Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Cleared Hot Episode 93 - Jack Carr

Episode Date: August 19, 2019

Jack Carr is a retired Navy SEAL with 20 years of service as both an enlisted SEAL, and commissioned officer.  Over his 20 year career he held positions as a SEAL sniper, Team Leader, Platoon Commander, Troop Commander, and Task Unit Commander.  He served in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  Jack is now pursuing his second life long dream, becoming an author.  His second book, True Believer is out now.  For more information about Jack, check out officialjackcarr.com 

This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Onit, a strength in conditioning, total human performance juggernaut, corporation, organization, Pickle 21. If you go to Onit.com slash hot, forward slash hot, you're going to land on the cleared hot landing page. You'll know you're there because it says cleared hot special. Receive up to 10% off when you check out. If you go across the top, you're going to get an idea of their offer. supplements, nutrition, fitness, apparel, sales section, and then there's content. On the content, there's written, there's viticles, videos, the Academy articles.

They have an entire audit academy. They have an audit podcast. Aubrey Marcus, their CEO has a podcast. The landing page itself has the three products that I use the most. The total human are day-night packs. Obviously, I use them in the day or the night, morning or evening. Alpha Brain is a neutropic. I personally like the instant that I can mix in water.

I like it for two reasons. One, it works for me, and two, it forces me to drink more water. So I feel like that is good because I think most of the time I'm dehydrated. And then MCT oil. And then another one I would recommend for people, this is for me. Sometimes I'll have, it's not that I have problems eating. It's I have problems digesting, I guess, perhaps. And of course, let's put on the table I'm eating the wrong food.

One thing I've found that really settles my stomach is the total gut health. When I eat that or take that supplement consistently, it actually really makes a difference for my gut health and then overall how I feel. Now, all of this stuff, right, the first category is supplements. And I try to say this every time I talk about supplements. Supplements are the micro. Before you buy any supplements, do me a favor square away your macro. So your rest, your recovery, your training, your nutrition.

Get all that dialed before you start spending money on things that are, like I said, the micro. So the vitamins and minerals, and it might optimize your performance, but if you're eating like a garbage disposal on the way in, it's not going to make a difference at all, and you're going to waste your money. So focused on the things that are important first, and then when you're ready, add some supplementation. And that's it. Onet.com forward slash hot.

You'll know you there because you'll see the podcast, art, and go to town if you want to. And if you don't, well, don't. So my guest today for episode number 93 is the author known as Jack. car. When he and I met, his name was not Jack Carr, because that's just a pen name anyway. But we actually started buds together. He was rolled due to shin splints shortly after Hell Week, so in the middle of first phase, and I'm not going to explain that anymore because we actually talked quite a bit about buds and broke the phases down by phase. And he knew he wanted to do two things in life. One

was be a seal. The second one was to be an author, and I'll be damned. He's done both of them. I had him on the podcast before when his first book came out, The Terminalist, and now his second book, True Believer, is on the shelves now. And if you want to check out who he is and his books, what I'd recommend is go to his website. It is three words. Official Jack Carr. Now, when you put Carr and it's two R's instead of one, other than that is normal spelling. Official normal spelling, Jack, J-A-C-K-C-A-R-C-C-R.com. Official jackcar.com. Check out his stuff. if you're a fan of books that are tied conceptually very close

to modern day military, but set in a non-fiction environment, then you're going to dig it for sure. And that's it. I'm going to let him do the speaking for himself. Episode 93 with author and retired Navy SEAL, Jack Carr.

Okay, copy, west of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. Coffee, clear not. Where would you like to begin? Jack Kerry. Where should we start? We should just catch up. I kind of wish we had recorded the whole ride from the airport.

To catch up? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I almost, as I was flying out here, I thought, yeah, that's going to be impossible because, you know, we'd have to have the stuff set up in the vehicle. I think it's been done. I actually think that Deadly has done some podcasts. He did it on a plane once.

Yeah, audio wasn't the greatest. I would tell. I would suspect that the plane would be louder than my vehicle, though. And I've heard Rogan did a couple on the iPhone. uh yes in a car but you could tell it was in a car this is much more professional it is yes and how many settings could there be that are like this for the people who are audio only i don't know what to tell you other than should probably go to youtube we have some special guests here with us at the table yeah they're not going to talk much throughout the podcast but uh yeah there there are four of them

for sure they've joined us which is amazing i feel very comfortable in this environment so what do you think of uh montana this is amazing so i always knew that i was I love Montana, and I grew up with this vision of Montana because growing up in Northern California, you just had this, you know, growing up in the mountains and all that stuff, but Montana was like the next step. That was like, that was freedom, especially in the 80s. And so I've been here a couple times, been to Helena, I've been into buildings and then the drive up to the brakes up there for a hunt, but I have not explored Montana the way that I would like and the way that I thought I would have at this point. So flying in today, it was so beautiful. Yeah. And then the drive out here is incredible.

I might not leave. You're welcome to stay as long as you would like. I appreciate. You have coffee here. I have coffee. We're pretty good. Like if something happens, we're going to be pretty good here.

Yeah. I have steak and coffee and booze. And we have deer right outside. We already said hi to a couple of them. We're a little early for season, so then we might have to let them mature a little bit more. I'm talking about end of the world type scenario. Oh,

it's fair game. Yeah, yeah. I think we're good. I think we're good. There's no turkey, though. I haven't seen any turkey out here. I've heard that there used to be some.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, Like if they ever come back, then we could have turkey, we could have deer, we have elk. Are there the moose wandering around here? I have seen a moose up here, not near where we're sitting, but the moose that I saw was east. It was over by the Hungry Horse Reservoir, which is not going to make any sense to you, but north end of Calispell heading east towards Glacier National Park, and then we took another right.

Okay. Which is about the precise as the directions that I get. And I was coming around a corner and just like, boom. Oh, hello, moose. and the moose was heading first for some safe ground. I don't know what he was up to. He stayed on the road for a little bit, looked to me, and then continued on with his life.

Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Point being we're in a good spot. Yes. You're not going to... High ground. Yeah.

And you're not going to be at a lack of wildlife for sure. No, this is beautiful. No, I love it. Love it out here. And I would not be surprised if we had a place close by in the coming years. I would get it. I actually myself want to explore more of Montana. And so for people listening,

I live in northwestern Montana, and that's as specific enough as we need to be, about 60 miles from the Canadian border, but the state is massive, obviously. I've been to Missoula, which is south of us, by about 120 miles, and I only know that because I drive by that sign every day. Nice. So it's not about 120 miles from that sign. It's exactly 120 miles. I've been to Helena a few times as well, passing through only Bozeman. I've spent a little bit more time there because big sky, and I get confused. Oh, I'll confuse myself.

Big sky. The ski resort areas there, big mountain. is the one that's up in whitefish. Flip-flop them sometimes. And that's about as far east as I've gone, I think, is Bozeman. And there is miles and hours and days more driving in that direction. And that's just, I would say, more towards the southern end of the state. You still have that whole northern aspect as well, which I believe is mostly agriculture.

Okay. Yeah. No, definitely want to explore this state. We have friends that have a place in Hamilton, Montana, which I think is closer to the Idaho border maybe. I do not know. But, yeah, no, definitely want to spend some time driving around up here and have other friends in this area. So you have to get time to.

Got to get time first. This is true. We were just discussing this. Yeah. So fill me in on the last year, which I think we, you came on the podcast. Right before the book came out. Before book one came out. One came out.

Which was about a year ago. Yeah, we did it in probably late February, early March, because you dropped it on the day of book release, which was March 6th of 2018. Okay. And then, yeah, we've caught up a couple times since. It shot and just back and forth on text and that sort of thing. But now here we are. together again.

And what have you been doing in that year? Because it sounds like a tornado. This has been crazy. This has been insane. And it was a lot, I guess, a lot busier than I thought it was going to be, I guess, especially going into it. So I thought that writing was like being in a place like this and writing and sending it to New York.

And then that's it. And starting your next one. And maybe you get an interview or two. Okay. That's great. I didn't realize that this whole thing is, it's a small business. and anything that you would do if you were starting a coffee shop or a lumber yard or whatever, you have to do as part of building a brand as writing,

co-branding, marketing, advertising, social media, everything else it takes to build anything. How much of that were you doing prior to the book release? Zero. So I did start social media before it came out. So I looked at social media, just kind of just looking at it. I laugh because I know you and I come from the same place of an absolute fear of social media and a misunderstanding or lack of appreciation or understanding what it can be used for. Right.

I was not an early adopter as far as social media goes. In fact, I just kept it at more than an arm's distance because of what we did in the past. And I just didn't want to waste time there. I didn't see, well, obviously, from what we did in the past, it wasn't helping what we were doing, training and taking guys down range and doing the job. It would have only had, I can only suspect it would have had negative impact. Yeah. I'm obviously not connected really at all to the teams anymore, but I would imagine that they have to discuss social media and its usage to the people coming in or even the people that are currently in because not really the stuff you'd want to be posting about. No, but it's a weird dynamic. So now you have guys coming into the teams that have grown up with it. Yeah. So we're creeping up on 20 years after 9-11. That means people are going to be joining the military that we're not even born on 9-11. And they've grown up sharing every. thing and having that be normal, which it was not for us. And so from the enemy's perspective, now when you're looking for somebody that's an outlier,

it's the person that doesn't have the social media now. Where we were still in the time frame where if you had it, whatever, it didn't matter. But if you're doing some of the, you know, more, I guess, a darker side or the intelligence side of things. Talking about looking in the negative space, instead of looking at everything that's out there. So now you spike if you do not have a social media profile. So in building, you know, backgrounds for guys and intelligence circles and that sort of thing and the algorithms. that you can put together, especially from a state sponsor when you're looking for people and building algorithms to identify people or figure out who is a threat or who's a deep

penetration agent. It is a tough thing to deal with. And I'll be exploring some of that in future novels, but I need to think about it a little bit more. But point being, you could get away with not having social media when we were in and it was better. But now, if you're going to have, it's just a very interesting thing to figure out. But if you're looking at it just at the base level, like what to post, what not to post, when you're home, when you're not. Yeah, you can do a lot of the enemy's job for them. Really? You really good.

Social media. Yeah. So point being, I guess I did look at it for about six or seven months maybe before I stuck my toe in. And if anybody follows me, you can go down on my early post. And I'm not in there. It's like knife, gun, book. You know, I'm not in there.

And then there's like side profile. Yeah. And then there's like backpack. And then slowly. And then when the book came out, I was like, all right. Got to go all in because that's what I owe the publisher for taking a risk on me. It's what I owe my family for putting up with this. It's what I want with myself for wanting to do this my whole life.

So I need to kind of embrace this and figure out. And, you know, I do like being able to thank people to reach out. It's great to have the touch points that you would normally have with that communicated, connected environment. I think for two years there was not a picture of my face. It was like helmet, wing suit. Nice. Maybe a little bit, but like sung light. Well, it's just because I'm always wearing my gators.

but it took me a while. And then forever I didn't want to play pictures of my kids up. And very, very infrequently, I'll put up pictures with my kids. But I think that, you know, the kind of the rule is you post a picture of a place after you've left the place, that type of stuff. But yeah, it would be tough to manage that in the modern day teams. If you wanted to be on social media, but you were in the middle of the workup, that'd be really, yeah, I would just think you couldn't post anything work-related. That would be detrimental. Yeah.

No, that would be, it would be not help. and then other people seeing you post and then the questions and then like it just yeah no best to stay away from it if you're uh if you're just coming into the teams or in military in general probably just just shy away from it i would i would suspect anyway but uh but yeah no it's a but it is a powerful tool obviously uh it is changing uh the world obviously uh particularly the way that people communicate via twitter in places that uh that aren't getting news um and how you can really also manipulate situations via Twitter with news that is not accurate. Twitter's a dangerous ecosystem. It's so crazy, the whole thing.

If you go, and this is me just totally anecdotally, but it seems like Instagram people are relatively nice. Facebook, they have a little bit more breadth and depth to go down the rabbit hole. Twitter is where two of the four wheels come off the bus, and then the only worst place than Twitter is YouTube comments. Oh. where there is, it's the, the bus is cartwheeling down the road and there's just pieces shattering everywhere.

I have not had time to go into any YouTube comments. You know what? Anything I've been on. Save any time that you might use looking at YouTube comments and do something productive. I will. Yeah, I will. Yeah, that's what I'm currently doing. But, yeah, I don't post pictures of the kids.

