Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - The Cost War Charges Later | JP Dinnell | Ep. 457

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

JP Dinnell spent nearly a decade in the SEAL Teams. Three combat deployments. In 2006 he went to Ramadi with Task Unit Bruiser as point man, machine gunner, and lead sniper for Delta Platoon. Chris Kyle was in Charlie Platoon. He came home with a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars with Valor, and an Army Commendation with Valor. Task Unit Bruiser became the most decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War. Then he went back to work for Jocko as an instructor at Training Detachment. Now he's Chief Training Officer at Echelon Front. This one is about the part nobody talks about. Twenty years after Ramadi, his platoon sat down together for the first time. Montana. Fly fishing, blacksmithing, and the conversations they never had. He watched men he looked up to carry weight he never knew was there. Their medic is fighting terminal cancer from a burn pit next to the building they slept in. We get into the difference between the price and the cost. The price is what you pay up front. The cost comes due decades later, in marriages, in kids, in the men around you. Join the Cleared Hot Newsletter: https://www.clearedhotpodcast.com Take the Operator Code Assessment: https://www.theoperatorcode.com Today's Sponsors:  Black Rifle Coffee:  https://www.blackriflecoffee.com Brunt: Right now, for a limited time, our listeners get $10 off at https://www.BRUNTworkwear.com when you use code "clearedhot" at checkout.

Okay, got the red smoke. West of the smoke, I'm looking at danger close now. Come on weather, baby. Give it to me. I made it. You're cleared hot. Can't be cleared hot. How much time throughout the day is your phone going bananas?

Too much. How do you structure your work day? Do you hard block yourself where you do focused work at short periods of time with break intervals in between or you just take it as it comes? I try to do the hard schedule with like little breaks like okay cool I'm gonna go

help Amanda with the kids or something because we homeschool our daughters so me being able to go do that with them for 15, 20 minutes is fun it's pretty dope which when I say help it's just me sitting with Amanda

talking with the kids because the program that we have them through like you don't have to it's all online based so they go at their own pace and they them and their peers would have just graduated from third grade,

but the girls are already doing 10th grade work, which is pretty cool. It's pretty awesome. But to answer your question, there are days that I just have to go with it and take it. Like, I'll look at my calendar. I'm like, cool, I have four hours of calls set up back to back. Now, our team is really good at trying not to do that,

but sometimes if that's a client's only option, and so it's like, hey, can you push this one to start? Instead of at 1 p.m., can you put it at 115 so I can have a 15 minute break to use a restroom, grab something, drink, a snack, because I just came off of two, one hour back-to-back zooms where I'm ending one at 1159, closing it out, opening up the next Zoom link, and then ready for the next one. Do you ever just pee in cups under tables and stuff?

No, I just like to live my life dehydrated, so I don't have to use a restroom throughout the day. See, that's the forward-thinking planning. That's what I'm talking about. What we used to do in the teens, and then you get out and, You know, one of my buddies, uh, Austin Little, he noticed that one time. We're on a trip together. Um, actually going down to Mexico. And he just knows he's very aware of like everything.

Like his situational awareness is, is unreal. Um, he would have been a good team guy. Just from just everything in his mind and mentally. And he's like, you don't, unless you're not drinking a lot of water. He's like, is that by design or you just forget? First off, that's a weird comment from one dude to another dude. Mind your business. You know, I'll drink.

Why are you watching me so much? Well, I could, if we weren't such good friends, I definitely would have been like, dude, mind your own business. Totally. But we're like really close. And I also know, like, Austin's heart posture is like, he was like concerned. Like, hey, you're not drinking any water. And I was thinking about, I was like, I just think from years of just kind of being used

to being dehydrated. I'm just used to it and it doesn't affect me. I said, but here's what's kind of cool about it. We go down to Mexico, everyone from flying and it's hot and humid and on the bus and everyone's like dying for water. I'm good. And you're in Mexico, so nobody wants to drink the water

until you're at the resort and you get the bottle water. Montezuma's revenge, I believe they called it. Yeah, I had that in high school. We were doing missionary work down in Mexico, building houses for the homeless and over spring break. Got that. That was horrific. A journey.

We'll just say that. Yeah. Yeah. How long do you think you can work at that pace? And do you enjoy it? So I enjoy it. How long can I work at that? And how long do I want to work at that?

I think are two different things. Because I love what we do at Echelon Front, like, man, the opportunity that Jocco and Leif gave me nine and a half years ago. Has it been that long? It's been nine and a half years that I came. Actually, October. Yeah. So, yeah.

October will be 10 years of, the first muster that I went to. And October of 2017 was the very first muster that Jocko Life did. I went there just to check it out. Jock was like, hey, come check out what we have going on. You know, he gave me a call. And he was like, hey, we might be needing to bring on another instructor. We'd love for you to come see what we have going on. That whole story is cool we can get into later if you want. I had another opportunity. And at the time, my wife and I were a really bad financial spot. And I just needed, I needed anything for work. Isn't it fun to be in those spots? Yes. And I've lived for years in those spots. I remember you talk about that on Jocco's podcast

and in your book as well. And just from your stories. And I mean, yeah, and I think that's, it's good for people to have to like work through those things and really endure. And at the end of the day, that's life. I mean, yeah, it's, it's not all. It's going to happen. I don't care who valleys and rainbows. Yeah. Also, if it was a magical valleys and rainbows, I don't think you could appreciate it unless you really you wouldn't I mean I remember legitimately when I first joined the Navy floating paper checks on a Friday to pay for groceries yeah hoping because you know the first would be like the second that are like a Tuesday because we know first at 15th is on a Monday you're getting paid Friday baby yes yes many times when I was younger in

the Navy and not financially responsible um I would look at my bank account and say, all right, cool. There's enough for the gas pump to authorize it. And it was calculated. I'm like, cool, this is what it's going to cost for me to fill up my tank. And then I'm going to pay the overdraft fee. But I need gas until we get paid. So I was in a very similar situation like that.

I have a screenshot on my phone where at the time, Amanda and I had 17 cents total and about $100,000 worth of credit card debt. And I was potentially going to go overseas and contract for 70 days, $1,000 a day, which is life-changing. Yeah. Life-changing at that moment. And still even now, like, I understand how much money that is. That's really good money. And I was going to be leaving on the same day that the muster started. Today's episode is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee.

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He knew that I read the book. I was listening to the podcast. You know, I read Extreme Ownership. And we'll talk about that later. It restored my marriage. So I was a believer in these principles. And I remember how they helped our task unit. And I had also applied them to business when I had gotten out.

but not to my family. And then applied them to my family and got my marriage back. So I already knew like, yes, I know these things work in business and in life. And I just knew that what Jocko and Leif had created was incredible. And it was just at the beginning. And so I called my wife and I said, hey, because I told Jocko and said, hey, man, I'm supposed to head overseas for a contracting gig. But I'd love to be there.

And part of me coming out there was to sit and talk. with them about possibly coming on as a first instructor because jaco said hey we're getting to the point where we're actually having to turn down gigs we've increased our pricing we're still having to turn them down we want to grow this and i said okay and i told him my situation and jaco said well i would never ask you to do something that would take money away from your family and that's who jaco is like he is the most selfless person jaco lief are two the most selfless people i've ever gotten to work with they want their people to win more than they want to win themselves It's a rare thing.

It's a rare thing, man. And with when that's genuine, not just playing the Instagram hashtag, let your people win. You know, a biblical thing that I've always had my parents instill into us and believe to be true is you can see somebody, you can see who somebody is by the fruits, you know. And I know I didn't just quote the actual scripture, but the big will be. principle is like the fruits that somebody produces that's who they are it's not what they say and they talk about but like you know the fruits or their marriage you know the the friends and like are they actually helping people and i knew jock and lay for helping people and i knew that they would they've always had my back i went through sqt with laf sestone and andrew paul those three men helped me become a young man

you did a lot of time with them yes it's and i've known laf for 24 years well and for people listening they might think, I'm sure you get this one as well, hey, I have a buddy or a brother or an uncle who was a team guy. Do you know Bob? And I've just started saying, Bob's fantastic, was a great dude. Because what I don't want to have to do is explain to people in person. The community is very small but also very large. You only know the people that you work with,

but there's a churn in the people that you work with as well. Your experiences being with those people for so unique. Atypical. It is. It is. So I said all that to say I've also been with Jocco since 2005 When he took over as our task unit commander

Did our workup deployment to Ramadi And then I went to trade it and worked with him And then he retired Yeah a little bit of stuff in between that Yes a little bit And so like I A little bit of time as an instructor at the center We'll talk about that later

If you want to talk about a leadership failure on my part We can dive into that So I say all that say is like I knew their intent and I know that I could trust them with anything. And Jocko being Jocko says, hey, talk to your wife Amanda and see what she has to say, which I also really respected because you being married and have been married before, like you know how important it is to have alignment with your wife. It's untenable if you don't.

If you extend the calendar out long enough, it's going to come crashing apart. And that, which we will talk about later, is what led me to Amanda serving me. I mean, divorce papers. And so I call Amanda and I tell her the situation. And, you know, my wife is absolutely amazing. Just always been in my corner, even during times that she probably should not have because of just the man I was not being at that time. And but now we're in a good spot.

And I tell her the situation and she said, you know Jaco and Leif will always take care of you and tell you the truth. He goes, this is, this is an easy answer, babe. I said, okay. I said, I don't, I was like, but we don't have the money to get to San Diego. And she goes, you'll figure it out. I'm like, okay. And so there's more to that conversation, obviously.

Called another buddy who was never in the military, but law enforcement, business, pretty successful. And I was like, hey, I just want to bounce something off of you. He goes, dude, absolutely. He's like, you should I do that. I'm like, okay. Well, there's one other problem. I had already made a commitment to go teach,

to help teach long range shooting for my buddy, Steve Aryan, with his company. He was teaching long range shooting for hunters to help them be proficient and get ready for big hunts. And it was really fun. I loved it. Like I love teaching shooting, especially long range shooting. For sure.

And to see like these guys who had never shot past 100 yards at the end of day one, like we're having them hit steel consistently at 1,000 yards. And so that confidence not to bring it back for a hundred And so I call him and I said, hey, bud, I have this opportunity, but I'm not going to be able to do the last part of the trip when we get the new group in. You know, do you have another instructor that you could call? And he goes, yeah, he goes, man, but, you know, and he's running a tight business at the time, very small. And he's like, I can get another guy.

He goes, I won't be able to pay you your travel day because I got to pay him his travel day to come up. And that's all I had budgeted. I'm like, no, don't pay me any of my travel days, going there or back or whatever. I said, but thank you. And so I was already driving out to Texas from Mississippi for teaching. One of my best friends, Dane Hidalman and his wife, Rebecca, were like, hey, you can just stay with us. You know, stay with us after that and then fly to San Diego. So I was able to scrounge up enough hotel points.

I'm sorry, airline points to get a flight from Dallas, Fort Worth area to San Diego, booked it sent a screenshot to jaco and i'm like i don't know where i'm going to stay i don't know how i'm going to get to and from this event but hey i'm buddies in san diego i can borrow a car i can sleep on couches man i'll sleep i'll sleep on the beach like i just i want to go be a part of this and uh as soon as i sent that confirmation jocco's like roger sending you an email connecting with jami who's helping with our operations at the time jami was just helping build the muster jami cochran helping layf and jocco with booking and events and, you know, started off very part-time and now was a full-time employee.

And Jocco sends an email and says, Jamie, this is JP to know, was with us and Tio Bruiser. He's coming to the muster. Can you get him a hotel room with us at the event? I'm like, thank God. Problem solved. I would. A problem solved. Yeah.

A, which I'm like, cool. Good, good to go. And, you know, at the time when I was teaching other shooting on the side, I'd started this apparel line, never settled apparel, very small, just for when I was teaching shooting, guys wanted shirts. And I'm like, okay, cool. Like, I'll do that. Well, I had enough money in the, was it PayPal?

Yeah, I had enough money in PayPal from a few shirts that had sold that I hadn't really touched yet. Then I was like, oh, I can use that for my Uber because you can use PayPal to pay. I was like, cool, I can do that to that. I was like, I can at least get to the event. And then I was like mapping it out. I'm like, oh, I could walk from the airport to downtown San Diego. Like, yes. I mean, depending on where it is.

Well, I mean, it's in downtown. Like, I was like, no, I'd walkable. I actually planned the route out. I did my route recon, like, pulled it up. I'm like, all right, cool. I'll just, whatever I pack will be in like a big backpack or so I'm not dragging a roller bag. You can just walk that whole running trail that goes along the bay.

That's what I plan on doing. Yeah. I was like, all right, cool. And, and then, yeah, so I booked it and I went to the muster. And, you know, Joccolonleaf didn't know I was in this position. You know, it was great to see Leif. I hadn't seen Leif since Chris had been killed. That was the last time I saw Laif.

And you know, a funny story is about what we do as humans. I was really nervous seeing Laif. Why? In my mind, I thought Laf was mad at me for no reason. Because you couldn't pin anything that you thought you had done to that? No, which is ridiculous. Which as, you know, I think about that and I've shared that with other people, those are just little whispers and lies from the devil.

Yeah. Like legitimately. I almost didn't go to San Diego to go the muster. I knew Jocka wanted me there. I thought, because these little seeds have been planted of lies, that Leif was mad at me about something that maybe I had done over the years. And I'm telling you right now, Leif had given no indications of that. My last interaction with them was when Chris Kyle had been killed and we're all together for that.

Crazy. Yeah. Like crazy. Had I actually held on to that and not had my wife be so encouraging, be like and it was crazy is when she said that she said you know jaco and laf love you will take care of you will always tell you the truth like she said both of their names because she knew how much they meant to me in my life and i mean like i said laf seth and and andrew had been with me since i was 19 years old and sqt and um really good leaders in the field teams and um so anyways go to the

very first muster and meet jamie and she's awesome and she's like running around i'm like hey what can I do the help and so I'm kind of helping out with stuff. And she goes, hey, you know, my husband's the team guy. He's going to be here. She's like, I don't know if you know him or not. His name's Flynn. I'm like, okay, yeah, I'm not sure. And so later that day, we're down in the hotel lobby.

Everyone's meeting Jock-on-Lave and they're all talking and everything. I'm just kind of like doing security because that was the other thing. They were supposed to have security. It fell through. I was like, hey, I can help with security. Just I'm going to be Jock-O-Lace handlers. Like if they need to get somewhere, Jamie, you just tell me, I'll be the guy that's like, hey guys, I'm sorry, get them from here to here, just kind of watching scanning and looking the whole

time. And so, which I was happy to be able to do that because I'm like, cool, I get to help Jochle and Laif. They let me come to this event that people paid a lot of money to come to. But I also know they wanted me to see what they did and they taught to make sure it's something that I wanted to do. But as soon as I get there, I meet Jamie. I'm like, well, she's awesome. She's super squared away. This is being run at a crazy high level. For the, the very first time doing something. I was, I was really impressed. Go downstairs. Elevator opens up. I'm like, holy crap, I give Flynn a big hug. Well, I don't know him as Flynn. I know him as Mr. Cochran. And he's like, Donnell. And Jamie's like, look, and I was like, how do you guys know each other?

He goes, this was instructor to know. And I'm like, kind of like, wonder like, what does that mean? And she was like, oh, you're the reason he missed our wedding. So that was really cool. Yeah. Maybe it was his own choices. What did? These audio levels look not very good. Let me see. I'm wondering if you want to pull out and check the... You're good.

JP talking to your mic. And so I see Flynn. Totally fine. I lowered the gain a little bit. Okay. It's totally fine. It allows me on the back end to increase the volume without having background noise. So it's totally fine.

I'm glad you're paying attention, though. It's the first time in the history of... I mean, we're... 20 minutes into it and you notice that, but it's like, whatever. I thought it was going to be like, hey, we're not recording anything. Oh, I've done that. I've done episodes with lens caps on. That's awesome.

Definitely done episodes with camera on, no audio, audio on, no, every expression of just total not having a checklist to fall. Yeah. So anyway. Okay. So I see Flynn, Big Hog, whatever. And Jamie's like, how do you guys know each other? He goes, oh, this is instructor to know. this is when I was a Buds instructor at in-doc.

Well, long story short, I had secured the class that weekend because I found alcohol in one of the students' room underage. So I just secured them and did the whole weekend of just inspections and beat downs and stuff like that, which... Did you clear that with the headshed, of course? No, because it was... Excellent. The weekend, and I didn't think to do that.

because this well outside of the curriculum boundaries oh i'm a huge fan 100% outside the boundaries and this is just one of many things as to why jocco eventually got the call and when jocco shares this story as to why i got pulled from buds to trade at he goes you remember rambo when they called his his officer and said come get your guy yeah that's kind of the call that jocco got like hey come get your guy he's off the rails and jacco's like cool you know and he didn't say this but i'm I'm sure Jock was like, I can speak JP, bring him to trade it. So Jock pulled me over to trade it to work for him and Z and all these other guys that I've been with in the task unit to give me a sense of fulfillment of like, hey, you're going to be

trained. And I remember that when I got pulled over there, Jock was like, hey, we are training seals to prepare them for war based off of the experiences that we have, that you have. Like we've got to, I was like, hell yeah, I'm about that. Because when I was that buzz, I was just, I was a psychopath. I was off the rails. I had no direction, which was 100% mine. I never sought it.

