Shawn Ryan Show - #1 Mike Glover - Green Beret

Episode Date: December 20, 2019

In this episode Shawn Ryan sits down with Mike Glover, a former Green Beret, CIA Contractor, and currently the CEO of Fieldcraft Survival. Mike talks about his childhood and how it lead him to an impressive career as one of the world's most elite operators. Mike opens up about his experiences training to become a Green Beret, his personal experiences in combat, what lead him to become a CIA Contractor, his struggle to transition into civilian life, and his latest adventures as a business owner and entrepreneur of Fieldcraft Survival.  Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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to help relax the body. While natural essential oils calm the mind. Soak in Dr. Teos to recharge the body, mind and spirit so you can soak in life's important moments. Find it at a Walmart near you, now available with a fresh new look. I've been dying to ask you this question. You got out September 3rd, 2001. A week later, September 11th happens. The towers go down. What is the first thing that went through your head? If you have one piece of advice for the kid aspiring to be an SF operator,

selection isn't an assessment of what you're actually doing. I want to take a call. And you take calls in your blog, guys? That's cool. What's up, brother? Kabiler, he's son of a bitch. It was from an operation where they had killed this bad guy, and they took his leg. It's official. We're up and running this episode 001.

I want to personally welcome everyone to the Sean Ryan show. Our first guest today is Mike Glover. He's a badass operator, a former Green Beret. We've worked together knowing each other for a long time. I asked him some really tough questions. I think you guys are really gonna like, if you're watching this on YouTube and you want to listen, please head over to iTunes, hit the subscribe button, give us a rating.

We wanna make this motherfucker go ape shit. All right, without further ado, welcome to the show, Mike Glover. Alright, Mike. Welcome to my show. How do you like Tennessee? I love it, man. It's beautiful. Thanks for having me out here.

It's amazing. I've never been here. Never. I don't think I've ever been to Tennessee. I've been to the border with North Carolina and Tennessee. You know, some cross-border ops, cross-border ops behind friendly lines, but it's beautiful, man. I love it. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, it's been a pleasure, man. I've had a really good fucking time since you've been up here and it's a great catching up with you. You know, the last time I saw you, we were in Yemen and getting shot at, we didn't really get to know each other out there and and start listening to your podcast

and we kinda kept in touch a little bit, maybe once or twice a year, but we got a lot of shit in common man I mean showed up and The first thing we did is go look for some treasures at the antique shops Yeah, I didn't realize how much we hadn't common, you know, you're Obviously half Japanese half Korean so get the Asian thing in common I'm also a big antique girl. I've always been half Japanese, half Korean, so we got the Asian thing in common.

I'm also a big antique girl, I've always been, I don't know if isolationist is part of what we have in common, but I'm about off-grid living, just getting away from people. And yeah, man, it was Yemen, and you had that assassination attempt, and it was pretty big deal, getting shot up. And we queue our F to you and it was a good day. I mean, it was a good day that you didn't get hurt when you came back.

Good day to get compromised. But yeah, that was a weird trip. But we're out of that now and you're here. Yeah, we're talking about isolating ourselves, and I think a lot of us do that. One thing I also noticed is how giving you are, and right now you got a toy drive going on. So, for any of you guys out there that want to donate, Mike's got a toy drive. I want to bring this up's got a toy drive.

I want to bring this up now so I don't forget. But I think that's just really fucking cool that you do those kind of things. And you are constantly giving back. And that's cool, man. We always try to give back any way we can. I mean, we've probably given in excess of $50,000 last year the charities to... $50,000 last year to

charities to $50,000. Charities to men and women who have died in the line of service, whether that's police, military, first responders. A lot of it we don't even advertise that we do it, but we leverage the community that we have and crowd source from like-minded people who want to help people out. And, you know, you've done that before, but it's a huge thing for us. And every holiday season, we'd like to do the toys. It's the one instance, you know, I'm not a big materialist to kind of person. But if a kid who's in a bad situation,

which we all have seen that or experienced in ourselves, if that could bring a little joy during the holiday season, which is a tough time for a lot of families, then, you know, so be it, we'll raise a whole bunch of toys and give them to less fortunate people. That's awesome. Well, when's the deadline to get the toys to you?

Honestly, there is no deadline. I'll hand deliver myself if People want to donate toys they could send them to our address. It's on Philcrasserbubble.com As long as it's before Christmas and then after the fact it just stay tuned to the channels because we're always doing something Right on man. Well speaking of Christmas, what is the one thing you want this year more than anything? You know I'm it's the first time, I mean it's not the first time, but it's solidified now it's the first time where I'm good man. I don't want anything. You don't want anything. I've got everything. You have everything Look my favorite some of my favorite things to do are the freest things to do

Okay picking up rocks I Rockound so if I see cool rocks I pick them up and I put them on my shelf Well, you did steal a big bag of mushrooms from my property down there. I harvest mushrooms I stole a bag of Turkey tell mushrooms from New York. I hope that makes it through the airport. I'm gonna try to fly with it. Well, you know. We'll see.

The only thing you do is rest of me. Well, speaking of Christmas, even though you don't want anything, I got you a little gift here. Ooh, okay. So. Any guesses? Go ahead. What. Any guesses? Go ahead.

What are you guys? So this is a box of milk duds. Is it? Is it? Is it? Is it? It's something, man, this is a lot of weight. I don't know.

All right, open up. All right, here we go. We're gonna have Motherfucker up. Here we go. Is it gonna punch me in the face? No. It's not a dick in the box or anything. Man, look at you.

Hey, I should've guessed. Just a little something for the ride home. Thanks, man. Yeah. This is 10 more pounds I don't need. Uh, that's gonna be on my ass. Oh, this is awesome. Thank you.

You're welcome. I saw you carry them for your EDC, so I figured I'd get you. I do, I absolutely do. A bigger pack for you. These will not be donated. These will be my life. I'll be selfishly take these. Gummy bears and milk duds.

Right on. Well, let's just do a quick overview of how you grew up and then we'll get into your military career a little bit. And then I'm really excited to talk about field craft. But where did you grow up? What was your family life like? Do you have any brothers and sisters? So I was born in military installation in California, Fort Ord, California. My dad had already been the military for a year or two. And I was born in a military family. My dad was in the army, my uncle was in the Navy. I have a great, great

grandfather who was a general in the Civil War. It's always been part of our DNA. I mean, you had a grandfather in the Civil War? Yeah, a Confederate grandfather, general hood. No shit. Yeah, he was a boss. He made general at the age of 37. He lost his leg and get his bird, lost his arm in another battle. He was a boss. He went to West Point. He was known as a battlefield general. Like he was the guy that did a lot of ops and he looks bat shit crazy. If you see him online, he looks like a boss but you know he had a pretty sad story. He eventually died and then all of his kids were basically harvested out in the adoption system.

Holy shit. But my family, on my dad's side, the white side, all grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. And we grew up in a rural south. I mean, my families from Georgia, and they all migrated, migrated across the border into Florida. And, you know, I grew up in Daytona Beach, Florida for the most part. And I saved for the most part because I was all over the place. I lived my first four years in life in Germany where we were stationed. My mom and dad separated when I was about four or five. She went to North Carolina. My dad went to Florida.

And so I spent time between Florida and North Carolina with two separated parents. Kind of just living life growing up. I had a good upbringing. We were poor as shit. I remember not even a one year, I couldn't even afford. My mom couldn't afford to buy me shoes. Oh, shit. So I wore flip-flops the entire school year.

My mom didn't even have a car growing up. We walked everywhere. So sad stories of, you know, my life was hard. I walked to the grocery store and we had to walk miles to get groceries. And it's stereotypical in an American society, but it was true. I mean, we just didn't have a lot. My dad was bouncing around from apartment complexes to trailers. I remember when I was 15 years old, laying in my bedroom in my mobile home, and being able to touch all the walls with my arms and legs.

That's how small it was. Wow. So yeah, I didn't have much, but we were rich because we didn't feel like we were poor. All love, huh? All love, and my dad's a real loving guy. And he took me in every night. He read me bedtime stories.

He told me he loved me. He was empathetic. He was a real compassionate and humble person, and growing up with that was real impactful because I understood what emotional intelligence was. He was dumb when it came to women, he was a womanizer, made a lot of fucking mistakes, like most men do. My mom was a disciplinary, you know. She ruled with a kung fu grip. She used to beat my ass.

And I needed that. I needed the balance of both to be able to be successful. And luckily for me, I just had good parents and a really decent upbringing. So yeah, lived that way until, I eventually ran away when I was 16 years old and I wrote my grandma letter because I was living with her at the time.

Where did you run to? Down the road. Okay, I did that till. Like a couple miles. But I lived, I actually lived in a motel for on and off for almost a year. What kind of was it like? It was a shitty little motel. It was a shitty little motel. It was a of was it like? It was a shitty little hotel.

Okay, by the hour motel. Basically. But you weren't having any fun in there, were you? It sucked. It was a little shit motel, and I thought I was living baller life because I was living on my own, but it sucked. I never forget, like I was leaving the motel

to go to work. And it was too far to ride a bike because it was, I mean, it was miles, it was like 12 miles away. And so I decided to start taking the bus, but I had to wake up like an hour early. And I was getting on the sidewalk to get on the bus stop. And this is just me being 16 living on my own,

wearing my little get up for the job I had. And a Jeep drove by full of like teenage kids, and they threw a Wendy's flurry or whatever the frosty. And it hit me in the chest and exploded all over me. Holy shit. And I remember, like I got hit with it, and I just continued to walk, and I just sat on the park bench,

you know, the bus stop bench, just waiting for the bus, like, holy fuck, man. People suck. Yeah. And it just was, like, man, this is my life now. So I knew I had to do something different, and so I did, I joined do something different. So I did. I joined the Army at the age of 17.

You joined the Army at the age of 17? Yeah. No shit. Where did you enlist? I enlisted in Jacksonville, Florida in the infantry. Did you have any, at 17 years old, who signed for you? So my grandmother signed for you? So my grandmother signed for me to go on the military because she was probably recording.

And so did you have any guidance or did you just, I mean, that's what you knew you wanted to do and you just made it happen. You just went there, you didn't talk to anybody, it was just you and the recruiter or did you have a mentor? I don't really have a mentor. I had, you know, I had some decent recruiters, they weren't the best, but I knew about the military. I mean, I played army with my cousins growing up my entire life. If you were to ask back then, even as kids, who was the most likely going the military?

I mean, I slept with a Glock BB gun underneath my pillow. I planned complex raids and operations as a child. So, I already knew, in fact, I made my dad a bet that I was going to go on a special forces. I think I was 10 years old, where I was interested in the Navy, I was interested in Green Berets, and I asked him obviously being biased who was the best, and he said, Green Berets, and so I said, I want to be that, and I bet him. I actually bet him an MP5. You bet him an MP5?

I said, if I get in, you're going to give me an MP5 SD, because I was fascinating with guns. I had read about guns and had magazines and books, and I always say, yeah, you still owes me an MP5 SD. I was just gonna ask, whatever it is. He'd have to sell his mobile home to get there. Well, yeah, those are pretty, what are those, like 25 grand now? At least. At least.

You know, that's a good bet though. An MP5, nice. So you still want one, you could have said that and maybe it would have shown up for Christmas. That would see, yeah, if I can get an MP5 SD, I've actually tried. I've reached out to go over this. I need an SD.

Maybe we could do a little barter here. I don't even need the SD model. If you're listening to this, look, I don't need the tax stamp, I don't want the drama. Just get me the standard model. Right on, and like the, uh, input file. With the special selector switch.

