The Nick Bare Podcast - Archive - Tim Kennedy | Built By Scars And Stripes

Episode Date: May 16, 2022

Tim Kennedy is an active Special Forces master sergeant and sniper with combat deployments throughout the middle east as part of the most elite counter terrorism and hostage rescue unit within the U.S. Army Green Berets. Prior to the military, he was a professional mixed martial arts fighter and two time title challenger. Tim sits down with Nick to talk about how fighting and violence has always been a part if his life, and how it has evolved over time through the experiences he’s had, and how he now uses it for good. You can preorder Tim’s book, Scars and Stripes today on Amazon. More Resources: BPN website: www.bpnsupps.com Nick’s website: www.nickbare.com Nick’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/nickbarefitness Nick’s Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/barelifenutrition Follow Us On Social Media! Instagram: @thebareperformancepodcast Facebook: The Bare Performance Podcast Twitter: @BarePerformPod

In this episode of the Bear Performance Podcast. Scars and Stripes, you know, the Stripes is a weird, I think people automatically assume it's like the stripes of the flag on here. Stripes in the military are your years of service, which are on your sleeve, the years that you're deployed to war, and then the year, and then your rank as a non-commissioned officer. and being part of the NCO, the non-commission officer, life is to be able to have answers, to be able to be a selfless servant to those around you. And that's what the stripes were. And you earn those stripes,

just like you earn the stripes on your sleeve, just like you earn scars and just like you earn combat stripes. So, like, is posts are the scars and stripes from, those moments important? Is it post-traumatic stress or is that damage or a learning moment? Like, how do you tell the difference between the two? Welcome back to another powerful episode of the podcast. I'm your host, Nick Baer, founder and CEO of Bear Performance Nutrition.

Every week, we bring you insightful stories, knowledge, and inspiration to help you reach your full potential in life, fitness, and business. If you enjoy the message we're promoting in this podcast, we would greatly appreciate it if you would leave a rating and review on the platform you're listening to. Make sure she subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes that embody the go one more mindset. All right, welcome back to another episode of the Bear Performance Podcast. Today we have Tim Kennedy. What up?

Welcome to the show. Thanks for having, man. What are you drinking over there? Sounded good. I got some electrolytes. Salted watermelon electrolytes right now. These mics are really good because I could hear you like drinking it and I'm jealous. It's like it sounds the way that you drink good.

It's that ASMR salty electrolyte taste. So I just wrapped up finishing your book. I'm sorry. Scars and stripes. I loved it, man. Thanks, man. Like I was selling some of the guys here. You know, I always saw you as like the UFC fighter and Green Bray and, you know, military and

this patriot, but I didn't know half of these stories. And I'm like, holy shit, you've done some stuff. Yeah. When I finally make it to heaven or hell, which, you know, hopefully heaven, I'm going to roll up and they're going to look at my busted ass body and be like, bro, you can't come to, you can't come through either of these places. You're just too broken. Like, you just ran too hard in the paint your whole life.

That's how I'm going to roll. It's like you talked about in the book, like with some of these fights you were in, you're getting hit in the face, but your face is so much scar tissue. and it just like absorbs the hits. Yeah. It doesn't absorb. Like I wish it would absorb. Instead, it just like opens.

Like if, I'm not joking, you could come over here and feel my face. You're like, oh, that is all scar tissue around your orbital socket. Interesting. And like the bridge of your nose. Like this was Robbie Lawler. And this was Jacques-Raisusa. You know, and this was Jason Mayhem Miller. And like, this was Yowel Romero.

You know, and then like, oh, let me take my shirt off and we'll go down, okay, when I got blown up or like when I have, like this, I have a bunch of scars right here. So I'm right-handed and my body armor casing rounds. When they bounce, they come back and they're like always go in the same spot. So I have all this melted flesh on my chest from where brass casings get stuck between my body armor and my skin. So there's just like nice little lines. They're like, was that self-inflicted?

Who are those people cutters? Like, no, bro. That's melted skin from brass casings. Get out of here. That's a lot of memories. Yeah. How many fights have you been in in terms of like in the ring and the octagon? 100 something.

But you've been fighting your whole life. Yeah. Yeah. What's crazy that I didn't realize is, I mean, you had a whole other life before even joining the military. You didn't plan on joining the military when you were younger, right? You wanted to be a cop.

I did. Where I grew up in Central California, like this isn't in the book. And it's going to be funny, a lot of people are going to read this book. Like, I know everything about Tim Kennedy as a, bro. You have like,

like I told you, we have these arcs and we picked stories to kind of support what we're trying to tell in more of a story than just a, you know, a biography or a memoir. And when I was in on the Central Coast, there were a couple of serial killers that were on the loose while I was growing up. And Rex Krebs was going throughout San Luis,

Louis, Bissible, California, plucking young, beautiful women off the street, and they just disappear. I was working in bars with Chuck Liddell and Gamowin, Scott Adams. And these women, I remember towards the end of the night, like you could, you're a good looking guy like you know when girls are like wanting to be are interested in you or they have ultra other motives right sometimes we can smell it you know like the pheromones like

the pheromones yeah i know it you know there's no doubt like when you're in the gym you're working out and a girl that has just recently separated from her husband you don't know this yet but then you're like that girl's on the prowl you know it you know and there's no doubt and and some some people that are been immersed in that world are quick to identify it um At the end of the night, it was different. It wasn't who, what guy am I going to go home with is what guy will take me back to my home? And it was the smell of fear. It was the most unnerving, weirdest thing to smell the pheromone of fear coming out of young, beautiful girls.

I remember, like, how helpless they were, you know, like Chuck, Scott, Gann, Jason. Like, we can't walk all of these girls home that didn't, you know, get to. So these girls would walk home in groups. I remember wanting so bad, so badly, just to be walking home. And we didn't know who this guy looked like. We later find out he's exactly what you'd imagine a serial killer to look like. He was this short, shaved head, kind of musly dude with this goat, a little almost Hitler mustache. You're like, just a total creeper-looking dude.

And to be walking home this creature to come out of the woods or to come out of the bushes and be like, ah. I found you. I get to kill him, you know, because I was a professional fighter at this point. But of course, that's never going to happen. But it was a feeling of helplessness that, you know, in the book you'll see often is one of the most horrific, most unnerving things for me is to not know what to do, to feel helpless. And, you know, I wanted to be a police officer. I wanted to be like Clarence Starling and Silence of the Lambs. I wanted to reserve reverse engineer who this person was kicking the door. And while he's trying to make some girl put lotion on her skin, take that dude's face off. But that's not how

it actually shook out. I thought it was super interesting that, I mean, the dynamic of your childhood between your mom and dad, like you stated, your mom was as highly educated, classically liberal woman who valued books, art, and dance, which is interesting, but I was more interested in the fact that your dad was an elite counter-narcotics officer who was literally hunting Pablo Escobar. Yeah. Did you realize when you were younger that that was this interesting dynamic

or was that just the norm at this point? Dude, he would pull in and like the most gody Porsches and corvettes and Lamborghinis. Like having your dad drive home a purple Lamborghini and, you know, that was asset forfeiture.

So like they took that from some drug distributor. They don't know that it's a bat, like the back then, there's no internet. There's no way that you're texting a whole bunch of people. we had pagers.

So like word spread quickly on the street regionally, but they could use that car in other places. My dad would drive home in the purple Lamborghini. You know, so like I knew I got a pretty rad dad. All of his friends were like 6-4, 6-5, just huge gigantic jack dudes. And I'm a 10-year-old shooting an MP5. I remember using timers to figure out how fast

we could shoot 30 rounds out of a fully automatic MP5. I'm 10. Like this, a suppressed MP5 machine. gun in California like 30 rounds in 2.3 seconds. I don't know if that's right H&K but that's what we got on the clock. That's wild. Yeah. And at this point like was violence and fighting from your dad or like people in the business kind of available or around like you growing up? This is the 80s, you know, so it was way more raw than it is now. You know, as the pendulum of the ultra helicopter parent has swung the opposite direction.

I would get home from, we'd be done with school and we'd get flicked out. The doors would get locked and we would be allowed to come home when the sun went down. Like that just blows most parents' minds now. But we'd be in the creek. We'd be trying to steal tires or intertubes from the local tire dealership. You know, we'd be fist fighting with the BMXers down by the railroad track. like it was just feral. And that was normal then.

