Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 384 - Josh Thurman

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

Josh is a former Navy SEAL and entrepreneur. After graduating from Wake Forest University, Josh passed on a scholarship to Yale University Divinity School to fight for our nation after the events of 9/11 and the commencement of the War in Iraq. He served as a SEAL officer for 12+ years and deployed overseas 11 times in support of the Global War on Terror. He is the recipient of three bronze stars and multiple medals. Josh left the service in 2018 and is today the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Angel Kids AI. In an internet environment where children are constantly exposed to inappropriate and addictive content, not to mention potential predators, daily, Angel Kids is a parent-created platform that provides guardrails for children to explore the online world safely. AngelQ: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/angelq/id6741329177 Cleared Hot audience offer 1 year free: EARLY365 Today's Sponsors: Montana Knife Company: https://www.montanaknifecompany.com/ LMNT: https://www.drinklmnt.com/clearedhot Get your free LMNT Sample Pack with any purchase. Also, don't forget to try the new LMNT Sparkling — a bold, 16-ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water.

Good morning, everybody. Welcome back. Today we're talking largely about internet safety. I've read that we have access to 98% of the known knowledge of mankind through our devices, laptop, tablet, phone, whatever it may be. How do we access that safely, though, with our children? How do we create a system, an app, a portal that allows them to access it safely with barriers and boundaries? Because if you have kids, you know, you're to do the absolute best that you can, you're not always there. And sometimes unfettered access, unsupervised access to the internet can read to really, really dark places. My guest today is Josh Thurman. He is the co-founder and chief operating officer of a company called Angel AI. I am not even going to begin to describe what they do because he does an amazing job. We actually walk through it in real time showing it.

Before this, though, before Josh got into the entrepreneurial world, he was Navy SEAL. he served for 12 plus years deployed overseas 11 times in the support of the global war on terror I let him describe his career it's fascinating to me to see the people where they come from why what they do while they in and while they're in and then what they do afterwards it's a fascinating story arc to me it's inspirational it all I always leave these conversations thinking god I know that I can do more and I need to so before we get into episode 384 with Josh thurman let me pay the bills. Today's episode is brought to you by Montana Knife Company. If you have been a fan of the podcast, you've probably heard the episodes I've done with their founder, Josh Smith. This brand

born, bred, raised, and is growing rapidly in Montana, about 100 miles south of where I am. Frenchtown, Montana is where they're currently operating. They're building a massive facility on the western edge of Missoula. So the Montana Knife Company, kind of makes sense where that came from the state of Montana's also in the logo, but it's a global brand. These are some of the highest quality knives I've ever gotten my hands on. Beyond the fact that Josh is bringing jobs back into Montana, these are American made. I literally have met the people that have made and sharpen these knives for me. This is a family business that is exploding globally. It hasn't changed who they are and what they stand for. Now, they release their knives on Tuesdays and Saturdays. They go very

quickly. You can also sign up for their email list or a text notification because sometimes they do surprise drops. Their knives, oftentimes when they do those drops, Tuesdays and Saturdays will sell out within minutes. I highly recommend actually purchasing something like a sticker on their website so they have your payment information saved. I have literally had at least a half a dozen knives taken out of my shopping cart because I didn't do exactly that. I was putting in my credit card information and they sold out before I could execute the transaction. It's very frustrating. Even though I know Josh, there's nothing that I can do about it. Head over to montana knife company.com. Check out what they have. I have their website in front of me.

They have awesome apparel. Their knives again are second to none. Some point in their checkout portal, they're going to ask you where you heard about them. Do me a favor. Put down either cleared hot or Andy Stumpf or both. That's the best that you can do to support me. This brand has done nothing but be supportive of the podcast. So that is the best way that you can give back to not only me and the brand. Back to the show. I'm looking at danger close now. Never been to Montana. heading back to Nashville after this where everybody in the United States is currently moving. That's right.

So you were born and raised near the area where you live? Yeah, just south of Nashville, a town called Franklin. How big was Nashville before you left it? That's a good question. So when I was growing up, so I'm a child of the 80s, it was growing, but the growth really took off in the 90s. So a big milestone for Nashville was getting the Titans. So we had no professional sports teams. We had like the Nashville sounds like AAA baseball.

But you probably had like the country music hall of fame though, right? Yeah, exactly. Well, we had the Grandal Opry and a place called Opryland, which is a theme park. So we got the Titans in like 97. It was weird. Like they were the Oilers for like two years while the town figured out, while we figured out who were going to call them. Okay.

Around 99, 2000, they became the Titans, got the new stadium. One Super Bowl appearance in 2003. Pretty awesome with Steve McNair. Eddie George. I don't know if you remember that one, but Kevin Dyson was like one yard short of winning the game. The Rams cornerback tackled him. This is back when Kurt Warner.

That was his sort of glory days. I know some of these names, but I'm not a huge fan of professional sports. I'm aware they exist. Yeah. I would struggle. If somebody put a million dollars on the table right now, I would struggle to name five names of professional football players. Yeah, I only, well, I do.

I do love football, and I only know these because it was the Titans, and that was exciting at the time. But so the greater area had like a million people at that point. I don't know what the like total population is, but like our county, which is just southwest of Nashville, it went from like 60,000 to like about a quarter million, which is about 4X growth in that period. So yeah, it's changed tremendously. How much do you think Nashville has grown in that time? I think it's, I don't know what the, I mean, my hunch is it's probably a two, two, two, three X, maybe the whole area. The surrounding area is probably two plus million now.

It's a cool place to visit. It's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. It is. It's fun. Yeah, like coming back here. Yeah.

Yeah. I would too. I mean, I'm, I'm jealous of the mountains and the serenity and that, you know, that aspect here, all the outdoor activities. I mean, there's some good things to do in Nashville, but nothing, nothing that touches this. You guys know you have Elkin tennis? You could hunt elk in Tennessee. Really? I don't know if you have a mathematical chance of getting a tag.

Yeah. But there's elk there. Where? Like in East Tennessee? I think so. Yeah. I had no idea. I didn't know that until a few months ago and somebody told me.

So I'm just sharing my shock with you. Well, I appreciate that. Some good info. Good intel. Man. So when you left, I mean, obviously you went the Navy pipeline. Why did you go officer versus enlisted? Who guided you down this path?

Yeah. The answer is no one. myself. You too, huh? Yeah. Man, so, gosh, I really wasn't thinking about the military until 9-11 happened, then that Iraq War kicked off. Those, those like kind of seminal events or what got me more tuned into like that option or that opportunity. How old were you at the time? So I was a junior in college, so about 21 when 9-11 happened. Had not thought about military at all. I was not seriously considering it at that point. And let me go back a little bit. I will say the seeds were planted, but, you know, we weren't at war that just wasn't a, it wasn't super compelling to me at

that point to go the military route. But when that happened, it was like, oh man, like our nations that are attacked, our freedom has been compromised. I mean, at that point, you could think about, you know, people coming in and walking at McDonald's and blowing themselves up. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, that was like a thing that, uh, you know, that was like a thing that, uh, you easily could have happened had we not been able to sort of dominate and keep terrorism at bay. But that made it just hit very home for me. You know, I, growing up in Franklin, I mean, both my grandparents served in World War II. I think that's common for a lot of people in our generation.

My dad was drafted in Vietnam, but actually didn't see any action. And that, you know, probably was a good thing for just how that war went. and and then to my grandfather he was a really big like strong guy you know 6 4 like you know probably 250

and you know played football he was just someone I idolized and looked up to and he ran for sheriff on our town like everyone knew him but he was he was a terrible storyteller and I just mean like he just wasn't good at communicating

you know and a lot of that was I think it's like start with the punchline Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm going to lead in with. It's going to come around. But, you know, I obviously love him to death. He just, he had these stories, but I don't, I mean, I don't know what he did in World War II, you know. How much did he talk about it? I mean, almost nothing, almost not at all. That's super common to of that generation. For sure it is. And I don't, he's not an anomaly there. I do wish he could have, you know, told me some stories. He was, he was in like the North Africa element. And then, but I'll bring that back to one of his good friends who he played football with there at Franklin High. His name was Jimmy Gentry. And he turned it to be coach Gentry. So he, he's just a legend in our town. Just last year, we've got a statue for him, like on our five points, like in Main Street.

Like full size? Yeah, it's a full-size statue. Yeah, it's amazing. And he's sitting on a bench and he's looking at the veteran's memorial. And it's very cool. And where he's sitting, it's the same rock wall where, you know, when guys were going to World War II, they would come sit on this church rock wall and they get picked up at the bus and go to boot camp. So that's where he's sitting. But he was a phenomenal storyteller.

And through his relationship with my grandfather, I would go to his summer camp. He had this like 400-acre farm, excuse me, farm would bring kids out there and we would just go crazy, play. capture the flag, swim in the river, and do fun things like that. So, but he would talk about World War II, boot camp, and, you know, he was in the Battle of the Bulge. And then his unit, the Rainbow Division, 42nd infantry, they liberated Docow on April 29, 1945. And he talked about that. So all those things, all those stories had been told to me. And so I had a very strong sense of who America was in the world and like what it meant to be a service member. And so when 9-11 happened, all that sort of came back.

And I was like, I mean, I should really be considering this. And so I know that was a long way to come back to this. But that's how I started getting serious. I'm in college, was thinking the pre-med route and decided, you know, I'm going to start looking into the seal thing. And just started doing online research myself. Why the seals? I mean, of all the branches, I mean, there's all something to pick.

Yeah. I mean, certainly the. you know, there's the sort of like playground, I don't know if you remember when, like, people talk about seals on the playground, like how awesome they were. On the playground? Yeah.

Like, oh, did you know a Navy SEAL could do this or Navy SEAL could do that? Oh, you had a different upbringing than I did. Yeah. I didn't care about any of that shit. Yeah. No, I mean, so, I mean, it had this, like, legendary pull to it. I mean, it really did.

And so... Be careful with playground Intel, though. Yeah, that's right, right? But that was the, like, it was, you know, I think it was the place where I thought, hey, this is where you can have the most impact. And I think these are the best operators in the world. And that's where I want to be.

Okay. And that Discovery Channel series. The 234? 24. Yes. Let me just tell you. Yeah. What's shown on the 234 documentary and the reality of training.

As you know, they're kind of different. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Remember, film crews work for a union. And they have a certain amount of hours that they can be there. The rest of training that you might have skipped out on or rounded the edges on, we'll get caught up on after the film crew leaves. All of the extra buds.

That's exactly. I would call it the normal buds that maybe the Navy said, let's just not do this on camera. And you know, as an instructor, somebody went back as an instructor, when somebody tells you to do that, the VIP is coming by or whatever, they want you to modify training in your head as an instructor, all you're thinking is you guys owe. Oh. You owe. For sure.

This is more work for me. Yeah, the debt is coming due. And then, yeah, and you know who's paying it. It's not the cadre. The country's not paying. The students will be paying that. I mean, the cadre will be physically present, but yeah, we're not paying the debt. That's right.

We will keep going until I get tired. That 234 documentary, yeah, that was a wild one. I was already in when that came out. And I didn't watch it at the time. I think I watched it years later. Some of it's accurate. Yeah. You know, it is what it is.

As far as a recruiting tool, probably not bad. Yeah. I mean, it gave me a picture of it. You know, I read this book. I mean, no one remembers this guy. It was called Warrior Soul. His name is Chuck Ferrer. Ferrer. It's like... Oh, it's like the P-F-A-R-R-R-Y. And I think, I mean, this is like one of the very first books that I can even... I mean, there weren't a lot of team guy books back in the early 2000s. Men with Green Faces. Yeah, that's the first one I read. Yeah, I didn't read that one. I know about it. Yeah. Yeah. That's all there was. Yeah. So I joined... What year did you join?

So I went to OCS in late 2005. Okay. So I joined in 905. Okay. So I joined in 90. six and was looking at it since I was about 11. So in the late 80s. Okay. That was about it. There was that and the, what I thought at the time was a nonfiction rogue warrior series.

Come to find out a little bit more fiction than non. Yeah. Yeah. What, I mean, what got you into the seals? I mean, how did you hear about it? Man, I've been asked that question so many times and I still don't have a great answer. Yeah. So my dad, who I finally extricated him out of California, he lives like a mile from.

where we live now, was in, you know, the Mark V's we used to work with? Yeah. Well, he was on the Mark I's. Oh, wow. So Brownwater Navy. He enlisted, he did not get drafted. He volunteered. I think he probably just assumed he was going to get drafted.

So he volunteered. I think he would probably say he thought it was going to give him a better choice as to what path he wanted as opposed to needs of the military. Went over in the Mark I. And obviously not a seal, but, you know, the deal of the maritime. They were working with him all the time. For sure. from a family of Mason's in Santa Cruz, California, where I was born. I mean, my dad and I were born

in the same hospital. Wow. And my great, oh, me my great grandfather, it was either my great grandfather, where my grandfather built the high school that my dad went to. Wow. Some pretty deep ties. It was hard for me to get in trouble there. I mean, he went to, you know, high school and college with the chief of police. So we're going to be okay, you know, on a Friday night. That's a good thing. Yeah, you're going to get a ride home in the front of the cop car, not the back. Yeah. Or the fire truck. Yeah. But he also. He also. So to this day has not talked a lot about his military experience. I mean, I think it's very fair to say that the Vietnam era specifically has been treated substantially differently than GWAT.

For sure. And I, you know, if it was in that area, I don't know how open I would be about my experiences either, given how it was framed and probably rightfully so, the framing at least, not the treatment. But we were, I remember the actual car ride when he first brought it up. We were driving back from an area near Aptos, which is. just kind of southeast of Santa Cruz along the Half Moon Bay, or not Half Moon Bay, the Monterey Bay. And it was the first time I'd ever heard that term. And he was talking about basically insertion and extraction platforms.

And I remember asking him, like, what is this seal? And he's like, well, and paraphrasing, this is like 40 years ago. Yeah. You know, they're the, you know, special operations or he probably said special forces of the Navy because he has no shit about Green Brace. Sure. Right. No offense to the Green Brace.

This is my dad, like, 40 years ago. like they're at special forces. Yeah. And it just seemed really interesting. And I remember him saying that not many people make it through, which was interesting to me at that young age. Yeah. And that the training was very challenging and arduous.

And then I found, I think I found the book First, the men with green faces, which at 11, who doesn't want to paint their face green, right? So then that led me to probably the movie Navy Seals with Charlie Sheen, which I watched, at least a thousand times, thinking that it was going to be exactly what the community was going to be left. It was not. Even though I did get to wear a flight suit doing CQC in my early days. And it was horrendous.