Yeah, yeah, right on. Yeah, with the ziplock bag. Would you rather have an MP5 or an MP7? Honestly, because I'm not nostalgic in old school, I'll have an MP5 or an MP7? Honestly because I'm one nostalgic in old school. I'll do the MP5. All right. Like MP7s don't impress me. I mean it's, it looks cool because you guys may look cool but outside of that I've shot them and used them in combat and they're not that exciting. You have used those in combat? Yeah. I've carried MP5s. You don't like it? Or I've carried in people. I don't like it or I've carried in piece seven

I've never killed a bad guy with one. I carried it on like PSD stuff Because they can seal a lot better obviously than an M4 But the units and special operations units that I've been in guys don't't you typically run them? No shit, I've heard guys rave about them. Yeah, the Navy's big about them. I mean, entire organizations and troops are using those, and I'm sure that's for a good reason. Yeah, I mean, I do think that would have been

the perfect weapon for what me and you were doing together. 100%, but a lot better than what we were using. 100% but I agree with that. I was wondering why we didn't have those available. And it is pretty fucking cool looking. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. You know, that's half of it, right? But all right, so 17, join the military,

you go to infantry and how was that? Was it everything you had hoped and dreamed? It's funny because I remember the first, I went to Fort Benning, Georgia, infantry basic training and I joined with an 11x-ray option 40 Ranger contract, which means that in basic training, I would be plucked after AIT, advanced individual training, and then I would go to Ranger Regiment. And so that was the plan. Yeah, and you know, the option 40 contract, contract guarantees you a Ranger slot. Like the Ranger instructors are going to come pick you up and you're going to go to Ranger Battalion. I didn't think basic training was hard. I thought it was easy. As a 17 year old with a myriad of life experiences

that were a little bit more difficult than most, it wasn't hard for me. I mean, I remember distinctly, because I was a squad leader in basic training, either threatening or punching or, like checking dudes, grown men who were crying, who wanted to kill themselves, who wanted to get, you know, leave, get back to their girlfriends or the wives, and thinking to myself like, holy crap, man.

This is like, at the time, 15 weeks of your life, and you guys can't suck it up to do a job to get trained up in the military. And so I band together with a whole bunch of dudes that were just solid dudes that eventually went into special operations for the most part. But what was unfortunate is, I got selected to be 11 hotel.

What is in 11 hotel? It's like, basically it's an infantryman who drives, who rolls in a humvee. So you learn heavy weapons like 50 cowl, the toe missile system, and you're considered anti-tank. And I actually liked it because I was like, oh man, I don't have to walk.

I mean, I can have, like, I'm a mobility expert because I learned the GMV or the humvee at the time. And I thought it was real cool, except that they selected us they did it randomly. I mean they said hey you guys are bravos which is just basic infantry. You guys are charles which is mortar men and you guys are hotels which is heavy weapons. And then when the recruiter or the ranger instructors came to pick us up And then when the recruiter or the Ranger instructors came to pick us up, I was, you know, I was Faberglass-gasted. I was like, what the fuck's going on? Like, why am I not getting picked up?

And they said, well, there's no 11 hotels in Ranger Regiment, which I was like, okay, that's not my problem. Well, it was my problem. And so I didn't get to go to Ranger Regiment like I was supposed to. I still have the contract,x ray option 40 and that was just their way of downsizing. I mean, I'm assuming incentivizing people and then at basic trainings, you basically fucking them and They told me I couldn't go and I didn't have any other options. So I picked up the phone and Called my uncle at the time who was a

smart major in the infantry and said, Hey, I don't know what's going on, but this has happened. And within, I would say 48 hours, they changed my MOS to 11 Bravo in basic training, which is basic infantry men, okay, and from 11 hotel, which is now my primary and my secondary is 11 hotel. And they said, we're going to send you to a unit called the Old Guard, the third infantry regiment. And when you get there, you're going to put a 4187, a good arranger regiment. I didn't even know what the hell the Old Guard was, the third infantry regiment. I had no idea. I went and saw the recruiter. a civilian came in and crossed out 11 hotel, wrote 11 Bravo,

put his initials, and I was like, damn, it's that easy. And then I went and went and in process the third infantry regiment in Fort Meyer, Virginia. I mean, that had to be just fucking gut wrenching too. I mean, your dream was to become a ranger at that time correct, and they just fucking yanked it right out from underneath you. Yeah. And I mean, how long, I mean, did you mope around about it, or did you say, fuck it, this is my new direction, and I'm going kick it to ask.

So I knew I knew I had a timeline where I you know 4187 back in the day was the way in which you submitted paperwork to transfer units and it worked typically It didn't work for me a long story short But I knew when I got there as an E1 that I had, number one, my uncle had been in the old guard. He had been a tomb guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. So I had big shoes to fill. And so when I showed up, I was all about the grind, man.

I didn't show up, I didn't show up day one in the military to hang out with chicks, to get drunk at bars, and to fuck off. My entire objective was to go in special operations and I didn't give a fuck about anything else. So when I showed up, I went to work. I immediately as a private got my expert in infantry badge, which is pretty rare as a PV1.

In fact, when I tried out to get my expert in infantry badge, me and my petun leader were the only ones in my petun that got our expert infantry badges, which is basically a test of common core task and they assess you and then you can do a rough march and all the stuff. When I got back from that, I went to airborne school. What year is

this roughly? 97. Okay. When I got back from that, I went to Ranger School. Everybody's like, you going to ranger school. I was like, fuck yeah, I'm going to ranger school. I just distinctly remember being different than everybody else I was around. Friday night, dudes were shotgun and corps lights in the barracks. I was putting on a ruck sack to go out. And that's no exaggeration. Like, and I didn't falter. I don't think I ever once in that unit drink at all. No shit, so you're about what, 18 at this time? 18.

And you didn't give in to any of the pressure. None. And they gave me a hard time and I was like, fuck you, I'm not interested. That's impressive. So when they were gone out getting wasted, they would see me rucking across the Potomac River, going to Georgetown, carrying a rucksack, and I went to Ranger School as an 18-year-old, graduated as a 19-year-old, went straight through no issues, got back, and then I assessed,

it's a selection process, to become a guard at the tune of the Unknown Soldier, which to this day is the hardest thing that I've ever done. That training to become a tomb guard took me nine months. Totally. To earn my tomb identification badge, which I have. And I spent the rest of that time guarding the tune of the unknowns, which is great because I didn't have to fucking deal with people or dumbasses.

I kind of got to do my own thing and yeah I finished up my infantry time as a tombguard trainer, a train tombguard for a year. No shit. So you and you became obviously the best at that. With, I find that impressive that your primary focus was to get into special operations, yet you still took that job, sounds like extremely seriously. As you know, I mean, it's a fucking honor to even see that. But, I mean mean that's doing something that you weren't set on doing and kicking its ass. I mean that is pretty fucking commendable.

Yeah, I didn't have a choice in it. So the path, the armies like that, it's a big institution. So you don't have a lot of choice, a lot of opportunity. And so my idea was, if I, you know, given what I was given, I have a choice in which to be successful. And at that time, be all I could be in the army. So I chose that. Wow. So moving forward. We'll move forward. I actually had had a breaking service and decided to get the fuck out. What day did you get out September 3rd of 2001? I've been dying to ask you this question. You got out September 3rd 2001. A week later, September 11th happens, the towers go down. What is the first thing that went through your head? Knowing, you know, your primary mission was, or your primary

goal was to become a Green Beret and special operations, kick and fucking doors and going to combat that whole lifestyle and then you immediately know we're at war. Yeah, it was and you're not in it. The biggest kick in the balls that I've ever had because I mean backing up a little bit I had had the option to reinlist. Obviously, I was on retention's radar for like, hey, this guy's an airborne ranger qualified dude. He's an E5. I made Sergeant when I was 20 years old.

And so I was a team leader in the infantry, he had good insuers. And so it's like, hey man, this guy's a good guy. We don't wanna keep in the military. But I told them that I want sniper school and I want Halo school in route to 18th Airborne Corps Lurse, or long range reconnaissance, or a range of Italian.

And I was adamant about that. I actually went into a Sartmator's office who was the military district of Washington, so he's a command sergeant major. He knew my uncle and he said, Mike, what can I give you to stay in? I said, this is the things that I want. And he goes, which I found later, I found out later is true. Halo or free fall school is not a reenlistment option. And it's not. Back then, you didn't, you didn't have a lot of incentive for staying in, so they used to give you schools to stay in.

And I said, it's armatured, well, we can make it an option, right? Because that's what I want. It's like, Mike, I can't do that for you. I mean, I'll call, and I'll try. And he did, but it's not an option. So a CSM even can't make it an option. And so I said, okay, that's my, I gave the options on the table and they decided not to facilitate what I wanted as a dream.

And so I decided to get out. I had a buddy who re-enlisted with me that I went to Ranger School with or re-enlisted without me and he went to third range of the time. He jumped in to Afghanistan on October 19th, 2001. And so the moment it happened, I was actually in college and I had gotten out of the military obviously, but I had transitioned into the National Guard component.

Okay. So I'm sitting in a chow hall at Fayetteville Technical Community College getting my associates degree so I could further my education and solve the events happen. I did some crazy shit, man. I immediately started making phone calls. I went home, I packed a duffel bag of my equipment.

I threw my battle dress uniforms, my camo uniforms in the washer and then dried them and was making calls like, what are we doing here? What's happening? And I was at the time, I was in 30th heavy armor separate brigade and I was in the scout put in and I was a team leader. So I had a little minuscule position that could affect something, but I knew we were going to war. So I had a choice

to make, which is really easy, which was I'm going back in the fucking military. So on September 12, like 0-9 in the morning, I'm making phone calls to get back in. I mean, that had to be like, at the exact same time that's happening to completely separate emotions. One, tragedy would just been attacked and a lot of people died. On the other hand, you know what that what comes after and everything you've ever wanted to do since you said you were 10 years old becomes a reality. And you're not there. I mean, that had to be, it was one more overpowering than the other. Yeah, it was, I mean, I felt for the people obviously, but I knew that I was in a unique

position to make a difference in the fight because I was an, I was an insu-yo, I mean, I was a non-commissioned officer. And I knew that there was an opportunity for me to get in the military and fight and get some vengeance. And that's what I wanted to do. I joined the army to fight. The reason I got out, because there was no fight to be had, if there was a war of something going on, I would something important to note is

the biological instinct in men, most men, the men I associate with, to fight. I mean, not it's not, it's to fight each other in training because that's what we do. As kids, we fight and we we grow up in those environments where we're displaying our masculinity and there's a whole bunch of psychological and physiological things that are associated with that. And I don't think we grow out of that. We grow up and we want to fight and defend. That's what men do. And so it definitely was part of my character and my DNA. And I don't think it was fake.

I think it was something very real. And I wanted to fight, so I had to go back in. How did you get back in? It was a battle, because the army didn't really know how to handle a whole bunch of dudes who were prior service guys that wanted to go back in. Was there a lot of guys that wanted to go back? Oh yeah, there was a lot of guys.

There in that time period, a lot of people who were prior service who had gotten out, I mean, even older guys who had gotten out wanted to come back in and serve. So I had to go through the whole process again, which was holy shit. I had to go through Mepps, you know, as in E5, going back through Mepps,

you know, the whole Duck walk thing, all that stuff. I had to go back through all that to get back in. And they had a program, which is kind of similar to what's called 18X right now, where you can come in off the streets and try out for selection. And if you make it, they'll send you to a special forces training. And if you don't, you simply just go back to your sister unit or if you don't have a unit, whatever your job is, they'll find a job for you in that position.

Now how old are you at this point? At this point, I'm 21 years old. You're 21 years old. You just saw the towers come down. And the only thing on your mind is I got a fucking get back in there. Yep, no shit. I mean, wow, that's, I mean, that's, that's a lot of courage.

Always young. Yeah, there's a lot of courage. So you got back in. Yep, I got back in and I got the opportunity to go to selection and I did that in 2002 and I was successful. And were you, were you adding the mix? Were you, would you say you were top of the class, middle?

I was probably about middle of the class, which is where I wanted to be. I had always been told and grew up, you know, obviously going to a ranger school where I didn't want to be the spotlight ranger. I wanted to be the gray man. Yeah, and so I wanted to be somewhere in the middle not standing out for the wrong reasons or even necessarily the right reasons. I just wanted to be middle of the pack. I'm a really good rucker. I can carry a ruck really well. I remember even intentionally slowing down on rucks just so I wasn't advanced.

That's the first person. Running different story with my size. I'm not the best runner, but I'm a decent runner. Probably middle of the pack. And so when I got selected, I had confidence that was probably going to get selected. I didn't prepare, I prepared as much as I could, but my feet were hammered dog shit. I mean my feet were just jacked up. What is there anything about, so selection is what you have to go through to become an SF guy

in a Green Beret for those of you that don't know, but was there one thing that you just really dreaded about selection, like for example, when I went to Buds the first thing that I was really worried about was the 50 meter underwater swim. I didn't know if I could make it and I was going to pass out trying but that was the first hurdle that I was like, shit man, I hope I make this. Was there a specific event that you knew about in selection that you were dreading. Yeah, it's weird, but I was actually dreading the obstacle course, the nasty Nick. No shit. Yeah, I just, you know what, I had an aversion to heights when I first went into the military.

