FULL SEND PODCAST - Shawn Ryan | Ep. 152
Episode Date: March 27, 2025Presented by Happy Dad Hard Seltzer. Find Happy Dad near you http://happydad.com/find (21+ only). Video is available on http://youtube.com/fullsendpodcast/videos. Follow Nelk Boys on Instagram http:...//instagram.com/nelkboys. Part of the Shots Podcast Network (shots.com). You can listen to the audio version of this podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts & anywhere you listen to podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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All right.
Me and Sean are starting out the pod.
We're tossing in a little Alp.
Shout up to Tucker.
You were on Tucker's too?
No, I've been on Tucker.
You've had him on, right?
Yeah, super cool, dude.
How is that?
He's a man, right?
I love that guy, man.
Did he get you into?
He came to Nashville and had like a launch party for this.
Oh, okay.
It had Ramsey's place.
And I was like, oh, fuck it.
I'll try one.
About knocked me on my ass.
And then I was like, I kind of like this.
I just love the burning on the lip.
Me too.
You know what I mean?
That's like the main thing, right?
Yeah.
Did you see what we did with him when we gave him the big Zinn container?
Did you ever see that?
No.
So we surprised Tucker with like the world's biggest Zinn container.
I'll show it to you after.
Nice.
Yeah, we like flew it in on a helicopter.
I don't think he's a big fan of Zinnon anymore.
anymore this was like a year and a half ago yeah nice yeah but uh no dude i'm pumped to have you here
sean ryan this guy's become like an absolute inspiration to like millions of people i know
you're in the navy you're in the cia so much military you know experience and stuff like that and
now you started a podcast and i think you've just obviously become like a help to so many people
and inspired so many people did you ever think that like back then did you ever think you'd be doing
like a podcast now that's so successful no definitely not
I didn't, I didn't even like talking to people.
So, I still get nervous for these damn things.
Yeah.
Do you?
A little bit, yeah.
Yeah.
You're considered a legend too, so you always want to do a good job, right?
Yeah.
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Let's get into the pod.
Who's the craziest person that you've had on?
The craziest person I've had on.
Obviously, you've had Trump.
Man, I don't know, man.
I've had a lot of like really good interviews.
But I don't know.
And every time somebody asked me this, somebody knew somebody different pops into my head.
But I had this dude Chris Beck on.
and like one of the most brilliant minds that I've ever encountered, like just a super smart guy,
but he was the first, maybe the only, hopefully the only, but transgender Navy SEAL.
Really?
Yeah, yeah.
And he wrote a book called The Warrior Princess, and then he transitioned back into a man.
Started as a man, went to a woman.
Yep, yep.
And then joined the military?
After he was a SEAL.
Okay.
He transitioned to a woman.
I mean, as you can imagine, the SEAL team just, like, lost their fucking minds over.
They probably were happy.
I was going to say.
Yeah.
I just think it's, like, fascinated to get in somebody's mind.
I really wanted to know, like, how does this happen?
Especially to a SEAL.
And we're pretty headstrong guys.
And so I was like, how, how's this going to go?
And also, like, I wanted, I mean, he had transitioned back.
So I wanted people to see, like, what that looks like and the effects, you know, that it has on people.
because, you know, I mean, it sounds like it's getting better now, but at the time, you know,
we heard all this stuff about kids transitioning and Washington.
They were confiscated kids, you know, from their, or they were taking them.
The state was taking them if the parents didn't want the surgeries to happen.
And so I was like, well, let me get inside this guy's head and like, let's talk about how this happened
and what the effects are.
It's one of the most fascinating interviews I've ever done.
I've got to check that one out.
What did you credit it to?
Long story short.
so super like rough childhood a lot of like sexual abuse and and and uh and his dad was pretty abusive
i think him and his dad has since made up but he basically he had uh some brothers and sisters but he
was the one he was like the whipping boy you know they would take him in and just knock the shit out of him
and so what he did he did not want to be a woman but what he would do is he would go up in the attic
and like skip school as a child and put his sister's clothes on.
And he goes, I didn't want to be a woman or a girl.
He's like, I just didn't want to be me, you know, sexual abuse by the neighbor.
Dad knocked the shit out of him all the time.
So he would just put these different clothes on and pretend he was somebody else.
And then after he got out of the SEAL teams, he rode with the Hells Angels, cocaine, whole gamut with like a lot of us do,
we just lose our minds when we get out and so he wanted to get better he started going to
therapists and he got the wrong therapist and and i don't know if you've ever done any therapy but
they always go back to childhood right she started talking to him about his childhood and he said like
yeah you know i was severely abused as a kid and i would put my sister's clothes on as like a young
like 10 years old boy and and uh and she like kind of like mind fucked him into going you want to be a woman
you want to be a woman, and he was still fucked up on opiates and coke and all these other drugs and
stuff. And don't quote me on the exact drugs, but it was a combination of a lot of things plus
booze, like a lot of booze. And she told him to write a book and she helped him write the book.
And when he was all fucked up one day, she slid over the, you know, the contract and he just signed
it, not realizing like he had signed like everything to her.
So he wanted to redact the book and he's like, I don't want this released.
He was like, sorry, bud, like, I own you.
And so the book got released.
And then he decided he didn't want to be a woman anymore.
So he came back.
That's awesome.
He didn't go the full gambit, though.
Yeah, that's good.
He didn't go the full gambit.
You don't want to go full gambit.
That's good.
You've had Trump on.
How do you think he's doing so far?
I know I saw, you said on Joe Rogans that America maybe aren't the good guys anymore when
you were on there.
Do you think that now Trump is in office, has that changed at all?
Or what's your outlook on that?
I got to be honest. I'm not following it as much as I should be. I'm kind of exhausted with the political, you know, environment. But I mean, he seems to be doing good. You know, I mean, the Doge stuff. I mean, I'm a little worried about the economy. I think that the government needs to be cut. You know, I just interviewed the secretary of the VA yesterday. And they're getting ready to slash 83,000 jobs, which they need to. I mean, there's like 180, 480,000 government employees in the VA. And, and, you're getting ready to slash 83,000. And,
And there's only 450,000 active duty in the Army.
There's definitely an imbalancer, you know, but you see all these jobs getting cut.
And I'm kind of wondering, like, well, how's this going to play out with the economy?
But at the same time, I'm not saying we shouldn't be cutting these jobs because there's so many, there's so much fat to trim in the government.
But as far as being the good guys, yeah, I mean, I think it's great that we're pulling out all these wars.
