Julian Dorey Podcast - 🤯 [VIDEO] - Navy SEAL Intel Officer Unmasks Military’s Deadliest Team | Remi Adeleke • #157

Episode Date: September 9, 2023

- SIGN UP FOR MyBookie: https://www.mybookie.ag/mobile-betting/  - Julian Dorey Podcast MERCH: https://legacy.23point5.com/creator/Julian-Dorey-9826?tab=Featured - Support Our Show on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey  (***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Remi Adeleke is a Navy SEAL, Author, Director, and Actor. After immigrating from Nigeria to The Bronx, NY as a young child, Remi later went on to have a long career in the Navy SEALs as a Human Intelligence Specialist. Post-SEALs, he has acted in Hollywood, Directed films, and written two books. His latest, “Chameleon,” is on sale now. Buy Remi’s NEW Book, “Chameleon”: https://bitly.ws/Ui3k  Remi’s Autobiography: https://bitly.ws/Ui3y  ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - Before Navy SEALs: Remi’s Childhood in Nigeria & his father’s dream 6:58 - Remi’s father’s mysterious death 11:34 - Many Nigerians now know truth about Remi’s dad 15:03 - How Remi found out his dad died; Society’s fragility & parenting 25:03 - Phone addiction; Embracing age 29:21 - The 4th Turning; Societal Selfishness 35:33 - Nigerian Get Rich Plan: Politics? 39:15 - Remi comes to US right after father’s murder 44:59 - Growing up in The Bronx 49:37 - Remi’s childhood obsession with money 53:07 - Remi becomes a dealer & burner phone scammer 1:00:34 - The Ongoing Cover-up of Remi’s father’s murder 1:08:32 - Why Remi decided to join the military (& later Navy SEALs); How he got in (story) 1:15:39 - Remi remembers when the Towers fell 1:19:23 - Remi immediately tries out for Navy SEALs 1:22:39 - Remi’s classmate dies in BUDS Navy SEALs Training 1:30:27 - Remi slacks off & fails end of Navy SEALs tests 1:35:55 - Remi starts over at bottom of Navy; What kind of person makes it through BUDS? 1:40:51 - Navy SEALs learn how to work as a team; Navy SEAL fraternity is very tight 1:51:14 - Remi’s teammates who died in battle 1:52:33 - Remi’s Specialty as a Human Intel (HUMINT) in Navy SEALs 1:59:32 - What Navy SEALs HUMINT training is like; Writing & Spying 2:06:58 - How Remi’s photographic memory was passed down from his Grandpa 2:10:09 - Never ask others to do what you won’t; Backstabbers in business 2:18:50 - The values Remi teaches his kids 2:20:24 - What goes into a great CIA or Navy SEALs intelligence report? 2:22:23 - Psychological profiling in Navy SEALs HUMINT 2:26:08 - Why Remi was effective working with intelligence sources 2:29:54 - Remi’s explains his deployments with the Navy SEALs 2:35:03 - How did Remi identify potential spy sources? 2:39:22 - Navy SEALs morale in Middle East in 2008 Post-Iraq 2:43:31 - Why Remi left Navy SEALs 2:46:46 - Remi’s rock bottom moment (story) 2:54:38 - Remi & his wife’s parenting discussions & teaching son to face bullies 2:56:44 - The great responsibility of being a Navy SEAL 3:00:02 - Remi’s Black Market Investigations ~ Get $150 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover (USING CODE: “JULIANDOREY”): https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey ~ Music via Artlist.io ~ Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 157 - Remi Adeleke Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up guys, if you're on Spotify right now go to the base that's not the SEAL base. You go to NAB or go to another base and you have that trident on, everybody stops and they look and like, oh crap, you're a SEAL. And it's like that can build up pride within the person. And there's been guys who, you know,

it's been too much power. Thank you. Even though that's detrimental to that kid, that kid can end up dead or in prison. You know what I'm saying? If I remember this correctly, didn't you say before you went into the military, like you were involved in that? Yeah, I was involved. Growing up in the Bronx?

Yeah, I grew up in the Bronx. I was a product of my environment. I didn't have a father. My father died when I was five. We left Nigeria when myia when my father died yeah you had a hold on a second you had a really unique yeah yeah childhood obviously tragedy in the middle of there too and you ended up really taking in control of your life and turned into an unbelievable success through your own work which is amazing but like you were really wealthy in nigeria for like until you were five and you had to come here what what happened there like what was what was your dad's background so my dad

he was a he was a genius he was a visionary entrepreneur uh philanthropist multi-millionaire you name it he did it he was he was uh he was born in Nigeria left in his late teens, ended up getting a full-ride academic scholarship to study architecture and engineering in London. Got his bachelor's, got his master's, started accumulating his wealth in the West. He was one of the first black men on the board of the World Trade Center in New York City. He was one of the first black men on the board of the British Financial Planning Council in the UK. I mean, the dude was a genius. After a number of years and after accumulating all of his wealth in the West, he decided, I want to go back to Nigeria because Nigeria is rich in resources. You got oil, you got natural gas, you got cocoa, you got gold, you got minerals. As a matter of fact, you got china not going into parts of africa not just

nigeria but other parts of africa as well and and you know and buying up land and and broke and doing deals with with nigerian governments or property owners and and to to mine these areas for natural resources and so my dad knowing how how rich nigeria was and resources and is in resources you know he wanted to create like a Nigerian Wall Street, like an African Wall Street, a financial sector that people from around the world could come to and do business in Africa. And so in the 1970s, he bought a massive plot of land called Marico, still exists to this day.

And that's where he was going to build his wall street. He bought it for 8 million pounds in the 1970s. And that's a few bucks. That's a lot of money. Yeah. And, and, and so that's where he was going to build this,

this wall street essentially. Um, uh, and there was a military coup somewhere around the seventies. It is. Can't remember exactly. The little one to say it was a late seventies. And,

uh, that Mariko was taken from him. Fast forward. He went to court with the Nigerian government, fought them. And after the coup subsided, he wasn't going to fight against the military regime. So after the coup had subsided, he went forward against the Nigerian government in the court system. They the federal government said to him, all right, what do you want for compensation? We're not going to give you Marico back. What do you want?

Do you want the money back? What is it that you want? And so they settled. And in the settlement, my dad requested a lagoon. It was literally a swamp, but he requested a lagoon. And the Nigerian government was like, a lagoon? What are you going to do with a lagoon? He's like, don't worry about it.

Just give me the lagoon. And so what he did was he hired Dutch engineers to d dredge the foreshore create six interlinks and essentially create one of the first man-made islands in nigeria which is it exists to this day it's now known as banana island which is a uh um it's a uh pretty much like a beverly hills that's where like some of the richest nigerians richest africans in the world have property on Banana Island. So that's my dad's that island. My dad created that island. Wow.

I'll put that map in the corner of the screen for people to see. And there should be a story on somewhere. It's a bunch of stories on the internet. There are very few things that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And, of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month.

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this whole thing right oh that looks like a banana that would make sense here's a crazy thing it wasn't supposed to be a island for with luxury hotels and multi-million dollar estates or any of that stuff, right? Click images? Click images? Yeah. You'll see like... Let's see. Images.

What am I looking for? I mean... Oh, shit. ...houses and stuff that's on it. Yo. Dad was balling Yeah so That's when I

When he started dredging the foreshore And creating the island That's when I was born So I was born in 82 And I was born into The riches and wealth We had nannies Cars

Drivers I mean you name it we traveled all over the world my dad was multi-millionaire my mom and you remember this well not not a lot i mean i left when i was five so i don't remember too much i remember little things like i remember my dad i remember um uh the private school i went to um in the koi legos and you know i remember some of the people very vaguely. But I have pictures all around. I have pictures in my office and stuff of us on our horse or with my, you know, dad, one of my dad's fancy cars.

And, you know, my grandmother traveling to London with her fur coat on and my dad got her and all of this other stuff and pictures of the day. As a matter of fact, I remember years later, after my dad died, I found letter from from the white house ronald reagan that he had written to my dad you know what i mean because my dad was he was well connected all over all over the world's brilliant man and so um so that's the life i was born into fast forward after the land after the land had formed and uh and he started construction on the buildings, the Lagos state government, not the federal government, but the Lagos state government came in and said the federal government was never supposed to award him the lagoon.

They said that the lagoon belonged to the state. But Nigeria is a very corrupt nation historically been one of the most corrupt countries uh for the last 40 50 decades and uh they conveniently waited until the land had formed and until construction started building the building to come in and say that belonged to us that they just took it to us they just took it from us they essentially took it my dad my mom you know would tell my dad all the time listen you need to put money back in the states because i don't trust the nigerian system and if what happened to you in the 70s happens again we're going to lose everything because

my dad had leveraged everything all his art our house millions of dollars and he would always tell my mom listen my priority is nigeria let me get this this whole thing set up so that nigeria can be in a better place and once it's all set up and we're getting paid rent and all that then we'll put all the millions of dollars in the u.s but this is my priority because he was trying to do something for the people wasn't about him doing yeah he was going to make money, but it was about him doing something for Nigeria. As a matter of fact, the same architect of the World Trade Center was a good

friend of his. He architected and created the blueprints for the twin towers that were supposed to stand at the center of, well, Lagoon City. His name was changed to Banana Island, right? Because, again, he wanted to do something for the people. Anyway, I say all I have to say,

he went to court to go fight the Nigerian government again. And, uh, he died three weeks later. How did he die? So, long story short, a lot more to the story. It's all in my book, Transform. I break it down. But the autopsy showed that he was given bad Medicaid. He was bitten by a dog. Um, he went for a walk, super

stressed out. In Nigeria. In Nigeria. Yeah. Super stressed out. Went for a walk. And that's what he would do to clear his mind. Neighbor's dog on the compound next to us broke free. My dad had done these walks a bunch of times. Never happened. Dog broke free, slid through the gate, bit him. Right? So my dad went to, I mean, naturally, you know, he went to the doctors. Right? I want to say the next day. And got medication to treat, you know, I think it was supposed to be like anti-rabies, like prophylaxis.

I can't remember. But some type of medication. Didn't take the medication right away. anti rabies, like prophylaxis. I can't remember, but some type of medication, um, didn't take the medication right away. Flew to Germany real quick. Cause he had friends and lawyers and, and, and this stuff in Germany, there's something out there in Germany,

flew from Germany to New York, was out there for a couple of days. And then he went, my mom, you know, my mom told him, you need to take the medication. He wouldn't take it.

He didn't take it. He's like, I'm gonna wait till I get back home. Gets back to Nigeria, takes the medication and goes to go take a bath never comes out so medications just had a reaction with the no it was essentially poison yeah because my dad was my dad the he was very connected in nigeria he was connected to to politicians he was connected to the oluolu which is considered like the king of the yorubas he was connected to to politicians he was connected to the oluolu which is considered like the king of the yorubas he was connected to generals he was connected to a lot of

people my dad was a very very driven person and again he wanted to create the island because he felt in his mind if i create something where there was never something no one could ever come in and say it was it's mine because it never existed? And so he thought he had bulletproofed this island. He bulletproofed this dream of his. And in reality, you know, there's a saying in Nigeria, if you fight corruption, you're gonna fight back because Nigeria is so corrupt. And so when they found a loophole and did what they did,

they knew that come hell or high water, my dad was gonna fight too for now and get it back. So they killed him. So essentially they killed him. And my dad's personal security guard to this day is the manager, one of the managers of the island. So it wasn't just people outside, but it was people in his circle. So that guy is still there today. Still there today.

And you feel a certain type of way like he might have done. You know, yeah. Well, for him to be my dad there were a lot of people that were after my dad was gone inside his circle outside of his circle that got portions of that island that got a lot as a matter of fact i did a post a july fourth post that went like super viral on twitter got like i don't know like four or five million views on twitter it was like like it was like, it just blew up. Brad can tell you about it.

If you go to my Twitter, there's a post and I did July 4th post where I shared my dad's story. I didn't share it like to pretty much bash Nigeria or anything like that. I just shared it to kind of tell the story how why I'm grateful to be in America because of what happened to my dad. And keep going.

I gotta go. July 13th. You said it was July 4th? July 4th, yeah. That was a follow-up one. July 5th, July 4th. You can click on that post. You want to read it?

So after the top part is cut off right yeah after completing his bachelor's after completing his bachelor's and master's in the uk he created multiple businesses in the west and generated more wealth than he could have ever imagined dad brought all his talents and expertise back to nigeria with the hopes of creating a world trade center africa wall street when i was born in nigeria i was surrounded by wealth of servants opulence blah blah i already covered that in 1987 oh wait let me do that uh service uh i was surrounded service obviously loving parent who despite having it all modeled the importance of hard work never being a victim and never being satisfied with mediocrity in 1987 the nigerian government illegally and

corruptly stole all my dad's assets including his man-made island that's now worth billions and was renamed Banana Island. While fighting the Nigerian government in court, he mysteriously died weeks later. We went from rich to poor overnight. My mom brought us, me and my brother to America. It wasn't easy as we literally started from the bottom of the Bronx. My brother and I applied what our parents instilled in us at an early age. Despite a plethora of mistakes I made, we both became very successful. Without the opportunities America has afforded my family, I'd be nothing.

Yeah, America isn't perfect. We have our issues just like every other country on the planet. But America is one of the handful of places in the world where you can start with nothing, put in the work, and end up at the top. I love this country, and I'm not ashamed to say it. And the moment I feel otherwise, I'm going to pack up my stuff, teach my kids a new language, and seek life elsewhere. With that said, happy Independence Day, July 4th. And so the comments, if you go down, it's like 4 million views, right? The comments, dude, that I got, I got tens of thousands of comments, right?

Most of them from Nigerians. What'd they say? All kinds of good stuff. They were just like, oh, my God, we didn't know that you were the son of Chief Adebayo Adelake. You always said, because I was in this movie called Plane. With Gerard Butler? With Gerard Butler,

yeah, and when Plane came out, I was getting a lot of Nigerians hitting me up like, I saw your name in the credits. I was like, this is a Euro, but this is Adelake. And then, so they knew me from the film, a lot of Nigerians And then when they when I posted this it was like we didn't know that you just was your dad the chief at a bike And my dad's like a legend in Nigeria, right and another there's I mean

There's tens of thousands of comments and retweets and all that and one thing that was that I'm trying to the point I'm trying to make here is that There were a bunch of Nigerians who said the current president of nigeria lied to us we've always known that he's he was lying about the the origins of banana island so they because he was the senator of lagos son of a bitch when my dad in 1987 now you you were five years old i was five Yeah. So how'd you find out your dad died? My mom. So I remember, I'll never forget the moment.

We were sitting on this red, it was like a couch slash chair because it was about this wide. My mom put me on her right side, my brother on her left. And she delivered the news in such a calm way. She was just like, hey, your dad's died and he's not coming back and she it wasn't that she was being cold and stoic i asked about it years later but i but in retrospect i could say that she was she kept that she knew that she had to keep it together so that we can keep it together because if she was you know falling apart and crying and screaming then we would fall apart crying screaming and would just create this never-ending cycle.

And she said it in such a calm way that right after that, me and my brother looked at each other, we said, okay. And we went back to playing with our toys. You also, at five, you don't have a concept. Yeah, we don't have a concept of death. And on top of that, on top of that, my dad traveled a lot for work. So, to us, it was like, oh, he's just going

on another business trip. Oh, shit. Because we didn't understand death, but also, I think a big part of it was like oh he's just going on another business trip because we don't understand death but also i think a big part of it was her delivery because if she was hysterical and crying it's like you know it's like one of the key lessons we learn in combat is when you're in combat situations you know if your leader is like frantic and going crazy in the midst of a firefight like oh my god i don't know what to do like like like uh we have a saying our community calm breeds calm right but if you have

somebody that like a leader at the top that's freaking out don't know what to do somebody will eventually like jump in and fill that void be like shut all right you get over there you cover down on that door you go up there you get on the phone with the bird. But for the most part, there might be an instance where everybody else can be in disarray. And that probably doesn't apply to soft units. But I would probably say, let's say infantry units, especially an infantry unit that has a lot of young privates in it. If you're looking at that leader and that leader's falling apart, chances are you're going to fall apart. But if you're looking at a leader in the middle of the shit storm like he's keeping them together you'll be like cool let's rock let's go get this you know what i mean and so that's what my mom was applying she and

she was keeping it together so that we could keep it together and she she sounds like a really strong if you look up her on instagram dude she's 71 dude she's like does pull-ups push-ups run i mean people think she's like my sister sometimes. She's a beast because she still has that let's go get it. Her mindset is I'm not going to rely on anybody to do anything for me. I don't even want to have to rely on medication. I don't want to rely on having to go to the hospital for anything. And she had that mindset ever since my dad died.

See, this is something that in this country, I speak for myself and probably a lot of other people. Like we don't get that. Just like we don't really understand what it's like to have our land invaded or something like that. We're this experiment in the West, beautiful experiment, this island. And we take for granted the fact i can pick up the phone call 9-1-1 some chick's gonna answer right you know yeah i go to the hospital i say need something like even people who are uninsured and that's a huge problem we gotta fix that but like they'll still give them treatment and stuff yeah you know you just kind of like i i don't know

more and more recently i've said this on on a lot of podcasts recently but i keep thinking about like how fragile society is man and I'm trying to like understand how close we are to like not having that stuff if something went wrong. Yeah. But you get that. Yeah, I get it. Your mom gets it completely.