I don't post pictures of my wife. I talk about them all the time, but I don't say their names. So I just do things like that just because, I don't know, it's just more natural for me. I can't, it's such a big part of my life. Yeah. It's unnatural for me not to talk about them, but I just don't do the pictures and don't do the names and that sort of thing. I kind of naturally land there too. Like I said, it took me a really long time. And I talked, you know, with the kids about it before as well, too. Like, are you guys comfortable with it? I just wanted to make sure. And then the first one I put up, it just was like, uh, yep. It's tough. Yeah, horses out of the barn. It's a tough thing. And I don't do Facebook because I started with Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And three was going to be too much.

It's all. Two is almost too much. So I just do Instagram. I just do Twitter and things to repost to Facebook from Twitter or from Instagram. You just have them linked. Yeah. So I don't, but I don't respond to comments. I don't look at comments. I can't log in to Facebook.

But it is me on Twitter. It is me on Instagram. So if I'm not getting back to anybody on Facebook, it's because I cannot log in and I do not look at it. Why can you not log in? I just never, I mean, I probably could figure it out, but like I don't need to because I don't want to look at it. I like where your heads up. Yeah. So it's just Instagram.

Twitter. And right now, I try to get back to everybody. I'm sure that I miss people on Twitter in particular, because once I got that blue checkmark, things switched up, and I don't see how many comments there are. And I just have to do a lot more scrolling. And maybe I just don't know what I'm doing, which is entirely possible. But at some point, too, it'll become unmanageable for an individual response. I'm right there at the cusp of that. So I'm trying to keep up as best I can. But I think, you know, given the next year, it's going to have to change a little bit. because I just won't have the time to do that. So how did you put all that,

like you described it as a small business, which I would completely agree. Where did you start when it came to putting that together? You know, it just kind of came naturally. I just realized, okay, well, I'm in the, I guess, public space. I'm an author now. I need to promote the book. I need to build a foundation, build a base.

It used to be back in the day that a New York publisher would do that with a publicist and word of mouth would kind of take over, but it was actual word of mouth. around a water cooler or to a friend, but now we have word of mouth electronically via all these platforms. So I looked at it kind of the way that I looked at solving problems on the battlefield. So aggressively solving problems, looking for opportunities and capitalizing on those opportunities when they emerged

to get whatever advantage we could over the enemy. So I looked at this, although the repercussions of making a bad decision here are a lot less dire than on the battlefield, very similar, solving problems and figuring out that. the best way to use your time, your energy, your resources, to maximize whatever your, you know, whatever the outcome that you're after. So I kind of looked at it like that. And I didn't have any baggage coming in.

That's the other part because of what we did in the past. Obviously, we didn't do any advertising. We didn't do any advertising. We didn't do any of help. We didn't focus on the mission and how do you destroy the enemy. What's the best way to do that? That's it. So I didn't have the, this is what we did in my last job.

This is the way we've always done it on Facebook. This is what we're clean slate. Not exactly there. Not even a lens. It's not even a filter with any sort of a tint to it. It was just clear. Okay. Here's what I need to do.

How do I do it? Oh, look at this opportunity. Okay, I'll take that. But that also leads to not being able to say no. It's very difficult to say no, especially as you're starting something up, which it feels like a startup. You know, and that's what it feels like to me. And it feels like a full-on sprint. And when you have momentum, it feels like I shouldn't.

And I need to capitalize on that momentum. Don't take your foot off the gas, but it feels like. Yeah, at least for another year, at least for another third book or a fourth book. That's what it feels like anyway. But it did help to not have any of that baggage and just look at it like, okay, say yes to this, you'll say yes to this. But eventually I'm going to have to start saying no just because time. Which leads me to my next question.

In that journey of building it, what do you think the biggest mistake was that you made or a decision that you maybe would have reversed in hindsight? That is a good question. Yeah. I haven't had a chance to take a breath and really reflect on that yet because it's all been about how to just do it better next time. So not necessarily based on a huge mistake, but just, okay, what do we do this time? How do I do it better next time? So, I mean, all small things.

Yeah. But still, how do you do it better next time? Like sending out all the galley copies, which are the early copies of the book that I forgot if I sent one to it or not. You do. Yeah. So the packaging, because no one's ever done that before in publishing that I know about. Yeah. No, I like the anti-tampering tape on it. Yeah, exactly. So it's all like, when I get my iPhone, it's an experience. It's not just the iPhone. The unwrapping experience. Exactly. So I'm like, well, usually when I get a book, it just comes in a manila envelope from someone. So I'm like, what if I just... Usually with Amazon.

Yeah, a lot of times. But if you can get the early ones, even get the galley copies. So I was talking to a friend that did some stuff for Red Bull and they do something similar. And I hadn't seen that before, but my experience was with Apple. But apparently Red Bull does something similar. And so I thought, well, let's do it with a book. So this next time around, I won't do it with the galleys. I will do it with the hardbacks to maximize that impact to come out the week that the book comes out. So that's a lesson learned. But it's a small one. Yeah. But still, you want to look at what you've done.

And just like we do an AAR or a hot wash, how do we do it better next time? And so that's one of the little things. But yeah, nothing big. I got very, very lucky, very fortunate. I knew that exactly what I wanted to do, even the military, which a lot of people don't. And then knew the other part of that. The mission was to take care of the family. So I had that mission and purpose.

And then I had that passion that I wanted to do to fulfill that mission and purpose. And that was writing. It's cool you were able to combine those two because you'd see a lot of people who come out. I actually might even fall into that category myself. Obviously, taking care of those that you love is of, you know, utmost importance. I did not necessarily have a passion that I was pursuing when I got out. So my course was more of a sign wave than just a nice little vector. or heading in one direction.

But mistakes made along the way, lessons learned, same thing. How do I do this better? One of the biggest things we were talking about this earlier, too, is for me, it was valuing my time appropriately. Because I went down exactly the same road that you're describing. When I got out and you know the deal and anybody who's been in the military or works for the government, first and 15th, hey, easy money. Not necessarily always easy money, but you know you're going to get paid.

Unless I guess there's the government shuts down. But then you'll get paid back. It doesn't mean it doesn't suck. but you'll get paid back. It's not the worst thing. Yeah. So stability was one of the first things I was thinking about. And I went from a,

I had another job when I got out, which I left about a year after getting out. And then I was in a place where maybe I'll get paid on the third and the 22nd or the fifth, sixth, seventh, nothing else for the rest of the month. And it, I put myself, it didn't do anything.

I put myself into a place where gas pedal down accept every opportunity. And I would accept the opportunities at a value that I don't think was a pro, for the service that I was providing. And it took me a long time. One of the hardest things for me to do up to this point being out of the military is to say, this is what the cost is.

This is the value that I bring and this is what I'm going to charge for that. And I know that there are people who, like, that's their job as to act as an agent or a go between. And for me, I mean, I handle all, like the emails that come to me. I respond to. And when people ask me to do public speaking, it's like, they'll ask for a quote. And I'm sitting there type. And every time I'm like, man, this is an unremendable.

uncomfortable thing to say this is what it costs and I just had to get over that but it took me years of going on a long trip coming back realizing that from a financial perspective I was not much further down the road than I was when I left but I was exhausted I had missed things and I just I wanted to try to do less of that and more of the ones that were valued appropriately coming back rested feeling better feeling good about what I had done rested oh I'm looking forward to a day when I feel rest it again. I mean, I know I look tired. I am tired. I haven't worked out in a long time. Like, I mean, I have to do stuff in the back country or whatever. And I get on the trails and ski and all that sort of thing. But the, uh, so what happened at the pace of your life after

that last podcast? Because that first book was hitting, like, what changed in your life when that thing came out? What is the last 18, 16 months? Yeah. Well, working out fell kind of, you know, off the schedule completely. Yeah. Jocko, I'd be very proud of you. I know. We did discuss it. I got a little, I got a little bit of trouble when I was on there. And then he found out I wasn't rolling anymore and I got even more trouble. But you know, you could do the best you can. So yeah, after the last podcast, things kind of took off. I managed. I went right on the book tour right after that. And what does that actually look like? Describe a book tour. So you fly it into a city, you go to the hotel, drop your bags, depending on what time it is, zip off to the bookstore and sit,

do a little talk. And in my case, I kind of merge the seal stuff with the writing and really talk about how those things came together from growing up knowing that I wanted to both be a seal and then write fiction in the genre and how the guys that I read back in the 80s all had protagonists that had backgrounds that I wanted one day. So I get to talk about all those people that inspired me, like David Morrell, like Nelson DeMille, like Tom Clancy, like A.J. Quinell, J. C. Pollack, Mark Olden, all these guys I read in the 80s because you couldn't just Google Navy SEAL and have an unending supply of information. It was like, okay, there's a couple mentions here, a couple mentions there and in nonfiction, here's a magazine article about him in this other, you know,

Sojo Fortune or Gung Ho magazine or whatever, but that was it. You could read it all in about an hour. And then you're, then it was nothing. So, but there was fiction. And there were these protagonists that had usually Vietnam experience, usually special operations, Vietnam experience or some sort of a CIA type thing from Vietnam. And that's what I wanted to do. So that's what I read. And that was that foundation. And once I got into the teams, of course, I kept reading these kind of novels, but then my focus shifted to the nonfiction and really focused on terrorism, insurgencies, warfare, where we were going, who'd been there before us, the lessons they learned, the politics, the religion, the culture of where we were going so I could make the best

decisions possible for the guys. I did the same thing, man. I had a stack of books about Afghanistan and Iraq, just trying to understand, like he said, who was there before and what happened. And why. Yep, exactly. That's what. we owe the guys. That's what we owe their families. That's what we owe the mission. And ultimately what we owe the country. So I didn't think of it in terms of, oh, this will be great preparation for one day writing fiction. That was not my thought process at all. It was just, I want to be the best operator I can possibly be. And that means I need to be learning all the time, constantly learning. So I did that. And then what we did on the battlefield in Iraq and

Afghanistan, that experience and the feelings behind those experiences then really all came together with that foundation, then the studying of warfare, and then those feelings behind the experiences, kind of all came together at the right time and place to be able to translate that and apply them all to the pages of a fictional narrative. So it really worked out. It wasn't, I didn't plan it that way. I just knew first to steal, then right. That was it. But it just happened that all those things that I did really informed the novels and really made it break out from the other things that are out there. Led you to a bookstore one day where so you go and you talk for an hour? Yeah, so I talked there. I talked for like 20 minutes, maybe, 30,

minutes. And I like questions a lot better because if I'm just talking and I'm just getting these, I was looking at these faces. I don't, I don't know if anybody really cares what I'm saying, but I know that if one person asks the questions, I know that that person is interested in what I have to say. And it's going to lead to another question. Yes. So I do like the questions a lot more. So I just prime it with a little of the background. And it's mostly about writing. It's pretty much what I just told you right here. Maybe a couple little things. I'll talk about the review process, the government review process, kind of maybe how I got published, little things like that. And then going to questions, and I really like those.

And most of them would go on forever if they didn't stop. So the crowds were pretty big this time. So you'd fly in straight to a bookstore, finish that one. Is it right back to your hotel or right on a hotel? But a lot of times, especially this time, more so than the first time, there were a lot of interviews. So I'm trying to get cell signals. I'm driving in the back of an Uber or whatever it is and I got one bar.

I'm trying to do a live radio show in Philadelphia, and I'm in Denver, and you're trying to do all that stuff. And so you're doing that, doing podcasts, TV appearances, and then taped radio stuff. So you're doing all that. And it's changing by the day. And so you can only, for me anyway, I could only print out before I left the house. And then it was on tour for nine days. So nine days, nine days.

Oh, you'd go nine days at a stretch? This was this time, yeah. Nine days, nine different signings, which is kind of a lot. How many total did you do? So nine signings during that time. So one a day, really. But yeah, started at Poison Pen in Scot. Dale, Arizona, then it was to Houston, then it was to Dallas, then it was to San Diego,

then it was to Portland, then it was to Fort Carson, that was to Denver, then it was to Vero Beach, Jacksonville, and then home. So it was kind of crazy. And every day there were interviews. And so you had to remember. So I'm sending my alarm on my iPhone to five minutes before a live interview. So because I get so distracted, there's so much going on that would be like, oh no, hold on, I need to find a place to do this. So you're in the airport, holding one ear, trying to find a quiet place. That sounds miserable. Yeah. It's kind of, it's good, good problems to have. So these are definitely not complaints.