I never got clarification. Like, hey, what are my roles and responsibilities as an instructor? Like, hey, when I'm, like, what are my limitations? I was psychotic, Andy. Well, it's also wild that they didn't provide that for you. You know what I mean? The mechanism also needs to onboard their staff appropriately as well, too. And I will give the program the credit.

I'm sure they did. I'm telling you, I probably did not listen and or receive it. Which we can go back and forth from a leadership aspect. That checks out. I can look over from the other side and be like, Hey, if you see one of your guys, like, are you not pulling them aside and say, hey, is everything okay? If you have to hold yourself accountable to your people, accountability is this term where from leaders I see this often, they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, my people are accountable to me.

Put a pin in that because we'll come back because that's kind of true. But as a good leader, you really need to be accountable to your people. To your people. Yeah, have you, this person who's underperforming, do they have the knowledge they need? Do they know the left and right boundaries? Do they know their authorities? Do they know the roles and responsibility? Have you reiterated those things to them and had the escalation of counseling conversations?

And yes, they are accountable to you via the leadership structure, but take it easy, buddy. Yeah. So one of the things that Jocka's encouraged me to do is start writing. Like, not to write a book, but just to start writing because he's like, you have a very, and life has it as well. He's like, you have a very unique perspective because you were the youngest, most junior rank guy in Task Unit Bruiser. You know, yes, he has some leadership positions, but they're always at a lower level. And now what you do at Ashland Front, I see it from a completely different angle. so I can bring them all together.

So that's why I was saying as I was going through that, like trust me, it was 100% my fault for the way I acted as a buzz instructor. I got pulled for a reason. I was not doing my job properly. Was I holding the line? Yes. Was I doing what buzz instructors should be?

Yes. But was I also doing things that I should not have been doing? Absolutely. So anyways, I secure him that weekend. Flynn was supposed to fly home that weekend. to for because him and his wife had already got married, but this was the ceremony with all of the family with his family. So now Jamie's there by herself with his family.

When I found that out, I felt absolutely horrible because I liked Flynn. He was a good student. He was a good officer. He was a class OIC. Had Flynn and I told him, I'm like, bro, if you would have just told me, hey, Instructed to know, I'm supposed to get married this weekend. I would have said, cool, go. But him being a good officer and the class, the last thing he was going to do. Zero chance he's going to do that.

So that was my first introduction with Jamie Cochran, who is now our chief operations officer at Eshlon Front and one of our senior leadership instructors. So she'll find you for that in a few decades. Well, we always joke. We used always joke a lot back in the day. It was like, oh, we got a low paying gig that has three stops and a bus. Yep, JP's on that one.

You know, we'd all, oh, the hotel's oversold and only has handicapped rooms. J.P's got that one. Revenge comes in so many different forms. It's been nine and a half years of just hookups. It's not enough yet. I would say one more decade and you might be it even with her. If it's even possible to get to even with her. So I'm lucky.

She's a very forgiving and sweet lady. That's what she wants you to think. Well, maybe. And I believe it. She's also. She's playing you like a fiddle. I know. Well, she's, you know, I'm very.

fortunate with what I do at Ashlawn Front because I love what I do. And I know that was the original question. Yeah. I love what I do. Uh, I love interacting with clients. I love, you know, the hands-on scenario based leadership training, the field training exercises that we built out. Jocco LA for like, hey, we've done a few of these. This is what we want to look at. This is what we want to look like. Go. Go build it. And those were my parameters, which was pretty awesome to have that much trust from your leadership and now Cody Gandy one of our leadership instructors he's the um he's the director of experiential leadership training so he took that whole program over for me he's former marine um this absolute studs very smart um very hard work he's made the program so much better than when

i was running it and so to answer a question i at this pace could i do another decade yes do i want to No, because the last decade, while it's been amazing, like absolutely amazing to be a part of this and now on the executive leadership team and, you know, trying to help grow rational in front from a strategic level. And I'll tell you what, I have weekly calls with Leif Babin and he just pours into me every week of helping me think strategic. Knowing that when I was in the SEAL teams, it's important to think strategic. But when you're in E4, E5, E6, how strategic is lunch. Yes. It's strategic. maybe if you're pushing it as the end of the day.

And, you know, yes. And then when we got to Ramadi, they put me in a leadership position where I was the LPO of a small group out on the eastern side of Ramadi with Seth and Benny and those guys. And so I got to see a little bit more. I'd go to mission plannings and, you know,

everything else like that with the guys and I was helping plan out the missions and I was our lead sniper and point man and machine getter. So I had a little bit more. And then at Trade It, you see a little bit more as well as an instructor. But I never had what Jocko had

that Laf had, that Dave Burke had, who, you know, Dave Burke did 23 years in the Marine Corps as an officer, fighter pilot, top gun instructor, ran top gun school. You know, is the only guy to have ever flown and operated, or flown operated, commanded units for F-16, F-18, F-22, and F-35. I think he has like two or three master's degrees. And then, and so I was, I had a really hard time comparing myself to these guys at the beginning. You talk about imposter syndrome. Like, I'm the first instructor. Dave Burke's the second instructor. And then they brought on Flynn Cochran as an instructor for a while as well. And then a few other guys that you and I know and now we have this massive team.

I have failed in the last five years to shift towards strategic thinking to grow the company, which has hindered my team. Well, you may not have been in that role, though, either. Yeah, but I should have started knowing what we teach. I should have really started like asking better questions to Jocco and Laif and Dave and all these other guys who are brilliant. leaders. And so Laif this last year has really been pouring into me to help me just think strategically and shift things that way. And so the goal is to help grow our program, to grow echelon front. You know, we do our LDAP program. It's our leadership development alignment program. It's our

long range, long range contracts with clients where instead of us just coming in for one or two things, hey, we're going to work with you for nine months, 12 months, 18 months. You actually make a change in an organization. 100%. Like let's get an error. Yes. For opening eyes to concepts, but getting the tires on the road with traction with those concepts is not going to occur in 60 to 90 minutes. No. I'm not discounting the keynotes.

It's the extended work over time. 100%. And so I love our LDAP program and our FTX program because when you put those two together, hands-on scenario-based leadership training where you're feeling the principles real time, it's incredible. And so Lay's been helping me just think more strategic to grow echelon front, not just FTXs. It's one team, one fight at echelon front. Hey, what we do at echelon front, it's, hey, we're all working together. And so their goal is to help grow while not having to be in two to three, four different

cities every week. And I love traveling because I get to meet new people. But I also love my wife and my kids. Yeah. And now I try to bring my wife and kids on trips when in the, makes sense. My kids come to the musters and they help work the muster and it's really cool. They get to be around that and see those events. But stuff though, it is. It's too different worlds. You know, our son, Aiden, is 20. And man, you know, I just last January got reconnected with my son

out in California. He's 17 now. And he was 15 when we got reconnected. And, The blessing there was, you know, God's grace and forgiveness is a real thing. Did he reach out to you or did you reach out to him? His mom reached out to me and was like, hey, I'm sorry. I hope you can forgive me. I forgave you a long time ago. Hayden knows about you. He doesn't know anything about you.

If you'd like to be in his life, I'm good with that. And I was so thankful, like so thankful that she, like, gave me that opportunity. and, you know, forgiveness is a real thing. Yeah. And I like to say forgiveness is your sign. Forgiveness is a sign of your maturity as a leader. And when you forgive somebody, you actually have to forgive them. Well, there's one step before forgiveness.

You and A might not agree on this, and that's revenge. Well, fortunately, in this situation, there was none of that, right? Because the kids involved in... Clearly, you didn't try hard enough. It could have been towards the mother. I'm joking. It's... I'm the farthest thing from a perfect human being.

And I agree with you. Being able to forgive or say you're forgiving is one thing. Being able to actually let go your end of the tug of war. Yes. Putting the rope down is way different. I have been better at saying I have forgiven people and then plotting their demise afterwards than actually letting go of the road. It's hard to do because you want revenge.

But it's not worth it. Yeah. So I know you were joking. I never wanted revenge. Was I? Well, there are a situation. But in this current situation, there was no feelings of like revenge towards his mom. I was thankful.

I was very grateful. Any revenge would have stolen the opportunity she was presenting for you. Exactly. Yeah. And that's just also not the right thing to do. And what's what's really cool about forgiveness, it's for you. It's for you. Yeah.

Because if you say you forgive somebody and you don't forgive them, but you're holding on to something, that is. hindering who you are as a man, as a human. And, and so for me, especially being strong in my faith and, you know, like, Jesus has forgiven me for so many things that I don't deserve forgiveness for. Who am I not to forgive somebody else? You will be forgiven at which you forgive others. That's why I like using the tug of war analogy. I like that. Just let it go. It tug of war takes two people. Yeah. You always have. the option of just opening your hand and letting go of the rope. Yeah. Well, it was really cool how God

had started conditioning my heart for this moment because in February of 2022, I went to a ministry event called, it's through a ministry called Walking and Truth. My buddies Matt Russell and Troy Foster and Jared had started this ministry. And they do these events called Pursuit for Truth. And the thing about Pursuit for Truth is it's your pursuit to get closer with the Lord. Everybody's pursuit is different. And so it's a four day or three and a half, whatever. It's Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And at the time, it was only in Amarillo, Texas. And now it's like we have, they do them there.

They do them in Maine. They do them in Idaho. They do some in Arizona now. But when I went, I went to that and I just surrendered all these things that I've been holding on to since childhood, high school, military deployments, failed marriages, like all of these things, all these things that, until you actually surrender it, you're still carrying that. And I was carrying a lot.

It was heavy. It was dark. On the outside, everything looked good. But, man, I was slowly suffocating on the inside. And I've always, like, I've always had a relationship with the Lord. I was saved at a young age. Like, Jesus Christ is Lord. He's my Lord and Savior.

Always has been. Never turn my back on God. But I had veered off the path multiple times. And by his grace, he'd always pull me back. And this was one of those moments where I, I was starting to veer, hadn't completely veered, but was starting to, and pursuit for truth, got me back. And one of the things I worked through was my failure as a father with Hayden because I didn't do enough. There's so many more things I could have done to reach out to just fix that relationship to, like, I didn't apologize enough.

I didn't do enough to fix the damage that I created with his mom and his grandparents. And she did what she thought was best for him. I can never be mad at her about that. I can only be mad at myself. And so part of that was forgiving her for those, for that time away from my son, but then really forgiving myself, Andy. Like when I was able to forgive myself for all of these things, it was like, man. And also, again, my wife and I were divorced at a time and now we're good when I went to pursuit.

I was also able to work through to what you were saying. Like I had forgiven a manner for a lot of things, and I know she had forgiven me. But some of those things would still be in the back of my mind. And like Seth Stone used to always say, the devil's a liar. And he'll just plant those seeds back in there, plant them. And for me to be able to go there and just fully let go of everything. And I was sharing this with somebody recently. Like when I went to pursuit, when I was forgiving everybody

and forgiving myself for all of these things, one of the other things that I did is, Lord, I forgive Amanda for everything I don't know about. So if anything comes up, I don't care. Because what would the devil want? To bring something up that maybe had been hidden that we had never talked about to ruin what we have now. I don't believe any of that actually exists.

But in my mind, I want, yeah, but I wanted my heart posture. to be in a position to where it would be like, oh, cool, I don't care. I already forgive her about that. Well, you didn't know about it. No, I asked God to help me soften my heart so that I would forgive her for everything I didn't know about. And I did that with like everybody in my life.

And so it was a really cool moment to where he'd been conditioned in my heart. And I'd try to go back to pursue as much as I can to help serve, to help other guys go. And it's just, it's an incredible ministry just to see the growth for guys of just drawn closer with the Lord and just letting go of stuff. Just, hey, let go of these things. I think religion, I'm not a religious person. Open to religion. Faith has never landed with me.

I don't have always been super transparent. I would have to say I am agnostic. I don't know either way. I'm not an atheist where I don't think. I just don't know. Yeah. And I served with some really religious people. We would talk for hours about religion.

And oftentimes I'm envious of people's faith, but I can't lie and say, I share the faith. And maybe that just means. It means it's not my time. What you're describing though, people being on their own path. Yes. As opposed to being on a regimented path and being told, well, this is the only way and then this is how you have to do it.

I think religion would be so not that it's not accepted. I think it would be accepted and embraced more if there was an understanding that it doesn't have to be follow the breadcrumbs of the person in front of you. No. Or the larger path. You were walking in glacier the other day. There's the clearly worn path and maybe that works for most people. it's also okay to walk in the knee high grass if you want to.

Yes, it is. I think it would be all of our walks with the Lord are going to be different. And I love the way you said that because I think that is the fear that people have that are new with their faith or maybe thinking about like, I don't know. Like you just said, you're like, man, I've been around people. I just haven't had my moment yet. And, you know, I've had some buddies say the same thing. And I just, my challenge to them was, hey, just ask the Lord to have that moment.

And he'll, you'll know. Like, it'll be an undeniable thing that you know. And I've had multiple of those throughout my life. And that's like when it comes to my faith, like, it's as strong as if somebody was to tell you, you don't actually love your wife, Andy. If somebody told you, you don't really love your wife. You would be mad. Like, you would, yeah. I don't think anybody I know would tell me that.

And since I wouldn't know the person saying it, I'd be like, get away from me, crazy person. Exactly. Okay. So that, okay, so exactly. And I love this because even the thought of that makes you uncomfortable of like, dude. Yeah. Like what? You would be like, get away from me.

You're crazy. Yeah. And then if they didn't, you would start to get. You would heel hook him. Yes. And hopefully they're wearing pants so I could heel hook somebody on a ghee. They'd probably be wearing shoes. I think that's a tight grip.

I've never tried it because I'm only two days into this. Yeah. Your heel hook game is sick after two days, which is really frustrating and inspiring. and inspiring at the same time. That's my conviction. But that's my conviction with my faith. Because I've had so many moments where it was an undeniable God moment

where I knew that I knew. And so that's why when I went to pursue, it got even deeper. Like it got even more clear. I like that philosophy. I'm not going to say, I don't want to speak for the organization,

but it seems more self-guided or self-jury with no wrong answers. Well, they actually say it's, Holy Spirit led. There you go. And each person has their own pursuit. And I love that they say that. Like, hey, don't compare your growth this weekend to Andy's or JPs or Matt or Stevens or

Josh or Jake or Brent. Your pursuit is your pursuit. And also when you leave here, the pursuit's not done. This is a never ending game like life, like business, like marriage, like jiu-jitsu, like raising kids. Like you don't get to a point. You're like, cool, I'm just done. No, it's like until my last day, I will continue doing these.

things. And so I had been serving, has some really cool moments of just, oh, man, I need to work through this. Oh, I need to work through this. And I'm super thankful because my parents instilled all these things into us as young kids. Like grew up with a really good household, really good parents still have obviously really good parents that love all the kids that just, I mean, they've been praying over us. My grandmother who's still alive still to this day. And I remember We were growing up and hanging out of her house. We walk out into the kitchen. And she'd been awake, you know, because her and my grandfather fed all the animals and did

all this stuff on the property. And she's sitting at the kitchen table, reading her Bible, praying over each family member. So that's what I've seen my whole life. She's still alive? She's still alive. And your mom and dad are both still alive? Yes.

I know it's a blessing. It is. I know it's a blessing. And my in-laws are still alive. My in-laws are a blessing. Oh, it's amazing. And my grandmother is the only grandparent left. So Amanda, so that's, you know, Amanda's like, hey, you know, it's her grandmother as well.

You know, we've been together for so long. But, you know, I was just like, okay, need to work through these things, work through these things. I'm like, man, why is, why does forgiveness keep coming up? This is a common theme for me. And then I get that text message. And, you know, there's a wave of emotions, you know, anger and frustration and, you know, geared towards myself.

And, you know, I waited for about two and a half hours before I respond. responded and, you know, because all these little things come up like, well, I could say this or this. And at the end of the day, what you say is thank you. Isn't it beautiful to take that time, though? Oh. That's why, Ashlandfant, we teach, detachments of superpower. Because it's so hard to do. I've been sucked into that rabbit hole.

Very recently, within this week, I was involved in a business situation where upon receipt of information, I believe the technical term would have been, I became furious. Oh, yes. I had to come over and record a podcast. I didn't have to. I'm lucky enough that this is what I get to do for a living. Yes.

And the guest was there waiting to go. So I did not, and I would like to believe I would not have gone completely off the top ropes. However, being honest, there is a chance I might have gone off the top ropes. Instead, grab the guest, we came to a podcast, talk for about three hours. the difference in my ability to be able to respond. And it was, I think it was equal parts. Time, but also my mind was occupied elsewhere as opposed to just churning the ground

of what it was that was making me just infuriated. And when you get sucked into something like that, you can't see anything else around you. And you can do a lot of damage in that furious mind state that may not be, depending on the things that you say, I mean, sticks and stones may break my bones and all that stuff, words will never hurt me. Yeah, I've been pretty hurt by some words.