You know, like this is an 80s kid in a rural area of California. So like violence was present. But I was also, we were also seeing violence in lots of different ways. You know, my dad would come home and he'd be like, man, I had to, you know, we're doing this, this warrant on a meth lab. And the guy stuck a pit, stuck a pit bull on us. And I had to zip this pit bull up. You know, so I'd be like, shoot and kill this pit bull. and then the guy fought us and it turned.

So like I had purview to what real violence looked like. You know, I'd see horrific things second person. You know, like I'd be one thing removed from seeing what real violence looked like, which is very abnormal for a kid. And then I was already immersed in martial arts. You know, my dad very wisely and early was like, if I don't get this kid discipline, then this one is going to be in prison for the rest of his life.

So they started me in martial arts early. which was a refined version of violence. That was a really healthy way to get out that aggression and refine a pretty feral human. So that was intentional on your parents' behalf? For sure. That's smart. Yeah.

How is that kind of affected? You know, I'm 31 now. So I grew up in the 90s. And I think I was one of the last generations to actually grow up where at night in the summer, you'd go out, you didn't have cell phones. Like you'd be out playing, capture the flag or just run around the neighborhood or riding bikes.

And I feel like there's been this huge shift and change. And as we were talking about last time we were together, I'm about to be a dad in July. How was like the way you were raised and kind of what you experienced from your family? And how has that impacted the father you want to be or how you raise your kids now? Yeah. I got two chances at parenting.

When I was young in the military, I had two daughters very young. I was in college, and I was a train wreck of a human. And I enlisted in the military and went to special forces. And I was mostly absent. And because of that, I got to learn a lot about failure as a parent,

when I should be present and when I should have been present. I have two beautiful, amazing, successful young human, young women daughters that are out there, you know, doing great things. And then I now with my now wife have two young children. So not only did I get to use the perspective of my mom and my dad and they're vastly different approaches to parenting. And then also having, you know, two kind of goes at it as me as the parent. there's balance and there should always be balance and I think that pendulum in that spectrum

that slides both directions of like overaggressive authoritarian dictator obsessed pushing all these things on our kids and then a totally laissez-free absent parent like where's the balance and it's different for every family and different for every child I try to be somewhere in the middle

you know where my son is he's a lot long-haired lacrosse hockey playing hockey playing kid that has he takes his helmet off and he's mad and he has strations on his shoulders and people always look at him and look at me and they're like you make this kid work out and I was like no that kid just plays you know he climbs trees

he throws a lacrosse ball you know he hits kids on the hockey when they're jerks they're not allowed to check yet at a at seven you know but he's just he's a savage you know then I look at my two-year-old daughter who we had to put one of those fences around our whole entire pool that can't be climbed and can't be unlocked

because she's a psychopath and she'd be like, okay, I'm one and a half and I can't swim, so I'm gonna jump in this, this eight foot deep pool. Like peace, bitches, and she goes. There's nothing, there's no way that we could ever stop her. We could electrocute her and she'd still be like, oh, that hurt.

Cool, I'm gonna jump back in. So like, I want them to learn themselves, but I also want to be involved enough where I can help teach them so they can maybe not have as many scars and as much pain as I went through and they can start a little bit further forward than I did. I don't know, in the middle.

Do you feel like this responsibility to submerge them or offer them opportunities to fight like you had growing up? No. Now I hope they both are in chess club and I hope that they are, they grew up to be architects and I don't know.

They both nature and nurture. I know it has, they see violence. You know, I come back from Afghanistan and I'm broken, having seen women and children killed right in front of me. That was eight months ago, literally. You know, like my son was old enough

to see a dad come back, broken and hurting from what he saw over there. So he's one degree removed from real violence, you know, and we have nothing in our house from when I was fighting, but he sees pictures, you know, people walk up with, hey, will you autograph this? And there's me just covered, a picture of me in fight shorts, just covered in blood,

whether I fought Michael Bisbing or Robbie Lawler or whatever fight. And like, he's like, that you, dad? He's like, yeah, yeah, he's like, whose blood is that? That's my blood, you know? Like, most people only recognize me when I'm mostly naked and covered my own blood, son. Okay, this is weird. You know, so, but by no.

means am I pushing violence on them. You know, like, they'll, they'll have enough of it in this world. Yeah. Well, how did you then, I mean, obviously, your dad put you into martial arts to kind of discipline some of the, the violence you were experiencing or saw or were around? How did that, like, progress so much? Because obviously, when you got into martial arts, M.M.A. was like, it's not that you UFC that it is today, it's completely different.

I even talk about in the book where, like, in the 80s and 90s, there weren't these professional fighters. You were just like, you were a fighter on the side and you were doing something else. And like I told you, like, I didn't realize you had this whole different life before joining the military. I kind of just assumed that you were born and it was like, I'm Tim Kennedy. I'm going to be a green bray. But it was like you were a fighter.

like you were fighting first. How did that progress so much to the point where you're like, you're fighting and training with Chuck Liddell? Yeah. One, it hurts. That guy hits really hard. The current UFC champion,

lightweight champion is Glover Texera, and he was a purple belt at the time. He was in our gym too. He wasn't really in the book because I didn't know who he was then. It would have been kind of disingenuous to be like, oh yeah,

another guy was just like Glover Texera. He's currently the UFC light heavyweight champion. He was just a purple belt, a little Brazilian brown kid. that was out on the match that none of us were like, he's really good and he was talented, you know, but that was just another dude that was there. He's now currently the UFC light heavyweight champion.

One of the million instances in which I fancied myself a pretty talented person at something and fighting specifically. And in walks, real talent, real skill, which was Chuck and Jake and Bo. And they just mopped the match with me. They made me feel like a child. I was the big fish in this little pond. And that was one of many times where I was the big fish in a little pond.

I don't know if it was my ego that I was always putting myself in a place that I could always look the best or look the brightest or, you know, look the most successful. And then I've totally flipped that now. Now I only want to be in places where everybody's faster, everybody's stronger, everybody's better. And, like, I get it done with knee surgery. Like you're one of the first person I call it. Like, how do I get my runtime back down?

and I still have to do a two mile and five mile every single year. Like, I'm five knee surgeries into life here. What do I do? Like, I just want to, but back then, I just wanted to be the biggest and strongest until I come in and learn that I'm the most pathetic, biggest fish in the littlest pond I could ever imagine. And then I start following them.

And that was the slow beginning of me learning what real violence and real fighting felt like. What was it that kept you of? going back and keep being your ass kicked. When did that start? When did you realize? I don't know if you enjoy it, but you saw a benefit

in getting your ass kicked in a lot of things. So the, not in the book. My brother and his giant friends, Chris Silva, they had this game when I was,

I don't know, maybe six, which was throw Tim in the pool. That's literally the game. Like, my big brother and his big friends, can we pick Tim up and carry him to the pool

and throw Tim in the pool? they were able to do it for a couple of years. You know, then I was eight and, you know, getting a little more wiry, getting a little bit more violent. And by 10, they would be missing digits if they tried, you know. So, like, there was, when I was really little, and I have a heart murmur, my parents think I'm going to die, doctors, like, this is dark ages. Like, we're going to have to do open heart surgery. this kid's going to be not healthy for the rest of his life.

You know, science is not 20-22 science. We're talking like 1979 science. And there's a good chance. He's not going to survive. If we don't do anything, he's going to be not an athlete. He's not going to be a physically vigorous human. His heart will just never be able to perform.

My parents are very faith-based Christians. And they're like, no. So they prayed about it. the church prayed about it. And, like, I'm a freak when it comes to fitness and cardio now and define what science predicted would be a level. And I think whether it was as an infant, me watching other kids be able to run faster and me just barely being able to crawl.

And then as a toddler where I could barely walk and everybody's running and I could not keep up with them. And then being as a kindergartner and watching. bullies go and pick on Laura LaCarrie and I'm like, fuck that guy, you know, and go crack him in the face, push him off the play gym. It's like I had this like permanent chip on my shoulder from like the littlest child ever. And that continued into my brother's big friends picking me up and throwing me because I'm just like the littlest dude. And then I got more violence and I got more violence and I got more capable. And at some point the, uh, I just had this taste of whether I'm little or I have a chip

on my shoulder, I still have to, not that I guess, compensate, is the right word, just to survive. Like, this is the 80s. You know, this is a different world. It's hard to put in the context of what it was like. And, you know, this is, like, the fight when I was in a teenager, those were bottles and chains and being busted over our heads.

Like, those are real fights. Not like, you know, I'm going to throw my shoe at you, like the mall fights we have nowadays. Like a real fight. They're trying to kill people. Yeah, yeah, like I'm a fight for my life type of fight, you know, and totally different time, totally different world. And I was a totally different human because I had to be just to survive. You think that was, that's the reason you started fighting when you were younger is that chip on the shoulder?

