Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 149 - Andy Arrabito and Dan Cerrillo

Episode Date: October 12, 2020

Andy Arrabito and Dan Cerrillo are both former Navy SEALs who have transitioned to the civilian and business world.  Andy is the founder and CEO of Half Face Blades. HFB knives bring the soul of rugged, dependable, combat knives and tools to a variety of settings - from special operations tools for warriors, hunters, and backpackers, to knives for the kitchen and great American workers. Dan is the founder and owner of Spartan 7 Security, and Spartan 7 Adventures.  Spartan 7 Adventures seek to provide clients and organizations the leadership, communication, offensive mindset, and advanced situational awareness skills developed by Navy SEALs. To provide a hands-on approach to teaching our clients advanced skills in shooting, driving, hand to hand combatives, travel safety, home defense, and personal defense through realistic mission-based scenarios.  

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doing now, so I'm not even going to step on their toes a little bit. Let's dive right in. episode number 149 with Andy Aribito and Dan Cerillo. Enjoy. I'm looking at danger close now. Great Asian movie. I don't know if you can say that. That's relatively racist.

13 assassins. He's part Asian. I'm part Asian. You're not part Asian. I have no eyelids. You do have eyelids. That's not true. I've seen them.

They're just hidden. If I blink, you can see him outside of that. They're just gone. I feel like this episode will already be flagged for racial issues. Shit show slash dumpster fire that is 2020. I guess it will be going on Spotify, you know? We should actually talk about that at some point. Before that, though, I'm going to let you guys introduce yourselves

because I'll completely jack it up. We'll go right to left. Beto, you're up first? Bito, that's my nickname. Andrew Aibito. Spent some time actually in the SEAL teams with Taco just in the beginning. and then didn't get to work with you

but I know you now I own a small knife company go half face blades where are you from originally up in Napa Valley on the hillside above St. Helena okay it's on fire right now yeah my mom's evacuated

and oh is she really my friends yeah lost their homes I was born and raised in Santa Cruz and my dad was driving up to Montana what was it three weeks ago when they were raging and he actually had to delay his departure for two days

because he could not get out of even Santa Cruz itself. Saying they couldn't see the sun. It was raining ash. That's so nuts. And all of the fire crews had shut down the roads. Like 17 shut down. That was the last fire up there that was surrounding Lake Beriasa.

Yeah. And that was all the way down, you know, way down toward Napa, all the way up toward Clear Lake. And literally 360 Lake Bayeressa there. Once that went out, this other one started. It's cutting over the hill. It ran into the fire line of that one. Dude. It's nuts.

It's a little better. today but yeah my old company's been my old uh jobs and that's all those guys doing is fighting those fires helping fight them put the microphone closer to your face taco sorry about that there you go i don't also don't feel like we can call you taco 20 20 is not going to allow for that i don't give a shit so so you get to introduce yourself uh yeah i'm dan cerillo um i serve some time in the seal teams and um i'm the owner of spartan seven security spartan seven adventure and then i have a real job as well where i'm the chief of staff for american addiction centers which we have to talk about that at some point too not that there's any addiction issues inside of the seal community

there's no substance abuse issues whatsoever no we just talk don't talk about those things you should talk about those things yeah that's all i do is talk about them you were pre nine 11 obviously yeah how much would you say drinking was part of the seal community just ingrained in the culture yeah i mean we we had every friday had the kegs of the command i remember when i got my bird in 90, I think I got my bird in 97. The first question I got asked was, hey, where's the keg? I was like, hey man, I'm not 21. I can't buy you.

However, here's the cash. But yeah, everything was, I try to tell people and talk honestly about that culture because I personally believe, and I've seen it in myself, that it will lead to some shit on the tail end that can come unwound if you can't manage it. I think we all know guys. Well, yeah, we definitely know. guy. How many guys do you know who died mysteriously in their late 30s, early 40s after getting out? Easily over 100. That's what I'm saying. And I think a lot of that is due to, I would describe a career in the seal community as fifth gear, foot on the gas pedal, with no understanding of the machine under the hood and no assistance removing pressure off the gas pedal when you get out. But Jeff Inderlund was one of the guys who shocked me too. I did a platoon with Indy pre-9-11.

Do one of the best friends, yeah? Yeah, and I think I read it in the newspaper. I actually think he was living in Montana when he passed. He's about 100 miles from you. Not too far, Lone Pine. Yeah, I couldn't believe it. And I think it's fair to say, Indy went hard in the paint. Yeah.

Extremely hard in the paint. It's that thing that, you know, we all did, obviously. But now, you know, the education the new guys get today and the education we got back then is completely different. You know, we... As far as the substance? Yeah. And we, you know, nobody ever talked to us about the after effects and what happens to your metabolic to put a rate when you're in your 40s and 50s with alcohol, et cetera. But every single day I'm on the phone with a seal, every single day.

And by that, you mean somebody's struggling? Somebody's struggling. Somebody's struggling. Somebody talking about treatment. Somebody who's calling me going, you need to get this guy. He's about to kill himself or he's, you know, he's so drunk. He's, right now we have a guy incarcerated that I'm trying to get released into my custody to take him to therapy. So I would imagine that spans the officer in and listening.

it brings. Yeah. It's basically the study that I wrote, every single guy that I'm treating is over the age of 40 at E7 and above. That's years of drinking. Yeah. That is. And that's high up on the, I'm surprised that it's E7 and above. Yeah. Very few guys under the rank of E7 I'm dealing with. Probably because they're getting the new education versus the lack of, I mean, I checked into team five in 96. I think on a Friday. And they were doing, I hate to say this, but I'm going to tell the truth, volleyball and a keg. Weird. Because inside of this SEAL community, let's just say there's a running joke between East Coast and West Coast SEAL teams.

The East Coast teams obviously think they're better than us West Coast SEALs. Beater, you were a West Coast guy, right? Yeah. Okay, so fuck the East Coast guys. I was at five and one. Yeah. But how many times have you heard the East Coast guys? Like, you guys are just Hollywood, flip-lops and sandals.

All the time. Yeah, which... If I could live out there, I would, though. And that's the thing. There's a reason why property values in San Diego were so high. We worked a shitty nine iron from the Pacific Ocean. And yeah, the uniform of the day was sandals and flip-flops. And on Friday, I'm going to play volleyball.

And drink after the keg with my buddies. But then also think about everything I think of my... Even when I was on the East Coast, the beer log, every punitive measure... Yeah, went to them for beer lull. Correct. Or hey, it's your first time on a C-130? Huh. Case of beer. Oh, it's your first time doing this land warfare trip at this location? Yeah, case of beer. Oh, uh, dead man's gun on the range, case of beer.

Oh, yeah, you, uh, swept somebody in the house, six-pack. Oh, you accused somebody and they really didn't do it. No. Beer. Remember they get built. So like, if you accuse somebody, right, and they, they didn't do it. That was like a big deal. That was like a double. Now people like, in the civilian were, like, accuse each other all the time. You know what I mean?

I'm like, whoa, dude. You can't just do that. I get accused my girlfriend accuses me this shit all the time. That just, I think, is the way that that works. Like, you owe me beer. She's like, what do you mean? Yeah. I want to pause there for a second because you guys were Team 5 guys playing volleyball.

I was a Team 1, dude. No fun one. We did not play volleyball. What? It was, fuck, dude. Historically, Team 1 is known for having the loosest attitude in the most time. That's the most recently. That's 2008.

Oh, shit. That was their nickname. Stalog 1. I was there when we were. We had uniform and haircut inspections every Tuesday. Wow. Straight up, get our jump boots out, shine them. We had more chiefs at Team 1 than any other command.

And here's what's crazy is that we were in the military and we hate the fact that that used to be the case or that was the case at Team 1. And that is probably the standard across most military branches. Once a week, lucky. We did a uniform inspection once at Team 5. I mean, I called it sick. So I didn't actually participate in it.

I was at dental. Yeah, I know that, or a tax. appointment in February. I know that they had, uh, yeah, we did a few uniform inspections. I was so sick at Team 1 that we, we were at Nileland training and, uh, they called us back for a change of command. So, like, hey, get haircuts, et cetera. And so I did the old, that's not acceptable to come back from Nile and for a change of command. I did the old lost weapon. Like, we lost a weapon. We got to stay here and search for it. Just so we'd have to do the stupid chain of command. Like, I don't care who this is in. Wow. Yeah. He's here for two years. I'll take a page 13.

I just don't want to go to the chain of me. I'll take a, uh, administrative review board over this chain of command. I think I wore, especially when I flipped over to being an officer, I think I wore the dress uniform one time. And it was at my commissioning where Krista Clerk like swore me. And he was my first platoon, OIC. He's just like, what an awesome dude. He's awesome. Yeah, he was the best.

And then he was like the, he was a civilian over at ops over at group one. And I used to go over there. When I was a butter bar, I would just throw my camies on. It was the best. I would have these chiefs be like, hey, sir, you know, just sit here and listen. You know, you'll, you'll figure this out as you progress through your crimes. I'm just like, oh, yeah, just tell me more. Tell me more.

What is this mean? And then I would fuck them up later on if they saw me in my khakis. I'd be like, yeah, that's right. Go fuck yourself. That's a different story, though. What class are you? 194. Don't belie to me.

You were in the double digits. I feel like it, you know, yeah, 194. I'm lucky enough to be an original member. That's my only claim to fame. There you go. And then I was 212. What were you, Bito? 246.

Okay. Actually, we spanned it pretty good. Yeah, I think I put Bito through Hellweek. Did you? Yeah. I don't remember. And you probably were a little bit busy. You were a little bit.

I skipped it. The correspondence course. What drew you to the seal community? The movie, believe it or not. I was a shitty punk kid. Do you mean the documentary? No, no, no. The actual Navy SEAL.

The documentary. The documentary. That's what I thought it was. I mean, I've only watched that movie a few thousand times on VHS. I was a punk kid trying to play college ball and not doing very well at the academic side of it. And my girlfriend took me to see the movie. And literally got in a fight. I saw the movie on a Friday.

Got in a massive fight on Saturday. It was in the recruiter on Monday. It started reading books. And it was like, this is what I want to do, you know. How old were you? 19. Okay. So early on as well.

How about you, Bito? What drew you in? I think the first, I was probably at sixth or seventh grade. My mother's cousin had bought me a Navy SEAL workout book, that Mark D. Leesle, and then soon after I got the Stu Smith book, but this Mark D. Leesleasel book, and I kind of had gone through it and looked fun climbing ropes and looked into Navy SEALs,

and then looked into other special forces and decided, well, since they're on coasts, and I don't have to be stuck in somewhere like Fort Benning. You know, I kind of had the idea to do that for a long time. That was still pre-9-11, right? Yeah. Okay. Because I went back as an instructor in 08. I think it was class two high 260s, something like that. They were definitely post 9-11. I tell you what, that was watching those kids volunteer for a post-9-11 world where they knew that they were, well, they probably didn't know exactly what they were getting into, especially since it was kinetically probably coming over the top of the bell curve and slowing down. But I remember, yeah, I watched that movie with Charlie Sheen. So good.

It is good. And I was actually, I made it in for the handlebar mustache and NP5 era. Just the fair. Dude, just the tail end. My first platoon, we were in no-max green flight suits with the, I mean, I think the web gear I was wearing served in the Civil War. Yes. It was the, I mean, it was just dog shit. And I remember just jamming MP5 mags.

And for people listening, it's a pistol round. It's nine mill. but just jamming multiple MP5 mags and running around a killhouse in green flight suits, MP5s thinking I was living my best life. It was, you were. It was so awkward. The black body armor that you couldn't put any pouches on whatsoever.

Oh, it was terrible. And I had stuff all over my legs. Like I had leg straps, you know, the classic pistol holster on the side. When you start to run, it would either end up in the front of you or hit you directly in the dick. And then just swing back and forth. Oh, it was awesome. And then... I think Tommy Kremens was still wearing

that H-Gir, Vietnam H-Gir in 2005. Some people wouldn't let it go. Some people would... He literally had, you know, Vietnam canteen still. He was rocking. I was full of Jim Beam. Yeah. Wasn't water.

110 degrees in Nileand. But he'd be like, here, try this water. And I'd be like, no, drink it. It'd be warm Jim Beam. Oh, thanks so much, man. That almost triggers a gag reflex. It does. Warm gym beam.

What do you guys, what do you guys think about the new ethos? Let's just dig right into the best topic. I have so many questions for the people who changed the ethos to, I think the only description would be a gender neutral seal ethos. They removed every reference to the term man in brotherhood. Thoughts. I think it's the weakest,

most spineless bullshit to ever, ever come out of any person in naval special warfare in history. Whose decision do you think it was? Not by individual. I'm talking about... Where the pressure come from to Admiral? To Admiral, whoever, but was it a Group 1 level? Was it a Commodore?

Did it come all the way from Socom? Like where... Because I haven't heard of any other unit or organization doing this. And I almost think it's because the SEAL community... from a public perspective has stepped on their dick so publicly over the last few years. I almost think it was an attempt to be like, hey, look at us. We're going to get out in front of this. Look, we're kinder and gentler.

