Good Life Project - Jake Wood | Once a Warrior

Episode Date: February 22, 2021

When Marine sniper Jake Wood arrived home in the States after two brutal tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, he wasn't leaving war behind him. Ten years after returning home, Jake's unit lost more men to suicide than to enemy hands overseas. He watched in horror as his best friend and fellow Marine, Clay Hunt, plunged into depression upon returning, stripped of his purpose, community, and sense of identity. Despite Jake's attempts to intervene, Clay died by suicide, alone.Reeling, Jake remembered how only one thing had given Clay a measure of hope: joining him in Haiti on a ragtag mission to save lives immediately following the 2010 earthquake. His military training had rendered him unusually effective in high-stakes situations. He wondered if there was a way to help communities in crisis, often in the wake of natural disasters, while providing a new mission to veterans? With that, he built on the early missions to co-found the now-iconic Team Rubicon, a disaster relief organization with over 140,000 volunteers that drop into locations around the world to battle hurricanes, tornados, wildfires, pandemics, and civil wars, while reconnecting with a sense of purpose along the way. In this inspiring memoir, Once a Warrior: How One Veteran Found a New Mission Closer to Home (https://amzn.to/3dt5qkt), Jake recounts this extraordinary journey.You can find Jake Wood & Team Rubicon at:Website : https://teamrubiconusa.org/Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/teamrubicon/-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So when Marine sniper Jake Wood arrived home in the States after two brutal tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, he really struggled to leave the war behind him. And 10 years after returning home, Jake's unit had lost more men to suicide than to enemy hands overseas. And he watched in horror as his best friend and fellow Marine plunged into depression upon returning, stripped of a sense of purpose and community and even identity. And despite Jake's attempts to intervene, his friend died by suicide alone. Really reeling, Jake remembered how one of the only things that had given his friend a measure of hope was joining him in Haiti on this ragtag mission to

save lives immediately following the 2010 earthquake. And it turns out that their military training had rendered them unusually effective in these high stakes situations. And Jake wondered if there was a way to help communities in crisis, often in the wake of these profound disruptions and natural disasters, while also providing a new mission to veterans. With that, he built on the early missions to co-found the now iconic Team Rubicon, a disaster relief organization with over 140,000 volunteers that drop into locations around the world to battle everything from hurricanes to tornadoes, wildfires, pandemics, and civil wars, while reconnecting with this sense of purpose along the way. And in Jake's inspiring memoir, Once a Warrior, he recounts this extraordinary journey. In our

conversation today, we drop into some of the really powerful and transformative moments along the way. So excited to share it with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday.

We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die.

Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. Right now you're hanging out in LA. It sounds like you actually kind of grew up bouncing around a couple different places, Texas, Nebraska, ending up in Bettendorf, Iowa, which by the way, if you Google Bettendorf, Iowa, it's like the MMA breeding ground. Yeah.

What happened there? Yeah, that's actually so random. I kind of forgot about that. A guy named Pat Miletic was a really early UFC guy and a pretty famous and well-known University of Iowa wrestler. And he started a training camp right there. And boy, I'm forgetting all the names of the guys that came through. But yeah, I mean, all the champs you trained there, all of them back in the early days of the UFC.

Yeah, it was crazy. I was sort of like doing a little bit of background. I'm like, okay, so it's a relatively small town. And yet there's this list of MMA, UFC champions. I'm like, what's in the water there? Yeah. And I always told people, don't pick a bar fight. Don't pick a fight at a bar in Bettendorf. You don't know who you're going to be squaring off against. Yeah. That's pretty funny. So you ended up growing up there, but it also sounds like you had a year or two that was pretty formative in your early days. It sounds like your family was bouncing around and you were in Austria. You dropped into Austria for a short amount of time, but you had some experiences there that really sort of like, there's a lot of foreshadowing in

it, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. I spent some time in the book talking about that, which was actually kind of interesting because in the writing process, my editor kept trying to jettison it to the cutting room floor. But yeah, I spent two years in Austria from 1989 to 1991. And I was a young boy. I think I was six years old when we moved there, maybe eight when I left, went to an all-German speaking school, just a really fascinating experience. And amidst all of the really immersive cultural experiences that we had, one that really stood out and that I wrote about was this experience at one weekend going to Mauthaus, which had been a concentration camp in the Nazi regime in Northern Austria. And it was just a really somber

day. I mean, I remember the day itself was just so dreary. It was like foggy and wet and miserable. And we were cold. And of course, my sisters and I are sitting there kind of kicking rocks, you know, what are we doing here, dad? You know, why are you, you know, why can't we just go to, you know, the Hofbrauhaus or something fun? And it was a really eye-opening experience. I think I, for the first time, really saw just how evil people could be. It was pretty unvarnished. You could sit there. You could see the ovens.

You could see the gallows. You could see the photos and the exhibits of these mostly Jews who had suffered there. And it was just really eye-opening for me. And it also was enlightening because Mauthausen had been liberated by Patton's army near the end of the war. And many people had, of course, already perished, but a handful of people were rescued. And that just really struck me. And seeing, of course, my father's emotion, looking at it, my grandfather, his dad had served in Europe during the war, not in a combat role, but nonetheless, he was a part of the effort. And I could see just how proud he was. And it

was just a moment where I thought to myself, that's the type of person that I want to be. And it was just something that always really stuck with me. Yeah. It's so interesting that that moment, decades later, is still to be. And it was just something that always really stuck with me. Yeah. It's so interesting that that moment, you know, decades later is still with you. And it sounds like it's still with you in a fairly vivid way. You know, there's something that was sensory and visceral that really imprinted it in your memory where it just never left where, you know, like how many other things happened to you when you were six, seven, eight that, you know, you have zero recollection of. Yeah, I, I, I agree. I think that it was a moment that provided me perspective for the world that not a lot of kids my age were receiving at that point