But, I mean, you know, we're going for four-year increments.
geopolitically I was saying too because like I saw recently I guess we struck the like Iranian is it the Houthis in Yemen and then you got the Gaza and Israel thing going on in Ukraine Russia what do you make of like the geopolitical like wars going on right now is it a scary time or yeah I think it is yeah I'm just Israel alone you know that's who knows how that's going to go I don't know I'd like to see us pull out of everything you know I'm not not really sure what
we're doing over there but do you think trump can put an end to the russia ukraine thing i think he's off to a good
start you know what do you think i think he can too i think he's a really good negotiator and he seems like
he's just a people pleaser right too so i think you you never see him insulting someone like he doesn't
insult i guess he insulted zolensky but maybe he knows that you got to insult zolensky to kind of get to
him too but i think if you insult Putin you kind of you piss him off and then he's never going to make a deal
with you, right? So what do you think was like the most nonsense war that America's ever been
involved with?
Jeez. I would say it's a toss-up between the Vietnam War and then probably, probably right
around to the Iraq War. I mean, I'm not super knowledgeable on Vietnam, but I don't know
what we were doing in Iraq, you know, even when I was there. I mean, I was all about the mission
and, you know, doing the work and killing people that wanted to kill us. But, you know, it was
like did we really need to be there probably not i mean if you look back you know at haliburton and
and uh cheney those ties and he's a part of the biggest logistics company in the war
the only logistics company in the war yeah man do you know about this shit i mean i know a little
bit about it but i'd love to hear from you yeah so what is that defined for our audience like
what's a logistics company don't quote me on this i'm going to butcher it a little bit because i
didn't know we're going to talk about this but cheney was uh i believe he was
the CEO of Halliburton. And so if you went to Afghanistan, if you went to Iraq, Halliburton
pretty much ran all logistics for both of those wars. And so what I mean logistics, that's like
they're building the fuel stations, they're building the chow halls, they're building the barracks,
they're doing the laundry, they're cooking the food, they're sorting through the mail, they're
For the U.S. military?
For the U.S. military. So I can't remember the percentage, but the majority of people that were over
there were actual contractors, right? In the way these things work is all these companies will put
bids in, you know, for government contracts. Well, just so happens that, you know, Halliburton won
like all the bids. And so there was definitely an incentive. I don't know what his ties were
when he was vice president. But to come from that company to the vice president and then to win all
those, the company that he came from Halliburton to win all those contracts in a war that
we probably shouldn't even have been in. Just basically everything you see, all the infrastructure
that was built, all the, everything, it was all Halliburton. I mean, it's the military industrial
complex, like unraveling right before your eyes, you know, and I didn't, I didn't realize that
when I was there, you know, because, I mean, we're busy doing, you know, sniper work and all kinds
other shit but and then even into
Afghanistan it's kind of like
after the bin Laden raid it's kind of
like what what are we doing
here like in the in the
ROE's starting to really tighten up
and the Obama administration
really kind of chopped our legs out from underneath
of us he got to the point where Marines
would be out there and if they got shot out
and the guy dropped their weapon
they weren't supposed to return fire and kill
the bad guy but it's it's like
if that's what you're going to do here then like
what the fuck are we doing here
anymore you know you're not even letting us do the job we're not killing as many bad guys it got to be
only the tier one units where we're doing any real work i think probably the afghan war you know
the operation enduring freedom whatever you want to call it afterwards after the bin laden
raid was kind of senseless and uh it just seemed to drag on and on and then the entire iraq war
yeah you have an incredible story i know you joined the navy when you're 18 yeah and did you do
eight years in the Navy? I did six years. I did a little less than six years. What made you want to
like enlist originally like all those years back then? I wasn't really good at anything growing up.
I wasn't an athlete. University wasn't really a path forward for me. Plus I would have just blew it
with happy dad every day, all day long. I was always into like GI Joe's and shit even as a kid.
And the military, I just always had a draw to the military. I wanted to go to war. I didn't know what that
look like and and uh so then i started looking at special operations stuff marine reconnaissance nobody
would take me because i was little nobody really took me seriously it was probably like a buck 30 maybe
and uh the navy recruiter like stuck his head out and was like hey have you ever thought about being
a seal and i was like what's that so he gave me some pamphlets i went home studied it went to the
library and we didn't have the internet at the time and and uh checked out all the books started breton
movies about seal teams the national geographic and discovery channel stuff was coming out and
so i was like yeah let's do this and i wanted to make my dad proud man i just always felt like a
failure being the oldest and just fucking everything up you know all i really cared about was
booze and chicks yeah i'm still on that phase i'm getting over that face hey good for you man
it took me a long time to get out of that phase so six years in the navy what was that like
you know i went to boot camp that was kind of a joke um
And then went to Buds.
That was really hard for me.
Got through that, went to SQT, went to jump school, and then showed up at SIL teammate, only to find myself to go to Europe to Germany.
So more booze and more chicks, which was great.
I was just like, man, I didn't go like through all this training to booze with Germans.
Beat people up at October Fest and shit.
And so I had made my decision to get out then.
And then we got back and then we went to Afghanistan.
We did some stuff in Afghanistan.
It was right after Red Wings happened.
So Red Wings was the lone survivor movie with Marcus LaTrell.
And so it was, it was, it just wasn't like a great time.
You'd think we'd go over there and just fucking kill everybody.
What was that like, like it was somber, man.
It was deployed into Afghanistan.
I mean, it was surreal.
You land and like, it's like another world over there.
You see how people live and stuff.
And, I mean, that stuff's fascinating to me to see people living in caves and mud huts and shit like that.
And, I mean, those people are so poor, they'll put, if you had a bag of fertilizer or grass seed or something, you threw it away, they'd, like, hang that up in their house as art.
But we didn't do, like, a tremendous amount.
We hit a couple of targets and brought back some bad guys and threw them in a little hole and interrogated them and stuff.
and worked with the Canadian Special Ops guys, which were awesome.
Those dudes were, like, really cool to work with.
We got sent home early because of Red Wings.
It just got very political.
That's when I realized I was like, I'm done, man.
We did, like, maybe three operations that were, they were pretty cool, but it wasn't everything it was cracked up to be.
So I volunteered to go to Iraq.
And what year was that in?
That was 0506.
and jumped into my sister-batoon in Iraq, and then we got pretty busy.
We were there to, like, it was another mission that I just wasn't excited about.
It was protecting, like, the prime minister or something.
And we had an awesome boss, OIC, lieutenant, and he started farming us out for a bunch of sniper work.
The very first mission we went on, I was there for like a week, and then we were doing real shit.
So basically what he did is he like looked for conventional army infantry units or or supply routes that guys were getting killed on with IEDs and they were getting blown up.
So they would send us in.
We do like a reconnaissance targeting package, figure out where these guys were getting blown up if there were any patterns.
And we would bring in a couple of the guys from that unit, like teach them like this is how you set up aside.
This, we'd teach him everything from setting up a sniper hide in an urban environment to shooting, to targeting, to finding patterns.
And then we would actually go on the operation with them.
And the first night we went out, we killed like four dudes, I think, like within.
