Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 133 - Nick Norris Part Two

Episode Date: June 22, 2020

Nick Norris is a graduate of both the United States Naval Academy and Basic Underwater Demolition / SEAL (BUD/S) Class 247. Upon completion of SEAL training in 2004, Nick assumed progressively higher positions of leadership within Naval Special Warfare. His deployed roles included combat advisor to Iraqi and Afghan military units, Cross-Functional Team Leader, and Ground Force Commander during combat operation in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Nick was most recently assigned to Naval Special Warfare Basic Training Command — SEAL Qualification Training (SQT) as Officer in Charge prior to transitioning off Active Duty. Originally from Chicago, Nick received his Bachelor in Science from the United States Naval Academy in 2003 and his Masters of Science in Real Estate from The University of San Diego in 2013. He is the Executive Director of the C4 Foundation, which provides support and resources through science-based programs to active-duty Navy SEALs and their families. Nick is also the Co-Founder and CEO of Protekt Products, a wellness company that is committed to positively impacting customer health via both personal care products and nutritional supplements. Both Protekt and the C4 Foundation value the power of time spent in the outdoors and the positive impact it has on overall well-being.

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And then when it comes to this optimization of your performance, then you can get in to the micro. Check them out. Onit.com slash hot. My guest today, well, if you listen to the podcast, you know who it is. It's Nick Norris, again, part two. And I cut it in half, like I talked about at the beginning of last episode, because we talked about so many things. I think it's important to break it up. I didn't, I felt like people would get lost in a three hour and 40 minute episode.

So here we go. Nick Norris, part two, enjoy. I'm looking at danger close now. I'll do it sometimes out of the blue and I probably like, I actually thought about it. You caught me off guard for sure. I did catch. I probably did catch you. I was just like, what?

Yeah. No, dude. I, I, I, but what you think about, you know, define love. You know, caring about somebody more than you care about yourself. Of course, I feel exactly the same way. Which embodies the connection, the relationship. that I had with the guys I served with. I just wasn't prepared to have you say that to me.

And I was just like, uh, I got to go. Yeah, Nick, are you propositioning me? No, which I didn't say, because I think I was already reaching for like the, you know, and the call button. I was like, I'm just going to pretend that didn't happen. It's super awkward. Maybe I'm not going to have you on the podcast. You just need to.

Dude, I love it, man. Because I actually, I thought about it. I'm like, huh, I understand. I just said, I said what I felt. But I mean, dude, I've, uh, the feelings are, of course, reciprocated. That's the thing. Like you have to, I mean,

take a second to define what that word actually means. And I've tried to describe this to people before, too. I mean, I love my kids. Yep. I love my parents. It's, I've had relationships with people that I worked with

that arguably were at a deeper level than either of those. Yep. And then it's amazing how, you know what I mean? Infrequently that you'll actually say, tell them that you feel. out to them in general. For sure.

You know, that, that ability to go in and work every day with those people that are similar, with that sense of purpose and the next thing you know, you're like, I'm going to, you know, I'm going. See you. Yeah. Yeah. And the world spins on for them and it spins on for you. And then before you know it, you know, you're more isolated than you think.

Yep. And it doesn't, you know, I was living in Chula Vista. I wasn't geographically. I mean, right now I'm geographically isolated largely by choice because I would rather live here than in Chula Vista. But you can still isolate yourself down the block from, you know. Dude, I, I live in, I live in North Park, right? I mean, like, I'm right in the mix. And for years, like, I didn't see anybody. I mean, good buddies, guys that I served with multiple

rotations and they live in San Diego and I don't see it. Phone call or car drive away. Didn't see him at all. So, yeah, I mean, it probably wasn't two of, a couple years ago, probably two and a half years ago. And they took, you know, I had Greg Sisa reach out to me. Cease. And he's out now. What's he doing these days? So Greg runs, he got out, he went to work for a company, called Kennedy Wilson. So real estate company, totally different than anything that he probably expected to do. And now he's running a program called With Your Shield, which is a family-centric transition program for NSW. That's awesome. So it's based out at University of Southern California, the gentleman that runs the company they originally started working for, endowed the program.

And there's been a bunch of guys. I mean, Scott, is he still in? He's about to retire. But I can reconnected with him through with your shield. Like I've gone up. That's awesome. Dude, that's like amazing. Like so with your shield, you know, Greg may have been one of the first people to reach out to me. You know, kind of, kind of break the silence. Maybe there was a handful of guys, but the first person that like I had, I kind of

let the relationship atrophy because I just haven't, hadn't engaged. He reached out to me. And I was actually, I'm like, dude, that's awesome, man. Like, thanks for giving me a call. And we've become close. Like, I've taken, you know, our family. families have gone on vacation together, you know, hung out. But, you know, Greg's doing, he's, you know, kind of investing time in that program. That's awesome to hear. Yeah. I like the name,

too. Yeah, with your shield. With your shield. Or on it. On it. We'll do exactly where they, that's where they came up with it. And Gray, he's going back and forth. He's like, yeah, no, I wanted to be like, it's a, it's a warrior transition program. I like it. But it involves kind of the whole family. So they have, you know, spouse, kids that are involved. That I actually think is the most underserved portion. For sure. It was when I was in. I can't, I cannot speak to the programs that exist now. But I think, you know, if you want to really, I believe, enable the lethality of warfighters, you support their families.

Yeah, for sure. And you remove any of that thought process from their head because it is all it's going to do is allow you to focus narrowly when you need to even more so. Dude, absolutely. I don't know how many times I've been on a helicopter wondering whether or not there was enough money in the checking account to cover the mortgage. Oh, for sure. Not the time. Yeah. Not the time.

You want to be laser focused on what you're doing. Don't care about anybody else. Or you get an email, hey, guess what? Because you're gone, and this always happens when you're gone, the washing machine exploded. Right. Or all the other stuff that you have no control over. Yeah, yeah. And you're just sitting there on a helicopter just like, what is it?

What are we doing, guys? Oh, oh, five minutes out. Yeah. Perfect. Hold on. Let me try to unpack the shit that's going on inside my head. I'm thinking about making the call when I get back to fix the washing machine. Oh, my God.

Why did you decide to get out? So I decided to get out namely because we had our first child. Well, what happened? So let's get to that. Where did you go after that deployment? Because you still had 13, so you had at least two years and change. Yeah. Yeah, so I went back to the training Naval Special Warfare Center.

Yep. So where Buds is. And I was the SEAL qualification training officer in charge. So unfortunately, there had been a student that got shot in a training accident. Was it by another student? By a cadre. That's not a good look. Not a good look.

Yeah. So I actually, I was slated to become the, I was going to be the junior officer training course lead prior, like coming off that. For me, it was also known as Jotsie. Which I think you had to go through. I did not. I wasn't a real officer. You were the real officer.

That's true. You weren't a real officer. I was not a real officer. You're welcome. The fact that I became an officer, Let's be honest here for a second, is proof that the military system is broken. That's all it is. That's all me getting commission was, was undeniable proof for everybody watching that, hey,

nobody's paying attention in the Navy. You will be harder on yourself than anybody else. I got the word that the package came through and I was just like, is this a joke? Like, you guys are joking. I see my name here on this little message. but this is like I'm getting punked right this is funny ha ha time it would have been awesome if they did put you through jotsie though I don't no because I think lay I think layf was teaching it at the time and he would have been like get the fuck out of here yeah yeah yeah no I think life was running it yeah he would not have tolerated my shanagan's at all there would be zero sarcasm of course what's my primary weapon system at all sarcasm is my primary weapon system I've just effective effective weapon system at that I've become you know I've while I fought it and I was just like screw that. Give me another bandolier ammo. Just going to, you got to embrace your strengths. Yeah, I guess. And ignore your weaknesses.

It's this recipe for success. If shame was the secret weapon for that other individual, I think sarcasm was your, your leadership tool. Yeah, but I tell you what, there's limitations to that too. Pros and cons. You're not going to connect with everybody if you go that route. But I digress. So you went to SQT. Went to SQT. What happened? Give me the wavetops of how did his student get shot by an instructor. So I don't do, I'll tell you, but I still don't know how it happened. Yes. So it, I believe a, so they're doing blank fire kind of FtX type maneuvers.

Which is super common. Super common. Yeah, you're doing it all the time. So all the weapons had blank firing adapters. Or did they? Did they? This one did. Actually, you could have a blank firing adapter.

The round and the chamber. Well, so, yeah, on an automatic weapon. So on a saw. So I think it had a box. So BFA. So if you know a saw, you're not changing barrels out, right? BFA stands for blank firing adapter. It looks like it's a square.

Yep. What does it look like? So yeah, it's kind of like a, I think on automatic weapons, it's like looks more cylindrical. Yeah, it is different. Okay. I'm thinking of the M4 ones. Yeah, I'm not actually sure what it looks like on a saw. But on the M4 is it literally just looks like a square adapter.

And there's a circular ring on the, end of it that you use to twist it on. And you're just, and on the M4, you're changing out bolts, right? So you're putting a blue. Blue bolts are for, uh, just sim. That's right. No, no, no. Yeah, for a M4. Yeah, so it's regular one. So it's the same thing for automatic weapons, right? Yeah, because you're just, you're increasing the pressure inside of the barrel. So it'll cycle with that actually a projectile. Exactly. So BFA's on the end of a saw, automatic weapon, um, you know, uh, 2, 23, 556, belt fed. Yeah. Uh, there is a material difference in weight. between 200 live and 200 blames.

And it's substantial. Substantial, right? But one way, shape, or form, that box got loaded into a weapon. Oh, daddy. And, you know, pointy things were felt and loaded in. But apparently that was missed. So a live belt was put into the weapon, and then it was fired. And I wasn't there yet.

I think I was still, actually, I know I was still in Afghanistan at the time. So cracked off, you know, cadre shot a student. ended up hitting them, I think, once or twice in the femur. Do you live? Lived, yeah. Yeah, yeah, lived. I think, I believe you end up making it through training. But yeah, so that incident happened.

And obviously there was a major detonation within that training cell. And there's going to be what you call an investigation for that type of incident. And they're going to bring the magnifying glasses for sure and telescopes and get those. right up your ass. Yeah. Yeah. So it doesn't matter. If you were involved in that,

like I think everybody heads rolled across the board. And they probably should have because there's protocol when it comes to training with blanks. And one of them is make sure there's no live ammo anywhere. Yeah. Yeah. So it's multiple levels, right? So like failure happen. And hey,

nobody's perfect. Yep. But that's the reason. I'm glad to hear the student survived. That's good. And then that's the reason why we have kind of protocol, right? And you have multiple steps in the process before you go to kind of a blank fire. revolution, right? Make sure that there's no live fire within so many days, I believe.

You check equipment. I've had people pull your magazines out, people looking in with a flashlight. Yeah, you're trying to avoid a single point of you're downloading everything. Everything's blank and empty before you start loading and then they're kept in a separate. Yeah, it's taken very seriously. Yeah. We're talking about human beings, so mistakes happen. It should happen. So like a, you know, a live box of, of, and I don't know all the details, but I know the, I can't remember them all. That to me, honestly, that to me enough paints the picture. if there was a live box around. Conceptually, I can understand how that happened.

Yeah. Shouldn't have, but I conceptually understand. Yeah, I mean, if it's at, hey, at night, you know, ideally it wouldn't, right, it'd be you feel the difference, you feel the weight, but if you're running around and your, your heart rate's up and you're switching out boxes and actually getting into the FDX, like, shit could happen. You know, I can see that.

But a lot of things went wrong. Anyway, student got shot. I was supposed to go to JOTC and then they shifted me to SQT because there wasn't a 1130 seal officer in that billet. before it just had been gapped because you know guys got shifted around yeah so i took that job and i needless to say i spent a lot of time out at nileland um over over but it's a destination location it is a destination locations in the set in the beautiful chocolate mountains just east of san diego and to be honest some of the chocolate mountains are beautiful beautiful but the training area that you're talking about

where your boots are in the sand is not so much so yeah a lot of like sharp rocks uh it's very hot good old Can't Billy Macon. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Brutal. So I did that. Did a lot of,

uh, spent time for I ads and, uh, and FTX's. I imagine there was a additional layer of oversight for the first few evolution after that. I think it was pretty much like, hey,

you now will go out there for two weeks every, every class at a minimum. Um, so I did that. So I spent my time at SQT. Originally it was going to be a placeholder. Um, you know,

I, like any officer coming through like I had aspirations of screening, um, and going to green team. Um, And then I had a bunch of, I had a couple things happen in my life. I had, my wife got pregnant. But I say, you know, having kids was kind of the catalyst, but I think it was, that happened.

