Shawn Ryan Show - #313 Eric Frohardt - DEVGRU Gold Squadron Sniper and Assaulter

Episode Date: June 15, 2026

Raised on a farm in Northwest Iowa, Eric Frohardt learned the value of hard work and personal responsibility at an early age. After one year of college, he joined the Navy and achieved his goal of becoming a Navy SEAL in 2000. Over nearly 12 years of service, he deployed around the world with SEAL Team Five and DEVGRU before being medically retired due to combat-related injuries. Since leaving the military, Eric has built and led teams across multiple industries, becoming a respected business leader, consultant, and speaker. Today, he is passionate about faith, family, leadership, and helping others reach their full potential while glorifying God through service. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: For problems worth solving — get started with Claude at — https://Claude.ai/srs. Get firearm security redesigned and save 10% off @StopBoxUSA with code SRS at https://stopboxusa.com/SRS #stopboxpod Get started with ShipStation today and get sixty days free at https://shipstation.com with code srs. Taxes and fees apply. Go to https://meetfabric.com/SHAWN and apply today, risk-free. Eric Frohardt Links: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ericfrohardt Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/eric.frohardt X - https://x.com/EricFrohardt Website - https://www.ericfrohardt.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. Eric Frohart, welcome to the show, man. Thanks, man. Thanks for having me. It's good to have you. So, Eddie Penny connected us.

Yeah. I love Eddie. Yeah. He's a huge inspiration into my faith journey. And wow. Yeah, that's awesome. How long have you guys known each other? So Eddie and I were, we were together at Gold for a while.

I've known. I didn't know him before. before he got there because I came from Team 5 and he came from, I want to say, team two. Team 2, yeah. So I think I got to, I got to Gold a little bit before him and then he, you know, he got there and then, you know, I met him and we started working together. Right on. Right on.

Good dude. Yeah. Well, I'm glad we connected. Yeah, I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks, man. Thrilled to have you. So let me start you off with a introduction here if we don't mind. Yep.

Eric Frohardt. You spent nearly 12 years as a Navy SEAL serving with both SEAL Team 5 and Naval Special Warfare Development Group. You deployed around the world specialized as a sniper, point man, and lead climber, and completed climbs of El Capitan, Denali, and... Akon Kagauga. There it is. You are medically retired as a SEAL operator chief after combat injuries and a medical condition that cost you a kidney. Since leaving the military, you've built and led high-performing teams across multiple industries and now serve as chief standards officer at Goldenrod Companies.

You're a leadership speaker, board member, husband, father of four, and a committed follower of Christ. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, bro. Got you a present. You want to see it? Yeah. All right. All right. Do I make it up or? No, no, I got it. Since you don't have any truck guns, I thought maybe you might like one of these. That is the ultimate. Do you know what that is? Oh my gosh, bro.

That is sweet. That's the Sig Sauer Rattler. So SBR version with the collapse or the foldable stock, fixed iron sights that's one of sig's new red dot optics up there it's got a sig flashlight on there with the thumb activation switch and then silencer shop oh my gosh they heard you were coming too so so the gun is from my friend jason over at siggs yeah and then silencer shop heard you were coming so they wanted to throw a can on there suppressor i love silencer shop because they do all this extra stuff for the second amendment. Yeah, yeah.

And, yeah, they were pumped that you were coming on the show. So they wanted to, they wanted to present you with a brand new 300 blackout truck gun. Bro. Well, first of all, thank you to you. Thank you, Sig and Silencher Shop. That is, that is freaking amazing. How does this work? you got to push the top

thing down. This thing down? Yeah. Oh, I see it. Dude. Suppressor's illegal in Nebraska, right? Yeah. Cool.

I thought so. Did you use 300 blackout at dev group at all? They were starting to a little bit. Really? But then I always ran a 416, a P226, before they were switching.

And then some of the dog handlers and maybe EOD guys were running the, what was it, the MP7? Right, the little. Yeah. And then when I did reckey work and sniper work, you know, once in a while, what was it, the 417? But that thing was just big and loud. So most of the time, 416. Right on. Yeah.

Right on. This is freaking amazing. Thank you. Maybe you can use these on your, uh, Next Adventure. Yeah, for sure. These are awesome. Thank you.

So you're leaving at the end of the month. Legal in all 50 states. Legal in all 50 states. I got to take these back to Nebraska. Get them past the drug dogs. Yep, you'll be good. I've got them past several times. But, yeah, maybe you can use those on your climb.

You're getting ready to leave on a climb, right? That's right. That's right. Getting ready to climb Kilimanjaro. We're taking off in about almost 20 days. It's just 21 days. So we are climbing, my son and I, along with eight other climbers, are going to go climb Kilimanjaro to help raise money and awareness

for global partners in Hope, which is a, it's a nonprofit based in Omaha that does work in West Africa, Specifically, they do, they build water wells and medical treatment facilities, kind of like treatment centers in kind of underserved French, kind of the French-speaking West African area. Right on, man. Oddly, I had met the, so I met the CEO and founder of Global Partners in Hope when I was moving to Nebraska, I emailed my former commanding officer at Dev Group. He was Captain Moore when I left and now he's retired Admiral Scott Moore. And I told him and I was telling a lot of my friends like, I'm just, I'm leaving Colorado.

I'm moving to Omaha, just giving people a heads up, right? And I had stayed in touch with my, I had stayed in touch with at the time Captain Moore. Anyway, he's like, you got to go meet this guy, Ian, when you move to Omaha. He runs a nonprofit there. He's connected to everyone. So a few months after I live there, I go and meet Ian Vickers. And he who run, he started Global Partners in Hope and is the CEO and executive director. I go and meet him.

And before he had started that, he was a pastor of a church. and built a big church in Omaha. And then before that, he mentioned to me that he preached in a very small town in northwest Iowa. And the town was the same town as where one of my aunts and uncles lived. And I asked, I'm like, do you know my aunt and uncle, Joyce and Alvin?

And he's like, oh, my gosh, I pastored their church in Northwestern. Iowa. Not only that, he lived with them while his house, while he was trying to move into his house. Wow. So we just kind of, we kind of connected. He started to introduce me to some people in Omaha. Eventually, he asked me to be on his board. So now I'm a board member. I'm honored to be on the board of Global Partners in Hope. And a couple of, I think it was the end of, maybe the end of 2025 at one of our board meetings, we had heard about a similar nonprofit that was doing a climb in Africa, climbing Kilimanjaro, to raise money and awareness for their cause. And we just,

one of us kind of posited the idea of doing it for what we're trying to support. And then before I knew it, we had 10 of us signed up to go climb Kilimanjaro. So we are going to leave in 20 days. And the money we raised from this climb is going specifically to water wells and a medical treatment facility there. And in that part of Africa, like access to clean water is so limited. And just having clean water saves so many lives. And not only does it save lives, it gives women and kids more time. Because kids during the day, they might be sent to fetch water from somewhere that has clean water. So now they're spending their day fetching water.

They can't get educated. So just a well makes a huge difference. And the wells that Ian builds and that Global Partners builds, they are self-sustained. So when we build these wells there, they, we train the locals how to operate them. So when money is raised, we don't go back to donors later and say, hey, we need to, that well we put in,

it needs to be fixed over and over again, right? Like they're self-sustained. And the treatment facilities we build are the same way. And we're, like a little bit goes so far there, like Ian like Ian teaches at a college in Omaha, Creighton. And I've seen him like, ask the kids like, hey, who in here was, you know, born from C-section, C-Sycerian section? And generally something like, I don't know what the percentage is now, but it could be 10, 20%, or whatever it is. I have four kids all born by C-section, right?

And he's like, now put your hands down because you wouldn't be here. Because in places like West Africa, if the mom needs a C-section, like the mom dies, the baby dies, right? So in this little treatment facility there, a couple hundred people and a couple hundred moms will be alive because of just a new little hospital. Wow. And the crazy thing is, like the hospital that he's building there, that the treatment facility, it's something like, like $180,000. I saw that. Which is, you know, even in Omaha where it's very affordable.

Like you can't, you barely buy a house for that in our country. So we're climbing Kilimanjaro to raise money to help with the well in a treatment facility. And, you know, we're going to go whatever. It's 44 miles. And you start at like 12,000. feet and you finish at 19,400-ish. So it's 44 miles and whatever, you know, 7,000 foot of elevation gain. And you're going to spend, we're going to spend seven nights sleeping in a tent, eating dehydrated food and hiking all day. And, you know, it's hard. But, like, we're choosing

to do it. You know what I mean? And they're like, their, their days are that hard. And they, they don't get to choose. You know what I mean? So, yeah. Man, that's cool. This. Is there a, we'll put the link in the description for anybody that wants to touch in on that. We have a, we have a landing page for all the different climbers and each, each separate climber has their own landing page and my son and I have our own, our own page. And I'll give you the link. And I mean, 50 bucks goes a long way. So, yeah, very exciting.

Noble cause, man. Yeah, thank you. So let's get into your story. Where did you grow up? I grew up in a very small town in northwest Iowa called Sac City, Iowa. I was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, like 40 minutes away from there. And I was raised in a small town and grew up mostly working on the farm. So my mom was a nurse and my dad was a farmer.

And, you know, I spent as much time as I can remember out on that farm. So, yeah, very small town. What are you guys farming? We raised corn, soybeans, and hogs. And for us, I think at our highest, maybe we had 800 acres of, like, corn and soybeans, right? but most of the labor was hogs because with the corn you plant it same thing with the beans you know you plan it and then it's in the field

and then you don't really do much to it until harvest time right but year round there was hog work and we had like back then it was Pharaoh to finish So we had like boy hogs and girl hogs and they had baby hogs. And the way it works now is people generally buy hogs that have been weaned from the moms and finish them out. Right. But we had, you know, we had hogs indoors and outdoors and pretty big operation. So it was, I tell people now like the farm I learned so much on that farm.

farm and it helped shape me and it like honestly it forged me it like it helped me make it through buds um but like hog farming is like it's not glamorous yeah right i'll bet it's not there's no there's no hog farm version of yellowstone right uh it's just and like i just remember like i hated it like really well i mean i liked being on the farm and like working but then it was like Like there were days when you're like, all right, I'm going to hard work, low pay, and, you know, and just sometimes dirty, nasty work. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I've told my dad since, you know, I wouldn't trade it for anything, you know?

So. Yeah. Do you have brothers and sisters? I do. I have two brothers and a sister. So one of my brothers and my sister live in Omaha. and then one of my brothers is in Orlando. Right on.

Yeah. And we're all very, we're all very close still. Right on. Yeah. I live about a mile and a half from one of my brothers. Wow. That's awesome.

Yeah. Where do you fall on the birth order? What's at? Where do you fall on the birth order? I'm the oldest. You're the oldest? I am the oldest, yep. Right on.

What else were you into as a kid? So I grew up on the farm. Um, you know, it was very work hard, play hard, right. Um, get the work done, but we had four wheelers. We had a dirt bike. We had a Honda Odyssey, like the old like single seat dune buggy. Nice. Before they renamed a minivan an odyssey and, uh, you know, fishing and hunting and just

building like when I was little like building forts, just all that sort of thing on the farm. tubing, you know, behind the four-wheeler in the snow and just, you know, just kind of made your own fun out on the farm. Yeah. But then as I got into like middle school and then in high school, I was, you know, really loved football and lifting weights. So. Were you close with your parents?

Very, very close. So I, like, I don't, I don't have like a sob story. some people who, you know, joined the military. Like, I grew up with very loving parents and who, you know, we weren't spoiled by any means. We worked hard, but we had, you know, we had a nice home. We always had amazing meals. And we always had spent time together and, like, watch TV together like everyone did back then. And close to my siblings and, you know, all of that.

So I learned a lot from, like, learned a lot from my parents, you know. And my mom was just so, so calm and so caring and so loving. And she worked so hard for us. And she was, she was gone a lot because she was a nurse. But she would always still, like, find time to make our favorite meals and that sort of thing. And she was, most of all, I remember about my mom was just her calmness. And that's something that helped me, like, when I was in the teams, right? And I could always kind of just be relatively calm when things were getting, like, wild. And my dad, on the other hand, is not calm. Like, he's just, like, this big ball of energy or was. And he, like, when I graduated high school, my dad was like, I don't know, like, almost six, five, but three, four. 40 and he he could like I was training for football and he could still beat me in a 40-yard dash

holy shit is a monster are you serious yeah and like he he can't put his index finger through the trigger guard of a Glock 19 like he's a beast whoa yeah and so I'm like I couldn't like you know if if I like mouthed off to him he could just pick me up with one hand or whatever um but he you know I learned a lot from him too we worked hard but he always played with us he always did things with us like kids from other like my friends would come out because he would like he could work all day

and then pull us around on a on behind the four wheeler and the snow like he always he's very playful but then he also you know taught us like to be responsible so like if you had a job to do on the farm like you were responsible for getting it done and then accountable for the results right so if you left if you left the pen open and the hogs got out like you better take blame for it you better go put them back in right um and the thing most of all from him was probably just respect of women so the

the cardinal offense in our house like if mom got upset like we were in trouble and you didn't want to make my dad angry. Like, A, he had a temper, but he's also almost 6.5.350, right? Like, he could be scary. So, I'll bet. If mom got angry, like, we tried to, you know, butter her up before dad got him. So, anyway, yeah. For this show, the biggest thing is preparation. When you're sitting down for a long-form conversation, you can't just show up with surface-level notes. You need real depth, structure, and the right questions. That's where I've been using Claude. It's helped me with research, building outlines, and shaping better questions before I sit down with a guest. I'll take a topic or a guest, run it through Claude, and it helps

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I. slash SRS. Were you good at sports? Yeah. I thought I was. Like, so in a small town

you kind of get to do everything. Mm-hmm. And when I was really, when I was younger, it was T-ball and then Little League and And then, you know, I made the All-Star team in Little League, but it's such a small town, right?

And then there was a time where in the summer I would be doing like baseball and swimming. And I was like, I was on an all-star baseball team and an all-district swimmer. But this is a town of whatever, 1,200 people, right? I don't know how big it is now, but it's not huge. I graduated with right around 30. So. So, but I always loved, like, for whatever reason, like, I just loved football. And I worked, I worked so hard to play football.

And I, so I had played all those sports and basketball. Like, you kind of ran track. You just did it all, right? And back then, people didn't specialize either. And it was a small town. At small school, you kind of could do it all. Yeah. If I was in even Omaha now, I probably wouldn't make the team on half those sports in any of those schools, right?

So I, but I think it was my, by the time I got to high school, I was just so tired of not having a summer because it was like, like grade school and middle school. I would have swim team practice in the morning, go to the farm all day. and then have baseball practice at night. Wow. And then once the practices were kind of over, there was game times. So there were times where I would have two swim meets a week and two baseball games a week,

maybe a tournament on the weekend, and farming every day. Right. So my summers, they were a blink. Yeah, the busy kid. And then so when I got into high school, like I just had this like epiphany. I'm like, I'm just going to play football.

And my summers were going to be spent lifting weights and doing farm work and fishing, right? And then maybe some, you know, running and conditioning stuff for football. And then all of a sudden, like, I just had these awesome summers. Like, I was just lifting weights in the morning or doing the football conditioning stuff, the sprints, farm all day, work on the farm all day. and then, you know, maybe go fishing or go out or something at night. And I, like, that was a lot of fun. Right.

But I was, I was decent at football. I think my senior year, I was, you know, pretty good. Thought I was. Made all-state as a linebacker. I think it was like second team all-state or whatever. But I'm like, oh, I'm going to get, like, and I wanted it really bad. right um so i went and tried to play football in college and my again my dad's really big and my uncles are anywhere from six three to six four and big uh i mean my little brother

he graduated high school at six five to seventy five and my cousins are six three i mean my other little brother right now is six three i'm the i'm you know kind of the runt but i thought like oh i'm going to go to college and i'm just going to go to junior college because i'm just going to hit my growth spurt later like i was planning a growth spurt and i'll go to junior college and i'll get like two years of football right i'll get i'll get on their strength and conditioning program and eat some more and then i'll get better at football and like two years later i'm going to get it like this was my plan. I'm going to get a Division I scholarship to Iowa State and play, right? Like, that's what I,

that's what I wanted more than anything, right? So graduate high school. I go to a junior college, community college in Mason City, Iowa called Nyack, Northern Iowa area community college. And I get up there and I'm thinking like, it's just, just junior college. It's going to be like 13th grade, right? Like it ain't, it's not like I'm going to like back then, like I live in Nebraska now and in the 90s, Nebraska was like the football. Oh, yeah. So it wasn't like I was going to play Division 1 at Nebraska where I, you know, probably wasn't worthy of carrying water, right? And I show up, show up at Nyack. And there were a few people

like me kind of farm kids, but there was also like Division 1 town. there from other states who were like, like, Iowa and like parts of the Midwest, they have a good, like, junior college feeder program that like feed the main universities. And there's people there that maybe didn't have good enough GPAs or high enough ACTs. And they're getting their grades up to then go play elsewhere. So we had people on our team like get picked up to go play Division One later. and it was a good junior college team. So I get there and wouldn't you know it, I'm like, not that good.

Like I, and I had, you know, I had like bulked up a bunch, right? I got above 200 by the time I, before I went there. But I was trying to play linebacker, and like the linebackers were like 220 and they could run faster than me. Like, I had the speed, like, of alignment, and I was strong. I just couldn't, like, like, I couldn't play, right? So I like to say I wasn't big enough, strong enough, or fast enough, but, like, I just

wasn't good enough, right? And it was, it was kind of eye-opening when you just see that kind of talent. But, like, the cool thing, like, like, I don't have any regrets because, like, I like to say, like, you know, I never achieved my gridiron goals. But I learned so much. Like I learned just like football is a hard sport, right? The games are fun when you're good. But practices are hard, right?

