Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - How To Rebuild

Episode Date: November 15, 2024

Traditional Friday Q and A for Today: 1. How do you rebuild after a catastrophic accident or failure?  2. Suppressors on pistols? Is it real life, or a thing of the movies  3.  Business relationship breakdowns, how do you recover? Enjoy

Good morning, everybody. It's Friday. We're going to keep it light today. There's enough going on in the world. People are celebrating in some places, taking a deep breath and others. So we're going to go light the forecast for today. Light with a chance of sassy. Before we get into that, let's talk a little bit here about Spartan Forge. If you haven't heard me talk about them, well, then you are missing out. It's deep in the hunting season right now. And for hunters, you probably have heard of this tool or similar tools that are in the market. it. This thing, though, my opinion, does far more than some of the competitors. I mean, you can look at property lines on just about every app at this point. Terrain contour features. You can look at that stuff. What has made the difference for me, and I talked about this in terms of the way I've been using this for aviation, is the LiDAR. And the ability to look at terrain by stripping away essentially, these are my words, not a technical description, stripping away the foliage so you can see the terrain underneath and get an idea of what you're you're actually getting into. It sucks to plan a route and then realize that it is almost

impassable due to terrain that you were unable to see. So again, based in the hunting application world, but there are just features essentially like a Blue Force tracker where you can share pins and boundaries and look at where your friends are, what they're doing, check in with each other, you know what I mean? Stuff, again, designed in the hunting world, but could be used for things far outside of that. And like I mentioned, I think in last Friday's introduction, had an engineering company reach out to me talking about how they're going to be giving it to their surveyors for their initial assessments. So yeah, it might be based in hunting, but I use it for just about anything but Spartanforge.com.A.I. Go check it out or don't check it out. But you

should check it out. Let's get into it. Let's the red smoke. Okay, copy. Whist of the smoke? I'm looking at danger close now. All right, like I said, today's forecast light with a chance of sassy. Maybe we're going to even keep it under 30 minutes, maybe about 20 minutes, which is what I try to do, and then I have this unbelievable ability to run my own mouth well beyond where I probably shouldn't. I probably seem like I'm rambling on some of the listeners.

Some different topics for today, as I, try to do is pull something that's not repetitive in nature. So let's get into the first one. Good morning, Andy. I've listened to your podcast for a while now. I've always enjoyed hearing your view on the world, the way you process information with an unbiased view based on facts instead of emotion, the way you advocate for emotional health and physical health. I definitely do, and I'm not going to stop doing that. I have always looked to you in your podcast for help in uncertain times, where if I'm undecided, you somehow come out with a Friday episode that sounds like you're talking to me. I am 22 and have never truly been through anything traumatic. I've prepared,

as your friend Mike Glover has said to, has said to and consider myself to be pretty resilient. November 5th, around 6 p.m. I was headed home from voting and I ran a stop sign in an area I was not familiar with and I hit a car with a mom, a dad, and two young kids in the back. When it happened, I flipped and I landed upside down and they flew into the opposing ditch. The kids were okay, but the two parents were taken to the hospital and I do not know how they are. Based on what the police have said, they will be okay. I pride myself on my driving ability and how I handle situations. I have an immense amount of guilt and I've never thought or have never been through something like this and I'm not quite sure how to process it. seeing those kids climb out of the window broke my heart.

I don't know what path to go down to help them in the future or if that's even possible. Any advice would be appreciated. And if you would, please pray for the family. Thank you in advance for reading this and any feedback given. Enjoy the rest of your day. And thank you so much for the time and sacrifice to help others. I don't feel like it's a time and sacrifice. And I honestly don't feel like I'm helping others.

