Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 374 - John Fussel

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

Jon Fussell is the founder and CEO of Patriot Leadership Development. John spent his entire 20-year Naval career in the Naval Special Warfare Community. After serving in leadership positions at SEAL Teams Three, Ten, Four, and SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team Two he earned an assignment to Joint Special Operations Command's Naval Special Warfare Development Group. Throughout multiple combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, he led our Nation's most elite special mission units on hundreds of direct-action combat missions. Among other awards, he has earned four Bronze Stars with Valor, and two Presidential Unit Citations. Patriot Leadership Development: https://www.patriotld.com/ Today's Sponsors: Montana Knife Company - https://www.montanaknifecompany.com/ LMNT - https://drinklmnt.com/CLEAREDHOT  

Good morning, everybody. Hope you had a good weekend. I hope you're ready for an awesome episode today. It's not very frequently that I'm able to sit down from somebody in my old career path from Naval Special Warfare. John Fussell is my guest today. Fuss is, I would say, his nickname. And he is one of four seals in his family. Let's start with that.

What kind of overachieving bullshit is that right there, all right? obviously somebody's family won the genetic lottery. I'm slightly jealous. I don't have three other brothers. My sister definitely would not have made it through training. So, you know, he's got that. He has the correct lineup, I think it would be. And although people think the sale community is small, which I guess it is in comparison to the Navy in and of itself, a lot of people, you don't know a lot of people, especially if you're separated by coasts. And honestly, if you're separated by teams, you might have have heard somebody's name or have some idea of who they are, but having never met them. And that's actually the case for Fuss and I, I'd never had the chance to really spend any

time with him. I think I had heard of him or his name, but sitting down with him for a few hours was the longest I've ever been able to sit and discuss our shared experiences. He started off enlisted as well, went to OCS or officer candidate school. So he actually has higher education. So we kind of took the same path, but he did it through actually education. himself and having a degree. I do not. I barely graduated high school and found a program that would allow me to commission absent having a degree, which I think they've shut down,

hopefully not due to myself. Storyed career ended up at a national mission level command in charge of operational and maneuvering elements. And one of the things I appreciate about the conversation with fuss is that it's not, hey, this is everything that we did Right. This is the stuff that could be the series of books or TV shows or movies. Sometimes you just got to eat the ugly stuff up front too. And I mean, I'll let him get into the story. But imagine being a part of or in charge of a hostage rescue mission or the person that you're going after dies because it's something that people in your maneuver element or the operational you're in charge of because it's something that they did. Imagine living with that having to eat that. I'll let him talk about it. that. So I enjoyed the conversation. I love connecting with people from that old world. I've said it many times. I don't ever want to be completely defined by that. I know it's inescapable to some degree. I try to tread on it very lightly. But I also love sitting down and talking about people or talking with people about their experiences. And that's what we're going to do today. Episode 374

with John Fussell, aka Fuss. Before we get into that, bear with me for a few seconds, 60 to 90 seconds. Let me pay the bills. Today's episode is brought to you by Montana Knife Company. If you've been a fan of the podcast or listened to some episodes, you might have heard the name Josh Smith. He is the founder of Montana Knife Company. First time I ever met him, he was sitting right across the table from me and filled me in on not only who he is, but what Montana Knife Company was at the time and what he wanted to grow it into. That was a few years ago, and the company that he was talking about then was a fraction of the size of what they are growing into now. Josh is the youngest master blade smith and the history of master bladesmiths. He started this company largely, I'm going to say his backyard, wasn't like in the grass, but it was in a building in his backyard and has grown it to and is continuing to grow it to something that's unbelievable.

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Montanaknifecompany.com. You won't regret it. These lines are absolutely fantastic. I'm looking at danger close now. We're chatting before the show. Team guy for 20 plus years. I don't get a shit about any of that because already the most interesting thing I want to hear about is you spending a year during COVID driving through the country. Because I don't know about you.

Sometimes I get exhausted about talking about being a seal. Yeah. Yeah. We know the same people. We kind of all did the same thing. We wore the same uniform sort of. But I've never turned around during COVID. it, so I'd rather have you unpack that to start.

Yeah, we have to get into it. Yeah. Where'd the idea come from? So. Other than probably being trapped in Virginia. My wife, she's a maniac, like most of our wives. And she, for years, had it in her head. She kept like, and she was falling in love with it on Instagram and Facebook.

And she said, that's where she got the hook was. That she got the hook. And then she would, I mean, literally, I was laughing in her face. I was like, babe, we've got three kids and two jobs and I travel. How old were your kids? So when we took off, they were 12, 10, and 8. that's actually I was if you were going to say three five and seven no that would have been a journey that was completely different our the age was really really the sweet spot the kids were old enough that they completely self-sufficient

young enough that we weren't pulling we got girl girl boy we weren't pulling our daughters away from their boyfriend so they hated us you know they were they're still small enough they can kind of jam them in a small space yeah probably found a sense of adventure they weren't at the point where they didn't think their parents were at cool yet or anything you guys wanted to do was yeah and it was I mean it was a show at a work I mean, it was, we did, we had two vehicles the whole time. So really? Caravan in it. Well, we had a, we had a small sprinter van, which you've seen a ton of them around here. We had one of those.

I think I think it's a 144 wheelbase, a smaller one. And that thing was totally tricked out. And then we had our suburban, which was our tender. And because, I mean, those, those sprinters are great for like a couple, maybe a couple with one little kid. Like, there's no storage at all, right? And we had three kids. Like, so we'd roll on days we'd drive. The suburban would just be bust into the gills with all of our crap.

Yeah. You know, and then, you know, we'd get to someplace. The sprinter would become home. Yeah. And then, you know, like when we were here, you know, we're jumping the suburban. Go to the road to the sun or. Going to the sun road. Going to the sun road.

Which is open such a short period of time. They don't clear the snow from that thing until mid-June-ish, I think. Yeah. It's one of the last, they're just carving it off off the side of the hill. I think we came through here and we took off and we were here pretty early. We took off in June. We might, well, if it was, I'm trying to think back. We've had some pretty light snow years.

Even right now we're a little bit thin. But yeah, there have been times where that's the last thing to open in Glacier Park. People listening, if you come to Glacier and you can go on the going to the sun road, you should do it. It's amazing. It's gorgeous. Yeah. So we came by week, we took off in like June of 2020. So we took off pretty early.

It happened fast. How much of a plan did you have when you departed Virginia? We, so we were, we actually living right outside Charlotte at the time. Well, I can explain how we ended up there, but we were living outside Charlotte, and my job went remote really quickly, probably a little bit quicker than most, not because I had some crystal ball. It just kind of happened that way. And I told my wife, I was like, hey, babe, remember that crazy idea you always had about driving the country that I was laughing your face about? She's like, yeah, you know, asshole. I think we can do it.

Like, let's do it. So we, I mean, we came together in a couple. Did you have a sprinter van at that time? Nope. No. Hopefully you got in early because let me tell you, the cost of Sprinter vans during the pandemic did not go down. We did. It was ridiculous.

I can tell you about, we did sell it because of that very fact. You probably broke even, I bet. We made a profit. I mean, it was criminal. I mean, we were on the road and I started, I was just checking. I didn't want to jinx myself. And I was like, damn, this thing's going up. Yeah.

Going up. And there was a point like halfway through trip. I was like, we might break even. I was like, if nothing else changed, we were going to. We sold it for about a 15% profit. after driving it all the time you did. I drove for 11 and a half months, never got it registered, sorry, government, never got registered, never had plates on it and sold it to the guy.

And the guy wanted to know if I was taking him to cleaners because there's something wrong with this. And I was like, no, he goes, why are you asking? He's like, well, your price significantly below a lot of others. And I was like, I just want to move. I mean, we can add to the bottom line if you want. I was like, I listed it 36 hours ago and I have a check in my hand right now. I'm not going to be greedy.

Yeah. The government could say no interstate travel tomorrow and I can't sell this thing. And we had just adventured for 11 months. So I'm going to put that in the wind column. Exactly. So. Wow. But as far as the plan taken off, we did start off.

My wife's a planner. I'm not. She had a, like, massive plan. And after about six weeks, we were like, I got that's too much. It's because things were changing. Like at one point we got to California. California shut down. It was during COVID.

They shut down all campgrounds. Yeah. Like fences up on the beach type stuff. Like we had all these epic campgrounds picked out. And it was like, that's a pretty decent way to social distance is to like go camping. They shut them all down. So we, after about six weeks when things were getting changed left and right,

we just said, hey, look, we just got to pick our next destination and ballpark on how long we're going to go there. And so we ended up moving roughly about every week, you know, six to ten days. We did a, we were here for about, this was early on for us. We only did about a week here, but we knew we wanted to be in Glacier for a bit. We did about a week here. We did almost a month in Yellowstone, just because that was later in the trip and we kind of figured it out.

We stayed on some friends property. Plus, it's just epic. Oh, it's amazing. My, I got a really good friend. He's just retired. His wife's still in the park service. He was the senior, whatever you want to call him, Warcom of the Rangers. He ran to Yellowstone.

He was the top, top ranger at Yellowstone. And they live right in Gardner, right outside of the park. Damn. And he just, we just got such awesome access. You know, we got to go back to see where they do the Bison program. And the actual, where they have real cowboys there, like where the real cowboys work and everything. So kids got super behind the scenes. I want to see people, what I'm here for is the people who try to pet bison's

or put their kids on bison's for photos. Oh, my God. I'm not a fan of the injuries that occur for the children. Yeah. But if a fully grown adult, once it thinks they can pet a bison, I'm not going to lie. I'm rooting for the bison. Oh, my God. Yeah.

I mean, the rangers have got all kinds of smart ass sayings. It happens there so often. The bison is the number one problem. Not the problem. The number one choice of debt. Elk goering cars because people are, you know, trying to put a Snickers bar through the windshield? I mean, nuts.

We were there. It was like National Geographic. We were staying on the property. They were like, oh, you should go in the park today for this and take a day off and going for this? There was a, you could probably Google it. There was one of the biggest bears in the park. They're all tagged. Had run across the river in these meadows area and taken down an elk.

And as soon as it happened, a couple were with, they're like, you should go check this out today. because this big bear, which we know is one of the biggest, just took down this elk. And I was like, wow, does that really happen? And they were immediately like, no, that elk definitely got hurt in the rut. Like that doesn't happen. But this dude had run across this river, killed this big elk, was laying on the riverbank.

On the other side, the Rangers are like doing traffic control because it's all these people. We were part of the problem, too. I want to see it. Yeah. But that bear laid on top of that elk for like five days. It just gorged itself. Eight slept.

Eventually he left. Two younger bears came in. Oh, for sure. They left. I think wolves came in. I mean, it was just like the cycle of eating. Out of that 11 months, did you see all the lower 48? We, not on that trip.

So my kids have actually been through all 48 at this point. We thought Alaska would be cool, but Canada would have been a challenge driving because of COVID. We did kind of a big, lazy counterclockwise loop of the country. We did, you know, having lived in New England for four years, we kind of did most of New England while we were there. So we skipped New England on that trip. We went through kind of up through Michigan. I did the Upper Peninsula. I was like, oh, see the Upper Peninsula.

I've never been there. I'm pretty, you know, nothing against anybody who lives up there. But I think that's if you're too lazy to go to Alaska to get away from the government, that's where you go. So you're upper peninsula. Like, there's nothing up there. Yeah. But there's some pretty stuff painted rock, pictured rocks is up there. There's a couple really.

So we went through there. And we probably spent seven months, Colorado and West. because we just had less experiences out there as a family. So we did a lot of time out there. It's better topographical relief, in my opinion, at least. Oh, it's amazing. Yeah, the north to south, Rocky Mountain Range is unbelievable. Yeah, it's gorgeous.

So in that 11 months, anything that sticks out of, what was your favorite? I'm sure everybody might have had something that was their favorite. What sticks out for you? As far as just beautiful places, I mean, here, like we said earlier, man, glacier is unbelievably. Yeah. Gorgeous. Yellowstone's amazing. We had great access there.

I enjoyed our time. Utah's a little quirky at times, but we went through Moab area. Unbelievable. Just gorgeous. Surface of the moon. Yeah, gorgeous stuff out there. Again, it's a quirky place. Yeah. You know, don't seem to myself living there, but we enjoyed the heck and go and see Arch's National Park and stuff like that.

Then we did a bunch of stuff in California, bopping along the coast. We did a stretch the Marine Corps base there, Hamilton, with those camping, that camping area right there on the beach. beach. Oh, I've actually camped there before, yeah. Yeah. Trusle. There's a famous surf right there, Trussels.

I think it is Trussels, yeah. And because, oh, the surfers got to come on, they got to come in underneath the railroad track. That's kind of a hidden gem there. It's for people who don't know their larger, I mean, the U.S. government owns a substantial amount of land. Oh, yeah. What do they call it? MWR, Morale, welfare and recreation.

So I think it's a website you go on. And I actually think the Camp Pendleton one, I think you might have to have a sponsor. There is a way that I think civilian. The civilian surfers just kind of cut through. The servers do, but I think people camp there sometimes. Oh, to camp there? Yeah, you can probably get a sponsor or something. Yeah.

And so there's a whole behind the scenes, I don't even know what to call it, campground network on military bases. Some of them are pretty badass. Yeah. The one in just outside of Acadia in Maine, that one, while we were in New England, and then we went there, that place was awesome, man. I think it's called Great Pond. Yeah.

Just beautiful cabins. Like, we were right on the water. It was kind of funny. We checked in. And you know, the military, you know, there was a group of like eight or ten cabins that were built in the 60s. And then there's a group from the 80s. And there was the new ones. And so we went to the new ones.

And I just randomly picked a cabin online. I was like, yeah, put me in cabin five, whatever. And we got there. And it was like maybe 10 of the new ones. And we were about, you know, 50 meters back from the pond, beautiful, really nice cabins. You know, big screened in porch. And we had a perfect view through the woods down to the water. And I was going for a run, whatever.

and I kind of was like, we're definitely going to come back here. I'm going to scout out these cabins. And so I kind of scouted all the other ones out to see if, I was like, I think we maybe stumble. I think ours is kind of the best spot. We kind of stumbled into this because the rest of them were kind of same distance back from the water, but they were all in the woods. Like you couldn't see the pond, right?

And there was these two, we shared a parking lot and these two, a driveway, but these two were, you know, 50 meters apart, 50 meters back from the water. And when you sat on both these porches, there wasn't a twig. There wasn't a tiniest bit of foliage in your. your way. There was trees everywhere. Yeah. But they were all, they were all pruned up like 30 feet high. So you could see. So you could see right down to the water. And I went to ask the woman who ran the front desk. And I was like, hey, we're going to come back. I was like, I think we kind of stumbled into a really good. Oh, she goes, oh, you're in building, whatever. That's the best woman.

I was like, why did I notice? Why did you all clear just that one? And she said, oh, well, we didn't. I was like, okay, well, who did? She said, last year, there was a regular Navy chiefs initiation and all the senior chiefs and master chiefs stayed in that one. And all the new grunts stayed in this one. And she said they would wake up every morning and have their coffee. And it was just free labor. They were like, trim that, trim that, trim that. They sat there and I was like, well, you need to rotate those guys around every year.

The hidden underbelly of how things actually get done in the military. Free labor in the military. Yeah. You are about to be promoted to the same rank I am. So let's give you additional duties that are probably outside of my scope of responsibility to give you. So you suffer like I did. Yeah. Yeah.

It's a good system. It is a good system. Not really. I mean, pros and cons, I guess. People talk a lot about hazing. I don't know about your experience. Did you hazed when you came in? Nothing too crazy.

Nothing too crazy for me either. But once I realized what the mechanism was, and I'm not advocating for it, even though I do think it has a place, I think the intent behind it really matters because I think you can use it as something that brings people together. Or you could hammer somebody and hurt them. I've seen both. But if they hadn't have hazed me the way they were the rest of the guys in my first platoon, I actually would have felt left out. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I mean, I probably got worse hazing.

I wrestled all through high school and college. Yeah. Probably had worse hazing on my wrestling teams, personally. Yeah. But we still got a little welcome to the team kind of stuff. For sure. Yeah. Tortured, made to do dumb things, you know.

Yeah, that's putting it politely, for sure. How did you find the teams? I know you come from military family. Even though you're saying, you have a cousin that was a team guy? I had a bunch of it was actually. We, nobody, I'm the first knucklehead to make it a full career. Yeah. And that was just timing, 9-11 and everything, you know.

But you had family in the teams prior to that? Yeah, so my dad, my old man was a Green Beret. Yeah. Vietnam era. He was in just for a few years. What was his thoughts on you? When I decided to go in the military, he was not a big fan of the Army. He was like, you should talk to your uncle.

My uncle was in the SEAL teams, Vietnam Team 1. He goes, you should talk to your uncle. I think he had a better experience there in the SEAL teams. And I did with the SF. And then grandfather fought in World War II, had a couple of Marines. I came through a couple years after me and my brother came through. A few years later then, my cousin, cousin came through. So a few of us, you know.

But I like, it's funny, man, like, I hear guys, and I've talked to have friends. Like, oh, dude, I know I wanted to be seen when I was like eight years old, you know. And that was not the case for me. I mean, I was eight. I wanted to be, you know, a cowboy. Firefighter cowboy dinosaur, you know. And it was, I was just totally focused on wrestling. I was like halfway through undergrad.

And started looking where my buddies were going, what was going on. Kind of felt, I should serve. I'll do my peace. I'll do a few years. and started doing my homework on the military, what I could do, looked at flying for the Marine Corps for a little bit, kind of ruled that out. I got a good friend, he's a retired colonel, Cobra Pilot guy. He was just ahead of me. But that wasn't really the fit for me.

And then started exploring everything special. That's when I talked to my old man, you know, led to that. And I ended up kind of getting my life there. And that was kind of funny. But I almost dropped out of college to do it. What were you studying in college? Communications, which I was 19. 75% studying wrestling and 5% had to stay eligible to keep wrestling.

