The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Drownproof: Eight Life Lessons to Keep Your Head Above Water by Andy Stumpf

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

Drownproof: Eight Life Lessons to Keep Your Head Above Water by Andy Stumpf https://www.amazon.com/Drownproof-Eight-Lessons-Above-Water/dp/125037961X Featuring a foreword by Jocko Willink! A motivational guide to success and leadership based on the author’s experience as a Navy SEAL. Drawing from his extensive military career, renowned Navy SEAL Andy Stumpf shares his hard-earned wisdom by reflecting on his own journey and offering advice to empower readers to avoid costly mistakes and navigate the complexities of life with confidence and purpose. From the grueling training programs to intense combat situations, Stumpf recounts the highs and lows, the challenges he faced, and the pivotal moments that shaped his leadership abilities. How can you take the toughest situations in your life and make them the most formative moments you’ve ever had? How do you take a leap of faith in your life? How can you combat fear when it comes to crush you? How can you build discipline in your life instead of building regrets? In his down-to-earth, sometimes humorous but always honest voice, Stumpf addresses these questions and more in Drownproof. Readers of Drownproof will: *Understand how they are in control of their destiny *Grasp how preparation leads to execution *See the value of planning for the worst-case scenario *Learn how to approach goals *Realize why people actually fail *Discover practical insights learned from the military that apply to all spheres of life About the author ANDY STUMPF is a former Navy SEAL with a 17-year career, including time on SEAL Team 6. He is also a public speaker, podcast host (“Cleared Hot”), and entrepreneur. He was medically retired in 2013 but continues to be active in the military community and various sports like jiu-jitsu and hunting.

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Because you're about to go on a monster education role. rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks, this Voss here from the Chris Voss Show.com. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome the big show for 16 years, 2, 800 episodes. We're going to hit 3,000 folks here in another month or two episodes of the Chris Foss show.

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He's threatening his audience. Go to Facebook.com, YouTube.com, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Voss. You can find me all over the place there. Today, we're an amazing young man on the show. We're going to be talking about his book called Drownproof, eight life lessons to keep your head above water. Out April 14th, 2026. Andy Stump joins us on the show today.

Welcome to show, Andy. How are you? I'm good. I'm worried, though. I was listening to your intro. I don't meet any of the criteria of the type of people that you have on the show. I'm not a CEO. I'm definitely not a thought leader. I'm not revolutionizing anything. So yeah, I mean, we can just wrap it up if you want. I mean, I don't meet the criteria. Bye, everyone and be sure to order. So Andy, give us to dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwaves? All the socials and versions of my name, the most active on Instagram, Andy Stumpf, 212, Twitter, I think is A-Stump, 77. And all of this has been. because somebody stole Andy Stumpf before I got on there, so I had to create versions of it. And then Andy Stumpf.com is going to land you at kind of just everything that I have my fingers in. Yeah.

Just call up the person who has that.com and should be like, you know, I'm a Navy SEAL and I make people disappear sometimes. That's what I used to do. And I'll be honest, I wish it was that cool. I wish it was that cool. Yeah. I mean, I'd give it to you. I'd be like, buy that man of beer. because I've read a lot of books and we've had a lot of people on the show that have come from the seal background and our military background of course.

So give us a 30,000 overview of would please of drownproof. Oh, where to begin? You know, the best place to begin is how much fun of the authors I have made from my previous community and how many times I told them I would never write a book and that I was disgusted with them, which I wasn't actually disgusted with them because most of my friends, I'm just giving them, you know, a good nature at hard time. The reason that I didn't think I could ever write a book is that, at least in my opinion, I served with people who were absolute legends. I look at my own career. I would value it as a C if you're looking at an academic standard. And I was just surrounded by people who were A plus, maybe not in every area, but they could

exceed my ability, maybe not the same person, but this guy is better at me than this, and this guy at this. And so what do I have to offer? And also, you know, the real military experiences that I had in the global war on terror was nothing to really write home about, no pun intended, but never these national level missions that people have necessarily heard of. It wasn't making headlines. It was just down the center of the road, which was still important, and I'm very proud of it. But how do I, you know what I mean? And I'm watching all these other people who are recognizable inside of the community for these things.

And the idea was presented to me, and it was more from, instead of trying to tell those type of stories because so many people look at the SEAL community as if the experiences are unavailable to everybody else. And the reality is statistically, almost nobody will make it into the community. But that's just because such a small percentage of people actually apply. And then a small percentage of those people actually make it through training. But the more I was thinking about it, the lessons that I learned, the mistakes that I made probably more than anything, which is largely what the book is about, are the mistakes that I've made and the things that I learned from them in that community have shaped the rest of my life.

And the longer I've been out of the military, I've realized that all of those lessons have applicability in the civilian world, whether the person is able to experience them through their firsthand POV like I was able. And the book is my best attempt to try to take those experiences, those lessons learned, the mistakes that I made, and give people an architecture in a framework that they can go solve whatever problems or challenges life is presenting to them. because I can't solve anybody else's problems, but hopefully I can give you some tools

that'll make a difference in your life. Damn, I came on here with a list of my problems for you to solve. I'll give you a place where you can pre-order the book. I like that. I like that. He steps right into it. You know, we've had a lot of great military people on the show. We've had people that are Navy captains

that are from the SEAL community background, from the Air Force, you name it, all over the place. I think we've had some leadership people that teach it. Oh, it's the big military college. There's a couple. West Point, Naval Academy. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, our military teaches an amazing amalgamation, because I guess each branch has its own different version a little bit. But it's all kind of round about the same. Of leadership, of character building. It's extraordinary.

And I really didn't realize how big or important it was until I saw what used to be deemed is the second best military in the world, the Russian military, and we found out they're the second best military in Ukraine. Yeah, and by a large margin, too. Yeah, and you see the difference in leadership. Like, I really started seeing the structures of how our leadership is and there, and you really, man, we should do. I mean, I don't know why military people are not hired directly out of the military as soon as

they leave and put into leadership positions, because they have that innately with the way our training is so that they can so they you know if their command is cut off they can operate as a unit and function in themselves and that's really you know in russia with the russians they you cut off you cut off the head you know the downline is lost well and i think some of that is tied to how and why people are serving in the russian military i think a lot of the times they're being voluntold versus volunteering you know in the in the u.s military yes i would say leadership in all the services the services are defined by their similarities, not by their differences. There might be a different vernacular that they use, but I would agree that many of the core nucleus of the messages are the same. They put their

own color on it, depending on what branch that they come from. There's a difference when you establish that NCO Corps, that non-commissioned officer corps that is the gap between people who are first joining and then senior leadership. Without that NCO Corps, which is people who are in the military, I'll say six to 10 years, you really can't function without them. Because that's, That's, I mean, if you, that's how the sausage is made. Those are the wheels that are turning that are getting things done in the military. And I'll tell you this. I would say anybody in the military who has experience is probably going to have a better

understanding of leadership, but I would actually caution civilian organizations hiring people for leadership roles just because they were in the military. Leadership is a very soft skill and it takes time. And I've now, I mean, I was in for 17 years. I've been out for 13 now. Leadership outside of the military is more difficult than it is inside of the military. Your people are contractually obligated. They've gone to a variety of crucibles, depending on what program they've come through.

They've bought in on the mission. You know, you get issued your flag instead of buying it. You're there for the right reason. So you can be a little bit more heavy-handed and a little bit more directive at times. And that actually falls flat in the civilian world. Definitely give veterans the benefit of the doubt, but hire them because they're qualified. not just because they came from service, because leadership is like anything else.

It's a tool. It requires practice. And not everybody views it from that perspective or gets many laps in the saddle of that practice. Or discipline for that manner and character building. I mean, if anything, there's a discipline in the military. And it serves a purpose, you know. I remember seeing a thing with the Marines where they were talking about. I can't remember what it was, but it was something I have to do with the badges that they wore,

their awards or recognition of rank, I guess, that they have. And there's a reason that they're posted at a certain point, one of an inch of something or other. And it just has to do with that preciseness of if you fuck around, you find out. So you've got to be disciplined and all that. I know what you're talking about. Everything on the uniform is a quarter of an inch apart. And your shoes have to be on a certain way and your laces have to be left over right or right over left. And people on the outside will look at that and say, that is so ridiculous.

And it actually has nothing to do with the quarter of inch on the uniform or the shoelaces. It's that how you do anything is how you do everything. And discipline in the real world execution of the military role, which to fight and win wars, could be the difference between life and death. So you're teaching a lesson a concept through an act that isn't directly or associated directly with where you need the expression of that to be. But yeah, like, why are the military? Why is it the way that it is? if you looked very deeply into what the job is, you've got to kind of follow instructions and

directions from time to time. And you've got people's lives on the line. So you mess around. People can die and catastrophes can happen. So you wrote this book. We've got eight of these life lessons. What's one of your favorites or one you like to talk about and is in the eight there? They're all good and they're all tied together. But if I had to not necessarily tied together, I would say they work well together. If they know, if the total system was a wheel, each of them are a spoke, the wheel can go on without all of them, but I tried to do it in a way where they all kind of made sense and you could use them in combination as opposed to just isolation. Probably the most impactful tool that I didn't realize I had been taught at a very young age, but was reinforced substantially, indirectly and directly and directly while I was in the military was the idea of breaking your goals down into digestible pieces. And this isn't revelatory by any stretch. And there are so many conversations that I had when I went back as a seal candidate instructor, the basic pipeline is called Buds, basic underwater demolition seal.

I went back as an instructor. And we talked really deeply about should we be reinforcing this lesson to the students before they show up here? Would it be a difference? Would it actually help them make it through training? And the reality is you can understand the concept, living that reality and knowing the reality are two very different things. It doesn't make anything easier. it makes things more digestible. And what I realized when I went back as a seal instructor

is it is the world's best laboratory on why people fail. In winter months, 15% of a class will graduate. So almost nine out of ten people that will raise their hand and tell you, this is what I've wanted to do my entire life. This is the only goal I have in my life. There's nothing that you can do that will make me quit. And I will be here on graduation day. nine out of ten of those people will not be there.

So to me, I mean, you want to talk about a laboratory of just a graveyard of dreams. They actually, it's so wild because when they quit, they ring a bell, which is symbolic. I was going to say the bell. Yeah. But after that, they take their helmet off and they put it down next to the bell. So for every class, there's the first helmet down. But then there will be a row of sometimes 150 helmets. Wow.

And I started looking at those as tombstones. Those are just tombstones of people's lifelong dreams. Dream dying? Wow. Yeah. And so as an instructor, I got to spend time with the students who had just made that decision to quit. And I was very kind with them.

Nobody knows there's no need to do anything other than be empathetic and supporting of somebody who's just made that decision that they likely will regret for the rest of their life. But I was curious as to why so many people quit because it is my theory. If you can determine why the vast majority of people quit, should be able to reverse engineer that upstream and figure out how you can kind of bulletproof or drownproof your mind, right, depending on the word you want to use. Drown proof? Yeah, they all almost exclusively told me exactly the same thing.

And this is hundreds of students, maybe thousands. I didn't use the same words. They didn't say it was exactly because of this. But what they all described to me were versions of this. I didn't think I could be fill in the blank for long enough, meaning I didn't think I could be that cold for any longer or for as much. long as you were going to ask me to. And I was like, dude, I didn't ask you to do it any longer. I didn't tell you how long you were going to have to be cold. You did this to yourself.

I couldn't be that tired. I couldn't be that hungry. I couldn't be that far behind for whatever it is. What they're describing is being overwhelmed. And what I mean by that is, they are viewing where they are. And their only thing that they are looking at is the distance between where they are and where their goal is. So they have this huge optic on time or distance. And the bigger that optic is and the bigger that distance is, the more likely they are to quit if that's all they can think about. The people that are able to get past those moments are the ones that don't care how far away they are from their goal. They focus on the next step that they need to take. So they chunk their goal down into a digestible step, and all they focus on is the next step

that they have to take. And there's so many ways you can do this. Like how week is the, or was the fifth week, a fifth week of training when I went through butts. It starts on a Sunday. ends on a Friday. You get about two hours of sleep on Wednesday. And the best advice I was given, though, is don't pay attention to what day it is. Don't pay attention to if the sun is up or the sun is down. Just make it to your next meal. And I remember asking the guy who told me, I'm like, why, why does that matter? Dude, they have to feed you every six hours, which I didn't know. I'm like, oh, that's actually really attainable, as opposed to trying to figure out how many hours are left, 136, 135, why you are the coldest you've ever been in your life. So that concept of chunky,

and how to do that and how to break things down into those moments and how to focus on that moment almost to the exclusion of everything else, whether it's your frustration, your anger, your fatigue, whatever it is. That is the difference between students who graduate and those that put their helmets down. And as far as an impactful tool, the most impactful tool in my life from the book, that one's it. That has gotten me through the most difficult things in my life to include buds, even though that was not the hardest thing I've ever done. And it's also helped me in how I achieve goals that I don't necessarily know how I'm going to get there. I just need to focus on maintaining my momentum and not paying attention to how far away I am

from it. Because as soon as you get frustrated and overwhelmed, man, the bad decision matrix is starting to creep in on you. Do you kind of feel like you turn emotional at that point or and you lose kind of logic perspective? So you can. You can. You can.

Some bad decisions and emotionality. Yeah. I am not aware of a single way that emotions benefit decision making. You know, it does if you're, if you're scared or excited, right, two polar opposite emotions, neither of those, if they involve themselves in your decision-making process, actually make things better. But I believe it could have an unlimited downside. And because when people get scared, and I've seen this in my own self, you really start making bad decisions.

And you can actually make things worse by emotionally allowing your decision-making process to continue. And so part of that is an awareness of yourself and realizing that you are starting to get emotional and how can you work your way through that? You take a little bit of a step back, not like physically, depending on what's going on, but just look at the situation that you're in, take a deep breath and figure out that next step you need to take and keep doing that regardless of how you feel.

You know, I've read a lot of books from military folks like yourself and about seal training and the stuff that goes into it. And I always wondered, you know, who the people were that rang the bell. And I just always kind of figured, you know, they just made whatever the reads, they don't have the gumption. But, you know, I've used that technique in my life in business and stuff, you know.

And sometimes, and I'm a procrastinator. I'm an ADHD. If I can find something else to do, which I usually can't be an ADHD oriented. For sure. It's kind of your gym. Yeah, it's my gym. It's a CEO of disease. I mean, it'll make you a lot of money, but it'll cost you a lot of money too.

So you got a, you got to, it's a constant battle. And but I call it eating the elephant one bite at a time. Yep, or a whale. I've heard both versions. Or a whale. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, whales probably, I don't know which is tastier, which is chewable.

I'm going to go whale probably. I think so. I might switch from elephants to whale then. I think I might change my diet. You know what's interesting about the students who quit? Sorry, not to interrupt you. It's not about the gumption, actually. A lot of the times, they're just not ready.

They might know the lesson. They might know the technique. But they're not at a place in their life where they can execute it. Because, again, you can understand this chunking technique. And if I take you and tell you, you're going to be awake for five days and you're going to be hypothermic nearly the whole time and running around boats on your head and telephone poles and more chafed than you've ever been with sand, that concept, you'll tell yourself, day one, okay, here's what I'm going to do. I'm just going to chunk this. It's going to make it easy. And about the end of day one, you're like, oh, my God, this is not easy.

I'm trying to focus on just the next step. And this is the most painful thing ever. So knowing the path and walking the path are two different things. This is a tool that takes reps. What a lot of people don't talk about is you can come back to butts if you quit. As long as you don't leave for a reason that would be, it's usually administrative in nature. It's going to be like an alcohol-related incident or if you get in trouble with the law out in town. If you just quit, if your command will let you come back in a couple years, you can absolutely come back.

And the students who come back a second time have a much better pass-through rate than the ones who are there the first time. And I think it's probably because they have a little bit more life experience, a little bit more wisdom, probably more reps practicing that concept of chunking. Because it's probably more, in going through seal training, which is it more of, would you say, a mental game or a physical game? The only muscle that matters in Buds is the one between your ears. Now, having said that, it is physically challenging. It's kind of cliche to say that.

But the reality is the brain is what controls the meat suit that we're all walking around in. But if you show up, so day one of training at, buds doesn't occur in a vacuum. You don't just like teleport and you show up there. You join the military. You raise your hand and say, hey, I want to go to this training program.

So you take a very, very basic physical tests and aptitude tests. Then you get pipelined into the program. There are more people that want to go to the program than there are slots available. And this has gone on and off. So I don't know where it's at currently. But there's a pre-training program where you're practicing the physical

evolutions. You're taking the testing standards to the best. best of their ability to replicate them. And then you're competing for your slot in the program. Then you check into the program and you have to wait for your entire class to get there from all over the Navy. And that whole time, you're being trained by instructors. You're doing the test gates. And my point in all this is you have to do a lot to get there on your first day. And I personally believe if you can physically arrive at your first day in training, you physiologically possess what it takes to graduate. But that's not the muscle that fails. Now, yes, some people do

get hurt and then I'll carve that out as a second category. Oh, yeah. But as, yeah, so injury, and the injury rate I was astounded by when I went back as an instructor. I didn't realize it was as high as it was. Right. But the vast majority of people make the decision to quit, which is a failure to control yourself in your mind. Yeah.

We've had people on that have coached the Olympics, and a lot of them talk about, you know, the visual, visualizing in your mind what's going to happen. So if you're going to Super Bowl, you think about each play, you think about how you're going to react, how your body's going to feel. Because one of the problems people have, like with the Super Bowl, especially if they've never been in it before, is they kind of get that anxiety and that overwhelm. I'm, you know, this is what they waited for their whole life, right, as football players. Yeah, they're amped up before they even get into the game. And they're amped up, and then that throws them off because, you know, sometimes those chemicals and emotions, you know, and but if you're like Tom Brady, you're just, like,

ah, it's a Super Bowl. Autonomous robot, potentially emotionless. Alien. No, he's a good. But,

yeah, I used to hate him because I have a Raiders fan and he stole that one Super Bowl from us with the talk rule. I mean, here's the thing.

He can't argue the man can perform. Oh, yeah. I mean, once that, that Falcons game where he came back

against every single odd, I think it was, it wasn't the Falcons. And that was when I went, okay. Yeah. And how about where he was drafted, right?

The last guy, Mr. What do I call that guy? I forget there's a name for the guy who's drafted last every year. Nobody probably would have thought that he would have had two hands full of Super Bowl rings when that happened. Oh, yeah. It's crazy, man. Now, you talk about how people understand how people are in control of their destiny. We see a lot of people today.

It's a victimization competition seems to be huge. But how can I get in control of my destiny when my girlfriend always wants to go to Target every day? It depends on what she wants to go. to Target 4 because sometimes there's good snacks there, right? So you got to determine if this is like a snack mission or she's getting Tupperware. Definitely. Did she pay you off? Did she sleep her some money? I know exactly what you're talking about. Suffering to a degree has almost become a competitive sport. And I get it. I mean, I think people are looking for this path for an easy life. I haven't found it yet. And I've actually worked my way to a place that I'm not actually looking for. Nothing that I value in my life came to me easy. And the reality is this. You can't control what happens to you in your life, but you have 100% control over how you respond to it. And one of the things I talk about in the book is well, it's another one of the tools. And I do this every year. You just get a piece of paper out and you draw a line down the center. And on one side, the left hand side, usually I'll put concern or you can put whatever worries, whatever you would want to. And on the other side, I put influence or you could put control. Things that you, on the right hand category, you can only put something in that category that you personally. can physically actually control. So the left-hand category, when I first did this, I was a little shocked. I'm like, okay, this is almost everything in my life. I am worried about everything. How much money am I going to make? Am I going to be successful? What do people think about me? Should I do this?

Should I do that? And then I started scratching my head. I'm like, okay, what can I put on the right-hand side? And to this day, there's only one thing that I can put down there. And that is myself. So that is at least an eye-opener for people to realize or ask themselves, where am I dedicating most of my time? Because that's what shocked me. I was doing high 90th percentile of my time on the concern side of the house, which I actually have zero direct control over. Now, anything that happens that I'm concerned with, I might have to react to, but I am in control of how I can react. I can control my thoughts. Yes.

Do they get away from me at times? sure. Can I recognize that and work my way back? Yes. Do I get angry, frustrated, all the emotions? Yes. And I've worked as I get closer to 50 than 40 to being able to catch those earlier and work on those things. But those are the only things I can control. Not what happens. You know, so the girlfriend who always wants to go to Target, your mechanism of control there is you say either yes or you say no, right? You get to control the environment. But that is it. You also can't control whether or not she wants to. Like, why does she have to go to Target? Why do you want to do this? Oh, man, that's a, that's a roundabout to hell right there. And she'll be able to control leaving me for someone else. Dude, that's a fear that I have as well. But, okay, if you actually, and for people out there who think that, I'm so, okay, what would stop somebody from doing that? How about you take control over what you do have, which is everything in your actual

sphere of influence, you're going to go to the gym, you're going to work on your diet, you're going to rest. You're going to be the absolute best expression of a human being that you can be. And guess what? She's not going to want to leave you. Yeah. And that my, my darkest plan is to eventually buy Target and bankrupt and shut it down. So anyway, no, I'm just, I can be an early adopter in that plan.

My wife spends a lot of time at the old Tarjeet. I know. I've got guys who got wives that go twice a day. I don't know what they do. That's unacceptable. That is unacceptable. That's a psychopathy. Yeah, there should be a book on that.

Anyway, so now you mentioned, you know, how you react to different things is really important. A lot of the military folks we have on, the book Meditations with Marcus Aurelius is kind of their Bible. Have you found any sort of alignment with stoicism in the book? I mean, I think it's great. I think there's broad applicability inside of the military or out. I think the reason a lot of people in the military probably gravitate towards that is one is it's in a lot of the curriculums inside of the military. Because, again, he was talking about military service and stoicism during that time and being a leader. And again, it's another, that's, you could read some of those things, but I'm never going to be who Marcus Aurelius was.

It's okay, we'll take that out of the equation. He's not talking about that. You could, I mean, imagine if regardless, Target, you're, you have, you check people out at Target and you're dealing with different personalities all day long. And some people are fired up to be there. And some people are really pissed at you for existing as their person who's there, you know, checking them out. Stoicism is going to help you in both of those situations. I mean, it's just so wildly applicable. And again, because of the close parallels to the military, I think that's why it's so aligned with a lot of military people. But great lessons. Yeah. How to, you know, control your emotions. You know, we had one of the astronauts on from Apollo 13, and the title of the book was don't panic early or never panic early.

It was one of those two. And basically they talked about what you mentioned. You know, don't, as soon as you lose, as soon as you panic, as soon as you lose control of your logic and reason, you're, you're screwed. And you'll make bad decisions. And that's what they taught him in NASA. and, you know, they would run them through thousands of these fails that would go on and they would train them. And, you know, he even said that the movie, you know, the only time his heart rate ever really got up or he was kind of, they were a little concerned was when they were coming in to the atmosphere.

And they was starting to get a little too hot. And that was the only time, the whole time where he's my heart kind of went, might not be pulling this one off. But the rest of the time, they just, they just stays through it. They stayed on topic. and, you know, he espoused that idea, like you said. You know, once you start letting emotion slip in, you start making bad decisions, and then they compound, and then people's lives are on the line, too. Sometimes you're on, maybe.

And, you know, the Apollo 13 astronauts are, I mean, are amazing. I feel like they had to just walk to the space capsule with a wheelbarrow with their testicles in it. Because, you know what I mean? Like, where do you keep that in the capsule? Is there a secondary capsule for that? But those people, you know, their ability to do that, they're not autonomous robots. And that's important for people to understand. Controlling your emotions is very different than trying to remove yourself from them or not have.

I think our emotions are some of the things that make human beings what we are that are unique. And we can feel and communicate the way that we do. I mean, I think empathy is one of the most important emotions that you can have. So it's not a matter of trying to be emotionless. It's a really important point. It's a matter of over time working with yourself. Like for me, I can tell like my face gets flush, not red, but I'll feel like there's heat in my face. face anytime I start to get frustrated or angry. And I recognize that because I let it go too far before

and started working my way backwards and after action review. Like, how did this happen? This was a train wreck. Can we go upstream and try to figure this out? And it's sometimes for people, it's the pace in which they talk or they start fidgeting or these are all cues to people. You got to work with yourself. I mean, nobody can do this work for you. Yeah. You have to do yourself. One thing I wanted to run by I've had, you know, in our business world, we used to look at things, whether or not we can put up with the worst case scenario. We'd call it looking to the dragon or looking the tiger in the mouth. And when we'd make really big decisions with our companies,

we would sit down and be like, what's the worst case scenario and can we live with it? And we're going to spend 20 grand doing this one thing, and hopefully this piece of hardware we're buying is going to, you know, create profits and better systems. and we found that really worked for us because once we found we could live with the worst case scenario, we're like, I mean, it's not going to be so bad then. And you talk about that in your book. Tell us a little bit about that, the value of planning.

Yeah, planning specifically, like best case scenario is amazing. But most of the time in our normal 72-hour planning process, I would say eight-tenths of that is spent on contingencies, which is what you're talking about. We would look at things like the most likely course of action from our enemy, but then the most deadly course of action, not for them, but for us. And that's exactly what you're talking about. You're looking your dragon in the face. And this is how you know that you're spending the requisite amount of time, especially given what it is that you may be doing or what you're risking. You can analyze and assess risk and then you can array things against them. Is there a piece of

equipment we could use a different type of helicopter? Could we drive instead of fly to reduce risk from anti-aircraft fire? So what's the worst thing that could happen? Is there a way we can mitigate it? Then look at what that risk remains. And then you have to make your decision off of that. You can either tolerate it or you cannot. And in the military, depending on the residual risk, that's where you have to go to for different levels of authority, like low risk. You're probably going to be able to be able to do it locally. Medium to high risk. I mean, you might be all going all the way up to the White House at the most extreme levels of risk. And then they're looking at the dragon, right? And a lot of that, though, success in those

environments comes from contingency planning. The best time to make decisions and figure out what you're going to do is before the emergency presents itself. If you could, in a perfect world, like the best way to be a combat leader, if you could, and this is impossible, but if you could strive for this, it would be amazing, is that if everything presented itself to you, it would go down to a branch diagram because you've already thought about it. If this happens, I'm going to do this. If this doesn't happen, I'm going to do this. Because that just frees up bandwidth, right? You've already answered the question, you know what you're going to do, and that's all front-end work that doesn't make any of the movies.

I've yet to see a movie about the SEAL community where for three days straight, they stare at Microsoft PowerPoint and argue with each other about what thought you're going to use. And I know why, because that movie would suck. It would. Maybe if you put some really good music to it, I don't know. It sets this expectation, though. If you don't openly talk about that, people think that that doesn't happen. But I mean, for a normal operation overseas, if you have the time, you will take 72 hours

and dissect every single phase to analyze, assess, and, mitigate risk and then it's all what ifs what are we going to do what if we'll lose our radios what are we going to do what if how many people can we have get injured before we have to stop this and call for a medevac what if the weather comes in you know and it's and that is what allows you to be fluid and maneuver on the battlefield because you've thought through all the contingencies yeah i mean one of the example great examples i'm sure that you probably have a million in your history but one of the things that we stuck out to me was when we capture or when we kill bin laden And, you know, they plan for everything, you know, Pakistan scrambling jets because the aerospace has been violated, you know, making the target aware of, you know, that there, you know, something was about to go down.

Yeah. And they, and they, so they plan for all that. And the other thing they plan for is being prepared for everything. So one of the helicopters had, is called a hard landing, I think it is? Oh, no. Crash. Yeah, that was a crash. Yeah, that was a crash.

Okay. It's called an uncontrolled unintended landing. I do that with my life sometimes. Gravity is real. Yeah, gravity. That damn gravity gets it every time, especially when you get older. But, you know, and so they knew what to do when it happened to destroy the helicopter so that you couldn't, you know, the technology couldn't fall into bad hands and whatever.

But, you know, I just, I read what happened. And I was like, were they there for four hours? What the fuck? like the amount of time that they got like all this shit done even with the contingency of having to get another helicopter backup you know deal with that helicopter and destroy it and you know women and children they even got like hard drives and everything and I'm just like were they camping out there for a day or two but you look at the I don't I can't remember what the exact time is that they pulled all that off I think just 40 minutes yeah just crazy I mean

I can I can sit here and look at my computer in 40 minutes go by it's it's it's wild and I'm friends with a bunch of guys that were there and you ask him about that. Yeah. And you ask him about that and they're like, yeah, it was no factor. I mean, we just didn't check it. Literally. But because in, you do, you practice that stuff. What if a helicopter you're getting ready to launch to begin with, then all of a sudden

one of the helicopters has a mechanical. Do we still have enough people? Do we need to shuffle people over? You figure all that stuff out before. So once they got there, it's just a tactical problem. So, yeah, they were supposed to fast rope. I mean, I guess it saved them a little bit of time. there, no risk to your ankle for falling off the rope, potential risk to life for being in a

helicopter crash. But at the end of the day, once they got their feet on the ground, they didn't really care. I mean, I don't think they would volunteer to go for that riot again, but it didn't change anything that happened on target. Yeah. So planning for the worst case scenario. I mean, that's what our military does. That's why we see you guys do all the drills and the practice and stuff because practice makes

perfect. And then when you're in those scenarios, you know, I've had Air Force pilots on the show talk about, you know, some of the split decisions they have to make in the military. and I'm sure you did too, where you've got to make sometimes complex life and death decisions for yourself or for, you know, other members of the team or even civilians. And you have to be able to make that logical conclusions and calculations in milliseconds sometimes and then be comfortable with that decision. Yeah, you know, a lot of people will say practice makes perfect. I would add to that perfect practice makes perfect. If you're just going to practice and not hold yourself to the standard that you're trying to achieve,

an argument could be made that you're wasting your time a little bit. So you need to practice smartly. It's not always about time on the range. It's about, you know, what time you are spending on the range and how you are training it. But in hyper-realistic training helps in those situations. I mean, the training we did was extremely difficult. People would get injured sometimes. It replicated the environment that we were going into. And it's layered over decades for a lot of guys, at a minimum, multiple years. And it helps you make those decisions. Because by the time you are presented with those situations. It really is, it's like information presents itself, fall back on your training. I mean, it's a snapshot. It's a very rote decision-making process, but that all is because

of the work that you put it on the front end. You can't just throw somebody to that environment, expect them to perform. Yeah, definitely, definitely. Anything more you want to talk about on the book or future stuff, maybe you're working on future books, speaking events? You know, people, first off, since my answer was I was never going to write the first book, how do I even answer? When people say, you're going to write another one, and I'm going to say, no, and they'll be like, liar, we know, we'll wait for it. So here's what I'll say. I don't know.

I don't know what I would write about. It wasn't really my idea to write this book. And truly, you know, it's interesting. I'm very new to this process. I had no experience and exposure to it. The book comes out in April 14th, so all the leading up to it talking about, this is all very new to me and I know that people are in the literary space, you know, there's some marquee things that they're aiming for, right? Like New York Times bestseller list, USA to

day list, Amazon list. And although I can appreciate those things, I mean, truly at the end of the day, I just would like to have an impact on the world in a positive perspective. I would like to leave this place a fraction of percentage better than it was when I came in. You know, I did enough damage on my own. So I don't care if I hit any of those if people can find their way to the book. Again, I can't solve anybody's problems for them, but I can talk to them about my mistakes and what I learned from that and hopefully give them another tool on their tool belt. And that's where the idea of drownproof comes from, right? Because before you can thrive, you have to be able to survive first. You've got to be able to keep your head above water before you can even talk about

thriving in any environment. And to me, the water is the least forgiving. I mean, it's wild. to me how little people respect water and it will take your life like that. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, it's, I hope that it has impact. I hope that it means something to people. And I put my best foot forward to try to take those experiences that people have told me my whole life, oh, man, it must be so cool. I can't believe you got to do that and nobody else gets to.

It's, yeah, the experiences. And if I live my life and never did anything with that, it would have only had an impact on my life. I feel obligated to try to take those experiences and use them in a way. that it can have impact on other people's. Yeah, that's the goal with the book. If people want to find me and just go to Andy Stumpf.com. I do a good amount of public speaking, but all that stuff is there. I host a podcast called The Cleared Hot Podcast. Oh, and again, that's just the best repository for me is the, is the website. Because it's just, again, it's all the little tentacles

of stuff that I've absolutely, you know, stumbled my way into over the years. There you go. You know, it's like we say on the show, stories of the fabric of our lives, and without them were pretty much nothing. And, you know, we don't get owners manuals. So we share stories with each other, we entertain, we teach. It's the greatest way to learn. You know, many times, you know, someone like you has a blueprint where you've, you know, you've gone through some cathartic moment or some crisis, you survived it, you figured out our way to get through it. And so you're sharing your blueprints with other people. And so people see that and that resonated. And I mean, you'll literally change and save lives. I'm sure. I've got it loaded up on

my audio book pre-sale. So I'm awesome. Thank you. Yeah, isn't it wild that, You know, we got a few iterations of human beings at this point from like generationally. No instruction manual whatsoever. I'm just the way to buy it in the mail. I mean, a toaster, I bet you in the toaster's second iteration, it came with a piece of paper that said, don't put a fork in this. Don't put a fork in this. Don't bathe with the toaster. Yeah, that's like within three generations maximum.

And we're like, you know, depending on beliefs or how many generations we're at, we got nothing. We're like, do your best. Yeah. I mean, we don't even come with the warning label. I think some of us should come with the, maybe me, should come with the warning. Everybody. Everybody needs a warning level. Trust me.

You're not unique in that. Don't let this near plastic and it might affixate itself. Yeah. Just like the dry cleaning. Maybe don't rip the tags off this, something like that, like a mattress. Andy, it's been wonderful to have you on, delightful. Thank you for your service and thank you for sharing your lessons of life so that people can learn these things. You've had a most unique experience being in the top percentage of people to get qualified

and, you know, stay in this program and to serve our country and serve our Constitution. So we certainly appreciate it. Thank you very much, Andy. Definitely my pleasure. Like 98% of it was awesome. So that was my pleasure part. The other two percent suck, but whatever. It's part of the job.

Sometimes that you get here, you know. That's the way it goes, man. Cost of entry. As an entrepreneur, they're like, oh, it's so great what you did. You're like, my back hurts, my knees don't work anymore. And you're missing the 10 other ventures that didn't get. get me to this place. Yeah, the 10-year overnight success. But I don't know where I'd be without it. So there you go. Thanks, Andy, for coming in.

Order up his book, Drownproof. Eight life lessons to keep your head above water. You can pre-order it now for April 14th, 2026. I can't believe we're almost halfway through the year. I know. Wow. Thanks for tuning in. Go to Goodrease.com, Fortess, Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com, Fortess Christch, Chris Foss, 1 on the TikTok, and all this crazy place in the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you. next time. You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning. Consuming too much of the Chris Walsh Show podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy.

Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult a doctor for any resulting brain lead. All right, Andy, great show.