You're hitting. You're wearing pads. I remember in high school, we were doing two a days in Iowa and it's hot. Right? So we would have morning practice and then a late afternoon practice. And in between that, instead of going home and playing video games and drinking Gatorade, like half my friends, I had to go work on the farm between the morning and the afternoon practice, right?

And I might be bailing hay and drinking Pepsi, right? Like instead of video games. But back to football. Football is hard. It can hurt. But you learn like so much about teamwork and commitment and preparation. Like every, the more the more time you spend in the weight room or off-season conditioning, the better you'll be.

Like you just learn all these things and you learn kind of like a team sport, how to win and how to lose. Like some people that don't play those sports, like they just like don't have that experience. Yeah. Right. So I learned a lot from football and I never achieved my goals. But like, like sometimes the person you become in pursuit of a goal is the actual, like you didn't know it at the time, but that's the reward.

You know what I mean? And we were, I don't know, we had finished a year of football. And I mean, you will get a kick out of this. We're watching a movie about seals in a dorm room. And I've had like, maybe like three or four natural lights, like the cheap version of Bud Light. And I'm sitting there like, and it's a shame to say it was G.I.J. We're literally watching. And my one of my friends in college had like rented G.I.J. for Blockbuster.

I got hooked on it. And I watch it. I'm like three or four beers deep. And I just, I don't know, a light bulb goes off, literally. And I go, I'm going to join the Navy and be a seal. I'm so, I'm not going to play football. That moment? Yeah.

Like right there. Yeah. I stood up. I said this in the dorm room. And we had one dorm room that was like no beds in it. It kind of was converted into it. It had like two couches and a TV, like a party room. Yeah.

And I just said, I, this light bulb went off. I'm like, I'm going to join the Navy and become a seal. And someone in the room was like, yeah, whatever. You'll never do it. You can't do it. Like, you're not big enough. Like, it wasn't big enough.

But like, I know a guy who was a Marine. He's much tougher. You'll never make it. Right. And like in that, like, I just needed someone to say I couldn't do it. And I enlisted in the Navy the next day. Holy shit. Shit, are you...

On a bet. On a bet. Still hung over from Adi Light. Literally, from G.I.J. Damn. Right? Now, I didn't leave the next day. I joined on delayed entry.

Right? The DE was called... Were you just hoping that all your teammates look like Demi Moore? I just thought like... So, I... There was something like... You know, like, we all have a chip on our shoulder.

that go and do that. We're like going to prove something. Yeah. Right? And I'm like, I'm sitting there in college. I'm like, well, I'm not proving anything here sitting as the third string outside linebacker, right? I need to go do something different, right?

And I will be the first to say it was a, like, we can get into this later, but it was a selfish pursuit. After 9-11, that all changes, like, because now I'm like, oh, I'm serving my country, but I joined the Navy to go, prove that I could go do something, which that's fine, right? Like, it's, it is what it is. I wanted to prove that I could do it. And then I had someone tell me I couldn't do it. I enlisted in the Navy the next day on a bet. And then I was in the delayed entry program. So I finished out my, uh, finished out my one year of college, because I'm like, I might as well finish this year in case I go back or whatever. And then that time, I think college got over, that year of college gets over in

what, like May, something. So from May to October, I'm on delayed entry. And then I go back, I go back to Sac City. And I literally have this, like, period of my life that is, like, one of the most purposeful, like, seasons that I've ever had. Because I was, I was young, like 19, but I knew what I wanted to do with my life. Like there was, I was singularly focused, right? I was going to be a Navy SEAL. I had so much clarity, like, about that and so much purpose. So I would, and I had gotten this dumb little, like, printed PDF from the recruiter.

It was called the warning order back then. And it's this old school like, it's like 15 pages of eight and a half by 11 paper that's stapled in the corner, that it has the running program, the swimming program, and then the calisthenics program, the push-ups, the pull-ups, the sit-ups, and the dips.

And to me, like, I took that home. and, you know, I had finished my junior year of college, or I'm sorry, my one year of college. And I was like 215 pounds. Like I had bulked up for, for ball. But I wasn't getting any faster and I wasn't still going to play. And I show up back and back at home and I got this, now I got this path, right?

And I literally, like, I'm going to spend the whole summer just working on the farm and working out. So I'll, like, that whole time basically June through October, like every morning I would do, I would work up, it worked you up to a two mile swim, right? So it had a, it sequentially got longer. So towards the end of that, like five, like three to five days a week, I'm doing a two mile swim in fins in a pool. Like, it's in a rec center.

in doors. And I remember it was like... How many laps is that? 44. Oh my gosh. It was 88 lengths. Damn. It was 88 lengths or 44 laps.

And I would like sometimes lose count. So it was like, you know, I'm trying to figure out how to keep my count. And I would do that every morning, right? Like anywhere from three to five days a week. And then the running program, well, I'll go sequester. Then there was the push-ups, the pull-ups, and the sit-ups, and they had these pyramids. And it was anywhere from three to four days a week, right? And, like, they have so much better shit now from, like, the human performance side.

Like, and they have, like, they have these programs that the SEAL recruiters give you. This is just an old printed-off thing that I got from a Navy recruiter in Basin City, Iowa. Yeah. But I'll never forget, like, I didn't even have pull-up bar. So I'd like, I build a pull-up bar from a rafter in the barn. And then, you know, I had this piece of carpet on the floor in a shop, like a machine shop for push-ups and sit-ups, just a piece of old, like, kind of like this, right? That was my PT pad. Nice.

And then I even, like, built a dip bar in the shop. So it was kind of like Rocky Four, right? So I'd do my swim in the morning. I'd go to the farm all day and I'd do chores and do the work or whatever, whatever I was doing. And throughout the day I would take a break and grab a set of pull-ups, set of push-ups, sit-ups, dips, whatever the program called for. And then when sometime late afternoon, you know, maybe when the chores were almost done or even like we had a farm site that was like three miles away, right, from this one farm site. So if that day called for a six-mile run, like, I would just put on shorts and run in my boots from this farm to that farm, do chores, and then run back.

So I'm like farming all day. I do like two miles swim every day, farming all day, and then work up to like five or six-mile runs every day. And I'm like super in shape, right? Yeah. And then I'm sure you experience the same thing. getting like you get in this great shape and then you go to boot camp and get out of shape, at least Navy boot camp. But I had, you know, a big part of the story that I'm leaving out was my dad's support.

I was going to ask. What did your parents think? So on the one hand, it was like so helpful when someone said I couldn't do it. Like I needed someone to say you couldn't do that. I was going to prove them wrong. And then I came home from college. I think it was around Christmas and New Year's, you know, the break. And I told my, I told my folks, like, we were at my grandpa's house and getting ready to have Christmas dinner.

And I was like, I had been meaning to tell him sooner, but I just didn't have the courage because I thought he's going to like whap me. Really? Like, I mean, just jokingly. Like, you dumbass, don't. You want you to be a farmer or something? No, but I mean, he wanted us to go to college. He didn't, actually, he didn't want us to be farmer. He's like, he doesn't want us to take over the farm.

It's, our experience with farming was like long work, hard hours. We didn't, you know, we didn't make a ton doing it. We didn't have land. You know, he didn't inherit land. We couldn't buy land at the time. Like, it was, it was just a lot of work. And it wasn't for us not. Anyway, he never, like, pushed us.

He never pushed us to be farmers. I mean, we worked on the farm because that was, uh, that, paid for room and board. Right. Yeah. But in a moment, and he was just, you know, he's so awesome. But I just go, all right, dad, well, I'm not going back to college next year. I'm going to be a Navy SEAL.

I said all that in like one breath. And he just looks at me, you know, looks down on me. And he's just like, okay. Well, like, I forget the words exactly. But something like, like, I really think you'll be one of the. few that makes it through and you'll be good at that. I'm excited for you, son. Right. And to have that, like, that encouragement, you know, from your dad was just like, you know, so powerful. Yeah. And just a reminder, like, you know, hopefully someday, like, I'll be aware enough for someone,

if they need that encouragement from me, like, I can mimic that. That makes sense. What did you tell them you were going to be before that? Was it when you went to school? I was taking ag business and criminal science classes. So I was either going to be a farmer or in the FBI. I honestly didn't know. Right on.

And part of it was you go to junior college, a lot of it's general ed. And you might change later anyway. Yeah. You can get your general ed done at junior college, community college, and then go to university. And you might change your mind by then. You know what I mean? So I was not, wasn't really sure. What about your mom?

My mom. So, yeah, she was a nurse. No, I mean, what did she think? Well, she was concerned, right? She didn't really, she didn't know what that was. was, like what a seal was, right? My dad knew because, you know, he'd read even like Rogue Warrior and like when I grew up, like, as a little kid, every Friday, dad would get a tape. We didn't have a blockbuster, but we had a corner store with VCR. Like, we would have to rent

a VCR and he would bring an action movie home. It could be Rambo or a Commando or diehard or like some 80s action movie. Oh, yeah, man. And so, like, Friday night was always, like, movie night and, like, that, like, really shaped, you know. He was aware of what Seals were. And one time we did, you know, I think it was like the, certainly in the 90s, but he brought home the Charlie Sheen Seals movie. And, like, my brother and I watched that.

And like, the next day at the farm, we had this swing set and we turned it into our obstacle course. Nice. Yeah. So, I was. It was one of those, like, for a while, I was one of those, like, every time I watched a movie, my career path changed. Yeah. Like, if it was backdraft, I was going to be a fireman.

If it was G.I.J. I was going to be in the ABC. So, yeah. Anyway, my mom was not, she's supportive of it. But, like, also, like, back then, like, this is 98. Like, it wasn't like she didn't know what I was signing up. up for. You know what I mean? But mom, yeah, she, I would say, you know, fast forward to 2001, and now I'm on deployment, like they're, you know, they're turning into prayer warriors just because

of the way things changed. So I made it, I don't know, finished my year of college. I had that summer of purpose and trained and I shipped off and went to boot camp in October. right on um and then boot camp you know it's uh i'm sure you experience the same thing like you get in really good shape and then you go there and you're just folding clothes and doing dishes and i mean it was awful i mean was yours the same yeah i mean shining shining your boots shining your boots sweeping the floor a lot of cleaning swabbing the deck. Swobbing the deck.

Yeah. No, boot camp, for me. Basically all the extra motivation you need not to quit bugs. 100%. That's absolutely right. Oh, this is what I'll be doing if I don't make it. Right. This is fucking horrible.

No, thanks, bro. Yeah. Yeah. No, so I go to boot camp in October of 98, and it's mostly uneventful. there's two things that stand out about boot camp. A, I met Matt Bissonette and I were in sister divisions in boot camp. Oh, no shit.

So I meet him in boot camp. We end up going to Buds one class apart. I go a class before him because he had a longer A school. But then we show up at Team 5 together. We're in the same STT class at SEAL Team 5. and we do for two rotations at Team 5,

we are in sister platoons, right? So we're kind of going through all this together. I would have gone to Dev Group the same time he did, were it not for my kidney thing, which we'll get into.

So I've known no one longer in the military than him. Wow. So met Matt in boot camp. And then it was towards, so towards the end of boot camp, Um, the and boot camp again, it's so it's pretty easy. A, I was in really, really good shape and be like the work, like the work ethic you learn on a farm, right, which just carried me through, has carried me through so many things made like boot camp was simple. But at the end of boot camp, um, I, I had this like extreme pain in my side, right? And, um, and, um, I, I had this like extreme pain in my side. Right. And, like my parents come to be there for graduation.

And like you get to go spend like, I don't think we got to stay in the hotel with them, but like they could pick you up during the day and like, take you out to eat or whatever. And so I've been at boot camp and I had missed my folks and miss my siblings and my brothers and sister. And they're all younger. And I'm like,

like as boot camp approaches, you're just so excited. to see your family. It's been like three months. Yeah. And you're just so excited, get out on town and eat real food, not this crap from this chow hall. And they finally get there and boot camp's finally over and I can't do it because I'm in this, like, I just go back to their hotel room and I'm curled up in a ball on the bed, right? And I just want to be in a fetal position. And I get like, so I get like, I see the doctors, the boot camp doctors and they're just like, well,

it's probably ibs, irritable bowel syndrome. And eventually it kind of goes away, right? Or whatever. And I, this, this is a pain that would plague me like in boot camp, at the end of boot camp,

and then once in buds during hell week, and then once in sniper school, and then once in land warfare for when I was at, at team five. And I would later find out, like, it's a kidney stone. So I had this pain. Been in there that fucking long. Well, I would, I would, they would pass, right?

And they would, like, they would like, somehow the way the doctor explained it to me, like, it would get stuck in the, my, the ureter is the tube between your kidney and your bladder. And mine was like, had like scar tissue in it. So there would be times where my kidney wouldn't drain all the way. And then if it would get backed up, it would form a stone. Right. So I find out never diagnosed. Like I'm diagnosed in boot camp with IBS and constipation.

And it's a blocked kidney. So. And I'll go through that sequentially. But like, so I finished boot camp. And then I go to. whatever. Back then, um, seal wasn't a rate.

Uh-huh. So I went to A school. I went to Sonartec, Sonor Tech, Sonor Tech A school in Point Loma. So anyway, uh, that was like, I think that's like five weeks.

Sonar Tech, but they don't, and they don't send a five week A school graduate into the fleet. They have to go through other training before they're actual sonar techs. And I was the honor man of my sonar tech A school. And they were going to give me my choice of orders.

I'm like, well, I'm going to buds. And somebody else the first choice. Yeah. And you had to, as you probably, I don't know, when did you join? 2001. July 2001. Got it. Right before 9-11.

Yeah. So like back then you had to. like this was called the seal challenge program same and you were going to get e4 out of buds if you made it but you had to pass these you had to pass the test in boot camp and then in a school right and then and then the first day of buds as long as you pass those PRTs you're in it right so you know the drill yeah that's what i was doing right on yeah well let's take a quick break and then when we come back we'll see if uh all of the buds candidates when you showed up like Demi Moore.

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Head to StopboxUSA.com and use code SRS for 10% off your entire order. After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them our show sent you. Welcome to Hollywood versus reality. They do it, right? What does he do in the movies? Tell me if I'm doing this wrong because I don't watch any of the shit. Little flick like that, right?

Seems pretty cool. It is pretty cool. Gotta silence it. In another lifetime, I did gun reviews for a living. Proprietary magazines. Supposedly the best engineering in the fucking world. When that breaks, you're... And now we're bringing them back.

It does look pretty fucking cool. I got to admit that. All right, Eric, we're back from the break. Yeah. Getting ready to show up to buds. So, yeah. What's your first impression? What's it like walking in there? Well, I was, you know, my time in the military and in the teeth, like all of it is marked by steep learning curves.

You know, they like take people off the street, turn them into seals or in my case, take them off the farm, right? And first of all, I'm one of the guys dumb enough, like naive enough, like when they're like, who's never been in the ocean before? and I'm like, right, like thinking it's a badge of honor. Yeah. And then, you know, whatever the proctor, whoever the instructor was at the time, he's like, get over here, we got to go catch up. Takes me to the ocean. Like, and I'm in, at the time, PTRR or something, you know, before you're phased up.

And he just proceeds to surf torture me until I'm stop showing. right? And I'm like, I don't, you know, I had seen the ocean, I guess, technically, because I was in Point Loma for A-School, but I never been in it. And like, I didn't realize how cold it was, how cold the Pacific Ocean. Like, I watched Baywatch. That's what I thought. I watched Bay. That was my fucking Baywatch. Well, everyone's running around in swim trunks and, you know, Bikini suits. Yeah. And I'm like, it can't be that bad. So long story short, I wasn't expecting the water to be that cold or taste that gross, you know, that salt. Yeah.

But my first impression. That salt and shit coming up from Tijuana. My first impression, it's, I don't know, it was kind of interesting. You kind of look around and, you know, you're all kind of. kind of like measuring each other. Like, you know, is that guy going to be here at the end? And measuring each other up. Yeah.

And I've done it, you know, I've done it recently in a college football or whatever. You're kind of looking around and trying to see where you might fit. And for me, I don't know. I'm sure you had the same experience, but I'm not sure how many people we started with. I have seen and heard it was somewhere around 180 or 160 or whatever. And we graduated six months later with 19. Wow. Damn.

21 total 19 originals. And if you... If you... 21 total 19. Holy shit. You only had two rollbacks? Three. So it's 22.

Sorry. Holy shit. Yep. And we had, if you took like, just say it's 150 or 190 or whatever it was we started with, I wish I could find this out. And you just took this long, like this big panoramic photo. And I gave you a Sharpie. And I said, now circle or not you, but if I just gave it to some random person, circle the 19 people that are going to make it through, based on appearances.

Like, you wouldn't have circled me. Like, let's say all of our shirts are off or whatever. You wouldn't have circled me and you wouldn't have circled half the people that made it through. Because you can't really judge someone by their appearance, like, in that role. Yeah.

Better example. A better example would be Excel. Take all 190 or whatever, however many candidates there were. And every name is on. a row so it's 190 rows or again however many it was and then every column was a measurable run time swim time obstacle course push-ups pull-ups sit-ups like tested and then i just said all right now highlight the 19 people who are going to make it well you wouldn't have i wasn't in the top

you wouldn't have chosen me and you wouldn't have chosen half the people that made it. Or even looking at pedigree. Like if you just looked at people's like resume and there was a there was like some really good you know college athletes or Olympic alternate decathalade or whomever that were the best runner swimmer push-ups, pull-ups, fastest O-course times like all of those.

Yeah. And those people didn't make it. Like it's so strange. And you have like the failed junior college football players and the washed out wrestlers and the whatever like it what now for sure there were plenty of there were plenty of guys that looked like they were going to make it through and had the measurables and had the pedigree like there were a few of those but that was more of the exception than the rule so it kind of taught me like you can't You can't judge by appearances. You can't judge by measurables and you can't judge by pedigree, at least in that context. Yeah.