I think they're prepping for a female to come through. Well, it's been open to female for five. And so I get a question about this fuck all the time. Female, uh, female seals, thoughts. So I just actually kind of blew up on a, on a post about this, but I'll, I'll explain my thoughts on it. one, there's no reason for it. And I've, since you and I come from the CrossFit world

and I come from the Sealfit world where we've trained. I do not come from the CrossFit world. I'm going to go ahead. But go ahead and clarify that. I worked for CrossFit. You can go fuck yourself. He comes to the team guy world. I've taken Christian Clever, you know, when she won the World Championship,

all these fit CrossFit women through that Concoro simulation, and not one of them would ever make it through the SEAL teams. and they barely made it through the weekend. And of all the women that I put through that training, I think three would have made it through buds and only one had the capability to actually be operational. And I hired her in Silicon Valley and executive protection team. So what I think you should do is, which already being done,

is you create a completely separate unit. The women do well. A female unit. Yeah, in a low visibility role. I think that's how they would be. Which has kind of already been. They would do it anyway. With SF, they do that.

Yeah. Women had been on the front lines for a long time. and there are a lot of programs that are organizations that are not discussed broadly nor should we discuss them broadly where women have been on the front lines. I mean,

when we were doing key leader engagement stuff in 2010, there were women present there. Yeah, linguists. And I fall back to this one, not to say that this is the only situation where it highlights how much women can gather intelligence from men, but send a man into a bar

to elicit information from women and send a woman into a bar to elicit information. I'd have so much information. depends what man come on. From a, let's just say at a baseline level. And there are some things that Afghanistan is a perfect example.

You cannot go and engage with the women or talk with the women or, and that role has, my grandmother was a nurse who was, she was in the army before she got removed from the army from post-traumatic stress

because she was caring for soldiers who were coming off the front line in World War II. Narnly. Oh, dude. And that's like, so gnarly then. I can't even imagine actually working one of those words and having to deal with that because everything,

every day. So she got out of the army. No, I'm sorry, she was in the Navy. She was a Navy nurse. Got out of the Navy from post-traumatic stress. Lied about it.

Got back into the Army and went back into the nursing corps. Savage. That's so nuts. It's just seeing like that trauma coming in every day and then the loss of life every day too. Like it's that flow through of like trying to save people, losing them, saving people that are mangled, disfigured, burnt, like, man, just dealing with it.

Every day, be so gnarly. You think about the medic in the World War II. Here's some sulfur powder and maybe a tourniquet. Let's go back to the Civil War. Here's a bandsaw. Yeah. Hey, bite down on this leather belt. I think the sounds of that of your patients would haunt you for the rest of your days.

The worst part of when I got hurt overseas, obviously it didn't feel great. But they put me on a helicopter. We were in the green zone. Green zone to Balad, Balad to Germany. the plane that they put me on was full of people that were all injured worse than I was. And they were getting moved around on stretchers. And every time you, I mean, some of these people were completely Swiss-cheased. We're talking loss of limbs.

They had like the erector set, like a lot of the erector set on stuff to hold. External fixation. Dude, every time you would move it, and so this plane ride was full of people in horrendous pain. I remember I was fortunate at the time. I was attached to a J-Socke unit. so I had a doctor just for me and the other two guys that we were getting medevaced and I just told him I was like hey put me out like I don't want to I don't want to hear this I don't want to deal with this then they put us on a school bus when we landed in Germany

after all the turbulence oh dude the school bus was work they I don't remember I think the drive was like 20 minutes over like I think they were off-roading this fucking bus just and I'm on a stretcher right like I get pulled out of the school bus they almost dropped me because I'm heavy. I'm just like, that was the worst experience of it. And you weren't even the worst messed up. No,

but that plane was full of docks. And I think back now about those doctors sitting there just trying to manage these different levels of pain on their beginning of their repatriation back to the United States, but fuck man, so gnarly.

Especially the takeoff from Iraq, right? It's just straight vertical and then they start looping up and, God, yeah. No, I literally said to that doctor, I'm like, I don't care what you give me, but I don't want to be conscious for the rest of this flight.

So you can just go ahead and experiment with whatever protocol you want to. But just go ahead. Keditin here, sir. When I got hurt, they took, you know, they just gave me some fucking stuff. And by the time we took off, I was out. But I just remember how much my head hurt. It just felt like it was going to explode, you know. So to go backwards, the seals in, uh, women in the seal community, what I, my theory on it is,

as long as they don't modify the standards, I actually wouldn't care. Like if a woman... Modify lower. As long as they don't touch them. I agree. I think one of the beauties of the seal community is it's... People say that they're colorblind, which is kind of bullshit unless you actually can't see color. Like, everybody sees color.

I had people of color in my class. Not a lot, but also not a lot of them volunteered. It's not something where they're going out there and saying we have to have X number of, you know... It's all volunteered. Yeah, backgrounds. So my concern would be, is that they would... modify the standard to get a woman through training, to say that they did get a woman through training.

To that, I would completely disagree with. But if they kept it the same, and there was a woman, because I was around those same CrossFit athletes as well. They were, I mean, they were stronger than a lot of men, but you can't forget that there are physiological differences between male and female. And one of the biggest ones is the upper body strength.

And how much time did you spend with a boat over your head or a log over your head? What would you say your average LBE load was overseas? Body weight plus what? I was always plus 130. Which is not, that's not mathematically good. Oh.

But you're kind of a hobbit, right? You're built to go over uneven terrain while bearing weight. So you're slightly an anomaly. Yeah, you're slightly an anomaly. But, I mean, what about you, Bito? For what? How much they weigh? No, I mean, like, how much did you weigh?

How much did you carry in addition to what you weighed overseas? I don't know, probably 60 pounds. dependent on, you know, am I running a saw of, you know, doing sniper stuff? Dude, if you're running a saw, there's no way it was 60 pounds. No, I made, I made everybody else carrying my ammo. Don't worry. I have a little bit of philosophy on that, on, you know, women coming in. I think that the job attracts people who are protectors.

And a lot of that and people who want to protect and want to serve their country, but also like, it's an exciting job. and they want to serve their family and they want to do well and they want to be in a brotherhood. But there's a lot of alpha males in the teams. There's a lot of guys who don't deserve to be a team so I wouldn't call them alpha males.

And let's be clear, there's some betas in the teams too. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. There's guys obviously in any group that don't belong to be there. But I think that women can feel, you don't want to be protectors too. But that's a part of the reason guys join

is to be protectors, right? Protectors of their family, protectors of the weak, protections of the innocent, protectors of those who can't protect themselves, protectors of women. and it kind of is an odd thing. Let's see you have a girl in your platoon.

I think subconsciously, I know subconsciously, I'd be more apt to watching out for her possibly than other people in my baton. So the physiological and the, you know, idea behind it. Like, I feel I wanted to be a protector and I want to protect people like that. Yeah. And women and women in my life, my mother, you know,

sister, stuff like that. Like I'm always wanted to be protector for them. And having a female, you know, in my unit, it right there, I think they would throw off, you know, some of my actions possibly. It's tough to put that in doctrine, too. And I think that's where, I mean, I agree with what you're saying. I think I would feel exactly the same way. I have no idea how I would write that down as a justification, you know what I mean,

as a justification against it. I don't have any issue with them opening it up whatsoever. Correct. It's open. It is open. I don't think anybody's even shown up to Buds yet or gotten the, they've gotten to go ahead. There's a mini... Four have got a pre-training.

Right. So we should talk about pre-training, though, because I've seen it written in articles where so-and-so makes it through the first phase of training. I'm like, no, no, no. That's like mini-buds. It's not even mini-buds, I think.

It was the academy program, essentially, right? Two-week-click. And Dan Lina was working on that a little bit. Yeah. And so for people listening, if you are in the academy, what do they call it? They're summer crews.

You basically declare your job. And if I'm incorrect about this, because I didn't go to the academy, you're going to have to just deal with it. But they declare their, chosen path and then basically on summer break they go and they get to experience go to a ship sub whatever it is so if you declare yeah if you just if you declare spec war you're going to get the chance to go to mini buds and from my understanding it's actually highly competitive at the academy

and that's the that's the key part you should focus on right there is that the naval special warfare bill it in many but to get to mini buds is the most competitive thing they have the naval academy physically right and and mentally so now they took the fittest female at the naval Academy and sent her to pre-training and she failed every evolution but won. So. Yeah. I mean, and in pre-training. What sucks about that is I find people not wanting to look at that. They want to look at it from a societal perspective instead of a fact-based mathematical perspective. And I try to tell people, the demands of training are based off the demands from overseas. If you modify one, you're going to modify the result or the likelihood of your

survival overseas. Right. I mean, that's, it's a extremely correct because you've got to depend on your buddy right and I always wanted to be I was like I want to be better right I want to be able to go work out and lift and be able to run and carry weight because I want to be able to help my buddy out and do that 10% extra not just 100% do 10% if if you get your platoon is great dudes and everybody believes that way and cares about their buddy more themselves and they want to be physically defeated they want to be a good operator then you you do very well together but as soon as somebody obviously the moment you don't trust together like uh just stay in the turret don't come the house

You know what I mean? You know, that's the thing, too. I'll explain it from a physiological standpoint of, when I showed up with Buds, I was 195. I graduated 160. So a female shows up to Buds, a really fit, strong female, 150. 195? She's 150, 160. You're going to tell me she's going to lose 30 pounds and still be functional?

I mean, look at Dick Norris. He weighs 96 pounds. And he's very functional. He's extremely functional. He's like 50 bullets. Well, you could too if you weighed four ounces. If fucker's got hollow bones, dude. You remember Tico?

Yes. Or bridges. Yeah. Also. Yeah, he's strong as a son of a bitch. But again, he's got a mechanical advantage because he's only two feet off the ground. The guy can get underneath anything. Basically back squat a vehicle because he can stand up right underneath the wheel well.

But that's just my thoughts on it. The women that you put through the seal fit, you said three you think could have made it through? Yeah. Three could have made it through buds. From a physiological perspective, you think they were hard. Yeah, they were hard. One of them, and what's funny is one of the hardest ones was like a 46 year old female. And, you know, it's way too old to go to buds.

But she was one of the hardest women I've ever met. And I was so, like, impressed with her. Like, holy crap, you're fit. You're strong. And she was, she had a smile. That's the big thing that people kind of forget. Is she was smiling during misery and I'm like, you could make it. Yeah.

Yeah, I think people ask me all the time, you know, could I make it through butts? And the only honest answer is, I have absolutely no idea. And they ask me to describe. Buds, and I describe it like sandpaper. So I bet you all of the women who were there going through seal-thet, they could make it through a day. I think most people could make it through a day. Like, you could muster that, but that's... And tell them it goes on forever and then see how they feel.

That's the sandpaper analogy. So you use sandpaper for your damn knives. What's like a rough one? Like a 20 grit? I mean, that's extremely... 60 grid's rough. So let's call it 20 then, because Buds is a little bit rough. And you have to take it across your knuckles just once.

People be like, okay. Like now... For a harder... 79 more days, though. You're going to do this. And a day two, people are like, ooh, I'm still a little bit chafed here. Day 50, when you have pus pouring out of your knuckles

and I hand you the sandpaper, that's buds. It's not the day. It's 179 days of the grit going across your knuckles. And it has more to do, I think, between your ears than the physiology muscle was. Mentality of like, you know, misery loves company. I remember laying there and just being so miserable and so beat.

And I look over and my buddy Jeff is there, you know what I mean? And I'm like, and we just start laughing. You know what I mean? And you're like, like, I'm, there's nothing more these instructors could do, man. I'm not obviously, quitting's not even in my mind, but like, I can't move any faster. You know what I mean? You're toast. Regardless of how much you yell at me.

And it's funny. And then let's add the hidden aspect. Your first platoon. Not that way. Okay. No, we'll get to that. I'm talking about in buds, the motivation that makes it even. more awesome.

And that's when you hear the bell ring. Yes. When somebody gets up and goes, fuck this. And you just sit there. You're like, you consume just a little bit of their soul. Highlander. I call the Highlander status, you know? You go take your enemy's head off and you're like, whoa, just gaining that strength.

Every time you hear like, ding, ding, ding. You're like this, your buddy, look your buddy. And like, oh, we're gaining their strength, man. I would just, you know, that's the part of fire me. I was like, dude, the child line just got shorter. Well, yes, it did indeed. So did one person in my boat crew. This is going to suck.

I was a short guy, so there's a lot of us. Just you. I mean, think about that in Hellweek, though. When I went through, especially when you went through, there was not a lot of knowledge. Like, you could probably hop on the internet, Bito, and research buds. I had men with green faces

and the documentary known as Navy Seals. Silent option. Perhaps. Let's not forget Rogue Warrior. Silver Strand. If you ever seen that movie I saw that one recently for the first time Roblo

It's so bad That's what I'm saying Rogue Warrior Yeah yeah Red Cell Which I When I first found that in the library It was mistakenly put in the nonfiction section

So I read that book And I was like oh this is what it's real Yeah But that's all that we had Now you can go online And you can find all this information But I remember God the first guy that quit in our Hellweek

Was the dude who was like He was a rollback he's trying to give everybody all the spit on Hell Week. How to make it through who. And we all looked up to him. And then he bailed in the, I think it was actually the first surf torture evolution. So we did not get a breakout. My class did not get a breakout.

We were in the tents, the canvas tents out on the beach. And historically, Hell Week starts with an ambush. Being on the receiving end of an ambush would be the best way to describe it. Blanks back in our day was like at M6, he just got, got, got, got, that awesome sound of a 60 cycling, artillery simulators, smoke grenades, and it's basically controlled chaos.

So that's what we're sitting out on the beach waiting for and waiting and waiting. And then all we hear is, hit the surf, get out of the tents. And I remember I was like in the last tent over and we're just like peeking through the crack. What do they do?

And so like two tents cleared out and we're all sitting there like, should we go? We're like, no. They won't notice. They won't notice. So, of course, immediately we're out in their water with them. But that was the start of our help.

