The Nick Bare Podcast - 122: How Nick Lavery Returned to Combat as the First Above-The-Knee Amputee

Episode Date: May 26, 2025

In honor of Memorial Day, we sit down with Nick Lavery, a former Special Forces Green Beret who shares his remarkable journey from sustaining severe injuries in Afghanistan to becoming the first above-the-knee amputee to return to combat. Nick discusses the insider attack that led to his injuries, his unwavering determination to rejoin his team, and the disciplined, team-based mindset that guided his recovery and return.CHAPTERS:03:47 Nick Lavery's Book and Unique Audiobook Approach07:50 The Importance of Team and Mission12:09 The Genesis of 'The Machine' Mentality22:15 Nick Lavery's Journey to Becoming a Green Beret32:12 Humility and Emotional Regulation in Special Operations42:52 Understanding the ODA Structure47:27 Objective Secure: Tactical and Personal54:38 The Reality of Using a Prosthetic01:00:25 The Attack01:25:24 Life Changes and New Perspectives01:30:31 Embracing Failure as a Path to Success01:34:14 The Discipline of PreparationORDER NICK LAVERY'S BOOK:Objective Secure: The Battle-Tested Guide to Goal Achievementhttps://www.amazon.com/Objective-Secure-Battle-Tested-Guide-Achievement/dp/057835201XLISTEN TO THE AUDIOBOOK:https://open.spotify.com/show/4RnIeiCXa6KuIaTfVDOUgxPRE-ORDER MY UPCOMING BOOK GO ONE MORE HERE:https://www.amazon.com/Go-One-More-Intentional-Life-Changing/dp/1637746210FOLLOW:Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 20% off FOR LIFEhttps://bpn.team/memberIG: instagram.com/nickbarefitness/YT: youtube.com/@nickbarefitness

Today's guest is Nick Lavery. And I just finished having the conversation with Nick. And this was one of my favorite podcast episodes to date. On March 11th, 2013, Nick was stationed in Afghanistan just weeks away from returning home from a deployment. and he was attacked from an insider attack, a green-on-blue situation, and nearly lost his life. And through that attack, sustained multiple injuries that resulted in an above-the-knee amputee to his leg. Nick was the first above the knee amputee to return back to combat as a special forces operator. A green beret on a team, on an ODA.

And in my conversation with Nick, we talk about his journey to becoming a green beret, the injuries he sustained from the attack on his deployment, and then his journey back to duty, back to the teams. It's an amazing, remarkable story, great values and lessons to take away from this conversation that you can apply to your life, regardless if you are in the military or not. I am blown away by Nick and his life and his perspective

and the way that he just ruthlessly attacks his goals by placing the mission first, placing the people first, placing the team first. So let's dive into today's episode. Nick, it's been a long time coming. Long time, man, yeah. Welcome, brother. Thanks. Good to be here, man.

I appreciate you. Your story is remarkable. And I think that's the only way to describe it. And I use the word remarkable very rarely. I'm a big fan of the author, entrepreneur speaker, Seth Godin. He's a world-class marketer. And he says that the word remarkable is so unique

and should be used so rarely that it is almost the opposite of great. You know, where good is the enemy of greatness. And remarkable is the opposite of great. Well. But, you know, I've read your book. I know a lot of, not all of your story, but I just want to acknowledge before we dive in this conversation that what you've been through, what you've done, your mindset,

your approach, your consistent effort to keep just driving forward. It is truly remarkable. So it's an honor to sit here with you. Thanks, man. I appreciate that. You'll have me thinking about that. Remarkable is the opposite of great. concept for a while.

I haven't heard that before, but I'm humbled that you would even put me in the conversation of that, man. So I appreciate it. No, yeah, thank you. Yeah, it's something I think about often, ever since I came across that, like how unique that word is.

Yeah. And it should only be used, like, on that special occasion. Sparingly. Yeah. Yeah. So what I loved, I finished reading your book, Objective Secure.

and I loved so many aspects of it. I found it so unique because I listened to the audio book. Oh, cool. I found the audio book approach so different and unique, the way that you and Eric kind of brought it together. Yeah. I really enjoyed it from like the extra kind of like podcast interview inclusions, but also the fact that like he read the parts that were very personal to you

and you read the parts that were more objective guidance driven. How'd you come up with that concept? Dude, I'm so glad you asked this question. I don't think I've ever really even shed this openly. So Eric and I, and to back up a little bit, Eric was really the genesis of this book project. He brought this to me. Actually, it was in 2020, and I was in dive school,

which ironically, I'm wearing a combat dive t-shirt right now. I was in Dive School down at Key West, just getting my ass kicked. It's a six-week course. It's absolutely brutal. And he calls me out of the blue. And I'm hanging on by a thread down there, physically and mentally. I got a couple weeks left. And we go back and forth real quick.

And he just says to me, hey, man, I've been thinking about this. And I think you need to write a book. And I just hung up on him. I'm like, I am in no position to entertain anything even remotely close to this right now. Followed up. Eventually, I decided to pursue it. It was in 2020, you know, so we're mid-COVID. All the gyms are closed.

The fight house is closed. So I have all this extra time and energy on my hand that I have to reinvest somewhere and decide to write the book. So it was even while I was writing the manuscript that Eric and I were talking about doing an audiobook version together. We knew we wanted to do that together at some point. And then once we got to a position to be able to start taking that idea seriously, the more obvious route to take would be for me to share kind of the more personalized stories. and then Eric to read more of the objective stuff. That was the way we were going to do it. It was maybe a week before we went into the recording studio to record it.

And I hit him up and I said, hey, man, I think we may be going about this the opposite way. And just hear me out. I think we, I don't want to flip the script literally. And without hesitation, he goes, no, I think you're right. I was thinking the same thing. because I want those stories to be able to be translated into the mind and the heart of somebody else. And I thought that coming from a vantage point outside of my own could maybe enable that, but maybe more significantly, I wanted the emphasis of my voice, which is where most people are coming to the book for to be driving at the points that I wrote that book to create.

This is not, as you read, this isn't an autobiography. This isn't like the Nick Lavery story. There are experiences I went through in there. But my intent behind that was to drive the principles into people's minds. So if we looked at it from, what are they more likely to take away from what I read or what you read? Odza, I may have at least a slight advantage being the author. I got this unique voice. 51%, 49% me versus you.

What do we want to prioritize? the stories or the associated messages. It's the latter. Cool. I'm going to read that. Yeah, I listened to your audiobook after I recorded my audio book a few weeks ago. Okay. And I was like, shit.

I should have done this different. It was genius. I almost wanted to go back and re-record my whole audio book, but you know how painful of experience. It's tough. That is. Yeah, it's tough. Holy crap.

And we wanted to do the little interview stuff in between because we wanted to give those that had read the book, like a new thing. It's not just going to be what you've already read. We're going to give you a little bit more on top of that. That's where we came up with that format. Yeah. Well, after like reading the book, because you explained that in the beginning of like the approach you guys took.

And after getting through all the content, it makes so much sense because the one thing that I shared with our team internally after I read this book is. how important and effective team is and not making the mission about yourself. And you could have easily taken the approach of writing this book and recording the audiobook and made it about yourself. Made it your story and position yourself as the hero. But you didn't.

And I think that's what some of the best leaders, entrepreneurs and brand builders do is they don't position themselves as the hero. I learned this from author Donald Miller. You don't position yourself as the hero. You position yourself as the guide. And the listener, the viewer, the consumer, they are the hero. And whether that was the intent or not, I mean, it's my assumption.

That's just one of your core values. That's what you did with this book where you could have very easily made it. I'm Nick Lavery. This is what I've gone through. Sympathize with me and listen to my story. But you didn't. It was like, I'm going to use this experience to guide and help people along the way. So after I read this, I went back to the BPN team.

I sat with the brand team earlier this week. And it just reinforced this value and lesson. That's really what I want to drive a lot of this conversation towards. It's going to be my objective in this discussion is that it's important to be the most effective, skilled, talented individual possible. But for what purpose and what reason? What is the why? And if you have a collective group of people, a team, if you will,

it doesn't matter how skilled or talented the individuals are. If they don't know how to contribute to the mission of the team, it's an ineffective team. And as I'm like just letting this all sink in and think about it, how it's applicable to the military, but also just building a business and creating culture and building teams and operations and systems.

I end up on your website, Team Machine, and I go to the About section, and I read this. I'm like, oh, this just ties it all together, where it says, we believe that power exists in the collective rather than in the individual, that nobody achieves greatness alone,

and that victory lives within the machine mentality, the team mentality. Can you just speak on that for a little bit? Because I think that's so powerful. And all these people in the world right now are so focused on self-improvement. How do I become the best version of myself? How do I succeed?

How do I win? But the reality is like we can do so much more as a team, as a collective unit. Yeah. And I think that goes both ways. It works more in a cyclical fashion where individual development is essential, as you mentioned. No one can do the work for you. No one can get you up out of the warm, cozy bed.

No one can put in the extra rep. No one can run the extra mile. Like, you have to do that stuff yourself. So we do live quite aggressively in the realm of personal development. But I do believe, to your point, Nick, is that is empowered and enabled within a tribe. because having others that will hold you accountable, support you, call you on your bullshit that are better than you that you are pushing to keep up with in many ways is, I would argue, an incredible component to how we get better as individuals.

Who do we surround ourselves with? They don't necessarily have to be pursuing the exact same design state, but they have ambition, they have drive, they have a sense of passion and purpose, they're like going after life. those are the types I would argue you want to kind of surround yourself within that circle. The whole machine mentality thing, it's a real interesting story. I'll tell it quickly is on my first deployment back over back in Afghanistan after I was wounded and lost my leg, within a couple weeks, the locals, as we were going out and doing our thing, started referring to me as Palawanamashina, which is Dari for the machine fighter.

and that just became like this nickname. And they're trying to process like all of this walking into their village. And this can be a difficult thing to process here in Texas. You go to a place like that. And I'm like a cyborg from another planet, like Terminator 2 like reincarnated. So that became what they referred to me as. And it was kind of like a running joke. And we go to a new village or new area and like the kids would come out and they'd immediately be saying,

oh, Paloana machina, paloana machina. Like the machine is here. none of my teammates called me that it wasn't a nickname it was just kind of a thing while we were there next year next deployment we're in eastern africa same thing happens so whole different part of the world and now the locals there and some of our partner force there are referring to me me as machine so that's kind of with the genesis of it it became about me as an individual i kind of ran with that concept a little bit because it was just tied to me and some of the things that I was able to accomplish, but then as I reflected on it more, I'm like, I'm not where I am

literally right now had it not been for hundreds of other people that enabled me to do the things I needed to do to then accomplish the things I just decided I wanted to accomplish. I'm not who I am without them. So I just continue to analyze this like one word that kept coming out in my mind because it was being thrown at me. So regularly, it's like machine. I said that thing like, what is a machine at the end of the day? If you use like an engine of a truck, what is a machine?