if I'm being totally honest, answering some of these questions, questioning my own beliefs, taking a sounding on the depths of my own beliefs, asking myself the why of why I believe the things that I do, it's actually very cathartic for me. So I think I'm helping myself as much as I'm helping somebody else. On the praying front, I've never been a religious person. I've been really open and honest about that. But I know there's plenty of people who listen to the show who are religious. So maybe I can pass that along to them. Maybe they, can pray for the family. Okay. I feel like there's only one way that I can answer this question, and it sucks that I have to say what I am about to say, because I hate that this is the reality

or perceived reality of the world we're living in right now. Before you do anything else, I think you may need to talk to a lawyer, because even though it seems like they're going to be okay, if you do have a desire to reach out, which I think it is an amazing thing. I think it's a good thing that you feel horrible. I think that it is a good thing that this has shaken you and that you've never been through something like this, but that you are going through something like this. You will be a better person on the far end of this. And in the grand scheme of things, traumatic for the kids, for sure, traumatic for the parents. If they are okay, though, and there are no injuries involved, things are replaceable. You can get a new car. This is

why we have insurance. So anything other than the humans involved in this can be replaced. So that can be worked itself out. I would caution you, though, against reaching out directly or honestly having any further communication with the police without at least talking to a lawyer. run it by them, understand the legal liabilities that you may be facing. And maybe there are none. Maybe I am off my rocker to think that we live in a litigious society where people, and I'm not saying this about the family, because who knows, maybe they're just happy that everybody is going to survive from this.

They harbor no ill will towards you, have no desire to sue. what if they're the exact opposite of that? What if they are looking and have been looking or the type of people that are looking for a way to claw everything out of you humanly possible because you made an honest mistake? I don't like that about them or people who are like that, but I wouldn't want that to happen to you over an honest mistake as well. So again, everything I say is under the umbrella of you probably best suited to first talk to a lawyer. Now, having said that, and depending on what the lawyer says, let's assume that you're going to do that and move beyond that. My advice in a world where we're not in a litigious society, I would personally reach out to the family.

I mean, this is a horrendous and traumatic way to literally, metaphorically and physically collide with other people. but who knows what could come from getting to know these other people. The adults, the kids, you never know where it could lead. They could be the coolest, most awesome, interesting people that you have ever met. And if they are, and you talk to them about how you feel about what happened and the impact that it has had on you and that your desire to be involved, stay involved, to help going forward, that could build an amazing relationship. If I already put myself in that situation, my kids are obviously older. Somebody, it sounds like, you know, you ran a stop sign. Let's get to

that for a second. First, awesome job going to vote. You're 22 years old. So I guess depending on when your birthday is, this could have been your first time voting, maybe your second. Excellent job. Running a stop sign that you're not familiar with the area where we on our phone, were we trekking our social media? Were we texting somebody? I hope not. If you were, there's a lesson to be learned from that. And the lesson is it only takes a moment of distraction to potentially catastrophically impact somebody else's life and your own. But again, putting yourself or me putting myself in the shoes of that family. Hospital, you're injured, you're going to be okay. What would my first concern be as the parents up front? Of course,

are my kids okay? Sounds like the kids are going to be. okay. Second concern is my partner, okay. And I hate to rack and stack it in that order because there really is no rack and stack between kids, partner, all of those things, but I'm just kind of listing these things out in real time as I think through them. Partners, okay, okay, cool. Car is hammered. That sucks. That's why we have insurance, though. Okay, so that's a solvable problem. My family's okay. I have some logistics that I need to solve, maybe some recovery that I need to solve. Maybe it has an impact on occupation, whatever it may be. Insurance exists for those things as well, depending on who they work for, there might be workers' comp, all of these other things,

even though I think workers' comp might have to do with being injured directly on the job. I think people get the point, though. There are safety nets and boundaries that can and should exist to help people in these situations. So let's say all those wickets were knocked over, and you're left with largely a logistical problem that you have to solve. And somebody comes forward, knocks on your door one day, and this is not the advice I'm giving you, but I'm saying somebody comes forward, knocks on my door and says, hey, I am the person that hit you. I am so incredibly sorry. You know, again, and this is where you need to talk to a lawyer, but again, assuming you've

