The Pomp Podcast - #1129 Shawn Ryan | Inside CIA Contracting with a Navy SEAL

Starting point is 00:00:00 what's up everyone this is anthony pompliano most of you know me as pomp you're listening to the pomp podcast simply the best podcast out there now let's kick this thing off sean ryan former navy seal cia contractor and the host of the sean ryan show in this conversation we talk about his illustrious military career his time as a contractor lessons he learned both in the military and as a contractor that he now applies to the business world and generally what it takes to be successful in the world that we live in. Also, Sean has built an amazing business and a great show that I highly suggest you go take a look at. We talk about why he does it, what exactly his experience with psychedelics was that unlocked a bunch of business success,

Starting point is 00:00:41 and why you as a listener or a viewer should go and check out the Sean Ryan show. I really enjoyed this conversation with Sean and I hope you guys enjoyed as well. Once you get done listening, jump on Twitter and let us know what you liked, what you didn't like, what you agreed with and what you disagreed with. We love the feedback and I consider it a gift. All right, let's get in this episode with Sean. I hope you guys enjoy it. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular

Starting point is 00:01:16 investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Sean here with me. I thought a great place to start would be Navy SEALs are known for just incredible training programs and process. We produce some of the best warfighters in the world.

Starting point is 00:01:37 But in some ways, the Navy SEAL methodology is also like an apprenticeship model where you spend time training, you get through kind of selection and all these. But then you go to a team and you're the new guy. and you very much, uh, learn from the people who've been doing it longer. Talk a little bit about that experience. And like, do you learn more in the training process or do you learn more on the team kind of just doing it and being thrown into the fire with people who are older, more experienced than you? That's it. You learn a lot in training, but you, you don't really learn how to be a seal in training. And so when you show up to the team, you hear all the rumors and,

Starting point is 00:02:15 you know oh we're gonna get the shit beat out of us or whatever and from from actually for me personally that did not happen right off the bat but uh my when i showed up my platoon had a different methodology where they they actually had it really bad they showed up and there was a lot of kind of unnecessary hazing and knocking people around and stuff and so they wanted to do it different it was almost i don't know if passive aggressive is the right word but when you when you get out of buds training and you get out of sqt and you show up to the team you think you're on top of the world you got your trident and you think oh yeah i'm a seal little do you know you know you're you know about this much of what it takes to go to combat

Starting point is 00:03:03 uh with a seal platoon and so what the what when i showed up my platoon they kind of waited for that ego to develop and then they shut it down real fast but but as far as learning um and i think they're a lot better about it today learning is when you show up to the team you got kind of two types of two types of seals when i was in you got the guys that are just they're just going to be an asshole to you no matter what you know and if you mess up then you're going to hear about it and they don't really correct you and then you have the guys who are the superstars and they'll tune you up and then they'll take you to the side and say look this is how we need things to be done and this is a better way to do it and this is a better way to integrate into the team or a better

Starting point is 00:03:53 way to clear that room and and for some reason those guys always wind up being the rock star operators you know that they really know their shit the guys that can put their ego aside and and help, help the FNGs. Yeah. You know, the business world has become obsessed with the military in general. Uh, but I think SEALs in recent years have been celebritized and kind of plastered across the media. And obviously there's a number of stories of both, uh, heroic actions, but also just results, uh, that, that have become quite popular. And I think the reason why so many people in the business world are obsessed with this is because there's the aspects of leadership and teamwork and things that run across all organizations. But the difference is in the

Starting point is 00:04:35 military, if somebody screws up, like it's literally life or death, right? And so the stakes are higher and you need that cohesiveness. When you were operating in the SEAL teams and you're talking about these kind of superstars, it sounds like there was like this knowledge transfer where yes, they would be assholes, they would kind of hold you accountable, but they would still be willing to teach. How important was it that your peers were also teaching versus if it had come top down and it had been maybe officers or people kind of back at some sort of headquarters unit or something like that trying to tell you what to do. Is it important that it was like the peers rather than maybe more kind of the superiors? Or do you think that it was just, no, if you got

Starting point is 00:05:16 the knowledge, it would have had the same impact? Well, that's a great question, but it's not a hundred percent relevant because the officers and, and the, the upper head shed, a lot of times they don't have the skills that the actual guys running the team are, are, are, are the ground guys, you know? So let's like an officer, most officers don't go to sniper school. Most officers don't go to communication school. Most officers don't go to a breaching school. Their whole focus is to learn how to lead you know and so what they do is they allow all the guys who are the resident expert in their specific genre to teach the new guys you know their skill sets so they'll take a breacher a breacher is a guy who is uh he blows doors up he's a master of entry and so they'll

Starting point is 00:06:11 take the top breachers and they'll run the new guys through you know through a a basic breaching course to get them you know kind of up to speed and the snipers you know will run guys who haven't been through sniper school through a basic sniper course stalking shot placement all that kind of stuff same with comm same with diving same with everything and so when you get to a SEAL team you have your head shed and they're in charge but they're really good at disseminating like look you You need to go and talk to Anthony, who is the best diver in the platoon, and he's going to score you away with your gear and all that kind of stuff. And then you need to go talk to Sean, the breacher, and you need to go talk to this guy, the assaulter. And so that's kind of – does that answer your question?

Starting point is 00:06:58 It does. And one of the things that immediately jumps to mind is there's a lot of debate around specialization versus kind of a generalist. and people debate this in terms of building their own careers regardless of the industry people debate this with their kids right should you start them out super specialized in maybe a sport versus allow them to play a bunch of different sports and figure out what they like the seals seem to be unique in that you do have a specialization but you have to be kind of a master of many other genres or skill sets as well because you need to have that well-roundedness because on the battlefield it's not like hey you only get to do comms you don't have to shoot today right is that

Starting point is 00:07:33 kind of a fair characterization it is however that specialization could change so SEAL teams go in cycles so when I was in it was a about a two-year cycle it was a year and a half of training workups going to schools getting specialized and stuff and then it's a six-month deployment so in that two years your specialization and at the beginning of that is when you can do when you can go into a new specialization. So you have about six months where you can go to sniper school, breacher school, comm school, free fall school, all kinds of schools, right? Well, if you go to one of the main ones, which would be like one of the ones that I listed, then that's your field of expertise for that two-year cycle until you're placed into, if I go through sniper school,

Starting point is 00:08:24 you know, at the beginning of that cycle, beginning of the next cycle, I might say, hey, look, I want to, I want to go to breacher school. And then for that cycle, you might be the lead breacher, you know, and then it all depends on how many cycles you're doing and what you want to do. A really good SEAL will develop all of his skill sets. And as you're going through these different schools, in the last 20 years, you pretty much knew, hey, there's a high likelihood that you're going to go to war, right? I've talked to a lot of people who were in the military pre 9-11. And they're like, yeah, we went to schools, It was cool. We kind of were screwing around, didn't really know what else to do with my life.

Starting point is 00:09:01 But like the threat of war was not nearly as obvious and people would get deployed. But they'd go to Kosovo or somewhere where, you know, yes, technically you're forward, but it's it's somewhat peacetime operations. Did that change the way that SEALs trained, thought about going to different schools or kind of the day to day operations when not deployed? knowing that, you know, at a moment's notice, you could be deployed and kind of put forward into some of the most ferocious battles that we now are starting to learn about? I can only speak from my own experience, you know, and when I, by the time I got to SEAL Training Buds, it was already post 9-11. So I saw a little bit of that transition by the time I showed up to the team what it definitely i could tell that there was a transition and process

Starting point is 00:09:53 if that makes sense i think i could see the old mindset especially of the the older seals and the more seasoned seals at the time and then the guys that were coming back from early deployments early on in the war and when those meshed it was it was it was an interesting time to be in because you saw guys who had been in for 15 20 years you know who hadn't been to a con to a real war zone and then you got guys that are like me a new guy coming back after one deployment or two deployments And they have already been to Iraq, Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan, maybe more. And so what that did at the beginning is it created a lot of it created a lot of jealousy. Yeah. You know, because I mean, you can figure it out.