Where were you wrestling? At Old Dominion. Okay. So grew up in Virginia. Wrestlers are a hard breed. Yeah, we're weird. I mean, your word's not mine. I'm not going to disagree with them in many ways.

My introduction to grappling was six plus years ago through jihitsu, which let me tell you. Jiu-jitsu and wrestling are an interesting battle when you find somebody who doesn't know any jiu-jitsu but they wrestle for a long time. They're a nightmare. Oh, I'm sure. And for as much as people want to think jiu-jitsu is this magical art that solves all problems,

run into a collegiate wrestler. Let me know how the fuck that goes. I was a mediocre collegiate wrestling. But it was funny in the teams, man, like so many dudes starting get into it. So many guys were getting into it when I was in that I had an allergic reaction to it. And then when I finally found it,

six plus years ago, if I could have kicked myself in the back of the head for being such an idiot. Because all I had wish is that I had found it earlier. But it was literally, it was such the soup de jour catching fire that I'm like, whatever that is, I don't like it. This is like a cult right now. I can't. I didn't even know anything about it. I don't go to gay pajama wrestling or something. Like as you getting into it, I mean, you know the deal.

And you get these athletic dudes that gravitates or something. The learning curve does this. Well, our old job rewarded. ability to learn. Yeah. I mean, let's be honest. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah. So you put that towards a martial art or a skill set. It lends itself to good performance over a short and long period of time. And you're surrounded by, I mean, you've got, oh, I mean, you got hugely into skydiving. You're surrounded by the best skydivers in the world. Well, and then out of the command, they're like, how much money would you like to hire the best skydivers in the world and you'll only train with them? And would 50 hours in the wind tunnel be enough for just you? And I'm like, yes.

Yeah. I mean, I was thinking 100, but I was. Okay, 50 will do it. And they would say, okay, how about $100 to $50? Yeah. I don't know what our budget is here, but I deeply appreciate the system. Yeah, yeah. I remember guys started when guys were really getting into the, you know, martial arts, mixed martial arts and everything.

And I remember being on deployment a couple times, guys kind of got winning in my background and wrestling. I'm like, hey, why don't you come in here? You know, just show us some takeouts up. They didn't know what they're asking for. Well, I never really did. I didn't roll a lot. I was like, guys, I'm not, look, I'm not. Yeah.

I was like, but if you want a little, some pointers, some take downs and let me. Yeah. And I was like, and again, I would caveat. But look, this is, this is, this is, everything I'm telling you, was like, I did this for years, but there was never a threat of being punched in the, well, rarely a threat of being punched in the face, right? So, yeah. And I remember doing, like, a basic Russian arm drag on a, I guess I can see, first name, Waco.

Yeah. So hell of a boxer. I'm not sure if you know that about him. I did not. Really good boxer. And I did a Russian arm drag on him, which is like, so muscle memory. I've done a million of them, you know. And I tell you what, it shuts down all of his boxing.

And he was like, he was like, he was like, baffled. He's like, how are you, how are you, how are you doing that? And I'm like, dude, you could you could knock my head off right now if you felt like it. Unless you climbed on his back. Yeah. And he would never be able to get you off. Yeah. But, uh, so I would jump in time to time, like give a pointer here and there, but I never really. I kind of wrapped up wrestling and kind of got into rock climbing and, you know, I got the, what do you think you would have done? If you would, if the military wasn't an option with a communication degree, I feel like it's broad enough, you probably could have gone into any industry. What were you looking at?

I mean, way back, starting undergrad, like, getting into sports casting or something like that. Okay. You know, nothing, nothing. And then no huge, you know, I started seeing where people were going from, you know, Oda is a decent school. It's not a great school. I started seeing where people in my major were kind of going and they were going in this kind of kind of grunt level at the local news station and stuff.

I was like, yeah, I want to do something a little bit more exciting than that. When you first started looking at the military, I mean, you already said, you know, you did 20 in a wake up. Did you think it was going to be that? Or did you think you were just going to go test the waters? Do you have any idea that you'd make a career out of it? No, I didn't. I mean, so I did my homework. I mentioned I got my life threatened.

I should tell you that. So I was, I do my homework, and I happened to grow up in Virginia Beach, so I wrestle with a little to you. And so just by default, through rock climbing, I met some team guys. And so I had some pretty good, you know, guys giving me some advice on what to do. At least some direct baby. Yeah, yeah. I had none of that growing up in Santa Cruz.

Right. Yeah. And I mean, and I, it just so happened, the guys that I knew. And I didn't know this at the time. They were all like, you know, warrants or senior enlisted dudes. There wasn't a whole lot of officers in that crowd that I knew. But I really didn't know the difference at that point. Yeah.

But I started doing homework. And I was like, yeah, I'm going to do this. And then they were like, I mean, look, you're going to have your college degree. But you could go the officer route. But they're like, you know, and they started explaining, you know, this is what your path look like. You do that. And they're like, you know, if you're enlisted, you decide later you want to become an officer, you can always do that.

But you can't do the other. And I was like, all right. So, you know, I went the enlisted route. and I don't know. Did I have plans to do 20? Absolutely not. I mean, I think anybody coming in with their 20-year plan, I'd steer away from that guy, you know.

I was like, oh, I'll do my piece, see where it takes us. I actually think having gone back as a Bud's instructor for 18 months, which was of the duty stations that I had, that was the one I didn't want to do. Oh, really? Well, I got injured to the command. Yeah. And, God, that's a story in and of itself that.

Note to anybody listening, a master chief is an E9. As an E6, you probably shouldn't tell him to go fuck himself in his office. Yeah, that didn't go well. However, in my defense, I feel like he deserved it because we had had an agreement about have taken some time off after getting injured. And then when he told me that I hadn't done enough, I had choice words that terminated in me having a chief sport. and then getting to choose a duty station out of the command,

which I needed it anyway, because I needed to rehab. Yeah. So I didn't want to go as an instructor. And I tell you what, man, looking back on that 18 months, I think it was the most rewarding tour that I had. Getting to see and understand the training that, I don't know about you, it didn't make, the training didn't make any sense to me when we were going through. One day you do this, and it's a high five.

One day you do the same thing, and then you get absolutely hammered for it. Why are we doing these stupid evolutions? Why are we doing it? I guess I didn't think they were stupid at the time. I just didn't understand them. Like, none of it made sense. You go back as an instructor, especially after 9-11, you're like, this makes a lot. Which phase for you?

Second. Second phase. Yeah. Like, this one makes a lot more sense. I was glad that I did it. I was glad that I had that experience and got to see kind of into that pipeline. But I also got to spend, the biggest difference. And this is what was fascinating for me is, what class did you go through?

I started in 203. Yeah. I had a role. I did everything but the island with 203. Okay. And then literally the day, my first. the class was going to the island. I had to roll. I was all busted up. I had a bunch of stretch fractures. And I did, uh, actually do it. I had to do a double roll. If I had to do 205. So you were

actually a year and a few months before me. I was in 212. So, so classes a year, just over a year. Yep. Yep. Do you remember any of the guys in your class that quit? I remember the moments. Moments, we had a set of twins and one of the twins quit. And they drive the end. And did you ever talk to him again? You know what I mean? Like, they just vanished. You're, and for people, my class, started with 180. What's your start with? I think we were 178. Yeah. And the next thing it's like, Cof, these people are gone. You run to chow. Yeah. And you're like, hey, Bob, what's going on?

This day sucks. You're like, yeah, I know, yesterday sucked. And I bet tomorrow's going to suck too. And you're just like, singing these stupid C-130 rolling down the strip songs. Yeah. And then Bob's gone. Yep. And you're like, never to be seen again. Never be seen again. And if I'm going to be honest, didn't care. Yeah. As an instructor, you get to spend some time with Bob.

Yeah. And you get to talk to him about why they quit. And the majority of the, of the kids, which is what they were. There were some older people that came through. There was a variety of different reasons, but the number one theme that I heard from student after student after student after student was they got overwhelmed. Yeah.

If you come into the buds with a goal of doing 20 years in the community, I actually think you're setting yourself up for failure because you need to make it through the day. Yeah. Right? Oh, absolutely. Let's get through the pipeline. Maybe earned your Trident because when you went on through that you did STT or whatever

was. Same thing. They didn't have the curriculum of SQT that they do now. Like, let's get your bird and see if you can make through your first platoon. Somebody who, I honestly think, as an instructor, if you were to canvas people and say, what's your goals? Somebody said, if there was a kid that said, I'm going to graduate. And a guy that said, I'm going to do 20 years.

My money's going to do 20 years. My money's going to go on the kid that says, I'm going to graduate. Yeah, I want to get through this. We have a four mile run this afternoon. I want to get through that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the guy is like, I don't know if you guys know this.

I'm a pretty big deal. I'm going to redefine what it means to be a hero. And they're like, you're gone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I think you have to have the mentality going into that, you know, the whole Cortez, burn your ships kind of thing. Yeah. That was my mentality. And I think most dudes that make it through through it through. It's plenty of guys that come back and go through it later when they're a little bit more mature.

Which isn't talked about a lot. It's not talked about often. Most people think it's just graduate or quit, which, I mean, those are a part of the options that happen in between there is a med role, performance role, and an administrative drop, essentially. but it's it's forgotten often that just because you have that one failure, which some people end up defining their life by that failure, they just can't move past that. You can pick yourself up and learn from that and go back. There have been, and there's another thing too, nobody gives this shit in the teams. I never once asked a guy, hey man, how many times do you take you to get through buds?

Right. Nobody gives a shit. And some of the best people, the best operators that was ever round, come to find out later on, they did go through twice. Or they're on their third time. I'm like, oh, cool. I don't know. This is completely me, just making up a fact or whatever.

I would, I would speculate that of the guys that go through a second time, it was just a maturity thing. You went through pretty young, right? Yes. Yeah. I was barely 19. Yeah. I mean, the numbers are stacked against you. Yeah.

You know, 18 and 19 year olds don't. Fortunately, I'm an idiot. And so I had nothing also else to do. Yeah. But I bet you the guys of the guys that retread, I bet you a lot. We're 18 or 19. We're a little bit too immature. Yeah.

Come back one in 23. They're good to go. Well, they also come back with probably four years of experience at a shore duty or a float billet that they didn't want joining the military. So they also now understand what's waiting for them if they were to make that choice again in a low moment. I think if they come from that world, their odds are much, much higher of making it through. Yeah. No, I remember guys that we were going through Buz with that had been in the fleet for a while. They were in that exact.

They're like, dude, you don't know how bad it is out there. I was just going to suck it up. Common sentiment was, I'm not going back. Yeah, get through this training. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not talking shit at all about the Fleet Navy. They do an amazing job, but it is different.

Oh, for sure. Yeah. For sure. But yeah. So, I mean, like I said, I started doing my homework on what I could do almost. I was like I'd been wrestling forever. And I kind of got hurt pretty good by junior year. Nothing show stopping.

But I was ready to drop out. I was like, I'm done with this. I'm going to drop out of college. And because we knew a bunch of guys in the teams, not a whole bunch of a few. I had a friend He was like And I didn't know at the time

He was a blue mesh chief And I had no idea where No idea where he really worked or anything And he's like Hey I heard you're gonna go That's awesome let's go You know let's go out and have a beer You know

So I'm you know Dumb college kid He's like drags me out He's like go out and go down You know We got out the ocean front All the old school The raven

All the old school bars He's dragging me around And I'm like I mean that was the stomping ground Yeah And I'm hanging out with him And two other guys And the whole night

And he just pumped me up, oh, you got to do this. You should prep. You should do this. You make sure you're doing this. And it didn't be all this great advice and everything. I was like, oh, this was awesome. I was all pumped up. And then like, you know, probably around near last call.

He's like, you know what else you need to do? I was like, what's that? I'm all pumped. He's like, you need to go back to O'DU and register for your senior year tomorrow. And I was like, oh. Before I could even get my sigh out. And he's like, and if you don't, you see those two dudes over there, they're going to drag in the parking lot and kick the shit out of you. And college it is.

Yeah. And I looked over those two. doing the one guy who he would know I would tell you later. But he looked at me like I was a pork chop. He was like, hey man, master you says I got to kick your ass. It's going to happen. So college it is. I mean, their advice was correct.

It's not like the college tree isn't going to serve you well. So you go in, roll right before the island. God, that sucks because as a student, I'm going to say you're in the tunnel. You even know you're in the tunnel. You can see a little bit of at the end. I mean, the stats, if you make it through pool comp, the stats, they favor. Oh, yeah. Graduated.

Oh, yeah. Like, not a guarantee, but, you know. It's got to be high 90s. I mean, maybe start looking at the first Trident you want to buy. You know, it's hard to say. I'm not saying buy it, even because I actually do know a guy who did that. Dude, I know a guy who got kicked out of buds. He got sent to medical on North Island.

He came back in his camis. And one of the instructors caught the fact that there were three pinholes over his left breast pocket. No kidding. Yeah. So immediately a room inspection was set up and guess what they found, a Trident that he finally owned up after. I mean, who the fuck first off is looking for three pinholes, right? Like, yeah, it's a psycho. Yeah. But I mean, and you know what I'm talking about. Everybody else is like, what are you guys talking about? A distinct pattern that holds the metal trident on your chest. Eventually we switched to a, I actually had a Trident that was metal, but black. I wish I had a hold on to that thing. I think I have won somewhere in my. So cool. stuff. Yeah. I even had one I think my first

trident I ever got when we went to Thailand at Team 5 we did the ruby in the eye or where it was don't have a fucking clue where that thing is. I don't even know

if I could find anything associated with the military at this point. But yeah, the kid went to medical but slapped a trident on as a bud student.

He was not a training for long. Yeah. That's not going to last. No. Yeah, we're talking about the heat coming down on.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, the instructors saw it, noticed it, made a comment, and it was as if the chowbell had been rung. And instructors just, guys, I had never seen came out of the woodwork and they're blue and golds. Oh, yeah. And that's a good moment for everybody else in the class because you're like, oh, you're not beating us right now. You're just like, I'll be over here being quiet. Totally. It's like Green Team when someone argues the cadre.

You keep arguing, I'm going to be over here. You know, that actually happened in my class too. and I don't understand why anybody ever would think that's a good idea. Your only response is, Roger that, got it, won't happen again. I'm an idiot. I'll fix it. Totally. Yeah.

Even if you're right. Yeah. Roger that. I got it. Not to mention the guy who's telling you that your footwork was wrong was only looking at your feet. Yeah. There was 17 other dudes looking at the other stuff. Some people for us take different paths through life.

Yeah. You know what I mean? All right. So get through 205. Walk me through your career. Oh, man. What did you put on your dream sheet? Well, unlike you, I, we had the same sheet.

I put all the East Coast. Okay. Well, how come you got it? Are you better than me? What the fuck? Basically, my whole class got it. Yeah, it's because that's just, like we're saying on the walkover. So in second phase, it was for my class least.

They say, hey, it's looking good for you guys. Yeah. You know, here's your dream sheet. Put down the team that you think you'd want to go to. Santa Cruz guy, 2,4 and 8. For those of you listening, don't know about the teams, even on the West. Or even on the East Coast, odds on the West. So 1, 3 and 5 at the time.

Now 7. Now 7. and 248, now 10 is on the East Coast. One of the instructors had mentioned that there were SDV commands, but he said, if given the choice between suicide or SDV, kill yourself. And I'm not a huge fan of those many subs at all. So I put down since I was from the West Coast 248. Yep.

I got five. And that's when I understood that the needs of the Navy trumped the needs of Andy. Did the bulk of your class go west coast? Man, they were split up all over the place. It was actually what? It was bulk West Coast. Probably two-thirds. Okay.

I think we were predominantly 28 guys. I think we were predominantly East Coast. May have been somewhere. I can't remember. It comes down to what the commands. But there's probably of the 28 dudes in my class, probably 14 of them put all West Coast. Yeah. You know, and they're telling your story.

It's a real dream. It's a literal dream sheet. Yeah, it's a dream sheet. Oh, that's cute. Totally. If it comes down to- is going to sort this out. Yeah.

If it comes down to we have nothing needed, sure. But yeah, I didn't say, I put all East Coast teams. I got orders to Team 4. which at the time I was thrilled. I think it was the best thing going. I mean, the team two, they had a pretty good setup, skiing around Europe. Four was doing anti-drug operations, though, right? Run around, running around the genres.

Yeah, that was close to being in the fight as you could for that back then. In the 90s. You must have graduated in 90, either late 94 or early 95? When we graduate? I think we graduated early 96. No, that's not possible because I was in 2012 and we graduated 96. Oh. No, I'm sorry, take that back.

I graduated in 97. So it is probably, yeah. It could have been 96. Because we were roughly two years apart, a little less, right? You were seven classes ahead of me. Oh, seven. No, just over a year. Yeah, so did you've been?

Just over year. Yeah, I was 96, you were 97. Yep, okay, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, uh, but yeah. At team five, we heard about the dudes at four. There were two teams that seemed to have been busy. On the West Coast, it was team three.

They were doing ARG alphas and some real world shipboardings. And they were like, and I'm not trying to talk shit about anybody, but looking back, They were highly permissive. Yeah, sure. Oh, yeah. Highly permissive, but, I mean, guys were locking and loaded and actually going on to vessels. And we would hear about anti-drug operations or interdiction operations from guys at Team 4. Yeah.