already done that, I wasn't paying attention or I was unfamiliar with the area, completely my fault. And I just want you guys to know how horrible I feel and how much I am struggling with what happened. if I was the person opening the door and receiving that information, I would immediately invite that person into my home and spend a good amount of time with them. I'd probably invite them to have, you know, depending if this is like 9 o'clock in the morning, probably wouldn't invite them to dinner. But I would spend time getting to know that person because everybody makes mistakes. And reality is probably every driver has been so close to something like this happened. happening and they didn't even realize it. You know, the almost in nearleys and near misses,

most of the time I don't even think you necessarily know that those things happened. But I'm distracted driving sometimes. Yeah, sorry, sometimes this anxiety rectangle, it gets me. And I know I'm not supposed to check it when I'm driving and sometimes I do. And yeah, it's amazing how much when you're driving a multi-thousand-pound vehicle, you glance down just for a second and you then get your eyes back up. And like, huh, I missed some stuff. point in all that is mistakes happen. There is, I don't believe, an infallible driver out there who hasn't at least had a close call. So I think we can all understand that to a degree. And admitting when you're wrong and talking to somebody about the impact that it is having on you, I think is an amazingly powerful thing. And I would suspect that somebody who, again, knocked on my door, especially a young person at 22 at my age now, I would be invested in that person and making sure that they are okay. Because this probably is the first traumatic event you've ever been involved with.

And seeing two young kids crawling out the back of a smashed vehicle, that should weigh on you. And if you were actually distracted by your device, hopefully that's a reminder for you never to do that again. You know, there's ways to actually set your phone up so you cannot be distracted. Well, I take that back. You could always be distracted, but you can at least remove the phone from that interaction

in your vehicle. You can turn all your alerts off. You know, you can put it in the glove box. There's things that you can do that would prevent you from actually being distracted on that device. But it should impact you that you were involved in something like this because it sounds like you had a near miss, not in a car accident setting, a near miss in a catastrophic event. Because if any of the children or adults had died or been permanently must, you know, modified due to the accident, I bet you would have a hard time ever forgiving yourself. And that didn't happen. And it's okay that you are struggling with this experience. One, it just happened, what day is it? It happened seven days ago. So a week ago today, actually, give it some time.

Not to be a broken record. Find a professional to talk to about this type of trauma and the impact that it is having on you. Sit with this for a little bit. It's okay to be a broken record. It's okay to bothered by this. It is okay to not have a good day sometimes. It's okay to experience things that rattle your fucking cage. We're human beings. I've yet to meet anybody that is impervious to things, everything going on in their life. That might be impervious to a lot, but there's going to be something that's going to have an impact. So this is okay. Let's not let it happen again when it comes to driving. Let's protect ourselves legally. And if I were you, I would reach out to that family and you never know where it could go. But my suspicion is it'll be a huge net positive for you and

them. And it will be a relationship that could be enduring and you never know where those can take you. So that is my advice to you. But again, please make sure that you legally protect yourself. God, I hate that I have to open and close with that, but that is the world that we live in. Completely shifting gears to question number two. One that I've actually gotten many, many times. And I consider it to be ridiculous, but if the question keeps coming up, maybe I'm the one who's wrong. Maybe it's not ridiculous. Maybe I am ridiculous. This may be an obvious question, but a suppressor on a pistol seems unreasonable to take on missions and operations as it makes the weapon double the length.

If you're lucky, yeah, there are some suppressors that you can put on pistols that I'm not going to say it triples their length, but it's, It's ridiculous. Holstering and even presenting would have its challenges. Yes, it would. I think it's just a Hollywood thing, but I've been wrong about a lot of things. In your past, was that a piece of gear you carried or used? I think people know my stance on suppressors, especially on rifles, if you're going to, especially in a hunting environment, assuming it's legal where you live. I help with suppressors because, one, I value my hearing.