Yep. And parenting. I think it's so funny you bring it up because I think that the issue, the reason why we are where we are, I'm about to be 41 in two weeks, right? You'll look great. I'm trying, trying brother it's not

easy man but but i would i would just like i think you're still in that same time period where we had to work we we didn't have social media we didn't like we had to go we had to entertain ourselves like we had to we had to we had to we for the most part i want to say i know i got discipline like we got discipline and sometimes we got yelled at not just by our parents but by like the neighbor like what do you do get over here i'm not you go tell your mama on you but that doesn't happen now and and and parents like parents are so it's like parents are scared of their kids man i'll do i was at i told brown with the phil's barbecue yesterday oh i didn't tell bro i told jessica i went to ph's Barbecue yesterday. No, I didn't tell Brad. I told Jessica. I went to Phil's Barbecue yesterday. It was this long line.

And Phil's Barbecue is like on a square. It takes up this square of a block. And it's in like this kind of strip mall. But it's like the square is in the center of the strip mall. And so there's cars that drive back and forth on each side of Phil's Barbecue. And it's these two kids. The boy couldn't have been older than 10 years old the girl couldn't have been older than like seven years old and they're literally running they're playing tag hitting each other and running into the street like cars like driving by stopping about to hit the kids. And yo, my blood was boiling.

I look back at the parents. I was literally about to yell at the parents because I was like, yo, your kid is going to die. And the one girl, she's not even looking when she's running from her brother. She's just blindly running into the street. And Kayden and Caleb, my two oldest sons, they came up to me. I saw this and they were just like, we know you. Yeah, they wouldn't be doing that. I said to them, I was hoping, I said, yeah, because, you know, I'll whoop your ass.

And they laughed. It's like, we know, Dad. And they kept on coming up to me for me to do something, and I wanted to. But at the same time, there's a dad right there. Finally, the dad, because everybody's looking at the kids running constantly into the street about to get hit by a car and running back. And finally, the dad walks up, and the dad puts his hands on the kids, and just, it's like he didn't even know what to say. He just put his hands on his son's shoulder, and then walked back. And I was like, that's the problem.

Like, those two two kids they don't know what discipline is they don't understand consequences for actions yeah they don't understand that like yo there's certain things you're supposed to do there's certain things you're not supposed to do when when somebody approaches you that's an authority figure there's a way you're supposed to respond and we've lost that and a lot of that comes from the parents guess what everybody it is that time of year again football season is officially upon us and you know what that means it is time to place those bets as a better you demand perfection and my bookie delivers nfl college football and a brand new cash out system gives you the opportunity to bet and win all season long first two legs of your

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Upon doing so, you can use the promo code DORY, D-O-R-E-Y, on a deposit of $50 or more to get up to $200 injected instantly right into your account. Once again, click that link below and use the promo code DORY, D-O-R-E-Y, on your first $50 deposit or more and get cash quick. Thank you so much to MyBookie for supporting our podcast. Please show them some love with a download today. And my mom, my grandmother, my grandfather, my mom would tell me like, they loved her, but they were like, yo, you will do things right the first time. You will show up on time. You will be respectful You will do X Y Z and if she did it then she had to pay the man for it And so she is still that in us and that's why she was and still is the woman

She and we've loved parenting has been lost. Why do you think that's happened? I Think a part of it is Social media that's a small part of it. Mm-hmm. I think I think you having a lot of I think a part of it is social media. That's a small part of it. I think, I think you have an, a lot of, I think you have this generation that at least my generation that doesn't really want to grow up.

I think, you know, we want to stay, we want to stay 20, 16. I think you have a lot of people that are living their lives through their kids or trying to live their lives through their kids instead of being a parent, be a friend.

I see it with, you know, I have friends who, you know, they're my age and their kids be bugging out. And I tell them like, yo, you need to get that in check right now, son.

And it's like, ah, they giggle and laugh because it's like they want to be friends. The divorce rate has always been about, has been around, I don't want to say always, but I would say in the recent, what, 20, 30 years, always been around 50%, right? That sounds right and so you have parents who have to essentially be your friend to maintain a relationship with a kid yeah because it's like mommy can't be the bad guy because daddy can't be mommy daddy hate each other you know mommy's always looking for something to you know pin on daddy daddy's always looking for something to pin on mommy hey i know that i i know that i can get away with whatever i want i know that i could do whatever i want and i got a friend that's like that where you know his his kid there's certain things he won't do to his kid

and i'm not talking about like spanking the kid or anything like that like taking the ipad away from the kid right because he wants to be he doesn't want to be the bad guy. So I think that that plays a role in it as well. But I think it goes back to my generation doesn't want to grow up. That's a really – I don't know that I've heard that answer before when this topic comes up. That's everything you said there. I agree with it. And I think for anything like this, it's always going to be a litany of reasons. It's not just one thing.

But one that you're kind of saying in there, I'm just going to expand and put the name on it, is the phone. Because I think, and more specifically, rather than just the phone and the fact that we use it a lot, we don't have presence because of it, right? You talk about standing in line. One of the things I try to do when I'm in lines now is I like to keep my phone in my pocket yeah yeah i don't want the distraction yeah yeah i don't i i want to be present as much as i fucking hate lines i want to be present in this line yeah i'll watch people yeah right which is something you had to be very good at in your career and everything and i'm like i'm looking at a lot of parents where kids have been raised on this thing watching all that shit on t tock all the time they don't have

an appreciation for any respect or values like that because of it and they don't have an example because if you look in front of them in that same line their dad's on the phone exactly exactly you know yeah so it's like a and and the dad doesn't want to scold them for being on the phone because he's on the phone he'd be a hypocrite yeah right yeah so i think that i think a big part of it is you know we have this dopamine cycle of cell phones yeah yeah in the country that you know is it's global now too let's be honest but you know we i see it i can speak to what i see here yeah and i think that combined with all those factors yeah that's really good parents don't want to grow up and they want to be friends with their kid. You're definitely right about that.

Yeah, just think about it. Think about people 40s, 50s getting plastic surgery and, you know, to try and, you know, I'm not just talking about women. I'm talking about guys, you know what I mean, as well. Trying to like, you know, do certain, trying to stay young, wearing clothes and all of that stuff. You know what I mean? I'm guilty of that. I don't like wearing my hat forward. I've always liked wearing my hat backwards since I was a kid., I'm guilty of that. I don't like wearing my hat forward. I've always liked wearing my hat backwards since I was a kid. So I'm guilty of

that to a certain extent as well. But, you know, it's just, we all going to get old, bro. Sometimes I tell old people to try to be young. So I'm like, yo, listen, you had that time. It's over. Be old, be cool. Like embrace it. Embrace the wisdom that you've gained from living life. I think people feel like if they live naturally, they're going to become the get off my lawn guy. That doesn't have to be the case. It doesn't have to be the case at all. It doesn't have to be the case. But you don't have to go to the other extreme either by being immature or being a grandma going to the club with your granddaughter. Right. You know what I'm saying? Which happens. Or being a mom and going to the club with your granddaughter right you know what i'm saying which or being a mom going to the club with your daughter yeah you know what i mean seen that one a lot yeah grandma less mom i've seen yeah you know the deal and it's just like come

on and then being the one that's trying to hook up with with do or push your daughter on the dudes or whatever the case may be because uh you know. That's weird. Yeah, it's like, you know, that's the issue. And I think it could change. I think it could change. But I think, again, it starts with conversations like this and people looking inwardly and be like, huh. You know, just like with the whole human trafficking thing. The point of these conversations is not for us to just sit here and talk.

Do you know what I mean? Like, it's for people to be able to listen and reflect. Man, am I the one? Is that me? Am I trying to be a friend to my kid? Am I on my cell phone all the time, not paying attention to my kid? Am I the one that's trying to stay young,

do all of these things? And if it is, then you can do something about it. Yeah, I'd like to think, I mean, I sit here while I'm doing it. I think I'm really lucky because I literally have the front row seat. But I'd like to think. I mean, I sit here while I'm doing it. I think I'm really lucky because I literally have the front row seat. But I'd like to think a lot of people listening have a lot of the thoughts that pop in my head when I have different guests in here that are also popping in theirs. Because I'm constantly like, first of all, I have all these different people in here.

So I'm constantly learning things. But then, you know, people will just be explaining their experience and it'll reveal something in like my weakness. And I feel like I have this growth hack here. It like oh yeah wait i do that wrong now i now i know now i can i can do it but we should live in a country where like there is kind of like that elder statesman kind of thing with your parents you know and it's not buddy and friend it's like you have a great relationship but parent child i mean my parents were i have a great relationship with my parents they were not my friend yeah yeah like that was a very like there's no mistaking that my the closest to a friend was my dad calling me buddy literally but like it wasn't like it wasn't like that yeah it was like you're gonna go fucking do this thank you he was nicer but you know what i mean and it's like have you ever read

the the book the fourth turning no i haven't you gotta check that out it's these sociologists i'm not gonna go i've done it on other podcasts i'm not gonna spend 10 minutes explaining but in in essence the spark notes version yeah these sociologists in the 1990s sociologist historians said wait a second every historian has always made the mistake of thinking that because they're has a historian they can predict the future and when they do that they unbiasedly or they biasly project change what the future patterns are going to be all we're going to do is we're going to identify the patterns and we're just going to go like this and we're not going to predict you we're just going to truck month is on at chevro. Get 0% financing for up to 72 months on a 2025 Silverado 1500 Custom Blackout or Custom Trail Boss.

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I don't know how. And that's what they did. And they essentially figured out that everything happens in these 21 to 22-year cycles of generations. Four generations, four cycles, over and over and over again. Yeah. Just to put a little cap on it for you, Revolutionary War, 75 to 83 in the 1700s. 80 to 85 years later, Civil War, 61 to 65. 80 to 85 years later, World War II, 41 to 45 here. 80 to 85 years later world war ii 41 to 45 here at 80 to 85

years later covet era right so shit kind of happens in weird cycles and one of the things that always occurs is in the different age brackets like 0 to 21 21 to 42 42 to 63 63 and older there's always the same generation on top of the same other type of generation because it repeats in force so we are currently in a cycle where the generation who's like in charge the 42 to 63 years are generally they're called the nomads and they're the people whose parents like that generation kind of like didn't wasn't as active with them or whatever so now as parents they're trying to make it up with their kids and they don't know how to do that right so in this case they're trying to be like friends with them and shit yeah that makes sense and i look at it

and i hear you give a really well thought out answer like that and i'm like kind of lines up yeah man you know yeah that's the problem bro and uh well that's, well, that's one of the, that's one of the problems, but I tell you what, I ain't my, I tell, I tell my kids, just like you said, I say that my kids, the same thing. I ain't supposed to be your friend. I'm supposed to be your father. And, uh, my, and I say that my, my Jessica, my wife, your mom is not supposed to be your friend. She's supposed to be your mom. So do X, Y, and Z. And because that's the way I was raised. And that's how you raise good people who will then raise good people who will then raise good people.

You know, I had somebody ask me the question all the days, like, what does winning mean to you? And I said, winning to me means my kids have grown up to be assets to society. They grow up to be respectable, law-abiding citizens, giving, not self-serving, genuine people. That's what winning means to me. And I will not have won until that happens. And I will have failed if my kids 20, 30, 40, become 23, 40, 30, whatever the case may be, and they're in dirtbags or they're in prison or they're unaccountable or they're self-serving or they're beating their wives

or my daughter's sleeping around doing all of these crazy things. I will have failed. they're unaccountable or they're self-serving or they're beating their wives or you know My daughter's sleeping around doing all these crazy things. I will have failed Like life for me is all about them because at the end of the day when I'm gone Hopefully more than likely they'll still be here and then when they're gone then their legacy will still be here And that's what it's all about and that's why you know, I tell them I say this is why daddy does what he does This is why daddy makes you make your bed. This is why mommy has a chore list for you. This is why when we, when you, when you do something that you're not supposed to do, you have to get disciplined. We don't enjoy disciplining you, but we're trying to raise you up. Our job, our priority is to raise you up to be, you know, law abiding, good

serving people. Yeah. And I, we will have failed if not and i think that that's another thing i think going back to the whole people don't want to grow up what's an aspect of not growing up remaining selfish i can tell you like when i was when i was 15 when i was freaking a kid it's all about me yeah i want my candy i i yes even my kids right like you know, it's all about me. I want my candy. It's the same with my kids, right? Like, you know, kids, it's all about them, right? When you get into the teens, it's all about me. It's all about getting girls.

It's all about getting money. It's all about me, me, me, me, me. Getting to 20s, it's all about me, me, me, me, me, right? And to a certain extent, that can be helpful because that can help project you to where you need to be but at some point right life is not about you anymore life has to be about your legacy life has to be about the people to your right and to your left life and that and i got that in the seal teams man i tell people all the people ask me were you ever scared as a seal i said my only fear is good right one but my only fears is as a seal was doing something or not doing something that would lead to the death or serious injury of the man to my right or the man to my left

highest stakes ever i didn't care about death yeah i could die i gave up my fear of death the moment i raised my hand to join the military during an act of war during a time of war i gave my my fear of death even more so when i decided to go to SEAL training with dudes dying SEAL training guy died in my class right in front of me you know I gave my fear of death way before I even went on my first op so at this point it's not me dying it's about the people around me and I would say for me it wasn't until I was I turned 26 that I was like you know what life is not about me anymore life is about the people around me and and don't they say the brain i might be way off on this but like the brain develops at like 25 26. yeah it's like in that is it 25 i thought it was 28. but you might be but it's in that it's in that neighborhood though

that's interesting yeah so so you know so many people their brains may not have developed you know what i mean or you know they just can't stop being selfish life is still about them and so when life is still about you you can't properly parent you can't you're not because you're not going to be a visionary like my dad you have nigerians you have people in nigeria when they want to become rich their aspirations are politics like i'll take myself an example and growing up in the bronx yo when we want to be rich rise up what do we look at for the most part myself and a lot of guys have guys and girls i grew up rapping sports or hustling right in nigeria is different it's all, from the time kids are small, go into politics. Their parents groomed them to go into politics.

Because you can go into politics poor and come out a billionaire. Not a millionaire, a billionaire. Because Nigeria is very corrupt. Because you get a lot of Nigerian senators and governors who they're taking. There was a story out of nigeria a few years ago uh when uh nigerian military we were trying to fight boko haram in the northern part of nigeria and i can't remember the name of the state but the troops had no amu barely had ammunition guns wall jacked up didn't have vehicles they have nothing why because the the governor of that

state received and i'm just throwing out a random number i can't remember the exact number received like a hundred million dollars from the, from, from the federal government. Hey, go fight Boko Haram. By the time that money got to the troops,

it was like 5 million hours left. Yeah. Right. And so that even there's a story about, um, in Nigeria of the, the oil ministry, the minister of oil,

this woman who she was cutting side deals with other countries and ships would just disappear with barrels of oil but she would when she got out of a government she was a billionaire billions of dollars right and then she went to london when they um when the nigerian government was like you need to come back here we found out that you stole billions of dollars in oil she was like i need to stay in london because i have cancer so she stayed in london right and so a lot of people in nigeria they groom their kids to try and get into politics because if they can get into politics then they could become rich that's their way out that senator um i don't know if we had the story up there but the senator of uh uh who uh with the organ harvesting where he uh his uh in the uk him

and his wife tried to get there oh the one we looked at earlier yeah yeah this dude here earlier that dude i'm not gonna try to say that sorry he millionaire yeah he was a senator he's a senator he was a he well he was a senator in nigeria came out of politics a millionaire moved to the uk and that's what a lot of nigerian politicians do after they've served their time and they've made their millions of billions they go to the uk or they come to the us it's sad that you say parents then aspire for their kids to do that though because they know inherently what that means if they're aspiring for them to do that. It's not.

Yeah. They're not doing it in honorable ways. No, no. And so I say that to say there's a line. There's I'm going into this field of politics for me because it's about me versus my dad story i'm trying to build this island for them for my people so that we could have a place to go do business and they kill them for it and they kill them for it that's the same thing we've seen with parenting yes it's no i want to stay young i want to have a good time through my kids i want to hang out with my kids friends and all this other stuff and it's like no dude it's time for you to pour into your kids pour into your legacy because not the cycle

is going to continue and they're going to be just like you and then that's going to create another generation to jack up kids which is going to create so it's a crazy cycle man well the other thing that you have now that's great that through no fault of your own and certainly no fault of your mom's own you didn't have growing up is you and your wife are both there to be parents to your kid your dad was taken from you murdered when you were five yeah and your mom had to be a single mother so you know you mentioned you guys lost everything when that happened because it was taken from him yeah did you come to the united states like right away yeah it was quick one minute we one minute we're in nigeria my mom's like let's we're out and you went to the bronx with no money nothing that is a matter of fact

my mom got to the u.s she called up an uncle of ours on her side, cousin, her cousin said, hey, I have no money. Husband just died. Don't have a nickel to my name. Can you loan me some money so that that way I could get some food? You know, just something to time you over until I get a job. He's like, let me call you back in five minutes. Five minutes later, phone rings. Then the phone was my mom's cousin's wife she said to my mom how dare you call up my husband and ask him for money who the hell do you think you are don't you ever do that again and then she hung up the phone on my mom so So here my mom had been kicked in losing her husband. And now she's been kicked again by another family member. And that was, I have to say, the point in her life where she was like a switch went off in her head.

Where she was just like, I ain't got nothing. I got to make this happen. We had nothing. I tell that story just to emphasize the point of we literally had nothing where'd you move in the bronx uh west bronx fordham and sedgwick and uh like i mentioned earlier my mom did a good job of masking the reality of what had happened she you know she kept our apartment well kept. She had some of my dad's art peppered around the apartment. She would emphasize us, keep your room clean, keep the kitchen clean, all of that stuff. And she did a good job of hiding a lot of things from us.