And it was, you know, everybody, you know, bone up on your Spanish. Went through a new guy, first platoon, not a clue what was going on. Didn't even understand what a workup. Like my headshed and, like, never sat me down. It's like, hey, this is a workup. We're like, okay, I got another training trip to go on. It seems like the same news are all on these trips. but you know went through a first first workup when we're running around with like mp5s and silly stuff like a whole

mustache it was pretty cool yeah mustache suit dumb flight suits particularly for diving oh my god i think the dumbest thing the dumbest thing ever like i need more drag how can i have more drag looking back though i do wish that at least once i would have roll with an mp5 on target I would have really hoped I wouldn't have had to use it given it was a 9 mil round best suited for rats Yeah But damn I ultimately did end up with an MP7 for the most time

But MP5 and MP7 are not the same No, not at all Not at all, yeah Yeah a lot of you guys were rolling MP7 I mean an MP7 It'll get it done inside of 100 but I tell you what Beyond that Yeah, yeah, it's a beasting

But as a troop commander Yeah you're going for weight for sure Plus, where they have 40-round mags? Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, a lot of bullets. I mean, they're micro, but yeah. Yeah, they'll still mess you up.

Oh, for sure. But, yeah, so I got through, you know, I went to Team 4. Actually, it's funny you mentioned. Did my first full workup and deployment. Did some J-Sat-type stuff in South America, worked with Colombians. Enjoyed, it was a good time and liked it, you know. And I got into my second work-up.

And you mentioned recently, I heard you talking about the record owner for the highest, K-Duck cast. Do you remember who that was? Yes. He was in my Green Team place. So he's Godfather, my oldest. We graduated Buzz together. His story is horrendous.

Oh, it's on William. Yeah, so we went to Green Team together. Yep. And so he would have been probably, if he hadn't gotten hurt, he probably would have been a green team or so ahead. A year or two before. He's lucky to be alive.

Oh, unbelievable. Well, Brad, you know, we lost Brad that night. Yeah. So that was my second platoon. Same guys. We were in the first platoon together. And then. You were in that platoon?

So that was, yeah, I left that platoon. So I had, so that was my same guys. We rolled over to the second platoon. And that was, that was three quarters away through the, no, that was, I don't know if it's still in the workup. It was, it was inter-out with the command. And I had left. So I had dropped exploratory package. There was a couple guys putting in for officer candidate school.

And there was two guys that were senior to me. They were doing it. And I was like, dude, I'm brand new. I'll throw a package in just to learn the process. And then I'll do it after I get a couple of platoons under my belt. And I got picked up. This was still pre-9-11? Mm-hmm.

Okay. Yep, 99. And wasn't really expecting to get picked up. I thought I was kind of going through the motions and I got picked up. If you had a crystal ball and if you had known that 9-11 was going to be around the corner, would you put that package in then? Yeah, you know, I think about the... Because for people, again, who may not understand, the enlisted path and the officer path, I think they both can be wildly enriching, but they are very different. Oh, for sure.

For sure. The enlisted path, I mean, if you want to, And you can perform at a high level. You can stay operational for a very long time. Yeah. What do you think for officers? I mean, you're going to get your, probably your AOIC or OIC. In a conventional team, your AOIC or OIC, you may get a third OIC at the beginning of that.

But they're going to probably get a troop commander. And then you're going to be like exo path, disassociate or, you know, your joint tour, all that stuff. If you don't make the, as an officer, if you don't make the jump to the command, probably the average is probably eight good operational years. Yeah. Maybe a little less. on the enlisted side, you're probably finding your fifth year at about eight years. You finally have, again, personal opinion, I would say at the five-year mark, you have a good idea of what the job is, but at eight years, especially wartime, like you are, you're up to

speed. Yeah, yeah. And then, I mean, again, my kind of recent, we talked about resetting our clock as an officer. Yeah. So, yeah, I got picked up. I got picked up for officer candid school before I thought I was going to get picked up. And then I was like, like, nothing was going on. And to your crystal ball question, I think about that.

a lot. Like so the guy who just bench him with the K duck, you know what he's doing now? No. He's in the seat, the guy who you call an asshole, he's in that seat. Okay. And then he just replaced another guy from my class, so back-to-back same class in that seat. And, um, but

those are my buddies. And I look at them, man. I love those guys and all respect in the world for their career paths, you know, if, in a different path if I'd go on that route, yeah, cool, see where it takes me, you know. Um, a bunch of, bunch of guys I went through, you know, buds with that went straight over to the command as quick as you could for the enlisted ranks. Ended up, you know, up on Robert Ridge, getting torn up on Robert's Ridge. So, you know, you got to be

careful what you wish for. Yeah, you know what I mean? That was a rough night. So, I think I would change it, man. I love my path. I got really lucky. Like, you know, you got, you got, you know, some officers, if you're lackluster, you're going to get stuck in crummy jobs. Maybe you get two good pumps and a crummy pump and then a desk job, you know, and if you're a little bit more good to go and add another two years to that. And if you do the command thing, you're going to do, J-Soc route. Yeah, I might have four or five years to that. So, I mean, I was very fortunate.

I got to be, you know, I was 17 years in before I was even slowing down, you know. That's kind of unheard of. Yeah, I got very lucky. I mean, so, and then again, 9-11, you know, adding the command of that. Yeah. What, uh, so you got picked up and then what was your duty station upon being picked up? Yeah, so you did, um, did you do the fork and knife or did you do? You must say, you did.

I did. So I picked, my commission source was through the LDO program. Yeah. Which I heard they actually don't even offer anymore because of, because of was underutilized. Yeah. But which is, it doesn't actually make sense because the package was the same as the warrant package.

And I have to believe that there's still warrants on the team. Oh, for a factor. For sure. There's a message come out. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know why. What I heard was it was just wildly underutilized, which doesn't surprise me. I think four or five people put in the year that I did.

Yeah. It just was not used much. Was that, did you go through down in Pensacola? No. They sent me to Rhode Island for four weeks. And while we were in Rhode Island, most of the instructor said, you're not going to do anything that is a value to you for this week. So just like check in on Friday.

Yeah. Here's your uniform. Basically. Yeah. I mean, they were doing everything from like legitimate like underway navigation, radar scope. It was very fleet based, which I totally get because that's what the vast majority of the people were there for.

And the guy who was with there who was a warrant, they just basically said to us like, just make sure you're still alive and check them with us on Friday. Yeah. So I did, I did phone on regular OCS. That's what I'm talking about. Officer and a gentleman. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

And it was awesome, man. I mean, it was, you know, I knew what I was getting into. It's reindeer games. You're not going to play reindeer games with us. And it is designed and is an outstanding program to scare the ever-living shit out of a young college kid who's used to sleep until 10 o'clock in the morning, you know, and you just strip them down to nothing, wake them up at 4.30. Yeah, it's the same as boot camp. Yeah, just a little bit more gentlemanly. And the DIs that run that place, I mean, they're nuts.

They're full-on nuts. but they are the most professional dudes. Like the Marine Corps doesn't goof around, man. Those guys, I think they have to have worked Paris Island before they'll even consider them to work OCS. So they're all great at what they do. They're awesome. And the Navy, I don't think we put that much room, you know,

premium on who we send there. But I went through there, all kinds of reindeer games going through that. That was hysterical, you know, because I had four young guys that were going to buds. in my class. And there you are. Yeah. Yeah.

And here comes bad influence. Yeah. And I'm like, you don't need to do that. And they were scared to death. They were like, no, dude, we're going to lose our orders to buds. It's like, no, you're not. That is possible. Yeah, you might.

Either way, I'm going out tonight. But I remember being there and like, it's like boot camp except you're living in a, you saw the things. Four man rooms. Yeah. Open doors. No doors. Big hallway.

And when I was going through, there was a couple of guys that were going to your program because it was at Pensacole then and I'd see him like tear in my eye like oh yeah you know they're like you want to go play golf like no I can't I mean again I can't speak with a deep level of articulation about the Rhode Island course I'm sure it's fantastic again it was more that our career path for the guy I went there with was very divergent for a lot of the actual material there but it was it was kind of nine to five yeah it was it was not the officer and a gentleman course yeah yeah but I remember uh I remember one night we hadn't been there long and studying for test and I hear this kid marching.

It's just marching like out of the movies, marching down the hallway. And I was like, God, man, give me a break. And I stick my head out in the hallway and I yell for the whole class. I was like, get down the hallway now. Let me get the whole class out in the hallway. They all pile out. And I said, get down.

And there's like a wreck room at the end of the hall. I was like, get down the wreck room, everybody. Drag everybody down to the wreck room. I was like, go to the windows. Put the whole class up against the wall staring out the windows. I was like, what do you see? You're like, parking lot. It's like, what's in the parking lot?

Like, nothing. It's like, who parks in that parking lot? The DIs. Okay, their cars are gone. They're gone. They're at home with their families. Everybody here needs to take a wrap off. If I catch one of you,

if I catch one of you knuckleheads marching at 10 p.m., I'm going to kill you. I'm killing myself. I was like, you're so wound tight, you're going to be terrible in the Navy. And you'll just burn out. You're going to burn out. Yeah.

So I made them relax a little bit. So we had fun. We had fun. The D.I came in. It's all time management. And reindeer games. you're a buzz instructor. Yeah.

He came in and dumped a, dump a kick the trash can down the hallway of belt buckles. And he's like, shine these. We're in the middle of studying for a test. It's going to tell it was like damage control test or whatever. We needed the night to study. And he just came in and take away some time,

you know, and throws these belts out and everybody runs it and scurries up and they start shining them. And it literally takes like 45 minutes to an hour to shine one of those to the standards that they want. It's stupid. You're shining the inside of a belt buckle with a cue tip. Strong.

Pretty, pretty dumb. And I was like, whatever. I walked down the hall with a, trash can. I was like, bring me your belt buckles. Bring me your belt. I walked down the hallway. I got recollected all of them. I was like, I'll shine them. I'll shine them. Go back to study and send my whole class back to study. And, uh, you know, put the can over in the corner. Didn't touch him. Study for my test. We all passed the test. Next day, I went to the drill instructor,

you know, knocking on the door to a silly announcement stuff. And I was like, I have a and then he goes, put it over there. And he like digs in and realize I hadn't touched any of them. They were all mess. You know, and then he just, you know, just beat me for like an hour. Yeah. Push ups and push up and jumping. You know. Sweat up. and the butt off, you know, for an hour. I'm like, okay. And he was like, he was happy that I did. He's like, get out of here.

Yeah, he understands. Good job. Not only what he was doing, but why you did what you did. Yeah. So, but, you know, it was a sidebar, but. So then you go back to the team's butter bar. Got, got through that. And then they said, hey, we need you change coast.

And you had mentioned team three and team four were kind of doing. So I'd be looking into team four. I was like, well, I did jungle thing with team four. Let's do something totally different. I had heard team three was actually doing some stuff. So I got to go to team three. And then we were, some boarding stuff.

It was nothing super sexy compared to what we were doing a decade later. Yeah. But at the time, it was kind of the best thing going. And so went to Team 3, and you were like 12, 15 years in

when you got your commission? 12. 12. Yeah. So, I mean, I was like five and it did change. I didn't want to get a commission. I was stalled out.

I got hurt when I was doing my LPO tour, and they counted it as incomplete when I got Medevac's home. So I put a chief package. Because you got shot. What were you thinking getting shot? I know. Obviously a subpar operators and seal and probably human being.

But I put a cheese package in twice. And I mean, my record, I will call my record at least average. And I finally heard, I mean, and you know the deal. They're not to the people who go to these boards and work them. They are not supposed to talk about what happened. Yeah. But I knew somebody who was there. And he basically said, hey, man, I saw what happened to your record.

And they just looked at it and they don't count your LPO two or is complete and they got wiped off the table. They're not even looking at your record for chief. So I had just gotten to buds and a guy had just started his LPO tour. And as you know, it's two years. It is short duty command. So I would have had to wait two years for him to finish. Then for me to do two more years. So now we're at four total to have it count to put my package in. Yeah. So probably five more years stuck at E6. And that's when I started looking at ways that I could if I was going to stay in, I wanted to figure out a way where I could at least continue up the ladder, even from just a pay perspective.

Yeah. And that's how I found it. It was not something that I was seeking out or had this long idea that I was going to do earlier in my career. Yeah. Yeah. For me, the interesting thing was just, I kind of saw the path to the leadership roles.

And my first thing was pretty rough. And it was some good dudes, but it wasn't that great. And we had a great deployment. We did. We had some cool stuff. But the personnel, the guys that were kind of, the guys that were two and three platoon guys, it wasn't the best bunch of mentors ever.

And I saw some pretty crummy examples of leadership. And I was like, whatever, man. I won't be the best officer in the history of this community, but I'll damn not be the worst. You know, so that was my for dang. But then, you know, I got commissioned, went to Team 3. And so my, much like the OCS reindeer games, you know, there was the prior enlisted Mustang, you know, shenanigans.

You could get away with a little bit. Like, they put me through a trident board. Did they really? Oh, yeah. Why? I don't, you know. And they put it. But it was fun because, I mean, like, and I, you know,

I started forward and did my best. Yeah. and but I was also very comfortable. You already had your trident though. You're not going to fail me. I'm like, you're going to give me, you know.

Well, you already had it. Yeah, I know. Yeah. But, um, did they let you wear it when you first got there?

Oh, no, no, okay. Oh, you mean OCS? No, no,

I was, I was already. That would be tough. Like, hey, you don't get to wear it. I'd be like, get it off. Yeah.

Yeah, not a chance. You better come try to take this off. Totally. Yeah. This was not easy to get. Yeah. I put a lot of effort into this. And just because I have a different collar device,

I'm not taking it off. I did have to take it up one with those OCS. When you first check in OCS, you can't wear anything. Do they let you put it back on at some point? Put it back on. Because I have another dumb OCS story. So we were there for, I think it was like two weeks. You couldn't wear it anything.

And they figured after about two minutes who I was. Yeah. You know, but there was a, you had to put on your dream sheet what you wanted to do. So I had SEAL teams, EOD, and pilot. And I was too old to fly, but I put it on them on them. purpose because I was only going to go to teams, you know. And the commander who was in charge of

the air side of the house, they changed the age requirement for flight. So he walked into our class and he routed off like six names and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it was, my name was on the list. Five of the guys were backseat, you know, NFL or Navy flight officers. Oh, yeah, Wizzos or something like that, whatever it is. Yeah, the bat, whatever. Not, they weren't pilots. They were naval aviators, but not pilots. And all of a sudden, they were eligible to go become pilots. So they were doing backflips. They were thrilled. And I was like, and so he called us all into his office and the next afternoon. And he's like, all, he didn't even ask. He's like, so you're going to go to medical? You got to get this done. You're just done this. And just telling us what we're

going to do. And finally, when he stops talking, I was like, sir, I'm not, I'm good. He goes, what we're talking about? I'm like, I got order. I'm going NSW. Seal teams. And I've known sign. And he just starts chewing me out. He's like, you're an idiot. You know what the washery is? You're never going to make it. I am familiar with the wash rate, yes. Yeah, I was like, yeah, and he kicks me out.

And then he called me back in like three weeks later, four weeks later to, he still wanted to fill that billet. Yeah. And at that point, I could wear my stuff. And as soon as I walked in, I had my rack on burdened everything. He's like, you smart ass. Why didn't you tell me that? I was like, because you didn't ask.

You were chewing me out. Yes. So, being in Team 3, going through a board. It was kind of funny. Just spoke my mind very openly at the board. I got to ask some questions that a brand new young incident would be. Oh, sir, I would never do that. And I was like, yeah, I would.

Probably. Yeah, I'd break that rule for sure. Yeah. And they were like, what? And I'm like, come on. Yeah, say what? But at the same time, at the back of their mind going, yeah, that's the right answer. Yeah, that's pretty much.

Yeah. Yeah. No brand new incident from Minneapolis is going to say that. But then, yeah, so I deployed almost immediately. I got there. He said little shenanigans, the ops boss. He's out now. Can you remember Kevin Wayne?

Yeah. Kevin was ops. Yeah. A maniac. He was another wrestler. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I went through Green Team with him as well. Okay.

He used to like to take a shower and then ask people and challenge them to wrestle while walking back to his cage nude. Kevin's nuts. He is out of his mind. I would lock myself in my cage with the lock on my side when he would do that because he would come into your cage. But he was the off so Ed Buds when I was there. That's when we reconnected. Yeah. He's a nickname Puma, possibly ugly man alive.

I could take the pee out of that. He was there and he's like, he's a nut. And we connected. That's the first time I met him. We connected with wrestling and we hit it off and we're hanging out. I was working for him for him like two weeks. And some guys got in trouble on deployment and sent home. And he's like, hey, give me a list.

I need a list of guys. I got to deploy somebody that can deploy immediately. They've got to be sniper communicator. Give me a list. I was like, all right. And I was a sniper and I was a communicator from my enlisted days, which were like 15 minutes ago. So I put the list and it was like five names on the list and mine was the very bottom one. And he looked at it and started chuckling.

You know, he's like, I didn't tell you to put your name on this list. I was like, well, you said sniper and call it communicator. So I threw my name on the list. And the other four guys, none of them wanted to deploy. They were like, I don't want to deploy. I'm doing, you know, I'm going to work. I'm doing it. I was like, he goes, well, will you deploy tomorrow?

I mean, basically like 36 hours. I was like, yeah, man, send me. So I got to team three. I was there for like a couple weeks and then did a quick deployment for like, like half of their deployment maybe like three or four months. got to do a little bit of the sniper overwatch for some boardings, which is pretty cool. And then came back and got into an actual workout. Yeah.

Where's your career take you from there? Well, 9-11 went down while we were there. Deployed probably like 12 days after. We didn't get over to Afghanistan. We were earmarked to go to Afghanistan. We went to Bahrain. We were there for about a week or not a week, maybe. I'm probably probably almost a month, two or three weeks over there,

gear enough to go to Afghanistan. And then the call came and they made a decision. There was some politics between my platoon commander and the guy who was in Afghanistan. They just didn't like each other. So the guy in Afghanistan was like, send me the other plane. So my platoon was ready. Our platoon commander, my platoon was ready to kill. Because we knew we weren't going to Afghanistan because this is a tough pill to swallow.