Because like there's no quick way to measure like a guy's heart or what they're willing and able to do. Their drive, their determination, their their resilience. And that's just revealed over a period of time, which is six months and they call it buds. right so to me like I think like what makes someone make it through that I don't know obviously there's some grit there's some determination there's some stubbornness all these things but I think something to prove there's a there is that like oh I have something to prove right or a chip on my shoulder and I'm I'm from a such a small town that like when I was going through Hell Week, there were signs in my town.

Like, I had friends that were from these big, big towns in New Jersey and California and everywhere in between. And they're anonymous. Like, I'm not, I'm not anonymous. Yeah. There's a big deal. Just to get out. I'm from a similar town.

Actually, about eight times the size of your town at 8,000 people, but still small. Yeah. But, but, yeah, I'd be just getting out of the, just getting out of a small town is a big, fucking deal, right? Yeah. You know? And I mean, go back there today,

it's like walking back in time. It's like, holy shit, everybody's still here, which is awesome. I know. I have nothing against that. I love my small town. And I literally,

you know, the bank signs that have the ticker, like the digital. Yeah. My parents are like, there's your name's on the ticker because you're going through hell week. Holy shit.

In this little town. And so for me, there's also this pressure. Yeah. I'm not going to quit. A, I don't want to let my parents down. And B, I don't want to go back to my hometown with my tail between my legs. Most of all, I had something to prove, you know, I want to go do something hard.

And I think just having so many factors, but just being very clear on what you want to do and being willing to do it. Like, every time, and I've thought about this a lot. But when I failed at something, it's either I wasn't like crystal clear on what, not just what I wanted to do, but what it would take. Like I wasn't 100% clear on what I'm doing and what it will take to succeed or I wasn't willing. Like, and there are, there's, it's great to know, like, if there's something like to succeed, let's say to succeed as a whatever. stockbroker, name, name the thing, a race car driver, two very weird, weirdly different roles.

But like, you have to know what it takes, and then you have to be willing to do what it takes to succeed. And if you don't, if you're not willing, that's fine. Don't do that. So for me, when I, as I look back and I look at different things since, with the benefit of hindsight, like clarity and willing, are like very important, right? And I think in buds, too, I mean, there's so many different character traits, but like just resilience, like the ability to bounce back up.

Because no matter how good of an athlete you are, you will fall and you will fail, right? Or you will be brought low. and just the ability to return to baseline, I think, like, kind of... I think that's a huge part of making it through. Yeah. Not enough people talk. I mean, when you're bringing up washed up wrestlers and all that kind of shit, these are all people, these are all kids that have learned how to lose, you know what I mean?

And have gotten back up and tried it again and again and again and again. You know what I mean? And I think, you know, when you're talking about it. about the best athletes. Because it's a big, it's the big mystery, right? Like how the fuck do we learn who the hell is gonna make it through these programs? It's been like the question since,

at least since I came along, which was that 20 something years ago, you know, and yeah, I think that's a big component is people that did, it's resiliency, right? It's learning how to lose, pick your shit up and get back after it. How to get, just get back up. Some people,

learn that through broken homes. So I think that's why there's a lot of people that come from a broken home that make it in there. And, and you just really, it's a mixed bag of nuts when you get out, you know. You got rich kids, poor kids, abused kids. Like, but they all, I think that's, that seems to be a common denominator. Well, that's why, like I said, like I, I've heard, you know, the Navy, the Navy spent millions of to try to figure this out because they want a higher attrition rate. So they're trying to get better, more qualified people into it.

But they can't, they still can't figure it out. The Army has done the same thing with their special programs. And the answer is like there is no quick test. It's revealed over the selection. Yep. Right. And the recipe is different. Like the recipe that made me get through that.

My resilience came from the farm, right? And the toughness that I learned from my parents and playing some football. And, you know, I didn't have the classic sob story. But I mean, I had days in buds that were easier than days on the farm. Like, I had farm days that were harder than seal training. Yeah. And that's where I learned that, right? So I think you're right.

I mean, there is like you just look at a picture of, like a Bud's graduation photo and you know them all so well. And you think about their stories like New Jersey, California, Florida, my swim buddy from Washington State, right? I mean, he was my swim buddy the entire time, like first, second and third phase. Wow. We both made it through together. And like, you just hear their stories and then they hear about the kid from the middle

of the country on a small farm in Iowa. And like there is, yeah, there is no one, there's no one story, but there's common denominators, like people who knew how to, I guess, get back up, right, from falling and failing. What did you find, what did you find the most challenging? About buds. So, I was oddly, so I was oddly one of the, there's two of us in our class that never failed one thing. first time every time. So I never won the time to run, but I was always

in the top five. I never won a swim, but I was always towards the beginning. No shit. Somebody that had never been in the ocean before. My swim buddy was really good at guiding. My swim buddy was really good at guiding, and I literally just like followed

his. Right on, man. You know? And I was good at swim. Like, I could fin all day, right? Because of my two miles in the pool five days a week. Yeah. Right. So nothing was, I mean, it was all, I should say, it's all hard, right?

But nothing stood out. I wasn't the most, I wasn't the strongest on push-ups and pull-ups and sit-ups, but I was in the top 10%. Yeah. And I was actually quite good at the O-course, just like I have long-armes. arms, big hands, and I had grip from the farm. Like so, because so much of the O-course was like kind of grip stuff, you know what I mean? And I somehow like past dive physics and pool comp and weapons practical, all those things, like the first time, right?

Like, I just, whatever. But the hardest part about Buds was, for me, was hell weak. And. That same side pain that I had had in boot camp revisited me, right? And it was Wednesday or whatever the steel pier night was. So then, you know, the steel pier where, which I think is like the hardest part of Hellweek. And that's my recollection of it is the water temperature determines how long you can be in the water. And then when you get out of the, like, they have.

have to take you out of the water so that you don't get past hypothermia or whatever. And it's based on the water temp. And that's based on average weight. So there's a lot of fluctuation. And, you know, we all know, we don't all have the same body fat. So they, the Buds instructors have a timet where they're allowed to keep you in the water. And it's based on the water temp. But on steel pier, they make the whole thing miserable by when you get out of the water.

You're laying on a pier. about this wide and it's metal and then they hose you off with a garden hose, right? So it's colder than the water. And like, that's the night I had another like side pain attack. So I'm sitting there just wanting to curl up into a ball. And, but I'm laying on that pier and just getting like, you know, kind of jackhammering. And again, like at the time, I wasn't diagnosed with anything other than IBS with constipation. They're like, oh, it's IBS with constipation. So now they give me a laxative. Well, now I have diarrhea and essentially, and it's hell week, right? And you don't get to stop and go to the bathroom. I don't know. That's not a very glamorous story. But I, at the time, I'm not, so I wasn't.

What's wrong with them? I don't know. Give them some laxas. Like, because I'm like, Curled up in the in a ball. And I went to, and I didn't even get to stop then. I went to sick call the next morning. And they're like, well, what's the matter with you? I'm like, I got this terrible pain in my side. I can't stop curling up in a ball.

And it really, really hurts. And they're just like, probably constipation, IBS, give them some laxative. Oh, shit. And you're just like. Oh my God. Hell week, bro. So you went through Hellwig with a fucking kidney stone that they were giving you last.

And I have to stipulate because I know a lot of people will see this. That was not diagnosed, right? I only know this with 99% certainty because a few years later, and I had this pain revisited me. A few years later, I had the pain again and I was finally properly diagnosed. with a kidney stone. Holy sure. Same exact pain, right?

And that happened when I was going through land warfare at Sealed Team 5, which I'll get into later. I'm trying to stay chronological here. So long story long, 99% sure that not only was, you know, hell week hell, like, it was full benefit for me, like having this, not only having what I'm 99% sure is a kidney stone, but also having diarrhea. Damn. Yeah.

Wow. So that was, I mean, that's my answer to your question. What was the hardest part about buds? Probably that. I mean, how the fuck are you going through like around the world, like all this, like the longest mile with laxatives? What's that? That's Thursday morning.

Are you literally just shitting yourself? They just give you that, they gave me that Thursday morning and then I just, it ran its course in about. Fuck, man. 12 hours. And I'm just like, oh, but like, thankfully you're wet all the time.

So you're always in the ocean to rinse off. Oh, shit. It still hurts. Here's some more laxatives. Yeah. Drink water. Talk about your, fuck, man.

All-time misdiagnosis. Oh, shit. Oh, man. That's fucked up, dude. Wow. Yeah. So, so it was a shitty time for you.

For your, for your audience, the term full benefit. Yeah. That's just, that just means like when it sucks extra hard, like, I had full benefit. And then, like, to make, like, the funny thing is, like, so here I, I graduated Hell Week. They secure Hell Week on Friday afternoon. And then right after that, you all go in, they see you at the medical thing before you walk back to your barracks. And I go into medical,

I'm like, well, my toes kind of hurt. Well, both my big toenails were ingrown. And they yanked out my big toenails. Oh, my God. Here I have this. Kidney stone. Oh, your toe hurts. Kidney stone, diarrhea.

And it's finally over and like, oh, as a parting gift, we're just going to take out your big toe. Oh, shit. Dude. Damn. And you get like. you know, you get like a week off the next week, walking week, but there's not much of a break. Like after that, you're back into it and like, you know, I still don't have my big toenails. Like, oh, shit.

So, wow. Full benefit. That's definitely a full benefit. Holy shit. And somehow I'm like, and I, as I tell people that, I'm like, and even like in my mind, I'm like, how would you not quit? Like, that is too. But like, I don't know if I didn't know any better or I was just dumb or I wanted it that much. I don't, you know, if that happens to me now, I'm quitting.

That sounds like a major lawsuit nowadays. Yeah, yeah. Shit. Yeah. What the fuck? Damn. Holy shit. So you made it through Hellweek.

Made it through Hellweek. I graduated, Butts class 225. How did that feel? How did it feel to tell your parents, your siblings, your friends back home, you made it? Well, as you know, like, A, I made it through training, but then they're like, oh, so you're a seal? Well, then you have that period of time because you can't even, like,

it's kind of anticlimatic, right? Because you're not a seal yet, but like you graduated buds. I was beyond, you know, very proud, right, of my accomplishment. I'd done something that I'd set out to do, right? I worked hard and I achieved it and I had gone through a little bit of, you know, had an obstacle, right? So I felt amazing, right? But then, and it's very short-lived because then you check into a, you know, back then we went to, we went to jump school in Benin, right?

And then you show up at a team. And then it's kind of like pretty humbling, right? Because now you're a new guy. And not only are you a new guy, but you're a new guy at a team without a Trident. Right. And so checked into team five. And yeah, kind of you feel like you start all over.

Did you want to go to the West Coast? No. It's so funny. And I ended up loving it, right? I mean, I loved kind of pre-9-11, every team had its own kind of like personality, right? And Team 5 was kind of like known as Surf Team 5. And like everyone thought I would like, I didn't, you know, I look like a surfer now. I've never served.

I don't serve, right? But I chose like literally two, four, and eight when you do the dream sheet. Yeah. Like I wanted to go to the East Coast. Like, I wanted to go to the East Coast and I wanted to go to Dev Group. Like, that was. You already knew about Dev Group? I got in trouble in third phase because we had Buds instructors talking to us about the different teams.

And I literally, so I'm not even graduated yet. And I go, well, what does it take to go to dev group? None of them had gone there. Well, then, like, two of them beat me. Because, like, you haven't even made it through this yet, dumbass. You know what I mean? Right? So it was always on my radar.

But I wanted to go to the East Coast. So I went to SEAL Team 5, and I had the best time. So, like, it was just. so different than the East Coast and it was so different than just growing up on a farm in Iowa, you know. But I met some, you know, awesome people, had some awesome teammates there, some awesome experiences. Any good hazing stories? We, you know, the hazing was, and it didn't happen. These are not my stories.

These are things I've witnessed. Like, we had guys that would get, you know, taped up naked to a spine board. Mm-hmm. You know, with basically we would call it rigors tape. But for people that don't know, it's basically duct tape. Or just get covered in spray glue. I think one of the, one of the worst ones I heard about was a friend of mine got like, Hey, he got like taped up to a spine board, like head to toe with duct tape to a plastic spine board.

And they taped a funnel into his mouth and poured vodka down it. And then they put him in a closet and they taped an alarm clock to his head. And it was just ringing the whole, so he couldn't pass out. And then they left him there for like eight hours to chew his way out. or whatever. And he had like pissed and shit himself in the tape. Oh, man. I've not heard the alarm clock one.

We did the Happy Hat. The Happy Hat was common. Oh, fuck. That's the... The Happy Hat's where they, for the audience, it's where they tape a handle on the top of your head. Wrap your whole head and duct tape, and then they tape a handle on the top of your head.

So anybody that wants to walk by, grab the handle and... Yeah. Shake your head around and there's not a damn thing you're going to do about it. So these were always like horror stories. So when you're a new guy, like showing up at a team back then, you kind of walked around, like just waiting for your number to get called, right? Um, and I've heard other kind of, you know, I've heard, I've heard, I've heard wild ones like this,

like someone they threw, they put them in a cruise box and threw them in the, San Diego Bay with a can of spare air. I haven't heard that one. And then they had him on like, uh, you know, he's like 30, 50 feet down and they had him on like one inch nylon and pulled him back up. I'm like, holy shit. You're pretty lucky that didn't go badly. Yeah, no kidding.

So I didn't witness that. That's a secondhand one that I've heard. But yeah, it was pretty epic back then. Wow. Wow. Wow. Yeah. But the alarm clock one is pretty.

sinister. Like, not only to just get taped to a spine board and then to get your stomach filled with vodka, but then to tape an alarm. That's a good one. Like, dude, it's just awful. I kind of want to do that to somebody now. You got any new guys on staff? We do. We do. Wow. So what, how was it, I mean, what was your impression of Team Five when he showed up? So Team Five, it was so, I loved it. Like, and so we're going, I'm, I am there for a couple of weeks before I went through STT. Back then it was sealed tactical training. And that's all the recent Buds graduates that show up at teams one, three, and five. There was no seven.

Okay. So teams, all of us that were out of buds and jump school. and we were not yet seals and not yet in a platoon, we went through a class called STT. And among that class, and that's three months, it's like 90 days. And in that class, there's people that are going to go to one and then three and then five, right? And at the time, like, one was the hardcore, like no fun one. Yeah.

Right. And three was kind of in the middle. And Team 5 was like totally the more relaxed, like, surf Team 5. And then Midway, like early on in STT, we had a new commanding officer. at SEAL Team 5, Tom Deetz, and he had come out with a policy. And at the time, this was like groundbreaking. He said, no more mandatory PT, your adults work out on your own. We'll have one group PT a week on Fridays.

And we'll chase it. It was kind of a Monster Mash PT. So for the audience, that's like a run, swim, O course, ruck kind of combo adventure. And like back then, every Friday at

Seal Team 5, you had a long PT and it could be running or swimming or a combo and rucking or obstacle course or combine all of those. But it was always over at noon. You showered and changed and there were two

kegs on the grinder. Nice. And it was kegs on the grinder, grinder is like an asphalt like blacktop area and maybe some hot dogs and some burgers and two kegs and that was like the kickoff to the weekend and team five it was like it was very interesting because there was also a volleyball net there so people are like you guys had a volleyball net oh dude they're playing volleyball for for like training or everyone had like skateboards. So they're moving around the weapons containers in like longboard skateboards. Nice.

It definitely was this kind of surf-like team. And we finished STT, showed up at Team 5, and I could just train how I wanted to. And then every Friday we had to do a workout together. It was awesome, right? Versus like having this regimented like run day, swim day, gym day, or whatever, they kind of let you do what you wanted, which was pretty cool. Yeah. I think, you know, eventually they all got more like that, right? But my impression of Team 5 was like, I didn't want to go there and I ended up being glad they did. Right on. Yeah.

Right on. How long was it before people turned up? So finished STT and I was. supposed to go into a platoon a few months after that. Sorry, I'll rewind. I finished STT, then I finished my total of six months probation. Oh, okay. Took the Trident board, earned my Trident.

Every team had their own Trident board. That one, Team 5 for as lax as it was, as a culture. we had a very hard Trident board. So it was like an eight or ten hour day. And you went from diving to Marops to Land War and you had to do all these different things and have written tests and then like a performance test. And like it was a long day. All in one day. Yeah.

It was like almost 10 hours. Holy shit. And you had like you were in your camis. They made you put on face paint and you were carrying. a ruck between stations, taking apart weapons, writing out a dive chart, right, putting on a static line rig and getting inspected, fixing a zodiac, like, all these things you had, you had like a 90 minutes or whatever per session. Gotcha.

So it was like both a practical and written thing. Earned my trident finally. And now I'm like, now I was like a seal. and I was supposed to platoon up. I forget the time, but it was going to be in like Echo or Foxtrot platoon. But then Charlie and Delta platoons did a, they did a nighttime combat equipment, static line,

and like three people got hurt. And two of them were going to be out of the platoon. So they grabbed two new guys and I got to be one of them. So I platooned up early. Oh, right on. So, yeah. I forget the exact time. You know, that's so long ago.

But so I ended up getting into a platoon at Team 5. And then they had already done more than half their workup, though. So now. And they had done like Marops and some of the suck. like back then like special reconnaissance, some of the sucky blocks of training. So now I'm a new guy in a platoon that's already done half the hard stuff. Well, they didn't all really love that. You know what I mean?

But I had an awesome time in that in that platoon. I think we had like right into. They had finished Mar-ups, so we went right into Combat Swimmer, right? And that's like, whatever, three weeks back then. And then finished that, and pretty soon we were doing CQB and a Shaw's trip. So it was great, right? Right on. Where are you guys heading to?

We ended up going to Guam. Guam. Yep. pre-9-11 Guam deployment. And so we're there, we deployed like mid to late August 01. Oh, shit. So right before, huh? Yeah, right before 9-11.

And my, so my birthday is September 7th. And I call my mom on my birthday from Guam. And she's like, well, what do you want for your birthday? And I'm like, you know, I'm some. dumb, whatever. 21 or 22, 22. And I'm just like, mom, I just want a war to fight.