These are very, very good problems to have. And I feel extremely, extremely fortunate. But it was tired. And when they told me, like, hey, we have this nine day

book tour plan. You think you can handle it? I'm like, come on. Who are you talking to? I've stayed awake for nine days. I stayed awake for a week once, as you know.

I know. We went through hell week together. We did. Yeah. When did you quit my class? We've discussed this. So anyone interested in that story, you can go back.

So I got rolled afterward for the, shin splints, I guess they call them, or shin spurs. Right after how week? The week after, no, not the week after the week after that. So the one right before you'd go in. Oh, after the walk week? Yeah.

So on a swim, I just, my legs wouldn't work. Whatever that is when you're, when you're, when you're, for fear like this. I was just doing, yeah. Dorsiflexing. Whatever that is, that wasn't working. No, it's planter flexing. Sorry, yeah. So I was not planter flexing.

Yeah. I was just using my arms to survive. And I remember some huge instructor just yanked me out of the water. like, and said you're going to medical. I'm like, no. And then I did. End up working out for me, though, because I never had the problem. Again, I'm worried about talking about it right now because it might come back.

Some buds classes are too hard for some people. It's okay that you could make it through in 212. It was a tough class. It was, I believe, the last toughest class ever. Well, we had some interesting leadership, as I recall, that didn't do us any favors. No, it was terrible. It was the worst. Yeah.

And, you know, at that point. in my life where I think I was maybe 18 and just running around like an idiot. Yeah, you were the youngest. Yeah. And I'm sure you would agree emotionally I'm still exactly the same age. You're very similar. You've progressed a bit. People have asked me like, what were you like when you were younger?

I'm like, well, it's probably a better question for people who knew me, but I don't think I'm that different. Pretty much the same, just younger. That's probably how I'd answer that if someone asked me, which people have. I didn't know much about leadership in that. Well, you learned a lot during that. I did. Oh, I certainly did.

it was bad. Well, you know what? I've always learned my best leadership lessons from failures. Have you? Well, we learned a lot of that for through Hell Week then. Well, if you look at it, you mean, you know, if the train goes by and it doesn't wreck, you're like, huh, it's kind of hard to really break down what's happening. When a train goes by and it's cartwheeling and coming into pieces, one, you're going to pay attention to it,

and then you can do a little post-mortem on it. That does feel like our class leading up to Hell Week and through Hell Week was, yeah, train cartwheeling down the track of just leadership disaster. We didn't even get a break out. No. They were so bad, they didn't even do a breakout for us. So we have to unpack this a little bit. So for the people who are listening, the Hell Week is, what was it for us? The fifth week of first day?

It was the fourth week, I think. I think now it's the third. It might have been the fifth. I don't know. I think it was the fifth. All right, so let's go back even farther to the macro level. So Bud's basic underwater demolition seal. You're not a seal at the end of that.

You've just entered into the selection process. There's now a very robust screening process before that to pipeline guys in, which I know almost nothing about. And also the pipeline afterwards has changed because they get their trident. which I know a little bit about. Yep, we can talk about that. But the Buds program itself, it is six months long.

It's broken into three phases, first, second, and third, shockingly enough, although didn't it used to be third? Yes, it used to be something different. It was crazy. But if it doesn't make sense, it likely occurs in the military, so just embrace that principle. Yep, don't try to figure it out. First, second and third phase.

First phase, I would describe as physical conditioning slash being ground into dust. You don't really learn much. you use some hydrographic reconnaissance at the end. You've proven you want to be there. Correct. 10-week phase, or it was when we went through. Second phase is an eight-week phase, which is diving, both closed circuit, which is no

bubbles, and open circuit, it releases bubbles. Third phase, I would say, is an intro to land warfare skills. Navigation at Mount Laguna, San Clemente Island, some very basic maneuvering tactics, which all tactics are based off of, and it's amazing how well those basic ones have served me over the years. By the time you get to third phase, your odds are great. in second phase there's a test gate called pool comp, which I actually administered when I was an instructor.

If you can make it past that, your odds are looking really good. It's kind of, I would say, the last go-no-go test gate, probably in buds. Yeah, I mean, I think you get most attrition other than hell week in pool comp. But also, I should break it down is, yeah, that first phase, just proving you want to be there that you've had that you have that grit. Second phase, it's proving you're comfortable in the water. Even if you really want to be there, you're a great leader, you're in great shape, you're all the things we're looking for.

If you're not comfortable in the water, yeah, you still might be a good fit. Yep, that's it. And then third phase is that kind of that catch-all where you're like, is this guy safe with demo and weapons? I forgot the demo, yeah. Because you could also be a great leader.

You could be in great shape. You could be, you know, you have that team ability we're looking for, you have all that stuff. You could be comfortable in the water. You can pass pool comp and be really good with all that. And you could be a disaster. Somehow, you could just not be safe somehow.

It's a total shit show with a gun. It's possible. Yeah. So that's really way to catch those guys. So that's kind of how I break it down. Yeah. And in first phase, the main test gate there, or I would say 70% of the attrition probably occurs is hell week.

It starts on a Sunday evening. It ends on a Friday afternoon. And Sunday night is supposed to, they call a breakout. And, you know, I would imagine, I watched a couple of them and the instructors get fired up, right? Because you're going into the armory and you're getting, it used to be the M60s with blanks. And then it became saws. and, you know, grenade simulators and smoke grenades and they have everything taped off.

It's actually pretty funny watching it from the instructor's side. Oh, yeah. Like there's fire hoses. Well, there's like life jackets on the concrete pillars, which you never see as a student. I saw all this safety that worked when I went back as an instructor. And it's basically an ambush. That's the bet you're ambushing the students

because they are on the beach in Vietnam-era tense. General-World War II. Yeah, GP-Tet that likely saw service in. at least the deuce. Yeah. Maybe the Oon. You never know. And so you're laying out there on cots.

For the hunters listening, it's like a gigantic one of these guides, canvas guides tent, but like a big one. Yeah. And on a cot that is the stamp on that thing, it was put in service likely in Vietnam. They're super old, but they last forever. And you're laying out there, and as the students, you know that breakout's coming. And you're just, you're waiting for it because it's the beginning of a five-day kick directly into the testicles. And it sounds awesome.

Like the 60 gunners are working together. Gag, cag, gag, gack, and then it's just chaotic. And then our classic comes down. But we started, though, with usually they watched like a motivational movie.

Oh yeah, we had pizza in a movie first. In the second phase of us? No. What was it? It was not a motivational movie. Was it Apocalypse Down? Yes.

If one of the most depressing movies you could watch before starting. We probably had half of our attrition in that class just because of that, how depressing that movie is. The low moral state that we're like, oh, yeah, that was awful. I think after that they're watching Braveheart,

you know, watching these things that fire you up. And yeah, no, we had Apocalypse Now. Great movie, but not necessarily what you were going to watch before you start Hell Week. Yeah, so we had pizzas, Apocalypse Now in the second phase classroom. Yep. Went out to the tents. Yeah.

We're anxiously awaiting the cacophony of machine gun fire, which never came. came. Didn't happen. Because our class sucked the biggest of dongs when it came to leadership. We didn't even deserve a breakout. I think the instructors actually hated a large portion of our class. Well, they definitely hated our leadership.

Oh, they did not like him at all. No. I don't think he ever actually did a platoon. I don't think so either. I'm amazed he made it through, to be honest with that. I cannot believe. That was disheartening. I'll tell you.

That was disheartening to me to see somebody make it through that from being that the sled dog being that enlisted level guy. that you look up and saw this guy is not a seal leader. This is not a tactical battlefield leader. I do not want to go into combat with this guy. And I know that the enlisted instructors do not want to go into combat with this guy. So why is he making it through? Because he found the seams and limits in the bureaucracy.

I think you're right. And I say that. Very nice guy. Yeah. I say that having gone back and found them myself. Because, you know, as an instructor, you do get some insight into the personalities of the students. and now what they have incorporated are peer assessments. Yep.

And that is mind-blowing. It can be because they spend so much time, you know the deal. We spent so much time actually away from the instructors and evenings and weekends. There's a lot of things that will happen there that the class may feel a certain way about somebody who's performing well or just won't quit in that perspective. And the instructors just don't see it. And I think that information is critical.

Oh, yeah. I mean, they used to do it old school was the top five, bottom five. Yeah. Like no, I mean, a little bit of thought. Yeah. Like, who are the best? Who are the worst? okay, these worst guys, let's get them gone, or let's talk to them and at least give them one

counseling session. And just say, hey, you just so you know, ended up on the bottom five, don't be here again. Yeah, exactly. One chance. And then usually those guys were gone, especially in first phase, second phase, I would guess, probably, you know, it's harder to figure out who the bottom five are. It's the third phase, harder. But maybe they're, you know, regardless.

Now they're a lot more thoughtful about it. And they're using technology to get a better picture of who these people are. who are the attributes we're looking for and do these students have them? Do these sealed candidates have them? And we have certain physical test gates that, okay, those go in there as well. But these peer assessments

also go in there. But it's not just top five, bottom five. It's these attributes and all that. There's algorithms. Well, they're asking for more amplifying information. Yeah, it's a lot smarter. So, yeah, how would you describe our hell week beginning? Oh, yeah.

A little bit disappointing. But, you know, so fast, So quick. And you'd see back then there wasn't as much, obviously, out in the news or on discount. I think there was one Discovery Channel thing out, but not like the long one that people watch. It was like a couple. Oh, the class 234 one. Yeah, it was not that one, obviously, but there was something out there.

So you had a snippet of Hell Week on video. Like, I'd seen something on it. You know, that's right. Yeah. Now that you bring that up, I do remember having watched something about that. And it was awesome because I was shooting a 60 from the hip, walking through smoke and just ejecting brass everywhere. Brickin great. Yeah. So when that didn't happen, you know,

my mind was like, oh, yeah, we're the worst class ever. But then you're in the water so fast and you're shivering and your arms are locked and you're doing, what are those drills, the whistle drills? Like, up to down. Whistle drills? Yeah. So I don't even know how you describe a whistle drill. One whistle you have to hit the deck.

Two whistles, you start crawling towards the whistle. And then what's the third one? You have to cover your ears. I don't know. I don't remember. It's just movement. It's movement with no purpose whatsoever. Yeah.

The odds of you successfully doing, which. you're being asked to do at zero. And that's the purpose of it. It's exhausting. Yeah. But yeah, I remember we were sitting in the tents and you hear hit the serve. Yeah. Somebody walked in, I think, to mind.

We have two tents or one, I forget. There was three. Three tents. I was in. The person that went into the first tent did not come into our tent. So nobody moved. We were just sitting in the clots. And we hear him, hit the surf.

And I remember somebody like went and peeked and looked out the canvas. And everybody else just said, I don't want to go outside. So we all stayed in the tent until they came and like ripped open the intent. Yeah, then it was straight to serve torture. Yeah. Yeah. So you got cold pretty quick. So I think I forgot that there wasn't a breakout. I didn't spend my next five days thinking about that. It was more just, you know, survived. But what I really loved is, and it feels that as much I don't like talking about this because it makes me seem heartless, but I loved when people quit. I was going to actually just say the same thing. I was going to ask you, do you remember how long it was before the first person bailed? Really quickly. Yes. And the person who bailed was a rollback proclaiming how well he had performed in previous hell weeks.

I think he actually gave us a speech. He did. And when he quit. In front of the class and wrote things on a board. Yes. And I was like, okay. And he was pretty fast, I think. I'm climbing ropes and stuff.

To the bell. He was very correct. He was very fast for the bell. The fastest even. Yeah. So, yeah, he was done immediately. But I liked that because I was like. But do you remember what happened when he quit, though?

More people? It pulled more people with him because of how he had built himself up. And then I remember that because he was right next to me. Oh, really? And we were going, you know, back up to the instructor. and into the surf. Uh-huh. And I heard it happen.

They're like, what are you doing? Fill in the blank last name that I won't use. And then more people started going. And then shortly after that, they secured the surf torch. We got the boats on our head and went down to do rock portage. Okay.

Because I think they wanted to stop the ex-attrition. Yeah. Oh. So great. Yeah. I'm, I loved it. I loved that.