Relationship. But I mean, you know, it was the second best thing in town. Actually, that was Chris Cassidy. His name's out there. Chris Cassidy, the astronaut, retired afternoon. John now. That was his battalion that went. So they were early into Afghanistan. Chris was a great friend still. And we did the boarding thing. Did a full month, full six-month deployment of doing the boardings, which is cool. It's something to do. You know, we got to take out a bunch of ships.

I officially got my pirates' qual because we commandeered to ship one day. Is there an official qual? Well, I think if you commandeer a ship in international waters without being told you're allowed to do so, then you're a pirate. And so our boss was a little bit... I would get that on your DD-214. Yeah, I want to. Because our boss was a little bit timid about this one ship, and it kept playing cat and mouse in the Iranian motors. And he was like, you're getting that. He kept telling us to abort, and I literally turned the radio off. And I was like, guys, we're going. And we took it down. So the guys are like, I think we're pirates. Like, we are officially pirates.

That would be such a dope line on your DD-242. Pirate. Yep. So, yeah, did that. I had a great time there. And then kind of while I was on that deployment, that's one there was talk of Team 7 and Team 10 coming to be. It was a really weird turn of events. That was actually on, that was happening immediately as soon as we deployed. As soon as 9-11 went down, they were talking about adding teams. And then they did something weird.

They cut all of us that were going to eventually, and I think it was in all three teams. You probably experienced the same thing. Like they cut us to Team 7, which didn't exist. It only existed on paper. And then they cut us like TAD back. So it was a Team 3. sent the team seven on paper, but TAD for deployment to team three. It was a really weird thing.

Why would they do that? I think to justify that they could start building a command, they had to have bodies somehow. Full disclosure, I've never been good at paperwork. So I'm not the person that they would ever come to it to say, hey, how should we structure this? But that system perfectly describes the military and the bureaucracy associated with it. So like, okay, hear me out. you're going to be here but through three different paper cutouts

that will somehow allow us to do something later on but don't worry you're going to be here don't worry it's all going to work out that's the military in a nutshell so we're on that deployment knowing that we're coming back to stand up Team 7 which was going to be new when we came back

and I wanted to come back to the East Coast and I knew 10 and 7 we're going to get commissioned on the same day so basically contacted Team 10 and the detailer and said hey if it's neither here or there they're getting commissioned on the day can I come back to the East Coast and they hooked me up with that so I got to come back to Team 10

and be a plank owner that's cool team 10 yeah it was kind of cool I was like again military snafu once my buddies at all my buddies were at seven when they got commissioned and they were like hey we're talking a couple days later on phone or something like you know your name is still on the list like you're I was like what like I miss that whole dumb paper shuffle yeah they didn't take me off the list so technically for I think they fixed it later but technically for a period I was a plank owner at 10 and 7, which were commissioned on the same day.

That's awesome. So I wish I could have gotten a plaque from 7 because anybody would know would eventually be like, okay, that's impossible. Yeah. You can't be a plank owner at Team 1 and Team 2 at the same time. Or can you? Or can you? I pulled up. So, but yeah, I did that.

Got to be a plank owner at Team 10. Did a, you know, full regular workup. We did kind of Winter Warfare Workup, that whole deal deployed to Afghanistan with Team 10. that was the winter of 2003, 2004. That was the first deployment to Afghanistan with those guys. And great, great, you know, welcome to the party kind of deployment. And, yeah, that was, we were relatively, you know, relatively busy driving around, doing a bunch of, you know, trying to do the right thing.

Yeah. We were early Operation Mountain Storm kind of early phases that. We're taskworth dagger. With team three, we're taskworth dagger. But, yeah. Did that deployment, and again, like not, at that point, like, not everybody was guaranteed going to Iraq or Afghanistan. Iraq had kicked off at that point. Yeah. And I heard of Team 4 was going to Iraq, so I volunteered to go over to four.

So I did two AOC tours. And I was kind of, the first one was like, they put me, I literally got sat down back to Team 3. I got sat down by the skipper. He's like, hey, we got this guy, he's a lateral transfer. he's kind of weak. He's a mid-patoon commander. We need a strong officer in there with him from putting you in with this guy. And I'm like, dude, I'm like an E5 on steroids.

I got commissioned five minutes ago. I'm trying to figure out this whole thing out. And then we had this lat transfer guy who was a nice enough guy, but he was just not making it, you know? So let me ask you this, because I encountered some people like that. Why is the SEAL community so bad

at just solving that problem at that level and shit-kitting them? Yeah. Because what I have, seen happen is exactly what you described. They recognize, I'm not going to say it's a flaw in the leadership of the person. Let's just say that they're not well-tooled for whatever reason. Maybe it's a performance. Maybe it's a EQ or an IQ problem. Maybe it's all of those things. But it's identified. Instead of shitting that person, which would do a great service, in my opinion,

to the seal community, they bring in somebody else to buttress them, which doesn't do it as a great service to anybody. And it actually puts that person who is in the technical or the leadership role due to rank. It doesn't make them look good either, especially when the people underneath them, like the E5 mafia, which is a real thing that you will not find anymore on doctrine. Yeah. Everybody in an operational element instantaneously knows if there's a shitbag and a dude that's put into that position to help them and they stop going to the shitbag and they go to the person who's actually junior, which is directly undermining the chain of command of the military. Yeah.

Why don't we just shit camp them? Yeah. As if you and I are going to solve the problem, it's like, we've always thought that, I mean, I have some good buddies that were lateral transfers and there, I would say, one and ten figured out. I mean, we can strip the lat transfer out of that. For whatever reason, the poor leadership is identified. Yeah.

I have watched the can kicked down the road to a degree that it had consequences much later. And those consequences could have been mitigated if they made that harder decision up front. Yeah. I think that, I think, I think, weaknesses of the SEAL community, at least when I was in. But I think if you look at like, and again, I'm speaking this much informed, right? I mean, but like, I think we're reasonably informed. We've been around the community enough.

But if you look at like, if you're not cutting it as an Army Ranger, and I love the Army Rangers. Not giving anybody a hard time about a difference in. But if you're not cutting it as Army Ranger, I can kick you, you're still going to go be a soldier someplace. Yeah. I can kick you off to 80 second, 100 first, blah, blah, blah, kick you back to being a soldier. Everybody in the Army is basically a soldier at some level, right? if you're not cutting it in the seal teams, like there's, you know, you're a soldier in the seal teams. You're an assault.

You know, there's no place to put you. So I think there is a tremendous amount of pressure like, dude, it costs us over a million dollars to get this guy here. Work with him, you know. And I don't agree with it. I mean, some people can be worked with, but we all have a glass ceiling. There are just some people who aren't going to perform at that level. And I get it. The investment is there, right?

The sunken cost fallacy where we've put so much time into this guy. We've got to keep him going forward. And, you know, what's this guy going to do about? to the regular fleet navy, yes. I would rather see that than somebody lose their life because of poor leadership. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Like I would probably be a rock star in a lot of different places.

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And then my... Junker. And then the same thing happened the next time. And actually, by that point... Same thing happened to him again? No, no, to my next lieutenant team. I was kind of like the grim reaper of AOC. He's like, I don't want that guy in my OEC.

I got back-to-back, back-to-back. Patoon commanders relieved. I didn't do it. I mean, it's the same thing happened. They were like, hey, we got a prior enlisted, and then this weak officer. And he was not good. And we were going to Afghanistan.

I'm like, dude, we cannot go to Afghanistan with this dude. You know, he's a train wreck. And so he went away. Later, during my platoon commander tour, team four, I had a really weak AOIC who I had to let go. And that guy was like, he was physically hard enough to get through buds. You know, he could do some of the job, but he was just too slow to process.

He couldn't learn quickly. We talked about learning quickly. And he just wasn't cut out for it. And he was a very devout guy to each his own, right? But hey, you want to be super devout? come to the SEAL teams, stand by. You know, whatever. I've seen it go well and I've seen it be a real struggle.

Anything, I'm not talking about just religion. I think you mean no deal. Anything you want to wear in your sleeve, like people are going to torture you about, whatever they can torture you on. Especially if at any point in time you show them your underbelly. Yeah, exactly. And if a comment gets under your skin,

welcome to a flashing button the size of a pizza dish on your chest and everybody's just going to be like, yeah, yeah. That guy, that was exactly what happened. And the guys were just torturing me. And he, we finally had to let him go. And we did it very politely. That guy was a chaplain like that.

And I bet he was amazing. He's the only chaplain in the Navy. He's still wearing his strident. Good for him. That's awesome. It's probably an admiral now, for all I know. Yeah. But he was, and he went to the chaplain corn in about two seconds, you know.

I would so much rather see that than forcing a square peg into a row. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But as you and I both know, it's a great, it's a great filter. what would you describe it as? It's definitely a crucible. It's not, I can't say it's a selection course because it's basically physical tasks that you have to complete and not quit. Green Team, I would call more of a selection course because it's performance, for sure.

So what would Buds be? It's a crucible's. Yeah, it's a crucible, a filter maybe. But every, even like a pasta colander, sometimes noodles slide through. And just because you're physically tough, and you're unwilling to quit. I mean, and I think we can be honest. Let one of the SEAL team secrets out here.

Bud's is not select for intelligence. How do I know that? Because I'm sitting here. You might have a better chance of graduating if you're dumb, if I'm being honest. You're like, fuck it. I don't even know what we're doing, but this sucks, but I'm not going to quit. Next year you know, you're like, well, I've been at this for six months and now I have orders to a seal team. So point being, obviously tongue and cheek on that last part, but point being, it's not a

course that actually screens for capability as what I'll call a seal operator. No, no, for sure. And again, but as the leadership and all of this, we went through this and I never got to a leadership position. I was at 03E when I retired. The headshed should know because they went through the same program that we did that there's going to be, let's call it 5% that slides through that still has to be handled. Yeah.

I just feel like the earlier you handle that, the more it saves lives. Yeah, for sure, for sure. But the community, in my experience when I was in, was very unwilling to do that. Yeah, it's all basically the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's, yeah, it's a, and again, it's a million plus dollars to get a brand new guy on board. Work with him.

Make it work. I mean, what does it matter? I mean, when was the last time the DOD passed a audit? Survey says never. Yeah. Yeah. But they, uh... You think you're going to miss a million dollars?

Yeah. No. But buds gets you, it gets you someone who is just hard as nails. Yeah. He's never going to quit. No matter. matter what. You're not,

it's such a weird physical, I don't think when, not that's, when guys are like, oh, it's the best shape of my life come out of buds. For me,

that's kind of a red flag. I'm like, I don't think you've ever been in really good shape if that was great shape for you. You're over-trained. You're, yeah, you're like,

if I told you to put a refrigerator on your back and walk up and down to fly of steps for, until I come back, you would be able to do that. Yeah. You know, but you're not in a,

your hip flexors are smoked. Yeah, most guys have a lead some semblance of shin splints, Right. Overuse injuries on their joints. Oh, and oh, by the way, the people I'm talking about are largely in their early 20s. Yeah. Yeah.

It's destroying your body. Yeah. It doesn't really get better from there. Yeah. But that's what I'm looking for. They want someone who's like, hey, you're running, you know, I ran way too many miles on stress fractured legs and pushed it. I should have rolled way earlier than I did. But I was terrified of getting kicked out.

So I sucked it up as long as I possibly could. Super common. And then, yeah, you're just trashing yourself. But when did you decide to go or when did you put your papers in for selection? So I, let's see, I did. again comes by prior enlisted time. So we went to Iraq with Team 4 for my platoon commander. We did a regular workup and then about maybe two-thirds of the way through the workup.

They're like, hey, you're doing PSD. And we're like, yay. No one was very excited about that. Did you ever do any that? The personal security details? Yeah, I was just going to describe that for the listener. Think of it as the best civilian analogy is going to be Secret Service. Secret Service.

Yeah. Yes, the first time they pulled our green team class, we went to High Risk Sear up in Washington. and the squadron that was originally tasked with the Karzai detail, they were trying to rotate people back. So they took, and they knew that I believe it was, Dinacore was the civilian organization that was going to take over. They basically needed to bridge it for 45 to 60 days.

So we did essentially that augmenting the left, the last of the blue squadron guys that were over there. Gotcha. It is, without a doubt, I think my least favorite military role because it was completely reactive. Yeah. God, it sucks. Sorry.

No way. The, it was, yeah, we were bummed. We were bummed when we got told we were doing that. We were definitely in, like, hunting down bad guy mode, and we're excited about that. And then we got told, hey, we're going to do the top, I think it was the top seven dignitaries. Taking them over. I went home immediately and started doing all the research I could on these top seven guys. Six of them had thick British accents because they all came from money and they all grew up in the UK.

And, you know, they came back when we invaded. They're like, oh, I can be the prime minister. Cool. And one, President Talibani, he was a Kurd. And he fought Saddam's whole life. Never, you know, a guy lived in a cave when he was young. And he was the only one that was, you know, true and true that never left. So I went in the next day and volunteered.

I was like, I'd like to protect this guy. And at that point, my ops boss was like, well, you can have whatever you want. No one even cares, you know. So volunteered to take over that detail. And it ended up being, it's totally reactive. But he was the only guy that refused to live outside. He refused to live in the green zone. So we were living out in the gen pop.

We had a pretty decent compound. We were right on the Euphrates. But, you know, we had Peshmerger guards, guard in the whole perimeter. We had, you know, multiple, two or three. Two car bombs tried to come in and blow things up. And a couple of small things here and there. But it was, you know, it was reactive. It was great.

But, you know, in the end, I tried to make the best of it. And we got our guys to rotate. I was stuck doing it the whole time. That was basically his shadow. And we tried to rotate my guys. We had a DA force there to rotate the guys through, get some DAs under their belts and all that. It stands for direct action for people listening. Yeah, sorry.

Yep. And then on that, so it was on that deployment where you put in your paperwork for selection? Well, so I was, again, because being a prior enlisted guy, so typical officer is going to come through, graduate in Annapolis or whatever college they go to, go to Buzz, do all this training. And then by the time they're in their first, their first full workup, they're really, they've been commissioned about two years when they get to their first team. Yep. Maybe a 02. Yeah. So when you're, but if you're prior enlisted, you go from Officer Candid School five minutes later, you know, like I said, the,

the guys that went through Officer Candid School with me that were going to Buds, they ended up getting the teams two years later. Yeah. You know, so I went Officer Candid School, boom. So basically, when I did my Patoon Commander tour, I was two years junior to all the other Petun Commander tour that were there. What do they call that list? Just a linear list.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's so fucked up. You were two years junior, but you're operational experience. Yeah. Yeah. And it's so funny, too, because it was four of us.

I was always ranked number four out of four. Yeah. Which is just comical. Yeah. So I'm the worst guy here. Like, well, you're the junior guy. Again, it describes the beauty of the military. It's a perfect.

But, yeah, so I did that. But I was two junior at that point, really, to screen for the command. And so I knew I needed to do something else. And I had done, you know, two OEF and one OIF deployments right after 9-11. And then I want to do something different. And I kind of rolled the dice. I had done an augment. and went and didn't augment with the command.

It was just when officers go over and not just officers, people go over and they plus up. So I did that. Got to see what was going on over there, liked it. And the commanding officer that was there was coming back. At that point, they were decommissioning SDV team to the mini-subs. And I kind of rolled the dice. I was like, well, if he's going to be the skipper there, if I go there and I screen positive, maybe it'll find some mercy on my soul and let me go.

So I did roll the dice a little bit. I went to SDV, when I finished my platoon commander tour, I went to SDV school, which is cool. It's a neat. It's a miserable job. It's niche for sure. It's niche. And, I mean, there's nothing cool about being underwater for, you know, the better part of a day. You and I definitely agree upon that.

Yeah. But I got to go to the school, really cool, really cool capability. I learned it. Went to the command, was attaching a commander there. And we were just getting into our workup, and I did screen positive. And I went to see the skipper and I was like, hey, sir, I know I owe you two years here and I'll give you a rate every day of that. But I just screen positive. I was wondering by chance you might want to let me give that a shot.

And he was like, go. Awesome. Like he didn't blink. He was like, go. That was a good chess move on your part. I got a little bit lucky, but yeah. I don't know if I'd call that one luck. There was more strategy involved in that.

You were kind of tracking the person moving around. Plus that person had a deep understanding of what you're going to be getting into. Yeah. If it hadn't been a guy from the command in that seat, I don't think I would. I would have been able to pull that off. Oh, he just would have slid of your orders and said, hey, do you see this end date? Yeah. Go ahead and screen after that.

Yeah. Yeah. You do owe me two years and I will get every day. Yeah. So, yeah, did that. And then, yeah, went over to the command. And we did, uh, at the time, they were trying to get more body scissors. So they did two green teams that year.

So we did green team. We were the winter hellweight green team. We did. We classed up in January of 07. Okay. So you were, we kind of, we kind of. We kind of. We kind of.

We kind of. I left in 06. Yeah. So we were like this. Yeah, and like we were talking before, we started. I don't even remember if we had started, but yeah, people think the community is so small. But it is in comparison to the size of the Navy. But I just, you know the people you worked with and everybody else.

You might hear a name here and there, but other than that, I mean. Yeah. Well, you know people by reputation and it's just siloed. And you see guys walking around the cage space. Yeah. I always thought they should have taken the cage, because they may have done this by now. I always thought they should have, instead of all the guys from each Caribbean jammed together. I always thought they should mix all of it up.

It's an interesting concept. I think the only reason they would argue against that is if you had to do a blowout, it would be a nightmare trying to get people's geek. Could be. You'd have to get this. But there's also a nightmare when you had the entire row of guys packing out for something at the same time. Oh, for sure. When everybody's dumping into the aisle.

It's not like there's going to be a perfect solution there. But aggregating everybody into the space, that's somebody's Excel wet dream. Trying to figure out that. Yeah. I think an argument can be made for both, though. I saw that too, man. As a new guy on the East Coast, you know, the compound used to be that rectangle. And then there was some stuff that grouped, the medical-owned supply and stuff was in the middle.