Shit. Right. And, you know, dumb. The stuff that dumb young warriors want. So, anyway, we started in Guam and then we got sent to the Middle East. You went to the Middle East from there. Yeah. What was September 11th?

like for you. Well, I will, you know, obviously, like it's so memorable just because so I remember not long before that having a big birthday party out in town, you know, I mean, I'm turning 22 on deployment, right? I think it was that. And then I don't know, like my. So my wife was going to college classes, and she would wake up early in the morning at the time, sorry, girlfriend. And I call her and she, she just says,

I think someone bombed the World Trade Center. Or, and then she's like, no, maybe a plane hit it. And I go, what? Like, and I remember this. Like, we didn't have laptops in our rooms and stuff like that. There was in this, we stayed in a, not even a barracks. In Guam, it was a kind of a BAH kind of like hotel, right? So there's a hall.

It's almost like a college dorm. There's a hallway. Everyone gets their own little dorm room. we had our own room and that's where we were staging because we originally went to Guam in August and we were supposed to travel to like go

and do joint training with like Australia and then go to the Philippines and maybe Thailand and Malay... Whatever, all the paycom stuff. But you have these rooms in Guam or they did and we didn't even have a TV I didn't have a TV in my room But at the end of the hallway, they had one of those old, like, three-foot thick big screens.

Yeah. Remember those? And I just remember her saying something about the World Trade Center, you should get in front of a TV. And I like just kind of like, she doesn't know what she's talking about. And I walked to the end of the, end of the hallway, and there's already people around the TV. And I'm just like, like, I get there in time to watch the second plane hit it. you know and it's like oh and from that moment like pagers started to go off no one knew right away who did it and but that night you know we were getting different intel briefs and then pretty soon we're getting

more and more briefs and you know we're instead of worrying about like where are we going to go out it was, hey, we need to, we brought all these guns with us from Coronado. Not only do we need to make sure they're sighted in, but like, let's get a few more yard lines or whatever. It got very serious. Like that switch from, you know, pre-9-11 and just kind of, Steel Platoon was a rock band. It was like, hey, we'd, you know, know, we had all this fun. We were ready to do this stuff, but mostly it was like a deployed a party. You know what I mean?

But it got real serious. When did you guys figure? When did you guys hear you're going to the Middle East? So we originally, we thought we were going to go to Afghanistan. And obviously we didn't. We ended up, and we're constantly getting these briefs, but it probably was I think it ended up being like three weeks later that we got shipped to the middle,

flew to the Middle East. And we ended up, we ended up replacing a team three platoon that was doing underways or VBSS in Kuwait. And they got to go to Afghanistan. Gotcha. But along the way, I want to say we stopped in like Oman or something,

like to refuel. I forget exactly where, but there was like dev group guys there and Delta guys there getting all ramped up for Afghanistan, and we were just like, whoa. And we thought that's like, oh, we're in the right spot. We're going to Afghanistan. Then we land in Kuwait. With SRS, we're not just putting out content. We're also running an e-commerce business, selling merch, products, and even gummy bears. And when you're shipping real orders to real customers, shipping can quietly become a huge time suck if you don't have it set up right. That's where ShipStation comes in. Shipstation is an all-in-one shipping platform built to handle the entire order fulfillment workflow, so your team can stay focused on growth instead of getting buried in shipping.

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today and get 60 days free. It's Shipstation.com with code SRS. That's shipstation.com code SRS. Taxes and fees apply. And by the way, like, so my first, my first rotation, my first deployment, end up doing it in Kuwait, right? Post-9, like, right when 9-11 happens. but in hindsight, I think I got to do, you know, 20 plus real world non-compliant shipboardings, a few of which I was the lead climber on.

And, you know, it was kind of like, obviously in post-9-11, that doesn't seem like that big a deal, but I'm like, hey, that was, you know, was better than what they were doing before, right? And we were ostensibly, A, there was the, you know, the Iranian oil embargo, the Iraqi oil embargo, but then there was also this, you know, this idea that Al-Qaeda terrorists were going to be, like, funneling out on these ships. And that's how they, you know, that's how they motivated us to do it. But, you know, the gravity was still real and people were still drowning doing that.

So it was as real as it gets. Not a lot of bullets flying, but, you know, still pretty, uh, could be scary. You know, underway shipboarding is like dice, especially at night, especially in, you know, in these waters and with stuff like that. Do you want to describe the first one? Huh? Do you want to describe the first one? The one that is anyone that's of significance.

So there's two that are very memorable. And I was like, so I was a new guy. I was a jack of all trades. One night I'm a lead climber. One night I'm a breacher. go figure and there was one um and it is pitch black we have nods on and we have like back then we're still running MP5s you know and so the pole man had put the pole up and then the latter man was unrolling the ladder you know on the bottle and the original lead climber went to Clon

and his handgun, the handle on his SIG got stuck in the rung, and he was climbing against it. And he didn't like realize it. And it was partially the fault of the ladder man because it was all unspooled. And he was sitting there and like, you just couldn't go. Right. And then after like maybe a minute or less, he like, let's go and he tapped me because I was the second lead climber.

He's like, bro, you're up. Go. And I'm just like, ooh. And now I'm going to be the lead climber up this underway ship that's like steaming into Iranian waters. And it's a, it's a 20 plus foot climb on a caving ladder that doesn't have a runner on top. I'm the one that's going to climb it and set the runner. So I shimmy up that thing like so quickly. And by the way, it's like, it's like, it's like, oddly.

like climbing the, a small ladder on the side of a grain bin or a grain silo in Iowa. And so I shimmy up this thing and I get to the top, you know, and the hook, the grappling hook is just, it's not on anything bomber.

It's just on the lip. And I just climb this thing on a hook that's just weighted on a lip. You know what I mean? Yep. And I get up there, I clear the thing with my pistol. I look at that.

I'm like, oh, crap. I got to get off this ladder, right? And there wasn't anything there immediately to, like, hook it to safer. So I pop up over the, over the thing, over the lifeline. And then the first thing I do is, you know, everything is clear around me. And I'm up there alone.

And I take that. I take that grappling hook. I hook it on something more solid. And then I take my safety runner out and I run that around something more solid. So now it's hooked on something solid and it's on a and the runner is on something solid. And then back then we were using like that little like the Kim light, right, that with the tape on it. And I put the Kim light over like, okay, the ladder is now on something more bomber. sorry, more solid, and then there's a runner on it.

And then the rest of the team came up. And like, that was, you know, a lead climb on a non-compliant shipboarding. And my first, you know, my first deployment. So it was, it was memorable. And then there were, there was another night where we had, this shipboarding was like a stepover freeboard. So that ship had been so laden. that you didn't have to climb.

The rib could pull up next to it and you could step over onto it. Oh, wow. It was that full of oil. And it was steaming. It knew we couldn't go into Iranian waters. So as soon as they saw us, they were like steaming into Iranian waters.

And that night, I was carrying, remember the torch? Yeah. The, like, oxygen torch or whatever it was. and I have a torch on my back. And I step over the, so I step off the rib over, over onto this tanker, straddle over the lifeline, right? And we're like, we're standing.

There's like water ankle deep. It's like that laden, right? And I'm standing there and they had put, they had put like heavy steel up going into the superstructure and some of it had angle iron behind it. And so we have to try to, you know, you have to either take down like whatever, the engine room or the bridge, right, to stop the ship. And they had protected the bridge so well with the extra steel and the angle iron. And I bust out that, like that torch, you know, had that rod.

And I start it. and I used the entire tank on half of the diamond cut. Because the steel was so thick and it was reinforced behind it. So I didn't run out of rods. I didn't run out of battery. We ran out of oxygen just trying to get like, you know, obviously I'm a new guy. I'm probably not as proficient as I should be on this.

I tried. But at some point, like it didn't matter. I get halfway a half diamond cut. and we get a call like, hey, you guys are almost in Iranian waters. You get off in the next five minutes or you have to jump, right? Off a boat that's moving with huge screws and all that, right? So the ribs are pulling back up to pick us up. And like all of a sudden, like we're standing in more water.

It's almost like the ship we were on, like was either taking on water or whatever. But like we started and it was like this deep and now. all of a sudden, just on the deck, right? It's like knee-deep water. And there's like a big battery on this torch that you used to start it. And I am sitting there as when I, when I grab the lifeline to straddle it and go back onto the rib, I'm just starting to get. I'm getting some voltage.

And I'm like, and like pretty soon I'm like halfway stuck there. I'm like, I can't like. and my buddy's like, I think it's the battery. He's trying to unhook me and like, I'm standing in water. I got this big battery on. I grab the metal lifeline. And it's like, oh, I think I'm just catching a little voltage here, right? And then, like, that very same night, that very same night,

we had to get off this ship that was like going into Iranian waters. I had half cut this diamond and I, you know, it was getting like, not electrocuted, that would be an exaggeration, but I'm feeling something. Like, I grew up on a hog farm and we used to have fights with cattle prods. It felt like that, like where you're getting hit by a cattle prod. And, like, to top it all off, a teammate of mine as we ended up, so we back then we had ribs, and mark fives. You probably remember mark fives. And we would do longer transits in the mark fives.

And then when it was time to do the climb, get on the rib. So the rib picks us up off this boat, this ship. And then we're going to transit back onto the mark five. And like, I don't know how. But for like, even with all these climbs and stuff, no one ever fell overboard, right? one time we had a guy fall upside down on the ladder and have to get pulled up from the ladder, which is scary.

But no one really fell overboard until one night. Like the night of that, when I was getting shocked by this torch, we're stepping from the ribs back onto the Mark V's and a teammate of mine who's the radio man, so he's got a big radio. And it's pitch black. and the boats are, they're kind of moving. He steps, slips, and hits the drink in the Northern Arabian Gulf.

Turns on his strobe and he's got this big radio on and we're, it's like, man overboard, right? Like, and we could, you know, we had nods. We could see his strobe and everything. But he's, and that's, that's Jack Carr, the guy. Oh, no, shit. The author, right, who still, still close. with, but he's written those books and one of them is the Amazon show terminal list. Right on.

It's memorable to me for that. That, about that. Wow. So then you guys come home? Yeah, we finished that deployment and come home. And I was, I had met my now wife, Leah, right before, not long before that deployment. And then so the first year of us dating, I had, I did a six month deployment. So really only six months dating, right?

And back then it's like, you know, now you can FaceTime from deployment. But back then it's like calling cards. Yeah. And, you know, these phone banks and a little bit tougher. Dial up emails and that sort of thing. So I come home from that deployment. and my post-deployment leave, I get like three days off,

and my post-deployment leave is sniper school, which is not in any way stretch, any way, shape, or form that relaxing, right? And at the time, like, there was an East Coast and a West Coast sniper school. It wasn't all centralized under the, whatever it is now, the center. And I, so I go through my,

I show up at sniper school instead of, getting a, you know, a nice long post-deployment vacation. And I forget all the details, but at the time they said one NSW sniper school, one, which starts with like 30 people, expends more ammunition than the Marine Corps sniper school does in a year. Wow. The amount of, and that's just the amount, and I'm not saying they're better or whatever, I'm just saying we had that much more money to spend on ammo.

So you are spending, and sniper has evolved so much with reticles and ballistic coefficients and all that. But like back then, hours and hours and hours were spent on yard lines, right? So there was a marksmanship portion, which was a couple of weeks at Camp Pendleton. and you had to qualify, you know, expert with irons before you could move on, right? And then it was, then we got shipped to, not ship, but we went up to Kowlinga, Northern California. And that's where we spent most of the, most of the marksmanship part of Sniper School, was spent in Kollinga.

And we would, basically, you're living in a tent there. There wasn't even birthing. It's something like six weeks and something like that. And there's a couple of weeks where you, you know, it's M14 and then you move to your, like your 308 and then your 300. And then at the end you do the 50 Cal, right? Like it's a couple of weeks with each one.

I think the 50 Cal is just one week or whatever it is. like I forget exactly, but it's it's five or six weeks and you're in a tent. And then all day long, you're just, you're either prone on yard lines or you're in the behind the berm. We call it the butts, right? Those target butts going up and down and you're marking targets, right? And these are like long, hot days. Well, back to kind of like full benefit.

I have another side pain. Oh, shit. In sniper school. And I end up going, I think it's Lenore, you know, where we did. Do you remember Haps, high altitude, where they put you in a chamber before you can go to parachute stuff? So they had a chamber there where we did HAPS. But then I had to go there back because, you know, because I had this side pain. And they're like, well, we don't.

know what it is, but we can tell you're in a lot of pain. They gave me Vicodin. Right. So I spent, I spent the night in this- Better than laxatives. Way better. It's way better. And so I spend the, again, at this, I should be clear, I'm not at this point diagnosed with a kidney stone. I know in my heart it was because I got that same pain later that did get diagnosed. And I end up losing a kidney, right? So I know what it's like. So I spend the night in this hospital. I think it's Lenore. I might not be pronouncing that right.

But I'm all hopped up on Vicodin because it's painful. They drive me back to my tent where sniper school is the next morning. And the next day we have our UKD test, unknown distance test. and on a UKD test you're kind of you're like here and then they have like four targets at this yard line

and maybe four targets here and four targets here whatever right like unknown it's not like an even yard line it's not like a hundred or 200 but they're and they're not on the yard lines you have to guess how far they are

you have to mill them um the height with your mill dot and then dial and then you get four you get one shot per target and there's either five targets per per spot or four but there's a total of a hundred points on the test and you either you have to like hit the thing it's like a miss or a hit right um and i am still on like high from Vicodin. And I asked the, so I asked the instructor,

I'm like, man, I just spent the night in the hospital. Do you think I could retake this test some other time? And like, back then, like, they treated sniper school as they wanted attrition. Like, it was a badge of honor if

like more than half of our, well, I would say half of my sniper school did not make it. And they didn't, Like, they didn't feel like it was their job to make more snipers. They felt it was their job to protect, like, how hard sniper school was, right? And so he tells me, he says, take the test or go home. You can always come back next year.

I mean, I'm a seal. I've just done a deployment. I am here on post-deployment. This is my post-deployment leave. You should want to make more snipers, right? The teams need them, right? So I'm like, I get, what do I have to lose? I'm going to take the test.

And the only problem is, so I'm sitting there, I'm high, I'm confused by my reticle, or I'm sorry, by my elevation turret. So they did let my spotter help me dial. I had to squeeze the trigger. but I was so relaxed that I got the top score. Now, he was dialing my scope. He was, and so I'm sitting there, Sean, like, oh. You know what I mean?

Like. Wake up 30 minutes later? And I would just, dude, I was like, man, my trigger squeeze is so smooth. Like, because I was still on this, like, I mean, again, someone might get in trouble if you're like, take, a sniper test on Vicodin nowadays. Yeah. But so again, past that, I finished sniper school and not not, I finished the marksmanship part of it.

And then we had to go do the stalking. That's where more people fail out is stocking. And I made it through stalking, but I got like all of a sudden I started losing a lot of weight. and like I got down to like below 170. And I'm like, and there was a couple of us that were like getting really, really sick. Well, unbeknownst to us, like a few of us got Valley fever,

which is Mike Rittland got it. He was not in my sniper school, but he got he got medically retired from it. Oh, shit. He lost a lung from this. or portion of a lung. I forgot about that. So that is the reason that the seal teams no longer go to Koolinga. Apparently, there is like a fungus in the dust that's like prehistoric or whatever.

And if you're like in that dust all day and the wind's blowing and you breathe it, the spores can like form in your lungs. Holy shit. And I was one of, like, I was fortunate enough to be one of the people who got it, but I never, I got it and beat it and never lost any lung function, right? So I actually have, like, they say you have it forever, but you've beat it or whatever, like you, you have the antibody or whatever it is. Someone would, is probably watching this now and correcting me on that, but I got Valley Fever

not to the point where I lost lung function, but I got really, really sick, lost a ton of weight. My face started to, like, just my eyes sunk in. But one person from my sniper school, like, he got medically retired from it. And then Mike, you know, ended up getting, getting it really bad.

He lost part of a lung. So, like, kind of back to the full benefit theme. Like, finished me. Shit. Finished sniper school with a kidney stone and valley fever. It's been a rough go for you. Been a rough go. Yeah.

But no, it was good. I actually finished sniper school. And at that point, my second platoon, right, had already started. I joined them. How did you meet your wife in Guam? I met her before deployment. Are you guys still together? We are still together.

Wow. That's an anomaly. We met in San Amel. Diego before my first deployment. Okay. Her being from Omaha and me being from Iowa, like we, we connected like closely right away just because of the kind of shared Midwestern background and and like she's, I mean, my wife's the greatest. She, we dated through the first deployment. We got married right before.

before the second. And then all the other ones that, you know, a dev group that she went through and the stuff she's gone through. And we are, you know, 24 years married 14, 14, 16, 18, and 20 year old kid. Damn. Congratulations, man. How many years married, 24? Yeah.

Wow. Yeah. I mean, people say I don't look old enough to be married that long and have a 20-year-old kid, but I'm like, my MRI looks old. Right. And all the, all, well, actually, my med record's pretty thick. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. So long story short, like, I can't, you know, anyone who tries to give me credit, I always, like, don't give me much credit. I had so much fun. But, like, whatever Leah put up is 10 times put up with is much harder. So how did you guys meet? So we meet at a bar in downtown San Diego. And we had just finished. So I'm in my first platoon, and we had just finished, we finished a month, the month of January in Codiac, Alaska, which is as cold as it sounds.

Good times. Doing over the beach with dry suits and land nav in the snow, right? Now, I should say, like, remember how I said the farm. made things a little easier. Like, that Christmas break, I went to Iowa for Christmas, and I was there for like a week around Christmas and New Year's. And it got to like 60, maybe 65 below with the wind chill. Like, at one point, I remember getting to 20 below and it was like, man, I didn't even need

gloves now, right? because it had been so cold. And I'm spending my entire Christmas leave helping my dad keep the hogs alive outside. So you're outside for a little bit. You're melting the waters. They had these outdoor waters. You're feeding them or you're running straw and hay to their sheds, right?