Starting point is 00:10:50 You got a guy who just came in who went and did the job that the guy that's been in for 20 years has been trying to do. And so that created a lot of jealousy for a long time. And it took probably a good five, six years, I'm estimating, to kind of switch that mindset. Because the old mindset was, and it still is to some extent, was work hard, play hard. And we work really hard and we play even harder. And that mindset kind of started to switch, you know, especially when you started seeing more and more guys getting killed out there. It becomes, you know, it brings a realness to the entire community. when that kind of stuff starts happening. Yeah. You know, so, so, so the training environment

Starting point is 00:11:35 did change. The focus would be, it went from let's hurry up and get this shit done so we can go to the bar to let's not hurry up and get this shit done. Let's get this shit right because we're going to be doing this in two months overseas. Yeah. I was deployed to Iraq for about a year and in the big army, there was two things that I think surprised me in that experience among many, but two that really stuck out the first was uh everyone has this big build-up to going to war and now the big army is going to do very different types of operations than uh the seals were uh but once you kind of see it and you feel it and you're in it you're not exactly looking for a fight every day right there was this element of like okay cool like this shit's real um and uh if we have to

Starting point is 00:12:21 we'll fight but uh it's not like we want to go and pick fights uh just for the hell of it because this is real. Right. So I think that was one. And then two was as kind of a, a second component of that. Um, I happen to be in a platoon where, uh, the very first engagement that we were in, uh, the platoon leader was not there. And so everyone is getting combat action badges and kind of all these, like, I think in the military, you don't really give a shit about, but, uh, from the outside, they seem important. And so through the rest of the deployment, uh, the platoon leaders seem to make decisions that I'm not going to say put people at risk intentionally, but definitely felt like, Hey, he wouldn't be upset if, uh, he was able to be in an environment where he could

Starting point is 00:13:08 get some of these awards and things like that. And so like, maybe that was a one-off case and it was just like human dynamics, but maybe not. And so like, how did the seals think about this? Is it something where most of the people while deployed were like, let's go get in firefights every night and like, you know, I live for this? Or was it more of like, let's go do our job. And if we have to do that, you know, we're prepared to do it, but it's not necessarily something we're seeking out. Like what was kind of the maybe like the psyche of the SEALs going on these missions? For me, and I would say probably 90 percent of the SEAL teams, it's let's go get in a gunfight. OK, let's go. Let's go do what we came here to do.

Starting point is 00:13:44 let's let's we have all this training you know it's a buds is six months usually it takes guys a year to get through then you go to jump school then you go to sqt now i think the guys are going to some more schools then you show up to your team and you do a year and a half work up and then you finally deploy so add all that time up and then you finally get a chance it's like it's like a mlb player showing up on the on the on the field for the first time it's like shit here we are yeah i need it i need that bat yeah and put me in coach and uh now guys have been around longer guys that have seen shit guys that have that experience they have a different mindset and that that is another thing at the very beginning um i was i was war hungry i really

Starting point is 00:14:29 wanted to kick some ass we had a lot of deaths i um we went in to afghanistan right after red Wings happened. That was the biggest loss in the SEAL teams at the time. And we weren't doing a whole lot. And it was, it was extremely frustrating for me. And for those that don't know, Red Wings was the Operation Marcus Luttrell lone survivor. And I think it ended up being about 20 Navy SEALs were killed during that three or four day period. And so you went in right after. Yep. And it was very risk adverse so we had all these targets that we could have gone and hit but we weren't doing it and it created this it it it really demoralized um the platoon and so does that answer it yeah you know we really wanted we wanted to fight and so it almost feels like when you're

Starting point is 00:15:22 talking about this demoralization uh you know the targets are there you have the intel we know where they are we have the skill set to go and and capture them kill them do whatever is asked of us uh but it's frustration that you're not getting the green light to go do it and you're kind of sitting there without being able to use the skill set let me yeah let me try to paint this a little clearer for you so i went to first or second deployment i'm sorry to afghanistan we show up first thing we do is an intel brief in that intel brief is video footage of the guys that went down on the helos that went to um qrf quick reactionary force to the guys on the ground and the sniper hide marcus axelson deets one of the first things i saw was a fighter a foreign fighter

Starting point is 00:16:11 holding up danny deets's id trying to figure out how to turn his night vision on how to turn his laser on they're ripping his clothes off and you could see the fresh tattoo that was just tattooed on danny's ribs and then we don't do anything you know and and the only question you're in your head is why the fuck aren't we doing anything yeah who is that guy yeah and and then you see him collecting all the other rifles and going through the helo crash and and getting everything they can just scavenging off our guys dead bodies and so that demoralized us um guys that hadn't been out yet. Let's fast forward. Then we go to Iraq and we're doing just a lot of sniper stuff. A lot of, we killed a lot of bad guys that were trying to do harm, especially the infantry army that

Starting point is 00:17:09 were running convoys. And it was just op after op of taking care of guys that were placing roadside bombs. Well, then it started, once you get it, you know, and you get the taste, then you start, you start understanding, you know, Hey, maybe this isn't worth going out for, you know, that we're not, yeah, there's a bunch of shitheads over here, but maybe we're waiting for the big one, you know, and if we go take care of all these shitheads, then the big guy's not going to come out. And so you learn to develop patience and, and you start to begin to understand, you know, why things maybe don't move as fast as, as you want them to. It's, uh, you can take that learning and apply it across various industries and organizations like the young person who shows

Starting point is 00:17:54 up and it's like let's just go build everything right in business and then somebody says well hold on there's resources there's budget there's strategy there's other components that you may or may not see um when did you realize that you were maybe gaining the experience or the patience or some of the discipline that the older guys had was it just reps so literally just being on combat deployments and and going on these operations and eventually you just pick it up did somebody like sit you down and say, Hey, here's why this is the way it is. And so, you know, once you have that knowledge, then you look at it differently. What, what changed? Uh, you know, I'm kind of a slow learner. So, uh, I actually left the SEAL teams and I didn't, I didn't really pick up that bigger

Starting point is 00:18:35 picture, uh, until I got into CIA. And then I started to realize, Hey, there is a lot bigger of a picture here than sean being able to go out and kick some ass every night and uh and it it was probably a good four or five years into my agency career uh that i finally started picking that up and the only reason i was able to pick that up is because the agency has their hands it's so many different things you start to build the bigger picture yourself in your own head and It's okay. I see how all this shit is all connected throughout the entire battle space. I see how, how we're utilizing the SEAL teams and how we're utilizing the Green Berets and Delta and Team Six and, and, and assets that you're running and, and, and all these things, you know, and, and, and that's when you start to understand, okay, patient, we, we gotta be patient because we want to get number one. we don't want to get you know the minions yeah i mean it's very similar if you've ever talked to like the dea or police officers right like they'll go do street drug buys because they want to figure

Starting point is 00:19:47 out who this person is they pick them up and say hey where do you get your drugs from and they kind of work their way up the organization and eventually they try to get the leader right and we saw this you can go look in the tri-state area with the mafia and kind of how they pinned those guys military is very similar um and i think what was fascinating to me uh was we weren't being given operations to go anywhere near big guys or anything like that um but there was names that were known there was you know kind of almost mythical figures to some degree right as to oh we don't go over here because a b or c reason that's so and so's you know kind of domain and you're like, well, if we know that dude's name, right. You're telling me that the, the might and

Starting point is 00:20:28 power of the United States military can't figure out where the fuck that guy is. Right. Uh, and so it was like very weird to some degree. Um, but I do think that your point about like, once you got exposed to more, you, you learned, um, when you left the seals, you didn't expect to go to the CIA. You went in, if I remember correctly, uh, wanted to go into like more business and kind of the investment world yeah i read uh i read donald trump's book uh the apprentice was it the no it was how to get rich it was how to get rich i picked it up and actually i picked it up in cuba at guantanamo bay and i read the whole thing in like two days and i was like fucking hey man i'm gonna go get rich

Starting point is 00:21:11 and they're like well how are you gonna do that and i was like i'm gonna sell my fucking condo And I'm going to use that money to start flipping houses. And I'm going to become a real estate agent. And then that turned into a whole disaster. How long did you last doing that? Oh, man. I sold one house to my ex-girlfriend's mother for about $150,000. Success.