But once you were in the front door of still Team 4, you could walk to STV2, Team 2 and Team 8, all in the back compound. So as new guys, like as a comms guy, if I need a batteries and you're over Team 2, I'd go over and beg you for some batteries or stealing from you or whatever. So we were interacting a whole lot more. It wasn't like that on the West Coast. Team 5. It was actually separated from Team 3 and Team 3. Team 1 by the Buds compound. Team 5 was on the northern side.

Yep. Yeah. And team 3 and 1 probably could have done that. When I got to 3 and 1 we're kind of sharing. Yeah. You'd interact a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

It was 5 and 7 where the bastard showed. Not in a bad way, but they were off on their own. Yeah. Now they've got that monster thing down the strand. Have you actually been and seen it? I haven't seen it. I haven't either. Do you have any desire to?

I mean, if I'm out there, I'll go see it. Yeah. I've got enough buddies there, you know. How long have you been out now? God, man. Coming up on a decade? I went just did a decade? or no, I got out in fall of, I was in 95 to 15, so January, January 15, I retired.

I only asked because it's, when I first got out, I really missed it. And I wanted to be, and while I was still living in San Diego, which is pros and cons, like not a total detachment from the community that you came from. Yeah. But you're also not in that community anymore. So you're, you're in the bleachers as opposed to being on the field. Yeah. The farther way I've gotten from it, and I don't say this in a bad way, I'm more and more less interested in it.

I'm so happy that they, I mean, they basically took the damn neck model and built it on the West Coast, which is fantastic. Good for them. I'm glad they had the budget. I'm glad that they're able to do that. I don't know if I have any desire to go check it out. Yeah, it's just a bunch of buildings. Yeah. I think people, even when civilians get tours, they're like, I give you tours.

It's kind of lackluster. Yeah. All the training happens away from here. Yeah. This is really just an office building with some cool toys here and there. Yeah. You know? Yeah, that's a...

Have you found that you miss it less the farther you've gotten away from being in? Or you think about it less? Yeah, probably for sure. You know, I mean, you know, I just know that there's the next generation that's just doing great and kicking ass and working their tails off and doing it. I just realized they don't need me. No, my input and usefulness is expired. No, that, I mean, that train goes so fast. They will beg and beg and beg and beg you not to get out until the second you get out.

If you leave, this community will not survive. Yeah. You come back the next day. They're like, oh, shit, we thought you were gone. We already got a guy to do your job. Yeah. I mean, the entire system is designed. Guys get wounded.

Guys get killed. No one's irrepressible. Like, you know, yeah, you're great. We'd love you to stay. But if you don't, we'll replace you in a heartbeat. They never really tell you that, though. They do tell you that you're replaceable in as many ways and forms and shapes as they can. pressure to stay in is definitely real.

I think it's valuable. And this is me looking back on a change, I guess, I wish I had had in myself that I didn't recognize. I think reminding yourself that your usefulness and expiration date is on an egg timer is probably healthy. I think it would actually, at least at the tail end of careers, help people orient towards the next. Yeah. And set them up for success. Yeah. So, yeah.

How long did you state the command for? Um, let's see, seven to the end of 11th, like just over four years. That's awesome. Yeah, it was good. So I did a few pumps with blue. And then I was actually the first, first non-plank owner at Silver. So, um, I'm assuming they just populated that squadron with people from the other ones, right? They did a pretty good job.

I can't remember exactly how they did it. But there was definitely no, like, dumping of, you know, dumping of guys we don't want. Yeah. It didn't happen that way. It was, I can't remember. I think they may have even. Well, you can't plus it up with an entire Green Team class because that would not serve the purpose either. I think they may have even said, hey, each one of you give us a troop right now.

I think I'm, I'm not even positive, but I know they did a pretty good job. It was a bunch of good dudes. They stood it up. They did a great job. Well, upon creation, it has to instantly be operationally capable. So, I mean, yeah, you can't fuck around with that. Yeah. That was, it was interesting, too.

Like, I bumped into some buddies that went there. And that was the only one that wasn't in the main building. when it first stood up. And I remember going over there, catching up with the buddy and be like, oh, let's go over normal thing, go see such and he'd never even been up on the second deck.

And I was like, God, I just drove home. Like, you guys are so isolated. They need to fix that. Yeah. Because you don't know anybody here, you know? I've heard the new compound is pretty nice. Oh, it's crazy.

Yeah, I've never been there and seen it. I've only. That's nuts. Yeah. Again, I don't know. It's interesting, too. I don't even know because of the fact that I host this podcast.

I don't even know if I'd be welcome there. People in the public eye, it's really hit or miss with guys. You know what I mean? I tried to do the best that I can and be super honest about my experience. Yeah. And I always tell, like, I did the minimum amount of time that I was obligated to do there. I didn't want to leave, but I did leave for reasons that were out of my control because I'm a shitty seal and got, you know, left in front of an AK-47 round. It's like, ah, hit me.

But, yeah, it's, uh, I say that. because I know some guys who are not welcome back because they're in the public spectacle. Yeah. It might be because of how they conduct themselves. And I just try to tread on it so lightly and be cautious. But it's another one where like the torch has been passed. I'm so stoked that they exist and that they have evolved.

And I'm just. Well, guys get really, really sensitive about basically, you know, whatever you do for life. You're trading on the brand. You know, I work today. How do you not, though? Like, no, no, I mean, that's what we do. It's a natural thing.

And you're doing it and I'm doing it. It's okay. You are some of your experiences and that's what you're building something else on. Yeah. That's who you are. But, you know, we did sign a lot of paperwork saying we wouldn't talk about certain things. Which I never do. Which you don't.

You know what I mean? And I was like, and if you want to, you know, if you're going to crank out a book, hey, share your experience. If you're going to crank out a book and talk about things other people did, people aren't going to like you very much, you know. That is correct. And then your name might end up off of a certain squadron walls. Yeah. Yeah.

So like, right. I don't know people know this, but power drills work in two directions. If you do it the right way Did you ever be touching the dragon You know Jimmy? Jimmy did a great job man Jimmy I knew God I've known Jimmy for a long time

Yeah fellow Sky I met him through And he would augment courses And God I mean he fucked himself up Before you're going to the command Oh yeah

Oh yeah He caught a wire right in the stadium You know the downplanes Were they I mean I Was it a downplane for him I mean, because I think they had separated, but it was too low. The leapfrogs went through a rash of incidents where they were talking life flights.

And he was a part of that. Oh, he was for sure part of it. Yeah. And so I will say this. I love Jimmy to death. He was a different man after that accident. Well, his wife is Kelly Kelly's flat out. This is not the dude I married.

Like he's a changed person. And then when he got her overseas, man, he went through it. Yeah. He went fucking through it. I'm so happy to see that he is off on a different path. You know about the school thing, right? You know that? He's just, I think he just graduated.

Yeah, he just graduated. It's amazing. Yeah, it's awesome. I mean, also. I went back to Yale, 54 years old as a freshman at Yale. I am sorry, young Yale undergraduates for anything that Jimmy might have said. Any feelings he may have hurt. Yeah.

But also, I'm so glad that you got exposed to him because he's awesome. Yeah, he's great. He's one of my favorite people. Yeah. But his book, he did the right way. His career path was amazing, unique, great timing, right place, right time for a bunch of amazing stuff. Didn't share anything that was, you know, on. on a level that he wasn't supposed to share,

didn't take credit for anything to didn't do. And I don't think, I don't really think anybody is a hard time for that. So I am in the final, I was this morning, shockingly enough, some days I can't sleep,

so I come in early. I did the final draft of the book that I agreed to write. Okay. There are zero war stories. Not a single fucking one. Really? Because I,

that is to me entertainment. I talked about failure. I talked about the first chapter, is how I lost my trident the first time. I like you to say the first time. I got asked once by Jocko when I was on his podcast what rank I got in the most trouble in. And I had to think about it deeply.

And my answer is I think it was an equal amount across the entire spectrum. I'm consistently in trouble. Probably not the best person to work for. And I'm sure some of my bosses were like, you motherfucker. Yeah. But the book, it's all.

is like mistakes that I made or lessons as I learned while in the seal community, it has that lens, but it's not completely, it's not a seal book. It's not like, hey, this is what Buds is and all this. But this is what I learned. And I hope that somebody else can do something with this would have having to go through the path that I did. Yeah. Zero war stories. None. Yeah, the section where I wrote about when I got shot, I think it was one paragraph. I was like, I got shot. I landed on my back end of war story. That's literally, in. No heroic actions.

I got pulled around a corner by my buddy who made the shirt that you're wearing. Evans. He literally dragged me around the corner. I argued with him about whether he should cut my pants. He's like, move your hand, like direct pressure. He's got a pair of trauma. He's my favorite pants. Fucking arguing and like, God damn it.

That's it. Like there's no heroic story or tailor or anything like that. And I was, I got asked to write that book for years and I finally did it because what the experiences that you and I have mean if we can't pass them on to somebody else. Yeah, that's fair. And I think that there's a way that you can do it without treading completely on that. But also, I earn the right to do with what I want to with my experiences, but I'm responsible for how I message that.

People are upset about that. That's my fault. Yeah. Well, I really hope that, I mean, I don't, you know, military recruiting right now, whatever it's at. Like, I hope that it can get conveyed to the next generation of guys that are on the fence. Like, I think I want to do this. Like, what an amazing, like, if you have an ounce of it in you, you, you.

You're thinking about it. I think that's going to shift. I think that is going to shift. The last four years were pretty rough on the military. And I think, I mean, I hate that there are an extension of the whip of politics as it drifts left and right. I think there is going to be a changing of the narrative of what service is and the people who do serve. I think it's going to be a little bit less of a social experiment. I think that will help.

Yeah. I think talking about, not that everybody does this, but I mean, I have. Fuck, you're young people saying, why would I want to serve in the military? This country sucks. I'm like, whoa, dude. Whoa, but why do you say that? Where did you arrive at that position? Have you ever left this country?

Have you ever seen the world beyond your fucking Instagram feed? I'm going to spend about 15 minutes in Somalia and come back. I was going to say like five, but. Yeah. No, it's crazy, man. But I just hope that, like, sharing some stories can do something good for the next generation, you know? And it's not even about the story. It's literally the title of the book is me called Drownproof, which has a tie to, you know.

Sure. And it's funny because people would think that seals can't drown. You and I both know that quite a few seals do drown, but it's about how do you survive when the world gets crazy? Yeah. That's probably the deepest lesson that I learned in 17 years in the community. How do you, A, how when you're asked to do something, which, I mean, some of the things they asked us to do were ridiculous. In hindsight, you look back and you're like, hey, asshole. And of course we're like, yes, we're going to like two bags full.

Here we go. You look back there like, wait a minute. That was stupid. Yeah. Nobody else. You guys asked us to do that because nobody else would do it, didn't you? You sons of bitches. But then you figure out how to thrive in that environment or what did we learn?

Because in my opinion, the seal community is a community full of very average people who are asked to do extraordinary things. That's fair. You know, like there are some outliers. You're like, holy shit, this dude should be stored in a. Pryo freezer and he is Captain America. For the most part, I don't know about you, I serve with people from every religious background, every upbringing, from wealth to being extremely poor, left side of the political spectrum, right side of the political spectrum, dudes that were fat as shit, dudes who were Iron Man,

capable and qualified. But at the end of the day, they were exceptionally average. They would just ask us to do wild shit. Okay. How were we able to do that? A lot of it had to do with leadership. A lot of it had to do with the training pipeline. A lot of it had to do with setting your goals, how you view your goals.

how you view your goals, how you work your way through chaotic situations. Okay, those are all valuable. Let me see if I can package this into something that somebody could do something with. Yeah, that's good. I mean, we, the problem solving that you see in the SEAL teams and particularly the command, I think, because you have a little bit more autonomy, a little bit of freedom left or right boundaries, get pushed a little bit further. It's pretty impressive, man.

I mean, that's what that's awesome. That's what is to me looking back now is non-linear problem solving. Yeah. We're going to put you into a dryer and give you a complex problem, and it's going to be tumbling. We need you to figure it out in real time. We did, got to do some pretty cool stuff. We were working out of Sharon, Afghanistan.

And great deployment and a bunch of assets. We got to do kind of a big deal thing. It was pretty cool. And because of that, there was a bunch of assets in country. And then talking about problem solving, we kind of like raised an eyebrow. Like, that was done. And these assets were still here. And they weren't going anywhere for at least a day or two, if not longer.

If we can come up with a use for those, they could become ours. Yeah. Because it's easier to leave them here than to fly them back to the U.S. I mean, let us help you save money for logistics. Exactly. I mean, I don't know about jet field costs, but probably a lot. Yeah, we still, I don't know if we cheaper, cheaper to leave it here. But we, yeah, we stood up the daytime, the day-vi-I thing.

Yeah. So we stood that up. Fucking balzy, man. That was the-day-vi-I means day vehicle interdiction. Vehicle interdictions would fall, I guess, under direct action, but. So daytime helicopter-based pounce package. I mean, we're talking, yeah, and people can look it up on YouTube if they went. I'm always super hesitant to talk about TTPs, but let's just say, you're not going to find anything on the internet that shows what it's really like.

Yeah. I can guarantee you that. But let's just say also, I mean, the electronics that we had access to turn night into day. Yeah. Which I don't know about you. I liked having the tactical advantage. Oh, yeah. When you switch out nods for sunglasses, fucking giddy up.

Yep. Yeah. No, it was definitely, man. That's it. I mean, you are, that's another level of risk. Yeah. And, uh, strap in. Yeah.

But the, that, that crew overall, just the, well, first of all we were, I mean, like, all kidding aside, we were like, we were a scalpel. We were, I mean, collateral damage was non-existent. Yeah. And we just, we went dozens and dozens of these missions just going after these guys, worse or the worst. And they were complicated, man. You're like, you know, like, you know, pack of motorcycles one day, three Suburbanes the next day,

you know, families involved, bodyguards involved. and like so clean just getting after the bad guys it was it was and it was so fast paced it was nuts and it all comes back to i would say a lead a trifecta of leadership problem solving and planning yeah i mean i think under that is of course layers of like currency competency those screening process and all of those things but again at the end of the day they present like hmm these guys realize if they drive around at night nighttime helicopters find them. Now they're driving through daytime areas and difficult places that are going to be really

dangerous. But if we want to give them, here's the problem. We need to all that problem. Figure it out. Yeah, you're right. I mean, it's just, you know, is everybody, well, regardless of what industry you're in, but you want performance. And you have to have good people.

You know, there's not a line of dudes in the SEAL teams that like, oh, yeah, I was going to play in the NFL. I ripped that contract up. Like, no, we don't have that caliber of athletes. There's a couple of dudes that are pretty, like you said, pretty exceptional. They're the outlayer. Yeah. No, they are. You got a bunch of pretty fit dudes.

And some dudes who couldn't see their dick if they were doing. And some guys who could push away from the table once in a while. You know, but yeah, you got good people and you get high functioning, cohesive teams with good or better leadership. And then that's going to get you, that's going to get you the performance. Yeah. And that's what we were very fortunate to be a part. You know, it would also be a part of something where no one's making any money, you know. And if you're, you see somebody across the compound working on a problem, you can drop it.

if you have an idea on how to make that dude be better and help him, you can drop everything you're doing and just help that guy get better. And there's no, like in the civilian award, if I just drop everything and just go help some other team, like my year-end review is not going to look good. Like, we notice that you stopped doing your job for two weeks. Oh, yeah, but Mike needed help. Yeah.

Like that doesn't work. Yeah, it's not your job. Yeah, it's not your job. So, but that happens all the time in spec ops, you know, guys like. What was, so you did four years there, how many years had you been in the team? when you left the command?

Right around the, coming up on 17. Okay, so you maybe had one more billet left. Yeah, when I left, when I left, I knew I wasn't coming back. I can talk about that if you want,

but the, I think the detailer, actually, detail is the guy who gives you your next set of orders, your job. So I was an officer with about 12 years commission time. I think we can agree

that the detailer is the dude who rotates through there. The woman who sits at the decks. I heard she's going, The famous one is gone. Yes. The little ladies in the white tennis shoes really ruled the world. She wielded so much power.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Inside of the military. Yeah, for sure. There's a reason why they rotate people through duty stations for short periods of time so you can't have this entrenched level of power. Yep. That woman probably had dirt on every admiral.

Oh, for sure. For sure. Yeah, yeah. She was always kind to me. Thank you very much. I was not going to say your name. I was always in a good graces. You know?

Yeah. But I think the detailer, because I was about 12 years commissioned service, and at that point for a regular officer, not a prior enlisted guy, you're like, okay, this guy's got 12 years. If I send him to school for two years, he'll owe me on the backside. Oh, like the Masters program? Yeah. Like, if I send him to school for two years, he'll owe me double that as a payback.

I'll get my 20 years out of this guy like that. If he's on the fence at 12, I'm going to get him for 20 or more if I send him to school. It doesn't play with you. Well, I don't, I literally think he made a mistake. I don't think he looked at my 17 years. I think he saw 12. He's like, oh, this guy's a 2,000-year group. Hey, you want to go to graduate school in Monterey?

I was like, yeah. I was like, I can't believe you're offering me this. What is that, Naval Postgraduate School? Yeah, naval post-graduate school out there in Monterey, California. It's on the other side of the Santa Cruz is up here, and that's on just the other side. Yeah. Why do you say you think or you knew you weren't going to go back when you left?

You know, the old saying you're only as good as your last op. Yeah. I really hate that saying. That's really true, though. I know. Did you have a shitty last op? We did. We did. We had a pretty rough flashed up. You can talk about it whatever level you want.

Yeah. It didn't end well. We can get into it a little bit. I knew, so that didn't go well. And it wasn't just the op. It was the aftermath, the way things were handled. That I was like, yeah, I'm not. Sorry, guys. You know, a little bit too much emperor naked in that one. And I still love the community of thought. I mean, can't say nothing. It did just a couple of bad decisions were made. And it wasn't really at the tactical. Some bad stuff happened at a tactical level. Some worse stuff happened elsewhere, you know, when wagons got surf. Who they were circling around and who was taking care of who and that kind of stuff. And I was like, no, I'm done guys.