And what I recognized a lot of time was, I wasn't scared of heights. I just didn't have confidence in my physical ability. So when I developed my physical ability to push and pull my body weight, I had confidence going over an obstacle. So it was less about heights and more about my abilities to carry my own weight. So if you're you know I'm carrying a you know I'm climbing up 40 foot tower or obstacle course Then I would have confidence because I knew I could secure myself or you know not shake and potentially go to muscle failure And fall so I always I'll kept thinking about that. I remember thinking about that But then when I did it it's called the Nick, which is named after Colonel Nick Rowe,

a Vietnam error veteran who started a lot of things that can't recall at the training facility. I didn't have a hard time, I just, I got through it. It was a lot easier than I thought it'd be. My feet, again, were torn up and I had to suck it up. But it all in all, it was a fairly decent experience. One piece of advice, I mean, I know you get a ton of DMs. If you have one piece of advice for the kid aspiring to be an SF operator, what would it be?

One piece. One piece would be, selection isn't an assessment of what you're actually doing. It's an assessment of what you did prior to doing what you're doing. Meaning, if you show up and you do a 12-mileer and your feet fall apart, well, your feet fall apart. But it's because you didn't prepare three months or six months prior and condition yourself. So the only thing they're doing is assessing you. It's kind of like us for contracting where they're just assessing your resume. They're not training you. So show up prepared and ready to assess. Not show up and have some expectation that you're gonna get trained and build up to it.

You better be ready to perform. That's all on advice. I'm say the exact same thing. So you graduate selection, where do you go next? So immediately we go straight into the qualification course and start training and they identify what our MOS or job specialty is going to be and they make me a 18 Bravo, which is a special forces weapons guy. Weapons Sergeant is the title, which is an expert in weapons.

So that's the pipeline that I started, which you know, small unit tactics, culmination in Robin Sage, Sear School, High Risk, Language School, Unconventional Warfare training, the list goes on. What was your favorite, what was your favorite, I don't even know what the hell to call it, genre? Phase, yeah. My favorite phase or genre was unconventional warfare. I mean, unconventional warfare, I didn't know how they were going to teach us unconventional warfare, but when they taught us and then we went into Robin Sage, which is a pretty famous or known at least, field training exercise where you assimilate and build an auxiliary underground network

of guerrilla fighters trained with them and then operate with them. It was super interesting, man. I mean, to jump into behind enemy lines into this town and interact with chicken farmers and you know gas station clerics was pretty awesome. This is what fascinates me about the green berets is that you guys can go in and such small teams and create an entire fucking army and and do it so efficiently and And you know when in our rack was fast forward just a

little bit for a second in our rack. When I was with the SEAL teams we had to have a for the most part almost every up we did we had to have in our raki face. And the mission became FID, which is, you know, training our counterparts. We had no fucking clue what the hell we were doing. We're seals, we're salters, and we can't even take care of three guys. Yeah. Yeah. They're correct way. Because we've never been showing how it was in our mission. And you guys are out there and it's the opposite. There might be three of you in a whole army of people and I mean, how do you even fucking start? How do you recruit? How do you start that? How do you gain the confidence and be able to trust a local national? Yeah, it's a process for sure. I mean, there's a deliberate process behind it.

It's never done like Willie and Nilly, you go in there and you have a plan on building rapport, assessing, recruiting, vetting. And that process is pretty complex. It involves biometrics, it involves genealogy, it involves test evaluations, psychological evaluations. It's a pretty drawn out process. And yeah, it's, sorry, is there like a specific profile you're looking to start with or no, for sure, it's mission dependent, right?

Because one mission, you know, if it's a 1208, you're looking for counterterrorism guys who are kicking indoors and shooting bad guys in the face is different than if you're looking for assessing and recruiting patrol officers who are gonna be interacting with the local populace. They're not gonna be assaulters. So there is a tactic behind it,

and then they teach us those tactics. And when they, when we go into, it's super interesting because when you go into Robin Sage, they, they hire up for that are military cadets, West pointers, like all these young, impressionable minds that want to be you. And then you have to start them from scratch. You know, they don't have a big background in it. You have to get them online. You have to build rapport. You have to break bread.

It's super interesting, man. A lot of people don't realize, which I didn't realize until I was in, is foreign internal defense, or even counterterrorism, foreign internal defense, which is FID, is not just a training mission, but a means to access and placement to that environment. So before the Vietnam War started, we were in Vietnam, Green Berets were training the Vietnamese. We ex-filled Ho Chi Minh and trained that guy before he went in obviously took over. So it is an opportunity for us to do other things. And now that bilateral mission, which is you in a host nation force, is how you conduct operations. Because now you can't do it without it because you can't you can go in there as a unilateral

Package and if you don't have a strategy behind that you're going to go in and kick a dude's door in kill a Much of bad guys, displace the environment and cause a whole bunch of issues. You have to have some host nation force to be able to you know strategically win that victory. some host nation force to be able to, you know, strategically win that victory. Okay. I want to, I want to touch more on this, but we'll wait until your first deployment. So back to selection. Yeah. Your favorite thing was Robin Sage. So how long is selection? And did you finish it without any, any hiccups? Yeah, so selection is obviously the SFAS,

special forces assessment and selection is the first thing, and then you go into the pipeline, which is known as the Q course or the qualification course, and that includes all the different phases. And I didn't have a hard time with anything. Without signing any getistical about it, I just got through it. No shit, first time every time.

First time every time. I didn't have any issues. The hardest thing for me was learning a foreign language. And I learned French. It took me four months to Parli Lou, François, or whatever you're talking about here. It was hard because I knew how to speak, or I know how to read and write Korean, which is completely different obviously than French, different backgrounds and bases. But yeah, that was difficult for me.

To be doing patrolling and small unit tactics and all this high speed stuff and then sitting a classroom for four months and learn foreign language, that was the hardest part, but I got through that as well. So you went, you already knew Korean, but they send you to learn French. I was, I was a French speaking Asian dude that deployed to the Middle East for the most or most of my career. A really good looking Asian dude. Thanks man, I appreciate you. Sorry you.

I like my cabin and like three people. I know. That's awesome. But all right. So you go, where did you, after the Q course? What do you do? It's a cool little story, but when I joined, when I went into SF, they give you orders based off a paragraph in line, which is just a way in which you identify what group or what battalion. They're basically a number that assigns you to a paragraph in line that specifically points you to a direction of a unit. And I knew I knew I was going to third special forces group, which is the group that I wanted to go to because they were the group that was going to war. And it was right down the road, right down the road for my training. I went into that group and started looking at battalions at the time three battalions. First, second and third battalion. I wanted to know who is the best battalion.

I went into first battalion, kind of poked my head in, looked at their little display cases and stuff, went over to the third battalion, did the same, and then I went went into second battalion. And second battalion's motto at the time, I think it's still the motto, was we do bad things to bad people. Nice. And it had the the Harley-Davidson outlined kind of thing with we do bad things to bad people. And it had the Harley Davidson outlined kind of thing with we do bad things to bad people, bush hogs, second battalion. And I walked in there and in a trophy case,

they had this leg. It was a wooden leg sitting in the display case with a shoe on it. And I thought it was a guy's leg that is served in the unit. And I got closer and it was like a peg leg basically. I was like, well, that's weird. And next to it was like a five by seven picture

of a terrorist laying a pile of blood with a whole bunch of special operations guys standing around him. Holy shit. And it was from an operation where they had killed this bad guy. a pile of blood with a whole bunch of special operations guys standing around him. Holy shit. And it was from an operation where they had killed this bad guy and they took his leg and then they put the leg on display from this bad guy because he had been known as like one leg Willie or whatever the name was.

HVT Omar, one leg Willie. So they took his leg and they put it in display in the foyer of the battalion. And I said to myself, this is the battalion I need to be in. I knocked on the battalion's Sarmadir's door and I said, Sarmadir, my name is Staff Sergeant Mike Glover. I want to be in your unit. I want to serve and go to war with your guys. And if you know special forces,

and maybe this is part of you guys too, if you want something done, you have to go out and get it. So me asking him to be serving as a battalion, he said, what would make me want to have you serve him of time? And I told him I was high speed, I was motivated, I was wanted to go, kill bad guys. It's like that's good enough.

Shook my hand, handed me over to his personnel person, gave me a pointed subject and paragraph in line to go straight to his batine. I got assigned a Charlie company which was going to war soon, immediately in process and went straight to war. That takes a lot of balls to knock on the door as a fucking new guy and say, hey, I want to go with you. I mean, as a leader, if I had that happen to me, I probably would have just, that alone would have been enough. I'm like, I know how much fucking balls it takes

to come and pound on this fucking door and walk past my wooden leg that I took off that guy. And you got what you wanted, that's fucking awesome. So, were the boys pretty accepting when you showed up? They were, I mean, they knew we were going to war soon, so they didn't have a lot of time to fuck with me. You know, special forces. If you show weakness on a detachment, if you are fucked up, if you're running your mouth, if you're saying dumb shit,

that there is a likelihood that you potentially are gonna get messed with. I came in hard charging, squared away, kept my mouth shut. I knew the game. I mean, I played that game as a tomb guard candidate for nine months. Keep your fucking mouth shut, do your job, go home, repeat. So when I got to the team, I didn't have a hard time integrating and nobody really fuck with me because they knew I wasn't a shit bag. I was there to work. Were you drinking at that time? No. I'm still straight

laced. I never drank alcohol, ate sugar for the most part, or ate like shit my entire 20s. Never. Wow. Never. now a lot of teams would probably actually frown upon that they they did I mean some guys did and I didn't care I Was raised this way with my mom where I? Don't care about what the fuck you think about me. I'm just trying to do me Yeah, I'm more concerned with better than myself than what your perception of me is. And I knew there was a right answer and a wrong answer. And for me being in

special operations, the right answer was conditioning my mind, my body, and trying to be the best I could. I thought alcohol was the liability, and it still is. I've seen it destroy teams, I've seen it destroy relationships, it's fucked up a lot of people. My mom, my family has their own, had their own issues with booze in some ways. So I didn't want anything to fucking do with it. Wow, I mean, it's almost part of the culture.

In a unit like that. And as a young new guy, what are you? Maybe 22, 23 at this time. Yeah, at the time I'm after the Q course, because it was two years, I was damn near 25. Showing up to a team who's already been to war and back, they invite you to go have a beer with them and welcome you to the team and you say, I don't drink. I mean, that's hard to do. That's real hard to do. Well I had, you know, it wasn't for religious reasons, it wasn't for an ideology, it was because I was always training

to do something. So physically, I was always in some prep phase. So they would ask me, why aren't you drinking? Well, because I'm running tomorrow morning, or I'm doing a ruptum tomorrow morning. What do you mean you're rucking? We're at war, we're in Afghanistan, you're gonna ruck like, yes,

because I'm, again, taking my life that I had prepared my entire life for, basically, seriously. Yeah, and that bugged a lot of people, man. I got a lot of hate for it, but, you know, you wanna be an alcoholic, you wanna drink alcohol and be a fuck up, go fuck yourself. Yeah. I'll be here, rucking, and taking care of my body and myself. You know, you want to be an alcoholic, you want to drink alcohol and be a fuck up, go fuck yourself. I'll be here, ruck in and taking care of my body and myself.

And yeah, now I drink occasionally, I won't drink more than a couple beers, that's my limit. Because I just don't like alcohol, but I like the social interaction, I like the taste of an IPA, but it's not something that I need. And it's definitely not something that I use

when I was in the military. You show up to third group and how long are you there before deployment? Two weeks. Two weeks. I'm there two weeks before we deploy. So you didn't even have fucking time to get to know the team before you're in it? Well, I barely got my issue of equipment before we ripped out and headed to war. Wow, and the team didn't even have really have time to see if you were a good fit. They didn't at all. Holy shit.

Yeah, it was, and on top of that, the senior, because we operate in twos on an attachment, there's another 18 Bravo who's going to be my senior, he even got hurt or injured so he couldn't deploy. So I was going to be the Bravo, which is a big responsibility in a fire base in Afghanistan. He's slide into the number one slot as a new guy. Yeah. I'm in charge of base security, base defense, tactics, weapons, and we were going to war. You're going on your first deployment.

Yeah, my guys had already ripped out and they, you know, they had already sent the PDSS, the pre-deployment site survey guys. And so they were just turning and burning, coming back, picking up the main body. So when I got there, it was a rush to get everything packed. Guys didn't want to be in the team room because they want to spend it with family. And then when I hit the ground, I mean, I was running. We immediately deployed to Afghanistan. How many guys are on your team, roughly? Well, I think at that time, maybe 10.