My wife got pregnant right before I lost a brother. So I lost my younger brother, middle brother, in an inbound avalanche in Winter Park, Colorado. Fuck, man. Yeah, like totally, like, I talked about getting, you know, caught off guard. I had, my wife, we found out my wife was pregnant. And I hadn't seen, like, dude, like all of us, spent long periods of time away from our family. For sure.

Like I hadn't seen my dad for years, probably. And then Christmas before, like, as a new guy, just finished training, Christmas before he died, he died in January, I went home by chance. Spent two weeks with my dad, awesome, got to, like, just spent great time with him. And then he died of a heart attack. And then, you know, my wife gets pregnant.

we were like, hey, you know, let's go out and let's go hang out with Chris and his wife, and they had a daughter that was like four, and then a little boy, my nephew, that brand new, maybe he's six weeks old. So we're like, let's go out and we'll spend Christmas with them. So we spent Christmas with my brother and his family in Colorado. We lived in Evergreen. He went to Western State. He backcountry ski.

He loved the mountains. Just that was his thing. It was like a life I aspired to have. Like I wanted to live, I want to live in the mountains. like you are now with my family. So we spent time out there with him and then I actually went back out to Colorado in January a few weeks later to go flying the tunnel

on a boondoggle trip that I had probably set up for myself. But saw Chris kind of that day at the tunnel flying with some guys in Denver and then the next day he actually went skiing. So he went with his father-in-law to Winter Park in bounds and I had flown back and I got off the flight and had about 50 voicemails. And it turns out he got caught in a slide in a set of trees in bounds. And who knows?

I mean, my guess is probably was knocked unconscious in the trees. And then, I mean, the way they found him, I mean, he probably could have dug himself out. But, you know, buried upside down, but buried probably up to his shins. I've heard that if there's a slide and it involves trees, your likelihood of survival rapidly decreases because of you're going to impact them. That sucks, man. I'm sorry that you had to go through that. No, I bring it up, I mean,

you know, case in point. Like, it's better for me to talk about it. It's been actually more liberating discussing it, bringing it up in conversation, than locking it away. Because I still, I locked that shit away. Like when it happened,

I mean, I went out to Colorado and, you know, I had to be there for his widow and his kids, you know? If I'm a mess, it doesn't help them at all. You know,

so I focused on trying to, like, fundraise for them, care of because he didn't have minimal life insurance, you know, and they were living in like a cabin up in the mountains. So, yeah, I mean, that happened. So put a lot of shit in a perspective for me. You know, I decided that, you know, my wife's pregnant. You know, we had told them, they were the first people to find out that my wife was pregnant. No one else even knew. And, you know, I got to see, I watched him die and then I got to see the kids that he left behind. So I just,

you know, having a kid, you know, as you can probably. you can relate to is like having kids changes your life. It does whether you want it to or not. Yeah. Whether you will admit it or not. Yep. It absolutely does. Totally changes.

You can deny it if you want to, but at some point in time you will arrive at a position where you will. Yeah. Admit that, yeah, it changed it from the beginning. Yeah. You realize at some point you'll realize that their life is the most important thing in the world.

Agreed. Yeah. Agreed. So that happened. Yeah. We had, we, you know,

I went through that, knew that I was going to have a daughter. and made the decision to get out. Very difficult, not something that I was, like, stoked on. But, you know, I just put things into perspective for me. I wanted to be around. I wanted to see my kids. And I guarantee it was because, you know,

I got to see my brother taken early and kind of leave his kids behind. I just, I didn't want to regret the time that I had with my kids, you know, that he'll never get back. Yeah. How many years had you served when you got out? About 10 and a half, going on 11. And that's pretty much the go-no-go. For sure.

for most people, I think, I think there's a mass exodus usually between, you know, four to six. Yep. Then some people will say, hey, I'll stick it around to touch longer. They get to 10 and it's either I'm in or see you. Yep. Deuces. I'm out of here. Yeah.

You've seen guys, too, get out of like, I mean, 14 years, 16 years. I think it all depends on what they have on the horizon. Yep. If they know, or some guys I see make that decision because they had a horrendous experience. And more so I've noticed through the bureaucracy of the military, not like a traumatic experience, but just a horrendous experience or a promise that was unfulfilled as much as you can't really make promises

inside of the military. You know, there's only so much that you can actually control. But yeah, that's a tough one. I mean, how did you pick what you were going to do next? So I think I went to a fundraising event. Literally, man, like I'm like most guys,

like I went to some, I think I went to like a Navy SEAL fundraising event, you know, met some guy, you know. one of the guys I met, he's still a very close friend of mine. It was like a real estate developer. So he got me interested in real estate. So I think that was probably the initial conversations. I met the first guy I met on the outside was like a real estate guy.

So I'm like, oh, real estate it is. I was born for this. My wife would tell you exactly that. She's like, oh, yeah, the first guy I met is like did real estate. So he went to grad school and got into real estate, which is 100% the truth. So yeah, I did that. and I think I wanted to try to re, kind of repurpose myself.

I wanted a new identity. I wanted to break from the old identity. I wanted to prove myself. It's just, I wanted to, I just wanted to do something different. So I went down that path, got into real estate,

but yeah, it's very entrepreneurial, you know, in brokerage specifically. And then that segued into kind of like entrepreneurship, you know, doing some stuff with, with Suncare.

Yeah. First thing I remember seeing was the camo paint that had SBF qualities. That was the first venture. How did you settle on that? I don't, dude, I saw, I mean, I saw surfs on screen and knew that you could see it on your face and all that stuff. And then it came up in conversation. We're like, maybe camouflage face paint.

You could, you know, I know he's done. How many times did you wear a camo face paint and training? Very few. So I wore it a ton pre-9-11, right? Yeah, I never wore it. How many times did you wear it for real? Never. Zero.

Why is it still made? I don't know. That might be part of the reason why I am no longer in that company. I saw that and I was like, okay. Yeah, yeah. All right, you do you, Nick. So you learn, right? You just got to go through some pain.

And as we talked about on the way up here, I am a slow learner. Yeah, I am directly in that car next to you. Very stubborn. We'll just continue to drive on and do it and try to force it and make it work. So anyway, you know, like any entrepreneur, you know, iterate, you know, you, a lot of lessons learned in in business partnerships, a lot of lessons learned in loyalty and trust, who you can. Expectations, expectation management. Expectation management, yep, for sure. So, I mean, I've gotten a dissertation in kind of what to do wrong as an entrepreneur, but you need to make those mistakes.

Like, I don't think anybody, I mean, you hear it all the time. Like, no entrepreneurs made overnight, you know, no success, you know, happens overnight. So yeah, I'm in the early stages of that where there hasn't been. There's not all that much success. Well, look at your seal career. I mean, I look at mine. You know, the number of mistakes that I made far outweighs, the number of successes that I had.

But it was those mistakes that enabled the success. For sure. We had, though, oversight and mentorship to. Yep. And somebody saying, hey, you're a moron. You can do flutter kicks and run for a long distance. However, you actually don't know how to be a seal. So you're responsible for.

for this small thing. Right. And I would like mess that up and then it would be correct to measures. And eventually I could build on those mistakes. And that's what a career actually is. So I see it as being the same. And you remember the mistakes more than the successes, right?

I mean, people ask like, oh, they sting more. That's for sure. Definitely. I mean, dude, I remember them from being overseas. Yeah. There's a lot of times where I like, I screwed things up royally. But, you know, I just checked my ego and said, okay, you know what?

Yeah, I did screw that up. and not going to happen again. Don't make the same mistake twice and own up to me. There's no being mistakes or making mistakes or having mistakes made. It shouldn't be a concern about that. The concern should be not learning from your mistakes. For sure. Everybody's going to make the mistakes.

But if you're a buffoon and you just make the same mistake over again and don't learn a lesson, then we start edging into territory that I have a problem with. Oh, for sure. Or I'll just naturally deselect my involvement in whatever it is. Right, right. Right, right. Yeah. You know it's going to go to a bad place at some point.

How many times have you seen it in skydiving, right? A hobby that you and I both have been passionate about at times. Yeah. And warning after warning after warning after warning, after warning, you watch somebody make a low turn too low, low turn too low, low, and you're there talked to and they just mistake after mistake after mistake. And the lesson is directly in front of them. And then the mistake becomes catastrophic.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, overactive ego. You know, we talked about how ego is important, but overactive, kind of prominent ego is, is what drives a lot of bad shit in the world. Well, you got to have a balance between ego and hubris. Yep. Huberus will kill you. For sure.

For sure. And we all have egos. And I think, you know, if I look at, you know, people are successful in the SEAL community. Yeah, of course, they have ego. Yeah. And it probably drove a little bit of that success, too. It drives you. I mean, because we were competitive as well, right?

And when your ego takes a ding, you just like, you know, and you go a little bit harder. So, yeah. And I stop people when I say, you're just like, you know, and I stop people. say, you know, humility. And I literally, literally watch people write down. No ego. No ego. Because I remember there was somebody in the front row and I actually, I was giving a keynote and I stopped. I said, what did you just write down? He goes, he holds it up and showed to me no ego. I'm like, that's not what I said. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When you die, you can have no ego. And like, and then it was interesting because it led to a conversation of do you think what you just wrote down as possible?

And you thought about it. No. Okay. Well, let's talk about what is possible. maintaining control of your ego and not letting your ego control you, which in my opinion would be probably the number one deficiency of the person you ended up replacing overseas. That is what drove the vast majority of those problems. And it manifested itself in behavior and leadership. And it was the people who were underneath him. They suffered for it. Yeah. And that, I mean, that's the impact that it can have. Yeah. Well, and you see, I mean, you see it on the outside, too, in the private sector, you know, especially when you're, you know, business partners, you know, business ventures,

ego, I mean, money and ego drive a lot of decisions and a lot of bad things happen because of that. And I think you have to be willing to,

you have to be willing to stand up and, and, you know, as far as like, yeah, if you feel strongly about something and it's meaningful to you,

it's part of your kind of, uh, the fabric of who you are, you can't capitulate just because, you know, a lot of money's on the line. Well, you can,

but let me tell you from personal experience. And there was no, there was no large sum of money on the line. When you don't take that action, you get to saddle yourself and deal with regret. And regret is terrible. It sucks. It'll chew you up.

And it, uh, yeah, you want to talk about insidious. Regrets, regrets a bitch. Yep. So.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the most valuable type of shame.

Self shame. Yeah. Self shame. shame, make sure that you will never forget. Wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and tell yourself how much of a piece of shit you are. Every day, start your day with that reminder. Try to dig yourself out of that hole.

You know, it's interesting. I've had conversations recently. You know, self-talk. And again, we're now, well, most of the things I talk about, I have no mastery of whatsoever. I actually can't think of a topic where I do have mastery. But, you know, the impact of self-talk. And having conversations with people and having the management. ask questions like the way that you talk to yourself, would you ever say those things to

another person? And I think about the way, like I'll skip working out. And in my head, I'm just like, you lazy piece of shit. You know, you suck. You're going to eat chips now, aren't you? You fat fuck. What are you going to have some ice cream with that? And it's just, and it's like, I had this spiral of negativity in my own head. And somebody had asked me, would you ever say any of those things to somebody else? It's like, of course I wouldn't. I'm like, well, what are you doing talking yourself like that for it. I'm like, don't ask me questions that are that powerful. I'm not ready to think about things like that this early in the morning. But it's, I mean, it's true. Yeah, no, for sure. Be careful with how you talk to yourself. Be careful with what you

load yourself up for because you might actually just find it. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's going to drive. I mean, it just drives who you are, right? Yeah. And people talk about like, hey, like, I want to, I want to get rid of ego completely, but their negative self-talk is terrible, right? It's like, you're like, okay. Well, that's their mechanism they think for suppressing the ego is to put themselves down inside of their own head. Yeah. Yeah. Let me like, I'll just crush my I mean, I'm never going to love myself. I would see it in the students, because I did pool comp as an instructor. It's an ego crushing evolution.

It is. And you could see, I could almost tell you how the student was going to perform based on how they verbalized their grasp of the material and how they were approaching the test. Because they'd have that night in between. You know, you only get, you'd four shots at it, two on a Thursday, two on a Friday. And it's an interesting place to be for the students to have failed the third time. and you've got, you got one peg left in the board. Right. So it's either go big or literally go home.

Right. And you could see it talking to the students and how they would verbalize. And I was like, hey, walk me through, you know, walk me through the procedures. And, you know, I rip the mouthpiece out of your mouth. Where do you start your procedure? The mouthpiece is in your mouth and you can't breathe. Where do you start the procedure? How do you work your way through the problems?