Sniping?
Yeah, well, kind of.
They wound up being like 50 yards away.
But it wasn't like a miraculous sniper shot.
So we had these guys come in, two dudes on a moped.
and so they were planting the bomb in the same exact place like every i can't remember it's like
every thursday or whatever it at 8 p.m and these two dudes would roll in on the moped pull out the
bomb out of the back planted wired up tried to drive off and we smoked them and uh so they're laid
on the side of the road once again like my badass boss oh i see then there was this taxi and he kept
like driving circles because the convoy the army convoy
gone by and the explosives didn't go off because the guys that were going to initiate it we'd
killed they came by like another time they came by like three times all of a sudden you heard
my o i see go mattie light that fucker up and so here's the road a sniper hide on this side in a
building sniper hide on that side of the building and then we had two automatic weapons guys
that basically like the M60 machine gun it was like an upgraded version of that and there was two guys on top of the roof and they just peaked over the lip of the roof and you just saw like tracers just like heavy machine gun fire coming down from two different angles hit this fucking car blew it to shit kept driving hit hit like a electrical box the electrical box blows up and then um we were like right on we were
like right on who is that and uh it was i mean he was obviously involved because he kept
driving by see if the if the explosives why they didn't go off then we called in the army to come
in like do the cleanup and bag the bodies and pull all their IDs and shit and so wound up
uh we had killed the two iED emplacers which were just you know little minions and then the guys
in the taxi one of the guys wound up being the cell leader like the iED cell
leader for the entire region and we just you know killed them and so so that was really cool so we did
a lot of that stuff in bagdad where we were just and then those guys we get they didn't get blown up
again for the rest of the time it took everything that they learned from us and killed a bunch
more people uh we ran into them bad guys not people terrorists but we ran into them right before we
left and they were like dude we we like we've been getting it on
word got around and then all these other units started calling they're like hey can we use you guys
over here and so we'd go over there and then kind of do the same thing all over again what was like
the civilians like appetite when you guys were there were they like angry with you guys or were they
like happy you guys were there like because i know at some points they were saying like you guys
were just being policemen there at a certain point right i don't know if that was when you were
there but now we were never policemen but um i mean look i guess the way you can kind of look at it
is america right you got super blue states and super red states and i'm sure if you go to a super blue
state a lot of people hate you you know what i mean and if you go to a red state a lot of people
probably like you and that's kind of like how it was over there you know and so we would go
into these places and and break in and set our sniper hides up in people's houses and people's
buildings and like that particular instance the shoot i was just talking about that operation they
were emplacing those bombs and this woman's like like right in front of her house and she had
little kids you know and she's actually the one that told us she was like these guys come
every thursday at 8 p.m and my my kids are outside trying to play or like they're coming in and
breaking my windows and you know it's causing a lot of violence so she like dimed them out and was
like super happy that we're there, super happy that we killed those people, those terrorists.
I don't know why I keep calling them people. But, you know, and then you go to other places where
the town was black. And black means no Americans are allowed in there. Nobody's allowed to fly
over it. No helicopters, no tanks, no humvees. And then they would send in the seals to go and kind
of take care of business on the outskirts of the town. Or they'd send in the Marines to a place like
Fallujah and just, you know, wipe everything out. It was kind of hit or miss, but the majority of
the places that we operated in, they were like really happy that we were there. So yeah, we went
into this one place and like I said, it wasn't my specific hide because we have like, I don't
know, four or five hide sites all around a designated area where we thought they would show up.
And these guys broke into a house. Another sniper team on the same op broke into this house
and wound up being an Iraqi prostitute.
And you would think that they don't have that stuff
because they're all full dress.
Like they wear the, you know,
a prostitute broke into.
Yeah, no, no, no, no.
We broke into a prostitute's house.
And so, and she didn't speak any English
and those guys didn't have an interpreter,
but she kept trying to tell them, I guess,
that there were going to be visitors showing up.
But she was super happy that they were there.
She's like cooking foreign them and making tea
and all this other shit.
So the prostitutes loved you guys too.
Yeah, they love, oh, yeah.
But you'd have like these Iraqis banging on the door
And she'd have to shoe them away
And then 15 minutes later
Another one would bang on the door
And she'd answer and shoe them away
And it was like they came over comm
So like I think we uh
I think we set up in a prostitute's house
Like
Well make sure you keep watching the target
No don't get too busy over there
But that's hilarious
But yeah everybody
Most of the people were just like really happy
That we're there to kind of get rid of
the bad shit that was going on in the neighborhoods.
You put your life on the line there and, like, you serve there.
Looking back now, do you think that's a war that should have happened?
No.
At the end of the day, man, you know, there's people trying to kill you and you're trying to
kill them.
I hate to say it like this, but everybody's just doing what they believe in.
Those guys believe that we're the bad guys, and we believe that they're the bad guys.
And, you know, only God really knows.
We probably should have never been there.
If somebody were to infiltrate our country, I'd do the same damn thing they were doing
to us. I'd kill as many of them as I could. But no, I don't, I don't think we should have been there.
I do think that we killed a lot of evil, you know, in that country. But should we have been
there? But Afghanistan, that's a different story. You think that one was justified? Yeah, I think
that one was justified up to a certain point. And then after that point, I mean, look, we went in there
to eradicate terrorism, right? When you started getting these stupid rules, like the one that I had
mentioned earlier, they were sending the Marines into the Hornets nest and giving them these
ridiculous ROEs. Like, if they shoot at you and they drop their weapon, then you can't shoot back.
And it's like, dude, like, they're going to get killed or they're going to be worried that
they're going to go to prison. So if you don't want them to kill the bad guys, that's when I was
working for the agency or contracting for the agency. We didn't fall under those rules.
But, you know, it was just like, man, like, what the fuck are we even doing here? After that,
bin Laden right if if the goal wasn't to eradicate every terrorist within that country then
what are we doing there what's your opinion on 9-11 do you think that's something that could
have been prevented definitely I mean we got a warning we got several warnings right but
you know I went over and interviewed this guy Ahmad Massoud about the about the funding that
we're doing to the terrorists right now and what the withdrawal was like because those guys were on
our side there was a there was an alliance you know the most recent
withdrawal like in yeah yeah the most recent withdrawal and we turned that over to basically our
enemies and all the guys that fought along with us like there were a lot of afghans that were on our
side that were fighting with us and i mean 20 years these guys have fought with us and then we just
left them well they're still there fighting Taliban fighting al-Qaeda fighting these you know terrorist
organizations his dad was the guy that we were going to partner with um because he had that
alliance. But way back then, his dad was also Ahmad Massoud. He's known as the Lion of
Panshir, just a phenomenal warrior and leader. Bin Laden killed him, had him assassinated.