Just to try to keep these poor pigs alive. And like when it gets to like 50 below, like the amount of time you can spend outside is limited. So you'd go out for a little bit and come in and warm up. I'm doing this for like a week. And then we go to, I get back to San Diego.

I'm like, it's so nice. And now we fly to, we fly to anchor, sorry, we fly to Codiac. And we're going to spend the entire month of January on Codiac Island. And we get up there and it's like 20 degrees.

I'm like, it's warm. After Iowa, right? It was warm. So, back to Leah, I spent a month training on Codiak Island. We get back and I had just spent a month with these guys. Like, if we weren't out in the field, we were at a little bar in Codiac, right?

Or we were in the barracks. And we're all going out that night to Maloney's downtown. I'm like, I don't want to go out. I just spend a month with you guys. I want to stay in my apartment and relax, right? And it was, you know, I'm a new guy, so it's mandatory, right? It wasn't like I could say no, right? I just didn't want to.

I'm like, shoot. So I go out and that's the night I meet my wife, right? And she was supposed to go watch her dad play in the Pebble Beach Proam up in, whatever, by Pebble Beach, at Pebble Beach. She didn't want to do that. So she wasn't supposed to be there either. And we meet at a bar in downtown San Diego. And she walks up to me and she's like, do you have a girlfriend?

Like, I'm like sitting there at, I'm like, I'm sitting at a bar. I have like a chorus light and a Yeager. Like, because back then it was like, you always get like a light beer and a Yeager shot. And I'm getting ready to take my shot of Yeager and, you know, chase it with. the Corps light, and she's like, this girl just elbows me and is like, do you have a girlfriend? I'm like, no. Like, and so we talk for a while, and oddly, you know, Matt is there. He was there the night I met her.

We talked for a while, and she finds out I'm in the Navy. She didn't even know what a seal was, which I thought was a bonus. and so she kind of like, well, I don't really, like, I don't want to marry someone who's in the military. Bye. Like she goes away. Well, she comes back later and we sit there talking for another half hour, and then she looks at me and she's like, I'm going to marry you.

And I'm just like, dang. Like, that's a little forward, right? Well, like, we ended up, we date for whatever. We date for like less than a year and a half. And then we get married before my second deployment. And she, and that was at Team 5. And then she went through all the stuff at Dove Group. And then, yeah.

So she's been, she's been through the ringer, been my rock. Man. So what's the secret to a successful marriage? Man. I mean, it definitely takes two. You know, I think like we've been, you know, very, you know, fortunate. I think there's obviously you have to love each other. And there's, you know, selflessness that goes into it.

And honestly, our faith has helped us a lot, you know. We didn't start, like, when we were early married and in San Diego, certainly we didn't go to church all the time. but we got like we got into church big time in Virginia Beach especially as you know things started to get scarier and then we've always gone to church together since that's a big part of it and I would I would also say like I think people think of marriage as a it's a 50-50 like if There's this much to do. I'm going to, you know, it's a 50-50 split. Like, we're going to, you know, I'm going to clean half the kitchen. You're going to clean half the kitchen, right? Like a zero-sum game.

But I've heard this, I've heard it said this way, and I wish I could remember who said it. So I could attribute it properly. But that's the problem. It's not 50-50. It's 100, 100. Like, you both give all of yourself. Right. And I think that's good advice. It's a great way to put it. So, and it, you know, doesn't hurt to pick the right wife the first time. So, I mean, obviously there's, you know, there's some luck. There's some whatever, right? I just feel very blessed. That's cool, man. Yeah. Thank you. She's. Yeah, we beat the odds for sure.

I'll say. We look at, I look at photos now from, we used to have parties in Virginia Beach. Like, we would have like a Thanksgiving party or just a summer pool party with like teammates. And like, we could have a Thanksgiving party there because a lot of people didn't have family there, right? So you'd have a friends giving kind of thing. And I look at, my wife was good about let's get a photo. Let's get a photo. And like we would take a, there might be like four to six couples in a photo.

And like now, I mean, I look back on them and there's some of those photos where either all the husbands are dead or they're divorced. You know what I mean? Yeah. So anyway, I feel very blessed, very fortunate. And we got, let's see, we got engaged. We got engaged in October of 2002. And we thought that we thought we'd get married next summer.

So summer of 03. But then I found out about the, that we were going to deploy early because of the Iraq invasion. And we were going to be deploying in like, January. So we're engaged in October. I'm going to be deploying in January. And I just,

we just decided to get married before I deployed. Right. So we had like a six week engagement. And we didn't have. So some people thought she was pregnant because it was like, that seems a little rushed. But I was like, babe, don't you want to be able to shop at the,

you know, the PX? Yeah. or don't you want that insurance, right? And it just made sense. So we just, we got married in Vail on Pearl Harbor Day. I was in my Navy uniform is right. Oh, man. Beautiful.

So. And to, I guess, take a quick rewind and get a sip of water a second. Right before that, I lost my kidney. Right. Oh, shit. Okay. Right. right after sniper school

it was right after sniper school and during excuse me land warfare we went to Fort Chaffee and we had you know at Team 5 the first platoon we went to Nileland

for land warfare like everyone does for some reason we went to Fort Chaffee for land warfare in my second platoon and we were just

starting our week of I ads and that's for your audience like these moving and shooting drills and like the first night

like I got the pain it came and it had a tendency of just going away within one or two days but this time it was like I had this pain

for four days straight. Like it wasn't that whatever stone was in there was not passing. And I was like doing like eye ads during the day and sometimes at night and I'm just curled up in a ball and getting super dehydrated. And you know, I'm like, I'm just kind of sucking it up because I'm usually like these episodes would go away within a day, maybe day and a half. But this time it's like three days, then four days. It's not it's not. It's not. stopping. And

I'm telling my OIC and the Corman and finally, like my OIC guy named Clint Bruce, he's like, man, you can't keep doing this. And his dad is a sorry, his guess it would be his stepfather was

a urologist in town. And he takes me to see a urologist in town, his stepfather. I get an x-ray with contrast. That's different, right? Like, the first time I had gotten this contrast, and he happens to be a urologist,

he's like, there's scar tissue in your urator, and you have a giant kidney stone stuck in your ureter. That's the, again, the tube between the kidney and the bladder. And so they give me this, like, I guess it's a sound word. wave surgery. You know? And they...

They blast it. Yeah, they put you under. They blast you with these sound waves. And they also put a stint in there, which is like a tube between the... And I was out. I was out during that. But like, I woke up and I had... I was kind of black and blue here.

Like, it does feel like you're getting, like, punched a bit, like, just from the sound waves. And I had, you know, gotten rid of the... the pieces of the stone and I had a tube between my bladder and here and they're like, well, maybe you shouldn't finish land warfare. Let's go back to Balboa. So I flew back to Balboa and under the premise that they were going to like fix my ureter, like get rid of the scar tissue.

And then they went in to go do that, like a week or whatever later. and then when they got in there they just looked at my my kidney at that point was just a water balloon like it was not working so like it was like an eight hour surgery because it was so full

they didn't want it to break because it's you know it would go septic sepsis and normally you can take a kidney out like if someone donates or like a small whatever and I have a scar from like almost from like 12 o'clock to nine o'clock because it was this and the doctor's like yeah we almost had to take a rib out like because it was just this distended this distended like water balloon

right so i wake up you know eight hours later my poor fiance at the time had just spent eight hours in Balboa thinking I was going to have a 90 minute surgery. Yeah. And she's like engaged to me and I just remember like all of a sudden I wake up and they explained to me what happened. Like, well, you lost a kidney. And I'm like, well, what does that mean? Basically it means you're out of the military.

Like you everything's waivable, but like in the, in. soft, like that's kind of one they don't like to wave, right? And the Corman, one of the corpsmen from like the med department at Team 5, like did some research, shows up at the hospital and gives me a waiver. They find a waiver I can sign to stay in the military. And I am like high on morphine, but I don't even read this thing. He's like, if you sign this, you can stay in the military. If you don't, you're going to get like medically discharged. And I had done one deployment and I had done all this work and finished basically finished my second workup and I wanted to deploy again. I didn't want to get out,

right? I didn't care that I would get a medical retire. I wanted to want to deploy, right? So I signed my waiver and never had one of those attacks again. Right. Because that kidney was gone, that urator was gone. And I was engaged when the surgery happened. I healed. We had our wedding in December. And then I think I deployed it like a couple weeks later, either in the middle of January or the end of January.

For nine and a half months. Shit. Where did you deploy to? So for that one, we went to Oakland. which I was so upset like I wanted to go to Iraq or Afghanistan. We ended up going like we ended up going to Oki and we were going to so we were going to split like we were going to start there and then swap someone out in Iraq because of the opt tempo and then something to do with you know airfare and not airfare but like airflow getting people in and like nah just stay. But on that deployment, I had a lot of, I mean, we had

a, it was a great group of guys. And we had a lot of fun. Got to finally, you know, I went to, I would get my share of Iraq and Afghanistan later. So it was nice to, I went to like, we went to Thailand, the

Philippines and Australia and got to do, you know, some of that stuff. Were you, were you honest questioner, were you actually able to enjoy that knowing what was going on in Afghanistan and Iraq? Not as much as I otherwise would have. Yeah. Because I had

that FOMO, right? And I didn't know that I would get my fill of that later. Right? I was just like, this, I'm not here for that. I'm here for that. So no, to answer your question, no. But I mean, in hindsight, you know,

Australia was awesome. I don't need to go back to Thailand, but I would go to Australia, right? It was, it was great. And I had good time with the guys, and I stayed late on that deployment. The reason I got home late was the platoon that was relieving us

was down a sniper, and one of us needed to stay, and I volunteered to stay. So I ended up doing about a month extra with, I think it was Hotel Platoon. And, you know, I got, I became close with like Bill Mulder and Scotty Wirtz and J-Mo and some other guys. Right on. Anyway, wasn't quite as cool as I was hoping.

but, you know, I don't know what happened for a reason. And so what happened? Do you come back and screen for a development group? So I had missed screening for what would have been 04. Because I could have gone, I would have had time to go to 04, but screening was, that screening was during my surgery. Gotcha. It was like a week after my surgery.

And I was cut from here to here. I couldn't do anything, let alone the sit-ups. You know, my abs are still growing back together. So, yes, I ended up coming home from my second platoon. I did the, you know, the screening. There wasn't going to be enough time to do another full workup and deployment. So I went to trade at. Gotcha.

And trade-ed is the training cell for naval special warfare for those listening. And it was awesome. Like, it really was cool. Like, I had, so I actually did not yet have my orders. But I, they gave me a, they let me go to trade ed assaults, which was great. Like, I'm getting to help teach CQB. and, you know, getting to go on trips where we are meeting with the East Coast trade at

and some dev group guys to de-conflict how CQB is being taught. And then I got like in a year and a half, I went to Shaw's like seven times. So that didn't hurt for when I did go to All but, you know. All but. Selection.

So I, would have, I mean, I would have loved to have gone sooner, but like, I had a great time. I had a great time going to, going to trade it. And doing, like, the Shaw's trips and then a mount trip to Fort Knox. And then we were doing back then even go-plats, gas and oil platforms, you know, oil rigs, taking those down. We were teaching, we would teach the West Coast platoons how to take down an oil rig. And I had spent weeks living in the Gulf of Thailand, like taking down oil rigs on my previous deployment.

And then we were teaching VBSS still, right? Or like underway shipboarding. And like I was one of the two people in the whole trade it that had ever climbed a ship on a real shipboarding. Right on. So it was cool, right?

I enjoyed it. No regrets about that. It was fun. And the travel, you know? And like my wife and I, like, it was kind of good for me to go to a like, get like some technically some shore duty before going to dev group and getting on all, you know, getting on that up tempo.

And it was hard. Like our first year of marriage, like I was deployed nine and a half months. I said a, that's crazy. I set a pretty low bar. That's the secret. That's the secret. Set a low bar the first year. Right on.

On that note, let's take a break. Let's do it. When we come back, we'll pick up with Development Group. I need you to stop what you're doing for a second and really listen. If someone relies on your income and you don't have life insurance yet, this needs to move to the top of your list. I've had to think about that myself, making sure my family isn't left dealing with everything if something happens to me.

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You're going to get first dibs on new merch drops and limited edition items that will never be sold again. Plus, exclusive offers from our partners you won't find anywhere else. So subscribe to the Vigilance Elite newsletter right now. All right, Eric, we're back from the break. we're going to get into development group now. How many deployments do you have with them? Lost count.

No, it wasn't like that many. I'm just trying to make sure I'm counting them correctly. Four? Right on. Yeah. And I had, so two at Team 5, one of which was like nine and a half months. And I went through my training.

I finished you know after tradeette went to the East Coast went to Dev Group

went to Gold Squadron they had just renamed it from gold team to squadron Oh that was an official thing

I didn't realize that used to be teams then they became official Navy commands and they renamed them squadrons Right on.

And that's when that happened when I got there. And which is the funny, so now I have a, I am by no means a plank owner, but I have a big, big huge certificate and plaque, framed plaque with the coins as a gold squadron plank owner. Oh, right on. Because I was, I was there when they became, went from T. teams to squadrons. That's cool. So that's cool. Obviously, it, you know, it was long, it was around well before me and we'll be around

long after. But yeah. And I, let's see, moved out there technically. What were some of the first things you noticed that were different between Dev Group and Steel Team 5? You know, there was a, well, for starters, I mean, you're starting all over again, right? You show up at a team, like you show up at SEAL Team 5. I showed up at SEAL Team 5.

You're a brand new guy. And now I've done two platoons. You know, I'm a department head, right? And now I'm going to leave all that to go start all over. You know what I mean? So there's a lot of You know, there's a lot of similarities. There was,

but there was definitely something very different about it. I mean, fuck, man, I've been there. I'm just walking in the damn compound. It's like, holy shit. Well,

as much bigger. You got your own fucking shooting range. You got a gym that takes you up to altitude. It's like everything you could possibly fucking imagine. Whereas everybody else is traveling all over the country. And I know you guys are too, but it's appeared to me. It's like,

well, I don't know why the fuck these guys are traveling. all the damn time. It's all, literally everything is right here. They have a climbing wall, they had altitude simulator, they have all, you know, it was very interesting, like, once, you know, once you're there and you're kind of through training and whatever, I could just keep my guns in my cage. Like, I didn't have to go sign, like get the ordinance rep to sign them out of the the armory to go train with them and turn them right away in. I could keep my guns in my cage.

I could take them. I could go to the range anytime I wanted. I could shoot. I'd clean my own guns. Once a month or whatever when they did, they had to do an official weapons inventory. Then it had to go back in the cage. They would get eyes on. Then you could take it back and just go like keep all your gear in your cage and go train with it. Nice. It was interesting though. Like when I first got there. It probably doesn't mean shit to anybody else. But it's a big

deal. But it is a fucking big deal. It's a big deal. Like it was like when I was at Sealed Team 5, it was so hard to go train. Like if you got to go to a range, it was on a trip. Yeah. You weren't doing it there. Right?

So for starters, the like the first thing that stood out to me, and this was like, like, when I got there and, like, I moved there in 04 and started to, like, hang out and I was going to go through training in 05. And, like, like, guys are a little older because they've done at least two rotations. Obviously, there was the grooming standards. You know, back then, like back then it was a significant difference, like long hair, beards, everything. And you couldn't have that at. you know, Team 5 or other teams.

And just, yeah, the command itself, like, was this kind of Death Star type area, like, with all these buildings and all these training facilities and like these, like, just the, the meeting rooms, just everything was, you just had more, right? And you had, like, way more gear. the amount of gear that you get, it even as a, even when you get your gear for like green team, it's just like,

whoa, this is way nicer than the stuff I had at Team 5. And this is what they're giving me for training, you know? Wow. And then you just kept getting more. You kept getting more. It's just insane, right? The amount of just the gear.

And the other thing, And I don't know, I haven't really rehearsed what to say about this, but you got to be there at dev group. Like, you're going to have to be there five plus years. More, probably more than that. And have done multiple, you know, five plus deployments. Probably more. Before you're in charge of a sixth man team. No shit.

That's generally how it works. I've never heard anybody say that. you like it is so like and when you go through your selection most people are e5s or e6s and then all of a sudden you're on a six-man assault team of one e-6 with a bunch of e-7s like it's just more senior right and just more mature um just been around longer um so yeah it's it's just and there's just this different kind of attitude you know you can just i don't know more certainly in some ways more mature, you know, because obviously they're just older, right? I would say a couple of things that really stood out to me.

So when I was new at a team, Sealed Team 5, like, I knew that, well, I felt like if I wanted to, I wanted to be the best teammate I could be. And so part of that meant being as good at my craft as possible. Like how good can just be in a good shooter, you know, being able to shoot, move, communicate. doing all the all the component skills of being an operator, right? But then also

being a good teammate, right? And helping people out and, you know, helping other departments out. Like, I've always believed it's, it's not good enough to be good at your job.

Like, do you make other people better? And I learned that in, I learned that in football. It got emphasized at Team 5, right? And it, you know, something I watched other people do at Dev Group, right? So as good as you can be at your craft, that is how you make the team better. But it's also not good enough just to be really good. You have to, like, help other people.

And that's being a teammate, being selfless, being humble. And then being a better leader, right? And that starts by like being a really good follower. Because you can't expect other people to follow you someday if you haven't, if you weren't willing to like follow what your boss told you to do. Right. And I found that the skills were all very similar. You just had to do them like sharper, maybe a little faster, a little better.