10 dudes. Yeah, most attachments are light by nature of guys coming and going. And like I said, my 18 Bravo senior was in surgery. So he had to get a surgery recover. And so we deployed that year to Afghanistan with a little bit of a light package. What year?

This was 05, early 05. So that's a hot year. Yeah. Now are you doing, are you running indig? Yeah, part of the job is running indig. I mean, when I reported as an 18 Bravo, I was in charge of about 144 Afghan Commandos. Holy shit. So there are 10 got there's 10 NSF guys

You know running a hundred and forty four man Army yeah, and basically I was the commander of them So I was in charge of all of them as a new guy as a new guy holy shit I never forget he said hey your your guys are formed up waiting on you Waiting on me Yeah, you're the 18 Bravo get get out there and be their commander. Because everybody else had other stuff to worry about, I mean, the 18 Charleys had to run the fire base,

which is a full-time job of the base security and the actual physical structure, the generators, the water system, everything, the commo, base defense, the commo base defense. The commo guys are living conditions like shit. I mean, tense living on a cot, uh, living on a cot surrounded by stack sandbags and a concrete ish, just mud mud hut. Okay. On the second floor of a little structure.

So you're way the fuck out there and like, at your own fire base. There's no PX. Nothing. There's no chow hall. Nothing. None of that shit. Are you in local food?

A lot of the time we were, or Mermaid or MRE. I mean, we were the furthest northern fire base on the border with Pakistan. And we had really not a lot of support. I mean, the closest support was J-Bad, which is still hours away, I mean, if something went bad. So, how trained up you show up in country?

You're looking, you're looking now the commander of 144 Afghan force. How well are they trained? Did you, did you guys, was there like a change over from another, another team or are you starting from scratch? Now, some of them were trained up by prior ODAs. I think first group was there before us, before that, there was another third group team. And so they had a little bit of training, but that's, I mean, man, when you're talking about Afghans in a rural province of Afghanistan that have no education, have no attitude, don't know how to read, right? Yeah, I mean, it's all relative. I mean, if there's one thing they're good at,

it's jumping jacks. It's jumping jacks. Yeah, climbing mountains. Climbing mountains and flip flops and jumping jacks, that's their forte. You've seen that video, right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But, so they're pretty green.

I mean, so you take over and, I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but I'm assuming the first thing you wanna do is figure out what they're actually capable of doing. Yeah, you have to, no matter what the condition or the situation when you come into a new firebase or fall into a new endage, you got to vet them. You got to put them through some kind of process to be able to see what their current capability is.

We did that. It wasn't much. So we started from scratch. Wow. We were doing small unit tactics every single day. I was doing small unit tactics with them every single day that we weren't operating. And this would be the force. Not only this is before Afghan commando units, Afghan border police, Afghan national police. This is before all that. So they didn't have a job.

Their job for us were, they were Afghan commandos working for Special Forces guys. We paid them directly cash. So these were our first line of defense and QRF if anything went wrong. So you show up in country, you gotta get to know these guys, you gotta train them, you gotta figure out what their capabilities are, you gotta improve those.

How long do you have before boots on the ground, first operation? Well, I mean, again, that's relative as well because when you infill into a remote fire base, the one we were at in the middle of nowhere was surrounded by high ground. It was just a couple of Americans in the middle of the Wild West. So we were getting rocketed, we were getting reports of attacks and all these things that were happening.

So we were in it. We were in the thick of it already. But I mean, we didn't have any time. It was immediate. I think we went on an op, two days, three days, after we hit the ground. Immediately went and did a link up with one of the, you know, Afghan seniors,

or Afghan elders in a village. And that's a movement to contact. I mean, you know seniors or Afghan elders in a village and that's a movement to contact I mean you're just rolling. Yeah, hoping you're not gonna get blown up hoping you're not gonna get in a tick With the guys that you haven't vetted yet. Holy shit. We're talking two fucking days two days and you're out the door with them Out of movement. Yeah, we had no choice. How did that go? It went uneventful, we had activity, but nothing significant happened, luckily for us. And we just started building more rapport with them, vetting them, training them, and improved our situation over time.

So you're out, you meet the village elder, you come back, you debrief, are you happy with what you meet the village elder, you come back, you debrief, are you happy with What you've just been handed with the 144 guys? Are you going holy shit? We have got a lot of work to do now? I will say Here's some just a little bit of forward history on the guys that I train Those same guys that I train had worked with special operations those same guys that I trained had worked with special operations, including special missions unit from the Navy. Okay, prior to working with us, so there were some good dudes. And when I left that fire base, a guy by the name of Rob Miller, ripped into that fire base and was with those guys as an 18 Bravo from third

Special Forces group when he was killed and earned the Medal of Honor posthumously of course and those men, those Afghans that were with them were the Afghans that I trained that were trained prior and so they were squared away. I mean they had a heart, they were disciplined, they were squared away. I mean, they had a heart. They were disciplined. They wanted it, man. They impressed with them. Yeah, I was impressed. A good example was they instinct, instinctively knew when or if there was a potential significant act going to happen called SIG Act, and they would immediately get to the high ground,

and they were good about displacing themselves and then talking to the local community because you have to understand that these people lived in that same community. So they knew everybody around them, and they didn't want to be the guy that failed their mission and got an American killed. So they had buy-in. So yeah, I was impressed with them. We had a lot of work to do obviously, but they had a good base and all the guys and nurse stand-provence that I operate with that were Afghan in the village of Naree and Assadabad and Barakow all great great great men. Did you how long did you spend with this team?

So that particular trip was nine months in Afghanistan and that team, I spent a year and some change with them. I mean nine months is a long time to get to know somebody. I mean, yeah, people get married in less time than that. Do you develop more than a professional relationship with them, or was it always just you're the commander, and they're the, they're the jundies, or they're your guys. Did you, did you get close?

Did you keep in touch? Yeah, I didn't keep in touch with a lot of them, because I knew we were gonna leave, and it would be difficult to retain that. I try to get close to them, but I knew there was a line. What I didn't want is to compromise the mission or the rapport building from another detachment that came in there, because you know how it works. They just, the button gets reset

every time an attachment comes through there. People try to reinvent the wheel. And I heard years later, them asking about me when I was coming back, which is unfortunate, because we should have went back. We should have had continuity and stayed with those specific, you know,

Afghans for a longer period of time because I think that's how ultimately you win is when you have men that you build these relationships with and they're more loyal to you because you've built the rapport that's necessary. I mean, it's unfortunate, but it's also gotta be a good, I mean, it's gotta feel pretty fucking cool that they're still asking about you years later after several teams have come in and left. Uh, you must have made a hell of an impression on those guys. Yeah, I wanted to, I'm not, I'm a kind of guy where I'm not afraid to build rapport.

I've smoked cigarettes and Afghanistan with them. I hated it. But I knew that was part of their culture. I drank tea with them and smoked cigarettes, sitting on mats, like a bunch of school girls talking about, you know, politics and the military and their families. Like Afghan men do. I mean, that's what they do.

So I socialize with them, I hung out with them, I did a lot of laugh and I'm joking with them, but I knew the line, because I still wanted them to respect me as a commander. So when I asked them to potentially sacrifice their life because they had an assault, a bunker, or do something that might take their life, I wanted them to do it.

And so I kind of knew the psychology of it. I was just big into that. So I had my limits with them. But yeah, they're the greatest, I mean, partnered forces that I've worked with in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc. I've met some really good people. Did you, did you have an engagement other than base defense, or like getting rocketed or the base getting attacked? Did you have any engagements outside of the fire base? We had a few significant events happen. We got in a little tick in the coach of alley, little gunfight, we brought in

eight tins, we brought in the Marines, we lost image 47, it was shot down. Or not shot down, it was crashed down. They had a catastrophic failure and crashed. So whatever, a hundred million dollar helicopter, image 47, the battalion Commander for 160th was on that bird. So it was a big, big operation. And so yeah, we did, we didn't get in engagements. Most of our actions, most of our activity was in the fire base, getting shot at, getting rocketed, and then responding to those rockets rockets and responding to those attacks.

How was... Because base engagements are a hell of a lot different than outside of it when you're on a mission. A lot, you know, base defense is, I mean, usually it's pretty locked down to a tee and everybody knows exactly what they're doing. It's when everybody has to find cover and fucking communicate and I mean, we don't have to go into details on that, but when you got back, were you impressed with how they performed? I mean, it's always a shit show, you know, when you get contacted outside of the base. So, were you impressed with their performance? Yeah, I didn't have a problem with my guys' performances. They did

well, typically all the time. Operating through language barriers. That's another story, the loals and time. There's a whole bunch of logistical things also. My guys didn't run radios. We run icon radios because local traffic, we couldn't give out 100 in-biter radios, turned it up with crypto, with crypto and everything else. There were challenges. We did a lot of basic seven-dash eight small unit tactics in order to accomplish a lot of objectives,

using flares, using smoke, using human-norms, and via non-s, or yeah, tactics. Yeah, we were big on that. That's how we did most of our stuff. We did most of our, I did most of my commanding and controlling of my indig via hand and arm signals. No shit. And we had SOPs, four smoke, four shifting lift, fire, all that kind of stuff.

So it was back to Vietnam. I mean, it's back to basics. Wow. What are these guys carrying? Do they have nods to helmets? At this time in the war, no nods, no helmet. We eventually evolved into that, but we were straight AK-47s and flip flops. Oh man, I mean, our guys didn't even have uniforms.

They were rolling around and whatever we can get them. I actually exploited a program that was a nonprofit that was providing clothes and Tolletry items to soldiers overseas and Got this nonprofit to send me Helicopters full of equipment to be able to outfit my Afghans with just clothes With just toothbrushes because they didn't have it and we weren't paying for it So they needed stuff. I mean it's so funny seeing these these deeds run around. Holy Dave's insured and they're playing on flannel jackets and USA ball caps but we had to do what we had to do.

Are there any field crafts or Bible cats over there now? I hope so man. They're better fucking. I've seen them. They're on SF guys but. Right on. What would you say when your first lessons learned after your first combat deployment, maybe your first engagement, maybe your first base defense? I don't know. What was the first thing that you realized, holy shit, we need to make some changes or...

Or, I mean... Yeah. The first lesson, major lesson you know, I mean, yeah. The first lesson, major lesson learned. I had a major one. I mean, I almost had a, look, as an 18 Bravo, I was in charge of the base defense plan. I made it, I wrote it, I rehearsed it with the guys, I implemented it, and I would die on that, you know, that's, so it was a, it was a huge responsibility responsibility and I fucked it up from the get-go. I had senior guys that had been to war prior to that.

When I was in the QCourse, they were doing an evasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. We had guys in my company that were killed the trip prior to Afghanistan. So we were vetted. we had a good detachment. They let me run with a base defense plan and I did it and made a lot of mistakes. I mean, I fucked up a lot of stuff up. One thing that is stinkly remember was I had a base defense plan to be prepared for an indirect attack that turned into a direct or more complex attack

Because that's how you do it, right? You prep the objective You get everybody's heads down and then you do a direct assault and get inside the fire base and start killing people from the bad guys perspective Shit, did they fucking get in? No, they didn't get in for for this particular one, but they what they were doing was hitting us with one of seven rockets. One of seven millimeter rockets air stabilize themselves. So they have basically a mechanism to stabilize their trajectory. So they won't go ask over in and just wrap into the rocks, they'll stabilize and it will send it on its trajectory and you could aim them off of a rock. It got shot, it got aimed and those things, they have hundreds of meters of kill radius on the back end of

those one of seven memory rockets and they were hitting our base like our small little base, there were rockets that were landing in our firebase. We had one that destroyed one of our fuel points. I had an SOP to get my guys out of their bunks, get their kid on and get on the rooftops to defend against a direct assault. Well the problem is, and I didn't learn this until the hard ways, you get up on top of a rooftop when I want a seven millimeter rockets coming in, you are putting your guys lives at risk. And I got to a rooftop with my 18 Charlie, we were engaging, I was engaging the point of origin, which I saw where the rockets were landed, with a 240 Bravo. I couldn't even affect that area. I was thinking about traversing the 120 mortar.

And as I was about to get off the roof, a 107 came over me and my Charlie and hit the fuel point and almost killed us. I mean, if we were on the back end of that, when I was seven millimeter rocket, it would have ripped us in half. And they were known for killing people because the shrapnel know everything else is devastating.