Starting point is 00:21:39 Yeah. And so a very small commission. And I realized a lot of things very fast. i'm horrible at dealing with people especially coming but i mean right out of afghanistan or right out of iraq into being a realtor i have no patience i mean i would ride around and print off this is what back in 2007 2006 i would print off like 50 pages of map quest because i was too broke to buy a tom-tom you know what a tom-tom is yeah yeah and i would hand it to the client and then i would get pissed off because i don't know how to read a map and uh

Starting point is 00:22:17 Uh, and, uh, so anyways, I just realized, I was like, you know, this isn't, this isn't, this is not my skillset dealing with people selling. This isn't my skillset. And so, so I went into a fire Academy. Got it. And, um, you eventually end up at the CIA. Uh, I think I've heard you talk previously that a friend basically was like, Hey, you know, are you looking for work? Send me a resume and, and I'll, uh, uh, I'll see what I can do. But it sounds like maybe you didn't know that it was the CIA, what you would be doing. Like there's almost like kind of a curtain and until you're behind the curtain you don't really know what's going on is that a fair yeah they don't really tell you okay and um so the way it was was i i left being

Starting point is 00:23:00 a realtor obviously and i was in the fire academy that wasn't really going great it was you're not going to get hired for two years and me you know i'm just going to say it i'm a white male a white straight male i'm not gonna you know i'm not high on the priority list right okay so um so they told me they're like look it's going to be two years at least before you even think about getting in plus you have all the family ties within the fire service as well got it you know and so they need to entertain all of that and you know where i'm going and um so you know i'm an adult at this point obviously i have bills to pay and i'm like well this shit this isn't gonna work i don't have two years to wait you know for for a firefighter salary just so happened my buddy called me

Starting point is 00:23:50 and um he was hey i'm working for blackwater at the time and i was like no i don't want to do i don't want to work at blackwater why not well it blackwater had contractors in general had a reputation back then and uh some of that reputation is true a lot of the blackwater stuff wasn't true that was other companies they were doing things they shouldn't have done saying that they were Blackwater when they weren't anyways long story short the contracting requirements I didn't realize there were different sections so if you look at Blackwater Blackwater is an umbrella company but they also they have the State Department contract they have the CIA contract they have all

Starting point is 00:24:36 kinds of contracts maybe they have the NSA contract maybe they had the DEA contract that there's a ton of contracts there's a mail contract to get mail and delivered and I didn't realize that so then they take all the resumes that they get and they put different qualified guys into different buckets just so happens most the guys coming from special operations get put into the CIA bucket but they can't know that anyways I didn't think I was gonna be working with the type of people who I was used to working with in the SEAL teams. And I didn't, I wasn't in contractors at the time where they had the reputation of

Starting point is 00:25:17 being bloodthirsty. And for those that don't have the context, one of the things that ends up being, I think, a challenge for the contractors, especially at that time, is if you're bloodthirsty, but you're not actually with the support of the military, as we saw a couple of times, you kind of out on an island on your own it could almost be more dangerous than if you had the full you know support and firepower of the you know the military where you could call qrf or you could call some of these organizations uh you may not have the best equipment like there was a lot of things especially early on that changed over time but depending on when you were looking

Starting point is 00:25:53 at it uh also it could have just been more dangerous than even being a seal yeah definitely um what what you had was you because the contracts were so wide right and i didn't realize this when i was in the teams co-located with these guys uh you know in iraq and afghanistan is i mean i would be in the chow line or something and i'd talk to somebody like oh how did you get to work here how did you get into contracting oh i was a bank of america security guard last week and i'm like really you're and now you're here you know and uh you are not gonna have my back I don't think I want to be a contractor when I leave this gig. And well, anyways, my friend had told me, he's like, look, it's not like what you're thinking.

Starting point is 00:26:37 He's like, it's not what we saw overseas. There's a bigger picture here. And he's like, everybody on this side of the house is like us or better than us. I think you might want to give me your resume. It pays extremely well. And it's a great gig to be on. And so I said, all right, here it is. I mean, I had an idea.

Starting point is 00:26:57 I was like, all right, it's got to be a three-letter agency contract or at least attached to them. And, yeah, so that's – so I gave my resume. I didn't hear anything. The first correspondence I got was we need a full body shot of you to make sure I'm not a fat ass. I didn't know that at the time. No way.

Starting point is 00:27:18 Yeah, and that was like – Naked or clothed? No, no, no, clothed. Clothed. Clothed. we need a full frontal with uh government was running only fans before i thought this was just a military contract but um but yeah so i was like all right well that's kind of weird so i sent it in and and then i later found out hey we we get a lot of a lot of guys let themselves go when they

Starting point is 00:27:44 get out and we don't want that and so that's what that was it's amazing people think it's so sophisticated but it's like yeah just as a picture right like we're gonna get like uh 80 percent of people filtered out that are just fat yeah right and you can't be fat in this job whether people like that or not like you got to be able to be physically fit to do the job yep so and they've already done all the other vetting you know or not most of it they've asked around they've got opinions your name might be in a wall that but it's really small community so they they already kind of know at least a little bit about who you are as an operator before before you have to give the full frontal you know and uh and then i didn't hear anything for a long time again after that

Starting point is 00:28:27 and uh filled out some paperwork for a new security clearance and then i mean i thought it was just done and then i got i got a you know hey we need you here on this date this is what your brain says that like is is it your friend is it like uh somebody's like hey i work for the cia I need you to come here. Nope. Cause this was Blackwater. You know, I went to work for Blackwater. They were basically the, the, what would you call it? Subcontractor. The agency's like, I need this many guys. Blackwater's like, we'll find them. They work for us and we'll give them to you. Yep. You know, and there are only four allotted for the, the agency contract, which is called a special programs at the time or something like that. And so it was an email

Starting point is 00:29:12 and it just came from a regular gmail account you know it wasn't like it wasn't like anthony at cia.gov hey show up here or eric prince at blackwater.com it was whatever joel at gmail.com you know and it's like who the hell is joel at all right well you know here's your plane tickets we'll see you here and uh and that's that's that's pretty much how that this episode is brought to you by Valor, which represents what's next in the digital economy. They provide simplified trusted access in crypto, decentralized finance, and Web3 investment opportunities. Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant, and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry-leading equity products and protocols, all through a single stock purchase on a regulated

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Starting point is 00:30:44 membership by visiting www.masari.io backslash pro and entering promo code pomp again that's masari.io backslash pro and use promo code pomp navigate the market with confidence with masari pro it's kind of how the military works right uh obviously once you get into the contracting world and some of the agencies um i think people would like to think they're more sophisticated but in the military people basically like okay uh here's your clothes here's your equipment and uh get on this plane we're gonna take you somewhere and then you're gonna do what we tell you to do and then like you're gonna come back okay yep so like uh there's some i guess familiarity with that When you get there, is it like academic exercises?

Starting point is 00:31:27 Because is it like a tryout or is it basically? It's a tryout. Okay. It's a, it's a, they're not there to teach you. They're there to vet you. So it's, it's a tryout, a month long tryout. And so you show up and the first thing they do is run you through a physical test. You know, just run pushups, pull-ups, sit-ups, you know, I think that's, I think that body

Starting point is 00:31:51 drag drag a 180 pound dummy so many so many yards um did you find it difficult or it was like a pretty basic i mean it's pretty basic you know again it's just can this guy move as he let himself go was he injured you know shit like that it's i mean it'll get you breathing it'll get a sweat going but it's nothing too excruciating and uh which actually to be honest with you a lot of guys don't make it through that uh which is sad but like i said a lot of guys let themselves go so then after that you start getting into a shooting package and um you run that shooting package you just run drills drills drills drills and they don't tell you at least on this one they didn't tell you times they don't tell you they tell you how many shots and where to line up

Starting point is 00:32:43 and do it as best and as fast as you can and that's it so it's like shit i don't you know no slap on the back no good job no no nothing no well i mean like how fast do i need to be you know and you know because you shoot it sounds like you shoot so i mean you know the wheels fall off at a certain level there of speed and so you just do the best you can and guys that's really where guys start disappearing there's two quals that i can't get into there's a there's a whole series of pistol quals there's a whole series of rifle quals there's two one pistol call one rifle call in particular they get probably 75 or more of the guys um they don't make it yeah and is it a difficulty of like what they're being asked to do or is it the unknown and so guys may

Starting point is 00:33:39 not try as hard or goes fast or or they like almost succumb to the uncertainty more so than the actual uh skill they're being asked to uh kind of display i mean it's all of it it's a difficult qual and uh you're coming you're coming from concealed and shooting a certain amount of rounds in a very short a few amount of seconds and then um the rifle one is actually a two minute long qualification but you only fire i think eight rounds okay and a lot of moving around and stuff but so you're now like i think the best way to describe this people listening or watching is like uh this is now moved from like novice hey can you shoot to uh are you an elite operator yes who we can put in certain environments and like you've got a higher probability of succeeding than

Starting point is 00:34:25 than most yes we we have an expectation and you're going to meet the expectation or you're not but just rewind it a little bit so when you do that you know you're shooting for a job that's going to pay you more money than you've ever been paid in your entire life you know so there's that then there's you know you're already at an elite level and everybody hates to fail you know especially in front of their peers especially when it's you know green berets delta guys seals uh you know marsauk guys force reconnaissance guys paraforce pjs it's all it's competitive you know and so if you're the seal that failed the fucking qual shame on you you know so you have that and then you have the difficulty of the actual qualification as well and do you yet know

Starting point is 00:35:13 as you're going through this what's on the other side like are you far enough into the process now where you know hey this is CIA this is the types of things that uh I would be going and doing uh or is it still like just do this we're vetting you and we'll tell you later you know what your job's going to be it's very no talking and um yeah so you don't know until you're until you've completed it successfully and um looking after all my interviews that I've done it I think that they tried to model it maybe a little bit off of uh what delta what delta guys go through and um and so it's very it's very professional it's very minimal conversation it's very direct conversation or instruction and it's just don't talk back just do what you're asked to do