It actually fucked us up a little bit because we were waiting for the big bang. And of course they framed it as, well, your class is so shitty and we hate you so much. You don't deserve it. They probably somebody probably didn't put in for the ammo like the blanks or something. Exactly. They forgot to put in the blanks. So they're like, yeah. It's your fault.

But that dude, he, he bailed early. And it actually triggered an onslaught of people running towards the bell to the point where I think it freaked the instructors out a little bit. because he was like to do that with a guy who already quit. Oh. You know what I mean? Reinsert a guy. Manchurian candidate. Can't do that, right?

Because it's like, the guy spits some knowledge, like, this is how to make it. And you really expect that guy to crush it. To crush it. Hey, guys, I've been here before. You get to break those other people. Now it's different in Buds, right? Bud's student, there's like a book or something. It's like, how to break Buds or something.

And it's like, somebody wrote a book like How to Break Buds and it's, and it's, I haven't seen the book. I haven't read it. But it talks about, you know, how Bud's changed also. so where everything is timed, right? So even on, the instructors have to put in paperwork in to beat the students longer on a Friday. There's a huge problem with that.

We don't beat the students, because we remediate them. You can't use words like that. Yeah. Surf condition. We don't want, we don't serve. But you can't break someone's, you know, really the best thing is to break someone down at the point

where they're like, dude, I'm not, I'm just not going to quit. I don't care how long this lasts, right? Then you can rebuild. when you know that it's like, I can't two more hours and they can't legally be, you know, remediate me anymore. Yeah.

Oh, until only three more hours. Like, weak people can get through that little bit with that little bit of hope. It's where you take away the hope and someone goes, I don't care if I die,

I'm not going to quit. And that's where you get good frogmen from. And now it's the difference. It's less and less. It's the difference between saying to somebody, hey, we're going to go to a track and you're going to run a marathon versus,

hey, we're going to go to a track and you're going to run until I tell you to stop. Correct. And what if it's only half a marathon? What if it's only like 10 laps? But it's the mental game that gets...

I did not know that somebody had written that book. Oh, and there's time now. There's so much literature. Students know how long they can be remedied. And then if they're really bad on a class, like how much longer, you know, can they have to put a paper or can to keep the students longer

on a Friday evening to remediate them? You know what I mean? I experienced that as an instructor in 2008. Oh, yeah. There were various levels. But again, so now we're talking 12 years from now. Yeah. 12 years ago.

So I suspected that system didn't get any better. Oh, yeah. I think that started when I was an instructor because, you know, I went through buds and, you know, you grab the boats. You can shove the boats. Instructors could. When I went through buds, there was dudes who would jump in the boat and beat you with a paddle while you were running with it on your head.

I was there when Ed Bowen was. That's great. I was there when Ed Bowen was the CO. And it was like, How soft can we make this training? Because the guy would hide at like 4 a.m. and peek around corners to see if we were breaking rules and whatever it was.

It was just such a gimmick. And we actually, those guys that showed up to team said, we called them Bowen Seals. We shit can't so many of them. They're just so soft, you know? Do you think it's a threat to the community, the changes that they're making?

Yeah. I have to agree with you. Leadership dependent too. Even those changes are bad, but then you have somebody come in that runs the command and they're not as hard on the students. And you have a guy come from, you know,

another command did a bunch of good work and they're like, hey, I crushed the students. There's a class pretty recently guys came over to my shop and there was 10 dudes in the class left over after Hell Week. Good, I support that. I was like, that's awesome. That means at least eight of seven of you are decent.

You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, that's awesome. Better than, you know, there was a class where it was like 86 or something like that. Post-Hel Week, 80s? That's a lot. That's a lot. That's a lot. Mind-blowing. You know? I was like, wow, that means 25 are good.

That's the thing. You know, you know, the guys don't realize, like, my best speech I ever got when I got to the team was, you know,

Massachusetts and Fernandez like, hey, dude, because I was, you know, obviously I'm cocky and eager, Tiscoll and whatnot arrogant. He's like, hey, dude,

just look around. Everybody hears the seal. Go clean the shitters. Yeah. And then I always tell the guys that I train, to have that pre-training program, like,

dude, Buds is easy. Your first, your platoon life? Oh, my God. Did they tell you guys in buds, hey, you'll be more tired.

in the teams, more cold and the teams more wet and the team's more hungry. I found that all to be true. You're like at least to be in the teams. You know what I mean? I went in thinking I'd be like the weakest link, right? Which was such a good, I didn't know then. I think that's a good mentality to have now. Like I'm going to be the weakest link. I agree with you. I'm going to have to prove it, all the stuff.

You know what I mean? Then I did well. But getting in the platoon was, you know, I hopped in with Kevin Kent was my LPO and Tom Cremens and that might be rough when your first go. Traskin. You got Hayes. A lot. Oh, buddy. Yeah.

Oh, speaking of hazing, do you think that stuff still allowed? They don't even loud at all. That's not acceptable. Well, there was a kid who's, he's out now, and he does, he wrote a book, does public speaking, gets paid to public speak, and he was pushed out of teams, and he, whenever they did any remediation in his platoon, he wrote it all down, he gave it to his mom, she gave it to a congressman, and the platoon got just all in trouble.

Every time, anytime he'd even drink a beer in the platoon space, you know, he would write it down and just got all these people in trouble. And he talks about his time in the teams And his leadership in the teams He gets paid And here's the thing about hazing There's a way that you can do it That has a positive benefit

To both the individual and the team And then there's a way it can be taken too far Like if there's malicious intent I'm okay with that Not being a part of the community But I remember my first platoon As new guys If there was an evolution going on

That it involved hazing It's gonna try to think about Remedation That's not the right place for it It wasn't remediation and you weren't involved in that, you're like, oh, fuck, the guys don't like me. Yeah.

Yeah. It was, if they didn't mess with you, it was like that initiation. When I got my Trident, it got smashed into my chest by every single person in the platoon. At least once. I was the command.

Yeah, and what that means for people listening, you know, so the Trident is the seal logo. On the back of it, the metal one that they give you, how, what do you think? Quarter inch? Yeah.

Quarter inch pins, three of them. And each person would come up, take it out of the skin in your chest, move it over a little bit, place it there and hammer it home with a punch. And it was one of the best days in my life. And I'm not recommending anybody else do that,

but it meant something to me. PINning parties. Yeah, it was incredibly. Yeah, it was incredibly. Well, and then we went and did a grinder, PT and had a keg of beer. It, uh, I worry about removing that stuff.

I think you could modify, round the edges on it a little bit, but totally removing that stuff, I think is a detriment to the community. You know, when I showed up the team, I literally was, under this illusion that I would show up there and all these dudes would be waiting to hug me and be like,

welcome to the team. What the fuck? What you get that? I guess. All the instructors are lying. You know, they're lying, but the team can't be this bad.

And so you never had the team five guys throwing water balloons at you. Yeah. You know, like, oh. Bro, some of that shit was nuts. I remember when Masschee Fernandez,

like, go clean the shitter. And then I remember my first run, me and Steve Prasia, you know, still one of my best friends were running. And we were fast dudes. And this guy,

Laif Karen's like goes blowing by us the last mile. And he's sitting there waiting at the quarter deck for us. And we come jogging up and he finished first. We finished like second and third. And that dude was just like, you fucking motherfucking blah, blah, blah, pieces of shit. And I'm like, who the fuck is this dude? And I'm kind of like, I kind of just walk away. And I go to my platoon chief George Young.

I'm like, who is that dude? He goes, that's a seal LPO. I was like, oh. Yeah, Roger that. Roger that. But that was the way my whole full first platoon was. I had jaco. I had good.

It was unpleasant. And you got the piss kicked out of you. You never did anything right. And it was just like, you couldn't win. And they called you out all the time, everything. Which is what shaped you into the future operator slash leader going forward. You're always striving to do better. Correct.

You know, one of the issues is when guy sucks, right, to a point where you're like, you know, you don't even remediate a new guy anymore. You just don't hang out with them. So you know there's a problem when your older guys are like, not inviting you out and stuff like that. You know what I mean? Or they're like, you're always driving for us.

Let's go wake that new guy up and make him take us out. Yeah, like, cool, you know, part of that, that maybe it's not team building,

by that brotherhood, like getting to know guys. It's the camaraderie. The camaraderie also builds like, if all you do is going to work and leave or go on training trips and no one ever spends time together, no one spends time together just families, like you get to know each other and you can open up

and you really start loving another human. And that's actually makes you a better operator. around how much you love your buddies. You know what I mean? I totally agree. You're not able to build that. And hard times and stressful times build that even more. You know what I?

Yeah, there was no work-life balance when I, like my, I would go to the old platoon huts at Team 5, the Kwanza Huts are awesome, which were awesome. And we would work all day and then we would eat, drink all night, every day, families there, there, weekends, like there was no work-life balance. It was just great. It was just life. But at the same time, it couldn't have been closer. And even in that group,

It's, you know, people think that the seal community is this, like, the valley of perfection where there's unicorns. There's still people that hate each other. There was still fistfights. There's still the bottom 10% and the top 10% of everybody else in between. But yeah, my experience as a new guy was the same. I came into a world. I was like, holy shit, dude.

I'm surrounded by my heroes. Yeah. And I suck at everything in comparison to these guys. Like this never-ending ascension of trying to be better to try to do better. It was awesome. You know, it's funny. 100%. When I got into leadership position,

and I had a couple guys that was like, hey, I'm going to give you the option. You know, because, you know, hazing was kind of coming out then. And we were a wartime unit, right? We knew we were going to Iraq. I put the piece of paper and a pen down. I put rigors tape down.

Which one do you want? I can do both. And this one, this goes away after this. This one's never going away. I'm going to take the rigors tape. I had one guy. He's like, I can't even read the handwriting. One guy said he'll take the paper.

We read him paper. And four weeks later, we read his own between the Navy. I was going to say that's an interesting insight. I think most guys would say I'll take the shorter term consequence that has no long term impact. Yeah, I hope I don't know, man. I'm not smart enough to talk about the politically correct culture,

which seems to be going on in the U.S., but I hope that at least there's some stopgaps somewhere. I hope that Trump actually lives up to what he tweeted and said, I'm going to reverse this shit. I don't know. It's, you know, like you were saying earlier, it's about, you know, don't change the standards. Every time you lower one standard affects others,

and you're literally making our fighting units weaker. Or even from any point, not just military side, but any type of training, any qualifications, any, I mean, look at the Olympics and if you start changing, even if you change like the first, the first test, right, get them into the next, then they fail the next thing because the first test was lowered. Did prepare them for the second.

Right. And that's, it's all the building process to become, you know, the best you can be, right? Just say that, you know what I mean, in any unit. And you start changing the first one, you're going to have to change another standard to make up for the lower standard you did. And that goes back into personal life too, right?

You want to create standards for yourself that you meet because if you start lowering it on your personal standards. You know, guys get into the teams, right? Guys are really fit. You don't know how fit you are after you graduate, you know, buds and SCUT or STT. You're like, oh, you're sore, you're beat up, but you can run like the wind.

You know what I mean? Then it's up to you. Maybe like the breeze. Like a slow breeze. Run like the breeze. But, you know, then it's up to you to stay fit. And it's up to you to keep that level of pride and hard work and effort. The individual accountability and responsibility.

Right. And some people get to the team and they fail that. And you're already, it's like, you're lowering your standard. Like, why do I want you in a platoon? If I can't depend on you to carry me or depend on you to be able to climb this mountain with that weight. Yeah. You know what I mean?

So the standards start in training, starting life, you know, and in the teams once you're there. My thing with the ethos is, I mean, for you and I, Dan, did they have the ethos when you went through? Yeah. Because they did not have it when we went through. And at first. Or soon after.

Yeah. I went through at like 03. Okay. I joined in 02. But there wasn't even a, there was not a hint of a written ethos. Of course, there was the ethos of how the community conducted itself. But when they wrote that ethos, I remember. the first time that I sat down and read it.

I was like, wow, that's actually a very clean, clear, crystallized document on what it should be. And I thought it was the perfect expression of the community. And I don't want them to mess with that because I don't think that the changes they made do anything other than slightly dole the blade and anything that doles the blade should be shick-canned. And I think that, and I would hope that any woman, right,

who qualifies that wants to go through that training to become an operator would also respect that. And not want it changed. And any woman wouldn't want standards changed for them either because they don't want to be looked at as less somehow. You know what I mean? Yeah. So you would think somebody with that,

that desire and that, you know, insight and foresight would be like, you know what? I don't want anything changed for me. I don't want the ethos change for me. I want to be part of this humble group of warriors. Yeah, because the standards, the standard. Right. Yeah.

How was your guys experience in the community? I mean, Taka, you got to experience pre-9-11 and then post, as did I, and I'm grateful that I did because it wasn't the same. But how was, give me the highlights. How long did you spend in? It's like 42 years, 43? Class 47, right? Yeah, just over 14, but just almost 15. But I was lucky enough to be a pre-war seal.