And the way that they would verbalize their level of comfort, their level of knowledge, or just that mental approach, whether or not they were defeated. or they went into it with a positive attitude, I could, I mean, if it was a Vegas odds, you know, if there's a Vegas betting game, you'd be a very wealthy man. Oh, I'd be an incredibly wealthy man. And they're doing it to themselves

because the test was pretty much identical across the board. It's so much more how you approach it than the test itself. Yeah. Which is the beauty of that test, because it's not a test of diving. Yeah. It's a test of the individual. Oh, for sure.

I actually had to, I would brief the students, like at the end of pool comp, like, all right, you little fuckers, do not go out this weekend and read a set of scuba tanks because you guys don't know how to dive. The test that we just did for this week-long process in the pool has absolutely nothing to do with diving. You will embolize yourself, right? You are not qualified to go be a wreck diver. Do not, under any circumstance, think that you have a grasp of diving.

Conducting pull comp on each other at the bottom of the ocean would probably be how it would go. Yeah, I would have done that to my buddy. Why would you not? Yeah, I mean, it's fun. I remember doing the open water dives and probably take. taking my regulator out a bunch. I remember being in Green Team and being the outside left swim buddy on a dragger dive. We were doing a pole dive and I would disconnect myself from the buddy line and swim around to the other side and turn their oxygen tanks off.

Because that's how I like to have fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And see if they panic or not. I mean, at that point, they shouldn't. I mean, you know. They should not at that point. They're not. And we were 10 feet underwater.

So in my mind, I had justified my behavior and choices in life. But yeah, no, it's recklessly irresponsible to do either of those things, whether go get the open circuit rig on your own or turn your body's oxygen off. Well, there's an insertion point for meditation. Like meditation would actually be a valuable training tool for pool comp. Oh, 100% would be. Because the whole point of the instructor is to induce panic. Yeah.

Well, actually, you know, I wouldn't say panic. I would say stress. Yeah. And those are very easily confused terms. I could easily panic a student through stress. but the test is not about your ability to control panic. It's ability to manage your procedures while under an extreme amount of stress.

And the truth of pool comp is you could, and it's not difficult to do, create a testing environment that is not possible for the student. Yeah. And the point of doing that, there is no point. Failure for the sake of failure. And I explain to people,

because how many times do we train to failure in the SEAL community? It happened. But it wasn't so people could say, ha ha look at you you suck but it was actually you know with junior officers how easy is it to in the middle of a mount problem you know you're out on san clemeny island to pull a third officer and a oh i see aside and say hey what do you got going on you know and just what's your next move going to be where's your people what's your head count what's the weather and all i'm trying to do is like i'm watching out the corner of my eye like a tactical problem is playing itself out over here yeah which is what

i'm actually interested in but i want his head the other direction yeah yeah yeah and so and then they make a shitty decision and they trained failure. You're like, what? And the actual hell is going on. It's like, okay, hold on. What happened? You did not prioritize what was going on. You were focusing on the wrong thing instead of the right thing.

And that's why you failed. And then if I try that again, the officer's like, get the fuck out of here. I'm not playing your game again. You can learn those lessons. But taking people to failure, there's no point in that. And in pool comp, as the instructor, I control when you breathe. And if I rip your mouthpiece out after why, watching all of the bubbles escape from your open circuit, Jacques Cousteau regulator.

You are going to last. You're done. And if I rip it out and then I let you get it back and rip it out again halfway through your inhalate, you know what I mean? Like the odds are stacked in my favor. And it's an environment that has to be, you got to be careful with that. Because it's not about me as the instructor. It's about me applying the curriculum because what I'm looking for is people who can

manage stress in that environment. And you know as well as I do. There's nothing like the water. or your loss of ability to breathe when you want to that can introduce stress. Well, I can tell you a story about me and water. Yeah, you basically died. I did. I did almost die.

I forgot about that. Oh, my God. I'm so glad you brought that up. And it's funny. It's like, we got to this point and it was totally unplanned. I can tell you. And I couldn't have thought of a better way to lead into me talking about dying, drowning, than pool comp being the lead in

because most people think that we drown people in polcom. Do you get that question a lot? Do you have to hold your breath and buds until you? Have you been, do you have to be revived from unconsciousness

in order to pass Bullcom? To my knowledge, there is only one evolution in buds where you will get a pass if you go unconscious underwater. And it is the 50 meter underwater swim assuming that your forward speed carries you into the wall.

Yeah, into the wall. If your head hits the wall. Yes. Other than that, guess what, assholes? You're supposed to follow a procedure. And even in pool comp, I'm out of here, right? The thumbs up, I need to FSA, which means free swarmer ascent. Like, there's a mechanism for everything.

You're not supposed to pass. If you go unconscious in pool comp, you're, you're, you're film. You aren't done. Yeah, yeah, you're done. You're actually, it's like maybe major safety hazard. Well, it is. Yeah. Yeah, you got to come up as the instructor and you yell red line and they make, you know,

maybe I have a slightly different sense of humor than most. Perhaps. But when you pull an unconscious student up from the water, and this would happen on like the tread too. Yeah. The noises that those breaching students make are amazing. And it terrifies the rest of the class. Yeah,

because you come up as an instructor, you yell red line, you're holding on to the student. And the red line is basically all the students turn around. The other instructors will come and help you. And they might have been unconscious for like a second. They're kind of most of the time flirting with consciousness. And there's a doctor on the deck.

And there's robust protocol on access to a chamber and all this stuff. So it's not a haphazard environment for people listening. But the noises that those students are just like, they sound like whales being put into a blender. And I loved it. I would die laughing. And you could see it draining the color from the students' faces because they have to turn around. So the only thing that they have to experience the situation is their ears.

Yeah. And it's awesome to see people coming back to the light. And I'm just, I mean, I wouldn't, I can't. I think the incident. I was just about to say that I wouldn't laugh directly at them, but that would be untrue. I would laugh directly at them. Oh, dude, I would almost, I would bet money that you were laughing every single time that that happened. I probably was.

And then the shit talking that ensued to the class after that. Oh, I would take every opportunity. The next few people who were a step up to the ledge after that guaranteed, guaranteed failure. They would be coming out of the water like a nuclear submarine broaching the surface. Because if you're going to tee it up for me like that and it provide for me that ability

to get inside of a student's head, if you're going to put the wiffle ball on the tea, I am swinging for the left field wall. Yeah, yeah, yeah, dude, I could only, like, that is the best. If I could have video of any portion of buds at any point in time, it would be handy, instructor stump about to conduct pull comp on some students after a student has just passed out

under one. God, it was glorious. It was glorious. There's some students out there right now. This is not funny. I am sure that there are some students who absolutely hate my guts. And that's okay. It was my job to apply the curriculum. Cursing your name right now. I gave a very, I gave a very difficult test, but I gave the same test to every student. And if you met the standard, you passed hands down. And if you didn't. I pulled you out of the water and I told you why you failed and you were provided another opportunity to go retrain. And I tell you what's hard is somebody who came up from the age of 11 years old knowing they want to be a seal. What's hard is testing somebody on their fourth attempt at pool comp. And you know the students at this point, right? Because I think there were maybe four weeks

into second phase, which is an eight week or it was at least when I was there an eight week phase. So you know a little bit about the students. And maybe you're over there and you're, you're testing a guy on his fourth, and you know he's already had a medical role. Right? He had shin splints or whatever it is. He got rolled back.

And he is in his go, no go moment of the infancy of his seal career. And he fails for procedure. But you're the only instructor watching, you know? And you pull him up and he knows he's getting pulled up early because he still's got all of his gear on. And he's only about three minutes into a test that can last up to 20 minutes.

Or you're being nice. Yeah. But no, I wouldn't, that wasn't my job to be nice. My job was to apply the curriculum. And you see a young man, late teens, early 20s, break down because they see their dream and snatched away from you. Absolutely terrible. And you have to sit there and tell them that, yeah, it's over.

And, you know, I had students say, like, you know, say exactly what I probably would have said. this is the only thing that I've ever want to do. They're emotionally losing control and you could deviate if you wanted to as an instructor. I could have said, you know what? Go check in as a pass. And I would have done nothing but a disservice to the SEAL community.

You're holding the standard. But standing there, holding that standard with people who are losing their dream in that moment sucks. And I'm sure there are students that hate me for failing them, but I wasn't failing them because I didn't think they were a good person. Sure. I was failing them because they

didn't meet the standard of a community that had very violent consequences, probably and generally not to the person who falls short, because again, it's always seems to be to the people who are the least deserving. And the reality is, whether they ever admit it in their life, I probably saved their fucking life. Yeah. Yeah. So, hate away.

I did the best I could. Oh, dude. Hey, I agree with you. I mean, holding the standard is, I mean, that's what it's all about. Yeah. So speaking of standards, why did you try to give up on life? I quit. I quit for a short period of time.

It sounds like it was not necessarily, but dude, I remember you briefly. No, I read the story that you sent me. You've got to. So I'll give you. This stage is yours. Yeah. So I'll give you the shortest version I possibly can. So I was in Hawaii, which is notorious for Big Surf.

But the day, so I was out there with my brother-in-law. We decided the last day we were there to go, cliff jumping. because we're like, hey, I'm not going to sit in my room. It's Hawaii. You know, as I may as well go find some cliff to jump off of. Sounds reasonable. So we hiked out to a section kind of near our hotel. We have no idea, you know, where you jump off cliffs and where you don't.

We were just going to make an assessment. So we saw a section of cliffs. Water was pretty calm. I mean, you know, it's Hawaii, so there's some waves, but, you know, pretty mellow. And, you know, actually we're very responsible about. it like we found a place where you can climb out readily you know we weren't trying to do like a 15 foot free solo to the top of the cliff you know because that would have been a terrible decision-making process so all in all pretty benign situation you know brother-in-law you know jumped in we actually took

turns we weren't both jumping in so somebody could actually help if something happened which that situation did unfold I ended up jumping in started swimming around and and I remember we were kind of out the night before with a couple lifeguards. Lifeguards are firefighters from the island, and they had mentioned that there was a big swell that was going to hit kind of that next day and probably for the next several days. So big surf, and they were going to stay on the side we were on.

So when I was in the water, I could feel kind of the initial surge from, you know, kind of that swell coming in. And, you know, granted, it's deep water swell, so it's like, you know, where we were. And I think there's a lot of places in Hawaii. Hawaii could be treacherous, you know, being in the water over. Oh, yeah. Way different than California, you know, I'm used to.

Oh, the surf is different. The waves are different. The material that the waves are breaking over and on is different. It's a different beast for sure. The power that those things carry, which I had really never experienced before, but I got to experience the full fury. So felt that first set come in and, you know, I'm caught inside at that point, right? I'm jumped off the cliff.

We were swimming around there. So basically you had the absolute timing, worst timing humanly possible. Yeah, like I made the worst decision at the worst possible time I possibly could have. You know, you know, and I will say this too. Like I think I was recovering from like bronchitis or something like that because I had done a run, swim run with some of the junior guards on another island like, you know, the day before a couple days before. And like I was hurting from it. I'm like, too, my lungs are jacked. Like not getting the kind of oxygen like the O2 set that I probably should have.

have been at. So, but we're calling cliff jumping, right? And it's like a lake. And it should have been totally cool until it wasn't. It is beautiful hot, dude. It's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's beautiful. It's fucking Hawaii. Yeah, it's blue skies, a couple of clouds. Like, it's sunny, you know, you know, we should have been drinking mitis and jumping on an aircraft back to the States. Because it was like, my flight was like six hours later, five or six hours later. So yeah, I'm in the water, felt the first surge. I'm like, oh shit, okay, this, I probably should climb out. I probably should get out of the water now. This is, feels like it could be getting real. So I get to the, the climb out, and the second I got there, it's like the full energy of that

first wave comes in. And I got scar, I still have scars on my wrist from like holding on a lava rock. Oh, which is basically like holding onto shards of glass. Yeah, it's like all sharp edges and everything else. So I mean, I have scars still on my stomach and hands, got ripped off the rocks. you know, brother-in-law is down there trying to like help, but first wave comes in. And it's kind of the way, and I've seen it in other videos where as the surge from that first swell from like deep water

where there's, it's not shallow, right? It's a cliff and it just goes straight down where we were. It just kind of floods, right? So the depth of the water changes. That makes sense. Right. So floods all the way up to the top of the cliff, basically. So engulfs the climb out area and all that stuff.