I've been hurt and I've hurt people with my words. Same here. And never in a moment of rational thinking, though, have I ever hurt somebody with words or tried to? Yeah. But in a moment of being furious, oh boy. Yeah. We were reaching deep, deep into the rucksack

for the sharpest object that I could find. I've been there a lot of times and you're thankful as you're looking for it. It's in the wrong pouch. And by time you get to that pouch, you've relaxed a little bit and you're like, nope, this is not the right thing to do. There are so few things in life

that demand an immediate response. And I would say life limit ice. are probably the only things in that category. Yeah, yeah. So I, you know, waited, like I said, two and a half hours before I responded. And I was like, thank you. You know, it's great to hear from you.

You know, I've been praying for you and Hayden every day. You know, Cliff knows version. Hey, love to connect with you later tonight. And so sat on the phone with her in my office. My wife sat in there and I talked to her for about two hours, just kind of learning about my son and all these things. him. And she's like, well, hey, I'm going to tell him that we talked and, you know, see if, you know, he'd like to, you know, we'd like to talk to you. I know he would, but just, you know,

might take a few days for him to, you know, to let's be good with it. And she's also very mindful because it was the weekend of our daughter's birthday. And, you know, it's like, hey, let's wait a couple days. So, boom. And so Amanda and I, you know, waited for the girl's birthday thing. And then we told the girls. And because they never knew. And the reason why we didn't tell them is, at what point do you tell them when they're young? Because at that point I was like, I didn't ever know when I would be connected and I didn't want our daughters holding on to that. And once you start learning your kid's personalities,

okay, cool, now's the time we could tell them they can process it. But because of their personalities, we knew that that would be really heavy on them. It would like be very, very heavy that they have a brother that they can't see and all these things. So as you can imagine, there's a flood of emotions from the kids. Aiden was good with it. And he was like, oh, yeah, I knew about him. Hayden, Amanda and I like, what?

He goes, yeah, I remember when I was four of you guys talking about him. Sponges, dude. But the fact that he was a sponge and held onto it and never said anything, which is impressive because he just knew that if we didn't talk about it to him, he's like, I'll just, I'm not going to talk about it, which is crazy. That's how Aiden's brain works. He's a very intelligent kid. But he can just hold on to stuff, which it's a superpower.

And he just pulled it out of a Rolodex from 16 years before. I know Like Oh Yeah I wish I had to like Like cameras in our house or whatever Because when he said that

Amanda and I both were like As if you and I were saying here We both were like What? Yeah What? One of our daughters Just

Rifely so Very upset with me And upset with Amanda and I But mostly geared towards me She felt like I lied to her Which was Really hard to hear and receive.

Our other daughter is just, you know, we have twins and she was not emotion, like just emotional. Like, just very stoked about it and had a hard time receiving it. Give it time. Yeah. Well, this is, you know, again, that's what I'm saying. With time, it'll start coming back.

And time. Yeah. Which to our point earlier, just give some things time. It will change. Our angry daughter, who is angry, she's not angry, but angry towards me. once she flipped it was all in awesome all in about her brother and blah blah it took the other one a little and you know he came out that summer you know so amanda and i got to go out there be a part of his

16th birthday and amanda's heart posture and all this was amazing just instantly like hey you know what we're raising a kid together we're going to be friends which is the right thing to do let's just be honest our better halves are they're called that for a reason and it is demonstrably true in both of our situations. Our wives. Yes. We out kicked our coverage. They are way better than us as humans.

But that was Amanda's like, hey, yep, we're raising a kid together. We're going to be friends. We're doing this together. And my son's mom and Amanda just connected. We know, we're in a group text. We go out there for a 16th birthday. It was awesome. I was out there for, you know, I was actually out there for, we're talking initially.

And I remember telling them, I'm like, hey, bud, I'm going to be. Man, about two and a half weeks. I'm going to be about 20 minutes from you and your mom. My wife's coming out with me on a work trip. I'd love to see you. If it's too much, I get it, but I would love to see you. And he said, I'd love that, dad. And I just, bro, I was just crying.

Yeah. You know, I'm on FaceTime. Like, gosh, dang it, man. And I was like, cool. And, you know, we met at a Bass Pro shop because there's a really cool, a shooting game that he wanted to show me. And again, he doesn't know anything about me. Yeah.

And so we meet there. He brought Amanda Flowers, and it was awesome. And we play the shooting game. And I'm like, cool. I'm like matching them on it. And then I just smoke them. That's the move, obviously. You know.

And he looks over and he's like, man, I'm pretty good at this game. And Amanda goes, there's a lot you're going to learn about your dad. And so we had a great day. Next day I do my work thing. We get to go see him, train jihitsu. You know, he's a good kid, loves the Lord, serves the church, trains jiu jihitsu. I'm like, man, this is, you know, amazing. And Amanda and I have been very intentional about making sure we tell his mom this and everybody else.

She's done a phenomenal job raising a young man. Phenomenal job. It's tough when you have both parents involved. Tough enough when you have both involved. I can't imagine the solo journey of that. And, you know, she has a close relationship with her parents. And our parents are awesome. And, you know, her parents, his grandparents have done a great job, help him pour into it.

I mean, he is a solid young man. Like just play sports is a good kid, good student, loves the Lord, trains jujitsu, has like an amazing heart. Take down. Strong. Yeah. That would have expected nothing less. Yeah. And okay, let's play that game with Michael.

Okay. So, we'll pause real quick. The first time watching him train jiu-jitsu, I'm just like, and Amanda's like, he fights trains just like you. Almost like he has your genetics. Weird. It was so, it was so surreal, Andy. To see my son who I hadn't seen in 15 years training jiu-jitsu, who has the same style.

So having world, you don't have a one of the kids. One time since we've known each other, and it was at last origin, Kiyah. Because I was avoiding it every time. I'm like, man, we have the boss of all the, I get, it was for you,

uh, beating the living crap out of me. I didn't beat the crap. We played, basically we were exchanging in guard the whole time. I was on my back and you were passing, and all the old Brazilian bastards were all just Portugueseizing it up. Like, what?

Yeah. I loved it. I love your jihitsu and you're a team guy, your intensity, everything that you do in life. But you, man, your technical skill set on jihitsu is impressive. I appreciate that. I don't, oftentimes, man, I feel like I'm barely surviving. Okay.

Well, you can say that, but I can tell you my perspective. And everybody in my jiu-jitsu world is very impressed by your jiu-jitsu. My professor, Formiga, kind of good. You know, 13-time world champion. Never heard of him. 14-time Pan American champion. He's just unreal. Savage.

He loves your jiu-jitsu. That's good to hear. I'm just saying, and he loves your wife's jujitsu, and also your wife's ability to teach jujitsu. She's such a better practitioner than I am from a depth of knowledge. Well, and you saw this in the teams, too. There's people who are, they can perform at such a high level, but then it's almost always somebody else who could teach and get.

somebody to that level. Seeing both in the same person is very, very rare. Where they're an ultra-high performer, but they can also coach and make people better than them. And I'd almost rather have the 80% practitioner, but 100% coach that can bring people up. Leah is just. Yeah. Yeah, it's like Formiga and also, you know, Victoria, one of our, she has the same ability. She's competing on a high level. And then- was so bummed. She was very closely monitoring the world's competition over the weekend. I know. I know. But for her to do what she did was still incredible. That's what I said. I'm like, let's not be too bummed about what's happening.

She is slaying everyone except for this one person. Yes. Yeah. Silver is still pretty epic in the world. You're going to be just fine. And she's so young. I know. She's got road. Yeah. Don't think we're going to escape this, though. Looking at Michael, take down her guard pull. Let your inner voice come out. Man, I think just the way his brain works, he's probably a guard polar because he likes the technical aspect of being down there and then work in his jiu-jitsu game. His guard is good, but he's a little takedown savage. He'll fight for it. Yes. Yeah, I love take-d-I-I-I-like guard for sure. Yeah. But I love fighting for takedowns. My man. Yeah, which is like the perfect play. That's the dangerous player. It doesn't matter. Oh, my takedown

failed and I'm in guard. Oh, darn. Until I sweep you and end up on top. So I wasn't completely wrong with my assessment. Just by looking at him, though, I agree. Guard-puller. for sure. I'm not going off of looks. What are you talking about? Judging a book by its covers completely fine sometimes. Well, I mean, we proved that to be true

on the Q&A session we were recorded yesterday. Did that guy lose your profile picture over, by the way? It's spectacular. Zoomed in right on the guy's forehead right at the doorbell. I appreciate that.

I know. I figured you would. Yeah. So, yeah, that's kind of where I'm at in regards to my mindset of like the time at Echelon front because, you know, I lost, I didn't say I lost, but I was limited on what I was able to do with my kids,

but Amanda and I had agreement 100% from the beginning. I remember the red light that we're sitting at in South Avenue, Mississippi in my truck when I'm talking to Jocko Leif on the phone. And, you know, they said, I remember Jocko saying, hey, if you want to be a part of building this, we want you to. You can do as much or as little. But if you want to build this with us and be a part of this, you're going to miss a lot of things. But if we do it right, you're going to be super busy for about five years.

And then you should have a team in place. And then you're going to be busy with your team for about another three years. And then start pulling back and doing different things. That's literally the timeline we've hit. So Amanda and I both knew is going to be about a decade, which as you know from building businesses, if anybody listens to Pete Roberts, he talks about decades. Everything is in decades. Nobody wants to hear that either.

They wanted to be... Well, because we live in a microwave society where you go to grab something out of the freezer to heat it up to eat, which you shouldn't be eating those foods. But you can microwave broccoli. Take it easy. Yeah, that's what I was thinking, too. Not those delicious...

Hachamas chili burritos. Just say it. I've microwave broccoli sometimes because it comes in a microwavable plastic thing, which I'm sure my middle son would be disgusted at because of the micropastics that I'm absorbing. Yeah. But, you know, thinking about it.

Okay, how many times have you grabbed something and you look at it and you're used to everything like 90 seconds is done. And you look at it and it says microwave for five minutes, rotate halfway through. People get irritated about that. Because that's just what we're used to. So now you're trying to tell somebody, hey, it's going to take a decade to build a business or to see some major transitions and changes in your life. That's hard. That's hard for people to actually think about and see it, let alone have that ability. to maintain a tenure or to create a 10 year vision and then maintain a 10 year vision.

And that's what I was saying, like, why Laf and Jocka had been pouring into me because I didn't do that soon enough and they're helping me just catch up. They're helping me shorten that gap. Now, as you know, with time, we can't do anything with time other than make the most of it. I can't pause it. I can't speed it up. I can't slow it down. I can't reverse it. Okay, cool. This is the time I have. Now I'm going to be intentional with it. I was very intentional with helping Doe Dashuan front, get my family out of that financial spot, you know, get to the point where we had money and savings. Get to the point where, cool, we have money and savings. Now we can invest. We can invest. We can invest. We can invest. Cool. We're also saving and investing. We want to

buy a house. Cool. We can buy a house. You know, and there's some things like, you know, hey, we're getting ready to buy a house. Hey, there's an opportunity to invest in a Jaco fuel. Friends and family, do you want to do this? And it's like, yes. House can wait. And that's the choice that we made. Which was. A strategic. Beautiful. You have that choice, though. Man, like I say, God's grace has been amazing because, like, nine and a half years ago,

it wasn't happening. Jocko and Lafe also didn't know. When I first came on board, echelon front, I was delivering pizzas to help make ends meet for my family, going door to door in our neighborhood, asking if people wanted their address, spray pin it on the curb in front of their house. So in case they had to call 911, it could be easily identified by first responders. It's actually a very good sales pitch. Yeah.

I'm not bad at sales. You got to make it pressing. has to be a pressing problem. There's an emotional connection to your need. Yeah. And so that's why I tell. And they're like, yep, cool. So I knocked that out.

I was teaching people shooting. I was citing in people's hunting rifles on the side. And then my buddy Jared up in the Nashville area, just an incredible human. He actually built me my first long range rifle that I still have, my 6.5 creed more that just is a laser beams. Yep. And he was, he didn't. need the help but he knew I was in a position because I just made a comment about work and he was just like hey bud I could use some help on these jobs and so I was driving from South Haven to Nashville

area which is three and a half hours on a Wednesday morning waking up at three getting there by you know 637 and I would do construction with him all day long sleep in his attic at his house do it again on Thursday do it again on Friday drive all the way back to South Haven Mississippi and then deliver pizzas And then I asked my buddy Lee who owned the Marcos pizza in South Haven if I could stay a few hours late to help close down the kitchen. And he was like, no, bud, we're good. I got people do it. And I was like, I could use the extra hours.

Think about this, an extra two hours at minimum wage in Mississippi. Yeah. But I was also doing that because I wanted him to know I appreciated him letting me deliver pizzas because that was all those little things and then selling the Never Settled T-shirt was getting me where I needed to be. One of my best friends, Brian Arnold, who was a detective up in Louisville, Kentucky. He actually started the air unit for Louisville PD. He, I met one of his buddies one time I was up there for a trip, and his neighbor had a mobile ATM business.

And I was just like, because at the time, my buddy, Brian, you know, he lived in a beautiful neighborhood. His wife was very successful. Everybody in the neighborhood was ultra successful. And we're all hanging around a fire talking. And I'm just, hey, what do you do? What do you do? What do you do? I'm like, if people live in these multimillion dollar homes, I just want to know, like, what do you do? What have you done with your life? Because I like learning from people. Yeah. And one of the guys is like, well, his name is Chris. He's like,

you know, you probably, you know, laugh about it. But, you know, me and my brother, we own a mobile ATM business. I was like, interesting. Probably slays. Uh, yeah. Yes. He goes, well, you know, the banking thing got deregulated. So me and my brother went out to this conference in Nevada. We learned about it. and we just started out. And I was like, man, that's awesome. I was like, anybody can do that, right? He goes, yeah, he was like, if you want to do that, I could help you get set up with our system.

And I was like, I want to do that. He's like, man, I have an old ATM down in my basement that, I mean, it works, but it's not a new one. He goes, we have all these really nice new ones that we use the systems. And he goes, you know, I handle this side of the business. My brother does the processing side. So when somebody pulls the money out,

we get the money from their bank. we then transfer the money back to your bank and that's how it all works. I'm like, all right. And then we just, we take a little bit off of each transition from both sides. I was like, man, that's, that's really cool.

Okay. He's like, man, I give it to you for like $500. I was like, I think I have $500. Again, just I want to try to make something work for my family. Yeah, man. And so I also had a mobile ATM business at one point where I would go to different concerts and venues and MMA fight shows.

and I would pull this ATM out of the back of my truck, put it on a dolly, had this whole setup and everything. I had gone to the bank and got a signature loan. To stuff it full of the cash. Yes. Yep. Absolutely. And got a little signature loan. And, you know, just started doing that.

And I would go to different venues and just set up the ATM there. There's a few times I'd, here's a crazy. I would walk in and I'm like, hey, do you guys know where the ATM is supposed to be set up? And they're like, oh, I didn't. there's ATMs down there. I'm like, cool, thank you. I'd go down there. I'd unplug the other ATMs.

That is the move. Put bags over the other ones that said out of order. Plug mine in. And yeah, that's what I do. And I was doing that all the time. And then I'm, so then I'm doing that and then setting up a table to sell shirts. And I mean, that got us through all of these moments of just like, all right, I would sell t-shirts.

I'm like, cool, this is a truck payment. This is our rent. Here's grocery. And I was putting them in different pockets. And so they're like, all right, cool. This is now we can buy more shirts and we can more stuff printed. And then I was like taking all the profits from the ATM service fees and just stacking them up. And then I was able to repay back that signature loan and then have my own little bank that I'm using.

Yeah. And just working it from there. And man, I was crazy. My buddy Dylan Davison, who's like my little brother. He actually now teaches at Sig Academy as an instructor there. He worked at Shaw's for a while as well. Funny story, I taught him how to shoot and then got him a job at Shaw's as a groundskeeper

and then he worked his way up to shoot. They got some really good shots that have been groundskeepers at Shaw's. Yeah, well, that's Dylan Davidson. He started on my buddy Mike's farm in Mississippi, me teaching him how to hold the gun properly and shoot and then groundskeeper worked his way up teaching and now he's one of the lead instructors at Sick Academy. That's awesome.

But he was always with me. He would go to all of these. things to help me because he was just trying to help my family. And I've been so blessed to have those people in my life. And so the work that I now do at Ashlawn Front, I like keeping that pace. And the reason why I shared all these things is like my parents taught us, hey, if God has given you an opportunity, you give it everything you have. Like, you don't have to be the smartest or the most gifted, but you better outwork everybody. And that's what I saw firsthand from both of my parents is they outworked everybody all the time not because of ego but because it's the right

thing to do and it's the same thing with my sister my brother manda same way my brother-in-law brian he's the same way like so that's just i like to work work work work work work and so i've done that for 10 years to build this and made different investments to try to build these things but i also you know knew and the reason why i made these other investments and i've tried to do other things on the side is I know there needs to be a point where I throttle back. I was gonna ask you, are you as good at taking downtime as you are working hard? Because I struggle with this. Not right now.