By third phase, when people ring the bell, our class, which was too hard for you to finish with, It's not for everyone. It's not for everybody. I mean, the bell, people would ring the bell and you're just sitting in a classroom just like, yeah,

and we get in trouble because we were so enthusiastic about other people. Oh, really? Yeah. I liked it, but I remember some people in the surf zone would be like, come back, come back. And I was like, you know, I did not. You heartless bastard. I know, it sounds terrible to say, but it's almost like

a, well, Highlander, like, taking their energy. But especially when that first guy quit, that was so loud and, like, he was pretty beefed up, right? I mean, he was like, strong. I think it was 10 minutes in. It was probably like that. But I was like, yes, this program works.

Yeah. Because if you were to pick somebody not to quit, it would probably be that guy just based on like looks. The portrayal. Yeah. And the self-patroil. I was like, yes, that's it. I love it.

It couldn't have been more than 15 minutes. It was in one of the first iterations of surf torture. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I heard his people. Yep. And for people listening, surf torture is you face the ocean,

you lock arms in a very long line. And you walk out generally to about neck, neck deep water and you lay down and the surf smashes over you until you get pushed up onto the sand or you reach the time limit allowed and then you stand up and you walk out again and it's that's it's it's good times good times but it's like it's true hey do you have the grit to be do you really want to be here yeah and it's a good test for that because that cold is it as you know is a great equalizer it is that certainly was with that first guy to quit oh wow yeah i know i remember in wednesday i got pulled into medical i was having some stomach issues and

he was in there working as a corpsman because he was a corpsman. And it's not like he was too exhausted from his previous evolution. And he was like, hey man, let me get you a blanket. And I remember thinking, I don't want to blame. This story doesn't have much to do with him. But I remember thinking, don't give me that blanket because I don't want to warm myself up. Yeah. So I tried to keep myself cold because it was the transition from hot or warm to cold, like

sitting down and eating for an hour and then trying to get your body moving again. I'm like, get that thing away from me. I'll take the meds. I think they jam some Z-packed on my throat or something. Yeah. And then I was just right back. I'm like, just get me back in the ocean, please. Not that I wanted to be in the ocean,

but I knew I didn't want to be in a room with a heater in it. Yep, which is why the worst part for me was that two hours they get, if you have sleep or whatever on Wednesday. So you go back into these tents and they are awful. I mean, it's just all these bodies have been moving since. You woke up Sunday morning. Yeah. And then you've just been moving and you've been in and out of the surf zone.

And you've been to the chow hall, whatever. So your body's kind of warmed up in there as you're eating. And then it's just, stinky and smelly and you're, it's just disgusting. So all packed into a tent with no ventilation for two hours. Yeah. And I can only imagine just walking into that, just how awful that was it wasn't great as an instructor. But the waking up from that. And so we did get a little mini breakout from those. I think people through flash crashes in maybe. I don't, I vaguely remember even that rest period. Right. Regardless, I mean, you could get an hour asleep. Maybe you got two hours

if you like hit the rack right away. Yeah. Maybe it's 30 minutes. Who knows how much you actually get there and you go right into like your body just starts going into REM right away. But then you wake up. It seems like a second later, you're back in the surf zone. Yeah. That was, just let us just keep going. But that was the worst part to get back up. And we got some quitters there on that one. We did. Which is a little bit late

in the week for that too. Wednesday. Yeah. Yeah. I usually make it to Wednesday, you're okay. But getting back up from, yeah, when you're here's the most bullshit saying in buds. If you can see the sunrise on Wednesday morning, it's easy from there. Fuck you, whoever came up with that. You can make it if you see the sun come

up on Wednesday morning, but it is no easier to get to Friday. Yeah, no. It's out, but it was kind of, you know, but at that point, they're just, they're keeping you awake and you're just moving and you're doing the fun of games and all that stuff. So you're not doing things for time anymore. If you're doing it for time, it's a competition. Oh, it around the world? That's for time.

And then around the world. Was it for time? Yeah, we were racing. Oh, interesting. I don't even remember. But we didn't even get to go around the world, right? We had to go like halfway around the world and then back. So around the world, we got to describe this one, too.

The boats. If you go, yeah, go Google, Bud's, what would it be the best thing? Buds, boat crew. I guess Hell Week around the world or something like that.

I'm just trying to get people perspective of the boat. Like Hell Week, Bud's Hell Week boat crew or something like that. And you're going to probably find a picture of people running with boats on their heads because they're really easy to paddle in the water, but it sucks on your head. So you're going to spend most of the time with it on your head. But you start at the command,

which is right there in Coronado. I'd say the southern edge of Coronado before you head towards Imperial Beach. And you're supposed, to paddle south to Imperial Beach. That's where you do the portage, and then the mud flats is right there. Yeah, that's healthy.

Yeah, it was super good. And then from there, you paddle back up, and now you're on the Bayside. So you paddle to NAB Coronado, which is the Bayside base, which is directly adjacent to the ocean side, separated by the silver strand going up. Buds is on the ocean side, NAB Cornado is there.

Then you're supposed to paddle all the way around to North Island, go through the opening to the channel. So you're still in the bay, but now you transition to the ocean, come back to North Island, on the beach, and then you finish up back at the compound. Did we do that?

I don't think we did. No, I think we... I did that. We did the mudflats. It was a separate evolution, though, and then we went across the mudflats, and then we paddled back for midrats on the Bayside. Yep.

We ate them into soccer field. Oh, man, I don't... Oh, yes, I remember soccer field. But that was a different day. I think Thursday, they're like, you guys aren't even... You guys aren't even good enough to go around the world. So you guys get to go.

I really think it was probably tides or like, who knows. But I think we left kind of by buds and then went all the way up to the mouth of the bay and then back. Oh, interesting. Yeah, because I don't remember making that, I don't remember closing that loop and going through the channel. I think we did the whole, nope, I think we just went up to the end, turned around, and then came back. I'm actually certain of it. I mean, we had to get out. And full disclosure, we were absolute zombies at this point, because this is Thursday night.

Did you hallucinate? Yes, I started hallucinating on Tuesday night. We were paddling. That's a little early. Yeah. Well, we were paddling, and I remember I was up in the boat. I remember specifically I was in the front left portion of the boat and I just started seeing luggage coming by the boat. I'm like, oh, God.

Interesting. Well, yeah, I didn't do it until Thursday, but I saw a warehouse in the water as we were paddling around the world. And I saw Poseidon come up behind it. Oh, bitching. Yeah, it was pretty cool with a Trident thing and everything. And I just kept paddling. I was like, oh, you know, normal? So there's a floating warehouse out here.

And there's Poseidon coming up behind it. It's hard to describe the mental and physical state that you're in for people to understand. stand because then they secure you on Friday. You get a t-shirt that's brown instead of white. You get handed. It's pretty sweet. You go through medical and the conclusion is on everybody, oh, you're completely messed up.

You need some sleep and food. Yeah. I got a red Gatorade and an entire pepperoni pizza that lasted about seven seconds. And then the most painful and uncomfortable sleep in my life. Oh, really? Oh, my body hurts so bad. Really? I woke up Saturday.

I don't know if I'm not going to guess what time it was. I had to pee. and just the evolution of getting out of the bed and walking to the bathroom and coming back. I'm like this. What's going on here? Interesting. I think I pissed on a bottle. Maybe that's later.

That's a varsity move. I wasn't there yet. But our mattresses are on the ground. Remember their mattresses are on the ground. They're off the bed, even the bottom bunks. Because they didn't want you to fall off? Well, I think isn't it because if your hand falls off, your body's not strong enough to push all the fluids back up?

I thought that was the reason. Could have been. I was not in the best mental state when they were describing why the mattresses were on the ground. And then the next day, I remember getting up and going to Ruth calendar thing and getting the buffet. The buffet. The buffet.

Yeah. I remember that was like the best food I ever had. I did the same thing with my dad. Yeah. And then I think a couple months later, I had, I went to, I was going to take some girl to breakfast and I was going to really impress her by thinking of Marie calendars. Spare no expense. Yeah.

Looking back, I'm like, oh, yeah, no, not the, that, that is not a black belt move. for sure. Yeah. Wow, man. How did we get down this rabbit hole? I love it, though. We live in Hell Week talking about people quitting right away. We were on first, second, and third phase.

Yeah. And we were just talking about Hell Week. Somehow we started talking about breakout and not having a breakout. Yeah. And we were talking about your book tour and leadership. That's right. That's right. We did segue.

We did segue, indeed. Oh, point being nine days on Book Tour. I thought I could do it because I'd been awake for five days once. but now I'm 46. It's not quite the same. You were 18. I think I was like 21 or something. And yeah, so not quite the same.

I was a little bit tired by the end of this nine days on the road. But it was great. But every second was jam-packed with interviews or podcasts or TV or the signings. And the signings went long. Because I, they're like four hours each, which is a long time. It is a long time. But I take time with each person. I feel so fortunate to be in this position.

So I'm not good at moving people along. Yeah. And so I just like to talk and ask them, you know, how they found out about it and really thank them for taking the time to come by and to buy the book and to have it. If they read the first one to have what they thought of it and if it resonated with them and if they're here for the second one, it obviously did. So it's, it's very cool, very cool experience. I'm assuming that'll repeat itself for the third book. Yep. I think I'm going to do it seven days instead of the nine.

I think that's the, that's my plan anyway. We'll see what the publicist has to say. See what Simon Schuster wants to do. pretty much whatever they say goes. Yeah. But I think a seven day is a good one, come back and do a couple around. And I came back from those nine days and did two,

one in Salt Lake and one in Park City. Yeah, which a little bit more local for you. Yeah. What a, do you have to do it in nine consecutive days? Why couldn't you break it up a little bit? Well, you want to do it right off the bat because the first week.

Right off the release, correct? Okay. From the publication date because the first week is the best chance you have of making the New York Times best seller list because all your pre-orders count. those numbers. So whatever anybody bought in the preceding year, when it was up on wherever you can buy it, then those count as a first week sale. So that's the first week to hit the ground hard. And I'm sure you could make it later if it caught on later or something happened. I'm sure they're outliers. But generally, you want that that first week is the best chance, especially someone in my position that no one really knew last year at all. Now people know a little bit more because of another book. And they're just going to keep building on that. But yeah, first week is a full on sprint. And that's,

It's also the time. I think when you have the best chance to get interviews because there's something to talk about, the new book. But I think mine's a little different in that usually I always have something to talk about. So it feels like I've really been on a book tour since we last talked on the podcast. It seems like you've been all over the place. Some of that I know you, it's cool because I see you getting to combine things you're passionate about hunting. So you can travel, hunt, and also research. Research.

Yep. Yep. You want to Siberia here, Comchaca Peninsula, which I need to find out of that really inside. Siberia or what exactly that means, but Kamchaka Peninsula in Russia to do some research. So the third book is pretty much done, but what I'll do is take what I learned there and weave that into the next three months of edits, three or four months of edits, how from long the edits end up taking and get that local flavor in there, kind of like I did with Mozambique when I went over there doing that research and talk to the professional hunters, talk to the trackers,

got to see the dirt, the rocks, the trees, animals, Chinese influence in the area, how are the legal and illegal mining operations, how they're feeding those people, how does poaching play in and all those things that made it into the storyline. Yeah. The same thing with Kamchaka in Russia. And there's some things I want to find out like, what kind of snow machines do they use? Do they get them from the states?

Is there, come from Europe? Do they have some crazy Russian sleds that they use that are run off like vodka and oil? Like, what do they have there? And then I want to talk to them about their mythologies, a local area, the changing of the seasons, what that actually looks like. And I just want to talk to the locals and get as much information as I can.

and then weave what I learn into the pages of the third novel. When you submit that book for your first edit, how long do they hold it before they start giving you notes? I don't know. My experience in this is one or two books now. Up into this point. A couple weeks. Did they assign just one person to read it,

or is there a team of editors? Yep, one. Emily Bessler, books, which is an imprint of Atria, Simon & Schuster. Okay. And she's probably the one person that if you could choose someone to like your book in this genre, in New York, it would be her.

And that's where my book ended up. First one ended up on her desk. And she loved it. And then the edits on the first one were very minor. And I thought there'd be a ton because she published Vince Flynn, Brad Thor, continues to publish the Mitch Rapp series that Kyle Mills writes now. And I thought there'd be a ton. Like, these guys are the experts.

You know, they're going to change this thing around. And who knows they might put exploding robots from outer space in there, you know, whatever they know. Yeah, they know what they're doing. But it came back with like three things. What do this here? would he do this here? And a third thing I can't remember.