in time. And as I think about having two young daughters now leading what's probably going to amount to a pretty sheltered life here in Los Angeles, California, I constantly think to myself, how can I expose them to moments and experiences that provide them that level of compassion and perspective that makes them a better human being and citizen in the world? Yeah. I mean, it's such a delicate balance, right? As a parent, because we really want our kids to understand the quality of relationships in the planet and what's going on around them and understand that there are things that are incredible and also there are things that are really scary, but in a way where you don't feel as a young child paralyzed and unable to make sense of it or do anything with whatever understanding you have with it. I think a lot of

people have actually been dropped into that this year in a lot of different ways from issues of privilege, economic disparity, inequity with medicine, issues of race. I think a lot of different ways from issues of privilege, economic disparity, inequity with medicine, issues of race. I think a lot of parents are really grappling with how do we introduce kids, especially young kids, to the truth of what's going on in a way that really allows them to understand it and also understand their role in it or their role in it as they emerge out of childhood, especially. Yeah, I think, well, let me preface what I'm about to say by acknowledging that I'm not a psychologist, a child psychologist for sure. I think we should probably give kids more credit

for being able to process and understand some of these complex issues. And if they don't understand them or can't process them necessarily out of the gate, we should give them the time and space to figure it out. And I think that exposure is really important. I'm sure there are all sorts of listeners tuning in right now who are hearing me saying that and slapping their foreheads. But that's certainly the perspective that I have. Yeah, no, I have. Yeah, no, I'd agree. And actually recently sat down with somebody on the show, Rini Jain, who deals specifically with a lot of young kids. And she was actually sharing how one of the biggest misses is that kids actually do understand and they're capable of understanding

and integrating so much more than we give them credit for at a much younger age. So you returned from there to Iowa. I'm curious, and again, this is a young age for you, but I'm curious if there's sort of like a culture shock that happens when you drop back into a relatively small town in the middle of the USA. Well, actually, it was coming back from Europe. Our first stop was actually in a place called Danville, Illinois, a struggling town near the Indiana border. And I think't, I mean, I think there was maybe some culture shock, you know, Central Europe, where we were growing up, small town in Central Europe, maybe 5000 people, not a whole lot of material things, you know, you'd go to the

supermarket, the shelves are relatively bare, the options weren't, you know, extensive. And in coming back, you know, I think that it was a little taken aback, but it's not like I came back to big city Chicago or any of those other New York City type options. I think what surprised me the most was just some of the pop culture stuff. I really had no access to any of that. And all of a sudden, I come back and my cousins are obsessed with Vanilla Ice and New Kids on the Block and Teenage Mutant Turtles are taking the world by storm. And I have no idea what this stuff is. I mean, I had this one like puppet British cat that would make its way on TV every once in a while.

It was like my only form of entertainment in Austria. And so I think that was probably the thing that caught me most off guard. Yeah, that's too funny. It sounds like, I mean, athletic sports is really your jam from a pretty young age. I know you come up, you get really involved in football. You become a pretty big guy also. And you end up in University of Wisconsin playing for four years. I guess it sounds like in the back of your mind for a solid chunk of those, there was an aspiration to see if you could actually go pro. Well, it's certainly the case. I was a pretty highly recruited offensive lineman coming out of high school. You know,

this was right at the beginning of the whole internet recruiting phenomena that has developed now. There's a whole industry around these high school athletes, which is pretty sickening. But, you know, I was a top 25 recruit in my position nationwide. And I ended up going to University of Wisconsin, which for my position, that is like the factory for sending guys to the NFL. If you want to go play NFL, you know, offensive line in the NFL, you go to University of Wisconsin, they're sending first round draft picks every year. And so to get a full ride offer there, it all just almost seemed like my, you know, my destiny was preordained. And I got on campus and, you know, maybe held my own for a couple of days until the varsity showed up. And the moment on campus and, you know, maybe held my own for a couple of days until

the varsity showed up. And the moment that varsity team showed up, they had a, an all-American defensive tackle named Wendell Bryant. And I just remember that guy just physically abusing me for, you know, the whole first week until he ripped my shoulder out of its socket and basically ruined my, my first season. But I maintained hope for a couple of years. And a couple of years later, the school recruited a guy in behind me named Joe Thomas, who was highly, highly touted, number one in the nation at his position.

And nobody really thought that he was gonna live up to the hype. And the moment he stepped foot on campus, he did. I mean, it was just, it was apparent. And the worst part was, I was really just kind of hoping he'd be dumber than a box of rocks and wouldn't be able to grasp the playbook. And I might be able to buy some time. But it turns out he was really smart too and nice. And I just, I wanted to find a reason to hate him and I couldn't.

And he ended up taking the job and he ended up going on to have a, you know, a hall, literally a hall of fame career. He'll be a, you know, a first ballot hall of famer in the NFL and remains a good friend to this day. But that's really when I was disabused of my dreams of, of going to the NFL. Yeah. I mean, what's, what's that like for you though? Because I'm curious, you know, when so much of your identity through your childhood, through your high school years, and then through much of your college has wrapped around this idea of this is kind of who I am, this is where I'm going to go. And then all the signals seem to

say like, yes, this is the path. When you finally, whatever it is that, you know, when the penny finally drops and you're like, this actually is not going to happen. What's that like for you? Yeah, it's a good question. I think my identity wasn't as tied up in football as some of the other guys on the team. I was a good student. I didn't take my studies as seriously as I should have while I was on campus, but I got great grades and began deflating pretty fairly early in my time at Wisconsin. So by the time I was all done, I was already on a glide slope to a different future. But I did feel this sense of what next? I didn't, you know, it was 2005. It was the height of, you know, kind of the market craze, the real estate craze. You know, the economy was sizzling hot.