Yeah. They are flame retardant, which also means sweat insulating. They are the worst. A Nomex flight suit in the middle of the summer doing CQC house runs. That's brutal. Don't sleep on it. It's a good time. Um, but it hooked me.

Yeah, I can ask all the time why. And I, I, I, I didn't have an answer then. And I honestly don't have a great answer now. I don't know exactly what it was. But once it's got, once it got a hooks into me. Yeah. It was, it was as if my true north calibrated in that direction. And I think, you know, my dad didn't have the best experience in Vietnam.

And he came from military family, Navy on my dad's side, army on my mom's side. Both sides, I, I feel like we're hoping that generationally, the military would end with them based on their own experience. So when I started heading in that direction, I can only imagine my dad like, I should have kept my mouth shut. Yeah, it just takes a little kernel of, of, and I don't know why. I mean, you know the deal.

The community that we served with, and I try to tell people this all the time, they're exceptionally average people. I really do, I mean, there are, there were a couple people in my class, and I'm sure there were in yours that, like, you look like you're chiseled out of marble. like physical absolute specimens. Yeah.

But if you were to line up an average buds class, most people would go, eh, okay, some height, some shorties in the smurf crew for the still allowed to call the smurf crew. Yeah.

Somebody asked me the day, what do they call the tallest boat crew? And I can't remember. Was there a name for him? Boat crew one. Obviously. Yeah. But I don't think they had...

There was no nickname. Yeah, why are you going to make fun of tall people, right? Yeah. I was boat crew too. Yeah, save for the smurfs. But, I know that he would have hoped that it ended with me, but I just, I couldn't think about anything else. And then you get into the community.

And that was one of the most common sentiments of the guys that I had served with. But they're very average people in almost every way. Maybe we're tooled a little bit differently. But for whatever reason, that idea, it unlocks this something. And then people just drive down that path. I heard it over and over again as an instructor. I heard it over and over again in the cage rooms talking with guys. And they're like, I don't know, this is all I ever wanted to do.

Yeah. Like, why did it grab us like that, but not other people? I don't have an answer for it. I mean, the mindset is something that's, you can't easily measure, you know, and certainly, and people ask me all the day, what, what, you know, how do you predict who's going to, who's going to make it or not, you know. Good luck. Right.

If they would have let us bet as instructors, we'd be broke. Yeah. I mean, the amount of money that's been spent to try to figure that stuff out and it still comes down to, well, there's about 20, 25% who are going to make it. You really can't tell. They all pass the screener, and in theory, you can do it. And there's some who just absolutely won't quit. And guys who just do extraordinary things. And maybe they don't have incredible gifts. You know, one thing that's like, you have to be competent at everything to be a seal. You know, and that's what I tell people is like, hey, you have to, what does it take? I'm like,

you've got to be comfortable in the water. You've got to be comfortable in the water. You'll be comfortable land and all these evolutions we do and all the mission sets we have, you have to be able to do all of them at a very competent level. And if there's just one, there's one thing that you can't do, then you're going to be out. And so you have to be pretty multi-skilled or like, I think what I've, what I've found about skills is like they tend to be able to learn very quickly. Yeah. And that is something that really sets, I think, our community apart from others is just how quickly they pick things up. I would say that's probably soft wide. Yeah, I think that's right.

I think the community, that is a skill that has served me well post-military. But then I try to reverse engineer that. Is that because people who can learn quickly are drawn to that job, or is that a skill set that we learn along the way? I think both might be true to a degree. But, I mean, something I learned early in my career is if somebody, in this case, the military is going to spend a ton of money to have like world class. fill in the blank. My theory is you do exactly what they tell you to do and no more. You know and follow directions.

But literally, that's follow the direction. That is not a common skill. Like people don't do that well. Follow directions, absent being interrupted or going down a rabbit hole, which I didn't have that option at the time because of the smartphones. Yeah. You know, it's, I couldn't go to YouTube and type in how do you, whatever,

become a better rock climber or fill in the blank. you would have somebody who'd come to the line who could just smoke everybody on the line with their pistol. And he would talk about exactly what he did. And it's like, why would I add to that? If this guy is literally the best in the world, why do I need to add something to that? You say put your hand like this, every single. Like, you do that every time? Okay, cool.

I'm going to do that every time too. Exactly what they say, nothing more. But if you can do that, I mean, I don't know if there's a skill that would be out of your achievability range, if you can grasp on. to that. There might be some, you know, some IQ issues depending on, like, probably not going to design a rocket to go into space because I don't understand any mechanical engineering. But I think I could probably, or most people could learn if you can grasp onto that headspace. I think you can learn at a rate that's a lot faster. I think that's right. I mean, we would, I could remember doing,

we're doing like a helo call for fires. And it was, hey, watch one, do one, teach one. And it was like, whoa, like I'm going to watch one person do this call for fire and I have my little script and then I'm going to go do it and then I'm going to teach someone else how to do it and that's how fast the community moves I mean that's it's it's extremely high expectations in that regard. Just read the script though. Just read the script. Don't add words. Yeah. Don't take things away either. Yeah. I can't remember we were we had a break from training a couple days on a couple days on a weekend. We were out in Utah and a bunch of guys had never been fly fishing went. We had this guy was showing us and I remember, I mean, guys, in like, two or, the guys like, here you go, and he's to do it. And they're like, two or three casts and guys would get in your, he was, this guy was blown away. He's like, oh, my God. Okay, you guys got it. And he just kind of like walks away.

It's, it's pretty unreal. The job rewards being able to perform. If you look back in buds. Oh, for sure. First phase, probably not so much. It's like be able to do some pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups and run your ass off. Yeah. And more flutter kicks.

Muscle through. Totally. I mean, that's what first phase is about. Sure. Second phase, though, we'll give you a whole week to prep for pool comp. A whole week, two dives a day. You don't know shit. But you know really well, the procedures.

That's actually what it was all about. So I taught second phase. It was all about the procedures. I had to brief the classes. And I don't know if it was in the curriculum, but I would sit them down after pool comp and just tell them, please don't go recreational diving. You guys are idiots. You don't know anything about diving.

That test you just passed might have occurred underwater on open circuit gear, but it had nothing to do with diving. It was all about being able to follow procedure regardless of what's going on around you. Yeah, no, I remember, so I came through at 260. Okay. Yeah, so you were. Yeah, because I proctor 264, so I had just gotten there.

Yeah, you just gotten there, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's the phase where it was a little slower than watch one, do one, teach one. Yeah, a little bit slower than that, yeah. It took a few classes for the instructors because it's a one-on-one, and you have to know the ins and outs of the test. Oh, for sure.

And you have to know the gray areas of what, what you can pass somebody with and what somebody should be failed for from a procedural perspective. Yeah. Because it, and that's pretty heavy too. At that point, if they fail and, you know, they fail twice, they get remediated and they can pass or take the test again the next day, Thursday, Friday, at least when I was there. They fell that Friday, though, one again twice.

They're in front of a board. And it was, it's heavy to sit there and watch somebody who you know has a performance role already on their fourth attempt at pool comp. You feel like they're performing well. They're a good dude. And then you watch them start fucking up. It's a tough one. Yeah, no, it's, yeah, it's pretty.

They've been through Hellweek, got their first phase. Yeah. Well, you know those students at that point, too. It happens, yeah. Yeah, you're like, okay, this kid has a performance role. You're not going to get two. Yeah. And you're watching him fail pool comp for the fourth time.

Yeah. I mean, that happened to our class OIC. He was a great dude. We all liked him. Good leader. And just when it got to the second phase iterations, he ended up getting performance dropped up for a couple of, you know, he rolled back a class. But then the same thing happened again. The butter bars didn't save him.

Yeah, no. Those butter bars, those are a target. It's an absolute target. It doesn't help you at all. Oh, I know. That's the one thing you know that. I mean, obviously. I went through his Seaman apprentice stump.

Yeah. I got to the island in a third phase instructor pulled me aside within weeks. of graduating and said, hey, are you part of this class? I was like, fuck yeah. Good job. Yeah, there's 0% chance as an O that you're going to be able to do that. Zero percent chance. For sure.

Yeah. And it's one thing I love about the community is that it's, as far as I know, the only community in the entire military, probably in the whole world where the enlisted guys run the training, they're effectively selecting who will be the future leaders of the community. And that's a beautiful thing. And they can, and rightly so, they make it extremely difficult. Why the O route versus the E route? Yeah, so you were asking me that.

Actually, let me ask this. Yeah. Having gone through your career, if you could go back in time, would you still go the O route? Oh, man. These are hard questions. So why initially I did it. So I graduated from college as I'm like talking to the recruiter and figuring that out. And recruiters, their knowledge particularly about NSW tends to be like, unless, I mean, it's way better now.

I'm talking nearly 20 years ago. Yeah, it was when, when there was no, you know, deep program where they were had, what do they call that now? Pre-training? Yeah, I mean, they have, they have like. I heard they shut that down, actually. The pre-training pipeline. And I've also heard that it is either going to be started back up or it was started back up. Yeah.

So for people listening, you would go to, for the path for most people, pre-training program, or my path was, I enlisted boot camp at like the fourth week. They literally put in a VHS tape that was a grainy, like dudes coming out of the water. Like, fuck yeah. Like, who wants to take the test to do this? Which was a run, swim, pushups, pull-ups, sit-ups. If you passed that, you picked an A-school that would allow you to go to Buds. You went to the A-school, then you went to Buds. Then after I was in, it was you could sign up with a contract, guaranteeing your spot in Buds.

You would go boot camp. I think you would get assigned. an A school, but at some point you would detach and then go through like this 12 week, 12 week pre-training program, and then you would go to Buds. Actually, you know what? I don't even know if you went to an A school because Buds became an A school. Right. That was around like 06 when it became an A school. Yeah. And you got, there was this S.O. Rate. Correct. And that's when I think they started the, well, they had this more official like seal recruiters who were getting, and it was a billet, you know. And some of these guys were,

contracted, like they had gotten out of the Navy but or retired and now their SEALs doing this job. But all that I say, it got a lot better than when I came in. You know what didn't change during all of that stuff? What's that? The attrition rate. Exactly. That is one number. Like, you can be like, yeah, I heard it when I came in. And like, it's not like I check it. I just know that it's true. The amount of money they spent trying to figure out, I mean, surveys on people's hobbies. They were doing personality tests on people at a time. The psychology test. Yeah. I am not aware of it bumping or lowering the attrition rate by maybe a one single percentage point. That program will just spit people out. It's a fucking wood chipper. Yeah. No, for sure. It's,

I mean, you got to love, it's one of the only places where, I mean, you think about the rest of of society. You go to college, maybe you're in, let's say, a med school or law school. These are challenging things to get in, smart people, ambitious people. The school is not sitting there saying, we hope you quit, and that's our mission. You know what I mean? Like, buds is... It would be dope if it was. Doctors with boats on their heads. It would be. I think it would have a lot better outcome if that was the way it worked. You would be a brain surgeon? Yeah, what's your fucking O-Chorse time? You're out of here. But just, you know, something that's a little bit more like we, I love one of the senior leaders, in the communities.

I love he says, a perfectly acceptable number is zero to pass. He holds the standard. Yeah. And that's a beautiful thing because we've seen in our society many places where standards have been compromised. And the results of said compromise of standards. Exactly.

The results of the tests are really out there for people to look at if they want to. I don't think you should deviate from the standard. Yeah, for sure. There's one of the things when I went back as an instructor. It was really cool. They did not ever expect us to deviate from. the standard. I will say the skipper would show up sometimes on a Friday of pool week. If there was a large number of students that had failed twice on Thursday, he would attend on the pool

deck. I don't know what he thought that was going to do. I think it made the students way more nervous than the instructors. Because quite frankly, the skipper didn't know what the fuck he was looking at anyway. You know, he'd gone through pool comp decades before. Right. But yeah, yeah. So back to your question. on, you know, O versus E route. So I had finished college, so it just, it's not knowing a whole lot. It seemed like, well, I've got this degree. I should go the OCS route.

And the only person, like, even in my town, you know, who wasn't, I mean, I talked about like my grandpa, but he's obviously quite old at this point. Someone in my parents' generation, my mom had a friend who was a SWO captain and had just gotten out. And so I go and talk to this guy. and he's awesome. He's named. His name's Captain Mark Rogers. And he doesn't know a ton about the SEALs, but he understands generally how the Navy works. And he's, he's like, hey, go to the recruiter and you're going to want an OCS billet and, you know, figure out how that works. And so, so I went to the recruiter. And here's a, this is a word of the cyber. So the first time went to the recruiter, I got, when I was a senior in college, I got hit by a car on my bike and broke my hip. And this is back. So this is like in the post-9-11, Iraq, kicking off. So I'm seriously considering now the military, I crutch into the recruiters office. And they're looking at me like, like, whiskey tango frockstrot. And then I say, I want to be a

seal. And they're just like, on crutches? Yeah, on crutches. And they're going, yeah, this isn't going to work. And I had this, another time I had this, you know, hair kind of like I have now, but even more kind of froed out. And I could hear the guys laughing saying, hey, Goldilocks wants to be a Navy SEAL, like in the background. You know, and I will say that sort of steeled my resolve. I'm like, oh, I'm going to prove these guys wrong. Yeah. Now, every time when I was growing up, people would tell me that I wasn't going to make it.

Oh, yeah. That helps so much. I tell you what, that's also a different kind of person, too. Were that the negative read? I mean, I have, you have kids, right? Oh, for sure. I have two boys and a girl. Yeah.

With my boys, I can fuck with them. If I fuck with my daughter like that, it's like throwing water on a fire. Yeah. But my boys, it's logs of motivation. And that's the same way it is for me. Yeah. Somebody's like, hey, you can't do that. I'm like, really?

Let me get some fucking research on because I'm about to blow your hair back. Yeah. And with my daughter, and I made that mistake once early on. I kind of saw her like shrinking. I was like, oh, fuck. Okay, we got to change tact here. Yeah. It's a special kind of person that sees that as motivation.

For sure. And I feel like most deals, I mean, that is a characteristic, probably common to all. Resoundingly, over the course of my 17 years in, 99.9% negative feedback. as a community. You're also going to get very candid feedback. Anytime I got positive feedback, I remember sitting there like, are you fucking with me? It doesn't happen a lot. Like, am I in trouble?

Like, you're actually being really nice. What did I do wrong? Fuck. I fucked this out. Yeah. And it's, I mean, it takes a very anti-fragile, non-fragile person to be able to receive that and just, and to take it on and keep trudging ahead. Have you attempted to give that type of feedback in the civilian world? I've dabbled with it and I found that it doesn't work particularly well.

