Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Forging Resilience - with Casey Hildreth

Episode Date: January 1, 2024

Casey Hildreth is a Christian, dedicated husband, and father to five. Casey carved a path of resilience and leadership through his 19-year tenure with the United States Army Special Operations Command, and since retiring in 2019, he has pivoted his focus towards nurturing the physical and mental fortitude of others. He currently serves as the Training Director at Cloud Defensive. We explored the vast spectrum of his career, the training methodologies he's championing, and how his experiences have fueled his mission to empower individuals in their personal growth. Casey is also a board member of The Resilience Foundation, co-founded by his wife, Erica, to support veteran nonprofit organizations. Casey is very open about his own behavioral health struggles and offers a message of hope and solidarity to those battling similar demons. Cloud Defensive: https://www.clouddefensive.com/ The company I mentioned that I am working with for my blood panels is called Marek Health. If you are interested in checking them out, please use this link: https://marekdiagnostics.com/stumpf Marek has also provided me with a discount code, "stumpf". Full disclosure, I have no clue what the value of the code is, maybe it is 100 percent off, maybe it is 10. Some mysteries in life have no answers. The Speed of War Comic Series: https://www.thespeedofwar.com/ Check out the newest Cleared Hot Gear here: https://shop.clearedhotpodcast.com/  

Welcome back, everybody. We're back to our regularly scheduled program. Today's episode is actually the last one that I recorded before traveling with my wife and ending up in the emergency room. So it's a little bit delayed getting it out, but we're going to be able to get it out. Today's episode is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee. I was really trying to get people to forward to think about their holiday gifts for the coffee lover in their life. And nothing's really changing about that. Let's go to the website and take a look at what they have to offer because there's always birthdays. There's always a special occasion to get the coffee lover in your life, something coffee-related. So if you go to blackcruffelcoffee.com right now in their rotating banner, they're doing 15% off of coffee bundles. It's pretty self-explanatory. If you click on it, you have the opportunity to see the 2023 impact of your purchases and how that directly benefits the veteran community. I'm not going to click on it right now, but if you do click on that, that's going to lead you to another page with the YouTube video that really breaks down.

how Black Rifle Coffee is giving back to, again, the veteran community. As you continue down, our normal slider from light to dark roasts, and then, of course, you're going to see the apparel and gear, coffee bundles, coffee sampler, and then always the best sellers. So just remember, coffee lovers are always going to love coffee things. So keep that in mind for holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, whatever it actually may be. My guest today is my good friend Casey Hildreth, who I met while he was working for Mike Glover at Fieldcraft Survival, teaching shooting instruction. He is now currently the training director for Cloud Defensive.

They make flashlights. They make very powerful flashlights, small ones to the point that I actually carry them in my fanny pack as part of an EDC, even though I don't really like that term, to bigger ones. But here's what I'll tell you about all of their flashlights. it is so much fun to shine them in your friend's eyes and sometimes accidentally in your own because they will blind you and it's just something that I enjoy doing. I've always liked being like, hey, buddy, what's going on and shining them right in the eyes? I have no idea what that has to do with Casey other than the fact that he works for that organization. And if you want an awesome flashlight, check out Cloud Defensive.

Before that, though, he spent a good amount of time in the Army, 19 years, most of that time as a green beret. multiple deployments throughout the world got out in 2019 to focus on being a father he's a father to five amazing children and he's also a board member for the resilience foundation which was founded by his wife erika hildreth and to date they have raised $50,000 to support other veteran non-profit organizations one of the things I love the most about Casey is that he's totally open and honest and transparent about his own experiences in life. Positive and negative. Successes and failures. And I just deeply appreciate somebody willing to speak on both the good and the bad, in the sunlight and in the shadows, if you wanted to use that analogy or metaphor. And that's kind of what we did for the next few hours. So hopefully

you enjoy the conversation. Episode 317 with Casey Hildreth. Enjoy. I'm looking at danger close now. Flashy. Flashy, if you will. Decorative. Festive. Those are all words that I think people when describing me, they would be synonymous. You know? I would need to look up the word synonymous real fast to make sure I use it properly, but that's what I would think. I agree to disagree. Yeah, hold on. Michael doesn't.

Michael, where are you at, dude? Where are you out? Not doing my job yet again. I literally just, after you walked out, I compliment him. I was like, man, you do a fantastic job. I know he gives you a lot of shit, you know. You do a great job. And he's like, oh, thanks, man.

That means a lot to me. I was like, I'd never say that in front of him. Let's talk about the job he did today. He came in. All the cameras were on and set up. The lighting was good to go. The recording mixer board was already set. The AC was already off.

So what exactly would you say you do here, Bob? Hmm. I keep the show going. Yeah, he hits record. He keeps it going. Sometimes. Sometimes he forget. I've never missed.

Some reds, yeah. Sometimes we forget to shift cameras, you know. What we did last time we had one camera for five minutes, focused on Erica. Yeah. She got some very particular commentary. Yeah. I did a change agent episode this morning and forgot to hit record on the video. Thank God they have a backup recording for me.

Did you zoom it? Yes. And they were recording on the back end. There's actually an awesome conversation with a cybersecurity expert, a professor in England, just talking about shit. We talked about cybersecurity threats, TikTok, just everything. Personal data, privacy,

Patriot Act a little bit. It was wild. None of that was captured on my end by video. I think it was wild. When we watch it again, it'll be wild. Now, that's a whole other avenue of approach people can be attacked from that not a lot of people really care about. You know what I mean?

I think they probably should. It was last year, since this is on the top of my mind, a $6 trillion. industry. Right. Mostly the ransom type stuff. He said that the threats are increasing in numbers exponentially, and the complexity of the threats is accelerating and also increasing at a volume level that is hard to actually calculate. Because the technology tools are so advanced but so easy to use that you no longer need to be an expert to do that.

type of stuff. They're just doing it through bots now and things of that nature. Through bots and just volume. So he said he almost fell for one. He had an email from PayPal and it was talking about his account. Hey, you need to log into your account. The classic one, I honestly think I get a couple of these a day. And he described the exact same thing that I do. I go up to the subject line of the email and I click on the email address. And I love it because I'll get him from Bank of America and you click on the email address. And it's like Frank 1179 Alpha X-ray 42 at, you know, eat dicks.com. Yeah.

You know, like, I'm not going to click on any of the links that are in here. He said it said PayPal and he almost clicked on the link and then he took another look at it. And the L and PayPal was a one. Wow, dude. This is a 61-year-old professor and expert in cybersecurity in the UK. Almost got him. Yeah, I don't even mess with anyone. I know exactly what you're talking about.

I mean, we're flooded with that stuff. one of my older inboxes is flooded with that stuff. I don't even hard. I just go through and delete everything. Some of them you don't even have to open though, right? Is that? Oh, I think that's a little bit more complex. And I think if you're targeted.

I think if you hit that level, you are being targeted by a nation state. Fun. Yeah. And he actually talked about that. He said, you know, so the ransomware is a big one. He said that is criminal activity. They want money. He said, so like the link, you know, click on the link.

They're trying to get access to your. financial information. And before I forget, he said, another reason that it stopped him is he uses a different email address for everything financial. He bifurcates the information that comes in, and he realized, I don't do PayPal with this email address. And that's actually what got him to go back and look at the email address again. Just food for thought out there for people. It's a really good idea. Yeah. He says, so he was saying, ransomware criminal in nature generally. There could be an entity and organization behind it, but they're looking for money. They're either trying to hold shit hostage or exploit your financial data.

If you're targeted by something like that and they're only trying to gather data and they're not trying to get anything out of you, the likelihood that it's a state level actor is very, very high, which absolutely makes sense because they're just gathering intelligence. Yeah. Well, I'm not that important. What do we do? No. Oh, Pegasus.

Yeah. This was developed in Israel. And I think I had that on one of the things I was going to talk to him about. and I try to keep the change age at once to like an hour. We were at like an hour, 25, and I hadn't even got to it. So we wrapped it up. Yeah. But yeah, the Pegasus, this is one where I think you don't have to interact.

But again, I'm pretty sure, and I say this with absolutely no expertise, knowledge or understanding, that you have to be, it's basically like a nation state. Right. Yeah, I'll come talking completely out of my scope right now. I'm actually receiving education on this. But yeah, stuff's scary, man. um well i figured out a way around it just be broke as fuck you know what i mean nice we want all your money no problem do you accept cashier's checks for under five dollars i don't have the monies so jokes on you i guess dude what do you want to talk about case you

i don't know i see i yesterday you're like i don't know we'll just talk um people think that i have some overarching or arching architecture when people sit down and sometimes i do and sometimes it's better just to stand on and talk yeah no i'm with you um I don't know. What's hot topic right now? What's on Andy's plate? What does Andy want to talk about? You have kids, right? I do. I have all the children. How old are your kids? Okay. Two seven-year-olds, a 12-year-old, 14, and 15. All right. So you're asking me what's on my plate, and I'm glad because at the age of seven, you're not too far from this. imagine one of your seven-year-olds, but they're like three,

and you force-fed them some Indian food, some curry. Let's do that. And then you just unfolded that diaper later in the day and put that on your plate. That's kind of what I feel like was on my plate right now. Really? That crowded, huh? I'm not saying it's crowded. I'm saying it's a spicy hot dish that is sometimes hard to smell, look at, and handle.

Overflowing, huh? Yeah, no, I get it, man. And I don't know if that's the time of the year. every year I said the same thing how the fuck did we get to the end of whatever fill in the blank year it is right but uh I mean there's obviously some stuff we can we can talk about uh openly on the podcast and other stuff you know we're still navigating our way through but it seems like there's a lot right now you know I mean how much of that is manufactured by the time of the year I mean there's a lot of obligation a lot of yeah you know both financial emotional and family things that we got to take care of well and things start to stack up relatively quickly. I don't know. It's a rough time for you. I'm not huge on this time of the year, but I will say this.

I'm probably in the best place that I've been in a very, very long time at this time of year. So it's been a little easier for me. I think the better question is how often do people load their plate up willingly or unwillingly or unintentionally or unintentionally with that spicy Indian food cuisine, if you know what I mean? I think the answer is more often than not they do it to themselves. I get the, I won the lottery with my parents. Yeah, yeah. My father is, for anybody who watches or listens to the podcast, clearly out of his mind. I think the last episode we did on Friday, Michael was in here.

It was tough to maintain professionalism because of what was coming out of his mouth. Literally referred to his grandson as a Gayblade, which I didn't know how to take that. Michael almost fell out of that chair. And all I can really say is my mom was kind of the exact opposite and somehow tolerated him for 30 plus years of marriage. But they were awesome. So Christmas, yeah, it's interesting. I say that one layer away from my mom and dad. Christmas, I always felt great, you know, that time of the year.

Right. And this actually ties back into the episode I just did with my dad. He, I'll say this because I know he wouldn't have a problem with it. I saw him the next day. And he goes, hey, can we redo that podcast? And I said, why? He goes, I didn't realize how much I was hitting that piece of metal on the table. And when you asked me why I was, and I said, it's my father.

He goes, I actually have been really struggling with issues with my dad for about 10 days. Wow. And he's open about that type of stuff. So I feel comfortable saying that. So I feel like I won the genetic lottery. But one sliver of the onion away from me, my dad's father, and this type of back into the holidays because one of the last memories I have of my grandfather is we went to his house and I was young. So my memory of this, the specific details are a little bit more hazy than

kind of like some of the visual stuff. My dad already realized he was going to cut himself off from his father. And what he didn't want to do was abandon his mom. So we went up there with the goals of hopefully extracting her from that situation. In the end, the cops got called. So in the last holiday memory I have with anything really beyond my biological parents is the red and white flashers bouncing off the far wall inside of my grandfather's house. That's, yeah. Wild. But yet I still, like, you know, trauma is trauma.

And everybody deals with it. I don't care who you are. We both know high net worth people. And for those out there, they think that their life is perfect and they don't have any problems. You are losing the forest for the trees. Money does not solve issues. It solves some issues. It does.

Like teeth and titties, you know what I mean? It complicates. It complicates life, though, as well. The two T's, which is what Michael's looking for in a significant other. That's a different. That's a different. That's the only bar they have to pass. Which one's more important?

Tiddies. Okay, fair enough. He's an honest man, through and through. You can't blame them. That's actually pretty wild. Your history. We've come to find that our history matches up pretty well, and even in that realm as well. I think every family, if you go deep enough, and maybe it's generations long before you ever knew of the person.

There's crazy in every family. 100% crazy in every family. And there's going to be somebody who, like, you didn't invite Uncle Bob over to the picnic, did you? Right. Well, that's the thing. I think that, so my father was an amazing human being. My mother as well, still is. My mom's still here.