And then sucks it dry, like almost dry kind of where the cliff is. So there's probably 15 feet of like rock in front of me, um, or maybe more, 15 plus feet. Uh, so I'm like, okay, I'm not, I'm now, I'm like fighting to try to keep myself from getting smashed against the rocks. So I'm fighting out. Um, and, and the waves are now bouncing off of the, the, you know, the cliff as it's kind of like, yeah, you have waves coming in and going out. So yeah, this experience. So I got energy kind of in both directions. Um, and I made one more attempt to kind of get to the climb out kind of in between kind of the waves, like in the truce. Like in the Shroff. I specifically remember grabbing my brother-in-law's hand, like wrist, and it just,

it ripped me off of him when the second one came through, and it threw him back. I mean, he's lucky that he didn't get tossed into the water at that point. And at that point, he had kind of, you know, retreated back onto the cliff because he goes in the water, like, we're both fucked. Like, we're both going to die for sure. So, I, you know, I spent the next, you know, time becomes very weird at this point, but I'm like, I'm redlined, right? I'm like, I'm fighting with everything I possibly have. Um, yeah, I mean, kind of like white water, right? So like my legs and arms are not grabbing much of anything. So I'm fighting with 100% of my output just to keep my face kind of above water or be able to grab air, um, and fighting to keep myself from getting

smashed against the lava rocks. Because I knew I'm like, hey, if I get taken in hard enough, I'm going to get knocked unconscious. I get knocked unconscious. I'm done. Game over. Game over. I'm going to sucked into the, you know, the caves and all that stuff, they may not find me. So I am, you know, I fight, I basically fight through, you know, I don't, probably five plus waves that are coming in at intervals and get to a point, man, where I'm like, it's fucking weird, man, it's, it's one of the strangest feelings, you know, hopefully I'm, next time I I experience this, I'm actually going to die, right? I'm like, I'm my death.

That's a bizarre statement, but continue. Right, right. So, like, have never been in situations, right, where I've been shot at. I've been in vehicles that have been IDed, you know, so I've had things where they, for all intents of purposes, I could have died. I was close to death, but never lost control. So I felt a, a complete kind of loss of control at a certain point where... You're talking mentally or physically?

I think mentally where I finally, I finally started to surrender to the fact that, I like good chance I am going to drown like I am going to I'm going to see what it feels like if I drown there's nothing that's going to save me because I go unconscious with the way that the the swell and the waves were coming in like my my unconscious body is going to be unsavable at that point polarized yeah yep so I'm I I was redlined and I can tell you after the fact I mean I ended I survived obviously um yeah I had thanks for the spoiler alert I know spoiler alert I know spoiler all Fuck, man. I was into this story.

Totally ruined it. Now I'm out of this. Yeah, did not die. But yeah, I had rabdo, basically. What was kind of mild rabdo from, in my lower body, like lower back, like add-upers. From being in the water? From treading water because I was, I was, like, pegged for, like, I was fighting so hard. So heart rate was, like, through the roof.

So I only say that because I went from, like, complete physical discomfort. you know, lungs burning, felt like I'm bleeding, like out of my lungs, to, like, barely being able to kind of tread water anymore to, like, a very, like, intense euphoria and kind of serenity, where I'm, dude, I can remember it still. It's actually spooky where I'm, like, feeling kind of myself kind of get euphoric and be okay with, like, letting go with surrendering. I've never been there before. Fuck.

And like, you know, I end up, I was, I distinctly remember, I mean, I remember seeing my brother-in-law on the cliffs, you know, looking. I think he was yelling. I couldn't hear shit at that point, right? I'm just like, well, you can't hear shit in the surf like that anyway. Yeah, like fully engulfed anyway. But I distinctly, as I started going to this kind of this place, this place of euphoria, seeing both of my kids. So, like, literally the, like, no thoughts in my head.

head other than I saw my little boy and I saw my little girl. They were basically, I mean like very, very difficult to kind of verbalize, but they were like with me. I'm like staring at them. They're in front of me, kind of like, you know, kind of blue sky behind them as I'm looking up. You're like physically seeing them. It felt like that.

Yeah. I physically was, I physically saw them. I physically felt like I was with my kids. You know, I do. I get, I have like a physiological reaction when I talk about it. Like, I mean, I have, you know, hair standing up on my arms. Yeah. But, yeah, I, like, saw my children.

And, and then remember kind of as, like, I mean, I think I was kind of, like, skirting the edge there, right? I mean, like, I'm walking the edge of the cliff, like, about to fall off. And I could see, you know, for a moment would see my brother in law. And I remember him kind of entering the water, like, probably after kind of the last major wave of that set kind of came through. through. He made a decision. He basically made a decision to jump on the frack because, I could tell you, I mean, like jumping into that shit was gnarly. Yeah, he voluntarily chose to

involve himself from what you were dealing with. He jumped and dude, he made a decision where 95 plus percent chance, maybe higher. Well, you probably bump that up a touch. Yeah, probably. Remote, no one out there, right? Remote section of cliff. No one there was on the edge of a golf course. Nobody's around us at all. Sounds like a great choice in your, you know, decision-making cycle to choose this location. Yeah, yeah, terrible decision-making. If I could go back, I probably would. Maybe I wouldn't do it, but you know,

because it's been a positive income overall, years later has been positive, but yeah, terrible at the time. But do remember him entering the water. At that point, I'm out. I'm gone. Like, I went to another place, and, you know, it was peaked with, you know,

being with my children. So, I mean, I remember distinctly being with my kids, being very, you know, a feeling of like, oh man, it's like total, like bliss. No worries at all, no thoughts at all, no thinking, no, no money, no distractions, no nothing. It was just, you know, the two little things that I love more than anything in, you know, in the world.

And, you know, I went unconscious basically at that point. I was going to ask you, were you still actively swimming, treading water at this point? Yeah. And so at that point, I went unconscious. and granted, this is kind of the feedback, the narrative that I got for my brother-in-law, and months later, because it became kind of a, it was kind of like a traumatic thing. Like, when all this thing, this whole thing settled out, like, we didn't talk about it. Like, I didn't even want to call my wife. You know, he had to call my wife and say, like, hey, I'm spending the night in the ER,

not coming home tonight, you know, didn't want to, like, freak her out. But, yeah, we didn't talk about it for a long time. But he told me that, you know, he entered the water, still bad, you know, turbulent. And he remembers swimming to me, but he did my, I was basically probably air in my lungs still, but I was kind of floating neutral, kind of underwater, you know, eyes wide open. He described it as like gray, like, you know, kind of colorless, you know, no nothing, no emotion on my face. You know, so grab me, basically started dragging me out. So it was swimming me out through the next set because as it started to come in to get us away from the cliffs.

because if we got pulled in, both absolute death sentence. Because what I had to do solo, he would never be able to do carrying dead weight. So he remembers kind of dragging me through, surf, floating me, because he ended up seeing two kayakers like hundreds of yards offshore past us, just randomly. You know, by grace of God, there's two random guys out there. Would float me, kind of lift me up, and then tread water and kind of signal. and did that a handful of times.

Like as he would signal, I would just start to sink. Like, basically you'd start getting sucked in by the swell, like in towards there. He'd grab me, pull me back up again, refloat me. And, you know, kayakers finally saw it. So, I mean, we, you know, thank God. It's funny enough, like, I've tried to call, I called that individual, because we end up getting in touch. I've got the name and information to thank the guy that literally dragged my dead body

or lifeless body at the time. time onto his kayak, like re, like swapped out gear and then paddled me back like several, like a mile plus, mile and a half to a takeout point. But yeah, I haven't been able to talk to him in person. So, I mean, I like, like had left him messages. Thank him, obviously. But yeah, brought me back. You know, I don't remember. So you were still breathing at this point? I was, uh, I think there was a period where I was unconscious in the water probably. I know I drank a lot of salt water because I vomited a lot of salt water. Because I vomited a lot of salt. salt water up when we finally got to the hospital.

Yeah. I don't remember coming to until they started giving me oxygen. So they basically pulled me out. Maybe I had kind of very light respirations after a kind of a long paddle. I started coming back. I don't remember being, I couldn't open my eyes. I think my eyes were wide open, but I think lack of oxygen. My eyes were not working.

You know, all I saw was like red. Yeah, pulled into an ambulance, I guess. I could feel it, right? I'm blind at that point. And then as oxygen started coming in, I started coming back to vision, started coming back, you know, back to me. And, you know, I ended up getting to the hospital,

you know, vomited a shit, I mean, stomach full of salt water. So I mean, I drank as much water as my stomach would hold as I was underwater. And, you know, spent the night in the hospital, a terrible flight back, you know, it was basically miserable, like laid up, you know. You know, like I had rabdo basically early,

like, you know, my muscles, like I fucked up all my muscles. Like I remember two days later back in San Diego like crawling to the car and having my wife drive me to the ER because like I didn't know that that was the case yet. I think it kind of delayed onset. Um, but if I couldn't stand up, I was like literally crawling into the emergency room. But took like a month or so to kind of get back on my feet. But yeah, yeah, super gnarly. Um, but you know, something that I've, I mean, you talk about kind of a experience kind of post military to kind of reset perspective. I mean, it gave me, it was like getting hit in the head with a Louisville slugger to kind of show me what's important in life. How long ago was this? This was June 8th, 2018. So just over two years.

Isn't today the ninth? Yeah. So, yeah, yesterday was, I flew in on the anniversary. It's crazy, too. It's like, I can't remember my anniversary sometimes, but wedding anniversary, but I can remember that. That's right. Your wife will never hold that again, too, if you forget. She'll probably listen to it and be like, you ass,

but yeah, dude, it was, I mean, Andy, I went to a place. I mean, I grew up Roman Catholic, not very close to the church or religion for a long time, all through my time in the teams, and even afterwards, you know, never really went to church and never been a very, I did, I grew up, you know, all guys Catholic school. So like you do Bible study, you take class on religion.

I think there's a difference between being religious and going to church. For sure. No, I agree. Yeah, I never went through. I think it's easy to hide and not be religious. Just because you go to church, I don't think should be the metric for whether or not you are a religious person. But that's my personal thing.

No, I agree, man. I think I've always looked at it as like a connection. And being outside, being in the outdoors, I feel closer to God than I ever have sitting in some building. building, you know, with somebody talking to me. So, I mean, that's, you know, this experience has kind of been a big, it's been transformative for me. I mean, it's really kind of put me, I feel closer to a higher power now than I ever did before because I could bet. I realized, I mean, I got to see it. I got to feel it. And it, regardless of whether people, you know, want to believe that, believe where I went

or what I felt is, you know, passing on to another plane and, you know, going to heaven or whatever you want to call it. I mean, I think I was skirting the edge there for a while. And, you know, it gave me a perspective that, you know, I'm very thankful for. You know, I got to, I got to, it showed me my kids for a reason, you know. It showed me kind of the purity of the love that I have for those two human beings. And it's probably the reason why, you know, I express love more openly to people that deserve to hear that. That makes sense to me, man. That sounds, I don't have the words for how that sounds.

I have one key question about the entire event. Yeah. Because your brother-in-law now is afforded an amazing opportunity. Does he tell people at cocktail parties that he saved a Navy seal in the water? I hope so. God, I hope he does. Whoever this man is, this masked hero needs to ride that fucking horse into the sunset. Yeah.

If that had been me, well, it wouldn't work if it was me because we were both seals. Yeah. Tim Duba. I'm actually going to give him the shout out because he deserves it. He needs to tell everybody that story. Yeah. Yeah. He saved a Navy SEAL who drowned.

Yeah. So, no. You're lucky you didn't. I would be, I would slap you across the invisible face. If you have like, Navy SEAL drown, like God. Dear Nick. You son of a bitch. You failed the community again.

He, I mean, he has, he should write a book about it. Fuck. What a gnarly experience, man. Yeah, I mean, dude, talk about like, you know, I mean, dude, I get it. I mean, guys do this. Like, guys do this in combat. They do this in kind of law enforcement, you know. I never had that experience in combat.

Yeah, well, I've never seen it. I never, you know, I've never been in a situation where either I got to see somebody do that or I got to do that for somebody or somebody did that for me. I mean, dude, I saw, you know, you know, like Monsor. didn't see it, but, you know, I got to hear that story and I was on that deployment. Incredible story. Medal of honor winner for people who don't know who Mike is. It's definitely worth of Google. But yeah, I mean, that's, it's, you know, for me, that was the first time of my life where I've actually been kind of the recipient of that, because I know how shitty

it was. I know how gnarly and intense the situation when I was in. I'm sure Tim knew, because he could probably see the fear. I mean, he saw the fear. Oh, for sure. In my eyes. and we've known each other for a long time. You grew up, you know, he was my roommate at the Naval Academy. He's married to my wife's identical twin sister. I know he's told me that there's a lot of, I asked him, I'm like, dude, what was going through your head? Like, I want to know, because that was a heavy weight for him to carry.