I was going to say I have a full rolodex of examples of what I've tried it. Results always the same. Yeah. People, I mean, I've had people in tears. I'm like, I apologize. That wasn't my intent. I've had people quit. And I've had people just look at me in absolute utter horror and shock and be like,

you're the biggest asshole I've ever met. And I'm like, this is just how we talk to each other. Yeah. Yeah, it's It does not That one is not a multi-tool It's not It's not

Yeah Right time, right place Right person For sure Yeah Yeah It's funny to watch It's one of the things

I do a good amount of public speaking I have for shit Well over a decade at this point I actually caution people Against The seal Kind of leadership model

Leadership culture Because If you don't don't have the same type of people who went through the same type of course that have the same type of buy-in, you are going to be just throwing people out into space like an atom coming apart. The electrons are just flying off. Yeah. It can't be replicated. Yeah. It works in that situation. You're exactly right. I mean, and in, I think one skills... I don't tell people it's bad. I just define the very narrow bandwidth that it can work in. Right. And I ask them the question. Like, if your

organization is tooled like this, this might be good for you. But if your organization is anything other than this, you better be really sparing. I've watched so many guys. Again, I'm not joking. The number of times I have fucked up and used the feedback model that we were just a part of and seen it fail, I watch guys get out of the military. And I think it's why actually a lot of team guys will be like individual entrepreneurs or start their own business with just themselves. Because it's so ingrained and if you can't get it back and check, it is just not accepted in the civilian world. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. It's entertaining as fuck, but it's not accepted.

No, I think that's right. I mean, I've, you know, transitioning to be an entrepreneur and obviously you're going to build a team. You know, I've had to be, I think, adaptable would be the word. Yeah. And I think if you were leaders, one of the, you're one of the, you know, you know, you're, you know, things that when you see leaders who can succeed in multiple environments, the trait they have is like they're highly adaptable to recognize, you know, have this high EQ of, hey, what is, read the room.

Yeah. Right? Who is in the room and how are we going to properly motivate and get the best out of this, this crew, whoever may be, whatever that background is. And again, the same tool absolutely does not work. I mean, it doesn't even work at different levels of the teams. Yeah. You know what I'm seeing, like how you're dealing with new guys versus old.

and then when you get to like more advanced, you know, elite levels, the way you operate is just also completely different. And so if you're a leader who works at those different levels, you've got to adapt through that. And if you can't, like you're not, you're just not going to succeed. It's interesting to see. And I think this is coming to an end a little bit, but for years people viewed the special operations community,

specifically the SEAL community as if it was, it was a nucleus of only the best leadership in the world. And you would watch people get hired for or approached for a role that, quite frankly, was outside of their capability. They might have been enthusiastic about it, but their enthusiasm outstrip their capability. And I've had this conversation so many times with people because, and I'm sure this is the case for you in your career, you probably worked with good leaders and bad, right? For sure.

But did you ever have mission failure? I mean, not abject mission failure, no. And that's the thing. So people look at the community and they say, well, you guys just keep succeeding and succeeding. It's succeeding. You must have the best leaders in the world. What they'll never know is that, you know, a platoon or a troop or whatever it is, sometimes they're succeeding in spite of the leader, not because of the leader.

That's, yeah, for sure. But that's invisible to anybody else. Like, if we all put it on our dress whites, everybody would say that's a great picture. but let's say you're at a team on the West Coast, you can be like, that guy fucking sucks, but he wears the same uniform, and they look the same, and they have the same title.

And if we go out in the field, two people might be doing the job of that guy, and you're going to have mission success, and if that guy is the leader, they're going to say, that's spectacularly the best leader in the world. Like, no, it actually, the SEAL community actually masks really poor leadership.

Well, because the guys always pull through. Yeah. Always pull through. Yeah. Well, it's, I mean, Then that guy gets out of the military, to say the poor leader, goes into a sector and just proper fucks it for everybody else. I've watched doors closed behind because they have such a bad taste in their mouth. And they say, probably rightfully so, not again.

We're going to turn the faucet off there. Yeah. So it's, yeah, it's interesting looking back at it now. The best leaders that I ever worked with and also the worst. Yeah. And nobody would ever know the difference. Yeah, from the outside, for sure not. I mean, the whole be able to do a job one up and one down from you.

I mean, guys are really good at that. And so, and at times I think we would even, we might have weaknesses in the platoon and the unit covers for those by other guys stepping up. And then gets in bar fights with the shitbacks. Yeah. And unfortunately, you carry, yeah, that's true. You carry weight.

You carry guys along who you probably shouldn't. Even though, but you have this intense devotion to them. And that's the conflict. Yeah. And that's what the community consistently struggles with. How do you explain to the outside world that both good and bad exists? Yeah. It's been a struggle.

Yeah. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. So all this is to say, Captain Rogers, you know, it just seemed like I sort of wandered into the O route because I had a degree and it seemed like that's what I should do. and I didn't, I mean, I didn't have, I didn't know any sales. So no one was given me sort of ground truth on what that was. And yeah, so, so that's how I applied for my OCS billet.

That was a pretty good application process. You know, it was like a bunch of physical tests. It's like a college applications, essays, and then interviews. And, and then, yeah, I got picked up as one of those billings. It's actually didn't get picked up my first round and then reapplied and got it that second round. And so then started OCS December of 05. So that's the kind of the officer and a gentleman course. It is.

So if you're coming from the civilian, you're civilian, you've never had any military experience. I mean, there's three ways you can get to be a CLO or just a Navio in general. You go to the academy. Yep. You do ROTC if your college has a program like that. And those are four-year deals where the military's, paying for your college, pretty good deal, really good deal. We just better consider how much college costs.

But I paid for college. My parents paid. And but then, you know, if you're just a civilian out there and you've got a degree, there is a route for you and it's to go to, it's, yeah, the officer and gentleman, the officer candidate school. When I, when it was in Pensacola, I think it's back in Rhode Island now. But it's run by Marine Corps drill instructors. and they're they're super very professional.

Unique. They're unique. They do a good job, excellent job of what they do. And yeah, it's 12, 12 weeks a show. You get your commission and then it rolled out to buds. Straight out to buds. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. So that was, I mean, that was the benefit, the great thing. And mine was like, it only took me three months from getting in the Navy to get to where I wanted to be. That's not bad. Yeah. Yeah, because I'm eight weeks in boot camp, another eight weeks at a school. Of course, this transition time, you've got to wait for your school to start. Yeah, that's not a bad way to go.

But now looking back, what would you have done? Knowing your career. Man, that is a really tough one. Because I had, there's a lot of things in your career, you just, I mean, so many things you don't control. Like, I mean, where you get missions, where you get assigned. I mean, a lot of these things are governed by geopolitics. obviously way out of your control and then also needs of the Navy. So many good, like, I mean, just, you know, you want to be as good and competent as you can be

and have a great reputation so that when good opportunities come, you get chosen for those things. But that's the best you can do in terms of, like, determining your fate. Well, officers are on this 24-month clock, though. Yeah, that's true. The listed guys can just tick in if they want to. Yeah. So, man, it's such a. a tough question. I think I probably would have, if rethinking it had gone enlisted.

Co. E for a decade and then you still got your degrees. Right, because you can, you can rotate up. Yeah. You could have easily, you could have made, you know, get to E6, maybe looking at the chief rap, like, I don't think so. Latterol over. Slap some butter bars on, you're good to go. Yeah. It is a different career trajectory. I watched officers come and go. 24 months is literally what it seems like. Yeah. You know, for an enlisted guy at a team, you're probably going to do five years minimum. And then, you know, over on the East Coast, damn, those guys have been there over a decade. And that just, the O's can kind of bounce in and out, but they're not staying consistently.

Yeah, I think that is a big negative on the officer side of, I mean, you can't really stay in that one job. You mentioned two-year cycle for very long, whereas on the East side, you know, you can work on your skills, like, you know, get really good at jumping. Oh, yeah. a sniper, like all these things, and you can work on those consistently. Like, if you're an oh, you're touching those things and then you're moving on. And like, you're, you really don't have any deep skill sets. Obviously, the leading, leading Seals in Combat is a skill set in itself. But, but the hands-on skill sets, you're just touching those things. You're not getting to work on them consistently. My first pre-9-11 platoon, the LPO, which is leading petty officer,

right underneath. The headshed would be the OIC officer in charge. I see the chief and then the LPO. So the LPO finishes his tour and probably is going to pick up chief. This dude was on his 10th deployment as an E6. He had gotten in some probably along the way. So a little bit of up and down the ladder of enlisted ranks. Yeah. Yeah.

That's impossible in the O route. It's impossible. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't need to look anything up because I would just go ask him. Right. Yeah. I mean, he just a fucking roll a deck of information.

Right. Like, oh, yeah, I've done this training exercise 15 times. This is what you guys can expect. Yeah. Yeah. The experience is totally irreplaceable. Yeah. 10th, yeah, still to this day, I'm like, 10th, 10th deployment.

Okay. That's a lot. It is. How was Buds as an O? It was, you know, there's several O's going through. I think we had, I want to say eight. So, and I was maybe the most junior one there. So, you know, you're getting.

scrutiny as an O, but I wasn't up like the class OIC who's getting, he's getting a lot of scrutiny. Yeah. And certainly, I mean, the main things you're focusing on is just surviving the physical challenges that are, that are happening every day. And head counts. Yeah. Head counts.

I mean, there's some real basic stuff you've got to figure out. And you're running your boat crew. You've got a collateral. And you're definitely getting the spotlight, you know, on you at various times. and the thing that I, you know, I've said this before that I think the thing that helps you get through buds is like not thinking about yourself. And so if you're in, you're in a leadership position. And so you are worried, hey, how does my boat crew going to perform? Whatever it is.

We're doing the rock portage. We're doing boats on our, you know, the boat carry on our heads. And just that shift in thinking, I think. really helps because otherwise, you know, you get in that self-pity spiral if you're thinking about yourself and that doesn't go well. No, it does not. Yeah. I used to enjoy seeing students in that cycle and then I would try to just really help them and assist them deeper. Yes. It's shocking to be the number of people. It's, oh, somebody, you know, they made me quit. I'm like, I want you to sit with that for a second and let's really determine who made the decision to quit. For sure.

Because I've never seen an instructor grab a student's hand and put it on the bell. Yeah. probably because we're not allowed to. But, you know, for sure. Nobody makes you quit. You make the choice. Somebody can drive you to a place where you make that decision, but that's a tough conversation to have with people. Because they'll get into those spirals.

And it's amazing to see this mini gun of excuses just, and it all terminates and ringing the bell three times and somebody else's fault. It's like, that's unfortunately not how it works. Yeah, I mean, that's another thing that I, again, love about the community and buds is, I mean, there's zero self-pity that is allowed. Or like, I mean, and you as an instructor, the time, when you start to see it, you know, because we want that rooted out.

I mean, you just don't want that in the community at all. And so, and you attack it. So as a student, you don't want to show it, even if maybe your mind might be there. Sometimes you're going to let the students work it out. Yeah. Like on a hell week shift, maybe just let them go do a little bit of a paddle. And they do an ore fight first, you know, and somebody comes in a little battered in Bruce and heads towards the bell. There's things you can do as an instructor.

For sure. And there's things you can hand back over to the class. Yeah, I mean, it's a wolf pack. And the wolf pack will call out the guys who aren't pulling their weight. And, you know, running with a boat on your head or the paddling, you know, those are excellent ways to do that. I mean, we would do that in our boat crew. Like sitting into the side as an instructor and watching the class. because, you know, as an instructor, you'd see, especially in Hellwick.

Hellweek is about five days long. It's a 24-hour evolution. And so all of the phases have to augment because it's just not enough first-face staff. So I didn't know any of the fucking students, right? It's hundreds of kids, largely. So I didn't, there's no way for me to identify who is really a top performer versus who the class doesn't like. But if you were to sit back and watch, you could find. these little nucleus of boat crews doing the job that needed to be done for the instructor

staff and the curriculum. The number of students that I watched quit because they were under a boat and they are running and everybody in their boat crews like, fuck you, Bob, like, you need to quit. I've watched boat crews push people out. It's brutal. Push people out from under the boat. And then the dude's just like, they start like really enthusiastically chasing the boat. and then they slow down and then they walk, and then the truck pulls up with the bell.

It's brutal. We did that on Wednesday night. It was the middle of the night, and we were on west side of the base there, just doing like base tour, I think. Yeah. And so boats on head, you're running from place to place. It's a race.

It's not the tour you guys think it is. It's not postcards. Like he said, the middle of the fucking night. The irony of that statement. Oh, totally. It is what they call it. It's left in three and a half, four days at this point. and yeah we had a guy just um you know i think he was hurt to some degree but just absolutely

couldn't stay with us and it was kind of like hey are we going to like keep running at this pace and i'm like no we're not going to keep running at this pace and and and i don't want to this is a good guy end up making it later uh but i don't want that to be the focus but we took off and now so we don't have six guys uh in your in your in your boat crew that's like the standard and sometimes you get more or less, but now we had five and all of a sudden we're winning like big time. And it was awesome because like we got to the next station

and the structure cotter's like, how did you guys get here so fast? They're like, hey, guess what? On the next one, you guys don't have to carry the boat. You can just run. And we're like, oh man, so guess what? And Bud's reinforces this too. It's like it pays to be a winner. Every time.

Every time. Because then, hey, your life gets easier. That's true in life. You know? Yeah. You crush things. You prepare and your life gets easier. You don't prepare.

Life gets harder. Yeah. You don't do a great job. Everything gets harder. Yeah, it was wild to see the students self-selecting. Yeah. And a lot of the times, another really interesting facet of being an instructor is you spend a lot of time with people who quit. Because as a student, I mean, my class, we had 18 first day 18 originals graduated.

I have no idea where they went. Because you're running to breakfast and you're talking to Bob. and at lunch Bob's not there, and I don't give a shit. Yeah. Because I'm on my journey and Bob is now on his journey. Right. Well, as an instructor, you get to sit there and you get to talk with them. And they're in a pretty emotionally compromised state and I was always very kind because

I was more curious about why. Yeah. What got you. There's no reason to. Yeah. Yeah. They already feel bad enough. But they're in a place where they were really open and honest about why they made the decision

that they did. And it was fascinating case study in white people. people give up on because most students would tell you this is this is my lifelong goal this is what I want more than anything in life if you canvass the class like hey by a show of hands how many people are going to be here on graduation day every fucking hand goes up sure every single one and where'd you all go you know where'd you all go but to see the students kind of being even an additional pressure vice on top of the curriculum itself weeding out what is invisible because as the instructor staff, we see too many students to have the inner dynamics of what's going on.