Yeah. That makes sense. And then I felt the evolution between like going from, like obviously you wanted to be a police officer, but you weren't old enough. And you had to get this massive journey of like EMT to firefighter to police officer. When you finally become a police officer, you get charged with this felony. Again, it's dropped and you go in the military. But when you were an EMT, I think you were 19 years old. Yeah.

You come across like mass casualty accident, bus accident. Was that like absolutely life changing at that point in your life? this is another one of those moments of helplessness where so wild so the Attask Air Fire Department Station 2 is one exit away from where the crash happened so the first exit as soon as this van tumbles and rolls over somebody sees the dust and the flashing lights I'm guessing seconds so pulls over to this first gas station and you know no cell phone and calls that there's an accident. So this is like a landline immediate.

Somebody sees this thing happen. They call and 10 seconds later, Beep, Be, Peatatatol fire, vehicle collision on 101 northbound and at intersection or exit so-and-so. So we get on and we're there maybe 90 seconds, two minutes after this accident's happened. Like this was super fast.

So there's still dust in the air. And it was totally out of a horror movie. And thank God, I don't know how this happened. Tom Way, who I talk about as the paramedic there, that guy is God ordained to have saved as many lives as he has saved in his career. This is just another one of those instances where somebody was driving that station, that fire truck for him,

because there's no logical explanation how we didn't run over bodies, as there were 15 bodies strewn across this grass field all the way up to the side of the road. And when the engine comes off, you know, and we see people kind of a couple people like the walking wounded and they look like zombies walking in the lights of the fire truck. The dust is still in the air. It feels like I'm living in a horror movie. This is the beginning of the California drought.

So there's lots of dust in the air. And I can remember smelling and seeing everything and stepping off that fire engine and hearing women crying and the pain of a child that doesn't know. why it has so much pain and so much hurt. Like, you know that sound that only a child can make when it doesn't know what else to do. It's that cry of helplessness, and I didn't know what to do.

I'm a child, you know? My frontal lobe is not developed yet. I've been an EMT for six months. And where do you start? That's helplessness. You know, there's 15 lives that are hanging in the balance of death. And I have no knowledge, and I have no experience.

So I've been to a six-month-long EMT school, you know, like deformities, contusions, abrasions, punctures, penetrations, you know, like the stupid things that they teach you. I like essentially knew CPR and how to give somebody oxygen, you know. And there's 15 women and children thrown across the highway and I have no idea what to do, helplessness. Was this the first, like, time you ever felt this to a full extent of being this helpless? fighting for we went to

that river fight where me and I think four of my friends end up fighting like 25, 30 dudes and that was like helpless in the sense that I should have been prepared

I should have known more I should have been a more talented fighter I should have understood human nature a little bit more but as I'm trying to protect my friends and carry out a friend that's unconscious and has his skull crushed and his orbital socket shattered. That was a different kind of helpless,

but this was the first time that it was totally on me helpless. Like there's no external things. This was, I am introduced into the situation and I have no answers or solutions for the current existing problem. You know, I'm just a nipple on a dude, totally vestigial. I'm just there. Useless. was there some sort of like PTSD from that event being that young and and seeing like mass casualty like that?

Wild in the research for this book, I found, I find, I find out that the little girl that Tom Way starts working on. So right off the truck, Tom's like, find a body and start working on them. Like, okay, I can do that. So I go out and, you know, hearing people moan and scream and I can hear bile and, body fluids like falling onto the ground as these people are walking holding their limbs and I find somebody I start working on them you know when Tom comes up I don't know how long I've been working on this person and Tom's like go find someone else okay so I stand up and I leave and I see that he doesn't start working on this person like it's not computing in my brain

that he just triaged that this person who is still breathing that I could still find a pulse on is not going to live like there's 14. seeing other people here. That one's going to die. There's nothing you can do about it. Unbeknownst me, had it totally crushed lung and punctured lung and he could hear the rasping of the breath and the, you know, he knew so much more and he knew that my time would be better spent somewhere else. So I go off and I find, I hear this, this young, young girls crying, helpless crying. And I go to her and I start working on her and, you know, I'm again, useless. Like I'm trying to, figure out what is all broken with her and everything is broken. Her leg is at this wild angle that a leg

can never go to. You know, her arm is like completely contorted. And I could see that her clavicle is broken and her shoulder's broken. Like she is just jacked. Who knows what internal stuff is wrong with her. And then Tom comes up again and like the fear of him saying the words that he said, which is go find someone else. And I'm like, which is what he said, like, she's dying again. You know, like, I didn't, I couldn't do anything. This is my fault. This little girl is going to die. And I step up to go find somebody else and he starts working on her.

I'm like, okay, she has a chance. And I go off and I start triaging and figure it out how to continue to do real work. And just in the research for this book, did I find out that that little girl lived? Like, for the past 30 years, I thought that girl died. So only recently you found out. So to answer your question, was that scars and stripes, you know, The stripes is a weird, I think people automatically assume it's like the stripes of the flag on here. Stripes in the military are your years of service, which are on your sleeve, the years that you're deployed to war,

and then the year, and then your rank as a non-commissioned officer. And being part of the NCO, the non-commissioned officer, life is to be able to be able to, to have answers, to be able to be a selfless servant to those around you. And that's what the stripes were. And you earn those stripes, just like you earn the stripes on your sleeve, and just like you earn scars and just like you earn combat stripes. So, like, are the scars and stripes from those moments important? Like, is it post-traumatic stress or is that damage or a learning moment?

like how do you tell the difference between the two? I don't know. I don't know either. Well, you mentioned, I did like that you mentioned in the book. It's really easy, I think we've seen in the past couple years, to just trust authority. And you made a good comment where you look at people for skill and experience rather than authority.

And that comes with awareness, for one, to recognize that. Unfortunately, many people don't. But do you think that you have just put yourself, you've intentionally put yourself in these positions and opportunities to gain this experience and this experience being skill and then help people? Or have you just been the right place or wrong place, right time, wrong time for years and years and years?

Both both. Because like you've been through a lot. you've seen a lot, you've done a lot, but it's turned you into this callus that is super powerful and skilled to help a lot of people fight for, not just for yourself, but fight for other people who can't fight.

Yeah, I love the callus. I love that metaphor. You know, as like how purposeful is a callus? Like it serves a huge purpose, right? Like, one, it shows that I can do work. And it's the body's adaptation to being able to do something, like go and pick up something heavy.

And that thing that I'm picking up has caused so much friction that my body is adapted so I can go and pick up more. Sometimes those calluses tear. Sometimes I have to build more calluses. Sometimes there's not enough calluses as I go to, you know, do the next Cindy workout, and I'm trying to break my prior record and my calluses tear off again. So they really serve a purpose. And right place or right time, there are so many times where I have wished I could have been

someplace that I wasn't. I have thrust myself into so many, I wish I was in Aurora when that asshole walked into the Batman movie and was like, threw a gas canister and start shooting people. You know, like, that'd been awesome. It's so cool. I wish I was at the Boston bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon when I watched a dude. And you know me. Like, if a dude in a black sweatshirt with a black backpack, sit down a black bag next to the finish line, like, what do you think I would do? Vic, hey, come here you. You're not walking away, of all. Like you and I are going to have a little chat and that bag's coming with us. Let's fucking go. But I wasn't there. And the bomb went off and all those people got hurt.

I would, I've gone to Africa so many times and I specifically go to places where there's a chance for something to happen, whether it's, you know, a radical fanatic going in to shoot up a place or the next genocide starts or the next coup and, yay, I'm there. But I've missed them, you know, and right place, right time in the military, you know, there were guys that got to go to Panama. There were guys that got to go to Somalia. I'm saying got to go because I realize those were horrific moments and there are some people that that was the worst moment of their lives, but then there's some people that was the most significant moment in the greatest moment of their life. And had they not been there, everybody would have died. You know, if you look at like Black Hawk down,

there's maybe five or ten people that had those five or ten people not been present, there's a good chance that everyone on the ground would have died. And so it's a balance. It's a little bit of putting myself in those positions and hoping that I'm at the right place at the right time. And then it's also having thrust myself into some of those where I had to learn the hard way and that just happened when I was there. Was it always like that?

Did you always want to run into the fire? Oh, yeah. Ever since you were young. Forever. Yeah. It's born with it. Like, nature and nurture. Like, I saw my dad do it.