And, you know, lucky enough that my first platoon was nothing but pipe-hitting frogmen. but then have the awesomeness to be in a platoon, the second two platoons with the weakest, softest, senior enlisted people to walk in the seal teams. Well, tell me how you really feel about them. I mean, I just, lions led by lambs. Yeah, I mean, I beat one of them up, you know,

so it was another to see your chief carrying a broomstick in the killhouse. I was a hall boss, my second platoon, and that was because, you know, the joccos and the goods and Bill Munn's taught me how to do shipboarding, you know, at my first platoon and the second battalion came in there, and the guy couldn't do it, so I just took over, and it was the way it was from the, I'm going on, but then go into the wartime scenario where all these guys had to come out of the work,

would work to make chief, and just to see them getting shickhand. You know, we just fired so many dudes at Team 7, and it was awesome because of the time we got to the point where they were literally like, you fired too many people. You've got rid of too many guys. The new guys that we had and the senior list guys we had were just, and we took it. And we went, and we freaking just got after it, you know, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, It was awesome to see how to bring new guys up knowing they were going to go to war. And every training in evolution meant something.

Whereas pre-war, you're like, hey, this is simulated, this is simulated, this is simulated. The big Mish or the golden con Xbox? Yeah. And then remember the cold, then it came. And then it appeared actually. You're like, holy crap, where did this gear come from? Well, it didn't actually appear. It wasn't golden. It wasn't a con Xbox.

It was just the supply to buy. It was a big brown bag. Yeah. It's a big brown bag. But I remember just, I remember the level of training during that workup to go to go to Iraq. What year was this? This was 0-2.

Okay. And so we knew we were going. We knew we were the super troop to go. Were you in the initial invasion as well? No, I was right after that. Okay. So, but to be, to have everything basically like, this is real. We're not going to simulate it.

We're going to do it. And, you know, have guys like, hey, I don't want this. And cool, we beat it. Yeah. We get this train's going forward, you know. Makes it fun, though. Yeah. Oh, man.

this they get to all those new charges you're you're like it's important now i need to learn this i get to go smoke some some bad people and then with the funny part is when we showed up to iraq you got there and team five was there and they were like all that crap you learn get rid of it here's what to do like oh they're like you're going to be freaking doing nothing but dAs every night here's cut your charges in half yeah you know because there's windows in every door and then it changed again and then it was just like how then it was how fast and then how to go freaking dynamic and from dynamic to freaking you know combat clearance and and it is in an instant.

It was cool, man. It was cool. You could run thin-skinned vehicles in the beginning until... We were feet out. We were feet out in the beginning. Yeah. Remember standing on the...

Going up at that point, you're standing on the... Standing on the running boards. Yeah. My first deployment to Afghanistan, we were cruised around and thin-skinned Toyota Highlux. Before IEDs and...

Oh, before, I mean, back in... And before martyrdom and before them... Oh, yeah. Because by 2010, I was in a side-by-side wanting nothing to do with any road. I don't care if it was an am... Same.

rated for whatever. It's like helicopter. I'd rather walk or I'm going to go through the hills in a place where they would never set an ID. Yeah, and the thin skin in Iraq in like 06, 7, 8, not the jam. How was your experience, Pito, in the teams? You know, I checked in to Team 5. I went straight to my tier one off road school up in Reno, and we had a Humvee rollover and senior chief Fitz Henry. He got thrown out, rolled over him.

It rolled over him? Yeah, so I ran up to him, and night vision had ripped part of his head. I've held that, and then we started CPR me and Jeff, Jeff Nichols. Yeah. And the guy died, but it was, you know, three days later, I was sitting next to his daughter at the, like, the wake, you know, at the command. And it was like, that's a rough entry. But it was like, I'm grateful for that entry. You know, how sad that was, was like, this is what it's about.

Like, this is not a guy's dying, but you know it's going to happen. The gravity of the consequences. Right. And it's like, this is why I joined, you know what I mean, to be a part of like it was high stress, you know, and there was, you know, pain involved. Like, you get the teams and people talk about the teams like, how awesome. You're like, dude, it's some of those proud, amazing moments of my entire life. And it's also some of the fucking saddest, you know, for sure. In your life, too.

But, you know, hopped in platoon with some big, big dudes, you know, those guys got remediated a lot and crushed it. and two really good platoons, good time in Iraq, first time around. Second, went with Team 5 to Southeast Asia. We live in Indonesia, and that was amazing. And then went over to Team 1, did a platoon with Dan Luna and Brad Kavanaur, 2009-10, and went to Afghanistan.

So I got one deployment to each area. That was a great deployment, dude. Oh, my God, it was incredible. Where were you guys at? Which problems? Arugan. So me, Dan, and Brad, took some of the guys up, maybe eight of us up to Aroos gone and hopped in with some SF guys.

It'll have a little fob up there and then just went to a Taliban control area and picked fights from there. Going at night, raise a flag in the morning. This no-mom on comms. They'll be like 3 p.m. We're going to hit the Americans. Sometimes at 3 p.m. RPGs come in and then you're on it and sometimes they BS. But we had horses.

Like it was incredible, man. The photo you took us. I love that photo. Which one? He's shirtless, body armor on his face is painted. That's what half-fakes blades. His face is painted half black, and he's got a mohawk. You could do it out there in the middle of nowhere.

When I flew back to the big base, you know, Dan was like, hey, you're going to have to cut that. I guess. Yeah. You know, but it was incredible, man. It was even I was there in 2009-10. It was Wild West if you're away from Kandahar, you're out in those little fobs or like those omegas, man. Yeah, we were out in Navarre in most of 2010. Yeah, the Wild West out there, man.

One of the first places we went to was khaki Afghan, which hadn't had American presence in years. And it showed because it got settled and then ICOM kicked off, spotters on high ground and then thank God RPGs don't fly straight.

You know what? I'm glad you brought that up. I've seen like eight out of ten RPGs fly high. They shoot high. For a corkscrew. I mean lucky for us. When we came in,

we did Overwatch for the Aussies leaving the fob and then took over for them with the SF guys. and in the morning they pick us up on the mountain the 47s and we're coming in, I'm sitting in the back, you know, the door gun in the very back. I'm sitting there and we're on the first bird.

And, of course, we're slowing down to come in and land we're 1,500 feet. And right between our two helicopters, two RPGs, go like right between, it turns up. But, man, another op over there, working with DEA, fast team guys. You know, we got hit by one hole,

like, I think it was two, maybe three RPGs on one side. All of them went high right above the wall, you know. It's just seen so many misses, which is great. And then it only takes one, though. Yeah, that's the issue. You know, and then it's a whole bird. We had a guy on my deployment.

I think he was either ANA or A&P. We called him Rocket Man. And that's all he carried was the primary. It was a R.P.G.7. You're good at it, too? Well, I watched him basically try to clear a room with it. And I was like, holy. We were in a bizarre.

And he's just like holding fucking finger on the trigger, like, right at the doorway. And I'm just back. It's too close to arm. You'll be okay. But the backblast, as we know, can be apart. party. So I was just fucking backing away. And he actually fired it once one time. We were getting, we were in a contact and I was on a roof.

And at first I couldn't figure out. Rocket man. Oh, dude, he sent that shit behind, but he was behind me. He just basically shot it right over our head. And I was just like, hey, motherfucker. Rocket man, we're here. The videos are best, you know. I really enjoy getting online and watching videos of our enemies.

Yeah. trying to fight. I have an Instagram page dedicated to this. Yeah. The tactical assholes. You know, the guys not clearing their back blasts is one of the best ones. And the guy's walking back to RPG and guy just gets smacked against the ground.

And then the guy always turns around like, oh, what happened to him? What's wrong? Get up. A video, I think you're on that mission too when the building collapsed on Robbie. No, I wasn't on that. He was running across the top. And the guy on that building, his gold team. Oh, yeah, clacked off the fucking.

shop the fucking RPG. That was after my time. Building collapsed and Robbie fell into the building, you know. It's game time if you fall into a building of Muge. It is. Dossed everywhere. Fuck. Yeah.

It was good deployment. It was wild, man. And the second half we linked up with our squad wine and went out to out east somewhere. I can't remember the, uh. There's many provinces. Yeah. Why did you decide to get out, Tucker? I was the first Eddie Gallier.

I got charged with murder. I went after a guy named Menad al-Gimati. He had blown up the Red Cross in Baghdad. He and I got into it during the raid and pretty big fight in the kitchen. And I fucking let him have it. Turned him over to the agency. And he died during interrogation. And about six months later, they came back and he said, we're charging you a murder.

And so I got cleared three different times. Being told, you didn't do anything wrong. We know exactly what happened. Boom, boom, boom. And on the fourth time, I was actually went through an entire investigating officer board, got cleared on Thursday, got the report saying all charges are dropped. We find credible evidence to go forward with using harsh verbal language

and posing an unauthorized photo. And on Monday morning, I read the San Diego Tribune, and it said, Admiral McGuire agrees that all charges to be dropped, but he's decided to court-martial ABH-1 anyway. And so I went through the entire court-martial proceeding, literally standing outside the door of the court. court marshal and the old entire time they just wanted me to rat on everybody and literally as i'm getting ready to go on the court marshal like just come in here we'll give you immunity if you just

testify against lieutenant ledford i'm like he didn't do anything yeah like he didn't do anything and so they gave me immunity fuck yeah i went through the thing went to come to comemodeur's mass got to in common you know when you're in captain's commas basically you get then get all the charges again you get to fight them on your own and so no lawyer just you and the commodore which is it just you and the commodore is me the commodore ron cole pepper and the m m a So there are a few other people involved. Oh, and then the forced Master Chief, I won't name his name because I still want to crush the skull with a brick, you know?

Tell me how you really feel. Stop holding back, talk about that dude, man. So I go through the whole thing and all the charges, the Commodore dismisses everything. I plead guilty to posing an on his photo because it was my camera. Even though it was a PID photo. There was a few photos that got out. It was a few famines photos, right?

Few of the guys got hammered, but you got it the worst. I got it the worst. And then using harsh verbal language, any meditania war times two because I called him a fucking piece of shit, right? What year was this? That was, that's crazy that, I mean, that's wild. That was 05. Then they're like, oh, you can't use bags, all this.

So this is, okay, this is why I'm not familiar with this, because I was on the East Coast, task saturated. This was 05, and then basically, I started having, I was literally, my bags are on the pilot to go to Ramadi, and I started having these really weird feelings, and everything that could happen and go wrong started happening to go wrong. So I was on an extension and I just wanted to extend eight more days to go over and get the tax-free bonus, right? Because I'd spent so much money on my own attorney. And they were like, oh, you have to re-enlist today.

And I was like, I'm not doing that. So I go to the CEO. He's like, well, operational, hold you. Oh, we're not going to do that. Can't hold you. I went to the common door. He's like, well, operational hold you. We'll just get you on a flight tomorrow.

The flight got canceled. And so I went home to my wife and like all this time. She's like, if you re-enlist, I'm divorcing you. And I'm like, what do you mean? She's like, they just completely and utterly bent you over the taste. and gave it to you and you want to give them more yours and so I was kind of like okay basically divorced me at that point and what's funny is that night I went to go have drinks my buddy Danny he's my neighbor he's like my you have my wife your one neighbor and I just said hey man

I got a question for you like I've been having these weird feelings he's like I wanted to talk to you about that I'm like what do you mean he's like you're going to die and I was like it's kind of hit me home and I went to work to go again like try to get this extension and again They were like, you must, you have to reenlist today. And so I literally was like, I'm not doing that. I'm not reenlisting. And so I went home. And what's funny is Troy Deal replaced me.

And Troy got hit so bad so many times, guys wouldn't ride in the vehicle with him. And Troy's 6'3. I'm 5'7. Troy took up around right in the chest plate. Troy got I-ed like eight times. It was crazy. And I basically got out and then went into work for another company and went back overseas doing the same exact job I was doing.

contracting. Contracting. Yeah. So it worked out for the best, but I was basically pissed off at the world when I got out. So did they end up court martialing you? No. Okay. So you got a honorable discharge. Okay. Honorable discharge. They took my rank away, then they gave it back. You know, basically, hey, we're taking your rank away. And then like three weeks later, calling back, hey, we're suspending your bust. Tear the paper up. You're a good frog man. Keep doing what you're doing. Type thing. But, yeah, man, I got out. My speech, I never showed up to it. I'm like, take your fucking plaque and throw in the garbage now. So Fuck, man I was a little angry

I'm better I'm better now Now it's just like hey It's the best thing Never happened Besides the break Besides the break It's just one dude

Funny funny I carry a brick With me Yeah Just There's three guys Back in the teams That you know I don't drink anymore

I don't do those things But if I see them They're gonna get hit Because I feel like hitting them You know So I don't know If you can say that Sober punch

It'll be sober punch Remediation buddy But I look back on that It was getting out was the best thing I did because I love that when I got out of the teams, I got out having done everything I would ever do and being with the most awesome dudes. And I was able to look at the guys in that platoon when I left and told every one of them, if you don't want this to happen to you, go to Damneck. Go to Damnick because all the good chiefs are Damneck.

And they all went and unfortunately some of them died in the helicopter, you know. Yeah, extortion. But they were good kids and I got to be the guy who kicked doors. with them and you know and have them have my back and we did so many missions in mosul i mean we just we had we did frogman work like you know four and eight missions a night and it was awesome yeah so how about you beat it why did you decide to get up um let's let's see my last platoon at team five then went over to trade at uh ran the maritime over there i think that's you came through when you were getting out yeah i saw you over there uh that's when the chimney was over there and stuff um

ran that ran the oil platform takeover stuff ended up breaking all my fingers in early 2012 and my i was going to go back and do an lPO slot you know and it was real op tempo was down kind of then and decreasing iS hadn't kicked off yet you know what i mean and i it's like that was probably july march 2012 i got me broke all my fingers just messed them up so like having a couple surgeries and really you know the command i was at like jimmy was like oh just make your own schedule you know what i mean until until until you tell me you tell me you They're good to go. And my EOS was November,

and the November, December that year. And I was just at that point, you know, you get out, you get 100% disability. We'll give you a medical retirement. So they kind of screw you on that. You know, they're like, oh, just put in the paperwork after you get out for your, to go to the medical board. No, no, no, no.