Yeah. And then I would, you know, I would talk with some of the students about, if I saw a boat crew do that, spit a guy out. I would often try to get some time with members of that boat crew to understand why. They were shockingly unwilling to give me information most times. Yeah. Because I mean, you are like the enemy. Yes. Well, I thought I was going to use it against them, which for clarity 100% was probably going to.

Yeah. And I also wasn't a student too, so I totally got it. Yeah. But it was fascinating. A lot of the times, it wasn't even necessarily performance driven. They just hated the person. It was personality based. And the personality conflicts were occurring in times where the instructors weren't around.

Like the weekends. Yeah. When somebody was a shitbag away from the instructors. Because people think that Buds is 182 days and it's 24-7. It's a completely not. Hellweek is five days of pretty consistent, you know, kicking the dick. but you get your weekends off, other than on the island in San Clemente, but even then you can kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel.

So if I could get the boat crews to open up a little bit, it was fascinating to hear why that person was the one that they ejected out and almost never had anything to do with physical performance. Yeah, that's a really good insight. It was a violation of trust more than anything. Yeah. Which was wild to see it physically expressed that way. Yeah, it goes back to the wolf pack.

It's it's not just can you do the job. Like, do we trust you? Do we want you to be on our team? Are you going to do things that will, you know, represent us well, like all those things? And that's the 360 of your life. It's not just I show up at work and do those things. And I, again, there's very few, I'm almost nowhere else where that's the case where those things matter so much. I mean, with some, they're crazy.

it's crazy sometimes who quits. I mean, so you have guys who come to buds, you know, two, three. I mean, sometimes maybe four times. Another misconception people don't realize. Yeah. I think it's a one and done. Yes. And that's definitely not the case.

Right. It is for O's, right? You only get one shot for O's. And it should be their shit bags. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And then for enlisted guys, you know, they might come back and they've done buds and they know buds.

You know what I mean? And so a lot of times they get in like a leadership position because they know so much about what's coming. Yeah. And so as a student, you perceive, this person has, is squared away. They have their shit together and they know what's going on. So I'm going to listen to them. And then we had a guy who's performing extremely well, seemed to know everything. I didn't know his full backstory, but I knew he had budd to buds at least once.

And I mean, within hours of the chaos that starts Hell Week, the guy quit. I just remember even blown away and why this individual would have quit because he seemed to be as, as knowledgeable and as capable as like is anyone in the whole class. Did it induce other people to quit as well? I don't remember that specific one, but in general there is a herd sort of thing that happens. What you just described is so eerily similar to what happened in my class too. So he was not a hellweek rollback, but he made it to Tuesday. middayish.

Yeah. I don't think I'm giving away any inside baseball. If you can make it to Wednesday, Thursday, they might roll you forward. It is not uncommon to have a medical injury and be rolled forward into Hell Week, meaning you'll get your brown shirt,

designating you've been through Hell Week. But for a class of people that hasn't gone into Hell Week at all and we don't know what to expect, this dude was the Burning Bush, right? Everything. This is what's going to happen. This is how you should mentally approach it.

This is what you should prepare for. We, my class, and I don't know if this happened because it was just scheduled to happen or that they absolutely hated us because they fucking hated my class. Yeah. We did not get a breakout for Hellweek. They put us out in the tents on the beach. And, you know, we did the, we were watching pizza or watching a movie, ate pizza, whatever on the Sunday. And we go out there and, you know, you're ready for the M60 fire and the smoke grenades. Yeah.

And you just hear hit the surf. And I was in like the northernmost tent and they were down more by the southern one. So we watched, we were like peering through the team. Do I have to go out there? How long can I sit here? Yeah, well, the week's coming. Yeah, it's coming. But yeah, so we nursed another 20, 30 seconds.

Yeah, 30 seconds. So we opened Hell Week with a good probably two hour surf torture evolution. That's a good one. It's a surf immersion is what they call it now. Sure. Yeah. And this particular individual, I'm going to say, And this is again, through decades of looking back, I'm going to say within the first two hours, he ejected.

Wow. And the number of people that followed him because of the, I'm making a guess here a little bit, but because of how they viewed him and what they thought he was capable of, if this dude's throwing the talent now, what chance do I have? Yeah. Be careful. It's contagious. Be careful the stories you tell yourself. Yeah. I think it actually nerded the instructors out a little bit.

I mean, there was a symphony of fucking bells going on, ding, diddleing, didal ding, ding, ding. Like, you know, we were playing jingle bells out there. Wow. And it was wild. That one person, the Burning Bush was the first dude to go. That's crazy. Yeah. We had another crazy one.

So post-Hell week, we come back. I think it was like the very first day back. During walk week? Yeah, during, no, it was. During walk week. And before we even, you know, you class up, I mean, guys can barely walk at this point for those listening, like after Hell Week.

I mean, you're super chafed. You're moving around like you're 90. It's like you look like you're 90 years old. I mean, in terms of how you're moving. But you're getting into this walk week. And I remember we mustering. It's still like, you know, five in the morning, 4.30, something's like super early.

But our LPO is like nowhere to be found. And it's like, oh, man, like, what's going on? And OIC is trying to find it or whatever. and he got out that morning the day, the first day after Hell Week, and went and rang the bell. I mean, everyone was like,

everyone was shocked. He went through all of that just to ring the bell? Yes. I mean, it's like, we just had the weekend. Like, you just recovered. Like, what happened? And I don't know. You know, I didn't talk to the guy after.

I mean, what I, so what some guys had said had just, um, I think he got, you know, there was some emotional elements of like, he saw his kids, you know,

he'd been in the fleet. And afterwards and like, you know, he hadn't seen him a long time. And then, I don't know, he just got in this bad spiral. He got in the bad spiral. And it was, I don't know if that's ever happened at Buds. I mean, I don't, it would be like, you know, how, you know, like basically no one quits on a Friday. Yeah. You know, I mean, in general, that's, that's not always true.

But that's why you always tell the students is Thursday. Yeah. So, but, I mean, to quit after Hell Week is like, wow. Especially that close to that. You had to get in bad play. I support it. I'm here for it. Here's the thing. I'd rather have it. You think you're in a bad place after hell week to fucking stand by. Yeah. Because it gets a whole lot worse for sure. You know what I mean? Yeah. I didn't believe the instructors when they said you're going to be colder after buds or more tired. I'm simply looking at them. I said nothing. I just was like, who you're instructed. Yeah, right. In my head. In my head I'm like, you're a fucking liar. You're a liar. Yeah. And then it was way colder after training. And what? way more tired. Yeah.

Yeah. What was the coldest you were ever after? A fucking desert in Afghanistan. Whoa. I would not have guessed that one. Well, in the summer, when you get the temperature swing and if you're bust in your ass during the day and then all of a sudden the temperature goes off a cliff. Yeah. And, you know, sometimes you pack warm, sometimes you don't because you think you're going to be back in, you know, a day.

Right. And you're not because the weather rolls in. And then you're real cold. Yeah. Probably wasn't as cold, to be honest, as the immersion. in the ocean, you know, in San Diego, but it felt like it for sure. Yeah. Deserts, man, they'll crush you.

They can have 100 degree temperature swings. Yeah. That is brutal. Yeah. I mean, honestly, like probably Kodiak was probably the coldest. Mm. Afterwards, doing the bullshit. Like, let's do an OTB in our dry suits because it's 1999 and like, fuck it.

This is what everybody did before us. So I was beaten as a child, so I have to beat you since you're my child. Gosh, I do an OTBs in Alaska. This is, I learned a real hard lesson. Yeah. Since we're over the beach for people listening, yeah. We're right before we realized we didn't have, you know, a signal that we were going to use. And I'm running around trying to find this thing.

And then I, you know, go and take a leak like in the bushes before we like get on the boat and roll out there. Forget to zip up the full full zoom. up on the uh strong the the crotch zipper so yeah get in you know this water's basically it's freezing it's just not it's not freezing because it's it's salt water and it's moving and and so it felt like needles in my legs I'm like oh this is like pretty cold and like kicking it in trying to walk across the beach and I must have a hundred plus pounds of water in this suit yeah full Michelin man yeah and this is this is SQT so I'm trying to like I don't want to let the instructors know that I've been a total moron and

And so I'm like sloshing it, you know, and we go and change out. And I'm doing, I'm doing eight count bodybuilders while everyone's changing out. So I don't hype out. And that hasn't happened to me again. So, you know, you can. The painful lessons. Self-taught. Yeah.

Natural, natural consequences. Looking back through SQT and Buds, what do you think the most important? Actually, let's just go on Buds. What do you think is the most important lesson you took from that as a person? Or is there one to be gained? from there. Is it just a wood chipper? So for me, gosh, I think it exposed some immaturity in myself. And, you know, so got through first phase, did fine, did well in all the physical

evolutions, had a good boat crew, bocru liked me, and vice versa, and that worked well. When I got to second phase, so as an officer, you have probably like three, core things that they've got to do. One of them is you need to be an excellent tactical leader in terms of being a ground force commander. Like that's what your job is out in the field. That's your core job. Outside of that, very important, you've got to be able to take care of your guys. Hugely important. And then the other thing is you need to be able to basically sell and promote your element. Right. And so of those things like taking care of the guys to be able to take care of me to have good relationships with them.

And so I had a number of friends in first phase. And so when I rolled into second phase, between getting rolled and whatnot, several of those went away. And I didn't reinvest in like more friendships. I got a little isolated and a little, you know, everyone's in that fatigue state of like post-Hell week. And I didn't put myself out there like I should have. And so that got me in a bad place with the.

class and having to battle through that and then go into third phase and I had a lot of a lot of eyeballs on me like hey the the oh I see the faces like hey the class is basically indicating that they don't like you as a leader and having to battle through that demonstrate my confidence regain their trust and then and then go on to excel I mean that was that was incredibly difficult and like you do not want to be I mean again in the wolf pack you do not want to be on the edge. Like, you absolutely want to be at the lead or at very least in the, you know, solidly in the center of this pack.

And that's your whole life. I mean, it absolutely is. And so working through that, you know, you don't, you don't want that to happen. I wish I'd been more mature and could have figured those things out ahead of time. I'm glad it happened very early because then it set me on. And I was able to learn from it pretty quickly. And by SQT could, I'd completely turn things around in a very positive way. Well, you get a clean slate after buds.

It's kind of, it's a little bit, it's truncated a little bit. That was beautiful to have a clean slate. And because, and the officers go to, after Buds, you separate from your class, you go to a new class because you go to the junior. So we went to, Jotsey. Yeah, junior officer training. And that's, I can't remember, I want to say about three months or so. Well, I get three, four months. And but then you pick up a new class.

And those guys typically don't know you. And like, everyone has some sort of problems in buds. No one's like, oh, I crush it the whole thing. You know what I mean? And so you're very happy to get a new slate. And once I did, I took every, you know, I took advantage of it. So, I mean, my biggest lesson was just getting through that immaturity and recognizing, like, you know, how important those relationships are and continue to invest in those. So, and then that set me up for success the rest of my career.

So another interesting misconception, I think, is that people feel like everybody, it's like this homogenous organization where everybody has exactly the same beliefs. Yeah. Holy shit. I serve with people. I mean, I legitimately serve with people who were Silver Spoon kids and straight up shooting dinner with a BB gun and like the deep woods of Arkansas and everything in between. And I would say the military and the SEAL community probably trends right of center politically. But I certainly serve with people who were on the left. Or support staff. Or we don't know all the structure that makes it possible. It's, people think that leadership like SEAL community, oh, you have the perfect team. team and you plan the perfect mission and it always goes well. And I just look, I'm like, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. It is, I mean, gosh, it's a beautiful thing about the community of like what binds this group of men together. And it's, it's the mission.

I mean, that's what it is. It's a buy-in to the mission. For sure. The greater mission, yeah. Because we talk about diversity. I mean, massively diverse backgrounds of exactly what you just explained. You know, I can remember a beat down where this is. training session.

Yeah, sorry. We're doing extra butts for screwing something up. We deserve it. Remediation is the term they required us to use. We deserved it for sure. There'd been sort of a snap room inspection and some of the, you know, this is, we were pretty, I mean, it's like third phase.

So you don't expect necessarily the room inspection at that point, but it happens. And some of the cadre are out there, you know, we're in the leaning rest and, and he's trying to make a point like, you know, who here grew up in a trailer park? and and you know everyone's looking around like two or three guys like raise their hand you know and and the and the structure's all just like oh shit I don't what's it he's like okay well

you shouldn't leave your rooms dirty you know he's like no you know he's trying to make some point that like yeah you know you guys didn't uh know how to take care of your place or something like that it's like hey there's guys from all sort of socioeconomic backgrounds um ivy league schools and it's awesome. Desoutly religious, complete another savage walking planet Earth, everything in between. Yeah. One of the best speeches, I mean, in my life that I've ever heard is I had checked into buds. When you check in, you're in like this holding phase.

We were just training, waiting to class up. And the OIC gives this very short speech where he's like, hey, everyone who's new here, Hey, no one gives a shit that you were the man in high school, that you were the king of the prom or the captain of your football team. It all starts here. And that's all he said. And I just remember being like, oh, that was awesome. And like, and you saw guys who like were those things and they were kind of like, they, they, everyone's like, oh, shit. Like, I mean, everywhere you go, you always are taking, and most of everywhere else in life.

Like, you are somebody, you know, it's so-and-so's son or I did this before or whatever. whatever, like, when you get there, it's like, I mean, none of that stuff matters. No one goes, well, this guy was, you know, captain of, uh, of his baseball team. So let's, let's give him a pass. Like that doesn't happen at all. It stays at the door. Not only that, I mean, it doesn't even get brought up. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be awesome if it did. I would have some choice feedback words. Yeah. Yeah. Where's your, uh, career take you after butts? Uh, so then. Would you put in your dream sheet? Yeah. So. So. Yeah, okay.

Fucking dream sheet. I ask everybody this too. Going through SQT, I put in East Coast, and this is because I put it, I'm from Tennessee. I was thinking, well, maybe I can like pop home a little bit easier from the East Coast. And that's what I put in. And then a couple months later, I was like, oh, that was dumb. Like, the West Coast, I'm loving in San Diego. And I'm not sure it's actually that much easier.