I saw my brother do it. I saw all my dad's friends do it. One of my dad's best friends, Bud Silva, was one of, by pure gumshoe detective investigating police work, he went and found Rex Krebs. Like, that's amazing.

You know, not like some fancy kicking the door moment. Like, he sat there and turned over papers and he looked at, which prior pedophiles or guys with prior sexual assault had recently been released and were on probation or on parole and he went door to door knocking on every single one of them like just hard work and police work that's so badass by the way um so i saw it you know and i was i was i was at visibility of these people doing these things and i wanted to be like that you know i wanted to be my my grandpa

Greatest generation, my uncles, heroes from Vietnam. And I wanted to be like Tom Way. I wanted to be like my dad. I wanted to be like my brother. My brother's like kind of a giant like you. And as I'm a rabid, small animal on cocaine that's locked in a pen, my brother's just this big force of confidence and goodness. And, you know, somebody's doing something unjust.

I remember he'd just take his big paw hands and just slap them. Nothing more insulting than just a big man child slapping you. And he'd like take his big hand and like put it on my forehead. As I'm in the back, I'm like, I'm going to go eat this guy's face. I'm going to eat this guy's face. My brother's like, it's fine. He and I just talked about it. I had to slap him.

But everything's okay to him. Like just go back in your cage. And so like I'd see it. And I wanted to be that. But I wasn't. And I back to that chip, you know, on the shoulder. I just kept working to try and improve. And is that why you wanted to be a cop?

It's a whole time leading up to your young childhood. Yeah. Wanted to having your dad come back and be like, this meth head put a baby in the microwave. Not a lot of people see real horrors. A lot of people don't see real violence. Cops kids do. Firefighters kids do.

Like they see pictures, they hear about it. You know, my bedroom door as a five-year-old kid is cracked open as my dad is talking to my mom, and I can hear them, you know, and knowing what real evil looked like, knowing that we traveled a lot. And I remember being in a mall in California, in San Diego, California. And my dad, my mom, my little sister, my brother and I are in the car. We hear this blood-curdling scream and as this woman is being assaulted in the parking lot of this mall. And my dad just looks at my mom. I'll be right back nonchalantly, gets out of the car, walks over, puts the boots on this dude,

and then waits for the cops to arrive. You know, like, real superhero shit right there. No, like anything could have happened. His kids and his wife's wife is in the car. Like, that guy could have had a gun. could have had a knife. Like, there was not a moment of concern or hesitation on his part. He's just like, I'll be right back.

And he walks out there. Seeing, you know, my best friend's dad, Bud Silva, James Silver, was one of my best friends go out there and find Rex. Like, so rad. You know, like, Patty Hurst, being kidnapped and my dad playing a part in finding and rescuing her. Like, all of those things, like, they're a commonplace in my life. You know, hearing stories from my uncles about what happened. happened in Vietnam, listening to my, my grandma, tell me stories about my grandpa when in World

War II covered in Greece because he worked on B-25 bombers running and jumping on this barbed wire fence that separated the men from the women at these factories, at these plants where they worked on these planes. And my grandpa covered in oil and Greece from these airplanes that were bombing freaking Nazis. And he's just like hooting and hollering at my grandma. Like, that's rad. I want to be that guy. You know, like, that's what man looks like. That's what a good masculine human looks like that's going out to do good and to make a difference.

And I'm useless. Do you think it's good that a lot of people are ignorant to the evils of the world? Do you think a lot of people can handle some of the evils that exist? I don't know. What I don't want is what's currently happening, which is they're getting editorialized, curated versions of violence to trigger some response.

They're just being manipulated like a bunch of lemmings. You know, like when I was in Afghanistan, you know, we moved 12,000 people in 10 days. We moved over 10% of the total people that left Afghanistan during the fall of Afghanistan was a bunch of volunteers that went over to do it. Not the military, not the U.S. government,

a private entity called Save Our Allies through the permissions of Department of State and DoD, like with authorities to go over there and do with this. but when I come back, I was hearing the wildest, most inaccurate recountings of what happened. Both me personally, like,

oh man, I heard you're over there, like totally wild, wild west, just like loosey-goosey. I was like, you have no idea who I was working for. You have no idea how I got there. Like, clearly I didn't just get on a plane fly into Afghanistan.

If you could tell me how to do that, fantastic, really interested. Like the layers of approval all the way up to the gym, joint chiefs of staff, like all the way to the top. But they don't care, right? They have whatever confirmation bias they're looking for to hate me for whatever reasons. And then hearing them recount what they heard on the news. Like, that's not what happened. That's not the truth. Like, you have portions of violence that you think you understand, but you don't understand

what happened. So I pity a lot of the general population right now because they're just being manipulated everywhere that they turn and not getting real truth. about some of the horrible things that like Ukraine's another example like does anybody really know what's happening there like what are they in Russian propaganda are they in Ukraine propaganda you know like Pelosi just went over there you know like are you getting American propaganda like what I guess we have to refer to the Ministry of Truth or whatever it's called now like to find the real information or the which is not real like it's just them telling whatever's convenient for them there's a long answer to your question of do I think people can handle it I think people can

always handle truth. The actual truth. Actual truth. That's always the best. The truth will out. But the truth isn't always sexy. No, it doesn't. It doesn't always sell. No, it doesn't. It doesn't sell advertising. It doesn't make people look cool. But like, that doesn't make it less valuable. You know, the truth is still the most priceless thing ever. And one of the things I love, like about podcasts is we don't have to have talking points, right? I don't have to have these little bullets of like this long form communication where we can get into the nuance and we can get into all the different shades of gray that any single, like we talk about abortion right now, like the hottest topic that everybody wants to talk about. And like we could spend two,

three, four, five hours or I could open my phone, go to Twitter and I could look at whatever, the 40 characters that you're allowed to drop on there in some nonsensical bullshit. you're like, no, let's put some logic and some common sense back into the human nature and put truth. And people are gravitating towards real experts and people that are just saying what they think is to be the real truth. And I think more so now, the pendulum has been swinging where we went from, you know, like the huge media is being able to control everything. Now it's just like totally swinging the other direction where people just want truth. So I think there's start, they're starting to see through the smoke and mirrors,

and they just want truth. It's past the headlines. It's what's beneath the headlines, right? And you see people, it's a clear example. Like, there can be a story that's published, and I could go and see the headline of that story, which doesn't match the body text of that story. And then instantly, I'm creating this story out of the headline,

and I go to you and I share this story that I've created through the headline and you pass them to someone else. And before we know it, there's this brand new story that's not factual. It's based off of 10 words. Yeah. That's dangerous. So dangerous.

And it's not the truth. You know, it's the truth to get a click. And, you know, the bait click or whatever they call it. Like, if it's not sexy, if it's not perfect, I don't care. Is it the truth? Like, just tell me the truth. Was being a cop for you?

It was part of that wanting to bring the truth to light. Was part of it wanting the sexiness to it, the badge, the mission? Or what was it? Was it the fight? It was a little bit of the fight. This is still Wild West policing back then. This is not body cams. This is not car cams.

This is I'm chasing bad guys. If you got good work and bad work, you know, you have cops that would go to nice areas of town and hang out, write reports, and then you had hardworking cops that would go to hard areas where there was lots of crime, and they would go and try and protect people. Like, I wanted to be one of those. You're like, I'm going to go to a poor area, and I'm going to try and protect the poor, like the marginalized groups. Like, there's never been enough ever in history, especially in American history, of us trying to protect the minorities, the poor, the weak, and abused, you know, and as imperfect as the Bible is, one of the

one of the very clear things is, you know, is to love your neighbor. And, you know, my neighbors are not just rich white people. You know, my neighbors, especially as like a proud American patriot, like it's all Americans, the gay ones, it's the Muslim ones, it's the brown ones. It's like, I don't care the ones. Like, it's all of them. And like, even back then, whether it was because when I was little as a kid and I felt helpless, I never wanted the little, the little one not to have somebody to fight for him. I've hated bullies since the littlest youngest of age. A rapist is a bully.

A serial killer is a bully. You know, a kid on the plague gym, taking somebody's lunch as a bully. Different types of bullies and those bullies grow up to be even worse bullies. I wanted those bullies not to be around. So then obviously your dream of being this cop is it's crushed. By a bully. Yeah, it was another cop, right? try to charge you with a felony for shooting someone with a paintball gun that was attacking you with rock.