And I think that's because as I was doing it, I had the theme written on a yellow sticky on my computer. So I had revenge written right there. And if a paragraph, a chapter, even a sentence didn't directly or more importantly indirectly, lead back to that theme, then I immediately got rid of it. And people talk about if you read books about writing

or talk to people about writing, they say don't edit as you go, get it done, and then go back. I'm not good at that. So I edit as I go. maybe that'll change in the future. But as I go, I was editing that one and the second one and the third one. So you'd write for a day and then just go back and re-edit what you'd just written?

Maybe not even a day. Maybe just writing it. And then as I'm writing that sentence, writing that paragraph or even that chapter, let's say it took three hours, maybe an hour, depending on where I stop and take a breath and look at it. And I ask the question, is this on theme? Does this tie to this theme of revenge? No.

Okay. Delete. And so, yeah, so Stephen King calls it killing your babies. And, but he, I think he waits till the end. And then he's like, don't go, don't be afraid in his book on writing. Don't be afraid to go back and kill your babies doing that, doing those edits. So I just did it as I went. Yeah.

For the most part. And I did that for the second and now the third as well. But staying on theme for me was very important. And that really helped. And I got that from Stephen Pressfield. And I think I got it from when he was on Rogan's podcast. But he wrote Gates of Fire, Legend of Meg advance. Yeah, the War of Art, authentic swings.

So those series on creativity. And so I got that from him. And that really helped. How are the notes on the second? More. More on the second. Because it was way more in depth, way more development. It was, had a geopolitical backdrop that was a little different that varied by time, space, distance.

So it was a lot more to juggle. So a lot more edits on that. But not a crazy amount. Yeah. I mean, pretty much the same. You know, just keeping it on theme and hey, you might want to build this up a little more over here, take this out over there, kind of more normal. type of edits, I would think. But once again, my experience is now two books and about to be three. How do you know when it's done? Who makes that call? Uh, me. Like, I'm done with this editing process.

Well, no. I would probably keep editing forever. Yeah. But at some point, it's got to go. It's got to go in. So they'll submit with feedback. I'm sure Emily would. Yep. You make the change or what you think she's saying, give it back. Yep. So you ping pong a little bit. Yep. And at some point, it's just, you're like, it's good. Yep. So you do that. You, uh, And this is obviously just our experience and our relationship. It could be different for other people. But, yeah, go back and forth on some content stuff. And then you'll start a formal process where you're now in the cycle.

Like they have a date where they need things. They have a date where it needs to be, go to the printer because it needs to be published. And the cover has to be matched. And all these things have to line up. And it has to have been, like the year ahead of time, been figured out as far as, okay, what kind of books do we have going on at these different points throughout the year? So you're not kind of competing with yourself type of? like kind of what movies would do.

So the same studio is not going to have the two movies that are exactly the same coming out. Oh, yeah, they time for sure, yeah. But you figure all that out. So eventually there'll be a time where this date, it's called the first pass of edits, those are due. Those go in. They have a date where they're getting those back to you. So it does get formalized a little farther down the line. So that'll probably happen here in the next couple months.

For book three. For book three. Yeah, it'll be first passive edits, second pass in the first time. So there was a solid month between when I got the, the first passive edits back when I do when I the second pass was was due and so I thought it was kind of I didn't know what I was doing right sometimes they assumed that I know things and but I'm very new so I have no clue and then when that third ones came I thought I was going to have a bunch of time and so I got them back and I waited a day because something was going on then I dove in and that day I dove in

they said yeah we need this by end of business I'm like what about what about the whole month I didn't what so so I was like oh all right I there you go do the best I can and get it back, but you could really do that forever. And it would probably get better by degree, but not by, not by much. So, uh,

and then once that goes, it's like a round down range. You know, it's gone and you can get it back in the chamber. Nope. And you can a little bit with ebooks. So there are a couple things that, uh,

that I get to change. They get changed very quickly on ebooks. You get a couple mulligans. Yeah. Those change instantly in ebook. Like when I find something in here, I call and like that second, it's done.

Yep. Um, and so anybody that downloads it from then on, it's fixed. Uh, audio can do some magic. They can do some magic and fix it there. The first printing is, though, the first printing that's out there. There's nothing you can do about that one. Do you read your books for the audiobook? No. No. So it's much like having, wanting to write the

screenplay if they do a movie. I want the best screenwriter to do that. Same thing with this. I want the best narrator to do it. Obviously James Earl Jones. That would be amazing. Or Jocco. I've had a lot of request for Jocko actually. God, I don't know if I could take that. It's very intense. But I didn't know because I'm a physical book reader and I wasn't an audio guy. And what I didn't know is that narrators now bring their own fan base. People will follow a narrator from one book to Max rather than the author. And I had no clue. So when they first got in touch with me about the audiobook, Simon & Schuster sends me an email and they say, we need to, how does this guy sound?

Let us know. And I'm like, well, listen to it. And it was awful. I don't know who it was, but it was not good. And so I emailed back. I said, hey, can we choose somebody else? Or can I find someone else? And they said, yeah, just let us know. Once again, end of business. I was like, oh, what time is it in New York? I'm like, okay, I got a solid two hours to figure this out. But I didn't have anybody in mind.

So I started doing samples, just sample, sample, sample, sample, and found Ray Porter, who was an amazing guy. And then listened to another one of his, then another one of his. than another one of his. And then I sent that back to Simon & Schuster and said, hey, how is this Ray Porter guy? And I had no idea that he had the fan base that he did,

but he brought an entire fan base to it, which is great for the audio. And audio is the fastest growing segment of publishing right now. Doesn't surprise me, given the growth of podcasting as well. Exactly. I think the same people that are listening to podcasts and are on Instagram are my audiobook people.

Well, as soon as you realize you have... That's based on nothing, obviously. That's just a guess, but that's what I think. But once you realize you can actually be productive while consuming information.

To me, that was the flip. I remember the last time I listened to anything other than probably, man, I guess music occasionally, but other than that, it's podcast, just learning and figuring new stuff out. It's amazing. A buddy asked me last night,

we were at a concert in Deer Valley last night, and a buddy asked me what I listened to, like music, we had a concert. So he's like, what do you like? It was Ben Harper. And I say,

who do you listen to? I'm like, I listen to no one. I listen to podcasts. That's it. And I was thinking about it. And I told them that I think the last time I turned on the radio to listen to music was probably four years ago. And it's all podcasts ever since I found out what a podcast was.

And I think it was Rogan might have been my first one. And it was a hunting specific one. And then I like went to the search bar in the iTunes podcast thing and like typed in hunting. And I think Grie Bowman popped up. Probably. Yeah. Back then. And then I forget who was after that.

But that was the start. And really I've only listened to podcasts ever since. Yeah, I'm kind of in that boat. I was late to the game, way late to the game, podcasting-wise, as far as consuming them myself. And, yeah, now it's like, okay, playing catch-up on a volume of things that I can't possibly catch up on. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, now I can't listen to all of them. I just search completely based off of guests and topic. And skip the ones that don't seem to be as interesting, and then just hit the ones that are fascinating to me. Got it. Yeah, so I download the ones, my regulars, and they all download, and then I look at the guests. For sure.

And I'll go through and just and pick the ones because I can't listen to all of them now. It's impossible. And there's just too much going on. And when I started listening to podcasts, I was driving up to L.A. a lot. So I was still in the military. So it must have been in 2015, probably. And I started driving up to L.A. because I had a lot of opportunities up there as I was trying to figuring out.

Because I would have backup plans and contingencies. It's very important. So as I was getting out, I had a lot of them in L.A. for some reason. So I was making that San Diego to L.A. drive, which made me also decide to not take any of them, regardless of how much money they offered in L. because it was to traffic. I drive north on the five from San Diego to L.A. Routel.

I've done it 90 minutes and seven hours. It's awful. With no control over which one it was going to be. And also, I've been in traffic jams in L.A. at 3 in the morning. Yep. There's like cop fire on the car and a side of the road or whatever. It's crazy.

But I pretty much decided that and I had some pretty nice offers up there and I decided not to take any of them. It's just too being in traffic for life. That's not what I did the last 20 years for, just in traffic. just to have a bank account that was fairly, fairly robust. But it did give me a lot of time to listen to podcasts. So I did get to do that.

2015 is when I found them as well. Okay. Yeah. Not exactly on the tip of the spear with that one for either of us. I mean, it might have been 2014. I can't remember. But anyway, it was. I found it a day before you did.

So it's fun. Whatever years was, I was right before you. That's it. What is this shit? What is this shit you're telling people that you're taller than me too? I am taller than you. How tall are you? It's the platform shoes.

I don't wear platforms. How tall are you? You're six foot tall. You're six foot tall. I'm wearing flip flops. I am maybe a little bit taller in that. How tall are you? You're not six one.

I might be. You're not. Well, I know that you're not. I love you more. Somebody told me like, oh, I met Jack and he was telling me how he's taller than you. And I said, well, first off, that's just odd. Is that Dudley? Yeah.

Because it was a competition thing. I forget it was like a photo we were. were in or something. Well, it sucks is. You can't talk about height with him because he's 8 foot 4. I know. He's a monster. But he moves to the woods like nothing I've ever seen.

Oh, it's really impressive, actually, until he says, let's go. And then you're like, oh, no. Because he's just, and you're just sitting there like, oh, my God. You're running like twice as far. His normal steps are about 1.5 of my gate. Yep. No, I get it. Yeah.

It's tough. I totally understand. Yeah. How do we get on the, how do we get on the? Oh, yeah. Hunting? Oh, no, the podcast. Yeah.

So you discovered them in 2015. I discovered them in 2014, is what we just figured out. I discovered them in 2014 the day before you did. I think we could probably go back and figure it out because one of the first ones I listened to was Jonathan Ward with Rogan. And Jonathan Ward does icon 4x4. Okay.

They make those just sweet land cruisers and now Broncos. You are obsessed with those things, by the way. I do like my land cruiser. When did that start? I think it started. Gosh, I can't even tell you exactly when it started. because it's a love affair. It is.

It's really anything, you know, anything retro truck-wise. So it's really, and I don't discriminate too much, but the Land Cruiser is just when I could afford it back then, and the Defender 110's, Defender 90s, were a lot more expensive. Land-cruisers are now expensive if you get them in a very in good condition or with low mileage, which are hard to come by as well. But back, you know, 15 years ago, 10 years ago, whenever, you could still find them out there and they weren't at,

expensive as the Land Rovers. So, yeah, just naturally gravitated to it. Love that box. Love the utilitarian. It has just, well, the look, and then how they actually just were barely bomber. You post about them often. I do.

I read your post. And they're characters. You are cheating on your wife with that car. They're also characters in the novels. Because growing up in the 80s, we had, so you had the Duke's Hazard car, you had the 18 van, you had the Magnum Ferrari, you had Miami Vice, you had all these characters.

If you could take any one of those, which vehicle would you? go with the Dodge Power Wagon from Simon and Simon. What? Bam. Yep. How about that? I would probably go with the 18 van.

Yeah, it's a little creepy, though, when you look back. I don't know. I liked it in old school. Yeah, I don't know. You can get away with it now, though. The second choice would have to be the Duke's a hazard. Yeah, Mike, you can get in trouble with that one now, too. Well, maybe a different paint scheme.

How many of those do you think they wrecked jumping? I think I've actually looked this up. I think it was a fair number, but then at a certain point, they switched over to just model vehicles. Oh, did they really? And back then they kind of just like, and you could totally tell it was completely fake.

Yeah, when you hit season five or something, when the cousins came in, when Bo and Luke left and the cousins came in, then I think they went to the models because they needed to save some money to bring Bro and Luke back. Yeah, because you could watch some of those landings and say, you're never driving that car again

as the chassis just completely bends itself. Yeah, but there's also the Fall Guy truck. So he's a fall guy truck. I'm not familiar with that one. He had a little place in there where you could smuggle people. because he was a bounty hunter, so they have a little hidden compartment in the back. Keep people in there for smuggling. But I think the Simon and Simon truck is Dodge Powerwagon would be the way to go with a sweet bumper.

I'm going to have to check that out. I'm not really familiar with it. Yeah. You know, it's not for everyone either. It's true. But yeah, I think growing up with movies and TV shows that had characters that were vehicles is why I have essentially a character of the Atlanta Cruiser in the book. And then the third one that I'm finishing up right.

right now, I use it as a character development tool. So between two people, one of them has a defender 110, one of them has the land cruiser. So it's a, and they talk about it, and they joke about it, which one's better. Also use the 9-mil verse 45, Kidex birth leather, too as character development type tools. The never-ending conversations. Oh, man. I can't even engage in those anymore. But yeah, I love them.