I'm done. So I knew when I left, I was like, I was done with that. And I was so close to retirement. Yeah. I was going to say, as you were describing that situation and you see that happen, it sucks when the facade that you want it to be shatters. And you see at the end of the day, again, it's human beings. Yeah.

And they go into self-preservation mode. Yeah, that's what I. When from you and I, from the, I mean, what do they tell students from day one of butts, the person to your left and right is more important than you. Yep. And then you see way later on, because things don't always go right. And you have this, facade's not the right word. You have this idea behind a piece of glass, if you want, that you want it to be.

And then one day it gets shattered. You're like, fuck. Yeah. Yeah. It can be heartbreaking. Yeah. But also, I hope that it happens to everybody so that they understand it's just people and people aren't perfect and there's no perfect systems either. Yeah, so you're very cautious what you dedicate your life to.

Yep. Yeah, so that happened, and we can circle back to that. I left there. I think the orders to Naval Postgraduate school were almost by mistake. And they, because he saw the 12 and he didn't see the 17. So he sent me to graduate school and I came out of there with like, I was like, am I 18 and a half? half coming out of there. Technically I owed three years on the back end, which good luck getting that one out of me. Yeah. And so then I went to, I went to advanced training, so for the East Coast.

So I ran, I was the OIC, which is an executive officer tour. So I did the, I ran the, ran the East Coast schoolhouse. Was it essentially trade at? Trade at, trade at, trade at, trains and of platoons. Yeah. Advanced training, you own all the schools. Got you got you. So I mean, really, for civilian translation, I was the dean of a schoolhouse. Yeah. You know, our schoolhouse blew stuff up and jumped out of planes and did all that stuff, but 2,500 students through, I can't remember. We had 100 guys, 17 courses, whatever. So did that. Did you consider it all staying past 20?

No, it was pretty much done. It was good. I enjoyed, I was a great exit tour working there. Graduate school was fun, partnered with a couple of great buddies, one of whom is the number two guy. You may have seen him doing push-ups during the Army Navy game. He's, uh, we... It's just weird.

I don't know why people do that stuff, whatever. the number two. Yeah. I guess he's the, common on a students is the number two? I'm not sure. But he's number two guys.

A great guy. We partnered with another guy and wrote our thesis and we wrote our thesis about talent, talent identification and retention. So the identification, grooming,

and retention of high potentials. Because really in the officer ranks, we had a major, you know, retention problem. And I think that, though, comes from people,

they, I mean, about the six to eight year mark, And, you know, you're looking down the window of, okay, I wanted to come into this community not for an administrative role, largely. Yeah. And I've done my third-o. I've done my AOC. So third officer would be, honestly, it's a metric of having a lot of officers.

So you're not even, you're third in the chain of command, third-o. A-O-I-C, assistant officer in charge or two-I-C second in command. And then your OIC, you'll probably get a troop commander job. And that's probably going to be at a conventional team, your last battlefield role. Yeah. I mean, you see this in the aviation. and any of these highly, you know, higher-end things in the military, whether you're flying a jet or you're a nuke or seal teams or something like that. Nothing against anybody else in the military.

Just those groups draw in a little bit overqualified people because the job is pretty rewarding. You're talking about selling an addictive product at your coffee shop. I mean, the SEAL teams is like, you're talking about an addictive. What are you talking about? Never experienced that. Never, from that once. There's a funny old, I'll find it from Chotu, this is a funny old saying about the OSS, the precursor to the CIA. Yeah.

You ever that one? It's about, it's about how. I've heard of the OSS, but I don't know. There's an old, one of the old guys wrote this thing about how addictive it is. How could it not be? I'll find, I'll find it in TOT, but it's, our job was the most bizarre and maybe unique role on the planet. Again, and there's other military units that do exactly the same thing. I'm not saying that we're unique in that, but.

No, anybody in that realm. I mean, Army Rangers, Green Berets, Delta, you name it, like. So if you can't. a ball into that pool though. Yeah. And then you're told, hey, you got to get out of the water, but you can, you can put the towels on the, on the benches. But you can't get back in the water. Yeah.

You're going to have a retention problem. Yeah, that doesn't happen to do it. I mean, you get, you know, this incredibly addictive job that's a grind. Your pay is terrible. Yeah. You're away from your family constantly. You're burying your friends left and right. Right.

But the job is so addictive, this guy stay. And they stay and they stay and they'll eat you up. But loved it, wouldn't trade it for the world. But I think the, you get these high caliber people to come in and do it. And on the officer side, we talked earlier about the enlisted, kind of you can keep running gunner for quite a while on the enlisted ranks. Yeah. You know, I know guys in mid to late 40s still going, you know.

And the window for anybody listening, I've always equated it to pro athletics. It's very much like being in the NFL, it's, you know, 22, 23 years old, probably your average new guy, to like mid to late 30s, man. You start pushing it, you start pushing it, you know, north of 30s, eight years old, you're getting a little bit on the older side. So it's kind of like pro athletics.

And, but you get these guys come in overqualified. It's super smart flying some whizbang, you know, multi, you know, multi, a hundred million dollar jet, you know, the guy's genius, you know, flying this crazy thing or in his SEAL team's like overqualified. And then you do, you get really the stuff you love for six or eight years. And then you grab a desk. And the desk still deploys. The stay and desk, you're still going to be away from your family, but you're no longer doing all the real fun stuff that you love. No, it's, you're watching it on an ISR screen as opposed to being on the ISR screen on the other end of the sensor. And then you look at, then you look at a, you know, then got, life just catch. up with people. You know, you know, oh, my brother's a, my brother's a knucklehead, and he's working at Goldman Sachs making five times what I'm making, you know, like, I'm out of here. His boat's awesome. Yeah, you know what I started seeing the real word out there. You're like, wait a minute. You know, it was cool when I was doing the fun stuff, but I think that's, so we got into, right, and we wrote the thesis about the retention problem. Got to do some fun stuff. Because of that, I got sucked into, we overhauled that year, we overhauled the way

we did the whole interviewing process for all the young officers trying to come in, and which was really cool. The head guy, captain, was in charge. We put together a panel. We had about eight of us on the panel or seven. And kind of, we had to, we had to sort of level the playing field, and we each kind of had our lanes. I asked a lot of moral dilemma questions. And so we each had our lanes. And because, you know, we had almost a thousand applicants, and we had, we whittled that down on paper to a little under 500. So we did 400, some odd interviews over six months. and that was all the academy guys, all the Rotsie guys. Oh, just to go to NSW?

Everybody. Fire enlisted guys, everybody. And that was wild and hysterical, man. But it was kind of mind-numbing, too, because we had to ask the same stuff to make it fair. So hundreds of interviews. I'm like, here goes Bob again. He's going to ask that same question. Oh, my God.

You know, you just don't out. But the board got fun was, you know, occasionally after even one or two questions, the guy would be a resounding thumbs up or thumbs down. Like, I love this guy. in. Yeah. The first question he was in. He just knocks it over the left field wall in the first question, right?

You know what I mean? Or this guy's definitely out. You know, but we still owe him the next 45 minutes they got to finish the interview. And so those are the only ones that ever got to be kind of fun because people would kind of, they would take it in different directions and ask some fun stuff. And it was mentally

an escape for us because I'd asked the same question hundreds of times. But one in particular sticks in my head was and these guys couldn't debrief in between. They didn't see each other. but I had the co-captains, I don't know where these guys are today, co-captains of the Navy lacrosse team that came in. I just remember one guy was particularly tall,

one guy was on the short side, that's all I remember. They were both resounding thumbs up, like within two questions. And when it came in my turn, I normally asked this moral dilemma question stuff. What was your favorite question you asked? On the moral dilemma? In the category, yeah. Without getting crazy into details, I would make it very binary, and it would be a lesser of two evils.

hey, you're a troop commander. You got some guys pinned down there in a terrible situation. If you don't call in fires, they're definitely going to lose half, if not all of them. But if you do call in fires, the bad guys that are attacking our guys have run into a civilian compound. If you do calling fires, you're definitely going to be taking out some civilians. Sounds like we're going to have some civcaps. Just a binary. Well, you know, you and I, a 22-year-old kid coming out of college.

And then the whole thing is like there's no right answer to that, particularly for a kid going to have. No, it is a lesser to you. questions. But the fun part came when anybody would flip-flop. Because whatever your answer is, well, no, my guy signed on for that. They're professional. I couldn't possibly kill a civilian. You know, you're going to get destroyed.

Yeah. You know, and then if you flip-flop, now it's just worse, you know. So that was the kind of stuff I would get into. But these two guys, where they were both resounding yeses and came my turn. And I was happy that I got to ask something other than my standard questions. And I said, hey, so, and these guys, I mean, it's a naval academy. So they're very buttoned up. Yeah.

You know, it's kind of homogene, one of homogeneous crew there, all the same uniforms, all the same haircuts. And they know the deal. They know, yes, sir, no, sir, and all that stuff. The OCS guys are like, uh-huh, yeah, and they have no idea. I don't know, bro. Yeah, maybe. You know? Yeah.

I was like, you're telling the Navy captain's seal dude right now. But I said, so you're the captain of the lacrosse team. I hear that. And he's like, yes, sir. I was like, I heard that's a pretty scrappy crew you got there on that team. Like, yes, sir. My cousin played on the team. Two of my cousins played on that team.

And as I heard, it's a pretty scrappy crew. I'm like, yes, sir, pretty scrappy. I was like, I've also heard that the water polo team and the wrestling team are pretty scrappy. Is that true? They're like, yes, sir. I was like, all right, well, answer me this. If we went out to the practice field out there, and I told you I wanted your team to line up down one side line, and on the other side line, I was going to put either the wrestling team or the water polo team,

and you had to fight them. Which team would you put on the other side of the field? And without missing a beat, both of them said water polo. And so I immediately being a wrestler, I immediately, I was like, so I wrestled all through college. You're afraid of wrestlers or something? And they were like, no, sir. I was like, so why? Why water polo?

And without missing a beat, and these guys did not get to debrief in between. Almost verbatim, both of them said, sir, there's a couple guys on the team. I'd like to beat the shit out of them. More a personal grudge. To have the guts to say that at that interview was pretty cool. I like it. We had some fun. That was a fun, fun stretch.

What did you do when you got out? So, yeah, did Monterey, did the thesis, did the training, advanced training, got way into that stuff, that interview stuff. Over the course of the thesis, we went out and interviewed a whole bunch of companies on how they do retention. And I was, I wasn't job hunting at that point, but I was kind of industry shopping, just wanted to see what's out there. It's a great mechanism to do that. It was great, yeah. And we did a trip to Dallas. We did a trip to Boston, San Fran, New York.

and just interviewed a boatload of companies. And it was a boondoggle, but it was productive for the thesis. And I then just kind of dusted off a bunch of contacts I had made, reached out to a boatload of people, and just started an interview. I wanted to do something different. And I only interviewed with a couple of finance places, but I connected with this shop up in Boston, Wellington Management, which no one would really have heard of.

Everybody in finance knows them. They're very behind the scenes. They're on the by side and pretty prestigious place. It was really, really cool. but very, very collegial place. And I met some really good people there who brought me in. And more or less I got hired as like the ops boss. So I was an operations boss.

What was it about the financial sector that drew you in? I wasn't really, I wasn't some guy who was like day trading, like, you know, in the teams and stuff like that. I wasn't overly drawn to the industry. It was the people. I connected with some good people there. I interviewed with tech companies and some other shops here and there. But just had a good connection with this crew, and it seemed like a good place to get my feet wet. and I was like, well, this is probably 50-50 at best if this first job will stick or not,

but I put a lot of research into it. And ultimately, it didn't. I left there. I did three years there. So it stuck for a while. But I learned a lot. I mean, I was the business manager, which is basically like for the military and operations boss. I was operations boss for the global trading team.

So I was like right there on the desk, like right out of the movie. Like, you know, fixed income, stocks and bonds, buy trade, by trade. We had 138 people in our line. I think we had 99 traders. So basically you were the wolf of Wall Street. I was basically Leonardo DiCaprio, yes. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, we were.

Vodkaonics and cocaine for lunch. Every day. Yeah. Start your day with qualoos and eye drops. How did you know it was time to leave that job? I just, you know, it was great people. I enjoyed my time there, but realized like the path to get to what I could contribute. I would be very disruptive if they're like, this guy could lead a team here.

and we don't let people lead a team here unless you've been here for like 17 years. So even if the person who hadn't been there for 17 years could do a better job? Yeah, not going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. So that was a big part of it.

I was like, you know, this has been cool. And it wasn't, there was no hard feelings. It was by and large, really great experience, you know. It's a very self-limiting ideology for a company to have, though. Oh, yeah, for sure. For sure. Prioritizing time and saddle over performance. And generally, you're going to have the better performance out of the person

with the time and saddle and experience. but damn man what's your metric I think the metric should be this guy is fucking crushing we're making more money Frank go retire to the golf course here's your exit golden diamond parachute whatever it is you know

and I about I was disclaimer I don't know shit about the financial market so don't take any of my advice well I had been there for about I did three years there and I was probably about a year and a half in and I kind of identified like I probably should have jumped into the sales team

and so I started talking to the sales team and that was a better fit. I was trapped. I was trapped in a building, trapped in a suit every day. You know, I thought, you know, in the SEAL teams, I had a desk a few times, but you don't realize how little time your desk in the SEAL teams. Yeah. Like I'm doing two-day workouts and I'm still doing skydiving, so not really a desk job.

Yeah. And I just kind of saw the sales team. I was like, I should have done that. So I started talking to some of them. And I kind of had some connections in the, they call it Taft-Hartley world. This is the finance thing. It's Union World. Connections in the air, so I talked to the Taft-Hartley team.

I was like, I think I could help you out, you know, leverage my background, get you in front of the right people. And ultimately, they kind of slow rolled that. It wasn't going to happen, which was fine. And then I was like, I'd move. So I kind of took that concept and went out on my own and connected with a couple of other finance shops and started. I helped two different finance shops kind of build. They go like in that world, they call it a value ad team. And so I kind of helped two different shops build out their value ad team.

And the value ad team is just helping them get FaceTime with their customers. which are their customers are in that world. They're wholesalers that are trying to sell their financial products, and they're trying to sell it to financial advisors who's running your money for you. That makes sense. So I did that for a couple of years, and then the pre-van tour, pre-driving the country,

started shifting into taking some experiences that I had. I said, I hate the, you're only as good as your last op. Took that. I had taught that as a lesson learned thing when I was still in the teams a few times. And at one point I was taking my ethics training, which in the finance world is just completely cover your butt, cover CYA crap. And I was like, this got to be a better way. And I kind of saw like, hey, there's this, there's leadership development stuff,

there's team building stuff, there's ethics. And I'm kind of kind of pulled it all together. And now I'm teaching a series of courses based on all that experience. That's what you're doing modern day. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's the main focus. Where do you house that? Is, I mean, I'm assuming this is in person, or is it an online curriculum as well?

No, it's, I go to, I go to the customer. Yeah. How do they find you? Website and board a mouth, really. Well, what's your website? Patriot Leadership, LD. You had to think about that far too long. Patriot.

You're like, uh, it's Patriot leadership. The website is PatriotLD.com. Yeah. But, yeah, doing, uh, doing those courses, which are really fun. And like I said, the original court, the original one, was a mission I was in command of and it's out there. There's tons of stuff on the internet about it, so not speaking on a level

I shouldn't, but I'll also not get two. It's a heavy subject. We was a hostage rescue that ended poorly. Mistakes were made. The hostage was inadvertently killed by us and bad decision that caused that to happen

and a couple of bad decisions after that snowballed into making it a bigger deal than it could have could have ended very quickly. Mistakes are made, an individual who, you know, messed up and took the hostage his life. If it just come clean immediately, probably would have changed the whole path, but panicked. Did that person know immediately?

Yeah. Okay. Unfortunately. Yeah. But complete panic mode. Yeah. I have peripheral knowledge. Like I said, I have a mutual friend that I went through selection with who was right there with you.

And yeah, I had never asked him that. I had more knowledge about when he encountered that information. I wasn't aware if the person who directly responsible knew in the moment. And I just, you know, I want it back and started. building these courses out and that's the first of several now of different missions. They're not all missions that ended poorly, but a lot of them are because that's where we kind of learn these rich lessons learned, you know? And I saw that. I was like, you know, there's, there's so many deep lessons learned about this and it's human behavior, you know,

and it's, and I've got to be able to take this to any mission. And I've taken it to finance shops, to NASCAR, to transportation companies to military supply companies, like, you name it. It works, whatever, again, wherever you want performance, you want that high, high functioning teams with good leadership. Like, that's what this is kind of all about. How is it received when you present? Really well, man. And people love it.

And the thing about it's like, it's getting people, I got, I kind of nerded out and getting into not like the, you know, adult learning theory is kind of the whole of rage, you know, how do we learn? I went back and I went back and did my, my MBA a couple of years ago, right before the pandemic, went back and did, I went to Duke, which is an amazing program. I shout out to all my classmates who carried me through that program like you read about, barely survived that. But started seeing different case study models.

and how they did the teaching. And I started paying attention about when I did do well in a class, they're like how I learned personally. And it's just like it's an adult learning theory. You know, it's like we learned by experiences. We learned by storytelling, experiential stuff. And so I kind of went that model. And it's also fun because, you know,

basing the courses we teach on real world stuff, that's in our world, you know, old hat. But like it gets people so out of their comfort zone. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? You're up there looking like you're a monkey juggling. and chainsaws. Yeah.

I'm sorry, what did you just describe? How much time did you have to make that decision? And what hung in the balance? Yeah. You had five seconds and lives. You're lucky. Yeah.