Well, machine is a series of different components that when brought together to work in harmony can create something powerful like an engine. So a machine is a singular entity, but what gives it its life force, its ability is all these different components that have to work together in a system to then create the end state you're looking for. I'm like, that's what a machine is. It's not an individual. It's a team.

So I see those words as almost synonymous. And that's how we've continued to run with it. But that being said, I'm really curious on your opinion and perspective about people who consider themselves self-made. How do you respond and react to that? I think I'll take it from two vantage points. One, I think the spirit of what many take that to be true. is something to be respected. That is the early mornings, the late nights, the putting in the grind when no one's there

to care, when no one's watching, when your boss isn't watching, when your haters aren't watching, your wife, your friends, your colleagues, when no one's there, it's just you and you do what needs to be done anyway. I think many correlate self-made with that. And in that instance, I would agree that that that's a requirement 100%. I think those that take that term literally are going to lose and they're going to lose bad. Because I would argue nobody has done anything worthwhile truly by themselves. At some point, someone or something has given you an opportunity or provided you with some knowledge,

provided you with some guidance or some support or some resources that has enabled you to do the things that you want to do. So I think if you go at life literally self-made, you may win a couple of bad. battles here and there based on your drive and grit, resilience, and discipline. But you're going to lose the war. And you're going to lose the war to the person or the team that has the honesty, the self-awareness, and the willingness to recognize their gaps, recognize their shortcomings, and they go find resources and assets to help fill those gaps. Yeah, you nailed that. The thing that I kept thinking about as you were speaking is the individual who considers themselves and thinks they are self-made solely on their own lacks incredible self-awareness.

And one of my favorite quotes is you can go really fast alone, but you can go so much further together. Because back when I was younger and naive and immature, I used to consider myself a lone wolf. And I laugh at just like that whole concept now. Because in my head, I'm like, no one gets me. No one understands what I'm trying to do. I'm going to do this on my own.

And I can do that for a period of time. It got me to a certain point until I hit that wall. I'm like, what is this wall I keep hitting that I can't break past? And it's when I removed that ego and started pulling other people in, I had to take a step back, which initially I slowed down a bit. But then it was being on this rocket ship of just projecting me into the future and making me so much significant progress. But yeah, I think that mindset and a process.

lacks so much self-awareness and is dangerous to an individual. It's a dangerous person to be around. And you mentioned, we both mentioned self-awareness. I would argue, and you mentioned the word ego, I would argue that self-awareness is a subset ingredient of humility. And humility for most of us probably all requires time, requires maturity, for you to recognize the value of it, and then couple that with the confidence to them be able to deploy it.

And those two things work very powerful hand in hand. That as I'm advising newer commanders that I work alongside of as a warrant officer, that one two punch combo is one that I typically focus on most of the time. Certainly with like younger like captains and like junior offices. It's like if you can get on this trajectory of wielding those two things simultaneously, you're on amazing trajectory. Kind of the ironic pot about it is many people misassume. or miscorrelate humility with insecurity.

Meaning if I display humility, that's going to be seen as me being weak. And I can't have that. Where in fact, those are two entirely separate things. Yeah, I agree. When you can have a degree of confidence, authentic confidence, which you and I would probably agree is earned,

it's evidence-based over a undeniable track record of developing skill and the ability to do hot shit consistently. Authentic confidence is earned. That thing can initiate. able us to deploy that humility because I know I'm good. I know I'm capable. I don't need to tell people that, i.e. cockiness, because it's real because I've earned it. Now I can deploy that humility, which can suppress the ego and can allow the things to happen that we just discussed. But it does take time. It takes a minute. It took a while for me to get there as a brand new team

guy. Man, I was just like what you just said. I'm like, I was John Rambo reincarnated when I graduated of the Q-Course. And I got that little green hat on my head. And I'm like, all I need guys is a ride. And I'm going to fix this whole G-WAT problem myself. Beyond confident, almost full-blown arrogance. And it took me a minute to kind of start to realize that humility is a bit of a superpower. And those that are at the absolute best of their game absolutely have it and deploy it almost automatically. I need to be more like that. I have a lot to learn, a lot to figure out. and there comes to honesty, the self-awareness, the gratitude, and some of those other elements of humility.

I don't know from personal experience, obviously, but I would assume that could be common to newer green braise that join the team. Yeah. Because you're the tip of the spear. You're brand new and it's like you feel you can dig down the world. But there's so much experience and wisdom to be gained and humbled. Yeah.

Along the way. So I'm going to get ahead of myself a little bit, but I'll bring it back, I promise. You were talking about when you were on your first deployment back after losing your leg, you were considered the machine. Did that put a target on your back when you guys went out into the villages, into the talents, into combat? Like, where people are like, I'm going to take down the machine

because of the way he looks in this vibe around you. Yeah, there was an interesting ongoing discussion. about that exact thing once it became more and more of a trend and in those in those pockets of the world while technology exists you know to a degree it's mostly word of mouth as that spreads but it it moves fast like that that line of communication can move fast because they've really mastered it over you know millennia in that area specifically there were discussions of this of hey man like are you this like known figure that's now maybe a higher threat risk to what we're doing because people want to capture you or kill you and say, like,

we killed the machine. Is this like, is this a concern that we need to have? And it was kind of thrown around almost jokingly at first. And then towards the tail end of that first Afghanistan trip, it became like a legitimate discussion. So it was something we were cognizant of. It didn't affect what we did or how we did it. In fact, you had plenty of my, you know, team guy knucklehead brothers that were like, good.

We want us to have an additional. target because we want more people to come and try to play the game. They want to duke it out. So it's like, great. Let's like let's let's make this louder so that we can go find ourselves in contact, which is also very common amongst, you know, team guys, especially in those environments. So was it a concern? I can't say it was a concern.

It was something that we were aware of, but it really didn't change anything. It's like chumming in the ocean for sharks. Kind of like that. Yeah. Yeah. You're baiting them in. So I would love if you could just provide a little bit of contact. to your journey to becoming a green bray.

Because from my understanding, you went to college first. I did. And then after college, you enlisted. Correct. What year did you graduate college? Oh, six. Okay. Did you know when you were in college that you were going to go directly into the military?

Was that the plan? Immediately post-9-11, actually during 9-11, was the initial surge of desire to search. I ultimately stayed in school, grinded out the rest of my degree, Bailey. So the site of joining the military got a little bit less clear. And I started going down from really poor lanes, making some really poor choices towards the latter year in my college career. But then it was maybe during my last term, it ended up being my last term or last semester, that I kind of re-zeroed in back on that target. And now it's 06 and we're surging now in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

So it's like, man, not only is this game still being played, but we're ramping things up. You know, initially post-9-11, I had this fear that this game was going to be over and done with like that. I mean, I was really angry and wanted to serve, but I wanted to finish playing ball and graduate. So I was kind of stuck. And because my only real context of military warfare was really like desert storm in the early 90s. was obviously a young kid, but that was over very, very quickly. So that was kind of the context I had to go off. Like, yeah, we're definitely going to respond, but this is going to be over and like a week.

And ultimately, again, decided to stay in school, graduate. And now it's not only game on, but it's game. We're amping up. So I was like, yeah, I'm going to make this move now and come in. And then it was really just a matter of what branch do I want to go in and what do I want to do? 2006 is the year I decided I was going to go into the army. but then I was still in high school, went to college, commissioned. It wasn't until 2013 that I actually went in to active duty service.

But why 2006 is such a reminder for me is because my cousin at the time, his name was Matt, he was with the 101st. And he was going back and forth multiple deployments Iraq and Afghanistan during that time. And I remember being very kinetic and watching him transform from this boy. to this man after multiple deployments and watching him transform, I identify that. I was like, I want to need that for my life. So I don't say vividly, but I remember that timeframe and remember just how kinetic warfare was at the time. What made you choose the 18 X-ray path to go special forces? Yeah, really a couple things, man. So I knew I wanted

to go into special operations. I felt like, my physical capability could be utilized in that capacity. But really more than that, man, I just wanted to make as much of an impact as a single person could in a very short amount of time. This was not intended to be a career for me at all. In fact, quite the opposite. It was like, I'm going to come in. I'm going to do a five-year contract. I'm going to get to the tip of the spear.

I'm going to kick as much ass as I can, get some pay back for 9-11. And then I'm going to get out of the army and figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life. That was really the game plan. So, okay, how do I get into special operations? And I walked into a recruiter station in downtown Boston. And there were actually three branches in the same building, the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Army. And I went in that order. So I started out actually with the Navy.

I walked into the Navy recruiter office. I said, hey, what do I got to do to be a Navy SEAL? Of course, back then as today, you think of like the best ass kickers in the DOD enterprise and the Navy SEALs come to mind very, very quickly and for good reason. and because they're also very good at what they do, not just tactically and operationally, but also as it pertains to like marketing. So these guys jumped out at me.

I'm like, I want to do that. Talk to a Navy recruiter. And he's like, yeah, man, sounds great. We got to get you enlisted into the Navy first. And then eventually you could request to go to Buds and go that route. And I was like, awesome. Thank you, sir. Appreciate your time.

And I left. Went to the Marine Corps office. Asked the same question. Got basically the same answer. Thank you. Left. Walked into the Army office. And I got a different answer.

And they're like, hey, we actually have this program called the 18 X-ray program, which is a special forces recruit, which gives guys off the street the opportunity to bypass any kind of service in the conventional army. And if you make it through that entire pipeline from start to finish, your first real job will be as a Green Beret on an ODA. I didn't make my decision right there. I said, thank you. I left. I went home and started doing a little bit of research. I really didn't know what Green Berets did. I had movie references in Rambo and John.

on Wayne, but I really didn't know. So I started kind of just digging into what do these guys do, what are they all about? Unconventional warfare, which is our primary mission set, just really jumped off the screen at me. And I said, man, that really sounds cool. I think I want to do that. So it gave me the fastest route to get into special operations. And then it also was the mission set I was most drawn to.

That was it. At what point in your journey from that moment to becoming a green beret, putting the beret on at graduation, did it hit you that, oh, this is the real deal? And you were humbled. How early on? I said the first time I was truly humbled was probably at the end of around the first week of being with my team. I mean, you get humble going through training for sure.

It's brutal. It kicks your ass. This is all post selection, post-cubes. course actually getting to the team that was the that was the biggest wake up call for me in terms of like an ego check was when i actually started to go do the work interesting okay and i realized because you graduate that course and it's like i got all these special skills i can do all this cool stuff i'm a literally a walking weapon and now it's game on and you walk into that team room and you're around guys that have been over there and done that four five six times like hardened warriors

and you realize that you barely know anything. You got like a fraction foundation of what this means. And now you're actually going to start to learn how to really do this job. Going through selection and going through Q course, there are certainly times when you get your absolute ass kicked. So humbled at points of time during training, for sure. But the real wake-up call for me came once I actually started going to work with the guys. Kind of like, was it like a gut check putting you in your place?

100%. Yeah. I think in order to be a professional, you need that wake-up call. Yeah. I mean, it's a catalyst to what we've been talking about where, you know, it may be for me that first real step towards humbling myself. And yeah, you can do some things and you can run fast and you can do a lot of push-ups and you can shoot a rifle and that's all great.

But you've got a lot to figure out. One thing I do like to highlight of people often are in. interested in selection and, you know, how hard was that? And selection is designed to kick your ass. That's the whole point. And really, the different selections within different military units, the slightly different on how they go about doing it. But the science and the concept is the exact same, where you're going to break down a human being to the point where their authentic self is right there on display for you to see. And of course, there are trained professionals at cognitive psychs and performance psychs and trained cadre with years of experience that are there to,

then assess you, but that's what it's designed to do. And I came in at a peak level of confidence and what I could do physically and mentally. And so I did absolutely get my ass kicked many, many times during that point because that has to happen. It's done by design. Right. But I still, you know, I still had a sense of ego that was still with me despite those ass kickings and then overcoming them, which almost fueled it even more. Like, yeah, I can just keep, I can just keep going. Like I'll just, as long as I never quit, like, I'm going to make it to the end, which is true to a degree. But then that real wake up call hits once it was about time to really go to work. We're like pushing out the door in the next 45 days and we're going into Kandahah and it's going to be game on and you're around these dudes.

Like, you're no longer the biggest, baddest dude in the jungle because you're in a whole new jungle. And now you're like a tadpole amongst lions and you got a lot to figure out. Could you feel that the first time you landed over? overseas in a combat zone that you could realize how small you felt initially yeah and it's one of those moments where you know you want to display confidence and say no i'm i'm good like i'm here i'm here for a reason but also you just you're drinking from a fire hose where there's a lot to try to take in and assess and your your teammates are just they're operating like it's another wednesday going to the grocery store because they've done it so many times they're just almost just casually

walking through what needs to happen and i'm like pie i just trying to keep up and not mess anything up. And of course, they're there to provide guidance and make tasks very small and manageable. Like, hey, man, the ammo guys are over there. Like, go get us some ammo so we can load up and we're going to hit the road in an hour. Like, okay, that I can do. But from a big picture, it's almost too overwhelming in the beginning to try to conceptualize what's going on. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. For someone who might be listening to this and has no experience or knowledge of the military. And they think special operations is like Rambo,

like you said earlier. For that listener who doesn't have all of the experience and all the knowledge, can you describe what makes special operations, special operators special and unique? What are the characteristics? Because I want to add some color to that. I believe most people think it's like these hard charging type A warriors who are strong,

who are fast, who are killers, which you and they are. But I would assume there's characteristics that they share, especially being teammates that a lot of people don't consider that could actually be applicable to their job, their career, them personally and professionally, regardless of them they're in the military or not. Yeah, great, great point. And you actually mentioned one word already, kind of, of in the question or in the setup. I'd tell you right now what special does not mean, at least organically. Special does not mean elite. Special does not mean better than. Special does not mean we are

coddled and catered to. Special is synonymous with the word different or the word unique, which you just said. That's it. If they changed the name of all of Socom to, different operational forces instead of soft, nothing would change tomorrow. We would go about our business the exact same way. It's just those of us in this career field think differently and then more importantly, we behave differently. That's it. And it's just you're going outside the norm.

So we're a different group of people that think differently and act differently that are designed to solve complex problems differently. That's it. And it's really by virtue of how different we're willing to be, that that is what makes us elite. Because, yeah, special operations is elite based on how different we're willing to act. So I'd like to set the stage on that for people that are spying to be better to win and grow and these things, which are great. I think it boils down to that. How different are you willing to be?

How often and how aggressively are you willing to go against the grain to defy the norm? by definition outside the norm. This is what normal is. And there's nothing wrong with normal. Normal is just a mathematical average. This is just what most people do in these circumstances. This is how most people eat. It's the most people sleep.

There's the most people exercise. This is normal. Nothing wrong with it. But for some, normal is like a death sentence. I can't live my life normal. Like I have to be an outlier. I have to be different. And then it's based on your thought.

and then more importantly, your actions. Some of the more surprising trends to get a little bit more granular of team guys and special operations because you do have the aggressiveness. You do have the type A competitive, goal-oriented, driven personalities. But operating in that 12-man team to take the ODA as the example is that does not thrive without a healthy dose of humility, which is where we mention quite often, which can almost catch you off God. we were talking about some of the most savage lethal weapons the world's ever known even outside of SS specifically we have worked with tier one units and three letter agencies from our country and others and those that are at the absolute best of their game have weaponized humility it almost can surprise you when you are alongside these individuals in a battlefield environment and then 10 minutes later they give you they give you the shirt off that

back. They ask you like, how's your son doing? They actually care and they're empathetic and they're compassionate and they're decent, kind human beings that are also savage animals and they have a very deliberate control of that switch and they can flip it whenever they want. So humility is without question present because I think it needs to be for a functional team as we talked about. If every single person believes that they're the absolute best at everything, there's no possible way that that can work in any kind of harmony. So that exists within those team room walls. And then what is necessary to lead towards that. And here's where I get to maybe is the root, if I would put it the absolute baseline, is emotional regulation, emotional control. That is, in my opinion, the differentiator between elite

teams or elite individuals or even high performing and everybody else is emotional regulation. And the reason why it is such a difficult skill to shop in, because it is a skill, is because it also defies mother nature and biology quite a bit. Like Dale Carnegie says it best. When you're dealing with a human being, you're not dealing with a creature of logic. You're dealing with a creature of emotion, which is 100% true proven by neurology, biology, biology, physiology, psychology. There is an emotion attached to every single thought or action you take.

And it just goes on a loop. Emotion thought, emotion act, emotion, act. It just keeps going around. It's the exact same thing that makes us the most dominant species on this planet that also opens us up to a massive vulnerability, the same exact thing, because emotionally charged decisions oftentimes aren't the greatest. And what we know to be true is emotion and logic are antagonistic of each other. So as one goes up, the other one goes down. It's almost impossible scientifically to make a highly logical decision when you're at a highly heightened state of emotion

because they counteract each other. Special operations, and this is something that we teach with clients in all walks of life, athletes, corporate, law enforcement is without a degree of emotional control, emotional regulation, without deliberate effort in sharpening and harnessing that skill, that will forever remain a crux in your ability to grow and employ and be an asset in whatever environment you're within. Because we're going to be met with endless amounts of adversity and challenges and be sent in emotional states. Can you control, that, not remove it. That's a huge misconception, particularly in special operations, that were these like emotionless creatures or fearless, for example. That is wildly inaccurate. In fact, the fact that we

have the emotions is part of what makes us able to do what we do. It's just over time, you learn how to control those, not eliminate it, but control it when I'm feeling angry or sad or even overly joyful or happy. I don't let that decide what decision I'm about to make. And you should, shorten the time horizon between an emotional reaction and a logical response. You're not eliminating an emotional reaction because it's part of being a human. That will happen. That hurt my feelings. I'm now angry.

I'm sad. I'm enraged. I'm really, really happy. That's going to happen. How long, if at all, does it take to move from that point, an emotional reaction to a logical decision that you make? That becomes a question.

And over time and the teams, that's one that you have to learn. and be able to weaponize. Is that skill of emotional control? Is that identified prior to getting onto a team? Or is that something that is refined and taught? And if so, how does special operations do that? Yeah. So, I mean, that is 100% character trait that is being assessed going through selection

without question. Is that through like a psych eval or is that just observational? So both, you know, we take a series of like written psychological evals that goes through, you know, assessments. The kind of grading criteria, I'd say the majority of it is done through execution and through our performance throughout whatever given time period. Someone's going through that interview process. When I went through selection, it was 14 days, which was a little trial experiment that they did for lasted about 18 months where they took a 21 day model and they smushed it down into 14. And the only things that were removed was sleep, hygiene, and food.

But all the tasks were the exact same. They were just trying to condense the time frame, and it proved to really not work all that well. Dude was just getting broken off. And they were losing a lot of potential talent. So it's now a 21-day interview experience. And mostly during that phase is when they're doing their assessments. And one's ability to control their emotions is absolutely part of that assessment. What are you guys doing to continuously refining that skill?

Are there things intentionally done? Or is it just being in the end? environment on the team that's going to curate those skills and refine them? No, you need to be deliberate about it, you know, for sure. You know, the crawl walk run approach is one that's like typically employed, certainly as or when we get newer dudes onto the teams, which does happen. You know, you can only move as fast as you as your slowest individual. So depending on the makeup of the team at that time, we'll determine how fast during our

train up do we progress through that cycle and it begins small. but you're deliberately including stressors on purpose to get after a specific emotional responses, emotional reactions on purpose. And then as that scales over time, it's getting more complex, more aggressive, and more intense. And I think that that's where many miss out on massive opportunities to increase their own emotional regulation. It's like there are certain scenarios that most people can experience on an everyday basis. they can almost say with certainty at some point during this window something annoying or frustrating is going to happen take your commute to work whatever that is where you're walking

taking the subway taking the tea driving through traffic you could almost guarantee at some point on that 15 20 30 minute experience someone's going to cut you off someone's going to bump into you someone's going to do something silly during that window and that becomes a rep that becomes an opportunity to employ that that skill to sharpen that edge a little bit more. You just have to be deliberate about it and see the opportunity as it comes. And hey, if you happen to go through that whole thing

and nothing happened, like, okay, great, but you were prepared for it. And then when it hits, when the person cuts in front of you, gives you the bird, whatever it is, it's like game on, like right now. And I got about five seconds to play this game. And if I play it right,

it's going to enable me just that much more the next time. And you just keep going on that cycle. It's having that patience to sit back, let it sink in and then then respond. I know a big part of your book talks about the difference between patients and procrastination. Yeah. Before we're kind of like jumping into the next part of the conversation,

can you describe what an ODA looks like? Like what does that team structure? What it consists of? Yeah, so it's a 12 man, 12 man model, which is built by design. 12 just didn't come out of nowhere. ODAs, which is an acronym for operational detachment. Alpha. So sometimes you hear the term A team, although that's kind of an outdated term. I haven't heard that in real utility for many, many years. Operation Detachment Alpha, otherwise known as an ODA,

is a 12-man team. And the reason why is we are built to work in split team capacity. So six and six. That's how the team is built. So we can split up into two elements. You have your command team as part of that, which is a traditional officer, which is usually a captain. You have your senior enlisted leader, who's typically a master sergeant, and really he runs the team. All the guys, all the NCOs, they really work for him. And then you've got me, which is your warrant officer, otherwise known as your assistant detachment commander. So in a split team environment, which we're built to do, detachment commander takes one cell, the warrant officer takes the other cell as the commanders. And then you've got the rest of the team. So,

you've got an intelligence specialist and every enlisted guy on the team has a has a specialty that they focus on although we cross-trained amongst each other so everyone has to have an idea of how to do everyone else's job just not to that extent you have your intel sergeant and that is not a position you can take right out of the gate you have to come in as one of the other four jobs and then you can request or be assigned to then move into the intelligence sergeant position who really operates also as kind of the 2IC or the second in command for the team sergeant. So in that split team dynamic, when you've got your officers that are in charge, you would also split your Intel sergeant, otherwise known as an 18 Fox.

And your team sergeant, otherwise known as an 18 Zulu, would be the senior enlisted guys for those two sections. And then you got your four baseline enlisted positions. So you're 18 Bravo, which is what I was, which is a weapons and tactics specialist. You've got your 18 Chalys, which are your engineers and your demolitions experts. You've got your 18 deltas, which are your medics. And then you've got your 18 echoes, which are your comms individuals. And then what usually goes unnoticed or uncared for until you're in the team and actually doing it is ODAs are built to be self-sufficient.

So, of course, in the army, in the military, you've got all these support functions that support operations. You got your S1, your S2, your S3, your S4. These are all your support entities that enable us to do what we need to do when it comes to operations. Your finance and your paperwork and your logistics and your supply and your intel and like all these things that are necessary for us to go do the work. ODAs build those support functions into the MOSs. So an example would be your 18 Chalee, who's your engineer and your demo guy. is also your S-4 function. So he's in charge of property.

So he's managing like a ton of like paperwork, 262 like hand receipts. Like he's managing like the team's inventory as well. So those are the internal staff functions, support functions that each guy on the ODA also maintains so that we can truly operate in a self-sufficient manner. I didn't realize that. Yeah.

So there's the secondary jobs and responsibilities. Yeah. Like our medics are S-1s. So all of our pay. and leave and like admin like paperwork shit that guy's managing all that that actually surprises me yeah that's really impressive yeah it's i mean it's not what most of us sign up for is that um there's a method to the madness you know if you want because these functions are you you need these functions and it's not to say that every time we go anywhere we are truly completely isolated

from all support assets. That will very rarely be the case in today's world, but it's built to be able to do that. And that comes with a lot of additional work and effort, but that's also kind of why we exist if you would operate that way. Yeah, I did not realize that. It's impressive.

So the book's called Objective Secure. What is the meaning of Objective Secure? How did you get to that title? And what does that mean for everything that consists within the pages and the content. Yeah. So the tactical term for objective secure is something that you would reach that point of objective secure.

If you looked at, say, an urban operation, urban military operation, we were going to say take down a compound. It's divided up into different sectors and you got your assault team and your Overwatch and your cordon, isolation containment. You got all these things set up. And as you're moving through and you're clearing, you're clearing different sectors. So sector alpha clear or section one, two, three, clear, whatever. Eventually, you get to a point of objective secure.

So this is our objective. It's this compound. We've now cleared the whole thing. We've back cleared it. We've consolidated anyone that we have under our control. We've done all the searches we need to do. We are now at a point of objective secure, which gives everyone on that operation a little bit of an opportunity to kind of take a breath and like take a minute.

And we can kind of like zoom out and like reassess like what's going to go on. what needs to happen next. Priorities of work, comms, are we moving? Ex-fill, like whatever happens after. So there's like a pause point that happens once you reach objective secure in a tactical environment. The mission is not over. You are on the objective still physically. At a minimum, you need to get back to your camp or onto the next objective or whatever, but it's a pause point. Mission is not over, but it's a good place to be. It's a warm, like comfortable place to be, regardless of how chaotic or Connecticut was to earn your way. And I use that term, on purpose to earn your way to Objective Secure.

It's a good feeling. Man, we made it. This is a great point in time. Awesome. Objective secure in the context of the book is really used almost the same way, whereas here's where I am today. Here's my, here's my mission. Here's my desired mission and state.

The macro goal, the big picture, the holy shit, like this is actually scaring me a little bit, vision of what I want to do. It's out of business. Write a book. get a scholarship to play football, create visible abs, build my arms to look like yours so there's no sleeve gap.

Like whatever your current mission is, that's the end state. Odza, and hopefully, it's going to take a little bit of time to get to that point. I would argue most goals worthwhile are going to take a little bit of time to invest in, to create a reality.

So here I am, here's a need to create. Maybe I have an idea of how long it's going to take, maybe not. Well, in between here, in there, there are a series of objectives that have to be met that at least I think are going to be done in this sequential order. So that's really all we're doing is we're just mapping it out over a time horizon of now. And then all these kind of micro goals that need to be done in between here and creating that vision into a reality. So reaching objective secure as it pertains to personal development or business

development, a professional development is seen through that same lens where it's a great milestone to get to, you get that moment to breathe. It was chaotic. It was crazy, but I made it. Awesome. Look up. Taking some sunlight. Taking a deep breath.

Give yourself a pat on the back. Grab your spouse. Give her a kiss. And then now we got a zero in on the next objective because the mission isn't over yet. It's obviously a large part of the way the military operates. Objective secure. But, you know, based off of your life after. the attack and getting injured,

you applied it to everything you did after that, to going back to the teams, to getting healthier and stronger again. Were you able to, prior to the attack, apply that same approach to your life? That's a good question. Was I able to?

Of course. Did I? Not really. Not out of choice or just... I think it was more. more out of a couple things, a lack of appreciation for the value of having a system and strategy and tactics to work within, coupled with a sense of confidence and being more work ethic driven. More about just blunt force trauma and just doing a lot. I'm just going to outwork everybody. That kind of mentality, which I would argue is a great one to have, this idea I'm just going to be the highest worker in the room.

Are you harder or not smarter? And just beat everybody, right? That only takes you so far. Like at some point, you have to introduce a little bit of strategy into the game so you can streamline efficiencies and processes and create the kind of habits you want, SOPs, so that things can happen faster and more efficiently with greater outcomes. But I don't think you can get to that point until you just start doing stuff. But if you're not learning as you're doing, then, you're, you're not learning.

you're slowly losing that advantage that you have because the the smarter way to go about doing it will almost certainly surpass you despite your greatest blunt force trauma effort type approach. So up until my injury, I could do a lot of things. I had a lot of margin for error. I took a day off from training. If I blew off my mobility session or my cool down or I missed a meal, like I can make that up. And it was kind of like, yeah, I'm like I'm good. I'll be good to go.

And that was reinforced by the way I was able to perform. Like I proved myself right, despite it not being optimized whatsoever. I can just continue to outwork everyone around me and outwork my poor choices. Lost the leg. Almost all of those advantages disappeared overnight. Now I'm trying to do something deemed to be impossible. My margins just shrunk to nothing. They don't exist anymore.

I don't have the luxury. blowing off. If I blow off that mobility session at the end of that workout, I won't be able to get out of bed tomorrow, literally. And I had to learn out the hideaway a few times. So it's like, nope, can't miss that. If I miss a meal, if I come up shy with my hydration, my residual limb would change in shape. And now I can't get my leg physically can't get my prosthetic leg attached to my body anymore. Those margins have disappeared. And just, I just felt one after another. My margins just kept going away. And it's like, man, I need a system to work within here so I can streamline a efficiencies and outcomes.

And economy of motion is a term. I think I talk about it in the book where every single step I take, every action or movement I make, there has to be a correlated ROI with that, like down to like the micro detail, which of course, we're not going to bat a thousand. We're not going to be perfect with every single thing we do. But that was how granular I wanted to get with my efficiency because I didn't have the luxury of time. And I didn't have the margins that I could rely on to make up for my misses.

One of my favorite parts of what you shared in the book, which it kind of surprised me and maybe it'll surprise you, was actually just everything you shared around learning how to use a prosthetic. I personally learned so much in everything that you shared that I didn't even realize. Interesting. That's cool. Around like, you know, you think or I think for someone who doesn't have the experience, you take this prosthetic and you just attach it to the limb that no,

longer exists there and you just then have this prosthetic that is part of your leg. Right. But all these things I didn't consider in terms of like moisture and sweat build up. Or if you're sweating and the limb becomes smaller and then the attachment or the prosthetic doesn't fit as properly. And then you have to use like the sock in certain situations. And I'm like thinking about, yeah, it's one thing if you're wearing a prosthetic. out and about in Austin, Texas, and you work a corporate job.

Sure. But it's a completely different situation when you're over in Afghanistan running with 100 pounds on your back. Yeah, give a take. I found that, I'm glad you shared that in the book, because I found that so interesting. I appreciate that feedback, man. I don't think I've ever heard that from a non-amputee or non-prosthetic user.

So it's actually really cool that that connected with you a little bit, that little bit of, education. Yeah. Because it is a massive kind of misconception. And I'm, you could use the word guilty of enabling that misconception because people see me or read something and this like, oh man, this dude just like wakes up, clickety clack.

Leg goes on. And he's just like off and running and doing whatever he wants to deadlift in, climbing mountains, scuba. It's like, oh, yeah, it's just like a, it's not his leg, but it works the same way as his actual leg when of course, maybe not of course, but that's wildly inaccurate. it's those like little sneaky extra challenges that you don't really anticipate because i guess could you anticipate it where you lose your leg you come to the reality of yep that's how to my body is gone got it hey we're going to give you a new one and you're like awesome i'm going to

strap this thing on i'm just going to be right back to it just looks different it maybe makes some sounds like i don't switzerlander and terminator that could be kind of cool but that's it and it's all these little like microchallenges that just like stack up over time and those can be the ones that that could kill you. Yeah. Like death by a thousand cuts. It's like you come to the realization of I no longer have my limb, that's, that's tough.

But cool, I got a new one. And then it's all these little knick-knacky pains in the ass that for some, they just, they'd say, the hell with it. I'm not going to do it. I'm just going to live my life in a wheelchair on crutches or whatever it is because

it's just, it takes its toll. There's just like so much that comes with it. A lot that comes with it. Maintenance, lifestyle changes. Yeah, a lot. I want to take a quick break in this episode.

to talk to you guys about how I use our products around my endurance training and how you can as well. Now, here at BPN, we've created products to fuel your performance and optimize your recovery. But I want to talk specifically around how I use these products in my morning run. Before my morning run every morning, I'm not training fasted. I want carbohydrates and I want electrolytes. So I consume two scoops of G1M Sport, which is our carbohydrate and electrolyte powder, and one go bar, which is our lightweight oat-based bar. With this combination, I'm getting about 800 milligrams of sodium and 76 grams of carbohydrates total. Carbohydrates for the fuel, electrolytes for the hydration.

This is going to set me up to have the best run possible. fuel and hydration. Now, based off of the distance, duration, and intensity of that run, I will add in go gels during the workout. And the go gel is our simple ingredient, endurance gel, 24 grams of carbohydrates in each gel and 110 milligrams of sodium. We have a non-caffeinated version and a caffeinated version. The caffeinated version has 75 milligrams of caffeine per gel. And I'll have one go gel every 30 to 45 minutes or every four to five miles. And we really created the go gel for these bigger effort runs or endurance training sessions

and races. They are extremely useful during races because you get a quick hit of energy from the fuel, the carbohydrates, some hydration from the electrolytes, the sodium. but they also digest very easily. So you're not going to have stomach discomfort and GI distress. And then after my run, I want to rehydrate. So I'm always adding in our electrolyte powder, one to two scoops. Each scoop has 500 milligrams of sodium, full electrolyte profile.

So I'm using our products to fuel training, enhance hydration, maintain effort-intensity, during training sessions with the go gel and then rehydrating immediately after. So that's how I use our products around my early morning runs and all my endurance training and how you can as well. So go to BPNSups.com. Check out all of our endurance products to fuel your performance. And now back to the episode. So I know in the book, you had Eric Reed, the section that describes your injury

in the attack. And that was in the I Will Never Quit chapter, which I love how you broke down the book in sections based off the Army or Ethos. I will always place the mission first. I will never accept the feat. I will never quit. I will never leave a fallen comrade. I found that very unique and applicable.

Thank you. But like I was saying, I know Eric read the section of the day of the attack. And that was, I listened to that twice. because of how just like specific each point was. And I was taking it back after after hearing that. So I completely understand if you don't want to talk about that in the podcast or if you want to lean into it. Oh yeah, absolutely. Completely respect to whatever you want to do.

Yeah, man. Let's do it. So March 11th, 2013 in Afghanistan, you're weeks away from coming home. Yeah. And incorrect me at any point if I'm incorrect. This is the third time you were injured on this deployment. Correct. What were the first two injuries?

First one, I took some grenade shrapnel to the back of my shoulder, blew a little bottle, lemon-sized hole in me. I was out of the game under medical treatment for like three or four days. And then I was back to the, with the guys back to work. Second, I took an AK-47 round to the face during an IED-initi-initiated ambush. that we drove into. Six of my friends were in a, my teammates were in a lead vehicle that was decimated by a 400 pound bomb, limbs blown off, like severe blast damage, eyes hanging out of faces. Like, so those guys were really jammed up and I caught around during that. Similarly,

after the first one was the same experience. I got medical attention at Bogram. I was there three or four days and then I was back with the guys. And then the leg incident with the, with the attack was the third one. So martial. 11th, 2013, you're getting ready to come home, essentially weeks away from coming home. And this was an insider attack. Correct. Can you describe what that means? Yeah.

We refer to it as a green on blue, which is really just based off of a system we use that gives different types of individuals on a battle space, like a color code to loosely define who's who. So green being labeled as unknowns and or like friendly. blue being like US forces. So green against blue. So when one of the guys we're working with turns on us, hence the term green on blue or insider attack.

So we were set to drive out on an operation and just prior to loading up our vehicles, a member of the Afghan National Police Force, climbed up on the back of a Ford Ranger pickup truck that had a mounted PKM machine gun attached to it. And he opened fire into me and the guys from about 30 feet away. So considered the most catastrophic insider attack that we knew of at the time since the beginning of the GWAT. And then to make Matt as more interesting, this was the initiation of a pre-planned complex ambush. But we didn't know there were about 30 Taliban fighters that had our compound almost entirely surrounded. So when this guy initiated from inside our perimeter, they all began launching mortars and RPG rockets and belt-fet machine gun on top of us.

So it was a really bad day at the office. You could say 12 U.S. casualties, another dozen or so Afghan casualties. Three of our guys were killed, one of which was our detachment commander, Captain Andrew Peterson Keel, who I speak on in the book, is from Connecticut, was standing right next to me, really, right before the rounds started flying. And then myself and another eight Americans, just varying degrees of wounded. I took an estimated, like five or maybe six rounds. or so to my right leg, which basically just vaporized it.

And the onslaught really continued. One thing I do like to highlight, man, real quick, you were an infantry officer. Is that right? Yeah, correct. And I love when I share this, I don't share it often enough, is we had an infantry uplift squad that was there with us. It was about 14 dudes, most of which on their first deployment, fresh out of basic training. So we had like some legitimate kids, like 17, 18, 19 year old kids.

Their squad leader was Staff Sergeant Rex Shad, who was the only one, I believe, out of the group that had any kind of Afghan combat experience. He was actually also killed during this attack. These guys were attached to us as well as another three or four enablers to literally hold down the fort for us while we were out conducting operations with our patent force. That's why they were they were assigned to us. And we're doing village stability operations. we're up in the mountains of Wardak. We're not operating out of a fob. We're operating out of like this little camp with like nothing.

Those guys were really our primary means of defense and like defending the compound. But over time, we're training these guys because that's what Green Berets. That's what soldiers do, really. It's what Green Berets do, specifically. We're training these guys. And we stop bringing these guys out in operations with us over times, drivers and turt gunners. And it was awesome. These are these young kids and now they're attached to an ODA and they're growing their beards out.

and they're wearing like, you know, non-official uniforms. And, like, they're really getting into it. And we needed them to be into it like that with us. They were, like, very much part of the team. So watching. At this point in deployment, you guys still getting into it a lot? Yeah, yeah, quite often. A lot of firefights?

Yeah, like maybe two, three, four times a week. Okay. Yeah. So we're going out on most days. We take a day off here to it. But it was pretty much kinetic throughout the entire trip. Watching these young studs develop over time was awesome. It was amazing.

On the day of the attack, most of the ODA was wounded as we were getting set to go out. And as I'm laying there, and I eventually end up treating myself with tourniquets and some other stuff. But as I'm laying there dying, as I'm bleeding out, from oral lottery is severed. And I know I'm dead. I know I'm going to die. Watching these young infantry soldiers come out of the opsend, come out of wherever they were on the main camp. and they start flooding into our motor pool, which is where the attack happened.

And these guys just start going to work, man. They're taking up fighting positions. They're calling out distance direction, enemy threats. They're reloading each other with belt fed. They're firing up the mortar that we taught them how to use. I mean, these guys were like game on as most of the ODA is down, dead or dying. And these young studs are just going to work. And that to me was,

I thought going to be kind of my last vision as I was laying on the ground looking up and watching these kids just go handle business. And dude, I don't know if at least up until I became a father, I don't know if I've ever felt that amount of love and pride and respect for a group of others to watch them save us and protect us. These kids, just don't do what they do, man. It was an amazing moment coupled with pending death that would have been a great way to go, had that been it.

Were you pretty convinced at that point that you were going to die? 100%. Convinced. Yeah, 100%. When I saw the amount of volume of blood that was pumping out of me, I'm talking like just like a host, I was like, yeah, man, my formal has been cut. I might have eight or so minutes here, give or take. So I was convinced that no matter what I did or what anyone did, that this was going to be

my last day on earth. I was able to kind of get my head out of the clouds pretty quickly and go to work. So I started to treat myself with tourniquets and eventually with an internal pressure dressing, which is a wild experience to go through. But yeah, I thought that that was it, man. Yeah, you described it in the book. And you kind of end that section with my heart is full. What an honor to have served with such men. What an honor to die along. touch warriors. When I heard that, you know,

part of the book was like, holy shit. Like, that's real. Yeah. Yeah. That internal, that internal dressing,

is that the power ball? Yeah. Can you describe the way the power ball? Like, what is the intent of the power ball? Yeah. So power ball is just the term we use, when you're dealing with like soft gauze,

medical gauze, and you just ball it up to create kind of like a golf ball out of it. Just to give it a little bit of a like, like density to work with. And it's used to create pressure dressing. Well, what I needed was an internal pressure dressing because of where the location of the femoral artery had been severed was towards the top of my leg. It had retracted up into kind of where my pelvis is.

So with the arteries cut, it retracts. So now it's up almost by my hip. And while we do have techniques, like laguinal legwinal um turnicates and actually we now have equipment that's built specifically to be able to apply pressure to the hip area specifically for this kind of injury um we didn't have any of that equipment i didn't have anything on me it really wasn't built into the way we trained it was just get the tourniquet as high as you possibly can um that we couldn't get the tourniquets high enough on me because of where the artery was actually bleeding from so I ended up

up loosening up one of the highest tourniquets. And fortunately, I was hit from behind. And I say fortunately because the exit wound on most gunshots are typically a much larger cavity. So goes in, creates a small hole, comes out much bigger hole. So that big a hole is right in front of me as I'm looking down on my leg. So I loosen up and loosen up one of the tourniquets, create this power ball with this gauze. And I'm able to ram it into the wound, but then up towards my pelvis in order to to get direct pressure on the formal lottery. So like half my hand is basically in my thigh at this point. And I'm reaching up towards my pelvis.

And eventually I think I feel like a pulse. It was tough to tell. It's complete chaos going on around me. Explosions, gunfire, people screaming. But I think I feel something. And I'm kind of like, you know, hey, this, what the hell with it? Let's just go. So I just like squeeze as hot as I can.

I feed all the rest of the gauze into the cavity on top of that. And then I was able to secure a tourniquet on top of the gauze and wrench it down tight enough just to create that upward pressure directly into the femoral. And time would tell you that that worked because I didn't get medevaced for almost two hours after I was hit because of the ongoing gunfight. It just took a while for them to get us out landing birds. But eventually I would hear from the doctors that treated me, you know, years later when I first got to that aid station for initial treatment. And they were like, dude, you, you nailed your formal lottery. You were like dead on with that thing. So a little bit of luck, a whole lot of phenomenal training from some great teammates and great medics over the years that enabled me to do what I needed to do.

Were you feeling all of that or was it just numb at that point? It wasn't, definitely wasn't numb. The first time I remember feeling any legitimate pain was during that. procedure because I was scraping past like shattered femur. My femur had been shattered into like 18 pieces. So I was like scraping past broken bone. Up until that point, I didn't feel any pain at all. Adrenaline was just, you know, it's just dumped into the system. When I was doing that was when the pain kicked in for the first time. And when I say it kicked in, I mean, it came in like a freight train. It felt like I was actually trying to like explode. I could feel almost my eyeballs like pop

out of my head, that amount of like heat and pressure internal trying to explode out my body was so powerful that it almost just like put me out cold. Like I could see my peripheral vision just like went completely away. And it was like I was hanging on through this like soda straw looking into, you know, the sky or the abyss. I was barely hanging on consciously and just telling myself, man, like you cannot pass out right now. You got to get this in there and you got to get this right on the mock. So just stay in the game.

Stay awake. Stay awake. And just battle through that discomfort. And I was able to do that just long enough to secure a turn and get back on top of that. And then I did go unconscious. When did you wake up after that? The first time I woke up after that was about a minute or so later. And I looked at the work I had done and I had no idea if it really did anything.

But I was out of options. So now the question is, what do you want to do with the rest of your life? Which is a question I think that we should all ask ourselves from time to time. Regardless, of course, without knowing how long that is. In my case, I was supremely confident that that was maybe 30, 60, 90 seconds. So what do you want to do with the rest of your life, the next minute and a half? And I glance over and I see some of my teammates that were wounded about 10, 12 feet from me.

and so I just dragged myself over to where those guys were. And the first guy got to was our senior medic. His name was Elliot, who had treated me many times on that with deployment. And he had taken a round through his calf, but he had a tourniquet on. And he was in stable condition. But he was feeling every ounce of discomfort that comes with a properly applied tourniquet. I mean, when that thing's on right, it sucks, as you know.

So I just thought I'd do what I could to distract him and thank him for everything he did for me as a teammate, as a medic, everything he taught me as a man. And that's how this game of life would end. And I was surprisingly okay with that. Sure enough, I did kind of fade to black and I thought that was it. And then I came back again. And that process happened like 10 or 12 times until eventually I came to and I was being carried on a stretcher and I was being loaded on a helicopter to be medevaced, which was almost two hours later.

And from there, how long from that incident to being back in the States? About eight or nine days. They had to get you stable first? They had to get me stable first. Yeah, they medevaced me to an outpost. I had some treatment there. Some mistakes were made there for sure that caused things to get even that much more challenging. From there, I arrived at Bogram, basically completely dead, hooked up to a bunch of machines.

And those machines kept me kind of alive. for about a week. And then I just kind of came back. And then it took another day or two for me to get stable enough to survive a flight to Germany. Was there for a day in Germany is where they amputated my leg up to my knee because everything below that was just dead. And then I robbed at Walter Reed the day after that. At what point did they amputate above the knee and why? Is that Walter Reed?

I think my first surgery at Walter Reed was the day I got there. And they just went above the knee at that point. And it's a really cool story where I was there maybe two or three days. And the chief orthopedic surgeon, John Claude Delorant is his name, still a great friend of mine. He just recently retired as a full board colonel. He's the chief ortho. And Walter Reed, with all military installations, they are. also have like students and those that are in training and they have residents. So it's like this

whole team of people that are at different varying degrees of skill set and experience and whatever. Well, his entire team, his whole staff advised him on day two or day three to amputate my leg at the hip and just get rid of the problem, which was all the infection that had set in. I was dealing with like MRSA and some like extreme circumstances with infection that was literally a threat to my life. So they're like, we got to get, we got to do a hip dysarticulation. They basically just take the hip a pot and get everything below that gone and save this guy's life. His whole staff recommended that.

And he's like, okay, cool, got it. Thank you guys. And now he's at, now he's at a decision point. And he comes over to me and I'm whacked out of my mind. I'm on huge doses of ketamine. I just got out of surgery, like anesthesia. I barely know, like, where I am or what's real. But I can remember this conversation.

crystal clear and he looks at me and he goes hey nick my name is dr delaran i'm the chief ortho here i'm like yep okay i just see this random dude hovering over me he's like here's your situation brother he's like my whole staff wants to take your leg off at the hip which is the right call to make but i think i can save more of your leg but it's just going to be a street fight and i need you in this fight with me that's what he said to be verbatim and i think i may be process a tenth of what he actually said to me. And that tenth being, hey, dude, I'm going to go get into a fight.

And I'd like you to come with me. Do you want to go? And I was like, I'm in. And he's like, cool. And he did have a subsequent conversation with both my parents that were there as well, that happened either before that with me or right after. And he tells them the situation. And their son is they're dying.

Right. And he's like, hey, guys, listen. Like, he explains the situation to them. And he goes, I don't know this guy at all. This is the first time I'm in a room with this dude. You've known him his entire life. There is a considerable risk is if we go about this the way that I'd like to, a risk to his life.

You're his parents. What would you think he would want us to do in this situation? Take the risk, save more of his leg, which will give him more opportunities to live a life, an active life, or take the more cautious by the book answer and do what my staff wants to do. And my mother, my father, they had like a quick conversation with each other, which lasted like 15 seconds because they both know me very well. And they look back at the doc and they were like, no, like save as much as you can. That's what he would want.

And that's what he did. If they would have went up to the hip and disassembled your hip, how would that have changed your ability now. Yeah, it's a great question, man. I live in the world of what's possible. Impossible to me is a very difficult word for me to accept to be true. I'm not sure if I do accept it to be true. But I could say that a hip dysarticulation is a massive difference than being an above-the-knee amputee, as is a massive difference than being a below-the-knee amputee. When you lose a limb, it's really not so much the loss of the limb as it is the loss of the joint. that is what we have yet to be able to recreate anywhere close to that of what Mother Nature gives us. We can recreate tibias and femurs where you would really never know the difference.

The joints compound the challenges tremendously from below the knee to an above to a hip. There are three entirely separate worlds of quality of life and ability to perform actively. So as much as I believe anything is possible for me to hear, have gone back to the ODA and to do some of the things that I've done since as a hip disarticulation, I would argue is as close to impossible as it gets. That context helps a lot. Because you ended up being the first above the knee amputee to return to combat as a special forces operator on an ODA.

Correct. So after the attack, after the injury, you get to Walter Reed. you begin recovery, was there a moment in time where you started, I mean, obviously, like, people experience transitions in life, trauma in life, and they get to, we get to make the choice. Do I go left or do I go right? Sure. You could have made the choice of saying, I'm going to sulk in my sorrows. I'm going to leave the military, which would have been fully.

respected, obviously. And I'm going to take an easier, more comfortable path. But you didn't pursue that, and you said, I'm going to get back on the team. How quickly after recovery started did you decide that? And was there any point in time where you're like at the fork in the road, do I go left, do I go right? Or was it always, no, I'm going back to the team. Yeah. The decision for me was made actually before, the road to recovery even started. It happened when I was still in the intensive care unit was when the decision was made. And it was a wild scenario where I barely knew what was real, what was not. But that was the thing that I could see crystal clear was right there.

This is what you're going to do. Quick story that I like to share that highlights that is I was maybe on day three, four, five time frame, ICU. Parents are still there going through surgeries. it's a whirlwind of activity. People are coming and going, doctors, nurses, practitioners, 24-7 nonstop. It's amazing. I'm there maybe three, four, five days.

And all of a sudden, in walks, all these people in black suits, and they stop positioning themselves around the room. And I'm like, it's kind of weird. And then in walks the first lady at the time was Michelle Obama. And she comes straight over to me, and she starts talking to me. And I'm laying there,

and I'm looking up at her. And she's talking. I have no idea. what she was initially saying. And I don't recall what I said back to her. I think it was just a bunch of me mumbling and stuttering some like nonsensical gibberish back to her. So she's kind of like, okay, I'm not really getting any way with this guy right now.

So she diverts to her attention to starts talking to my mother who's at the foot of my bed. So they're having this conversation basically like right on top of me. And they're talking for a minute or so. And then I interrupt them by saying to the first lady, I just say, excuse me, ma'am. And I said it so loudly that it actually like startled her. She like jumped back and was like, oh, this dude just totally said something to me. That's kind of cool.

So she leans in. She's like a foot off my face. And she's and I said to her, I need you to do me a favor. And she doesn't respond. I said, I need you to tell your husband that I am still an asset. That I will be back and don't give up on me. And she starts crying. So she's crying.

My mother starts crying. I think the Secret Service agent stopped crying. Like everyone in the room is going through this like emotional experience except for me. I was dead serious. And if I'm being honest with you, man, it was I just saw a strategic opportunity to get a message to the guy, to the commander in chief. And if you've been in the military longer than a day or two, you realize you know that there's an exception to every policy we have. All takes to the right person to put the name on the right piece of paper and anything can happen. So for me, that story is one that's still impactful to me. My mother tells it actually much better than I do. But that was what was crystal clear. And of course, I didn't have a clue as to how I would go about doing that. But I felt in that moment, I was probably going to need some administrative love from probably a whole bunch of people. So maybe if I could get the endorsement from the guy in the Oval Office that may go a long way. So the decision was made right there. And then I saw things quite clearly. I had two options on the table.

Roll over and die, as you just mentioned, or go back to doing what you were put on this planet to do. And this was almost, this was over 12 years ago now that this happened. And things for me have changed since then. Becoming a father, as you know, will change your perspective. You have kids, yeah?

Yeah, two kids. Yeah, okay. We'll change your perspective on a lot of things. Everything, right? Back then, being a Green Beret, being a professional war fighter, it really wasn't what I did. It was who I was.

My whole identity was wrapped up in this one function. This is the reason. I was put on this planet. So I was able to see things just that simply. Die or go back to living your purpose. And I don't do very well with the whole rolling over and dying thing. So that quickly was removed from the table. This is the only option that's left.

Now you've got to figure out how to do it. I read this book this past year that I've shared so many times in this podcast, but I'm obsessed with it. It's called BE 2.0. It stands for Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0. It's by Jim Collins. I'm listening to it right now. Are you really?

True story. Yep. It's a great book. It's awesome so far. I'm like halfway through it. So chapter four is the vision chapter. And it talks about the three components of vision are core values, purpose, and goals. And I believe so firmly in this that I also believe the greatest downfall of people is that they don't have a vision for themselves.

And that vision does not come. consist of core values, purpose, and goals. And in the absence of vision, in the absence of purpose and direction, you'll dig holes in your own life. I had Bajros Koli on the podcast a few years ago, and he shared the story that I shared in my book. And they got this new dog at their house. And it was this big, big dog.

I can't remember what kind of dog it was. And his name was Cookie. and they bring this dog home and this dog starts to dig in holes all over their yard. So he calls him this dog trainer and he's like, I got to figure out what's going with this dog.

And the dog trainer says, this dog needs purpose and direction. In the absence of purpose and direction, this dog is going to dig holes all over your yard. This dog is going to give itself purpose and direction. That's not aligned.

And dangerous goes, holy shit, this is what we do as individuals. If we don't have purpose and direction, we will dig holes in our own life coming out of that injury like you had a very clear purpose and direction yeah i'm sure you speak to a lot of people who come to a very critical point in their life similar to you as you did who have this choice of going left or right how do you guide them often if they don't have that purpose and direction yeah it's a great question um i think in an ideal determining what the mission is is essential and some maybe most struggle to determine what that is

what do you want to do or maybe more importantly is who do you want to be and that's a very kind of almost easy philosophical question to ask and some really struggle in determining what that is but without that to serve as a beacon or a guide to begin driving towards the cliche expression, if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. You're just kind of like acting in life, digging holes, just at random. So I think determining what the mission is is essential. And people tend to overthink it, I think. People tend to overthink this, I need this perfect vision, idea of who I want to be or what I want to do, which of course doesn't exist.

There's no such this thing as perfect. And it's going to change no matter what, no matter how close to perfect you were even to get, it's going to change because one of three things are going to happen. You're going to accomplish it and then you're going to be moving on to the next one. While en route to accomplishing that, you realize that you may want to pivot in another direction. And here's where people, that's where the paralysis by analysis comes in is, well, if that happens or when that happens, does that mean that everything that I did up to that point was all for nothing? And I would argue, no.

for one, you would not have been positioned to make that pivot had you not done all the things you needed to do to get to that point. And almost certainly, you've learned some things on the way, you've grown, you've increased your physical capability, your mental resilience, your disciplined behavior, you've got new habits, you got new people around you as a direct result of you launching on this path. Now I'm going to make a slice in this direction, but now I'm equipped with everything that I've been given and earned by moving forward. So that's going to happen. Or you're just simply going to drop dead while en route, which of course can happen.

So the mission is going to change one way or the other. The paralysis by analysis, loop can just keep going on forever. So make a decision, plant the flag, and then begin moving. Now, when people struggle to decide what that is, I usually give three pieces of advice. Two of them's in the book, one of which I've kind of pondered on since I published that. is internal dialogue. Is that even a thing in your life? Call it prayer, call it reflection,

look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself to question, like, who do you want to be? And then shut the hell up and listen and let your soul speak to you, which, in my opinion, rarely comes blasting through the glass. If you're looking in the mirror and like punches you directly in the face, I say more often than not, it shows up in the form of a whisper. But if you're not listening for it, you're not going to hear it. So internal dialogue.

The second is play more of the statistical route, meaning I'm going to focus on my talents and I'm going to move in that direction. A definition of talent is something that you do better than with the least amount of effort. What do you do well with the least amount of effort? And everybody has that. I'm not talking about how good you are in something. I'm talking about your talent, like organic capability. we all have at least one, usually a lot more than one,

it's just identifying what it is and then start stacking skill on top of talent because those are two separate things. And when you wield both of them, your likelihood of success will skyrocket. And then the last one, which I don't mention in the book, because this is more recent for me, is what I call weaponized curiosity. I love that. Just start trying stuff, man. And sometimes you have to just be disciplined to do that.

Maybe you're not genuinely interested in it, but start trying things. Or if you're like, I wonder what that's like. Go figure out what that's like. Because most of us, I would argue, the passion and drive and sense of purpose behind something usually comes as a result of executing on something just to begin with based on curiosity or even an emotional trigger towards doing something. That was what it was for me.

I was not in love with being a soldier. I had no sense of purpose with being a soldier until I, I started being a soldier. And it was like, oh, man, I really love this. Like, I want to make this a lifestyle. Cool. Like, that's what I'm going to do. I had no passion for impacting people's lives and helping businesses and

entities develop themselves and grow until I became obsessed with writing a book. Like, that was the first thing for me. And I just went all in. I wonder what that's like. You know what? We're going to find out. And, oh, man, I really do love this. So I think there's a lot of lost opportunity and lack of execution because we want to have

this clearly defined pathway between now and then, and that can just keep us stagnant for a really long time. Yeah, I love that last one. I think curiosity is that one thing that we all have, but very few people activate curiosity because they lack courage. Sure. And if you layer courage on top of curiosity, dude, that is like, that is powerful potential. Yeah. Super powerful. I believe that's been one of my strengths is like I have a lot of curiosities and I'm not afraid to activate that curiosity with courage. And a lot of times I have failed and misstep, but I've never made the mistake and looked back saying, oh, that was wasted time. And that was gained experience and opportunity that I'm now going to leverage for this next curiosity and later on more courage. And you mentioned one component to that is failure.

the instant we can begin to see failure as opportunity is the instant that what you just said opens up as an option. I'm actually seeking failure. I want it to happen. Now, it's got to be deliberate and authentic. You can't just like half ask something and be like, oh, I failed. I'm really happy about that. No, no, no. I'm talking about going at something to win and then losing.

That becomes the opportunity because that's where most of the knowledge is located. You can be talking about a new hat. Like, you know what? I'm curious. Like, what if we start selling hats? What if BPN starts selling hats? Like, I don't know. But you know what?

Like, let's find out. And you do the whole thing. You manufactureing and printing and blah, blah, blah, distribution. You get it going. Let's say it totally flops. Not a single person is interested in a hat from you. That totally failed. Okay, what did we just learn from that?

I mean, we went at that aggressive. We went at that to win. We were going to sell a million hats this year starting right now. Game on. And it doesn't work. That happens all the time in business and in life. in sport, in physical development, in education. Like, this is the game of life.

When that happens, this is a random example for you. That's not the case, but it's a random example. When that happens, those that have operationalized it, those true weapons, those outliers, those really dangerous people, see that point in time going good. Okay, here's what we just gleaned from all this. Was it the hat? Was it the design? I don't know.

But like, we're going to continue to dig and figure it out. Or you take that knowledge and go, you know what? this is in our market, it's not the right time. But you wouldn't have gotten to that point had you not been willing to have the courage to execute in the face of fear, which I think is enabled once we see the value of failure. Yeah, I have a great example of that from this past year. For the past couple years, we have put on these races, marathons and ultra races. And we typically launch these where it's a lottery system where you sign up and then

we have this drawing and say five to 10,000 people sign up for. the lottery, maybe only 125 to 150 people are going to get selected randomly through a lottery. So they're wildly successful for us. We know our audience loves the ultra distance races, marathons. So we had this idea this past year that we were going to do a more fun race. It was going to be a relay race in Austin, in a parking garage. It was teams of four people. Each person had to run 800 meters.

Okay. So two-mile race. You didn't have to prep for it. You didn't need to prepare. It was fun. It wasn't that hard. Just come and do this race and have fun. And based off all of our confidence and all of our races in the past, we assumed thousands

of people were going to sign up. We launched the website. We're like bracing for the impact. And I think we had room for like 25 teams or something like that. Six teams signed up. Which we've never experienced in our life before. Right. And the team was crushed.

The team here was like, tail between their legs, walk around not talking. And I came in and I was like, guys, this is a massive win. This is a huge win. There we go. We just learned so much from our consumer. Our consumer doesn't want fun.

They don't want easy. They don't want to fly in and have a good time and laugh and have some drinks, need some food. No, they want to sign up for something that they know was going to kick their ass. They want to suffer. They want to put in 10 to 20 weeks of prep, putting it all on the line, coming to race. So when they finish or across the finish line, they've exhausted the tank.

They're wiped. They're going to feel the pain for days and weeks after that. It is earned. There are brands and companies who spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, to get this consumer feedback and research. We got it for free. How fortunate are you? Everyone's soul this is a failure.

I said, no, this is the biggest win we've had of the year. Yeah. It's only, I mean, you could say it's only a failure if you stay down or I like to dissect the dichotomy between failure and defeat because I think that that is a failure. Like, this was the goal. You failed to meet the goal. Correct. Got it.

But you're not defeated because you're going to learn. You're going to get back up and you're going to move. And you know what? With your team, it has to hurt. it has to sting. Otherwise, it's not an authentic loss. Correct. And you can't, that that catalyst isn't there to drive the knowledge, transfer, acquisition, and improvement.

So it has to hurt. And that's where many are just unwilling to go because it's damaging. It's damaging to this system. And like, I'm just unwilling to take that risk. I'm going to play it safe. Most will stay in that bubble. Weirdos like you and like me are willing to venture outside that because that's where the growth actually happens.

Yeah. After reading your book, I've given a few motivational speeches to the team, inspired by some of the stuff in your book. And I talked to the team two days ago, and the whole concept behind this speech, this inspiring speech that I was given to the brand team was, are you going to be an asset or are you going to be a liability to this team? And I had this written out of my notes,

and I didn't know you were going to share the story about, telling the first lady that you were going to be an asset once again on an ODA. And I know after, you know, you started your recovery process and you started training and building back strength, your goal was to get back on the team. And that special operations put in all these different tests and parameters to ensure that you could actually come back to the team and operate as a team member on an ODA. And you reached a point, and I found this part of the book so, important, you reached a point where you passed all the test, special operations said you are

able to go back to the team, but you wanted to ensure because it's much larger than just yourself. This was not just a you being able to go back to the team. It was you being an asset to the team. It was a team win contributing to a mission, not a Nick Lavery win, getting what he wants. and you went to your team members and you said, do you guys want me back? Am I going to actually be an asset? Or if I come back and we go to war and we get into a fight and we get injured

and it's my fault, am I going to be a liability? I think that is so important for people to whoever's listening or watching are now take a step back and think, am I an asset or a liability to myself, my team, my family, my business, my goals. And it's a really hard and honest conversation to have with yourself, but it's absolutely critical in order to contribute to a mission that is much greater than yourself. And you just, you took the words right out of my mouth, man.

I would define purpose, a term we've used many times here, as being a part of something bigger than yourself that creates impact on others. And that's the difference between passion and purpose. Passion is for me. I love what I get to do. Purpose has to be, by definition, to impact somebody else. So purpose is for you or for them or for him or for her. Passions for me, purpose is for you. But when you wield those two together, you become a very dangerous asset, very capable individual.

And to be clear, what you just, the little story you just shared is that epiphany to me actually happened while I was in the process of earning my way back to the team. I was about 25% through what would end up being about 12, 13 weeks. And I was cranking out these tests and assessments. I was like five, six different seven tests in. All the confidence, these guys can throw anything at me and I'm going to dominate. And that epiphany hit me in the middle of the night with all this momentum. And it just stopped me dead in my tracks.