You know, he's like, he's like, it was fucking traumatic. When did you guys finally talk about it? And why? What was the tipping point? Dude, I don't, I remember going the first, really heavy conversation about it. We had, we ended up going to Idaho Wild, and we ended up spending just time together as a family. And I remember one night, and this was probably, it was cold, right? So it was probably winter time frame. So it was, dude, it was probably,

it was probably more than a year later, year and a half later. Nothing like just pushing it down. Yeah, just push it. Pack it away. Packed it away. Compartmentalized it. Hey, Tim, never talk about that again. Yeah, hey Tim, remember that one thing that we're not going to talk about? Good. Keep not talking about it. Yeah, I remember coming back. from like, I came back to work and stuff like that. And I'm just like, yeah, it was good. Terrible, yeah, yeah, I had a little incident in the water. But it was like kind of glanced over by everybody,

and I'm just like, yeah, we're good, we don't need to talk. I was like, dude, there was shame, kind of embarrassment. I almost felt like I'm like, dude, I almost fucking took myself out of the game. And I started thinking about my kids. I thought about, thought about my wife. I actually thought about a lot about Tim, the fact that he, you know, he basically, he sacrificed his life. You know, it didn't happen that he didn't die.

but, you know, he should have died. Yeah. Yeah, because he actually started telling me that. He was like, dude, the thought that went through my head is like, there's probably a point of hesitation. I can tell you, I was thinking hesitated, but I thought about having to go home and say, like, look at your kids in the eye and say, yeah, I watched your dad drown.

Yeah, that's some incredibly powerful motivation. Yeah. So, yeah, he definitely, I mean, he definitely jumped on a, frag for me. I mean, it's something I'm always, I would always be thankful for. It's definitely gotten us closer. I mean, we... Oh, you think?

Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. I just can't see why it would bring you guys closer. It's not like you shared a horrendously traumatic experience together. Yeah. Yeah, no reason it would be bonding in any capacity. Oh, my God, man. Two years ago.

What an experience, man. Yeah, but, you know, gives you, I mean, it's perspective, right? I mean, it's given me kind of a renewed perspective on kind of the things that matter. Probably appreciation as well, I would imagine. Dude, I mean, dude, I, like gratitude, absolute gratitude. I mean, being up here, the fact I get to, like, look out and kind of see how awesome and beautiful this place

that we live in is. I mean, I'm just, I'm thankful. You know, if anything, it's helped me to live in the moment. And I, you know, I fall out of the present. Yeah, I get pulled into the past and the future. Yeah. Past and kind of, yeah, future with anxiety and stuff. But, like, I'm much.

better at kind of checking myself, you know, putting myself back in the moment and trying to enjoy everything that we have. Yeah, that makes sense to me. God damn. So why the Navy? How'd you talk to me about, we've talked about just about everything other than where you came from and, you know, how you actually ended up on the Navy path? So I, dude, I wanted to be a seal, man. How did you hear about it? Through a friend, I had a buddy of mine from grade school, is way into kind of the military, Marine Corps. And I think I asked him, was there a specific segment of the service

that was really difficult to gain access to be part of? And I think he told me about it. And he gave me like rogue warrior. Like any. Oh, I've read it. Like any guy that. When I read it, it was misplaced in the nonfiction section. Damn, you Dick Marsenko.

No, I did. I read the same. And so I read that book and then I thought I'm just like, I'm not the best athlete in the world, but I want to work hard. I want to achieve something that's difficult to achieve. Do you remember at what age this was, this desire? Seventh grade probably. Okay.

Yeah. So actually what is seventh grade puts you? That's about 11. Yep. Okay. So same. Yeah. Just about the same boat.

Yeah. There's a lot of guys, too. I think I fall into that kind of age. I talk about this all the time too. It's such an uncommon narrative for people to hear of what do you mean you knew you wanted it to do when you were 11 years. How is that possible? And I don't actually have a great,

I thought about it then because people would ask me when I was 11, 12, 13, they're like, how do you know? At that age, I was like, man, I'm narrow, you know, whatever I sounded like at that age. And now it's, I still,

I mean, I have a better understanding of myself, but I still struggle to really narrowly define exactly what it was. Yeah. And then how many people did we serve around? Who said exactly the same thing? Yeah, dude,

like everybody I talked to. So incredibly uncommon outside of that community, but one of the most common narratives inside of the community. Yeah, it brings people, I mean, it's bringing that like-minded group of people together, you know, and you get a lot of, I mean, the vast majority of the guys, you know, from the SEAL teams or, you know, soft in general are, you know, very, share a lot of the same character traits, right? Yeah, driven early.

Driven early. I mean, you know, pretty humble individuals. Yeah. But it was, for me, it was a gravitational pull. I mean, it just felt like when I heard it, it clicked for me. Oh, yeah. Or I felt like a puzzle piece that was, it was the last piece of a puzzle that I was looking for. And I don't know why.

Maybe it's a chemical thing. Maybe it's a wiring thing for people who feel that way. But I mean, I can't deny that that's what it was. Yeah, I heard about it. And it was like I, from that point forward, it was like everything was being a seal. Did you have a Navy Seal flag in your room? I did not have a flag, but I had a T-shirt and a hat. Did you have a collection of Navy Seal books?

I did. And I had, instead of the flag, I had, the old school Navy SEALs poster with the guys coming out of the water and the Fumanchu mustache. Full powerful handlebar mustache. I know the exact picture that you're talking about. What t-shirt did you have? I had a shirt that said a cut above the rest. That is a terrible fucking shirt. And it was a skeleton coming out of the water slashing somebody's throat. Yes. What a shitty, shitty shirt. Because underwater knife fighting. is a very,

it's a profession within the teams that's very common. You know, I would hear that term often and then underwater basket weaving was the other one. Underwater knife. You know, seal,

right? For those of you who are joining us, late to the game, who don't realize it stands for sea, air, and land. How much fighting did you do in the sea? None. Yeah,

had none. No. I got sea sick a lot. I did one time horrendously in Korea and ever since then found the power of drama mean. Oh, dude, I would be, dude, I can tell you, Mar-Ops FDX in STT, I was, as an officer, I was like an element leader in like the boats. Yep.

I was drugged on so much dramamine and I was, I think it was unconscious in the bottom of the, or the zodiac. I had to do it. I got so seasick in Korea on a Mark 5. So I check into Team 5. And on my 20th, yeah, I spent my 20th birthday on my way to Seoul Korea. and then at the bars there. And then we were, you know, exercise foal eagle or foul eagle, however you say it. I went there time after time after time.

So I was a brand new guy. I didn't have my bird. And we were there supporting and they're like, oh, go for a ride on the Mark V's. Famous fucking last words. So of course I eat a full meal before getting on this Mark V. Right, dude. Which was the insertion platform, you know, or to get the guys to a place. It was so they could get in their zodiacs.

Right. And then I had to drive back there. And of course, it broke down shortly after letting them off. So we're adrift in the sea. And then they're popping the engine compartments. And then I just just like, blah. Oh, dude. And I felt sick for like three days.

Yeah, yeah, it's terrible. I remember barely making it back to the Vietnam-era cot in the Vietnam-era tent that was heated by a wood stove on a soccer field in Korea. Yeah. It's the best place to recover from terrible nausea. But I could barely make it in there. And then I got into the cot and I felt like it was moving. just I was sick for days.

Yeah. And ever since that day, it's like, nope. The worst. Just pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, taking the, it was, it was so horrendously and utterly bad. Yeah, I just avoid all kind of waterborne evolutions at this point. A cut above the rest. So powerful.

So powerful. What year did you join? I went through, so I finished the academy in 03. Why? Actually, go back to it before finishing the academy. Why did you go that route? So my parents wanted me to go to college. I almost didn't get in.

I applied to the Naval Academy. Well, I mean, many people do not. So that wouldn't have been an uncommon tale. It didn't get, so you need a nomination, right? You know, congressional Senate nomination, something like that. Somebody has to give you a letter of recommendation. So I didn't get that to like the 11th hour. So I got acceptance, but I was actually on track.

I was going to do ROTC scholarship through like Citadel. And namely my parents wanted me to go to college. I actually at the time was like, I just want to enlist and go to butts. But I took that path, ended up getting into the academy in like the 11th hour. I think like a month beforehand. How was the academy?

It was terrible. I've seen some documentaries that mostly focused on like the squared off meals and kind of, I guess it would be, what are they called your, the first year to plebe summer? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Most of the documentary was focusing on the ridiculous shit

that they would ask of you guys. Yeah, it's ridiculous. Is that all just, steeped in tradition. I mean, it's all tradition and, and, uh,

it's, yeah, it's all tradition. It's tradition and kind of like, uh, I don't know, would you call them like routines or, uh,

nonsense. Not nonsense would be a better way to put it. But dude, I, you know, it was a terrible place to be while you're in it, right? You don't really,

like you're just like, this is horrible. I have less freedom now than I had when I was like a freshman in high school. Oh yeah. Not allowed to drive a car, really. for the first year or two.

You're not allowed to do a lot of stuff for the first year. Can't wear civilian clothes out in town for a while. You can't basically have a normal social life. I equate you as a senior there as equivalent to like maybe like a freshman at like a really lame college. Okay. Maybe. You're probably like even worse. Yeah, maybe.

Maybe. You get less freedom. You have to still go to mandatory meals like if you days, like breakfast, lunch, you know, like dinner on like Wednesdays. But yeah. Not fun to be at. I mean, good, I mean, I have a lot of good buddies, you know, and namely a lot of the guys that I end up going to Buds with,

you know, either in my class or the classes around me. How does the pipeline from the Academy work for Buds? Because it's my understanding when I went through as enlisted, and there were many more available slots for enlisted personnel than officer. Yeah. So I would imagine there's probably more people than slots available at the Academy. Yeah, super competitive. Like everybody there, like, freshman year,

there's like 300 guys that are like, I'm going to be a seal. Like, no questions asked. Um, you say 300, what's a class size? Um, probably, you start with probably, oh man, probably a thousand plus. Okay. So that's a, that's a pretty a lot of guys. Like, I think every guy that like, you know, go, that has aspirations is like a, I mean, you have a lot of athletes, right? A lot of, everybody wants to be a frogman on Friday. Everybody does. So yeah, everybody wants to be a seal. And then the, then it just slowly got whittled down. So like you, I think our, such is the way. Our class had like, I think, six, 16 billets, but we had one guy who was an enlisted seal that came through.

So he competed, but, you know, kind of he took one of those slots. So we had 15 guys come out of the class when we were seniors. That went to the budd. Yeah. Man, that is a reduction in numbers. Yeah. And you get to know those guys. You do all the kind of screeners, like we were talking about, like you run your in-house

screener at school. And it's like, it was Wallace at the time. It was like, no. empowering people that maybe don't need it. Right. We could leave it back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No science behind it.

Just put them in the water until somebody's really, really cold and injured. Put them in the water until somebody almost dies and then back it off just a touch from there. Just a touch. And then everybody else should be pretty cold. So how did they decide who got those slots, though? So you competed all year. You go to like... What do you mean by competed?

Physically? You do like screeners. You do like PFT. Okay. What do they call it? Is it PFT or PRT now? I think it's physical fitness test or physical readiness test? I think PFT when we were doing it for like the swim, pushups, situps, pull ups, run.

All the marquee measurements of physical ability. Yeah, the marquee measurements. I was tested often when I was in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, on none of those things. I don't know how any of those tests determine whether or not you're prepared to carry your body weight plus 80 fucking pounds up a mountain in 110. Yeah, I think that would have been better as like weighted buddy carries like around the field. That school would have been better for your knees, but it probably would have been a more applicable test. for what you were getting into.

Much more applicable. Okay, so you go, so PFT or PST scores. You do those, your grades at school. Okay. And then you had like, they looked at athletics. You would compete every year to go to like different like military schools. So like I got a chance to go to like Navy dive school in Panama City.

In your summertime? Yeah, between freshman and sophomore year. That's cool. So that was a cool trip. I went to Benning. So I actually went to Benning as a midshipman between sophomore and junior year. Is it dirty, nasty leg? as a dirty, nasty midshipman leg.