But from what he came up in the situation, what? What he had to model a relationship off of being his parents, he went the exact opposite direction. And my child was amazing because of those two people. And I learned how to love people from watching those two people, treat people with respect, you know, honor my wife and all those things. That's where I learned that from. But he had to do a complete 180 from what he knew and created an amazing life for my brother and I and obviously my mom. I think that's the choice. Right? I mean, you can either cascade it downhill, which does happen, and I'm sure you and I both know people who were treated like shit growing up and turnhand families and treated other people like shit, or they decide that it's going to stop with them and they go the complete opposite route.

Right. I don't have any stats on that, but I hope it's definitely greater than 50-50 that it goes the other direction. Yeah, I hope so as well. But, you know, the people that continue to repeat that process, there's a way out of that as well, you know what I mean. Just it takes an objective look at yourself to change behavior. That's how old were you when you think you were able to start objectively looking at yourself? It hasn't been that long to be perfectly honest with you. We're talking about a couple of weeks or what we're talking about?

You said that, not that long. 36 hours ago. No, I would say, I would say about four years ago. Yeah, 34 years ago. What was the switch? I wanted to stick around. and I was living a life in a manner that both. Do I'm going to stick around like existentially like you were thinking about checking out?

Yeah, I'd gotten to that point. Things had gotten that bad. And I luckily was able to go do a therapeutic retreat, if you will, that essentially saved my life. But the thing being after the fact, I had the clarity. Like all of the noise had quieted down. And I had a choice. I could continue to live the way that I was. I was living. That was completely up to me. And frankly, I did for about it. I continued to drink.

And I was like, well, and one day I was like, why am I still doing this? I was like, I don't have anything to hide from anymore. I don't have anything. Those things aren't bothering me anymore. I'm not continuously like living out of my, um, the back of my brain anymore. So what am I even doing? You know, um, how did you get to that point? And I don't mean the point where you decided to change. how do you think you navigated your way to that lowest point um i think that i was the condition uh being pts and i know there's this is there's a thousand people that talk about this but the condition being pts i had tried everything else i'd been to um inpatient rehab um i'd been to uh outpatient rehab i'd gone to a a all of the things um yet i continued to self-medicate

to and not, I was temporarily dealing with the issues that were actually the root of the problem. And I, through those modalities, wasn't able to not necessarily relinquish that, you know, get that stuff off of my mind. But through traditional modalities, it just nothing stuck for me. Rotate that microphone a little bit more towards your mouth. There you go. You love saying that. Get it closer to your mouth. You do it every time.

I do it. First off, I need, you have to participate in me. saying that because I mean I guess we could have a conversation like this it's like yeah so you know it's better if you put your face into the microphone you know I was having an interesting conversation with Sebastian Younger the other day who I think this like that's the coolest aspect of having a podcast is talk like this morning the talk with the cyber security expert right that's the coolest shit right by far is getting to interact with people his documentary Restrepo, if you haven't watched it, turn this fucking episode off right now and just go watch it.

And it's awesome. And we were talking about the D of post-traumatic stress because I, and I'm not, my jury is still out on this, but he is changing my mind in the way that I'm thinking about it. I thought that it was like just a straight up a disorder. And he said, human beings are evolved to deal with trauma. If not, the first time a saber to the tiger came into a five. and grab somebody out by their feet, the entire human species would have ended. It's the people, he's like after about a year, and he didn't really necessarily quote any science about that, but even a catastrophic loss of a loved one, child, whatever it is, after about a year, you should be returning to functionality. I'm not going to say normalcy because I think those type of events change what your normal is. He said the disorder comes in is when you go past that year or you are unable to return to it. So I think that there's both. I do believe that post-traumatic stress is a normal thing.

And I'm changing now. Like there is a place for the disorder. But what I think is dangerous is applying a blanket term and perspective to everybody. Right. And I think that's something that the view is kind of the lens is shifted on that. That was a phenomenal episode, by the way. It's probably one of my favorites you've ever done. But yeah, he did.

He explained it much more eloquently than I did, obviously. But yeah, his listen to his kind of journey through that process as well was, was eye-opening. I'm, I educated myself, like I researched the crap ad nauseum after my diagnosis. It was kind of a relief.

You got it post-military, like on your way out? I got it while I was still in. Okay. Yeah. And started doing the recovery stuff. They were like, let's get you all the help we can.

You know, thank goodness. Probably helped me stick around, to be frankly. Yeah. And I'm not saying that from an oh pitiful me standpoint. point. I'm just saying it because not to normalize that, but if you're feeling that way,

you have a choice. You can go get help or you can continue to live out the way that you are. And, you know, the end is coming at some point. But you don't have to do that, man. You don't have to do it. How was it manifesting itself for you? I had gotten to the point where I just didn't care about anything. Just flatline. Essentially, yeah. I refer to it as walking around dead. There's a lot of different, a lot of different ways to phrase it,

but that was probably the best way. Like, I was already gone, if you will. Doing everything I could to not think about that stuff, you know, avoiding, like, to the point of not going on post, just because I was, like, the smallest things. And I hate to use the word trigger, but that's exactly, it really is. to the point of like, you know, seeing someone in uniform or even listening to the verbiage being used in an office or, you know, it's just like, man, I can't do this anymore, you know. Can you point back to any experiences or exposure throughout your career that you think were the most impactful that trended you in that direction?

Yeah, it's, I can actually pinpoint it. There was, it was in August of 2009. I believe there's a rocket attack on the camp. And there were casualties. The sirens are still going off. Afghanistan or a wreck? This is an Iraq. We heard people screaming from outside the compound.

Like, clearly, I mean, you recognize the sounds. So my buddies, Corey and Jeremiah grabbed aid back. bags and started running towards where we thought the things were coming from. Got their direct impact on a bunker as people were going in. So an eviscerated female soldier. And another one that had the entire back was like, I say all that to say these were United States soldiers. They were American citizens.

And not to dehumanize the opposition in that conflict. But that stuff never really bothered me. kids and women a little bit, but that was the pinpoint because we worked on the patient, the female, for an hour. We were trying to get her O2 sats high enough to get on the bird, and I was reassuring her continually, you're going to be fine, you're going to be fine, and then come to find out she passed on the way to Baghdad. And that sat with me. Like, not then. It manifested much later. I was still.

able to do you know be a operator for lack of a better term until about 2016 but I was just continuously getting sicker and sicker and to the point where like my functionality at work my cognitive abilities and decision making was not where it needed to be in the position that I was in so yeah pretty rough one it's such a complicated It's such a complicated subject. How many people are on an ODA? About 16? Well, it's supposed to be.

It's EMTO 12, but normally about, if you got 10, you're doing pretty good. Were you an 18 Delta? I was a Charlie. Which I want to say is comms, but that makes too much sense. So that probably was like a word that starts without a... Engineer, yeah. Of course. There you go.

What's an 18 x-ray? An x-ray is a... Don't say a fucking com guy, because that would piss me off. It's not. No, it's a guy that signs up. It's just like an 11 x-ray. X-ray has a contract to go to Ranger or to Rasp now, not RIP anymore. And 18 X-ray is a guy that goes, he's got a dedicated contract to go to the, go to selection. I'm just saying let's keep it easy.

18 Echo, engineer, 18 Charlie. I'm not disagree with it. Coms. I didn't make the rules. I know. I'm just saying, I have a hard enough time speaking Navy. We start getting into the other branches and I get. Well, I'm the same way with the Navy.

I'm like, what? Are you a rear admiral incident? At times. Okay. That works. Yeah. No, I ask that because in my experience, which is all that I can speak for, I think sometimes the modern media does a really poor job of portraying what it's actually like to be on target. You're just like 50 guys in a room and everybody shares the same experience when the reality is you might be lucky to have two other guys in there.

right you know but let's say you cross the threshold of a courtyard and you're making your way to like a primary entry point and something kicks off the six different experiences and exposures from an outset are relatively the same but not on the impact that it has on the person and that's why i asked if you could point to anything yeah it's uh and then it got me thinking about when they put me through nico the national intrepid center of excellence in dc i was talking i spent a lot of time with psychologists and psychiatrists because that was part of the curriculum. And I am kind of fascinated and I would ask them, well, why? You know, why post-traumatic stress with this person but not this person? Why is this person crippled? This person seems to be a better version of themselves because of their experiences. And a lot of them pointed back to the locus of control, meaning... Do tell.

So did you expect violence when you would leave a forward staging area and, start heading towards an objective. Absolutely. Around every corner, right? How many times when you were exposed to violence was it on your terms? The vast majority, safe to say? We had the tactical and technological advantage. We can see at nighttime, right?

We're going to breach. We're going to use sensors. We've got thermals. We're super good at height and seek. And by that, I mean we just have tools that let us cheat. Right, right. Which I support it all times. Yeah, absolutely.

So when you encounter violence, it's on your call. Right. You're deciding when you are exposed to violence. You're looking for it. Your sharp teeth are out. The situation in what you were describing, you didn't have control. So the locus of control has shifted from you or a person like you in that situation to now it is outside of your control. And from my understanding, again, I'm obviously not a psychiatrist or psychologist.

That really starts fucking with the geometry between your ears. And if you think about it, we were at my last deployment was in 2000. and we were in Afghanistan at a at a at a I don't even I think it was about halfway up route one from uh Kandahar to Bogram and the mine sweeping platoons and I don't know if that's the right term or squad or whatever it may be can you imagine sitting in the back of an RG 33 with a roller up front and you know and you just your job is to go find an IED. You want to talk about scrambled eggs.

You could see it in them getting their gear on it. Like, how could you possibly want to do that job? So that's the locus of control. One, it's just you have absolute control over when you encounter that violence and trauma. And a lot of the time you are imparting it on others. And the other one, you're out of control. Right. And I don't know.

I haven't talked to too many guys who can really pinpoint an exact experience like that. but it's interesting that it falls into where you were reacting to it as opposed to being directly involved with it and having control. Well, so in the research that I did and by no stretch of my like no accreditation as far as a researcher or anything like that. I'm not a scientist or a doctor either, Andy. I know you're surprised. But. Nor am I for clarity. Hmm.

Yes. But they're looking at the onset from six months after the event. and in the DSM-5 out to 20 years for manifestation of symptoms. That's a long walk. Exactly. But, I mean, look at that span of time, and you're like, this stuff started manifesting with me later, what I would consider about three to four years after the fact. And I had no idea.

I'm like, what's happening? I was convinced everyone around me was crazy. Yeah. And I was okay. But that absolutely wasn't the case. As a warning sign for people, as a human being, I think that is a place if you ever think that, that I am the only one that's okay in this situation and everybody else is around you. Tread with caution. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm sure as fuck not saying you're right.

And how many times you've ever found yourself in that situation where you had the juice and everybody else was totally wrong? The answer for me is zero. Yeah, not. So be cautious. I mean, you can use that as a warning sign. That's weird. I feel awesome, but everybody else around me doesn't feel that way. Why could that be?

Well, now on the backside of that, it's given me the foresight now to start any problem that I run into or anything I'm addressing is take a look at myself first. What have I done to either mitigate or perpetuate this situation? You know what I? But kind of coming back to the whole part of it, it's like, what are we doing on the back? side of this for people. You know, what is each, like you were kind of referring to the experience as it pertains to going to the breach, you know, two or three people you're in contact with, that's three experiences. Well, in those three experiences, there's three algorithms that have been created from day one up into that point. Yeah. So when we're looking at treatment modalities,

how do we address that? Like, do we have a kid that was treated like shit? Do we have a kid that came from a healthy home? Do we have a kid that was a rock star in high school? Do we have a kid that got picked on in high school and is there to prove all this buddy. What are we what are we working? What's the baseline to work with? And the answer is we don't have one. So what are we doing on the backside? Yeah. You know, and I think. How much emphasis, how much emphasis or obligation do you think the military has as somebody is exiting? I really hate that I have to be honest here, but very little. I actually, I land at the same place, but that's not to say that I don't think people need help. I think it's a better role for like an NGO.

Right. I think there's a bridge step there. The military is good at taking somebody from any walk of life, shaking them up a little bit, right? Like not breaking Humpty Dumpty as eggshell, but your yoke's a little razzled, etc. And they break them from the we to the me to a degree. Some people more than others. He'd wear a uniform and, you know, all of those things, teaching them how to do their job. I mean, if you even just look at Navy boot camp, it was eight weeks on the way in, and the TAPS program was

I think two weeks on paper on the way out, and I went to A class and that got it signed off. But I also, and I... Wait, did you shortcut that, Andy? Did you use your position to shortcut that program? Let me see, how long have I been out here? I've been out for 10 years, which I'm going to hope the statute of limitations would end on. I just signed all the... Oh, okay.