Yeah, do love my land cruiser. And now it's crazy. So Jonathan Ward and the guys at icon are actually refurbishing my old land cruiser. No way. Yeah, yeah. That's going to be pretty sweet. When's it going to be done? It's eight months.

What? Yeah, they take a little bit of time there. Eight months from start to finish. Yeah. Okay. It's already been there for about a year and a half, just waiting. Oh, so you were just in the queue. Yeah.

Why couldn't you just keep it? A couple done there? Because the engine fell out. Oh. Yeah. Strong. Yeah. Is that an essential piece of gear?

You know, I heard it. Yeah. I heard it was. And then I confirmed that when my wife let all the oil come out and was driving down the road with it. Oh, did it seize? Yeah. Yeah, that's probably going to be a replace, not a repair job. Yeah, it was sad, but it was sad in the driveway for a while, so I borrowed a friend's car,

because I was still in the military, so borrowed a friend's car for over a year. It's a good friend. I'm very thankful, yeah, very thankful for that. But now, yeah, I think my wife just wanted it dragged out of the driveway, so just having it sit there at the TLC icon lot for a couple of years. she was fine with that. Completely fine with that. Yeah. So, but yeah, it's going to be, yeah, year.

I'm going to go out. I'm going to go visit it, I think. Get some, uh, get some pictures. Get some pictures. Content, as the kids say these days. When do they start? Oh, okay. Good.

So it's no longer in the queue. No longer in the queue. It's, everything's out of it. It's, uh, yeah, getting the repaint, the new engine. It's going to be sweet. We'll come back to your factory? Uh, better. Okay.

Yeah. So they came out. I think in factory, they came like, geez, not much over 100 horsepower. hour like pretty pretty pretty low but so no drag race have no but this new one's going to have i think four advertised 430 oh really for like 450 i think they said nice um so yeah it'll be ripping all the inside out and then they'll take ripping all the inside out and then putting the the foam in there for the sound dampening and all that so it'll be it's going to be sweet that's going to be awesome yeah so you fire the bullet off on book number two yep how much time did

you give yourself before you started book number three? So the first, well, I'll take you back to the first one, because the first one you have as much time as you, as you want, to make it as good as you can possibly get it before you send it either to an agent or to New York or however that works out. So you have as much time as you want. So I took as much time as I needed, which was like a year and a half, year and eight months, something like that. And I started the second one before I even finished the first one, before I even sent it to New York, because I always knew I was going to write two. and there's too many examples of people whose first books don't hit who do a second one and that one hits. And John Grisham will be the person that most people are most familiar with. He wrote A Time to Kill first, and arguably it's his best novel.

I think it is any. I haven't read more of the recent stuff, but all the things that I read from the early 90s up to 2000, let's say, 2002, 2003, I think A Time to Kill is my favorite person. He writes the legal genre. Yep, yep. So he couldn't give that thing away. In fact, he threw away boxes of first editions behind his law office. Oh, no.

Yeah. But, you know, he didn't stop. He kept going. He wrote a second novel. That one was called the firm. And then Tom Cruise got a hold of it. Exactly. And that thing became a blockbuster.

It was blockbuster before Tom Cruise got a hold of it, but that just didn't hurt. Yeah. And he was off to the races. And we've had a John Grisham novel every year since. And we had the client. We had Pelican Brief, runaway jury. And a lot of those films gave some of the, actors that we know today that are huge stars gave them some of their starts. Yeah.

And yeah, so point being, I knew I was always going to write a second one. So I started True Believer before I submitted the first one to Simon & Schuster. I went to Mozambique before I submitted to Simon and Schuster. So I was doing all that research and writing it. I knew the idea, which came from an experience I had in Iraq in 2006 in that I was working with an Iraqi, kind of Iraqi type unit. And we had one officer from that unit that was like head and shoulders. above his peers. As you know, from working with a lot of those groups,

when the plan goes sideways, which it often does, whether you encounter the enemy or not, just things happen out there. In Iraq, in other places, the leadership, it's a leadership challenge when the,

because I think they're not really, very risk-averse, because if you make a bad decision, it's kind of off with your head, off with your hand, something like that. So it doesn't encourage you to take risks out there.

They will sit down. Yeah. Literally and physically just sit down. Yeah, I was trying to figure out the best way to put that. But, yes, that's often what you find when the bullets start flying and you're working with people in countries who not as forgiving as ours, not as, hey, let's learn from our mistakes so that we can, will not make them again and we can pass those lessons on to others. Not so much in most of the rest of the world. You made a mistake, off with your head. Yes.

So it doesn't encourage risk-taking, point being. But this guy was a head and shoulders above his peers as a tactical battlefield leader and a great guy. So we had some interesting times, 2006, Iraq, Golden Mosque bombing, Sunni Shia, rift to the forefront, ripping the country even further apart than it already was. So a very interesting time to be operating in and around Baghdad with this particular unit that I was with. And years later, years down the line, I got word that this Iraqi officer disappeared. And I thought, you know what if I was to make this a lot more interesting, and have him resurface in Europe,

having been trained by Special Operations Forces, by the CIA, being disgruntled with the U.S. leaving at the end of 2011, and taking those skills and using them against the Western world. And having James Reese, the protagonist of the first novel, having been friends with him in Iraq during those days, having to essentially track him down again and bring him to justice. So that's kind of where the action kicks off. But point being to the question,

that gave me a lot of time to work on True Believer. So this third one is the first one where I'm under a year long. You're on the clock? I'm on the clock. Yeah. Year from start to finish needs to be done. The next one is going to start here in the next couple weeks, book four. There'll be an overlap of editing book three as I'm writing book four for a few months.

And then it will go all to book four. And then book four edits will start and book five will start writing. So it's like, but you're on the clock now. So the point being start to finish, the answer to that question? One year. Exactly. Damn. By necessity.

Did he ever resurface? He did. Alive? He did, yes. Good. Yes. There's some more backstory, though, that we will discuss offline. Offline?

Fair enough. Fair enough. So tell me about True Believer. Let's talk about the book, man. That's where the action kicks off. It starts with that. But really what I wanted to do was take the readers on a journey. I didn't want to go back to the well.

The first one was so successful. It did resonate with readers. It did exceed. expectations from the publisher. And what I didn't want to do was go back to the well. But I knew that even before I'd submitted it. Like I knew I didn't want to just have two books that were the same revenge stories, one continental U.S., and then another one international.

I didn't want to just do that same thing. So I was introduced to Joseph Campbell in 1988. Joseph Campbell wrote a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces. And I became familiar with him because I was, I knew I wanted to be a seal, knew I wanted to write. I was just reading all the time. My mom was a librarian.

We were surrounded by books. So, while we watched this special on PBS called The Power of Myth, and it's Bill Moyers interviewing Joseph Campbell about, well, his life, life's work, really. But his seminal work is here with a thousand faces. And what he found was that these cultures that had never had any interaction

with each other had a similar mythology. They had a similar hero's journey. And typically, it was a reluctant hero, who goes on a journey along the way he meets some sort of a mentor who gives him knowledge that will help him complete that journey

he faces a crucible, a test, he emerges from that transformed and makes his way eventually back home to impart that knowledge from whence he came. So there's other things that go along with it,

but if you think back to the movies, you think back to the books that you read, fairy tales, whatever, they all have this similar theme. The Bible has it. Jesus goes into the cave, emerges.

Like there's all these, these, both, religion, mythologies, and just commercial fiction. These stories follow up patterns. That was very much in my head as I was writing the first novel,

very much in my head as I'm writing the second one. And I didn't think it was, I thought it was disingenuous to not deal with the traumatic events of the first book, to deal with him in like a sentence, a paragraph, one chapter, because they were so traumatic,

and he's on a journey, just like we all are. We're all on this journey. We're all looking for that next mission in life. And in his case, in James Reese's case, he's learning to live again. And so how does one do that, especially when he thinks he's dying? In that first book, he thought he was dying, which freed him up to do the things that he did,

freed him up to become essentially the terrorist or the insurgent that he'd been fighting for the last 16 years that kind of changed him from all the things that he lived for, all the things that he fought for. And now he's got to find that next mission, just like everybody leaving the military or anything. of any transition in life. So this is a journey. So the first part starts off with that journey, learning to live, takes the readers on that journey, and then he's presented with the information

that his former friend from Iraq has now taken the skills that he learned from the military and from the intelligence agencies and is using those against the Western world. And there's some other geopolitical conspiracies that weave in, but essentially it's a story of violent redemption. So I'm asked to say,

just do the one sentence, What's this about? It's about violent redemption. So the first one was revenge without constraint. Violent redemption is this one. So what's number three? It is the dark side of man. And the,

this is the third one is the one that I've wanted to write since the sixth grade. And I'm so excited about it. It wasn't quite ready yet. So the first one I wrote about six or seven different ideas down, one page executive summaries on the table. And I chose the one that I thought would resonate the most with readers, resonate with New York. And then the second.

one, he needed to continue to learn to live again. He needed to go on this journey. So the third one, it was primed perfectly for this next one that I've been wanting to write since sixth grade. And in sixth grade, I read a novel, well, a short story called The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell, written in 1924. And it's really about the hunting of man. Great short story. And I think someone reached out to me and said that their sixth grade class is still reading it today, which surprises me because it's a little dark. A little dark for sixth grade, especially today. you're talking about hunting. And anyways,

but I always wanted to write it with a modern geopolitical backdrop. And so this was the perfect time to use the characters from the first two novels. Today's geopolitics as that backdrop and then explore the dark side of man

through the hunting of man. So it kind of juxtaposes hunting animals, hunting humans, exploring that dark side of man while it continues the story from the second novel. So I'm super fired up about it. I can tell.

That's awesome, man. That's awesome. I think it's so cool to see guys, get out and be able to align their passion with what is going to provide for their family. I wish it was more common. I think people struggle with touch more probably than they would rather like to admit. I mean, I know I did for sure. Like I said, I was a little bit of a quirk kind of out there finding my way, which I did eventually.

So how do you describe what you're doing now? God, it's my least favorite question. I know. That's why I asked it. I don't have a good elevator answer or a Twitter answer for it. I was sitting down at the beginning of this year trying to think about. about what I do and what I want to do. And I can more accurately describe what I don't want to do than what I do now.

I know that for me, a 9 to 5 in an office with a suit and tie is not, it's not what's going to make me happy as a human being, and that's just going to auger in everything else in my life slowly or rapidly, I'm not sure. Yeah. I don't want to do the commute from San Diego to L.A. You know, it takes me a while to drive to where I live now, but it's a different type of drive as you experienced today. It's beautiful.

Yeah. And, you know, one thing I found that I really enjoyed, and I found to be empowering that surprised me a little bit, is I really enjoy teaching. And I discovered that. I would say when I was a Bud's instructor, you know, basically the interaction with the students, very malleable audience, because they volunteer to be there multiple times. They're basically everyday volunteering to show up. And when it's, as you know, it's not difficult to end that process. I mean, there's some paperwork that's involved. But if you really want to and about, 30 seconds, you can be done with that bad boy. Self-select out. Yeah. And then I originally started public speaking just by speaking in public when I was working for CrossFit and teaching at the seminar. So it broke any uneasiness or fear that I had with public, just because the volume that I was doing.

It started with briefing students, then transitioned to doing the conceptual foundation lectures largely while I was working for CrossFit, and then built to actual public speaking of my own design trying to impart the knowledge and lessons learned that we gained into the civilian world because, you know, there's leadership. There's good leadership and bad leadership, and that's about it.