I was graduating from a really top-end business school with great GPA. I had the whole Badger alumni network I could tap into. But the idea of just going off and wearing a suit just was not the identity that I wanted next. It wasn't going to be football. I knew that. So what was it going to be? And that in part gave me, kind of started nudging me to explore what ended up being next, which was the military. Yeah, which is really interesting. I think also because I mean, you shared that your grandpa actually was military, but there wasn't this sort of longstanding tradition of service in your family beyond him. In fact, it sounds like if anything, the expectation was either you're going to be a pro athlete or you're going to go straight into the business world and build something substantial. And yet you make this really interesting decision pretty soon after leaving saying, not just service, not just military service, but also the Marines, which I think is two different choices. One is I want to serve. And then two is when you start to

say, well, where's the place for me, this is calling me. I'm curious a little bit about that process for you. Yeah. You know, I, it was the height of the war. And so we're talking 2005, you know, we'd invaded Iraq two years prior, Afghanistan three years prior. And, you know, I, I had grown up again with that experience in Mauthausen, seeing Patton's army liberating that camp. Whenever I had thought growing up about joining the military, it was always about being one of those men that I'd seen in those photographs,. You know, Pat Tillman ends up being tragically killed in Afghanistan, which, you know, Pat as a football player, in his death, his sacrifice, of course, was something that I had followed something that impacted me deeply and personally. And it just didn't really even seem like there was any other option but to join the infantry. And so it was really the Army or the Marine Corps. And, you know, I guess I was just, you know, a glutton for punishment. I decided to join the Marine Corps just because it had that reputation for being the hardest and in some ways the best.

And I never looked back. Yeah. When you made this decision and then you share it with your family, what's the response? You know, my mother found out by accident. I was still in the process of signing up. I hadn't told anybody. And I had gone home one weekend from campus. And this was back when instant messenger was a big deal on desktops. And I forgot to sign out of my Instant Messenger.

And I'd been chatting with a friend from high school and mentioned the decision. And my mom, we all shared the same computer. She got on and saw this chat that said, yeah, I'm joining the Marine Corps. And so we went on a walk later that afternoon with my dog. And my mom just broke down. I could tell something was weird. And as we were walking, she just broke down and started crying. I'm like, Mom, what's wrong with you? Are you joining the Marine Corps? And I was like, oh, my God, this is not how I wanted you to find out. So she was scared.

I mean, she was terrified. Again, this is 2005. I mean, the wars are devolving. Sons and daughters are coming home in coffins. And here I am saying I'm going to go enlist in the infantry after graduating from Wisconsin. I just didn't make any sense to her. But at the same time, I think when she really thought about it, it made perfect sense because she really knew who I was and what was in my heart.

Yeah. I mean, when you show up, because I can't imagine as a parent, you know, even understanding the power of civil service and of service on that level, but also doing it in the midst of a season in this country and in the world where you're smack in the middle of war, you know, like active conflict. When you show up for boot camp, what happens with your expectations of what this experience would start out as versus the reality of what it was? You know, I think it was everything that I thought it was going to be. You know, it's a crazy, intense 13-week period. The drill instructors are just messing with you nonstop, 24 hours a day, playing mind games with you, you know, physically hazing you, legal hazing. I want to put that in air quotes and make sure the Marine Corps doesn't get in trouble. But it was it was interesting, because I was older than most of the guys I went in with. I was four years older,

most of them are joining out of high school. So I was the rare exception there. Having played college sports, I was physically tougher, but also just mentally and emotionally tougher. You know, I played for a really tough coach in college. Like he was demanding. He, he called me every name under the sun that you could possibly imagine. And so I was able to really shrug off a lot of what the games were, the drone structures were playing, but I saw a lot of young guys who couldn't, and they were just, they were just really wilting in front of, in the face of it. So a lot of the role I found myself playing was just taking guys aside in those quiet moments, which were really rare and just explaining to them, like, listen, Hey, this is just a game, just kind of grin and bear it. You'll get through this.

They want to see if they can break you. Don't give them the pleasure, you know, and, and, you know, at the end of this, you're going to be a Marine. And so I found myself doing that a lot. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like there was sort of like the unofficial leadership role within a group of people in part because of just age and experience also, like having been through this experience that let you understand sort of like the psychology of what was actually happening, like the ability to zoom the lens out a little bit. Well, it was both unofficial and official. I, you know, I got put into what's called the guide on the guide role of the platoon, which meant that I was really in charge of those 80 recruits for the whole time. And so it was actually a really early leadership lesson for me in really understanding that

it wasn't just about, you know, running around and making sure that the guys were getting dressed on time and getting out the door on time and lining up appropriately and, you know, with all the equipment they needed that that leadership role for me, for those 80, you know, hopeful Marines was to ensure that they were, you know, emotionally taken care of as well as, you know, physically or mentally. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting also, because coming out of the experience that you had and understanding how important it is to have, you know, any number of people come together, be completely different people from totally different backgrounds, but unified around a goal, a mission, a vision, and devoted to each other

in service of each other, not just the mission, but in service of each other. You know, like you said, it's kind of a rare experience to step into that with having never been in that before, but being able to sort of port your experience in college level athletics into that. When you then, you come out of bootcamp, you get deployed, I guess the first tour is in Iraq. And then you come back after that. Was it a foregone conclusion that you would go back after that? Or were you kind of, what was going through your head? Yeah, there was really no doubt that we were going to go back for a second tour. I still had at least 18 months, maybe 24 months left on my enlistment. And so the Marine Corps is going to get theirs. That's the one thing that's going to happen. They're going to get