Like you had to do everything a little bit better, right? As it came to shooting or parachuting or whatever, higher, higher expectation. And I would also say that at the command, at dev group, like you don't buy a spot there, you rent it. And that rent is due daily, if that makes sense. Makes sense. So it's kind of like we've all heard I will earn my trident every day, like true to an extent. But there specifically, like they are having, they're having a new group come up every year

with a draft, essentially. And there's people that want your spot. And people that make it there, they get kicked out every year, just, you know, shooting a hostage in training or whatever. Like, not, I don't know. Like, there's a, like, safety violations or kill house violations or whatever. people that make it there are regularly booted for performance or usually it's safety if that makes sense. So and I found that honestly like the like the really the best of the best were both both like they're obviously competent at their job, but they're humble and obsessed. So humble enough to not rely on my, on the fact that I just shot this six plate drill faster than anyone else. Like, humble enough to realize, like, I need to still get better, right? Or humble enough to know that no matter how good I am at this, like, like, even though the bad guy doesn't train as hard as me, he could still get lucky.

One RPG hits a helicopter. When you're saying the best of the best, I mean, you are the best of the best when you get over there. Are you saying the best of the best at that particular command? Yeah, like you, like I would look around and like, you know, you would just see like the people that I looked up the most to as operators, like they were humble and obsessed at the same time. Like we had a strong belief that you don't rise to the occasion, you fall to your level of preparation.

And I feel like humility precedes that level of preparation. preparation. Like, you have to be humble to realize you still need to keep training. The person who's not humble thinks they've made it. They don't need to train. Or another way to think about it, the humble operator is more inclined, not only to not think, like, oh, I'm not any better, so I need to train. But also, I'm not any better than my teammate. So I'm going to go, like, it's time to, like, whatever, clean the high bay or take out the trash. like that level of selflessness, like humility, the humility enough to help each other out.

Gotcha. And then obsessed with the craft, I guess you'd say. Did you notice these things immediately? I don't think I was mature enough to notice them immediately. How old were you when you got over there? You got in at what, 21? 19. 22nd employment, 22nd birthday.

on your first deployment. So I would have been 25? 25. I mean, not. I think it was 26. So it's still pretty young. Is that right? 25.

So still pretty young. But like, you know, I didn't have the charity now that I have now, you know. And I would just look back and I can look back. with the benefit of hindsight, like at the good operators were humble and obsessed, right? Always prepared. Always helping other people, right?

And having like seasoned operators help you out as a new guy there or whatever the case may be. So, I mean, it's the same job. It's just doing it to a different level maybe so a level of humility and obsession with just being

really really good at it you know what I mean which is that obsession I did and it you know it gets you have to you have to really obsession is a

double edge sword like if you obsess over everything then pretty soon you will run out of bandwidth right if you are as obsessed with you know how you make your morning coffee with as how you would i don't know clean your gun or sharpen your blade or whatever like pretty soon you're going to run out of energy so you had to be super careful it's like beware of how much of the things you obsess over

because it'll you only have so much band right um and it was it was very hard for So we had a kid in our first kid we had while I was going through training there and my son. And then had him in September. Then I'd finish training and deployed right away. Holy shit. And my wife, I swear like, I think I was gone on average 300 days a year there something like 280 to 300 and we a lot of time we may my my poor wife was

pregnant or nursing the whole time we were there we had three kids right while I was there um from essentially we had moved there in the end of 04 and left there at the end of 09 beginning of 2010 we had three kids and it was my kids were young enough to where they don't remember me being gone for birthdays like on deployments or work trips

so and I've you know since had a lot of friends who've you know had kids at the same time that ended up staying there longer and like their kids would for sure have memories of them being gone over Christmas and stuff like that.

So it got, it definitely, I saw it getting harder and harder to be a, you know, to be a good husband and father and a seal at the same time. Now, I think you can. And I think I did a pretty good job of balancing that at that time.

Like when I was, when I was home from being on a trip, like work hard, get my work done. But like, I wasn't going out on weeknights in Virginia Beach. I was coming home. And then when we'd go on the road, I would go out with guys, right? But I would not let that in any way, like, affect how hard I worked at work or how hard I trained. Like, I trained as hard as anyone.

Like, we'd, a friend of mine and I, like, we would do. we would do these like Friday morning workouts like where we had this rule like you had to be like completely fasted. And this was before people were really fasting for like longevity and stuff like that. But we would do like a really long ruck on the soft sand followed by like some sort of body armor like push up, pull up, sit up thing. followed by like an operator standards handgun and rifle test followed literally by like chess

just to like you're so depleted after all that. The only thing you were allowed was like electrolytes right and so we would like do stuff like that maybe some grappling you know stuff like that so. Right on. But I can also say

like my wife and I have now been married 24 years and I also got medically retired from that command that you know

a lot of people do get divorced from so you know maybe that was God's plan like that I would get and that I would

get hurt in combat and the kidney thing would come back to bite me and I would get kicked out of the Navy so like that's kind of the way I kind of think about it interesting

yeah Let's get into some deployment stuff. Yeah. Where was your first deployment to? Iraq. There when I was there. I would say mostly went to Iraq. I did go to Afghanistan.

Two good war stories for you. One takes place on Super Bowl Sunday, 2008. So I'd been there for a little while. And this is in Iraq. We didn't think we'd have a mission that night because it was Super Bowl Sunday. And our pilots, TF-160, said the helicopters were down for maintenance. They also wanted to watch the Super Bowl. But then we found out there's an HVT in our AOR, sorry, high-value target area of responsibility.

And we had to go out and do a capture-kill mission. So we go out on this mission and we're going to this guy is he's in one of three buildings. So we split the troop into three, you know, small assault teams to go assault three different buildings simultaneously. So we keep the element of surprise, right? Because they're all like 100 yards apart. and as Eddie and Dom's unit is getting close to their building, so I'm already, I'm already in front of the building that I will soon be leading a team through the door,

right? And I got my, I got my gun on that door, right? It's pitch black. We're going to be taking this building. Eddie and Dom's team goes past us and they're going to go set up on this building. And on there,

I think they barely get there, they're almost, there and somehow they get made and it was it was a little moon out that night but somehow someone saw them and people started like running out of that building trying to get close to them and blow themselves up they had suicide vests now intel had told us there'd be suicide vests on this whole target set. But I mean, there ends up being like 15 people wearing suicide vests.

Holy shit. They were legitimately running at were they deadnating themselves? Yeah. So they were running at the other element, the other assault team because they knew the gig was up. So they were just trying to get as close as possible to them. And they were all running. Like back then the initiators were on the shoulders. So if they went like this, they could still blow themselves up, right?

They knew that, because they knew that, like, we would have, the interpreter would tell them to come out and put their hands up and put them like that. And then they could reach, like, almost like a rip cord right there. Does that make sense? So they would run out of this building at Eddie and Dom's group. And something like three or four of them just blew up, right? And so I'm sitting there holding this door. I'm holding this door and I just hear gunfire boom more gunfire boom more gunfire

like it's three or four times right and it's shaking the ground like these are like big s-vass and across you know the that team leader comes across the radio and he's like shots fired shots fired suicide vests be careful And like, I remember, like, I literally, before that moment, I literally had thought, like, we had got into position early. Most of the time the mission goes is planned. Like, you go in, you capture, you kill the gut, whatever it is, you get home. I'm like, we're going to be back for half time. And obviously we weren't.

So they didn't, they end up eventually taking that. target down. And now, you know, I'm holding on a door, like maybe from here to the, you know, that engine block. And then a guy comes out of that door. And he's, uh, he's got a suicide vests and he's got an AK. He can't see me. But I'm like this far away. Like, obviously I have to engage him. Um, he's already too close. And there's another teammate of mine right there. Like, that's even closer. Like if he blows himself, like we could just die right now.

Especially if he had shrapnel on it. Even worse would be to let him go back in there because we have to go in there and find, you know, the leader. And that could be him. But like, as you know, like a suicide vest inside is much worse than a suicide vest outside.

Just because of the reverberation. or the concussion factor. So I in... How could you tell he was wearing a suicide vest? Well, he had a big vest on and four people had just blown themselves up. So I assumed. I assumed it was an s-best and and like we were told like we were briefed. Like we knew that the target line that we were chasing was like mostly foreigners, like not obviously not.

Iraqis at all. They're from all over. But they had come together under the Al-Qaeda banner to fight and fight Americans there in Iraq. And this group in particular was known like they were not going to surrender and they were not going to get taken alive. So they wore suicide vests and they all had AKs, right? And so he had what to me. and we found out after I shot him, it was a suicide vest. But I'm like, well, it is a vest, and they just blew themselves up. It could be, right?

I was just trying to get you to describe what it looks like for the audience. Oh, yeah. So he had... Not questioning your judge. Yeah, yeah, no, he had like his man jammies on, and then it didn't look like an assault vest. You know what I mean? It had like that. And it's not like you can see the wires on the thing.

thing from your, but it looks different than, it's not like a, I'll date myself here, like in a Black Hawk assault nest. Remember those? Oh, yeah. Right? Uh, which we bought with our own money. Um, no, so I end up and we were, you know, at that time, it was like, hey, if suicide vests are even on the menu, it's all headshots. Because you don't want it to, you know, blow up just by, So I got him. And then at this point, you know, they've heard us in that building. They've heard me shoot this guy. There's still another target to prosecute.

We still have to take my building down. And we're like, hey, like, as you know, we need speed, surprise, violence of action. So we needed some momentum. So I was standing over like behind a wall. I jumped that wall and I'm like, hey, we're assaulting this. run into that. And I kind of, and he's in the doorway, so I have to straddle him, right? And he's wearing unexploded suicide mess. And I'm straddling him and like pying the, it was a corner fed room. So I'm pying that room. And I don't see anyone in there. And I'm from the corner.

I'm like, I'm good. I'm going to get, I'm going to get through this room. All the other bad guys are like probably like in the main room right and i had i could clear most of that i mean you can clear most this room from that door right corner bed room and i clear it but i couldn't see all the way down this wall you know and and i didn't realize so there was someone in there and he was barricaded oh shit so i sneak. And I'm still like, they know we're around, but I wasn't going to just take it dynamically at this point. We're not doing a hostage rescue. So I kind of sneak through the doorway. And my first step in that doorway, all hell breaks loose. And I am, you know, three yards away from,

four yards away from a guy who's behind a barricade and he's spraying me. And I'm in, like, I'm in the doorway, right? Shit. And it felt like, you know, it felt like minutes. Obviously, it wasn't. But I do remember having this feeling like, how did I, like, how did I get here? Like, I'm going to die in Iraq on Super Bowl Sunday. Like, I should be, I literally had this, like, thought, like, I should be at home watching

Super Bowl with cold, hot pizza and cold beer. You know what I mean? And now I'm here in Iraq doing this. But then I also had this, like, moment where I heard the first three or four shots, but then I didn't hear anything. Like, it's like my hearing shut off. And all I saw was the muzzle flash. And, like, I've later read about when people get put in those circumstances,

like they will lose one or two of their senses to like focus all their energy on another sense. Like maybe their sense of touch, right? And I felt like I lost my sense of hearing and my adrenaline was like, like all of that was focused into my fine motor skill, like of running down my wall and shooting back. And like, that's all I did. Ran down my wall and shot back. And he missed me. I got him, right?

And I got, you know, I've said it before, we don't rise to the occasion. We fall to our level of training. And before, you know, we had, before that point had been in gunfights, but nothing like that close and personal and that consequential where it's, you know, it's almost me to you. And he's, he's got the first three or four shots with an AK. Right? Shit. And we found out later that before that happened, he tried blowing his suicide vest up, but it failed.

His cap failed. So not only does his cap fail and that vest not blow up when I walked through the door, he misses me. I'm running, and I'm, I mean, I'm telling you, I'm running pretty fast down my wall. and I got him. So I ran down my wall. I shot him while moving, you know, in this region, not here,

to not blow up his best. And, you know, it's better to be lucky than good. And, you know, that's a very hard shot to make. But that, that's like table stakes when you're at dev group.

You know what I mean? Being able to move down a wall. and quickly shoot someone in the head while with nods, right? So that's what I did. And I come out of that, like I come out of that room and I come out of that room. And I just remember like, you know, you're always kind of patting yourself for a bullet hole because you might not feel it in the moment. So I come out of that room and I'm like this and I'm crushing my legs.

And I literally go like, and my buddy sees me do this on nods. I totally forget doing it. But I'm like this, safe. And my buddy's sitting there on not, because, you know, we have such a sick sense of humor, right? And he's just like dying. He's like, bro, I can't believe you did that. And I didn't even, it didn't even dawn on me, right?

Like, so that was like, I mean, I was elated. Obviously, I was happy to still be alive, but like, oh, I got that guy. He didn't get me. Like, you get that kind of adrenaline. And then probably, I don't know, less than five minutes later, Mike and Nate get shot. Well, four other guys get shot.

Two of them die. Mike Koch gets, like, shot through the earhole. Nate under the armpit right through the heart. And they were in a similar room with a sandbag shooter. But there were two of them. them or more. And, you know, two guys got shot in the courtyard. Mike and Nate got shot going through the door.

And now we have whatever, four guys shot. Sorry, I heard buzz. We have four guys shot. And, you know, two are, we don't know they're dead right away. But I spent, you know, I. Like that night, I, like, I shot all my, all the bullets I had remaining just trying to help, you know, we were recovering bodies and Mike and Nates. And I remember putting, like, putting Mike into the bag and zipping it up and putting them on the helicopter. And then, you know, we came back.

We went back to our base and they were obviously dead. And we were going to have, um, we had a little. little Irish wake that morning. And that next night, I think Eddie may have mentioned this up, like three nights later when the building blew up. Well, between when Mike and Nate died and when Louis Saffront died, there was a point where Louis came up to me. and Louis, he kind of knew, he knew I was a Christian, he knew I was a believer, and, you know, I would say things like blessing and things like that. And I would say that I went to church and things like that.

But I wasn't like truly living out my faith, you know, like walking the walk as I should. And he was just asking me, he was kind of like beating around the book. Bush just asking me what I believed in why. Hmm. And it was more... Huh? I always think those are the best discussions. And I, like, I was not at that moment.

It wasn't, like, I wasn't ashamed. But I was, I was afraid. And I was afraid because, like, the Bible says to always be able to, you know, give a reason for the hope that you have, right? And what you believe in why. But I was like so worried about sharing my faith because I didn't have all the answers, right? I wanted to be an, like I was overthinking it. I wanted to be an expert.

Well, what about this? And what about that? And what, like, know the Bible before I would share it. You know what I mean? Like overthinking it. And I didn't, I kind of just changed the subject because I didn't have all the answers. And I've, you know, I've had a pastor since tell me, like, in those instances, We don't need to be lawyers. We need to be witnesses, which is a really good way of thinking

about it. We don't need to be experts. We are experts on our own lives. And if we have a relationship with Jesus and how things have changed because of that, we are experts on how that has helped us or whatever. And I didn't want to share it because I didn't like, you know, I didn't have, think I had the words. You know what I mean? I was thinking I need. needed to be an expert, not just a witness. And I didn't have the, like, the courage to just talk about my faith like I do now. And here he is kind of searching, like being around the bush. Really he was going to ask me as like, well, why do good people like Mike and Nate die and

like the bad people not, which I still don't have the answer for, right? But I'm sitting there and, you know, of all the, of all the regrets I have, I like today these now every morning I spend time praying reading the Bible and journaling and I've been doing that for whatever 10 years it makes every day better it doesn't it doesn't make every day easier there's still plenty of hard things it just makes me handle hard things better it makes me sharper at work no matter what I'm doing it it helps my workouts I It helps every aspect of my life. I spend an hour a day in the morning, first thing, giving God the first hour of my day.

Time in prayer, time in the word, and time journaling, and stillness and solitude and silence, like from five to six or six to whatever it is. And I've literally found it helps every aspect of my life. In fact, if anyone is like, well, what would you do? Like, do that for a month and get back to me. And you don't have to do a full hour, right? I swear if I would have done that in the teams, and I've talked to my teammates about some teammates about this,

like, man, if we would have done that, like, I swear I would have been a better seal, right? I would have been like just because I feel like things are just more clear to me. I have more energy from it. You feel like you're losing an hour of sleep. But that period of time where you're just waiting on the Lord each morning, like gives you this strength. Long story short, like I, at that age of my life, I was, I wasn't afraid to run into a room full of Al Qaeda for the flag that I wore on my shoulder.

But I was afraid to share my faith for that cross I wore underneath my body armor. That's interesting. You know, I get it. I know what you mean. But a couple of things. First being, I mean, now that you're deeper in your faith, isn't it weird that that's how we, you know, when the discussion happens, and I still think about it,

and I still, I still, you know, my mind switches and goes back to this too, but because we don't know anything else but, you know, this world. But, I mean, if you're a true believer, I mean, that's the ultimate goal, right? to cross over. And we always talk about it as if it's a tragedy, if it's a tragedy, because that's what we see. We see fucking tragedy.

We see fatherless kids. Yeah. You know, Gold Star Wives. And it's a mess. But, you know, the reality of it is it's that, that's the reward. That's the ultimate goal. That's where we go.

That's home. Yeah. You know, and it's, I mean, just looking around at people, you know, and everybody's got their shit, everybody's suffering. I think there's very few people that are genuinely happy. It's fucking, it's interesting, you know, how we perceive it. And, you know, it's funny, I was just talking to our mutual friend who protects my family. and I think we were talking about it this morning. And I don't even know why it came up, but I was just like, man, I just, it's so weird now, man.

Like I never gave a shit about dying. It never really, I mean, I didn't want to die. It's not like I had a death wish, but it just didn't really bother me that much. But I didn't have kids. I didn't have a wife. Yeah. And even when I did get married, I mean, it wasn't until I had kids. that now I'm scared.

I'm fucking scared to death to die and leave them here in this fucked up world. Sure. You know what I mean? With no guidance. You're not afraid of death for your own sense. You're just afraid of leaving them behind it. That's it, man. Yeah, yeah.

That's the only... I get that. That's my only tie. Yeah. What about you? I mean... You know... But you had kids.