What kind of jobs did she work? She started out as a teacher at the South Bronx, teaching elementary school. She would take jobs in museums and art galleries and even playhouses in order to expose us to the arts for free and give us like a secondary education. And then she started a creative writing business called First Impression Writing Service. I'll never forget because that was her thing that she always would tell my brother and I. It's always about your first impression. So she started a writing service. So she would write term papers for people. She would write resumes for people. And this is when computers started coming out. People didn't really know how to use Microsoft and type and all of that. And she started out with a typewriter

and then she migrated to, you know, typing on computers. She would do all of that stuff for people as a side hustle, resumes, term papers, cover letters, all of that stuff. And she hustled, man. Like, she would wake up before my brother and I. We lived in a 17-story building. She would run the steps a few times. Running the steps. For a workout because she couldn't afford a gym. So she would run up and down, up and down, up and down.

Come back, shower, get me and my brother up, get us fed, take us to school, go to her job as a teacher. Come back, pick us up. Well, yeah, come back, pick us pick us up get us home Well, no, my grandmother would pick us up. So we'd be home by the time she came back. She'd get us fed Work at work another job and then you know Put us down to bed and all that stuff and then she work another job and then she go to sleep wake up early again Do it again. And so for her cuz she was like I need to make it i need to make i remember asking one day i said mom why didn't you know why didn't you ever get married you never got married you could beautiful woman it's like she's like i never wanted to bring any confusion into the house she said because i knew that if i could if you guys would be successful i don't want to bring anything in the house that would that

would um that would hurt your chances of being successful or would drive you down the wrong path. Because she said, if you could be successful, then I will have made it. Everything will be all right. And so I didn't want to bring, that's why I didn't want to bring anybody else into this house. I didn't want to get in a relationship because her priority was us. And that's why she worked so hard. That's why she did all of the things that she did. And fast forward, it wasn't until I was about eight years old that I began to really realize the situation we were in

because I would go to the rent office with my mom and now I understood what she was doing. Even at eight? She was eight. Yeah, she was eight. But I was realizing, okay, she's asking for extra time to pay the rent. Yeah.

When I was younger, I didn't really understand the conversation she was having with the guy at the rent office or the woman at the rent office. So I began to do stuff like that. And my mom would get my brother and I to borrow ivory soap and say, hey, I can't afford to go down and do laundry. I don't have coins, money to do it. Wash it. Here's ivory soap. Wash your underwears and socks in the sink. Dry them out.

Hang them up over the shower pole. there were times she didn't have enough food to feed herself she had just enough food to feed my brother and i she would put the food on the table we would look at her mom why don't you eat and don't worry about me i'm okay she would just watch us eat and i remember one time my mom made something with onions as a kid i hated onions i hated onions with a passion and i I remember it was like these, she had diced the onions. So they were like these cubes and it was like a little slippery. And I'm going to spin them out of my mouth around the chicken sauce,

whatever that she made. She slapped me in the back of my head and I didn't understand why she was so angry. But now I do now because it was like, she's not eating, you know what I mean? And so I began to recognize some of those things and then going out and, and, and into the streets of the Bronx, you know what I mean? And so I began to recognize some of those things and then going out into the streets of the Bronx. You know what I mean? And going to the basketball court and going into the local bodegas and seeing the mafia guys.

You know what I mean? This is in the early 90s, the mafia guys with the big collars and going in and getting taxes from the Dominican store owners. And there was a guy in my building who we knew was in, his name was Jimmy. He had a spot called Jimmy's Cafe. And we knew that he was connected with the mob and the mob was doing stuff at Jimmy's Cafe. And that dude disappeared, never found his body.

To this day, they don't know what happened to him, but the police and everybody knows that he was tied in with the mafia. So I began to see all of these things. And I got beat up really bad when I was eight years old by a guy who just got released from prison. He was like 30. Yep, at eight.

I was 35. He was 35, just got released from prison, a 19-year-old and a kid who was my age. I was playing basketball in a basketball court, DeVoe Park, which is a crazy, dangerous park. And I started talking junk to this kid. We're playing basketball, you know what I mean? And he's talking junk to me when he's winning. So I'm talking junk to this kid we're playing basketball you know what i mean he's talking junk to me when he's winning so i'm talking junk back to him when i'm winning and it got to a point where he didn't like it and he told me to shut up i said no i said what are you gonna do and he said i'm gonna go get my brother and i said go get him and he comes ben

and you know five minutes later you know i look across the street from the park and there's three people coming across the street. And a 19 year old beat the shit out of you. 19 year old, 35 year old and eight year old. And, and, and slam me on a concrete, punch me in the face, um, held me down so the kid could spit on me. Yeah, man. And, uh, so it was all of those things that allowed me to realize I'm not in Kansas anymore. And the crackheads in the park. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like, mom's like, oh, they're just sick. But like my grandmother, you know, I had an uncle who was a crack addict. You know what I mean? And she's like, oh, he's just sick. But now I'm beginning to see, oh, he wasn't sick. These dudes in the park ain't sick. They're crackheads.

You know what I'm saying? You're getting a feel for this at a really young age. eight years old i don't remember when i was eight years old you know what i mean like you would you could pick up on these things yes that's pretty impressive but it's also i can't imagine having my head filled with all that information these realities of you know let's call it what it is, the cold world. Yeah. In that way. Eight, nine, I remember walking to school. I'll never forget. I was walking to, I was in mid, I might say about 11 years old.

So I think I was getting ready to go into middle school and coming back, actually walking from school and seeing these dudes jumping and beating up a kid, man. You know, a kid that was 12 years old teenagers beating him up slaying you wanting to get involved but like just feeling helpless because it's like i'm a kid what am i going to do you know what i mean you know there was a girl in my uh my brother's class named dina um her story i mean if you just google dina the bronx murder whatever um she was one of my brother's friends dina i can't remember her last name. Bronx.

I think Sedgwick Avenue murder. Sedgwick Avenue murder? Yeah, just put Dina. No, it's D-E-E-N-A. D-E-E-N-A, not D-I. D-E-E-N-A, Bronx murders. Bronx girl fatally shot in apartment laundry room. 95.

Yeah, there it is. You know what I'm saying? That was my brother's friend. You know what I mean? And the crazy thing, she was a sweet girl. Sweet girl. You know what I mean? She was 13 in my brother's class.

My brother goes to class one day. She's not there. Everybody's crying. She got murdered. Dude wanted to have sex with her. She wanted to have sex with him oh she wouldn't have sex with him 13 he shot in the face grown man shot in the face killed her and so um and as a matter of fact i remember walking my cousin home from school he was hanging out in our park because i like

that's right across the street from where i grew up i grew up on set before him in sedgwick and so i was walking my cousin home and with my other older cousin and my brother one day one night and right in front of that building

was a shootout and it was like drive-by shootout blah blah blah so we're running back you know to my mom's house in the middle of

bullets flying so that was my environment and you know unfortunately I became a product of that environment because that was all I uh you know unfortunately i became a product of that environment yeah because that was all i saw you know people say well why can't why aren't there more seals and

more doctors and all these coming out of the bronx it's like because that's we're not exposed to that yeah you know i mean i wasn't exposed to that um how early did this happen when you started running with some of the bad crowd? I was never a run with the bad crowd kind of guy. I was more of a let's get money type of guy. For me, it was all about I'm going to get this money. So I did little things like I would steal from my mom. Then that progressed to the little money she had.

I would go to stores, local bodegas and steal chips. Steal from your mom yeah man man as a matter of fact i tell the story in my book but i stole the engagement ring that my mom gave my dad she cherished that thing what made you do that because it seemed like you had such love for your mom and respect for her i was duplicit i want i did love my mom but i love money i didn't have and i think it what what it all comes back to is the lack of affirmation from a father. I tell people all the time that I think that every, I believe that every boy needs a father to affirm him and to teach him how to

be a man. And every girl needs a father to affirm her and to teach her how to be loved by men. And when a child doesn't have that, a child will just unconsciously seek out that affirmation. That affirmation is as powerful as love. So that affirmation I was seeking was as powerful as the love that my mom was giving me. But my mom couldn't be a father.

She couldn't be the one that says, hey, good job, son. I'm here for you. I got that from my mom, but a boy needs to hear that from his father. And because I didn't have a father to do that i sought that in things that would acquire that for me in money in money and because what happens when you get the money it was the locks back in the day money power respect right what happens when you get the money then you get the power you get the power then people will respect you and what what what does that mean people will affirm you oh you the man oh look you got the new sneakers. Oh, you got shorty. Oh, you got this, that.

You know what I mean? And again, that's the culture, though, that we're raised in, in the 90s. Even now, you see a lot of inner cities, you know, Chicago, you know what I mean? Bronx, Brooklyn, South Side of Chicago. It's like the culture is like, do X, Y, and Z. This is what a man is. You know what I mean? Punch them in the face if they disrespect you.

Yeah. You know, you see these senseless murders, people just getting shot and killed for over nothing. Like, oh, because you did, because you said something or you put out a rap song,

disrespect, I'm going to come find you and murder you and then now I'm going to go to prison for the rest of my life? Yeah. I mean,

it's, you can't know it unless you lived it yeah first of all yeah guys like me can hear about it and whatever from you but there is something there's a common thread when i talk with guys who are from the hard environment like like like you were there there's it's it all comes back to like like when i had wally green in here he was talking about it like it's it's pride and respect and the way that that is shown is just in in many cases bastardized in environments where there's poverty yeah 100 100 but again that pride and respect the substratum of it that everybody is seeking is that

affirmation because at the end of the day when you look at the single parent rate in the inner cities, you know, it's like, what, 70, 80 percent in some places? No fathers in the home? Yep. And in those same places where no fathers are in the home, 70, 80 percent, what's the crime rate? High. What's the teenage pregnancy rate? High. What's the high school dropout rate?

High. There you go. Yeah. After the father. And so that's why I did the things that i did yeah my mom loved me but i wanted something that i couldn't get from a father yeah and so yeah man i progressed to selling drugs and how young did you sell drugs i started selling drugs when i was like maybe 14 15 16 and then that progressed to running high-level scams man while I was out there

It's hustling cell phones, you know cell phones became the very Became nobody really used phones cell phones back and they only like the rich, you know Wall Street brokers had the big brick phones But then the Nokia phone came out and then you started getting Motorola StarTech phones started coming out And so I was able to get a gig at a cell phone company I won't mention the company's name. And I got a job there because a guy put me on as to how to hustle phones. Essentially, you know, activate three lines of credit, three cell phone lines on one person's credit. Wait, activate on one?

Yeah. So back in the day when cell phones started popping up i don't know if you remember they had the 29.99 plans 29.99 oh yeah i keep forgetting you 30 all right so back so back around 2000 2001 cell phones started to become a thing and uh and the plan started out 29.99 a month for $30. Okay? If you go, if you, sorry, $29 for 30 minutes. Excuse me, I said $30.

$29.99 a month for 30 minutes. Where the cell phone companies would make their money was on the overcharges. Because who's going to just talk for 30 minutes on a cell phone when cell phone is becoming like the primary means of communication right and so these companies weren't selling the phones per se they were selling the plans right and so all pretty much all cell phone companies at the time and uh and so the way we get people get clients is we we pitch them a phone say all right if you buy this phone got to run your credit you got good credit you can get this phone if you got even better credit then you can get three phones all you got to do is pay 30 a month now with some phones like with the more high-end phones like when you started getting to

the start start the motorola tic tac phone that looked like a little tic-tac oh yeah yeah I keep forgetting no idea you get the Motorola two-way time pages remember the time port silver and gray it's our silver and black okay yeah that was all right all right anyway uh uh so long story short I would get people's date of birth social name and I would activate a phone through multiple more cases three phones on that one person's line of credit I would then go sell that phone those three phones to drug dealers for four three to five hundred sometimes eight hundred dollars depending on the style of the phone the drug dealers like the phones because they would stay on for 90 days first 30 days you wouldn't get a bill at the 30-day mark after you pass the 30-day mark and then a bill would come in oh has had uh

sorry at the 30-day mark the bill will come in you had until a 60-day mark to pay the bill if it wasn't paid by the 90-day mark the phone will cut off and so drug dealers like the phones because they're burner phones they're burner phones they stay on for 90 days cut off come back to me get a new phone and guess what it's unlimited plan i was doing unlimited cell phone minutes before it wasn't even unlimited plans right yeah and so i was making a lot of money doing that that was my cell phone hustle and uh that's how i get that's when i got into the music business i was uh essentially laundering the money through a record company I started called Eighth Wonder Entertainment. How old are you when you started that?

I'm 18, 19. Okay. Yeah, I'm 17, 18, 19. Were you an aspiring rapper at the time? I wanted to be like P. Diddy and Dame Dash. So Brad knows because i got this compilation album on my i keep the compilation album that we were able to make uh on my office desk as a reminder where i came from and it's a picture of me and the artist that we had signed to the record company

and so i was i was just trying to be p diddy i wanted to i wasn't the rapper i wanted to be the guy that you know behind the business side of things. And so I wanted to do what Dame Dash and Jay-Z did where they used a drug game to help get them set up in the music game and then they left the drug game. And it worked out for them. So that was my exit plan.

And so, you know, that's where I was spending the money. I was spending the money recording at studios. Were you going to school during all this? Yeah, I was going to school. Were you all this? Yeah, I was going to school. Were you cutting school? No, I was going to school because that was my way to keep my mom off my back. She thought everything was all good. Chameleon.

That's how I was becoming a chameleon because if I'm in school and my mom's not getting truancy letters and I'm doing fairly good and I'm graduating to the next grade, then she's off my back. She thinks I got a job at a sneaker store or wherever. I had a whole sneaker hustle as well that was another thing I was working at a sneaker store called athlete's foot and you know um long story short yeah man long story short um one day a guy came in and he was in a rush and and he said hey I need a pair of sneakers right now I got to get to a meeting and I ran he looked at the wall picked out sneakers i ran and

got him and he just threw me cash and said don't worry about it just just charge me you know you know overcharge me whatever the case may be i don't need to change and he runs out and that's when i got the idea oh i could do this and i took his sneakers and i put them in the um the box and i put that box in the defect section because we had and they were in our warehouse we had a defect session and like every like four or six months like somebody would come from the main warehouse and come just they wouldn't even look in the boxes they would just come grab the boxes of defected shoes and take them and so i was i was selling i wouldn't do it i wasn't doing that for every person i was smart about it but kids in my high school would be like, yo, I want the new Jordans.

I want the new pennies. I want the new whatever. I'd be like, I got you. Give me, you know, if the sneaker costs $120, be like, give me 100 racks. Or give me $90. They'd give me the cash. Come back next day, boom, here's your sneakers. Oh, my God.

So I was doing the sneakers. Then I was doing the cell phones. True businessman. True businessman. All the way around. was your mom talking about college during this whole time though? Because you're doing pretty well in school. Like what was I was I wasn't doing well I was doing good enough to graduate to the next grade. God. I wasn't doing like my brother So my brother was different. My brother graduated high school in three years Um, he got his master. He got he graduated college in. He got a full-ride academic scholarship to Syracuse University. He studied engineering there.

And then he got his master's in computer science engineering in one year. So he was the brains. You know what I mean? I was the one that wanted to be in the streets. And so, yes, I did good enough to get to the next grade, and that was enough to kind of keep my mom off my back. And then I graduated high school. And once I graduated high school, I didn't want to get to the next grade and that was enough to kind of keep my mom off my back. And I graduated high school. And once I graduated high school, I didn't want to go to college.

I did not want to go to college. I wanted to be a music mogul. That's what I wanted. Seriously, that's what I wanted. Like to me, going to college was like beneath me. That was like below me. That's like, again, I'm a kid. I'm a street kid.

You know what I mean? Yeah, but not just an entrepreneur. I'm a street i want the i want the bands i want the jewelry i want you don't get that going to college you get that being in the streets you get the girls by hustling and doing music that's what i wanted because i was trying to get that affirmation i didn't get from my father at what point like how old were you when you started to realize what really happened to your father? As far as like the whole, you know, like the whole setup and all of that stuff? That wasn't until I was in the military. That wasn't until.

So at no point, hold on a second. So you were five. Yeah, yeah. We talked about that that half hour ago or so or whatever but you were five when you find out you go back to playing with your toys because you don't even know the difference oh you mean what happened as far as my dad's death no no no i'm saying like at what age do you start to realize oh dad's gone it wasn't just a business trip like he really is dead yeah he's not i wonder what happened there and then when did you figure

it sounds like you're saying oh i't figure it out until the military. Well, as far as like when I finally realized he was dead, like I'll probably say like months, six months, but I still didn't really understand that. It was like a, like one of those weird gradual transitions, right? Like he's gone and I'm still young. And then finally, like I realized he's gone and it doesn't really hit me. It wasn't until I was about eight that it hurt yeah that it affected me now as far as like what happened with all the corruption and stuff around the situation i didn't my mom would tell me things here and there as a kid i mean she knew

obviously she knew yeah because i would ask my mom i was like are we gonna ever get the island are we gonna ever get our dad's money and she would always say in nigeria don't hold your breath yeah she's like don't hold your breath at all you know what i mean um but it wasn't until later you know and talking to my brother uh my half brother because my dad was married years before he married my mom and i got a half brother who was a lawyer in the uk and then he went back down to nigeria after my dad's death to try to fight them he's been i mean as a matter of fact he's been on the case for almost 40 years yeah as a matter they offered about four or five years ago uh the government offered him eight million dollars to settle to settle brother said

no because my because again it was my dad spent eight million pounds he spent eight million pounds in the 70s just for inflation plus interest plus the money that my dad spent to dredge the foreshore to create the island plus the contracts he signed plus the construction that my dad spent to dredge the foreshore to create the island, plus the contracts he signed, plus the construction that he already, you know, money that he had put up. But is your half-brother worried about his safety? Like he's going after the government here, maybe in a public way, if he's going after him legally for this long. Well, he goes back and forth between the UK and Nigeria.