theirs. And so the real question, I think, as we were coming back from Iraq was, was our battalion going to get redeployed to Iraq? Or were we going to get deployed to Afghanistan? And or even rotate on to what's called an expeditionary unit where we go out on some Navy ships, either in the Mediterranean or in the South Pacific, and nobody wanted to return to Iraq. You know, we just had a really grueling tour that we were there in 2007. As part the surge. It was really bloody, violent tour. And I think it was that it was also it coincided with the reality, this understanding, at least for those of us who are looking at it objectively, that, you know, that really wasn't the war we wanted to be in. You know, as as individual Marines or as a country, just, you know, that price that we were paying over there just really didn't seem worth it. And so I think a lot of us were still, you know,

kind of chest dumping and, you know, thinking that we were invincible and we all wanted to go to Afghanistan. And we learned that we were, our battalion was going to Afghanistan while I was in sniper school, actually. We got the word, I was in the middle of sniper school and the Afghan war had been deteriorating at the expense of the surge in Iraq. And so all of a sudden, the Department of Defense was scrambling to send reinforcements into Afghanistan. And they looked at our battalion, who had just, again, returned from Iraq. And we were supposed to be home for at least 12 months, according to DOD policy, like kind

of this decompression period before rotating back over. And we were only home for six months because they just needed to throw somebody back into the fight. And so we basically turned right back around and went into Afghanistan. And, you know, we were excited about that, like only young, dumb Marines can be excited about combat, and hopeful that that war would feel a little bit more righteous than the Iraq one. I mean, this was the one that was truly in response to 9-11. This was the one where you really felt like you were out there getting the bad guys, the guys who were responsible,

even though we knew in our heart that that's just not how it worked. It was never that simple and clean, but we had high expectations turning around and going to Afghanistan in 2008. Yeah. I mean, and so you go back there. Now you go back there also in the role of a sniper, still in leadership. You end up in Helmand province, if I'm right, right? Yeah, that's right. Actually, I think you were there like 2008, 2009? 2008. Right. Yeah. I actually had a cousin who was a Marine who was deployed in Helmand province at

that exact same time, did a tour there. But he came back, he did two tours and he saw a lot of bad stuff and actually ended up in an ID tech. And yeah, that was the end of his service when he finally came back from that. But, you know, when you go there and you're in the heat of something like this and you move through it and you survive it and you come back, when you come back, you can't not come back, when you come back, you can't not come back different. And I'm curious for you, whether you were aware when you came back that you were a changed person and if so, how? Yeah, no, you're right. Um, you know, one of the things that people often say,

or I've heard people say is if you don't come back a change, changed person, that's when you really have to worry about somebody. I came back, I'm not sure I thought I was changed. I mean, I certainly felt like I'd earned a different perspective on the world. But shortly after returning, my parents and my sisters met me in California. And then I saw them again, I think near the holidays. And I don't remember specifically when it was, but they each at a certain time pulled me aside and said, Jake, you're different. And they just kind of said it, you know, without judgment,

just kind of matter of factly, like, what's going on with you? There's no joy. You don't laugh as much. You're just distant. You're lacking emotion. And I think the first time I heard it I dismissed it I said you're wrong you just you know I'm in a bad mood second time I heard it you know I thought okay third time I'm like okay well that's a pattern you know and these are the people that know me best

and so I spent some time reflecting on that and ultimately it was those conversations as well as some of the the the self-reflection that I went through that led me to understand that combat was changing me, that I was not the person that I used to be. And that was understandable. And I was okay with that. But I also didn't want to further slip down that path. And I realized in that moment that war was becoming a little too easy. Combat was just becoming a thing that I did versus something that I had to do. And I realized I didn't have to do it and I didn't

have to let war consume my life. And so I made the really tough choice, you know, after Afghanistan to get out of the Marine Corps at the end of my enlistment. Yeah. I mean, it's got to be so hard on so many different levels. I imagine one of those is that there are probably people that you served with who made the same decision as you, but there were probably a whole sort of knowing that as having been so deeply close and bonded with people. Yeah, it was. And I don't know what it is about how you phrased that, but it's actually making me emotional right now. It's everybody's got to make the choice when their war is over, you know, and

it was really hard for me to make my choice. And some people that I cared about deeply weren't ready to walk away. And what's, what's, I think sometimes tragic is that that can create this gravitational pull that pulls men and women back into it, um, against, you know, often against their will. And I think about guys that after I got out who went back overseas and lost limbs and lost their lives. And, um, I remember for a couple of years, um, you know, two or three years after I would get phone calls on occasion and, you know, it'd be somebody that I served with and, you know, I would always know what the call was going to be about, you know, somebody was dead or somebody just lost their legs. And I remember one was a guy, Colin Raz, a Marine that I actually pulled into the sniper platoon,

you know, and he, he later deployed as a sniper back into Afghanistan and stepped on a landmine and lost both his legs. And I thought to myself, man, if I hadn't pulled that guy into the platoon, if I hadn't given him the shot at getting into this elite unit, would he have gone back?

I don't know. But, you know, now the price was his legs. And it just, it was so tragic for me to hear that. And whether it was rational or not, you become saddled with this guilt when you hear that. And, and that's, that's what's hard for a lot of guys is, is that guilt, that, that burden of wondering, always wondering if you did enough. Yeah. I mean, I can't even imagine, you know, it's almost like there are layers of stuff, you know, from the trauma of actually being there to then the trauma of not being there. Yeah. Which I think is the part that people probably really who haven't served in that way would have the most trouble sort of transferring into an understanding. But when you share it, I mean, in that one simple story, you know, it just becomes so real. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest

Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.

Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. So when you're back, you know, and you're sort of like saying to yourself, okay, so what's next? It sounds like your mind kind of goes back to, well, I got an undergrad degree in business. Let me step back into that. I'll be an entrepreneur.

I'll build something cool. And it sounds like you even started down that road, applying to Stanford. That didn't work out. But while you're sort of moving through this process and trying to figure out who am I now and what comes next, the earthquake happens in Haiti. That does something to you. Yeah. Yeah, it did. I think I was at a point in time where I finally thought I was ready to wear that suit that I didn't want to wear back when I was graduating from Wisconsin. And as you mentioned, I was applying to graduate schools. And when the Haiti earthquake happened, it was a couple of days

after I'd got my rejection letter from Stanford. So I was, you know, I was upset. I was mad. First thing I really tried to shoot for the Star Sport Post Marine Corps, I failed at sitting there. I was watching that disaster unfold. And a couple of things happened. I think one, I'd always had a desire to serve, you know, going back to that story in Mauthausen and even a lot of the stuff that I did, you know, activities I was involved in, in high school and and college, like I was always trying to get back to community. And so I wanted to help. And then there was also this itch I wanted to scratch.

It was a year since I'd been in Afghanistan, 60 days since I'd been out of the Marine Corps. And there was this realization that I was never going to do anything that consequential ever again in my life. And so all of a sudden, watching this earthquake, I realized that this is maybe the moment and sprung into action there, gathered a handful of guys that I knew and that I could trust. And we got down to Haiti a couple of days after the earthquake and just started running around the city, doing medical triage clinics in the hardest

areas of Port-au-Prince. And that was when we had this realization, like any entrepreneur does, that it's really, it starts with the problem and then it's the solution that they kind of stumble upon. We realized that everything that we'd been taught in the Marine Corps was applicable in this disaster zone or humanitarian crisis context. And so we set out really from that moment to build upon what we discovered in Haiti and that's become Team Rubicon. Yeah. And I mean, you didn't, you know, when you make the decision to go down to Haiti also, you know, it sounds like first you're like, okay, so who's already going down there that I can help. And you're offering yourself up and

people are saying no. Yeah. Yeah. So when you say you just grabbed a couple of guys and went down to Haiti, it wasn't actually that easy. You can't just say, call a couple of friends and say, let's catch a commercial flight down to an airport that doesn't exist and just start to walk around and help. It's much more involved than that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, you're right. The airport was shut down.

We made plans to traverse through the Dominican Republic. We made some, again, some rough plans to get from the Dominican capital to the Haitian border. And from there, it was really just a figure it out. And the best map, the most updated map we had beyond the Google Maps that we printed off before we left was on my flight from Miami to the Dominican Republic, I ripped the back page of a Wall Street Journal, which was a map of Port-au-Prince with, you know, icons kind of indicating where the death, you know, death was and the hospitals were. So that's just how, that's how grassroots this was to begin with. But we kind of had this naive, cocksure attitude that, well, we just came back from a combat zone. Of course, we could navigate a Caribbean nation off of the Florida coast. How bad could that be? Well, it turns out it was really bad. And I think we were pretty foolish in our own sense of self, an inflated sense of self. And we're pretty lucky that none of us died, but it was the birth of something that's proven to be pretty extraordinary. Yeah. I mean, because when you get there, it is effectively, it's a complete disaster zone,

probably similar in so many ways to a war zone in terms of the devastation, the danger, the risk, the lack of infrastructure and support that you can access. And you just kind of go in and rely on the skills of process planning and execution. And it sounds like it was just immediately powerfully transferable to that experience. You start out with, I think it was four guys, but that grows to eight. And then by the time you guys head out, which was, I think, about three weeks, were you like at 50, 60 people? I mean, how does that team grow

when you're there? Well, we were, so bear in mind that, you know, that initial team of four, we, the funding that we received to go down there was all from friends and family. And so the one thing that we committed to early as we were stepping off to go to the Dominican Republic is, Hey, we're going to share with you exactly what we're doing on the ground every step of the way, because we feel obligated almost to be that transparent with you. And so the organization was really born with this sense of radical transparency that is a spirit that we still maintain today. And this was really kind of at the leading edge of social media and kind of what viral stories would later become. Like now,

they're just a part of everyday life. But at the time, if you can think about it, it's 2010. This horrific earthquake just took place right off the coast of the United States. And this team of former military veterans are running around off the grid, outside of the conventional disaster response system. It was a story that people wanted to tell and people were looking for. And so it started with our own blog posts and the photos that we were uploading with our Blackberries. But then we were having, for example, the local ABC affiliate here in Los Angeles embedded with us for two days. And so the whole LA market got visibility into the work that we were doing down there and just a lot

of other things like that. And it just really started to snowball to the point where one night, maybe about a week in, there was this pounding on our compound wall. We were staying in this walled compound in the middle of the city. Security was pretty tenuous. And I go up to the door. And as we're answering the door, we're hollering through and we're asking, who is it? And this guy says, oh, it's Dr. So-and-so. I said, who are you? are you? He goes, I'm looking for Team Rubicon. And, you know, we weren't really taking ourselves too seriously at the time. So I said, well, why? So I saw, I'm a neurosurgeon from Oregon, from Portland. I saw you guys on the news. I wanted to come down. I brought two of my scrub nurses with me. I opened the door. I look at the guy. I'm like, yo, man, like we're not doing brain surgery down here. Can you sew? He's like, of course I can sew. I'm like, all right, get in. You're on the team.