Right? And what's nuts is. Put the paperwork in before you get out. They give me like 35, 40% for sleep apnea. But my worst physical injury with all my fingers being broken and stuff. 10% because if they give you 30% or greater, they have to get put to you a medical award. Really?

So, yeah. Yeah, I went through the med board process when I got medically retired too. Yeah. While I was still in. That's the varsity move. Right. And then they come back with your rating and they say, you have 90 days to which I went into Joe Burns. I said, Joe.

See you later. See you, buddy. He's just like, awesome golfing Tuesday. Let's do it. Let's go. Joe's awesome. Yeah, so, you know, I got out and I don't know, you know, I got buddies asked like, yeah, well, you know, you stayed in, had ISIS, probably had, you know, ISIS kicked off and it was going hard overseas.

It was going hard for some people. I think a lot of people don't understand that just because you're a seal, A, doesn't mean you're going to get deployed to the right war zone. And B, even if you are, it doesn't guarantee you're going to get to do a goddamn thing. Right. I mean, even in a smaller level, you hit a compound with four bad dudes, but there's 35 of you. You being the guy to enter the room where the bad guy is, like, and, you're going to, you. get your kill on, like, may not happen. There's some dudes that have done so many good deployments in platoons,

and they'd, like, you know, they shot anybody, and they're always like, wrong place, you know, right place, wrong timing. Yep. You know what I mean? So it's nuts, man. I don't know. I was kind of at a great point in age-wise being 31 that, and I did 10 years ago, good deployments each place.

You know what I mean? And I worked with, again, like, epic, you know, Dan and stuff like that, like amazing people. and I was at that point like, well, I could get out, I could continue my education, I could start another career, I'm young enough, you know what I mean?

Not that 39, I mean, I'm 37 now, like 39 is young to me now. You know what I mean? And I'm happy, you know, I love going to war with my buddies. That's the funnest thing in the entire world hands down. You know what I mean?

Going to war with your fucking friends. It's a vacation that you deserve after that much training, you know, is going to war. But then again, you know, it's like a time clock, like how long until maybe you die. You have another buddy dies.

Like we're all going to deal with seal buddies that die. We have buddies that are in and buddies that are out. It's a matter of time. You don't know when it's going to be your last. Not that that would ever stop me from going to war because if my buddies are going, I'm sure it's fucking going. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Yeah, you don't want to put that burden on them. I think the timing was really good for me getting out and then moving on to, you know, started making the knives. Were you making them while you were in? Because I was curious how you got into knife making. No, I made knives with my older brothers. I had two older brothers. When I was younger, they were, you know, making little crappy knives and little

rock, you know, wheel grinders. And I've just always been an end-year-s. A real outdoor family, hunting and then in the team. So I kind of know what I want. I cook a lot, a lot of chef buddies. So I was hung over one day and I was like, man, you know, I was doing some advising up in L.A. And stuff like, Dan, I don't, you know, I had some really amazing people in that movie industry.

but it's not something that attracts me to go live there and try to tell everybody I'm an actor. You know what I mean? Good people that you don't see on camera. There are people sending it up to cameraman, and everything, good people. But I was like, man, you know, I'm gonna, you know what I'll do?

I'll just make some smaller blades that I would use overseas for my active duty, steel buddies and SF buddies, you know, so I kind of started just research a little bit, like what type of steel is better now, boom, boom. This is what a lot edge retention, corrosion resistance, and bought one grinder was on the awning in my backyard in San Diego.

You know, just my one grinder in chunks of steel and started making knives, you know, and just took pictures of the learning, probably my learning process. Just started social media, took pictures of the process,

and then made 50 numbered first ones, people reaching out, you know, buddies that support me and networking and stuff like that, people reaching out wanting them. And then I was like, man, I'll make another design. Boom,

another design. Didn't number those. And it just grew from there. I hired my roommate, I hired my best friend I grew up with, hired my seal buddy. I had like a plastic table with people's names on, no joke,

like in my house. I'd finish the knife. I'd, you know, put a little sticky note, write their name on it, their email address and put the knife there and be working on it.

You know, and I'd take a picture of the table, like my first 50 knives done. I was like, wow, this is, you know, it's fun. That's awesome. Right? And then built a little shop in my backyard,

got a little warehouse, hired my other buddy, hired another buddy, um, being able to provide a job for a crazy story. The, my mom's cousin. who bought me the Navy SEAL Workout book.

He was an older guy. He never married. Battle of depression since his mom had died. He was 50. And I was able to kind of living in a bad situation up in Oregon. And I grew the knife company big enough. I moved him down in with me. Oh, sweet.

Yeah. So that was kind of cool to be able to provide that, you know, for him. One of my favorite aspects of your knife, knife work is the handle stuff. Yeah. It's fun, man. Like to me, I'm like, I think I could figure. out how to sharpen a piece of metal. But that handle shit is beyond me.

Dude, your handles, man. You know, I'm glad nobody, you know, biggest thing is being an end user going back to the beginning, right? And then having nobody teach me is fine. I can watch YouTube videos. And then... Thank God for the internet.

Right? It's amazing, you know? But I went to a knife maker, get together. And I was like, I was sitting there and I was looking around. Like, the guys who shop it was like came over, kind of picked the knives up, real disrespect.

I dropped it on the table. And I'm like, And I was talking to some of the guys, and every dude, like, were knife nerds, which was fine. There wasn't one end user. It was probably 20 of us. I was the only dude who's, you know, used knives tactically, used them. Or out skinning animals with them. But he's just like, I cook with my lives all the time every day.

You know what I mean? I was the only end user back to the beginning. Not that there's not good knives made by knife nerds and stuff like that, but it was really odd. There is a difference, though, when the end user creates the product that they would want to use. Right. You know, and I was like, that's a great blessing. You know what I mean? From there, I can make something, you know, as beautiful or as extravagant as somebody

wants to handle-wise or as simple as someone wants. But I want that blade to, you know, obviously be quality and to serve a purpose. You know, make some swords and some fun stuff, you know, once in a while. But at the end of the day, I can make something that's so beautiful, but it still serves a purpose and it will work. Yeah. What's the craziest handle material you've ever made? Um, I mean, we did human ashes in the handles and the inlays and stuff, maybe four or five ashes.

You know, Charlie Keating's knife, when he had died, the platoon brought me his pair of pants covered in blood that he died wearing. Yeah. Donate a few more pairs of pants, donated three flags, and donated a whale bone to me that he had found because he was a big waterman. Yeah. He was ground into powder, put that out of fiberglass resin, mixed his pants in the American flag and made handle material for 37 knives, with his initials in the blade. And like those are the holy grail, you know what I mean? For sure.

We've done quite a few stuff like that. A lot of ashes in lay. A lot of working dog ashes in the handles. Like for spikes, you know, that turned out really beautiful. A knife, tomahawk. We've been doing, making knives for that. Five or six people get knives and cut their babies umbilical cord when they're born with them.

Get some cool videos like that, you know. Those are the coolest ones. Oddly creepy, but okay. I just wait for somebody to get a tomahawk to cut it. Oh, God. I just like the little things. I was telling him, you know, yesterday the knife he made for me because I have really gigantic hands, right?

Yeah, normal size hands. I mean, for the size, how short you are, they're massive. Yeah. And, but it's, whenever I grab a knife, usually the palm, the tang is in the middle of my hand. Yeah. So when he made mine, it like, like my pinky can wrap around. I'm like, and it's baseball grip. And it's one of his first ones.

So it's like dinged and it's not pretty. So much better now. But no one's, that's me. That's me. I refurbish and I and I sharpen for free, right, for anybody. And someone breaks the tip of the knife off, send it back, I'll fix it. You know what I mean? If you want to send it back, I refurbish it.

Sam bless it. I have those first ones and I see, you know, I kept the very first one. And I look at it. I'm like, oh my God, this needs some work, man. You know what I mean? We've come so far. But I also put out like, hey, do you guys want to send, you know, one, send your knives back, refurbish, sharpen, cool.

But like some of the beginning ones I'll put out there like, hey, you want a series one knife. I know that they look like shit. it like do you want to send it back we'll we'll work on the handle tune it up i probably had one person people are like i'm not sending it back this is awesome like it's uneven you know scratch marks you probably went to you know 80 grit like i was learning but they're numbered and they're like i'm sure they're valuable now and people love that you know still mark it on your knives is huge i mean i look at that facebook page guys are like hey who's got this who's got that it's nuts right now i just what i enjoy is when you'll do a social post yeah like hey new blade drop and people get so

I'll give it like 30 minutes and go over and just, I'm like, oh yeah, that shit's gone. Gone. That chef blade set that I bought from you, holy fuck, man. Like, anytime you drop chef knives now, they're gone instantaneously. To the point where I have people, my cousin will be like, hey, man, did, uh, Half Face Blade stopped making chef stuff? I was like, no, you need to turn the notifications on. Right.

Well, see, I'm having this issue too. We're like, I'm doing production knives too, so I can have that same knife design that I'm machine grinding and a bullet. and a bolt on grip, like a Crow Jr. Same steel where I can sell for $100 less or where the custom one starts. Yeah, for sure. Which is great.

So I put 180 up at 4 p.m. on one day, and then they're gone by 7. So then I'll be doing customs, and I'll work on really nice stuff. They take time. I can't speed it up. 40 or 50 really nice customs or sets, chef knives.

The problem is I'll put them up and then I'll put them on the website. It takes me a minute. I load them. I do the pictures. I do description, everything, pricing, how many I have, you just,

you just one, then the next one. The end of that, I go to Instagram and I post, hey, these pictures, people go and they're sold out

in that 20 minutes and people are like, there's bots buying all your shit. And I'm like, dude, there's not bots. You actually made a post about this the other day.

You're like, would you prefer I post on Instagram first? Right. Trying to figure out. And I'm like, I want to help you people. Like half the posts are like, oh,

I finally got one I'm most stoked human ever. And the other posts was like, screw you. I'm not fucking following you anymore. It's just bots. And I'm like, wow, man. Like, hey, you tell me, you know, how I'm screwed up. One, I can either pull, so now I'm figuring out this is what I do.

Well, if I can tell people beforehand at 4 p.m. I'm going to post. So I'll try to get on, load them all, and then I can put the day in time where it'll actually become live on the website. Okay. So now I'm... You got a target for people to be on. Right. So it's like, hey, 4 p.m. on this day. The problem is before, when I'm loading them, I'm starting loaded at 3.

I may not all be done. But the problem is at 305, I load my first one. someone buys it through a 6 right so my 4 p.m. comes around there's nothing left so i'm i'm doing it where it doesn't even show and then all of a sudden 40 knives will pop up at 4 pm and then i'm still gonna have people mad because it's only 40 yeah you know or 50 or sometimes it's it's custom like it takes time you know and so how many knives do you think you've built at this point um um do you keep a running tally no you know i've that'd be tough um at customs Or just overall, it's got to be thousands at this point.

Yeah, I mean, I think we probably, I don't remember last year. I mean, I would say 10 to 11,000 last year. That's awesome. But not all of them customs. You know what I mean? Yeah, there's just overall. I think this year really, you know, I moved into a bigger shop band in December last year, got two CNC machines, learning that water jet to help me with that production side.

90% of knives are still hand-ground, which the only part about that sucks is when I do Kidex, every single custom has to be pressed separate because the human error in the grinding, a production knife is a production one that's perfectly ground by a machine. I can have put six to my kidex and make 200 kidex shees. You don't have them sitting there.

So custom not only, it just takes time to make, it takes a little longer to make she's. As it should though, if you're going to get a custom knife like that. Those things are awesome, man. I actually enjoy people's struggle. Tell the story about the chef's set the other day.

Oh, they went in the shop. I was just working out really beautiful. Or should you tell the story? Where the guy was like, don't sell it, that one? I mean, it's good. Like, we're working a really badass chef set to auction. You know what I mean? And a guy who came to shop from somebody else,

and he was like, I want it. I want to add two knives to it. And it's really like, it's like a $4,000, like really nice chef set. You know what I mean? And it's like, all right, dude, we won't put it up online. Same with that sword set.

I did that Arizona Jade. Like I just posted pictures of it and I was going to put on the website. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm like, okay. Name your price. I'm going to start writing zeros on this checkbook. You tell me when to stop.

Just one more. Yeah. Which is awesome. And, you know, I have like really good, some really good business mentors and they're like, hey, raise your prices. Raise your prices. And I'm like, I kind of battle with that too. It's like, okay, they'll be like, raise your price is 15%.

And I was like, dude, it's a $600 knife already. Yeah. That's a lot. You know what I mean? And so I battle with this, with this, I want guys, I want to be attainable. I don't want to be the guy that just pounds out of Damascus and only makes a $3,000 or $4,000 knife to a $10,000 knife every month. Like I want a business.

I want to provide jobs. I am providing jobs for my buddies, I'm veterans and stuff too. So I can't just be out there only selling $1,000. You know what I mean? But I don't want to sell something cheap either. Yeah. I want it attainable. And that's kind of a hard when you're looking at a $6,700 knife.

Like, that's pretty penny, you know? Yeah. And if someone can save them. But I want guys, I want workers, I want firefighters using them, a law enforcement using them. I want, you know, good people using these knives. And that's expensive. So I kind of battle that area, which that's why I really want to do the production

where it's like, okay, I want to support this veteran-no business. I want a good knife. I want some, serves a purpose, quality, and then I'm proud of and I love. But I can't afford a custom. So that's why the production really comes in really big. And then the custom, it's attainable. Someone wants to save up. And it makes it valuable for them.