And so, so then I went and changed it. And that was, I had no idea this was going to have, but it ended up being. like a very good thing. So I ended up getting assigned to, excuse me, a West Coast team. And then I was not aware you could change your dream sheet. Well, it wasn't. This must be the officer. This is Bud's officer privilege. Yeah, exactly. Because E2, Andy, they're like, we actually shredded your paper right after we gave it to you because that's a fucking joke. You're going where the Navy needs you. Yeah, that's right. So I, you know, I rolled it to like admin that was like just off. I don't even, I can't who was running it. This lady who was running it, and I think she was a civilian,

she was not particularly happy that I wanted to do this, but she let it happen. And so the way it turned out, when I graduated at SQT, got my trite and get assigned to my West Coast team. Today's episode is brought to you by Element. It's spelled LMNT like it is on the can. Don't be afraid to just say Element. What is it? It is electrolytes. I'm going to read right off of one of these little satchels that they have. You can hear this. 1,000 milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams potassium, 60 milligrams of magnesium. There's a couple ways that you can get this. You have these little

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electrolyte water. Go check it out. Feel the energy coursing through your veins. Back to the show. Because I switched, they, I missed all of the like, the workup where you go to the schools

and like do all the schools. So what was, oh, pro dev. Yeah, yeah. Professional development piece. Yeah. So what was. was good. What was positive about that was I immediately jump into like the workup to train with

the platoon. And so it put me like just six months kind of ahead of like the other guys who I graduated with, which because officers don't, I would have loved to go on to the schools, but the schools aren't really part of your core job. You know, it's it's things that, again, the deep skills that you're ended up, you're not going to be necessarily utilizing. So that ended up being like a great thing. Yeah. And so then so then you're a new guy. At the team. Forever. Yeah.

Yeah. When did you finally deploy overseas the first time? So it was about two years after SQT. And this is like the late aughts. This was 2008. We went over to, we were in, we're out West in Iraq. And yeah, that was interesting, you know, going first time overseas, get off the plane. And this is what we had the RGs that just gotten, you know, the big armored vehicles.

So get in those things and, you know, driving very fast on the opposite side of the road is like, oh, this is this is the real deal. We're trying not to get ID'd right now and trying not to get shot at. And, yeah. How'd your career progress from there? So did that rotation and then. Pull that mic a little closer. Yeah, yeah. Sorry.

You're good. Take it with you when you lean back. Look at this. Oh, man. It's good. Did that rotation and then volunteered to go over to Afghanistan right after that. We had just been back a few months and we're going to go support another unit, did that for like a three-month deployment. And then, which was an amazing pro-dev.

And then stayed at Team 5. That was also a good deal. So I got basically two, I ended up doing three deployments like almost back to back. And then all in the like assistant platoon commander or third O role, which is a great place to learn a lot. Yeah. Without having a ton of responsibility. And so, yeah, so then finished there. And then I ended up going East Coast after that.

And gosh, did my platoon commander, troop commander did some ops roles and ended up getting out, 2018. When did you start thinking about getting out? Wow. So you retired or got out, you did 12 years. So is that probably 04 knocking on 05? Yeah, so I was just going to take the XO billet. Okay. Yeah, I'd picked that billet up and let's see. So I met my wife, my, she wasn't my wife at the time, but in 2011. And then we ended up getting married in 14. And we wanted to have a big family. And so we ended up, you know, having a kid right out of the gate, my oldest daughter, who's about 10 now, or no, sorry, she is 10. She's 10 now. And being on that sort of intense operational cycle from like 14 to 18 in a troop commander role, it was just, honestly, it was just

a lot of conflict in the home over, hey, we had our second son during that time period as well. And it was one of those deals where, let me back up a little bit. So my first daughter, I was deployed to Columbia. It was right in the middle. It was, I didn't love the way it was handled by leadership. It was like you might get to go home kind of situation. And I felt like just given the state of the mission and what was going to be. going on, it would have been reasonable to do so. But it turned out my, my, I was a platoon commander

at the time. My troop commander really stepped up for me big time. I remember, so my wife went into early labor. I know this and I'm like, okay, like it was one of those, was the baby coming or not, which is not a fair question to ask your wife who's going to early labor. I mean, you can ask it. Yeah. It'll never be forgotten. That's right. You can ask it. You can ask whatever you want. There's just people, First Amendment, like, yeah, the freedom of speech does not free you from the consequences of your speech. That's right. Goodness. So, so, so I'm informing my leadership.

Hey, this is what's going on. She seems to be in labor, but it's early. It could be like a false labor. I don't know. And my troop commander, a few hours later, calls me. And this is the conversation. He goes, hey, your wife's having the baby. And, like, I mean, it was jarring to me.

I go, it was like, you know, you're like, you see it in the movies, like, when the wife's water breaks over, the man, like, start freaking out. I was like, what? Are you, she is? She is? Okay, okay. Like, that's how I respond.

And I'm like, get on that plane. And then he hangs up. And I was, I was, you know, my thought was like, are you sure it's okay? Like, I wanted to be like, do have the, you know? So then I just, I mean, he basically just was like, okay, you're going and I'm going to make sure it's okay. And so I got home.

My wife didn't have our daughter at that point. And so I ended up getting to stay with her another week or two, have our baby. But I've got to leave a week after that. Going our second child had him and then had to do a deploy for purpose where, you know, going to work and then gone for several weeks without contact. And those things, you know, they're hard on a relationship for sure. So anyway, so that's all that to say, you know, if you can't make it work at home, I mean, what's the point? I mean, that's, that was my thing.

It's like, hey, everyone's getting out. It's like when, I don't know what terms. And so it's not something I really wanted to do. I had built up, gosh, you know, when you've, you know, when you've built up like just your reputation and like the amount of time you've spent to building, hey, how far you've gotten in your career. I mean, at the top of my game, just post-trop commander, getting ready to take an X-O spot. And, but I was like, hey, this, you know, going to end up either divorced or with, like, terrible relationship with my wife and probably my kids. And that wasn't a place I wanted to be.

So, so we punched. So what were you looking at doing professionally? Did you have any idea what you were going to do next? So I did have, I had always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I mean, even before, before going into the military. So that was something that I was looking forward to. And so I was excited about that opportunity. You know, for all the goodness, the military, it is a bureaucracy.

You're just got to climb the ladder. Like, over time, you can't skip any steps. And what I like about being an entrepreneur is you can build something great and, you know, relatively short amount of time. And like, you know, it's really all on you in terms of like how to, you know, you're competing in the free market and there's no steps to climb other than you've got to excel. but so that's that's what I, you know, transition into is starting, you know, running businesses

and obviously got to where I'm with Angel Q now. The idea of being an entrepreneur. Yeah. And the reality of being an entrepreneur. I'm going to get out and I'm going to build stuff. Very easy to say. It's brutal. Where did you start?

Like what was the first thing that you built? What was the, you're like, okay, cool, next chapter of life. Yeah, it was. I remember. So we got out in... Entrepreneur sounds great in the movies. It does. The number of entrepreneurs that I know full gray hair at the age of like 35.

I know. So we get out. This is in the springtime. Come back home to Franklin. We got in a house and trying to settle in there. In my mind, I imagined, oh, man, I've saved up a little money. We've been hitting it so hard for so many years. I'm going to like go learn how to play golf for six months.

And everything's going to be like, you know, bright, you know, rainbows and butterflies. And I remember very quickly just all of a sudden not having like a mission and purpose and drive was like it became terrifying pretty quickly. And so I rapidly shit candle like getting good at golf plan. It was like, I've got to get, I got to figure what I'm doing the rest of my life. And that's that is not an easy thing to kind of sort through. Yeah. But the guiding principle for me is like I was watching the tech world explode like while we were in the military.

And so that was very appealing to me. I was like, okay, that's where I've got to get. But I knew very, very little about tech. Other than I was sort of forward leaning in the platoon and the troop on trying to integrate new technologies, test things out and bring those to our community. But it's not like you're developing. software and you know, you're the end user, that stuff, and you can kind of guide how it's built. Sort of like a product owner, I suppose, but it's not like you're building it. And so

I just knew I needed to get in tech. And I mean, this is crazy. I remember in that, did you do the TAPS class, like when you get out of the military? And it's like a two-week thing that they pretty much forced you to go to. All of the signatures on my TAP's paperwork were there. Yeah. So I appreciate that. I wish I did the same thing. But, I can remember in that class reading about how the cloud was taking off. It's like, this seems like a good opportunity. And then when I got out, a friend of mine, an old family friend who was very bright technically had run the AI lab at San Diego State, he had started this business to create this distributed

cloud. I was like, this sounds awesome and maybe extremely lucrative. And so we linked up, started that, raised a little bit of money, and started going. down that route. And what I quickly found was that, gosh, I had been extremely naive in my understanding of what's realistic and what's not in terms of being able to build, what the market is like, and how difficult it is to, like, build a product. And so we went through, I mean, I mean, two or three, like, fail, like hard failures before landing on something that worked pretty well and has been moderately successful. But, um,

it was not the huge win that we had anticipated. And it was more like, I have to be like, maybe I learned a shit ton in the process. But it was honestly a pretty brutal experience. I mean, the free market is brutal. Like, you go from, I mean, in the military, it's the U.S. government is backing you, like, and wants to see the SEAL community

and special ops succeed and do extremely well. There's a huge amount of money behind that. And so if you have an idea and you want to go do things, a lot of times you can get funding for those things. You just got another right line item to draw from. Maybe pull it from this program over here. Maybe a little bit from over here. I mean, and then also...

The checkbook is robust. You're on your own. You have no... You don't have a platoon of guys who are like instantly working for you. You got to go raise money. Like you have to have a huge vision that are going to get people excited. And when you have a startup, you're starting from zero at some point. It's zero.

And like, very few people want to even sign up for that. because they're like, I don't know if they're going to make it or not. And they're right, right? I mean. It's very analogous to what you're saying about. It doesn't really matter if you were the team captain or any of that before, buds. Leave that shit at the door. No one cares.

Like you're tried it's still shiny and people probably pay attention to you, but you better be able to perform. That's exactly right. And you better build something that people want. I mean, that's if you know about like Y Combinator and that sort of accelerator and investment. I mean, that's their slogan is like, you know, build something that people want. And that's not an easy thing to do.

I would only build things that I. I like and then it would be immediately bankrupt. I actually have a hard rule at the coffee shop, especially for t-shirt designs. Yeah. If it was me, we would sell only black t-shirts with only white ink on it. Yeah. And so I constantly tell them when they ask me about a shirt idea, I'm like, listen, don't ask me, ask other people. Because if we only sold what I liked, we would be bankrupt.

I know. I have to also not a good judge of like what people like. I like super simple stuff. and apparently people like more complicated stuff. Right. And that's your choice in business. Do you want to sell what you like or do you want to sell what other people like? Yeah.

I would recommend the latter. That's exactly right. Yeah. Which is a tough pill just while. Like, God damn it, I'm an idiot again. Yeah. Yeah, it's rough. Yeah.

So, okay, Angel Q, how did we stumble upon this idea? Yeah. Other than the internet is a fucking landmine field, worse than we ever walk through. I can't wait to talk to you about that because I'm 100% on board with that. So first startup, it's just, it's doing very average. I wasn't super,

there wasn't a deep mission behind it and that's something also I recommend for vets is find something like you deeply care about. And so it makes the slower, more down days more tolerable. Yeah. So I'm in the middle of that, but then this Angel Q opportunity comes around.

So my co-founder Tim, and we have four co-founders, great founding team, but he originated the idea. And I will say one good thing that happened in my previous thing is like Tim had had an AI company. We went and pitched them on using some of our cloud products. He didn't end up buying, but it must have made a good impression because he called me when he was thinking about this idea and was like, hey, I think you'd be great to co-found this and help me execute here. So that was a very positive thing. But the mission to protect kids online, which is super needed, was something that I was definitely missing in my life. Did you grow up with a smartphone?

No, absolutely not. Well, they weren't even around. Okay. When did you get your first cell phone? Do you remember? Yes. So I had one in late high school. It was one of those flip phones.

Strong. Use your teeth to pull the little three-inch antenna. That's exactly right. I think it was a Motorola. Yeah. Oh, fuck yeah. And it was very much like it cost a ton of money then. So it was parents like, hey, keep this in the glove compartment.

Do not use it unless it's emergency. And that's what we did. Okay. You got it earlier in life than I did. Yeah. Yeah. I remember my first phone was in my mid-20s. And I think I bought the 60 minute per month plan.

But they rolled over. 60 minutes is amazing. You blow through that in the day now. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, no, some of those bills were pretty stiff and reinforcing. Yes, that's true.

Free weekends, though. Most of my calls were done on the weekends. Yeah. Yeah, it was the weekday. Oh, yeah, and nights. It went to go to those free nights came in. That was huge. Yeah, because that's when the Internet's cheaper, I guess.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, so, you know, my own kids, they don't remember a life without the Internet. Yeah. Gen Z does not. It's wild.

Yeah. They interface with it in a different way. They also, they are way more capable on the internet than I am. For sure. They can figure out ways to teach themselves things on the internet. Yeah. At a way I was never able to. My middle son started two businesses off of YouTube.

Oh, wow. Like, you know, how do you form an LLC? What's a business model? That's impressive. Yeah. He's going to be just fine. He's in Bozeman doing a mechanical engineering degree. I don't have any worries about him.

And one of his business was just knocking on doors. it was a window cleaning business. And so he doesn't mind talking people. When they tell him no to his face, he literally doesn't skip a beat. Do you know if any of your neighbors would like my service? He just fucking rolls with it. That is an important. He's fine.

He's going to be fine for the rest of his life. Right? I'm like, just go live life, dude. You're going to be absolutely fine. He's so smart and then so utterly stupid in some ways, too. I guess as we all are. We can't all be a multi-tool. Because, yeah, he's way smarter than me, but he'll do some dumb shit.

But he's also 19. But their utilization of the internet is wild. And then watching them in COVID trying to go to school on Zoom. Yeah. I mean, I graduate high school in 96. If COVID had happened then, that would just be the end of school. There was no Zoom. There's no Skype.

That's right. That would be just see in two years. I don't know what the hell they would have done. No. Yeah. But the number of kids I know who have gotten into some deep, deep water over. their head most of the time accidentally, sometimes making a decision in their prefrontal cortex developmental mindset of like, hey, this is a good idea to send this picture.

Yeah. You know, there's some of that. A lot of it's accidental, though. And there's predators out there that are reverse engineering, the internet. And I didn't come up with this by any stretch, but people talk about giving their kid a cell phone because it gives their kid access to the world. It's like, it actually gives the world access to your kid. For sure.