And his two nurses came in after him. It's just how it was. It was the Wild West. Yeah. And it sounds like you just start accumulating people who are just madly inspired as your story is getting shared. Team Rubicon, that's the name that you give to your group. At that point though, it's almost more like, okay, so it's a cool name. It's a ragtag group of people who know each other well and are just willing to do this incredible thing. But it sounds like at that moment in time, you're almost kind of thinking, this is really feeling amazing. We're doing something powerful, but it's probably a one-off or maybe it's just something that happens here and there on the side. And we'll wrap up our work down here and go back and we'll figure out our lives and get careers and jobs. And then maybe every once in a while we jump out and do something like this.

But that's not the trajectory of what happens. Yeah, you're right. I mean, we had no intention of starting a nonprofit organization on our way down there. And in fact, the only reason that we became incorporated as a nonprofit is a random guy, again, who was following our progress online, who had been a Marine and was now an attorney in Minnesota, called my dad in the middle of the day and said, hey, I'm following your son's exploits on the ground. And he's going to be, you know, he's exposing himself to a tremendous amount of personal and financial liability by not being incorporated. I'm an attorney, I'll do it for you for free. So we're actually a Minnesota based nonprofit organization for no reason other than a guy named Pat Shriver up in Minneapolis called my dad and incorporated us. So yeah, we thought it was going to be a story that we would, you know, tell over beers, you know, in know, game of one-upsmanship with other people.

But we came back and we were just inspired enough to want to continue to do it. You know, I was starting grad school in the fall, I had six or seven months that I could tinker, you know, tinker with this as a hobby. And so we continue to do it. We did some good work. We went to Chile after the tsunami there, South Sudan, Pakistan, some hard areas. And in early 2011, we really had to take stock of what we were doing and what we wanted to do with it when my sniper partner from the Marine Corps and a guy that was one of the first people with us on the ground in Haiti, a gentleman named Clay Hunt, killed himself in Houston, Texas. And, you know, Clay's death was a tragedy for all the reasons that your listeners can imagine. But it forced us to really take a pause and think about what we were doing with our lives and what we wanted to do with our lives. And of course, a part of that, a big part of that contemplation was Team Rubicon. And what was it? What was the

opportunity? And was it something that we want to commit ourselves to kind of in service to the world and in some ways in honor of Clay? And so when the dust settled from his funeral, his memorial service, that's what I chose to do. Yeah, I can imagine the devastation of that. To sort of refocus on this thing and say, okay, so my path in the world of business now, that has to change. That kind of has to get cut short. And this thing has to grow into something else. Was this also the moment where you started to see, well, maybe this isn't just about service to people in disaster situations, but maybe this is also something that is in service to the vets, helping them, helping you, your friends, people that you know, people that you didn't yet know, figure out how to be okay when they came home, having left behind a sense of belonging,

a sense of fellowship, a sense of mission and purpose. Yeah. I think we, even early in Port-au-Prince, we knew that there was a really pretty powerful personal benefit to that service. You know, me personally, I, while on the ground in Port-au-Prince, had plenty of moments where, you know, the devastation that I was seeing, but the impact that I was having in it was helping me to process my wartime experiences. But I think Clay's death really brought those things more sharply into focus and I think provided a sense of urgency to them in a way that really propelled my effort, the efforts of our team, the efforts of those early volunteers. You know, at the end of the day, Team Rubicon is a disaster response organization. You know, we exist to serve those people who've been impacted by crisis and natural disasters.

But we know that there's a powerful outcome, personal outcome to those who are serving. And it's not, you don't have to be a veteran to gain, you know, a higher sense of enlightenment or purpose, a more powerful purpose through service. But I think for veterans who are so closely tied to their mission when they're in uniform, who are so closely tied to one another in that shared vision of service, who are so closely tied into their identity of that uniform, I think that they have a particularly large and dark void that they have to fill, that Team Rubicon has certainly been a part of filling for them. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, beyond the sense of mission and purpose and belonging, I remember reading research on how, especially when you're in battle for more than one tour, your brain literally becomes

rewired. You know, the immune receptors require increasing levels of chemistry in order to get through each day. So your baseline becomes radically different. And when you come home, it doesn't automatically reset. And when you don't get that just daily stimulus, you're hyper, hyper vigilant all day and your body's pumping chemistry that rather than returning to baseline, one of the reasons that I've seen is really offered that so many soldiers drop into a deep state of depression is because their brain actually requires a much higher level of these stimulating chemicals just to be baseline. And when they don't get it, the serotonin, the dopamine goes away and it drops them into a dark place. It's literally

chemical. And what's interesting is that the experiences that you're providing also kind of speak to that as well. Oh, absolutely. There's no doubt about it. We send these men and women into high stakes environments that are austere, that are in some ways dangerous, some of course more dangerous than others. It's hard to compare a flood in Omaha to a cyclone in Mozambique, but you know, nonetheless, it's an austere environment that's resource constrained and the, you know, the stakes are high. You know, people are counting on you. You're in there with a team, you have a series of objectives that you're pursuing. Like it, for all intents and purposes, it's the military without rifles and bad guys. And that's a, that's a really powerful salve for people to be able to

rub on those wounds of war. And it has been for me, it's been for many people that I'm close to. And like you said, it takes a long time for that brain to reset itself. And if we accept that, the physiological changes that you outlined, if we accept that as truth, and I certainly do, then we really have two choices, or really three choices. We can medicate our men and women, which I think we've proven to be woefully bad at. We can leave them to their own devices, which means they're probably going to climb on a motorcycle and barrel down the 405 freeway at 120 miles an hour, weaving through traffic, which at a certain point in 2010, more Marines were lost to motorcycle accidents than combat. And it was because of combat. That was the correlation that many people didn't see. Or three, we give them a healthy