It's good to have that range. And then it's custom. So it's not just expensive and it's not custom. That's where I really like. So if you want to save up and you tell me what you want and I'm going to do my best to make it happen. You know, you grew up in the redwoods. I'll find redwood brule. You want to do an inlay, you know, you want to do initials or your kid's initials or a handprint or something engraving.

What's cool is you want to save up and do it. It's attainable. And now it's custom to you. There's not another one like it, which keeps in there your values there too. And it's usable. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, I use the chef nice every day.

I have that tan sarico with a black. I think so much. I think we were texting one day. You're like, dude, I almost kept that for myself. Yeah, I love it, man. Yeah. So next time you need them all sharpen. I know how to sharpen it.

S35, oh, yeah, so you could charm them. S35 is kind of a bitch to sharpen that specific steel. So I just use my little Lansky rod sharpener at the day. It's great. You were talking about yesterday, $18. Yep. Don't get crazy and sit there with a freaking pro tractor. Just use your eyeball.

Look down it. There's the edge. I mean, YouTube videos, like I said, YouTube videos. People like, hey, how do I use the Lanski? I'm like, www. YouTube.com. Yeah. Rock and roll.

Go to YouTube and type in how do I and then enjoy the rest of your day because you can spend. Stay there. Oh, God. That's how I, when I started the podcast,

how do I start a podcast? All of the gear when I was making the studio Monta I've had for a few months now. How do I soundproof a room? How do I just kept going and going and going and going and going. Everything's there, man. And then realized I was being an idiot. So I got a hold of Jamie Joe's production guy.

I'm like, just write me a fucking list of what I need. And he was just like, here, thank you. He's so good at that. Oh, I was literally thinking, I'm like, what am I doing? I have access to somebody who does this professionally. And as actually I told him, like, can I have the economically efficient version of the list that you use? Yeah, the starter shit. And the great thing about Jamie is he makes you feel like an idiot while you're asking to.

Yeah. I love him. Yeah, I can get behind that for sure. So your path out, you did contracting. Yep. And then fill me in on what led you to what you're doing now. Yeah. Obviously a gap in some years there.

Yeah, yeah. So I did contracting and then got a lucky enough to get hired by a high net worth person named Paul Allen, who's a co-founder of Microsoft, with 20 other seals. So it was awesome as like being in a platoon again. And for seven years, we traveled the world doing every major event known of mankind, Super Bowls, Academy Awards, Cannes Film Festivals, you name it, we did it. And we did it. You know, a lot of people have this schedule. We had nothing called a schedule. So Bill Gates, everything is written out for a year.

Paul Allen, everything's written out for about 30 seconds. And I'd be on a plane with him. And you're looking, you're dressing to go to Africa. And all of a sudden you look out in there's snow. You're like, wake up and you're like, what are we doing? He's like, oh, he wants to go Milan and go shopping. So you're literally on the phone, getting vehicles, restaurants, hotels, everything's set up from your phone. And so I became kind of a master of logistics.

The guys did, right? All of us. And at the same time, we wanted to fight. We wanted to train because you're part of the security team. You want to think you're still a team guy. And the insurance company came back and said, you got to get fit. And so me being the fat guy, they were like, go get CrossFit certified. And so my CrossFit certification was with you.

It was? Yeah. Did I fuck you up? You definitely deserved it. You love me. Remediation. My CrossFit certification. And I came back and I'd always had a passion for training kids.

I just wanted to train kids. And you were in Bellevue at this time. I was in Bellevue. And so I opened CrossFit Bellevue, which was a, you know, first we started in the park like everybody else. and then open CrossFit Belvey, the first one, at 2,500 square feet. Within a year, we grew out of it into 27,000 square feet. Jesus.

And then by the, yeah, at a zero. Yeah, a thousand percent jump. Yeah, well, yeah, we started with, you know, we started with, you know, 20-something clients. And by year three, we had 700. And by year five, we had four gyms. And so I did that, you know, thought I was rich, you know, richy rich. And you were, you hooked me up with some really good stuff, getting in the NFL thing. You know, my NFL program went from Matt.

Hasselback. Yep. That was simply because you and next year. We had 12, 13 NFL guys each year. And at the same time, a coaching Bellevue High School, this, you know, one of the best high school football teams ever to exist.

And life was good, man. And then the CrossFit business started going down. My business started going down. And I went back to work and lucky enough to get hired by Sergey Brin, who's a co-founder at Google. I went there as, again, a security guy, an advanced security guy and worked my way into special projects. and then was selected to be part of their,

it's only privately funded humanitarian team of the world. We created a team where there's five of us to start it. Now it's about 170 people. And special operations guys, Stanford Medical and Harvard Humanitarian, go all over the world doing humanitarian aid and disaster aid response. I think you and I communicated about that at some point. Yeah, I called you because we're doing a big jump program.

They were like, hey, we want to jump. And the jump when we were doing, obviously it's a very secret program. Yeah. Because some special mission units to it. But I was like, I'll call Andy. Andy will know how to do this to the tee. I just wanted to wing suit out of the thing.

Yeah. The platform is amazing. Nobody will ever do it civilian-wise, right? And we'll just leave it at that. We'll leave it at that, right? And so, you know, I did, I get to do 200 jumps out of it. And it was awesome. But I did that and then got into the veteran treatment program by accident.

Right about that time, my wife got cancer and was not doing well. and, you know, all the war, all that stuff. Swing that mic down by your face. I shouldn't have to explain this to you. Yeah. All, I'd like it by my eyeball. So the camera can, I can read it. All the war and all that stuff.

You know, I had, you know, extortion, all those things. You know, they're building up bricks in the backpack. And, you know, me closing the gym was the hardest thing I did. I made one Facebook post about it. And I deleted it the next morning. Don Hasselback, I actually call me. He's like, are you okay? I'm like, I'm not okay.

I'm not. I feel like a complete and utter. failure. This was my baby. I grew it. I grew it to what it was all by myself. I have nobody to fucking thank for it. I built everything. I welded everything and now it's gone. You had an amazing facility up there. I remember I came up. We did one of the open announcements. Yeah, 14.4. And you know, the problem was is my wife was the business side and I was the, you know, obviously the operational side. And, you know, when your wife is laying in, I don't know if I can cry, but when your wife's laying there dying, I just, I couldn't do it, man. And, um, I was,

I just wanted to die. And so I started drinking. And I always drank, but I started drinking. You started drinking with a capital D. Yeah. You know, and for a while I managed it. And then the worst she got, well, describe drinking.

Because, let's be honest. There's drinking in the civilian world, and then there's drinking in the SEAL community. And then there's. And then there's drinking in the SEAL community. But I'll describe it as the way it went is I would drink on the weekends all the time. I worked in Silicon Valley by this point. The gyms are gone.

I worked in Silicon Valley. I would fly home on Friday, started the airport drinking, and all the way until Sunday about seven, I would stop and then get on a plane the next morning and fly back to work. And I did that for about a year, and I was cool. And that was, you know, you're talking as much booze as I could buy drinking the whole weekend. What was your go-to? Don Julio, Don Julio, right?

It's a five beverage. Yeah. And I had a lot of money, right? I got paid well. And then next thing, you know, Fridays became Thursdays. And then Thursdays became Wednesdays, Wednesdays became Tuesdays, and by the end of it, by the very last part, I was shaking, saying I won't have a drink on Monday. I won't have a drink on Monday. And it's funny, Grant Dawson, who's another seal, who's a CEO, he asked me to research a program called Maps, MAPS. And he's like, hey, there's some other seals going through this. I want you to research it to see if there's efficacy and to see if we should give some money towards this. And my wife actually researched it from bed because I just couldn't even read or write at this point. My brain was done. And I went from the number one employee there to being told we'd fire you if your wife didn't have cancer. That's how bad I was.

And I think everybody knew I had a drinking problem and nobody would tell me. So I researched this. I turned the paper in. They called me and I thought I was getting fired because my wife's, she's a great writer, but not as good. I'm a good writer, right? And I had a presentation by the people. Marcus Capone was there. I didn't recognize him.

He just looked so different. He was all smiling. I'm like, what's this guy's fucking problem, you know? And then. How dare you have joy and happy to? I'm going to smash you with a brick. I just, I didn't believe joy and happiness existed.

And then when Marcus's wife, Amber, spoke, I heard my wife. And she talked about what a complete douche Marcus was before treatment. Talked about how rough he was sexually, talked about how disconnected he was, how angry and full of rage. And I heard my wife's voice. And by that point, my wife and I were basically separated. And I was still, I'd go home every now and then, but I just didn't want to be home. I was, and I flew home and I asked her, like, how bad am I? She's like, if it wasn't for these kids, I'd divorce you.

And, you know, and I hit it hard because I always, I always had these speeches. It's when I own the gym, I really try to be the father and be the husband. Yeah. I try to exemplify that. And, you know, I'm the coach to my children. I'm the, I love my wife tremendously. And for that two years, I was not that. And, um, and so I decided to go into the program.

I pulled Dr. Planco aside and I said, hey, man, I have a problem. And he's like, I know. He's like, I'm like, what? you mean he's like i can smell you and i and your nose is bulbous and you know i can you're ugly how you you know and you're short you have a fucking serious problem and uh he's and uh and i was like you know i'm just i'm really embarrassed and he's like well don't be all of you were like this i'm like all of us he's like every one of you guys that that that i deal with every seal that i deal with all of you're the same. He's like, it's not your fault. And, and it just kind of hit me home. And so I went down

to do the therapy. And what is the therapy? So the therapy is called ibogane. Okay. And ibogane is an incredibly powerful drug. So I want to make sure I emphasize that it is for the 1%. And ibogaine used to be illegal, used in heroin addicts to about 86% success rate. And I took ibogane. It's a very powerful hallucinogenic that can actually kill you. I took it. You have a doctor there. you're hooked up on a heart rate monitor, a nurse in the room, and I relive the traumatic moments of my life for 36 hours. 36 hours.

36 hours. Yeah, the first eight hours are very crazy and horrible to where I'm literally able to grab hold the headboard. I'm like, and just be free fall, counter left, counter left. If the room's not,

if the bed's not spinning, I'm not spinning. And I thought they were fucking with me because, like, I could feel the bed shaking. And I'm like, why are they fucking with me so bad? And you're just crying, right?

You're just like, and one of the most, amazing things that happened, you know, during that night that I came to correlation to later was this every time it got so bad, this purple rain would fall. And the entire time, God damn it, in the entire time, I just kept saying, just show me my wife. And it wouldn't show me my wife, but it showed me everything terrible. Right. It showed me the hand-to-hand fight that I had with Manardale. It showed me, you know, it showed me some stuff from the war and it showed me in my childhood. And it showed me just some shit that I was like, God damn, you know.

And the whole next day, I went through a process of, why me? Why did all this stuff happen to this little boy? You know? And then it went into, it is what it is. Then it went into, I just don't give a fuck. Then it went into thank you. Thank you for all this happening because I am because of it. Right?

You can't beat me. You can't make me cold. You can't starve me. And I just don't care, right? And then the final point was complete forgiveness. Like I forgave. I just forgave, right? And I just said, I'm done feeling.

hatred and I came to two things that ended that night was my mom was just a little girl when she started having us she was 15 years old every man that ever met her beat the shit out of her treated her like shit and therefore the two men in her life that she could do it back to she did and once she was able to control it you know she did and and and I came to terms with it and just I forgive you mom right and I actually thought she died that night because I had this very powerful presence and then the second part was my wife is my Purple Rain, right? That she's the only person who's ever loved me for me.

She's been through everything with me, you know, almost my entire seal career, you know, business success and failure, you know, death, lots and lots of death. And I, you know, I think that, you know, you were married for a time. My wife went to every funeral and I just forgot she was ever there. And my wife knew every wife.

And my wife knew most of the guys that died because she bought houses, she was the realtor. And I just completely gaffed that shit off. And so the next day I took another drug, called five M-E-O-D-M-O-D-M-T. Okay. And they call it the toad in the hippie world. I've heard Joe talk about it, yep.

Yeah. And they say you're going to go to heaven. The first dose, nothing really happened. The second dose, I did not go to heaven. I went to hell. And I relived a very powerful night that I had, I didn't believe in suppression, but I didn't believe in any therapy or suppression, right?

I relived a suppressed memory of my mom getting brutally attacked. And my brother and I trying to fight the guys off. And we couldn't. We were very small. I was five, he was seven. And it made me understand my hatred from men, why men were always prey to me. And I came out of that.

It's about 15 minutes long. I came out and there's other seals in the room. There was only seals to go. And I was on my knees and I looked at Dr. Planko. I go, I need all those men in this room to leave because I'm about to fucking kill them. And he's like, do you want to do another dose? I'm like, yeah, dude, because I didn't go to heaven. I'm in worse shape right now than I've ever been.

And so I took the third dose. And on the third dose, I went to heaven and I walked with my mom and I spent time with my mom and it was glorious. And I went to the time where before she, before that attack where she was a normal mom. And what's funny is that entire weekend where it's a beautiful mansion on the beach, I couldn't touch the water. And I'm a seal, right? I couldn't touch the water. When it was over, I went out to the water and I just cleansed myself. And I felt like a little boy and I made sand angels in the sand and I served, body surfed.