And, but yeah, that, that and it's all, you know, if you took, you name the industry, whatever, man, anybody who's had a snafu lately, you know, airline industry, there's been a few snafos. You take a bunch of people from the airline industry and you build a case study and a course around a mistake that's made in the airline industry. They know the business too well. They know that industry too well. It's not, you're not, you take a, you take a, you.

You'd be able to case around something in the operating room and you teach you to a bunch of doctors, a bunch of surgeons. Like they know, they know the right answer. Yeah. Like, well, I just wouldn't do that. Or I would do this. Or you can, lessor of two evils. You're going to have to, you know, but by getting people totally out of their comfort zone, you do those rich lessons learned that are just completely conveiable. So it's been super fun, man.

Yeah. You can nest that knowledge inside of a story is not the right word, a scenario or a situation that has nothing to do with what they do for a living, but can have immense impact. Do you enjoy public speaking and presenting? Because I'm assuming that's how you do it. Are you on stage or when you present these? Are you in more of a classroom setting where larger groups of people? Is it a mix of both? Mixed both, really.

Those are smaller groups, which I really enjoy. I've done plenty of keynotes. It's fine. Keynotes are great. But you don't get the same. You get in front of three or 400 and 500 people. You just don't, you know. It's just less interactive.

You don't get the interactive. You know, you do a presentation to 40 people. and then you open it up to Q&A, you get into some good stuff. Yeah. You know, but so those, the smaller group is more fun, you know. What was your highlight from your 20 years in the SEAL community? Got anything that sticks out? I'm sure there's a beautiful topography of highlands along the way, like a mountain peak,

but is there one, do you have a Mount Everest, one that sticks out of over there? I would think we kind of touched on the daytime vehicle interdiction. That was, that, that, that was, I mean, it's hard to explain, man, you're just, you know, without getting into TTPs and tactics existing procedures too much, but it's a bounce package. You're learning patterns, life on people. You're figuring out when and where you can get after them. And the flexibility, I mean, how rapid.

I mean, everyone was absolutely, dozens and dozens of those. Everyone, no two were even remotely the same. It was crazy how different they were. And we did, one day we went out, and there was this top lieutenant we were going after. And we went out after, and we went out after, and he was traveling a couple of vehicles, had bodyguards with him. We went in, we hit the, stopped him, and it was kind of an escalation of force thing

without getting too much into a, hey, present, you know, a big helicopter, that's scary, you know, but escalation of force thing, that went well, right, and got the guy, and then we're flying back and about a 12-minute flight back, and we're within sight of the base. and we get word that the top, the shadow governor guy, was on the move. And this guy had been a ghost. He had been nowhere to be found for months. He knew his days were numbered. We were just taking his network apart.

This is in Afghanistan? So at this level, I mean, are we talking like high-level AQSL-type people? These, I'm not sure quite high level, but they were high enough that they were, they're plugged into that world. Okay. So outside of the Taliban farmer that unvary says AK and walk the poppy fields in the afternoon? Yeah, no. Okay. Now, these are serious.

bags doing nasty stuff. And we were watching them live just for a year. Well, their level of sophistication being able to evade or, you know, not be found would speak to that for sure. Yep. And so the top guy, we get the word that he's, they got him. They're tracking him. And I'm like, this dude's been gone for months.

Like, what's going on? So we literally, in flight, bust a U-turn. Very robust planning cycle. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a problem solving, man.

Oh, shit. It's on the fly. And we bust the U-turn and we're like, you know, we had five helicopters. We had personnel, two of those were daps. And we had a gunned up, a gunned up bird. And personnel on three other birds, make a U-turn, flying this package back, screaming low off the deck of the way back. We're like, hey, this is what we're doing, what we're doing.

Still don't know what we're going after. You're just coordinating this over your fucking radio in a helicopter? Yeah, no windows, wind. Yes. And we're like, and we're like, and we don't even know what we're going after. You know, this is like the boss. We're like, this is the top guy. And the guy we just went after was traveling with like six body guys.

yards and two vehicles. This is the boss. He might be with six vehicles and who knows. Smart a move to be traveled by himself, to be honest. Yeah. So we, we bust a U-turn and we were flying and then we pick him up and you're, you guessed correctly, sure enough, he's by himself on a motorcycle. Lowest signature possible. Yeah. And we're like, I was like, okay, this is going to, I'm, I was like chuckling. I was like, this is going to be the easiest thing we've done all day, you know, and we're in weeks, you know, and. Until he clacks himself off.

Yeah, yeah. And then we start realizing that pick him up, like this is by himself. He's gunned up like Mad Max movie. Yeah. Rocket RPGs and bandaliers. I appreciate it. Yeah, yeah. And I'm not going to tell anybody how to party. Yeah. So he got me, but then I realized a few minutes out, like three minutes out, four minutes out, max, he's going to find out what happened to his lieutenant. He's going back to where we just were. And at this point, we're coming in. And there's now a model. of like 300 people at that location. And I was like, we got to get him before he gets there.

Yes. So we step on the gas. We get him maybe a half mile down the road. And there's three to 400 people down the road who are not happy. And we got, we had to get out of there. Yeah. So we got in, got out, got the guy we're after, flew out. It's getting near dusk at that point.

Again, we're about to land. And we get called. We're going back. There's another guy. Shut up. I'm not getting. We call it the hat trick. So we fly back. First off, how much gas did you guys have in these birds? Yeah. We bust back.

My first thought of my first thought of my, is the warning light flashing on the gas gauge at this point? I'm sure it was. And we fly back and it's dusk and we pick this guy up. He's on, he's by himself on a motorcycle too. We're like, okay, we just did this. We got this. We go. And as soon as he sees us, he bangs a hard right and goes into a compound. We go to the ground. This is when the birds refueled. We go to the ground and shift, throw on nine. odds and do a DA. There's a solution for compound as well. Yeah. Yeah.

Unfortunately for him, the people in those helicopters are well educated and practiced on compound procedures. We got this. Yeah. Yeah. I actually be like, oh, we're good. Yeah. Let's just go ahead.

That, that, like, I mean, that whole mission set for a few months was just unbelievable. But that, I mean, like that day, there was a couple days similar to that, like, to see that level of, like, pick up basketball, problem solving on the fly, back get back three missions in a row, like with minimal planning in between yelling back and forth in their loud ass helicopters. I mean, like, it's just unbelievable. The respect I have for the dudes doing those missions, it's just unbelievable, you know. Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, people listen to the story, I think will have some understanding of the complexity of what you're talking about. But let's call it 50%. It's hard to describe the capability of those people. Yeah. Well, the pilots, man. Oh, fuck. I know you've dealt with plenty of them, and they're just, those guys are just world-class.

You know, you're not that organization, those guys, like, I was kid around, like, in our community, like, if you can get by, if you got a big personality and you're fun to be around, maybe you'll squeak through the cracks. And, you know, no one's going to hate you, but he's not the best, but we love him. You're like, there's no big personality in your way through flying a $70 million aircraft full of people. So, you need to be world class. I got my helicopter license this year. I will say I have a general understanding of the aerodynamics of helicopters and a rudimentary ability to control one. I look back at some of my experiences with the 160th and I don't understand how they were able to do what they did. They were at the absolute front leading edge, probably teetering over it of what was capable from an aerodynamic perspective.

Yeah. I mean, of course, as I start this, you know, Piston Robinson 44, I tell myself that I'm on a 160th mission. It's not a big deal. Sometimes I do do strafing runs on cars. I make, my instructor's like, what the fuck are you doing? I'm like, never mind. I probably told him. And he asked me what my wife asked me every day.

And I was like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Like, whatever, dude. Just, you know, it's fine. This is an old behavior. This is how people. They are so capable. Oh, yeah. It is unbelievable.

It is unbelievable. The mission, the one that went poorly. The flying that we did, we, we, there was this hostage, it was a hostage rescue. We, it became the only show in town for 15 days. We were it. We were the primary force. Everything in East and Afghanistan was. Did they just push everything to you goes?

Everything. Yeah. I mean, hundreds and hundreds of conventional people, just everything. We went out on multiple nights, went four different nights in that period. went out and last three nights we went out on night 13 big actually big engagements on all three of those missions but then 14 we pretty much had her nailed down where we thought she was the previous nights were you guys just a little bit behind were they moving her yeah we were I mean we were literally like you're just on the tail okay yeah you guys were just on the tail yep and uh all those blew

blew up in the big big fights with the guys who had been aiding and abetting and um on the night 14 we had her nailed down. And she was, they had moved her about as remote as they could. She was up over 9,000 feet, last, very last compound at the very end of this valley. Oh, is this up in Conar? Yep. And just brutal. You better pack a lunch if you're going up there.

Yeah. Yeah. It's no joke. Yeah. I mean, and it was, the terrain was just absolutely brutal. And Michael, can you pull up a Google image of what would be a good search? Like, Conar Valley, it's spelled, I've seen it spelled two ways. It's K-U-N-A-R or K-O.

N-A-R. I've heard Co-N-R or Konar. Yeah, that's K-U-N-A-R. What would be a good Google term, though, like Coonar Valley or Conor Valley? Copter inserts or not even insert. I want to show the vertical relief, the village or something like that. I mean, it's the foothills of the Himalayas. It's brutal. Covered in 100-foot trees. First off, I don't think any of their engineering is OSHA-approved. And that's what I want to show people. I want to show people this insane ability to build these villages on a damn near... Yeah, go to the... go to the right more, Michael.

There's an awesome picture. I would keep going to the right. There was another one. First one on the left. Yes. Dude, that's not. That is not unlike if you added, if you add. Make that bigger if you can't, Michael.

Yeah. It is not that unlike the where we went. I mean, it was sheer cliff face was like that below it. But why's it going to be blurry? Enhance. Heard, you know, carved into the side of a mountain. And so, you know, we realize we're like, the risk associated with getting there was just off the charts. And we're like, we point up chain and command and said, hey, we, we,

need an operational pause for 24 hours. Also, there's no way you're getting there with the element of surprise. They're going to hear you. No. And took an operational pause, put dudes up in aircraft, looked for every possible way of getting there. And at the end of the day, it was like, which wasn't possible. Like the patrol in wasn't going to have early morning network.

Offset wasn't possible. Coming in, Ridge lines up, we looked. I mean, we looked. And finally at the end of day, we had to go right to the front door. Right to the front door faster. Straight to the X? Yeah. And what was the risk assessment on that first?

I was. I was never a risk adverse guys. I went after some hairy stuff in my day. That was high. I mean, I was like, hey, look, if they have an RPG or a heavy machine gun, we got about a, I think we have better than a 50% chance that our helicopter is going get shot out of the sky with all of us on it. It's going to get shot at 100%.

Yep. I mean, you know, you've got a Chinook helicopter size of a school bus hovering 60 feet above your front door. Man. You know, and, you know, that risk was huge. And then also just the risk to her. Like, they're going to hear us. They're going to hear us eight minutes out.

They're going to know we're coming to their front door, five minutes out. These guys, every single one of their buddies that has helped us is no longer around. Like, they know what's coming. Like, there's about an 80% chance that they're just going to execute the hostage and run away, which is what I would have done if I was done. Because we had actually done on that same deployment a month and a half earlier. We had done a hostage rescue campaign for two American soldiers, or sailors. And we put so much heat on them that they did exactly that.

You know, they said, hey, this is not worth it. and they executed these two young guys. And then just disappear. We can't take the heat. So, but, um, but, you know, to say the point of that whole thing is like the pilots and add 100 foot trees to that whole image, you know, we did about a 60 foot fast rope to get down to that thing. And those hot, those pilots held station like you would not believe.

I mean, unbelievable. So they're, their, hats off to them and then. I don't know where they put their balls in the cockpit. Is it, you think there's like a slide-out compartment? They must. Well, you know, I mean, I've got, I'm going to. I remember getting on one night, multiple nights, but one night in particular, like, we're in a, you know, a dicey situation, lots of, we're still in a firefight. And we went to our first HLZ.

And I got on the radio, I was like, hey, man, we're still in the thick of it. Well, we're going to go to the alternate. It's about a mile away. I was like, we're going to fight our way to the alternate and not dragging y'all into this. And they were like, now we're coming. Fuck. They're like, now we're coming. Yeah.

And I was like, all right. And then, dude, they came in. The gunfight. And you know the deal. Like, the gunfire stops come in our direction. Because you kill one of us. you're kind of a big deal. I do like when the laser beam comes out of the helicopters, though.

Yeah, yeah. But you shoot down that, you shoot down that $75 million aircraft. You're a legend. And so all fires go to that aircraft, even though it's pitch black and it's hard to see. And, again, I have a rudimentary understanding of helicopters, but part of it is a pre-flight and understanding how all these systems are tied together. I assume, I don't know shit about a 47. I assume there are redundant systems.

Oh, yeah. But every one of those redundant systems has an allergic reaction to lead coming at thousands of V per second. Yeah. We had multiple. I was one of the first guys on because I would, Drew Commander,

be right up front next to the Air Mission Commander, got up through a headset on, and within seconds, we had at least two, it might have been three RPGs explode within what felt like five feet to me. Thank God they don't play accurately.

Those guys did not budge. Thank God the RPGs are not very accurate. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Man. Love those guys. They're amazing. Yeah.

But, you know, like I said, that was, that was, a rough, rough chapter, but I've tried to, like, morph it in something, something positive,

and then I've built out other ones since that. Well, I mean, I asked you about your highlight, you know, would you say that that particular op was the,

uh, the lowest thing you had to deal with or the hardest thing you had to do with in your career? No, I mean, it was, it was a bummer.

I got, you know, I'd do that. But I, first of all, I should have said this before. First of all, to the,

to the Norgrove family and her names out there, you know, condolences. We're so sorry. We busted our bus. And to every dude and we have mutual friends that were on those birds with me that night, all respect in the world. You know, even to the guy who messed up. Even the guy who messed up.

The amount of risk, you know, people do not under, well, first off, they might have some level of understanding of the risk. But with almost nobody will ever understand is what it feels like to be getting your shit on. Yeah. Knowing you're going into that because whether you want to or not, you believe in what you do. and you believe in the person to the left and right and the purpose and what your fucking flag on both shoulders is supposed to see in for. That's what people don't understand.

Yep. And I don't think there's hard. There's no possible way to explain that. That night was one of the few, probably did a couple times in my career, where I said, hey, we did go men force, absolutely bare minimum number of guys that we could take because the risk was so high.

And I told my troop chief, I was like, hey, guys aren't going to like this, but we all went. Our whole troop went. I was like, but if we're going to, we start cutting away guys from our troop, I was like married with kids,

they're getting cut first. You know? I was like, because if this goes catastrophic, I would rather have the bachelor go down than the father of three. You know what I mean? The bachelor would probably want it to be that way as well.

Yeah, of course. They all would. So that was a risk level. Again, all respect to the world for the guys who accepted that level of risk for that mission. And again, people,

you can't explain that to people. Yeah. Um, a low, you know, low points, just losing guys. You know, we've lost a ton of buddies. Um, Mark Carter, you know, Badger. I had just gotten out of Green Team. Actually, actually kind of a funny story getting out of Green Team, but first real deployment after Green Team just got over there for a couple of days and we lost Badger, uh, stepped

on a crush wire, improvised device and nothing you can do. You know, you take X number of steps in certain countries. You're going to step on those things. Especially with the most heavily in my country on the face of planet Earth. Yeah. I mean, yep. Tommy Vee, is my troop chief. Tom, you know. I knew Tommy.

I can't. So we were, yeah, I'll obviously avoid the details of everything that happened. But the fact that, you know, the way that it played out and the communication, like, fuck, man. Yeah, we were there for us. So we, so, I mean, you're tight with Lou as well. Yeah.

So last three guys out of the bird were myself, Tommy, and then Lou, who was a jump master. Yeah. And then our other friend was on the ground who powdered his feet. Yeah. Another sky guru. All these sky gurus. I don't know if you can call them a sky guru if they powder the... Yeah.

You might be able to call them before that, but I think... Lucky to be able to walk. I think you have to change the nomaker after they spend time in the hospital. Yeah. How many jumps you out? I don't know exactly someone between 8,500 to 9,000. Yeah. I'm like less than 10% of that.

I'm a little over 600 people like, we're 600. I'm like, no, I have buddies that have 10,000. Like, that's... I know people have 50,000,000. Yeah, yeah. They work and live and they pay their bills in the sport. And people are, you know, a couple thousand jumps is how I'm like, let me introduce you to so-and-so who can do things that I don't understand how we're possible. Yeah.

Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was rough. You know, five of us, you know, we lost Tommy. Not to get into that.

It's a private for his family. Yeah. But the aftermath of that, just seeing guys come together. Like, only five of us stayed out there. Just key personnel stayed. Yeah. Multiple investigations got everybody came in after us. Oh, for sure.

Nightmare, man. So. But. When you look back on your career, you know, almost been out for 10 years, what do you make of those experiences? How do you view your career now? I wouldn't trade it for the world. I'm glad I did it, you know. Same.

I share exactly those as well. Hard, hard, hard road. But, you know, like I said, it's a, talking about the addictive drug. It's a, you know, and I like to think that it doesn't ultimately define me. I was like, if people are talking about what a team guy was and my eulogy and then not talking about me as a husband and a dad, you know, mission failure, you know. So, but it's an amazing chapter, you know, and I think we gain so much. I think one of the biggest things gained from that experience is I think that from age like 25 maybe to like 45, like most people, like you're going to lose your grandparents in that window.

You're probably going to lose one of your parents. There's going to be a couple of suicides, maybe a tragic car wreck, maybe a tragic cancer. But like in that window, like the normal, and I'm completely making these numbers. There's a normal human being is going to have a dozen or less funerals to deal with. And probably most... Like half a dozen or less would be my guess. Yeah, 10 or less to do it. It is an anomalous event.