Yeah. I'm trying to get better. And I would like for us to talk about later when the time's right, but this last weekend, I was able to do that with my old platoon, Delta platoon from Tia Bruiser. It was the first time in 20 years. Let's up into it because I was gonna ask you what brought you up to Montana. And honestly, when you were talking about forgiveness, I mean, that ties directly into, I would say, from the outside events like this, what you guys were doing as well.

There's an aspect of coming together, reconnecting, but there's an aspect of forgiveness as well, too. Oh, yeah. All right, while we're doing this. Yeah, it's still fresh. Well, explain what it was. Maybe that's an easy entry. Yeah, and I'll just put this out. just I'm still processing stuff.

And maybe this will also be a part of my healing as well as we talked through this together. Like you've always, you've done that for a lot of guys in the teams and help them navigate stuff because you've had to navigate hard things. But so what we did and West Baldwin, who was our medic, was the one who put it together. And he was the one that led the charge and said, we've got to get together. How'd you guys land on Montana? So when Wes got out of the military, he lived in Bozeman, Montana for a while.

Okay. And it's a beautiful area. It's phenomenal. Amazing area. And he also had some friends there. And he also had a relationship with a blacksmith. And he wanted us to go do some blacksmithing one day. And I'll get into that reason a little bit later.

So it was that. And then Doug Wallace, who was our LPO. He lives in the Cordillane, Idaho area. And is familiar with Montana. I was like, knows this is a beautiful area. And then our platoon chief, Del Fortin, was like, trying to help. And so we're trying to get all the guys together. They picked the dates. And, you know, at first, they're like, man, I don't know, there might be three or four of us that show up.

But hey, that's progression. That's growth. Like, let's get, we as a platoon never sat down after Ramadi and talked about Ramadi. Was it intentional or accidental? 100% accidental. Because guys just kind of started going their own ways. Like, hey, you know, you're back in a platoon. And you probably have your orders of where you're going to go next before you replay back home. Yeah, you were already looking at what's next on the horizon. Yep, 100%. And they also, one of the things, and it pissed off Arplatoon, like guys were furious with the leadership. Not Jocko, not Seth, but the command leadership.

Because when we came back from Ramadi, they're, and I understand why they did it, but I don't think they understand the damage it did to us. And had they known that or had one guy, like, voiced that? I'm willing to bet they wouldn't. But what year was it? 2006. So after we came back for Mardi, 2006.

It was early. I don't think they had figured it out yet. No, they didn't. Well, this, they don't understand the damage that it created to our platoon. And I'm not blaming anybody. I'm just sharing this so that our listeners can be aware of these things. They had the idea of like, let's break up all the experience. Instead of keeping those guys together.

Which that holds water-ish. Yes. Yeah. It sounds great. From a rack and stack. Excel spreadsheet where you're looking at inexperience versus experience and how do we titrate this to make it the most equal. Yeah.

I can understand that. But I also understand deeply what you're saying is going to by fracturing those people that had that shared experience and not letting them work through that together. Yeah. Yeah. And when you have leaders that you respect and you look up to at your command say that, it makes sense to everybody. And guys are like, okay.

Now, guys weren't happy, but you're in the military and the steel teams. It's, it's Roger that. You know, unless it's going to be something detrimental, the response is, okay, Roger that, sir. Like, hell yeah, cool. I'll do whatever you need me to go do. So they completely fractured our platoon. And they did the same thing to Charlie Patoon.

And I can only speak on behalf of Delta Puckoon. But I'm willing to bet it had very similar effects to Charlie Pachun by not being together and not being able to, hey, let's talk about this. Let's work through this. So for the first time in 20 years, we were able to get together and just sit and talk. And so flew into Bozeman on Thursday, was able to, I flew in a little bit earlier. One of my buddies, Lance, who owns Duarte Construction, who's one of our clients at Eschlein Front. He lives here most of the year.

Smart man, by the way. Yeah, clearly. Yeah, clearly. His company is based out of Loomis, California, in the area that I grew up in. So him and his wife were out here, had lunch with them. It was awesome. Talk business and just life and faith and stuff like that. And then hung around until Benny flew in and went and picked up Benny.

and then we went by Costco and grabbed some stuff. And Doug had done a big grocery beer run as well, food and beer, whatnot. Did you put Benny in on the cart, the little section where the feet, like the little child section? For those of you who haven't heard, well, actually, you probably all heard the Friday at this point. Benny's the little wee. It's four-six. He is not four-six, he's five eight and I will fight you. And I know he'll hook me.

Five-six tops. No, dude. I know what you're doing. I'm not playing into it right now. So we One of my favorite people He's fucking awesome One of the most talented

Yes Individuals in the field teams Technically and tactically proficient Yes Yeah absolutely You know he was a big part of Poring into me as a sniper You know him and him and Doug

And Rick and Smurf You know Ricky and those guys like Really helped me become who I was as a sniper And you know obviously Chris Kyle as well But Chris was in Charlottos These are my Delta Battalion Yeah Maybe you boys

And Benny was You know It's still one of my best friends but in the teens was absolutely my best friend. Him and West, we're just, the three of us were just so tight. And so anyways, just seeing Benny, it was just like, like, walk out. I'm just like, man, give him a big hug. And, you know, we do our thing.

We get there and just walking into the house and all the guys. So Doug found this place in Clyde Park, beautiful area, about 50 minutes northeast of Bozeman. I don't exactly what you're talking about you. Yeah. I had two big houses, you know, with enough, you know, I had 18 beds for the guy. and a little bunk style, but it's like, who cares, man? Yeah, give you shit. Big living room area, fire pit, trigger grill, beautiful kitchen,

and just a view of like everything. It was on a hill, it was just, all the guys were like, man, this is amazing. But of course, typical team guy fashion guys are like, Doug, like, you couldn't have found us a nicer place? What's up with this crap hole? He like, where's the rest of the mountain range? There's no snow covered peaks, you piece of shit.

Yeah, those elk are really annoying to look at right now. like just like it was just amazing and it was really cool like giving every you know given all the guys like hugs and you know and just like just just embracing that and um and i was just kind of watching all the guys and you know i said this later but i'll put it in right now man i was talking to the guys and i felt really guilty because as guys were like processing through stuff I realized I'd already done that when I went to pursuit. And so when I showed up, I was a little anxious for sure, but like healthy. But the level of anxiety on all of these other guys was really hard to see because I love these guys and I care.

And you could see it. You know, guys were happy to be there. And you could see guys kind of starting to like, you could literally see posture change. And, you know, a set of guys just like kind of sitting with their backs to stuff. or whatever, like guys getting a little closer to each other and like, all right, cool, let me crack open a beer or let me grab a protein shake or, you know, whatever. You know, guys are starting to relax a little bit and there's some fruit out, let's eat some fruit. And, you know, like Doug had this like, like, little board set up, like with meat and cheese

and stuff like that. It's called a charcutory board. Yep. And so, you know, guys were just kind of like, just chilling and hanging out. And it was cool. And we're just kind of like, do we want to grow here? what do we want to do. Everything was just kind of open.

Hey, who cares? So think about what you just described to. If you were to ask a group of people who was maybe peripheral, peripherally aware of what the SEAL community is and what they had done or your task unit bruiser. And you would have asked them to pick a word to describe the, we'll call it the vibe of you guys having a reunion. I don't think they would pick the word anxious. Yes. It's not the community that would most likely be associated with that.

And I think that there's something there. And it goes to the price and cost of what it is that they ask you guys to do. Yeah. Beautifully broken down. And all of us think that same thing about ourselves and each other. But I was able to see it a little bit different. everybody else initially, I think, because I had already gone through those things. And also, I was talking with Matt Hasby about this. Because I, you know, I started calling other guys

after this event. I'm like, hey, go do this. Like, you have to get your guys together. You know, your core group. And, you know, I didn't spend a lot of time on the SEAL teams. Like, nothing compared to you and all those other guys that did. You did 20 years than you. You did 12, right? Yeah. Yeah, I did 17. I didn't do that much more. Yeah, but you had multiple deployments. I only had three. No, but the reason why I'm saying this, the whole comparison is what? The ultimate thief of joy. I know. The reason why I'm saying that is I had that one core group though. Yeah. You know, I know other guys have had multiple core groups. Yeah. 24 month cycles, man. Yeah. It's crazy.

Guys need to make that a priority though. Like, you have to make it a priority with a group of guys to go sit and talk, process, heal, grow, whatever. Because of what I do at Eschleon Front. And that's the way that Matt and I were talking, he's like, what, I mean, like, what do you think? think was the difference between your head state going in there. Matt has to be always asked very good questions like very like makes you want to think and he's genuinely asking questions to to grow as well. And I said, Matt, what we do at echelon front helps people. We have, there is an undeniable value behind what we do at echelon front. Not all of these guys have that. I will add to that. What you guys do at echelon front is awesome, but you personally just listening to you talk have invested in doing a lot. of work on yourself that helped get you there as well.

So the echelon piece is no, nothing to say about that other than amazing things, but don't discount the work you have also put it in as a person. I appreciate that. And that was also one of the things like Matt, I talked about, I said, man, I've been working on this stuff for four years, knowing, you know. And I was talking to a friend recently, you know, their marriage isn't the best. And there's some trauma from the spouse. And it's like, hey, until that person is put in a position.

that facilitates surrender and growth and healing, they're never going to do it unless they hit rock bottom and then seek it themselves. I was fortunate because, hey, when I hit rock bottom on my wife served me divorce papers and I was just a complete dumpster fire, I had somebody in my life, a jiu-suituit coach who looked me in the eyes and said,

when are you going to get your shit together and start taking responsibility for your life? At the same time, I had started reading extreme ownership. those were my two things that was like, yep, I needed to hear that. Oh, here's the tools. The tools that I use in business to do pretty well in sales at a financial company with no background and no experience to do that, I wasn't doing it in my family.

So I started doing it there and was able to restore my marriage. Yeah. Because my wife's amazing and forgave me and we worked through it together. But to your point is we had to work to get our marriage back. I've had to work to get my health back. I've had to work to get my finances back. And everything ebbs and flows. There's been good financial times, good financial times, good health times, bad health times,

good marriage, bad marriage. Don't forget growth is just a person as well. I mean, you're reinvesting in yourself and trying to constantly become a better version of yourself. That is not an easy road either. No, it's not because you have to look at the mirror every day. It's very reflective. And that can suck. I don't like what I see.

And now what you can do is you can turn off the light and not look at the mirror. Or you can say, I don't like what I see. What am I going to do about it? And that's also I love what we teach at Ashlawn Front. We show you the mirror. Hey, this is who you are as a leader. Here's your strengths, your weaknesses. Here's what to do to grow better and stronger, to have more impact, more value, you know. And so to see the guy starting to kind of just relax. That was really cool. We went to dinner. We're like, yeah, let's just go to dinner. I found a dinner place. You know, I just, I love like planning logistics and everything.

I'm like, cool. Found a place. They're open. Send to the group. Hey, I'm lead vehicle. Follow me. You know, it was really cool. Like guys getting back into that routine. God. Get the rigorous tape out. tape the vehicle door. So take it easy. Second, I know, we didn't go that level. But it was really cool because, like, we're getting ready to go.

And somebody said, uh, who's got a point? And Dave Garcia goes, JP's got point. He's our lead driver. And it was, it was funny.

Like, the way we sat in the vehicles was natural the way we used to sit in the platoon. And it was just, I know. Just said you fall right back into it. I'm driving. Benny's next to me. Because guess what?

When I drove, Benny was my nav. Yeah. And then Smurf and Doug were in the back seat. And then the other vehicles were all set up like that. It was really cool. I wonder how many of the guy. That just occurred to me.

As I was like visualizing our vehicle layout like, yeah, we had a little convoy. So we go to dinner and awesome dinner. And again, you can see guys kind of relaxing and relaxing a little bit. And yeah, go back to the house, hang out a little bit more. And then the next day, Dale, our platoon chief, has set up fly fishing. So six of the guys want to go fly fishing. We still had two guys that hadn't flown in yet. A group of guys, you know, we're just like, we're just going to chill and hang out

with the house. You know, typical team guys, you know, you have something awesome. You're going to complain about it. We're like, all right, cool, what time we're rolling out? He's like, yeah, we've got to be leaving at seven. We're like, dude, we're up here to relax. And, you know, like, we're like 7 p.m. Like kind of, he's like, no, guys, we got to meet them.

We got to get out in the water. I'm not in the military anymore. I have to do that shit. It was so funny. Like, you guys are just, of course. And, hey, if we can give our chief a hard time, 100%. They'll be in the cars at 6.30. Don't worry about it.

Yeah. And he's like, and then you realize what we're doing. He's like, all right, fuckers. You know, like, so we go fly fish. I never been fly fishing before. It was awesome. It's not the easiest thing. I haven't tried it either, but I've heard,

watching a river runs through it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be able to do the perfect whatever. Which as I learned from my guide, as he like, mother F that movie, because he's like, that's not actually how you do it. And he was like. Worked pretty well for us. badly pit yeah clearly um but what's i guess fly fishing which was intriguing to me is considered like the sniper world of fishing oh i bet for sure because it's very difficult and it's a very precise

skill set yeah which all of us were like oh heck yeah so we had really good guides my guide evan as we're sitting talking in the boat i'm like yeah where are you from he's great guy for conversation and everything and uh we're just kind of BS and whatnot and he's like yeah i grew up in Memphis, I'm like, Memphis, Tennessee. He was like, yeah, I was like, I lived in South Haven, Mississippi. He's like, what? So he started talking. His sister-in-law was Amanda, my wife's neighbor, and they cheered together. Okay. Wow. Crazy. Yeah. Crazy. So we had a great day. So he was awesome. All three of the guys were like really good at coaching and teaching and we'd screw something up. And you talk about somebody being a master at their craft. Like, we would do something. And he would be

like you didn't do this with the wrist. You didn't come all the way up. You didn't do this. Like all these like little things and guys throughout the day are getting better and better at casting and catching. And we all caught multiple fish. That's awesome. Which is really cool,

which is also like you were talking about like the first time you and I ever went golf, like my first golf swing, I just absolute drove it. I was like, oh, golf's going to be easy. All went downhill from there. So my first time fly fishing caught multiple fish. You'll probably fish for six months now and then just end up throwing your pole in the

water. You'll never see another. Just snapping it because I won't get anything. But hey, but here, hey, that's a testament to like why you hire a guide. Oh, they're putting you where you need to be, looking at the conditions, making sure that it's exactly what you wanted to be. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah. So that was really cool to be able to go do that, which was a lot of healing for all of the guys to be able to like actually like work through that and just had had a really good time with these guys.

And, man, I just really enjoyed that time on the water. And, yeah, so I got to give Evan a shout out if you're good with that. With a hatch finders fly shop. Hatch, I feel like that's somehow associated with it. It's in Livingston, Montana. Yeah, no, I mean, the hatch finders. I feel like that's a fishing term or like the lures they make. And I know that's the flies they mag.

Something like is tied into that. Yeah, yeah. So Evan. Pull up their website. Evan Keane and Hatch Finders Fly Shop in Livingston, Montana. Incredible guide like this guy. Yep, wow. Look at Michael crushing things.

Oh, Michael's the man. I mean, come on, Michael, scroll down so we can see the beauty. I feel like the hatch thing has something to do with the flies. Is it because things are hatching on the water? I don't know. I don't know enough. I don't even, I mean, I believe they're supposed to be replicating insects that land on the water. And then, yeah.

Keep going. Michael. Gosh. You never got into fly fishing. I also need another hobby like I need another hole in my head. I was just going to say, you know, so yeah, that's him on the right. Oh, nice. Yeah.

And that's, yeah. Not you on the left. Yeah, clearly. But just an awesome thing. And what was cool about what Evan and the other guys did is they facilitated conversations the whole time. And then they, because I noticed, I was like, oh, he's getting us to be talking and interacting and asking really cool questions. not pushing anything too much and just

then also just kind of letting it be silent yeah which was cool and we got off the water and you could tell all the guys had a little bit of progression, a little bit of growth just being on the water with your guys talking and all of a sudden like Benny would be like hey do you remember and I'd just be in tears laughing. I'm like whole man I haven't thought of that for 21 years

we're in our workup and I did that stupid thing and like so we're all talking and then Smurf and I were in a boat together and you know just talking about just life and just everything else like that was his wife and his kid and you know learning about you know what his daughter likes and all these things i'm like you know and as the day was going on it was it was amazing and you know uh Dave Garcia out there and Dale and we had another another buddy uh out there um and with Benny as well I'd say the other buddy I know his name but he's he's a very quiet guy so out of respect for him um you know who I'm talking about he's just

maintained a very low profile and I respect that incredible team guy like just a generous heart incredible breacher and did some other really cool stuff and it was cool seeing guys kind of open up and just just but for me I started to kind of get a little frustrated with myself because I'm like man these are some of the closest guys I've ever had in my life and I didn't know they were I didn't know these things I didn't know that so-and-so was going through a really bad divorce. Yeah. You were fighting for custody of his kids.