Let's make it true. And not as guidance for somebody, but if they wanted to do that, don't use the same pen. Right, right. I used to help teach the tandem course for J-Soc and people would come. There was a basic jump number requirement. It's like, hello, good sir. Can I see your logbook? Is there a reason why the last 150 jumps all are written with the same pen,

the exact same inflection and stroke of this ink? You would never be lying to me, right? Because you're about to strap yourself to another fucking human being. This is a government document. There's no pencil whipping that goes on in that. What are you talking about? Yeah, I don't know. These are questions I ask myself because people ask me these questions.

I don't know the answer. I just, the military is good at breaking things. They're not at putting stuff back together. And maybe that's just the way it should be. And then we find the bridge. And I think the bridge would be better served through a different organization. I don't think the VA is the answer either, even though I've had some good experiences with the VA. But I've also heard horror stories that would make you want to go.

cause substantial personal and infrastructural damage to those said facilities. But there are a lot of organizations out there, Greenberry-specific, seal-specific, range or specific. They're all out there, and I'm not saying that they're all great, but I think that might be a more effective and efficient way. I think it's the only way. And it's unfortunately that financial burden is being bored by the private sector, for the most part, the organizations that are doing that.

and it's like Chris Miller talked about this on Sean's show a couple weeks ago came out or whatever. Chris, Chris Miller was my battalion commander at one time. Probably one of the most. He was the sec deaf, correct? He was the sec deaf as well. Probably his strategic acumen is unmatched. The man is brilliant. He worked at a couple of, no, at one smew. Also known as a special mission unit. There you go. Thank you for the acronym. That's right. Despernick. You'd be shocked at the number of messages I get it. What does that mean? So I do the best I can to unpack it. I appreciate that.

I'm sure they do too. We speak in a different language that it goes. Leah was the one. I would have an entire conversation. She would say, would you mind filling me in on what the fuck you were talking about? She doesn't use those words. I'm filling that in creatively.

Of course. But at any rate, he kind of addresses all that. I believe you wrote a book. I'm looking for it right now. I prefer the high carpy, but I'm going to give that a listen. But I think he talks about a lot. of this stuff and how where the pool is being diluted because there's all these organizations

that are out here doing things differently and they have different or over 40,000 service-based organizations targeted specifically just towards veterans and how many of those are actually legitimately trying to do things right I think you need to vet those organizations I'm not suggesting regulation of those organizations but if you're getting involved open those, make sure that you're hitching yourself to the right wagons, if you will. But that said, I don't have the answer either. I think it starts with the individual because you can't help somebody that doesn't want help, and that was me for a long time because I didn't think I needed it.

So you have to take that objective look or be forced to. Did you really think you didn't need it or you just were unwilling to accept the fact that you did? That's a great question. Most of the time when I am galactically fucking up, which I tried to spread out and disperse over the broad span of my life because it really sucks when you repeat like day after day. I'm doing this again. I don't know of a time or at some level I wasn't aware of it. Right. I might have argued with you to your face and said, no.

Oh, I didn't know that. In the back of my mind, I kind of knew that. you know when I look at my former self and I'm not even blaming this on P I was I had some narcissistic tendencies

and some behavioral patterns that were I wouldn't say diagnosable but I really like I can't say that I I I'm ashamed to say this

I'll put that out there but I'm not really sure that I ever got to a point was like yeah maybe I do need some help because I was just like I was just going went through life and I was like, well, this sucks, but, you know, I'll just drink it away or I'll just, you know, that's what I'm talking about.

It's a good long-term strategy. Wow, darn it. You know, it sounds assononon even saying it, but I truly thought that way. Pair that with trying to make your mortgage payment every month in Vegas and you have a winning plan for success. Yeah. It kind of, you know, it's called coming up out of the drain. That's how you do that. Yeah.

So some do it. Some try to. I don't think we should put that in doctrine. Yeah. No, it's wild, man. I think what year did you get out? Oh, 2019. Dude, by 2019, even in the mid-2000s, in the aughts, if people will.

In the arts. The special operations community had already been placed onto a pedestal. I don't think it's unfair to say that the vast majority of people, and I'm including myself in this, have a level of ego and narcissism associated with that. Yeah. The stuff that we were able to do is fucking hard, man. Yeah. There are a lot of people who want to do it and will even take the preparatory. steps to prepare themselves to do it and they get there and they face the crucible and it

smashes them into dust right it's i i don't ever want to define myself but what i used to do but i also i mean like there is you have to take an objective moment like okay like what we were able to accomplish is not easy i'll use the term average person i don't even know what the fuck that means but i'll just use a commonly accepted term there is a level of narcissism that is associated with that I mean, you know why seals prefer the Silver Ranger compass, right? Oh, God. No, I don't, Andy, do tell. Please.

It's got the biggest mirror that you can flip open and check your hair. That's nice. Where'd you think I was going with that? I don't know. I don't know. You're very poignant and sharp. You guys use lens addict shit. I don't know how to do that stuff.

You guys are talking about mills and all sorts of shit. Bro, what is a knot? A knot? A knot? 1.1 mile per hour. Oh, really? Yeah. You're welcome. You'll never use that information again unless you're a pilot.

What's a nautical mile? It's not 1.1. Is it really? I didn't think it was associative. Fuck. Michael? Yeah. I might be wrong.

I'm pretty sure it's 1.1. Okay. A nautical mile, I'm pretty sure is 1.1 statute miles. A knot of speed is 1.1 miles per hour. So if you're doing like 60 knots, you're doing 66 miles per hour. Why do you guys? First off, when you say you guys, I was in the Navy. But I don't know shit about the Navy.

It's because of boats. Yeah, 1.15. Okay. Hold on. Click on. Yeah, okay. One lottical mile good. And then wire knots used instead of miles per hour.

I think that's just for aviation and air stuff. They're easier to navigate with, obviously. Why would it be easier than that? Because we change everything. I don't know. It's very strange. Yeah, we use that. So it's funny, right?

We use that for, you know, jump stuff. Wind. Yeah, right. Five gusting to seven knots. knots, but we'll measure all of our walking distance in kilometers. Ranges and meters. Ranges and meters or yards, depending on where you're at, speed and vehicles miles per hour. God, I wonder if just this group of geniuses created U.S. military and they're like, okay, here we go.

How many branches? Good. Forever, however many branches there are, you have to have your own individual way to describe units of measure. Makes sense. Yeah. Why wouldn't you do that? We use Ranger beads in seals, like the beads that keep track of your pace count? Yeah. I'm familiar.

Oh, I bet you are. Do you know, do you remember your pace count? Not off the top of my head. Because we had our kick count, too, for our 100 yards underwater, or 100 meters underwater. Because, of course, diving is in meters. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Why wouldn't it be?

Fucking no. That's wild, man. Yeah, I used to know my pace count on flat terrain, on even terrain, uphill, downhill, through foliage, snow like the whole nine hours. Well, you had to. And I am so happy that I can't remember that anymore because that would be absolutely wasted bandwidth. I'd be throwing a guess at it if I try it.

I can't remember I recall them. I feel like if there was a true study done on the efficiency of the military, they would classify the results at a level that is well beyond any clearance you and I have ever heard of because of the impact of the insanity. Of the inefficiency.

You know, and it almost became like the further up the chain I went. It's like it was normalized. You're like, no, you can't do this and here's why. I'm like, oh, that makes absolutely no sense, Roger. Yeah. Any pushback. He's like, what are you even doing? Yeah.

I don't know. Shear bannery. Yeah, the Silver Ranger. It's good for navigation and take a look at yourself. You know what I'm saying? I'm checking that hair. I am going north. Jesus.

Oh, come on. What good time. It's like tossing me softballs, man. I can make fun of the SEAL community all day long. I don't know. I love you guys. Here's my thing with my friends that I have a lot of friends from the NSW community now. Yeah.

And individually, these people are remarkable human beings. Yourself excluded, obviously. Of course. Present company. but like when I worked with them like on a military on an operation it was just so different from the way that we would address problem sets and you know just to like basic maneuvering and whatnot it was planning is a big difference it's huge difference as well the single worst military experience I ever had was with a greenbrae captain I'll leave it as broad as that and it's funny because people think that and I think pre-9-11 we did internally fight a lot more because we were fighting for budget. Of course. We always would get the job done post 9-11, but there are cultural differences for sure.

But there also are different, the communities are, you know, if you look at Rangers, I mean, if you look at the actual metals, the mission essential task list for Rangers, it's to jump into and seize airfields. Right. Which I hope that they don't have to do that a lot because that sucks. Yeah. The SEAL community, literally, if you draw it back to its origin, it's to do depth soundings before amphibious invasions. Yeah. And maybe go into the hinterland, you know, and it wasn't until Vietnam that they actually really developed the, you know, the amphibious nature of it. But, you know, Green Berets, it was, it's, the metals are around FID, right, for an internal defense.

Correct. The by with and through training a partner force, you know, force multiplying and all that stuff. Who else do we have? Air Force special operations? What do they do? They tell us about the weather. And they talk to airplanes, too. That's good.

The PJs and CCTs are awesome. I just don't know enough about their medals to answer that. Marines, I'm not touching that with a stick. I don't know anything. I've never had the opportunity to work. The guys like on the backside that I know from that community are, again, great guys, you know. All you have to know about the Marines is technically they're part of the Department of the Navy. Okay.

Was that a dig or is that? No, it's true. I mean, they're the men's department. Don't get me wrong. Okay. Yeah. I mean, the Navy is more along the ascot side. These guys are more along the ass less chap.

side, but both still powerful in their own way. Yeah, yeah. That's doctrine, correct? Is that doctrine? I have never seen it in doctrine, but it was described to me and beaten into me physically and metaphorically by my peers that that is in fact the way that gravity works. I love Marie. I actually had fantastic experiences with every one of the branches.

It was so uncommon that I would have a bad experience. And there are, there's a lot of people out there who really talk shit about the seal community. and I laugh because like imagine how much more shit you would talk if you actually knew the truth. Right, right. It's like if you want to sit down and talk like come come get me. I'll help you out with that. Right. But it's also wild to see people have one bad experience and they shit can the entire community.

Like the ODA captain. Not a fan. Some of my closest friends are ex-green brays. I don't give a fuck. You don't judge the community by the actions of a single individual. It's like, come on. Let's be adults. Yeah.

Yeah. Now that's a lot of people do that. Unfortunately. I don't work with some Marine Scout snipers down at T1G. They just shut that course down. I cannot believe that. What do you think the justification for that was? No idea. Just from a heritage standpoint? Like the hogs tooth, all that stuff.

But what? Even from a capability standpoint. I don't know. I have no idea. Maybe. Well, I mean, let's look at it from, I can't even make sense of it from a warfare standpoint because we're looking at near peer threats now. from technological and, you know, from all standpoints, if you will. Like, why would we remove that capability from? I don't know. I don't either. I don't know.

It's soft overall. I mean, I just feel like that they're, I'm so glad I'm out now. Yeah. Just from the horror stories that I hear. So recently. When did it change? But that's the thing. So I was going to talk to you.

I mean, recently I did that video where I was, there's that stupid TikTok video that, like, Who's more toxic? Army or prison. And I dug into the recruiting stuff. So this year, Space Force and the Marine Corps hit their numbers. The Army's missed it for a decade. Yeah. 25% this year.

All the other branches have fallen short more often than not over the past decade. I'm sure there's a variety of reasons, but that's troubling. And then you reduce capability? I mean, is that an issue that they don't have enough people to, like there's no longer enough people to want to go into those? billets they can't support those billets from a logistical perspective it's a problem I don't think the world's getting any safer I think the problems are getting more complex and maybe that lining up tanks against you know or aircraft carriers or aircraft maybe that threat is dissipating a little bit I'm

not smart enough to say that that is the case I'm saying maybe that is the case but missing recruiting numbers reducing capability not an artist but I don't think that's painting a very good picture right I can't make sense of it oh you You were around when after when the global war and terrorism began, correct? Correct. You were already in. I joined in 96. I had been in for like six months, right?

And the culture that I came into as lower enlisted at that point was, I mean, we were relatively violent individuals and had that mindset. It was like towers fell. We were actually off that day. We had done, I think we had done a 30 mile later day prior. I was at Ranger Regiment at the time. And so we were off. Within two hours, the parking lots were full. Oh, for sure.

Like, everybody had come in. We were on RF1, Ranger Ready Force 1, so we were part of the package. So everybody was there. It's like, when are we going, you know? About six months later. Right. My former squarly were like, when's of, because we're all in the back. We're chomping at a bit.