outlet for that. And that could be snowboarding, that could be climbing Mount Everest, or it could be responding to a disaster zone. But those are really the three options that we have. Yeah, that totally makes sense. I mean, when I'm thinking back to my cousin, who I mentioned before, when he actually came back, he ended up kind of redeploying to Afghanistan through a humanitarian organization, you know, where he wasn't carrying weapons anymore. But I remember him sharing that one of the things that he really struggled with when he was there is he wanted to genuinely be of service. He wanted to genuinely help the people that he met in communities, and he couldn't. But that never, but because he wanted to go back in a different context. He wanted to go back in a context of genuine, like doing the thing that he felt he wanted to do when he was there, but he couldn't do. Yeah. I think a lot of us who saw places like Iraq and Afghanistan through the barrel of a gun came to realize that a lot of

those complex problems on the ground in places like Afghanistan can't be solved through a gun. You can kill bad guys with a gun, but there's just going to be more bad guys. At a certain point, you have to break the cycle and you have to figure out what the root cause of extremist activity is and radicalization. And again, there's a time and a place to carry a gun and go kill bad guys in foreign lands. I get it. I'm not a pacifist, but I'm also a realist. And I understand that for every dollar that we spend on our defense budget, we should be spending, you know, $3 on education and global outreach through poverty eradication programs. Yeah. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.

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Flight Risk. You know, the other thing that just occurs to me is what you have built with Team Rubicon is effectively, it's an alternative. So you talk about your friend who you brought into the sniper role with you and how he went back and was injured. What you're creating with Team Rubicon, even though it wasn't the initial notion, is effectively it is an alternative to saying instead of going back because there's just a thing that I feel like I have to do, you're giving them an alternative that is kind of safer for them, but to, to, to either step into like long-term or even transitional while they're sort of like processing through how to be, how to be okay in the world. Yeah. That was actually a topic that I really tried to explore both explicitly and implicitly in my book. The title of the book, even once a warrior begs the question, you know, what is a warrior? And if book, Even Once a Warrior, begs the question,

what is a warrior? And if you're no longer a warrior, what are you now? And there's a chapter where I'm on a mission in the Philippines responding to a typhoon. And among some other things that I explore in this chapter, at one point, I actually run into my old sniper platoon commander. He's still in the Marine Corps.

He's actually leading a sniper team down to the impact area to protect the airfield. And I'm about to send some Team Rubicon volunteers onto the same plane that he's about to board. I mean, it was like this ultimate small world moment. And he and I have a discussion for about 30 minutes on the tarmac. And I just remember the conversation was really about, you know, what, what is a warrior? And he, who had always only aspired to be a Marine in his life and who

I think often wondered what could he possibly be if he was not a Marine? I really asked him to reflect on all of those things that were in his heart about service and about trying to serve a cause or a mission larger than himself and to understand that it didn't have to be in a uniform carrying a gun. You could, and that's noble and there's nothing wrong with that, but there is an escape valve for you. And I think you're right. I think for many people, Team Rubicon has become that. Yeah. So Team Rubicon has grown into something astonishingly big and substantial. What started out as you and a handful of friends dropping down into Haiti for a handful of weeks has now grown into a global organization with something like, what, 140,000 volunteers? Yeah. Tell me more about the scale of what's happening now.

Yeah, well, it's big. Yeah, about 140,000 volunteers. We operate an affiliate in Canada. We've raised almost a quarter of a billion dollars over the last 10 years for the work that we do and responded to, I think, over 800 communities following disasters. And it's ranged from, you know, the earthquake in Haiti to the Syrian refugee crisis to Hurricane Sandy and Harvey and

Maria and all of those terrible storms and everything in between. And, you know, this year in 2020 has been a tremendous test for us. And COVID-19 was something that, of course, we didn't, nobody anticipated on the planet. And though Team Rubicon has continued to do medical work, and we've actually worked in infectious disease outbreaks, nothing like COVID-19, and certainly nothing here in the US. But I think what COVID-19 has proven is that our model, or rather our hypothesis that we can make a more resilient America if we tap into the strengths, the skills, the experiences of the 3 million men and women

who've served since 9-11 has proven true. We've responded in over 300 communities this year alone, doing everything from medical decompression work in places like Navajo Nation, where we saw 3,000 COVID-positive patients, to opening and operating two dozen mobile testing clinics throughout California and the Western states, to surging 10,000 volunteers into food banks in nearly all 50 states across the country. It was certainly an opportunity for us to rise to the occasion and

demonstrate to the world that we were onto something. And I think that it's going to fundamentally change the organization going forward. And I think that's a good thing, because I think it's going to really catapult us into what the next evolution of this organization will be. Yeah. Do you have a sense for what that is? Well, bigger. I mean, you know, listen, at the end of the day, we're big, but we haven't even scratched the surface of potential for the organization. So we've got 140,000 volunteers, but as I mentioned, 3 million men and women have served since 9-11 alone. There's 18 million veterans of all wars in this country. We might respond to 100, 150 natural disasters a year in the United States, but there's 400, 500 communities impacted by natural disasters annually. So that means there's hundreds that we're not reaching. So we have to do more.