Starting point is 00:36:05 don't try to get a bunch of attention, you know, just, just show up, perform and go home. Yeah. For, uh, for those who haven't read, there's a book masters of chaos that I think really kind of outlines, uh, the qualification course and a lot of the, uh, um, uh, green beret process. Uh, and what I think is so interesting about that is like, there's a period that's very regimented, which is, uh, we are going to instruct you. We are going to vet you. We are going to do all of this, there's usually almost no certainty. So let's go for a run. We're running for a mile. We're running for 10. Yeah. Let's go for a walk again. Uh, have this be here at this time. And I will tell you then at that point, what you're going to do. Um, but then there's a entire part

Starting point is 00:36:49 of the vetting process, uh, the Robin Sage event, uh, where it's very much, Hey, this is the objective. This is the goal and it's towards the end. And so it's interesting that that training, uh, is regimented with uncertainty. And then there's basically certainty in the objective at the end, but there's not a lot of regimented, uh, instruction in terms of how to accomplish the objective. And so they almost hit both sides. Is that similar to the vetting at the CIA? Especially in the next portion. So then you get through the shoot walls and if you get to through the shoot walls, then you go to basically tactics, which is, uh, driving. Then you do a lot of uh cqb which is clearing houses you know and um and that the driving doesn't really get anybody

Starting point is 00:37:36 cqb excuse me it does start to get a lot of people and it's tough because once again same thing you're shooting for a job you're being critiqued by people that you don't know um you don't even know if they're you know if it's if they're subjective to you know and and then on top of that you're working with guys that you've not only not worked with but are that are from different units that do it a different way and so then in that portion it's how does this guy think on his feet can he process fast by entering a room and not be shooting innocents and and unknowns and and killing hostages and all that and how does he how does he adapt how do these guys adapt working with each other interesting who do it completely different ways and um so that gets a

Starting point is 00:38:28 lot of guys and and that gets a lot of egos brought out too because everybody thinks their way is the fucking best right well we all know there's a thousand different ways it's gonna cat you know pick one and and and go with it and and be able to operate at the level of your you know the guy that you're entering the room with or your team so when you're talking about kind of uh different units having different styles. Uh, the Navy SEALs may do it one way, uh, green braids do it another right. And kind of go down the line. Um, what is that like? So you're like, okay, we're going to go clear this house. Uh, for those that may not know some of the details, um, there may be specific tactics around, Hey, when we entered the door, if the door opens a certain way, I go left, I go

Starting point is 00:39:09 right. I button hook. I clear a certain way. I am able to cover people a certain way. Is there a discussion before you do it or is it more so uh kicking the door and let's not shoot each other kicking the door let's not shoot each other let's not shoot any innocents and um and and you don't know what you're walking into so they had here's another scenario so then you get through that and then at the end they really tie it all together and um one of the drills was they put a hood over your head to put it they give you a rifle or a pistol you don't know if it's loaded you don't know if if it's unloaded you don't know if it's jammed you just have this if they put a hood on your head then they give you a weapon you know and you don't

Starting point is 00:39:56 know what condition the weapon's in and then there's all these role player it's simunition rounds which is basically kind of like high speed paintball and um so they have all these role players in there and you lift the hood up and it it might be a bunch of bad like dudes that look bad that are coming at you but they're not really coming at you and a lot of guys will get amped up and they they'll shoot you're done get out you know you can't handle it and then the next but you'll run through like i don't know three to five iterations i think is that how quick the feedback loop is so like literally you've got the bag on your head you're standing there you got a gun they pull it up and in the next 30 seconds if you do something stupid or they deem

Starting point is 00:40:42 out of bounds literally on the spot they say you're done get out really yeah people get pissed or it's not the environment they get upset but it's not really i mean it's just you're just i mean if you fail i mean it's that it's it's it's humiliating you know and uh and and there's a lot of shame i didn't see anybody get pissed i saw guys get pissed afterwards and try to argue it you know but in the moment like that no and if you argue if you if you're like no i didn't do that then you're out yep you know there is no like i said there's no conversation a lot of times if you if you do something wrong you don't even know what you did wrong you know it's just unsatisfactory back of the line. So when that hood comes up, what are, what are just kind of

Starting point is 00:41:32 some of the things that I think maybe you in hindsight realize they're looking for? Is it the ability to control your emotions? Is it the ability to have accuracy in shooting? Is it, Hey, did he check the weapon to even know if it's loaded or not before anything? Like what are some of the things that maybe in hindsight are obvious that they would be looking for? all of the above i think the biggest the biggest thing that they're doing is they're they are dumping a tremendous amount of stress on you and they want to see that you could keep a level head you know and so they want to see when that hood comes up you'll be able to process everything that's happening and and and and perform the scenario and uh so that that could

Starting point is 00:42:19 be anything from rescuing rescuing a hostage because as soon as that hood comes up you're in scenario and so that could be rest rescuing a hostage that could be there's nobody to shoot here that could be everybody's a bad guy that could be a fist fight one time i had the hood pulled up the hood didn't even come all the way up and just get punched in the face you know right right off the bat and so on the next thing you know i'm on the ground and you know did you hold on to your weapon when you got smacked or did it come flying out of your hand i mean a lot of just all those things. And so, but I think the number one thing there that gets guys is they get too amped up. They can't handle the stress. And then you got a guy who's, he runs at you and

Starting point is 00:43:01 might stop and it doesn't have a weapon and some guys will shoot him, you know? And it's like, well, he was running at me. Well, did he have a weapon? You know? No, he didn't. Well, maybe he was running because he was trying to get out of the room. Cause you scared the shit out of him. because you had a weapon and you just killed an innocent, you know? And, and so that's, that's kind of what you're highlighting here. Um, it's something I think is counterintuitive for a lot of people. So, uh, in the special operations community in general, uh, there are people who are six, five, 280 pounds and look what you would expect to be a seal or whatever. But I think I've read the average height and weight is like 5'10", 180 pounds.

Starting point is 00:43:46 These are people who generally don't look like what you would think the Navy SEALs look like in terms of at least the way they're portrayed in the movies. Now, I think Marcus Luttrell is 6'5", so like there's outliers for sure. Um, but also, uh, not only in what I'd consider like the physical, uh, metrics, but also I think a lot of people would expect seals or other special operators to, um, be bloodthirsty to be high adrenaline, to be, uh, egotistical and arrogant and, uh, walk into a room and think, yeah, there's 15 guys in here, but I'm going to knock every single one of these dudes out. And, uh, I'm a badass, but you're highlighting that actually they may be looking for somebody

Starting point is 00:44:27 who, uh, isn't six five and, you know, two 80, uh, with, with muscles bulging out of their shirt, they may be looking for somebody who actually has more emotional control than just the hard charger. And so did you ever kind of put it together and understand like maybe why they're doing that? Oh, definitely. Okay. What is kind of in hindsight, what do you think is like the big takeaways there? I mean, everything that they're looking for, everything that they're looking for just are just, they don't care what you look like. They don't, I mean, obviously you to have a certain physical standard but all they want to see it sounds simple but it's not is guys that can perform and analyze situations under extremely high stress without freaking out without

Starting point is 00:45:10 curling up in a ball and going in the corner you know they just want to see people that can keep their head on straight and actually think themselves out of a situation no matter how bet it is so once you get through um the vetting process is there then a training process on top of uh kind of the training you'd received as a seal or is it pretty much you've met the standard we know you can do this job here's an operation go later on uh there could be training there's different schools you can go to uh once you're in but that portion it's you got the ominous dominus welcome to cia go to work okay you know and then when you get in when you go to your uh your when you go on your deployment that's when you start getting trained by your team it's kind

Starting point is 00:45:58 of like kind of similar to the seal teams where you show up you think you know everything you realize you don't know shit and then the team schools you up on everything you need to know with that being said it's working for the agency it's complete it's just totally different vibe than working at the seal teams in what way um i mean it's more of a you're not going to get hazed you know it's more of a gentleman's it would be more professional course yeah okay and um then that and it's just it's a lot more you have to be a lot more politically correct you have to worry about people's feelings you can't just jump somebody's ass because they fucked up you have to actually you know go through steps and and which is nobody

Starting point is 00:46:43 coming from special operations is used to that so that's a challenge in itself in itself but getting over there the first thing you're going to do uh when you get to any location so the training never ends is figure out where the hell you're working so they give you a map mine was Kabul uh Afghanistan that was my first deployment with them and it was here's a map of cobble. You need to know every road on this map, starting with the major routes. Then you need to know all the back roads. You need to know how to get to all these venues, which hundreds of venues, and you got two weeks to learn it. And then you're operational. So you have the map. They tell you you need to do this. Do you get in like a car and you drive around and like figure it out? Do you