You and I were talking about this yesterday, walking over to the coffee shop. And obviously we can leave the specifics of anybody's issues that they're going through. Yeah. But it stuck with me when we were talking, the number of people that you could mention mutual friends that we have, or at least somebody I didn't work with directly, but I know who they are. And the, what they are working through and dealing with. Did you ever think, or could you even fathom 20 years ago when you were, you. in Ramadi, the two decades forward,

the experiences that you guys were having there would have such profound lifelong impacts in areas not directly associated, maybe. Never. You know what I mean? It's not once. And then another question that comes from that for me is, is it possible to ask people to do those things

and not have that be the result? No. I don't think so. And I'm only giving my perspective. And obviously we're talking broadly about some of the stuff that's going on, but what you were describing, A, it's not the first time I've heard it from people in our community. And B, it's gnarlier in areas of their life that people probably wouldn't connect the dots and say that those two events are connected. So let me just, I'll share this,

and then you can kind of expand upon it as you want or maybe it validates what we just said or it opens something else up. I looked at everybody else and thought, man, I'm the only one going through these things. Because I knew the impact that had on me. I mean, clearly, I didn't have my son in my life for 15 years. And it's not because I did anything towards her or him. It was I didn't know how to have a relationship.

I didn't know how to communicate. I didn't know how to control my emotions and not be angry and just, just angry. not anger towards her but you know what i mean just an angry person which robs you of life and so you know i just and i saw how that affected that um like you know even my first marriage like i didn't know how to be married i didn't know how to communicate all those things you know and i hurt somebody you know i hurt somebody who is a good person, you know? And it just, it's hard when you see the, the damage that you create in other people. And I think that's the effects of combat and war and seeing evil people

do horrific things to innocent people. I've never felt bad once. And I don't have any issues or any PTSD about the people I've killed overseas. Zero. Those are evil people. It was what was being done to other people that we were trying to protect. Yeah. When you see kids being used as a human shield, like that's hard. Mm-hmm.

That's really hard. And just other things that our listeners don't want to hear about. And then don't need to. And they don't need to. Yeah, for sure. And again, and that's what we're willing to share so you can imagine, you know, the other stuff.

I just worry about the cost. Because there is a cost that will never be fully measured. So how do? And the reason why Andy is because nobody talks about it. You can't measure something you don't know about. You can't measure data that you are not aware of. But we know it exists now. Like you saw it.

We do. There's more awareness. You saw it anecdotally this, you know, a few days ago. How do you, how do you prepare people? Because there's the price and the cost of what we did. The price we paid. Now do it again. Totally.

It's not on the dotted line, maybe physiological damage, maybe death, psychological, all this thing. The cost to me, or one way, one part of the cost, is the damage and suffering that you saw in your close friends over a period of decades. It's like an ink blotter that goes out and touches family, extended family, kids, all of those things. And if we know that that is going to happen,

I still believe that there will always be people that will volunteer to do that job. And we need that. How do we protect them to the best of our ability? Well, we have to actually talk about these things, document them, and come up with a plan. What do we do in the SEAL teams after every operation? And we'd create an after action report.

So we'd sit, we debrief, after action report, and what do we do with those? Hold on to them or send them out. Send them out. We'd send them out. And why? So that other guys can learn and not make the same mistakes. And like what we're doing in Ramadi,

like what Jock, Leif and Seth were doing is cool, gathering that, sending it back to San Diego to the training command. So, hey, adapt and modify real time training so that you're prepared when you show up. We're great at doing these things for tactics, but we don't do it personally. We don't do it professionally.

We don't do it with our finances. We don't do it spiritually. You know, that's going back to what we talk about the pursuit thing, that's a big thing that churches, I think, are missing the mark on. It's like, all right, cool, what are your next steps now? Like, hey, you're new to faith.

Here's your path. Read this book, right? Read Romans. Read the book of John. Read James. Like, start there. Like, just don't start in Genesis and read the whole thing and try to process it. Hey, the book of Proverbs has 31 chapters.

Each month has 31 or less days. Cool. One proverb per day. Like today's the 23rd, read Proverbs 23. Like things like that, like teaching people what your next steps are. That's what we do at Ashwin. Hey, here's your next steps. And that's why we're having success there. So we've taken these lessons that we've learned in combat and training and we've learned in So I'm so far disconnected.

They were getting better as I got out. So I'm going to assume and deeply hope that that trend can do. Yes. But the things that we can do and our veterans that are listening, if you have guys that are still in, tell them that they need to be doing these things. And that's what I was starting to do. I called guys from trial battalion. I called guys from other teams like, hey, this is what my platoon did. This is why you need to do it.

And we have guys that were there that still have connections to the community so that we can start preparing these guys. like hey you have these deployments this is what you need to be doing afterwards keep the guys together boom right hey facilitate these things um you know and find a way to serve your guys like ray boviera to help serve i mean you don't want to joke about it like i was joking i'm like oh cool so you're just lazy and not doing anything ray like i think he did i don't know over 20 maybe 23 years in the navy um heroes and seal teams got his master's degree while he's in and since he's been out he got his PhD so he's Dr. Ray Baviera now who works for a pretty cool organization with Space Force and also is a chaplain real underachiever much like Johnny Kim also training

jiu jiu jitzy and competing in jiu jitzu and doing well and yeah and so but but for him that his piece is a chaplain part yeah he's helping volunteer as a chaplain to help guys walk and navigate through these things and so this weekend was great You know, so we did the fishing thing on Friday. We all got together. And then, you know, we all met in Bozeman afterwards because we were fishing close. Guys were flying in. Guys were at the cabin.

We all met there. Had a nice big steak dinner downtown Bozeman. And then we went back to the house. And it was like, all right, let's sit and talk. And so we just started sitting and talking. And Wes was really good facilitating. And Doug was doing a great job, just kind of guiding the conversations. And, you know, you'd start something small.

something small and then finally our platoon chief goes hey you know what i have i think it was our platoon chief i'm pretty sure it was um what happened on the rooftop when mike he jumped on a grenade like we know he jumped on a grenade but what happened up there and when he said that i recognized i had never heard the story from benny or dug or mike either it was for the people who were there yeah so unfortunately mike shirley wasn't able to make it last minute he had some commitments on East Coast I guess he's done this really cool thing with Fox News to put together something for the 20 year anniversary of Mikey Mansour awesome and so for those I don't know so Mikey Mansour is in our platoon and in our deployment to Ramadi on

August 2nd 2006 Mark Lee was killed he was from Charlie Batoon he was the first Navy SEAL killed in Iraq on that same day Ryan Job was wounded earlier in the deployment Kaui from Delta Batoon had been wounded and set home as well so Cali got the second phase instructor me. Super cool, dude. Unreal here. Just, like, yes, we were both new guys together,

but that's my guy. And so Cali got wounded at the beginning of her deployment, set home. Guys got wounded throughout it, but we're able to stay on deployment. August 2nd, Marcus killed. Ryan Job,

get shot in the face by an enemy sniper, pulled out of country surgery, recovery rehab. And then on September 29th, 2006, as we're getting close to go home, Mikey Munsoor jumped on a grenade. that was tossed up on a rooftop. It was him, Mike Sorrelli, Doug Wallace, and Benny Olson up there.

And without hesitation, Mikey jumped on top of that grenade, absorbed the majority of the blast. It blew Mike Sorrelli to the right, Doug Wallace to the left. And those guys were really badly injured. And Benny was also injured from that grenade, not as bad as those guys. So we always knew that. But we never knew the details. Which is wild because you would think. And I would have assumed that your platoon would have known specifically because, and again, this is from a view from the outside of the platoon in the sealed teams is going to be 16 to 20 people.

And you'd think that everybody knows everything that's going on inside of that. But often you're so disaggregate or a smaller unit, I would have assumed that anybody in Delta would have known that story from soup to nuts. Yeah. Wow. So that kicked that off. And I would love for you to have Denny on your podcast for him to share the details. I think he's at a point where he could and would. What do you think? One phone book or two for the seat.

It actually goes up a little bit. It goes out a little bit. What do I do about his feet not touching the floor? I mean, mine aren't. You're taller than he is by a substantial margin. Oh. I love that. Your comedy gives me a little breaks from like the heaviness of this story.

So I know it's calculated and I appreciate it. I would love to have him on. But my theory with all those or anybody's story is, if you reach out to me, I'll 100% facilitate it. But I am not going to try to get somebody. Oh, no, I know. And I love that about you and your podcast. I love that because this isn't self-serving.

You do this to help other people. That's right. Yeah. Well, you do. And like all my buddies at Denver Swat, Like when they found out I was coming up here, one of my very close best friends, Jesse Rembert, former Green Beret, been on Denver Swat, all of his guys. A lot of those guys come help out on the FTX's role players.

They listen to your stuff all the time. They love your podcast. So I'm not to arrest me because I'll be there next week for a day. Well, you let me know. Hey, after this, I'm connecting you and Jesse in a text. If you want, the guys are like air unit? The guys would, I don't know. But it's some helicopter time.

Denver Swat. I'm just saying they have an. amazing training facility. Oh, I bet. I don't know if you remember how to shoot a gun. They can probably get you up to speed. No. I'm pacifist, no. Just a heel-hooking pacifist. Just a heel-hooking pacifist. Two days. Give me time. I'll get better. But I'm saying, like, I know your podcast, you know, my buddy Josh Straussberger that works with us, he listens every episode. All the guys do, because there's value in what you do. And the reason why I said, Benny, is I don't want to tell his whole story. Yeah. Because it's his story. I know it

be the one who's best suited to tell the totality. Yes. What happened up there. Yeah. It was really hard for me to hear it. Listening to Benny, share the details, knowing that I had never asked him afterwards. Hey, bud, what happened? Are you okay?

My best friend, I never asked him. Are you okay? Why do you think that is? I never asked. I am as guilty of that as. any of the guys. And I was talking with somebody about this. And I came to this conclusion, as we were just kind of going back and forth, it was self-imposed limitations that I put on Paul myself that because I was one of the youngest and most junior ranked guys, I couldn't do that,

which is crazy to say out loud. But, and well, it's crazy to hear probably for people. who didn't come from that community. It is not crazy to hear because I understand the headspace because I lived that headspace for many years in my career as well. I was a perpetual new guy in every role that I held. So I understand this. It's almost as if it's an invisible chain link fence.

I like being the new guy. Because it's easy. I like the new guy mentality. As long as you're a good new guy. Yeah. It's work hard, listen. You're looking for work you're trying to learn. Go above and beyond.

Take care of your teammates. Get the job done. Take care of your leadership. I like being a new guy. First off, that mentality you just described serves new guys, medium, and well done guys. Equally as well. Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

So I think, and I've been really bad in the past about this self-imposed limitations. And I had put these self-imposed limitations on myself of not reaching out to guys that I looked up to to ask if they were okay. I have always felt out of place my whole life as if I'm underage. undeserving to be around the people I'm with. I felt undeserving to be indelible to him. I have felt undeserving to be a trade at instructor. I feel undeserving at times of my wife and my family. The ministries that I'm a part of, me and my buddy started a ministry called Jesus and

Jiu-Jitsu. At times, you know, in helping out at walking in truth and the pursuit for truth events, events felt undeserving, undeserving, undeserving, undeserving. Eschlon front a lot of times just undeserving when I look around the table of instructors and I'm like man these guys are just incredible humans you know

do you still feel that way at times at times it creeps in but not as much because I identify that thought and I dismiss it because I look at the reality of my environment and you know Amanda was incredible at the beginning at Eschlein Front when that imposter syndrome was super heavy

and she would tell me Jaco and life would not bring you on board if you did not need to be here. This is not a charity. Do you think that you were the only one in those rooms that felt that way? No. What you just described is something I have battled with my entire life. You have? Everywhere at every role.

That's crazy. Yep. Do you feel undeserving? And you could change the vernacular a little bit. Underqualified, undeserving, uncertain. as if why I was in the room. And I don't want you to answer this. I want you to think about it.

Do you think that's why you struggle with your faith? Because you may have felt undeserving of somebody's love and forgiveness. I hope not. Because that's what a lot of people struggle with with their faith. Is they're undeserving of what Jesus did for us on the cross? I don't think so. Okay.

I mean, maybe I'll think about it some more. I would hope not. I would hope that I'm not. it's it's almost always been in a professional capacity okay why am i in this room i'm not good enough to be in this room the reason why i ask that is if you fill it in one area of your life you probably fill it in others yeah let me noodle on it yeah that's all i want you to do i just it just popped in my brain and i'm like yeah all right i don't know if that was a little prompting of the holy spirit to ask you that question or just it was in my brain yeah totally but um yeah so i that's great

that's so crazy i wish you had met him glasses on, but we have that camera that captured my reaction. When you said that, Michael was probably doodling, so I'm sure it was the camera pointed at the ceiling. Yeah, proud of that. I haven't been switching this whole time. Yeah, cool. He's just, all he's Googling is an A, he's like, is there a robotic hand that can app switch back? He's outsourcing his job. No, dude, I deeply struggle with that my entire time in the teams, post teams, still to this day talking about my experience in the teams. Yeah. You're not alone in that. Yeah. And so You know, I said something earlier, you know, we can't measure something without data.

And if guys aren't talking, we don't know it's existing. I assumed I was the only one who had a dumpster fire of a life. I look at Benny and I'm like, there's no way that guy's struggling. He's a legend in my eyes. There's no way Doug Wallace is struggling. Now, I knew from Doug and Mike Sorrelli and Benny B on the rooftop, that's going to be hard. I didn't actually understand that. And, you know, for a little bit, Mike Sorrelli worked at Ashlawn Front.

Now he's doing his own thing, doing incredible things. Yep. And just stud of a team guy. You know, I know you guys, I think, worked together on some stuff. And like, man, I never asked him. Yeah. You know, but I'll tell you, I've always prayed for all the guys. And that's always been on my heart. And, you know, our unnamed buddy, no way that guy could be struggling.

Like the pedestal I've always had him up on. and because of just who he was and how he poured into me as a young guy and his experience. And then to find out he is struggling. And like, I don't care. People can judge me if they want. The amount of tears I cried this weekend

was healthy. Because hearing those stories and just processing and me feeling guilty and then working through my guilt with time with the Lord at night before I go to bed and reading the Bible, is what I needed. And, you know, Smurf.

Okay, he struggled through some stuff. And, like, for me, he'd be like, wait, what? You know, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, like, I didn't ever really know he was struggling and stuff. Yeah. And then you find out he has stage four terminal lung cancer. Damn. And he's not a smoker.

And it was undetected for all of these years. Because every doctor's appointment he went to, it didn't show up. Yeah. Well, you know. To screen specifically. before I didn't want to say anything, did he? There is, no, he was trying, because he knew he was like. He was feeling something.

Well, what he's feeling was he was dying. Yeah. He was dying. And he kept going and going and going to all these different doctors and VA and everything and couldn't get an answer until, in which you could only imagine what that did to him psychologically of the things that he wanted to do and didn't want to do any more. more. I'll leave it at that. And then he finally gets to a doctor and the doctor's asking a bunch of questions. And Wes is like, yep, so I was that. This is what I did in the seal teams, all this stuff.

And the guy was like, were there burn pits near you? Only everywhere. And Wes goes right next to our building that we slept in at Camp Corrigador. And the guy was like, like right next to it. And he's like, yep, right next to it. So the building that we lived in, full metal jacket, at Camp Crigador, which was a Ford operating base on the eastern side of Ramadi, had a burn pit right next to it. And so this doctor, I'm seeing if I have it, if it was in the text from West, this doctor ordered. It was brought to you by Brunt Workwear.

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one test okay there's one test that can find it and i'm going to take my phone off of airplane mode and ask him what was the test that found this uh hopefully response but i know he's that he's at he's at therapy or physical therapy right now um and so what's going on with west is um um um i was never a smoker but i'm battling cancer from toxic exposure at camp crigador and romadi uh from the burn uh field next a full metal jacket it is alk positive non small cell lung cancer okay i'm considered chronically terminal because of as of non-of-lawful mental because of as of now there isn't yet a cure. I was diagnosed with three to six months to live without treatment. That was November of 2023. Fortunately, I responded well to treatment and could potentially live

for 10 years or longer. I do scans every three months to check for progression and twice daily take medication to keep the cancer suppressed. I can beat this but need my research team to do their part and I will also keep doing more. I'm trying to. be the first person to beat this kind of cancer at stage four. I'm a fighter and I need help getting at home so we can have a home base to face a battle that is still yet to come. If people want to help find a cure, go to AlkPositive, A-L-K, positive.org. And so, Michael, write that down for this show notes, please.