And he's like, I've been waiting for this for six fucking years. You guys just calmed down. You know what I mean? He said it much more violent than that. And we did some physical. activity after the fact. But that culture was already established. When that happened, we were prepared. You know, we were prepared to go and those things were in place. Like, I don't understand where we are now. You know what I mean? I don't understand like as a military. How are you

maintaining readiness and pushing down, like pushing all this hogwash, like making it the priority. Maybe you're not. That's scary. It is scary, and I think because the military only gets pressed on in limited circumstances, or maybe from a kinetic perspective, smaller communities get pressed on more often than conventional ones, depending on the theater. Maybe you can justify it somehow, but in the long run, I don't see how it's a good strategy. Nor do I. I mean, you're essentially, you know, you're exposing vulnerability, even from a mindset standpoint. It's like, why would you do that? So if you joined pre-9-11, what drew you towards military service?

Well, I tried to sign up when I was 17. My parents wouldn't sign off of me going early because I had a scholarship. And I would have been, well, my mom graduated from college. My dad hadn't, and he really was pushing that. It took me about a year to figure out. Well, I generally already knew that I wasn't really into the books that much. The book learning wasn't for me. What sport was your scholarship from?

from a sport is academic. I scored. I find that hard to believe. Why? You know, I'm just going to let that comment. Because I know you? Because I know you? If you were smart enough to get an academic scholarship, you're smart not to figure

that joke out. You know what I'm saying? No. He's like, because I know you. That's why. Now, I just scored well on a test and they gave me a scholarship. I never had that experience. Well, that's surprising to me.

I think I had at 1.8. The bar to graduate high school is low. I somehow tripped about six yards in front of it and crawled just slightly under. That blows my mind. I almost didn't graduate. So I had already enlisted in the Navy through the delayed entry program. Okay. Gotcha. And I don't remember the number of credits you have to have in high school.

I was an elective short. This is like two months before graduation. I went and found a photography teacher that made a deal with the, me and I don't remember the exact number of pictures that I needed to produce. And I mean, like, go through the regular film, the chemical process. Right, right, right. But I did it in about a week, and he signed off on my credit for that elective. Otherwise, I actually don't know what would have happened.

That's so crazy to me. I don't see how, because I don't think, I feel like that you're probably one of the more intelligent friends of mine and. You need a larger friend, sir. Well, I've got to take a look at myself. Yes, I absolutely would. That's what I'm going to do first. Like, am I really?

What I can say is high school had, I had no interest in high school. I knew what I wanted to do since I was very young. And I'm not recommending this as a strategy for anybody. But I watched my friends arduously study for like the SATs. God, college admission tests. And I forget what they call, but essentially writing your resume that you apply. College application. Right, right.

I didn't do any of that. I actually don't know what, I mean, I know if I had not made it through Buds, I would have gone into the Fleet Navy. I don't know what that would have ended up looking like. I feel like I would have gone back and tried again, whatever it may be, but I had all of my chips, like, pushed in. Yeah. And I just didn't care.

It didn't interest me. And it's not a strategy that I recommend for people. I got very lucky that I didn't even realize the injury rate in Buds. I got lucky. Right, right. Well, let me ask you this, was Buds, and I'm asking you this from, like, your former self. Was Buds hard for you? Yes, but it's designed to be hard for everybody.

Right. And it's actually designed, not all of Buds is hard. Right. I grew up on the beaches in Santa Cruz, and I did junior lifeguards, and I played water polo. A lot of people freak out about the drownproofing test, which I'm not, I don't know if you guys do that in any of your pipelines, but it's, you know, And of course, what they show in documentaries or if they want to freak people out, all they do is they show people who are being resuscitated. No, or like hands tied behind their back, feet tied together, which you do, but the very first time you do it, it's like there's no restraints. Right, right.

Then it's like a Velcro piece of rope around your ankles. Right. Then it's a Velcrope. Right. There's ways to portray things. Of course. So they show the 10-year overnight success. It's like, this is what it is.

Right. So for me, the water stuff, that particular evolution, I loved it because I could only hear the instructor's yelling at me when I came up and was, and then right back down. I don't know what you're saying. And I don't care. I hope this evolution goes on all day because it's not hard. You relax. You exhale and go down. And then you bounce up, take a big breath.

And then they throw a mask in eventually and you grab it with your teeth. You bob a few times. You do it front of it. It's not hard. But running on the beach and, you know, they were Bates, light. at the time, but like a jungle boot or a bait's light, or running with a telephone. You know, I mean, like, there's something in that course for everybody. So the whole thing is not hard.

Right. But you will find the thing that you suck at and that is going to eat your lunch. Well, that's what I was like, the whole thing was not hard. That's the thing. Like, none of the things, like the Ranger Indocination program, that at the point, at that point in my life was probably obviously the most physically demanding thing I'd ever done. As was buds for me. But it wasn't hard.

Like, I enjoyed it. it because I knew at the end of it, I was like I was going to be with the best that the Army had the offer. And the same thing for selection in the Q-Course. I mean, there were hard portions in there. But it wasn't hard, per se. You know what I mean? I didn't have to, like, I never really redlined.

And if I did, it was like, okay, this is the point that I'm supposed to be at. Yeah. So when you say you knew what you wanted to do, that's kind of where I came from. I was like walking around in the woods, my entire life, my childhood. I grew up. You know, so it was, it was familiar territory for me. So it wasn't hard. I knew what I wanted to do as well.

But like I said, my father wanted me to go try that out. And then I bounced around a little bit, doing framing and stuff like that. And finally I was just like, I'm going to go. I'm going to go do what I feel like I was supposed to do. So straight into the Army. And then what, where's your progression? How does it go? Army boot camp?

Then you guys have what? AIT. So I went in on 11 X-ray contract. So I went. Special Forces contract? No. Ranger Reg. But you said 11 X-ray.

I thought 18 x-ray. Okay. Yeah. At that time, there were no 18 x-ray. You couldn't go straight to the course. Basic AIT or OSIT is one station training or whatever. Then you go to airborne school, and then they come down from regimental headquarters with a couple of trucks. You're standing over your bags, and they're like, who's get all the Rangers over here that are going to the Ranger Doct Nation program, and they say, pick your stuff up and follow these trucks.

So everything you've been issued and you're running down this It's a How inconvenient It's almost like your stuff would fit better in the truck It was so awesome I look At that moment I swear I got a specific

Specifically remember that moment I just I had the biggest smile on my face I was like okay fuckers You know what I mean Well especially if you I remember the Phase 1 Day 1 of Buds

It has like this aura about it Because I've been thinking about this shit Since I was 11 Right. And there's so many things, God, there's so many ways you can fuck it up along the array. You know, you can get in trouble as a younger kid and do something egregious enough that it hits your record and you're disqualified. You can join the military and it's your first time on your own and you do something stupid on liberty. Orders are changed.

You know, your job is to chip pain on an aircraft carrier. Start at the bow. When you get to the tail, just keep on going, buddy. Somebody's job is probably that. I'm making that up. But by the time you get there on day one, I remember that too. like the instructors come out and they're theatrical. It's fabulous.

The theater. Yeah. The interthespian of the instructors is coming out. And then, you know, they're wearing shirts that are probably a size too small. I feel like they were in the gym sculpting their guns before they came out. It's just like everything you've ever wanted to be in your life. And these guys had perfect hair, too, I would imagine. We're talking about the seal game.

Exactly. It's a requirement. Okay. unless it's not looking good, then you have to shave your head bald. Of course. Because, you know, we can't, we don't want to discriminate just because of that. You could be a good operator, but you're either going to have fantastic Fabio hair. Or it's polished.

Yeah. To a spit shine, like jungle boots and spit shine. But I remember, like, I mean, on the first day, good luck trying to find something that is the correct answer, the correct response. You're getting the shit kicked out of you. Right. And I loved it. I did too. Fuck yeah.

Here we go. That's great. I didn't like it as much as the second day. I'm like, this is old. I'm a little sore. I don't know what's happening to my body. Yeah, like, how many days are left of this shit? Oh, this is going to suck.

Yeah. But yeah, there was that sense of anticipation. I was glad. Obviously, the outcome was unknown, but I was so happy to be started. Right. And you remember the group of guys that you were, I mean. I remember vaguely. Yeah.

Same thing. But it's just the mentality is like you're there with those guys and you're like, bro, we're here and we're doing this. Yeah. The problem is with buds, you say that in the morning. And by the time lunch comes around, a lot of those, people aren't there. So it's not until the later phases of training that you become better friends. You'd literally, because you had to run to all your meals. Right. And it was a mile and a half each way when I was there. So you'd run to breakfast, lunch and it would not be uncommon to have a conversation with somebody on the way to lunch and have to find somebody new to talk to on the way back. Oh, I'm sure. That's wild, man. I didn't realize that was a thing. Yeah. Oh, you can eject it anytime. Just go ring the bell. The bell is at the ceremonial unless you're in hellweek and of course they attach it to the back of a truck so it's with you at all times otherwise it lives on the first phase grinder that's that's cool ours is the fire at cold range for ranger indoctrination program they have this giant fire yeah um and coal range is just like historically it's just shitty weather and it's a torture it's there i would call it the hell week not to offend anyone from yeah but it's the hell week in rasper or rip when i went through and it's uh

Probably two to three hours, tops to sleep a night, you're doing land nav. And in between when you're not doing land nav, if you're being physically tested. Yeah. So, yeah, that was the thing. He's like, guys, everybody just stand here and close your eyes for a second. You literally have people falling over going to sleep. Oh, yeah. I love it.

I have personally watched as an instructor people standing up and have done it myself. But there's like, hey, just all you have to do is go stand by the fire. And when they tell you to open your eyes or they give you front leg rest or whatever, there's half the people are gone, you know. It's like, hypothetically and allegedly, you know, we have these, uh, IBS inflatable This means this is true. This is a true story. No, it's hypothetical. Oh, okay.

Because statute of limitations? Unknown at this time as to what the statute of limitations hypothetically would be. Right, right. But if you take two students and you take the wooden oars that they have and you make them stand there near something warm, but they have to hold it over their head. So it's like a cross soars. It could or could not be funny depending on whether or not. this happens when they start smacking each other in the face as they fall asleep.

Sadistic bastard, dude. I didn't say I did this. I didn't. Let's not fill in the negative space like that and assume that this is something that I would do. I've said that for my, that was, that was personal. Yeah. Yeah, I was like, I'm a sedentious for laughing at something that that. No, you can 100% be out on your feet.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Been there. What's amazing is your body has that natural reflex, that starter reflexes. Unless you get tired enough. And then what catches you is your nose. It's the ground. Yeah.

I did that one time. One time. Sand softens the blow a little bit. Yeah. This was on linoleum. Yeah. Not fun. So was Ranger the desired end state when you got in and then you found out about the Greenbrae program?

Was that kind of the N-State? I wanted to be a Green Beret from the beginning, but I would never have voiced that at Ranger Regiment because it's kind of frowned upon, if you will. So it was kind of a mandatory. milestone along the way it's the best place to grow up in the army i feel like um i didn't i just wanted to be with the best unit that i could be with going into no i get that um so i went that route because i couldn't go to special forces out of the out of the gate um it was a plan um but once i did get to get to selection it's like and if you go from regiment they're like it be it go to smew selection

or you go to be go to SFAS you better make it you know what I mean SFAS is the official name of the Q course right that is special forces assessment selection is that pre the Q course that's where they decide who's going to start that's the screening process yeah um but yeah I wanted to do that ultimately ultimately I wanted to go to SMU but the family things didn't work out yeah you know I'm thankful that I didn't at this point because I'm glad where I am in my life right now and I don't think that I would have been there had I done that. But how was your first deployment? I'm assuming it was with the Ranger Regiment.

It was. How was it? It was boring. It was absolutely boring. We did. More of a common tell than people would actually believe. Well, I mean, it was like, it was kind of feeling things out. You know what I mean?

It's like, what are we supposed to do? Yeah. And this is, granted, this is coming from a private at Ranger Regiment. I wasn't privy to a whole lot of information. Yeah, but what was the total amount of combat experience in that element? Zero minutes, you know, like it was... The second deployment, there were guys actually that came back in from BECO from 1993. So we had a couple of...

No shit. Yeah, bro. We had some old scrolls walking around. That's dated knowledge, though, man. Yeah, yeah. Data knowledge. 100%. Yeah.

But, yeah, I mean, it was zero. They jumped on Rhino on October 19th. So Towers fell September 11th. We left October 11th, and then they jumped on, I didn't jump on Rhino. because I was a new guy. Probably for the thing. Well, there's the thing. A major bell from headquarters took my slot on the bird,

to which I verbally protested. And I didn't have the stature to protest at that time. So I paid physically for that as well. But I was like, I mean, I was 22 years old at the time, 23 years old at the time. I'm like, are you fucking serious right now? You know? Because I trained to that point.

I was proficient at my job. I was good at my job. And I was like, you just hadn't heard of the game. It's called rock paper rank. Right, right, right. Yeah. It didn't, yeah.