So the biggest mistake I made was thinking that doxxionally there was a tactic that needed to be implemented. The right answer was to keep my guys inside their bunks at least for a period of time and reinforce the positions with armored vehicles which we had a couple of GMVs and then respond that way. Put my Afghans on the wall, have them defend to the base, but don't risk putting guys on the rooftop where they could easily be taken out. I mean, obviously, one of seven is not forgiving and no matter what situation you're in, you get hit directly in a vehicle, in a building with a 107, it's going to be a bad day. You finish that deployment, you come home, what's next?

I get back from that deployment and Iraq was getting bad and I wanted to go to school so I went to to put my name in the hat to go to Sephardic. Sephardic which is Special Forces Advanced Target, Reconnaissance Target Acquisition Interdiction Exploitation, a whole bunch of words and an acronym that doesn't even look right. It's a fartiac, whatever. People call it Sephardic, and it's our CQB Advanced School House for Hoss's Rescue for Direct Action, for Vehicle Interdiction.

We learn all that stuff there. It's a, I believe in eight weeks school, maybe nine weeks, so it's pretty long. And it is the minimum qualification that you need to serve in a commanders and extremist force, which there's one of those per group, which is a reinforced company that's designed to conduct Haas's rescue and crisis response across the world. How much CQB do you have?

What's your background in CQB before you show up to that school? What is a basic kind of mold for an SF guy? Usually at the team level, you learn in, it's called, it's a phoic. You learn basic CQB. Sometimes it's strong wall. I think at that time it was probably strong wall. Real basic CQB. You don't learn points of domination. You don't learn Hoss's rescue considerations. Maybe a little bit, but there's not a lot of it. Okay. So, at the basic team level, if you don't have a Sephardic qualified guy,

you might not know a lot. You might think you know a lot, but you really don't. And I thought I knew a lot, but I didn you know a lot, but you really don't and and I thought I knew a lot But I didn't know anything. I showed up and didn't know shit about CQB until I got there I knew how to shoot. I was a decent shooter with pistol and carbine, but I didn't know much after that school Let's fast forward in the next deployment. Did you utilize that a lot or was it back to? What you were doing before? No, it was, in fact, I was in Charlie Company, second battalion, the SIF was Bravo Company,

second battalion. One company designated per group, so they were right next door. So I used to see those dudes come in and they had longer hair, they had cooler uniforms, they had better guns, and I wanted to be in the sift. At that time, you had to have two years team time to even think about going in the sift. But I had a real good rapport with my company, Sart Major, and he went next door to take the

sift. So he was my Sart Major, he became the sift Sart Major, and long story short, I wasn't supposed to go to S if as a new guy with only a year or some change on the team but I went to Sephardic and came recommended out of Sephardic and so they pulled me over. I mean I wasn't supposed to deploy to Afghanistan for another year but I went next door and I was in Iraq a month later. I mean out of Sephardic I'd from that trip I came back I went straight to Sephardic which is two months. I had 30 days and I was in Iraq a month later. I mean, out of Sephardic, from that trip, I came back, I went straight to Sephardic, which is two months.

I had 30 days and I was straight back in Iraq. So you did a nine month deployment, come back for roughly 90 days. Yeah. Two months of that is training, becoming an assault or at the highest level, and then you redeploy. Yeah.

Re-repoided Iraq for counterterrorism mission, which is all CQB. Did you have any, do you have remarried at the time? At the time I was married, but I was married young and didn't, I mean, to be honest. Came secondary to the mission. Absolutely secondary to the mission. We barely knew each other.

I mean, on the ground I had a couple months with her. So it was turning to burn. In fact, I had a hasty marriage because I had saw some dudes get killed, killed our trip, you know, Operation, I was part of Operation Red Wing that trip and we had a couple other Chinooks that were down. We had guys that we lost in the company.

So it was a bad trip. It was a bad year. A lot of Americans were killed that year. That's a fucking small world. The fact that you were there, I came there right after that, which means we were there at the same time. And as we talked a couple days ago, you met my fucking best friend who just passed away.

Yeah. It's fucking crazy. You know how the world is. It is. It's a small world, man. But so you did utilize, sorry, side track there, but so you did utilize that school on that next deployment. Every operation.

I was sure. I explosively breached every other target, every other night. We went out every night, sometimes twice a night, going after bad guys, and it was a real active campaign. It was us, and I believe, Silt Team Eight, and we did joint ops, where it was like two SIF guys and five SILs, and we went out with our indige and conducted counterterrorism missions. What do you think of working with

the seals? My first impression of them weren't great because we had a few interactions with them where I never forget you know at the time I was believe still in E6 I hadn't made E7 yet, but I had combat rotation behind me, and I was on my second deployment, and had been in training for years, had been the military in the infantry, and so I had a background. I'll never forget one of the young sales being told by one of my guys who was a senior guy.

Oh my God, I was the most junior guy in the SIF. A SIF, a commander's and extremist forces filled with the most senior guys in the group. I think my detachment years later, everybody made master sergeant the same time. Wow. I could entire senior team with guys with multiple deployments. I had the least amount of combat. Guys on average had three or four rotations and this is early GWAT.

He said, hey, maybe you should hang out with these guys because we could do some cross training and maybe teach you guys some things. And he said, what could your guys possibly teach mine? He had to be shitting me. He said that. And I was humbled to the fact that a lot of my own guys were so senior and already legends in the community.

There was already stories about them. So I paid attention. And we had a lot of experiences like that with the young sales, but some of them a lot of them weren't. I mean, Jeremy Wise, who eventually went to work for the CIA and he was he was killed unfortunately in a suicide bombing. He was there, he was great. A couple guys that are now in other special missions units were working with me and they were great. So I didn't have a horrible experience, but it was different. I mean a young still coming out of training, 21, 22,

and even at that time I was 26 at the time. So it was different, but we got along good. I mean we didn't have problems with operating with them, and we had a lot of action. We had a lot of fun that rotation. What is your next assignment? So you're at the, you're at third group. You go to the SIF, what comes next?

Another rotation in the SIF. I mean, the SIF is a grind. I did three SIF rotations that I racked back to back, going to war coming back, going to war coming back, going to war coming back, going to war coming back. I eventually moved up into reconnaissance and special operations and became a sniper, went to sniper school, went to free fall school and started specializing in my efforts on long gun. So between unilateral operations, which is working with task force, the joint task force.

I think at the time we were working with Tom D. Tomasso, who's a famous black Hawk down, between leader and he was a special missions unit commander. commander, we operated under him and under Task Force 16, which is Stanley McChrystal's big, you know, kill capture, conglomerate of the best units in the world. We were part of that effort when we went out and crushed bad guys for years. I mean, it was a good run of killing a whole bunch of bad guys. So I did that for three rotations in a row. Then I did go to selection, just call it West Virginia Selection to assess for Yususak. I served in US Army Special Operations Command in a couple of positions.

Which was a great reason. The reason you that don't know used to suck is an operational unit at the highest level. You were, to your one at this point. Yeah, yeah. And really, once you get there, I mean, you've just become the most elite war fighter

in the world. Yeah, how do you feel? Well, I don't know if I was one of the most elite war fighters in the world. I never looked at myself that way. Everybody else does. Yeah. I had some good experiences and some bad ones. Look, special operations is a great community to be part of, but it's a community of the most alpha males on the planet.

I did have a bad interaction with my time in that organization with a couple characters, that was a personality conflict. And it's the first time in my career that I felt like achy in my chest, I had anxiety where I was like, man, what the fuck is going on here? I don't typically tell that story because of the nature of the nature of the organization, but I had a bad, I didn't have a bad run. I recovered from it, but yeah, it was that unit, that organization, all special

misnake units are operating at the speed of war, which is a lot different when you have to deal with bureaucracy and bullshit. Yeah, I mean, it seems like the higher you go and operational units like that, the more fucking dramatic the guys can get. That's 100% true. The guys that I worked with were amazing. I mean, I worked with a lot of great guys and I just got my P.B. Spanked, I got in trouble there. Nothing crazy. Was it just personality conflict? It was a personality conflict. I mean, I pissed the wrong dude off. And, you know, I learned a lot of lessons from it.

But I had a good time in that organization. Got to see, got to operate, got to do a lot of cool shit that I never would have done otherwise. And it was a real cool learning opportunity. So much so that I got promoted at such a young age, that, you know, I made E8 at the age of 30. I made a mass startant at 30 and promoted the last guy on the promotion list in that organization. So, you know, I was like a point, they'd promote us and like point whatever and not a whole number. So I was like, there's 160 on that list that year. I was 159.7. No, that, no, no, no. And the list. And so I made Master Sergeant while I was there,

and I had a choice. I can go back and retrain and do the job for the next 10 years, or I could do what a lot of guys do when they make Master Sergeant and become a team Sergeant, which for me was the pinnacle of a career in special operations. To be the team daddy, to be the team sarn was huge. So sarn major Bob Erby who is a legend in special operations.

He's known by everybody. He's man, he's got probably more operational time than anybody in Special Forces Command. He heard about me and another guy, I can't mention his name, but he heard about us and he asked us if we would leave the organization for an opportunity to stand up in new commanders and extremists force from scratch. Meaning there was no commanders and extremist force for the continent of Africa. And he asked us if we would like to stand it up, which meant obviously working with joint special operations command, we had relationships built, report built,

we had experience with specifically reconnaissance, special reconnaissance, snipers, free fall operations. So we said yes, and we were given everything we needed to be successful. Unlimited budget, we got to pick higher and fire our guys, damn, and it was a huge amazing opportunity to do that. To start a mission from nothing where there's nobody in the company and then build it up from scratch and we did that. You've got a hell of a career man. I mean holy shit and then to to watch your face when I tell you or when I ask you what does it feel like to be one of the most elite war fighters in the

fucking world and to watch your face be taken back like, oh, I don't consider myself to be that. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's, I mean, a lot of guys do that. I think it's ingrained into everybody. And it's, I mean, I can see how uncomfortable you were when I just fucking said that, but it is the truth. I mean, they're not very many people that get to that level.

And with that much combat and, uh, I mean, that's fucking impressive, man. Yeah, thanks, man. So you leave there and then... What happens? So I leave and start grinding to build up this unit, hire and fire a couple guys and build up a skill set for special reconnaissance in the continent of Africa to be able to respond to crisis that potentially happened. And there was no, there was no at the time organization that was covering down on Africa,

because it used to be third groups responsibility, but because of the war, we had to change in hands and change in responsibility. So we stood it up. It was a grind. We got validated by special operations command. And that was ironically enough September 1st of 2012. We got validated. And a week later, or September 11th, Benghazi happens.

I had already been notified prior to Benghazi happening that my team and myself was gonna be the first guys in Delibia to run what's called a 12 weight program, which is a congressional mandated counterterrorism program to counter al-Qaeda, which therein lies the biny, therein lies the point, which is before September 11, 2012, I had already been identified. We're going to go in there, stand up, account our tears and force to counter Al Qaeda. So it's often been said, oh, there was no threats there. There was threats, there was bombings, there were shootings, there was attacks on the

UN, foreign nation bass or embassy staff. So I was getting all those intel sit reps before that happened. And then obviously that happened and it changed everything. Where were you when that happened? Ironically enough, I was back in a special missions unit compound,

doing a cross-talk brief with basically a key leader engagement with the team lead from team Libya that had been designated and me and the other guy from my unit, because we were former unit members of that unit, we were there doing a cross-talk. I'll never forget. I went, I went there and met up with a J3, which is at the time a kernel. And he told me last night, this just happened. And this is what's going on. And so I

stayed in an extra few days to assess the situation and to get tied in because at that point it was my unit's responsibility to react and respond outside of obviously the primary main effort that unit that I was in's responsibility of responding to that crisis. So was this happening? Was Benghazi happening real time when you found out? Yes, it was happening real time. It had it had it was it had, was Benghazi happening real time when you found out? Yes. Yeah. Was happening real time. It had, it had, it was, it had, it was still active and it was still happening. And I was watching on ISR things and folding. Jesus Christ.