Yeah. And so that's why Wes got all the guys together was. His time is limited and as you know cancer spreads and he's waiting to find out to see if it spread to his brain So I lost my mom. It's an insidious way to go man I remember you sharing that Fuck. It's it's an insidious Way to go So if he doesn't get back to me on on the on the on the test that does it it's the test that they do for older People that have been smoking their whole life I bet you and the reason I had Michael write that down is I bet you on that link somewhere it will talk about yes, yes, yes

So we'll be able to find it and put it in there. Yeah. Just scroll down, Michael, if you would. I prefer patients by patient. What is Algae? Inquired of Nali. Alc gene. It is not thought to be inherited or passing it in your way.

No known causes or cure. Cures about 70,000 people worldwide with Alc. Okay. So we'll be able to look at this and hopefully be able to determine that. But, yeah. Yeah. So we all do that Friday night. We go into some deep stuff.

And, man, all the guys. were in tears listening to Benny and then listening to Doug and they sketched out the rooftop like I took a picture that I drawing I can show you which we won't share but I can show you yeah and it was I could to spend a great amount of time with Ben yeah that's right that's right so you've and I just want I didn't say this yesterday I just want to say thank you because I know the time you spent with him talking and listening helped him we had somebody that we were sharing frustrations about at the time well sometimes that's a great common goal ended up getting fire.

Well, sometimes that has to happen. So we had a lot of commiseration about, usually it would open with, can you fucking believe this? This guy. Oh, dude. Yeah. So we, I mean, we stay, I mean, there was no early nights. It was all late evenings, early mornings. Yeah.

Which limited sleep. But at the end of the day, it's like, bro, this is a time with the guys for healing, which is really, really good. And again, you know, as I'm listening to these guys, I'm like, man, I'm so thankful for what I get to do at Ashlawn Front because I feel that I'm providing value to people. And it's a dangerous thing when you're living life and you don't feel like you're providing value anymore or you're not able to perform at the high level that you used to perform at. And that little inner dialogue starts going. And to find out that so many guys that I've talked to over the years and, you know, just deal with suicide. because they get to the point where they're like, well, I'm not good at doing these things anymore.

I'm not providing value. I'm not blah, blah, blah. And they listen to those lies. And they feel like the best thing that they could do is in their life. That's a, that's a lie. That's not the best thing. That it's,

man, the damage that it would create to your family and your loved ones, you know, is just like the pebble theory when you, you know what I mean? It just goes. The ripple effect, you know.

And so, which was cool. Like, we worked through all that stuff and kind of get to the point. where guys are like, all right, man, love you guys. You know, very intentional hugs at the end of that. And we're all got to get to bed because the next day, West set up for the whole platoon for us to go do some blacksmith work.

And... It's hard work, man. Unreal. And most people would believe that swinging a hammer is hard. The temperature in those forges is unreal. Yes. Yeah. And so...

Before we go to the blacksmith, I'm just thinking about this. and talking about price versus cost in what happens when you don't talk about these long-term impacts. One of my fears is, you know, so I joined pre-9-11. I joined the Navy in 96. Got to my first team in 1997. I think it's fair to say post-9-11, the media narrative books, TV shows, movies people can make of them what they want to it can focus on a really flashy aspect of what the job could look like many of those things have what i'll say is a very cautionary relationship to the

truth some of them are designed to be fiction some of them in the nonfiction section would probably be better served to be moved over into the fiction section yeah but the point is is it focuses on what can come after or the notoriety or very few things very few events out of a totality of things that can be life changing and then the GWAT winds itself down and there's less talk about what happens 20 years later yeah and you get together with a group of people that you worked with and you see that impact if that's forgotten i can see a world where people look at special operations and they say, you know what? I want to go test myself. And that seems like something really hard to do, which it is hard to do. But if you're going to go to a butts as an example,

as just a crucible to test yourself, and you don't realize that that occupation is designed for men to go and hunt down other men where they live in their houses, in their bedrooms, you're missing what the end state of that journey is going to be. And I don't want the seal teams, and I'm not saying it is this way, but I don't want the seal teams full of people that are just there to see if they can do a hard thing. I want them to be there for people who are there

for the right reason and purpose. And both can exist, obviously. But if you don't talk about the consequence, it can make it seem like, oh, this is like a really hard thing that I can do. And then I can move on from there. Maybe if you're not asked to go, do those things for real.

Yeah. But if you are, you better, you better seatbelt in for the rest of your life for the cost of what that does to you. Yes. And that cost will last with you for the rest of your life. I believe how deep those wounds go. For me, I can speak on my behalf and other believers. When I was able to surrender those things to the Lord, he took those away from me.

He took them away. and I saw that in Ray. I saw that in Andrew Paul. I saw that in Cowie. Those guys are all believers. And over the years, they've surrendered these things to Jesus.

And that's what's helped me. And again, I'm just speaking on my behalf. For sure. And there are people that are able to process and get rid of those things by talking about it. Like we did. Okay?

What we did wasn't a, religious gathering, which I don't like the word religious because religion, a lot of religion it's rules, right? Do this. You get this. Do this. For me, it's about relationship. It's a term that's hijacked. Yes, 100%. So it's that relationship aspect. But so this was not like a ministry type of get together. Like my buddy, my buddy PJ has a foundation called Therapeutic Recreation Group or TRG. But what Therapeutic Recreation Group does is brings veterans together. and facilitates what our platoon just did. And I got to go on a hunt with him

with my best friend Mike Mitchell. Combat infantry officer in the Marine Corps had done some just hellacious things in combat. He shared his story on my podcast and it was hard to hear because that's one of my best friends who I've been walking with the Lord with. His wife, Emily, are very close friends

with Amanda and I. And like we have this four group like Pastor Chris and his wife, Lindy, Pastor Tyrant and Betsy, Amanda and I, Mike and Emily, the four of us, right? Just really close. They've been helping all of those three couples pouring into Amanda and I. We pour it. You know, it's just all pouring into each other.

And to hear my best friend share those things on my podcast was really hard. And then when we go do this thing with PJ's group, TRG, I recognize. I'm like, wow, the power of what he's doing is just bringing guys together, facilitated on a hunt that's sponsored by these amazing business people. they just want to be there to hunt and just listen and they pay for everything like the the things that TRG do all you have to do is show up and his PJ's requirements is combat veteran that has your stuff together he's like there's plenty of other great foundations doing things to help guys really heal I don't I want to bring guys together for a different type of healing like we're all right cool and he does it within a radius of where all the people live so that you can build that network it's brilliant

What I did with TRG was what we did with Delta platoon. And so we have to be able to facilitate these things. And when we do those things, that's where guys will heal. That's where guys will heal. That's what the teams need to be doing. Hey, guys come back from deployment. Cool. Let them go on pre-deployment leave.

Bring them together. Bring them together somewhere. Let guys talk. Boom. And there needs to be a regular cadence of those things. That's why PJ did what he did with TRG. Yeah. And that's why Wes.

created this with our platoon and west's big thing one of the last nights and it was cool jaco flew up sunday night just to be with the guys um um just one night with us let us do our whole thing until he came up and it was obviously amazing having jaco there and west's big thing was like this doesn't die this can't die we have to keep getting together checking in on guys going and meeting with guys and and different stuff like that. And I think, Andy, that's what will provide the healing for the cost that will come. The cost is going to come.

Yeah. And here's the other thing. It will be heavier on some people than others, depending on who that person is. That's what's gnarly about. I was talking with Leah last night. Just it's, so for people who don't know, my wife is a jiu-suit-coach, among many things.

She's a competitor as well. but and she she just pours herself into the women's community and the trauma aspect of i mean god the stats are horrible about the percentage of women who it will receive beyond the receiving end of a traumatic event some things damage people some things bruise people some things they bounce off like teflon but you could have three people exposed to the same thing and have each of those and you can't tell yeah and that's where it gets gnarly yeah because you and i could see something happen and Michael could be destroyed. That wouldn't be that hard

because obviously, I mean, look what we're talking about. But, you know, it's impossible to tell how much volume you have in your individual vessel before it spills over. And that's invisible. Yeah.

And, you know, guys, even in the teams, as we say, we're all cut from the same cloth. I know you've heard that. Oh, for sure. Yeah. But, yeah, we're all cut from the same cloth, but there's different segments of that cloth. And different guys have different

capacities. What I've found over the years, though, is we all have our own different capacities, but once you reach capacity, that's a dangerous place to be living. And if you're holding onto stuff and not letting things go, eventually you start to spill over into the people around you. And that's why we're talking about forgiveness. Forgiveness is a huge thing that provides healing, because when I can forgive somebody else, I take something out of my cup. Now there's more space in there. I forgive myself for something big from the past. That's a big thing that comes out of the cup. Oh, something small pops up into my brain. Let me process that, work through it, forgiveness, cool. That's something else. And so that's how that that allows me to have the

capacity as a friend, as a husband, as a father, as a human to take care of the people around me. Because if I don't take care of myself, how could I take care of you? You can't. If I can't take myself, how am I supposed to lead my wife and my kids? I can't. Would you hire a fat out of shape personal trainer? Even if they had the knowledge, but they're not applying it to their own life? No. Maybe just because I could mock them. And they couldn't go anywhere because they're under contract. Yes. Okay. I love the way. Remember who you're talking to. Yes. I know. I know. As soon as I asked the question, I saw your face. I'm like, hold on. Hold on. This might be a chance for me to pour into them. I hate you.

You thought you were training me? Valid. It's on salad diet now, bitch. Uno reverse card. But you understand what I'm saying is you might have all the knowledge. Knowledge isn't power. Yeah, I don't take advice. Financial advice from like broke hobos.

Yes, 100%. And that's why when I was hang out with my buddy Brian Arnold, I ran a bunch of millionaires. Hey, what do you do for a living? What do you do? Why would I not ask those questions? Get the beta from the beta. You know, I love.

working at National Front. I'm working with companies all across the United States and the world. And I now have friendships with people in very senior positions and or owning companies that are doing tens of millions, hundreds of millions. One of our clients' groundwork started working with us, 44 million a year in 2018. They're now doing 1.6 billion. Incredible growth. I'm not good at math, but that sounds good. Yes. I'm not a mathematician, but I like that growth. I think those numbers are going in the right direction. Yes. Absolutely. And, you know, Flynn works with them. helping lead the charge. My buddy Brandon Wisdom got pulled from a company to help them grow.

This guy, Jeffrey, who's the number two at the company now, high school diploma, helped his dad build up at basement foundation repair company is now got acquired by groundworks growing. Like, these are guys I get to talk to and shoot a text. Like, hey, bud, what do you think about this? Hey, what about this? Hey, who do you have doing your taxes? Because I know your tax bracket has gone up, like things are a little bit different.

Yeah, things are a touch more complicated for your, you know, what is it, Quickbooks. Maybe you might have outgrown Quickbooks here a little bit. Yeah. And so just being able to have those different things in my life because of Eschleon Front also helps me grow. And if I can grow, then I can help the people around me as well. And I think, you know, that's the healing comes when you intentionally put in the work. And I hate that phrase, knowledge is power. It's a lie. The application of knowledge allows you to do powerful things. Yeah, knowledge is just knowledge. What are you going to do with it? Well, if you do nothing, it's useless. And it's a disservice

to the people around you. Now, I know there are team guys that hate on Joccoa L.A. for writing a book and starting this company. I get it. There are always going to be team guys that do that. Why do you think... Because of silent professional. Well, here's... That was ingrained into our brain from the very start.

Do you think that those same people didn't read men with green faces? I know they did. The greatest documentary of all time starring Charlie Sheen. They watched it. Yep. 100%. So if they found inspiration from a medium, but this is the thing.

Because people, I hear these same things too, but when I try to actually find the person and be like, listen, what is your actual objection? And I will say that there are different expressions of book, movie, all of those things. And I think that some of them are, they hold the, there's a difference between silent and quiet, by the way.

Yes. It says quiet professional, correct? not silent professional. Okay. Quiet would be though, never saying. Oh, no, no, yeah. I switched that at my thing. Yeah.

I do believe that there are expressions of all those mediums that can hold true to the silent professional and there are expressions that can't. Extreme ownership is not a war story book that is doing, it is not out there in a salacious way. No crap, there I was.

Knee deep in hand grenade pins. Totally. So when I can try, finally dial, it's like, do you have an issue with all books. Because I bet you men with green faces. And they'll say, yep, I totally'm like, well, why don't you have an issue with that?

Because that is somebody who is also then violating the same code that you were trying to apply to Jocko and Laf. And so if you can remove that, a lot of the times, I don't want to say it's often jealousy, but sometimes it seems it is very rooted in that. They did something that maybe that person

didn't think that they were capable of doing so they have to tear it down. I would agree with that, and I would say it is professional jealousy. It's connected there. Maybe not fully. Maybe some guys just, that's their standard. You know what?

I respect that. Although I better never hear a story of them trying to pick up a chick in a bar saying that they were a team guy. So I had a buddy who was giving it to me for what I was doing at Eschelon Front, mocking me, making fun at me. Oh, riding the coattails of jocco and life. Dude, right here.

You don't have to talk about me. Okay. All those things. And I just sat and listened. I let him vent. Right? I'm like, cool. All right, cool.

You know, whatever. He's venting. That's his perspective. That's his reality. Cool. Whatever. I don't agree with it. I'm not going to get angry.

We're not going to fight. Like, whatever. And I just asked him. I said, you retired? Yeah. Cool. Are you just retired for the rest of your life? Are you going to get a job?

No, I'm trying to get a job. Cool. So the resume that you send to this company, What are you going to put that you did for the last 20-something years? What's your first bullet point? Oh, weird. You were a Navy SEAL. Huh.

So are you going to list all your qualifications in the SEAL teams? Don't forget awards. And your awards and deployments and your unique special skill sets of leading under pressure. My hypocrisy only goes so far with this stuff. I can't know. And so I just started asking those questions. And there's a little bit of a tone of sarcasm for me, for sure. but he was a friend.

So you can get away with that with that close relationship. And by the end of it, he's like, I see what you're saying. I said, have you read Jock or Lace book? No. I said, if I send you a copy, will you read it? I don't know, maybe. No, no, no. Not maybe.

Yes or no. Because I'm not going to waste my money because I'm not getting it from them for free. I'm going to buy it on Amazon. And send it to you. And he goes, yeah. And so I've done that. And I was like, the thing is like, there's jealousy there and then also I think guys look and they don't understand it's a it's a it's a lack

of education you don't understand what we're actually doing an echelon front we're literally trying to help people be better leaders so that they can also go home and be a better husband a better wife a better a better husband better wife better father better mother just be a better human like that's what we want at echelon front we want to help people just be better versions of who who they are because at the end of the day, leadership is hard, but leadership is also a skill set. So if we can teach people these skill sets and they can then take that knowledge and actually apply it, why would we not do that? If you, and I asked my buddy also, I was like, hey, do you teach people shooting? He goes, yeah. I'm like, why? He goes, well, people need, I'm like, oh, they need the help.

It's the same thing. You're investing in your time to help teach people how to shoot. And the reason why they're paying you what they pay you is because you are a Navy SEAL. Correct. And you're very good at your job. You're very good at shooting. You're very good at teaching shooting. You're getting paid because of that skill set. We're getting paid because we have the ability to translate these lessons that we learned in combat to business. And also, by the way, there's no secret Navy SEAL leadership techniques. No. These concepts, I truly believe, have been around since humans started fighting other humans. everything we teach is in the Bible. There's nothing new under the sun.

That's what I'm saying. There's no curtain being pulled back to, oh, now they're going to know. Here's the secret Navy SEAL leadership. No, it's, there's no. And guess what? There's a lot of great leadership books out there that are not biblically based, that are not Navy SEAL base, that are not military based. And guess what they talk about, what we talk about. The laws of combat that we teach, cover and move, building relationships.

Simple. All right. Communicate in a simple, clear, and concise method. You were listening to my dad talk about rugby this morning. And I was connecting everything that we teach Troy Hughes. I loved it. Dad's awesome. I could sit and talk with him all day.

Everything he did in rugby is what you did in the SEAL teams, what I did, what I do in business. It's just small unit tactics. You and I have talked about detachment multiple times. That's prioritizing and execute. Hey, step back, look around, see what needs to be done right now? What's going to have the greatest impact on the mission? And then decentralized command, empowering your people.

And the big thing. for cover move, when you're building relationships, break down the barriers of those silos. Because every organization has silos. Yeah, they're very trunch. I mean, shit, we had them in the sealed teams. Oh, yeah. Even in tasking a bruiser, we were tasking a bruiser.

But guess what you had in tasking a bruiser? Charlie Butoon and Delta Blatoon. I'm sure there wasn't any competition, though. Now, I was Delta Platoon. And I love Leif. He's my brother. I love Matt Housby and all those guys over there. Chris and all those guys, right?

But man, I'm in Delta Batoon. That's my platoon. I'm in Delt's Patoon. There's squad one, squad two. Yep. I was in squad one. So naturally, you know, hey, fire team one, fire team two within squad one. I'm in fire team one because I'm our appointment.