It was attacking me. Our pastor's kid, Jonathan Gaddis, I think he was like eight. I'm eight, maybe ten. Like we're down in the creek bed and there's this bridge over Ensenada that would go over the Tascadero Creek called Via. And this bridge, they stood over and they took a rock. And according to them later, they were trying to get our attention. But they took this rock and they threw this rock and it landed like right now. I mean, this is a boulder landed right next to this eight-year-old kid.

I was like, oh, hell no, did you just do that? It's like, start shooting them. They take off and they run. They get back to the car. And I'm like, no, I'm not getting away. You just try to kill an eight-year-old kid with a boulder. So as they're trying to roll up the window, I stick the barrel in there and I light this kid up. He was like, cool, I just mark this.

I'm going to call the police. They're going to be able to find him. When the police get there, the police officer knew these kids. And it ended up being like the most political. dumb injustice of him trying to protect these kids who had clearly done wrong and then all the while being able to damage my dad because he was like a he didn't like my dad for a variety reasons. And so he kind of got like a two for one, you know, protect these kids that he knew and be able to screw over one of his, one of the people he didn't like all the while ruining my

ever hopes of being a police officer. I would have, I would have had to wait maybe five, six years for, you know, everything went away. Like, I didn't do anything wrong and we finally got to stand in front of somebody. It's gone. But, uh, you're not going to be applying to your charge, I was charged with a felony as a kid trying to protect another kid. It's absolute insanity. But, um, so that, yeah, that was infuriating. And, and how, uh, how soon did that happen? Or how, how much time passed from that until September 11th? Two years. And then you went... A year and a half.

You went to the Army office, September 12th, 2001. How many people went and tried to enlist then? So I went on September 11th. Oh, you did? Yeah. And there was, like, I couldn't get... There were thousands of people in front of the recruiting office. There was only one recruiting office at the time in San Luis Obispo.

And the dot com that I was working for, Parable Interactive, they were only maybe three miles from this recruiter's office. So by the time it's super clear that this has been a terrorist attack. Like this wasn't an accident by flight controllers. This was deliberate. I'm cruising down there. And there are 2,000 people in front of the recruiter's office. Like, I don't know who did this, but I want to sign up.

And so I couldn't get in front of anybody until September 12th, where I was finally able to walk into the Navy office, the Marine office, the Army office. I was like, Coast Guard's not even real. Dakota, Dakota Myers says this is one thing, quite often. Love that guy.

He's like, I'll never, I'll never hope for a September 11th ever again, but I'll hope for another September 12th, day after. Yeah. I mean, I was,

I was so young then. I think I was in fourth or fifth grade. So it was a completely different experience for me, right? Like, it was completely different. But what was that like at the recruiting office where everyone wanted to be a part of this,

this next fight? Yeah. we didn't nobody knew what it was you know um we had juliani and bush standing on top of of things and people are still looking for bodies and um we but there was streets blocks cities covered in american flags it's so wild every time that we talk about september 12th there's always some total prick that's like oh but you know what there were all of these assaults against, you know, like, Muslims. I was like, those were so rare.

One, that's horrible. Like, Americans, be better. Like, that's terrible. But those were so, so rare. Let's look at, like, how unified we were as a people and as a country, I'd be like, this was horrible. Can we address this and go and fight this? I don't think there was a single house on my street that didn't have a flag in front of

their driveway or up on their, or up on the house. There wasn't a single business in all downtown Atascadero or Paso-Robals that didn't have a flag sticking out there. And we need that again. I agree with Dakota. You know, I don't want planes and I don't want 3,000 Americans to die. But as we have, as are as divided as we are, maybe the most divided that we've been since the Civil War. you know like there's so many things that we could rally around and unite. I don't know why we're not.

I love everyone. Even people I disagree with. Did you want to join the military leading up to that? Or was that like a trigger decision of this is what I need to do? That was, that was an awakening in me about how pathetic I am. I was. At that moment, I am. You know, it was, uh, it was me thinking about me in every single way. What is the best thing for me? What is the best thing for my ego? What is the best thing for

my sex life? What is the best thing for me? And, um, and then watching an American look back into a building that's smoky and hot and then lean out to take a breath. then come back in and then look back and super clear what he's doing. He's contemplating if he's going to burn alive or if he's going to jump to his death. You know, like, and watching that, I watched it live. Like, I watched. I didn't know what those things were. Was that debris falling out of that building?

Is that what's coming out of the two towers? Like, is that what's coming out of the World Trade Center? No, that's an American jumping to his death so he didn't burn alive. Because it's getting hotter. It's getting hotter. It's getting hotter. There's less air. There's less air.

less air. He's getting more scared. He tried one more time to make it back to the fire escape and to the staircase. And the staircase was completely engulfed in flames. And then somebody else came back from the staircase and said, man, I just saw Jim go down there. And he made it like one floor. And then he passed out and he's dead. I can see his body. I don't go down there.

Imagine the conversations they're having up there. Yeah. These are grown men with families, women, beautiful dresses working in New York. they're looking down and they're having to choose between burning alive or jumping to their death. I'm not cool with bullies. And I'm not cool with bullies, bullying Americans. And, man, I just had to do something.

And I was so not doing anything then. I was just such a piece of shit. That was obviously a life-changing pivotal point in your life for everything after that then. It's trending. It started trending. It's not like I became a good person. You know, I became a person that made a choice to start doing something that mattered. And in the action of doing that choice, I made many, many more bad choices.

You know, like throwing a grenade the moment it goes off, I would have done anything and be able to pull that grenade back. You know, opening my mouth to my boss to John McPhee and being like, all right, you know, you should have taken me on this helicopter assault force mission because, I'm so badass. You know, I said E5 brand new to the team on my first combat deployment, like a total piece of shit. But I still said that, still did that. So it wasn't like I all of a sudden became a good or perfect person.

Like I was still a human flawed in every imaginable way and continued to make many bad decisions. But I started trending in the right direction. And you went 18 X-ray program selection. Yep. Q-course, Sear, whole special forces route, first deployment was Iraq, 2006. Yeah. What was that experience?

Like, because obviously super kinetic time of war. Yeah. Was it, I don't want to say everything you hoped for, but was it the fight you were looking for? No, it was, there were no fights. Like, we just smashed everybody. Like, it is wild to see when there's a singular focus of all of the American might on a single entity. Well, there's two entities. There's bin Laden and there was

Zarqawi. But in Iraq, Zarkawi was the number one bad guy in the country and the number two bad guy in the world. And Delta Force, seal teams, like this was pre-Marsok, but like the versions of the recon marines, the British

SAS, Army Rangers, the Army Green Berets SIF, the was a special unit within the Green Berets. all of that looking for one dude. You know the book about Chris Kyle, American sniper, that was taking place at the exact same time.

Chris Kyle was there hunting these same people. All of that was looking for one bad dude. And when I say we kicked everyone's ass, nobody had a chance. There was no fight. It was complete American dominance in every single corner when you look at like the Ramottis and the Fallujah's. Those were fights.

When we came in there, it was devastation. Like nobody stood a chance. chance, like, woe to them to even reach for a gun or to pull a trigger because them and everyone around them would immediately die. I thought, like, this is the ignorance of young men. This is the arrogance of youth, especially around violence. Like, I thought I knew what violence and fighting was, and I wanted it so bad. And then it was until Afghanistan where I really saw it.

And then I really understood the horrors of war. and, you know, it's just like, man, I don't want this. How different were those two deployments? Oh, they're different. Obviously, they're different countries, but they're like different worlds. They're different experiences. They went from me being on a 12-man ODA part of this joint special operations command, like Delta Force-driven combat unit, this task force, to,

I'm by myself in Afghanistan as a level one sniper hopping from mission to mission by myself. Like, you know, going from getting my ass kicked and having multiple metavax to come in to pick up my friends to nobody got hurt, nobody got wounded. We just kicked everyone's ass. These could not be more different. Would you say, I mean, was it was the most tragic or the most things? memorable but rememberable mission in Afghanistan when you guys went from, I think it was like 150 plus miles to cop anaconda for resupply mission. Yep. Was that one you still look back on and say that was, that was one for the books?

Yeah, that's one where I was just not useless, but helpless. I like that feeling again where the IED goes off, the Humvee in front of me gets destroyed, ends up on the hood. Everybody in that vehicle dies. And that's the beginning of a three-day gunfight. A gunfight where we run out of bullets. A gunfight where AC130, Specter gunships are flying over us, and they run out of bullets.