Rank trumps both rock and paper. Yeah. Absolutely. I learned it. I learned that lesson. Oh, man, I've learned that one. I was on Jocco's podcast years ago and he asked me what rank I got in the most

trouble and I just started laughing. I was like an equal amount at all. All of me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sensibly. I was reacting emotionally. I can argue sensibly at the age of 46.

Let me just tell you my capacity to act like a fucking child in my 20s and 30s. Well, I've seen you do it at 46 as well. I'm not saying it's stopped. I'm saying maybe I have a little bit more of a... It's like hot water, cold water, and I can do a little bit of a better job of modulating what's coming out. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, it was relatively uneventful for me. did another we did one more mission we went up to paxand to secure an airfield for the guys

for the other schmew looking for was it ubl obo you can just say it osamos you can just say delta what's the delta boys well i mean it's obviously an airline and for those being if they choose to get offended we're talking about the airline mfdf i don't know if i've heard that one you haven't no mother fucking delta force oh i like that a lot i do too It's one of my favorites. I like that. Again, another group of people had great experience with. Yeah.

They're fucking awesome. Cosmine professionals. Robots. They're robots. They're robots with more emotions than robots could ever have. Yeah. Yeah. I found it even at the highest level.

And this is another one that I don't know if I do a good job of explaining this. People ask me all the time. What's the difference between a conventional SEAL team and a J-Soc element? And it starts with they're the same pool. of people and what you're really doing is that at a J-Soc element it's like we'll take 85 to 90% of your job responsibilities and we're going to take those away from you but you need to be tits at these three things not that there's actually three things but just to throw a number out there that's lower I mean how many things I don't know about you guys at Ranger regiment or at ODA is like we

were constantly chasing currency oh my god like how do you use this radio again shit how do you put that dragger together again? What was my pace count? Which end of this law rocket goes, boom? Like, you know, can I shoot this AT4 indoors? No, okay, I can't. Can I one time? I just want to, you know. Just, just this once. Yeah. But currency, unbelievable. But chasing those things. And then it's, hey, your job that we want you to be good at is crossing the threshold of the door and making life and death decisions like that. Roger that. And the support ratio goes to like 15 to 1. Right, right. It's the same people, different job, very, very. in comparison, narrow mission focus, which allows you, it's like if you had to have brain surgery, I wouldn't want to go to a general practitioner.

I'm going to go to the specialist. They both go to medical school. One guy just is like, I don't do feet shit. I do only between the ears. Right, right. But they, I mean, they were some of the smartest people I've ever been around. And they were, I think the more emotionally intelligent that they could be, the better they could make tactical decisions. I have no data to support that.

Right. But if I think of the best tacticians that I was ever around, don't give me wrong. There were some autonomous robots, but there was also some sociopaths and some psychopaths, too. There were people there for the wrong reason. Absolutely. But if I think of the people that I have the most respect for from a tactical perspective, and then I start arraying that against their IQ and EQ, they were very high at both. Right.

Well, I think that in those commands or under that umbrella, you can, they have more liberty, to address problem sets, be it tactical, tactical or material solutions, they have the liberty and the support to seek out those solutions. And then once presented to up the chain,

they're like, yeah, we trust you guys to this level. And it's inherent with units tier two, two or three units, there has to be more management. And that didn't really start happening until about 2007, I would say, I feel like when the command shift started getting into the team rooms a little more.

But up until that point, it was, and that was some high intensity stuff back then, you know what I mean, which kind of comes full circle to things starting to manifest for guys and gals around that 2015-16 timeframe. I mean, you were dealing with a behavioral health pandemic inside of the Department of Defense due to, the opt tempo of the conflict from back then. You know what I mean? Yeah. When did you switch from Ranger and start going down the green brave pipe? 2004.

I went to selection. I finished the course in 2000. Correction. I went to selection 2003, began the course 2004, graduated 2005, September signed in and then went to Iraq. And then was it kind of just a ping pong back and forth between Iraq and Afghanistan? No, I did two trips to Afghanistan. regiment and I never went by.

Really? I was Iraq the entire time. Interesting. There were still, no, of course there were ODAs in Afghanistan. I was telling you that experience with that ODA captain was in 2010. So they were obviously, you just weren't at a command that was. Right. We were, no, I was in Baghdad for the majority of it, man.

I knew that place front back and center. It was almost like, it was like my second, my summer home, if you will. Yeah. Yeah. And you were married during that time period? I was, yeah. How did that work in for you? Well, you've seen my new wife?

No, it was difficult. I was, you know, obviously my job is my priority at that point. I would tell you otherwise in the time. But, I mean, job was a priority and, you know, everything else became second because of, you know, the mental state that I was in. And frankly, it's hard to switch from like, hey, I'm not. I'm a lethal mechanism at one point and come home and do that. Some people can do it. I don't, that wasn't me.

Yeah. I couldn't do it. I was stuck there, if you will. Let's talk with Tom. Well, it was the first time I met Tom Spooner. We were at a sniper competition. They were at a three gun competition, and Tom had videos up on his computer, you know, south side of the airfield in Baghdad.

Just, you know, just like team room stuff. And I was standing behind him, I was like, gosh, that's like, I miss it, you know. And he closed the computer, he's like, you and I need to talk. I didn't know him from Adam, really, you know. And he started to explain it some things to me. And it, you know, it's come if you ever speak to the man, you know, it's when he talks, you listen. Yeah. Because, you know, he listens more than he talks for a reason.

But that was my first exposure to. He's like, hey, you need to look out for these things. you know what I mean I want to say it was 2011 2012 um and I heated his advice but I was like yeah probably should start looking out for that listening to what people are saying and hearing what they have to say are two different things yeah and that's exactly the case with that um but in like when things started manifesting and whatnot I was talking to him quite a bit I was like I don't understand this like what am I and he helped me the best he could but I was I wasn't I would say I wanted help, but I wasn't in, I didn't have the capacity to receive the help, if that makes sense.

It does. You know what I mean? I don't know. How long were you married for, first time? 13 years. You have kids from that relationship, right? Three beautiful children. How is your relationship with your ex-wife?

I would say not ideal. Communication is, are you saying, like, currently or from that? In general. And I get, if I'm following my train of thought where I was going with it, I wonder, I was going to ask you if you've ever sat down and talked with her about the person that you feel like you were versus the person you feel like you are now. No, I have not. And I'm not advocating that because I don't want to. Erica's fantastic. She's awesome.

I would never advocate something that would try to be antagonistic in that. Right. But you share kids, which means you're going to share a portion of your life for the rest of your life. Right. And it's a, quite frankly, it's a, it's a selfish question because I don't have the answer to how it's going to go with my ex-wife either. And it's not good. It's something honestly that I would like to do, but she doesn't, she doesn't know me now. Do you know, do you understand? Yeah. I do. I know exactly what you're saying, actually. She has a preconceived ideal of who I am from my former self, if you will. And not to refer to as my form. It's all part of me. Don't you. wrong. But those behaviors, those, that general view on life no longer exists with me. Thank God.

Have you forgiven her? Yeah, I had to. I can't. Do you think she's forgiven you? I don't know. I don't know. I really wish her nothing but the best in happiness, obviously, you know, because I mean, she's the mother of my children. That said, I can't do that for her. You know what I mean? I wish I could, but I want a healthy environment for our children. And all that they have up in this point is that that relationship that they saw. So when the decision was made, it was one of my children asked me, why is Mommy so mean to you? And at that point, I stopped what we were doing. And I walked in and I was like, I can't do this.

I'm not going to allow my children to think that this is normal. you know what to me because I had been given the gift from my mother and father that showed me how to treat and respect and love people and I was like this is not okay for them I was about to say I hate it and that's too too strong of a term it breaks my heart

when I hear people say we're going to stay together for the kids no because I so I so deeply disagree with that and I people you know on Friday is most of the time I'll answer questions or Michael and I'll kick dumb ideas back and forth. But I can get people my opinions. I try not to tell people how to live their life.

It's like you can describe it however you want to. But I can't think of something worse for your kids than staying in an unhealthy relationship under the guise of it's for my kids. Well, in all fairness, and let me take some ownership in this because I feel it's the right thing to do. I made mistakes. I was, you know, been unfaithful and all those things. And we had decided to try and salvage what remained. But I think that the hurt was too deep. The trust was broken.

And that was being projected both ways. And then, you know, that was like, that was the normal why. Why are you guys so mean to you? I was like, no, I can't do that. That's not fair to them. So how is their relationship with their mom now? It's good. Yeah, she's a great mother.

I mean, there's no question in that whatsoever. I think that, you know, there was a time when she was concerned because of the way that I had, you know, what she saw in the path I was going. She was concerned, you know, for the kids to be around me and whatnot. That's no longer the case, which is good. But like I said, she doesn't know who I am anymore. She hasn't seen, you know. Yeah, I think sometimes that's the way it goes. Did she ever remarry?

No, not yet. I don't know. I just, my only thing is as long as whomever that is is suitable for my children. Understands that in a given moment you can fucking snatch their soul right out of their throat? You're gone. That's it. It's not personal. It's not personal.

Oh, it's fucking personal. Well, that's the thing. Well, it is. It scares me at times. What does? The level of just sheer, I don't even know what it is. It's just like. I know what you're saying.

We, and I don't know how this is going to be received by people, and I quite frankly don't care. We sit at a coffee shop today, you know, down the street, a business project of Denver and I's, which I'm super proud of. And have a cup of coffee. and I will talk with anybody who comes through the door about anything. And the level of violence that I'm willing to go to for what I believe in and the people that I care for would likely get me locked up for the rest of my life if they could read my inner monologue and thoughts at times. Of course. I had a conversation about this with a good friend of mine probably three, four weeks ago. David Acosta, we were discussing violence and when to use it.

And I was like, I don't want to venture into that space any longer because if I find myself at that point, it is, you know, to defend myself or my family and already know the outcome at that point. So I don't really venture into that anymore. I try and stay. I'm not avoiding it, but I'm containing. It's control of that measure. You know what I mean? I just think people would. And most people don't walk around their daily life, nor would I advocate that they do.

Like, oh, I wonder if this guy is comfortable with violence and this one. Right, right. How about this? We just don't know who we're sharing the earth with. So maybe get people the benefit of the doubt because there are people out there whose favorite hobby is chopping down fucking family trees. Right, right. And you probably don't want to piss in their Cheerios. Yeah.

These are the facts. But nobody wants to talk about that. You know what I mean? Why? I don't know. It's strength. I love violence. I know you do.

You don't know that. I just told you. So I guess now you do because I told you, but it's not something you inherently knew, even though you got an academic scholarship. Do you need an ascot? Michael, do we have an ascot or like a... Hey, Michael, let me tell you. We have a painter's tap.

Here's my Andy policy. When he starts doing this, it's... I have a choice to interact with the statements that he's making. And I would encourage you to start practicing that as well. It helps me. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Just give it a shot.

If you don't interact, go with it. I'll fire you. You will play with me. And I'll be immediately hired tomorrow. That is actually true. It's tough. I've fired him several times. It lasts for five to six seconds.

You fired him before we even started this podcast. That is true. He just kind of stuck around. He knew. I knew I would be needed. No, but I mean, I'm telling the truth. Like, I love violence. I know.

But I'm not a violent person. I know that as well. Like, I love nothing more than wrapping my arms around my kids and telling them that I love them. And it's like they probably hate it at this point. Every time I see my kids, I get them all. Every time I see Julia at the coffee shop, I give her a hug. Like every interaction I have with my kids,

I tell them as many times to the point where their ears are probably bleeding that I love them. Right. Leah is probably utterly fucking annoyed by my desire to express affection towards her. Yeah. I have someone that's quite familiar. Let me tell you this. And I told Leah this today when we were up on the mountain. And it's like when we were in that meeting yesterday and you were talking about you and Leah shooting.

You lit up like a schoolgirl. I was so, I was just like, God, it was so cool to see that. But it's a true expression of joy and love and happiness. You know what I mean? And the fact that you get to experience that, just from a friend's standpoint, makes me feel amazing. You know what I mean? It's like somebody else has what I have. I wish that for everybody.

I truly do. But it starts with you. You have to be. you have to be healthy mentally and what I consider spiritually and physical doesn't hurt either, you know what I mean, to optimize the... But then there's the other side of that, right? There's... Like, I feel like the way I feel is normal. I think all human beings should be capable of violence. They have it in control. Jordan Peterson has a great job at talking about that. You know what's interesting? And I was thinking about this the other day. Jordan Peterson talks about men, capable men being they have a proficiency in violence, but they have it under control.

Do you think he is capable of violence in any way, shape, or form? Like an expert, a professional talking about this about the role of violence, but then isn't capable of it himself. It would go one of two ways. You can either punch through Jordan Peterson. or you have stepped into a world where you have underestimated your opponent. Yeah. And he is on you like. I feel like if he trained in any way, shape, or form, we would kind of know about it.