And I felt so whole and cleansed. And what's funny is I came back on a Monday and I was back at work on Tuesday and the first guy I sit down with is another seal and he's struggling. He's hurting, man. And I told him what I did and we just cried together. And he's like, can you help me? And I'm like, yeah, let me introduce you to these guys, you know, et cetera. And it was the first guy that I ever treated. And then I got lucky enough a month later to go down to the Bahamas do stem cell therapy, intravenous stem cell therapy.

and that's when I felt my brain actually being repaired. I got blown up pretty good, right? Everything on my right side of the frag in my arm, right? And I felt my brain being repaired. And then I started having these epiphanies of like, I get it. I get what's going on with us from a meta, because I'm educated from a metabolic standpoint, from a spiritual, from a physical, and it's bricks in a backpack, right?

Team guys can carry a fucking ton of bricks, but eventually there's more than they should be able to. More than they should be able to. And what I came to the correlation is that I believe, that that drug for the worst case scenarios of SEALs has efficacy and the you know some of the other plant-based medication but what I've really started doing is I started treating veterans and I got some money and I started going to the point where I was overwhelmed. I could only treat three to five guys a weekend and you know I'm on the phone every day and for some reason I made some Facebook posts

I told guys about my experience I don't hide it and I've always wondered why other guys who did it wouldn't speak but I'm like I'll talk right over I don't give a fuck and I started talking and guys started contacting me. You know, I'd put my story up there, and the next thing I'd get a PM. And then other guys call me like, hey, man, fucking this guy's hurt me. I'm calling him.

Every guy that I called, I never asked them how they were doing. I just said, let me tell you about what happened through me. Yeah. And I would tell them, and then they go, yeah, man, I'm in a bad place. And then I started flying to guys, and I'd fly there, and there's a couple of times

they took guns out of guys' hands. And it, it gave me, I felt a purpose. And then I called Michael Cartwright, who at that time was the owner of American Addiction Centers, the founder. And I called him, I'm like, hey, man, I, I, I'm, I can't treat enough guys. I just don't have enough space. He's like, well, I have 2,000 beds, but we don't do VA.

And so I'm like, shit, I can, I can make some phone calls. And so one of the senior advisor, the secretary of the VA is an SF dude. And I know him. And so I called him, I'm like, hey, Scotty, like, how do, how do we navigate this? I knew there's a billion dollars. how do we get to that funding to work? Our guys can go to therapy. Yeah.

And we navigated that thing to the first check that we got was 12 million. And now we've treated in excess of about 1,200 veterans. And that's all I do now is veteran therapy. And now all I'm doing is I was part of this amazing group of other foundations where we formed the SEAL support alliance. So a lot of these foundations kind of bicker with each other. We brought them together. And now the entire point is every one of us has SEAL support.

we're supporting. Let's get a pipeline from the time we detox them to we get them clean, to we stem cell them to hyperbaric chamber, to we change their diets, change your sleeping habits, and then get them the job placements and the elite meat and all those other things. And that's all I do now is I work in that program and I sit with seals and that. And then, you know, the other side of the house is I got lucky enough. Again, I do, I feel like just hugging you right now because you've done so much for me. I want to make sure everybody knows that, what kind of person you are. We don't have to talk about me.

Yeah. But, but, you know, I had the security company. It was very small. I had one client and, you know, he owns a sports team,

so I was lucky. But then, you know, you hooked me up with Joe. And then I kind of had this, another epiphany. I have all these guys I put through therapy. Holy shit.

I have a staff. And they're not drunk. They're fucking hardcore. And they're sitting on their couch. Like, what do I do? Who am I? Yeah.

And I put them to work. And, Now we have 37 guys on staff, you know, four different details. And I got a bunch of, I got about 20 other guys on staff, all seals, um, work for me to American addiction centers doing sober escorts. And, um, yeah, man, it just feels good to put guys to work. I mean, just like Bito, it's like my friends, you know, my friends. That's got to feel awesome, man, had that sense of purpose and seeing that impact.

Yeah. What, uh, in the time you've been doing it, are you seeing any similarities across the guys? is it, uh, TBI type stuff? Is it just, is it just the weight of the job? So what I find is,

it's the weight of the job and basically the, the number one thing that happens is that I see all the time is that guys are drinking in their 40s and 50s like they're in their 20s. And in our 20s, the way we drank and, you know, people like, I drink like,

dude, you don't go drink until six in the morning. That's what I was saying. And then go to work at 6.30. Go to work at 6.30 and do a 10 mile run at 7 a.m. Yeah. We did that. We did that every day, right?

That was our life. Well, now guys still do this. same drinking. And they dropped dead. But they aren't running. They're not P-Ting. They're not just, in general, just walking, I mean, shit, just walking out on the command. They're not countering.

Just walking from admonin and supply back to the platoon. That's a mile, right? And you won't get anything at supply. You're not getting to take, so you've got to do five trips. So what I'm finding is guys are drinking the exact same way. Therefore, their TBIs are exasperating. They stop sleeping. So now you're getting a guy, once you're under two hours worth of sleep, you're going to die.

You're within one year of your death. And so. Cool. And what's that stat? get less than two hours a night. Yeah, you're within one year of your death. No shit. Yeah.

Joe talks to that, but Dr. Williams is an Australian dog. So sleep doctor? Insane. Okay. I'll watch that one for sure. I work with two of the most brilliant doctors in the world, Dr. Larry Weinstein and Dr.

Mark Clarko, and we discuss this all the time of how our testosterone is a big deal, right? So VA gives us testosterone. They don't give you estrogen blockers. So the VA gives out testosterone? Yeah. Yeah, but they only,

they cap it like six or something. The most minimal you get, right? So guys, testosterone is shit. They've been Ferrari's their whole life. Now they stop being a Ferrari. The body has no reason to produce fuel. That's why I've been a U-Go.

My own life. I've shot for a three-cylinder, 66-square power, U-Go. And then you get depressed when you're a Dotson. Yeah. Right? And then guys get out and, you know, every wants them to go to U.S.C.

and get their MBA. Go to USC get your MBA. And then they go there, and then they go into this big, high-level job, and all of a sudden they find out the people that surround you aren't worthy of you. Oftentimes, they're just not worthy of the capability.

of what you do or the person you work for doesn't even understand your capabilities. Like I have, I took a job where the owner of the company literally would look at me and go, you don't know what you're doing, you're stupid. You're just a gym owner. You're just a gym owner. And then six months. Did he realize that in the back of your mind you were going to beat him to death with a brick? Six months later, when I cut the budget by $117 million without laying off anybody, he's like,

what did you even think about that? I'm like, because here's the deal. I'm a gym owner and I buy a toilet paper. You paid four times for the toilet paper. Yeah. Yeah. You paid four times for the copier paper. You sign contracts like everything.

And that's what I approached it. And obviously as an executive now of a big company, I approach, every contract comes across my desk. But going back to what I was doing was understanding that team guys are mission oriented. And so I've been able to find the guys who I'm treating and get them back into mission oriented jobs

in the humanitarian team as sober escorts on the security side. And some of the guys, we just had a guy, one of the guys leave the sober escort side to go back into banking. But he understood now, ready to go back into banking yeah an MBA he's brilliant he's enlisted guy he did so

rescuers for a year he's like okay I've I've seen the pain I've dealt with it I'm ready to go like cool come back when you're ready to come back and that's the thing I'm trying to educate all these guys who I talk to all the time and there's a lot of pushback man I get a lot of pushback from from the guys or from the institution institution oh we don't have a problem like you have a huge problem you have huge problem I wonder why because Anybody who has spent any time peripheral to that community, it's not like it's not right. It's right in front of your face.

You can tell that there is an issue. I wonder why they feel like there's liability of some kind for them to push back against that. I sat at a foundation dinner and listened to an admiral, a naval special war admiral say to the entire crowd, Naval Special Warfare does not have a PTSD problem. Oh, that guy should go fuck himself. And I literally was like, doesn't it call TVI more now?

I'm like, here's my phone, bro. There's like 13 overlapping symptoms between TBI and post-traumatic. stress. The problem with the problem with proletcherabatic stress and TBI is people think they're the same. You can have PTSD without having traumatic brain injury. But if you have a traumatic brain injury, your TBI is going to be, your PTSD is going to be worse. And it's getting more of the physical than them. Yeah. But it's understanding it's also reversible. You can reverse TBIs. You can change your diet. Stop drinking. I mean, it's because it's just poison. And then go get stem cell therapy, which build your white and light brain matter, gray may matter. It's just a five MEO helps build up white. It's five. Does? Yeah, fibbo. Family,

it was the only known drug to repair brain matter. And so, you know, it's, it shows you what I know. Yeah, there's, and there's so much myth. Guys is like, oh my God,

like, okay, well, I'm normal. I did it. Did you just call yourself normal? Kind of, you know,

like, I don't, I don't eat my toenage anymore. Your little hand smell of cabbage. There's no puppies and peanut butter around right now. I'm just saying, but, maybe we should define normal before we start calling ourselves normal.

You know, because I get on a tangent, but basically, The last two years of my life have been the greatest years that I could ever fathom existing. That's awesome. You know, my life is so simple. My marriage is, I can't even describe my marriage. My, the relationship I have my children, the relationship I have at work.

And I, and I give speeches to my, to my company. And I go, who here has the right to be the most biggest jerk ever? I do. Here's everything that's happened. And my goal is to make seven people smile per day. I want to make seven people smile. And I want to freaking, how do I, how do I sit from the chair I'm in? how do I make your job better?

How do I help you, you know? It's a good place to be in, man. Mental health is huge. That's an incredible turnaround in 24 months. Yeah. And you know, and what's funny is, was a gym owner, all you do is think about money,

money, money, money. I don't think about it at all. And now it's like, how happy are you to be out of the CrossFit ecosystem? Oh my God. Like, we can have an offline conversation about that. You know, you and I know some intimate details, right? And I was,

I got to be part of that. But I'm going to open a gym again, but it'll be a nonprofit and I'll all train his kids. That's cool. That's where I think you can have the most impact anyway. You know, I lucky enough to be at the Bellevue program where they made a movie and right when the game stands tall and those kids, you know, we would tell them like, you guys have no talent, you have no size, you have no ability, but we're going to go on the road to Texas,

to California, everywhere and we're going to kick these shit out of people because we play fundamental football. And we did. And man, those kids are so successful post-colle. college. You know, that's awesome. That is awesome. What's next for you two? For me, I'll go so he can go last, because you can have a big deal. What's next for me is I'm debating whether I stay in corporate America in the coming years because my executive, you know, leadership stuff, the Spartan 7 Adventures. Yeah, shit, we haven't even touched on that.

You might as well explain what that is. So yeah, so my company started Spartan 7 Adventures. And full disclosure, people, he's never invited me to an event. so he can go fuck himself. Same. Oh, no, shit. So two out of the three of us here, don't even know anything about this. I thought we were his friends.

It's no big, it's fine. I'm worried about that brick coming one way. Let's get talking about that Spartan 8 thing. Five minute abs. So Spartan 7 adventure used to be called Turning Steel. I invented it by accident. I worked for SealFit, and I always look at the owner of SealFit,

and I go, what's next? What's next? And he's just like, whoa, yoga. I'm like, that's fucking stupid. Right? Like, what's next? These guys came to Seal Fit to learn seal shit. So I opened Turning Steel, took guys to Montana for two weeks,

shot, land nav, all this stuff. And I found out that businessman can't get away for two weeks. You're doing that once or twice a year. All right? And it doesn't matter how much you charge, you're never going to make any money. So I sold that company. And then I opened up Spartan 7.

And basically it was all these business guys that call me and go, hey, teach me to shoot. I'm like, I can't teach you shoot in an hour. And so, but I can teach you over a weekend. Yeah. And even then in the weekend, there's, we're going to scratch the surface. But we can do it more effectively.

What I'm not going to do is take you to Joe Schmo's gun range. You'll give you a false sense of security. I'm going to take you to the greatest gun range I've ever been to, which is closed to the public. And while we're there, I'm going to bring the Brian Contosh, the Chris Smith, the Tom Shea,

these guys who are bestselling authors, these guys who charge 50,000 to get on stage to talk, and you're going to be there for a weekend. All your gear is there, all your ammo. All you've got to do is fly there and everything else is taking care of, executive chef to the nine.

And we're going to have fun in. These guys are going to be up on stage for an hour talking. They're there with you. for the weekend. Which is that to me and the speaking that I have done, if there's an event before or after or the chance to actually hang out. Because I always end with the Q&A, and there might be one dude with a set who's going to be like raising his hand,

but the number of questions actually in the audience are voluminous. So then you get to hang out and you can actually individualize the attention that you're giving to people because they're going to ask you, tell me about leadership. They're like, hey, man, this is what's going on where what I'm at. Let me fill you in on what's happening. And what do you think? You know, one, obviously the latter being much more impactful than the former.

Yeah. You know, the great thing is, is I've done these events now for some of the biggest business leaders in the world. And one thing, one of the best feedbacks I get is, is when I'm briefing, like, hey, here's what, here's what, here's going to happen. Here's a timeline. Boom, boom, boom, boom. But like, how did you do that?

Like, what do you mean? They're like, you just, you've got like the entire mission plan out like that. I'm like, I'm a team guy. All of us do that. Yeah, it's day one. Problem problem solvance. And I've gotten. A lot of guys have rolled off from these events, Jason Torrey, Jason Tushin, to roll off into executive leadership's roles in major companies.

And that's probably happened about 10 times. And it gives me a chance to hang out my bros. And when you talk about leadership, you know, there's a lot of guys out there doing talking about leadership. It's great. Here's a book. Here's an hour. We're going to show you. Over the course of a weekend, I'm just going to say, this is what front sight focus means with a weapon in life.