Do you ever talk about our butts class as far as bad leadership? Or would it not make sense? You have to have to unpack buds first. You know what I mean? So if you're limited on time, the problem with that would be is you'd have to unpack the program

a little bit to explain how much of a shit show that particular individual was. Oh, yeah. So there's the speaking aspect which I kind of fell into a little bit and through the recommendations of friends. And I think it's probably one of the favorite thing that I do

because what's the difference between public speaking when you're trying to impart a message and teaching? It's the same. I love it. And you can see the lights, you can see the lights which come on for people. And if they leave with pages of notes and I've been up there talking for an hour,

which happens all the time. And then I stay in contact with a lot of the organizations that I've spoken at. And the impact is real. It's generational because it takes time and then hopefully they develop their leaders better. you know and I don't have any magic recipe for it by any stretch and there's plenty of speakers that are probably way better than me and probably plenty that are way worse but I enjoy doing it

so to me it's empowering um you know one of the first gaps for me outside of in the military was I was love jumping and I was able to put some sponsorship income from that side of the house but there's an egg timer on that for sure depending especially depending on how deep you want to go down into the rabbit holes yeah I was I never got incredibly deep down the wingsuit base jumping rabbit hole, but I got deep enough to experience it. More than most. More than most, for sure, but most people don't pursue that idiotic activity,

which I willingly participated in. And, you know, you lose some friends along the way, and it has changed my perspective on that. I still have those endorsements, I would say now are largely more based around being active in the outdoors. They're not as pinned into just skydiving because that is not what I do. I mean, I still live 10 minutes from a drop zone. I would hear the airplane take off while drinking coffee

and could make it for the second load. Wow. And I would just call them like, hey, put me on the manifest and away we would go. Nice. Then there are, you know, some consulting relationships. And then, you know, the podcast, which was, again, it was Joe's idea, not mine. And I think he knows what he's talking about on the space. Yeah.

I have a little experience there. Yeah. Of course, I mocked him. I'm like, if you were more popular and had a better, broader listener base, I would probably be more likely to, you know, take your advice. Actually, I was sitting there. I couldn't believe he recommended that. and then it's like, screw it.

I mean, I'm going to take his advice. Yeah. And even the podcast today, it's, I mean, it's awesome to be able to reconnect and have you out to the house and sit down and figure out what you've been up to and what I've been up to. And I don't know where it's going to go. I don't have a business plan for the podcast. I don't have anything other than, I guess, I would say, a direction for where I wanted to go

and it has to, it's parallel with where I want to go. So it's, I mean, it's a mess. Chaos. It kind of is. I mean, if you're, and you know, controlled chaos. It is controlled. anybody who's a 1099 person who makes the vast majority of the money from a 1099, it's, you know, you're in control and it can be stressful, but also waking up one morning and focusing

on this type of project. And then the next day or later in the day, you're thinking about something else. That is very refreshing to me from a mental perspective, constantly having something different to look at. And I can manage my time if I want to, you know, I very infrequently promote any of the public. Actually, I never do. I mean, I have, I never hear you promote it. Yeah. Well, I have a website and it's like, hey, if you go to Google and, I mean, like there's a tab on the podcast page that will lead you there, but I do enough of it that I enjoy it and I'll let it build organically. I'd rather it be like that than plastering it.

And just slowly letting all that stuff grow. I just, I know. So you didn't identify what was important to you as you were getting out. You identified what was not important to you and why you didn't want to do rather than what you did. I've always been able to determine the path that I didn't want to take. And when I had multiple paths in front of me, like I said, one of the mistakes I made, and we were talking about it earlier is, I would try to walk down all of them at the same time,

which is also, it's not a good idea for people listening. Prioritize and execute. Prioritize and execute. There's a guy I know who talks about that sometimes. Maybe he should narrate one of your books. I think I can afford them. Yeah. No kidding.

But it's been, I mean, it's been great and also stressful and terrifying, and it changes. And the endorsement sponsorship game, I don't care what you do. There's a shelf life on that. You're on an egg timer to some degree. if you're pursuing that as your full-time occupation, my advice to people is always, you know, try to think of something outside of that as well in addition to that may be a touch more stable

because it can be a rocky road. And brands that you work with and for, they can have a bad quarter. And their budget for any type of ambassador or sponsorship relationship could be just completely annihilated overnight. And you were going to feel the brunt of that. And that's not their fault. That's, it's business. That's the business world.

Or the opposite. They could do so well that they get bought by someone that comes in and change things, or just changes the product and keeps you on. And now all of a sudden the product doesn't have the quality it did at the outset. And you're still tied to it. Now what do you do? So there's those questions I'm sure that have the possibility of coming up from time to time. Yeah.

And so it's, I mean, it's complex. There's no easy answer for how I weave it all together. Some days are more stressful than others, but I enjoy it. And I'm physically in a location that allows me to reduce a lot of the stress. I love where I live.

This is amazing. Yeah. Like I said, I might not go. That's fun. This is so cool. You can stay. Come back anytime.

We'll get the, get the, get the bows out here. in a little bit. Oh, for sure. That's next on the agenda. That's going to be awesome. I'm so fired up.

Like where I am now, so we're going to move. And the main reason we're moving is so that I can walk outside and shoot a bow. I don't know my wife knows that's the main reason we're moving. But I don't think I've articulated that. Like, yeah. But just listen to the first hour, honey. Yeah. So we are right now.

We're great. I mean, a beautiful view, amazing mountains, a little trail that takes us up. Like, it's awesome. But it's just not ideal for walking right outside and shooting. and even though there's not many people there, when I shoot, it seems to be the only time a person comes up. Of course.

And it's just how life goes. But when you're not shooting, it's probably just a ghost town. Yep, exactly. But I'm on the road, which is quite a bit. I've shot in some parking garages. Really?

Yeah. Wow. I just went to the emptiest section and pulled the target out and put it on the tailgate in my truck in, just shot a few. Dang. It's kind of after it.

Kind of ran away a little bit later. That's awesome. I don't know if it's awesome. I don't know if it's recommended actually. It was... Or legal. Yeah, I just wanted you to get some reps in, so I did. I was on the road.

Can I get those reps in? No, I love it. I love it. And we're going to have to use my new bow, my new Hoyt, for the... I did shoot it once just so I could... And knock on custom creation? Awesome. What do you do with?

Which, the RX3? Very nice. So, yeah, fired up to put a few more arrows to that. I went out and I shot it because I was just, this summer has been insane. I mean, we hit Africa with a family. We were in New York. We were in Oregon. We were all over the place.

But now I'm going to take a breath and we're going to show me how to use it. I'm not the person to show you to use it. You've been training. You've been doing it. You've been rocking it. Here's what I can do. I can repeat to you things I hear Dudley say to other people. Don't mess it up.

That's usually what I say is when there's a live animal in front of you, I'm going to just whisper in your, just don't mess this. And the hopes that your boat just starts shaking a little bit. Yeah. You never know. never know that's going to come on. Like I, I don't want to talk about it because I have not experienced that. But I could.

And you hear people talking, they grew up hunting, they grew up whatever. No, you'll be alright. And all of a sudden they have it from some reason they have this, you know, but I've never had it.

I think you'll be okay. You know, if you look back at a lot of the training in the even buds itself, it's stress management. You know, if you were to go through the first day of buds again on your last day, physically it would suck, but the stress level would be so low.

Yeah. Because they, slowly lever and build over time. Like he's overwhelming people, let's be honest, it's not that hard. Yeah. And if you're actually trying to train them, there's no purpose in overwhelming them them day after day after day after day. It's that slow application.

Pull comp's a good example, right? It's not a diving test, even though it's a test that involves diving. Yeah. It starts with day ditch and dawn. Yeah. Then night ditch and dawn, then buddy exchange. That's all procedures. Yep.

And then it's you can't breathe when you want to because I'm going to control that as the instructor. It's very uncomfortable, by the way, when you can't breathe for those of you it's super uncomfortable it's about a 20 minute test where you're getting knots induced and you could rip the tanks off your back and eject to the surface if you want to and some people try and they get actually shoved back to the bottom of the pool which they think we're trying to kill them we're actually trying to save their life so they don't get an air gas embolism as they ascend holding their breath because that's the most common thing people want to do so that rapid expansion of the lungs are getting bubbles in your air stream but if you pass that test and i used to brief this to the students

please, for the love of God, don't go out and go do a wreck dive tomorrow because you suck at diving. What you're good at doing is following procedures regardless of the amount of stress that is being applied to you. But if I wanted them all to fail, I'd just give them pool calm day one.

And we wouldn't start with day, ditch, and dawn, and the night ditch and dawn. So there is a lot of structure. And anybody who's spent a lot of time in that environment, I think your tolerance to stress is probably a little bit more refined. And I think you were used to, more used to being in those environments. So for me, I can recognize the warning signs a little bit earlier.

Like when I'm a good example, I'll be out in the field with Dudley and I'll feel like we're walking and my shoulders start to come up to my, and I'm like, oh, I need to relax. You know, you can, you know, you're moving faster. I try to stay in tune with things that are going to be detrimental to performance later on. Because if you're walking around with your shoulders up in your ears, right, just getting smoked. And then you've got to hold your bow up and maybe you're going to have to draw back and hold for a long period of time. or how hard I'm holding the bow or managing my breath.

You know, the ability to lower your heart rate, the ability to think in stressful situations. I think all that is, we probably have the advantage just based off of the choices we made early in life. Are you doing workouts where you're incorporating the bow? Are you doing grinding out some crossfit stuff in the garage and then getting out and slinging some arrows?

I haven't done that yet. I have done some higher, like, elevated heart rate type stuff. I'm trying to think, I haven't really had an experience yet where I needed to, where I had a rapidly, increasing or accelerated heart rate already where I had to take a shot.

Like I've never had to run over to something and then draw back real fast. Got it. Most, let me see here. I like the idea of that just for fun. I like the idea of it too. And also if you can get comfortable in that, your normal day. It makes a workout more fun for me, I think.

I don't know, it just seems like it's a, I don't know, it seems like it fits with my personality, my day, my, I don't know. But if you can get comfortable of shooting your boat near maximum heart rate, if you're in an environment where you need to shoot it and it's casual, it just makes it seem that much easier.

And I put that in the book three to a very, book three is very archery, heavy, both as a therapy in the beginning and then at the climactic scenes near the end. And there may or may not be an instructor named John Dudley that worked his way into the pages of that novel. Is he 5-6? In the book, hypothetically. 5.5. Perfect. Just one inch shorter than Tom Cruise.

I should do that. I might do that. Whatever Tom Cruise Heights is minus an inch. Yeah. Yeah, no, I like it. I like it. But, yeah, jumping back to the pool comp, that was my favorite part. Really? And life-saving?

Was it life-saving, that would you call when we do that? Yeah. Because you got to put your hands on the instructor. Otherwise, you're just getting yelled at. You got to describe life-saving. Life-saving is they have, I think, five maybe different? It was either four or five. Four or five different scenarios of drowning victims.

Passive victim. Yeah, someone's just lying there floating in the water. You have to go and you got jump in and you get them to the side of the pool. Another one's fighting at some. sort of level. I seem to remember the rest of them fighting. They were all fighting. They were all, but no longer passive after the first one.

But actually, you didn't know what you were going to get. So the first one may not have been passive. Okay. You just went and you did the line. Yeah. And did the instructions. Remember you had to turn around. Yeah, turn around.

And then you had to been back, right? Well, you had to turn around and then they come over the top of you for the initial grab. Oh, I vaguely remember this. I just remember I liked it because the rest of the time you're just getting yelled at, right? You do push-ups. Like, you can't do anything.

You can't, like, not do the push-up, or you can't. I'd be like, no, I didn't really, that sand that you just poured on the floor of my room wasn't there, like two seconds ago. I saw it come out of the pocket. Exactly. Like, you can't do anything, right? But in life-saving and in pool comp, you can. And it's not a fight per se, but it's you against them. And it's physical.

So I like that. Nothing else in buds that I can remember was like physical. You know, you might get pushed. You might get whatever, you know, but you couldn't do any back. Yeah. You just take it. But that, there you. could. So I loved life-saving. And I could just, you just, you know, like, it was probably from

the jiu-jitsu stuff because I'd done jutsu so early. Before Buds you had done? Yeah, so in the early 90s. So before anyone knew what it was. I was always into martial arts. Always into, to, uh, learning, well, so we're getting training for buds, training for, to be a seal. Yeah. In my head, my whole life since age seven. And doing martial arts, learning how to box, uh, learning how to wrestle, like that sort of thing. I wasn't, we didn't have a big wrestling thing. I grew up in Northern in California, so I didn't really have a good background there. But eventually, I found Jekundo, which is really essentially modern mixed martial arts. It was just taking a bunch of stuff and using what's useful and discarding what's useless from it. And Bruce Lee came up with doing that.

Well, eventually, in the early 90s, they discovered this thing called Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and they incorporated it into Jikundo. At the academy or school you were at? Yep, yep. And so I started doing it. And I was like, this is incredible because no one knew it. So you were really good. Like you didn't have to, like now, I mean, my level is so low. But back then, that low level, that's all you needed.