Does he do Jiu Jitsu? I don't know. And there's other shit out there besides Jiu Jitsu. You need to have striking, you know what I mean? Like, stand up taking like all that shit. Yeah. I concur. However, I thought that he did.

I don't know. Yeah. It's wild to recognize in yourself how much you care for. for and value that affection and your willingness to take what's on the inside of people's heads and put it on the outsides as they push you to that point. Yeah. It's a weird place to be. Well, it always has to be.

Fuck. It's at the, I mean, it's right there. But like you said, it's under control. And I'm not looking to exercise that. I'm looking for every reason not to. I don't. Yeah. Brian Callan asked me one time, he was talking about war.

And he said, well, what are your thoughts on killing people? Then again, I'm not so sure how this is going to come off, but I'll give you the same answer that I gave him. I said, it's one of my absolute favorite things to do. Right. And he looked at me and he said, what the fuck is wrong with you? And I said, Brian, can you think, it's not the act of physically taking a life. To be honest with you, again, that's another one where the Hollywood narrative is completely

blown the lid off of that kettle. It's just, first off, you almost never have time to fucking think about it. You're like, ah, surprise. It's like, I'm not sitting there, you know, oh, I'm going to watch you for seven days. I get to know. It's like, oh shit, you're standing behind that corner. Yeah. Fucker. Yeah.

Not anymore. Yeah. Because I can see at night and you can't, you son of a bitch, don't scare me like that. Now I need new pants too. I mean, that's the fucking reality of it. But what other environment in there that has consequences that are so utterly and absolutely steeped that you get to go into that environment and find out who the fuck you actually are? Right.

So it's not the, and again, maybe my answer to him and even the way. I just described it is imprecise to say the least. But I don't think you come out of that testing environment, the same person that you go into it as. And I guess that's the value. And that's what I enjoy from those or enjoyed from those situations because I'm not looking to do that again. But I think people underestimate the willingness of people with our backgrounds to go back to that. Right. And it's not a far cry.

Well, and that's what I start bumping up against people. who are calling for civil war in the streets. Jesus Christ. They will see you in the streets. It's like, I don't want to do that. Yeah. And for clarity, neither do you. Right.

Because the level of violence that that escalates to so quickly exceeds their wildest imagination. And call the duty on a video game is fun. I don't, I never found it to be that fun in real life. It's fun when you're winning. It's not fun when you're tied and you're wondering whether or not you're going to win. Right, right. So. Well, that's the thing.

my perspective on that or my shape and I talk about it from a behavioral health standpoint is I had to make peace that I would never be in absolute control of my entire environment and be that safe ever again. Like that's a tough one to come. I think it's the inherent like search for power. Like in those moments you are ultimately in control of everything in your own. environment and that's a tough one to let go of well that's the locus of control again that's that's why i asked you about that question that was a test in your past wasn't a test it's it's just it it reinforced what the psychiatrists and psychologists have talked to me i've never heard i'll have to read up on that i've never locus l o ucs yes no i have an academic scholarship

there'd have been like loks the loks of control locus yeah you're the you're the nerd alert obviously i didn't know that before but i'm a medical doctor This is not true. I don't know if I would enjoy being a medical doctor. I don't know. I actually had a kind of a cross-strain quite a bit with our deltas, our medics. Yep. Not the mics.

We sent our medics there too, actually. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Those guys are, they really are like doctors. When the hydraulic fluid starts seeping out, a trauma standpoint, you want them there. That's exactly who you want.

Or a PJ. Those dudes can stop shit right quick. Yeah. Yeah. Do you guys, you guys have. at Corman on White side and then the other guys. Our Corman on the conventional side still go to the six-month Delta course. Oh, okay.

You can become an IDC, which I think stands for independent duty, Corman. That's the addition of the long course on top of that. Okay. And I think there's some level of them don't go. No, it's not. But, you know, the special operations, and now I'm a little bit over my skis because they change this as I was getting out. Being a seal isn't of itself now an occupation, whereas it used to be.

be you still had to take your test on whatever your job was in the military. Right. I think at some point if you want to advance and you are on the Corman side of the house, you have to go to the IDC course. It might be the jump from E6 to E7. I got you. That's a chief, right? E7 is a chief.

I would describe that as the jump from middle management. Yeah, I got you. Of course, as in the Army, you have two versions of an E4. That fucking threw me through a loop for a little bit. Yeah, I was both. Yeah, but why? Twice. Why, though? Why does there are two E4s?

I don't know. I think it stems from the old technician kind of thing. I have no idea. One is considered an NCO, a junior NCO, and the other is still an enlisted. Have fun with that. I don't make the rules. Nor do I. And they don't ask me to either, which is probably a wise call. I'd say so. Yeah. What, uh, how'd you know it was time to get out? Or did you just time out at your time?

No, I asked to be, they were going to let me say to 20. I asked to be retired at. I got out at 19 years in two months. And they were gracious enough to let me stay. But I was like at that point, being brutally honest, I was like, I don't think that I'll make it to that point. Things had gotten that bad. Not just from a career standpoint, but from a personal standpoint, there's so many things. And all of which were my fault. However, I was just like, I can't be in this environment anymore.

Probably saved my life getting out one of the things that saved my life. out at that point. I mean, I'm assuming they medically retired you. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I was fully taken care of. Prior to all of this, my reputation within the unit in the community was my body of work kind of spoke for itself.

I mean, I'm not bragging by any standpoint, but I was good at the time. It is what it is. I was, you know, up until that point where things started, the wheels started to fall along. Had you even thought about what you were going to do when you got out? Wow. That's a, no, not in the least. That's fun, right? Yeah, I didn't think I was like, but that's where I was in a mental state.

Like my mental state is like, I don't even know how to be it more, you know, so. But the thing of it being is like we talked about this quite a bit. It's like the programs, like, why don't we start? And I know there are programs out there, but start something where these guys can monetize their network. Monatize their skill sets. You don't have to go into the defense industry. You don't have to be a contractor. You don't have to do any of those things.

Like from an entrepreneurial standpoint, there's so, like, a lot of the stuff that you did in your old job cross-pollinates into, this is just finding the right people to surround yourself and support yourself with. And that therein lies the difficult problem. We're talking about how hard it is to find good people to surround yourself with it because they're becoming more rare because we're all reacting to things emotionally rather than approaching problems objectively. So where'd you land when you first got out? What was your first job? We went back home. I went back home and just tried to heal up, lick my wounds, back to Mississippi. And then Mike actually gave me my first job.

I was an instructor for Fieldcraft. Michael Aubrey. Michael Aubrey. Michael Aubrey Glover. Yeah. Also known as the Quant. The Quant. Somebody sent me an official.

I saw the certificate. Quantitative certificate. Are you taking it to him? I sent it to him digitally. I figured it was a faster way to get it in front of him. He was a fan. he sucks at math i know horrible do you know he's Asian yeah fantastic driver stereotypically the opposite fantastic driver horrible at math doesn't make any sense I don't know I don't get him

yeah so worked for Mike for quite a few years yeah a couple two and a half years when I worked from an instructor into the uh training director position over there and it was a great time made a lot of a lot of good connections. It was great. Honestly, like, I've missed the absolute crap out of that crazy bastard

or really do. Because it's the, there's something about, and we don't even talk about it that much. So you don't, but being with friends who understand where you have been before. You know,

I think that that's super important. But you have to be doing that healthily. Like, you can't hang out with a guy that's, like, and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with. that do what you have to do. But if you're just drinking at the VFW for every single day of your life and you're not doing anything,

like, you know, let's take the successes that we have and build upon those, you know, perpetuate success between them, like between each other and support, you know, bounce ideas off each other. They have real conversations where we're not just talking about, you know, the old job. Yeah. I have to assume you guys had some crossover in your career. Where did you guys first meet? So at selection, Mike was... Which is the pre-EQ course?

Correct. Mike was... Mike's bunk was directly across from mine. He was taking off his Tombwalker patch. And I recognized the patch. And I was like, hey, are you two-m-marker? And he's like, yeah, and kind of talked to me a little bit about that. And we had our first conversation.

I was like... I had no idea how big of a deal that was inside of the Army. Huge deal. I had no idea. Huge honor. Yeah. But I was like, well, you know, right on me a good luck. And then during land navigation, all the events,

Mike and I would kind of show up first or second. You know, I would always beat him. Of course. He would be second. I mean, that was the assumption that I operate. You've seen our elk in the coffee shop. One is slightly larger than the other. Right, right.

People can fill that in and feel the business is. But, yeah, we crossed paths throughout our career a few times and, you know, shot the the use sniper competition, which he always is like, yeah, and we beat you that. And then I'm like, Mike, here. the results, those are just, that's historical data. You can't just say and make things up. I don't know if he operates under that principle. That's a good point.

It is, it is Mike's reality. I have heard MCA some wild shit. I'm like, I don't know if that's true, but I'm not going to challenge you on that right now. But he says it with conviction. Correct. He sells it. Boy, I'm telling you what. No, but he gave me, he gave me my first job.

And that was. Did you guys stay in kind of was like close contact or you guys would kind of just balloon back at each other once in a while. Yeah, bounced back into each other every once in a while throughout our, you know, throughout our career. But like I said, he was gracious enough to give me a job. And it really, that job helped fill the service gap for me. I got to be with like-minded people, met some phenomenal people throughout that process as well. It was really, it was divine timing for me, honestly.

It kept me healthy and, you know, it's gotten me to this point now. So, super grateful. for that and then recently i don't know within what like the last six months you switched over to a new venture yes sir cloud defensive turning the night and today yeah visible spectrum light do they do any iR stuff not yet i'm pushing in that direction though matt's going to yell at me about that but i'm gonna try and do i mean it's super helpful assuming you have night vision goggles yeah otherwise this shit doesn't work therein lies the issue um no really uh really innovative company their young company. I met Matt three, four years ago. They had five employees. Now they have

over 50. They've five X in five years. That's a pretty good growth curve. In that industry, especially, you know, but we've got some stuff coming up shortly after Shot Show. I feel like it's going to blow the lid off of things. So really good people. Everything's American made. You know, good principles, good values. Do they have a light that goes under the 365? well, pistol light. You're asking about the EPL. So there's a running joke. Whatever you just said, I have no idea what that means, but.

Well, so the running joke is this light has been in development for quite some time, and I'm probably going to get in trouble talking about this. Tell me more. Yeah, exactly. Oh, please continue. Yeah. But it's coming within the next six months. It's coming, and everyone is waiting.

So anytime that Cloud Defense has posts anything on social media or YouTube or whatever, the comments, look in the comments, you'll just see EPL question mark. Really? Oh, yeah, yeah. It's a run and drove across the way. I say that to say they know that it's going to be the one, just because highest outputs on the individual

spectrum on the market. The product itself is the highest output. It sells itself. It's like if you want to, and it's easy to test. You can take light X and one of our products. Yes, it's not subjective. It's very objective. I'm definitely very biased towards SIG because that was kind of the pistol platform that we grew up on.

And I love the 365. I think I'm running the Excel macro. Whatever is it. Yeah. In the Fanny Pack, 17 plus 1, which is insane for that size. I love that macro. But half of the day is not day. Yeah, yeah.

You know. Half of the day is not day. Half of the day is not day. That is a scientific fact. It is. Yeah. And bad stuff. Unless you live up here in the winter and then three quarters of the day.

is not day. I know. Eric and I were talking about that last night. It's like the sun doesn't come up to like eight o'clock and it goes down at 3.30. You can fool yourself. You lay a bed like, oh, I can still sleep in some more. The sun's not up. I mean, it's 9.30.

Yeah. Summertime, it didn't go down to like 11 here. My productivity peaks in summer months. I would say so. And my nesting slash sleepy time peaks in the winter months. You're like a bear. Are you? I don't know.

I don't know much about bears. Well, how's your vitamin D? Bro. Do we want to venture down that? No, we can. I'm trying to think of the way, because I have talked to you about this. And I'm trying to think of the way. So I have a few friends.

We all have friends. I hate the fucking term operator syndrome. Not the syndrome part. I just don't like the term operator. And I don't know why. But there are some medical issues that did not broadly apply. some people more susceptible than others. And again, it's like from a genetic perspective, too,

you might have had good parents and, you know, Evan Hafer's could walk under this table without crouching down. You know what I mean? Like genetically, not everybody wins the lottery. He would just walk straight through, and this table is about a foot and a half off the ground. For those of you out there on the shorter bus, I'm saying he's short.

Right. You know, short by, see what I did there, short by short. I like a deal. Nice connection. You're an academic scholar, so, I mean, obviously, you got it immediately. And I just turned 46 years old. And I've been getting to a place where, dude, I will wake up feeling exhausted.