Starting point is 00:47:28 sit down with a big cup of coffee and just like start reading the map? Like how do you get that amount of uh detail and information into your brain with high information retention in such a short period of time like what is that process like it is it depends you know where you're at how big the location is you know if you're going to a small a very small location you're not i'll just tell you what i did so i took the map and i just traced the routes over and over you got to know the names because when you do this they want you to be able to navigate without a GPS without a map without they want to be able to blindfold you put you somewhere and be like all right this is where I'm at take us back home you know without anything and um so what I did is I

Starting point is 00:48:13 took the map and I would just trace all the the main routes over and over and over until I had that image ingrained literally at the front of my brain and then um while I was and then after that then i would have a mentor somebody would be assigned to me and they'd be like hey take sean out show them a little show them the the main routes you know a couple times a day and because that's your only job is to learn so you do that and then as more new guys start trickling in then it's a sean knows a little bit about the city anthony just got here yesterday take him out you guys go out it is here's keys don't burn the vehicle meaning don't get compromised don't have you know, don't be out there creating a scene. We don't want the vehicles to get burned, but

Starting point is 00:49:03 you need to learn the city, go drive the city. And so me and you would become basically best friends for two weeks. That's all we're doing is just navigating, navigating every little section of the city. So then we'd start breaking down once we know the main routes and we break down sections of the city and you know, every single section, then they give you a test. We started a conversation around like the apprenticeship model of the SEALs, very similar here. You're talking about essentially apprenticeship for two weeks where, hey, this person knows maybe a little bit more than I do.

Starting point is 00:49:36 They're going to offload that information to me. When military units switch out, they do left seat, right seat type stuff where they kind of slowly work in more and more of a unit into the various convoys and operations. And eventually there's a full handoff and then the new team is 100% of it. does that speak just to like that's the best way to learn in your opinion is like yeah you can sit there and look at the map but like you got to get out on the road you got to have somebody who knows what they're doing and that can drastically accelerate the learning I think so yeah I definitely that's what it sounds like yeah and and I took that model everywhere I went for the

Starting point is 00:50:13 agency so but by the end of that you don't even you don't need a map you don't need a GPS you can And, and the, and the reason they do that is, is, well, it's for a multitude of reasons. I want you to know what the, where the hell you're going in case something bad happens. I want you to be able to adjust on the fly. And when you're working there, everything is, it's, it's very precise times. So if you need to be somewhere, if you need to be on a target, if you need to meet somebody, if you need to snatch somebody, you need to be there damn near on the second. And 1037, not 1035, not 1039.

Starting point is 00:50:46 Exactly. And so that's why you need to know all those back routes so that if you do get there early, then you're not driving on the same road twice, going through the same area twice. You can weave in and out of these neighborhoods without going by the same house twice so that people aren't going, hey, what the hell is that vehicle doing? We've never seen that here. It passed by three times. And you don't just loiter waiting for somebody to show up. It's it's all right. Maybe you get to where you're going or the area, maybe five minutes early and then you jet in immediately, you know, on the timestamp. When you're doing this, you mentioned not burning the vehicles, not getting identified.

Starting point is 00:51:28 What are you wearing? What kind of vehicles are they? And I'm sure whatever you can. But like, are you dressed like people would think of the CIA contractor that they see, you know, the movies? Is it you've got the local kind of clothing and trying to fit into the culture? I'm assuming you're not in a military uniform. You know, what is that like? And is there any intentionality in what you're wearing, what vehicles you're driving and stuff in terms of not being identified? Yeah, it's again, it's kind of all of the above. It's it's situational dependent.

Starting point is 00:52:01 Some some areas you go to, you'll be wearing the same thing every day. some areas you go to you're wearing a business suit in the morning and you're wearing a military uniform fully kitted up getting ready to go do something by night and uh and they're all it's just different missions for different things and and and so i can't get into specifics with vehicles and equipment but you could be driving the most luxurious the whole thing sedan and you know you can think of with all the little gizmos and shit that you would think that would be in there to a beat a beat up does this run piece of crap you know something that and then you get in and you're like whoa like is that a rocket launch no i'm just kidding but uh but it's it's they're

Starting point is 00:52:51 all they're souped up and then as far as dress same thing it's you know you might be going to have a meeting with president karzai one day and you're all suited up and then the next day you know you're you're you're doing some cia spy shit and you're dressed up like like the locals and arab garms and and and however the locals dress yeah during your time uh doing the cia work do you ever get in a situation where they're you're like fuck they they know that i'm here oh yeah right what whatever you could share like how do you know that they know um and then like what do you do right and i think i think of that as like probably one of the more stressful situations you could be put in without it being uh full-on combat and firefights and things like

Starting point is 00:53:41 that so like how do you kind of navigate one identifying like shit they got me and then two like how do you leave do you just like fuck it i got a gun and if they come over here i'm shooting or you could but uh how do you know well uh they'll shoot at you okay all right so usually it's like that guy doesn't belong here i'm killing them yeah some it's not usually it's it's i've had times where i've been walking somebody in and which we can go over that in a little bit but i've had times where i'm um um controlling an asset i'll put it that way and then we've been compromised and i look out my window and somebody's there point blank shooting at me luckily it's a up armored vehicle no you're not going to crack the vehicle

Starting point is 00:54:29 and kill that guy because that's not what you're there to do and if you do do that then i mean there's other important people in the vehicle there's do you know what i'm saying so it's not yeah you could let your ego get to you crack seals and kill that guy or you could just go hey we're in an up armor vehicle fuck them let's get out of here yeah you know before we make a bigger scene and and do they kind of know that to some degree like one of the things uh in my limited experience was like there almost was this like uh we know that if we shoot close to them they're gonna do x and like as long as uh we can be antagonistic uh as long as we don't kill one of them or do anything like the likelihood that they are going to take the most drastic response it's not like

Starting point is 00:55:13 an airstrike is going to happen right and almost in some way they they realize that in these situations and so they're shooting at you and yeah if they kill somebody they'd like that but they don't expect you to fire back or is it no they're like down behind a vehicle and they're expecting a full-on firefight both okay but they don't know they don't just because they're contacting you doesn't mean they know who you are you know sometimes they do most of the time they don't they just see a white dude they just see a white boy you know dressed up like an arab And they're like, that doesn't, that doesn't, nice try, you know, and, uh, cute Halloween costume, Sean, they don't even sell those sandals anywhere in Afghanistan, but, you

Starting point is 00:55:54 know, but, uh, cause I bought them on the beach in Mexico, but, uh, so it's, it's, it's, it could be anything. It could be a full on assault like Benghazi, you know, or I've been in safe houses that have been compromised and had hundreds of fighters trying to take us out really to, you know to what i just described to hey it might just be a mob you know surrounding the vehicle and honestly those are the worst because you don't know what's coming you know it's like oh shit am i there's women there's kids there's bad guys there's good guys that it's complex yeah i think that's one of the other uh pieces of war in general that people uh forget we had a uh

Starting point is 00:56:35 gentleman who's on from the Intel community. And he was talking about like in Russia, Ukraine, everyone wants to say good guy, bad guy. And war is just fucking complex, right? The good guys can do bad things intentionally or unintentionally. The bad guys can do good things intentionally or unintentionally. And so that complexity from like a macro standpoint or a macro analysis, okay, I think people can kind of wrap their heads around it. But what you just described, you're sitting in a vehicle in a foreign land where you've been compromised and you're getting surrounded that alone if you hadn't passed all the vetting and have the emotional control a lot of people who i mean we saw it literally in 2020 there's cops who just slam on the gas yeah right

Starting point is 00:57:18 and it's like it's a human instinct it's not a i hate these people it's not it's like i'm fucking scared yeah and you can't do that though because if you do that we recede on the news Yep. Right. Yep. Which revert back to that training I was talking about where they pull the hood up. You're in scenario, right? Well, now it's real. You're in scenario. And yeah, people do. They think it's black and white. But if you're surrounded by, you know, 300 people and 10 of them are bad guys and they're shooting at you, they shoot at you. You see them and then or they're shooting at you. then they stop they hand the they hand their ak-47 to the pregnant woman standing next to them now you the first thing you see is a pregnant woman holding an ak-47 what do you do while you're being shot at it's crazy you know so it really chaps my ass when people are so quick to you know burn our guys down when you were doing this this is uh like 2010s uh 2012 2013 or what time my last my last pump with the agency was 2015 2015 okay so in 20 uh 2008 and 9 when i was in iraq