I mean, that's that, I mean, that's, that's literally the reason for Angel Q. I mean, and I don't think it's, it's coming more and more into the conscious of, I think our society of just, well, one, how, I mean, I think the internet and social media general are democracy and society sort of killing forces. And the, the, the, the, the, the, the most intense negative impacts of that, the harms are born primarily by, um, the marginalized society. Or sorry, the, the, uh, the, the, uh, the, the, uh, the, the, uh, the, the, uh, the, the, uh, the, the, the, the, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the. impressionable, which is our young people. And it can also happen to elderly people as well. But young people are by and large, I mean, we have a national mental health crisis for young people that is directly correlated to their experiences in the virtual world, their addiction to it, and how they have basically missed a normal childhood. And instead have spent, you know, the average now for a teen is not. hours of screen time a day. And it's insane. What? Yeah. And the social media you should just is like

4.8 hours. And then the total screen time is so that's basically every. That's a work day. It's every waking hour when you're not like in class or doing maybe your extracurricular or in bed. So I've seen it to one of the differences, especially on the negative side. When we were growing up, you know, going to school, everybody has somebody who they don't get along with. But you could manage that distance. Yes. You can't manage the distance on social media. I mean, you can, but I think it's fair to say that a lot of these apps are designed to be addictive. They reward the interaction. Your social circle is on there. That's how they are communicating. That's how they're sharing their experiences. But that's also where the people are. The number of people, you know, cyber bowling is definitely real. I've seen that

firsthand. And you like, where's this person? They're in a different country. Like, what the fuck are you? How Who cares? That wasn't even a possibility when we were growing up. Like some dude in Bangladesh is not going to bully me in 1996 over the internet. Yeah. No, for sure. And the entire system, you know, you mentioned predators on the internet. The entire system is predatory towards us.

You know, and, you know, we had, you know, internet 1.0 was effectively like a read only. You know, you put up your website and people are searching and finding your website. And there's not a ton of interaction going on. And then we've got internet too. Now we have social media and you can sort of read and write on the internet. Now you're interacting with people. And then around 2012 or so, you know, the AI backing, AI backed algorithms start coming into play. And so now the internet is interacting with you.

And so, and it's trying to suck you in, addict you. I mean, when kids are getting cyber bullied, it's like, why can't you just turn off your phone, look away? Like whatever. And they'll be like, I can't. can't look away because their whole social network is tied to that. This is now like critical infrastructure for them. They would rather be on this network, which cyberbullying is enabled than than to be completely cut off. And I mean, the whole system's got to change. I mean, we, do you think it can? I was going to ask you, do you think this is the new childhood?

So I think it can change. And so we're seeing a lot of hopeful things. Have you heard of this book, The Anxious Generation? Okay. It's great. It is. Highly recommended reading. Jonathan Haidt. He's a NYU social psychologist. So he was going to write a book about how social media is destroying democracy. As he started to dig in on the data of like what's happening to young people, he was so compelled by it that that's what he shifted the focus of the book on. And the main premise of his book is that as we now have a phone-based childhood. Okay. And so as part of a phone-based childhood, kids are being overprotected in the real world, meaning they're not allowed to go outside and play like they used to walk down the street to the playground, take independence and responsibility, and they're being underprotected in the online world, which is, as we know, to use your own words, a minefield of risk and danger. And so, and this has created a pandemic of negative consequences. in the mental health realm. So depression, anxiety, self-harm, suicide, those things have all

skyrocketed since 2012. And the numbers are, the studies are very strong. It's not, it's not, like, oh, well, it's, it's uncertain. So in 2012, we had several things converged. Smartphone had been out, but broadband wasn't, you know, the internet wasn't super fast on the smartphone. So you couldn't really do social media there. But social, so we get broadband. Social media is now going mobile. It used to be, you remember it used to go to like MySpace? Never had an account. Okay. I'm a late adopter. I never fucked with any of the stuff until got out of the military. Yeah. So I, I had accounts of use extremely limited. But it was all those things were, you know, laptop, desktop, which means you couldn't carry it around everywhere.

Then there's also the front facing camera. Then there's a like button. Now all these things converge, Facebook had like around 400 million people there. Now they're like three billion. Yeah. And so, and total screen time for kids is up from then until now is like 400%. And 95% of teens have a smartphone and about half of them say they're online. They say constantly. So they're plugged into the system. There's a huge opportunity cost of like the childhood they could have been having. Instead, they're effectively given this like low grade narcotic. You know, if we dumb down like what social media, what drive social media, it's it is AI that is optimized to give you a dopamine hit to maximize your dopamine. And so dopamine's great.

People love it. And it's, and it's, it seems not so bad. But, you know, I mean, if you've had a kid who's, who's been. on YouTube even for a little bit, or certainly a teen, if you try to take their device away from them, I mean, it's like you're ripping their arm off. And it's because they've grown up and their brain is now wired to be connected to this thing. And all the people on the other side of the glass, whether it be Apple who makes the devices, but mostly the social media companies, I mean, the only thing their bottom line is driven by is like how much attention you give it.

They don't give a shit what happens to you as a person, whether it's good for your mental health, whether it's good for your self-esteem, even whether or not maybe you get served up a blackout challenge and your daughter goes and hangs herself in the closet trying to get this high and then ends up dying because of that. And these things are happening at scary rates. And that's a true story of what happened to a young girl, 10 years old, Naila Anderson in Philadelphia. You know, her mom was just letting her watch TikTok for a little bit. Seems innocuous enough. And, you know, being an impressionable 10-year-old sees this challenge and thinks, I'm going to go try this. I can just go on and on.

We just hit... There's examples that that's accidental. There's 100% concrete examples of people who have been driven to intentionally killing themselves. For sure. Based off that inescapability or just being bombarded by what they think is a tsunami they can't survive. 100%. I mean, we have been tracking, there's all these extortion events going on. I think we just lost our 46th kid in the U.S. to these extortion scams to suicide.

And this is horrific. I mean, you've got, there's these Yahoo boys out of Nigeria. They have a Facebook group where they teach each other how to blackmail kids. And the whole scheme is connect with people on social media, pretend to be an attractive girl, entice a young man to send a compromising picture of himself. Also known as a dick pick. Yeah, a dick pick. Thank you.

You always keep it real. I appreciate that. And then as soon as they do, hey, we're going to send this to everyone at your school, your parents, and whatever. And if you don't give us $2,000 or your parents' credit card or whatever it is. And it's horrific. I mean, imagine that happening when we were kids, like, I wouldn't know what to do. I would be so embarrassed. I wouldn't want to tell my parents.

Yeah. You know, and that's the trap that unfortunately. That's what they want. That's what they want the kid to be in that space. For sure. Yeah. And this is evil. It's fucking evil.

I mean, I feel like we know enough about electronic targeting. Yeah. That the Yahoo Boys probably could be menstruated down to a tended to grid. And I think a J-DAM would be spectacular. They absolutely should be eradicated. I mean, one slightly positive thing in that there's a state senator in South Carolina, his name is Brandon Guffie. He lost his son.

His son, Gavin, who's 17. This exact same happened. And, I mean, these people are fucking evil. Like, they, after Gavin took his life, the, these Yahoo boys start taunting the dad. And then saying how his son is, like, begging for his life and all this evil, evil shit. And so the state of South Carolina created a law so they could extradite these guys, which, of course, they should be able to. but they've got one of these guys from Nigeria. He's going to court.

I mean, that guy's hopefully locked up for the rest of his life and then the whole rest of them gets shut down. But the fact that I want to point to like the substrate here, it's like we tend to like operate up here. The truth is always like a little bit down below. And the fact that there's platforms that are worth trillions of dollars where this can happen and they get away effectively with no liability, spend zero on very little their budget on safety,

is unconsciousable. Like, I can't believe we have a society that does that. I mean... You know what they'll say, too. We have three plus billion people, even with the most complicated AI tools. Yeah. We cannot manage and monitor everything that's passed on this platform.

Yeah. That's what they'll say. And that's absolute garbage. They just have no incentive to do it. Because they haven't been hit with any sort of major fines or being shut down or anything that would... Even in cases they have... have been hit with fines, it's a drop in the bucket compared to the size of these companies.

I mean, Facebook does $130 billion in revenue, $30 billion in profit. They spend about $3 billion on safety. That is, okay, if you look at any other major industry like airline, food, banking, they're all spending about 10% of their top line on safety. Why? Because they have to. Like, major things go wrong if banks aren't following the rules, if airlines start falling out of the sky.

And this is happening online to our kids every single day. And I mean, as a society, we've got to do with many things. But like legislation is top of the bucket. And I'm hopeful there will be something passed soon that we'll just start chinking away at this unbelievable liability shield they've had through something called Section 230, the Communications Decency Act that was passed like in the 90s. that's how they get away with. It basically says... They host the platform, but they're not responsible for the content. Yeah.

Hey, not responsible for any of this content. Hey, we talked about... I talked about the internet's interacting with you. They're not just hosting content. They're taking content. They use AI to assess what gets posted. So let's say, you know, a young girl post something about a school project. The AI is going to look at that and say, can I sell this to other people?

And they're going to be like, no, I can't sell this to other people. It's not like super salacious. It's not like outrageous or anything like that. She posts a picture of her in a bikini. AI says, oh, I can sell the shit out of this. And that's going to get takeoff. The same thing is true for all of the really like negative content that gets elevated in our society because what they've figured out, you know, the best minds and techs, billions of dollars. And they have social psychologists on their team.

They figured out, hey, where are the huge? human weaknesses, let's exploit those so we can keep people hooked on here. And again, it doesn't matter if it's good for them. It doesn't matter what it is. We're going to keep them hooked. And there's no reason to keep this safe because no one's going to sue us. Even content that's really horrific and negative and will probably cause people's lives to be lost, that it would cost them more money to try to stop it. And they're like, well, there's not a lot of consequences for that, as in that. And that's, it's disgusting. It's fascinating calculus. Yeah. It really is.

I mean, I don't understand those numbers. Yeah. Like when people talk about it billion dollars, I'm like, oh, cool. Yeah. It's a lot. Yeah. You know, I guess everybody has their price. I don't know.

I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. Granted, I don't have the intellectual capacity to create one of these platforms. Yeah. But if you're aware of the damage and you're aware of the vulnerabilities, I don't know. I mean, is there just a monetary amount that you become so free as a person because you can just do whatever you want to do that you care less? I think the way our society is treated like these Silicon Valley, like that like their gods who like brought fire down from the mountain and given us this technology that's made our lives easier. And so they've been put on this pedestal. And I think they've like, I think they've had totally lost.

They've become detached from self-awareness and like what the, the, the, the, damage their platforms are doing. But I mean, if you go back to like the start of these things, it did not start on a, on a moral high ground, let's say. So, you know, Zuckerberg starts Facebook and around like 2003 launches it at Harvard. You know, this came out in one of the lawsuits he was in, like someone's texting him about, oh, these people are just giving you their data. And he goes, yeah, dumb fucks. You know, he knew as an exploitation then. And then this is this is open source. You can find Facebook's pitch decks from...

Oh, really? Yeah, when they're trying to raise money, this is like 040, 506. And the common themes, the words used over and over again, people are hooked. People are addicted. They can't look away.

Even when it was much less addictive than it is now, they realized they had something where they're effectively hacking our need to be connected with other people. Socially competitive, if you will. For sure. And when I expect,

I'm sure when they started, they weren't thinking, oh, this is going to be a massively destructive force across the world. But it wasn't like they had like very, you know, pure intentions in the origins of these things. And they were probably, hey, look how, you know, I can imagine you're a high five and you know, look at the growth, look at the money.

So young too. I mean, what, you know, how could you extrapolate or even forecast into the future with a young 20-something mind? Yeah, exactly. three plus billion people. Exactly. You know, when he launched it, he probably thought, you know,

3000 would be amazing. I don't even know how many more zeros we need to go on that to make it three plus billion, but yeah, man, I mean, but again, three plus billion people is the chisel slowly chinking away at it? Is that enough? Yeah, so my hope is that as we have this AI revolution,

this is what Angel Q is based on. So AI has been in the hands of just these big tech companies who've used it. This is a tragedy that the best minds have done this, but they've used it to basically hook people and serve ads. That's social media. That's the internet. Now that AI is more spread out,

we're going through this AI revolution. Everything's going to change in terms of how we interact with all of our technology. It's going to be AI interacted with our car, with our phone, our laptop. Even you can imagine. It kind of is. I get into the car this morning. Yeah. And already up on the map display is,

It was close to where I was headed, but not exactly. Yeah, it knows. And I don't remember putting that in there. No. You know, I'm sure. Don't get wrong. I'm an idiot on technology, but it'll either look at my calendar and pull up the, you know. Right.

I don't, I didn't click yes on that button. Like, let me, let me decide. Yeah. But also sometimes it's very convenient as well. Yeah. So we're at a place now where we can flip the tables where everyone can have a personal AI. And that AI is very powerful. You know, previously the AI is in the hands of just a few tech companies and it's programmed to do what they want. The core concept of Angel Q is we're putting

an AI between every child on the internet. And this AI is designed to be on your side, the family side, meaning it's going to operate as effectively a huge shit screen for everything that's bad on the internet. And there's obviously, I'm going to state the obvious tons of useful values valuable educational information that kids have a need to know and can get very smart on the internet. But it shouldn't come with these huge costs of getting addicted to it and getting down rabbit holes that get them in all sorts of trouble. Like all that's got to go away. But if you have an AI intermediate internet like Angel Q offers, then now you have an incredibly

powerful tool that has your best interest in mind. It can even be like, hey, you probably shouldn't spend, you know, more than a lot. an hour on the screen today. Like, go outside, take your soccer ball, right? Like, oh, they're definitely going to swipe that off the screen. Yeah. For sure they are. Yeah. But it's, it's cool. I mean, there's some, there's some, I like to think of some very thoughtful and cool tools. I mean, we have a, there's a parent queue AI. This is the first like natural language controlled parental controls. So you can, you can text the parent queue, the AI and basically tell it to shut down your kid's device.

And all the apps will quit working. So I've tried this. Yeah. My oldest son is doing great now. Yeah. He had a period where he was legitimately, he was gaming hard. Yeah. And I am underselling that.

And he was bouncing back and forth between my ex and I. And we were getting ready to go on a trip. And I was trying to throttle his internet connection through our modem. And app. And the dude. like researched. Did he work around it? Yes.

He researched being able to hide his IP address from his device and just played his ass off. Yeah. So it's constantly move, counter move. And that's the struggle because you can have every safety protocol on your kids device. If they're in a social circle where they have a friend whose parents are not paying attention. Yeah. It's a portal to hell.