Yeah, that wouldn't make me feel better. I know, I know. But, I mean, it's his legacy his he's trying to get it back i mean that's awesome i'm not but at the same time i think that the like so in 87 when he started they didn't pay much attention to him because he's like here's this guy who was my half brother who was born in nigeria like when he was like six he was sent to boarding school in London and he was educated in London. And then now he's coming back.

He's a Yankee. He's not a threat to them. He's not a threat to the, they're like, oh, here's this boy. He's a UK boy. You know what I mean? And it's like, PM, no mind, right? So I think there's still some of that

where to them it's like ah you are not really a threat to us go play with your toys right as a matter of fact um i don't know if you remember that there was a whole uh and there was an nsars movement and and in nigeria if you google nsars e-n-d s-a-r-s nigeria just google end e-n-d sars and then nigeria something like that yeah here we go uh and sorry sorry all right okay so that was like there were riots it was crazy like this was what year was that 2000 20 okay yeah yeah october 2020. 2020 was an interesting year for cops yeah yeah yeah it got crazy out there right cops and governments and so yeah the courthouse in lagos where my dad's case has been for like the last 30 40 years

rioters say this in quotes air quotes they go into the courthouse, they find the files of my dad's case, and they burn just those files. We're talking 30 years of documentation. Plants. And then the courthouse

says, well, they just came in and burnt down our courthouse. Yeah, how convenient. And then you go in and check, and it's like, they only burnt the case files for my dad's case. Right? That is sketchy. So that's why with my brother, it's like, you know, he's not, he, I think the sense is they're not

going to do anything to him because they don't see him as a threat. I think they see me more as a threat than they see my brother as a threat, If anything, especially with that social media post and how the story's starting to come out, especially my background and, you know, and... Continue to get more and more attention, too, in your post-SEAL career.

Yep, and then my book's coming. My book came out, and now it's about to be a movie, so more people are going to know the story. You know, every day I'm getting Nigerians that are like, I got your back. This corruption has been out of control. It needs to stop. What do you need got your back? So I think as as my story gets out there more and more and more You know I'm more of a threat to them than my brother is is there because again like you don't find this out till years

And years later so in a way. I don't know I can't relate to that I never had something happen to me like that thank god but you know when you're molded by it right when it happens with something like that like that rage lives inside of you your whole life but in a lot of ways you didn't have that for 15 years or whatever so is there i i don't i don't want to ask this question the wrong way but is there a little bit of like a i don't want to say displacement from it, but like you can't try to relive it like it just happened yesterday. And it's like, oh my God, I can't believe this. This is really fucked up.

Like if I can change it and expose it, I will. But it's not like this fresh, like just seeing red all the time. Do you understand what I'm asking? Yeah, no. You know what? Yeah, I totally understand. I think it's the opposite. I'm grateful for it, man. Like, bro, I'm so grateful for the past that I had and how things transpired.

Because I would not be where I am today without that story. Yeah. At all. Like, you know, what they meant to harm me was turn around for good. Because, yes, it was hard. Yes, it sucked. Yes, we lost. Dude, if I win that case,

I'll be a billionaire tomorrow. So yes, I lost billions of dollars. You know what I mean? Or what could have been billions of dollars. But I want to be who I am. I want to have had the path. I want to have had the hard upbringing in the Bronx.

And I want to have, you know, had to be snuck into the Navy to freaking and become... wouldn't have made it through seal i'm gonna seal training bro and it's like a kick in the nuts oh yeah and i'm just like yo like i'm good you know what i'm saying like the cold was horrible the coal was the hardest part of it and and you know and the ocean swims was the worst part of where the worst part of it for me. But at the end of the day, I'm like, I could take the beatings. I could take the torment. I could take the name calling.

I could take the mental games because I had already been, my mind had already been strengthened through my upbringing, through the adverse effect. When I was a kid, I remember the older kids would make us, they would get chalk and draw. All my friends remember this. I'm sure they laughing when they hear this part they would draw a boxing ring with chalk and and they would pick who was going to fight in a boxing ring and you had to and it but it was slap boxing fights and we would be slap boxing fights and we'd just be fighting each other and like that that toughens you up i'm not saying that that's no i understand but it's like

when you have that type of environment you're playing two-hand touch football on concrete you get pushed down to the concrete and bleeding and you get back up it's just normal for you to keep going you learn you know i mean it's just like that hardens you you know i'm saying so by the time i got to this program called seal train i went through hell week i made it through hell week two times how did you even get there like how did you end up we skipped that part how did you end up at the military so i ended up selling the guy a drug dealer um like 20 phones it's a lot more to the story it's all in my book man it's a good start right yeah it's a lot selling 20 phones they were supposed to they cut off in two weeks.

And initially I didn't want to sell him the 20 phones because I wanted to, you know, I wanted to, because he came to me, he wanted to do phones in bulk. And I said no, and he kind of, you know, manipulated me or talked me into it. And so I sold him a bulk, all good. Sold him another bulk, all good. Sold him another bulk, all those phones cut off

in like two weeks. He ain't happy now. He ain't happy because what I found out he was doing, instead of dispersing them to his crew, he was flipping the phones. Because he's, you know, being a drug dealer in the Bronx, in New York City, there's one on every corner. It's hot. It's a lot of risk. It's less risky to you know hustle nobody really understands how to the laws and the systems around cell phones and so how can you get prosecuted and this seems like

a safe bet where you can make a lot of money it's less risky same thing with human trafficking especially organ harvesting traffic is a risk beginning to realize that it's a lot less risky to do organ harvesting than it is to to to traffic because there's more of a paper trail with trafficking. Cause you're sending a victim out and somebody could come wrap them up at any time. Then you get exposed organ harvesting, you organ somebody harvest somebody's body, your organs,

burn them up. Nobody knows anything. You pull somebody from one part of the globe. Like I did in the short film, put them in another part of the globe. Nobody in that other part of the globe knows where they are. Nobody in the globe. They can't part of the globe. They is going to expect that they're going to

be in venezuela same reason why those those traffickers took that girl from texas and moved to the oklahoma you know what i mean so sorry i know i went down no unfortunately it makes sense yeah what i say all i have to say um he was trying to move differently i sold him these phones they cut off early. He came. Not only was my life threatened, my mom's life was indirectly threatened because it was like he was pissed. He's pissed. We're talking a lot of money.

Gave him his money back that night. Good chunk of the money back that night. Gave him the rest back the next day. And then that was my wake-up call. That was my... How old are you? I'm 19 december 2001 high school's over high school's over you're still doing entrepreneurial street scams yep yep and you have a wake-up call how does that wake-up call translate into i'm gonna go join the marines so for six months well for the first two months I went hard to try and get a label deal I went I had a meeting at Def Jam with Kevin Liles

Sat in his office play him the CD. He stopped halfway through was like you want to hear something better? I was like as soon as he said that my head dropped cuz I'm like, dang I mean I ain't getting a deal and then he put in a see Kanye Joe buttons. Oh I got this new dude just signed him. He hasn't come out yet. Here's his first song. This is what you need to be like.

He plays a song. And then at the end, he's like, this is the type of music I want. And then that kind of ended my career. Joe Buttons ended my music career. And then one day in June of 2002, long story short, I feel something telling me you need to get out of here and the way out is the military. And years earlier, when I was 15, I saw a movie called Bad Boys. That was that great movie.

Fantastic movie. Classic. That was the first time I saw two black men who, you know, look like me and they were heroes, you know? And that planted the seed in my mind that essentially said you could be something other than a drug dealer, rapper, athlete. You could still maintain who you are, but be a hero. You don't have to do the things you do. It planted the small inception in my mind.

And then about two years later, another movie came out called The Rock. Oh, yeah. And that was the first time I saw or heard of Navy SEALs. And that's when I was like, yo, if I ever turn my life around, I'm not saying I will, but if I ever turn my life around, I would do that. And so, you know, fast forward to June of 2002 when I felt something say, you need to get out of here. You need to join the military. That's when I said, screw it.

Let me see. You know, I ain't got nothing else to go on from my brothers in college. At this point, I'm 19 about to turn 20, living in my mom's apartment. My life had not amounted to anything. Why not? So I ran down the street. I grew up on, went into the Marine recruiter's office first, sat there for like 15 minutes. Nobody showed up. There was coffee on the desk, but nobody showed up. Left, went a couple of doors down to the Navy recruiter's office, a beautiful Navy recruiter in there by the name of Tiana Nadine Reyes. And in my mind, I'm thinking, not only am I getting the Navy, but I'm about to make her my girlfriend. She saw through all my

stupidness because she was from the Bronx. She joined from the Bronx, served in the fleet, then came back to kind of give back to people in the bronx and uh had me do a practice asvap test pass that to get past score high enough to get an A but then score high enough to be a seal and then she ran my background ran my background found i had two warrants out for my arrest had a warrant here in new jersey where we at and i had a warrant in new york and when she said that for the phone stuff or that's that's what i was about to so i got up as soon as she said that i ran because that's what i thought it to say. So I got up as soon as she said that. I ran because that's what I thought it was for.

I was like, oh, my God, because there were people before I left. Because I left. Not only did I leave, stop doing what I was doing after that had happened with the drug dealer, I also left the company because I was scared because the phones cut off early. I thought that I was going to get prosecuted because there were people getting caught and prosecuted for federal crime. And so I that's what I thought it was for.

And she stopped me at the door right before I got there. She said, what are you doing? I said, I'm getting out of here. She said, you got a suit? I said, no. She said, you got nice shirt, some nice pants? I was like, sure, I'm sure I can find something. She said, come back tomorrow. I said i could find something she said uh come back tomorrow i said for what she said come back tomorrow just come back stop being stupid and listen to me and you know growing up in the streets of the bronx i tell people this all the time you got to learn how to read people especially when you're doing

the kind of stuff i was doing it means the difference between life and death and that would this would all serve me well when i got into human intelligence in the teens because i you know i could tell when somebody was a source was my enemy or whether a source wanted to give me some information, but they were holding back or whether a source was a double agent. I was able to read that because I grew up around these type of characters my whole life where I had to read people and I didn't know what she was going to do. But from what I read from her reaction had been with her for hours. So I knew that it would be good. So I came back the next day. She was her dress uniform.

She drove me down here to Jersey. Don't worry about the warrants. Yeah. She drove me down to Jersey, put me in front of the judge advocate on my behalf. She was like, listen, this kid's made mistakes,

but he still has potential. Can't join the military. You know, what a, what a criminal record or warrants uh 9-11 just happened by the way judge i was and i was leaving that out here because you're in new york i mean i saw the twin towers come down no shit i saw the twin towers come down i went and my mom woke me up and she was when when it all happened when the first plane hit the building she was like oh my

god we're in attack and you know i heard, fire trucks and sirens going off all around the neighborhood, just nonstop going around the neighborhood, cars flying, driving back and forth. And this girl who I was dating at the time, she called me up. She was like, come here. So I went to her building, went to the roof, and we watched from the roof. The Twin Towers come down. And she went to watch because her cousin worked the windows of the world. Oh, my God. Yeah.

Single mom, worked the windows of the world as a waitress. They never found her. Oh, of course. Yeah. Never found her. That was the top floors. No one survived up there. They never found her.

And so, yeah. So, went to that first courthouse that judge clear clear my right just had to clear my record um i just had to pay like a court fee or fine or whatever then she took me to new york judge yeah yeah well she advocated she put in the work she was like yo she had on a dress uniform everything yeah and good for her and good for him though too yeah man and uh took me to the judge in new york the courthouse was blocks away from ground zero and here's the crazy right oh my god yeah this is uh they still doing cleanup this is june 2002 yeah you can actually remember the movie what was it 25 hours by spike lee ed norton's in it Tony Gusser Gusser

okay yeah I know I heard of it but I never saw it it's a little it's like a he filmed it right after okay

and so they show it like you see it yeah yeah yeah it wasn't in Brookfield Place but they have a scene where it's right above

yeah yeah Ground Zero and I don't know that movie it's a obviously fictional movie that had a very real thing around it.

But when people look at that and you realize, like, oh, my God, they were filming this. Like, that's what you were seeing. I mean, I get emotional going to that spot today. After that, how it looked, literally Ground Zero, just rubble. I mean, I can't even fathom that. Yeah, and here's the crazy thing. The architect of the Twin Towers was my dad's friend. And he designed,

he designed, yep, and my dad was on the board, and he designed the Twin Towers that was supposed to stand in the center of Lagoon City. Oh my God. And here I'm at the courthouse blocks away from

where Ground Zero was. And this woman's standing in front of the judge like, yo, give this guy a chance that's some divine can't make that up yeah you can't make that up man so and yeah man she's and judge was like all right expunge your record and uh paid the court funds court fees whatever it was and then she went a step further fudged the paperwork sneaked me into the navy and that's how i got in so i tell people all the time, you know, I'm patriotic now.

I wasn't then. As a matter of fact, I didn't want to join. Like, I hated the police. You know what I mean? I saw a lot of stuff happening. And I associated anybody in a uniform as the police, whether you were Marine, Navy, paramedic, whatever. And so that was not a patriotic decision that was a life or death decision that for me was like if i don't leave the bronx i'm gonna end up dead or in prison

and this woman gave me this opportunity she died two years after that too of an autoimmune disease yeah man and so yeah and so yeah man that man, that was how I got in the Navy, man. So you don't go to the SEALs first, though. What did you do at the beginning of your service? Went to boot camp. After boot camp, went to my first, went to A school, which, because I was a corpsman. A corpsman is like a Navy medic.

And then from there, I went to Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton. Went to what? Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton. So I was stationed at the hospital as a corpsman. Oh, gotcha. So I worked in, like, interestingly, I worked in a family practice clinic, which is crazy, because my wife, when I met her,

she was in residency as a family practice doctor. She's a family practice doctor now. So I was working with residents a family practice doctor. She's a family practice doctor now. But I was working with residents, family practice resident doctors, and checking in babies, doing vital signs, all that stuff. And when I got there, I told my LPO, which is the leading petty officer, like a supervisor. I said, hey, is there any way I could change my schedule so that I could train? Because I'm trying to be a SEAL. I'm trying to go into SEAL training. And she said, sure.

So I worked for the morning clinic for four hours. And then I had four hours off in the afternoon to train. Like whatever training I wanted to do, I had four hours. And then I would come back to the clinic and work four hours, the night clinic. So I'd work until essentially the clinic was shut down. And how long were you doing that? For a year. For a year.

And then you reapplied to the SEALs. No, I reapplied. So I started training as soon as I got there, as soon as she gave me that four-hour block. Six months later, I qualified. So six months later, I... Oh, so right away. So within that six months, I learned how to swim,

good enough to pass the screener. I got my ASvap i had to retake the asvap so i got what's that asvap is like the sat okay so um you got to score really high to get in the special programs whether it's whether it's buds or eod you can't be an idiot what goes into that test like math and reading like an sat yeah it's literally the sa a military version of sat but then they have like some mechanical like comprehension stuff in there as well and electrical stuff on it as well.

But a lot of it is reading comprehension, math, you know, algebra, all the stuff that you do in the SAT because they want to kind of gauge your IQ to determine what job you get in the Navy because they don't want somebody who's an idiot being a nuke working on a nuclear submarine. Yeah, that wouldn't make sense.

Yeah, that's the job in the Navy where you have to have pretty much the highest ASVAB score or near-perfect ASVAB score in order to qualify as a nuke. We call them nukes in the Navy because they work on a nuclear reactor, so it's just subs and ships. And then special programs kind of come after that. nukes in the navy because they work on the nuclear reactors on subs and ships and so um and then like

special programs kind of come after that and uh so yeah so i had i retook the asvap scored high enough to get into buds and then i had packed on the weight man you know went from not being able to do one pull-up to being able to do 30 pull-ups not being able to do 10 push-ups to or 20 push-ups to being able to do 100 push-ups 100 sit-ups and all the stuff that you have to do for the screener and then uh went to buds um so i checked in january 2003 to naval hospital camp pendleton qualified in july of 2003 and then was in buds in January 2004 Yeah, and how long is buds again? It's six months, right? So it's uh, It's six months first eight weeks

eight weeks is First phase so that's just like when they just hammer you log PT serve torture. I mean, it's just non-stop They were trying to get guys to quit and then in that eight weeks I think the third week is hell week. So hell week is where they keep you up for six days. Um, pretty much throw everything at you, make you do everything that you've been doing, but, but no sleep. And they keep you wet the whole time. When did someone die in front of you? Uh, that was like the week before hell week. So we were on a conditioning run. We were on a conditioning run. It was brutal. The conditioning runs in soft sand.

It's just a kick in the nuts because you got to keep up. And if you don't keep up, then you get put in what's called the goon squad. So that means that like after the run or maybe in between the run, if you're too far back, then you get hammered, like run to the surf, get wet, do push-ups up and down a burn boom boom boom like guys quit because they're just like oh this is around because now you got to run soaking wet and sandy which makes it even worse and so um um we were in the goon we had at the end of the conditioning run getting hammered in the goon squad and this dude's heart just gave up oh rob vetter so he was a former he was a swit guy so he was a swit guy so yeah so navy has two special operations programs

seals and swit so swit is a uh i forgot what it stands for but special warfare combat crewman okay and so they essentially i think they evolved out of the Vietnam War so they're essentially transport right yeah you got it right combat craft crewman so they're masters of the sea and as it relates to insertion extraction they don't just work with SEALs they work with other special operations

groups that operate on the water so as it relates to like inserting them and extracting them providing fire support all that kind of stuff because they got the big mini guns and on there and they got all kinds of other tricked out guns big guns on their can and stuff and uh so yeah he was a former swit guy and heart gave out and uh yeah man i remember that was the first funeral i went to in my entire life like the um we started trying to provide me and like a couple other corpsmen try to provide

cpr on him and then the class the the buds medic came up and he continued he was able to get a pulse get him back but he had been out for so long by the time they got him to the hospital that he was pretty much a vegetable he was on life support um he was on life support for like a week and then or like maybe three or four days and then his wife decided you know there's nothing doctor said there's nothing there's no coming back so they pulled the plug and then that next week that was the first funeral i ever went to in my entire life was this funeral. I didn't even go to my grandmother's funeral. So I'll never forget that. It was in this military chapel on base, on Naval Air Station base.