Starting point is 00:58:28 there was already talk of like hey if we violate the rules of engagement hey if we accidentally kill somebody uh that we're not supposed to kill or all of those types of things you're going to end up on the news you're going to get arrested like there was already this fear of the monday morning quarterback on these situations. Now the positive argument would have been, it made us think more critically about what we were doing. And so we didn't do dumb shit because there was always this fear that, that it would be, uh, known and, and, uh, uh, kind of punishment for it. The downside is there's a hell of a lot of situations. I am 100% positive dudes probably acted slower than they should have. Uh, thankfully in many cases, people didn't die. Some of them,

Starting point is 00:59:11 maybe they did uh because they were scared right is that also true inside of the agencies as well or was that just like more of a military thing where it felt like uh there was extra scrutiny during those times i i've never i don't think that's an agency thing i think that's a military thing uh i think that's yeah that's a political type thing yeah and um you know they were pretty good about shield lifting the reins and letting us do what we need to do to keep everybody safe and and and you know get rid of the bad guys um but i know exactly what you're talking about and it was that time frame uh we were i was with the agency and the marine corps was actually going to do the biggest push since fallujah and um helman province and the new roes came out from the obama

Starting point is 01:00:04 administration it was if you're shot at and the enemy drops their rifle and you shoot you're done you're going to jail and so yeah i think that got a lot of people killed that shouldn't have been killed because he chopped the legs off of the guys out there doing the job you know this episode is brought to you by bullish the bullish exchange leverages innovations of defy and a regulated framework so you can execute fast reliable trades with tight spreads even in volatile markets. Bullish's total trading volumes have now exceeded $100 billion since it launched in November 2021. Bullish offers industry-leading order depth. It's one of the deepest markets on the planet for Bitcoin and ETH. And now with its new Longhorn product release,

Starting point is 01:00:48 there are more reasons to be bullish. They've got tighter spreads all the time and new ways to customize how you generate income on your idle assets. Learn more at bullish.com and follow at Bullish on Twitter today. This episode is brought to you by Compass Mining, the world's largest marketplace for mining hardware and hosting with compass everyone can mine bitcoin you can do it at home or in one of their 23 hosting facilities around the world all you need to do to start mining your own bitcoin is go to compass mining.io today again if you want to get into bitcoin mining go check out compass mining.io today i've told a story before, uh, 2008, two 33 o'clock in the morning, uh, we're rolling down a known place where our

Starting point is 01:01:31 IEDs, we refer to it as IED alley. I think almost every road in Iraq at the time was probably known as IED alley. Um, and, uh, it goes off, lifts up the first truck, slams down. Uh, we kind of go into, you know, our normal, uh, procedure and the truck that I'm in, we see a dude, uh, two guys running across a field in the middle of the night with fucking guns he has to call for permission to engage and he calls and they tell him at first no calls again no finally by third or fourth time they're like go ahead and so long story short is eventually guys go out there go down uh and they walk into an ambush and i remember just saying to myself like again you are in a war zone an ied just went off and there's two dudes at fucking three o'clock in the morning and run through the

Starting point is 01:02:24 field with guns yeah i don't think that they're going to the store yeah right you know tight and so like again it's this weird complex thing because you understand why they're coming up with the rules because there had been situations that had been uh negative they're trying to cover their asses the fact that you're calling i mean it was just like this crazy situation and i'm thankful that i saw the situation because i understand it better but it also highlighted like there's no way people in the media or kind of the mainstream audience can quite understand how complex those situations are where so it sounds like maybe the agency was actually a better place to operate because you didn't have to deal with some of that complexity and it was more so

Starting point is 01:02:59 just get your job done yeah definitely i was in a similar situation uh because what you're talking about in the seal teams and it was a no shoot and that i still regret it to this day yeah but um But yeah, I didn't have to deal with that at the agency. Got it. You mentioned earlier some pretty hairy situations. Your safe house gets compromised, et cetera. Is there one situation that's like the most dangerous that you could describe in some degree of detail in terms of either you were like, oh, fuck, like we're not getting out

Starting point is 01:03:30 of here or in hindsight, it may have been really, really bad, but maybe didn't even realize it at the time. a couple times uh i've been in i gotta be careful you know how i word this but yeah one time i was in a safe house and there were not very many of us at all uh just less than 10 you know in an area um that where nobody nobody else was nobody else was down there and And when you start getting into surveillance and counter surveillance and spying on people, one of the kind of the rule number one is don't be time and place predictable. Don't use the same routes.

Starting point is 01:04:16 Don't leave your house at the same time. Don't go to the same spots every day. Everything has to be random. You don't want to create what we call like a pattern of life. Or if you do create a pattern of life, you want it to be a false one. know you want your pattern the pattern of life that everybody else sees it's it's it's a facade you know it's you're doing it intentionally yes I want everybody to see me go to Starbucks at 8 o'clock in the morning every single day

Starting point is 01:04:46 everyone from the employee you know I want everybody to see me go to the gym right after Starbucks you know and that would be like a something here you know so you you you kind of create your facade well we weren't doing that at this spot and it was this was an remember i was talking about at the age or at the seal teams there was this there was the guys that had been in for 20 years who hadn't done anything and then you have the like me that come in and we'd go do it right away well same with the agency um similar you got all these guys that had been you know during the cold war they came in they were doing all these cold war tactics with russia you know and all that stuff and then they throw

Starting point is 01:05:29 Oman, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, wherever, right? And they're still using those tactics from a Cold War environment, trying to get those to work in a wartime environment where everybody wants to kill you. It's not a permissive environment. Everybody wants to fucking kill you here. And you'd see a lot of these guys come and making transitions from that kind of a career into a wartime environment. And it just it just without any training or very minimal and it didn't work for a long time because it was all they cared about was collecting intelligence.

Starting point is 01:06:10 It wasn't it wasn't, hey, we need to we're going to be here for a while. Let's let's not draw them into where we live. Well, nobody wanted to listen. And and I'd mentioned I said, hey, we're being really time and place predictable. We've been to this place, I don't know, three times in the past week. You know, we need to find different routes. We need to alter our times. We need to, you know, meet these people at different places.

Starting point is 01:06:37 We didn't want to do it. The very next day we got hit. And it turns out we did get compromised. We had over 100 Taliban fighters closing in on our position and bullets flying everywhere. we really couldn't engage back because we didn't we couldn't see where everything was coming from or was too far for us to engage and we actually man we that started early in the morning and i don't think we got pulled out until 2 or 3 a.m at night by the british they had to call in british guys to come get us uh from somewhere else and um but and you're just like i didn't think we were

Starting point is 01:07:18 making it out of that you're just like sitting on your hands like oh fuck or are you guys at least shooting what you can and and trying to fight back i mean we're shooting what we can but there was there was there was a couple of different positions that had taken over a high-rise building that overlooked our neighborhood and we couldn't we couldn't see where they were shooting from so yeah you could shoot at the building yeah but you can't see where the hell it's coming from and they were throwing grenades at uh anybody that tried to get down uh get up the building they would just throw frags rpgs or whatever and then they had another position where all where these taliban fighters were massing and uh and then it came out it actually came out

Starting point is 01:08:01 in the news the next day that they were there to get us and uh a lot of things like that happened And so in those situations, you are operating with obviously what you guys can see. Are you also getting communications like they know that this these fighters are amassing? They're able to kind of give you almost the play by play. I think a lot for those that may not know as much about this. It's kind of like a football game. The football game is getting played, but they have coaches up in the box who can kind of see the full field. Are you guys getting like intel reports and stuff like that? and you're using that to try to fight back or is it pretty much hey we're doing the best we can to

Starting point is 01:08:40 get you there you know get there to get you guys but uh you're on your own right now we're we were on our own it was we're probably gonna die let's destroy all the classified information and uh and hope for the best you know go down and take as many of them with us as we can yeah pretty much Yeah. And how do you think about fight or flight in those situations? And what's fascinating to me is you've pretty much already said, hey, we're likely to die here. If we try to run to the vehicles and go on a high speed chase, it sounds like you're pretty far. It's not like you can just drive down the street to a military base where there's help or anything like that. uh if you stay and fight sounds like you probably think we're going to get overpowered here at some point um is it just out of necessity you you stay or is there a calculation between like try to run versus stay and fight there's just nowhere to go yeah you know and i mean yes it could it could have been me and the two other operators that were on the ground could have

Starting point is 01:09:46 evacuated out of there but when you have when you have a chief who's doesn't take care of himself and he's overweight because he's fucking hot dogs every night and you know you have you have women who who aren't going to do well you know leaving you have all that ammo there you have all the classified information there it's it's really it's just not an option yeah you know i i think a lot But from this story, it reminds me a lot of the Benghazi story, right, where basically the most general description is there's the ambassador and kind of his living quarters. There's a safe house or a compound that was uncompromised, from what I understand, previously a couple of miles away. And there was a potential takeover of the ambassador and he became in danger. and so a number of operators including cia went to try to protect him evacuate him etc and then

Starting point is 01:10:48 at some point they actually evacuate back to the safe house and are compromised and now here comes everyone on that location in those scenarios uh the operators i think people have a higher degree of confidence like they're fucking trained to survive these situations to to excel in these situations and probably could get themselves individually out or the small group but to your point there's people who aren't trained yeah and so in movies it is uh presented as like hey everyone shut the fuck up sit down in this room and like we got this we're gonna go and fight and like you guys just stay here and and uh uh don't do anything is that actually how it plays out or are there scenarios where uh no it's like dude we're all gonna die here's a gun this is how you

Starting point is 01:11:35 pull the trigger and like get up here with us and you're asking somebody who maybe doesn't have the right training or as much training to you know fight side by side with you you get after you've been in you know a few of these situations and you see what a basic civilian mindset because that is what yeah cia is basically a lot of it's a lot of college grads who are really smart you know not the best warfires but very intelligent college grads they did put intelligence in the name yeah right so hopefully yes yeah and uh but you get really good at assessing what maybe somebody can handle and so it might not be hey here's a gun it might be hey just let me know if anybody if you see anybody coming at us through that window or let me

Starting point is 01:12:27 or watch that door let me know if anybody comes through that door here's a radio I want you to tell this person everything that you're seeing right now you know and so a lot of times uh what I would do in those situations is you give somebody a job and it might not be and it'll calm them down because then their minds on something other than holy shit all these bad guys are coming to get us and so in that particular instance it was I mean because they're still you know even though he's a fat slob and he can't move he's still a fucking American you know and you can't abandon americans and been successful enough to achieve exactly a station chief or whatever so like he's not a complete moron exactly and so so you give them a job and a lot of in that

Starting point is 01:13:10 particular uh scenario was hey watch communications let us know what's coming through you know on comms and uh with the others it was get all this classified stuff and and and get rid of it you know and and so they're busy doing that and when you do that also it doesn't even if it's just a bullshit job you know like hey go uh make sure the fucking dogs are okay you know they're not seeing everything develop they're not seeing the battlefield develop no matter if you know if it's for the better or for the worse and so it keeps them a little bit calmer when when they can't see the big picture and their minds busy doing other things is there a flip of leadership in those moments like prior to engagement or combat is it like kind of like the smart people are in charge

Starting point is 01:14:01 and like we're here to either protect them execute you know orders whatever and like now bullets are flying shut up sit down i'm in control now and the operators take over or is there more of a balance in like the more peaceful times oh a lot of times it's welcomed it's not shut up you know we're in charge now it's they're like hey this is why you're here yeah it's okay we do like you yes and it's like i got it you know and uh that's that's how it plays out a lot when that's not happening yes there's definitely a lot of animosity especially when it comes to the guys who are doing the cold work because they're not used to having to work with people like us because they're not used to working in dangerous environments so when when they have to get

Starting point is 01:14:47 attached to people like us uh the egos get involved and it turns into you know it could turn into a shit show yeah when you look back across military and cia what are like some of the core things that you've been able to take away as you've gone into the business world and the podcast and that type of stuff like there's probably like the easy stuff of just like hey work hard right like how to discipline that type of stuff but are there maybe one or two lessons that you learned that you're like i actually use this much more often than people may realize that uh have really helped you kind of in your post-military or contractor career patience patience is a big one and um back to that bigger picture you know being able to step back and let

Starting point is 01:15:33 a situation develop and and look at a bigger picture uh has has really helped me with my business being able to not just look right here but hey let's let's look at all the peripherals and and forward thinking and planning as well i i there's a lot of forward thinking and a lot of planning that goes into you know not just operations but entire deployments uh you know if you're in a specific uh area of operation the the the plan might it might be a five-year plan you know and so in in those planning phases and everything i learned you know hey let's I brought it to business. Let's do a lot more forward thinking. And I'm not talking projections. I'm just talking, you know, if I do this, what's what's going to happen? Yeah. Yeah. Do you think it helped going from the SEALs? You said you mentioned that you then went and started doing some real estate stuff, but patience wasn't a key trait of yours, right? Some of the other things that maybe you found challenging coming out of the military right into the civilian world.

Starting point is 01:16:44 did you feel like the CIA was somewhat of a step you know okay I'm not in the military I'm not a civilian there's still danger there's still you know levels of combat obviously um but it helped almost like off-board you a little bit into the civilian world or did it actually go the opposite direction and like you felt like it actually compounded some of those problems you had to do more work once you got out of contracting to get back into the civilian world I would say the CIA definitely was a good – if you paid attention, there's a lot of lessons you could have learned that helped you in the civilian world and a lot more than in the SEAL teams from my experience, especially when it comes to patience and dealing with people and what is and is not socially acceptable. um with the SEAL teams it's I mean it's a it's a frat house it's not a frat house that's a that's a horrible description but you're with a bunch of you're with 16 guys that you live eat sleep

Starting point is 01:17:45 shit with you know for your entire career yeah and so that builds a camaraderie and there's a lot of trust and and you know I think you know where I'm going you know when I when I think of the military uh in general i'm assuming special operations is just this on steroids um i always think of it as a high trust environment yes right and it's like whether that's the training whether it's the fact that we all got uniforms on whether it's the flag whatever the the reason is that can be dissected but that high trust environment allows you to be super honest with people people sure get offended sometimes but like not as much uh and there's this element of like you do your fucking job i'll do my job and like together as a team will be successful whereas i

Starting point is 01:18:27 think that uh in large corporations for sure that doesn't exist even in smaller teams society in general because there's not that high trust environment you get a lot more of the political correctness you get a lot more of the uh you offended me right and these things that just they don't really exist in the military for the most part um sure there are the outlier situations But, uh, it allows for a level of efficiency on an interpersonal level that just, I don't see replicated very often. And I think people who are listening or watching this, um, if you have a friend who you can be like dead on honest with, you're like, I really appreciate that person.

Starting point is 01:19:05 Right. And like that person will call me back. You're fucking up right now. Right. Uh, but that's like, I'm assuming in SEAL team, it's like 15 other guys who are all willing to do that. And if you're fucking up and you're not listening, it might come over there and smack you upside of the head and say, hey, I told you you weren't listening. A lot of things that happen within a

Starting point is 01:19:22 SEAL team are inappropriate in other environments. And it would probably be very similar to a firehouse. Got it. And that shit does not fly at the agency. And that took me a long time to kind of wrap my head around. I didn't like it for a long time. But the agency does have a certain sophistication to it that it definitely carries over. You just, you learn how to carry yourself and deal with people in a more sophisticated and professional manner, uh, because you have to as, as, as, as, um, as you would in the SEAL teams. Got it. Um, when you came out of the CIA, uh, I've heard you talk about the use of psychedelics and, um, it seems like that really had a profound positive impact on kind of uh your ability uh across a number of different

Starting point is 01:20:15 parts of your life talk a little bit about that what were you just like on the internet one day and we're like i'm gonna go try this did no friend who tried it and suggested a doctor like what was kind of your introduction to psychedelics and then what was that experience like well the no i wasn't i didn't read it on the internet i was actually totally against them uh um i didn't like anything that i associated with hippies okay and uh communism psychedelics yeah and um and and so i didn't even it wasn't even on my radar to be honest with it but then i did this interview with uh this uh former seal eddie gallagher and he had talked about psychedelics in his interview and and so i asked him about it. And then he connected me with, um, other people who, who, who started a

Starting point is 01:21:09 nonprofit for psychedelic therapy. So I interviewed them and I learned about a lot about it. Then I started, then it just kept happening. I started seeing former colleagues of mine coming on to my show to interview them. And it was just, I did the psychedelic therapy and my family dynamic changed. my business changed, my anxiety is gone, a lot of that stuff. And so I did it. I interviewed so many guys, uh, that had gone down and, and, and, and, and done the therapy that I was like, all right, I'm going to, you know, I still have my own demons that I need to deal with. I did three and a half years of therapy, talk therapy twice a week. And, uh, which did help me. I would definitely recommend it. But, but, um, but then I moved from, uh, South Florida to Nashville and that therapy

Starting point is 01:22:00 ended, uh, cause I didn't want to build the trust with a new therapist. Things started getting out of whack. Uh, my business really was expanding. My mind wasn't present anymore. Um, I just had a son. I wanted to be present. My anxiety was turning into anger, uh, again, and just a lot of stuff that guys deal with coming you know home from combat and so things started getting really out of whack and i made a call and i said hey i would like to try this you know i've heard a lot of good things and they got me right in i went down there um to do it and i did this i did ibogaine and uh five maodmt and where do you go and like what is what is the actual process when you say you did uh these two specific ones like is it something that you are ingesting are you drinking