You know, it's a gunfight where it's the 24 of us, the Czech Special Forces guys and the Special Forces ODA that I was with, versus 700 Taliban and Iranian warfighters. like, this sucks. You know, this is, this is war and this is the war that nobody writes about. This is the war, you know, I was like, I have other dudes shit and bile running down the front of me, and I have my own running down the back of me, and I haven't slept, and I have overpressure sickness, and I'm concussed.

I'm at altitude. And we're 20 minutes into this gunfight. You know, like, that sucks. Was it ever the thought of, I'm not coming back from this one? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I thought I was, I mean, there were multiple times where I, like, had burrowed myself like a little gopher into the ground just to get an extra couple of inches of cover. And me looking out being like, can I make it to another vehicle to try and find some more ammo because I have no more on me?

Or is there a body, a dead body nearby that I can go steal his ammo from? There are multiple times. We're like, there's no way I'm getting out of this. one of them was like three minutes into the gunfight. Bomb goes off. Everybody in the vehicle is what I think dead. Irish Mike pulls our Humvee up to the back of this base of this hill. Mike Kay is up in the turret on this 50 Cal and he's just like laying hell to everything that moved or anything that flashed or anything that glimmered as like RPGs are skipping off of us and rounds are impacting the window.

and Mike, Irish Mike, who's the driver seat, is like, oh my God, those guys in that vehicle are still moving. They're way down there, Mike. And we're now up here, and that is where the ambush started, which we call the X and the kill zone.

If we go back down there, they called a kill zone for a reason, Mike, just throwing this out there. He's like, cool, I'm going to go get them. I was like, no, don't do you. Don't know, do it. Can we talk about this? Are there other options here? And he opens the door.

And I was like, golly, here we go. I'm like, I'm like, I'll let him run. down there. So I run with him. And we get down there and I drag this half body. You know, this guy's pretty much missing from his belly button down his body. And he's stuck underneath this turret. And as I pull him out like his intestines are rolling out underneath him. And Irish Mike is grabbing this other guy that's still screaming. And we get maybe two or three meters from this Humvee and the ambush line. So when you do an ambush, the vehicle comes into your kill zone. You initiate the ambush. You kill everything in there.

and then you have the assault line comes across where the ambush location is to finish everything off that's in there. Well, we're now back on the kill zone when the ambush assault line comes to cross the objective. And I'm just looking at these Taliban guys coming out of the woods out of this little tree line and I'm holding a half a body and I have this long rifle. I'm like, cool, I'm dead. This was fun. You know, thanks God.

We had a good run. and Mike Keller in the 50 Cal just vaporizes all of these guys that are 15 meters from me I don't even I could see their fate like I could see the freckles on their faces

and um if you've ever had a 50 Cal pat you know it's 3,000 feet per second and it's a bullet that's like the size of a rocket that passes your head it felt like it's getting concussed every time one of these bullets goes over

and I don't know how he like thread the needle of shooting these 50 cow rounds in and around Mike, Irish, and myself, as we're carrying these two bodies, hitting bad guys on the other side of us as he's in elevated. I don't even know how he did that. These bodies vaporized. They disappear and I get back. We're now five minutes into this gunfight.

And I've almost died twice now. And we still have three days to go. So like, this sucks. You get to a point where you tell yourself, I've missed death so many times. And it's probably going to come at some point. Fuck it. I'm just going to full send.

Yeah, I'm full send. Yeah. I, uh, why stop now? You know, it's not, there's, uh, my poor wife. I can't imagine. There's only one switch there. And, uh, I can't turn that switch back. So it's not like I'm going to change.

You know, like the, the moment Afghanistan hit, I went. The moment Ukraine's, starts going, I'm fighting to figure out how to get off the current orders that I was on for the military. If I had left and gone to Ukraine, I would have been like arrested UCMJ type thing. So I was like, cool, I'm going to not go, but I'm going to go and do this crazy thing that they've now told me to do, which I have to do because I was fallen told to do it, called involuntary orders. And there's going to be another one. You know, there's going to be a Taiwan, you know, that's coming. There's going to be the next shooting in a movie theater.

I wish it would never happen. I wish we're in a peaceful world. But now knowing the layers of the horrors that humans can do to each other, then I just want to be there. What do you do now to prevent or avoid this feeling of helplessness? Train my ass off. Just constantly. Dude, everything.

Like, I box this morning. I grappled this morning. As I was driving over here, I was listening to a podcast of, of like medicine and austere environments. As soon as we get off here, I'm going back to the shoot dog response building. Matt Smith, Sergeant Major Matt Smith,

who's there that runs our tactical trauma response course. He and I are prepping for a vehicle defender, like how to fight in and around a vehicle course that we're shooting next Monday and Tuesday. The Saturday, TTPOA, the Texas Tactical Police Officers Association, they're coming to our building

to learn defensive tactics and unarmed combatives and arrest and control. and use of force. I'm flying tonight to Soma, which is like the Special Operations Medical Association. It's like their big, like the big shot show of tactical medicine. I'm flying to that tonight.

To go to Asheville tomorrow, to go to, you know, a young 11 alpha, infantry officers. Christening, I'll be his first salute. Hop on a plane, fly back home. To go to an NRA kid's weapon safety class on Friday, like, I'm going to do this until the day I die. And I'm,

and nobody's going to be able to say, that guy could have prepared better. There's no way those words will be able to come out of somebody's mouth. Maybe I could have done something different. You know, like as you go to hit a race, like maybe I could have done the pyramiding a little bit better. The nutrition could have been slightly better, you know, but there's no way that somebody's going to look at you

and be like, this guy didn't prepare for that. There's no way, right? But it started as just preparing yourself and now it's evolved to preparing other people. Yeah. I mean, but the green braise, at their core are trainers. We fancied ourselves to be like the most elite fighting force on the planet,

but we're force multipliers. And while I wish I could be, I could be at the next Marine 5K bombing or at the next Pulse nightclub where, you know, the gay nightclub where that guy goes in to shoots all the gays because he didn't like the gays because he's a crazy psychotic fanatic. Like I wish I could have been there hanging out with my gay buddies, but I wasn't.

But maybe I could transfer me that would be, you know? and we're training thousands of people every single year now. And now we know that the people that we are training have been in the right places at the right time, at the right moment when these things happen. And they have been thrust sometimes voluntarily or involuntarily into these situations. And they have performed so admirably. And I'm so proud of all the things like three weeks ago here at at Roeley Peak Ranch. a guy shot himself. And one of our students

was right next door with our tourniquet and our IFAC, like the sheep dog response individual first aid kit. And he goes over there and save this dude. Like wild.

You know, from, we hear about a corrections officer in Louisiana. She comes to our course and the alarms are going off. Somebody's trying to kill themselves and they get to the door,

they get to the cell. And this guy had smuggled in a razor blade and he's slicing himself. He's like, don't come in here. I'm going to kill you guys if you come in here. And this girl, how badass is this? Opens the door, goes in there, fights this blade from this guy's hands.

And she's just like covered in this dude's blood, gets the weapon away, subdues him, and then puts a tourniquet on him and saves his life. Like, that's what I'm talking about. That's awesome stuff. We're doing thousands of these people a year now. How did the sheep dog response evolve like that? Like, when you first started it, what was the goal of it? this right here. This was, I was overseas and these shootings just, these, these active shooters just kept

happening. It was like, why can't me or any of my friends be here? Like, why couldn't one of, why couldn't Matt Smith or Justin Jones or Justin Lakin, you know, or a Yaku Kalili? Like, have you met any of my dudes? I haven't know. Do they are, they're badass. They're so rad. Um, you should follow my Instagram. I'll send you a couple of them. Like Matt Smith, 25 year special. Sergeant Major, you know, worked for Delta Force. You know, he was the sergeant major of the dive school, the combat dive school. Like, this dude is a 280 pound, just bear of a human. Good shooter, good fighter, an amazing medic.

And, well, that's the second office end to the left. You know, then go to the next one. You got Justin Jones, Marine Recong guy. You know, then you go to the next one. You got Justin Lakin. He was Army Green Beret. You go to the next one, you got Yako Kalili, who is a black belt and jujitsu professional fighter. and he taught special operations combatives to special forces

while he was in the military for 20 years. This is just the hallway of badasses in this office. And like, why couldn't any of those guys have been in the theaters? Well, that's only 10 guys. You know, but if I can take 10 guys, break them into groups of three, and run courses of 50 people 30 times a year, that is force multiplication.

You know, that is us being able to really train thousands of people and put them out into the world to do good. So it seems like you have a very hands-on practical approach. I'm curious your thoughts on there. I feel like we're in this space now as there's more content, there's more information out there. And a lot of people are talking and practicing based off of theory or reading. And there's obviously this massive divide between like theory and practice.

What are your thoughts on that and how? How do we get more people to practice rather than theorize how to apply these actions of being ready? Like we got the current YouTube expert, which I think is just theorizing a thing. They're watching a guy teach how to shoot or how to do apply a tourniquet in a certain way. And I'm like, you are not an expert. You have watched a YouTube video for free. You know, like nothing really good is free. Like nothing is.

and I kind of pity them because they consider themselves an expert in something like whether they've read a couple of books and done a little bit of research on YouTube about it. It's like, no, you still have to go do it. So in martial arts, a technique is only real and useful if you can go and practice it against a fully resistant opponent. And there's some martial arts that do that and there's some that don't. You know, there's some where you got like katas and like, I'm going to do this water punch

and your chest is going to explode. Obviously, that's not real. but there's lots of people that think that it's real. They're theorized that if they touch you in like five different points, you're going to pass out unconscious. Or poop yourself. Yeah. Like, do you put,

no, no, okay. Well, now what are we going to do? So you have to be able to do something against a fully resistant person that doesn't want it to be done to them. And that's why some martial arts like jiu-jitsu and wrestling and boxing and judo and mixed martial arts like the UFC,

while those are such dominant styles of martial arts, where I could take a Gordon Ryan who lives here, like one of the greatest grapplers, if not the current greatest grappler ever. And I could hand him almost any tool of violence and he would be able to destroy anybody because he goes and trains against people that are fully resistant to him trying to do something.

So he's like his superhero powers because he's able to do whatever he wants to somebody else. The only way that you can do that is through training against somebody that doesn't want you to do it. It's kind of that difference, the divide of that practical application to the theorized idea is, cool, you got a good idea. You have a great theory, just like in business.

Cool, you got a cool product. Well, you don't know until you have thrust it into the competitive capitalistic market space. Do you know if it's real? You know? Now you know. The difference between theory of, cool, you finished your MBA? Good for you. You got a business plan?

That's neat. Let's go open a business and see how you can do this. It's a totally different thing. Yeah, you kind of describe in the book, too, is if you ask someone, can you fight? Most people will say, yeah, I can fight. This guy comes at me. I'll throw some punches or do something. But can you actually fight?

Like, if this guy's trying to kill you, can you fight back and not die? And that's when it becomes very real of, oh, maybe I should train how to fight. Maybe. Because I don't want to die. Yeah. That's a dangerous part. Yeah. It's cool. The Go Rock a couple of weeks ago. Have you ever gone to a Go Rock? I've never been to a Go Rock. I mean, I obviously know the brand. I know the company. I've talked to them, but I've never gone to a Go Rock.

You would kill it. I would love it. You were like, you were built to do it. As I was at the podium this couple of weeks ago and I was looking at these guys as like, dude, this is a Nick thing. You would kill it. Anyways, their final event, it was like CrossFit kind of games, but with more endurance style events. the final event was they had like a sumo ring of sandbags and it was a wrestling, grappling, jiu-jitsu sumo fight. Like imagine the CrossFit games and the final event was a fight in a sandbag pit. Was this the Go-Ruck games? There's the Go-Ruck games. I heard them talking about this, actually. It was crazy.

It was so awesome. And it's like finally like there is not that it wasn't violence. It was competition. But at the highest level of like a sporting event, these athletes, who are amazing athletes, they also had to have a little bit of skill. You know, the CrossFit games, they started adding swimming and biking and obviously running and rowing. And you had to get good at that skill. But like, can we add some more skills, like that you can fight?

That's pretty important. That's cool. Yeah. Like, we got canines. You know, do you got can't? Yeah, you got them. I got some crooked, crooked teeth. Yeah.

But that means at some point you had to go and fight to eat meat. Yeah. You know, it is in our DNA to fight. Like we had to fight for the premier male species to have the proper female for us to be able to reproduce. And then we also had to fight to get food for us to exist. And now we're like sitting back, you know, watching Netflix and chilling, smoking some weed. And we forgot how important it is for us just to be fully capable, fully realized humans. don't forget who we are.

To be tested to survive. Yeah. And thrive. So I want to talk about your school. Go ahead. It's literally right down the road for me in Cedar Park. Apogee. Elementary school.

We just added middle school this spring. Oh, you did. Me and my wife have actually been talking about that. I mean, obviously our babies isn't due until July. That'll be our first baby. But we've been talking about the public school system. and what we want to pursue and looking for other options. One of my employees here, Sarah, her daughter actually goes to your school.

Did you really? She does, yeah. And what was the spark for starting that? Like, why did you want to do it? I mean, the same thing you just said. Like, I had, I was on Jocco's podcast. And I was venting about my frustration, about education, about when I was, I'm a September kid, so they put me into school a year early where I was like the

always the youngest kid in my class. I was August, so I was always the oldest. Nice. Yeah, it had to be nice. You know, like, I'm the opposite. And you're like a big, huge jacked, like, you know, dude. And I was like this little tiny runt. Yeah.

And so I'm the youngest. I'm the littlest. And I had all of this energy, just healthy, normal boy energy. And I got duct taped, duct taped to benches. You know, I got paddled by principals. I got belted to sit on chairs. like not just belted like hit with belts, but also taken belts and tied two chairs.

And it was such a unhealthy environment for somebody. And there was nothing wrong with me. They're like, this kid can't come back unless you put him on riddle in. You know, this kid's jacked. He's messed up. And now as a parent, I'm like, that is a totally normal four-year-old boy.

You know, like that is a total normal eight-year-old boy that wants to go and climb a tree and to see how far he can throw a rock. You know, and to like see if he can jump off. the top level of that play-scape. Those are all very normal things. And we have to have bumpers to be able to make sure that that developing hero, that young human, stays safe to a degree and still struggles, still fails, still gets

hurt, still continues to have to fight. Because that's where growth happens, right? That's where adaptation happens. Like, you don't get faster by running slower. You get faster by pushing. You don't get stronger by lifting less. You get stronger by your muscles going, ooh. I can't lift this.

I got tired. I got fatigued. I wasn't strong enough. And they're torn. They're literally damaged. Like if you open it up and you put a microscope on there, like, wow, that muscle got torn. It has to grow back stronger. The bones are the same.

The mind is the same. So, and in this, I don't want to disparage education as it stands now, but it is a dumpster fire. You know, it is like you, and I know there's some wonderful teachers out there that are trying their hardest, they're stuck within the limitations of the bureaucracy that they're afforded by these school boards. Whoever is voting these people in, please vote better because these school boards have to get, like if you're a parent and you have not gone to a school board meeting or physically competed for a school board slot, like shame on you. Go get involved. That's if your kid is going to public school. If not, put them in some place that you have a degree of control over.

So I'm excited. I would love to talk to Sarah. because I want to learn from her, our school is not, like you called it my school, it's not. It's actually the kids, who we call heroes, it's their school. It's not the teacher school.

It's not the parent school. It's not the owner's school. I'm losing money on the school right now. Like, I'm not making money. I'm spending the most of my time dealing with, you know, teachers and the city of Austin

and licenses and being able to, non-pervious cover, being a play scape, background play area. It's been so much time and I'm like losing money on this school, but not going to change a thing because it's the most important thing. But it's the, it's the hero school. It's what is the best thing for them to be able to learn. It's fighting for their future. Yeah. In our future. You know, like, but they are our future and that sounds so cliche.

Them being able to struggle and fail now gives us a chance of them being successful later. us curating and controlling and limiting what they're able to do, learn how they think, you know, like being little lemmings going from one classroom to the next classroom, like here's your approved curriculum. You know, there's no exploration, there's no adventure, there's no play, there's no failure. That's not education, you know, that's indoctrination. Like, just go and put your kid in prison then if that's what you want. That's not what I want for my kids.

You know, like go, you sit down with my seven-year-old and you're in, for, and you want to, like, debate anything, Pokemon, Minecraft, LaCross, hockey. Like, you're going to have to debate him because he will have his opinions. He'll have his beliefs. And if you're going to disagree with him, you're going to have to prove him wrong. You might have to do it in Spanish or Latin. You know, like, Brad, does he actually speak three languages? Yeah. That's impressive. Yeah. He wants to learn Portuguese and French right now. He's totally 100% fluent in Spanish. He's seven. And he goes to the school too? He goes to another school that we have the exact same approach. So because our school is public and or private, but, um,

seen by the public, I have a lot of people that don't like me. I have to be really strategic about where my family is. You know, like you Google Tim's address right now. You're like, you're going to pull up a, an Airbnb that I, that I own that it like looks like my house. And you're actually going to go, like, go to end up with somebody that's rented the house for the weekend. Is that Airbnb ever get hit? Yeah. We like, hey, is, uh, is Tim Kennedy here? They're like, what are you talking about? You know, like, ah.

Just checking. Losiento, Mutu amigos, you know? So, I feel bad, but I was known. The Army,

like, will throw a stone and just like, um, your digital footprint. It's big. It's kind of dangerous. I was like, is it?

Can you find out, I can find out where you live. You know, I can go to find out where your kids go to school. You can't find any of that stuff about me. How many teachers do you got at the school? We have,

uh, their guides. Okay. So back to bumpers. Um, Not to like sharpshoot the vernacular of the nouns of who these people are, but when I say a learner-driven environment, the heroes, the students, the kids, they're the ones that are that are driving the ship. So what the guide is doing, the guide is like pick an event, whether

it's like learning a new formula for geometry or math, learning the way to build a sentence structure. Like, that's going to be this event. And the guide is there to, like, keep us in this learning channel. But the kids are in charge of this bowling ball. Like, how fast it's going to go. If it's going to hit any pins, it might not. They might totally miss the mark. They might knock over one pin. And it's like a marginal success, but nobody's going to call it success because where I'll be like, hey, you failed. But it's okay. You're seven. You can fail lots right now. Totally okay to fail right now, especially when you have a guide that's like, like keeping you on track to keep you going in the right direction.

Totally different Socratic approach than the kind of traditional model. So it's not like Monday from 9 to 11 or working on this and Tuesday from two to three. There's a name for the technique of the approach. I saw it on the website. The Socratic? Is that what it is? Yeah. So theocratic approach is Socrates, most current law schools use this.

And what we're doing is we're thrusting the decision down to the lowest individual and lots of decisions. What book? How are you going to learn? Where are you going to learn? Where are you going to sit? Is this the best place best place for you to do this activity? Is this the best place? I'm asking a six-year-old, an eight-year-old, a nine-year-old about how are they going to accomplish said task. And me as the guide, I might give them some better options that they can choose from, not a solution, an option, because they're going to have to choose of which of these two options is the better option for them to go and do this thing. So they're getting really good. Like, how many decisions do you, Nick, in a day as an entrepreneur, as a good businessman, as a leader in this office?

Like, how many decisions do you have to make? Many, many, many. How long did it take you to get good at making the right decisions? A long time. Dude, and a lot of bad decisions, right? Many. Imagine if we front-loaded all of that. And by the time you're in high school, you have made billion of decisions. Some of them didn't work. Some of them did work. I went and launched a, we have a business fair that's going to be happening in June. And every one of our heroes is going to have a product that they have to go into market and try and sell. They have to market it. They have to sell it. And how old are they? Six, seven, eight. I love that. So rad. But they have all the resources, right? Like, they can come to me. They can come to any of the guides. They can go to any of the parents.

They can come to you, right? Like, Sarah might be knocking on your door. Hey, we're doing this business fair in June. What do you think about helping us market this thing? You're like, well, good for you. I love what this, I love this conversation. All right. So how it works for you to, for me to market something for you. There is actually a formula for this to happen. I'm going to open our books. So you see how this works, you know, behind the Instagram marketing efforts that all these different people have. I'm going to show you. Is this really what you want to do? So cool. That's, uh, that's amazing. You know, it reminds you of those books. I read growing up.

You know, like you have a typical book. You read it page one done. In this case, like 400. And you have those books growing up where you get to choose the path. Uh-huh. Or it's like now if you choose path A, you go to page 37. Oh no. The Aztex just killed you.

Yeah. It reminds me like this school reminds me of like you choose your path and what you study and how it goes and how long we spend in that area of knowledge. That's amazing. Yeah. So is that the biggest project you're currently working on? No, I mean, it is the one that I'm spending the most amount of time on. Save Our Allies, the nonprofit that I went to Afghanistan, they're currently working in Ukraine, Poland, Romania.

They're like saving lives, like lots of lives. And I spent a lot of time on that. My wife was really pissed because I was on a two-hour-long call about, you know, paying for how to smuggle some medical and food into a couple of sales. cities in Ukraine. Totally missed dinner. Are they still doing the Save Our Allies' Amazon wish list they were doing for Afghanistan? Not for Afghanistan, but there's a version of it for Ukraine.

There is for Ukraine. Okay. Yeah. I remember you guys were promoting that a few months ago. Yeah. Afghanistan, oh, man, this is like Americans and the news media cycle. Like, everybody's forgot about Afghanistan. Like, I can't even, there's still people I have to get out of Afghanistan that

I can't get out. The people that I moved out of Afghanistan, I've put them on lily pad places. So I'm paying for safe houses for them to be in some Middle Eastern countries, but I haven't yet found a place for me to resettle them yet. But now that everybody's talking about Ukraine or now we're talking about, now we're like five things removed, right? What we have had?

We've had like Disney is groomers, abortion with the Supreme Court, Ukraine. I mean, I don't even know if anybody knows if Afghanistan is still a country. Like that's how far people have forgot about it. It's very quick. I mean, even... Pathetic. If you look at the news coverage on Ukraine anymore, it was really hot and everyone wanted to talk about it.

And then... Yeah. Not anymore. I had like partners. They're like, hey, we're going to be making like this product to sell that, like all the proceeds you're going to go to Ukraine. You know, that's awesome. Like, fantastic.

You're like, I have a bunch of different organizations you can go work with. And now it's, you know, two weeks later, total crickets. We, uh, we're actually not going to go forward. with it, you know, because people are talking about something else. Yeah. Cool. The last thing I really want to ask is, you know, obviously your entire life,

last 20 plus years you've been fighting a fight. How has that fight change? How through experiences and maturity and life lessons, what fight were you fighting or trying to fight 20 years ago? And how's that different from the fight you're fighting right now? Yeah. I think then I was like fighting to find out who I was. And then once I started learning who I was and what my purpose is,

then there's this period where I'm kind of fighting my own demons of mistakes and decisions that I had made and how to fix those. And now my fight is how do I make the biggest impact for good? So I just hired this super awesome CEO and I'm writing how to explain this process that is my world. And in the center of it, there's actually like in black and white what I think I'm here to do. And then if I'm not, if the thing, all the other activities and times ways that I'm spending my time, don't connect to that. I want him to fight me on me having my time spent there. You know, if he, if, if this thing does not, in this Venn diagram, like right in the middle is this thing, all of these other things need to connect to those things.

And if it doesn't connect, I want him to be like, why are you doing this? You do not need to do this. Here is your 19 hours of a functional work that you can do in a day where I know you have to get an exercise in. I know you have to spend some time with your family. I know you need to be intimate with your wife. I know you need to get like those other six hours of the time that I sleep. So that leaves me with what, maybe 12, 13 other hours in the day.

If he's going to fight me on how I spend those times. So that's the fight now, is how do I make the most amount of impact for this purpose? I just finished reading this book. It's called the 15 commitments of conscious leadership. And one of the commitments is operating in your zone or area of genius, which is really hard because for high achievers, high achievers want to refine and improve their incompetence. You want to fix all these weaknesses you have,

but while you're fixing your weaknesses, you can't hone in and operate in your zone of genius. When you have the right people in your team that allow you to focus on your zone of genius, that's the most powerful reward and impact you can make. Yeah. Yeah. I know when you're not in your zone of genius

or when you take people and move them out of their zone of genius, like it's hard to be there. And I always, even in training, you know, like, I don't want to go, I love being a sniper. I'm really good at it. And I spend most of my time shooting pistol because it's the thing I'm the least good at.

You know, and I really should go back to the rifle. You know, that in business, and that as a husband and that as a father. You know, like I try to fix these imperfections when I should just be outside playing with my son. You know, throw me the, throw me the other lacrosse stick. I'm going to totally score on you right now. This is like, zero chance, dad.

I was like, watch this shot. Well, Tim, man, I appreciate it. I thoroughly enjoy the book, scars and stripes. Like I said, I learned a whole lot about you. I'm sorry? I learned a whole lot. It was all good stuff. Stories are amazing, super impactful.

And you've obviously been fighting for a long time. They're still fighting. Yeah, not going to change now. Thank you for you. Yeah, thanks, man. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Bear Performance Podcast. Please leave a rating and review on the platform you are listening to if you enjoyed it. It helps us to grow and reach more people with the intent of changing lives through the Go One More mindset.

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