And, yeah, that was heavy. But that was, you know, that was the course. The course is brutal. I almost died as a matter of fact the first time I went through hell week my class I started hell week with pneumonia in sight spitting up blood but I didn't want to I didn't want to tell the instructors because I didn't want to start day one the first phase because I mean they put you right back in a day one of first because you got you go three weeks of first phase and then the fourth week is

hell week like you lose like chunk of people in those first three weeks because it's brutal and then yeah So I didn't want to like I already made it to hell week, which is hard I didn't want to now have to start day one going medical hold and start day one again. So I hit the injury and Yeah, man About day and a half in two in, I started feeling even worse. My lungs were shredded wheat. Got to a point where we were doing steel pier, which is Evolution of Hell Week, where it's the coldest Evolution of Hell Week.

They lay you on a steel pier, make you jump in the bay, tread waters, freezing cold. It's at night, like 2 in the morning. Then you come out, take off your shirt, jump back in. So you do all that. And at that point, my core temperature was 88.7. Yeah. They took me to, drove me to Bud's Medical and went through the rewarming drill.

How does that work? It's just a process because they can't rewarm you too fast. Yeah, because it'll shock your body. Yeah. And so they get some, they have like warming blankets and towels like in this heated this heated thing and so they gradually put more and more on you uh and uh they did that finally my core temperature got back up and uh and from there they were like yo you want to go back to buzz you want to quit and so i was like i'm not quitting so uh i went back in and uh as soon as I got there, they put me in the water.

It was surf torture. Then we had an evolution called base tour where you got to run all around the base with the boat on your head. It was really brutal. And, like, all I remember is running and then waking up in the hospital. Yeah. So the guys reminded me. You know, the guys who were in my boat crew told me. They was like, yo, told me it's like yo

Dude, it's like somebody pulled a switch out of her out of the computer You weren't like that you were running and your whole body locked up and you went bam And then when I got to the when I finally came to and was at the hospital I think I came to in the ambulance and then they took me to buds medical check They had an x-ray machine in x-ray my lungs it was like yo this dude's lungs are done i had pneumonia site and rhabdo right i don't even know what the rhabdo my my analysis people die from that it's um it's where your um your muscle tissue breaks down yeah and your body's in some cases your body just starts eating itself and like the proteins and stuff gets into your

i think it's your kidneys or something like that. And then that's what causes your kidneys to stop functioning well. And people have died from it. And so I was in the ICU for a few days. And then from there, finally got released. And then went back to Bud's and they was like, hey, good on you for not quitting, but you got to start day one over.

Oh my God, they made you go all the way to the beginning because i had to well because it was medical if i would have made it past wednesday of hell week then i would have not had to start over again so yeah but the instructors were like hey they were apologetic they're like dude we're super sorry we didn't know that you were they thought i was faking because you get a lot of guys who uh in their defense you get a lot of guys who are who who are not sick but they don't want to quit but they do want to quit yes and so they you know they they play games and they like oh they're limping and instructors and and uh and finally you know the instructors had enough and they'll performance drop them so they were on the verge of performance dropping me because they

thought i was faking yeah and so after i got back to buzz they mean i understand that yeah this is the highest level level you know yeah and when i got back i remember uh the master chief of first phase and the senior chief came in well the chief at the time came in and he was like he was like yo we're sorry we we're super happy you didn't quit that's what we look for in a frogman dude that's gonna go and like until they're dead and then going back to and then still go even after they're dead right and that i don't think i would have been able to do that if it wasn't for my upbringing,

like we talked about earlier. Like that hearted me so much that even while being deathly sick and being screamed at by the instructors and told you're faking, like that didn't break me. Because if I would have quit and then went to medical,

there's no coming back from that. There's no you're going to start first phase over again. It's like, oh, well, sorry, but you rang the bell. There's no unringing the bell. And so, yeah, man, I started all over, went through day one of first phase again and watched a bunch of 20, 30 guys quit again and then started getting what got to Hell Week,

made it through Hell Week. And then after Hell Week, I had, I got performance role, two swims. So you have performance role is like an academic role. So they're not for tests, not like for a written test, but just for like, you have timed evolutions. And then you have like, you have timed evolutions and you have certain pass fail evolutions, you know, like, so drown proofing is like a pass fail evolution

It's where you have to your hands are tied behind your back your feet are tied together You got a bob water for a certain amount of time then you got to swim a certain amount of you know feet then you got Oh, you got easy. Yeah, you got a tread water or with your hands and feet tied together, right? And so that's a pass fail evolution and you have the 50-meter underwater swim, which is a pass fail evolution These are all evolutions that you have to pass at first phase, but then you have the time evolution. So you have a four mile time run every week in buzz. And the passing time of first phase is 32 minutes. You have a two mile time ocean swim in first phase.

The passing time is 85 minutes. You have an old course in the passing time. I think the first phase is like 11 or 12 minutes, something like that. And so you had, at the time I was in Buzz, you had to pass at least one of those timed evolutions in each phase in order to graduate to the next phase. And I passed everything except for the swims. I failed all my swims because even though I had learned, I had just learned how to swim, but I didn't really,

I learned how to swim good enough to pass the screening test. I didn't learn how to swim good enough to do the screening test i didn't learn how to swim good enough to do two miles in the ocean against current right and so after i made it through hell week structure was like yo we're not even gonna even let you class back up right now we're gonna just put you in brown shirt rollback land and work with you on which is like a whole program for guys who made it through hell week and then work with you on your swims. And I was in that program for like three months or maybe four months. And then I passed my, after the four months, I passed my first two-mile-time lotion swim. I made the time limit.

And then class back up and went another class and then got to super prideful. Got super prideful. You know, I'm not, I'm in like every class, I'm either one of two black dudes or like the only black dude in my class. So, you know, I still got some of that street in me. I still got that,

you know, lack of affirmation complex in me, you know? And, and so, you know, that all played itself out in pride, you know,

kind of like what we discussed earlier, where I was just like, nobody can't tell me nothing. I made it through Africa. I made it through the Bronx. Yeah. You know, I'm one of the nobody can't tell me nothing. I made it through Africa. I made it through the Bronx. Yeah. You know, I'm one of the only black dudes in my class.

I know how to swim. I'm in dive phase. I made it through hell week. You know what I mean? Like my head got so big. And like, I just remember I would go partying, clubbing and chasing girls.

And like, just like Kanye West song was out. I want to say around that time. You can't tell me nothing. That was like my theme song. That was like my, that was like, and it was, I was destructive. And when I got to dive phase, I failed the first two swims, ocean swims, because the swim times I dropped

from 85 minutes to 80 minutes in dive phase. And instead of working on what I needed to work on on the weekend, I was out partying. And then it got to a week of dive phase called dive week where you got to do these different dive tests. You got to do a ditch and down where you got to take off all your dive gear underwater and specific procedures. Swim up to the top, take a breath, swim back down, put all your dive gear on a specific procedure. Then you do that with a blacked out mask so you can't see then you do a buddy gear exchange where you got to take off your buddy's gear and put it on a specific procedure then he does the same thing then you do that in

a blacked out mask and then you have pool comp and then you have this evolution called the tread which is with 2080 dive tanks weight belt um dive gear you got to keep your hands above water and tread water for five minutes it literally feels feels like, at least for me, it feels like you're going to drown. It's tough, dude. Five minutes. Five minutes. And you got all this weight on. Your hands can't touch the water. If they touch the water, you fail. And yeah, man. And so

I failed that four times because you get every day at the end of the day after you do your dive, whether it's ditching down, buddy, exchange, whatever, you get a chance to do the tread at the end of the day after you do your dive you did what this ditching down buddy exchange Whatever you get a chance to do the tread at the end of the day and so I saw each Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday, I failed the tread and Again now it's all on me because the instructors showed up the weekend before the tread The two weekends before the tread and then the weekend before the tread they said all right guys this is a tough one um well i'll be here to work with you know instructors where they work with us on

the weekends they would show up at like eight in the morning not just to work with guys on the tread but also other dive tests as well and i was too busy waking up at some girl's house at 10 11 a.m you know that aren't you you're only like 22 23 right now right uh i'm like yeah i'm around 22 around 22 maybe 21 i was 21 i think i was 21 let's see no i turned 20 boot camp turned 21 at the hospital so yeah i'm i'm i'm 21 because this is january 2004 you're so 21 yeah like that's the thing like i and i hear you being hard on yourself with it but like i was a fucking idiot when i was 20 like you're you're a navy seal when you're 21 like you know what i mean i i guess you get a little kick in the ass because you fail some things and

you make it longer on yourself yeah you know yeah but you know at the end of the day too we all did a lot of it was pride driven you know pride driven and driven. And yeah, man, so I got, went to academic review board, got kicked out of buds, got kicked out completely. Went back to Camp Pendleton. This time I got stationed in 1st Marine Division with the grunts and was humbling, but it was the humbling that I needed because I'm down at the bottom, bottom, bro.

That grunt life is like legit. I remember we did a training exercise out in 29 Pal 29 palms which is like this hot desert out in california and and uh we finish our day and uh they're like all right guys it's time to go time to start bedding down it's like looking around we in the middle of like a bare desert like all right we're going back to the barracks no freaking sleep on the rocks so we just freaking got like a a mat and so i slept on a rock and it was that was all humbling bro that was all like dang man like i put myself in this position and uh long story short ended up getting back to buds a year and a half later and uh yeah made it through toughened you up for sure yeah humbled me for sure how it's supposed to happen yeah, made it through. Toughened you up, for sure. Yeah, humbled me for sure. It happened how it's supposed to happen.

Yeah, exactly how it's supposed to happen. Exactly how it's supposed to happen. And that's why I believe that everything in my life has happened exactly how it's supposed to happen. You may not know this. This is kind of way out there. So if you don't, no problem. But do you know the average age of someone who first starts in the Navy SEALs? Like who makes it?

I don't think. You know what? From what I recall, they've studied age groups. They've studied, you know, the backgrounds of participants who make, for years, they've tried to figure out what is, like, what is it that these guys have to make it through that other guys don't have? And they haven't been able to figure that out. At one point, they were like, oh, it's guys who come from water backgrounds, whether it's water polo or swimming.

Oh, and then throw those guys in there at late 20s. But regardless, when they look at each person, it's all different. There's no pattern. Because you can't tell what's in a person's heart. and this guy, but regardless, when they look at each person, it's all different. There's no pattern. Cause you can't tell what's in a person's heart. You can't tell what's in a person's heart. And you know, I remember this, you show up to training

and there's these guys that are like super skinny, super small and people will look at them like, that dude's not, and that person standing tall, like at the end, like made it through, but versus a guy, there was a guy in my class, my first class. He was a triathlete. Everybody knew, all the buds instructors knew him. They was like, yo, this guy's going to make it.

He's like, this is when triathlons became a big thing. And like buds instructors were doing triathlons to stay in shape. And so they all knew him. Everybody was like, he was going to win. He was going to make it. Dude quit. It's like, and here I am, Dude quit. It's like and here I am. He quit.

It's just something. Yeah. And here I am a dude that like never swam in the Bronx and I'm still there. So it's like you can't tell what's inside of a person's heart. Another crazy thing is you get guys who are like investment bakers or freaking lawyers or accountants. Like it's the craziest thing. And they decided one day, you know what? I think I want to try that Navy SEAL thing.

So you get guys like in their late 20s, you know, early 30s, who are like showing up, you know, enlisted. Not going in as officers. They're like, oh, you know, I'm just enlisting. I'm going to try. Yeah, I mean, there were guys in my class who, there was a guy in my class. Go get it, Brad.

There was a guy in my class who was a Rhodes Scholar. You know what I mean? You get a lot of guys from Harvard, Yale, Ivy League schools, guys from very affluent backgrounds who show up. So it's very interesting the type of people that get in, but also the type of guys, how they're not able to pinpoint the type of guy to get through. I don't think at least of what we publicly know about that's available.

I mean, I'm sure there's some things in the government come across that has the combination of psychological intelligence physical and courage yeah yeah like in whatever pot that is right there all together to have to make it so it's not like there could be a few other there definitely are a few other things that that actually do have more prestige than the navy seals there's not much but there's a few other things where it actually ironically might be a little easier once they've identified like the ideal type candidate to try out yeah it's easier for them to make it yeah because there's not it's just a bizarre yeah yeah you know yeah very heavy combo but that's why you know the guys there's a reason why guys like me yeah gravitate

towards listening to like what navy seals have to say yeah because there's a respect there for like yo yes not only did this dude like serve the country and go do crazy shit but just to get there get the right to do that i mean you had to accomplish a lot yeah no and another big piece to it is you mentioned like then you know the mental strength psychological strength all that stuff but uh another piece to it is the ability to operate and work as a team yes like that's that's what you know every seal unit ends with the word team seal team three sealed team four you know it's it's we we don't even refer to each other as navy seals we refer to each other as team guys like yo so you hear to each other as team guys. Like, yo, so you hear somebody,

how is that a team guy? You know that that's a SEAL that's asking that question. You know, if a guy's like, yeah, I was a Navy SEAL and I know Navy SEAL Ricky, you're going to be like, that dude probably ain't no SEAL

because we don't refer to each other as SEALs. We refer to each other as team guys, right? And so that's another thing that weeds out a lot of guys because we have lived, at least I would say in the last 20 30 years i've been around we live in a very individualistic society and culture like we discussed earlier yes we live in a society that is all about me me me me me or just me and mine that's why our country is so

divided because it's all about me and minds and that that's not about others. It's all about me, me, me, me, me. And we talked about how, you know, sometimes it's not until you're... It was for me, it wasn't until I was 26 that I began to realize that life isn't about me, it's about other people. And because we live in a very individualistic society, when guys show up to SEAL training,

and it's team-based. Like, yes, we have to perform as individuals. And yes, when you quit, you quit by yourself for the most part, but it's a team-based environment. Like when you're doing log PT, you're doing log PT with seven guys. Each guy has to carry his weight. When you're doing boats on heads, like each guy has to hold his head up erect. If not, if someone ducks boat, you're going to jack up somebody's neck. There's been guys with fractured necks and doing boats on their heads.

Why are instructors using these tools? They're using these tools because they're trying to beat into us the importance of a team. It's about the guy to your right and the guy to your left. And if you operate with excellence in your role and the guy everybody else does as well Then the team as a whole is successful and I think that that's another reason why you have a big attrition rate not just in SEAL training but even other special programs because It's not a Johnny Rambo World, you know Johnny Rambo does everything by himself. You know what I mean this in all special operations communities It's about a group of guys being able to work together to get the job done.

And so you just get a lot of guys who show up and they, it's hard for them to grasp that concept and they could be the best runners, the best swimmers, the best, whatever, but they just can't operate within the team. They can't rely on a guy and they can't have patience. And it's just, that's what we, a lot of guys crumble. It seems to be, it seems to me like listening to you explain that, that's maybe of all the skills the most important thing.

A hundred percent. A hundred percent. That these guys have. You get guys who have guys who will have gotten to third phase and they will get performance drop like the week before graduation because of that. Because throughout the entire course, we do peer evals. So every class, I think it's like every two or three weeks or whatever.

Oh, during BUDS. Yeah, in BUDS. And you'll get guys who will be, you know, if you're consistently peered low throughout your entire tenure and you're that guy where, you know, people are, you know, avoiding and, you know, they don't want to be around and you're just an individual. Right. We have a saying in our community, individuals fail, teams survive. Right.

And if you're an individual and instructors realize that, you'll get to third phase. You'll graduate the island a week before graduation i'll be like oh bye performance drop yeah you know you're not cut out to go to a team it's been a bunch of guys who that is that happens a lot too yeah that's happened that's happened a lot i think there's a um no i don't even want to mention a guy name because i can't recall the entire story but a well-known guy who apparently that happened to in Bud's. He's a big YouTuber guy, big social media guy. I'll tell you his name offline,

but apparently that's what happened to him as well. But yeah, man, you've got to be able to operate as a team. Yeah, you guys also, on a side note here, the thing about the Navy SEALs is that the post-service community, like the Navy SEAL community, whoa, is that tight. I mean, you guys, because, I mean, you all do go through like the exact same thing. But it's such a fraternity. I mean, I went to, I had the opportunity to go to, I think it's literally called the Navy SEAL Foundation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. to i think it's literally called the navy seal foundation it was a there was a gala back in 2017

and a friend of mine who was a really high up uh marine gunnery sniper he used to cover for a lot of these teams i think yeah i think that's what it was he was like yo i'm going to this because a lot of my boys are going to it they were navy seals yeah and i had a chance to talk with a bunch of these guys and i'm looking around the room and there are people from the last like 50 years spread out and there's just it's hard to explain but like people would understand if you were there there's just a thing yeah and i've never been in front of something that was that serious yeah yeah you know what i mean yeah it's a really special bond yeah Yeah, 100% 100% I mean what I think that's the what is it called? There's a term The suffering something about suffering when people suffer together

They have these inseparable bonds or when people have experienced the same type of suffering. Yes, just like you know, Holocaust survivors Yeah, you know, you know one Holocaust survivor Will meet another Holocaust survivor that they've never met in person. They've never known each other, but they'll meet like 70, 80 years later. And it's like, they're the best of friends. They have this, this is this automatic bond.

It's because they, that shared suffering, they went through that same suffering together. And I think that that's what, what brings us together. And, you know, that's why, you know, when I was on um on on the show special forces fox um people asked me when i did the first season they were like dude like how many times have you guys all worked together i was like we didn't really work together much i worked well actually this is when i was doing the uk series uk version of the show um they were like man it seems like you guys have worked together or practiced together a long time before you shot the show together.