I was like lower. I was lower than like the lowest, you know, PFC that was going through there. As you should have been. I should have been. You were swine at the time. Yeah, I just, I took it. So yeah, do you do that? And then MiniBuds was the last one.

So, couldn't compete to come out. That's the week long intro. Yeah, it's like a couple weeks long out at buds. And then you go to like a team and like hang out. You basically don't do anything. You kind of just get in, you get shown around the team. bit and told to do things. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's also known as being a new guy at a team as well. Yeah. Similar experiences. Yeah. It was like pre new guy. Yeah.

What'd you get your degree in? Well, political science. It's an engineering school. Engineering school because it was the easiest. It's an engineering school. The easiest major that I could take to get good grades. Hey, I can support that completely. Oh, for sure, dude.

I think a lot of, I mean, I knew a lot of guys that failed out because they took engineering majors. I only know, I think one person who actually got. got an engineering degree at the Naval Academy, which is an engineering school. I think because most of the guys you know are probably seal all of the series. Yeah, they are. They're like, no, no, no. I wasn't interested in that shit. I got this ring here that I'm going to knock on the table to remind you that you

don't have one. And then, yeah, I got the fuck out of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. History, English, political science, or if you really wanted to push it and kind of risk things, oceanography. No, it sounds like there's math involved in that. Too much math. Yeah.

And then what Bud's class? for you? 247. Oh, why? You actually were a while after me then. So you're no long, you're probably like mid-30s? 39. Oh, well, you had the four years of school.

Yep. See, I didn't have that higher education. That's why it took me longer to do the math. I didn't get that hoity-to-dy, Naval Academy math experience. Not everybody can. I know. Let me tell you who would have failed at that place right here.

But actually, I don't have to worry about that because I never would have gotten in. So that was a self-correcting and critiquing problem. There were there were times where I wish I didn't get in. I was like talking to buddies that were back home going to regular college. I bet, but not now. You know, it's good. I, you know, I say, hey, it's terrible and all that stuff. Great friends. I mean, it, it set me. I mean, dude, everything that's happened to me. It's set me at a path. It's giving me things that have made me who I am, even drowning. So you're trying to

take the best out of everything. And there's definitely good stuff that came out of that time. Yeah, I have no doubt that there was. How was your experience? in buds as an officer, because I only got to see the officer experience through the lens of an instructor. Yeah, yeah. You know, in mine, well, I guess I got to see it as a student, as an enlisted person,

but oftentimes things were different for the enlisted versus the officer. So I got to see it from a very, very far distance, and quite frankly, I wasn't paying attention. As long as they were yelling at you guys, they weren't yelling at me. Right. Which makes sense.

Yeah, that's the goal of buds, is have them pay attention to somebody else. We had a lot. So I think we had like maybe 17 or 18 officers, maybe more than that when we were in in-doc. That's a lot. So we had a ton of officers in our class. So initially.

That's just butter bars everywhere. Oh, it's like butter bars gone amok. And I think it was actually, you could actually be a gray man as an officer. Which is rare. Really rare. Because there's a lot of classes where you get like six officers to start.

And there's like one left, right? Yeah. So like all that, the hammers are dropping on like, You're the answer for everything, basically. For sure. So, like, I will say that, like, because we had so many officers, we had tried in a lot of officers. So, I mean, they, as long as you were, you're not an idiot and you're not super arrogant and you're not running your mouth and that, I think a lot of that pressure was off.

We also had, I had some really good, we had some guys that, actually had one guy who was a prior enlisted Marine, Mike Sorrelli, that came in, was in my Bud's class. So it was really cool having a guy like Mike because he's been there, he's done that. You know, he actually, you know, he's more mature than us, he had more experience than us. So be able to have somebody like that as kind of like an officer mentor. You know, it probably gave up me and the other guys. I mean, the knuckleheads that came out of the Naval Academy, like, we never signed a lease before. We didn't know how to do our laundry. You know, people cooked us food.

Don't talk about enlisted people like that, all right? Just because they were doing your laundry and cooking food. sons of bitches. But I mean, I laugh. I'm like, dude, we were, you're like, you haven't done anything. You're like, you're like. And then you're thrust into a leadership position with, I would understand you took a lot of, I guess, a lot of leadership or ethical courses and, but conceptual versus practical.

Dude, yeah, doesn't it? Yeah, you have no. The leadership courses that you get, you're like, like, in theory, you know, you're getting like worst case scenarios. Like, this guy committed crimes as an officer, is he right or wrong? He's probably wrong, you know? Yeah, that's, those aren't really tough question. Yeah.

Yeah. The tough one is when you're the one there deciding whether or not you're going to say something, allow a behavior, stop it, course correct. Dude. Yeah. Yeah. Stepping up, right? And making a stand now allowing behavior or...

Yeah. Unpack that in a fucking textbook. Yeah. It's... Dude, you're never going to feel like, especially all the peer pressure and like, you know, especially as a young, you know, as a young officer, like, you want to be liked by everybody, but at the same time, like, you need to be, you know, you need to find your place. It's kind of a, it's a weird spot to be in.

you know, you're going, especially as you leave buds, you go into a platoon for the first time. And I'd have to imagine having no experience in the fleet that the experience for junior officers in the seal teams is different than in the fleet. Yeah. I mean, I was on a first name basis with most of the people that I worked with. And from what I have heard from the fleet,

that is incredibly uncommon. Yep. And I think, you know, if you go as a butter bar and what I mean by that is you're an 01, you literally have one, what color would be? Copper, bronze. Yeah, it's like bronze or... It actually looks more gold.

Yeah, it's brass. Brass would be the best color. So they call it a butter bar. And then they're a lieutenant, J.G, which for me, I always emphasized the junior grade of that lieutenant. And then, you know, an 03, a lieutenant. But you start off as a butter bar. And you don't know shit.

Right. And, you know, in the SEAL community, you are in a leadership position, but I think you're thrust into an environment where people want to see you succeed. And it's more about mentorship and less about rock paper rank. Yep. And from my understanding of the fleet, it's maybe more heavy on the rock paper rank.

Yeah. There was no in the, in the seal community, I never saw a separation where we were gonna eat food. You know, sometimes they would go to the officer's mess. You're like, and that starts immediately

from my understanding, right, in the fleet. Like the butter bar is going to the officer mess. The chiefs are going to the chief's mess and fuck all you E6 and below's. You go get the, you know, sloppy Joe and mashed potatoes. Oh, dude, you're segregated, right? Immediately.

And I just, I think by not having that in the community, which is obviously vastly smaller than the fleet navy, it was a different experience. And you know, you're surrounded by people who wanted to see you succeed. Yeah.

Who would empower you and enable you and try to shepherd you along as opposed to just showing up one day on a boat and be like, hello. Right. I am in charge of you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, you know more than me about everything. Yeah. No, I mean, I think that in the, it's totally different dynamic, right? You go in as a new officer into a platoon, you know,

I jumped into a platoon when I was a new guy and, you know, I was super lucky. I had guys that, that were great operators, great leaders. You know, they weren't just there just like to haze you and like talk shit to you. Yeah, a little bit they were.

I mean, you want some of that, right? Or you'd feel left out. But. Or you'd be like, oh, shit, they don't like me. They don't like me at all. They're treating me very nice the entire time. But like those guys, like I, you know, I basically, I just shut my mouth and listened

and allowed myself to be mentored by guys that knew what they were doing. Easier said than done. Yeah, totally. Because like you, I mean, there's too, part of it's like, you're like, you're like, I'm a, I'm an officer. I should be, I should be in charge.

I should be running this. Like, no, dude, no one, they, you're expected to be a leader and you're expected to do your job, but you're not expected to have all the answers. Everybody knows you have no tactical expertise. If you are expected to have all the answers, the people that you work for have set you up for failure. For sure.

And they probably have no experience. Yeah, you need to, that's what we would call a cluster fuck. That would be the technical definition of the environment that we're described. It would be terrible. That would be horrendous for everybody involved. I think making that shift, though, from like, you know, you go from like kind of that heavy you are the mentee for 18 plus months, you know, after you've gotten out of training to deploying for the first time.

Deploying, you know, especially when we were deploying into combat, you know, you immediately do have to step up. Because then you're going to interact with kind of Army Marine Corps officers that own the battle space and you're the man. Like that Marine Corps, you know, my first deployment. the Marine Corps major that ran the combat outpost that me in like seven seals would go to to operate out of like he he was looking at me he doesn't care about the backstory no he's going he's like he talks he's talking to the senior ranking officer you know he's talking to the senior ranking seal officer

he's not interested in the backstory your experience how many days on the job yeah he doesn't care if you have a guy that has you know 15 platoons that's in that little element he's going to say hey you're the man in charge you're going to be the ground force commander you're going out so i think stepping into that, you know, making that transition is probably the, you know, that's the toughest one, right? You know, I think you're either going to make it, make yourself as a, as kind of a young officer or, you know, you could fail miserably if you can't navigate those waters well. And you see both happen. Yep. On the enlisted side of the house, too, by no stretch is the enlisted side of the house. Perfect. By any means. Where is your Naval Academy ring currently?

I know, I do not know. Don't lie to me. I swear. I think my daughter was playing with it a few years ago someplace in our house. It's good. It's a good answer. I often suspected when I was enlisted men that you guys had like these rotating little pillows that you put them on the nightstand and you'd have lights hit them from different directions. So it would make like a star mobile.

Yeah. And that's how you can fall asleep at night. Yeah. You would look at that. That's what I thought. It seemed reasonable to me that that's what you guys do. Yeah. No, very reasonable assumption for sure.

It was funny, man. It was bizarre for me to switch over from being. an officer to an enlisted person. Or the other way around an enlisted guy to an officer. It's just like, all right, this is weird. I did the best I could. You know, I tried and I think it worked out.

It worked out okay. I didn't kill anybody that I know of on our side. That's the best I could. Oh, dude. What, uh, so what are you doing now? Okay. So I run, we'd have a startup, new company called Protect Products. So we're doing, so I looked at kind of like routines that work for me as an individual.

You know, I've taken supplements my entire life. You know, I didn't use sunscreen that much because I just didn't like it. Nor did I. So we have, you know, very holistic, safe kind of products. We have four sunscreen products. And then we are starting to build out kind of some very simple supplements, you know, not kind of creatine and energy drinks and everything else, but really supplements that just help to support routines of hydration and sleep.

So we're looking at things that I feel support kind of cognitive function, your ability to sleep is going to make you a better individual anyway. So bringing some of those supplements to market. So we have a lion's main complex. We have a vitamin B12, D.E. You gotta say it like bear grills. Vitamins. Vitamins.

It's my favorite part of that show. I love that son of a bitch. Just for the way he says, is he still on? He, oh man, we're going down a rabbit hole here. So I

I get lost in this one because a couple of those guys in what I will call his genre got the curtain pulled back just a touch on how much of the reality that was actually involved with the survival-esque nature.

You mean they weren't just out in the middle of nowhere, risking life? I mean, you said it not me. So I'm not sure whether or not it's true. But yeah, so you know what I mean? There was a slight expose of the authenticity. But here's the deal. If you're watching it on the TV, for me, I inherently am fucking suspicious of everything that I see.

Right. So it's- I am too. I watch TV for entertainment most of the time. Like I'd love a good documentary like everybody else does. Yeah. But I think he is. But now it's like he does one-on-one stuff with people and they go do some other type of adventure.

Okay. And sometimes they discuss vitamins. Vitamins. I'm going to start. I don't know why that's stuck with me, but I love that son of a bitch for the way he talks. I'll be referring to them as vitamins. I hope you do. We have a vitamin tincture.

Yep. Comes in an aluminum can. So we have that going on. We have some great people. Mark Healy, big wave surfer, bow hunter. Spear fisher. Spear fisherman. Awesome guy.

He is. Should have been a seal. He would have done well. I spent a week with that. them in Lanai hunting, bow hunting, Axis deer with Sica. Like I said, just have him show you the picture, the aftermath of what it looks like

when you take your pants off, leave them with your backpack, forget what your backpack is, and also forgot to wear sunscreen. He showed me those pictures. He was sunburned from the, I would say, high thigh. High, high in the thigh region.

Low hip. Yeah. So yeah, very bad sunburn. Like to the point where maybe go to the ER. But in it, dude, And it kind of shows you, tells you what kind of person Mark is. Like, you know, I've gotten to know Mark, and Mark is just like, he just gets shit done. I know.