Yeah. Is this what ultimately led you to separate? Yeah. So that's exactly right. Long story short, I deployed to Libya soon after that and stood up a 12-way program. And we had all the right things done to go after the guys that were responsible for the killing of the four personnel that were killed in Benghazi, you know, Ambassador Stevens, Smith, and then Clint Ority and Tyrone Woods. So we went there, I was deployed there for over six months, I busted my ass and tried everything I could to

Kill or capture those guys with obviously other special operations units that were there and other One other special operation unit that was there and We offered up a full platter Kill capture bilateral mission Unilateral mission whatever you want will do. And we were told that the political climate wouldn't allow for it. So we're not going to do anything. And so let's just say I was disgruntled when I came back. I had a lieutenant colonel that I was co-located with that was a reserve officer from Africa, who was a fucking piece of shit, who was drinking

every night, getting drunk, who didn't give a fuck about the mission, who was making excuses every single day about not wanting to work, not wanting to do the op. And so when I get back, I said, go fuck yourself. Yeah, I got out. You serious? Yeah. You know, I know how fucking tough that can be.

I mean, I didn't watch, we didn't have Fred Feet or anything like that, but to watch an event going down, I mean, that's one of the most, when you know you can fucking help, it's one of the most helpless feelings in the fucking world. And I've experienced that as well. We were working with a foreign counterpart and should have been on that fucking up, but we weren't and their helos went down and we listened to the entire thing on the fucking radio and and then we saw them when they got back and I mean and the event that you had just you know stay on the sideline for us I I mean, I could see how you could be that disgruntled. I mean,

you got out with 18 fucking years in, right? Yeah. Yeah. Two years to retirement. Yep. Yeah. I got back. I did get recruited by the CIA at the time. They recruited me the CIA at the time. They recruited me for a job and I had finished my college degree my bachelor's degree The year prior to that so that was a prerequisite to become a staffer for them I came back with the anticipation of doing that job, but the sequester happened which was a stop loss on all or a hiring freeze on all jobs So I wasn't able to do that job, but the sequester happened, which was a stop loss on all, or a hiring freeze on all jobs. So I wasn't able to do that job, which kind of fucked me up, you know?

I was prepared to do that. So I transitioned off active duty and then went into the National Guard component where I took a team in Texas, a 19th Special Forces Group and was just waiting on the word, waiting on an opportunity. Let's rewind a little bit here.

So you separate from the Army, finish your degree. How long do you go from your last day in the military to CIA. So the contracting side? Six months. That's it. Six months. Yeah, six months. Did you even want to give being a civilian a shot or you just couldn't wait to get back over? Well, my anticipation at that time was, I only wanted to do one other job, and that was to be a paramilitary operations officer for the CIA.

Okay, that's it. The first casualty of the war of the Global War on Terror was Michael Span, and he was a former marine officer and a member of that job in position. So I wanted to do that. I was ready to hang up my life, meaning my personal life and everything else to just stay at war because that's what I wanted. And I was chasing the rainbow. A lot of guys, I mean, yeah. I was there I mean, I was there in Libya, seeing those dudes operate and like, you know what, man, I want to be part of that. These guys are squared away.

They don't seem to be dealing with a whole bunch of bullshit. And that's what I'm going to do. If I can't kill bad guys and special operations, then I'll get out and kill bad guys somewhere else. And that's what my thoughts were at the time. That's funny. That mindset just goes across the board. Because that's one of the reasons I wanted to deal. And not a whole lot of people actually know that about you.

I'm really in tune with your following on Instagram. I'm really in tune with your following on Instagram. I'm really in tune with your YouTube and your eight social media channels that you have under field craft flusher personal and you never fucking bring that up Not a whole lot of people know that you jumped over to CIA and then which is where where we met. Yeah, so And I'm really curious to hear what you have to say. What was your first impression? I mean, you go through training.

Let's breeze through that, but you show up in country, your first deployment with the agency. What's your first impression? So So the reason I did that job is they gave me that job as an interim from my staff position, which would have been paramilitary operations guy. So I did that job thinking it was a temporary thing, thinking it was only going to be a rotation or two until I got the call. When I showed up, I realized really fast that all the things that I'd thought about, those positions and then the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow didn't exist.

And they were dealing with shit just as much as I was. And so I started realizing that the job I was in wasn't that bad. In fact, it was pretty decent. I mean, it's, you know, without getting into too many details, there was an operational relevancy to it, which made me feel good about what I did for a living good pay

Good experiences and not a lot of bullshit. I mean are you kind of change your scale of bullshit when you go there, right? But I just came off active duty where I dealt with a lot of bullshit. So it wasn't that bad and so for the first time I think I was pretty happy with what I was doing. The operation Ops Tempo was decent and the rotation schedule was good. Were you out of flagpole? I wasn't. Oh you went. Okay. I went straight to Yemen. Okay. Yeah. Where we met? Where we met? Yeah. So that was your first deployment. Yeah. So what was your impression of the guys of me? What was your impression of me?

You know, it's crazy as people ask me that obviously a lot of special operations guys that ask me that the best dudes I've ever met have been in that job because one because I know, because of the vetting process that they're the best shooters in the world, even better than my standards and special operations. I mean, I've shot with the best shooters in the world and special operations and I get to this job and I was super impressed by the standards.

The shooting quality is the hardest shooting quality in the government. There's no doubt about it because I've been to the firearms and starter development course. I can't parry to to vet the hardest and most difficult courses outside of the US Marshall outside of the US Marshall service. The air marshal service. It was it is the most difficult. outside of the US Marshall Service, the Air Marshall Service, it was, it is the most difficult of a qual. So having that confidence that these guys

are vetted, qualified to be where they're at and that the mirrored of backgrounds and experiences are brought together, I thought it was real cool there. Yeah, I was super impressed. You're always gonna have a dude here and there. But for the direct hires that I operated with, the independent contractors, there's nothing bad I could say about any of them.

Some of them were quirky and weird, just like we all are. But operationally wise, or operations wise, the best I've ever worked with. Well, that's cool to hear. Did you find it? or operations wise, the best I've ever worked with. Well, that's cool to hear. Did you find it? One of the biggest struggles that I had working there was the integration of tactics.

All because you're working with all the best units from all the mill, from all special operations. Everybody has their way of doing shit. Everybody thinks their way is the best. Some guys like myself can shut the fuck up and learn new ways and realize, hey, you know, this is what we have to do and this is, I mean, we have to be uniform if we're going to work together. And then there's, you know, the other crowd that they can't let go of their unit specific tactics. Where did you follow that spectrum? I try to strike a good balance.

I did have recent GWAT experience and tactics and how that is, the further displaced you get from the war. There's a whole bunch of different tactics that change. So I was heard, you know, when I brought up things, but I also try to be very careful about, it won't be a new guy, but to understanding that as long as the tactics worked,

there could be a different way to skin the cat. I mean, there were things that I didn't necessarily agree with, but there are gonna be different viewpoints and tactics, but if it works and doesn't violate security, I'm okay with that. So I had a better, easier time, and like I said, I needed that job. I had gone, I was transitioning,

obviously off the active duty. I needed that job, and had gone, I was transitioning, you know, obviously off the active duty. I needed that job and I needed I needed to be in a good place in that position I had just made Sergeant Major and 19 Special Forces Group So going back home, I had responsibilities And so I just couldn't get caught up in any bullshit. There was drama like there is anywhere else. I just go to my room. Yeah, you are a room, Hobbit.

Yeah, stay in my room. You did a lot of squats, that's true. I literally saw your butt rising. Yeah, oh yeah. Week after week. Two to four hours of squats a day. I had a nice ass after a lot of time. You did.

I was real nice one, man. So nice. I mean, that's cool though, because I mean, honestly, most guys in that alpha don't have near-the-fuck-and-experience that you brought to the table. I mean, you just, we're just in an hour, one over your, you know, breeze through your military career. And I mean, holy shit, dude. that's a lot of fucking trigger time.

That's a lot of deployments. And that's a, that's a shit ton of experience. I mean, you named all the major schools. I think you left out J-Tack, which we had talked about earlier. I mean, it's got to be hard to bite your tongue with certain things. And anyways, that, how long were you over there? It's been on the agency. I did a total of seven trips, six point five,

because my last trip wasn't a full trip. Okay. So I think before we met, I did one, maybe one rotation before that, maybe. It's our interface together. Yeah, I did, yeah. So I did a total of 6.5 and my last trip was early 2016. And again, I don't advertise that experience,

but I was going deploying back into war zones between my trips with the CIA. So I was going down range, coming back, going straight on a deployment with 19th group, and then coming right back in. And so it became redundant and became pretty overwhelming to get anything accomplished in civilian life. All right, Mike. So we covered all of your operational career up to this point. And I want to kind of wrap that up because I'd like to move along with Phil, Kraft, and transitioning and what you're up to now. But before we do, I wanna take a call. And you take calls in your podcast?

That's cool. So I met this kid maybe three years ago and he was a fucking soup sandwich. Showed up to one of my training courses, had the fucking Delta beard, had all the fucking tactical shit, didn't know how to use any of it, fucking completely unsure of himself,

just living in a total fantasy land. And he started training with me more and more and more and became really interested in actually doing the fucking job instead of looking the part and I know you get blown up on the IG and so do I with DMs all the time of people who want to do it. Well this fucking guy actually is doing it. He went and signed up and he's waiting for his selection date and I'm super fucking proud of him. I nicknamed him Kebler like Kebler with Elf

Yeah, like Kebler the Elf because he used to have this stupid fucking beard, but this cookies are delicious, too They're so good. I know right so good so I'm gonna give him a call. He's got a question for you about Going through selection. I think or and something with the The National Guard so here we go Kebler, you son of a bitch. He's in a factory. Still pot factory. You're in my podcast and I got my Glover here. I know you got a question for him.

I do. How's it going guys? Good man. Cool, cool. You want me to just ask the question that I sent you to text about? You don't have that stupid fucking beard still, do you? No, just a mustache right now.

Jesus. Yeah, I got to grow what I can, right? Right on. Well, hey, let's hear your question. All right. So I have a question that a bunch of the National Guard SF students have. I mean, one that I have for myself as well. People are just interested hearing, you know, what the life is like inside of like 19th and 20th group as far as contract work goes, working for the GRS

while being in National Guard SF, if you have any information on that. Which is so happens I do. It looks like you're unlock, Kebler. I figured Michael over might be the right man to ask. Yeah, so I obviously did that for a living I figured my clover might be the right man to ask. Yeah, so I obviously did that for a living where I was doing contracting and then coming back and operating in that 19th group.

I was in Charlie 119 and I had a good Sart Major, I had a good company commander, but I was also a team sergeant in that company before I made Sergeant Major. So the time period in which I was a team sergeant, I had stood up a team from scratch. We didn't have a detachment when I rolled in there. I got to handpick some guys and put them on my detachment and found that, you know, operating overseas, no matter what your position was, was commonplace in those guard units. You're going to have a lot of guys that contract, how half the guys that work in 19th group more than likely contract.

Now, would that be said, depending on who your client is or who you contract for is going to determine whether or not it's okay. Most of the time I would say 99% of the time it's fine. There's no issues with it because again you're not doing anything during the year besides the one week in a month. And you know, as long as you could try to make the two weeks a year, that's fine. A good company and special forces will work with you via the B team operation sergeant. So if the B team ops guy is switched on, which mine was, he's super squared away. He facilitated guys who

missed their two weeks, two weeks a year annual training. And that was okay. He just made up for it by sending him to school, by making them do details at the schoolhouse or at the unit. And so it's not an issue. I mean, it's just what happens. I think a lot of people don't understand this about the guard component of SF. It's a secret and it's one of the best kept secrets and special operations. And I'll just leave it at that. It's a great organization to work for a had a good time. Does that answer your question? Yeah, it definitely does. That's definitely helpful because over here, like even the guard liaison they don't really have any information on that. They just kind of try to tell the guys to just once you get

to your group, be the guard, just go to as many schools as possible and try to hop onto other ODA's deployments. So I just wanted to hear from the contract perspective of it. Yeah, if you're a guard guy and you go to SOTIC, if you go to sniper school, for example, that counts as all your time because you're activated, obviously. So just going to a school or going to some training when you're off time, I was very proactive

when I came back for a contract trip. I would show up and be on the clock and hanging out, fixing stuff in the team room, training guys that showed up new. So there's always something that you could do to make up for the time on the back end. And at the end of the day, it's not that big of a deal. If you have a federal government position or job, contractor or not, you're pretty secure in your position.

The guard can't really fuck with you. That's good to hear. All right, Kevler. What are you doing today? Why the fuck aren't you at work? Why aren't you rocking him out? I actually am at work outside of the security from the 18 Bravo compound killing the game. Hell yeah, I remember that compound. That's solid. It's changed a bit since I've been there. Yeah. Alright Kev's, good luck to you. Talk there. Yeah. Alright, Keebs. Good luck to you. Talk to you soon. If you don't make it, don't ever fucking call me again.

I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. But seriously, I'm not. Don't worry. I'm gonna make it. I've had some cool mentors. Alright. Alright. Alright, man. We'll talk to you in the art bar. That's more a question. So that was Kevlar. Yeah, it's a good

question, man. So we're out of the combat stuff. We're out of the military and the operational units. You're done with your last CIA deployment. And now it's time to start transitioning, which everyone I know in special operations dreads the transition. How was yours? Oh, man. It was bad. It wasn't good.

I mean, I made a lot of mistakes. I had a hard time. Could you sleep? Nope. No sleep. Anxiety. Waking up all the time in the middle of the night, looking out the windows, staring out from the sky,

interiors not really understanding what the fuck's going on with me. Trying to get through the VA process and get some help, which is failing. Not having a job and just trying to grind it on my own failed relationships. I mean, the list goes on. I was a fucked up experience. Yeah. It's always, it's always, I've never heard of one that went smoothly. Yeah, if somebody said, yeah, my transition was just

super easy. Yeah. No problem. I'll be super suspect of that person. Yeah. Is there one thing that kind of gave you, gave you, I mean, I don't really know how dark it got. We did have a conversation and you told me, I kind of shared my experience with you on when I tried to commit suicide. And then you had a similar experience. Yeah, I had a night where I was prescribed Bambian, I was drinking alcohol, and I had a pistol on my hand. And the best way to describe to me, my own thoughts, was the fact that

in our career fields, our job is to be an asset to our team, to our unit, to our country. And we take out liabilities. We kill bad guys that don't deserve to be on the planet. And that's what we do. I mean, there's no ifans or butts about it. Like, you're a trained killer. That's what you do in special operations. If you don't understand that, you shouldn't be attempting to be in special operations or be in it. And so we're used to taking out bad guys. And I looked at myself at that point in my life as a bad guy. I had made some really bad personal decisions that affected my relationships to those closest to me. I had isolated myself.

I was an active duty master sergeant at the tip of the spear, having a decent family life. And now I was sleeping on an air mattress in a fucking apartment by myself. I had spent that time period, nobody wanted to be around me, including my own family. I spent Christmas, all of Christmas,

and all of the new years by myself inside the apartment, drinking, and I was at a loss, man. I completely isolated. Completely isolated phone calls. Nobody even wanted to be close to me. Geez. Nobody reached out to me.

I was completely by myself. Had they reached out to you, do you think you were even prepared to take any of this? Probably not. No, probably not. We find most guys to see that as a weakness, which is fucking sad. But, yeah, I fell asleep, drunk, with a pistol in my hand and a bottle of wine

in another hand on the floor of my shitty apartment in Texas. Any idea what pulled you through that? To be honest, not really, I don't know. I think I just got through it because I didn't have the courage to kill myself. I had nothing to do with empathy or compassion for others. I didn't kill myself because I felt for other people and they how they would live without me kind of shit. I didn't want to be alive. I just didn't have the fucking balls to do it. So I didn't. And you know what, what did, did help me is it was a struggle.

I mean, to breathe. I was breath, like I was taking one breath at a time, just to get through the moment. And I was researching all the stuff on depression and anxiety. And I read something that said that yoga helped a lot. There was a yoga studio, a mile down the road that did 90 minute hot yoga. And I was like, fuck it, you know what? What else do I have to lose? I've lost everything.

Let me just try. So I went to a yoga class and it did help me. Like I did yoga, I sweated my ass off and walked away from that experience going, man, this actually helped me a little bit. No shit. And just in increments, small increments, one day at a time, I started to pull myself out of it. I still had epic-filled relationships. You know, I want to blame my crazy ass ex-girlfriends

for a lot of stuff, and they were crazy, in a lot of ways. Most of them are. Most of them are, especially the hotter ones, but it was me. I was fucked up, man. I mean, things that, you know, civilians aren't prepared with the capacity to even understand what's happening

to them when you lose your shit or your temper flares or you punch a hole through a wall or you just do stupid shit and say stupid shit. There's no context for them. So it all comes across as crazy. There's no empathy. I never got empathy for my ex-girlfriend. She never said, I'm so sorry that you had to go through this because she didn't even understand it. So I want to point to fingering, be like, fuck you for not having empathy for me, but fuck me for just being a dick. But again, it's not our fault. In a way. I mean, I think we should take personal responsibility for things that we do wrong.

But there's no mechanism or even understanding back then at least of what the fuck's happening to this guy. He's an elite, special operations guy, I was everything going for him and he's fallen apart. And I simply just started to realize that like when you take a dog of war and you let him off the leash and he bites and he attacks and he has one condition which is operating at the speed of war, then when you come home, you can't expect to be sitting on your fucking lap and be a house dog. So there is a new reconditioning that needs to take place and it's a process.

People who don't understand as spouses that there is a process, it's a failed expectation. You'll fucking lose every time. And that process might not ever go away. Yeah. I hate the spouses that make themselves feel like victims because of what their veterans going through. Everybody goes to trauma in some form or fashion.

But I don't want that to define who I am at my core. Because I know I'm a good man at my core. But I know I've made a lot of poor decisions based on the trauma that I've experienced. And so it's a daily fucking effort and campaign, just to make sure that I stay squared away. I think a little big struggle too is, you know, there's a lot of things going on during, especially at the beginning of a transition.

And I think one of the first things that sets in for guys, I know one of the first things that set in for me was, it's when you realize you're just a fucking human. You know, I mean it's, you're not a god anymore. When you're at the SEAL team, when you're at, you know, the SF team, when you're, when you're at the agency, I mean you have this, this sense of like who you are and you're unstoppable and all the shit that you've been through and all the operations you've gone on, the gun fights, everything, you're, I mean, you're at the pinnacle of it all. And then when you come out, you realize you're just as fucking human as every other motherfucker walking around this earth. And that is very humbling.

Did you, I mean, did you feel that? Absolutely. I mean, one, society's not prepared for us. No. They don't know how to deal with us. Just like they did with Mac Fisaud guys in Vietnam, after Vietnam, or post even World War II. A lot of men that come back from special operations and have

these experiences can't replicate that in civilian life. So there is a complex where we think regards because we're identified as operator, we're identified as sniper, we're identified as all these high-speed things that are relevant in our communities, but irrelevant in society. You want to assimilate in civil society, knowing it gives a fuck that you're a sniper. In fact, in civil society, your reliability. Because you're fucking crazy. Or, sorry, you went to war war man, that must have been a tragic thing. And so they're definitely not prepared and I don't think we are taught that to re-assimulate

we have to re-identify ourselves and redefine purpose. Purpose for me in the military was killing bad guys. That's the only drive and purpose that I had. I woke up every morning, even as a leader in special operations. If I don't kill bad guys, I'm a failure. Whether that's kinetic proxy, directly killing bad guys was my job. How does that translate into the civilian sector? You know, that very well. It doesn't. It doesn't.

That very well. But, so something pulled you through all this. But before we get to that, I have another question that I want to ask you. Would you want, after everything you've been through, I know you wouldn't have changed the thing, so I'm not gonna ask you that, but you do realize now the toll that it took on on your personal life and you as a person,

what would you do if your son told you you wanted to become a green beret? Would you be for it? I would support him, but I would try to convince him otherwise. I don't think I had expectations of how it was going to be, and then I experienced it, and the told that it's taking long term, I would never take that back for myself because I earned that. Good, batter, and different. I earned it. But looking at the full process and journey and the toll it takes, I wouldn't want to do that to his family. I wouldn't

want to do that to his loved ones, his family, his friends, to his mom. I would try to convince him otherwise because one, some people think it's the only option. But two, there's nobility in it. Some people think that selfless service and sacrifice is the noble cause. That's okay. I get that. I get selfless sacrifice. But there's so many other things that are broader where you could affect change and have a greater impact outside

of the military. I didn't realize that until recently, until doing what I'm doing now. And I realized that I probably couldn't do what I do now if you weren't a sill when I was in Green Brain nobody give a fuck But because we are it's set a foundation so I don't know I'm torn with that but more than likely not it's tough call I want my kids coding at the age of five. I want them to be minute Entrepreneurs by the age of ten Because I know that entrepreneurship, because I grew up in it, entrepreneurship is the only single way

to a means of controlling your own destiny, literally. Yeah, not figuratively, not like, I got this, now you got a boss, you don't got shit. Interesting. I think most guys are the same, you know, they, I think they would say the same thing. I would. And the shitty thing is, is everyone I know in that community is stubborn as a son of a bitch, and nobody is going to fucking talk them out of it. But I just was curious, you know. I have an expectation my son will tell me to fuck myself.

Good. And I'm okay with that. Yeah. I wouldn't fight him on it is what I mean. Yeah. I wouldn't. There is no contingencies for me and there's no resentment for me. You do what you got to do son.

Do you? But let me give you the advice and you could take the advice or you could flush it down the shitter. Or the real, you know, I mean, when I talk to younger, the younger generation that's coming up and they want to do that, I make sure they do realize as much as possible what the other side looks like. It's not all the fucking glory that everybody thinks. It's not like Hollywood depicts. Yeah, not at all. But

all right enough about that. So field crafts survival. You guys fucking do all kinds of stuff. I've seen field craft talk about the keto diet. I've seen him talk about Brazilian jiu-jitsu, grappling, tactics, shooting, obviously survival, overland mobility. Am I missing anything here? It's probably 10-0. Yeah. But I mean, it's impressive that you're in all these

different spaces and how many people you're impacting. What was the first space that you entered in and fieldcrafted and why did you do that? It was survival, modern survival as I defined it, which is being prepared for a modern world. You know, bushcraft is really interesting and really cool, but it's the E in the paste plan of contingencies. It's the emergency. If you're running, you know, I always tell people if you're rubbing sticks together and neck in the woods, you fuck some stuff up. You've you've taken 10 steps prior to that and fucked it up so in modern survival we focus on the core principles of modern survival and

beginning in the beginning it was I've been to every serious school in the military. I've been at peacetime detention I've been to covert comms. I've been a restraint defeat. I've been to high-risk two versions of high-risk I've been to high risk, two versions of high risk. I've been to the agencies of serious school. So I have a good understanding of the doctrine and then the training methodology behind it and figured I would make a kit, survival kit, that allows you to survive for 72 hours because that's the period of time in which the average catastrophe unfolds were whether that's being displaced from an urban to a rural environment, getting out of

a bad natural catastrophe, surviving in a period of time that's usually around 72 hours. So I made a survival kit starting out and then we started doing modern survival training courses that focused on the psychology. No shit. Instead of focused on just a skill set. Psychology is so much more important to understand and understanding how it works, meaning how resiliency works, how survival works. So I started studying case studies on why people live and why people die

and formulated a training plan based off of that. And then stood up, feelcrasse, survival under that methodology. We didn't talk for after that deployment in Yemen, we didn't keep in touch at all. We didn't really get close to that deployment or anything. And then I'm going through my transition, and I see them watching Fox News and all of a sudden, I see fucking Mike Glover pop up on Fox News. And I didn't even know your real name at that point. And I was like, holy shit, I know this fucking guy. And that's, I looked up, you know,

and I saw a field craft and I started personal IG and I was like, holy shit. And then I started following you more and more. And one of the things that I really like about what you guys are doing in the tactical space is you just fucking have this way keeping it real and there's not and you keep the tough guy bullshit attitude out of it which makes for the perfect learning environment but you keep

everything very realistic. You're not out there fucking dancing around like an idiot. You're focused on shit that works. And that can be kind of tricky in this space because everybody's looking for the circus, the shit that looks cool. And you've created a successful training business without ever getting involved in that shit. How did you do that? You know, what it is is it's kind of what I've done my entire life where I'm not worried about popularity. I don't give a fuck about flashy shit.

I just don't care. I've never been that way. I grew up poor and I didn't have a desire to pretend like I was rich. So I didn't look at what most kids look at on social media, which is popularity. They look at likes, for example. Likes is not a metric to success. It's a metric to success. It's a metric to popularity. There are two different distinct things. I'd rather have 100 likes on a post from 100 people who are willing to train and read my

content and take things seriously and survival and preparedness than have 25,000 likes of a bunch of nerds just geeking the fuck out over a picture of something that looks tacked the cool. Yeah. I never give a fuck about that. And I also don't give a fuck about teaching people things that are unrealistic. I know statistically that cardiovascular disease and cancer kill more people than anything on the planet. So yeah, you're less likely to be in a gun fight. Gun fight. So maybe instead of focusing on running and gunning unrealistically on a flat-range shooting still on paper, I'll instead focus on the basic skill sets of gun handling skills and safety and the fundamentals of marketmanship.