And... I didn't have kids. I did. I was doing this. I had kids. So the day that happened, I had two kids. I had kids my whole time at that group. Man, dude, that is fucking crazy.

I had the, I called my wife, I mean, this was a few years before that. I was in Afghanistan. I called my wife on a sat phone. She was just going to get an ultrasound with a friend because I wasn't there to find out the sex of a baby that we were having. I get her on the sap phone. She's like, we're having a girl. We agree on the name. Over the sap phone right there. It's a girl. We're going to name her Daisy. She just graduated high school. Anyway, that night, we go on a, I go on a mission and I am between three different Taliban compounds. And I had like, I had to help lead a group into this.

this area and we get pinned down from three buildings and we're in the middle of this in, like the Helmand province, it's like a bowling alley. It's flat. And I cannot, I can't figure out, I'm towards the front. I'm like, well, which one of these buildings is shooting at us? And I'm, you know, there's three of them and like we found out later it's all of them. But I'm trying to, I'm trying to help coordinate an airstrike because they're like shooting here and here and there. So I get up on my knee to like get a better view and a bullet whizzes by my hair, my head

and cuts off a chunk of hair. I had longer hair than this. Get the fuck out of here. Are you serious? I had longer hair than this. It's sticking out of my helmet. I lose a chunk of hair from like, an AK round, right? And I had just, like, not five hours before that,

I'd been on a sad phone with my wife and I were having a girl. Like, I almost didn't meet her, right? And I was like, that night on that helicopter ride home, I was a little bit, like, almost nauseous, like, dry heaving a little bit, like, because I almost, I mean, that was close. You weren't like, all right, motherfucker, not the hair. The hair's off limits. But I almost like, you know, I'm like, I'm inches away from, you know, that or whatever.

And there was, you know, other close calls. I had like, there was also a time, like, I would sit there. I would sit there on a helicopter flight. And I would always say, if we had a 60-minute flight, I'd say a 40-minute prayer. And then I would, then I would rehearse the op in my head. Kind of like Michael Jordan rehearsing a game in his hit. Like I did that on every helicopter flight. And I would, I would say, like, I did say God, like, if there's any, I know there's non-believers on my team.

And if there are, like, I would happily die instead of them. I would just want them to, you know, live longer to find their faith. But I still wasn't always, like, sharing my faith with them. I mean, I had a, there were two nights in Iraq where I volunteered to go into a, instead of sending a full team in, like, I went in with just an EOD guy to clear a building that we thought was rigged to explode. Holy shit. I had two kids. But I was comfortable with it because I knew where I was going if something would happen. And I didn't know if other people did.

Now, that's very selfish. Like, I don't... Babe, if you're watching this, I'm sorry. So that I did... I think I did that twice in Iraq. But that was after... And that was after the building blew up when Louis died. Shit.

So it was possible. But I didn't... I don't know. I don't know to answer your question. Now I'm kind of rambling. I do fear leaving them behind. I just hope, you know, now they're old enough that, you know, I've, like, either taught them or showed them enough. You know what I mean?

But there will never be enough time. You know what I mean? I do. I think, I know what struck up the conversation this morning. My uncle just died a couple days ago. Oh, I'm sorry. that my parents 50th putting anniversary. Sorry for that, man.

Thank you. But he died on a fishing trip with his son and my brother. And yeah. And he was like on my brother's ass to get that fishing charter going. They had seen each other in a long time. The whole family was there except me, unfortunately. Oh, man. And he got in the water to cool off and died right there in the water,

peaceful death with his son who had been struggling for a long time, finally got it together. They're getting along and sad. But at the same time, I fucking hope I go like that. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah.

We just don't know how long we get. You don't. And, but I think, you know, I just hope I can see my kids flourishing and not worry and just know, like, they're going to be all right. And if that happens, I'm good. Yeah. Those are lofty goals, basic ones, simple ones. died having a good time with his son on a fishing trip you know I say like I thank God every morning

like I thank God for everything I have but I start by thanking him for the fact that I woke up like God I don't deserve a day you give me thank you for this one show me what to do and show me how to do it and or strengthen me for whatever BS is coming my way, because I can't do it alone. And I think that, I mean, I believe that's so true.

So we just, you know, we don't know. Yeah. You know, I'll tell you another thing that kind of, it always catches my gold team. Like, I don't know, like, what the, what the culture of each team is within development group. Yeah. But just something that I've picked up from the outside is, man, like the gold team has a lot of righteous warriors for Christ coming out of there.

A lot more than any of the other teams that I've noticed. And what's really fucking odd is it's a cross. The crusader, you know, it has the crusades. And I've talked about this. I've talked about it. I think with Eddie, I don't know who all I've talked about it with, but every time I bring it up,

they're like, I never thought of that. And I'm like, how the fuck did you not think of that, man? Like, some strong faith coming out of that squadron. And I think there's,

you know, I have friends from all of them, and I have met friends in all of them that have as strong of faith. And all of us, though, from my vintage, we would all agree. Like, we just wish we were all in that time a little more open about it,

even to the point of having, like, Bible studies and stuff together versus, like, and now we're, you know, now we're definitely more, now we're, you know, more open about it. But it's my only regret that. And, you know, I, back to Louis, I was, like, I didn't share my faith with him. Or just having, like, what I believed in why and, like, why I have. hope for the future just because like no matter how bad all of this goes like even if i get a hundred years right get eternity in heaven like and it's going to be better than i can imagine um even if i would say something like that right because i believe in jesus i didn't and he like died two nights later

and two nights later i was standing like i had just led our team up to to a window, sorry, up to a building. And I was again, the lead got the point man. So I was going to lead us through that door. And I stopped because there was a window here. And I had to pan through that window. And then there were guys in there waiting for us. So I engaged him through the window.

The rest of the team goes past or they were already passed. and they're setting up on the door and I'm like, you know, 10 feet from the door at this point. And then I just remember like, and Eddie wasn't even supposed to be there. He's supposed to be back over there, getting ready to support with EOD. But then at the last minute, he kind of bumped up.

And not Eddie, I'm sorry, Louis. And then all of a sudden the whole, when the building blew up, I literally thought, I literally thought, our breacher through like some top secret grenade in there because the whole building blew up. And I was like, what kind of grenade was that? Because the last thing I remember before passing out, because I was by the window, which saved me.

The overpressure of being next to the window blew me, you know, whatever, 30 feet away from the building or however far. but it blew me enough to where I bounced off the next building, like, or the wall, right? So it blew me away from that window. I bounced off this compound wall over here. And then when I came to all of that assault team,

my assault team had been, you know, crushed. And that's when Louis died. Like, and he got basically, where he was, there was a thick, concrete roof, like a carport like they have over there. That whole thing fell on him.

Shit. And then other people, like our dog handler, he had like double compound femur fracture, two thigh bones sticking out. We had another guy who had like a full pelvic fracture. And then a couple of broken arms and a broken. and leg like they were all and like I'm the only one who didn't get hurt but I mean I got a concussion I got blown away from the building because of the and I was the first guy I would be the first guy in but I stopped and I was engaging other bad guys through a window and then I got blown away

from the the window and that's that's like two nights three nights after you know the Super Bowl Sunday. Um, and I'll just never like, so I get medevaced because I was so my bell was rung so hard that I couldn't stand up. Like I had that much of a concussion. And I had played high school football and one year of college football. So I knew I know concussions, right? But I was like, man.

And I was nauseous. So I get medevaced. I have to get a CAT scan. They say I'm fine. And I'm fine. I feel fine. But like now my entire assault team gets sent home. Like from one houseborn IED and then Eddie dies.

Sorry, not Eddie. I keep saying that. Louis. Forgive me, Eddie. I did not mean your name. But Louis dies. And it was just nights after, you know, Mike and me. So how are you handling that?

At the time, you know, I didn't at the time I just you didn't you know like compartmentalized it. Yeah. Predator. I don't got time to bleed type deal. And then honestly like that whole deployment was so busy. Like it was like a couple nights later were operating again. They'd flown in guys who replaced the rest of my team and we're. out back in the ground, you know, chasing bad guys, didn't have time to deal with it, really.

And it wasn't until later when I just realized, like, the thing that I, and I will say, I don't have this. I mean, we all have whatever PTSD or whatever they call it now. I hear about people that struggle to fall asleep and, you know, have brain fog and all the operator syndrome stuff. And I have none of it. Like, I don't even have nightmares about what I saw or what I did. And I attribute that to my faith. Like, I have none of that.

I only have regrets of, like, not being willing to share my faith, right? And certainly, I know there are, you know, I have my share of medical issues, right? And I probably have, you know, you know, brain issues from not just that one. I mean, I was IED three times. That was the one big one. But then there's all the grenades and just, you know,

shooting a little gun inside of a killhouse. All of those things add up. I found out later that even, um, you can get like brain issues from too many parachute jumps, just that opening shock, right? Oh, shit. Especially like the, the, the, the, the, the parachutes.

we had which for like for higher altitude so they have less porosity so they can open quicker at altitude um that means if you prep when you train lower they open harder if that makes any sense um so just all those things can lead the different brain whatever lesions or whatever they get now um but i don't like i saw really bad things um i was put in situations where i had to You know, it was me or them. And I, I don't know. I sleep fine. I fall asleep.

Like, the only time I don't sleep fine is when I have like stuff going on at work and I wake up at two in the morning, take a leak. And then my brain starts to roll, right? Like, I'm sure we all get that. But I am, you know, when I got out of the military, I tried, you know, I never did a lot. I never did drugs or anything, but I, you know, I lost myself in work. I lost myself in hobbies or working out or the outdoors. Even, you know, I drank quite a bit. But never like, you know, I could never drink more than two nights in a row.

Gives me a headache. but nothing ever like fills the like fills the god-sized hole or the god-shaped hole that you have other than like it like that time spent in prayer and in reading the Bible and journaling and I attribute that to my relatively well you know adapt being adapted from all the things I got to see and do so I don't know And maybe that's not the case, but that's what I believe. So. And then I had a... You ever think about why you were spared those two times in a row? And I'm sure there's a lot of others. I think you're doing the thing that you need to be doing.

I think about that all the time. Yeah, me too. I wonder, I kind of wonder, like, was I spared to have the next kid? like so that or am i was i spared to go like am i am i fulfilling my calling and purpose that's always the that's always the question yeah you know what i mean and that's something i ask god every day so um i i don't know the answer to that it's a good question to ask yeah i think it's a good like it's a good question to ask all the time and keeps you kind of at least like having something to aim at you know I mean.

Yeah. And I had, like, I had a great, like, the Navy, as hard as the Navy is, and certainly the hard as it is to be at that team, like, that team has been described as like a burning Ferris wheel. Like, you get on it, you know it's on fire, and it's, you're going to get burnt and you're going to get ground out and spit out the other end, but you, like, you still want on it. You know what I mean?

But as hard as the Navy was and like all the things that happened to me in the Navy, like it gave me more than it took, you know, like, so I don't have any, like, I don't regret doing that. Why did you wind up leaving? So I got medically retired because of my kidney. And so I had lost, if we can rewind back to O2 when I lost. my kidney and I'm on a hospital bed and I signed a waiver to stay in the military. I didn't know that that was a non-deployable waiver. Are you fucking serious?

I immediately deployed right after it. Wow. And then I did four more at Dev Group. And it wasn't until I got hurt in combat that the Bureau of Navy Medicine found out. because they had to sign off on my purple heart and they showed up at the command the Bureau of Navy Medicine shows up at

dev group at the command and says where is this Frohart and my boss it's like well what do you mean why like it says here that he got injured in Iraq and he is being awarded a purple heart how is that possible he's like well what do you mean he was over there

and he got blown up in an IED. And the Bureau of Navy Medicine How's this possible? You're a fucking dev group, dip shit. Yeah. How do you think it's possible? Bureau of Navy Medicine goes, well, he signed a waiver

to stay in the military back in 2002, and he was not supposed to deploy since that. And that's how wires get crossed and bureaucracies have no idea. Like, can you imagine? Wow.

So I signed a waiver to stay in under the caveat that I couldn't deploy. And then I just, I didn't know that. I was also high on morphine when I signed this waiver. And no one, like I never read it. I like never. And I just kept going. Wow. Wow.

They finally caught up with me, right? Five deployments later they tell you no more, huh? Uh-huh. Wow. Wow. Were you pissed? So I was upset. Like I was like, I actually fought it for a little bit and then I had to go get a med board. And the med board came back and said, yeah, you, like, you can't keep going.

They said you could have shore duty. You could. And they actually, they even offered to let me stay at the command. Like, I could work, you know, in a training role with the, like the sniper guys or whatever. I would have taken that offer if I had 15 in and I only needed like five more. But at this point, I am almost like to 12 years and I didn't want to do 10 years teaching people and not going. Like if I can't go and go at the highest level, then I won out. And I got out. I had six months. They gave me six months. Because that's, that was my EAOS. Six months.

EAOS was six months. So I got out like, I got catapulted not only out of the Navy, but like I was up to that point. Like by the time my med board finished, I was training with the squadron getting ready to deploy. I found out. Holy shit. I found out weeks before a deployment, I was not going to be allowed to go. And then I had, and I had. And I had. planned on, you know how it works, I was going to go on that deployment and re-enlist. Because then I get my re-enlistment bonus tax-free. And instead of re-enlisting in December of 2009, like, that was my EOS and it just, it expired. So I found out in July of 2006 that, like, I found out before that about that they weren't

going to let me, but that's when my med board finalized. And then by December, not July of 06, but sorry, 09. And then by December of 2009, I was out of the Navy. So I had a no shore duty,

no transition time. You know, how you sometimes get a shore duty job or a like you can go network and find your next thing. So now I'm just, but I knew I needed to, like, if I'm getting out, I needed to leave Virginia Beach. So we left Virginia Beach. Wow, you left that fast.

And it was as hard as it was to join the Navy and become a seal. It was like harder to leave. No idea what you're going to do. So it was the hardest period of my life. You know, and I've had kidney stones in Hell Week, and I've been in hospitals from getting blown up. And I've lost teammates and all, like, all those things. But that period of time, those first couple years post-Navy where, like, you get out and, like, I didn't know, like, I didn't know my purpose anymore. I didn't have a way to make a living. Like, I couldn't find a job. So I had to, like, just start one. Like, I didn't have my team around me. the camaraderie with my teammates.

And then most of all, like, I, like, incorrectly, my identity was wrapped up in that trident. Like, all of ours. Like, my, I was singularly focused on one thing and that was being a Navy SEAL, and that was taken from me. And that is how I defined myself. Like, I was a SEAL first, then a husband, a father, and a Christian, and all these other monikers, right?

But, like, I was, my self-worth came from my profession. You know what I mean? And then, and I used to be able to say, like, oh, what do you do for a living? I'm a Navy SEAL. And that meant something. And then all of a sudden, I'm just, you know, another dad at Target buying diapers. So I lost, I lost all of those. things and and it was super, super hard. But then I just kind of found like, you know, I got

my purpose now is to be a good husband and father. How long did that take you to find? Took a couple years. How did you find it? Most people never do. Back to my, uh, I met some guys in Denver and they like it was this faith-based business networking group very similar to like YPO or YEO um and this group we all we had these forums of like six or whatever guys and you know there was this phrase called abiding which is like remaining close and we were always like talking about like, well, how much time did you spend abiding today? And for us, that was like made tactical as in reading the Bible, praying, and like writing down some thoughts, right?

And I, that was the way for me. So it was within, I want to say in like 11 or probably 2012. And I had gotten out at the beginning of 2010, right? And starting in 2012, I started to. like read the Bible and we'll pray and read the Bible and just write a few thoughts in my journal and like get shit out of my head and onto paper and then just trying it for a month I did it for a month a month became two two months became a year and I've been doing it ever since wow and as I was telling the other guys

earlier on. Like, I have, I want to say it was 2012. It was the first year I read the Bible cover to cover. And now I've done it probably every year since. Just reading the Bible all the way through. Now, there was a year, one year where I just did the Old Testament and one year where I just did the New Testament and went a little, like, deeper on it. But for the most part, that is the, that's what has helped me the most.

that time that I spend in the word and spend praying and journaling. And then when I finish that, then I do my morning workout, part of which is a walk, and I pray half of that walk. So, um, and I, how do you pray? Yeah. What's that? How do you pray?

Oh, I have like, uh, like you talking? Yeah. Just in my conversation. Quietly in my head. I'm like, you know, I, like I have a prayer that I do. early like, you know, about faith and hope and love and trusting God and, you know, thanking him for things and then asking for forgiveness and then embracing my weakness, my brokenness, and my neediness. Like I do all that. And then when I go on a walking prayer,

I call it, I just start by thanking him for all the things. So it starts, I'm like, God, thank you for my relationship with you. Please help make me a better Christian. Help me grow closer with you. Then I go, you know, in order. Leah, the kids, my parents and siblings, my in-laws, my extended family, my friends, my coworkers, teammates past and present. I thank God for, you know, our country and I ask for, you know, and I'm thanking and asking for help, right?

Start with, start by thanking and then I ask for help. so that I will be better in all these, all these ways. And then I even, you know, I thank him for the church and then ask me to, like, help me to be, you know, better, better brother of my brothers and sisters in Christ. Thank him for my country. You know, I pray that more people would know and love you and have a relationship with you and then be with our leaders, give them wisdom and discernment. I have this whole, it would take a while.

And then I thank him for my health. And then for work. And then I ask him like, show me what you would have me do. Thank him for every dollar he's given me for our house. Just help me to be a better steward of that money and a better steward of our house. And then even like hobbies and fitness. And I just kind of go like while I'm walking or rucking or whatever.

And I just like, I don't know. I leave those things. And I'm like. I go to work and I have so much energy until like two or three p.m. I stop and I have a snack. And then I like I have energy all day until about, you know, seven o'clock, have dinner. And then I finally wind down. But it gives, I would say like to anyone watching this, like it sounds like a lot.