It was like, boom, like brick wall. And went in, talked to the guys. And their response was, hey, man, we've talked about. this like a dozen times. We don't know if this is going to work. We don't know if you're going to be an asset back here. But we want to be the ones to figure that out. So if you're able to make it back here by some miracle, you know, this is them talking to me, you know that there is no room in this team for a liability. In this business, it is that black and white. You're either an asset or you're a liability and that's it. You either meet the standard or you're you,

don't and that's it's very cut and dry them talking to me you know that that's how this business operates yeah i mean i know okay so you know that we are going to hold you accountable to that standard period we love you we respect you we want the best for you in your life but business is business you understand that nick right yes i do cool you stay on target you focus on what needs to be what needs to happen we'll handle the objectivity we'll handle the logic because for me it was highly emotional thing I was trying to do. I was obsessed with this thing. We talked about emotion and logic.

They don't play nice together. So what I was able to do based on that tribe and my love and respect and trust in those guys was, you know what, that's fair. You guys will handle the objectivity. I will remain out of my mind obsessed and laser focused on the next thing. And if I get back there, I know that there's no spot here.

If I don't meet that and I'm willing to accept whatever that outcome is. Yeah, because you had to be an asset. It was about them. And it took, dude, what was already me operating at a high level. I mean, I was dialed in and I was putting out and things were moving on the right trajectory. That flip of a switch from me to them took what was already at what I thought was max output and surged it up just that much higher. Because when I was going in now to my third training session of the day, day, beat to shit, tired, all the excuses sounding the most convincing when I'm at my weakest

state. Rather than me thinking about this glorifying moment of getting back off the bird back in Afghanistan with both fingers in the air saying, I'm back and you done messed up. You should have killed me when you had the chance. That's what was driving me almost this entire time. Rather than me thinking about that, I was now thinking about my teammates' five-year-old son. I was thinking about my teammate's wife. And no, you need to do this workout right now or eat this food or do this thing, get into bed, get out of bed, not for you, but for them. And it just took things to a whole another level, which is why I'm such an advocate for team, tribe, community, and purpose being about something bigger than yourself that affects others. Because I don't care what you're

trying to do. If you have that in your life, it is going to take you to another level of output. Yeah, I agree. Fully. In periods and points of my life where it was focused on my goals for me, it has left me empty, it has left me short, it has left me unfulfilled. But when it's been, you know, right now in my point in my life, it's my family or this business and people in this business. When I put the effort and the purpose behind them, it shifts the way I get to that goal.

And it's not me focused. It's them focused. and it changes the journey, it changes the things that I do, the pursuit I choose to do. And it's so much more fulfilling. You know, like Army Warrior ethos, I will always place the mission first. What I love about what you share in the book is,

like the journey to get back to the team. And like now that you've shared like, how the mindset shifted from you to them, it all makes sense of why you've went all in. That's something that I could really relate to, going all in. When I have a mission, regardless of what that mission is, I go all in.

And sometimes it creates collateral damage in my life. And there's a lot of sacrifices to be made, tons. But as I reflect back on the things that I have accomplished, I've accomplished those things because I went all in. And I sacrificed a lot in the process, but it was all worth it. And, you know, you share how much you were training. You share how much you were eating, how much you were studying, how systematized you got. What I was most mind-blown was by the amount of calories you were consuming.

Dude, like you share the, I mean, just in the book here, it's like, four pages of your meals and your schedule for a day. You were eating eight meals a day. Each meal was broken down very specifically with macronutrients and total calories. 456 grams of protein, 674 grams of carbs, 179 grams of fat, 6,135 calories. for someone who has done many bulks in my life before and can consume a lot of food, it's a lot of food. Yeah, it's a lot of food. Are you still eating that much?

No, not even close. That's wild. Yeah. One of the things that I like to remind people of is as an above-the-an-a-amputee for me to walk at a normal walking pace requires 70 to 75% more energy spend than you to walk at the same speed for the same distance. Oh, wow. it requires that much more energy, i.e. calories. So that only gets amplified when you're talking about running, finning, training, and you're doing more intense activity. The calorie requirement

gets doubled, tripled, sometimes even higher than that. So that's something I had to learn over time. Like the science was given to me almost during like my recovery. Like you're going to be fatigued. This is tiring. And here's why. It just requires that much more energy to move you from point A to point B. I'm like, oh man, so I really got to, I really got to be loading up. And I was familiar with it when I, there was a window in time post college football and pre-military that I transitioned more into like strong man and like powerlifting type stuff. I was doing a little bit of boxing, a little bit of wrestling, but I was doing VIP security and nightclub security in Boston. And I was getting a lot of business based on like my physical

size with what I was doing for work. I just wanted to see how big and strong I could get. So I was, I had gone through a phase where I was hammering. and down like crazy amounts of calories. So I was used to kind of this forced feeding concept. But actually during that window, I was burning so much that I was genuinely hungry most of the time that I was eating. There were certainly phases and I was like, oh, I just got to choke down this another chicken breast or like whatever I was eating.

But I was, there was so much output that I just, I needed the fuel. And it took me a while to kind of dial that in. Yeah. And play around with it. I had some great coaches and dietitians that helped me with those formulas. But at the end of the day, you're the one that's got to have it all prepared, have it all with you, and actually just do it. And those that are listed in and you and I live in the fitness world preparation, it goes a long way, man. At the end of the day, like, you're going to eat when you're hungry. And if you don't have the thing that you are supposed to be consuming right there when that alarm starts to go off, that's when we typically just start to stray. So most of that effect takes place before the actual. task itself. And it's a lot to consume, but you can knock that out in an hour or two once or twice a week, have everything you need to go, ready to go. And then it's just automated discipline of

execution. I think a lot of people would probably read that schedule who aren't familiar with a lifestyle. And like, man, it's a lot of discipline to eat that food. And it's not, for people like you and me, it's not the discipline to eat the food. What's time consuming is the preparation. It's a preparation. Exactly. And I'm also, I live in that same mindset of like, I have to have my meals with me. No matter where I'm at, I always have meals prepped.

I have meals prepped here at the office. I have meals prepped at the house. When we go and travel on a plane, my wife gives me crap all the time is because I'll be sitting on a plane. I will pull back, pull out a big one gallon Ziploc bag. And there is potatoes and beef or rice and beef in there. And I'll eat it out of the bag. with the spoon.

Sounds familiar. I got my meals with me. I remember when I was in the Army and we go to the range for a day and, you know, to give you MREs on the range. Sure. I would take chicken and rice and I'd put it in a temper where I throw it in the bottom of my ruck. And, you know, I put that in my ruck at 5 a.m. And I eat that meal at 1 p.m.

Never thought anything of it. You know, it's sitting in the bottom of my ruck in August in central Texas. never got sick was always okay but like preparation is the name of the game. I was some of the people I get to work with that are focused more on like HPW and performance and wellness and fitness and health is this I just did this with a client. I'm like here's what I want you to do. I want you to get a cooler like a lunch pail like some kind of receptacle that is dedicated to carrying food and nutrients around.

That's it. Just go acquire one if you don't already have one. No, I got one. It's a lunch pail. It's really nice. It's made by Arctic or like whatever. I'm like, perfect. You got that?

Cool. All I want you to do is every night before you go to bed, take that cooler and put it right next to wherever your keys, your wallet, your phone, like your everyday carry items that you're going to leave the house with every single day and just bring it with you. That's it. He's like, okay, well, like, what am I putting it?

I'm like, nothing. Empty. Just have it with you. He's like, I don't get it. It was like, I put my keys in there. I don't care what you. No food is needing to go into it right now. All I want to do is build in the habit of this being as essential of an item to you as your keys, your wallet, and your phone.

That's all we're doing. And in 14 days, you come back and you said, I've had this thing with me every single day, the last 14 days. It's with me in the office and my truck. It was what I went to the gym. I went to the pack and I went to the grocery store. Like I had it with me or in the vicinity of where I was every day for 14 days. Then we're going to start loading stuff into it. And I think that that very, not necessarily that's like the only way to go about doing this,

but just a very small iterative, small victory approach to executing discipline on a relatively small scale, doing that with consistency. That now becomes automated and then move on and then move on and then move on. And when it comes to training and health, nutrition, people see you, people see me and they get this like this grandiose idea of like what they want to look like like what they want to look like or be able to do and I got I got to eat right calories and macros and it's like all this stuff is flooding in and they go from zero to a hundred out of the gate and you may be able to sustain that for a week or two or month but chances are almost certainly

it's just too much too soon I don't care who you are how disciplined you are it's just too big of a shift and the wheels are likely going to fall off new year's resolutions there's a reason why they don't usually last pass like the first week of February. It's just all in and then you lose that drive and it's done. But if you go very, very incrementally, whether it's food, nutrition, getting up in the morning, hey, normally I wake up at 7 a.m. Cool. Tomorrow I want it to be 655.

We're going to do that for 14 days. And then we're going to move to 650. And then we're going to go to 45, 35, 25, 25, 25, 06. Over 90 days, we're going to get you an hour of extra time to use them, whatever you want. And you won't even notice the difference. you've made it up 45 years of your life at this point without making this adjustment another 90 days isn't going to matter in fact it's going to help you so just very those little small wins compounded is I think how you end up getting to a more

systemized automated way where it just becomes the way you live these small refinements over time I think a lot of people saw my my schedule and some people do it's like completely unrelatable but they don't realize that there's been these small adjustments over years, in years, in years. And the only reason I can operate on the routine and schedule I have now is because I've refined those routines and schedules and routines based off what I have found works for me and what doesn't. And you just layer on these complexities, which are just efficiencies to get to where you

want to be. That's it. Yeah. Nick, this was epic. Great call, man. We could do this for the next six hours, brother. This is awesome. I appreciate everything you share, what you're about, your message.

It's like, you know, as I was reading your book and just like really thinking about what I'm doing in my life with this team and where I need to be focusing my time as the CEO of my business right now, after I read the book and I was preparing for the conversation, I sent a voice message to my one advisor and mentor in the business. And I was like, his name's Chris. Like, you know, Chris, like, I've created a lot of content over the years about self-improvement, self-developing and showed building this team. But I think, I think this is showing me and telling me there's an opportunity for me to really focus on making this team as effective as possible, not just inspiring individuals and mentoring individuals in this business. But are we making the most effective teams, not the most effective teams? most effective individuals possible. Oh, good question. And yeah, it's just provided me a lot of vision and clarity for this next chapter for me.

Awesome. So I appreciate it, brother. I appreciate it, man. I'm humbled. It's been a long time coming. I'm glad I finally got a chance to sit face to face with you, man, to say that I have an enormous amount of appreciation and respect for you as an individual and what you have built here and seeing it in three-dimensional time and space and seeing where you're going to be.

guys are moving towards is nothing short of spectacular and I can only begin to get an appreciation for how hard it really is so it's a privilege for me it's just to be here with your brother I wish you nothing about the best and I'm looking forward to watching you take this thing to the next level man thank you yeah thanks man