They set up a fake interview where they sent in like a news crew. I believe it was two days
before they did 9-11 because bin Laden knew that we would use the alliance, the resistance,
to infiltrate Afghanistan and to use them to, like, help us get the lay of the land
and use their intel networks and all that kind of stuff.
Well, they had set up an interview much like this, but they put the explosives in the cameras.
So they started the interview and then blew the cameras and it killed Ahmad Massoud,
the lion of Panshir.
Well, he had tried to warn us days before that that this was going to happen and nobody paid
attention you know and so he said there's going to be an attack on the oil yep wow and who did he warn
do you know uh he warned the administration that you know the bush administration and um they didn't take
it seriously there's so much weird shit with that like all the bin laden's flying out yeah there's a lot
of weird stuff around 9-11 but yeah i mean it could have been prevented so when did you join the
CIA. I got out in November of 06 and I wanted to, I wanted to be a business man. I'd read Trump's
books on deployments when we weren't doing anything. And I was like, man, I want to do what this
fucking guy's doing. And so I thought I would get out and start a real estate empire. And that
didn't work. And so I was going to open a Jimmy Johns with my dad. I didn't have any money.
And he didn't have the money to fund it either.
And so I was like, well, I was like, there's this contracting thing that I can do and pays really well.
And so I was like, maybe I can go over there and just work for like a year and then come back and it'll, we can just pay for it cash and start this damn sandwich shop and open a whole bunch of them.
So I started contracting and I tried like all these, I just floated my resume everywhere with the NSA with the,
actually you don't really know like who you're applying to yeah how do you apply to like so there was
like all these companies out there where you would they would they would take your resume and kind of
farm it out and put you in groups like because at that time contracting was huge so they had like
police officers and DEA agents and FBI and SEALs and Green Berets and they would take like your
experience and put it into a tiered system when the agency or the NSA or the DEA or state department
and whoever needs guys, they would be like, all right, well, what caliber of warfighter do you want?
What capabilities do you want?
They would tell the company, this would be like to a company like Blackwater.
And they'd be like, well, we want all special operations guys that have been in for however long.
So they would go into the resume files and the tiered systems.
They'd like, all right, here's who we have.
It would be yes or no.
And so then they would call all of us up and say, hey, you're trying out for this thing.
We need you here at this time, but they wouldn't tell you who the client actually is.
So I got picked up and tried that and got through the vetting process.
There was a handful of us.
I think we only, I think out of all, it was all Spock Ops guys,
and I think there was like three or four of us that actually got through it,
got through the training, passed all the qualifications.
It's called a vetting process.
And then at the end of that, they're like, hey, you're going to be contracting for CIA.
And here's the dates we need you to leave.
And so that's, at the end of that is kind of when you get your briefing.
That is so interesting.
So it's these private companies that are getting paid by multiple different agencies to go and fight.
It's not fight.
It's not like an offensive force.
You know, and like my thing kind of, it was a protective detail for spies.
Okay.
And then when we got in there, they started to realize like,
these guys are a lot more capable of doing other shit than just protective stuff undercover and so they started using us for all kinds of shit yeah that's kind of how it works you know it's i mean it's like it's like when you build a house if you build a house you get a general contractor then he finds the drywall guy the plumber the electrician the roofer you know the window guy all that and so it's it's essentially the same thing they would go to a company like blackwater or sock or mvm
And they would be like, this is what we need, and this is the caliber of people we need, Blackwater or sock or whatever the entity was would do the recruiting and say, hey, we've got 50 guys ready to go, already qualified, like, everything you're looking for plus some.
And so they would be like, boom, Blackwater wins the contract.
Agency pays Blackwater. Blackwater pays us. We go do the work.
Wow, that's so.
Yeah.
That business of war is so interesting.
It is, isn't it?
I didn't know it worked like that.
That's how it works.
That's how it works.
So, and the CIA is funded by taxpayer dollars, or is it privately funded, too?
No, it's taxpayer dollars.
Taxpayer dollars.
Yeah, as far as I know.
Right.
And it's cheaper.
You know, it's cheaper for the government to do it that way than hire than do big military
recruiting push or whatever, you know, and then you're paying, you know, you're paying
retirements and you're paying, you know, health care and all that kind of
shed and for the families and da-da-da-da-da-da. And this is like a quick thing because I don't
think anybody really realized that the war was going to go on as long as it did. That way at the
end of it, they don't know you anything. You don't know them anything. You just cut ties and
that's it. Plus, it's a great way to just, we don't know who these people are. They're just
contractors, you know. Even when you employ someone, it's easier to make them a contractor.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just the same thing, right?
So I did that for, I don't know, a number of years, maybe four or five years.
And then I took a break and I was like, I need something different.
So I started doing this anti-piracy shit.
And at that time, like, I don't know if you heard the Captain Phillips story,
the Somalian pirates were hijacking all these tankers and cargo ships and stuff.
So they would throw us on.
And then if they got, if they tried to hijack them, then we would get.
kill him. And so I did that. So you were on different ships? Yeah. It was horrible, man. In what region was
that, Somalia? It was, so you would jump on wherever, but it would be game on when you got into
the Gulf of Aden, which is like in between Yemen and Somalia. They would like, it sounds cooler than
it is. It was the most boring job I've ever had. So there's no action? There is, but it's like
very far, a few between. So like the first one I did, we got on in Mauritius east of Madagascar. It's
like this little island country, interesting place.
But you just get on there and just do nothing but work out and mess around and, you know,
screw off until you got into the Gulf of Aden, which could be weeks.
All right.
If you guys have been following me, you've been seeing.
I am trying my best with all the traveling, all the partying to try and stay in the best shape
I can.
A few years ago, you guys saw me do my 120-day transformation.
I followed a very, very strict and effective workout program that was designed by,
my coach Todd Norman. This guy's an absolute expert in the industry. He has a ton of experience
and he designed my workout program from scratch. And that was me being on the road, drinking every
week, not access to good food. So I basically told him, Todd, we got to make this program available
to everybody. I've partnered with him on tnmlifestyle.com. Fill out a quick quiz. It's
totally free. We're accepting a very limited amount of clients because this is one-on-one coaching.
If you're chosen, you're going to get a call from a trainer and create a complete.
completely custom workout and diet plan for your diet's the most important part you look good you
feel good i feel like that translates to everything else in life so also guys while i was in india
i ran a fucking marathon too which my trainer todd actually helped me train for as well we also have
marathon programs available now on tnm so if you want to run a marathon like i did you can get a completely
custom tailored plan depending on what level you're at to train for a marathon as well which is pretty
Cool. Then when you get into the Gulf of Aden up into the Suez Canal, that's kind of when
you're ready for some shit to happen. I did one trip, and then the agency got a hold of me
and wanted me to contract directly for them without the companies. So what they would do is they
would recruit the best guys, supposedly the best guys. And so I went back to the agency doing that.
they actually hired me like two weeks after I got arrested in Miami.