And some of them were kind of supposed to happen. You know, we, in that same window, going to dozens and dozens and dozens of dudes that were just complete stud yesterday. Yeah. You know, it wasn't like this slow creep. Some weird cancer got him. It was like, total stud, stepped on a crush wire, gone. Yeah. Total stud. Bad malfunction. Gone. Like that, people say, hey, you have an appreciation for every day. Like, I think in our community and anybody is working in that kind of world, like, no, no, you don't understand. Like, beat way, way, way, it just gives you such a real, real appreciation for every single day, you know. So it's a hard way to get there, but. It is. It's a unique path for sure. What do you wish that people, there's a lot of misconceptions out there about special operations in general.

I actually before I ask you that question I'm curious there are it's a weird ecosystem putting things out on the internet there are a lot of other and by no stretch of the imagination all people who are on the internet who come from a special operations background

and by no means are they all this way but there are some that are very anti-Seal because of the notoriety that the seal community has received. And I'm curious your thoughts on whether the notoriety is a good thing or a bad thing. And before you answer, my opinion on this is it's not something that the community asked for. Yeah. And I don't know, I don't even know exactly when it started, but the horse is not going back in the barn.

No. I'm just curious your thoughts on the super high level of notoriety because it does create friction between other branches and other elements that are doing fucking amazing. Yeah. Fantastic things. And I want to talk about stuff, I almost always try to talk, especially about just conventional forces in general. Like, let's be honest. The command is amazing. But what do you think the support ratio is there per operator?

Nine to one. That's what I'm saying. Like, strip those nine guys away, guess what? That command is far less capable. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like, it'll survive for a little bit, but then the mothballs are going to be a problem. Yeah.

So it's this huge, huge pizza that has to be there for the meal to be complete. The special operations component is like this three-degree slice. but the SEAL community gets the lion's share or the notoriety. I'm just curious your thoughts. I mean, I think there's pros and cons. I wish it wasn't where it is, but you're right. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. It's out there.

And a few key things really blew it up. Probably Captain Phillips. Probably one of the biggest one. Clearly, Bin Laden. Yeah. You know, some big things. I mean, in a king for a day, I think we should have vanished a puff of smoke the day bin Laden got taken down. I mean, literally vanished.

Call the president, hey, we're moving, and we're going to give the keys to this compound to some other group. And we're out of here. I'll call you. I need a blank check. We're going to move and we're going to vanish. And then, you know, this notoriety would still be there. But where are those guys?

Where they go? You know what I mean? Problem is you can find the exact address where they are on the fucking Internet. Yeah. Yeah. I did it some light Google searching a couple years ago. Just out of curiosity to see what type of information is out there. Holy shit.

Yeah. It is far too accurate and detailed. Yeah. It was ridiculous. I mean, the Bin Laden case was extreme, but the dude's coming back from that mission, God bless them all for being there and getting that shit done.

Like, coming back to that, insane, man. People throw this. I think our counterparts down, the green guys are much better about keeping off the radar. Yeah, I would agree.

They do a lot of stuff differently, too. They classify certain things, even, you know, then they do a better job than we do, I think. I would agree. What do you wish people knew about? about the SEAL community, like a misconception that you encounter

that you wish you could change? I mean, there's probably a bunch, but I think one thing would just be for the young individual. Now women are eligible for the training pipeline too. I don't think we've had any MET kid in there yet, but it's just like some people put something on a pedestal, like, oh, I can never do that.

I can never be a CIA agent. I mean, that's a really good way to make sure you're never going to be. Yeah, exactly. You know what I mean? No, you can. You can be a CIA agent. If you want to, do some homework,

figure out how to go do it, go, go join the CIA and become a field officer. Go do it. You know, or, oh, I can ever be a Navy SEAL. Yeah, you could. You know, it's not this bunch of, you know, world-class athletes with high IQs. It's like, no, it's a bunch of middle-sided dudes who were just willing to work really hard and never quit. And if you had that in you, give it a go.

They're willing to use their head as a weapon and use it to break an obstacle down. Yeah. Well, not simultaneously recognizing that they could have walked around it. Yeah. I think it's a bummer, too. I always get around that I would say every barrel's got a bottom. Yeah. And unfortunately, by default, any industry, you know, your bottom of the barrel,

your idiot in the finance world who does something terrible, Bernie Madoff or whatever. You know, people know all these names. Like your bottom of the barrel, by default, kind of become your ambassadors. And that's who everybody thinks a community is, you know. You know, the Patriots are all kinds of wonderful stuff. Sorry, Hernandez. I'm sorry he's dead, right? But, like, guy who's a thug?

He did some really dumb stuff. And he becomes an ambassador for that brand for a period of stuff. time, which is unfortunate because I got all these other dudes doing this great stuff, you know, doing great charities and playing great football. And a lot of stuff, you know, we get, we get some bad notoriety from a very, very tiny sliver. The vast, vast majority of the crew, just amazing, amazing Americans, hardworking professionals, you know. I agree. And who are wired a little bit differently, you know. That is for damn sure. Yeah. You know, when I was deeply immersed in the community, I didn't think we were odd. No. Now that I have interface

for over 10 years with people who didn't come from that world. We were a little odd. I got through. Yeah. Oh, for sure, man. We are wired slightly differently. I mean, but some of the funniest stuff ever. If not the funniest stuff ever.

Yeah, dark humor, a lot of gallows humor, but like, oh, my God, funny stuff, you know. I'm talking about being wired differently. And I would share this with young guys coming to the command. I was going through Green Team. and our selection and training process like nine months long. Classed up, probably similar to you,

classed up with about 78 guys. Probably somewhere either. Some plus minus 10%. 95% of which were all just solid. Good, good dudes. Everybody's got multiple combat deployments. Everybody's been to SEAL teams for six years, whatever. And we graduated with 31, right?

And so in that nine months, I don't know, probably slept in my bed at home, maybe 40 nights and nine months, just gone. You know, and those mornings I'm out the door, you know, crack a dawn or earlier.

And my wife was pregnant with our first, so she was totally ready to kill me the whole time. Perfect timing. Yeah, perfect timing. Well played. Yeah, I think we had eight pregnant wives. One of them I was going through Green Tame. They were just like, y'all are idiots. Yeah.

And we'd go through that, but then about three quarters of the way through, they tell you where you're going. And I found out where I was going, and they were on a certain cycle where you had to be staying in Virginia Beach for a period. You couldn't go anywhere in case something they needed you. And I knew I was going to that. And that, at that point, you know, as you remember, that, that function sort of, it was kind of a good deal because it was like, it really wasn't getting utilized a whole lot, that capability. Yeah. But you knew you're going to be home. You can be home for a period of time.

And my wife and I did the math. And we had been together for, you know, whatever, six years at that point or something like that. We'd literally never been together for more than six weeks at a stretch in our whole relationship. And I was like, me, I'm home for a few months. You know, that was a good deal. I'm going to get through the training. Training's almost done. And that was like the light at the end of the tunnel.

And she was against still, whatever, ready to kill me, you know. You might find out you hate each other. Yeah. Well, we survived 10 years in retirement. Don't you have a trip you need to go on? Yeah. We survived 10 years of retirement. So I think we're doing okay.

But yeah, I got through. And then I'm doing my admin check-in to my new team, post-screen team. And, you know, checking in dental and all that stuff, administratively checking in. I'm driving home. I think it was Thursday night. And I get the call and they're like, get back to work now. And I'm like, all right. And I literally, I'd like.

I was like, this is one, and Green Team's not over. This is one more reindeer game. It's one more stupid thing. I got to go plan this mission. We're going to fly to Fort Campbell tonight, like, whatever. And maybe U-turned, went back in. And it was real deal, no kidding.

No shit. Yeah. It was 2007. It was an early Bin Laden. And we were going. We were going right then. And I had texted my wife. I was like, oh, see you for breakfast.

Go back in. How many bin Laden raids do you think there were? Thousands? Well, I don't know. Full-on. take off from the U.S. I mean, no, I'm talking like where the, they fired a flare, like, you know, like, run it up. I mean, I remember he's, listen, Intel is showing he's getting tea in Kabul.

Yeah. And I remember thinking, like, and I don't know shit. I'm like, I don't think that's legitimate. Yeah, yeah. Single source human. He is on his way to Kabul. And we're all just sitting there. Okay.

Yeah. But that doesn't seem to make sense. Yeah. That's like saying you're on. Get ready. You're on your, he's on his way to, you know, New York. Okay. agree that'll be he'll be easy to find um but yes we went back in and uh it was it was it was

it was an early sighting and they you know we were just too slow to get there and it didn't happen but um and i was kind of in this admin check in week i could have for sure if i had put my wife probably killed me when she hears this but i just been 10 years it's been longer yeah but i could have not gone on that mission if i didn't want to you know what i mean i was just checking in i was getting there so you're missing out as real man i was like i was like no i'm uh I was like, I've been in the teams for over 12 years. I just suffered the green team and we might have a shot at this dude. Like, I'm getting on that plane, you know, and I went.

And, you know, we stomped around Tor Bora for six weeks and didn't get anything. But I would tell guys that. I was like, that's the crazy level of like, you might think I'm a nut job for like stowing away on a jet that's going to combat. But like that's the mentality. Like that you're surrounded by dudes. I didn't do anything exceptional. Every single dude would have said, oh, I got a chance to get out. Yeah, I'm going to get myself there.

Yeah, I agree. You know, you mentioned the funerals. and I don't remember ever being briefed about mortality, and nobody certainly ever said, hey, this is the potential cost of this occupation. I think a lot of that is romanticized a little bit in media. But I would say every single guy knew that it was on the menu, for sure. Like if you didn't realize it was on the menu, wow, you were galactically lost

and didn't have an understanding of the job. The funerals were hard. The ones I still struggle with. are the suicides. Oh, yeah. And I'm curious your thoughts on why. And I can only speak about my experience with the people in the SEAL teams, but it's a fucking issue.

Oh, for sure, man. And I'm curious where you think that stems from. As far as where it stems from, I mean, I don't have an educated answer on. I mean, there's a lot of people saying they're tying it back to you're more susceptible. They're looking back in early. The more trauma you had earlier, you're kind of susceptible to trauma. So you bring a full C bag in. Yeah.

Yeah. You know. I had a great friend who went through, we lost him to suicide, but he went through NICO and everything. He was like, oh, it's so great. They found this. They got me on this man, this man, this man. It was so great I did this program.

And I was like, dude, we went through Buzz together. You were bad shit crazy when you were 22 years old. I've known you a long time. You've always been crazy. Like, you're the poster child for baselining, you know. And so I think that some of that is baseline. You've got to be careful what you, some people are hanging on by a threat already and you expose them to some bad stuff.

It's going to get really worse. but also, I mean, just the blast stuff, the CTE and the other. TBI and all that stuff too. I mean, Dave Collins was a great friend of mine. I had lunch with Dave two weeks before he took his life. Really? You know, no red flags. I mean, I knew he didn't like his new, he just retired.

I knew he didn't like his new job, you know, blah, blah, blah. But like, no red, and it happened like that. I mean, like, yeah, you don't like your job. But, like, think of all the things throughout a career that they ask you to do that you don't like. That suck. Yeah. It's like, cool. You, yeah.

Now, well, something snapped in him. I mean, he was, he had literally. I'll probably mess this up, but I don't want you to do it. He hit the ATM within hours of taking his own life. Like, really wasn't planned out. Like, I'm going to need some cash for later. And now I'm going to pull over and take my life. Like, it happened.

Something in his brain snapped and it happened like that, you know? It's really scary stuff, man. So we need to whatever organizations are out there. There's a lot of them trying to figure out and make that situation better. We've got to get behind all of those. At this point, I'm thinking it might be one of the unintended and uninvolving. consequences for a small cohort of people that pursue that occupation. I don't know if it can be solved.

Unless you could solve suicide writ large in society, because that's all the teams are as a smaller segment of society. Yeah, but the percentages are staggering compared to the rest of society. The percentages are staggering for sure. But man, it's a weird job. Yep, for sure. You know, they ask you to do really weird shit sometimes and you do it. And there's weight that comes with that.

And I almost worry that they will arrive at that place. and realize that, hey, if we ask people to do things like this, this is a consequence we might have to bear, and then they'll just shut the study down because they don't want to be honest about it. Yeah. I remember I had just gotten through to the command. I'd just come through Green Team.

Well, just after the story. And I was walking, and no one back then would go see the shrinks and docs ever. And I literally had a brown bag lunch, and the head doc was there. And I just knocked him to him. I think you got any plans for lunch? You know, he's like kind of, no, no. walked in and sat down and he pulled some food from his fridge and we sat there and chatted for 45 minutes and had her lunch did you ask me about his mom yeah and said I love fucking my

so tell me about your upbringing yeah do you want to sit on the couch you want to kill your dad and uh but no I he sat there and he was like we had chatted for 45 minutes had lunch and I was like I cool him take off and he's like he was on his heels he's kind of like hey what did you they nerded about anything you want anything anything anything on your chest why did you come in here you know and I told him I said hey man look I don't I know the resources this place has and I don't know where I'm going to be in a few years. And if I'm having a hard time, the last thing I want to do is sitting here

and listen to some stranger, tell me what I need to be doing. So I figure I should get to know you. So I had a luncheon that do like almost every week. You know, that's a great strategy because it's often better to maintenance the vehicle before the check engine light comes on. Yep, yep. You can solve problems when the check engine light comes on,

but usually those sensors are set to a threshold where shit's about to get real, real bad. Yep. Yeah, it's the suicide breaks my heart, man. It just shatters my heart. These people are so, again, we can talk about the things that they ask the community to do, but how can you describe the tenacity and grit of these people who are like, again, there's no way to accurately just to articulate,

hey, this is an extremely high risk operation. When you're literally looking at it at maybe we're going to cut to people with families and people would still volunteer and raise their hand and get their shit on and dive headlong into that breach, I don't. people, I've pumped in so many people, Dan Knaecson, you know, Dan, he was up at our place in Boston, just before the Boston Marathon, he was running it, and he was at our house, we had a bunch of guys over, and somebody, one of the civilians was like, guys, it's unbelievable. I mean, I've met multiple guys from your community, they've lost limbs, and they're just like so positive, da-da-da-da.

And it's like, I'm like, you know, if you're working in an office building someplace in the elevator malfunctions and chops your arm off, I think you've got every right to be really angry for quite a while, because you didn't sign on for that at all, but we did. We signed on for it. We knew it was in the equation. metaphorically, I don't remember that paper. Yeah, it didn't sign it specifically. But if you're like, how could this have ever happened to me? You do know you signed Honda go to combat.

Yeah. That's how it happened to you. But it's a, no, there's a lot of great folks out there doing all kinds of stuff to try to help everybody on the mental health stuff. And I think it's, you know, have you done VHP? Do you know VHB? Virginia high performance? No.

You got to go. Yes. I have not. I have heard of what I have. You got to go. You got to go. I am more, I need them to change it. So I need medium or mediocre performance.

Virginia mediocre performance. Honestly, I might actually brand that shit and start a competing. Be like, hey, here's the marketing. When this shit gets too tough, come see us. Yeah. Montana, Montana mediocre performance. No, no, I'll set it up right next. Right next door.

Yeah, I'll outsource it. You should go. Michael, you can run that. We're going to do a mediocre academy. Mediocre. Mediocrity. Yeah. You should go, though.

It was, I went in August finally. It took me like a year to like say, okay. Because he's been, I keep bumping him to the airport. Yeah, for sure. And I'm doing it forever. And he's like, got to come, got to come. And I had to, I mean, it takes a month. You're there all day, every day for four weeks straight.

And finally carved out time to get it done. And it's just such an awesome program. Like two-day workouts, plus all the modalities, head to toe. Kind of resunters you. Nutrition. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, man, it's a job that comes at a cost.

It's, God, I'm so thankful that we still have people volunteering to do it. Yeah. I think the next generation is going to be all. Awesome, man. So just keeping it rolling, you know. Yeah. What do you want to close that? Would that be bad?

Two and a half hours. You're rolling on. Wow. Yeah, we kind of hit on my work stuff, Patriot leadership. Okay. Do you do the social media? A little bit. I mean, it tears a piece of my soul on.

You hit me up on Instagram? I said, actually, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I do a little bit of stuff there. What is the best mechanism for somebody? Just jump to the website. Okay. PatriotLD.com.

And it's, you know, also doing some work. We also partnered them where they're had them or seal kids, great program, sealkids.org, everything education related for our community. And they're blowing anybody who hears this is like, I'm not donating that. They're blown, they're going to everything in Socom. They're changing their name to children of valor. Sweet. It's going to be all educational stuff for them. And I partnered.

I'm actually doing my courses for them as fundraising events a little bit too. Awesome. And, yeah, that. My wife, Shop, Merccio. Marcio. Shopmercio.com. She's killing it, selling dresses. I've learned more about what she's apparel.

Does she ship? Well, this is about, I mean, this is me nagging her. She's done some custom stuff for guys. Like, hey, this is my wife. Here's my budget. Like, custom dresses for guys. Here's a couple of pictures of what my wife wears. Oh, so, okay.

Take care of Christmas for me. Again, I don't know what this says about me. When you said custom stuff for guys, I was assuming you mean guys we used to work with who wanted like a nice sundress. No, like, you don't have to shop for your wife. She'll do it for you. Yeah. Michael immediately knew where my head went.

He's like, yep. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Well, she shipped because that would be... Oh, of course. She's probably 50% online, 50% Okay, good. And break a mortar, but...

Because if we're about to blow up her website and she doesn't ship, that's a... Yeah. That's a problem, but... It was, uh, it was, it's been pretty funny, man. Like, people... I'll run the shop, I don't care. You know, I'm the odd... It might be the most rewarding job your life.

The odd man out. People walking not expect to see me, you know, man in the counter. But, hell yeah. Well, dude, thank you for making the trip out, man. I appreciate it. Yeah, this was awesome, man. I appreciate you. Yeah.

I'll be back on again sometime. Right on. Cool.