and I value other people's hearing as well, and I want to be a gentleman. So why would you not? When you miss, which I love people who say that they never miss, I think I'm safe to say, I'm going to go on record and say I am the retired, obviously, but Navy SEAL sniper with the most confirmed misses. I miss shit all the time. There is no magic when it comes to going to a sniper course. Don't give me. you're wrong. Your marksman's ship skill goes through the roof. Your field graph goes through the roof. Cover, concealment, camouflage. Yeah, it goes through the fucking roof. Man, but I can miss a shot with the best of them. It was just hunting in Wyoming. I had a cow elk tag. We found a cow elk. I think she was at somewhere between 550 to 600 yards. Not an incredibly long shot. But took the first shot, could tell that she was absolutely hit. Because another great thing with suppressors is you can actually hear the impact of the round, assuming that you're within a distance that you can hear it. In this instance, wind was blowing, and there was a bull elk standing right next to her that did not even

move. Another reason why I love suppressors in a hunting environment. If you did miss, or if I did miss, guess what? I'm going to be able to follow up pretty effectively. And it's not always the case that they just stand there and continue eating. The wind was howling pretty good. I don't think they ever even heard the shot and that would not be possible without a suppressor. So again, great utility. I carried them on all of my primary weapons overseas. A lot of that is for recoil management as well. And again, it just guns are loud. I like my hearing. My ears ring enough as they are. The pistol, though, I'm trying to remember the exact model of pistol. It was an H&K. I think it was a 40. and it came as a kid.

And I am not shitting you. It was, for people who are watching the video, I swear it was when it was together with the suppressor and the pistol. I swear it was the length of this microphone arm. And what you brought up was exactly the reason why it was comical. To holster that in a leg holster,

you would almost have to dislocate your shoulder to get the beginning of the suppressor to go into the holster. And that's putting it back in. So imagine if you needed to pull that thing out. You were transitioning from your primary weapon system. And then you basically have to pull out a Civil War musket out of your leg holster or wherever you may be carrying it and potentially blow out your AC joint along the way. It was ridiculous.

It was heavy. And honestly, I think it might have been more. dangerous being used as a hammer up close, than a pistol. Now, I know of only, I only know of one person, which means nothing other than I don't know, obviously, every story or, you know, war story out there. But I know personally of only one person that has had to transition in a gunfight from their primary weapon system to their secondary. I actually stopped carrying a pistol in 2010 due to the fact that the role that I was filling just didn't require a secondary sire arm that had an effective range of 50 yards or less. I needed things that could reach out and touch things a lot further than that,

so I didn't even carry a pistol. But I know of one person and one person only that has transitioned on a real world target from primary weapon system to secondary and actually utilized it. the rest of the stuff is a lot of Hollywood bullshit. The number of times where I've seen people in movies, the pistol comes out and they sit there and they just twist their suppressor on, which is awesome, you know, a direct thread suppressor, which means directly threading on to the barrel. And I always wonder, why do they wait to the moment right before they use it?

to do that? What if they were surprised or the world presented them with the situation before that and they needed to have it suppressed and they didn't? Again, they're also, you know, their holster then is not, if you have a holster designed for a firearm without a suppressor on it, it's not necessarily going to work for one if you add a suppressor. So there's a lot of logistics involved in that. And the reality is primary weapons are more powerful. They're more accurate. you can carry more ammunition. It's a more stable shooting platform because you're using both hands

and bracing it against your body. And even from an iron sight perspective, the site radius is longer. Therefore, it's going to increase your accuracy even though nobody's really shooting iron sights. Just about everything involved with a primary weapon system is better than a secondary weapon system.

And ounces become pounds, real, real fast. And I would feel it, and I'm sure other people have felt it as well, if you load up one side of your body with your equipment and it is heavier than the other, you can get away with it for a little bit, and then you start getting overuse injuries. And it'll start nagging on you. I'm right-handed, so my secondary weapon would always be on my right-hand side. And if I used a drop holster, which is generally something that would attach to your belt, and it drops down your leg, and oftentimes would be snapped around your upper thigh. I would feel a little bit of a tug on my right hip over time.

It would change the gate you either walk or run. There's a little bit of weight on that side. Eventually, I moved my pistol while I was still carrying one from a drop holster onto my armor because I wanted to clear up my waist. When I first, man, I looked like the fucking Michelin man when the first overseas deployment I did. the weight difference between my first overseas deployment and my last one had to have been measured by 20, 30, if not 40 pounds of less weight on the last deployment versus the first. I was taking less magazines, which is less ammo as well, but you're looking at the context of previous engagements and deployments and how much ammo did I need to have directly on me before being. being able to be resupplied or whatever it may be.