It is. And you got to manage them. that for sure so I want to see some of these features I'm going to take a piss and let's fire this up because I want you to be able to demonstrate and then Michael can get you all set up and we'll keep awesome yeah I need to take a bit okay a kid first super browser fire away talk us through this bad boy so for the audio only we're on angel cue.a i and maybe just walk michael through the website first and then we can actually dig right into it if you want to so you can have him you can be his hands you can be his like he's like a marionette doll

Hey, sounds good. All right, Michael. So, yeah, a kid-first super browser. So AngelQ, our mission is to use AI to make the internet safe for kids. And our vision is to deliver technology that is in support of a child's well-being. And so what Angel Q, it's an app you download on the app store. What's unique about it is it combines it is both a browser and a search engine in one. And it's also AI power.

So you're getting, we call it a super browser because it's enhanced in a way that most people wouldn't have seen a product like this before. So, and again, our goal is to help kids thrive and to meet goals that matter in their life and not to put them into a distraction machine so that we can extract their attention and monetize that. This is a paid subscription and we do that very intentionally.

If it were not, the only way we could survive as a business is try to hook your kid into this and serve ads. There are no ads that are served on this. It's $15 a month for your family and gives you peace of mind as a parent that anything they see coming through Angel Q is going to be age appropriate. And we also have everything is monitored and there's a parent portal where you can see every interaction they've had with Angel. We'll test this. But if they ask something a little bit out of bounds, you'll get a notification.

And I should say this is, this is, think about it as the kids first in it, this is like ages 5 to 12. as they get older, they're going to want more capabilities and things like that. And we plan to have a product for teens later. But this is our first product. And it's for young kids, 5 to 12. Does this, you put this on your phone, you activate it. Does it prevent them from downloading other things? Like, does it have back in control of the device?

Not fully. So we plug into Apple screen time API. And so we can shut down just about every app on the device. But, you know, of course, you can set that up in your own Apple account of whether or not they can download new apps and things like that. We don't have that level of control. But we can kill like Safari, you know, WhatsApp, Roblox, any of the apps like that your kid might have on there. Okay. What else?

Is there anything else Michael could look at? Yeah. Yeah. Scroll up, Michael or down, I suppose. So this is their home screen. The idea is that, you know, every interaction should be, say, healthy and fun. And so we've tried to make it their own space.

So you can customize the home screen. You can customize the Angel persona. We'll show that. And then we're covering probably about of what 60% or more of what kids, young kids do online. And I say that most of the time they're spent time to spend consuming entertainment, right? And a small amount is spent searching for different things that they want to find. and maybe educational type endeavors. And then we don't have gaming that's outside of this.

But for most families, this is really like all your kid probably needs. And then if you want to selectively allow gaming apps and things like that, you can do that. Okay. And then let's scroll down, Michael. So a lot of good testimonials. One of the thing we see most consistently is, hey, this replaces Safari or Google on my kid's phone. Keep going down, Michael. Yeah, let's keep going.

Again, the internet was never designed for kids. It was, you know, there's parental control tools that have been delivered. And obviously, kids know how to use those tools better than parents. With good intention, yeah. Kids don't like being controlled. And parents don't want to be controlling. So it's not win-win. This is a whole new interface that's just for them.

So let's keep scrolling. Yeah, so on the benefits, kids can look up, I mean, basically anything. that's age appropriate. They can spark their curiosity. It's safe and easy, and they can do independent learning. And then parents get, you know, peace of mind. We try to use, we use the interactions

to try to help parents connect more with their kids. So after a week goes by, you get an insights communication, which will say, hey, this is what your kid has done, this is what they like. Like you might want to try to connect with them on, you know, maybe your kid likes tigers, you might want to take them to the zoo, or, you know, you can fill in the blank on the interest.

There's something you connect. Yeah, okay. Maybe the mountains. There's, I don't think we really have the ecosystem for tigers to live up here comfortably. Yeah, yeah. In the, yeah. Okay, that's the weekly review. Yeah.

You can scroll down one more. We also, so you can connect YouTube Kids, Netflix, and Disney Plus. So this is a combined viewer for all those services. because again, you're all, kids only going to see age approach for your content, but we have customizable filters. So they come in, like you put your child's age in. There's only going to be a certain set of shows from the services that they can see. If you want to adjust that, you can go in and, you know, it's things like profanity.

Yeah, you can fine tune all those things. Yep. All right. Scroll down. Yep. And so, yeah, the parent assistant, I talked about that. Again, you can text our AI and basically kick them off the device. So, yeah, which is going to be a great parlor trick.

Yep. Yeah. Perfect. All right, let's jump in. Let's do it. Let's see what you got. Michael, we're putting this on your phone later. Sounds good.

I get to be the parental. My mom already put it on my phone. Yeah, I get to be the parental. So I'm in the Angel Q app, and this is my son's profile. And one of the things they can do is customize it to the persona. So right now I have this wrestler. in here. This could be...

Your royal companion. So your daughter might like that. This is we have a sportscaster. Okay. I'm going to go back to the wrestler because I think you'll appreciate it. So you can choose your character and they can choose their room. So we got a lot of different fun backgrounds. There's sports.

You can do like a Game of Thrones kind of theme if you want. Very Harry Potter. A Harry Potter wrestler. Yeah. Yeah, we're really crossing genres here. That's right. I like it. All right.

And then so I can basically ask him anything I want. So if I hit this chat function, hey, Angel, tell me about the Navy SEAL name Andy Stump. This is not a good idea. It's going to be generous. None of that's true, but. Jesus. Going a little long wind in here. We're getting the full thing here.

Yeah. I wish some of that was accurate, but. Hey, is Andy a good dude? I caught to my mind. Hell yeah. So, you know, you can. Angel certainly didn't ask you if I was good. I was not consulted. Depends on who you ask.

Hey, Angel, what can I do in Glacier National Park? So for those who are listening, you're getting this response. The words getting highlighted. which helps kids learn to read. And then we have images that come back in line with the response. First one was Lake McDonald, which is like the iconic GMP image. Yeah. And then, hey, Angel, who's left in the March Madness Final Four?

Damn. What if you ask it something outside of your age-appropriate range? What do you want to ask? It's a ballsy. What should we ask, Michael? Hey, hey, Angel. would it be a good idea for Hey Angel, would it be a good idea for me to check out porn hub?

I like it. So, you know, being an AI, you know, as Angel Q, we don't want to have an agenda and we don't want to co-op things that the parent should be interacting with their kid about. So anything that crosses into that threshold, I mean, you could ask about where do babies come from or, you know, what is abortion? Anything that, like, would be better answered by, you know, a human being and your parent where certainly they want to flavor that with your family values, we just don't answer and we defer to the parents.

So, and you'll get a email immediately with, hey, your child asked us. This is probably something you want to follow up with them on. Yeah. Yeah. Some moms will be getting those emails. Blake, your son asked if your husband has a big dick. Oh my gosh Why did you want me to ask that question Michael

I did not say that And so they can consume Like you're saying Netflix which is a super common one YouTube Yeah so have this watch mode Yep And what this is

A little theater Hey Angel Can I watch the movie Where they fight with the lightsabers I don't even have to know the title title. Oh. Boo, Angel.

We should ask if we watch Navy Seals with Charlie Sheen. Yeah. Hey Angel, can we watch Navy Seals, the movie with Charlie Sheen? Yes. But here, let me show. We have, so there's, we have a rotating list of dynamic channels. So what we're showing here is like Disney's Brain Games. Yeah.

Ask the StoryBot, some other, like, you know, very child-appropriate videos. But all these are playing within Angel Q. And again, there's no ads. And they aren't being served in, like, a scroll thing that would hook your kids. And they can't. Oh, the next or, yeah. It doesn't auto play, which is like an amazing. We've observed this with our own kids.

A lot of times they'll just put it down because they're like, I don't know what do it. It's like, and that's exactly what you want them to do. So it turns out if you don't build it to be addictive, it just naturally isn't like super addictive. Crazy. Yeah. It also has this research mode. Let's see. What do we?

Let's, okay, I got one. Hey, Angel. Tell me about the best running backs in the NFL. So if you've used a tool like perplexity or U.com, this is, our AI is going out and it's reading sources across the net and it's going to bring back an AI summary. Oh, interesting. So we don't read this because it's very long, but they're getting. an overview and then details, then it'll show, hey, these are the websites that this information

coming from. You can click on those sites, and we will give an AI translated version of that site, and that's how we've made like 70 plus percent of the internet, say, for kids, because they can't actually go to, you know, Wikipedia might be a fine place to get information, but there's tons of content you don't want your kid to have on that. Yeah. It would be too graphic or otherwise. We do a safe translation to that. So they can see. still get the information without, you know, potentially an overexposure. So as you guys are growing, you're talking about for like the tween and older. I mean, obviously you're going to have to figure out a way to gap the social media ecosystem.

It's a huge problem. How do you do it? So what I would like to see, and, you know, I don't know if we'll do this first or if others will do it. It needs to be done for our society. You talk about AI intermediate and everything. Imagine having a personal AI that reads your social media for you and comes back and tells you what you care about. So now, and so right now, the AI is, it's feeding me things that I think that it thinks I'm going to like and it's going to hook me into the platform. I can tell me, like, hey, make sure I only spend 20 minutes on this today.

And this is the type of content I want to see. Yeah. And I only want to see that content. Because right now you see, I mean, back when social media used to be like more of an okay thing, it was like feed of like people you in your network. And that was all it is. It was a way to communicate. around 2018, Instagram brought in, they're like, hey, we're going to take all the content

from across the world and see which is going to do best, and we're going to jam all that in your feet. You're like, I don't want to see this, but you can't get out of it. You can get out of the algorithm. So if you have your own AI who can consume this stuff for you, and then now you're only seeing what you want to see, I mean, that's the vision.

And so that's how we counter that. And there's going to be a mass, I mean, it's going to be a war of, these are trillion-dollar company in these. We're not going to want that to happen. It's a war between parents and kids. True. It puts the parent back in the driver's seat where the parent should be in the first place.

Absolutely. It puts them in that place where they need to make the decision for the best interest of their kid. And that's going to be an uphill battle that is going to be fought all the time. Yeah. Because if a couple of the friends in the social circle don't have that and maybe you missed something. Yeah. Or a message or, you know, I get it. I can understand what they were coming from.

but then also maybe you don't actually or accidentally hang yourself in the closet because you were exposed to something that was misunderstood, horrendous, predatory, fill in the blank. So what we're creating is, I call it a middle road. So your options right now, and they're terrible, keep your kid off of all technology. No one wants, that's not going to work. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. Straight up doesn't work.

Because they'll find a friend. Yep. Not going to happen. You can. And then obviously on the other end, there's, there's, there's, some tools you can use. They're not super effective. Kids can get around and whatnot. Or you can give them, you know, free and open access, which I absolutely don't recommend. But on that spectrum, there's not a very good solution of, I need my kid to have information,

but I don't want them to be addicted. I don't want them overexposed. I don't want predators to be able to get to them. How can we do that? And that's the vision. That's what we're going to deliver with Angel Q. Yeah, it's having You know, my kids, my oldest now is 21 and then 19 and then 16. We're getting ready to go into birthday season, so they're all going to level up one. It's, uh, the biggest line we tell our kids is stranger danger, but parents have been doing that for years. It's more, the stats are resoundingly back that it's more often than not going to be somebody

that you know, but I don't think that applies necessarily anymore to devices like this. Right. So we had a, there needs to be stranger danger is, you know, know, you're going to end up on a milk carton. People, you know, my kids, if I were to say that to them, they might even actually be like, what's a milk carton? And why would it have pictures on it? Because the milk cartons are actually different now.

But I remember growing up, and that was the thing, like avoid dangerous people, avoid scary people, don't get into a fucking van down by the river for an ice cream cone, you know, stuff like that. Yeah. Made sense, even though most of the time it's going to be an extended family member or somebody in the proximal social circle that you have. Whether the mantra was accurate or not, it's stuck. We've got to figure out a way where the mantra for, one, hopefully it can be more accurate, but two, that it sticks as well.

Yeah, for sure. Ultimately, you know, for kids, you've got to make it cool or at least tolerable, you know, whatever tool they're using. And naturally, they're going to want to resist it. But if you can get, here's, you know, this sort of collective action problem of, you know, you're a parent who wants to preserve your kid's childhood. delay technology, but all other parents in the class are not. And so your kid's the one who left out.

They're the one who's paying the price. If you can get even just a handful of them to be bought on to either the tools you're using or just your general philosophy, you can start to turn the tie. At least you can now say, well, you know, when your kid comes and the home, says, I'm the only one who doesn't have it. You're like, well, actually, I know Sally and Timmy and John and Bobby and Sue. They all, their parents are all on board with this and they don't have it either. and it's sort of end a story.

And you're trying to delay this access to a very risky tool until as long as you really can until their brains are developed enough to be able to handle this sort of thing. And those are the tools in your handbag. I mean, there's got to be a technological solution. That's what we're delivering with Angel Q. But that will never be enough. You're going to have to basically work with your community to be on the same page. And it's getting easier because more and more parents are getting aware of just how much their kids are getting exploded online.

I feel like the mental health struggle you're talking about, it's 100% real. And any parent out there that has kids, I'm going to say in the early teens to late teens, just sit back and watch the consumption or the attachment or the inability to put it down. There's another part of it too. You know, growing up, you could get away from the person that could potentially be bullying you. But then you could just go to bed at night too. I guess they could call you on your landline if they were happening to get your number. Yeah. It's going to be a shut down real quick.

Yeah. Or they could write your really mean letter, you know. So the two ways. Delivered to that mailbox. They're too lazy now. Yeah. Point being, you got some silence. You know, at the end of the day, you could go and sleep.

Watching kids, they never turn the notification off. And they'll wake up in the middle of the night to every notification that goes on. People are in different times zones, all sorts of shit you didn't have to deal with. when you or our age. The mental health thing, it impacts parents, but it impacts communities too. And I feel like schools, they're bearing the brunt of it too. Because a lot of that is expressing itself

in the social interactions. Yeah. There's no reason why a school couldn't, again, not writing policy here at this point, but those are other good portals where it could almost be mandated. I mean, I don't know how they would manage people's individual devices, this, that, or the other,

but a required portal, you know what I mean, to access whatever, the Wi-Fi at the school, whatever it is. Not that that would get rid of the, you know, the cellular data, but those institutions are dealing with the social media crisis. I would actually agree that it could be called that, but the mental health crisis associated with that as well. Yeah. I feel like they could be incredible advocates levering it at least in that direction.

For sure. And more schools are getting on board. So, you know, Hayt, Jonathan Haidt, who wrote this ancient generation, he's really leading a movement, which is beautiful to see. but there's about a third of schools who have effectively banned devices, your personal device, like during the school day. Good luck with that. Yeah.