He's awesome. He is a hardcore, tough dude and super humble, you know, you just, and very easy to get along with, like, immediately, like, we hit it off. Incredibly disarming. He's just a cool dude. Super good guy. So Mark is a partner in that company with us. So the whole goal is to surround ourselves with good people, people that I want to spend time with,

you know, because life is too short, as I only. almost found out when I drown. Think about that if you had to sit on your deathbed and your final task in life was to tally the amount of time you spent with people that you didn't want to. Dude, I've felt that now. And that is, that is the reason I think I have perspective that I have. That will change.

Even just that thought exercise, that should change your perspective a little bit. Yeah. Even me just saying that out loud, I was like, oh, yeah. I need to change some shit. Yeah.

You can like look at things you're doing me like, all right, If I was going to die, like now, you know, am I cool with everything I'm doing? Yeah. How am I spending my time? Yep. So, yeah. So, you know, Mark passed that test.

You know, for me, for me at least, I passed his test as well. Agreed. But, yeah, Mark, you know, just a phenomenal individual. So he's, you know, partners with me on that. And you're still doing real estate. Still doing a little bit of real estate. And then I'm also, I stepped into a bigger role with the C4 foundation. Which we need to take the time to unpack that because we both knew.

you know, Chuck. And he was awesome. So I'll let you go. Yeah, man. Well, I mean, hey, you know, to that point, I mean, Chuck, you know, talk about people. Why I rate myself at below average. Right, why I rate myself at below average.

Point in case. Yeah. Yeah. No, dude, me, so I went through, so our deployment, uh, workup deployment, 2009, 2010. He was in my sister platoon.

Um, and then ultimately I left them, uh, to go over to Afghanistan, but worked up with Chuck, spent time with him. Chuck is actually the guy that picked me and the guys up from Dover when we brought Brandon Looney home. So, I mean, it's crazy, but that was one of the last times that I actually spent time with Chuck because I got out, you know, a few years later.

And he ended up, you know, doing some more deployments with three and ultimately team one. Chuck was killed. So Charlie Keating, the fourth, was killed in Mosul, a little over four. years ago. And in combat, there's a letter that was written to his dad. It's on the C4C4Foundation.org. It's in the video that they did about Chuck and they have, you know, C3, his dad's reading it. But the thing that, like, dude, I'm going to like, I don't want to start crying. I think about it, bro, but like, there's a super heavy letter that was written talking about his actions that day. Which he received the Navy Cross for.

Yeah. He held the line, you know, killed a bunch of Daesh and, you know, ISIS. And sorry about that, dude. Why? He deserves it. Yeah. From time to time, like, you know, I say the words and that actually it lands. But, you know, he went unconscious.

Dude, with a, you know, the smile that I think I, you'll remember. And I remember. For sure. You guys bigger than life. He's the happiest kind of goofy dude you'll ever meet. It captures the essence of who he was. Yeah. Yeah, dude, heavy man.

I mean, I hear that. I hear C3 reading that letter about his boy, about his son. Yeah, son, you know, a guy that laid his life down, like so many of our brothers have done. Across the services, man. I mean, I've almost respect for everybody that served overseas in combat. that. And, you know, so I got to know, Chuck, you know, didn't get to serve with him on those last deployments. But, you know, it's unfortunate that I got to know his family after he was killed. So I didn't know his dad. I didn't know his widow Brooke.

Same. Yeah. For so, so many of the people that we both know and lost, you know, you knew the man at work. And, I mean, if I objectively know myself, and I'm honest about it. how I was at work, people knew what I allowed them to know. Yep. And that was, I would describe it as the tip of the iceberg. There's so much more underneath the water. And it's, I wish I knew, I wish I knew so much more and knew them so much better than I did. Yeah.

No, dude, I, I feel the same way. So I, uh, didn't know his family until after he was killed. And then I was introduced to, you know, obviously I saw C3 kind of at funeral services and all that. You got to meet Brooke there briefly. Which is not the best time to meet the family. Yeah, I'm not like, I'm not hanging out. I'm paying my respect. And they are in no place to receive.

And it's, you know what I mean? I can only imagine it's a fucking abstract painting. Oh, it's a dude. It's a war win, right? It's just all flying by. You want to forget it. You want it to be over. So I was introduced to them, you know, only a couple of years ago.

So by a mutual friend, another seal, just said, hey, they started a foundation called a C4. foundation, I want to introduce you to the family because like, you know, I was in San Diego, you know, I was kind of doing the business thing to maybe help raise some awareness and funds for the foundation. So got to meet C3 and Deanne and Brooke and everybody that's been involved there and then end up joining the board and just really helping them raise awareness. And the focus of the foundation, they were able to acquire the foundation. We were able to acquire a 560 acre ranch, about an hour and a half from San Diego, up in the mountains in San

Isabel. Like near, like past alpine? Like, so, a little north of there, so like Julian. You take the same route up there, though, essentially? Yeah, you can do that, like 15, then through, like, Ramona. Yeah. So it's country. It's like, it's really cool.

4,000 feet, like elevation. You actually feel very removed, you know, put you out in nature. So the purpose of this piece of property is to be kind of a sanctuary, you know, a place for, you know, a place for, you know, the active duty team. teams and then other programs. I mean, we're talking now about kind of bringing, you know, we're working, actually Robin King from Navy SEAL foundations on our board, you know, working with them to bring Gold Star families out, you know, families that, you know, whose, you know, husband, brother, father paid the ultimate sacrifice, bringing them out, doing stuff, maybe some

transition programs like with your shield that does work with transitioning seals, bringing them up there to really build the connection, family interconnectness. You know, so putting people in nature, the environment that, I mean, I think you and I can both attest to it. I mean, that's, that's where I feel closest to God and to kind of the things that matter in this world is, is kind of in nature, in the outdoors. Yeah, and it's not intentional. Like, you know, it just, it, it just feels that way. I don't know if I'm seeking it or I just enjoy it so much, because that's, I feel like a better person in those environments as well. I think there's something to that. I think, yeah, I think there has to be. And I actually don't know anybody who really would

say, you know, by having the time and ability or opportunity to decompress a little bit and get out there like, well, I feel like a shitty person now for spending a week in the woods. Like, I don't know people who say those things. Nobody ever. Yeah. Right. Well, that was just great. Now I'm a shitty human.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you feel shitty after spending a week out in a place like this, there's, there's some deeper issues that you've got to deal with. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

The last time I saw Chuck, he was at his troop commander's house. and they were doing kind of like their last dinner before they went on deployment. Okay. And I put him through training and remember we were just bullshitting. We didn't have an incredibly deep conversation. He introduced me to his wife very briefly. And I just asked him where he was going and what they were going to be doing. I was like, cool, man.

You know, just keep your head on a swivel. Yeah. Do what you can to come back safe. And then Matt, his dad completely randomly. He told me this. Yeah. I was, you give it. I was,

I think it was for temperatech. I don't know. I was, I was out. Um, but I talk, you know, I mean,

they asked me to talk about, to the best of my memory. It was, you know, basically service and sacrifice. And I knew that his dad was there. Um, and so I was able to tie in Chuck's actions.

And, you know, what it meant to the community in general, into the nation as a whole. And then barely, very briefly met his dad, which is cool. Um,

I actually haven't seen him since, but it was all it was, it was meaningful to me and, you know, hopefully it was meaningful to him. Dude, we, we should change it. You should come down. If you make it down to San Diego, come hang out at the ranch. I don't know if I'm ever going back to San Diego. It's probably a wise decision. Yeah. No, I'll come back to San Diego for sure, man.

It's, you know, I always feel obligated to do more or to try, at least to try to do more. I don't know. I don't know what the vehicle was going to be for that, but I'll feel. I don't know. For me, you know, they issue us these uniforms and we're super fortunate because it comes with a flag on it. And we don't have to buy that. Yep. You know, but to me inherently it came with the understanding that this is yours, but it's rented.

Yep. And I have to give it back. But I just, I don't, I don't feel like that my time in the military was the arrival point. Yep. I just still feel obligated to try, you know, whatever that means. and I have a very, a very poor ability to actually articulate what that means to me, but I know that I'm not going to be able to stop.

Yeah. And whether it's, you know, raising awareness for stuff like the C4 Foundation or the fundraising I was doing or trying to do for the SEAL Foundation back in 15. And it's, I mean, I don't know. I just feel so incredibly obligated. Because I just feel like I got lucky. Yeah, man.

And by no means, do I want people to think that I was sitting there dodging bullets. I mean, I saw more combat that some and far less. than others. But it's such a bizarre environment because I do feel like there's an essence of just pure luck. You know, you have lead flying around at thousands of feet per second. And if you take a step in one direction, it'll be fine. And if you take a step in the other, you're not going to be in, you know, to say that luck doesn't, I don't care how trained you are. To say the luck doesn't

play a part in that, then, fuck. Oh, dude, you're not paying attention, you know. I really don't care how trained you are because the most highly trained soldier could get killed by the luckiest shot from the most untrained soldier who ADs with their freaking PKM. Right, right, right. And it arcs in. It's like, well, yeah, fuck. Yeah. And, you know, we were, we were, I feel very fortunate to have served in those

environments with these people that we could, you know, go down a list of the people that we know. And they had so many similar characteristics. I just feel obligated to continue on because I do feel lucky. Yeah. I have no understanding of why you and I are sitting here today having this conversation. Um, but I'm thankful for it. I do. I'm so so thankful for it.

Same. And how can you best honor somebody by at least continuing to try not to be a piece of shit? Right. Like there's a good starting point. No, I agree. And actually make an impact or have a difference in the world that's around you. So yeah. We owe it to their, we owe it to them. We owe it to their memory. Keep their memory alive, man. And that's a tough one. That's a tough one, especially when you isolate yourself. Very much so. I think that, I mean, it all, it all ties back in. Yeah. I mean, that's, dude, that's the reason I'm involved, you know? It's not, it's because my involvement there has reconnected me with more people. I mean, dude, case in point.

Yeah. I very likely would not be sitting here today. I'd say I probably wouldn't be. I'd probably be isolated doing my own thing if it weren't for my involvement with the C4 Foundation. I reached out to you about what we did over Memorial Day. Yeah. To raise awareness.

And it reconnected me with you. And I'm, dude, I'm thankful for it, man. Because I've... As soon as we reconnected too, like we talked on the phone, I'm like, I'm fucking moron. Like we have to get together. And, you know, because I was thinking about Chuck, I'm like the best way that we could,

the best way that we could pay any tribute to him would be to sit down and talk to people about who the person was. Yep. And the fact that there's still a chance to preserve that legacy. And he can still continue to help people. Yeah. I had heard that same thing that, you know, that the look he had on his face when he went,

like to the bitter end, he went out to the bitter end, the person the way that he lived his life. And fuck, I mean, I could only help. hope that I would go out that way. Dude, the smile that was on his face that they talk about in the letter that was written to his dad tells me that he was content. He had lived a life that he wanted to live.

He was there for the right reasons, too. He believed why he was there. Yeah. So on the C-4front, what's the best place that people can go to find information about that or support it? So they can go to chuckheavy.org, which is an easy place to go. that's what we just ran. So we were actually, actually the shirt I'm wearing with the bone shaka,

which is Chuck's thing. They call him the Aloha Warrior, right? It's like way into surfing. He kind of was like, that was his thing. He was such a goofy fuck. Dude, totally. I mean, I'll say it all the time. He said to his dad.

Like, the way I knew him is like, it was Chuck, like, I remember a CQC trip when he was a new guy and he was a breacher, too, as a new guy. That's a dangerous pairing, by the way. Oh, dude. New guy, Breacher. And Chuck is like, you know, he was, he's an athlete. He's like, like, gangled guy, and he was always goofy and stuff like that.

And I remember cadre like talking shit about him or like because he was like, he just didn't, like, they were laughing. Like, dude, you're way too happy, man. You're like bouncing around and like, he was where he wanted to be. He told him, dude, he enjoyed it. Yeah, there's nowhere else that he would want him to be. Yeah. Well, I think what he wants to do.

So chuck heavy.org. C4Foundation.org. And there's a lot more on there. There's a couple videos, the long form video that talks about. about who Chuck was is awesome. I encourage people to watch it. They want to get to know who that man was. What he stood for, what he believed in.

Yep. And then, yeah, I mean, that's what's going on at the ranch. I mean, I can tell you, dude, it's going to be a prolific, have a prolific impact on the community as a whole. I see it as a beta that multiple services could follow by creating open spaces where, you know, veterans, combat veterans can go with their families.

decompress. I mean, every warrior culture, you know, had a, had a decompression like that. Or a transition. Transition, yeah. Whether it be a ceremony or something that, yeah, that I've heard it described as, you know, it was, it wasn't concrete, but it was, it was a space or a line in the sand where they were allowed, and it was, and it was very intentional in nature, where you went from one environment to the next. Yeah. Yeah, we don't have that that much now. You know what I think? it would make it easier to hang a lot of the stuff up. For sure. I mean, look at it, think about people coming back from like World War II, right? They spent like a month and a half aboard a boat. Oh, that's a good point, yeah.