It's what there's there's silos in every organization. And as you know in business, it's crazy. It's walled off sometimes. Literally walled off. And that's why I like saying breaking down, not removing. Yep. And I know some people might be like, I say breaking down because our silos also. necessary to have, hey, your roles and responsibilities, this division, this division,

this. Yes, absolutely. Siloes keep things separated. But if in business, we have silo walls that are so big that we're not communicating. If I don't know what you are working on. It's the transfer of information. You don't have to physically go walk over and sit in somebody's desk. But be intentional. You know, what I love, and I love sharing this, when we got to Ramadi, the first thing Giacloaf and Seth did was they went to those soldiers and Marines that owned the battle space and said, what can we do to help you guys? What can we do to help? Hey, what are you guys doing? Why are you doing it this way? How are you guys conducting operations? How can we help you? Intentionally breaking down those barriers and intentionally building relationships, which takes being default aggressive

to actually go do those things to actually talk to pick up the phone or maybe go walk somewhere and talk. And the other, like, how am I supposed to know what my priorities are? properly supposed to be if I don't understand what yours are. Because if we're both working on something bigger and we need to have alignment for the end state, man, I could have all my own priorities squared away. But what if my priorities are hurting yours? Oh yeah, or you end up fighting each other accidentally. Yeah, big problem. And so just it's crazy that there is that animosity. But at the end of the day, it's like, I know what we do. I know it works. I know it helps people and going back to what you said almost two hours ago like I love what I do because I've

seen the impact of businesses like that company groundworks you know 37 million then 48 million or 44 million the next year and then to now 1.7 billion 1.6 somewhere in there. It's fantastic growth. And think how many people's lives have been changed by that. Yeah. And then my buddy Lance I told you about door to work day construction implementing these things like the list of clients that I could like talk about that are implementing these things. And then I'm, are implementing these things is so long. And, but also, like, what these things have done for me and helped my marriage and helped my family has just been incredible.

It's pretty crazy, you know, Cody Gandy, our instructor, you know, he started off part-time helping as a role player. Just, I had to have a group of guys for this field training exercise. We were running up in Michigan. Sorry, needed, like, I just needed some role players that I trusted that at this time could do exactly what I needed them to do. And then, hey, we grow the box eventually. But hey, first time working together, first time doing this.

Hey, I need guys that I trust that are smart, capable, think outside the box. One of my other best friends, Dane Hattelman, he came out to help as well. And, you know, had these guys that were like, all right, cool. And then as the program was growing, we came to a point where it's like, hey, we probably need to bring somebody on full time. Dane was headed into a career as a pilot for the airlines. And Dane and Cody were like, my two guys that were just like running with stuff and, you know, offer Cody a full-time position just to run the admin logistics operation side of the field training exercise came on board. And it's cool because when he shares his story at the time, he's making $500 every two weeks. It's rough.

Yeah, you would talk about people working through things. $500 every two weeks. doing demolition work stuff which yeah and so he come and again I didn't know that and this is a guy I've known his whole life we grew up together and I didn't know he was in that position but he ran with it and he implements our stuff not only does he know the things he can teach him and he implements these things and now helped to grow the company and then started with him as a junior instructor in training you know it's just been crazy to see all these things like my buddy Danny Zeme that I grew up with was a firefighter came and started helping as again

role player part time then comes on full time now an instructor now but now helping lead out our first responders like geared echelon front training we've always had that but Danny's taking a lead on that and under Cody and so you know us working together through that and he's doing a phenomenal job because that's his passion he's also was on a SWAT team and so you have a guy who's a firefighter, a SWAT operator that knows these things, can teach these things, it's been unreal. And so you see the growth of what we experienced in combat. And I'm also sharing all this because this has helped me.

This has helped me heal. And when you see when you can take these really dark, bad things and you take the good from them, I think we both might know a guy that likes the word good. You know, I can't remember his name right now. Anyways, taking the, for those that are, I'm joking, is Jocko. One of my favorite memes is that's like the rose 12 pictures and it goes to the facial expressions. Oh, yes. All the different facial expressions are Jock.

Except it's the same picture. Yes, same picture. But for guys like you and I, Andy, to say, okay, cool, there's this cost. What can we take from that? What can we take? How do we actually apply it? And to see that being applied through our hands-on scenario-based leadership training. through our ALDAP program.

The muster is a two-day leadership event that we do with Jock-O-Laf and the whole team. Two full days of us diving deep into these things. I think when this episode comes out, we'll be in San Diego. How many of you guys don't know? 2030? This will be, I think, the 25th one is coming up in San Diego. And then we'll be in Denver in October. Sweet.

It's a two-day event. And it's Jock-Laf, the whole team. You know, we do battlefield reviews. We have an event called the council. we do FTCs for corporate clients. We have an individual FTCX program. So like, you know, Michael, if he was like, hey, that sounds cool. He could come to a two-day field training exercise as an individual to do it.

And we have companies that send small groups of that to test it out before they do the corporate site. That makes a little sense, actually. And then this year in November, we're launching our advanced FTCs to where it's going to be a little bit longer, longer days, longer in time, deeper discussions, deeper debriefs, like really. real time strategic coaching with the individuals and then an actual like game plan following like hey here's what you do to implement it follow on calls getting in together so it's just it's a it's a tier up and that's for people that have been through the FTX and now we might have some little outliers like you haven't been to an FTX but you've been to three musters you did the extreme ownership academy which is our online leadership training program that we have like we have all

these things that have grown at Echleon front and the intent for us at Echon front like our mission statement, core values, all the things, if we want to just wrap what we do into one thing, impact, reach, growth is what we're doing, creating impact. If it's not creating impact, we don't do it. We want to create impact. And then if we do that right, we'll reach more people.

And if we continue to reach more people and deliver impact, we will grow. the growth will come if we're delivering impact. And that's our intent at Eschleon Front is to impact other people's lives. And man, it's just, it's really cool. And I'm thankful. And that was probably the last gift that Seth Stone gave to me. And I didn't know that until I was talking with Jocco on one of his podcast.

Like I said, Seth, Andrew, and Leif were just instrumental to my life. growing and as a young man in the SEAL teams very impactful. Seth was my big brother and always took care of me, loved me, gave me a lot of really good guidance. When I'd veer off the path, he'd pull me back. He wanted me to win more than he wanted to win himself. He loved me more than he loved himself. And he did that for all of our guys. And I didn't know this, but Seth and I had reconnected. I pushed him away. I pushed all the guys away when I got out

because I felt really guilty for getting out because other guys had passed away and were getting injured overseas and getting killed overseas. And I just kept pushing, pushing away because of that guilt that I was holding on to. A lot of negative self-talk, just about who I was

and why I wasn't doing these things anymore. And so Seth being Seth never stopped pursuing that relationship with me. And we got reconnected and I realized how much he did love me and care about me. And what I didn't know is Seth had reached out to Jocko around the same time I was reaching out to Jocko just checking in and saying, hey, if there's anything I can do to help you in life at Ashland Front, let me know. If there's anything, just whatever it is.

And I continuously was reaching out to Jock. And I used to say, I still believe it to be true, but I used to say it a lot. the mentor doesn't seek out the mente. It's the other way around. And so I was seeking that mentorship from Jocko and Leif because I generally wanted to help them because I saw the impact. Using those principles restored my marriage.

And obviously my faith. I don't think it works if you were somebody who wants to mentor you, the other person has to want it as much as you do. Otherwise, it's not going to work. Yeah. You'd be so frustrated. Have you made that mistake with people?

Oh, yeah. Where you were pouring into them and you wanted them to win more than they wanted to win themselves. One of the mantras I live by is don't want more for people than they want for themselves. That's good. Yeah, I've made that mistake. Yeah. And so I-

It's not bad to do so. No, be cautious where you're directing your energy. It's just a reminder to me. I'm not saying people shouldn't care about others. No, yes. Yeah, but it can be misconstrued a little bit.

What I realized, what had happened, when I look at things through the lens of extreme ownership, I wasn't aligned with those people because I wasn't communicating with them regularly. There was lack of communication from my sense. side, which had those things fall apart. Which, again, that's on me 100%. But I was reaching out to Jocko.

What I didn't know is that Seth was also talking to Jock and said, hey, I think JAPE could use some help. He needs something new. He needs a new mission. And that's what triggered Jocko reaching out to me. That's awesome. And when I say that was his last gift to me, there was other little things, but that was the last one.

that changed my life. Yeah. And Seth passed away on September 30th, 2017. And that was devastating, man. Yeah. I was talking to him that morning. And he was headed up on a jump. Yeah.

Doing a base jump. Yeah. Base jump out of a balloon. It's, which is not technically a base jump. Oh, okay. Well, no, what you're saying isn't wrong. He was wearing base jumping equipment. And it's a really good training tool.

Yeah. It doesn't meet the stupid Guidelines. Building antenna span or earth, but it's a zero air speed jump. Yeah. And I was on Instagram messaging him, messaging with him that morning.

And the last thing I said to him was hit me up when you're done for the day, bud. And then I got a call from Laif Babin a few hours later. And I see Laif calling me. I'm all happy. It's Laif. It's my buddy.

It's my boss. Arguably the most recognizable voice on Earth. Texas Batman. You eat on any radio. They're like, that's Leif. Yeah. Anything. Back of the day, you know, when he was on Fox News a lot with Jocko.

Yeah. And you just, I'm like, oh, he's on TV. The single most recognizable voice I think I've ever heard. It's amazing. I mean, he can make hundreds of millions of dollars just reading people's books. Probably. Yeah. But I see LeifCon.

This is, one, my close friend, but also my boss. So I keep that separation. But when I see Laif calling, I'm happy. I see Jocko calling, I'm happy. You know? So I pick up the phone, hey, Leif. And he's like, hey, JP. And it was that tone that I knew.

It was the same thing when Carlos Mendez called me to tell me that Brad Kaepernar had passed away. The same tone, hey, JP. And I knew. And yeah, he told me that Seth that passed away. And there was, I don't. remember anything else that was really sad. I said, okay, I was like, I'll start reaching out to the guys. I called Amanda, because at the time she was working at her shop, she had a little place in South Haven, Mississippi, a little beer, liquor, wine accessory store, cool little place. And I called her,

I said, hey, Seth passed away. I need to, I need to start reaching out the guys. I don't know what to do next. and she started crying because she had gotten to meet Seth a few times and had gotten close with them just because that's who Seth is. And he made his way, he was doing a road trip across America on his motorcycle

and stopped in Memphis so that we could meet for breakfast one time. You know, we both were together out in the East Coast for our upgrade award ceremony. He was there. You know, we just, you know, man, I loved him. Yeah.

She loved him. She also loved him because she knew how much I loved him and how much he loved me. and took care of me. And so she calls her parents and to come pick up the kids because I was just hanging out

at the house with the kids. And I would have been fine if the kids stayed there but she just wanted to give me a little bit of space, quiet, a little quietness. And I'll never forget the look at my in-laws' face.

Like I said, I know my parents loved me, I love my parents, great parents. I've always known my in-laws loved me. But when they showed up, and I saw how much they were hurt by who I lost, I knew that my in-laws loved me.

Like I always knew it, but that was like validation. Because they both were like, JP, I'm so sorry. And they both gave me a big hug. They got the kids, took them back over to their house, and I just started working the phone. And then everything was a blur between then and San Diego. Do you have a funeral? I'm just and make a way out to San Diego and, uh, you know, I had the honor of standing watch over Seth at the funeral home.

Everyone's coming to in and out. And, uh, Jocko and Lave were like the last two guys to show up. Everyone kind of just cleared out and gave it to the three of us. And what really hurt me at that moment was seeing the pain on Jocco's face and Lave's face. These are two guys that have always taken care of me. And to see them hurting and I couldn't do anything to help, I couldn't take care of my leadership was really hard. There is nothing I could do physically.

And so we spent some time in there. I took off a bracelet that I had on my wrist that had the names of all the guys previously that had been killed, put it in the casket. and Leif put a few things in there that was a significance to him and him and Seth. Jocko presented Seth with his black belt into his casket. And he just sat there and he broke his silence by saying, we will not fail.

We will not fail Seth because he never failed us. And we will not fail the rest of the guys because they never failed us. and those words will always stick with me until my last breath and I go to heaven and I get a C. Seth and Mikey and Mark and Ryan and Chris and Aaron and J.T. and Brad and all these guys, right? Scott and my buddy Luke and all these guys. Like I know I know where I'm going and I know where they're at. But those words, we will not fail is something I think about every day. It's a heavy burden, man. It's a very heavy burden. heavy burden. I don't know if it's possible, but it's certainly a, uh, it's certainly a noble cause. Well, I think if you have that mindset of we will not fail, that's the best way to honor them. I agree. Because it, it guides your decisions now. You know, in my home office and I'm getting these, uh, these, uh, boards put back up like white boards, but they're not white, I'll just call them white boards. Um, well, what the hell are they? Marking boards. Don't,

tease me with something that looks like something that is something else. I just call it a whiteboard because... Are they made out of a glass or something? Yes. Just fucking say glass boards. All right. No one would know. There might be people that I don't know what that is. There's glass boards for practicing karate? I don't know. That would be very

dangerous and I feel like people would go to the hospital. Yeah. It's a bad business idea. That's why you break wood boards. Anyways, the glass boards, Andy, thank you for your correction, sir. You're very welcome. Yep. Anyways, harder on the art if it's going to be insulting. No, I wasn't an insult. I would never insult an officer of your caliber.

I laughed every day that people saluted me. I was like, God, I've got all you fuckers fooled. So once these are put up, I'm going to put these back up. And for these are like my five things so that I can think about we will not fail. Be a good Christian. Be a good husband. Be a good father. Be a good member of Eschleon Front.

and be a good friend. You're going to do five individual boards? No, just across the top. Okay. It's just, and I used to have it at our old house that we rented, I used, I was on the top. And when I'm at home in my now current office situation, the way, you know, I have my bookshelves behind me and off to the right, all these different books. Your book is on there as well.

Sweet. Absolutely. Actually, it's not on the bookshelf. It's on my desk. Slid off slightly in the garbage can. It's not a big deal. Absolutely not. Absolutely not.

Absolutely not. So I have, you know, and then I have different things like, you know, I have my helmet from when we were going through training and the teams has JP and big bold letters. And that's because Jocco is like, hey, you know, I need you to put your name on your helmet so I can find you to task you with stuff. Right. So things that are important to me, my boots or my bud's helmet, like a knife that Seth all gave to us. He, I'm sorry, that Seth gave to all of us before we deployed like different things like that. Just reminders. but when I'm sitting across from me on the wall above the window or above the doors is a flag that was

flown on the day that Seth passed away. And, you know, just different things and reminders. And so those five things are reminders like if I'm doing something or about to do something or want to do something that violates those, I don't need to do it. And now here's the thing. I will fail daily in all of those. And I know that. I'm a flawed human.

I'm a sinner. We're all sinners. We all fall short. But if I have those things as a visual reminder that will help me live my life to honor these guys. Because that is my obligation to live my life to honor these guys that poured into me that are no longer with us. But after this last weekend of what we were able to do as a platoon, it's also my obligation to live my life to honor those guys and to support them. And that was one of the things that we got to do on Saturday is. we went and did blacksmithing work. And the reason why we went to Bozeman, Montana area is because there is a guy there who has a business doing leather work for Cowboys and Rodeos. He was incredible. His name is Hyle Steele. And his business is steel halters, like steel, S-T-E-E-L-E-Hulters. And so he does all the leather rope work.

for cowboying and rodeos and everything. He's a professional rodeo guy. He's amazing, but he's also done blacksmithing work his whole life. And so one of the things that West did when he got out, as he was transitioning through some program, is he went and did blacksmithing work with Heil. And Heil is an incredible teacher, massive human, as you would imagine, most blacksmiths are. Very strong grips. His fingers had biceps.

Like you look at his hands. Yeah. Unreal. Yeah. And so he put it together for us to go and we're going to force steel. And the premise that West kind of put together for this was, hey, leaving today and leaving this time together, we are going to forge ourselves into better, stronger people. We are going to be different.

We're going to support. We're going to do these things better. And the significance also of forging that steel was seeing something mold and change over time. But it takes a lot of. hard work like we were talking about earlier. If you want to heal and, you know, and grow as a human from this cost, it's a long path. It's not just one little twist. It's not one little hammer. It's not one little change. So we're taking these pieces of steel and he shows us what we're going to do and it's like, hey, we're going to do steak flippers. I'm like, all right, cool. So when you say steak flipper,

almost all of our guys, you know, what we're thinking, we're going to take something. We're going to pound it down flat and it's going to be like a spatula. Like I'm thinking. Correct. Yes. Okay, that's what you're thinking. Well, he shows us what we're going to make, and Doug's like, you know, Doug Wall, he's a funny dude. Also, incredible sniper. Yeah, very, very skilled with weapons and all that stuff. He was like, hold on.