My recovery at Jiu-Jitsu, which is one of my favorite activities, more from a puzzle problem-solving perspective than the physical. Again, I'm not looking for, I am not looking to fucking hurt somebody on the mats. I actually, it is my absolute worst nightmare that I would accidentally hurt somebody or intentionally hurt somebody because I lost emotional control. Right. Like recovery is slow. Brain fog at times. It's just my body was feeling off. And I finally went and got a full panel of blood work done.

About six months ago, the last time I was, maybe it was a year ago, I don't know. The last time I went to Austin to Go Beyond Joe's show, a guy reached out. His name's Chris Williamson. He hosts the podcast, the Modern Wisdom podcast. Okay. He made a post. And I'm not trying to make this an ad by any stretch. What I want to do, and my goal moving forward with this is I want to be completely open, honest, and transparent about what led up to it, where I'm at, and what I'm trying to achieve.

Right. Chris did a social media post that said, hey, I just started working with a company called Merrick Health about six months ago. And he's like, I'm not on TRT, but I had a full panel of blood work done. And he talked about his testosterone numbers and what they were able to naturally. They were attacking the mechanisms inside of his body that naturally produced testosterone. One of the things with operator's symptom that I've now educated myself on and talking with people is that oftentimes the natural regulatory systems, whether it's explosive blast, concussive weight, whatever it is, they're fritzed out to use a technical term. Right.

Fritz. It's actually medical. I think it's in the seventh or eighth year of medical school should you make it that far. Yeah. Meaning you might have less effect by actually targeting in that way. and I text him I'm like, dude, tell me about what you're talking about.

He's younger than me, but I'm like, this is how old I am. Like, this is how I'm feeling. Is the post you put up, like, is it legit? And he wrote back on, he's like, dude, they're awesome. Let me to connect you with them. So he connects me with the guy at Merrick Health.

It starts with a blood draw. And I don't, if I'm being totally honest, I think I avoided, I know I had blood draws in the military for like your annual, whatever it is, I don't actually ever remember like the testosterone in addition to the other stuff that they tested me for. But I think I subconsciously avoided having anything checked for a long time.

It's like, yeah, I know maybe like I'm catching some warning signs, but how good did we get at our old job at being comfortable, being slightly uncomfortable? And this cascading, like it's a little, it's like 1% worse this week, but I can turn that into my new baseline. Right, right. 52 fucking weeks down the road, your new baseline is half, you know what I mean? Yeah, no, I'm with you. So he was like, dude, they're legit. They did not advocate that I get on TRT. They wanted me to attack these things naturally first.

Like his number's like tripled. So I get a hold of them. First thing is the blood drawn. I go down and I'm, God, I think they almost suck me dry. I know. I'm like, holy shit. All the files. Yeah.

It's like, are we done? Thankfully, it was just one stick, you know? Yeah. But literally, I'm like, do I need to have like a banana and some orange juice after this? You guys just let me drive? Yeah, I need to drive home. Should I let my dad drive? That might be more dangerous because he went to random days.

Like, oh, I'll drive down to Missoula with you. Do you not have anything else? Like, totally come with me. And it was actually cool because I had a chance to talk to him about it. God, and we had such an awkward conversation because he was, you know, he's like, testosterone. And he's like, you know, at my age, I just care about sex a lot less. But maybe I need some more of that testosterone. I'm like, shut the fuck up.

No, dad. No, no. I don't have this. I'm like, God, damn it, man. So we go down, the blood draw comes back in about a week. And after that, there is a consultation with somebody who's not a doctor, but it kind of gives you the base-line results. But they give you the results. Frightening, huh?

I read it. I read it in an afternoon, and I didn't know how to talk to Lee about it. I slept on it that night, and the next morning, I think it was a Saturday, a day where she didn't have to get up and go to work. We just had time to kind of like a slow on ramp to our morning. And I said to her, I said, hey, so I had my blood work done. And I told her I was going to go down there and do it. Obviously, what I said was I had the results came back.

And I'm sick to my stomach because they put it up on a, it was like red, yellow, green. Yeah. 80% of the numbers were under red. Of course. And not, not like the edge between red and yellow. Like, it was red. My testosterone was barely 300. And I know that there's two different.

There's like serum or free or something like that. I'm actually tempted to pull the report up and go through it. But we don't need to get that deep into my personal medical details. Is that you or me? That's you. I mean, I knew better than to leave my phone on. It's fine. It's not my first rodeo.

That's kind of your thing. Dude, nauseous. Like, it made me sick to my stomach. And I think it made me sick to my stomach because I had the realization that I you, it's like I had to confront the fact that I probably could have gotten that test it a while ago. Yeah. So I'm still at a point where I haven't done shit. Yeah.

Because there are other requirements. But I sat, we went through an hour. And I think we probably, for an hour with a consultation, we must have covered 50 to 80 metrics. And I just, and I'm taking notes and you ask me about vitamin D. Holy shit. It would appear as if I'd never go into the sun ever. Like, I don't, that, that particular metric actually was probably the lowest in the red of any of them. And they're, you know, educating me on it.

Like, this is a hormonally governing vitamin. Right. So, and looking at my paperwork, absent the individual knowing anything about my military career or operational history, he asked him, he said, do you have any injury of concussions or blast exposure? And I said, why do you ask? And he said, your numbers, what I'm looking at, and I'm not a doctor, and we'll leave it up to the doctor. but I've done this enough now or indicating to me that there might be a dysregulation

between your normal systems specifically around testosterone and what's going on in your body. And it may not actually benefit you to try to attack those things because it might not have the impact that you want it to. So I'm in a phase now.

I'm waiting to do the telehealth conversation with the doctor, but it is very likely that I will go down a path that will include the TRT or testosterone replacement therapy. I think that's what it stands for. In addition to probably a hand of other supplements at the same time because there were so many numbers that were low associated with that.

So that's a really long-winded answer to say, my vitamin D fucking sucks. Right. I wish I wouldn't have put it off for so long. And there's also this really weird. The reason I wanted that I'm even willing to talk about it is I want to be able to be transparent. And there's this weird stigmatism of people that, like, for me, I'm 46. Right. I'm looking at the amount of sound that's left in an hourglass.

There is more in the bottom than there is the top. And that's okay. I mean, I guess I could make it to 92. I don't know if I want to make it to 92. Like, what kind of cool shit are you doing at 92? Yeah. You know, you're eating your daily jello ration out of some other dude's asshole. I mean, I don't know what they do in nursing homes.

That's the first thing they came to mind. But it happens. It happens. Oh, I know. I'm well aware. Michael, you're over there. It's like, it's a possibility, right? I guess.

Yeah. It's the first time I've ever heard of it. You've never volunteered a nursing home and seen this? Yeah. No. I kind of want to now. If there is a nursing home where this is happening, I'll provide you Michael's personal contact information if you hit me up.

But I'm at a place where I need to do something and I'm trying to educate myself as much as possible. And I just am going to be completely open and honest with my entire reason. What led me to this? What I'm looking at doing? I don't have the call with the telehealth professional until late, late in this month. any type of interventions or treatment or therapy wouldn't happen until January. But I would so much rather destroy the stigmatism associated with it.

Right. So people, if that is a viable option for them, and I don't know what the doctor's going to say. I'm pretty sure what I know he's going to say. Right. At least when it comes to the testosterone route. But it's also, I'm not trying to be like a competitive fucking bodybuilder or jacked on steroids. Like I would actually just like to feel normal. Right.

Well, that's the thing. So my vitamin D sucks. I was about a fucking 30 minute explanation on vitamin D. No, well, I mean, that's the thing. It's like the mechanism is compromised in order for you to maintain the proper level. So you're doing something about it. And it's not for, like you said, like I don't want to be a bodybuilder. But I'm currently taking TRT.

What got you to that point? Same thing. I got my testosterone tested. I was at 240. So I was essentially. You know like a 14 year old girl has more testosterone than that? Exactly. So, I mean, that's kind of.

of frightening and with that you know a lot of other issues is from I noticed like I couldn't no matter what I was doing diet wise I couldn't lose weight you know all those things and it wasn't let me make it clear that it wasn't an aesthetic stimulus to seek this out it was like cognitive function was terrible I couldn't sleep I couldn't recover you know nothing was was going the way that and I haven't gone to the depths of looking at you know hormones and all of those but I was just like, hey, what are my options? And I'm like, well, we can do this. And same thing.

They were like, hey, we can, you know, there's peptides. There's hormone replacement therapy. There's this and the other. And found a dose that works for me. And it's like I can think, I can sleep, I can recover. It's just optimizing what I do have left in order to be there for my family. That's it. How long after starting the treatment did you feel a difference?

probably about a month, I would say. About a month, I started noticing things. I was like, man, I'm thinking really clearly. My memories, believe it or not, my memory was actually more functional. My short-term memory was absolute crap. And it still is, don't get me wrong. But it got better. And like noticeably to the point where I was like, well, I'm thinking better.

Yeah. And I didn't associate it with the TRT at the time. I was just like, what's going? And it's like, oh, yeah. this is also a benefit of it. Yeah, I'm interested in the minimum amount of intervention possible to try to get me back to where I feel fucking normal. Right. Like a human being.

Right. I know there are people, and I think it would be irresponsible of us to not acknowledge that there are people who abuse that type of stuff. Right. And there are, my experience with Merrick so far has been awesome. And what I can say so far with my experience is they are the opposite of an organization that you, You could call up and try to say, hey, this is what I'm looking to do. And they'd be like, get the fuck out of here. Right, right, right.

But there are things like that that do exist. So far, it's been great. Right. Yeah, I don't know. It's, it's been life changing for me. It's like, once I got my head in the right place and I was like, okay, well, let's start addressing these problem sets, you know, be, you know, from all aspects of our life, you know, and I'm finally to a place where it's just like, wow, this, this is pretty, pretty rad ride.

You know what I mean? And now you can start training in jihitsu. You blue belt you. I'm not a blue belt. You were a blue belt. I have a picture. Who gave you these pictures? You said, I was like, hey, I don't even have a belt.

And you're like, just put that blue one on. I know, but I was trying to set you up because I was hoping to get a picture so I could say it's stolen valor. And this, ladies and gentlemen. Stolen valor. I have one. Erica took one of you. I think you were attempting. I don't know.

You had my back or something. You gave me your back. I didn't have your back. It's not my fault. you turn it over like a pop. Are we having this conversation right now? But it's a great picture because we're both literally giggling like schoolgirls. It's, but it was so fun.

I'm hooked again. I'm going to stick with it. I love it so much. You are, you're made of dark matter. You're the heaviest human being on earth. I am not. I'm going to introduce to a man named Henry Aikens.

Yeah. And you will. You told me about that. That's Dan's guy, right? Find, yeah. Dan is also heavy. You will find, if you're not religious, you will find religion. and pray to a variety of gods

to get that man off of you. Michael, have you had the bespoke experience of a role with one Henry Aikins yet? Nope. I should go find like a 300 pound stone and just drop it on him from like five feet because that's about what it feels like. His ability, I'm trying to think of something,

like, it's all of his weight on something the size of that tip of the pin, which costs him nothing. And you are drowning on dry, land underneath him. That's scary. I told Lee, I was like, yeah, I was like Andy was talking about linking me up with Henry. When I'm out in Vegas, he's like, oh, he doesn't train with white belts.

You're your blue belt. I'll send him the picture. That's your profile picture for me and the phone. He's like, you'll have to go with AG or something. I was like, I'll do that. Henry worked with me when I was a white belt. He would work with you. Okay.

Well, we'll see. I don't know. The joy I have in that activity, and that's what. peak my, I'm like, I can't recover. And if you think about it, the more you do it, as with anything, you're going to develop efficiencies. So you should actually be exerting probably less the longer you're into it.

Like when you first start doing Jiu-Jitsu, it is the most physically exerting activity for about 60 seconds until you absolutely gash yourself. Yeah. After, I think I've been at it for just over five years at this point, you should have some levels of efficiencies. And when your body is, I'm like not recovering. and I'm noticing a difference from when I first started. That's really what levered me over the edge.

Like, okay, I cannot ignore this anymore. We'll see. I don't know. The last time that I ventured into that space, I was not on the, it was not on TRT. And I felt like, I was like, how can I do that again today? But, you know, we've rolled, what, two, three, two days now. And we're still going after this? If you want to.

Yeah. Michael, did you get a chance to roll? Casey yesterday? No, I don't think so. There are people in every gym, and there's a lot of... He's a gray man back against the wall. No, they're called Matt Dodgers. And there's a variety of terms, but what it means is he will only pick and choose the people

to roll with that he feels like he wants to do a guitar solo. You know, he wants it to be up there. He wants to show off his technique, yeah. And just like tap dancing. And if he thinks that you're not going to be able to provide that platform for him, he'll move on to the next. Matt Dodger. That's why I roll with you every time.