And you start shaving away those ounces because the pounds will fucking kill you. So I took everything off of my waist because for me, I started feeling it in my hips. If I had a belt on, even a padded belt and it started getting super heavy, it's just that drag on your hips if you're having to go over walls or crawl around or go under things. I just moved everything to my vest. And it also worked even better in vehicles because think about this from a pistol. and then let's add the suppressor to this. And we're back to the suppressor as long as this mic arm. Let's say you have it in a drop holster.

Drawing that while standing is not going to be the easiest thing, but you can get it done. Now put yourself into a vehicle where your leg is oriented basically 90 degrees forward and you have a seat and an obstacle behind you and you're going to try to get that thing out of there. My God, what a fucking nightmare. So, yeah, in the movies, is it cool to sneak around in houses and people are shooting people with guns.

They're like, p p pown, pio, and they're super quiet and nobody can hear anything. Yes, that's cool to watch if you're into that thing. Is that even remotely like real life? No. Could you do that with a 22 caliber pistol that had the ability to lock the slide forward so it wouldn't even eject around and you could really, really make it quiet? Yes, that's going to be one round, though. And that is the stuff of Hollywood movies and not in my experience,

the things that the military is expected to do. I wonder how much the Department of the Navy paid for those H&K pistols. I think it was a complete kit. It came that way, at least. I don't know anybody who actually carried one. We were issued SIG-226s as well, which is what the vast majority of people that I knew chose to carry. I don't want to use absolute, so I can't say, you know, everybody and nobody. But I don't know of anyone who chose that H&K as their primary weapon system because it was heavy enough who would drag you to the bottom of the ocean if you fell overboard.

And that's an exaggeration for sure. But God damn, it was heavy. So as cool as it is, I wish it was real. In my experience, it wasn't real. Suppressers are still awesome. Do you, should you get one for your pistol if you're a civilian? I don't know. Depends on your economic situation.

Do you want to mess around and have a good time? For sure. Go for it. Are you James Bond? No. But the end, you know what? James Bond isn't even James Bond. So get one if you want to.

It's a little bit more, in my opinion, which counts for absolutely nothing other than my opinion. It is a fun to have to mess around with, not a need to have, not a need to have, not necessity by any stretch. Last question. I am checking in to see how you are doing. And this is the way I'm taking. This is the writer asking me. I really enjoy your work and appreciate it. I'm turning 49 next week and started BJJ two years ago and learned to skydive last year because your podcast reignited a desire to do something different. That's awesome. And I hope both of those things are going great for you. So BJJ two years ago, you're probably knocking on your blue belt if you're not there. Skydiving last year, most people are going to get 50 to 100 jumps per year, depending on what they

have from money perspective and time off. So that's awesome. Please be careful in that sport. The Dun & Kruger effect is super real. The most dangerous time you are going to have is when you first start and when you get a lot of experience. So you're in that first starting phase right now. Please recognize that there is more out there that you don't even know. You don't know. And skydiving is awesome until it's not. Everything can go great and then you can die and you can kill others as well. So please go slow. I watched your birthday full auto Friday podcast recently where you mentioned a relationship breakdown you had that shook you.

Your words, or my words, not yours. And it occurred to me that that breakdown has affected you. So this is simply a reach out, not a reach around because that's Michael's job to say, I hope that you are okay. First and foremost, I appreciate the email. I am okay. I don't expect every relationship in my life to go well. I also don't expect every relationship in my life to go poorly. I am the most flawed person that I know, and I remind myself that nobody else out there is perfect as well. Specifically, the relationship that I was talking about. This wasn't a – actually, I take that back. I was going to say this wasn't a personal relationship,

but it was a blend of two things. This was a blend of a personal and a professional relationship. And right now, I can't openly talk about the specifics because there may be legal ramifications in the future or legal action in the future. And I am going to let those things play out before I discuss it any deeper. But in a nutshell, I had somebody that I thought I knew well