But it is if it takes an hour to do that, it's worth seven hours of energy. Right. It, the, whatever you think the sacrifice is, if I only can give them, let's say, it's 10 minutes. I believe that the payoff is more than three times what I put towards it, if that makes sense. Yeah. Makes sense. I've never thought of it like that. It feels like a sacrifice at the time, but it is, the energy you put forth, is, pay.

in comparison to, you know, the energy and the strength you get from it. That's interesting. I'm going to have to try that. Yeah. Please do. I will. Give it a month. Tell me how it goes.

I will. Let's take a quick break. What do you think, Sean? Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMDM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only.

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Plus, that signature, wait, for this price, moment. Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg. So we're transitioning into your civilian life. Yep. Coming from Dev Group. But one thing that we forgot to cover is lead climber. Yeah.

And how you got into that. So I mentioned And like in the middle, like on a SEAL team, as you know and for your audience's sake, everyone does a little bit of everything. We all cross-train. We can shoot. You know, we all know how to navigate. We all know medicine.

We all know how to use a radio. Like, and then there's specialties. We all can breach a door, but there are breaches, right? And a couple of different things. Like there was a time I was a point man, which is like a. a lead navigator slash, you know, you had to be able to navigate the team to a thing, um, to a target, and then a sniper, which everyone knows what that is. And then a lead climber. And a lead climber would just be someone who would, you know, as I mentioned on the boat,

like on those shipboardings, I would be the first guy up a ladder. I could set the ladder better and then get everyone else up it. Um, in Iraq and Afghanistan, it might be a, a compound wall or something like that. Usually it's not that, you know, it's not quite that epic. But I showed up at, when I got into finish my training and I was at, you know, gold team, squadron. And me and the other new guy in my little assault team, like my team leader looked at us and the other guy was bigger and he said, you're going to be a breacher.

And then he looked at me and he said, how many pull-ups can you do? And I was like, I don't know, like 30 or whatever it was. He's like, well, then you're going to be a climber. And I had never climbed in my, like, besides the lead climbing I had done at SEAL Team 5 on the side of the ship. And so long story short, I get voluntold into being a lead climber. And we do a we do a, we do a. climbing trip to red rocks, which is outside of Las Vegas.

So I get four days of climbing on real rock at red rocks, followed by four days of climbing real rock somewhere else. So now I have, imagine this, I have eight days of rock climbing under my experience on, like in a harness on real rock, like not counting like a trip to a rock climbing wall, right, but like real rock. And like the group of lead climbers, the one guy decides we're going to go climb L-cap, right? Which is a 2,500 foot wall. Holy shit.

And I'm like, like, what? And so long story short, I end up, I find myself in, um, Yosemite National Park and we're going to climb L-Cap. So the ninth time in my life that I've ever even worn a sit harness is a training day on L-Camp. Holy shit. The 10th time in my life that I wear it on real rock on real rock is day one on L-CAP, day one. Wow. And we climb it in three days, spending two nights on portal edges on the side of it.

the last night on the top finish the climb off the back side you kind of walk then repel walk there's like a down climb with a couple a couple of hundred foot repels and like El Cap the way we did it

because we're not like able to climb it all in one day so we have like hallbags with portal ledges which are cots that you sleep on Interesting. Two gallons of water a day, all your ropes, all your food, your mountain house meals. And like you're carrying each, each of us had 100 pounds of gear to start. So you, and you're not climbing with all that.

That's on an anchor, but you would climb. And then you build an anchor and you pulley that stuff up. And so you climb a few pitches each day. You make it as far as you can. Then you get as far as you safely can. get with the light still, you know, with the sun still out. And then you bust out this portal ledge, which is a cot that you put together and strap it to the side of the rock.

And the first night on El Cap, I think it was like 800 feet off the ground or something like that. But it was also six, it was steeper than vertical. So I was six foot away from the wall. So it was at a spot. where there's an overhang and the rope hangs down and my cot is like so I'm like 800 feet off the ground and six feet away from the wall and it's just spinning in the wind and I'm sleeping on this thing and we finished that climb and come around the backside and sure like and I didn't know who this guy was at the time but in the meadow. I think it's called Tawalami Meadows or whatever.

There is a young Alex Honhold looking up at El Cap. And some of the guys were like climbing dorks. Some of the guys at Gold were into climb. I was not a climbing dork. Like I didn't have the rock

climbing magazines and all the, you know, all that junk. And they're like, that's Alex Honnold. He's the next big deal. Right? Like, we would have never known he was going to climb L. Cap without a rope, you know, a few years later. Well, many years later. But anyway, I went from no rock climbing to a couple of rock climbing trips. This was like, so I, like, I found out I was going to be a rock climber in 2006 and we climbed L. Cap in 2007. So anyway, it was a pretty steep. shit, dude. That's a steep learning curve. But we finished that and, you know, one of the lead climbers, guy named Heath, Heath Robinson, who died in extortion. And I obviously knew all those guys really

well. Heath mentioned, like, he was the driving force behind L. Cap. And we finished that climb and he's like, I'm not going to do, you know, we're not doing any more walls. We're going to go do mountains. So then we went and did Denali, which no one said we would ever get it done. But he sold the trip and made it happen. So we did Denali. And then like the next one he handed it over to Rob, Rob Reeves, who also died in extortion. And he led the trip for Akincagua. So Denali being the highest peak in North America.

Akincagua, the highest peak in South America. and that just kind of brings it full circle to, you know, now climbing Kilimanjaro for a different reason, but one of the seven summits. Damn, that is cool, man. Yeah, it was voluntold into being a lead climber. Right on. Damn. That is cool. Yeah.

I can't imagine sleeping on a cot that's fucking spinning around. in the wind at whatever thousands of feet you were at. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's so not like, to me, like climbing L-Cap, a wall like that, like, that's scarier than jumping out of an airplane for me. Like, I don't know why. Like, it just, you have the one rope. Yeah.

And your world is that one rope. And everything you do is that, like, bubble. Like, it's so consequential. You know what I mean? I'll happily go do another, like, mountain climbing thing, like mountaineering. I don't, I don't see myself climbing another 2,000-foot rock wall. Oh, shit. Not after all the close calls.

Damn. So how are you back to kind of your transition, how are you integrating in with the family after that pace? Well, it's so I had gotten good at changing quickly from, you know, warrior to husband and father. Really? Right? I could, I could reintegrate very quickly. And it was because, like, you had to, like, at the command, I would go, there were no decompression stops back then. You would come home?

Like, I, in 06, I did a mission on the last night of a deployment. finished that mission. We had gotten in a gunfight on that mission. Finished that mission, came back to the base. I didn't even have time to wash my camis. Through everything in a bag, didn't have time to clean my gun or anything. Through my clothes in a bag,

my gun in a box. We flew out of that base, you know, without being too specific. Refueled in Ramstein. And I was in Virginia. beach at a Panera holding my kid 36 hours later. Wow. After,

literally after a gunfight. And it was just kind of like it was kind of a trip, right? I was like, but the hardest part was when I never got to go back. Like when I never got to turn on warrior mode again. And then it was like as far as reintegrating into the family, I just, you know, had to, you know, have my quiet. time in the morning, you know, my time in prayer, my time in the work, a little bit of journaling. And you started that immediately. Probably, you know, one and a half to two years after I got out.

And then, but the other thing is when I immediately got out, like, I also went 18 months without having a paycheck. So I just didn't have time to think. like it was like this consulting or this doing that or like teaching this class or I briefly did like adjunct instructor with Mid-South or security consulting or whatever eventually we you know bought a gun range but like I just didn't have time to wallow. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yep.

And now I like sometimes we have time to think and overthink and like, just kind of, I guess, wallows the word, you know, brood on something and not just like go out there and do it. And I didn't have that luxury. Like I got out, no college degree, didn't have a job lined up and, you know, had three kids and groceries to buy. And then, you know, then we had a fourth kid. Because we're smart. But then you became an entrepreneur. Yep.

Yep. What was your first venture? So at first did just some security consulting, and that led us to do in some corporate presentations. And that kind of segued into, you know, we were teaching this guy how to shoot, and we took him to a gun range in Denver, and they wouldn't let us rapid fire,

and they wouldn't let us draw from a holster. And as you and I know, like, if you're going to, If you're going to shoot a gun for self-defense, you need to know how to draw from a holster, and you might need to shoot more than one shot every five seconds. So we're like, this is no way to train, and he was just like, he's a very wealthy guy and awesome business mentor of ours from Denver,

ended up being one of our investors. He just said, well, why don't you guys raise money and buy a gun range? like if this if you can't train correctly here and at the time Denver had like two maybe three gun ranges they all sucked um he's like why don't you just either build one or make one so you know the there was a there was a problem to solve and he helped us find an answer so we actually found some people we raised money bought a gun range and owned and ran a gun range and it was you know firearms training and then a gun store and then lanes for rent kind of a three-legged stool right and i did that we did that for a while together um me and my business partner and um after a few

years um stepped down from the day to day and then i went and ran a uh a fitness organization called Strong First. Most notably known for their kettlebell training. And this was Pavel's company. And he's the guy who introduced the kettlebell to the west.

He's the reason there's a kettlebell in every gym now. Right on. So I had met him at Dev Group. Because when you're at Dev Group, you bring in the experts for everything. And we brought him to teach us how to kettlebell once. And I stayed in touch with him. And I had used, I had used the kettlebell like to help get me ready for like deployments

and for Denali and Akancagua and all, like everything, right? I combine like kettlebell with a little bit of body weight and cardio. I still do it to this day, right? And so I'm a believer of it. And then he was asking me to help him find his next CEO. And I was in that, at that point, I was in that, like, habit of, you know, reading the Bible praying and then taking up. Then I had added a lunchtime walk with a little quick prayer. So I'm on my lunchtime walk with a prayer.

And, like, I just heard God say, well, you should apply for the job working for Pavel. And then I went and did that for about three years. And I got to, uh, that was. a great job. And I was, you know, really a blessing to work with and for Pavel. And I had, you know, the gun range I had, we had anywhere from 40 to 50 employees at the peak. But I was also like my business partner and I, like we, you know, we just, like it needed one captain. That ship needed one captain. And then also I just felt like I'm always trapped. to this facility.

I can't, like if I go on vacation, I can't work from vacation. You know what I mean? And then I started working for Strong First, and I was working remotely back in 2014 before that was a thing because our team, our U.S. team was everywhere from Pittsburgh to Venice Beach and everywhere in between. And then our global team, we had instructors in 30-some countries. We were doing events in, we had 4,000 instructors in 30-some countries, doing events on almost every continent, not Antarctica. And basically, I worked at the, I led the headquarters group and like a senior group of instructors, and we were having licensing the material to be taught in other countries and continents and stuff like that.

So, and I was, there was no Zoom back then. it was called go-to-meeting and there was, you know, obviously cell phones, but like very early, like, you know, very good experience for me kind of leading a geographically distributed team. Did that for three years. And then I went, I went to work for, I had helped the NRA rewrite some of its concealed carry curriculum just as one of my side gigs. And in so doing, I was talking to one of the leaders there, and he basically hired me to run NRA's education and training. So I left the fitness organization and then went to work for NRA headquarters. And I was living in Denver, but like I had to commute,

to, you know, to Fairfax, Vyadollas. Oh, shit. Yeah. So that was going, I did that for three years. Um, I was going okay. I mean, it wasn't without its drama, right? Just the

politics of it all. And I was working on the ops side, like it's training. It should be free from bureaucracy. Not free from bureaucracy, but free from politics. Yeah. But like, there is a lot of politics there, just because it attracts politicians. You know what I mean?

Also, I was like never going to... I was never going to play the game the way it needed... I was only going to do the job, not play the game. So I was kind of doomed. And if I was going to, like, to do the job the way it needed to be done, like, at some point I needed to move there. And we were living in Denver, and I wasn't going to move my...

family to Virginia. Like, yeah, I, we've, I didn't want to go back, right? And I loved Denver, um, up until COVID. Um, but I, I loved what I, you know, I loved that job. I enjoyed it, but, um, you know, it was time to move on. So I did that until 2020. And then in 2020, I just started to do consulting. Um, and that kind of bounds me around a little bit. Again, like when you get out, you just find a way or you make one. And we're good at, you know, hustling and learning and problem solving and communicating and all those, all those skills. And I have since, you know, I worked at a beverage company for a while. I saw that. We had a CBD gummy. We had a CBD drink. We had a bottle water. We had an

energy drink. Then I was a consultant. I worked at an energy company that does like natural gas fired plants and like solar and even battery plants. Just helping with like culture and ops. And then I was even helping some of the developers there just as a like not a lead developer, but I would help lead developers. It's like the resume.

It's just, well, it's just like, you know, find a way or make one, right? Which is, you know, eventually, I had also always been doing a lot of speaking. It's always been a passion of mine. And I started doing that in 2012. And there have been years where I've done like 10 or 12 events. And there's years when I've done like two or three. but I just enjoy just sharing my story. And then like I have the 12 years in,

but then now it's like 14 or more, well, now 15 out. Yeah. And I kind of merge the, hey, this worked in the teams. Doesn't work out here. I've seen, I have seen how different they are. And not everything is the same, right? And I found ways to like kind of tie in. things that work in the teams, in the sealed teams, and work on the outside. And mostly that's

what I talk about when I speak. And it's typically like elite teams, aspects of an elite team or how a small team or an outnumbered team can get big results or it's basic leadership or teamwork. And that's on the corporate side. And then once in a while I get an opportunity to go just speak with a sports team or a couple of weeks ago, like a big men's ministry group. So that's kind of the side gig now. Right on. It's men's ministry group. That's the side gig?

No, speaking. Speaking is a side gig. Day job. I have a great job working for it's called Goldenrod Companies. And they're a real estate, I would say real estate development. and investment organization company in Omaha. They have offices. Let's see, we have offices in Atlanta and Dallas and Omaha,

and then I think some in Tulsa and opening new spots. But he basically, it's a founder-led organization. He has a family office, which we would call it a headquarters group in our vernacular. So under his headquarters group, There are, let's say, six portfolio companies. Separate companies all doing different things, but they all fit within the real estate, you know, world, right?

And I don't know much about real estate investment or development or legal or finance or insurance or, like, even has construction companies. All those things are happening. I'm just helping standardize operations and culture. So I don't do any of the things they do, right? I just help standardize the culture and the ops, you know, think of that as a horizontal going across those verticals. Right on. So, which is a good fit when you have a side gig of also doing speaking gigs because you're talking mostly about culture and teamwork and building, like building those things. Yeah.

So it fits pretty nicely. What, I mean, as you know. a lot of guys struggle with finding the next purpose, the next thing, you know. What kind of advice do you have for the next generation who's separating right now, getting out, looking for the next thing, thinking that nothing's going to measure up to what they did before? The first thing I would say is, I think it's, if you have the, and I didn't have this, I didn't have this luxury. But if you have, like, it is, if you can take a beat, take a minute and just get that, it could be a month, could be two months, like, just have a little bit of time to like

unwrap, right? I didn't get that. But then the next thing I would say is, like, your first job getting out of the military might not be your ultimate thing. Like, just take a base hit. You can't, like. It's a good point. Get the base hit.

And, you know, Jordan Peterson had this, had this thing about having an aim, right? Where you have an aim. You have something you're aiming at. And it might be on top of this hill. And you're walking towards that. But as you, as you get higher towards it, like, your aperture opens and, like, you see more.

Or you realize, like, oh, I don't, that's not my goal anymore. But because you took a step forward, like you're moving towards it. If you hadn't have moved towards it, you would have been down here still planning about it. Yep. Right. And I think like too many people are stuck down here planning about like what to do next. Like find that like base hit. It does not have to be like.

The end all be all. No. But you're on your way towards it. Like, A, you'll either get there and realize. that's not what I want to do. Or be like something else, some opportunity will open en route, right? Like the, like the,

my job now, I went and met with the founder of this company and the CFO. And I was just going there to think I was interviewing to do another speaking gig. Are you, and then, uh, he just asked, well, would you come help us with our, you know, our culture and our operations? You just don't know, right?

And I enjoy doing that sort of thing. It fits well with, like, it fits well for me with doing my, you know, the speaking that I do about teamwork and leadership and elite performance and all that. So, you know, you just, you just don't know. I would say to like to keep it simple, like, take a break, that's fine. Don't make it too long and then get a base hit. Good advice. Yeah. Good advice.

You know, at the beginning of the interview, you had mentioned something about, I don't know a better way to say it, but you had mentioned something about that the service, the service, your time in the SEAL teams, your time of development group was for selfish reasons. Yeah. Yep. And that you wanted to circle back on that. I was curious where you were going with that. I think I know, but I'm curious.

Yeah, at all change. Like, so I joined, you know, chip on my shoulder. I'm going to prove people wrong. I can do it. You know, we all, and we all kind of had that. I'm assuming. Like, I want to go prove, you know, this is, like, that's one of the reasons I did it. It's supposed to be the hardest training in the military, right?

And then, you know, 9-11 happened. And I found myself, you know, in a position. to, you know, do something about it, right? Or just to be in a position to, like, serve my country. So it changed from that selfish pursuit to that more, like, pursuit of service and sacrifice, which I think happens a lot. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, Eric, we're wrapping up the interview. Cool. you want to end this thing with a prayer yeah let's do it let's do it let's do it let's do you want to lead it sure all right god i just thank you for uh this opportunity today uh i pray that uh you would continue to watch over and bless sean and his family and his team and all of the sean ryan show continue to help make help them make the impact they are um not just for their guests but for all of the people they get

to watch this show, Lord. And I pray that, I pray that the thing said here in this building that you have blessed would be pleasing to you and would make an impact for your kingdom. In Jesus name we pray, amen. Amen. It was an honor, man. Yeah, no. Thank you, bro. Thank you. Hopefully I wasn't rambling too long. No, it was awesome. It was awesome. Just go blow some shit up. Yeah. No matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.