What did you get arrested?
That's petty theft.
What year was that?
2012.
Okay.
Has that resolved now?
Yeah, yeah.
I was, I was like really paranoid that they weren't going to hire me because did you know
that place 11?
Oh, buddy.
Look at his hat.
Yeah, yeah, man.
So 11 used to be the gold rush.
We know that like the Gulf of Aden.
same same level yeah so 11 used to be the gold brush and uh so i did like a crazy night uh in miami
downtown wherever 11 is at stayed there until like 9 30 in the morning done that yep and uh good times
yeah they were closing and i was like well shit man the party's getting ready to fire up in
Miami Beach. So let's go over there and see if we can pick up some women. And so I passed out
in the taxi and woke up to the cops like beating on the door. And I'm like, what the fuck is this?
Didn't have any cash on me. So I was like, hey, let me just go to the ATM and just pay the cab
driver. And they did not like, they didn't have it. It was, it was a Memorial Day weekend. Is that in
May? Oh, yeah. That's messy in Miami. Yeah. They have like a 5,000 arrest quota. And they were like,
Nope, handcuffed me, threw me in the clink.
So not because you were drunk just because you couldn't pay the taxi?
And I mean, I was drunk off my ass and on some other stuff too.
Yeah, it's 11, right?
Yeah, so they threw me into, they threw me in jail with a bunch of people that don't speak English.
So I started just brushing up on my Spanish.
I was in there like the only white boy in with a bunch of Latinos.
And I was like, well, should, I might as well make the best of it.
So I started having them teach me Spanish in jail.
knowing that I had to be in Cairo Egypt like I'd so the way the piracy shit would work is they would
like give you shoot you an email and you would have to be out within 24 hours and I was like
fuck man like I know there's an email in my inbox with a plane ticket to go to Cairo
that's some anxiety right there yeah I'm like I'm like you can't arrest me I got to go
fight pirates like within 24 hours they're like yeah right buddy and and so get out of jail
go to an internet cafe there it is so then i had to haul ass back home pack my shit and be on a
flight within like 12 hours so from arrest to cairo it was like 24 36 hours and i'm back on a ship
and then on the ship i got the email that the CIA wanted me to contract direct for them and
i'm like and the CIA didn't fucking google my mugshot even though it was a really good looking
mugshot so i got back from that trip and uh from
that piracy thing and they're like well
we're going to need you to come in and like
do an interview at headquarters and I'm
like I totally fucking blew this
because I was like really excited like cool
Blackwater's out of the way
socks out of the way like I'm just working
for them and I was like
yeah and I just got arrested
for petty theft which makes it sound like
I stood up a 7-11 for a bag of
Doritos and so I go
my first assignment
was to go to Yemen which was
really hot at the time and I
show up and they had my mugshot pasted on every fucking door at the safe house and they're like
oh you thought we didn't know didn't you and uh but yeah yeah like as a prank kind of yeah that's
like oh this is our guy nice good job sean and you guys did party a lot in the military
like we partied a it's like where's where was where was your craziest like a rock star oh yeah
where was like the coolest place to party during all your all my time partying
In the military or anything like that.
Dude, there's so many like good spots, but like in my life, it would be Medellin, Colombia.
Self-explanatory.
He'd been there?
I've been.
Nice.
Yeah, yeah.
Nice.
It took a good time.
Yes, it is.
You were doing some crazy shit there, too, no?
Yeah.
When did you go to Columbia?
Uh, I bounced in and out of there for, I don't know, five, six years.
Really grew fond of cocaine and women.
There was so much partying that it got kind of.
of boring. I'm not condoning that, by the way. I'm sober now. I haven't even had a drink at three
years. But so it was a bad time and I OD'd a couple times down there. But yeah, I started
I started trying to build like kind of like a cocaine network just to feed my adrenaline
because I was so used to like being in combat. Like I wanted to chase that feeling again.
And this is post-CIA? Yeah. And I wasn't getting it anymore. I just started going to like the most
dangerous places that I could find in Colombia and meeting with dealers and meeting with
the dealers that feed the dealers and kind of like set up this whole network and so the thing
was going to be it was basically I mean you get a lot of the Americans, Italians, Spanish people
that go down there and they want to have a good time but they don't want to deal with the
Colombians because they're scared they're going to get their head chopped off or something
and so I was like reliable cocaine.
Yeah, and so I was just like, well, I'll just be the intermediary, and because I taught my
self how to speak Spanish in jail, but, and down there, and so I would just be the intermediary
and make whatever they wanted to happen.
And it never wound up, like, going to that, but I had everything pretty much in place.
And then, like I said, I had OD'd a couple times and woke up, like on the floor, like, I started
feeling like that's when cocaine becomes not fun yeah i remember like my best friend told me he was like
you don't need to worry he's like dude you're on speed you don't need to worry when you're on speed
and then it starts to slow down that's when you're skirt in the line i had that happen a couple
times i didn't want my parents to like get a call like hey we just found your son decomposing in a
fucking penhouse in medijine i knew i had to get out of there and then the federal police were on to
me anyways they'd set up a hide side across the way on the building adjacent from me and
we're monitoring me so i kind of like uh just dipped right yeah yeah yeah bought a couple of
different plane tickets different locations and wow got that hot i mean and i you know i'm like kind
of trying to get out of shit like that so it got pretty intense man like the the addiction to
adrenaline was just like overcoming me i remember google in the most dangerous place in the world and
at the time it was San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
And I was like, all right, bucket, let's go to Honduras.
Let's go to San Pedro Sula.
Went there, messing around and shit, I should have messed around there, got arrested there.
And then right before I cut it, I was like, man, there's starting to be a lot of Americans.
And I never wanted to be around Americans.
So I never went to Bogota because I didn't want to be around the embassy.
And I used to go to Cartagena.
And then after the Secret Service sex scandal, that was like, it brought a ton of Americans.
So that's when I went to Medellin, and I went to Cali and Pareda and all these different places.
And then I started bouncing around to Lima, Dominican Republic, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras.
And then I was like, the Coke trade was like moving down to Bolivia.
I was like, nobody goes to Bolivia.
So I was going to go to Bolivia and then smartened up and got my shit together.
It took a long time to get it together.
but uh and that was just trick chasing adrenaline yeah you think not money or really i didn't care
about money man like you know how it is down there the dollar goes a long ways you know in those
places especially a place like honduras or bolivia i had made a pretty decent amount of money
contracting at least at the time it wasn't about money man it was just about it was like
how deep into this can i get before i get killed i mean i don't know how familiar you are with
Medellín, but did you ever go to Barrio Antioquia?
We went there, right, maybe?
Yeah.
Bario Antioquia is like, you can't even get in there unless you go through several
checkpoints.