Yeah. And, you know, here's why it's communication is so valuable in a killhouse, you know, because I tell you. I take the clients in the killhouse and you know, you want to learn driving skills. I hope you have good insurance. We go drive. We shoot U-TMs. Jesus. I'm not that cool, right?

And then, you know, just teaching all the skills that we take for granted. But showing them teamwork, communication, et cetera. And that's what Spartan Seven Adventures has been. And, you know, and I've been lucky enough to never have to open up to the public. It's always been private. Probably word of mouth, I'd imagine. It's all word of mouth. All referral.

There's very little advertising. And then the clients that come understand what they're paying for. and they pay for the year. And I have them for a year, the Zoom calls, et cetera. And, you know, we've been doing it for a while. And it's, it's fun to hang out with your bros and, and teach some cool stuff. That's awesome.

So you're considering doing that full time? Yeah. I could see how it would be a draw to that. That's fun. You know, because I, I like what I do, but I could do more if I wasn't constrained. And I, whoa, if I didn't just work for one company, because there's tons of addiction treatment centers out there. And there's tons more.

veterans that I'm actually reaching. You know, and American Addiction Centers only deals with the veterans who have VA or other insurances, but there's guys who never got a VA claim in. There's guys who have no money, you know, and I'm trying to, I want to make sure that I can treat every veteran deserving first responder, et cetera.

You know, from, from, I just think that I could do more, basically, you know. And I'm not done. I feel like I've been in a hole for a long time. And now I'm out of that hole and I'm like, I want to work. I want to work, you know. Got your legs back underneath you. What about you, Bito?

Oh, man. Who knows what my life holds? I'm joking. Just a wandering puppy in the darkness after that. You know, I would keep working on this, you know, kind of back to talking about mental health and stuff like that. Like I haven't gone to Donaigua. You know, I've done some other plant medicine,

which has been really good. One of the things with the five-year MEO that I've done, is like feeling, feeling this, the most massive feeling of love you've ever felt. And that's one of the things that people talk about doing, like, coming out of it. And you feel like the most love that you know it exists, that you have for other people, you have for your family and mom, that your mom has for you as a child. Like, you know it exists. It's kind of hard to tap into.

And I think over years of doing a job that we do, you know, I'm not the most, I'm a little rough on the edges sometimes and I have a hard time, like, being affectionate at sometimes, you know, but I want to be more, right? You want to be able to tap that emotion. But that was really amazing doing that and feeling like the most overwhelming sense of love that you know exists. It's kind of cool to actually feel it.

And, you know, that existence. You felt it before in your life before. It's a cool, cool feeling. Anyway, talking about that. And then talking about the mental health thing is, you know, it's a factor of starting that little business and hiring my buddies. You know, I realized at a point like,

oh, cool, I'm surrounding myself by my friends again. that's a huge thing when you get out of teams and you transition. It's like, you know, the biggest things is, you know, guys have financial, you know, issues, right? You're getting out and you've got to find a job, especially when married and a kid and you have this pressure. So financial stress,

all these little things when you get out. And then I think, you know, there's an issue with guys going from, you have an extremely important high responsibility job. You get out, and it's like, you're out. I literally felt like I just was important and I'm completely unimportant. And I'm just a normal

civilian. Sorry, you know what I mean? But I just felt like... I think a lot of guys feel that way. Like worthless now. Like I'm not doing anything important. And I think that combined, you know, that doesn't help drinking, right? You know, that combined with

financial stress too, I think a lot of guys, that's where a lot of depression ends up coming from, not that you don't have TBI before. But guys are so good at fighting that because you have purpose, right? And you have reason, you have responsibility. And you have your best friends you love more than yourself depending on you. So you can creep crushing it, do

platoons, right? When you get out and you go, you're worthless, you feel. You know, so I think that's a bit that plays into it. Over time, you know, I was lucky enough starting to surround myself and my friends. I got a platoon space that makes knives now, you know what I mean, and my buddies. It's been really mentally healthy for me to have that brotherhood and be able to go make things with my hands, you know, and I go on trips all the time. In the years, like my time to hunt and fish, and I love that. It's, massive for me, you know, and getting to know guys through you, you know.

September, October, November should really be removed from calendar. It's just a red line for it, blocked. So should April for gopher hunting, though. I feel like there's no season on gophers and I will shoot them at any opportunity. Yeah. Prairie rats.

They say prairie dogs just to tug on your heartstrings. Like you shoot the dog. Prairie rats. You know. Anyway, you know, I'm going to keep growing this. I enjoy the time we get to spend with my friends. And I've been able to, like, super stoked. I've been able to provide jobs for buddies and then veterans

and seal buddies. It's an amazing thing to be able to do. Right. It's awesome. And then I've done a bunch of stuff with foundations and programs and raising funds and donated knives or auctioning stuff. I got really annoyed at the beginning because every seal foundation was hitting me up. Yeah.

We want a free knife. And I was like, well, fuck you. Why don't you support? I'm 100% disabled veteran getting out of 11 years. and you want me to give you a free product. I was like, where's the, you want to pull on the heart, you want to use every dead guy to pull on the heartstrings to get donations. Pull that mic away from your little whiskers.

Well, what about, you like that? You're staying in my great bearded mustache. Your bearded mustache? You know, and they're getting all these donations, but I was like, who, who's helping the 10 to 15 year guys? You know what I mean? I know that this year of Future Foundation, and, you know, what Johnny had started,

was working on helping guys with placement, and that middle ground, you know, and got to a point now that I've grown enough of the business that I can afford to do auction and help in these foundations, little foundations here and there. And I really like working with these smaller, you know, American Warriors Association, Will Spencer's running that, you know, one of the cool ones.

I got a dog recently that was trained at Melanua from a guy in Florida, awesome guy, tiny little foundation. And he hooked up Bo, Reichenbach, who just legs won't off, did a couple retired Master Chiefs from out. out east. The command, anyway, Warriors Choice Foundation, that's his.

I don't know, I'm always looking for those opportunities. And I have a ton of them to help raise funds for that, but that's always a big point in being able to grow the business to a point where you can give back, providing jobs and also giving back where you did 50 nights for folds of honor. Yeah, that's awesome. Go through boots. That's true.

It's such a good feeling to write a check to a foundation and literally going, I'm writing this check and I could go spend this shit on something else but it's like and you know the other night it came at home because you know about three weeks ago I wrote a I wrote a check

and the other night one of our guys died and it was like that's why that's why I wrote that check. Yeah. That's his family needs that money you know. Yeah that one was a shock for sure. He was in my second platoon for a bit and I think like all of us

did had our difficult times throughout the community and he was able to recover do amazing things, which I was so glad to hear about, but I had lost contact with him. But, yeah, I saw the picture. I was like, fuck. Right. Yeah, unbelievable. It was Derek Benson's birthday the other day, yesterday or day before, D-Rock.

Yeah. You know, I grew up with him up in Napa Valley, but since we were kids, you know, he went out to east. I stayed out of the West Coast. It's wild, man. You think, like, think back to your buds class, and then you go, okay, how many of those guys are still alive now? You can, like, name, like, well, you know.

Quite a few of the guys of my best. Bud's class. You know, you've, or platoons, you know, it's like, there's an amount,

that's why I, whatever, none of you guys have a fucking murder in your buds class like I did. Was that Brown? Ben Seifred. Brown and Turner were my Buds class. That's good.

That's an awesome one. Also, tell me. The under, the Turner and Brown was basically a rape murder scenario. Ah, I never got in trouble. Is that in Mexico?

No, that was in Virginia Beach. Oh, oh, I remember that one. And then Ben Seifert was him and his wife, uh, chop some people up with the Spider-Co, a subpar blade to the half-face blades

and a bathtub and then deposited the pieces in grocery store or garbage cans because Ben used to work at a grocery store, so he knew that they cycled the garbage cans out. He's in jail, it's fine. Honor man in my budge class, it's no big deal. That's why I wasn't. That's why I try not to be Honor, man.

Light on the honor. Without the H, owner me. For sure. So we're almost at a time because Kendall's going to kill us if we're not on time. But I don't know if I've ever sat down and done a podcast with just other team guys.

So probably the most common question I get. What advice would you give to somebody who wants to enter into the pipeline and follow in the footsteps that we did? Want to go into the SEAL community. That's what we'll close with. You each get to give one piece of advice. Okay, I'll go first.

First and foremost, find a good mentor who's not going to, you know, who's there to teach you what it takes to get through training, get in the teams, not just get through training. A lot of guys are out there and mentor. Like, here's how to get past training. What is it like in the teams?

Yeah. You know, and then I always tell these kids, and I make them write an essay, do you understand what seals do? And because, you know, like, and I'm making it like, well, I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, do you know what seals do? And I make sure I pause. I'm like, seals kill people. Don't, don't fucking think.

No sugarcoat it. And don't think that every seal in there is, like, going to be hugging you and kissing you. You can have these great leaders all the time, you know. Why would they be kissing you of that? That's, well, you know, sometimes. It's a newer, gentler, Navy. That's the hugging part. But was that part of your counseling?

Like, E7 Below with like an open mouth? Tessing second French. Disgusting talk. Yeah, I just. Early promote, son. You know, understand exactly what you're getting yourself into. Understand that your relationship is, I tell the dudes, there, a woman you're married to her girlfriend, say goodbye to her.

If she's there at the end, then bless her heart. I know myself, Johnny Rodriguez, I think that's the only two guys that I know from my buds class. We were married to the original people. And I didn't get married in my buds class, got married afterward. But I only been married once. And I tell them that.

And that kind of hits home to some guys. And do you understand you're going to be gone 28 days a month home for? And when you're home, you're not going to want to be home. You want to be your bros. With your buddies again. So that's my biggest thing is them to understanding what exactly you're getting yourself into. You're not going to be jumping out of planes. And when you do, you're going to be loaded down with a 200 pounds of shit.

you're going to fall out and it sucks and you do it 10 times in a day and everything that's fun is completely ruined because it's heavy, it's hot, it's cold, you're starving. Probably. Probably gonna have a floating rip cord and wake up under a white canopy. Probably.

You know, advice to those who would want to pursue a path in the community? You know, these little bastards trying to join the community. I don't know, I'm like, listen to you'd volunteer for everything and shut the fuck up. Be good at running, right?

That's on the physical side of it, just going to buds. The other side is I absolutely be like, hey, listen, like cool. It's such a cool guy job now because of every fucking, you know, you have the soap opera CBS Seals. And then you have every other movie. And some were amazing. You know, I wish I had some more when I was young.

It was just Navy Seals when the sign the option, the documentary. But it's like, yeah, the purpose of the job is to go smoke people, go hunt bad dudes, go kill bad dudes. You know what I mean? It's going to be absolutely incredible being in the teams and accomplishing that. And then you're going to have the biggest heart break ever, too. you know, so just know that that's the point of going in for all these other things.

Like, I want to, you know, fight for my country. Like, that's only going to get you the first day. You know what I mean? You're going to have to dig deeper than that. And you have to realize what you get in there for. And then when you get in also, like, be there to learn and be better. Now there's guys get in trouble to go to command.

They're a brand new guy. Just get there to try to it. And they're like, you can't talk to me like that. And they're like, can you imagine saying that in your first one. Oh, bro. I did say that my first picture. Yeah, you taped up in a long.

anything and I still was taped up. You know what I mean? Right in the mouth. I didn't have it. I was borrowing money from my mom to pay my cell phone bill as a new guy. I'm not joking because. Oh my God. I'm food stamps, bro.

I had my money. I'd get 15th, boom, early morning that my money'd come in and by, it may be four days, my platoon would spend my money. Page would spend my money. Yeah. I was okay with it. I was like, yeah, because we were with them every day. I mean, in their vehicles, it's like, I was like, mom, like,

I need $85 Can you play my cell phone bill? She's like, really? Can you just get paid? Yeah. Aren't you an E4? Yeah. By the way, that's my fault.

Spent my money. Tage was my friend. Tage was a new guy. He's my roommate. And so he'd show up to the house. I'm like, fuck out, go get beer. Don't come back without beer.

My fault. I'm sorry. That's okay. The only thing I'd add to yours is that I agree with you. People should understand what it is they're coming to do and what the job is designed. But also understand that you might not get to do any of it. You have to come in with a realistic expectation of that's what you want to do.

But if you're going to judge the quality of your life on whether or not you get to do that, you're a good chance. Statistically, that you might be incredibly disappointed. Especially now, nowadays, you know what I mean? Like, I'm lucky that my third platoon, even 2009 and 10, like, it was some hot spots. And I got to get on that, you know. But I was lucky between what's with, too, you know what I mean? And like, I know guys will stack platoons and good guys will try to get together like the real,

I always refer like the real Frogman and the seal teams, everybody else, you know. Yeah. Isn't there for the right reason. But where can people find you, boys? We all, we're, guess we're websites, Instagram guys. Yeah, I mean, mine is just, you know, half face blades. And then Spartan 7adventure.com and then Instagram, Spartan 7adventure. So no S.

Or Taco Actual. Taco Actual is my personal. If you want to get offended, go to Taco Actual. That's where the real Dan Cirillo comes out. There's Dan Cirillo and then there's Taco Actual. Perfect. Gentlemen, that was two hours. Thank you.

Awesome, man. Anything else to close with? Oh, good, brother. Cool. Appreciate it. Let's get working on that Spartan Aid adventures. It's no big deal, Dan. We'll have you in this in five.

It's cool.