And it was like, no, we just have a similar shared suffering. We have a training that's the tip of the spear, and we all bought into it, and we all understand if I go right, so-and-so is going to go left. You know what I mean? So we don't need to have a conversation. We know how to read and react and flow off of each other. And that's why we're able to work well together because we all have that same level of training. Same thing when it came to the Fox show.

We all were able to work together and we all worked smoothly because we all had that same level of training where we could read and react. And we know I don't need to, it's just like going on the op. You're not talking on the op. It's all like nonverbal cues.

You know, it's all, you-verbal cues you know it's all you know hand signals it's all because you got to be sneaky peeky quiet right and so a lot of what we do comes from that training you know we train to contingencies as well so um yeah man that that that that is uh that's a bond that is in inseparable you know i get i i worked on a plane so funny when i worked on the movie the plane there was another seal on it. Pete Scoble and great dude. Great dude. So he was in The Adam Project. He was in, he's the new Percy Jackson for Disney. I don't know if I know the name. The Adam Walker Scoble?

Walker, yeah, Walker. Yeah, so Walker is Pete's son. He's not one of the Stranger Things kids, is he? No, no, no, no. I never watched that show. It just feels like every kid who comes up was in fucking Strangeranger Things kids, is he? No, no, no, no. I never watched that show. It just feels like every kid who comes up was in fucking Stranger Things. Nah, but he's a great kid, man. But when we went to go shoot Plane together in Puerto Rico,

it was like we had the combat scenes and all that, and it was just like, all right, we're going to do this? We didn't have to talk about it. The stunt coordinator's like, hey, you should do this. The director's like, got to a point, director's like, all right, we know you're a French guy. He's a French guy, Jean-François. He was like, yeah, I know. You guys know what hey, you should gotta do this. The director's like, got to a point, director's like, all right, we know you. He's a French guy. He's a French guy, Jean-François.

He was like, yeah, I know. You guys know what you are doing. Go do it. And me and Pete, we just kept shooting, move, communicate, drop, man. Like, let's do this, do that. And it all worked well together.

And we all had, it wasn't no competition. It wasn't no, it was like, it's just in brotherhood. Yeah. It's like, you know, so same thing with our consulting company.

You know, we own a consulting company where we run pro athletes, collegiate athletes, and Olympians, and corporations through mental toughness, critical thinking, team building, leadership training, all principles that we have to know in our community that translate well into business. And all the guys that I know, like they all have day jobs so sometimes I can't find the same SEAL to go do a job with me. Like we did this big pharmaceutical company, big pharmaceutical company

back in January and it's like, all right, need another SEAL. All right, who's available? I'm not available but I know this guy's available.

All right, boom. Hey, Ty, come do this job with me. Ty comes do the job, works flawlessly because we, we know, Todd, come do this job with me. Todd comes do the job. Works flawlessly because we know. You know what I mean?

And so, yeah, man, I can't think of another job or another field that has that blessing, I want to say, because it truly is a blessing, man. Are you really tight with the guys you graduated with who became your team today? Oh, yeah. Yeah, 100% 100% Yeah, they still talk to him as math I got a two-hour call when one of my boys a few weeks ago, you know talk on it's crazy Conversations are so different now cuz it's like dude, you know my kids and this and that I'm dealing with this Oh my daughter's day This oh so it's because we all know each other as kids. And so it's like the conversation is different, but it's like,

damn, we're getting old, man. It's so crazy because we think about, you know, I think about, you know, being young. When you think about that time, it's like 20, late 20s, mid to late 20s in the teams, early 30s in the teams. And then another thing I think about a lot too is uh you know my teammates who passed away like you know um charlie keating and pat feeks and those guys and just thinking about the fact that they never had a chance to have kids that's something

that gets me so you know every time like it's not every time but a good number of times when i'm looking at my kids like they come to mind especially when my kids come into my office because i have all the guys not all the guys but a good number of the guys who i serve with who passed away on operations i have that i have like a memorial wall in my office so every day i'm seeing their faces every single day and my kids come into the office and you know um come give me a hug or you say they got back from school whatever the case may be and i look for my kids as i look at them as they leave my office i see that wall and i just think about you know those guys who didn't get a chance to have kids and how you know their sacrifice you know paid away for me and paid away for others and so you know that that bond transcends life and

death as well yeah you know they still stick with you even to this day. That's awesome you have that, though. Yeah. I mean, for a perspective check, you guys, it's like when you're in the SEALs, you're born into that because you know, like, you're going to be going into battle. Oh, yeah. Most dangerous places, you're going to know guys that don't make it back. Yeah. Or it could be you that doesn't make it back. Yeah. And it's a heavy, heavy thing. Yeah, man.

But when you got in, like, what was your specialty? What did they bring you into? Yeah, so I was a corpsman. So I had already been a heavy, heavy thing. Yeah, man. But what did you, when you got in, like, what was your specialty? What did they bring you into? Yeah, so I was a corpsman. So I was, I had already been a corpsman. Yes. So that was more automatic for the most part. And then I went, and then I was a human guy. So.

Human intel. Human stands for, it's an acronym, means human intelligence. And so it was cool, man. You get, got to go to different schools and learn about running sources and tradecraft stuff and just being able to collect intelligence via another human being. You know what I mean? Now, how is this? Can we dig into this a little bit, like how this is different from being a CIA case officer or something like that like what is your what does a mission look like to you how long are we talking are are you would talk to me in the car

earlier about the fact that like right when you came in you inherited a lot of sources right so there aren't necessarily right away people you have to make sources but how are you making sources are you doing a lot of plainclothes stuff you you know, meetings? Like how does it work? Yeah. So for me, my experience, I can't really go into too much of the differences between case officers and cause I was never a case officer.

I know guys who were, but I was never a case officer. I can't speak to that. I want to say something. People like, but, uh, man,

man, it's, it's, uh, I think, I think I know the differences in the agency they refer to as assets. In our world, they're referred to as sources. In policing world, they're

referred to as informants. So essentially, what I can assume for the other two is you're essentially utilizing people to help collect intelligence for you, right? To help get information for you that you need in order to build an intelligence package or it might just be to find out what the atmospherics are.

Like how's everybody in this area feeling? What's the tone? Are people upset with the political climate? What's going on? Get me some on the ground information so that way i can have a good sense on how to move or what decisions i need to what how to move what information i need to pass up the flagpole so to speak right and so um yeah essentially it's uh it's collecting information to get a job done. And the other two entities that I mentioned,

case officers, DIA, as well as maybe even FBI to a certain extent, they refer to them as assets. And policing world refers to them as informants. But for the most part, I think we're all trying to do the same job. Now, how fast were you, after you're in your team, you make it through, you're active, how fast were you deployed to active zones? So I was after I graduated from SQT, I went through a workup.

So we do a workup. So you get to your team, do a workup. First part of your workup is pro dev, professional development. So that's about three months right and what does that consist that's where you go to your you go to your specialty school so if you have already have a specialization you go to if you don't have a specialization then you go to a uh you uh you go to into like an like an advanced so snipe the snipers will go to advanced sniper school guys who are already snipers a breacher can go to advanced breacher school.

Or if you're a human guy, like when I got back from a deployment, I went to TSO. So TSO is like a tactical surveillance course, right? So that's what pro dev is, where you're going to your school that speaks to your specialty or the specialty that you're going to have.

And then after that, then you go through what's called ULT, unit level training. So your team comes together and everybody goes, you do skydiving as a team. You do diving as a team, like hitting a target. You do CQC as a platoon. You do land warfare. You hit all of these blocks of training as a team. And you're you're you're

graded like your your team is graded and your your team your platoon is graded and if they don't perform well your platoon could get disbanded and not even freaking be able to make a deployment and headshed for sure be fired so it's like one of those things where you you have to perform it's not just like oh let's just go do this training to check a box it's like no dude you guys are going to go to war so better get it right yes before you can go do the job right so you're always being graded from the time you're in buzz to the time you're never locked in as the point exactly exactly we have a saying our community earn your trident every day. Yep.

And then after that, you go through what's called sit. And around sit, that's when you kind of find out where you're going to go. And so you train as a team to that specialty. Or if you find out that you need more human guys or you need another sniper because wherever you're gonna go like they need more guys to carry out sniper related operations then those guys will be sent to those schools to fill those needs and then you pump out i may i'm definitely gonna fuck up the term if i try to go back there's something you said in there but the school you went to for yours which was human intel in this case yeah yeah, yeah, it was another name for it, but just for this. And it was like three months, you said? No, TSO was, I think TSO was three or four months.

What does TSO stand for? Tactical Surveillance Operations. Okay. Yeah. So you go there. Is this, maybe I missed this a little bit, but did you already had upon graduating buds you already had some sort of background no no no this was fresh and they said you have to you have to

go to the school yeah okay so yeah so what did that comprise of like so yeah so one it comprises of a screening test i can't go into details about the screening test but it's it's it's not physical it's not like you're doing push-ups or anything like that it's very heady what what about the it's very like the the the fake phones record coming up again uh what do you mean when you were selling the fake phones was that a problem because oh no no no okay you're good at this dude for a long period of time bro like every time I got called into an office or every time like I when I was in boot camp, I was sweating. I thought, all right, this is it. This is it.

This is it. So that followed me for a long time. And it sucks, man. That's the one thing when you do when you do wrong, man. Even when you repentant, man, it still it still can follow you for a long time. Yeah. And so that's. Yeah. So, yeah. repentant man it's still it still can follow you for a long time yeah and so that's yeah um so yeah

so you wouldn't so you after you do the very heady screening test it's interesting because you get this like three guys in a room and it's it's very challenging then you go to the course if you pass that screening process and what kinds of things what kinds of things and if you can't talk about you can't talk yeah yeah i can't talk about this. We can't really go through not the screening but like on the course like oh and of course Are they so so like I've had Joe Ted I in here I've had Andrew Bustamante Jim Waller all guys with different CIA background Sean Ryan They talk about like being dropped into because I'm thinking just human Intel right now They talk about surveillance drilling like being dropped into cities in the US where you know they have set up drills to discover stuff like were you doing

that so that is that so so so so the human course is like the basic entry level course on running sources just leave it at that you know i mean just collecting information from meeting the person like meeting the person building relationship with the person and collecting information from that person like that's that's like the best safest way i probably like to describe it and then the biggest part of it though a lot of people don't realize is the writing side of it that's the toughest part what do you mean by the writing part of it, though, a lot of people don't realize, is the writing side of it. That's the toughest part. What do you mean by the writing side of it?

So everything you do, you have your physical side of it where you go out and meet your source and do all that stuff and then you come back. But then you also have a writing side of it because you got to remember why are you going to meet with these people? You're going to go meet with these people because you're trying to collect intelligence. Okay? That intelligence can't stay in your head. It has to be documented. And that's where I learned visual storytelling

because they teach you how to write in a way where you write a report today. Somebody could pick up that report 10 years from now and read it as though those events are happening right there and then. So it's a very tough literary course. That's the biggest part of it. You spend more hours in a blacked out window room writing and sketching, which is another part of it, then you do the other side of it. You know, because, and the thing is, you got to memorize everything.

Because you can't, because when you leave the area where you're doing this writing, everything outside is bad guy territory. Notionally, just notionally. And so the thinking is if you go meet with somebody and you're taking notes and then you start heading back and then somebody pulls you over, foreign government pulls you over, foreign police or whoever, whatever country pulls you over and you got all these notes.

Oh, like this is where the nuclear bomb is. And this is where this is. And this is where that is. Oh, yeah. And you said you were Scandinavian? Oh, okay. You're done. So you got to memorize everything.

And then you got to go back and you got to document it. And that's the hard. And that's why a lot of guys don't like going that route, which I understand. Because last thing you want to do when you're downrange, downtime, is write long intelligence reports. Yeah, but it's critical. But it's critical. And the interesting thing is my mom prepared me for that. Because remember I told you my mom was a creative writer.

Ah, I forgot about that. And my mom would make my brother and I read New York Times articles and books and write reports. And if our reports weren't near perfect, she would make us pick another article or another book and start all over again. And we couldn't go outside to play, especially in the summertime. We couldn't go outside to play

unless our reports were done and perfect. So I grew up writing. As a matter of fact, you know, mom- You had a good mom, man. Yeah, man. My mom's a beast. And the thing is for her, you know, a lot of parents put like a baseball bat and baseball glove in their kids' hands or basketball, you know, jujitsu outfit or whatever. My mom put a pen and paper in my brother's hands because she was of the mindset that if you know how to articulate your thoughts in a literary

format, or if you can articulate somebody else's thoughts in a literary format, you will never be without a job. You will always have a job. And so when I got to the teams and I found out about Humit and when my OIC was like, who wants to go? And most of the guys were like, nah, I don't want to do it. Nah, because they wanted to do other. They wanted to do. They wanted to be the sniper. They wanted to be. And that's all cool.

I was just like my hand shot up and I was just like, I want to do that because I love writing. You know what I mean? I love storytelling. I love I just love being able to get what's outside of my head onto the page. You know what I mean? I know people joke about, oh, seals write books. But the reality is, you know, a lot of guys don't, you know, because they have other people writing for them. But me what I mean? I know people joke about, oh, seals write books, but the reality is, you know, a lot of guys don't,

you know, because they have other people writing for them. But me, I'm a writer. I'm a storyteller. Like, I write my books. Clearly. Yeah, once again,

link in description. Bye-bye, chameleon. I write my screenplays. You know, I write, yeah, I don't have a, so funny, I get so many people like, you wrote,

who was your ghost writer on Transform because it was all well written? I was like, I don't have a ghost writer, dude. I sat and freaking wrote that book and bled over that book and the crazy thing is the publisher they didn't think they didn't have confidence in me because it was my first book and so they hired an editor and uh i remember i had the first meeting with the editor she was like you know they hired me for like five six months to edit this book and she was like, you know, they hired me for like five, six months to edit this book. And she was like, but I don't think it's going to take that. We edited the book in like

three weeks. Wow. Two, three weeks. That's how fast it all happened. And, uh, and an interesting thing is my publisher didn't want them, my first book to be over. They didn't want my book, first book to be over 80,000 words. I had to fight them to get it up to to uh you know 130 000 words show them comps and everything and uh so when i was writing the book i really focused on keeping it under 130 000 words and when the editor read it she was like why didn't you why didn't you go further on this part of the story why didn't you expand on this and i was like my publisher told me i'd be in breach of contract and she said what she went back to the publisher was like hey we need more remy needs more space he needs to tell tell a little bit more about this story when this relates to his grandmother here and that's how you know so like that served my what my mom did served me

well and everything i do like even when i'm working on special force was working on special forces fox like we had to write those briefs like i had to write my briefs like that i gave on camera like i had to write them memorize you did all that yeah yeah it's like all the producers be like all right you need to give a brief on like you know they're going to get gas so give them a brief on that and just make it look cool so you got to write all that stuff out you know even when my speeches i write all that stuff out and memorize them like you, you know, we just landed a TV show. We were able to sell a TV show to a major production company. It's an unscripted TV show.

And we got that job because I wrote the freaking pitch for it, right? So writing, my mom was right. You know, she had the key. You know, and the key was, hey, if you can write, you'll never be without a job. And that served me in the community. And that's what helped me do my job when I was downrange, actually running sources and having to now write these reports. And now these reports are going up the chain of command. And now these reports are going to other people outside of the military and i'm not looking like an idiot am i yeah well you i mean because the thing not to bury the lead with this but out front you were talking about how for the writing to happen though you were trained to be able to picture things and compartmentalize them to be able to write it down later yeah so maybe it's like okay well i need to get the fuck i'm just making one up right now correct me if i'm wrong but like maybe it's like all right i need to get the fuck out of here i won't be able to

write for eight hours or something i'll be at this place tonight and i can do it like how what what kinds of skills because this is relatable to other things in normal people's lives like mine like what kinds of how did you find a way to so perfectly visually remember everything and then compartmentalize it to put it in a perfect report i've always had a very photogenic memory i think that you know i can't i can't really say that it was like something that i learned i wish it was i had a simple form simple formula that i could give to somebody be like i did this this this and this i just i've just always had a photogenic memory and no you know what i i correct myself i've always worked

that muscle whether directly or indirectly i've always just like i think the gift was there because my dad you know my dad we didn't go into it but my grandfather had like nine wives and and yeah my dad's father grandfather was bald yeah and he kept on having he kept on having daughters my dad was the firstborn son to my to my grandfather and my grandfather not only was he a yoruba chief but he was also muslim so my father memorized the uh quran at a very early age wait memorize the quran yeah at a very early age i don many fucking pages is that? I don't know. I don't know. I've never read the Quran. But he memorized the Quran at an early age. Fast forward, you know, after my grandfather died,

the wives dispersed to different parts of Nigeria. My dad went down to the south of Nigeria Lagos, and there were Christian missionaries there. And not only did they teach the Bible, but they taught like math and science and literature and all of those things. My dad memorized the Bible. And my dad was the bible and my dad

was able to memorize mathematical equations and all these different things to the point where the missionary is like dude like this guy's a your dad was genius yeah yeah and so and so i think that i i i don't think i have his level of genius but i think that i've inherited part of that yeah you know part of that you know ability to memorize things or see a problem, but in my mind, because my dad was an engineer as well. So part of that is being able to see a problem and figure out a solution, figure out a way. And so that's what I've always,

I think a lot of it came from my dad, but then a lot of it came from me working that muscle, being intentional about working that muscle, whether, not intentional, but whether directly or indirectly working that muscle to memorize and remember things. Even now, like, I memorize stuff. I have this list of stuff that I go through all the time where I'm always trying to make sure,

is this fresh, is this correct? And I'm double checking to make sure, is this right, is this on point? Just correct? And I'm double checking to make sure, is this right? Is this on point? Just to keep working that muscle because that goes into acting as well. Right? Like you got to memorize your lines.