Yeah. You need to know 1% more than the person. And no one knew anything. No one even heard of it. So I can you have to relax? I don't, well, white. But I was mostly, I don't think we even really did Ghee stuff. It was, uh, all no ghee.

Yeah, it was all right off the bat because it was all about practical application. Awesome. From the get-go, everything that we were doing back then. Even the stick stuff, like we're doing Eskimo and Kali and all that sort of thing. Well, it was the same angles with knife that it is with the stick, different kind of move. But anyway, so incorporated the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu early. So I was very comfortable in that sort of a situation, which when someone is fighting me in the water, I just held on just like I would let the other person wear themselves out, just like in Jiu-Jitsu.

And so they would thrash all over the place, the instructor. And I'm just like, very close to a sleeper, but not quite. Connection. And so they would just start thrash in and run. Just relax. Because they're going to use up their energy. They're going to use up their oxygen a lot more. I'm not going to fight them.

I'm just going to hold on, let them wear themselves out. And then go to the top, get a little air, get a little farther. And when they start fighting again, just relax. Yep. But I was very comfortable with that. Water polo helped me. Oh, nice. Awesome.

I was like, please. Same type of thing. Yeah. The sedolution is not that bad. Yeah. No, exactly. The water pole is vicious. Oh, when you see guys that play, oh, people don't understand.

About 90% of the game occurs underwater. Just like, oh, it's pretty brutal. Horrible. Yes, I did not play water polo. I would have been very bad at that. I would have wanted to get out of the pool. But a combination of those two skills, you would have laughed at the life-saving. But then pool comp, a little different, but still you against the instructor or you against two instructors.

I think I had two because they were teaching someone maybe. Was it always two? It's a one-to-one ratio, but if you're being taught, it's two. Okay, so I think I had two on me. But I loved it. You just go through the procedures. And then I grew up pretty much, well, I got my, I got the certified scuba diving at age nine. My dad lied for me. It was in cold water. It was in cold water. I think it was in cold water. So going down, you can't see the bottom. So you're like this little kid. They didn't make wetsuits for kids back then. So it was rolled up. You know, like an adult wetsuit rolled up, rolled up everywhere. I think I have some pictures somewhere. But so I was comfortable in the water. And then diving for abalone. in the Northern California coast. So no tanks, whatever, breath holds, go down. You prime off the rock, make sure the right size, all that sort of thing.

And abalone's delicious. It's amazing. I've done some of that stuff. Always looking out for the man in the gray wets. Oh, yes. Yes. I haven't done it in years because we obviously were San Diego and then into the mountains now. But, yeah, it's like great white breeding ground.

Every place where we did anything in the teams, even down at San Clemente. And then all the way up to doing those abalone stuff in Northern California, that's some great white breeding ground or something. I was telling people recently about the boogeyman swimming. Which one is the bogeman swim? Is it the five mile? That's when you do the two-mile out in San Clemente,

but first they make you watch the Shark Week videos? Yes, yes, that's not good. And then they make you do it at night. And then they tell you that this is the great white breeding ground. Yeah, and all that's horrible. And that this is like the time period, and of course it's at night.

That's my fastest swim. Yeah. That was for sure my fastest swim. Awful. I think the top portion of my wetsuit was not wet. I can't believe that no one's got chomped, actually. It is surprising to me that no one has gotten chomped.

Like every two months, there's a new class out there, two and a half, whatever. There's a new group of people thrashing on the surface of the water. I mean, you guess you're kind of underneath it with the combat side stroke. I don't think it matters. I don't think it matters. Well, I love what Joe says about that when he says, you know, the odds of me getting eaten by a shark if I don't go in the ocean? Zero.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I love. He tells me the same thing when I ask him if he wants to jump. He says no. Because the odds of me dying if I choose not to jump are precisely zero. I completely understand. Yeah.

So I did like a pool of confidence. I did like life-saving because U-Guer was one-on-one theme with instructor staff. That was my favorite. Yeah, I can see that. And looking back, the rest of it was just receive only. Yeah, you're just...

You're on receive mode. You know, head down, grind, put out, do the best you can. We had some interesting cats that made it through the 212. Oh, yeah. The honor man who's in prison for murder. He and his wife would lure at least one couple back to their house. And he had worked in the food. industry as in like grocery stores.

And I might be messing up portions of this, but I know that they... The gist is on. They just, yeah, cut people into pieces and then put them into grocery store garbage containers because of the velocity with which they get switched out. Wow. And then I believe got caught trying to steal t-shirts

in the middle of the night from a... God damn. Hooters. Hooters. And there was like hair and stuff in a spider co. Yep. And that's just, you know... Crime 101, I suppose.

Traced it back, and he and his wife, and I think they ended up rolling on each other. Yeah. But I think that the Hooters, like, if they hadn't robbed the Hooters, they would have probably gone away with it. For a little longer anyway, until the next Hooters in the next town. Yeah, repeated it again. But it really sounds like, what's that movie with Woody Harrelson,

the natural born killers? Yes. Is that the one with Juliet, Lewis? Yes, it is. It sounds very similar to something like that, just on some crazy, murder, serial killing, crime spree. And that was the honor man of my buds class.

One, maybe that's a good example for people that perhaps titles don't always indicate the character of the person. Yes, and that was before they instituted this, more of the character peer assessment into the program, because I'm sure he wouldn't have gotten through today. He might have. With that, no, I'm just kidding. Yeah. But, and I tell people, there's weeds in every lawn regardless of the size and no selection process

is perfect, even remotely. I haven't thought about that in years. It isn't a bathtub, they cut them up, right? Yes. There was in a bathroom that they cut them up and then like I said, straight to the grocery store. I'm cutting somebody up with a spider cow. Like even the larger one, even that police one that's life really long. Like that's still work.

It's a lot of work. Was he a Corman? I think so. So he was probably, yeah, doubt in on the A&P, yeah. Oh. Man, still, you probably, I don't know. I mean, let's be honest, you found your person if your spouse is in with you. Yeah, yeah.

I mean. To find two humans that are. like, you know what would be awesome on date night? What we should do tonight? Let's cut these two people in a piece. Oh, and then let's rob a Hooters because I really want this Hooters T-shirt. Yeah, we would really cap it off as if we could just go to Hooters afterwards and get those pictures.

You found your person for life there. But if you get caught, you're going to roll in each other and then you won't be married anymore. Oh, brutal. Oh, terrible. How do we get on that? Oh, interesting people. Yeah, there are some interesting people from that time frame. They're not out doing some pretty cool things.

Yeah. Yeah, some interesting people are some that are still in. A few. Our generation is pretty close to timing out. Trying to think who I know that's still in from. All the people I know are at the very top end of the rank pyramid, at least on the listed side. Most of them are E8s, E9s.

Yeah. Finishing up their Master Chief Tours, they're getting ready to roll out pretty soon. Yeah. I'm trying to think if I can know anybody that's still in from our class. They're probably somebody, but... If it is, it's one or two people for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. It's nice. I tell you what, it's nice being out. Like, I had a good run, learned to do it my whole life. but as soon as I was back from that last Iraq deployment, I knew it was time to go because there was no more tactically leading out in the battlefield.

It was time to take care of the family. It was very evident to me. And what I did was identify those things that were important. So I did the opposite. I kind of knew what I didn't want to do. But I was willing to do them if I had to. I didn't have a dream ever past being a seal. And then you get to the realization of,

oh, that's a DD-214 in my hand. Yeah, yeah. No, I think a lot of guys come to that. that shocking realization as they walk out the door, try to recreate it, the feelings in the outside. Tough to do. What was the hardest part for you, transitioning out? You know, I was very fortunate in all respects

in that I had that time to take a breath. I had that time at Buds as the opto to want to identify that, yes, I am getting out. Okay, now that I've decided to get out, what am I going to do? Oh, I've wanted to write my whole life. I've always known that's what I'm going to do. How do I do that?

Okay. Also, let's have some backup plans. got off those contingency pans in place. What are those? Okay. One, two, three. Got it. So I just kind of went through it like that.

But I identified what was important. That was freedom. That was freedom financially and freedom to control my schedule. So both those things had to align. And no matter what offer I got, no matter how much it was, if I didn't control that schedule, even if it was the hit the financial freedom part, it didn't hit the other one. Done. So I didn't have to spend any time worrying about or thinking through or talking to my wife and saying,

hey, what do you think this offer just came in? think it means we have to move here. Well, let's look. Where is that? Okay, let's look it up. Are the housing? What are the schools like? We didn't have to do any of that. It was if it didn't hit both those wickets, done. That's as much thought as I gave it. So it's awesome. No compromise there. Yeah, from a time management perspective, it, we didn't work all over the map. Like, oh, this offer over here. What is that this thing over here? Or so-and-so started this company here. And he said there might be a place for me. And then you have five or six different things that you're looking at and chuggling and thinking, well, no, if you already decided what's important to you and what's not,

if it doesn't fit that, then no, easy. I know it's easy to say, but identifying those things, spending some time with it and really figuring out what's important to you. I think that's the best piece of advice I could give somebody that's getting out or in any life transition. Identify what's important to you. And then you have your answers before. Essentially, as the questions being asked, you already have the answer.

I really think the time aspect of that is important. Taking the time or giving yourself the time, if you can. to think through those things because if you don't have enough time you might make some bad decisions yeah you can make a rush decision and then all of a sudden you're oh man you're fighting your way out of a hole

and your wife's miserable or you know or maybe she's doing that because of support the families you're getting out and figuring it out or whatever it is it can turn into a mess so it can so I got very I was very fortunate but yeah the hardest part

yeah and we moved and that was very I think the move physical and psychological break with the military was very important because I saw so many people that couldn't let it go. And they just stayed in Coronado. They stayed in Virginia Beach. They kept seeing people at the grocery store,

seeing people at the same bars. Hey, what's so-and-so doing? Hey, when do you deploy? What's, oh, hey, can I go through her buds? Can I take my friend to her buds? I just couldn't let it go. So I saw that. I said, you know what?

That's one part of my life. It obviously informs the next part. It informs my writing. Hopefully what I did back then makes me a better husband, a better father, better citizen today. But I'm not going to live back there. So I think there's a difference.

I think. So it's not like I've just left it behind and don't think about it because it was a great experience. And I was very lucky that it was a great experience. But it informs my future, but I don't live in the past, if that makes sense. I feel exactly the same way. I think the geographic separation is pretty critical as well. Because like you said, if you can't leave the, if you're physically not a part of the team, but you geographically can't leave running into the team, it's tough for sure.

Yeah. Tough to not see kids at the drop off for kids in the morning and you see people doing the same. and, you know, then you're at Danny's, you know, whatever. Just don't go to Danny's. Yeah, that place got a little depressing. Yeah, but the burgers are amazing. Best burger, yeah. Slamburger.

It's amazing. Best burger in the world. You ready to shoot some bows? Let's do it, man. I'll let you close. What do you want to close with? I'm in. You know, I didn't really think about that, but if people are interested.

Perfect type of question. Shotgun questions. Yeah, people are interested in getting a little, like, deep dive into the gear or something like that I talk about on the books, that I used in the past or that I use now, outdoors and doing other things that I do now. Official jackcar.com has a little more information on that stuff. And then on the social channels, as the kids say, Jack Car USA, people that want to reach out or anything like that.

It's Twitter and Instagram. That'll be me getting back to you. So yeah, follow along on the journey. But really this second novel is all about that journey because we're all on one and we're all going to face adversity. If you haven't, you are going to. Yes. And how you deal with that adversity is really what defines you.

So that's really what this second one's about. Perfect. That is it, ladies and gentlemen. That is all I have for this week. This week's podcast had a video component as well. So if you want to consume it via YouTube, go ahead and enjoy the YouTube video. If you can even see us through all of the Euro mounts

that showed up the day before he got here, so we were having some fun. And before people get all twisted, it's just a joke. Take a wrap off. Don't take yourself or me too seriously, please, because that would be a mistake. I think that's it.

Thank you to the people who listen and reach out and take the time to listen to the podcast and help me spread the word. And if you want to fly the flag a little bit and get some of the apparel, go to clearedhodpodcast.com, click on the store or product tab,

and it's going to take you right there. Some simple t-shirts. And that's it. Buy one for you. Buy one for everybody in your neighborhood. Buy one for people for Christmas. I don't know. Or don't.

See you next week.