Okay.
So a white boy going to that neighborhood, they're like, what are you doing?
And I would go in there in the daytime.
I'm going there at nighttime and, like, start at the bottom with the street dealers and
work my way up, and it got pretty dicey.
How crazy are those cartels?
Like, is there any crazy stories, like close calls?
I mean, dude, there was like so many times down there.
Did you ever go to Fahrenheit?
There used to be this place down there and all the tables were black.
And they would have like lines of what looked like Coke and little mounds and shit, you know, and they lacquered over it.
Wow, it's like a movie.
So that way nobody could tell if you were actually doing Coke or not.
We would frequent there.
I would frequent there.
I say we, but like usually I was down there by myself.
And I mean, I had guys.
guys come down like I want to experience this and then they'd be like get me the fuck
up yeah I'd wake up and they'd be gone I'm like where'd you go and they're like dude
you're fucking crazy I grew up in a farm town and uh I used to bring one of my buddies down there
but it's farm town USA dude and you never really left there so he didn't have these kind of
experience and I would bring him down and be like check this shit out he made a lot of money for
being in a small farm town but then he comes down there and like and so he had like he had like
like he was a confident guy i'll put it that way he was hidden on somebody's girl or something like
that happened and i watched him do the rally like i watched the head nods happen they followed
him into the bathroom this is probably like 10 or 11 the next day like we would just go
damn like for days 12 a 12 pms dude it was just my record's like one and it hurts we would have been
good friends back in the day.
Yeah.
But, um, I know.
He's like a, he's like a knelt boy from the past.
But way more, way more badass.
But yeah.
I remember going in there and I was like, they're going to fucking kill him.
So I ran in there and like, I was able to like kind of de-escalate it.
Um, because I built like a pretty big reputation in Medellin especially.
And nobody really knew, do we fuck with this guy?
Do we not?
Why is he here?
How's he so connected?
How was he confident enough to run around with a Rolex in these parts of town?
Where were you dressing like at the time?
Like just to the nine, dude.
Like white guy in Columbia with the Rolex?
Everything.
Like just flashy.
Like super flashy.
But it was like for that overconfidence.
Yeah.
And because I wanted to confuse them.
And I knew Spanish.
Like I had everything, man.
And I had like a pretty big network.
So it would confuse them and they would be like, maybe we don't want to fuck with this guy.
We don't know who he's attached to, even though I wasn't really attached to anybody,
but it put fear in them where, and the girls I would run with would tell me,
like, I would ask them, like, why aren't they, you know, what's the deal?
Why is everybody, like, looking at me or scared of me or whatever?
And they're like, they don't know, like, who you are.
It's weird for somebody like you to be there and be that confident and know the lingo
and the slangs and the prices and, like, all of that.
Anyways, I ran in there and, like, was able to de-escalate it.
But had I not, he would have been cut up and bleeding out on the floor.
Was it more fuck there than, like, overseas?
I mean, it's totally, it's different, but it's the same feeling.
And it was the feeling that I was chasing.
I mean, if you listen to my show, there's a lot of this, you know, like, I haven't heard anything quite like mine.
But there's other stuff.
I mean, like, I just talked to you about Chris Beck.
You know, he's riding with the Hells Angels, like, doing me.
whatever he's doing, doing, like, riding his Harley on one foot and going 100 miles an hour and
like, you just get like this death wish and you can't get that feeling unless you're riding
the edge. There's like a chemical imbalance that happens when you have, when you have that many
adrenaline dumps, you know, doing a job in combat like that, like it fucks with your brain and then
and then the adrenaline actually becomes an addiction and you crave that chemical release that
happens when you get an adrenaline dump guys find all kinds of different ways you know to to to feel it
and then it takes it takes it and rock bottom to realize like this isn't this isn't sustainable so is that
when you hit rock bottom like kind of in the Columbia yeah I mean you know I told you like I wanted to
make my dad proud right and that's that's why I joined the school teams I would say that's probably
the biggest reason like I wanted to quit in there in hell week but I was like I was like I
I can't, like, call my dad and let him know I'm a failure again.
And that's kind of, like, the same sentiment I got when I really started skirting the edge
and things started slowing down when I was on speed.
But I couldn't just, like, cut it.
And that's when I wound up moving to Boka.
But before that, like, I was like, maybe I'll just go to Costa Rica.
Like, it's pretty tame.
It's like, and I got there, and I kind of started doing the same shit again.
And, like, I just fell right into it.
It just, like, it was like second nature for me to start building networks and stuff.
And then I went home and got, drank like a fifth and a half of vodka, probably totally blacked out.
I must have come clean on everything to my parents.
And it scared the shit out of them.
And they're like, we just want you to talk to somebody.
They were like tearing up.
And I was like, oh, fuck.
So totally left South Central America.
and that's when I moved to Boca Raton, Florida.
I was thinking about Miami, but I was like, ah.
It's too Spanish there.
I was like, I'll probably just get to.
Yeah, I was like,
you just become the king of any fucking Spanish culture.
I still wanted accessible, but not as accessible.
And then I started a business and, you know,
still struggle with a lot of different addictions.
Like, I couldn't sleep, you know,
so I would wash down whatever opiates I'd,
get on my hands-on, taramidol, hydrocoding, the occasional oxy, still finding ways to get
coke, volume, Xanax, Ambient, anything, anything I could do to, like, wind my brain down.
And I was like, well, maybe I'll try this therapy shit.
So I tried therapy.
The first appointment, she asked what I was on, and I told her, like, I would take
several volume and several Ambien and several Xanax, and I just didn't care of it.
wash it down. And she was like, are you trying to kill yourself? And I was like, no. I was like,
I just can't take enough of it to like shut my brain off to sleep. So I, you know, I started
weaning myself off stuff. And several years later, I just got totally clean. I did psychedelics.
I did a psychedelic therapy. What was that like? Did. It was awesome. What did you do?
I did Ibegain and five MEODMT. Where did you do it? Mexico. Mexico. Yeah, I went to this place
called ambio life sciences and uh but i had like all these guys that i'd worked with or or maybe i
didn't work with but they had the same kind of path in life as me they kept telling me about like
the psychedelic therapy and how it changed their life and cleaned them out and i was like maybe i
should try that and so i flew down and did that and when i came out like i just it was like you just
had this intuition that clicked in my head and it was like all the shit that i'm doing is poison
What was it? Did you smoke something or drink?
Yeah, so the ibogaine is like some kind of a root that they get out of, I think, Gabon, Africa.
And they say it's like the most powerful die psychedelic on the planet.
And it's like a 12-hour experience.
And then you wake up from that.
And then you do this five-em-em-o-D-M-T, which is also like super profound.
And how long does that last?
That one lasts about 15 minutes, but you have a death experience.
Dude, it's like you cross over, man.
Like you, if you, you have not done it.
I don't think I'm ready for that yet.
Yeah.
It's pretty heavy.
Would you recommend it?
I'd recommend it.
Does it stop you from like thinking certain things are important in society or like,
because maybe they're not?
Like it may, it's just, um, yeah.
Like money's not important or like, because at the end of the day, it's kind of not, right?
Now, it paints things in a different aspect for you.
It just makes things clearer.
So like whatever you're doing in business.
right now we have a lot of the similar decisions and stuff we're both in podcasting and you know you got
this shiny fucking carrot over here and this shiny carrot over there and like what it can do is like
give you the vision and the focus that you need to like get what you really want and so i did that
and it like wiped out all the bad shit that i was doing in my life and it also like gave me like
this intuitive sense of the shit in my business that's not important and like it made me guilt
free to say no to certain things and like I could tell like what was a distraction in my business like
yeah this might be like a chunk of change like right now but I'm after the long game and so it was
almost like if you're looking at something through a bunch of weeds like it's like wow and the path
just becomes like clear as day and when I did that man
like my business like really fucking took off and so it doesn't take your drive away or anything
like that because i hear a lot of guys that you know a lot of people that are like i don't want to
i don't want to turn into a fucking hippie and i don't want to like i don't want to lose my drive and it'll
change me but it will change you but it will change you into like the person that you're
supposed to be it's almost like it illuminates distractions and you're able to just
push all that shit aside and go after the big win.
So you're really struggling with like addiction before that and right after that.
Yeah.
You're just completely drug-free.
Yeah.
That's fucking like a miracle.
That's crazy.
The next day.
How long did the DMT trip feel like the 15?
You have no essence of time.
So when I say it's a death experience, like you 100% in your mind think that you're going to die.
Really?
You are grasping it like.
And I was pretty okay with dying.
I was like, all right.
And then I thought about my son and my wife.
And I was scared to death to leave them behind in like this fucked up world.
And then you have to let that go too.
Otherwise you wind up in the cycle.
And as soon as I let that go, it was like I crossed over into this other realm.
But everything, like if I did it right now, I would still see you and the microphones, cameras,
and all these guys in the background.
And like, nothing really changes.
but it's it's an intuitive experience for me the human eye can only see we can't see like the
spiritual realm we can't see i are we can't you know what i mean we can't see radio waves yeah man and like
you do that and you cross over into this other realm it's almost like a filter's like lifted off
of your eyeballs and you start seeing the exact same thing that you're seeing but you can see like
you can feel like the flow of energy and who's going to
good and who's bad and family members that are not here anymore and it lasts like they say it
lasts for about 15 minutes but you have it kind of proves to you that time does not exist and that
there are energies spiritual forces and it's just it's like your full intuition and I've done it
several times since and every time has been very profound now that you've done it a few times
what do you think what's happening when you do it like you're opening up another sense or you're
like i think that you are opening a door into a spiritual realm so interesting it's pretty
crazy has it changed your perspective on afterlife definitely how so before i went there i just
i never really thought much about god or what happens after you die or i mean i did but i just didn't
really i didn't live my life like that and then i did that and it it made me realize like
there's definitely something after we leave here you know you hear like the your body is like a vessel
you've ever heard that before and that there's a spirit or or your soul or whatever you want to
call it right that's kind of like inside of you and that's who you actually are without an ego
and that's what you tap into and i started like getting into like all right
like is it the universe what is a lot of people think they see the big bang on it like is it
is it god is it energies and so i just like went on this path where i was like trying to figure it out
i mean now i'm a christian and uh i believe in jesus christ and god and i think you are
somehow getting like almost like a direct link into that realm maybe god himself it's fucking
crazy it is man i hope you do it
some time wonder we should do it for a video it just it's scary right if you've never done it
like you said i have those same assumptions like is like am i going to come out the same
you'll come out yeah better than you were and the best place to do it is mexico yeah i mean that's
where i want that 12 hour one seems like a trip it is man it is i mean everybody has different
experiences on it but i can tell you like everybody i've talked to has is a better
version of themselves and when i say better version like i think a lot of guys that are
hard chargers and business mongles like yourself they think like it's going to like hinder that or it's
going to become unimportant it it does man it enhances it and you do other psychedelics you do you like
fuck with mushrooms right yeah yeah do you do the gummies or like chocolates or just i do t oh tea yeah how
often do you do that i don't know whenever i feel like i need to whenever i feel like like do you
trip or like microdose it i trip yeah that's what you want to call it i do it when i feel like i need
clarity coming up to a major crossroads and I want all the distractions like moved out of the
out of the way like every time man I get the path I'm and I'm like or I'll see things like look right now
like we're up for big podcast deal right my contract's expiring and I'm up for a big deal I've tapped
into that you know a couple times and I'll see like and like I said with the distractions like it's like
here's like a big pot of money or here's a big you know whatever man something i think might be
really beneficial and i'll do that and instead of just looking at you know thinking this is this is
the way then it brings in all these other aspects and it's like here's the strings that are
attached if you do that they want to control you here's how they're going to try to control you
and it's like holy shit man like i never like that was never
unveiled to me until I
until I did this
like for me that's a big thing I never want
anybody to do to control what I do
I know there's a lot of traps
out there that you can fall
into I mean look at the
upstein shit you know
you know for me like I have a very
strong relationship with my wife
and my kids like I know
that they can't get to me through sex
but I know that they could get to be through
money so it will unveil
things that I didn't think about
that are there and I'll see them like after I do it and if if if that's what I get out of it then I'm
like fuck man like that guy that wants to invest millions of dollars into my podcast like this is
what he really wants he doesn't want to fucking help me he wants me to like do this this
and this and start to create a narrative on whatever X Y and Z and then I'll go and I'll kind
of like research other stuff that I haven't researched sure shit
man, like, I'll see it.
I'll be like, fuck, he does want me to do that, you know.
I've gotten into the chocolates the last few months.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Group of Australian girls.
They just love them.
You ever been to Disneyland on Shroom chocolates?
No.
You've got to try it out.
No.
It's a good time.
I'll bet it is.
How do you think we solve some of these problems with vets?
Because it's such a big issue, right?
And they're putting their lives on the line to, you know, protect freedom, protect
the country and stuff, is there any solutions to like fixing this adrenaline problem or just
the way that they're treated?
I think I just told you about it.
Psychedelics.
Yeah, man.
There's so many guys that have done that, that it's changed your life.
Like, I'll give you another example.
There's a nonprofit out there called Fets, and it was started by a SIL-Seep-6 guy and his wife.
That's who I used to go through.
And they've been sending guys down for years now.