I thought we were doing some like a little pounding it thin. And it got a handle. Maybe we'll put some little grooves in it that we clearly cut with a machine. Yeah. No, we're taking this piece of steel and we're going to lengthen it out. thin it out. And we're going to take that and we're going to create a hook that's curved. And then we're also going to create a handle that looks like it's braided rope that's twisted with a little eye hook at the end. And that's what we're going to create. And he shows us and all the guys are like,

how are we going to go from this piece of steel? You know we don't know how to do this, right? Yeah. And so we're in a shop. I'm like, okay, this is crazy. So he shows us, which like anything in life, it's a skill set leadership is a skill set marriage is a skill set communication is a skill set blacksmithing is a skill set growth and healing is a skill set jiu jutsu skill set you have to put in the work but before you put in the work you have to be taught properly yeah like your wife learning is a skill set as well your and yes thank you learning is a skill set like your wife's ability to teach jihitsu is at the top yeah and i know you know that but i want to reiterate that because from ego is also saying that her as well. Her ability to teach is unmatched. There's only a few people I know that teach at a high

level that also compete at a high level that can do what she does. Yeah. And you and I are fortunate. You're married to one and I'm learning from Formiga. So we're very blessed. And Victoria does the same as well. And my buddy Brent, I haven't mentioned, but he's also one of our black belt coaches, former radio recon Marine. He was on my podcast, shared a story. His ability to teach is unreal. So those are my three people that pour into me for Jiu-Jitsu. You have your wife. Now we have this guy for blacksmith. He is like the coral belt of blacksmithing.

Just unreal. So he shows us, cool, this is what we're going to make. And guys are like, cool. I mean, I believe you,

but I don't understand how I go from this piece of steel to that, which is a lot of things in life. How do you go from here to there? And I think a lot of people screw up in life because they don't figure out the steps in between. You get overwhelmed. from start to finish. And it's like, no, make a small iterative step, small iterative change.

That's what blacksmithing is. So he shows us and he walks us through it. He's walking up. We've got to heat it up. It's got to look like this. It's got to lay flat. Boom, pull it out. Bring it over here.

Ding, ding, ding. All right, start from three quarters. Work your way down. Flip it 90 degrees. Work your way down. Go back to halfway work it down. One quarter, one quarter. Make sure you're really hitting that tip to like elongate it and thin it out.

Cool. he's working through it effortlessly. Just working through it. And you're just seeing this transformation real time in front of you. All right. So as you see, as it starts to get cold, it's a little bit harder.

You can make some changes, but not a lot of expansion and growth. Goes back, gets a hot, comes out. It's just glowing hot. And he's like, yeah,

this one gets a hot a little bit of time. He had like an old school coal one. He had this like turbo from like an engine. I know you're talking about. He hooked up to a fan system. And he's like, So cheese over there. He's like like just blowing the air in there. Just it's amazing. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Alongates it. Okay, cool. Hey, here's now how we're going to do the handle. Right.

Okay, cool. Hey, when you're putting this in there, it's going to be hot. Dip this portion in the water. Now you can hold it to have better instead of the tongs. Boom. Now you're going to you're going to chisel these lines in on each side. All right. They need to be deep. This is a long process. It takes multiple iterations to see any progress. multiple iterations, seeing progress. Now, cool. Now you're going to take that. You're going to create your little hook.

Boom. And then bending the steel and then now taking a thick piece, elongating it out, getting the curve on it. All right. Now we're going to braid it. We're going to twist it and put it in the vice where it was just looked normal. Like you just looked like you have these little divvits on each side.

And you go get that super glowing hot. Like just as I say, red hot. And it's just pull it out. Okay, put the little. end, like a little hook thing that you're holding on to, put that in the water cold so that that doesn't twist, but you want to twist the top part, put it in the clamp, put this on it, and then you're twisting it to create that rope-like twist. All right, cool. Now once you're done here,

we're going to go to this side, we're going to elongate that out, and then we're going to create the hook. And it turned out to be this piece that was, you would literally just be able to hook your stakes with and twist. And it was absolutely awesome to be able to go from a piece of steel to this. Oh, that's awesome. I would have gone with a spatula. I do like the twist, though. Metal is so crazy like that.

That looks amazing, man. And then I'll send you a picture of it, and that's not cleaned up. So then now we're like cleaning it up and making it look real pretty. And then we made some nails. which was extremely difficult. It seems super easy, extremely difficult. But,

yeah, this is, they, yeah, Ohio and his family set up, um, a dinner in their barn. We all walk in and look at that setup,

no. I got super emotional when I walked in because how intentional they were to create this moment for us. Yeah. And they would have been, you know, his wife and his daughters and Wes's wife had been cooking the food for us while we're doing all this stuff.

And, yeah, we hung a flag for Seth, hung a flag for Mikey, and then we had that flag for us. Let me see this picture. It's the fuckers. It's a good crew, man. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure this guy's over there on the right. Smur's not over there. But just to be able to have that moment with these guys and then, you know, we made these nails that look absolutely horrible.

but it was really cool. And then we all made those nails and then Wes made a Delta platoon brand, right? Just a triangle. And he branded it into a log and then we all pounded each of our, we all pounded each like one of our nails

that we made into that to signify to signify just bearing that stuff. Everything. Very powerful. And bro. each guy hammered their nail into there. And then there's a few guys that weren't able to make it because like grandmother passed away or or work or, you know, like I said, Mike last minute, unfortunately couldn't make it.

And so each guy in their honor did a nail in there for them. Like, hey, doing this for you, boom, put it in there. And then there's a hatchet that Wes had. And he gave it to Andrew Paul, who is the senior man, you know, he was number two. Seth was number one. and he took the hatchet, boom, buried it into that piece of wood to signify we're bearing the hatchet from all the BS. In between guys that may have occurred or not occurred or maybe you thought you had issues with another guy, we're bearing that hatchet.

It's done. And then went out to their orchard and they had a whole dug for us. We put it in the ground and we all covered it up with dirt. I said a prayer for the guys afterwards, and it was awesome. And then we went and sat in the garage, cracked open a few beers, and just sat and talked. And Hal and his wife and daughters and Wes's wife sat there with us and talked. And we just talked. And it was really cool to see this family so dedicated to helping veterans.

Because Howell would have been an awesome guy in the military. But as he said, he's like, that wasn't God's path for me. He goes, so I do the leather work to facilitate my ability to do the blacksmithing for veterans. That's awesome. So that leather work, you know, steel halters, that's their business to fund the blacksmithing work that they do. And it saved Wes's life. Because if Wes wouldn't have had that, I don't know where he would have been to fight through what he is currently fighting. through right now because the growth of him doing that steel work every day and having a gentleman pour into him every day you can't calculate that yeah and the impact of that family on our platoon now

is just unreal and so that's what we did and it's it's something we need to all figure out how to do And that's the thing we're trying to figure out. Like, hey, what are the next steps? How do you help guys? The thing I've been thinking about a lot is like, all right, just get creative, do something. You know, you know, Jock's form of working through all this stuff is he builds and works and does things to help other people. That's what Leif and Jocko did with extreme ownership. They poured into extreme ownership.

They poured into dichotomy of leadership. You know, the kids books that Jocko has written, there are men and women at the, at the Naval Academy at West Point right now because they read the Warrior Kid series. Yeah, I don't doubt it. It's crazy. Like, that's a factual statement. Jocko's met men and women at the Naval Academy at West Point

that are there because they read the Warrior Kid series that he wrote for kids. And then as they got older, they read Extreme Ownership, they read dichotomy of leadership. It's crazy. And your book is going to do the same. Like your book,

let's not get crazy. Stop. Let's not get crazy. You're at a 10. We need you to 6. All right. I'll bring it back down to a 7. Six is unacceptable.

Seven, okay. But, man, your book is awesome. Thank you. Dave Burke also ran a book. Need to lead. Same thing. He sat in that chair and talked about it for a couple hours. It was awesome.

Rob Jones. Haven't met Rob yet, but he even in point. Yes, works with us. Double above the knee amputee. He's an echelon front instructor. He ran 31 marathons in 3. 31 consecutive days and 31 different cities. To raise awareness that veterans are not broken

and we can do incredible things. And his book is called Put Your Legs on. Because every day, guess what Rob Johns has to do? I was going to say that's not many people can title a book that appropriately. Yeah. I mean, to be a dad, he's got to put his legs on. To be a husband, he's got to put his legs on.

To be a national on front instructor, he has to put his legs on. The only option for Rob every day is to put his legs on and move forward. And I'm thankful, you and I don't have any of those types of injuries. Yeah, no kidding, man. But we got to put our gear on every day. Yeah.

Just like we did in combat, we had to put our gear on. And for me as a believer, it's the same thing. That's what the Bible tells us. Put on the armor of God daily. Not, hey, you should do this once a week and think about it every single day because we're under attack as believers, just like we were in combat. Every day, you were there. You had your gear on, correct?

So only one time I took my plates off and I deeply regretted it. Yeah. We were at an extremely high altitude. So I was appreciative then, but not at the threshold of the door getting ready to make entry. I was like, wow. Would have been worth the weight. Yep. 100%.

Yeah. And, you know, in Ramadi at Camp Crigador, you know, the lessons that we learn from the soldiers and Marines, which were some of the most brave human beings I've ever worked alongside. National Guardsmen, Marines just getting after it every day. Those guys always had their gear on. And we learned to always have your gear on. You couldn't walk from one building to the next at Camp Crigador without there being an inherent risk of that base being attacked or mortars or anything like that.

It's just, it's crazy. Indeed. Well, I've got to get you out of here soon. But on the blacksmithing route. Oh. So Josh Smith is the youngest master blade smith that has ever been. And this blade is a perfect one for you. This is their war goat.

Wargoat? Yes. I like that name. It wasn't selected by accident for you. Oh, okay. I figured that you would appreciate this the most. So he's awesome. I have done some forging with metal with him down in his shop and his garage.

That's how I have an understanding of what you're talking about with the heat and the changing of the metal. I figured you would have a good. appreciate one of these blades for sure. Do not cut your finger off again. I didn't fully cut it off almost. Do not cut your finger at all. Please. There you go. It's a sick blade. Bro. Yep. That is. I don't know what you call the pinky thing, but I like the pinky loop. That's what I call it. That's a sweet blade. What can also be for your index? I mean, I don't, I'm not here to tell people how to party. Have you ever, like, worked with somebody who does knife fighting? No, I can't. carry a gun. Yeah, okay. So if you see somebody holding a knife like this, run really fast? Yes.

Because if they're... First off, a good rule of knife says if somebody pulls one out, get the fuck out of there. Because knives scare me way more than guns. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but if somebody's doing this? Yeah, the little, hi, can I get you? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, cool. Yeah, I'm gonna back away. Yeah, I might be able to kick that out of your hand and then run or whatever. So you're saying if they go the other way, though, you're in trouble. This is made for slashing. So cool, you put up your hands, I'm slashing through. I'm slashing through your forearms. I'm slashing through your neck.

I'm slashing through your gut. I'm pushing through your stomach. I'm pushing and then coming back and stabbing. If somebody has this, go. Like, just get out of there as fast as you can. Because also the other thing is like, I can defend myself. I can block. Totally.

I can strike. I can push you back and then come through, cut the inside of your bice up. Like, cool, you strike, I block. I cut through your biceps. Yeah. then your arm doesn't work anymore. Yep. Yeah.

No, thanks. Yeah. No, thank you. I figured you would appreciate that particular blade. Sorry, I went to level 10 again. That's fine. You might have been at 12. It's hard to say.

Lucas reminds me. So I do my podcast with my buddy Lucas. Did you check luggage or carry on? I'm going to check this back. We can mail it to you. No. Okay. Yeah.

All right. No, I don't want to wait on this. Okay. I want this with me. This is beautiful. Thank you, Ben. That's... Josh, Josh Smith.

I thought you said Ben. No, Josh Smith. Oh, sharpened by... Oh, that's sharpened by Ben. That's one of his employees. But also thank you, Ben, for sharpening the knife. Yes, okay. Josh Smith is the founder.

Thank you, Josh. Ben is the employee that... Thank you, Jason from Quality Control. Packaged by Preston and Ben Sharpened. Dude, Montana Knife Company, let's go. Yeah, just down the road to Missoula. Yeah. Which, I also love that you have that in your Black Raffle Coffee store.

The knives, yeah. Yes. And your apparel? Did you... I heard that you're... Coffee shop was One of the best in the nation It's pretty dope

It's really loud and annoying for the microphone Oh, that's right Sorry Michael, you can quiet that out What do you want to leave people with man Closing thoughts by JP So one I would Just real quick I just want to give

You know obviously some love To my wife that I hope I Articulated properly Over this podcast Of just how amazing she's been to me One thing I didn't share earlier, and I haven't shared this with many people, the day that Carlos called me and told me that Brad Kavanaugh had died, I called my wife right away, and I told her that Brad had been killed.

Brad was my last roommate that I had before I got out and moved out to Mississippi to be with Amanda and our family. And then I went right back into work and told my boss, one of the owners of the company, Jeff. incredible human he goes okay is a funeral going to be in San Diego and I said yeah he goes I need you to go see some of our clients in San Diego

in the next couple weeks let me know when the trip works for you helping me out called a man again when I was driving I get home and she had some Jameson and Gingerelle for me and dinner ready for us in the family we sat and talked and she was asking to make sure I was okay and we were just talking through stuff

put the kids down have some drinks and we had that evening together. What I didn't know for a very long time is that night she had planned on serving me divorce papers. When I came home from work that night, she was just going to be her there and she was going to serve me divorce papers. And even though she was at the point of, I'm done, we're done,

she still had enough compassion and love for me. man to not do that i don't know how i would have handled both of those things in one night i can speculate yeah i don't know i do not know what i would have done whether it was hurt myself or go downtown beale street and just hurt as many people as i could i don't know she had enough love for me as a human and as the father of her children to not hurt me more. And when I say more, she didn't hurt me. I hurt her. But she didn't want to create any of that to me. Months later, it got worse than we did get a divorce. And like I shared, we were able to get our marriage back by the grace of God and forgiveness and a lot of work, a lot of work. Yeah, let's not leave that part out.

And applying the principles of extreme ownership and what we are learning together in church and in counseling and in a small group through our church to actually and actually putting an end to work. And it's still work. But about a year later, we got our marriage back. So I want to articulate how much I love my wife and how much she has saved me over the years and my kids as well. Like when I see my kids being good humans, loving people, serving Jesus, training jiu-jitsu, trying their best at school and work and all these things. like it brings me joy. I'm also thankful for the push that Jocco Leif have always given me to be uncomfortable.

You know, I, the reason why I do my podcast with Lucas is just to try to help other people. I don't want to, we talked about this earlier. I'm not trying to be Jocko. I'm not trying to be you with my podcast. I'm just trying to be the best version of who God created me to be. And so my,

the intent behind my podcast was to share the lessons that I have from Echelon, front to help other people that will never work with Eschelon Front, to share my faith, to grow the kingdom and to help other people share their stories by interviews or whatever we do. We're a very small podcast, and I'm good with that, and I love it because we've led people to the Lord. Size doesn't matter, man. Impact does. Yes.

We've led people to the Lord. We've had people come to Eschalon Front trainings and FTXs and musters or they're a part of Extreme Motor Ship Academy now or they're reading Jocko and Lace books. Like that's all I care about. You know? And like the commitment that Lucas and his wife has done to help me do those things is incredible. But also my team at Eschlele on front. Cody is unreal. Like I say the kid because he's in his 30s to see what he's done with his life and his marriage and all the other instructors that I mentioned, you know, but my FTCX guys, the field training exercise guys, like Cody and Jesse and Josh and James and Joe and Brent and all these guys that commit to helping us at Eschlon

Front, their loyalty gives me drive every day. The loyalty that Dave and Jamie have to Jockle and Laf and to me gives me drive every day. The loyalty that Andrew Pauls had to me since SQT like Laif Babin has had, gives me that drive. And like I said, all the instructors. But what Joccoa Laf has created, I'm thankful to have a seat at the table. You need to find people that are going to drive you to be a better version of who you are.

But you have to decide to put in the work every day. What type of legacy are you going to leave? Because at the end of the day, each and every one of us is leaving a legacy what is it going to be one of the things i've learned through life an echelon front every time i lost sight of what my actual mission was at that point in my life that's when i would make mistakes so we have to have a clearly defined mission you have to create a plan and you have to put in the work every single day easier said than done but i think you're

Correct. Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity. Have you seen the title of my second book? No. I might have the cover art. I think you'll appreciate this. It's not a big deal. Hopefully I have it saved easily accessible here. I'm not an artist, so I might have had to have some assistance. It's a working title. It's not a big deal. Didn't you create that? because of some of like the things with your book. Oh, 100%. That's amazing. Yeah, it's titled extremely limited ownership.

There are no bad leaders, only bad teams. Oh, hell yeah. How long did it take us to put this together? Like three years have we been chatting about getting you out here? Yeah, I'd say at least two. We'd have some dates. Shit would happen. Yeah.

Yeah. I know. It happens. Well, we got to get you at least probably heading back towards the airport shortly. So I'm going by your store and grabbing some swag and then going to the airport because the apparel that y'all have it doesn't suck it doesn't suck yeah let's get you out of here then cool thank you yep