You know what I mean? You got to know your lines. And then me as a, as a writer director now, like, you know, I have a saying, and this came out of my time serving in the military,

a great leader will never make you do something or not do something that they have not done yes they are not willing to do yes you know i mean love and and i you know my end goal in life is to be a writer director that's why i directed the short that's why i directed a short film uh companion film for chameleon and i got the other feature film that i'm going to be doing and how can i expect actors to memorize lines especially lines of monologues that i'm writing you know what i mean like when i write these long speeches and how can i expect an actor or actress to memorize that and deliver a performance if i'm not doing it right if i haven't done it if i haven't put myself in a position to be able to, you know, memorize things and be able to regurgitate those things and get them out to the space.

Like, that's hypocritical. So I think that's another part of it for me, why I'm always working that muscle, that memorization muscle, or that muscle of finding a solution to a problem. We have our apparel company, Kejo, and all our shirts have different sayings. And we have this one saying, our first shirt that we launched with

was, solutions greater than excuses. Finding the solution instead of coming up with an excuse as to why something doesn't work. Exactly. Yeah, you have that real team's theme from the Navy SEALs, clearly. But that is one of my favorite things ever, the idea I'll never ask someone to do something that I haven't done myself or at the very least wouldn't do myself.

And I keep myself in check with that every day because I built this myself for a long time with the help of great people like you agreeing to come in here of course but you know now i have a couple contractors who are working on my second and third channel with me to edit things and i'm ocd as fuck right there's a certain way i want things and i'm a part of they're not just editing it like i'm a part of the process and they're i'm always checking that when i ask them to do something and it could be something as simple as like an Alessi, if he's listening, he'll laugh at this one. But it could be as simple as, yo, that text on the thumbnail, we have two lines.

That line, there needs to be like six pixels of space instead of eight in between there. And I know that because my dumb ass is making the thumbnail for the episode right now where I'm doing the same thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? And the minute I ask him something, and this hasn't happened yet, but the minute I'll go to ask him something where i'm like wait i never done that before i know i'm gonna stop and i'm gonna say i'll just fucking take care of that you know what i mean there's and that's i i guess that's something that came through doing what i do but you you're you learn that from life and death situations so it's easy for you to do it frankly with with the things you

do now it's it's not as high stakes either. Yeah. And I learned that having bad leaders as well in the military, not just like Life Adjust, but like even like, dude, I remember he's doing some training thing with the Marines and this out of shape sergeant was like, get up top there. Get up top there get up top there you got to get up that mountain and provide and he's huffing and puffing up the hill and throw it like when I say yo this hill is like steep bro and by the time I got to live like somebody took razor blades to my quad muscles like that's how sore my muscles were and he's like getting on us and we're just like dude you're not even leave from the front bro yes like leave from the front like you're telling us

to do this and you're freaking yelling at us berating us down there and you you would die if you even tried to get to the top yeah and like it was running into situations like that that infuriated me but showed me what not to do so yeah it was life and death situations at times but it was also having bad examples another thing is like that i learned in the military is being on this on a non-soft side and then being on a soft side is like you know taking a genuine interest in those you lead you know what i mean like it's not about just them being a stepping stone to get to the next rank or get to the next level it's like yo i really care about you and i i had i remember having leaders who they just saw me as a stepping stone or other guys as a

stepping stone they didn't see me as an actual person they didn't take a genuine interest and yeah i did my job like i did my job. Like, I did my job. But on the flip side, I remember having an OIC in the teams. That dude... What's an OIC? Officer in charge. So, in charge of the platoon. That dude took a genuine interest in every single one of us.

He knew our mom's name. He knew, like, he knew whether... what we were going through in our personal life. He wasn't doing that, like, to get into our business, but just so he had an understanding of us so that he could better lead us. And because he took a genuine interest in us, like, bro, I was willing to run, not just meet the standard, but run through walls because for him to get the job done, because I knew that he cared about me. And that was another thing that came out of my time serving in the military. Another thing that I try to apply now.

And it's very disheartening when I find myself in business situations because when I see the people not take interest or care about, not even people below them, but people on the same level as them you know what i mean it's just like bro that's not the way business is done you know i don't know why so many people are like that there is a common pattern and it's not that i don't like to paint like all negative views there's a lot of great people who are practicing exactly like you are right now and shout out to all those people yeah but you know in my experience in the business world which is less than yours i'm younger than you but i've seen enough to be able

to say this confidently you see a lot of people who have stepped on people or stepped over people to get where they are yep and you know it's not as simple as oh but they but the bad guy wins in life because they got a lot of money you know they're usually they're miserable sons of bitches yeah and that's their payment and no one fucking loves them and they're gonna die alone yeah and that's a sad thing i don't i don't wish that upon them but you know to me i just always thought like why would you ever let personal bullshit personal goals at the expense of other people money yeah get in the way of not just business by the way but like family and stuff that's the worst when you see that and people will step on their own kind like their own people i should say yeah like it just it just offends something in the human spirit to me yeah i don't know no i agree bro i agree and i've seen you know

working in the publishing world i mean brad knows he's been with me for five years you know working in entertainment it's it's you see a lot of things, man, where it's just like, sometimes we ask ourselves, man, why are we even still doing this? Like, we could be successful in success and other stuff. Like, you know what I mean? We talk about that all the time. And it's like, what's the goal? You know, the goal for us is to be able to tell stories that are going to impact people. And, you know, because going back to what we talked about with the whole human trafficking thing, if it's a global issue, it's going to take a global response.

And the best way to have a global response is by being able to tell a story in a fashion that appeals to people in the fashion where people can sit down, view and consume it. And so that's what keeps me in this fight that's what keeps me like persevering because it's like i mean dude every day i i have a fight dude every not every day every almost every moment is a battle in my head because i'm juggling so much stuff and i'm trying and i'm doing the right thing trying to do the right thing but then i run into people that stab me in my back i run into people who betray me i run into people who don't have the same level of it who have no integrity at all but portrays though they have i run into you know just things happen and that messes with my mind a lot you know what i'm saying?

And then the stress and then being a father and then having kids and then all these different things. So, like, when I'm not, the worst thing for me sometimes is to just be in my own head. You know what I'm saying? Because it's a battle. But for me, it's about what's the end result? What's the goal? I know that my goal brad's goal our intention sure your goal intention is to impact people to make try and make the world a better place whatever that may mean you know and whatever whatever level we could do that with the

platforms that we have and that's the only thing keeps me in the fight because you know what though people will get lost i i want to give you credit for something that is even at the core of what you're saying. Before, you're talking about all the things you do publicly. I mean actor, writer, director, former Navy SEAL. The list goes on and on. But you talked earlier with me about your kids and the values you're instilling in them, you and your wife, and how you do that. You're winning at home first. Yes. you and your wife and how you do that you're winning at home first yes you put your legacy

is putting putting them out to be even better people than than a better person even you were and so i think a lot of people in your position not you but like they'll preach about it because maybe they have a platform or something yeah right and they can say things that look pretty fucking good in the 60 second clip yeah but you get them off camera you send them home they're fucked up exactly the family's fucked up maybe maybe their wife left them because and their wife was right to leave them because they gave them no time yeah so it seems like i want to give you that credit like right here on the podcast it seems like you have your priorities yeah in check and that's the best example is is through example you know or the best

teaching point i'm sorry is is through the example you said and i think you're setting a great example at home i'm trying man i'm trying that's the goal man because like i said earlier if my kids suck at life if my wife my marriage is falling apart and uh but i'm making all of this money and have all of this stuff going on it's all worthless it's worthless i mean it's all worthless you know what i'm saying well we we got on i love that tangent right there but we got off what we were talking about so i wanted to go back to that but you were talking about the intelligence reports and how you got to be able to write them down and stuff what goes into a great intelligence report like what what makes something that's like oh they're gonna use this and they're gonna love it it's just clarity it's just simple it's

just being is being simple and clear you know it's it's not rocket science it's not like it's a formula or anything it's just like writing in a fashion that's one linear right not jumping around like having like a a set structure that you're that that where a person, okay, here I am in the story or the meeting that this person was in, was it beginning, middle, end, just like a screenplay, right? But then, and it's in a similar fashion as a screenplay. I think that this is what helped me as a screenwriter is clarity, simplistic.

Like in a book, you could, you have unlimited pages almost, in comparison to a screenplay. You could write long monologues, you could write long descriptions, and there she was in the beautiful forest, and the trees were glistening, and all of this other stuff. And people get that because you're painting that picture, but you don't have that in a script. In a script, you have to be able to paint that picture,

but with less words and in a simplistic way. And I think that that's what makes the best Intel reports are the structured. And when I say structured, I don't mean like going into crazy writing structure. I'm just talking about a simple beginning. This is the beginning part of the meeting. This is how he or she was when we met.

This was what I recognized. And then just going all the way through, and then this is the end. And obviously in that is the information that they provide and all that other stuff. And then this is the end and obviously in that is the information that they provide and all that stuff and then this is the end you know linear fashion simple and clear you know what i mean yeah and what did they teach you about psychological profiling of people i mean a huge part of any intelligence i think we can all kind of surmise this is that you got to know people better than yeah much everyone else like what what kinds of things did they teach you about people's like

pain points or hit points to be able to take advantage of body language being able to read body language um prying into a person's motivation by asking a lot of questions you know and when the biggest thing is when um says something, it's easy to throw away, it's easy to get an answer and feel as a person that's receiving the information that that's enough. When there's still something there that you could really pull out, right? So it's just essentially being a good reporter, you know, being a good reporter. And so, yeah, but body language is a big part of it. And then, like I remember is when I was in those classes on how to read people and how to figure out

whether somebody was telling the truth or not and all these different things that relates to making sure that we're getting the proper intel, I already felt like I knew it all. And I don't mean that in a prideful way. No, I understand what you mean. I felt like all I was now getting

was the terms that go along with what I was doing because I had been doing it for years in New York City. Yes. I felt like all I was now getting was the terms that go along with what I was doing. Because I had been doing it for years. Yes. In New York City. Yes. 100%. I had been doing it. I had been reading about it.

I've been able to tell, okay, this guy that's doing this car boxing, just walk past him. Don't even pay him any mind because as soon as you give him a second of your time, that's the bait. He's going to reel you in. You're going to get hustled. That's when the hustle is going to start. Somebody's going to be his back. Or when you're on a train and you don't just sit and focus on what's in front of you. You need to be always kind of scanning around, looking around, reading the room,

reading who's on the train, looking through the window to see who's down another car down, a homeless person, a crazy person that's about to come down come come through the your train whatever i forgot the train door whatever to come into your into your train section and then do you make eye contact do you not make eye contact you're gonna have to figure that out as soon as you look at that person right you're gonna have to make icon you're gonna have to look at that person before that person recognize you look and make a decision read that person really quick make a decision is the decision i'm gonna get off this train or is the decision i'm gonna stay put this decision is decision i'm gonna stand up because i'm in a position where i won't be able to defend myself fast right these are all things i lived that i i mean from the time i was i want to say five because i was young but from the time i

was like seven eight years old all the way to the time i was 20 years old i lived all of that so now when i got into the classroom all i was doing was putting the titles behind what it was that i had been doing it's almost like you could play the instruments like a genius in the orchestra. You just couldn't read the music. You didn't have to. You just knew it. Yeah. I just knew it.

I just knew it. And that's why it's like hard for me to be like, Oh, this is what they taught. And this is what they taught. And this is just like, no, it was just stuff that I did.

And I can't remember, you know, I mean, again, this is over what, 15, 16 years ago too. but still it's like with things like this,

all the things they could teach you it's not like you could just do calculations on the spot simultaneously of all this stuff you kind of have to be trained to have a second sense yeah to amalgamate it all put it together and know like oh go time not go time and then yeah and then another thing too was when I got to some of these countries, it was like, I felt like I can identify with these guys. What do you mean? Because as I mentioned offline, less than 1% of Navy SEALs are African-American,

right? Like, I don't know my exact number, but I was like around a 50, if somewhere around a 50 of African-american seal in the history of the team since 1962 right class i graduated start with 270 29 graduated i was the only black guy in my class and that's the way it is like almost every class and then once you get into your specialty whether it's a sniper whether it's a breacher because there's not that many af-Americans, then once you get into the specialization program, the number of African-Americans is even far less than, is a percentage of a percentage, right?

And so when I would get overseas, I remember the first time there's these guys, you know, guys, guys, I think I can't remember if he went, I know he went to Ivy League school. I can't remember if it was Harvard or Yale, whatever. He was a human guy as well. And doing a turnover op and he's talking to them. And I'm watching because I'm observing. I'm not in the room. I'm watching on the feed. I'm just like, I see something there.

I felt like I could identify. There were things that I felt like I was able to see that other guys weren't able to see. Not every guy, but other guys weren't able to see. Not because they weren't good at what they did. They were great at what they did. But because they didn't have the background and yes Yes, right so I'm it so they would ask a question in a way that was like the way we were taught to ask a question right, and they were good at what they did and they More chances than none got the information that was required to be gotten but then when i went

into the room with the same source different day or situation whatever the case may be there was this connection he's i grew up in a volatile environment this dude is in a volatile environment i grew grew up not rich, poor. This dude grew up poor. He ain't rich, right? You know, I grew up in tribalism in Nigeria. There's a lot of tribalism. There's a lot of tribalism here in America,

but there's a lot in Nigeria. There's a lot of tribalism in the countries that I went to. So to them them this is different hood but still the hood you know what i'm saying so when i would go into the room it's just and they and and interestingly they were surprised when they would see me because they never like when i would come in for the first time for turnover they'd be like i got pictures you know i'll show you offline but i got pictures with dudes because it's like black guy because they watch all of the uh you know american movies with subtitles of course but they watch eddie

murphy so they know who eddie murphy chris tucker and all these guys are they're laughing i remember going to a meet my first meeting when one so he's like eddie murphy right because i was smiling and stuff like that but you know what i use that used that to my advantage by playing that out. Oh, you like Eddie Murphy? Oh, I can do Eddie Murphy. What's up? I can do Martin Lawrence. And that would break ice.

Yeah. You know, whereas a guy who's from Harvard, Frogman, went to the school, he ain't going to go in there. Yo, what up, what up, what up? But I could do that. And I know how far to go with that and when to dial it back and wait get down in business because i i feel like i had that connection because we're makes sense from this you know same both from the hood but different type of hood when i say hood i just

mean like from a very similar backgrounds you know um in spirit not in actuality you know what I mean and you were serving in the teens for eight years or I'm just thinking of this as you're giving that answer like are you allowed to say where you were at all I mean I just try to be vague just because the fact that I was doing a human thing human thing so Middle East okay try to be vague they're just looking these are imaginations on that so how like how often were you deployed over there versus back home time off? Was there a set kind of schedule? So the way it works is you do your workup, deploy, do your workup, deploy, do your workup, deploy.

So it's that. I want to say it's like 18 months work up when you get back from deployment you have like a vacation and then like we call it leave uh and then depending on where you're going and it's about six to eight month deployment okay so the deployments i did were about six to seven months the i would say seven months the longest uh just because like we have like what's called advon so advon is like the advance it's the your whole platoon won't go but like a part of your platoon to go advon will get there early because part of that is to do a turnover and then the rest i don't think

i've heard of that yes it's called's called ADVON. Got it. So, yeah, so that kind of adds a little bit more time sometimes on guys' deployment. OICs for the most part, platoon chiefs, like human guys in some cases. If you're a medic that has like sniper, breacher, a bunch of different quals, for sure you're part of that ADVON to get there because now you're replacing another team that's coming back for the most part you know to fill that space so amen are you allowed to say what team you were on like what number or is that no go i came i just i was on west coast teams okay what are they even or odd so west coast teams are odd always forget uh east coast teams are even got it yeah

and so you're in the middle east like because again we've kind of touched on this but you're doing intel work yeah but then you're also doing like how much of it was like out there in the field doing kind of covert source work versus you're kitted up doing missions to kicking down doors and yeah so a part of it is so i'll use i'll take one one deployment as an example okay right so for this particular deployment i was when we did what's called vampire ops so we slept we went to bed like around a 9 depending on like 10 10 in the morning woke up like around 5 6 o'clock in the afternoon and Then like me like I was doing my Intel stuff like I was meeting with sources

Like pretty much like right after I had breakfast called breakfast like like I mean I had breakfast. I call it breakfast. Like, I'm meeting with sort of, and I had an interpreter that I worked through for the most part. So it's not just me, it's me and an interpreter. And then also sometimes I would go in with another guy. And so you do that. There's more to it because you have your team meetings every day as well, which is a part of it as well.

And then route that information up the chain. have your your team meetings every day as well which is a part of it as well and then right route that information up the chain after you do your meetings write your report send that up and again i'm just taking a random day but one meeting is not going to lead to an operation right it's like sometimes there's two meetings sometimes there's three meetings right because part of it is like getting that information and then embedting that information and get to other information to make sure it's accurate. It's not so you can't have a source come in and be like, so-and-so is at that house. Like, all right, we're going to go take down that house. It's like, all right, so-and-so is at that house.

All right, cool. You got to double. Let me try and get somebody else to vet and then get somebody else to vet that. And then once that information set up the chain of command, again, there's more to it, but I'm just sublimating it for the sake of not trying to get into all the details, then an op can get approved, right? DA, you know, we call it DA, direct action mission,

can get approved, right? Or recon mission or whatever the case, whatever the mission is required, right? And so I would do that. And then we would go and, we would go in, we'd go out the door like at, I don't know, midnight, one in the morning, two in the morning, when everybody's asleep and then come back.