Because I want to make sure the guy or Gao who leaves my course could draw their pistol safely and engage a threat realistically, then fucking run around with a pro mask on, looking like a fucking operator when you've never operated day in your life. Like, I hate, I'm not a fan of that. Yeah. I'm not a fan of it because at the truth and core of it,

we all have choices and options. And I get the customer's going to go where they want to go. But like I said, I have my tribe and people who follow us and people who buy shit and train shit. I'm good with that. I'm not interested in being the fucking the Walmart tactician. Not interested at all. I mean, that's cool because you're also,

at the same time, you're looking for a particular customer, client, student, whatever you wanna call it, just by saying that. And I think that drives a lot of the, I call them the end of the world fantasy people to the other. They don't want to do the fundamentals. They don't, a lot of them, you know, they just want to come out there and get a fucking picture of them wearing a bunch of shit that they don't know how to use.

And they don't want to put the time and the effort into actually become efficient with their equipment. And how long did it take you to kind of like figure that out? Who, I mean, when you jump into the tactical space, you get all kinds of, you get all kinds of people that want to train. You get the guy that just wants to protect his family and church. You got all the way to the opposite who's secretly fantasizing that he's going to be shooting zombies on his fucking rooftop.

How long did you take you to figure out all the different profiles that want training in this space. One knew the way I would attract the right people was by doing what we do, which is being real, which is having realistic expectations of training. And Nat trying to build a business off of a gimmick. Everybody nowadays come to the table in a business plan with a gimmick, and my mom raised me in business to understand that hard work, discipline,

and your ethic is what's going to get you to the top. And maybe that's one slow step at a time, but that scales more optimal for me because it doesn't deviate for my values. So just putting out that would attract the right people and it has thus far. We've grown slowly over the last few years, but I'm okay with that, man. I'm okay with slow growth.

Yeah. A lot of these kids are living in fantasy world because they want to be somebody. I feel sorry for them. They want to be something significant, and so they use their social media to virtue signal to the world that there's something they're not. It's called emulation. It's what emulators do. It's what we did just in a different way

I mean I used to read Mac Vsog books sniper books from John Placer called his half-cock all those guys and When I read those books I went in the woods and I pretended but I did that when I was a kid Not a fucking adult and these guys are fucking grown-ass men And these guys are fucking grown-ass men, larping on social media, without the deliberate plan to do something significant. I always tell these kids who ask for advice, I'm okay with giving you advice.

I'll give you free advice all day, as long as it means something up into the day, not just you perpetuating a feeling, because you tell your friends at the bar, that yeah, yeah, you're trying trying out for special operations. And then two years later, you're still sitting on your ass and you're cubable. Your authenticity really comes through in your lives and everything else. And I think a lot of people are really, really drawn to that, especially

nowadays more than ever with all the, the phony shit on social media and I mean all of your branches of fieldcraft just seem to be growing very steadily. What's next? Next Russ is partnerships with good companies that represent preparedness and survival. I mean, we all have different genres, you know, whether it's 5'11 tactical or BCM, people have their narrow fields of fire, but we went a partner with good businesses and develop better equipment that helps people survive. There's a whole bunch of deficiencies in the game

because a lot of companies are focused on the wrong priorities in my opinion. I agree with you. We're going to try our best to fix those. And they continue doing medium. I love the medium thing like you do. This being your first podcast. I love podcasts because it gives opportunity to hear a long-form version of somebody's experiences. And set a clickbait.

And so I'm more interested in doing versions of that instead of doing shorter versions of clickbait. I do have a plan to write a book. I've written four chapters of it. It's probably one of the hardest things I've done technically. Looking for a publisher or an agent to get that knocked out because I realize I'm a good creative writer, but in 300 word increment on Instagram And I 250 page book online on mindset or survival

So yeah, man, we'll just we'll continue to grind. We got mobility coming out. I overland training.com is a domain That I've licensed from Overland Journal and Expedition Portal who are the OGs and bosses and Overland. So if you guys want to do Overland Training with us, OverlandTraining.com, and we've got a whole bunch of shit going on. We're training all over the United States. I'll be in Texas in January. My guys will be in California in January. I know I'm all over the place, man. It's a grind

that I'm in love with. It's something that I'm passionate about, and I've been in it for four years, and it's just something that I'm prepared to maintain. I made it for the marathon, the 50K or the 100K. I'm not in this for fucking no, a wind sprint. I heard you say, I heard you say on another podcast that you never made it about money. And I have not heard very many people in business say that. And I always say that too, which is another one of the similarities

that when you came up here, do you think that really helped you with your business by not making it about money and making it about growing? Yeah, yeah, 100%. We all have our incentives, and it really shapes your behavior and your pattern of life. If money, you know, I love these people, come out and say, money is not important to me. And they fly in G6's, they buy lambos and show the world they have for our ease and materialistic shit. I don't fucking care about any of that.

I literally don't. I have a couple of sentimental things that are more likely rocks and war memorabilia, but that could burn to the ground. I care more about people. And it's not a pitch. I've always been that way. I've always been in the military willing to sacrifice my time, my efforts, and potentially my life for people.

So coming out of the military, that didn't change for me. I didn't, you know, some people I've seen, I've seen this happen, it's directly affected me. When motherfuckers come out and they get a little taste of what they think is popularity and it changes who the fuck they are. That never interested me because I'm not, I never cared about popularity. I played high school football. I was a popular kid in the school but I didn't give a fuck and so I didn't, I didn't wear my ego on my on my shoulder. So when I make it about people, it changes the priorities whereby the bottom line for me

isn't the profit margin. The bottom line is taking care of people. And by default, and this isn't, I mean, you could look at books as a marketing tactic or a business tactic, but it has to be genuine. And so when I make it about people, people take care of our company. People buy our swag, they tend to tend our training because they believe in the mission, because I've made it about the mission and not about a bottom line in marketing. I see good companies doing great things and then charging people, fuck man, $500 for a

bag. Like, what? Like, what are you even doing? I remember I dropped one of my mobility bags, and I sold it for $200. It cost me $67.50 to make. That margin is low in textiles. I mean, it's low.

After all the shipping, receiving all the labor, the overhead and the building, electricity, etc. You're looking at an additional bag, a 50% profit margin. Dude, that's no money to be made. The people bitched about it, and people complained. So I lowered the price. I even had that thing for 99 bucks just because I knew I wanted to make people happy. Now, that's my downfall too.

My downfall is I'm not always looking at the numbers when in business you should be. You should be looking at the numbers. You should be paying attention to the numbers. But incentive wise, what should drive your behavior and what should drive your business should be for the right reasons and that for me is people.

And field craft, it seems like you guys do a lot of prepping and are masters of it. And I don't know about you, but a lot of the clients that I've had think that there might be something they need to prepare for. So I don't know about field craft, but I have a feeling our clientele are very similar because we're both realists. And I would say the majority of my clients, not all of them, but the majority of them think

that they need to be prepared for something. And you guys are big in the prepping world as well. They think something might happen, not necessarily the end of the world, but they just want to be ready in case of a natural disaster, any of the, there's a thousand different scenarios. What would you say for somebody that's completely green? They don't know how to shoot, they don't own a gun, they don't have food storage, anything. What would you say the number one priority would be? Where do they start? The number one priority for me is personal defense because the first principle of patrolling is security.

If you can't secure yourself, you can't secure your family, you can't defend your life, you can't defend your family's life. So I would say it starts with a personal decision to buy a firearm, learn how to utilize a firearm, and carry that firearm daily. What firearm would you suggest starting with Pistol or Rifle? I think universally, you know, I carry different guns for different reasons, but universally, a Glock 19 is probably the staple concealed carry pistol. In contracting, we carry Glock 17s typically but Glock 19s

is the right frame size for most it's the right size frame for concealment. It has the most accessories per gun in the industry. It's a good platform. It's reasonably reasonably priced and I've used a Glock 19 when the military got them in special operations and I've seen them throughout my military career and I've never seen one fail. So a single action only Glock 19 is the start point. I would definitely agree with that. It's like the Toyota Corolla of hand guns. Yeah, absolutely. It just never fucking died. Yeah.

I'm sorry. And then, so next would be, so you would say pistol and then move on to rifle. No, the next priority for me is med. Med? Med, absolutely. 30 for me is med. Med? Med, absolutely. 30,000 people a year die in vehicle accidents. I wonder how many of those could have been prevented. I mean,

480, it's a year of fall, their tree stands and hunting and break their legs and do dumb shit. So we're prone to accidents, we're prone to trauma. And I've treated trauma in real life. I've saved people's lives with turnikits, turnikit, which is a $29.99 piece of equipment from North American Rescue, which we sell on our website at PhilcrustreRobbo.com, is the number one piece of equipment that in Med that you need to carry. Stop in an extremity wound, a traumatic bleed from a Femoral or breakable artery is life saving. If you don't do that, you simply just go to sleep and die.

Are you guys teaching meds? We absolutely do, yeah. We teach T-Triple C, Tactical Combat Casualty Care, which we were required by our contract to train. We teach a course, certified T-Triple C course through NAMT, the certification on tactical med training, trauma training. I just taught CPR, life-saving course at my Tribexbo recently.

So we frequently teach med, and I expect that if in contracting in austere environments we're required to carry a tourniquet based on our own understanding of what we could run into that a civilian should do the same. Whether that's in your inside your waistband because we do sell inside the waistband tourniquet holder or that's inside of a bag or inside your vehicle, somewhere within arms reach, where if you're experiencing trauma, you could save your life. Interesting. So number three, what would the number three thing be? We got post-all, we got med.

If we're talking equipment specific things that you need to carry, the next piece of equipment would be the way in which you carry it, which would be the bag in need to carry. The next piece of equipment would be the way in what you carry it, which would be the bag and what you carry. A lot of people don't think about it, but the extension of your capability of what you can carry on your person is limited. You can only fit so much shit in your pockets and your pants. And if you have a bag, meaning an everyday carry bag, that might be your purse, your purse, your European man's actual.

It sets you up for an extended capacity. That's how we look at vehicles. I mean, if I have a med kit in my back pocket, that's a minimalist, you know, low viz med kit, well, I want my fucking car to be an ambulance. I want there to be enough met equipment to treat my family myself And then you upgrade that to your house as well. I want to damn hospital at my house So having the ability to carry all their stuff is super important and in that bag. I would definitely include a

survival kit a modern survival kit that That has the staples of survival including the the ability to contain water, purify water, start a fire, signal, communicate potentially sat or ridium VHF, UHF, the list goes on. Gummy bears. Gummy bears that are fat free, they have lots of carbs of carbs lots of sugars lots of calories. They're survival bears Well Mike, I know you got a flight to catch so I'm gonna wrap this up, but I just want to say Man, I'm I had a great fucking time you came up and I didn't I didn't know how this was gonna go

We hadn't seen each other in six, seven years. And I mean, I think we think very parallel on a lot of things and it was a great time. We made some great content. I can't thank you enough for coming up here. And it's been awesome watching you grow and watching Field Craft grow. And I can't wait to see what comes in the years ahead.

So thank you for coming out. Thanks for having me, man. I'm looking forward to hearing your podcast and seeing what you guys have in the future. I mean, you're one of three YouTube channels that I watch. The other two or mushroom YouTube channels, foraging for mushrooms. You do love some mushrooms.

I love them. I love them. And so, yeah, man, I appreciate you guys having me out and you know, open your doors to me and it's rare for me like you to get out. And when I do go out, it's only four specific reasons or specific people and you guys are some really good people doing some really good stuff and I'll look forward to doing more with you. Thank you. Yeah, I hope we can do this again some time. Real quick, before we hang this up, where can we find you? We're all over social

media obviously, Philcraft survival fit Fit, Philcraft Mobility, Philcraft Survival, Mike.A.Glever on my personal Philcraft Survival.com, OverlandTraining.com. If you need to find us, just Google us, you'll find us. We have a podcast on iTunes called the Philcraft Survival Podcast, And we also have a podcast called the Modern Mindset 365 Podcast, which is all about mindset. So yeah, definitely hit us up and look us up. You heard it, look a mob.

I think you should open another profile called Magic Mike, the Magic Mike. But I like that. Yeah, that's a good one. But all right, thanks again, man. And we'll see you guys soon. We got a jet to the airport. Cool.

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