diametrically change their personality at the age of 50. never seen a personality shift in somebody that was so drastic. And what were the words that you use? What shook me, and it did shake me, what shook me is that I questioned my ability to read people. I'm not the most trusting person. I'm not the most distrusting person either. I have a very small inner circle of people that I deeply trust. This person was in that. And it shook, my, or forced me to, or enabled me to, depending on what a vernacular you'd want to use, it shook my personal belief in my ability to read people and to get to know people and to know when people are full of shit and when they are not. And, man, I've had to sit with that

one for a long time. And it is still something that I think about because I'll have days where I think it had more to do with that person, and then I have days where I think it had more to do with my inability to see that true person. What I will say is this, and I've said this often on the podcast, you don't find or meet the real person until you tell them no. And this particular experience could not have been more reinforcing of that. When this individual started being told, no, the real person came out. And holy shit, it was not the person that I thought I had allowed into my life. And that sucked. Now, in the end, for me, it will be a net benefit. I don't know if I'll say a net positive, but it'll be a net benefit because it is another data point on a

on a type of person that I don't think I had a lot of exposure to. The way I look at it now is a combination of two things. I had not really been around that type of person before. And what's the best way to put this? I'm trying to figure out ways. I want to be able to talk about this in a way that is open and honest, but allows for any potential legal action that may occur in the future. I had not spent a lot of time around somebody that was like this, which is a net positive for me because now I can add that. And I don't think this person is unique, meaning I'm going to experience it again in the future. Now, my goal is actually not to because I want to identify this behavior early and separate myself from it. But if I do

encounter this type of person, my experience now will inform and allow me to identify that type of behavior earlier. So up front, it was extremely difficult for me. It rattled my sense and ability of how I thought I could read people. But now I'm looking at this as a case study on being able to maybe put another layer of protective armor. Not that, again, I don't want to allow people into my life. I want to allow the right people into my life.

Now I have a better idea of warning signs, things to look out for, vernacular to look out for. behavior, all sorts of things that I just really wasn't paying attention to and I wasn't aware of. And, you know, there was a huge learning curve on the business side of the house, which I'll be the first to tell you I don't have an immense amount of experience in. The coffee shop that I own is my first foray into any type of brick and mortar business where we actually have employees working for us. The lessons there that I have learned have been numerous and robust. The mistakes that I have made, also numerous and robust. I don't begrudge any of those. I look at them as tuition payments, very expensive ones occasionally, but that's what you have to do, right? If you want to have

an advanced degree, you're going to have some tuition payments associated with that. So I'm trying to look at it in the long term. And again, I appreciate you reaching out. But at the end of the day, in both personal, professional and business relationships, I'm going to be okay. I'm always going to be okay in the long run if you expand the timeline long enough because there's nothing that's going to stop me I will learn from mistakes that I make I will own my own personal mistakes and that's what I've spent a lot of my time in this particular situation focusing on how did I fuck this up it's so easy to point the lens at somebody else and say why did they do this how did they do this just this that or the other and it's all pointed external for me I started with myself how did I fuck

this up. Where am I responsible for the outcome of this? Where are the things or the places or the actions that I fell short that could have contributed to this? It has to be that way. And I do that so I can evolve as a person. And there are days that it sucks and there are days that it's okay. But at the end of the day, there's nothing that's going to happen in my life that's going to make me give up. So I'll take it a day at a time or a half a day at a time or an hour at a time and continue to slog on through it because there's nothing that anybody's going to do to me that's going to stop me. And that's why I'm always going to be okay. Because I'll figure out a way to maintain my momentum, regardless of the obstacle that is in front of me.

And that might be a thing or it might be a person or maybe a combination of the two. So I'm going to do fine. I am fine. Probably. Today I'm fine. You know, maybe tomorrow I'll have a shit day. But that's okay because the day after tomorrow may not be as shitty. But I appreciate the reach out.

I'm going to be okay. And for everybody out there listening to this, regardless of what you're going through, as long as you don't give up, you're going to be okay too. And maybe we'll leave it at that for this Friday.