We have to do it better. We have to do it cheaper. We have to do it faster. We have to continue to innovate. And that's one of the things that we're really known for, but we can't become complacent in any of those things. At the end of the day, the world is becoming more complex and COVID-19 isn't going to be the last unforeseen crisis that we encounter. We've just got to be prepared for whatever the next one is. Yeah. When you think about all the scope of people who can still potentially become involved in the organization who are vets, that's one thing. But you also mentioned that not everybody is a former vet. Not everybody has served in the military. You have people who serve in police, fire, local civil service. I'm curious whether you also get people who just raise their hand and say, I have never been involved in any way, shape, or form in any type of civil service. And this feels like a way in for me. Yeah, all the time. And it's inspiring. We get school

teachers and truck drivers and people who've never worn a uniform of any kind in their life who have the courage to raise their hand and step into the arena alongside, you know, battle-hardened vets, firefighters, you know, grizzled paramedics. I mean, it's pretty amazing. And so from the beginning, we've never turned anyone away from the organization who simply wanted to serve their country or the world. And we've always committed to giving people those tools and the training that they need to be effective and always indoctrinating them into that amazing culture that we've built along the way that's deeply rooted in the military. Which is kind of amazing to me also, because when I think about that, the experience of just being a civilian and then stepping into that experience and then stepping into that experience and then working side by side with people who may have been through all sorts of different things,

the transference that's got to happen between people without intentionally saying, let me sit you down and teach you a lesson about my experience. But just because you're working side by side, you're devoting yourself to something. You're laboring together. Conversation is going to happen. And I would imagine that the opportunity to leave both people, all people, really changed and seen. It's got to be profound. It is. I mean, there's one of the things that's often spoken about these days is the civilian-military divide. Less than 1% of our nation serves.

They're all volunteer. It's becoming an increasingly family affair, meaning that if your father served or your mother served, you're more likely to be... And that's creating a caste system for our military, which is really unhealthy. And it leaves this division between those who serve and those who haven't. And that's really unhealthy for a republic who invests as much money as we do in defense and who's a leader in global defense, because it becomes really easy to send somebody else's sons and daughters off to war with an interventionist global military policy. And that's not a good thing. And so we do see it.

We see people come together with a deeper understanding, and it happens in both ways, right? So those who haven't served gain a deeper appreciation. And it happens in both ways, right? So those who haven't served gain a deeper appreciation and understanding for what these men and women who have served have gone through. But those men and women who did serve, often one of the phenomena that's developed through these forever wars that we're serving in right now is almost this sense of elitism. You know, I served and you didn't. You owe deference to me. You know, and it's a very unhealthy development. And what these men and women learn is that,

hey, you know, they're not the only citizens of this country. They're not the only ones who are willing to, you know, step into the breach and serve their country in a meaningful and impactful way. And that breaks down that barrier as well, which I think is really, really, really important to the health of the veteran population moving forward. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I mean, when we think about the time that we're in right now, too, you know, we are in a window of years where in this country, the division runs deep, you know, on ideological lines, on political lines, deep on a level where

politics has become identity politics, which is great if you want people to vote for you, and it's terrible if you actually want to someday have people be able to recognize each other's shared humanity, because it means you have to step out of an identity, which is brutally hard. But I wonder if you see in the context of what you're doing with Team Rubicon, people from all walks of life, all beliefs, all political backgrounds and persuasions coming together to work side by side, shoulder to shoulder in service of total strangers where nobody's asking, are you this political affiliation? I'm not going to clear the tree that fell in this tornado in your yard because of it. I wonder if you also see it as sort of like an interesting potential mechanism to allow

people to see each other's humanity. Yeah, we do. One of the things, one of the sayings that we have at Team Rubicon is that if everybody acted every day like they do after a tornado or a hurricane, that we'd live in a truly special place. Because following a disaster, whether you're in Team Rubicon or just a member of that community, you find this well of compassion inside you, this willingness to cross the proverbial train tracks and help neighbors you've never met that we just don't otherwise see.

Within Team Rubicon in particular, we see people from all walks of life. We see people that bridge the urban-rural divide. We see rich, the poor, Democrat, Republican, all races, transgender, gay, queer, questioning, everything. I mean, every shade of diversity. And people come together and they put it all aside. And it's really remarkable. It really is. It's inspiring. I will tell you that this last year has strained it. Not maybe on the missions themselves. I think everybody's still willing to swallow their personal beliefs and line up behind a mission. But man, I see the cracks forming on social media where volunteers from very dissimilar backgrounds would normally be cordial and accommodating online. I've seen vitriol creep into that dialogue in a way that's

just truly been disappointing. And so we were not immune to the divisive, vitriolic, destructive politics of 2020. I hope we can find a way to navigate it going into 2021, because I do think, and this is being foolishly optimistic, but I do think that we can serve as a vehicle for, you know, uniting a divided country. We have to have our own house in order first. And like I said, this year proved to be a challenge for us. Yeah, I would imagine. If everyone acted like they did after disaster to be better world, I completely agree with that. Having been in New York post 9-11, it was a different city for the six months after that. he served as an inspiration for your decision to enter the military. And then about a decade later, you end up actually given the Pat Tillman award. What was that moment like for you? It was surreal, to be honest. As a former college football player,

I always thought that I'd win an SB for something actually sports related. But I think that that moment, that award was, I don't know, like you said, it was just full circle. And it offered just this really amazing moment to reflect on the journey that I'd been on with some incredible people. And, you know, any award is a team award. And that one certainly was, but it held deep, special meaning for me just because of the role Pat Tillman had played in my decision to join. And it happened to come right before the I really paused to reflect on what was happening was these moments that intersected with children who were just always so innocent and in so many ways, so similar to the kids that you'd see walking down the street here in Iowa or New York

City or anywhere else in America. It was just this powerful moment of reflection for me. Yeah. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So hanging out here in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? Live a life for others. I think it's pretty simple. What's a good life? I hope my daughter asks me that question someday because I think it'll be a pretty easy answer. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life?

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