And that was the day, that was the cycle. You know what I mean? Like build the intelligence. And when we have it all and everything's been vetted, we're not going out every single night. Because it's a process. And then there's stuff that there's information we're getting that's not coming from me, right?

There's like maybe the battle space command is like, there's a target over here, you gotta go get, hit this target now, boom, boom, boom. And that's a different situation. Do you have another human guy on your team with you? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're working in teams in this part yeah as well yeah okay you have two to three well I don't want to

say that like in the situations I've been in it's been about two to three got it so obviously you had the repository of like sources that you are inheriting that came before you but what did you make the the sources who you identified and ended up bringing on did you usually get those through the sources who you identified and ended up bringing on? Did you usually get those through the sources that you already had? Or what would you look for in people to make them a source? Like, was there a type of a target kind of person that you always wanted to have in your pocket? Yeah, for me, for the most part, when I got in country, the last thing you want to do is

in my opinion is have a source say I know a guy you need to bring him on because you know you don't want to do that because you know that part of that motivation is going to be money

you never want somebody you never want to work with somebody for the money. Right? You want them to have some type of buy-in, you know, outside of the financial piece to it. And so the pool that I got was always pools that were already kind of established for the most part. Except for there was one deployment I was on where we got there and... Trying to be very vague about this. Take your time.

But there wasn't a source pool for the most part, but the group of guys was vetted because they were tied to a government that was trying to help us out with what we're doing. That's the biggest way I think I could explain it. Right. So, um,

it wasn't like I'm going out in town and trying to find somebody or anything like that. Like, Oh, you know, or try to hear a story of a guy who family got murdered by Al Qaeda. And it's like, Oh,

I'm gonna go have a conversation with that guy and say got murdered by al-Qaeda and it's like oh I'm gonna go have a conversation with that guy and say you want a chance to get back I've never found myself in that position you know it's always either inherited a stable and then got rid of guys like there were times when I was just like yo this dude hasn't performed or this dude is like bsing or this dude's motivation has completely changed. He's just in it for the money and then cut ties. You know what I mean? Yeah. So on the mission side themselves, though, once you actually would be approved to, you know, you have enough intelligence.

Because it sounds like your end of it, you're the guys who are determining a good amount or number of the missions, percentage of the missions that end up happening because you're kind of the tip of the spear. Is that fair to say? I want to say good. You're talking about human guys across the board? Yeah, across the board for the various teams. It's a piece. It's a piece in the puzzle.

You know what I mean? Because you can have all the meetings and collect all the information as you want, but if other pieces don't connect, there's no mission that's happening, if that makes sense. So it's like, it's just a piece. That's the best way I can explain it.

Because you could be getting intelligence from, because what if a government agency like has some information key information and then that information gets vetted then you're going out the door like you didn't really have that the playing that role that's kind of that's what my common sense was telling me and then when i was listening to talk i don't know if it's different like team to team it sounded like a lot of the missions were happening because of yours and i'm sure some were but like there's a balance of it it's a balance it's a balance a lot of it is not happening just because of me or just because of my effort or just because the effort

of the guys in the shop it's it's different things even meeting with oh i see meeting with like somebody who's high up in an area like a shake or something like that. You know what I mean? Have a sit down with them. So it's definitely all the onus doesn't fall solely on human guys. And it never fell solely on me. Like I mentioned earlier, it's a team. And so it's like I'm just bringing a piece to the table and hopefully that piece lines up with what's already been brought to the table or

Hopefully whatever has been brought you know or vice versa That makes sense and that's just that's the way it plays out. I'm doing math in my head because you You were telling me earlier you left the team's January 2016 Yeah, and you did like eight eight and a half years in the team's eight years. So you're getting in Oh eight ish. Oh, no, I'm in 2002. right but i'm saying you're getting into the seals oh yeah yeah 2007 2008 right so this is now where you're going over there and you're seeing combat in these situations and i'm just thinking about like you know this is now five years post iraq seven years post going into afghanistan there's instability over there in

the middle east what was what was that like like what was that time period like it it seems like it would have been especially when you were coming in a time where the morale was maybe at like an all-time low from the militants yeah yeah yeah well i would say for our community, guys don't go through hell, hell, go through buds to sit or go sit in Guam, bro. Yeah. You know what I mean? the anticipation of finding out where you were going and knowing that there's a chance that after you finish this workup, your platoon could go to the Philippines or go to Guam or go to Bahrain and just sit for six months. That's frightening.

You guys want the action. You want to, you want to, yeah, you go through, you do the, you go through training and all of this stuff and all this workup because you want to do a job. That's what you train for. You know what I mean? And so it's like in our community, it's just like getting after it. That's why we do. We want to be where the party is, if that makes sense.

Yeah. But maybe I could have been a little more clear on that question. In your opinion, were there things in and again we're being vague with exact places this is how it is with from an intelligence perspective here but like what were there things in the middle east that you identified as oh this is not going to get better because i'm thinking you know this is a few years before ISIS. Like, did you kind of see something like an ISIS coming? I can't say that I, I mean, to me, I think that I can't say that I saw ISIS coming. I can say that I knew that I felt as though something would fill the void. I just didn't know what that something would be at some point, right?

So if we're talking about Iraq or if we're talking about Afghanistan, if we're talking about other places, like Taliban swooped in and filled that void, right? Yes. Took over. ISIS swooped in and filled that void, you know, once Americans pulled out

for the most part, right? Yes. And so it was always in the back of everyone's, I would say most people's head that like, and that was one of the reasons why I think the part of the goal, and I don't want to speak, I want to be careful because I don't want to speak to what was going on in the minds of generals and admirals because I don't know,

but I think that maybe one of the goals was to try and stabilize it and and strengthen the governments or or people in power to the best of of our ability so that whoever did come fill that void wouldn't be successful yeah it's interesting and hindsight's 2020 now but we're we're great at a lot of things as a country one of the things we don't seem to be the best at, and in fairness to us, I don't think a lot – I think most countries aren't good at it from a power perspective. But spreading the democracy the right way or getting the right people in charge, you look at it, that just seems to be – I mean you mentioned it yourself. The Afghanistan example is phenomenal for all the wrong reasons because you just you spent 20 years and yet same ending you know it's kind of like a loop yeah yeah yeah and uh sad it is sad but uh what can you do man yeah so i i mean i have so many other questions in there but we we got to

get you up to new york soon but but before we do that like when when you left the teams i i think what's going to be happening here i'm just looking at the clock like we probably are going to have an episode and a half here we're going to have an episode on your like career and your childhood and everything then i'll probably put out an hour 10 minutes that we did on the human trafficking as its own which which I think would be cool to do, like, as its own episode. But, you know, without going into the things we already covered on human trafficking, if this one's coming before the other one,

what, when you got out of the teams, like, why did you leave? What was the motivation? My first son was born in 2014. My second son was born in 2015. And I looked at those boys and though i wanted to stay and i wanted to do 20 years but i looked at my kids and i was just like i want to be home it wasn't like i was scared of dying or anything like that for me it was just like i want to be home because even like outside of deployments like work workup, you're gone a lot. You know, you're going out to Utah.

You're going out to Nyland. You're going out to, you know, Mojave Desert. You're going out to all these places. And you come back for a week. Then you got to go here. And it's a lot. And I just knew that I, you know, I was, I got it out of my system, you know. And I needed to be home with my boys and my wife and kids and so it was a tough

decision but that was that was ultimately the reason why i decided to pop smoke it well it sounds like you jumped right into things yeah as far as like you you mentioned you got the call from the organization sacramento started focusing on some of the human trafficking i was in grad school when i got out actually like when i was in, I was in, yeah, I got my bachelor's, you know, I wanna say two years before I got out. Oh shit, you went to college while you were in there.

Yeah, I wanna say like a year and a half, a year, I finished quick. My bachelor's really, really quick. I remember my counselors were just like, you're crazy, I just stacked classes. I was just like, I'm taking as many classes as I can to finish this early. And then I was in grad school getting my master's in organizational strategy. stat classes i was just like i'm taking as many classes yeah this is early and then um and i was

in grad school getting my bat my master's in organizational strategy like i i had i could have got that one going to nba route but there's so many people with mbas that i didn't want to do the nba routes i did the same business school university of charleston west virginia but i went the organizational strategy route and uh i was doing that because I was gonna go in business consulting full-time because my brother-in-law is a YPO guy You ever hear familiar YPO YPO stands for young presidents organization in order to be in you have to Have become or be a millionaire and billionaire under the age of 40 this chap is all around the world And these guys control a lot of the wealth and women control a lot of wealth around the world and so my brother-in-law is a ypr he's part of the toronto chapter sounds like the illuminati

yeah but uh the good people but uh he was getting me a lot of consulting jobs and uh i didn't want to just rely on i was a seal and you, so let's go charge that hill. You know, go be a team player. I wanted to have the education, the theory behind it as well. So that's what I was planning on doing full time after I got out in January 2016, and that's why I was in grad school. Did you have any – I mean, you did some really – you were in the teams. You did some really serious shit. Did you have any mental struggles or something coming home? was there would did some of it stay with you I would

I would there's always there's always going to be a little something residual uh of the stuff that we do and the stuff that most guys do when they've gone in combat. So for sure, I think that I've had a, I've had a, I found a good process for myself to keep the demons at bay, at bay, you know what I mean? To keep my focus. My faith is a big part of who I am, you know, you know, you know, and prayer and relying on God and, and is, that's my, that's my center, you know, especially having this realization or belief

that everything happens for a reason and everything happens just the way it's supposed to happen and that alone is is comforting to me especially when things go bad and i've had so many bad things happen to me even like in last few months but just knowing that good will come out of it or has come out of it you know what i mean and so um i would say that faith has been a big part of keeping me my mind clean keeping me focused and keeping me you know on the right path did you have that as a kid at all no no when did that when did that come in for you um when i was 26 i had i had fluctuated between atheism and agnosticism up until the time I was 26. What did it?

I had a rock bottom moment. I had a rock bottom moment. And I tried all kinds of different things to fix me and to fix my situation. And nothing I tried worked. And, you know, my brother, he's been,'s been he was i mean ever since he was in college he'd been a christian he would always tell me he said remy when not if but when you hit rock bottom just remember to cry after jesus and i remember making fun of him and mocking him and doing that all just like you're stupid like get away from me with all that crap and when i hit my bottom moment man um and mentally my brain was screwed did you talk about that bottom moment already was that something we discussed no no are you no comfortable talking

about that or yeah yeah what was it it was a combination of things, man. It was, in short, it was, I did, I treated a lot of people poorly. My mom, my brother, a girl who I was, I was going to marry, you know what I mean? And I went, went out to the wilderness, long story short, had, had, had the chance to really reflect on my life and really reflect on the decisions that I made and I didn't like what I saw. And it crushed me. It crushed me to think how the things that I did to my mom. Talked about stealing her engagement ring ring stealing money from her as a kid like all of these things started coming to my my forefront things that happened you know there's certain triggers I remember when I was at the Lee Strasberg Strasberg Theater and Film

Institute oh shit you went there yeah that's awesome and uh there was a girl there brad knows um named jamal awesome actress and she did a scene um that triggered something in her that really took her to a dark place where she was just crying hysterically she ran out of the building and i ran out there and i chased her and she was just she was on if she was hyper she could barely breathe she was just out of it and that one scene that one thing in that scene I can't remember quite what it was

triggered something that happened to her in her past in a strong way and that's what happened to me this one instance of being able to reflect triggered all of these things, what I did to my mom. Things that I did years ago, men had thought about but never quite like this. Things I did to my mom, things that I did to my brother, how I used to disrespect him and not honor him. And then things I did to this girl.

I mean, there's a lot more to the story, but I my leg uh in jump school couldn't walk for three months and uh in that three months this girl like she dropped everything to take care of me and uh i was so i had been so angry at the world that i had poured out all that anger onto her. And she didn't deserve it. And once I was able to walk, I left. I had been cheating on her anyway. But once I was able to walk, I left her. And I remember her crumbling to the floor and just saying, how could you do this to me?

And I said, get out of my apartment. Why are you still sitting on my floor? And then she got up, cried, and left. And she had given up so much for me um and uh i eventually got back with her but still cheating on her and never physically abusive when either like i've never put a hand on her anything like that but just like putting her down you know what i mean and so again having that moment where i'm thinking reflecting on all the things I did to my mom, reflecting on all the things I did to my brother,

reflecting on all the things I did to other people, reflecting on what I did to this woman that crushed me, and to think that I couldn't go back and fix it was horrifying. Because again, going back to what I said before, my dad's mind is that what I inherited from my dad was this ability to see a problem or see a door and figure out a way to fix that problem. That's the way my mind has always been wired, everything that I face, everything that I

do. And I think that that's what helps me as a writer, whether it's a screenwriter writing books, it's like this ability, this challenge to be able to find a way out of a corner that I might have written myself into. And that was the first time in my life that I felt like I had created this monster and I couldn't fix it. And I couldn't go back and fix all of the things

that I did to all of the people that said they loved me. And I tell you what, that is a very, at least for me, that is a very, at least for me, that is a very hard, that was a very horrifying thing for me to a point where I was just like, man, I don't even want to live anymore. You know what I mean? I can't live with the stuff that I did. And that was when, you know, I took my brother's advice.

It was just like, yo, I don't know if you're real Jesus, but help me. And I can't tell you that things change right away, but i could tell you that i started to feel peace and i started to i felt i felt hope i felt a hope that i had never felt ever in my life and i felt like the father that i had been chasing my whole life had been there and he had been affirming me he had been trying to guide me but i was just not paying attention and then in that i felt like my father god was like i'm here i'm with you i love you you are my child and We're gonna walk through this together and you're gonna be a different person and that's that's how it all happened my wife and I were talking all the night and

We're talking about our kids and I was actually telling her the story about um The kids at the barbecue run into the street. Yeah, I was telling. This was last night. And she started telling me a story about a girl at the playground whose kid was getting picked on, but the parent wasn't doing anything. And then another mother went up to the kid who was picking on the kid and said, stop picking on the kid. And then the mother of the kid who was picking on the kids went up to the mother who corrected the kid and said, you're not supposed to be correcting my kid. And that story came to mind. And I never told my wife. I totally forgot because it came to mind because the situation happened at the same park that the lady shared the story with my kid. And I told my wife, I was like, dude, when Caden was five years old, I remember he was at that same park and this bully was just bullying kids.

And he had like another kid with him that was following him around. And he looked at my son, Caden, and he started and he kind of tapped the other kid like, yeah, we're going to get him. We're going to like go push. And I saw the kid like beelining towards my son and getting ready to hit him push him do whatever he was doing the other kid and i and i was sitting on the bench and i stood up and all i said was i said hey that's my son and the kid looked at me and then ran away and that's what that moment was for me that period when i was 26 it was like god said hey you're my son that's heavy and and and yo that's when i started looking at people differently that's when it was like life isn't about me anymore am i ever so slightly off here if i say that's when you were then coming back around to get officially into the seals no no no

no i was already in at that point yeah because you had you you were out and you went back i was already in yeah okay yeah so and and thank god that it happened because I know guys who they, you know, as seals and still friends with them and where that trident can really, the power that comes with it, the accolades that come with it. It's not good at times. You know what I mean?

Like, what do you mean? No, in my opinion, no human being was created to be worshipped by another human being. You know what I mean? And I think, you know, people who do get that praise, that worship, that admiration, if it's not deflected, I think it can lead to bad things. Like, you know, think about people,

celebrities or rock stars, Kurt Cobain, you know, all that drugs, trying to escape, trying to find themselves and all these people, you know, Whitney, like all these, and then they end up losing their lives because they're put up on this pedestal in worship and it's hard to handle. And they're trying to escape drugs

and all these other things. And when you're a SEAL, you know how it is, how people look up to SEALs, you know what I mean? And then when you're in the military, it's like you go to the base that's not the SEAL base. You go to NAB or go to another base. You have that trident on. Everybody stops.

And they look. And like, oh, crap. You're a SEAL. And it's like that can build up pride within the person. You know what I mean? And there's been guys who, you know, it's been too much power. You know, and going out, getting drunk, fighting, beating, beating, just a lot of crazy stuff. And so I know that if I didn't, like, if God didn't find me, I don't want to say I found God, but if God didn't find me, then I would have been very destructive as I went on.

And I don't think I could have. I know I would have been very destructive. Well, I'm glad you had that moment. I mean, it's clear. I got the chills listening to some of that. That was pretty awesome to have that on camera too and share that for people. Because even not being a SEAL,

people can relate to different struggles in their own life or things where they stop looking in the mirror or you know have a moment where things aren't clear and it's very interesting that you looked at that experience as also i forget you you said it way better than i'm gonna remember it but you're like it was like your dad who you were always chasing yeah he was there the whole time oh they had a whole time that is that's beautiful man and everything there's all these different connections man and who you were always chasing. Yeah. He was there the whole time. Oh, there the whole time. That is, that's beautiful, man. Yeah. And everything, there's all these

different connections, man. And looking at Tiana and what she did for me, the perfect timing of her being there and the Marine recruiter not being there but her being there.

That's an angel right there. Yeah, man. So it's just, you know, I've been blessed, man. And I can't take credit for everything I am and where I'm at today because I'm an idiot. I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit, man.

You're doing some pretty amazing things. But all right, guys, that brings us to the end of part one of my sit down with Remy. And part two, as I think I've already mentioned, is going to be completely different. For about an hour and 10 or 15 minutes, Remy took us inside the dark underbelly of some of the worldwide black markets that he has investigated since leaving the Navy SEALs. And you are not going to want to miss this one. Once again, we'll be putting this one out in the next two to three days. So keep your eyes out on YouTube and Spotify. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to the channel so that you don't miss it and leave a like and comment on this video before you leave. Thank you to everyone who has already done that.

That said, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace.