The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - How I Survived War With ISIS: A Mercenary Tells All

Episode Date: December 22, 2024

Taylor Cavanaugh, a former Navy SEAL, brings us into his life which feels straight out of an action movie at times. From battling ISIS in the deserts of the Middle East to surviving grueling SEAL training and joining the legendary French Foreign Legion, Taylor shares his incredible journey of resilience, transformation, and redemption. He dives into the details of being discharged by the SEALs and what life is really like for a mercenary. Go Support Taylor! Website: https://www.taylorcavanaugh.com/ IG: https://www.instagram.com/tcavofficial/ YouTube: @tcavofficial This Episode Is #Sponsored By MINT MOBILE! Support the show and get your new 3-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month at https://mintmobile.com/connect Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I've seen Olympians quit in Bud's training. They'll make dudes, like, open their eyes and, like, drop sand in their face. We went to Alaska, cold weather mountain warfare, swimming, doing over-the-beach attacks. I was flying, dude, like, untouchable. I fucking hit a guy in a bar. I ended up getting aggravated assault. Reality, you can't bend that long. And it came crashing down.

The next thing I know, dude, I'm, like, homeless in my truck. Taylor Kavanaugh is a former Navy SEAL who was deployed to the Middle East during the height of the ISIS takeover in Iraq and Syria. He was part of the early military campaign to take. out this terrorist organization. He recalls getting in shootouts with ISIS in the middle of the desert and calling in drone strikes on entire ISIS cells. Later, after catching a felony case in America and getting kicked out of the SEALs, Taylor joined the French Foreign Legion and conducted clandestine missions all over the world, including top secret private mercenary work that brought him face to face with death multiple times.

Taylor brings us into the mind of a top military man, a Navy SEAL, and explains what motivates people like him to risk their lives and suffer hardships halfway around the world. Nowadays, Taylor has a thriving personal development business, so make sure to go check him out on all social media. And for a bonus episode with Taylor, where he talks about his journey of getting sober and leaving the military life for good, head over to patreon.com slash the Connect show. This episode was absolutely fascinating, truly a part of American and world history, this guy.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Taylor Kavanaugh right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. Fuck that, dude. I'm going on the French for religious. It was going back to basics, dude. It was like, I call it the baptism and humility. That area of operation is powerful. Dude, they call it Len Ferber, Green Hell. We'd sleep in hammocks, and just in the blackness, you just,

all night. All night, hollerm, it sounds like the devil. That's when I see lights behind me start the flash. And I didn't even think. I just hit it. I was driving like my life depended on. And then I parked the car, popped out, closed the door, and I started running.

And he pulls out a burner, shang, it's like six inches. And he passes it to me. And he goes, here, that's yours. Don't ever leave the cell block without this. He was the reason I made it out of that place alive. It went, you know, your childhood, the streets. Yep. Then seal training.

Yep. Kicked out. Yep. Back to the streets. Yep. Out. Yep. Back to streets out.

Back to jail. And out. You know, then fucking foreign legion. And then the foreign legion. God. So what over how? What kind of years are these? So.

So through call, I went to college and shit, but through all that piece, I ended up stacking up a lot of problems. Right. A lot of misdemeanors, a lot of arrests, a lot of just, but they, not terrible shit, but enough shit to where I was on probation and tried to go in the military, which I always knew I wanted to be a seal. But it was just so fucking stupid. So this was 08, 07. all the way to I go to seal deploy. I mean, I ship out in 2010. But you just got home, though.

It's worth in 2024. Yeah, 2010. So I was in the SEAL teams for seven years. Yeah. And then multiple deployments there. And then I got kicked out. Went to jail twice during that time. Wallace SEAL was like the only motherfucker.

I took vacation and went to jail. Yeah. Yeah. That's your R&R. Yeah, man. And so then I get kicked out two years. I was in the weed industry. Uh-huh.

And like some, that whole period for two years. Yeah. then fucking the Foreign Legion. So it's been a 17 year Odyssey. That was like 14-ish. Yeah. Wow. 14 years.

Just I mean from like, you know. Yeah, 17 years. Yeah. From the time that you tried to go into it. Yeah. God, that's crazy. Yeah. That's crazy.

So you're to change, man, I assume. Fuck, dude. You know, just. Be funny if you're like, no, not at all. Yeah. I think I'm the same, but I do smarter shit. I'm just smarter about the shit I do. Okay.

So what point? part of San Diego are you from? North County. So I grew up in San Diego, like the center of it. Curry Mesa is the area. But I ended up going to high school and stuff in Palais, which is North County. Yeah. A lot of white boys look like you. It's like broed out, you know, lifted trucks, desert rats, that's shit. Fuck, monster energy drink, baby. That's it. Yeah. That's it. Do you think that's the influence of Camp Pendleton being right there, the military? Do you think that bleeds off into the culture of like partially? I mean, my dad was a Marine. That's what brought us to Southern California.

So I grew up in like Orange County area for a little bit. There used to be an old Marine base. It's like condos now. But it's the desert, man. I think it's more the influence. It's pretty conservative area though. It is. I would say it's a pocket of like conservatism.

You knew you wanted to be in the military? Yeah. I wanted to be a seal since I was very young age. And that seed of like commandos, special force fucking in our area, our era, bro, was like fucking Schwarzenegger in the jungle and shit. You know, it wasn't like a romantic thing, but I always kind of like it. I was drawn to it. A little bit.

Yeah. A little bit. You were drawn and guys from that culture were drawn to the military through those 80s action movies. The way I was drawn to drug dealing and the underworld by rap in the 90s. I could see that. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah.

100%. So you didn't question at all the bigger picture, the U.S. government's motives. I always ask people military guys that. And I'm not judging. No, it's a really good question. I never really gave a fuck. I was just like, because I never did it for some like larger altruism. that's the truth. I wasn't like, I'm patriotic, but that wasn't my angle. I wanted to do badass shit.

That's like what my angle was and that was just the truth. Straight up. Yeah. Yeah, I just, I didn't, it wasn't like, hey, we're going to go fight. I never thought I was like on some great cause. Like this is it for freedom. Yeah, I'm not doing this to protect my country, man. I'm doing this because I like to do bad ass shit. I stand for what we stand for. I respect for where I'm from. This is who I am. This is where I'm from. I'm going to fucking protect it. but that wasn't like the main driving force. So there's no ideology behind. For me, no. Wanted to do it.

No. So it's almost like an athletic pursuit because to become a Navy seal and then go on to do all of these things that you did, that's an incredible feat that, just like athletics, has its shelf life. And then you can't do it anymore. That's a really good take, Johnny. I never really thought about it like that. But that's a really good way to spin it is I wanted to do something epic, something high level, something elite. And, you know, once sports fizzled out, you know, you. You know, it's like I'm not tall enough, fast enough.

You know, I'm like, all right, I'm going to go this other route. What's the difference between training for a triathlon or seal training? There's a lot of overlap. It's brutal. It's punishment. There's a lot of overlap. How you look at it. There's some powerful triathletes I've seen quit. I've seen Olympians quit in Bud's training because training like that, it's different when you're freezing cold and massive sleep deprivation.

It's a totally different type of. animal, but there are those cardio monsters who are also tough. Yeah. So those guys do really well. So what age were you when you first tried to go in? So I was 23 getting out of college. Where'd you go to college? University of California, Santa Cruz.

Oh, no. Oh, wow. Yeah. So that's where I graduated from. That was like my fifth university after getting kicked out of a few different ones. So you were fucking up. Yeah, I was fucking up for. I was dealing ecstasy.

I was dealing weed and, you know, 18, 19, got kicked. out of multiple schools and just failing out also. And then I had a moment of clarity where I felt the walls closing in. And I called my fucking dad and I went, dude, will you take all my shit? I gave him all the drugs I had, all the money I had. I said, I'm just going to leave. And I went to Boston, dude, and lived in the basement of my aunt and uncle's house for like two years.

And dude, a bunch of dudes that I was with all got arrested. A bunch of bad shit fucking happened. So I really feel like I had a, like that universal guiding force that just was like, hey, man. And I had a few of those throughout the years because I didn't like smarten up then. But I got correct and then transferred back and, you know, but still getting arrested, drunken publics, DUI, all just little things like that. But I had a stack of misdemeanors when I was trying to go in the military. They were like, dude, you got to go to jail.

And so the judge sent me to jail for like six months in Santa Cruz County. Damn, you sounded like fun, dude. Yeah. We were a party. Yeah, we would have a good time. Your legs have been lifted up for some keg stands. Oh, yeah, dude. Wow.

Maybe not your legs. Yeah. My legs for sure. Okay. So you're 23 now. And do you see the seals as a way to like get out of this spiral that you're in? Well, I was kind of like, you got to go to college. My grandfather was a captain in the Navy and my mom was like, you know, there was like,

it was just an extension of high school. So I was like, oh, I got to complete this shit. So then that was done. So I'm like, all right, let's time to go to the military. That later was now. And so I was scared to fail seal training and be. end up on a fucking boat floating around, which is not what I wanted. So I went to try the Marine Corps, turn me down because I had too many tattoos, went to the

army, turn me down for the criminal background. So then the only option I had was the Navy. And they said, dude, you've had drug charges, all these different things. You can only be like a turd wrangler or a fucking Navy SEAL if you could pass the screening test. You're like, you got two options. I was like, well, a good thing is that's what I'm fucking here to do. So that's fascinating.

So the Navy SEALs will actually take you regardless of your background. At this time, man, they were like trying to get guys. in and there's just so few guys that they can actually get this pass all the screening test and shit and i needed conduct waivers i needed some a lot of letters or recommendation so it took me about a year man of training with active duty seals and stuff at the naval amphibia space stacking boxes at fucking home depot graveyard ship bro and like my little beater car like driving back and forth so it was a grind man but we got it done and i ended up shipping to boot camp february 2010 wow okay so it goes boot camp boot camp isn't bud's training not yet

Okay, explain the difference and go into the how it became. Yeah, so we were in a special warfare division for boot camp, which was all seal candidates. That was about 100. And just to give you like some numbers, there's about nine guys that ended up being seals from that initial. Out of 100. Out of that like initial boot camp group, which is, you know, so about 10%, which is about right. Then you go to Bud's prep. So that's eight weeks.

Then basically on water demolition preparatory school in Chicago area, Great Lakes. That's running, swimming, lifting three times a day. for like a few months. And then they take the top 75% of guys to test out. It's like a thousand meter swim, pull-ups, all this different shit, four-mile runs. And then you go to the show. You go to the grinder,

the crucible in Coronado. Right. Yeah. And so that was 2010, about June that was showing up there. So there's all these tests you have to take before you even get the buds. Yeah.

So the guys that are there, man, are vetted. They got a seal contract from their hometown. They went through. So there's a lot of wickets to even show up. Yeah. And then the attrition rate's like 75 on top of that. Right. So it's pretty. We came out with 400 guys.

And from that 400, man, we ended up graduating 13 originals. Like who went all the way through. About 50 ended up graduating because they got rolled back for injuries. But yeah. Incredible. Yeah. So it really is like the Olympics. Like once you get to the Olympics, those are the best of the best.

And only a fraction of them end up taking medals. It's totally a correct kind of connection like that. It's a grind, man. It's just who's really committed to be in there and has painted themselves in the proverbial picture that there's no other option. I'll fucking die here. All right. What is, yes, what is the mindset of somebody that can actually jump through all those hoops, pass all of those physical and mental tests, and then be in buds and make it through and be one of those 10%. What's, give us a prototype.

Is everybody like you? So I'm kind of like, I would say yes, because you got like some farm boys or not, never, they don't look particularly athletic. Then you got some dudes who are savages. And it's like, who the fuck makes it? It's just the guy who's told himself the story that man, dude, all drown, all die. I don't really have another option. This is like, and that's the story I painted myself is, dude, what am I going to do? I have no other options.

I have a criminal history. I had at least told myself this story. and instructors would point out to the ocean and there'd be like a ship. They go, you see that, bro? You go, you got good news and bad news. The good news is, this is a volunteer organization.

You don't have to be here. The bad news is it's going to fucking hurt. So you could be haze grazing underway. You can go. You don't have to be here, man. And so that was an interesting kind of dichotomy and problem you have to solve every day because I'm like, dude, I don't know if I can keep doing this.

Yeah, psychologically, you could just wake up and be like, oh, I want the pain. to end, you could just tap. Dude, I had mers on my feet like the beginning. Because I had, it's like an infection in your feet from the sand was rubbing, got in my boots and the boots were too tight. And it was like on the top. I have scars all over the top of my feet.

Dude, my feet swole up so bad. I couldn't get my boots in. I had to cut them. And I was like, dude, how the fuck am I going to do this? I can't even get my boots on. And that was a moment where I was like, dude, I don't. So I just kept running. They finally pulled me off, soaked my feet.

and it was like a miraculous thing and I got some bigger boots and ended up working. But that was a moment where I was like, dude, it might physically not be possible. And that was terrifying to fail or have an injury and you get kicked out.

Okay, so tell us about it. Walk us through Bud's training. I mean, this is like world famous for being, like the closest thing to like torture on a volunteer army. Yep. You show up. The first is indoctrination.

It's a few weeks. Kind of like, hey, here's who's who in the zoo. Here's the flow. Here's the battle rhythm. Then you start. the crucible, which is they're all eight-week chunks. Green helmets.

That's the first, like, kicking the nuts, man. That is like, that is first phase of buds, which is boats on head, the logs, the rolling are in the sand, the surf torture, obstacle courses, two-mile ocean swims all the time, man, running, hell weak. That is that period of time. What's the torture? What was that? Surf torture, man.

It all sounds like torture to me. They would make us swallow these pills, these big-ass pills that would test your core temperature so they could tell if people were fake seizuring or not. Wow. They would take you and pull you out when you're hypothermic, you know, sun's down. It's middle of the night. And the doctor would come by and wand and just be like, you know, and they'd go, okay.

And like some guy would fall in seizure and they'd fucking whine me like he's fucking faking or it's crazy, dude. It's like carnage. Absolute carnage. But they put you out there until you're sufficiently hypothermic and then pull you out. And then it's the psychological game of spring weekends are all about. family, sunshine, and evenings on the patio. Before everyone arrives, I stop by my local Total Wine and Moore to grab a great bottle to share. With such a wide selection and the lowest prices,

it's easy to find something amazing for everyone to enjoy. If you're not sure what to pick, their friendly guides can help. Find what you love and love what you find only at Total Wine and More. Shop Total Wine and More in store or online. Spirits not sold in Virginie. Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. B-21. Okay, who's going to quit because there's no like end? And so when they see like a big group of guys quit,

then they'll kind of dial it back a little bit. It's like a living organism. So you're bobbing around at night in the Pacific, which is freezing water. What are you doing? You're bobbing or swimming? I wish. You wish you were just sweating.

Dude, they make you face against the waves and fucking do rocking chairs. So you got to put your feet back. And then so all the sand goes down your ass crack and into your dick and dude. And then back and in your eyes. They'll make dudes like open their eyes and like drop sand in their face, dude. It's just like it's all the small shit. You don't it's like you're so uncomfortable. So uncomfortable.

It's indescribable. It truly is indescribable. Is there like some kind of release form you have to sign before you go in there? But I signed a lot of forms. I'm sure some of them are because dude, they've had, they have guys die almost every year in training. And so now this has gotten a lot of heat in the news. You might have like seen something. A trainee dies. It happens more often than you'd think because dudes have, you know, they could have fluid in the lungs or something and they go. And so they've been getting a lot of heat from the

government from this. Wow. Yeah. Did anybody freeze to death or how else? We've had guys. We've had guys. Most drown. Wow. Most will drown from stuff or like have fluid in the lungs and die and they're sleeping some shit like that. Yeah. So what do you think the point, did you find that these had a point, these brutal torturous trainings, could serve a practical purpose in combat? Or do you think it was just to test your toughness, just to weed out the week from the rest?

You have people you have FaceTime with, you may have certain, you've struggled with, you know that guy, at least for his balls. You know that dude can like, hang, you know, technical aptitude, intelligence, physical ability, all these things are different. Those come later.

But you at least know the dude's fucking tough. Right. And so there's something to be said for, you know, guys got your back and he's like, bend through it. And what's interesting about this, I think SAS does it too. And overseas, officers go through the same training. It's very unique in that all the officers are right next to you, doing all the same shit. And so it creates a very tight bond of unit cohesion, which is unique. Wow. Yeah. So that's a

very cool part of it. Now, so they put you through the, the physical stuff first. Yeah. How many people got knocked off just in the first, that first eight weeks? So that was, we went from 400 to 275. We classed up with 275. And then like three weeks later, we had about 185. And then after Hellweek, we were about like 48. Okay. So about eight weeks, about 48. Hell week really weeds people out. Tell us about Hell Week. Hell week. Dude, it was really nervous starting. So you start Sunday night and you go till Friday afternoon. And you don't, you sleep about two, three hours in that span of time. You run about 250 miles during the time. You're running the whole time. You're not stopping.

It's a just, they just keep you moving so you don't fall asleep, you know, but dudes will be like eating and then like stand up and you'll just hear their plates smash on the ground. Hallucinating a lot. you start hallucinating about Wednesday. And it's, it's just constant motion, constant carnage and then slowly you, the guys who they say are there by Wednesday, historically,

they go those dudes will just, so there's really no point to keep going because that's the, that's the switch. They're like, these guys will just die. So like they'll just keep running and it's going until they die. But Tuesday is kind of where they know dudes are still like,

maybe I'll quit. But the dudes who are there by Wednesday, they're like, Yeah, we're going to keep going through the motions, but there's nothing we could do to these. They're going to make it until Friday. Yeah, everybody who's going to be here is going to be here. What do you do? You're running the whole time, swimming.

Boats. Running on the boats in the head is something that people see, but they don't understand how uncomfortable it is. When you're having your spine compressed, those boats are heavy, man. Yeah. And they're bouncing and it's heavy as shit. And so you're running miles, miles holding them up. And the instructors will stand in them and fill them with sand and water. and they're sadistic too, man.

Like, yeah, those dudes have, you got to be. All these are Iraq veterans. I have some hard. Dude, to give you an example, dude, Eddie Gallagher was one of my buds instructors, right? Right. So we had some pretty powerful, a powerful instructor cadre that they didn't, dude, because they're going to be on a seal team with you. It's not the seal community is small, man. So it's, it's, dude, they're going to be on a platoon with you.

Seriously? So the officers will go out into the field. That's crazy. Dude, it's very unique, too, because you don't salute in SEALs, you don't salute officers. You're by first name, you know, you might say sir or something, but it's like from a Vietnam thing where they didn't want to salute. That's real. And so the SEALs have carried that on. No covers.

It's casual in that capacity. Training is very professional, but actual the connection between an officer and because it's bottom up, right? All the enlisted guys actually build the missions. That's wild. What does that mean? Powerpoints, presenting them to generals, actually. building the actions on, targets, all these things are done by an enlisted guy. So it's a higher caliber of enlisted guy, a little bit older.

A lot of them have college degrees. It's, you know, I had professional athletes, baseball players, Harvard Ivy League guys and enlisted. Fascinating. So rank and file seals, if you want to say, we'll be the ones building the missions from intelligence to, you know, actually. And presenting it. Like so public speaking, you're actually graded on public speaking from almost the beginning of seal training.

all the way through your entire career. Really? Yep. It's building PowerPoints, man. It's like a huge piece of it. It's almost like going to college. Yeah, man. And you're graded hard.

You present from a whole troop, 60, 70 seals, man. And, like, the instructors will sit there, take notes about, you know, you're doing something weird with your fucking face or your hands. Because it's important, man, when you're actually presenting to admirals, generals overseas to get missions approved. So seals are dumb? No. Okay.

That was a real question. No. I would say... I'm not saying you seem dumb, but I'm sorry. saying like, you know, a lot of these rank and file infantry guys are probably have barely high school education. You have to navigate quite a bit in terms of time management to actually make it through seal training. You have to pass a lot of tests. There's demolition tests, diving tests, diving tables. Because you're doing combat diving and all this shit, man. You got to understand quite a bit of stuff.

But what about like intellectual stuff or yeah, what about, you know, exams and research and all this like kind of like white collar stuff. Do you have to pass a test like you would be like getting into college? You have to take like an SAT type. Oh, dude, we're past, you're taking tests every single cell of training. Every single cell training you're going to take demolition tests, dive table tests, medical tests, everything, man. The best of the best.

Yeah. And there's other levels too, right? Because you have the Allsar team, you know, development groups, seal team six. That's the next step up. Right. How many of those guys are? are there. I can't really give out that number. Really? Yeah. It's kind of psych.

Six? Huh? Six? Yeah. Yeah. Those are, but that's the real deal, man. I mean, those are guys who who have spent six, seven, eight, nine, ten years in the SEAL teams and where the top 10% screen and go through a whole other year of that. Wow. Higher level, higher stress. And they're gone and their deployment tempo is serious over there, man. My homies that are there rocking and on, dude, for years, bro. Wow. It's serious. Who would want to do that for that long?

It's a... Is it good pain? I think guys get... I think guys get burnout. Yeah. You know, I mean, I think at 20, a lot of them are like, all right, I'm good. You know, and then because you want to make money. You want to build a life.

You want to, you know, not be gone from your family and you want to be able to have some autonomy, which I'm sure, you know, you've been in prison. I've been where I've been, it's having your autonomy and not having somebody tell you where to fucking be and stuff is... Yeah. At some point, you really start to... cherish that. But these SEAL Team six guys, the elites of the elites, first of all, how do they decide who goes and does what? Like, how do they decide, oh, yeah, they're going to go kill bin Laden? That's an obvious one. But like, you know, it, yeah, is that, does that come from the top down? Yeah, that's coming from top down, man. So that mission said, I can't really speak because I haven't been there, right? So I only know what I know. But it's coming from the top, top, top, down and not too far down. Right. You know, it's up there.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're up there with the CIA. Yeah. It's not too far down. Shit. Okay.

So you're in this, you're 23. You're past hell week. Yep. Did you feel like, I mean, did you feel like a fucking monster when you passed it? Do you feel like you were going to get through after you passed hell week? Were you like, okay, I'm about to. I still had issues with my background. And so they called me in after hell week, bro, and go, your security clearance is like not getting approved.

And I'm like, I'm like, I'm like. fuck because I was honest-ish. I could only answer, but I was, you know, I had serious interviews with investigators and stuff to even get into my seal contract and in the pipeline. And now I made it through that. Things were pinged.

So I was so stressed out, man, that it was all going to get pulled out from under me. But it was cool, man. The secretary of fence, Robert Gates secured us. We're out there on the beach and they give us, they pull you out there as like a brown shirt. They have a big ass Gatorade and like a fucking pizza.

It sounds. so simple man but it was like once you put that brown shirt on that signifies to everybody on the seal base and training that you've passed hell week and so it's a little bit of a level you're still shark shit on the bottom of the ocean but you're not like at the bottom and dude that was everybody's head swollen up your joints you're having such serious skeletal muscle breakdown that like people's joints had to go to the hospital get skin grafts on the inside of their legs it's fucking carnage man wow how why because running right it just fucking shafing.

Shaping so bad that it's down to where they actually need skin grafts. Holy shit. You know, as we had a couple people in class like that. So, laying down was one of the most unbelievable feeling. Like, we went to a diner the next fucking morning. It was like... You can't even imagine.

Oh, dude. It's like in a beanie and a... So good. It's like putting on clothes when you get out of prison. Like civilian clothes. It's like the most wonderful feeling. Dude, I can imagine, bro. You're doing time. You're just like, oh, yeah.

You put shoes on the fit that have souls in them, you know, that have like an arch for your foot. Yeah, dude. Oh, the luxury, bro. Exactly. What you miss when you don't have anything, this simple things. Well, it's, it's impressive you bring that up because, dude, a lot of people never experienced that stripping down. That's right. And so it makes sense why they're not fucking happy. It makes sense why they're going around and not happy about their fucking phones not connecting or whatever. It's like, dude, when you really get stripped down. Yeah. And we forget sometimes. But dude, it's still, you reflect back like, that coffee in your hand waking up you're like man this is really nice like warm and just and that's a such an

important reference point that's i think a lot of people miss man they never get it and how can you harness that you know because it's been so long now that i'm just like every other materialistic american like i bitch at the smallest inconveniences you know what i mean that two years ago weren't even an option now i can you know it's like things are so easy and they're moving so fast that you become so accustomed to just convenience. All the time. So how do I harness that being on the fucking yard? No phone, no smartphone.

No, I don't know what's going on every minute of the day. All I know is things are serious. Things are not good. But you're in the moment. You're so like so being in seal training, buds training. You've got to be so in the moment. Yeah. Which is hard to grasp why that's important when you're suffering.

Because when you're suffering, you're supposed to not be in the moment. You're like, I'd love to be somewhere else mentally right now. But I think taking yourself out mentally is to me it was more suffering. Yeah. Like when I was like running and spinning laps around the yard, I noticed that like if I like fantasized about like a girl or my old life or the future even, it would hurt worse than just like focusing on the next breath. Yep. So is that what did you think about when you were running to? 149 miles in one, one hell week.

Dude, what do you do with your mind? Johnny, it's funny, you brought up the running, man. Every step, I'm a terrible runner. I'm good enough to be a Navy SEAL. So I'm like the line. I'm like, not terrible, but not, I struggle. Or I pay the man, I should say, dude, every step I was like, I hate this. I don't know if I could do another one.

I can't keep up. I can't keep up. But it was just I could take one. It sounds cliche, but man, I could take one more step. Man, I could take one more step. My legs aren't broken. I thought about breaking my fucking leg sometimes really stop.

But all right, I can just go, let me just, they say this, let's, I'll just get to lunch. Yeah. Right,

that meal to meal. Man, if people are in that meal to meal place, you've probably been there when the stress is coming from every angle and you're like, it's gonna fucking get to breakfast. I'm just going to get to that next call

of my lawyer. Or I'm just going to fucking piece segments, man. Take it, break it the fuck down to the simplest form. And it's staying present,

bro. And you can, it's okay to say I hate this. Yeah. But at least you're in the moment. Yeah. Let's take one more. It's all good.

Don't deny it. Yeah. Exactly. It's fucking sucks. Exactly. It's empowering, man. When you just accept reality, that's what a lot of people do is they deny, man. They deny their own reality.

They deny where they're at in their life. Dude, fucking get on it. You're like, dude, I hate my fucking job. I'm fat. I'm whatever. Dude,

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So how long does it last after you get your brown shirt? How much longer is buds? You got four more months. Wow. So they call this thing called post-Hell week depression. It's a thing where you've graduated. You're feeling great. And then you realize you're like, dude, I'm fucking.

These motherfuckers don't give a fuck. You know, you got new instructors. They're like, hey, piece of shit. Like, so you go into dive phase, man. They're beating you up with tanks now. And like, you're doing tread. And like, that's when they do the underwater like, uh, pool competency test where you have 20 minutes underwater and you're fighting for your tanks and you have to do

all these procedures and you can't surface for 20 minutes. Okay. Yeah. That's powerful. Tell us, tell us explain that more. Yeah. And that's the one Jimmy almost got washed out. man, that's a powerful test, bro, because I've never been so nervous before something,

dude, and I've jumped out of planes. I've been different, dude, that was something powerful about knowing you're not going to have air for 20 minutes. And if you try to, you know, fucking. Hold, how is that possible, though? So you're, you're, there's a pool. There's a pool. You're not going to, you're going to be struggling for air, I should say, because your tanks

are on the bottom of the ground. And you have to do these procedures calmly. And then you have instruct. instructors who are tying them up in knots and fucking you up at the same time. Wow. So you're pushing you, smashing your head on the thing. And then they're like, and then they'll stop. And then you're kind of like, it's to simulate waves hitting you.

You know, it's to simulate that chaos. And so then you're trying to go down. You're trying to undo these knots and you're like, and then a instructor will hit you again and rip it out. So you're like in this constant like, and you're, if you bolt, they call it bolting, you know, going to the surface. Man, it's, it's automatic fail. And it's like the worst thing you can do because it shows panic.

So that was a really powerful moment where I woke up that morning and I went, wow, dude, I'm fucking nervous. You know, because you know you're going to be in this in this oxygen deprivation state. Yeah. And your whole career and, you know, dream rides on it. So if you bolt, you're done. You're toast, man. And so you, I think you get a couple failures, but, you know, it's not going to be. They're going to come at you even harder.

Okay. So how long do you, are you down there? 20 minutes. 20 minutes. So it's 20 minutes of that. Oh. Yeah. So it was,

described that. Was it as bad as you thought it was going to be? I was prepared, which was helpful. There's procedures you have to do in certain ways you have to do it just so they can see that you can stay somewhat calm. And then,

but I was in that flow state, man. I mean, you're not, once you're in it, you're not worried about it anymore. The anticipation was way worse than the actual thing.

I mean, it was hard, but once I surfaced, man, it was the best fucking feeling. When they said you passed, it was unbelievable. Because then your seal training light looks a lot bigger.

Percentage-wise, guys that pass that chunk are like, okay, now you're in that larger percentage of you're probably going to pass butts if something weird doesn't happen. Okay. So then what's next after tank train? After that, you're going to San Clemente Island, bro. So two months that you're doing San Clemente Island for about a month, which is demolition, small unit tactics. They have like a whole fake city built out there on San Clemente Island, which is you can do demolition. salts and I mean whole building eight nine 10 story buildings on this on the you know on San committing island it's government owned and but you're also doing boogeyman swims bro

they'll chum the fucking water out on the gray white sharks and take you out in the ocean bro and make you swim it's far so it's and there's great white sharks out there man and seals swimming around and it it's so you're swimming in open water with you know great whites are down there and they're throwing chum in the water bro and I was like these guys this not really chum and then a fish head hits me in the head. I'm like, oh my God, this is real, dude. Dude, they're chumming. They're looking for jaws, dude. That's insane. Yeah, dude, it was, it was wild, bro. They boogeyman swim, they call it. You know, I don't know if they're still chumming, but I know they had, they were doing it then, dude. Just until somebody gets attacked.

Yeah, it's powerful, bro, but you know, you're, what's interesting is, dude, I would never go in the ocean like that now, but when you're in, when you have to, it's different. And you're also with your buddy. You're right, of course. So you have somebody with you. So you just got to make sure you swim past than him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Have him dangle more.

Yeah. I'd be a good bait. Yeah. Six foot six. My legs are hanging down longer than anyone's. What was that? Were there any guys my height in there? Yeah.

We had a couple big guys. Really? So they do, they try to match. They'll pair you for the boats for tall guys. Right. So we'll have a couple six. We had a six eight dude.

And for you, the obstacle course would probably be a lot easier because there's like you're not having to jump for stuff. And it's like, but there's pros to being a little bit shorter. A little bit more compact. Yeah, I feel like probably more pros. Yeah, there's more pros. My height's about good.

Six feet. The five, 10, six feet range is like that good catch all. So when you're on San Clemente, are you now shooting? You're shooting now. Live rounds. Yep, live rounds and a lot. So not just like a little amount. The amount of ammo they use is something insane for that small of a unit.

Like in terms of military expenditure. even like the Marine, I heard some crazy stats about like the Marine Corps didn't shoot as much as some buds classes. I don't know if that's all true. We shot so much to where the weapons manipulation, the accuracy, the combat shooting was like,

still to this day, dude, I close my eyes and just absolute perfect on weapons manipulation. And they're strict, man. So you could put a gun, take a gun apart. That's for sure. I could,

that's easy. But it's also just the comfort, the malfunctions, how to fix things on the run. changing ammo while you're running. They become such second nature. And if you, it's trial by pain,

man. You're learning by pain. If you fuck up, dude, you're running two miles down to the ocean, get freezing wet, it's rolling the sand, come back up,

run back. They had this instructor. It was a little sadistic. He goes, bet us. He bet somebody about a shooting contest and stuff. The instructors are out there, bro.

They're bored, man. So they're fucking around too, and they're all crazy. And he's like, hey, you know, if you lose,

your guys are going to have to be insanely wet for the next three days. Like, I'm not sure with that. We lost, of course. Bro, we were wet, wet for 24 hours a day, like wake up immediately in the ocean. No sleep for like three days, dude. It was, dudes were getting jungle rot and shit. It was fucking insane. Was jungle rot?

Well, you're just, your feet and stuff are so wet. They never dry out. You start to get like fungus and rot. Oh, my God. And so they got some reprimand for that. So humiliation. is a real it's really utilized consciously

to try to avoid mistakes on your part. More than anything, it's the wetness. Yeah. It's like, the embarrassment, yeah, but it's like the, dude, it's so miserable being wet. It's so nice having dry shit on that it's like, people like, hey, you're going to get wet.

It's like, oh, God, please no. You know, fucking know, I just want to be dry, bro. What did you expect to be doing? Do people that go into the seals in Bud's training, do they expect, expect to get out and work right away. Like obviously when like times right now, where the world's heating up again,

you expect to go on missions right away. Yeah. But what about when times are calm? Like say this was like 2017. We're kind of Trump's in office. We're kind of out of active war. You know? Yeah.

What was like in 2010 when you were in there? What was the mind frame? What was the mindset? Did you expect to get shipped off and be, you know, Yeah, they were training us. Cap and Arab's. They were training us, man, because there are still cycles to Afghanistan, Iraq. That was still, the pumps were still going.

And then seals, at least on the white, on that side, it's every 18 months, you're to point for six, always. Every team, that's the cycle. So it's not like other units that, you might, if something's not, it doesn't matter. There's always someplace to put seal teams. It's just how hot it is or how not it is. I see. So it's always, whether you're doing foreign internal defense. You're training counterterrorism units.

You're building target packages. You're doing low visibility operations like I did in Yemen, which no uniforms, beards and that whole shit. That is always happening. So even if you're not killing a high value target, you're doing some shit overseas. Right? That's rare. That high value target stuff is rare, you know? But there's always stuff going on and there's always weird shit happening.

That's got to be the envy of all of the seals that, hey, I'm in the unit that gets to go kill Osama bin Laden. Yeah. I mean, that's that's premier. Premier. That's Premiere. Yeah. Dude, I want to do it. And it was, it was wild. Am I too old? I was just graduating. We were just about to. We came in in like a golden time.

We were just finishing land warfare out of the Chalkland Mountains out here, which is a extremely hard cell of training. For our seal qualification training about to get our tridents when Osama Belon got killed. And we had people in that class whose brothers were on that up. Wow. And so we did a couple calls like, hey, man. what's going on. And it was like,

hey, we got them. It was powerful, man. It was like a, it felt like we were on this, like destiny, this wave of destiny in terms of timing.

Uh-huh. It was, it was powerful, bro. Okay. So after San Clemente, you go to the, what,

chocolate mountains? Yeah. After, well, this is a while you go through. We went to Alaska, cold weather mountain warfare, swimming,

doing over the beach attacks with the fucking in Alaska and the winter, bro. Dude, that was all night doing land navigation, survival tactics out for a month hike in doing all that shit. Cold and wet now. Cold and wet now.

Dude, dry suits putting dry suits on in the snow, dude. Heavy. So that's part of it. Then they immediately bring us back down here for combat diving, which is all underwater, freezing your balls off, four hours underwater at a time, navigating underwater with a tackboard. Oh my God.

So you're you got your diving. Yeah. Close. Oxygen tank, close circuit rigs, and do you have weapons on you? Oh, yeah. Okay, so explain that for people, the layperson. That's a wild thing because close circuit rigs. It's not like normal stuff if people have scuba dive where it's like bubbles coming up.

So you're, it's like an extra lung. So while you're swimming as you, you know, you exhale the lung and you go. So you're going like this, but you, but you can't go too deep because of the how the type, the dive tables are with that pure O2. So you're going like this, but you're going, man. freezing your ass off, of course, because it's like, that's just the name of the game. And, you know, trying to remember your legs and your bearings and all that shit and plant, plant and limpid mines on the bottom of ships and stuff.

I see. That's the whole game. That's kind of an, that's a very special thing. Like Jimmy, Jimmy was at the unit that was an SDV, which was, that's what they do, man. That's like, specialty for that. But it's kind of like we all have to know it. It's a very rare mission set. Yeah.

Super, super complex. Incredible, but incredibly difficult. and and I don't know, cool. It's a lack of a better word. You got to put a mine on a ship in the water. Dude, ships are creepy as shit underneath that night. It's like, it's all slimy, dude. It's creepy, bro.

Totally. It's super creepy. Totally. Yeah. Wow. Every possible scenario of every piece of warfare. Yeah. In any climate, in any terrain, they train you for.

Yeah. And then you're going to close quarters, combat, which is house assaults, which is extremely technical, very, very difficult. One of the most challenging psychologically bringing your sympathetic nervous system down so you can actually think and shoot. And if you make a mistake in one room, you're not bringing that mistake into the next, which is a good kind of takeaway for life just in general is to cut that emotion. Yeah, I fucked that up.

But now we have to go in fresh because we can't go in and be all fucked up. Right. They call it an avalanche. You just start avalanche. Right. So that was that. Then you go to skydiving, right? Free fall, military free fall, doing halo jumps and that whole shit at night, full wall locker jumps.

What's a halo jump? That's a high altitude, low opening. So that's above 13,000 feet with oxygen and you're dropped falling for a while. And then you're opening the shoot lower, kind of just a more tactical way to insert. That was cool, man, because we're diving out. This was a moment I was like getting closer to graduation. and I'm going, dude, I'm flying out one time. And I'm like seeing Mexico and the border wall and like my hometown dude in the ocean.

I'm like, fuck. Yeah, dude. I was just in jail, you know, a few, like a couple years ago. And everybody told me, they're like, dude, don't even try. You're not even going to be able to get in. And now I'm here. And it was a very surreal moment to be like, man, fuck people. Right.

Like they don't know. Like they don't know your level of resolve or what's possible. If they're not there, I'm sure when you got out of prison, you're like, hey, I'm going to go. you know, try to follow my dream and start doing some people like, dude, get a fucking job, go be a fucking well, you know. Literally everyone. Literally everyone. And they were right.

That's sound advice. I should just go get a trade and find a nice, fattening white woman and just settle down and rainy ass Portland, Oregon. Yeah. I should have done that, you know? It's powerful, man. But my spirit couldn't let me do that. Yeah.

The human spirit is, is unbelievable. Yeah. And the seal training is like the body can withstand a lot. It can. The mind can really withstand a lot. You know, I heard an interesting, said, they said, who are seals? Like, describe what a seal is? Like, how would you describe the character trait?

And this dude said, man, it's a group of guys that want to be anything but average. I fucking like that. I get the chills for that because I really think it's like most seals are just average looking. Nobody's special. It's just they don't want to be fucking average, man. And that's like falling your dream in whatever capacity it is. It's, man, you don't just fall into that average shit. It's a punishment, man.

Yeah. Wow. It really is like athletic. It's like the highest level of athletics. Yeah. It was something spiritual that is driving you guys. It's not really ideology. You're right.

It's not, it doesn't really seem political with the people that actually go in to become SEALs. I would say it's not. You really draw out a really interesting point with that because I had never really thought about that piece, the ideological piece. It's most special operators,

they're not ideologically driven. It's like, it's like an internal piece. and then you also get connected with these other guys of like minds. And then you're just fighting for the dude next to you. And I think that that's a very important point about special operations. The pushback to that is, well, you're killing people, which is if, you know, it's a sin and the Christian all faiths, really. So that you kind of have to square away.

You kind of have to be brainwashed or convince yourself that this is a righteous reason that we're doing it. So did that play into your mind, like at a certain point when you know you're going to be. graduating, you know, there's a real good chance that you're going to be sent on missions where you got to give people tickets to the wet t-shirt contest. Yeah. Did you, yeah, did that cross your mind? Like having to take life? Yeah.

You know, it did. It was, but it's one of those things that it's like, I'll deal with it, you know, if and when it comes. And it was, you know, who I'm not going to worry about something that's not here yet. But it's a valid response. And I will say biblically, people can correct. me if I'm wrong, but the old actual translation is thou shalt not

murder, which is interesting, but it got translated into thou shalt not kill. And murder is illegal killing. Right. So, not splitting hairs here, right? But who's right and who's wrong? I can totally understand that. I can, you know, who's right and who's wrong. I will say

evil exists in this world, man. There are bad people that do bad things. I'm not saying we're always in the right. I'm saying I haven't seen evil shit around me. I've never seen guys do shit that I couldn't tell my fucking mom. That's serious, man. And I think that's why I can sleep well.

And I never lost my like morals. I never saw dudes do, you know, crazy shit like you hear about and just never saw that. I saw very professional guys that I was around and I'm grateful for that because it like keeps my sanity, man. For sure. And I think a lot of like the massacres of people that you see in foreign wars are usually done by people in parts of the military that have less training than the seals. Yeah. And I would say that the vetting nature of it is kind of, it brings out a guy that's just

like, dude, he's just gone through enough layers of selection that the guy's pretty fucking professional. So they don't want psychos. No. I mean, they don't, because a psycho is not manageable. Right. Or unpredictable. Sure.

And so you got to be able to be predictable, you know, maybe some tendencies or whatever. You got to be able to, you know, unleash the. beast, but in a very, very honed and professional way. Did you undergo brainwashing the way that you do in like, uh, regular ass fucking army boot camp, dude, get screamed at? That's, that was Legion. And the foreign legion, there's a lot of that. But in the, dude, they want to think and shooter.

I never experienced like, oh, yeah, kill that that didn't exist in the seal teams, man. Not a lot of yelling also, right? It's like, dude, like, the instructors will talk to you like this, like really funny, too. Dudes are fucking hilarious. Oh, hilarious. They're like, bro, you fucking serious? Like, how are you going to come out with me at the bar looking like that? You know, it's like talking shit, breaking balls.

So a lot of it isn't, dude, they want thinking shooters. They want bottom up. Hey, man, even from the lowest guy, you're giving a lot of responsibility very fast. Millions of dollars of equipment, people's lives, building mission plans from day one, man, right? Traveling by yourself. Government credit cards. Wow. Making hotels, renting SUVs.

You know, and you're my first year, right? immediately you're just like hey man here's all the rope like you fucking hang yourself or not right let's see you know and so that was that's incredible that the autonomy i think creates it's it's the self-perpetuating thing of you know you can't be brainwashed you actually have to think or you're gonna get just kind of burned out yeah that sounds man this all sounds really exciting yeah if you're recruiting me right now yeah i'm in dude well i'm so happy i ended up there and it wasn't the Marines because, dude, it was exactly the culture I loved. It was working out on the beach, casual, be professional as fuck at work.

And you know, what ended up fucking me, dude, is I got comfortable, man. You know, I was working hard and stuff. And I was, but I was like, then I started partying a little bit harder on the fucking weekends, going a little bit harder in the pain. I was living downtown. And the momentum started picking up. I see. So hold on.

Have you graduated yet at this time? Yeah. Yeah. So I'm at SEAL Team 7. What is the difference between six and seven? So all the even numbers. are on the East Coast and all the odd numbers are on the West Coast to kind of just give it as a kind of just general rule.

And you pretty much get picked up. It's just timing for the most part. But a group of, you know, a handful of guys go to a SEAL team. You get hoored out to all the different platoons. And I went to SEAL Team 7. Okay. How many people are in your platoon?

So there are you about 16 to 20 in a platoon. Wow. Okay. That's 16 to 20 guys. That'll be three or four new guys. And then all the rest will be older guys. I see. So there'll be multiple platoons deep.

Some cycling out. to instructor duties, some cycling out of the military, some officers, and then a handful of new guys. Okay. And so there's every 18 months, you know you're getting shipped out for six months. How long is your commitment, your minimum? Six years. Six years. Six years is the minimum commitment as a seal. Okay. And the minute you start, you're doing personal development or professional development schools. So you're doing qualifications. So I went to sniper school. I went to Naval Special Warfare communication school. Went to Advent Layden.

It's like advanced special operations, low visibility stuff. All these different specialty schools. And then they put you together like the fucking Avengers. Guys are demolition experts and breaches. Yeah. Put you all together. And then you start a unit workup. So that's that's when you do the diving, the this, the that, this.

What was your thing? So I have a sniper and a joint terminal attack controller. So that's like, do bomb coordination with pilots. So which was bad. man because I got to travel around the United States and just go meet with pilots and then we go train. And so a lot of training trips, Hawaii, Idaho. And that's where I ended up getting in trouble in Idaho where I went to jail up there. Okay.

So you're partying. As you're waiting to be deployed, you can get yourself in trouble. Yeah. Because if you're not training or studying, you kind of got a lot of downtime. Yeah. I mean, the downtime is not, we don't have a lot of downtime, but it's like you do have your weekends every now and again. Or you do have, you know, your evening.

and for a guy that pushes the pace, you know, they're not, a lot of seals aren't fucking Boy Scouts, you know, for the most part. Yeah, you do have your square edge guys and I probably would have been better to be,

but it's just not how I was and I hadn't built my self-worth and my habits and myself, my, my ability to predict and project possible risk, you know, what could happen wasn't really on point yet. So what was your thing? You were into Coke? No, dude, I was just drinking, man.

Not old school, all right. Yeah, I was just drinking. We were just going out bars and, like, just doing shit like that. It's just going hard and you do that enough. I mean, it wasn't that big a deal, but then I fucking hit a guy in a bar. And it was one fucking punch, but I ended up getting aggravated assault. And that started a whole cascade of shit. So now I'm facing the plea deal with six plus three.

And so six in prison plus three parole because I broke the dude's orbital eye socket. And so there's all these things. And I'm telling you, man, one puck and punch is all it takes to like totally derail your life. I was like early promotes golden boy. I was flying, dude. Like I got untouchable. That's in my head, right? And I forgot how quickly something can happen, man.

And that started a cascade of shit. I ended up going to Iraq still, even on bail, which was crazy. You bailed out? This was in Idaho. I bailed out and then went to Iraq like three months later. The courts were like, yeah, we can send them to Iraq. So I was in Iraq on bail. Wow.

Can when you catch a case as like a Navy SEAL and it's not something egregious, can can that get you out? Can that get you leniency? Can you make a call to the military and say, hey. It brings a lot more heat on you. So dude, they were like wanting to grill me because they're like a Navy Shields here. You should know better this and that. It was like on some video. And it really got blown.

The team sent representation up to Idaho. So I'm just like, I have a top secret clearance. It gets pulled. So there's all these cascading things. I had to get a fucking expensive attorney, bro. I got one of the, we had some good connections, which helped. So the seal connections, bro. I still paid, right?

But I had one of the best criminal defense to John Cox, my man. What's up? David Elliott and Jag. Shout out, dude. I got mad love for good lawyers, bro. Because you have somebody on your, I'm sure you don't have on fighting for you. It's incredible. You're on bail.

You're facing six years? Dude, I'm in Iraq. This is crazy. With a sniper rifle on just on sniper watch from three to six every morning was my thing. ISIS front like two kilometers away, right? I'm just kind of and I'm going, I fucking facing six jury trial when I get back. So fucking stressed out, bro.

People were, I volunteered to stay. Yeah, I thought about joining the Kurdish Peshmerga and just fucking knocking on the plane, dude, for real. Because I was like, dude, if I get a felony, I'm toast anyway.

You can't, you can't get a felony and stay in the seals. You're getting kicked out of the military. That is like, so I said, dude, I'll take it to the box then. Yeah. If they're going to keep it as a felony, I had enough leverage. I don't care about prison time, dude. I was like, I don't give a fuck.

I care about losing my fucking seal trident. Right. So that made the decision really clear to me. He's like, all right, we'll take it to the box. So I took it all the way up to the steps of the courthouse to where they finally go, all right, you got to pay all this restitution with my entire Iraq check, told my truck. And then we'll do maxed out misdemeanors, formal probation.

I couldn't like own a gun. and I couldn't leave the city. And it was fucking super. It was, it was destined for failure. But I had a miss, but I didn't have to go. I went to jail for a little bit. Right. But I'm still on the SEAL teams. Right.

I took a demotion and all that shit. But that was an incredible experience that I ended up fucking up three months later. Okay. Hang on. Let's talk about your first deployment to Iraq. Yeah. You're as part of the SEALs. You say they get like rented out to different battalions and other parts of the military.

For us, we were. What were you doing? What was your mission over there? For us, our mission was, now, you got to remember, it's not Ramadi, right? So it's not like, you know, we're not kicking doors in. It's a different battlefield. Yeah. But it's like entrenched warfare and they needed us to leap frog out,

build a base, for lack of a better word, and then kind of get prepped for this Missoula offensive that was happening. Right. So we had to meet up with the tribal fighters who had been displaced by ISIS and meet up with their shakes. And I was a shake leader and like a couple guys were put in. and then train their guys, get them a group that's good, and then start leapfrogging into taking these strongholds.

Okay, so these are the ISIS years. These are the ISIS. This is just taken over. Just completely like the whole world was like taking aback at them. Yeah. Great branding. Yeah. Great social media.

I got to tell you, man, that branding is that the flag and shit, man. Dude, and that fucking the editing. Yeah. We train. I train my own editor by watching ISIS videos. Yeah. I'm like, who's doing the cinematography? Dude, they had a fucking Stephen Soderberg.

They had social media shit. Like, we went on an op one time and a dude hit a one of our fucking native units hit a ID, right? One of them hit. He didn't even die. Six people around him died. Toros go flying. And like all the shit's happened. But dude, they're taking fucking straight selfies with these torsos, bro.

And posting it on line. I'm like, damn, these dudes don't give a fuck, right? It's just like a next level. type, but they were using that social media, bro. Yeah, straight up. They were putting that shit out, man. They had a content strategy. Right.

They had a content strategy and they were executing it, man. Because, but that was an interesting time. So you're working with local Iraqi tribes. Yep. To then basically, what's the mission? Eliminate these guys? Yeah, Sunni tribes to take over back and also targeting. So we're also building out drone launching places and doing all this shit and then calling

in airstrikes for with so there's a lot of that going on also so having 24 out predators on targets and then building target packages watching patterns of life all that's kind of happening while my name we're putting up fucking razor wire and shit like no base I'd never had a deployment where I like I went into a base dude we're eating off the local economy we're fucking building we took over a old ISIS storage facility that had ordinance in it bro old mortars and cleared it out his shit dude and then no and just slowly built a nice, like kind of a living situation. HESCO walls and bringing in the vehicles and slowly kind of build this thing over six months

until it's like an actual base. Wow. And you're building it? You're doing labor. You're doing labor, bro. Dude, you're working like a slave, dude, with a gun, bro. And you have to have 24 hours security. So two guys are on security, 24 hours a day.

Dude, there was only fucking, we showed up with 10 dudes. It's not that many. Dude, 10 dudes, man. and then plus us up about 10 more. And then slowly, you know, we're getting, we get the plumber and then we get the electrician. And then you get the guys that actually know the shit. Like, then you're like,

hey, bro, we got running water now. You know, shit's fucking, not too bad. We're living, bro. Yeah, but it's nice, too, because you don't got to wear shirts and shit. Like, you're not, you're not on the flag. Right. So you're growing, we're growing mustache is out. Right.

Kind of in sandals and being casual. That part is fucking great about a lot of sealed deployments. Yeah. You're like. You don't have the formality. of the other formality is just removed. Okay, so tell us about some of these missions. So most of it's like a company, right?

Most of it's advise and assist, excuse me. So technically the accompany piece is not, you know, so not to get too much into that part because it was illegal at the time to accompany. Right. So there's no boots on the ground technically, but we're still getting shot at. That makes sense.

No, it doesn't. Exactly. The Obama years were weird, bro. So you weren't allowed to be there, but you're there. We weren't allowed to be there. be they're like why are seals getting shot at right but dude it's part of the job they're like there's no boots on the ground oh yeah well why am i getting shot at by discus and fucking

taking mortars and shit it's a weird political place because you're you're not technically there it's very odd so that that's and dude it was small leap frogs and taking these pieces over and it was slow though it was slow were you taking out ISIS was that was that mostly drone drone strikes a lot of it's drones taking shots you're we're on the berm going because there's like an entrenched thing all the way up to mazul

with the tigris and the euphrates sprit some straight biblical shit dude we're out there with the tribes you know and they're shooting at us we're shooting at them launching mortars at them fucking it's like that you know and so it's it's and the in between is just straight mind dead dead man's land right no man's land

how do you get over that you got to go around it well you you watch patter in a life you watch where they're not going ideally for a lot of times but dude you don't you try not to bro because it's tough to sell dude that shit is mind to shit are you

calling in strikes oh yeah a ton how that feels that feel like a video game you see a bunch of humans that's powerful bro it's got to be right that's powerful too because you're like you know you'll hear him on their mics and you know him fucking scream and you'll hear because we have triangulation and so we can hear their mics

with our interpreters and so we can hear you know, and launching mortars and shit. And it's, you hear what's going on, man, you know. Yeah, you hear the humanity, even out of these people committing these egregiously evil acts. Yeah. You hear them screaming for their lives. Like, yeah. Yeah.

And it's, you know, it's, you know, it's, it's, they're fighting for their side. We're fighting for ours, you know. And so it's, you know, that going back to that ideological piece, you know, that's not a piece I dove into too much. Yeah. I'm quite honest. Like, what's the point? if this is where I'm fucking at, dude, you know. Well, did you, I mean, I imagine like looking at a bunch of guys in, you know, like night vision through the screen, you see just a bunch of these like small little white figures and then a huge mushroom cloud.

Yeah. Would you be ordering strikes like that? Yeah. You're just like, okay, here's 10 people. Now they don't exist anymore. Yeah. That's surreal. Also, dude, predators, bro.

Dude, predators, man. I won't get into the elevations that these things are at and stuff. Yeah. But dude, hellfire missiles, bro. We'll be watching dudes and they'll like get that like spidey sense and they'll go run under. Dude,

doesn't matter where they're running. Dude, the hellfire is coming in their fucking house, dude. And it doesn't come straight down. It come out into their fucking door, bro, underneath their balcony. Is that heat seeking then?

It's not heat seeking. It's just guided. Okay. Okay. Guided. So it's a little bit. So if you're aiming out a guy, he goes running, you're guiding the missile on your computer. Not me.

What they're doing is they're going to put that where it's at and it's going to go in and underneath where it needs to go. It's going to be fixed. Certain things you can't, but that's a lot from helicopters and shit. You can guide like that. You can steer it, but not these ones in particular. Wow. And that's crazy.

They feel it. Dude, they get spidey senses. Dude, you'll try to lay down. You see them running and they'll lay down like this, like and try to like, So their heat signatures gone. It's too late, bro. Wow. It's too late, man.

Could you ever disarm a bomb mid-flight if you needed to? Like, if it was a mistake and there's a bunch of kids? I don't think so. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think so. Did you ever, like, see women and children that were about to get hit? I didn't, though, but I have a funny story about that. So we're watching this dude.

I can't wait to hear how this is funny. We're watching this dude. And I hear a guy and he's like, dude, what is? It was a ISIS, and he was taking over this thing and he had all these like kids with him always always had kids with him and then one day this one dude's like zoom in and he goes dude that's a midget and we're like what this dude because he knew he had ice he had ISIS midgets and he just was rolling with ISIS midgets so he wouldn't get fucking dropped on wow and it worked for him for a long time man he had he knew if

if they think they're kids yeah i'm not going to get lit up yep because uh our collateral damage, our political climate is so stringent with that. And because social media deal, they'll put it all online. But he had midgets with him. ISIS midgets. Isis midgets. That is a killer name for a grunge band, isn't it? ISIS myth.

Who's opening up for ISIS midgets? Dude. But I'm like, bro, 10 points of creativity. But weird shit like that, man, that you just, you only get those experiences over there, bro. It's weird. That's insane. Okay. Did you have to use?

Were you sniping because you're a sniper? I had a 50 caliber out, so I'd bring a 50 cal. But a lot of the shots, man, they're pretty far. So it's tough to say what's going on. And it's like, you know, I bring that 50 caliber out with the high explosive tips. They're like, you know, monster around. They're like $10 a round, dude. It's not cheap.

They're pretty big. But, you know, going up and down the flop, but it wasn't, it wasn't sit and urban because it was trench warfare, man. Right. And so you're trying to keep your head down. They're seeing you. It's sketchy to kind of pop your head up. but we, you know, we'd clacks them off and they'd clacks them off. So you don't even know if you have any confirms.

Yeah, it's tough to sell. It's tough to tell like that. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, ISIS was so evil. Even like an anti-war kind of fruit like me was like, I want to go over there and like volunteer. They were like the epitome. And I know we created it by even going to the Middle East and overthrowing Saddam in the first place.

But, man, that's one of the best things Trump did was like a vicious. and aggressively, like, remove them. Dude, and it's weird when you see the political climate because you'd see we were supporting the Sunnis and who Iran supporting the Shiites. Right, right? And so there's this weird, like, sub-warfare going on, like, by proxy.

Of course. Very strange. It's very, very odd. And that's all we do is fight proxies down. When you see what's going on now with the way they they they they Iran basically controls them the the the um the Shiites right the Shiite yep in the Middle East and they're the ones that are manipulating Gaza and Hezbollah and and Hamas yeah it's all nothing's really changed and it's so layered right because there's other layers subgroups and sub it's yeah it's whack a mole bro dude it's it's never ending no I think the powers

at be know that it's just never ending yeah industry man It is an industry. So you put it that way. It's like all of everything that the seals exist and the entire apparatus exists because of war or perceived war, a war that we make up. Yeah. Right? Like it all comes from tax dollars. Money that's printed.

Yeah. That we're in debt that we can't pay back. And we just keep printing it. Dude, I think anybody who's honest. But dude, it's an industry. And I knew what side I was on. And I'm like, man, this is the side I fucking stand on. Right.

It's like that's how I drew my line in the sand. And I was all right with it. Do you get paid well? Seals, you get paid pretty good, man, as a single guy, right? As a single guy, you're doing all right. But then you start stacking on responsibilities and stuff. And because you're getting BAAH and stuff. I mean, probably with some bonuses, you're doing all right.

You're doing better than somebody, a Marine or somebody in the Army? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, because you're getting jump pay, die pay, demolition pay, special duty pay. And then per diem for all your travel. I think my first year, even not deployed, man, I was gone 200. 70 days a year. Wow. Just in hotels and shit.

You know, just training. Okay. So how long were you over in Iraq the first time? Six months. Yeah. And before that I was in Yemen for like seven. Wow. So seven was, that was a, with the counterterrorism unit, building, training the counterterrorism

unit, low visibility operations, full beards, no uniforms. So that was a little bit different of a kind of a flow. But on another small ass living in Alaska tents. Right. You know, we were dealing with taking outdoor showers, dealing with like, you know, Death Walker, Squirpians and shit, bro. But you didn't see any real action there. No, it wasn't bad over there.

Yeah, I wasn't bad over there. Okay. So. Very, very cool. So you decided to come back. Yeah. Instead of flee, you came back. You got your, you got, took your plea deal.

Yeah. Took the plea deal. Yep. Got demoted. Yep. Now what? Now I'm back in the flow, right? Back in the flow doing well, building back up my reputation, about to get promoted again.

And I get fucking arrested again. at a fucking Jimmy Buffett concert riding a golf cart that wasn't mine. This is how fucking dumb it was, dude, but how fucking, I was at a Jimmy Buffett concert, no shirt on.

That was your first mistake. Yeah, and that was my first mistake. And dude, I get, I'm on formal probation, cop pulls me over in this fucking golf cart, and I go, you gotta be fucking kidding me, dude. I was like,

I can't have this dude run my name. I'm fucked. And so I goes, wait on, what are you doing? And I go, I'm just going to check my ID. And I just split.

They tackle me. I get them off. They sick the dog on me. I'm getting tased. There's hundreds of people watching this go down. Snowballs down into this. You know, what started as small ends up me getting tased,

getting blasted in the face. They'm giving me all the love. I'm throwing the back of this cop car. Dude, I knew I was like, well, that was it. I just fucked myself.

I was like my steel career is done. Why were you not allowed to, oh, because you're on probation. You can't be drinking. I was, yep, all that.

I was on a date, man. I was, it was weird because that morning, I was the happiest I'd ever been in my life. I remember it so specifically. I was like going on a date with this girl and this. I was like,

my life's coming back, man. I was so happy. Be careful, man. When you're peaking, and this goes with anybody with success or whatever, you get that momentum, slow the fuck down. Bring it back down.

And this, you know, success in Hollywood or whatever you. We always see these people up crash, man. It's like, I go bring it back down. What brought you there? What built you back up, man? Bring it back down, man.

Bring it back down. to reset those principles. And that was what I forgot to do. And I fucking burned at the stake for it, man. And I ended up violation of probation, interstate compact tramp for federal marshals in a van to take me back. I'm fighting it. And I'm doing all this shit.

Long story short, I get it all squared away. I got to go back to jail. And I'm kicked out of the military. Oh, fuck, bro. Your dream. Funny, they didn't get me kicked out of all that. They get me kicked out for steroids. Oh, no shit.

That's what they got me for because I was beating the case again. And the Jag was like, nope. fucking way is this guy beating this case again. And because I had another good lawyer and shit in the connections and I was, you know, doing my thing. And they're like, you're wearing a steroid test. And I lit that fucking test up like a motherfucker dude.

Of course you did. Look at you. I lit that test up. You can't take steroids in the military. It's looked out like drugs. So zero tolerance. So I fucking, they sent it to the Olympic testing center,

which was unheard of. Wow. Spent like a couple thousand on this test. And I remember, dude, I had a fake dick in my locker. And I remember looking at this fake dick and I went, I went, fuck it. And I threw it. I was like, let's just fucking do this.

I just had this moment, man. I was like, let's just charge the machine gun nest. I was like, I'm not going to try to like do this shit anymore. And that and I'm glad I did because then my life ended up going where it went. But I was really glad I did that. I just, but it was hard at that period of time was, whoo stress, bro. Three lawyers in two states, hemorrhaging cash, civil case still pending. I'm getting sued by half million dollars for that dude that I had hit two years before still.

And it was like, I was like, oh, bro, the girl was dating at the time. She's like, you got a lot of shit going on. I was like, yeah, I do. I do. You're just a wild boy. But I was like, dude, and I started getting into bad shit. Like, I was technically still in Sealed teams. I was getting kicked out.

But I'm like starting to deal Coke to pay for my fucking lawyers. I'm like, have bricks of Coke in the fucking bed of my car. Wow. Just looking back, dude, but I was like on formal probation, doing coke, selling Coke. Like, dude, I was like, logic had gone out the window. Thank God, though, I had a, I got like a moment of clarity again and I ended up fucking ditching all that before. Yeah, it's like you're like sabotaging your dream, which was always to be a seal. Yeah, man.

Oh, dude, I, I don't say I lost it, bro. I gave it away. Right. I gave it away again. And that was, that was the hardest part is I had nobody else to fucking blame but me. Wow. There was not, it wasn't my parents. It wasn't my, how I grew up, bro.

It was all me. Yeah. Bad decisions, ego, all that shit, bro. I fucking ate that on the chin. And it was the truth, man. It was all me. And then you haven't been back. There's no going back to the seals after you get kicked out.

Not the way I got out. I got an R4, like they're not taking me back in unless World War III kicks off. Right, right, exactly. Well, keep hoping, man. You never know. No, I'm good what I'm doing now, bro. I love it all to go to the beach when I wanted to chill with my chick. Was it hard, though?

Was it hard, though? Was it hard to, to, oh, dude, it was so hard to walk away because that was my whole identity was wrapped up in. What, who was I if I wasn't a seal, man? That was. So I went, all right, well, I'm just going to try to make money and be successful. And that's, I just, the day after I walked out of jail, two days later, I had already kind of set up, started doing residential real estate development for the largest private residential developer in United States on the largest project in the United States. It was like $7 or $50 million project.

I'm drinking out of a fire hose, but still kind of making it work. but dude started Adderall every day Xanax alcohol weed every just going all the directions like dude I'm just gonna fucking and I was performing but year later moved into the cannabis space the first year it was legalized started to build out of the cannabis distribution facility and licensing and meeting with congressmen and doing all this shit working for a venture capitalist pitching decks now for different companies in a high rise dude I'm like dude I'm crushing it do you think you're sealed training really prepared you and gave you a leg up in the business world.

It helped with my confidence. It also helped just be definitely with public speaking, with being able to kind of you have the, you at least have the resume where people will fucking listen to you for five minutes. That you might not. That helped. And the focus and the discipline to be able to just like complete these tasks, like making a PowerPoint,

make it a deck for commercial real estate. That's not easy. It's just complicated stuff. Yeah, it is. And that had definitely helped. Yeah. And also if I didn't know the. I knew how to fucking run shit to ground and find people and be honest about what I didn't know.

That was one thing in the SEAL teams that they push, man. They're like, if you don't fucking know, figure it out as far as you can until you know you can't and you have to ask somebody. Right. That culture helped me a lot because I was like, I'm not just going to ask people for help. I'm going to work my ass off. Nobody will work harder than me. Dude, I was staying up until, you know, one in the morning, getting up at four or five, but stacked

on an opiate habit. during this time. So I'm sending emails, snorting, Percocet, it's doing working all night going, dude, I'm working. And I'm still doing successful. But dude, reality, you can't bend that long. And it came crashing down. And I went face down, split up my, split my face open, chicks yelling.

Like, it was just all people, it was just all the stuff when life just comes crumbling down, which I'm sure you know about Johnny. It's like, when it just falls apart, it falls apart. And it did. And I left the. mainland and went to the big island of Hawaii for like three months to kind of like see what was going to come of everything and what the next opportunity was. And next thing I know, dude, I'm like homeless in my truck. I realized, dude, suicidal. I got a sought off shotgun on my,

on my passenger seat going, fuck this, dude. I'm just tired. I was just like, dude, it was like, it was like everything just quieted. And I realized I'm like, holy shit. And I dropped Jimmy Watson off at the airport actually this that day and I drove from the airport he was on the run so we're both like in this weird diverting path and I go oh shit I got no money I just kind of like all the fog I got no money no title no nothing nor to go I was like oh this is how it happens it just sneaks up on you I was like and that was a fucking powerful moment where I sat for the junk in the jungle bro for three days right next to where the volcano is going off kind of epic I'm actually powerful.

But thinking about suicide, man. Thinking about killing myself. And then I had that moment of clarity where I thought about my mom, my sister, my people that knew me, I just isolated. And I went, you know, fuck that, dude. I'm going on the French foreign legion. Let's fucking do this thing. Oh, wow.

That was the moment. I fucking, that was the moment. Wow. So the French Foreign Legion is where you go when you have nowhere else to turn in the military. Yeah. It was exactly what I did. Okay.

Yeah. Tell us, tell us about the French. Jimmy had mentioned it. Yeah. Tell us what the French Foreign Legion is. It's a 200-year-old institution that was created by an old king in the 1800s to get foreigners who were in bars fucking up his program back onto the battlefield. They were like from veterans from a foreign war back onto the battlefield with the carrot of French citizenship to get them fucking back in fighting for France without the political pressure of French people coming back in body bags. And so it's built off.

of the model of the Roman legions. So it's okay, you can work and get your citizenship if you prove yourself over time. So you're fighting for France. 100% French flag. French flag. They give you, you show up and they give you a fake name. There's no application process. There's no way to like call ahead.

The only thing you do is you show up at one place. There's two places, really. But I went to Paris outskirts of Paris. It's just like a fucking old medieval castle. It's very indescript, actually. and you bang on this iron door, dude, with your bag. And then they fucking open, dude with a gun opens it. And he's like, okay?

And I'm like, je sui, see for the legion. You know, it's all French. And I knew no French going in there. And I just gave him my passport. And he told me, get up on the fucking pull-up bar, dude. And that's it. And that's how it starts.

And I didn't see that passport again for two and a half years. And my name was changed. Wow. And I got a foreign passport, French passport with an American name, but with like a European social security number and shit like that. Instantly? or did you have to complete training first? I had to complete a pre-selection phase,

which is an IQ test. It's like a week and a half long. Medical screenings, teeth, feet, you know, the full thing, psychological evaluation, Interpol background checks, all that part. And then they give you a fake name. And they go, this is you now.

And they go, nobody's going to know your old name. Nobody referred to me by my old name from that point on for a couple years. What was your name? Trent Clayson. Trent Clayson. It's your same initials.

and they take your date of birth and just move it a month and a day. Wow. That's what they do. And what is the point of that? What's the idea behind that? I guess, I mean, back in the day, dude, it was the bastion for criminals and hers. It was a little bit more, you know, and it still probably is, but they don't, they really want to make sure you don't have real serious issues with arms trafficking, interpol. Uh-huh.

And no sex crimes. That's like those two things are, they're going to fucking grill you. And, or you're just out. One out of 15 guys get selected about from, uh, um, medical problems or background checks, psychological evaluations and all that. And then you go into the selection phase, which is heavier interrogations, heavier psychological evaluation. This whole process takes a month.

But it's nothing compared to what you've done. No, it's fine. But the physical side was good. But it's swim tests running and all this shit, dude. But it was going back to basics, dude. It was like, I call the baptism in humility because nobody gave a fuck. I was a seal. It helped a little bit.

But they're like, what can you do now? We don't give a fuck. right. They don't want problems with the United States government either. So they're like, why are you here? Why is the Navy SEAL here?

Right. What the fuck? What did you do? And I told him, bro, I was like, I fucked my whole life up and I need a second chance. And they're like,

all right, that checks out, right? That sanity checks out. Because really all they give a fuck about is, are you who you say you are? Because the known evil is better than the unknown evil.

Like a lot of these countries don't have real hardcore finger printing and background checks. Like, dude, is this a weird motherfucker coming in here?

Yeah. So they grill, you hard. Are there a lot of sketchy people trying to get into the Foreign Legion? There's got to be. There's a lot of weird motherfuckers. There's normal dudes. There's three types. There's the romantic, the practical guy, and then the machine of war. There's like the guy who's like, oh, I love my girlfriend broke up with me and I'm going to go in war, right? Those guys get fucking smoke check fast. Then you have the practical guy, guys from Nepal, guys from Ukraine, a lot of Ukrainians I work with who just want a better life and get paid more. And that's it.

the citizenship. That's the practical guy because they're getting three times the pay than their home military at least. And then there's a machine of war. You got some guys coming out of some dark hole in Russia that are like, and I'm probably like, I was like a mix of the last two. I wanted the experience. I knew I wasn't going to get the same level of training. But I need, dude, I just wanted, I fucking needed to like relax my brain, bro. I just needed to just like quiet all the noise. Take my fucking phone. Take my clothes, butt naked, strip down to the fucking basics. Like for And then just like figure them shit out. I went off the grid, dude, for years.

And that was a massively helpful piece because, and I'm sure you had these moments, Johnny. It's like a lot of people don't have that time for quiet reflection when it's all been stripped away and you're forced to look at yourself. And just in quiet reflection for years. Yeah. You know the power of that because it allows you to start game planning. Sure. It allows you to get clear and get your fucking base setting. Right.

That was helpful for me. So where, yeah, I imagine there's a lot of people throughout Europe that are fleeing their armies or, yeah, maybe are on the run. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I guess if you have Interpol warrants, will they deny you? Or it's only for sex trafficking and arms trafficking. Dude, they've had, they've had guys from like drug crimes and shit like that where Interpol comes to the gate of the Legion and they won't give them up. They'll, like, protect you.

Because you swear allegiance to the Legion, not France, which is very weird. the French had an issue where they in the 60s they pulled out of Algeria and the Legion didn't want this because it was like us pulling out of Afghanistan and they tried to kill the French president right so there was like the Jackal yeah that was all that based off of the Legion was is a weird it's got some hardcore motherfuckers right got to but yet they still do they go to war like they're the French army yeah you attached like I went to so they deployed me down to South America to do the drug illegal gold mining intradiction stuff which was wild let's not gloss over that yeah and then also I did the French

I did the Russian border with NATO so they attached me with the foreign legion and I also did patrols internal in France for anti-terrorism domestic missions which is weird patrolling on the French Riviera bro with like an HK fucking weird bro wow okay what years what year did you go in

2019 to 2024 okay so it's just starting to heat up you're about to see you were there before the shit really popped off in Russia. But yeah, tell us about going to South America. Dude, this is intriguing. I had no fucking idea. France had territory down there. I didn't know.

Syrihan, right? French Guiana. Yeah, French Guillaume right next to Suriname. So I was deployed on the Surinan border, which that whole area, bro, is like, it's like a Star Wars bar. Like, I don't know how I'll explain kind of getting what that place was like. but they took us in, they broke us into small groups and they were sending us out to deep jungle operations at outposts.

So we would take, you know, a boat, an eight hour boat ride to another boat to a way out on in some jungle outpost where the French Foreign Legion posts up and we'll do interdiction for the boats coming in, but then also patrolling interior of the jungle, 14 day patrols and shit like that to blow up and break up and, fucking all these illegal gold mines from Brazilians coming up into French Guam. Wow. Is that

big out there? Illegal gold mining? I had, I was like, oh yeah, maybe we'll hit some, dude, we would do a 14-day patrol and hit new gold mines every fucking day. Wow. Every day on the way in. Wow. And you arrest these guys? Are they there? We can't. We can't because we were we going to do them. So it's, we just

fuck all their shit up, burn all their shit, burn their houses down. With them just standing there. Well, we, you know, and it's like growing men, right? Well, they'd be, build these shacks, but dude, they put mercury all over the, they fuck the place up, dude. Trash everywhere. It's like, fucked up. We just go, all right, take their names, all right, take some information. If they won't give it to us, some of our, you know, Romanian, we got Romanian and Hungarian and Ukrainian sergeants that are fucking not nice.

No, you can imagine these dudes. They know how to get some information out of you. They'll take dude's sandals and be like, all right, if I'm not going to tell me, good luck. Dude, like, they're hardcore. I'm like, God damn. Is the Legion governed by rules of French engagement. I never got a brief. Wow. Maybe somebody else, that's one piece of the legion. Nobody tells you shit.

They're like, shut the fuck up. Take the gun and just fucking go. They don't tell you where you're going, why, what the bigger operation is, what your ROEs are. So it's, and also there's a language piece. They're like, oh, they don't know what the fuck we're saying anyway. So are they giving you orders in French? Oh, man, France, you can't speak English. So it's everything's in French.

Wow. Except from the time you get there, every order, every document, every, everything is in French. Did you learn? You had to learn French. Did you learn it? More Francaire, Nule Leche, me, we.

Okay. So the ops there are catch release and also break up all the equipment. Take any guns, blow them up. But we would take demolition in sometimes and then actually blow up these fucking places too. That's why they sent us down there because I was actually at a mountain infantry regiment, but it was a demolition specialty. It's kind of like an engineering specialty. So that's why they sent us down there.

And we just, that's what we did. man, building out the base a little bit, improving it, and then doing little ops here and there. That was, but it was wild, dude, chasing these people through the jungle and shit. It's like, they're just trying to make a living. I get it. So I had no ill intent. I'm not trying to hurt these people.

It's like, but all right, let's break this up. And they'd be like, hey, Navy SEAL. Go in the fucking mercury. I was getting all the love, bro. They're like, swim, huh? Wow. Nage to go pick these diesel engines out of the thing so we could break them up. But it was, I glow in the dark now, dude.

Yeah. pretty sure. Yeah, yeah. You're going to grow like something on your body. I love the jungle though, man. I really, for me, though, that, that area of operation is powerful, dude. They call it Len Fer Ver Verre, Green Hell. That's what the French call it. And dude, I have these audios of when it would sound like we'd sleep in hammocks and just in the blackness, you just, all night, all night, it sounds like the devil, man. Yeah. All night. creepy. Yeah, very creepy. It's loud, right? At times of the day, it's super loud.

Overwhelmingly loud. Pitch black and loud. Wow. All we did was drink water out of the rivers with chlorine tablets because you can't carry enough water. Right. It was really, and you're not funded super heavily. It's the French foreign legist. It's the redheaded stepchild of the French military.

So they're like, hey, make do with what you got. Wow. Do you ever have to shoot it out with these like gold miners? There are some issues. We didn't have a lot of like issues like that. They don't want issues with the French military, right? But they had guns and there were some threats. and a lot of the legal gold mining guys do have issues.

So we would have to go protect some of them. They had a dude get shot through the neck while we were out there because they'll, dude, some of these places are doing $750,000 a week coming out of the like six dudes. Worth of gold. Yeah. Putting them in backpacks. One dude's driving.

We had a fucking rifle and in like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride trying to get out of the gauntlet. Yeah. And because these dudes will just wait and very, very, dude, there's no law out there. It's so deep. you're so far out that it starts to get like the rule of law borders it's all water but we would take little little trips over to suriname and they have the chinese are brilliant bro right chinese they would have these little stores in the middle of the jungle hor houses attached to them fucking they're doing

cocaine in the back here and it's like we had some guys get in trouble doing a coke deal some legionnaires and we had French gender armed military police with us. And so they search all our shit. I'm like, oh, my God, dude. I can't believe I'm dealing with this like middle of the jungle, bro. But yeah, dude, you know, he got edgy dudes out there, bro. Of course. Yeah.

Yeah, wherever there's a market on this planet, there will be some Chinese selling you some goods. Yeah, they would. Selling you some double a batteries and some wars. Dude, stocked up stores, the fucking logistics. lines. They're getting this stuff up of hardcore Amazon River, man, far. Yeah. And stocking these places up. Impressive. Impressive. But that, that was wild, dude, because we'd go out with our sergeants and they'd be like, hey, want some Coke. We'd go out to the fucking town right off of the thing. And the purest cocaine you've ever had in your fucking life for like $4.

For sure. And they're like, yeah, yeah, here. I'm like, dude, and the sergeants, they're like, yeah, it's cool. And I'm like, oh, my God. This place is. So it was fun, man, but it's powerful, bro. How long were you there for in South America? Four months. Okay. So we're out there for four months. Wow. Basically deep in the jungle.

Yeah. Holy shit. Yeah. And so that was cool. We came back and it was weird because that was the whole time during COVID. I didn't know anything about that shit. Because I was down there and I come back and it's Paris in this winter and just coming back from that. I'm like, what the fuck's going on?

It was so weird. The juxtaposition coming back. Did you know? Did you have a space? smartphone? Did you know what was going on in the outside work? I mean, I could catch wind of stuff. Right. But, and I had seen it at the beginning before I left like a little bit was going on, but then I left and kind of cut away from stuff for a long time. Fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like you're back in like, you know, basic training. Yeah. Right? Dude, it was, I love it. You don't know what's

going on in the outside world. You're in the moment. There's, there's a, there's a freedom in that. Yeah. It's a freedom in that of being disconnected for a little while. For sure. And so, it makes you appreciate it when you get back like we talked about but it also man you're you're focused on your your presence yeah you're not as distracted which has its healing properties what's your goal now that you're in the french foreign legion what can this lead to so this when i was there i'm going all right am i going to stay here am i going to make a career out of this i'm thinking like may they have a commando unit that they were going to invite me to screen for they it's called mountain commando group so they have a that's kind of where i was being guided to but i was like dude

I'm now I'm 35 right 34 I'm not some spring chicken right and I'm like okay well I'm but try screening for this thing and as I started a screen for dude I fail one of the run test hard very very fast and difficult I'm like look as I started to not even see the end goal there I was like dude there's no way I'm gonna fucking stay here also your life is not yours anymore you're dude living in a barracks fucking dude I'm not gonna be 40 living in a barracks fucking marching and chowel I'm not going to be 40 living in a barracks fucking marching and chowel I I just couldn't see that. I wanted to get out and make money, do my thing.

And dude, I missed the United States too. It's not my home. So that was the piece that I started to really, because we ended up having another deployment to Estonia and do some other operations. But it was, that was the phase where I said, okay, what's the next external thing? So now Ukraine's getting invaded.

So I'm going, okay, so all my Ukrainian buddies, 10% of the Foreign Legion's Ukrainian, mind you. Wow. So a lot of guys are leaving, deserting to go fight. A lot of guys are, And so I'm getting hit up by, okay, we have this unit. You can come fight here.

So I'm going, okay, that's the next path. We're Africa down a mercenary route. That's the path. 26 countries in Africa speak French. That's why I went there to learn French. So I'm going, okay, I command a little bit more this and that. And then I started to have this moment where I was like not happy still. And I'm in the foreign legion barracks room.

Like, dude, I'm a seal, legionaire and just still hollow. I said, dude, I got to like make myself good. Just like here. Like just here. Let me just start fixing my daily habits. I was still had some bad habits and shit. I'm like, I'm just going to like lock it on a little bit better.

So I started waking up early. I just started being more disciplined on myself. And then I started to feel better. And then that like need to fill that hole of like the next piece and what the. Also, I wanted to have a life, dude. I wanted to like date a chick and like maybe get married one day. And you know, that type of shit, man. I just, where do I just keep running this to ground until a fucking catch a bullet in the head?

Mm-hmm. Which happened to my, you know, a homie that was, he was a seal. He ended up dying in Ukraine. Wow. And it's just like, what was that? This was probably a year after the invasion or maybe a little less. Wow. So there's that piece, man.

And I just, I'm not scared of death. You know, that's not the piece that, you know, I had, I mentioned it's for it. Of course, people don't want to go to a war. I'm like, bro, chill out. There's deeper shit than that, right? It's like, bro, what do I want my life legacy to be? Am I just going to be that single dude that burns in and some foreign land? And then what, dude?

Like, I've done enough. Like, I had nothing else to prove to myself. And that was the piece that was really freeing for me when I've really started to be like, dude, I can just, like, be good in the day and, like, set some goals and start achieving some shit. Right. I imagine there are a lot of people that just stay in the Foreign Legion or go to, yeah, as you say, go to Africa and be a mercenary. And you're like a hitman.

You're basically a paid, you're a government hitman at that point. And dude, the life expectancies. And it's not that that, dude, I'm not here to live a long time. I'm here to live a good time.

But it's like, is that really a good time? You know, are you building, you know, there's an, I've caused enough destruction of my life. I've caused enough damage and pain.

Right. I'm like, dude, I want to start building people up. I want to start fucking building myself up. And that was the shift where I was like, let me put some, positivity back into the fucking world.

I've learned some lessons, what not to do. And I've made some mistakes. Let me share some of that. And that's kind of when I started like, I'm going to fucking do my social media. Yeah. That was that moment. I'm like, well, if that's the calling card, if that's the thing that you got to fucking do now, I'll play this game.

Right. That was the moment I was like, well, let's fucking do this thing. And in that barracks room, I put my camera up in my uniform and sent it in my, in the Fort Legion barracks room and just told my story, stream of consciousness in like a seven minute video and it fucking blew up. Like people will be like, You know, I think I had 600,000 views my first post or something. And that was a, that was when I knew.

I was like, all right, I might be on to something here. Let me just keep this going. But it felt good to finally tell my story because I just felt like I was isolated, man, for a whole long time. It was a nice outlet. How much do you owe the Foreign Legion? Like when you go in. Five years. Okay.

So five years is minimum. And I was about four and a half when I, you know, I put my thing out. And it caused some friction, dude. They were like, they were fine with it when it was small. But then not when it blew up. then I understand there's like a, they don't know what I say. But I got all respect for the foreign region.

Really, I have their mission sets good. Man, what they stand for is good. I think America should probably have something like that where they give people the option to work themselves out of a bad situation. Bro, if you got to, it's sad that felons can't join the military. I think that that's fucked up. Because there's a lot of felons I work with who are, dude, I wish I could serve, but I got a felony at 18.

Right. We've all, a lot of guys watching this, bro, have had penitentiary change. And we just didn't get caught. And then you get caught and then they can't go serve. And I think that that should be kind of probably reworked. I agree. Absolutely.

So what else before we go into what you're doing now? What was another really crazy deployment in the Legion? Dude, the Legion was wild because I would say the jungle was very weird because of how people get down there. I would say it was weird because, dude, you're embedded with natives. They're taking weird drugs going, doing like eating monkeys and, you know, eating crates and like going off the deep end. I remember laying there going, what the fuck. And you're mixed in with Czechoslovakian dudes from Czech Republic and all. And it's, it's such a hardcore.

I'm like, dude, I'm never going to get this energy anywhere else. you have guys who grew up alcoholic mothers with like eating mice, you know, hardcore dudes who have, who walk. I knew a good guy that walked from Romania to France. No passport. Just fucking dudes like that dude. Wow.

To get in came to their other. They're like, this dude doesn't have a passport. He fucking walked. Wow. Hitchhiked and walked into, from Romania to France. People don't know that's a far away. Yeah.

It's an interesting sect of guys, you know, guys gang members and guys from different places all over. And you say it's staffed by what would you say the biggest demographic is besides French people? Well, there's no French, hardly at all. So it's no French. Oh, wow. Yeah. So there's 1% French dudes maybe that then they give them a fake Canadian citizenship to get in.

French officers for the most part. Ukrainians, Nepali, Brazilian, Colombians. And that's probably the biggest demographic. Yeah. Wow. But a lot of Brazilians, great, great soldiers, a lot of Ukrainians, a lot of Romanians. I imagine. So you said when the war popped off in Ukraine, a lot of people were deserting the Legion to go back to fight for Ukraine.

And they're still fighting there. And I get it. They're fighting for their country. France did some props and they gave some guys the option to go fight for a little while and go get their family and bring them into France. That was pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So France did a lot of good stuff for the Legion.

And it's after about seven years, they'll give you your citizenship. About seven years, you can naturalize if you've done, had good service. It might take a little longer, but that's a way to become a citizen of France. Yeah. So you have citizenship. No. I didn't want it. I didn't request citizenship.

Okay. Yeah, I didn't want to request it. Yeah, you got to request it and go through that process. But after three years, I did what's called regularization situation military. So I routed extra paperwork so I could get my passport and my name back. And then they gave me my passport. And then I was able to leave France. but I couldn't leave France before that.

Wow. I didn't have a fucking passport. That's crazy. They basically make you an indentured servant for whatever it is. Until you get your passport back. Wow. Yeah, or route your paperwork. That is wild.

Is there like French regulation? Do they send regulators in there to make sure that you guys aren't, you know, running a pedophilia cult or some shit like that? Bro, they've had issues about it more than that because the legion's so brutal on the discipline. I had one day where they, I fucked up marching and the colonel saw me because my tattoos. Yeah. And he's like the fucking American.

And he called, he goes, he's marching like shit. I thought I was marching good. But he didn't like my swag. Dude, I was made to build stack rocks into a fucking pyramid for three fucking days, 19 hours a day in the fucking freezing rain in December. No rocks, mind you. There's no rock. So I had to walk 10 to 15 minutes, put three rocks in my fucking backpack,

walk 10 to 50 minutes back. And I had to build a pyramid six feet tall. That was my punishment, dude. And I remember stacking these rocks school. And they can't fucking break me. man. Yeah. It can't break me.

Freezing cold, but that's Legion punishment. Wow. They just are hardcore. And so they also have their own jails internal, which is technically illegal. Are you going to say, right? Technically. And the French, they're pretty good about professional, like, they don't want lawsuits, but how do you sue and you're not a citizen?

It's very complex. And you don't speak French that well. And do they even know you're in the country? Dude, the government of France? It's so gray. It's so great that when I had some legal trouble with the Legion about the, they're like going to put me in jail for my fucking YouTube and shit. I was like, well, I got a lawyer.

The lawyer's like, dude, you're nobody here. He's like, they can put you on. They're going to put you on food and water discipline for four months. What is that? Dude, you eat fucking bread and water in a four, foreign legion jail on base where you're just doing. This is a count of Monte Cristo shit, man. They punish you guys who are in jail sometimes,

not all the time, but more often. You wake up in the morning if you're in jail there. And you pick up like a 15, 15 kilo rock and run 8 kilometers and then stack it. And there's a fucking pyramid that looks like the great pyramids in the front. Wow. It's fascinating.

It's far. Archaic. It's fascinating. It's like old world. French discipline. It's old world. And the legions, the history of the Legion was in Algeria, bro.

They used to bury people up to their neck and sand in the, in Algeria and shit. The history of the discipline and the Legion was so strong that the French actually almost disbanded it a few times. They've had people die. What is the incentive to even have the French Foreign Legion for France? Now it's like tradition. It's like the French citizens know who you are, the Green Beret. There's like a pride piece.

And also they fought in every war since from Algeria to Afghanistan. So they're still going and doing the damn thing and without that political pressure. Right. What does that mean? You guys could deploy without the presidents of France's approval. No, we can deploy. But if I die, what the French citizens don't. It's not a French citizen.

There's no casket's coming home to France. There's no casket coming home with a French flag on it. Wow. It's just different. That's kind of brilliant. Yeah. And so that's why that political pressure is not there. So they can kind of like, oh, we're not want to put French soldiers there.

Let's send the Foreign Legion there. Did you have any buddies in there? Yeah, man. Dude, it's like some of the guys there. Like, I'll give you like a guy, an example of a guy. South Korean dude, my buddy. I won't mention his name because he's all like super secret swivel like that. Kim, Park.

Yeah. He was in South. South Korean military, intelligence, worked with a lot of soft guys and green berets and shit over there. Then wanted he love America. He speaks better English than me, dude. So loves America, wanted to serve in the United States military, came over here, was going to college. They wouldn't give him his green card within the two years. He ran out of money, join the French foreign region.

Just to kind of give you an example of like a guy of a scenario. Yeah. But I had buddies, Mongolia, Belarus, Belarus, Brazil, man. Did you know, Katz that went on to become like those mercenaries that they were just a little with a couple of screws loose? They're like, I'm going to go do deep undercover work in Mali. And I know when I talk to them, dude, because there's guys they call it the circuit. So it's called the circuit. And the circuit is the fucking mercenary circuit.

That's what it's called. And so it's like when you're plugged into that circuit, it's all word of mouth, dude. Right. That's how you get work as a mercenary. It's a word of mouth. So it's, man, do you know this guy? You know that guy. you're not really sending applications to these places.

Sure, there are private military companies, but the circuit's a little different. And so that it's solving problems because a lot of times you're getting in country and you're not given weapons. Like you don't fly in with stuff. So how do you procure stuff? You have to be a smart motherfucker and know-how.

And that's why legionnaires are actually very useful because you're gritty. You're not giving a lot of shit. You're just, all right, man, figure it out. Go fucking go over there and just live in the fucking shit and figure it out. Now, who's hiring you as a mercenary? Dude.

If you're from the Legion. Name it, right? Name it. African warlord, fucking government agencies, private citizens, whoever. Is this legal? Is it legal for an African warlord to reach out to the French foreign legion? Well, they're not technically in the Legion by that point. They're out.

I see. Okay. Yeah. So the foreign legion's not getting hired. Right. Directly. You know, directly, at least for what I know, I'm sure there's, you know, like, you know, there's gray area.

everywhere. Okay. So you're just paid to go and are these hit jobs that these mercenaries are paid by warlords? I think some guys and I could get some guys on here for talk to you. I know one of me that that would get in this connected hardcore on this. It's

it's challenging problems that need to be solved in an unorthodox way. Right. That's who needs these. You can't, where else do you go if you need A, B, or C done? It might not be kill somebody. It might be get information on somebody.

But like somebody powerful, maybe dangerous, you know, or a group. Yeah. And do they do that. So if you get killed, there's no trace. Yeah. Who the fuck are you? You're an America guy in Libya. What the fuck?

Yeah. That's why it's so gray. That's why internationally it's so hard to those international legal bodies. Laws, right. Yeah. It's, what is it? Yeah. It's water and it's sand and they change.

It's a guy doing a job. It's like, what am I really doing here? It's very, very gray, man. Wow. Wow. The circuit, that's fascinating. We'll have to have somebody on that can really talk about the circuit. I mean, we know Jimmy, you know, he went to do a job that involved, like, basically, I don't know if I'm allowed to say this.

I am. He went to, like, kidnap the president of, like, a Central American country. Yeah, I know the guy that was there with him. Really? Yeah, that's actually kind of doing some big stuff. We get him to talk to you on. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. That's pretty wild and very illegal. Dude, I'll tell you a job. This is illegal. Yeah. I'm just going to say that right now from my amateur legal perspective. I don't think. Yeah.

Yeah, very weird. I'll tell you a funny story about Jimmy and I, a little side job we did. Okay. And then it won't hold you up too long. But we were, but we had a guy, a money guy that I was hired by to speak to a very, very wealthy guy in a different country who owed him a lot of money. But you can't, how do you get this money from somebody who's a lot more wealthy than you? take you to court if you want to do it the right way and just drown you in paper.

Right. So he's like, hey, I need you to get a guy. I'm like, all right, I'm going to go with Jimmy. And so Jimmy and I went and the whole thing, we didn't need to hurt the guy. We just needed to give the guy a message and a bank account on an offshore bank account. That was all we had to do. But these guys have a lot of people after them. And so they would park in this underground structure.

And the minute they would, what's the family owned, downtown this downtown big city. What can you tell us what country? Canada. Wow. So very dangerous. So sketchy because it's also a first world country. Yeah. And so this country,

this building was like three stories, but there was just all financial guys. This family owned it. And they would come out of the bottom garage and in like S63s and fucking haul ass always. So I'm like, how am I going to get this guy? So Jimmy and I scope this dude out for like a week.

And we were in changed vehicles and whatever. And so I started with the Mercedes. We burned one of those. And Jimmy, you know, and I'm like, dude, this is the last day. We're here. We got to get like, get this, make this happen. So I'm driving. I'm in a, I'm in an, I'm in an Audi S5.

And I'm sitting like this, the dude comes out. I'm like, this is our time. We got to get this guy, this message. And he goes, we take off and we're in. I think he gets the spidey senses for a little bit. We're back far enough. I know how to tail vehicles and stuff. It started chill, but he's speeding up.

And we're going fast in downtown streets. I'm going through weaving. A cop gets blocked off by a construction guy. Dude, it was like out of a movie. A cop's behind me. A construction guy comes and stops the cop car, dude. I'm like, dude, this can't be real. Jim's like, what I'm paralleling this guy.

I kind of knew what neighborhood he lived in. So I kind of knew, all right, we're kind of, but I didn't know what house. So we get up to him, dude, he pulls into the, and I pull in, and I pull in, fucking e-brake slide in front of this guy's car. Jimmy hops out on the roll, dude. He's in this, like, big peat coat. grabs this guy, not illegally, just grabs them to the, you know, thing.

And we walk out in this dude's face and I'm like, hey, man, here's the deal. And give him this card. And he's like, all right, you know, okay. I'm like, this is the deal. You know this guy. This is what's going on right now. So just so you know, like just kind of give you an example.

And we, then we leave, right? Nothing crazy. You don't need a fucking shake, but just so people. Didn't pull a gun out. No, anything like that. Don't need to. Wow. And so just like stuff like that.

It's like intimidation. It's like intimidation. Yeah. It's like, here we are. Right. And so, Jimmy would tell you, that was one of the most nervous thing I ever done in my life just because of the first world nature of it, dude. Right. You could go to prison.

Yeah. And there's, you know, I'm sure the guy you're working for isn't, he didn't give you his real name. Yeah. So, you know, where you're kind of hanging it out there. And that's the time you're like, you know, out. And that goes with circuit work or foreign fighter work. It's like, you're hanging it out there, dude. Yeah.

And for what cost? You know, at some point you really start ratcheting up. Like, what am I getting out of this? Was that good money? it was all right you know but it was it was a lot of connection base and we had a there was percentage stuff put into the deal can you go in a if we on the bonus episode it's not on YouTube could you dive into like that world a little more I'm fascinated yeah okay yeah yeah and did you have the sense the guy you were doing this for it was illegal well I knew the guy

okay I knew this guy and so he wasn't an amorphic entity to me okay right and so I actually knew who he was and like what where the money is coming from and what the situation was a little bit you So the point is you didn't want to go back to doing that when you got out of the Legion. No. And it was like, dude, there's better ways to make money. If it's all about making money, right? At some point, it's about making money. There's better ways and more positive ways.

Yeah, of course. Also, and that's the other pieces. Yeah, man, you're doing good work. You can be doing that. But at what point are you stacking carmic debt? That's right. That's where I got a fucking dude. And I'm really, I'm all about universal laws and principles.

I really started diving into that shit, dude. And once I started applying that, you know, every thought, matters. Everything's energy, man. Every way you think and move, bro, it all counts. And when I started to stop stacking karmic debt on myself, like, dude, closed doors, open doors, everything matters. You know, you're causing pain to somebody else. You're getting it back. And so that was when I started to shed that stuff. My fucking life got way better. Yeah. More positive and things started lining up for me. For sure. So you got home recently last year. Yeah, I got, yep, got home like tail end of December right in January. Wow. This year. Wow. That's incredible.

Yeah, man. What are you doing now? Online coaching, man. Just sharing my story. Most of my clients, I got CEOs, doctors. If you feel like you're lujing your mojo, like I had lost my mojo, man, in that car, suicidal. Yeah. We need to change some shit.

You should wake up pretty stoked. You should wake up pretty positive about your life. People get so used to this comfortable agony that they just get used to. And I go, dude, that's not normal. really identify, are you content with you? I mean, are you fulfilled? If you're not, let's change some shit up. It starts with daily habits.

It starts with better self-talk. It starts with better diet. It starts with very simple principles. People know these things. But to know and not do is not to know. You got to be able to apply a simple blueprint. So I just show people pretty much what I fucking do daily. I record everything I do, show everybody.

I'd never change one thing from that foreign legion barracks room when I found out what works. Did I still wake up at 3.30 in the morning? Still fucking track my food. Still do all this shit. shit, not like a robot. Right. But enough to where I have this foundational point of where I get my mind right.

I don't get sucked into my phone immediately in the day. I set 20, 30 minutes. And you asked a good question before Johnny. Like, how do you tap back into that, you know, being on the yard presence started in the morning? Remember that shit every day. Wake up and sit in some quiet reflection, man. Remember yourself on that yard. That frame of mind, bro, is how you fucking become your best self, bro.

You all your fucking creativity. like, man, I'm going to fucking crush this shit. That's it. And you're doing it. So whatever you're tapping into, keep doing it. But that's what I think people need to do is really tap into that, that presence, that mindfulness, that raising of consciousness. Start being more aware what the fuck you're doing, man.

Pay attention. Be more mindful about all the decisions you make and make them strategic. Right. Yeah. Where can they find you? I love this stuff. Website. Yeah, go ahead.

www. Taylorcaveno.com. All the contact. form goes to me. I don't outsource anything or do AI. So all that goes directly my my email. My Instagram, TCAV official, Johnny on the spot with those DMs, always talking to me. I don't outsource. And on my YouTube, man, TCAV TV, where I dive into the deeper principles. I do gym workouts with different entities around. And I do stream of consciousness videos. I never edit, never re-record. I always press one time and I upload that video. That's like part of my flow.

Wow. Wow. Okay. Dude, you really. pulled it together just in a number of years. Yeah. It took a long time. It took a few years. It was a huge. It was a huge odyssey of fucking up. Yeah.

But, you know, once you get it together, and that's just proof, like, once you start acting right and thinking differently, and actually, the change comes pretty quick, you know. Thinking differently. That's all it starts from that. Well said. Yeah. Thinking differently. It's like when you kind of made that shift from that criminal mind into like, hey, how do I turn all this creativity? into this positive outlet

that I can not have to look over my fucking shoulder all the time. That was really when I was like, dude, I want to just feel good about the shit I'm doing every day. Thinking differently. And that was really being mindful about what I'm doing and how I'm approaching and where my vibrational frequency is.

Bro, am I dipping? Before I shit all over at somebody else, let me excuse myself. Let me go get some sunlight. I'm going to get hydrated. Let me come correct. Like that type of stuff, man,

is how we raise. and elevate. Yeah. Wow. Okay. What are your biggest regrets from this 20 year journey through the, through the military in jail and, you know? Dude, biggest regret I have making my mom worry.

Yeah. That's my biggest regret, dude, is being disrespectful to my fucking mom and people that love me, man, and just kind of putting her through that. But that has been my favorite, my best redemption, being able to take my mom out with my fiance and who's pregnant, like this, like my life coming back. together and seeing her like retired and happy now and not worried. Right. That is like my probably my most powerful success that I feel proud about.

Yeah. And jumping out of that plane is a seal. That's too. It's got to be a high point. Yeah, that was pretty good too. I don't skydive for fun though, man. Dude, I have, you know, people burn it. It's just dangerous.

Is it? Oh, fuck yeah. Skydiving's actually, because they say, oh, no, your shoot's going to open. There's a lot of seals die in training skydiving, man. Really? Yeah, it's dangerous. of shit. That's why I don't do it for fun, bro. Don't they, aren't they professional packers?

Like, what's going on here? Lots going on. A lot of gear, a lot of stuff, a lot of ways. And you got to remember the quantity of jumps, bro. Hundreds and thousands of jumps. Right. At some point, dude, it's... Wow. Yeah, it's dangerous. Yeah. God damn. That is an incredible story. Thank you, bro. That was

enlightening. Taylor Kavanaugh. Let's talk more on the Patreon. patreon.com slash the Connect show. Go fuck with this guy, dude. seriously uh it's inspiring i love talking to military guys because johnny thanks you time bro solid you know your platform's epic dude i respect your your path too man it's powerful thanks man i appreciate it all right guys take care we'll see you over on patreon