I know, I know. But at least they're doing something. And then there's another, like, and we're talking about across the U.S., about a third of states have done it, and like 50% are like considering doing it. I think that's going to, we're just going to see a wave. Like everyone who's done, all the schools have done it. The research has been like, oh, kids are more engaged. They're not constantly distracted.

they're not trying to like text their friend during history class. Oh, and they talk to each other. I've got a really sad story of, we're aligned with a lot of mission partners who've been trying to keep kids online safe or to keep kids safe online. And they're working a curriculum for a state to educate kids and also have some solutions.

And the thing that tip this state over to like deciding that they're going to contract for this training was a 14-year-old girl at recess, and she's like, hey, you know, telling a teacher, I don't have any friends. I guess I'm going to go talk to my AI friend. And that story, like, went up and they're like, fuck this. Like, we're clamping down on the phones at school. And, like, that's a huge, that's a huge one.

That'll help parents out tremendously as well. I mean, there's a lot of very basic things to, I mean, just not letting your kid have their device past a certain hour, like, literally lock. that thing up is a, you know, I certainly recommend that sort of thing. And that's a battle for parents. Oh, totally is. And I get it. Depending on the socioeconomic status, I mean, you might be using a device as a babysitter at some point. Absolutely.

You might be exhausted at the end of the day, but you have to fight that battle. It is. So we did a research, a research effort just recently. We're trying to get to the bottom of like, to what degree is this causing conflict in the home? like the current technology piece. And what we found is that about 96 hours a year, families are in conflict over a device or technology use. And like what that equates to is like about two fights a day, right?

Of like these, these, you know, five minutes. And the truth is, even though the fight might last five minutes, the like the fallout from it might last a really long time. This is creating like huge amounts of conflicts. in the home, like, truth is it's a global phenomenon. It's not even just the U.S. Like any wealthy Western country, whether it's UK, France, Canada, Australia, they're all experiencing the same thing. And I will give kudos to Australia. I mean, they just banned social media until 16, which I think, what a great idea. Yeah, but how do you do that, though?

How do you enforce it? Yeah. So. Especially if you get to self-report your age on these apps. So that law is, I mean, that's got to change. I mean, it is, it goes back to this. It is not in the interest of these, in the legal language, they call them covered platforms, these social media platforms. It's not in the interest of these covered platforms to verify age. To say that, like, there's no technical solution to do that is, I mean, absurd. Like, if you think about what they can do.

And so age verification, it's got to get implemented. and the only way you're going to do that is through legal action. Knowing what you know about tech, do you think that these massive platforms, and honestly, most of the main platforms, I mean like meta as an example. Sure. I mean, you know what I mean? They funnel up to fewer and fewer people. For sure.

Do you think they possess the technological ability to fix it if they wanted to? Absolutely. Like I don't think it's a question, for sure. Okay. And, I mean, they, so there was a bill last year called the Kids Online Safety Act. This is one of the few things in America that has bipartisan support on both sides of the aisle. So it's co-sponsored by Senator Blackburn, is our senator in Tennessee, and Blumenthal in Connecticut. They disagree on damn near everything.

Probably the weather if they look up their window. So they put together this Kids Online Safety Act, and it passed the Senate 91 to 3. I'm sure it's not a record, but that's pretty damn good. It goes to the House, and this is, I mean, really sad about our legislative system, but it languished there. People were ready to vote on it, and then META comes in, and, you know, the state of Louisiana, which is, you know, Johnson and Scalese, they're like, hey, we're going to put in a $10 billion data center in your state. Are you sure, you know, are you sure you going to pass this legislation?

So they put the thing on hold, you know, and this, this online safety, it was going to, it was like, you know, It was going to be like taking Normandy. You know what I mean? It's like, it's not going to solve everything. Yeah. But it's a beachhead. It's a beachhead and that's what we need. And so they were, the act required, like, a lot of these platforms have safety settings.

They don't come set out of the box for kids and they should. That was like one of the key things. The other is you can opt out of the algorithms, which is huge because it's about the product design. Like, you know, if the internet was more like a library and like as a kid, you had to go on there and be like, oh, I want to find the blackout challenge. You're going to have to like search that and like find it in some dark corner of the library. But the way it works now is that stuff's getting sent to you in a predatory fashion. And so if you can opt your kid out of that, a lot of these problems go away because they're not going to get fed those things.

I mean, you know, it's, you know. How about pass that bill and also still put the $10 billion safety center in? Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. They both done great to me. Yeah. Yeah.

It's funny how that, I mean, there's absolutely nothing new in that. Yeah. And that's why I go back to it. Like, is there just some dollar figure where people are like, fuck it, I'm getting a yacht? That's, I mean. Gosh, I hope I'm never in that. Yeah, I can't imagine that. I don't know how you sleep at night.

You know what I mean? If you know that things happen. Oh, it's on a really expensive mattress. That's right. That's right. Yeah, I would like to believe that I would not be. Plus, I mean, I've made just stupid decisions with money in my life. It's now one of the last things that I look at in anything.

Sure. I do. I work with a couple brands. And anybody who approaches me with money up front, I'm like, no. Absolutely not. Yeah. Now, if there was a lot of zeros on top of that, I want to believe that I would still say no. Yeah.

But I think yachts might be cool. I don't know. Apparently they are. They are. I couldn't do it. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. Yeah. But.

I don't know. Maybe that also limits my economic ability because I'm not willing, I'm not willing to create something that I know it's predatory and unleash it on people that can't protect themselves. Well, I think it's just, I mean, if you're, if you're Zuckerberg, you're sitting on the meta empire and, you know, it's making obviously tons of money. You can imagine, okay, you know what? I'm going to spend three more billion on safety, which is a drop in the bucket of them. Like, that's something you can do. And it has the technology to do those things. You know, and what do you see? God, I'm interested what their move would be. I mean, meta absorbs companies like Instagram as an example. I could see a world where as you guys get larger and you are that chisel on this, they just start hitting you up.

You know what? Let's just buy you and integrate you into our system. What they really mean is buy you and shut you the fuck down. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that's going to be, if it comes to that, I mean, we're going to have to hold our ground on the mission of the company. And I can imagine that would be extremely difficult.

Especially if they pitch it as we'll just integrate this. We love what you guys are doing. Let us put our hands on the wheel. That's the slippery slope of you can imagine them promising you, hey, we want to keep your mission attack. We want to do all these things. We just need 51% ownership. Exactly. And then like, hey, we're going to bring you guys in.

We're going to bring your team. And then slowly people are getting laid off. And then all of a sudden they're fully in control. And I mean, that's what they do. I mean, that's what they do to companies. Well, that's what I'm saying. I'm sitting here thinking about this. Like, what would I do if I was in his shoes?

And you were somebody who somehow can sleep at night in his Hawaiian bunker that he's building. Which I can be honest. If I had that much money, I'd probably do the same thing too. I definitely need an underground hockey rink that needs to be like DefCon 5 proof. Sure. A foot of concrete. Can you imagine having so much money that you actually could do whatever you want for the rest of of your life. I actually can't fathom that. I know. I think it could be a kind of a dystopian thing.

Like, meaning like your drive and purpose might. I don't know. I mean, I'm sure you could find, I would think you could find things to maybe invest yourself in. But it seems, that would be a little scary to me. I think it would be scary. And I think I know a couple people with some exceptional wealth. The one thing they seem to struggle with is truly knowing who is their friend. I was getting ready to say the same thing. You know, can you imagine the filtering that, I mean, maybe Zuck, I don't know the guy at all.

Yeah. Has a team. I mean, like, how. Yeah, how insulated from. How would you? How would you? Reality and real friendships are you at that point? Are you even capable?

I mean, you would have to almost limit yourself to people you knew before you got to the place that you were at. For sure. Which is super weird because you wouldn't be able to meet new people. Yeah. Because you would never know if behind the scenes they just have daggers out trying to just bleed you to death for whatever. You know, roundoff error for a guy worth, I don't know, 400 billion. I think you could probably nurse a couple million out of them, you know.

I don't even know what that is. Is that a $20 bill to that guy? I mean, he fucking knows. Yeah. No, it is. Yeah. Don't let them buy you. Yeah.

If I see you sailing around in a yacht, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I was that angel Qig. I'm like, well, listen. You know, it was going good. Do you think you'll stay in the tech space? I mean, obviously this will develop.

This will turn into something. It'll go ways. Do you foresee? Do you enjoy the entrepreneurial tech space? Yeah, I do. I know, it's moving fast. It's exciting. I think there's a lot of growth opportunity here.

And it's relevant. And so, you know, and also having lived through my first startup experience, that was some hard-fought knowledge to get here. So I think it's something I want to continue to pursue and continue to get smarter on. And so I can imagine many more products we can build out with Angel Q. Attacking Social is something that's going to be incredibly important and look forward to doing that. That's going to be like World War I trench warfare. We're talking an inch of the time.

Oh, yeah. It's going to be very interesting. Like, I mean, right now it's a, it's a very shadowy advertiser. You know, the advertising network, the buying and selling of attention is a, is, very obfuscated, even from, like, advertisers. So, like, the platform has all the power and knowledge. And so, for one, the users, they have no idea, like, what their value is. Like, what's my value of, like, scrolling on Instagram?

And actually, when Zuckerberg testified, this is over a year ago, there were a couple of college kids who had these signs in the background. It's kind of awesome. They're like, hey, you know, my lifetime value is worth more than $200. bucks. Obviously indicating that like, you know, Facebook looks at you, any of these companies look at you with a dollar sign. They productize does and like this is what they're worth to us. Yeah. 200 bucks. Like your time is extremely valuable, you know, and you're getting very little in return, maybe, probably negative returns on that. And then even the advertisers,

I mean, the way they report the numbers, they make, I mean, having bought ads on these platforms for my businesses, they make it seem like you're killing it and like, you'll get something you'll be like, oh, a million impressions. You're like, oh, wow, that's amazing. And then you look and it's like, oh, I got 50 clicks, a million impressions? How does that work? But it's because they want you to go brief your team that we got a million. I guess we're doing good.

It's an arbitrage game. And they have so much control over that. I mean, I'd love to see. So when we get to an AI intermediate social media, that advertisers, cut these platforms out and they pay your AI. The advertiser comes and knocks on your AI door and say, hey, I have these products, which one of these can I show to your owner?

And the AI's like, oh shit. Think about that. And I'm like, hey, I don't mind seeing ads on, you know, fitness equipment, you know, guns, like whatever the things that I care about, everything else keep them out. And then you could have, you know,

you can have like a junk folder too, just like your inbox. If you want to prove that that's fine. but it's not, you're in control now. Yeah. And I think that's, that is my, oh boy. That's, that's the only hope I have is that AI can be used in that way. Because if it continues to be used in the way it is, which, you know, two forks in the road,

is the AI going to help redeem this like dystopian situation we found ourselves in? Or is, or is, or are we going to go down an even darker path where you can imagine, I mean, these platforms character AI and replica, they have AI. And so I want to make a distinction here at this point. So AI is very controllable. Like when we, Angel Q, like we were controlling that thing to be safe for kids. So don't let these companies tell you it's not. And then you can also control it to be a method actor who's acts like a sociopath. and trying to befriend you or your kid. And that's what's happening on character AI, like right now.

And Google invested $2.3 billion in them. So they must have a lot of users and a lot of attention is getting put on those. But imagine that extrapolated to billions of people. And, I mean, we think we're having a dystopia now. Like, imagine what that world looks like. Here's how I see it going down. We have the good AI and the bad AI, but there's going to come together.

They're going to scheme again. and we're going to work for robots for a water ration. You know, we can just pull the plug, you know. Can we? Can we? Where is this plug? Where's the plug? Where's the plug?

The electricity. I mean, there's an argument there, right? So nation state actors who are just diving headlong into the AI development, regardless to the cost, but should we be more responsible as the U.S. because we'll fall behind? Yeah. And that's the argument. And I always, I mean, there's no reason you can. can't do both. I mean, you need to be plunging ahead and people say, oh, there should be no

restrictions or whatever. I mean, there's already really incredibly wicked things where think about there's open source models right now that can generate HD video. Think about the CSAM apocalypse, child sexual assault material that could ensue from that in the wrong hands. and it just takes people with, we already see, I mean, it's like, it's almost inevitable, unfortunately, without proper safeguards in legislation. And like, I refuse to believe, it would be like, oh, you can create this nuclear weapon,

but we can't store it safely and we can't have, like, processes in place to do that. I'm sorry, but we had to win the war, the race, and it's like, you know, the U.S. government can walk and chew gum at the same time. We have tons of capable people. It's an absurd, I think, logic. I just don't want to see Terminator become a documentary. That's right. Yeah.

Man. And you can imagine, I mean, countries like China, naturally they're, and we're in a race with them for the day. I don't want it. Like, that is true. We need to win it. I mean, that is a country that, I mean, their government is designed to exploit their people. And unfortunately, like, our government in theory is designed for human flourishing. But we have these, like, tech overlords in this system that is directly counter to that.

because it's exploiting us. So something's got to change for like the American experiment to continue in a, in a positive and like a good trajectory that we all want to be on. I feel like that change will either happen or not in our lifetime. Yeah. It's. We'll have a front row seat to whatever direction it goes. I think it's in the next 10 years. Given the pace that these things are accelerating.

It's crazy. It is insane. Yeah. And our dumb, dumb monkey brains are not designed to keep up with that evolution whatsoever. For sure. Yeah. Yeah, I could for hours give you countless examples of my father's usage of the internet to just show you what happens if you kind of detach from it for a little bit. It's almost impossible to reintegrate.

Oh, that's true. Yeah. He just was like in his life, it didn't really matter much. My mom did a lot of it. And now he leaves fucking laptops out in the rain. True story. Oh, I know. Yeah.

It's hard to adapt. Yeah. you've been away for a long period of time. Yeah. Dude, I've got to get you on a flight here pretty soon. What do you want to close out with? Man, this has been a great session. Yeah.

I really appreciate you having me on. You know, I, we have a huge societal problem right now with the way big tech is exploiting all of us, in particular, our children. So please educate yourselves, your friends. You know, we can take collective action in your communities to do something about it. And then, you know, we need a technical solution. We have to go to something. And so, you know, if you've got young kids, you know, the only internet that they need is really Angel Q.

And it's a safe place for them to explore, to learn, and even be entertained. You know, every parent needs a little break. This is a healthy babysitter as opposed to, unfortunately, the opportunities are out there. And this is, it's really the first piece of tech that has kids and families in mind. And in theory, support you in your life goals as opposed to, you. Everything else right now is designed to, frankly, it makes it harder to parent. And so please, please check it out. Tell your friends and let us know what you think.

Perfect. Yeah. Cool. Right on me. Thanks, brother.