It's a nightmare. I can tell you his game 100% of all. He has tried the same pass on me 500 times, I think, probably. Like, legitimately 500 times. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. God, I deeply appreciate that. It's never worked a single time, but. Yeah.

But it ain't broke, is it? Yeah, exactly. There you go. We definitely can go train. I have to check in with. the better halves. Same's. I gotta go.

To see, because I think we're doing a dinner of some kind. Oh yeah. We got that. We got. What time is the dinner? 6.30.

Yes, sir. Michael, do you fancy a little bit of training after this? Yeah, sounds good. Boom. That's what he says to people. He's like, I'll roll with you next.

He will not show up there. Yeah, that sounds good. I got stuck in the studio. I had to do some editing stuff. We'll park right behind each other. We'll pull up to a light. We'll go right. And it's like, did Michael just go left?

Where's he going? I got to, I had to go. Take yours. All right. Well, then we're going to knock this off in 18 minutes so we give ourselves time to train. Perfect. But yeah, I'm actually glad you brought up to health stuff because it's not something that I'm like super stoked to talk about. I'm not proud of the fact that I delayed it for a long period of time.

But I just am going to be open and honest about my experience on it. I think that we should because, I mean, a lot of guys that don't know what's wrong with them, they wouldn't know if it wasn't for this. You know what I mean? Maybe this is the first time. So people need to address that. fuck ton wrong with me more than testosterone if you look at those metrics like there are so many mechanisms that i am going to need to attack to include probably better sleep hygiene more

regimented control there's a dietary aspect of that a supplement aspect of that yeah like i said i mean i'm tempted to flip up in the the computer and just be like this this it's like right just imagine almost eight out of ten things that could be measured i'm doing great i know i was there yeah i don't know I feel, yeah, it's drastically improved my life in all aspects. So I'm an advocate for it. And I encourage people to take a look. Like, just go get a panel done. It's not that expensive.

Just for nothing else, then you're going to have, you're going to know, you know what me? Yeah. Something you can look at from an optimization standpoint. What do you, what are you the most excited about in your life right now? Oh, wow. I'm excited about I'm excited about my position

at Cloud we have a lot of stuff coming up I love where I'm at in my relationship with my wife How long have you guys been married now? Almost two years Yeah okay So But it's like a honeymoon every single day

I mean we you know Just because she's going to listen to this doesn't mean you have to say No no it's the thing The thing that I'm most proud is like how we handle the hard things. Yeah. We are able to have the conversations necessary to navigate those things together, as opposed to creating divides and the relationship and fissures and all those things.

We stay parallel efforts continuously. Easy days are just that. They're easy days. That's not who you find out who you are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I feel like I truly found my person, you know. Yeah. I feel the same way with you. Yeah. I know. And it shows, too, you know. You can absolutely see it. So I don't know. I'm happy for you, man.

Do you think that you will at some point in time venture out on, and I say this just pure curiosity because I know plenty of people who have worked for others their whole life and some people who have ventured out on their own. And it's not to put a judgment on that. Right. You think you'll ever do go out and spread your wings and just completely create your own ecosystem? I'm actually considering that now. I just don't know the avenue of approach currently. I'm thinking about becoming an author. I'm thinking about I have another venture that, you know, kind of addressing some of the problems we were talking about from the veteran space.

And I know there's that that pool is highly diluted. But with the network and resources that I have access to, I feel like that I could be helpful in that space. What do you think you want to write about? just the I would like to write about the body of work that I've done and how it affected me but write it from a personal standpoint talking about from a morality like the foundation of the person that I was prior to exposure to all of that like writing that story and it's going to be difficult I know that that's why I've kind of put it off for a little bit but it's going to be an exercise

and honesty and vulnerability, which I feel like is absolutely necessary when talking about those things, taking ownership of all of those mistakes, talking about the fear and talking about the anxiety and talking about all of those things that are counterintuitive

to the person that, or the persona that is required to do that job, and then facing the reality of it in the end. It's just talking about, well, I have, there's two directions I can go continue living this way I can write the shit. So I chose to write the shit.

About all the stuff you've experienced in your life. What are you scared of the most? What am I scared of the most? I would venture to say becoming the person I was again. The behaviors that led to that and fed that. I don't have a problem with, like, I don't drink anymore. I've been sober for a long time. And I think if I ever chose to do that again, I know where it would end up.

So I'm vigilant about that. I take responsibility and ownership of that, of that tendency. And to ever think that it's okay to do that for me personally, I'm not saying anybody else, but I know where that would send me. So that would probably be it. Like if I, I don't want that anymore. because my life literally did a 180 when I sat the bottle down and started thinking through things objectively. And my life just began to incrementally improve, you know.

What was the drink of choice? I was a huge fan of Jack Daniels whiskey, huge fan of gin for some reason. Do you ever combine the two? Jack and gin? Jack and gin. I'm not saying you should. I'm just asking. No, there was probably a time.

That would be fucking gross. And then Vatakas. The vodka? Yeah. Hell yeah. That was the... Burns clean. Man, I tell you.

Boat loads. Boat loads of that stuff. Don't miss it at all. I truly don't. That's one of the things that I began to do for me. It was just like it literally took away my desire to drink. I was just like, when I put it down, it was just like, okay, decision made, done. That was it.

Michael, you're like half our age. What are you scared of the most? You're at a different phase of your life. Heights. Jesus Christ. Can we get slightly more existential than that, you know? Because that's like completely avoidable. Yeah.

Yeah. God, he's probably too young to even think about things. He doesn't have any fear yet. I don't know. I am kind of scared of like colossally fucking up. And really. Define that. Making a decision that will basically.

put the trajectory of my life on a downward spiral that will be very, very hard to get out of. You're talking about meth, Michael? They say, well, not even once, but it felt really good the first time. I mean, I'm going to give you some controversial advice. I think there's not that I think people should try to do this. I know where this is going.

But I think you should make some decisions that might put you in a place where you catastrophically fuck up so you can fight your way out of it. Right now. Yeah. Like right now, if I had to pick one thing, I would say in our social circle and in the gym, you're probably defined as being a pussy. Right. Do you see how he delivered that?

It was just like real. I thought it was going to be inspirational for a second. No, no, no, no, no. Just insulting. I'm inspiring you right now. Oh, thank you. That's what we think of you now. Mm-hmm.

Hmm. What can you do to change that? You need to be risky. You have to be risky. You are at the phase of your life that Casey and I have already passed through. And you know, one of my least favorite questions for young men and women is, what do you want to be when you grow up? Jeez, you have no idea.

You know what I've come to realize? A lot of people don't know how to talk to kids. It's more like an awkward conversation thing. You know, what's your favorite color? What's your, you know, they just, they don't have a lot of people don't know how to communicate, period, anymore. Well, so they struggle with adults and they get around kids and they're like, hello, Jeremy and Shepherd. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm with you.

But if you think about it from a logical perspective where you have the most opportunity to recover, think about the amount of time you have left in your life to recover from, and I'm not saying you should go do something stupid to fuck your life up. And they justify it with this conversation, if you do. Well, Andy said. But think about how much time you have in your life to course correct or to work on the resilience. Like risk, I am always willing to take risks. I'm never willing to gamble. There's a huge difference between those two. But at a younger age, you have more opportunity to risk more than any of us.

Like my risk tolerance and threshold should be lower three kids a bit. You know what I mean? Like there's you, again, what you just have is what you're known for everywhere. By everyone. Yes. So we need to work on that. I told the guy in the airport, young kid, real estate, and he was in real estate and whatnot. And he's like, well, I could do this, but I'll be broke.

I was like, be broke. Seriously. I was like, brother, be broke. I was like, I learned more. That's a solvable problem. Yeah, yeah. And it doesn't have to be on a continuum. I was like, spend some time broke.

It's like you will learn so much from that. Be an E4, paycheck to paycheck. Get some. Those kids. Two thirds, if not three quarters of your paycheck on an apartment you can't afford that you eat ramen in. Yeah. And you live with three other of your buddies that are paying the same amount. out.

Yeah. You know what I realized? I had an apartment for a year and a half in Corridado the first time I had one. I didn't own a vacuum. And I think back, I'm like, son of a bitch. Hell yeah. COVID-19 was started right there. In the apartment.

Yeah. In that contractor carpet. God. God. They should have taken a flamethrower to that place when he lived out. Who the fuck doesn't vacuum their floor for a year and a half? Let me tell you. Right here.

This guy right here? Yeah. This is like maybe 20. And my buddies. Do you don't vacuum for? You have so much room in front of you, man. There's stuff that you're messing up right now that you don't even know you're messing up, which is awesome.

Most of it all let you know because I enjoy it. It's a pastime and hobby of mine, but... I really enjoyed your guys' podcast, too. He claims he's got a bunch of questions loaded up, so maybe we'll do it next week. Yeah, I have quite a few. The first time he sat down to do it, he goes, oh, I misunderstood.

I don't have any questions. I thought I was just going to be reading them to you. I thought I was going to be reading the audience questions. God. So children. Did you fire him again? Probably. I tell you what, the weapon he is now

I mean, if we were to describe him as a weapon he'd still be made out of rubber, right? When I first met him, it was, I don't know, putty, plato. At least at this point, he's like a semi-rigid dildo just flopping all over the place, right? But we're working on it. Yeah, it's improvement for sure.

He's taking shape. Yeah, going to mold him in. Gaining stature. Here's the thing. Can you imagine the weapon we could mold him into? Like, the world would not be ready for what we could do to him. Bro. Yeah.

An assassin. Yeah. We could create an assassin. Even off that platform. You could be a passassan. I already assassinate pussy if you know what I'm saying. You could be an assacipus. Assasipus.

That's, I think that's kind of funny. We both know that you're not an assassin of pussy. All right. We've talked many times about how you've given up on the dating game. So you don't have to date to slay pussy I guess I feel like he's named his right hand pussy But I'm not jealous of that game bro So you enjoy yourself out there

No You'll find your person man Yeah eventually possibly I didn't find my person until I was in my 40s That's true Same you know and there was a lot of ups and downs Along the way and a lot of times of happiness And absolute suffering

and the vast majority of those were my own fault. But I wouldn't give up a second of that to give up, you know, to change what I have with Leah. Right. It takes time, man. I would experience every single bit of that a thousand times over to be where I am. Same. Yeah. Yeah.

Truly blessed. Lucky. What do you think, Assasipus? Should we go get some training? That's actually, I'm just going to call him that for you. Should write it on the back of his belt. Assasipus. I mean, he has names like bottom bunk, like all sorts of.

Yeah. Assasipus versus the cuckler. You roll with Tyler. How's that go? I mean, I win, but... You should win. You're a purple belt. Yeah.

He also hasn't found his man strength yet. He's like, still, he's like bendy. When he's getting there, but... When he does? Yeah. Yeah. He'll be the assassin and you can be the assassin pus. And nobody knows what that battle is like...

Dynamic duo. Probably like a nuclear bomb just... I'm picturing Godzilla and Mothar kind of thing. Can you imagine finding Jiu-Zitsu when you were 17? Oh, my God. Or actually in the modern era, there are people whose parents own gyms. They grew up and developed their movement patterns on the mats. And to compare it to languages, we're not even talking the same language.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I think I understand the alphabet, but I don't understand. Yeah. What's happening? He's, like, creating code, that kind of thing. Yeah. I get it. What do you want to close out with?

It's been, like, over two hours, actually. We should go get some training in before we... We should. Did you get invited to dinner tonight? Nope. Yeah, that's weird. You're still not. But just what do you want to close out with?

I don't know, gratitude, I guess. All right. Very fortunate cookie. You got anything else? No. No, I'm just grateful for my friend's circle. I'm grateful for where I am in life, grateful for my family, you know. And I'm grateful for the people that gave me the opportunities to get to this spot.

And the ones that believed in me, even when I was in the worst of places, you know what I mean? For sure. Yeah. So thanks. Thankful for that. And thanks for this opportunity. Cool. I always enjoy hanging out.

with you. Yeah, man, likewise. It'll be cool. I'm glad you guys are coming down to Salt Lake with us. Yeah. Train a little bit with Mr. Glover. Actually, I'm actually not going to allow him to train because he just had neck surgery. Yeah, he's not going to train. He's not going to train. Dude, I saw a picture of him in a ghee and he had the scar on his neck and he had the scar on your neck from neck surgery that was four weeks ago. What are you doing? You can't tell him anything. He's not going to listen. It might have just been a picture, though. I hope so. Yeah. I hope so. Yeah. All right. On that note, let's go train. Let's do it.