Stanford did a study on it
and they would take guys like me
I didn't do this but they'll take guys
especially that have really bad traumatic brain injuries
from blasts like shock waves and stuff
they'll fly them into Stanford they'll do a brain scan
like when you do a brain scan it'll show like the parts of the brain
that aren't working it'll be like black spots in your brain
where you took the most blasts or whatever right
and they would identify all these black spots
and then they would send them down and they would do ibegain and then as soon as they're done
to an ibegain they would fly back up to stanford and they would do uh they would do another
brain scan and time after time after time again those black spots had disappeared and the
entire brain was lit up so what's happening like when you do this not at Disneyland but
if you do it like a therapeutic setting and you have like intentions that you want what's
going on there is so like the neurons in your brain are going back and forth through this thing called
the default mode network and that's from the back of your head to the front of your brain back of your
brain to the front of the brain and that's why like when you see we the older we get the more set in our
ways we get so what's actually happening is like the neurons throughout your life they get lazy
and they just want to use the default mode network right and so rather than traveling through
all these different neuro pathways in your brain, they're just, let's just go back and forth,
back and forth. Some psychedelics will do is they'll actually put like a block in the default
mode network, and that communication with the neuron still needs to happen. So instead of using
the default mode network, they go back into these neural pathways that maybe you've never used
or you haven't used since you were three years old, and it reopens all those neural pathways
because the communication still has to happen.
And when that happens, the entire brain is lighting up.
Wow.
And they're actually proving this.
Yeah, man.
They're proving it.
Wow.
And so you're seeing like these profound results from this like, like me.
Like, dude, I cut Adderall, sleeping pills, opiates, all that shit, like alcohol immediately.
Like it also replenishes the receptors in your brain, which is the cure for addiction.
the cure for addiction.
So I had a really good friend of mine.
He survived.
It was the biggest car bomb that I had seen somebody survive.
He walked out of it, massive brain injury.
Then he gets shot in the head years later.
Another, I mean, you can imagine massive traumatic brain injury getting shot right here, square on the forehead, survived it.
How?
Are you wearing a helmet?
No, man.
How's that possible?
It's a great question.
but couldn't go outside, even on a cloud a day without sunglasses.
His wife called, she's like, he's bedridden five to six days a week.
He's so dizzy, he can't get out of bed.
We haven't had sex in over two years.
He can't walk without a cane because his vertigo is so bad.
And I had been trying to get him to go down there for a long time after my results.
I was like, you got to try this, man.
Just like, what do you have to lose?
And then when I found it was that bad, I called him again.
And I was like, let me call my bu.
buddy, Trevor. Let's get you in. We'll get you fast-tracked. Goes down there. Does the Ibegain
experience. Comes out of it. Leaves his cane there for a souvenir. Doesn't need it anymore.
The vertigo's gone. Doesn't need his sunglasses to go outside anymore. Hasn't been bedridden at
all. Goes home. Bangs his wife after two years. And this is like eight months ago. And he's still,
it's still like the day after he left. Like he's doing.
awesome. This sounds crazy. It is crazy. It's going to tell you what's even crazier is why the fuck is it
illegal. Right. But you know what I mean? And so that's the that's the kind of stuff that that stuff is
healing down there. And so I'm not saying psychedelics is like the end all be all. I think there's a
lot of things that we could do. But I mean, I've not seen anything more promising than that,
you know, for for addiction, for traumatic brain injury, for PTSD, for depression, anxiety,
like all that stuff it's curing rape victims going down and like they're able to function again and
wow it's really like it looks pretty promising so that's your main message to like people kind of
recovering yeah i would i would say look into it you know and then i mean there's a lot going on there
you know what i mean definitely it would be like if you you know especially guys not just guys that
are operating at the highest level like at the seal teams and and the rest of special operations but
for anybody but i mean you wrap your identity up into that and and guys you know that becomes them
and so when that gets taken away it's like well shit who the hell am i none of these skills
really translate to anything else i mean just think if like your podcast got shut down overnight
what are you going to do you know what i mean what are you going to do this is this is what you do
this is what you do and you built an empire doing this right well then it all gets taken away
you know you have to find a new purpose and so that's something that's going on the adrenal
addiction is going on the you know the the the the the the tb i is the PTSD that a lot of their
wives left them infidelity guilt survivors guilt having to kill people like there's like a
heaviness that veterans have you know and so there's a can only imagine yeah i think finding a new
purpose and being able to like realize like being a navy seal CIA contractor
That's not who I am.
That's something I did, and that's gone.
And so what's the next thing?
You have to figure that out, and it takes time, you know,
but you have to get out and get off your ass and go try things
and figure out what you like, what you don't like.
And, like, clarity comes from that.
It doesn't come from sitting on your couch with a bottle of vodka and doing drugs.
Like, it just doesn't come from that.
It comes from finding a new direction and being able to set the old.
one down and realize that wasn't me. That's just something I did.
That's crazy. I got to look into that. We might have to do that for a video if we can handle it.
What's next for Sean Ryan and the business and the podcast?
Well, like I said, we're, you know, we're kind of shopping around and I'm probably going to go
independent because I don't like anybody controlling me. I'll probably be, stick with being
independent. I'm pretty independent for the most part right now.
But we've been building my team out.
I spent all last year building my team.
There was four of us, my assistant, my social media guy, one editor, my sound guy slash kind of business guy.
And so we've almost tripled that at this point.
And so it's kind of getting everybody working together, building the culture.
We've building a new studio.
Right now we're in like 1,200 feet studio.
We're building a studio from the ground up, it's like 7,000 square foot.
There's going to be a shooting range.
That's exciting.
Yeah, it's on a bunch of acreage.
There's going to be a wellness center.
It's going to be like the Google of podcasting.
That's it.
And yeah, I want everybody to be the best paid, the best culture, proud of where they work.
And then I'm starting to think about doing some stuff for kids, like kind of like a kids network.
Because I think, you know, the last four years especially, you know, kids really, you see what's going on in schools and all.
that kind of stuff and the kind of demonizing police and just an atrocious man and most
most kids don't even have any confidence and so I want to put something together that could
build that confidence and kind of bring you know traditional American values back into the
country and and show some patriotism and and who real heroes are you know what's that going to
come in the form of like I haven't had the bandwidth to dive in too much but you know I hired a COO to
to help me build these new verticals and i think it'll probably be books but turn it into
cartoons maybe that turns into toys and you know like that kind of stuff yeah congrats man
your story's very inspiring this this combo is awesome and yeah you have one of the biggest
podcasts in the world so wish you nothing but great success and yeah maybe i was thinking we got to do
if sean could get us into some navy training or something i think it'd be cool to show our audience
like yeah man just put us put us through the ringer or something like that i'll tell you what we should
do something for our next knellk channel like something lifestyle cool when you come out i'll have you on my show
and then i have like a 500 yard range so we'll go down we'll set some stuff up and give you a bunch of guns
and we'll put you at it let's do it awesome thanks for having