So they get that time to basically tell war stories, talk about the shit that happened, the people that they lost. Potentially get shit-faced. Potentially get shit-faced. Not if they were from the Navy because drinking was not a huge part of the Navy back then. No, not part of the culture at all. So there may or may not have been a lot of alcohol. Yeah. But I mean... But sometimes, though, that's the lever that. it's needed to pry open the box.

For sure. You know, and I'm not saying that's the primary tool that should be used, but sometimes, and I've seen it happen, and it's happened with me before too, that it'll open the door to a conversation that should have been had,

and you can finish the conversation later. You don't have to finish it in that moment. Yeah. Well, I mean, dude, it's all about the connection, right? Yeah. It kind of brings you together. You're more willing to be open.

And, you know, I've seen that happen at the ranch. You know, we're in construction of like a bunch of the housing and things that are going to be there to support the families as they come through.

But even having a bunch of kind of, you know, current seals, and I know former seals that have transitioned out come up there with their kids and just spend time with each other. I mean, it's insane. I mean, the level of connection, you know, how valuable that time is there. And you feel the difference. I can, you know, I can liken it to going out into the mountains for, you know, a trip or anything like that.

So it's just, it's a, you know, that's, that's the goal. And we talked about mindfulness earlier and kind of meditation and that. I mean, that's, you know, that's part of it. They're trying to, you know, and we're working through this right now. It's like, how do you present that to a group of guys that, frankly, don't give a shit about mindfulness or meditation? They don't give a shit a bit of because they're, they're just approaching it from an uneducated perspective. For sure. But you have to figure out a way to get over that hurdle.

Yeah. Well, I think like the NSW is starting to kind of embrace that with like, coming to the performance working group. Yeah. You know, we're starting to look at it that way as like a true partnership with NSW and saying, hey, maybe this is one of those places where you can actually, you can talk about it. And it's not coming necessarily from, you know, the shrink, right, that's telling you, oh, you need to meditate.

You know, you need to go talk to people on that. But maybe it's coming from guys that have been there. Like, I mean, dude, I would be, you know, it'd be an honor for me to talk about it, talk about its impact on me. And the message would go much, much farther. right if you were the one to do that yeah or you know just people with it's the shared background and experiences that I think will it'll open the door and at least you know you can show people what's on the other side and obviously explain like hey this is what happened or worked

for me it doesn't mean that's going to work for you yeah but it's worth exploring and at the end of the day you know you can't force people to seek help you can open the door but they have to walk through the threshold on their own or even like make you even hone them to a you know a sharper edge you know if I knew that I could work in this capacity on myself to make myself a better performer, a higher performer, I would have done it. I would have done it if it was being dictated or kind of given to me by somebody that I respected or at least had had a similar background. Agreed.

So I think that's, you know, maybe one of the goals will be kind of figuring out kind of that dance and really kind of bringing kind of that mindfulness into the mix, but doing it in a way where it's not like, hey, let's force feed a bunch of curriculum to people. You know, I think people can go up to a place like this, like the ranch. They're going to get a ton of value just being up there with their family, you know, sharing a meal with a friend and his family. When do you guys think you'll have it done? So there's two homes already built.

There's like a small bunkhouse that's already constructed. And we got... Obviously, that's the enlisted quarters. Enlisted quarters are in the bunkhouse, in the horse barn. Yes. Stable. You're lucky you have a rude... Swine.

So, yeah, there was, we built five, I mean, they're probably a thousand square foot decks, and we're putting, and we actually own like five more. You built the decks first? So we built, so we built the decks because we're building safari tents. So you go to Africa, you know, Africa, you go on with you. So they're raised. We're going to have these safari tents, which are badass. So climate control, beds, the whole deal.

So we'll have five of those constructed in the next couple of. months. And then the goal is to build out like, you know, 16 plus tents, plus we'll build out probably another three rooms in the stable that we converted. And then we have the big houses as well. So we'll be able to probably, you know, bring a platoon plus and their families up there. That's awesome. So the goal is three times a year, you know, for two to three days at a time. And then we'll systematically work through the seal teams and, you know, kind of have one, you know, one platoon come up, followed by another one. So yeah, just work through it. But it's an enduring asset.

You know, it's never going to go anywhere. And as the needs of the community change, we can morph the programming to fit that asset and use it as a center point for other great work that's being done kind of in, you know, the philanthropic world. Yeah, just having that asset is huge. That's a lot of acreage for Cali, too. Dude, and it's not dissimilar to your property. It is surrounded by national forest.

Nice. Tends, probably 30 plus thousand acres in San Diego County, which is a big deal. That's awesome. Yeah, it's a great area. Plus it'll keep the temperatures down in the summertime, too. Yep. Lakes, there's like, I mean, four or five lakes on the property. Somebody called like a seven and a half pound large mouth the other day. So there's like fish, wild turkey. I believe there's mule deer down there. Ooh, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know about the hunting scene in Cal. I wasn't even paying attention to hunting. I did. I was not at either. But we've seen a bunch of deer. So I think there's some. They're tasty. Yeah. Well, so we're not, we're not opposed to it. it starting to hunt down there too.

Conceptual idea and fallacy of hunting deer with a bow versus the stark, stark reality of failure is just a tough one to suck on sometimes. There'll be a lot of meditation that happens sitting on that property, not killing deer with a bow. Oh, well, you'll at least have the time for it. You'll have plenty of time for it. Right, right, right. That's awesome.

Yeah. What do you think you're going to do? You're going to continue with the entrepreneurial stuff? you're going to dig in more to the C4 from a personal level. What do you think? It's next. Yeah, I mean, for me, it's all about being around high quality people. So I think right now, those two mix really well. You know, I'm surrounded by awesome people with the new company. I'm surrounded with amazing people and I'm actually fulfilling a, you know, kind of a deep-rooted purpose with C-4. And we're actually, we're cross-pollinating a bunch. I mean, as far as

kind of giveaways, things that we're doing. I think we're about to, we're on the cusp of launching like a big kind of giveaway for the ranch to kind of raise some awareness and funds where we're going to have a bunch of Yeti athletes. You're kind of tapping into kind of like Mark Healy, Mark Carter's on our team, tapping into some of their kind of sponsorship in the companies and then bringing that together and using their platforms to increase the awareness. Yeah. It's the way to go.

And making a win-win, right? I mean, the whole goal is like, hey, we can we can all do some really cool stuff together. It creates some great marketing buzz for companies, and it allows them to kind of have an impact and give back to a cause that I think is going to have a positive impact on the SEAL community. So I see a lot of that right now, man. I mean, then, you know, reconnecting with more guys. I mean, doing more of what we're doing here today, just spending more time and hanging out with guys that I haven't seen in a while. Yeah. It's tough to put a description on the value of doing that.

Yeah. I remembered a question that I wanted to ask you that I've been asked recently. I'm curious your take on this, given our shared background. And it has to do with diversity. I guess it ties in a little bit to what's going on in the world. Do you think the SEAL teams would be better if they focused on more diversity for the sake of diversity? If the standard was upheld, then you can't give my answer, you son of a bitch, because this is the answer. I know, but I listen, and I heard you said it, but I agree wholeheartedly with your answer.

And I did. I listened to you answer that question. And I was actually sitting in my living room and I was like, that's awesome. Because I was still on active duty when I think women were introduced to kind of the pipeline. So I could ask this one all the time. When was that? It was 2012.

Okay. So it was right, because I got out the last day of June 2013. So I'm pretty sure it was right in there because it was a big deal. They were talking about it when I was still in. I didn't know. Okay. So the pipeline is in fact open to them. Yeah.

Yeah, and you know what? I don't even think the pipeline wasn't open at that point. We were prepping to open the pipeline. Gotcha. Because I was at SQT and it was a conversation, I mean, almost weekly as to kind of like how we're approaching that. There were a lot of working groups. But I bring that up because, like, I was right in the midst all of those conversations. And what, you know, my position has always been like, hey, I don't care who you are.

I don't care, you know, man, woman, what race. you know, ethnicity, religion. It doesn't make a difference because I didn't give a shit like you about any of that stuff when I served. And it doesn't matter when you're in a near death, high stress situation. In a combat environment, nobody has got like a box, like making sure that all, it's like nobody gives a shit. No one cares.

Yeah. You know what? And neither does your enemy, by the way. No, they don't give a shit. At all. Or the battle space. It's just, it's completely irrelevant. You do.

We are all equal in the eyes of God. And if the standard is upheld, I think that's most important. It's a disservice to every single person that is out there, you're basically willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice. I mean, that's why we step up saying, hey, I'm willing to make that commitment if I am called to make it. We owe that to all those guys that are doing that. And if somebody can get through, I don't care who they are,

then they've met that standard, and they're going to be capable of upholding their end of the bar. in that situation. So I mean, I, dude, I, I thought you answered it extremely well. I mean, I don't think there is a different answer I can give because. I don't think, I mean, and I think people outside of the community may not understand it, but I would be surprised if people inside of the community answered differently. And I realize that's a gap in an experience that may not be able to be bridged,

but I was just curious. I was like, well, dude, hey, man, if I, it'd be great. I mean, the world is a diverse place. Like, you know, and the SEAL teams are predominantly a white community, right? I mean, Caucasians dominate. I don't have the actual stats, because I could ask about that sometimes too, and I don't know how to answer it

because I could give you anecdotes. Yeah. Like I did about my buds class. For sure. Two black guys, definitely a Puerto Rican dude, a Mexican dude, and a murder. I mean, how much more diverse do you want? And, dude, same thing.

I mean, I had diversity in my class. I mean, I think my class was overwhelmingly, uh, kind of, you know, white males. Um, but when it came down to it, I mean, we at trited a shit ton of white males. males. And the guys that we were left with were a diverse group.

Yeah. And dude, some of the best, I mean, dude, again, it doesn't matter. Some of the best guys that I've served with in the teams are not white.

Completely and utterly agree. You know, I mean, I talked about, you know, I talked about guys today, you know, two guys that I respect dearly that I got to spend time with recently that,

you know, are phenomenal people. Yeah. And they're at the apex now of the organization on the enlisted side of the house. Absolutely. Yeah. They were, they will be setting the standard for the community.

Yeah. Which is exactly what they should be doing. Absolutely. Because it's based off of an objective standard. Yeah. Objective standard and their reputation. Yeah. And that reputation is what,

I mean, that's your currency in the teams and that's the reason why, you know, that individual is in the position that he's in is because he was a, he's been a solid seal operator, a solid leader,

and he's made decisions that are the right decisions for the community. Couldn't agree more. Do we've been at it for almost three and a half hours. Holy cow. you have the floor. What do you want to close with?

Oh, dude, I just, I appreciate you. No, stop it. I know. With profound. Okay, here we go. I'll set this eight. It's profound thoughts. Prothal.

I don't know if I have many. From retired, you're not even retired. You're not even retired. Oh, man. And go. That's called setting you up for failure. No, you know what? It isn't set me up for failure.

I will tell you that, uh, you know, you know, hey, uh, you know, I've said it before. and I'll say it again, you know, don't be, don't be fearful of opening up and being vulnerable and putting yourself in a, in a position that, you know, makes you feel uncomfortable. I mean, that's literally, I said it when I interviewed specifically on all of that and kind of struggles I've had. Dude, it has been the best decision. I'm a year removed from the conversation I had related to kind of post-traumatic growth. I can tell you my life has only gotten better

because of my willingness to be open, vulnerable, and have kind of conversations that make me feel compromised with people that I love and care about. So I think the more willing people are to do that, I think the more they're going to flourish in this life. And don't take it for granted, man, like live in the present. You know, we owe it to everybody else that isn't here to take every single moment and cherish it.

That's about as solid as you get for the closing of a podcast. So I can't, I got nothing to add. I completely agree. That's all I have for this week. Everybody, all I can say is thank you for those that are taking the time, energy, and effort to tune in. I really appreciate it. I appreciate the feedback. I appreciate the emails, the messages that I receive across social media platforms.

And if, you know, often people ask me what they can do to help me. The biggest thing that they could do is go to Apple Podcasts and do me a favor, rate the podcast. give it whatever star rating that you think it deserves, write a review if you want to, and then that's about it. So thanks for your time and see everybody on Monday.