Starting point is 01:22:55 it is it a solid like just kind of walk people through because i think a lot of people have heard of psychedelics but they probably don't actually understand what that process looks like okay ibogaine comes from the plant abogadent which is a root in i think it's gabon africa i could be off on that but um and so what what i took was ibogaine which is um i've been told as the most powerful psychedelic, uh, on the planet. And, and so it was a pill. I think I took four pills and, um, and that was like a 12 hour experience, but it's very, it's not like from my experience, it wasn't going out into the, into the jungle with a, with a medicine man and, and taking psychedelics which i would totally do now um but this was a very controlled medical

Starting point is 01:23:48 type environment it was in kind of a luxurious beach house okay um out of the country and but before i went down it was what are your intentions why do you want to do this this isn't just hey let's take psychedelics get naked and howl at the moon it's it's why do you want to do this? What, what do you want to change about yourself? And, and, and talking to therapists before you go. And so I wrote down all these intentions, uh, that I wanted. And then I got down there and it was, it was EKGs, it was physicals, you know, what medications are you on? We're going to hook you up to a heart rate monitor and when you do it, all this, all this stuff to make it safe. And, um, so I did that. And when I came out, I had lost 11, 11 pounds, uh, in 12

Starting point is 01:24:46 hours, 11 pounds in a week. I didn't weigh myself the whole time, but a week. And I ate the food down there is amazing. And, um, you're eating like four meals a day. Um, great chef, whatever. I shouldn't have lost weight is the point I'm making lost 11 pounds of detoxed 11 pounds of heavy metals out of my system uh my eye color changed the whites of my eyes changed um my anxiety was gone my I haven't had a drink in I think nine months now I didn't even go down there to quit drinking and uh and it wasn't it's not it's not uh it's not hard for me you know it's it just i just didn't want it it's it's almost like it showed me this poison quit putting it in your body because you're killing yourself and so sugars went away caffeine went away

Starting point is 01:25:41 alcohol went away marijuana went away um and i didn't go down there for any of that the main reason i went down there was just to be in the moment with my with my newborn son and my wife which happened and then all this other stuff all these other benefits came the other thing that happened was i quit i quit putting that pressure on myself of what does everybody think what you know which really now i realize that really hindered my business it was oh i don't want to do that because i might offend somebody and i think i think they want to hear this and i can't do that and it was like fuck it i don't care you know if i get canceled i get fucking canceled and they don't like if my audience doesn't like the content that i'm putting out then i'll find a new

Starting point is 01:26:24 audience that will and and so it kind of gave me like i wouldn't say courage because i've always had courage it just gave me this i don't fucking care i'm gonna do what i want to do finally and and when i came home and then you add in you know the no drinking you don't have that morning fog anymore and and man it was like my business was always on an upward trajectory and then after that, it went straight up. Yeah. Um, why did you lose the weight? Is it like, uh, ayahuasca? I've had people come on and describe it as like, I'm throwing up, I'm shit. And I'm, I'm, you know, like literally purging my body the entire time. Is it a similar type experience or was it something else? Well, it's a heavy metal detox. So, you know, just think of all the heavy metals, the

Starting point is 01:27:10 burn pits, the ammo, the bombs, the everything that, that you've ingested when you were in Iraq, you know and and i don't know how long you're over there but that shit stays in there you know and so when that stuff gets sucked out of you you know by the ibogaine that's that's that's a lot of weight yeah did you feel stronger when you came back like did you feel so you lost weight how did you feel physically uh it seems like you're mentally were much clearer kind of all these benefits what about physically this episode is brought to you by exodus accessing web3 across multiple networks just got a hell of a lot easier exodus is one of the most popular crypto wallets for mobile and desktop and they just added chrome and brave web browsers to the lineup the new

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Starting point is 01:28:40 believer in a decentralized future the blockchain.com community can join a short wait list to get one for free at blockchain.com slash waitlist slash blockchain domain free nft domains provide all the benefits of premium unstoppable domains including fee-free lifelong ownership if you don't have a blockchain.com wallet no worries there's new free domains available to everyone either join the wait list for a free blockchain.com domain or visit unstoppable domains.com to buy your domain today starting as low as five dollars unstoppable domains.com it's not uh like are you asking if i'm better in the gym or if i just felt healthier overall both yeah i felt a lot healthier overall yeah it's like it was like it almost felt like a true

Starting point is 01:29:26 detox that i think people aspire to have when they do whether it's fad diets or whatever that's what really what they're looking for is i want to be healthier i want to look better or whatever as well yes yeah um you mentioned a second psychedelic that you took as well uh you did those together in the same week yes you ended with this stuff called 5-meo-dmt which is a toad venom okay and toad venom sounds way cooler than the scientific think but uh it's it's they call it a they call it the bliss drug um it's an ego death you you this sounds weird have you ever done any psychedelics i've never done any of them and uh it's something that i find fascinating i've got friends who have built a number of

Starting point is 01:30:11 psychedelic companies and he's been talking about it forever and so uh i actually think there's like two or three people who i've heard talk about it you're one of them uh in that we have similar types of backgrounds probably similar interests things like that uh you're very different than i think most people who talk about it right uh and so i'm interested uh in understanding more so five five meo dmt gives you it's it's you die it's a death experience okay and i know that's uh i know how hard that is to wrap your head around but those who've done it uh definitely understand but you you there is no doubt in my mind that if i die a peaceful death this is exactly what i'm going to experience okay explain more in terms of when you say you die like mentally

Starting point is 01:31:04 there's like anguish and you're like this fucking sucks is it like a physical thing it's the most profound experience of my entire life and um and i don't i don't say that lightly yeah um but i'll just go through the experience so you smoke this and um you smoke this and they say count backwards from 10 i hit about seven and it was lights out but you're just sitting there you fall back into the you know the pillow or whatever i wanted to do it outside because i with no blindfold usually they do a blindfolded inside but i wanted to be in nature because i'd always heard you know hey psychedelics makes you feel like you're in it, you're in nature. And, um, so I did it. The first thing I felt was

Starting point is 01:31:54 I felt more anxiety and fear all at once than I have ever felt in any other experience of my life to include thinking I'm going to die in a safe house. Cause we're getting overrun by bad guys um to include somebody shooting at me point blank to include all the shit i saw on the teams and um this was more fear and more anxiety than i'd ever felt and it literally it really it literally felt like like just all this bad negative shit was getting sucked out of my veins and um and that probably lasted for about 30 to 45 seconds and i just i just kept telling myself just let it let just let go i think a lot of there are guys that have bad experiences with this stuff because i don't think they have i don't say this in a bad way but i don't think

Starting point is 01:32:55 they have the courage to let go because it is the it's the feeling that you're dying like if there's no doubt in your head that you you're dying and you know i've i've got a family so that was the only thing left that i was holding on to was i was like fuck my fucking son needs me my wife needs me to help raise my son but then it was i was like i have to die i have to i have to do this and and i i let go and man like the next thing you feel is just like pure bliss and and you realize every everything that's happened to you good bad everything in between it was it's all all had a purpose it was all everything happened just the way it's supposed to happen And when it came to my wife and son leaving them and kind of succumbing to this death, I realized that's OK, too.

Starting point is 01:34:04 You know, I was like, it's OK because they're going to wind up here. And this is, it's freedom. It is pure freedom. There's no ego. All your insecurities are gone. you know like none of that shit matters um and so i sat up and i opened my eyes and you know uh you hear people talk about oh the the energy and and bad energy and good energy and i always looked at these people like you're fucking crazy and i opened my eyes and i saw

Starting point is 01:34:44 i didn't see anything that wasn't there a lot of people have uh that wear the blindfold they have um hallucinations yes they have hallucinations i didn't have any hallucinations mine was more intuitive and what i felt and what i saw was just the transfer of energy through everything through the sky through the birds the trees the grass the ocean the islands off the ocean everything you could feel it you know transferring from the grass into your feet and when you hear people say you know everything is one that that's the that's the first time that i ever felt and knew i was like holy shit we're all fucking one thing here this is so if i you know reach over the table and try to fight you i'm just fighting myself it's really

Starting point is 01:35:37 it's really hard to describe this is why i'm so interested in somebody like you who's gone and done this because i have the same reaction right like um my wife's got a couple friends to talk about crystals if i hear about fucking crystals one more time i'm like shut up right this shit is all bullshit yeah uh uh energy like all everyone's heard all this stuff right i'm like okay sure guys whatever um other than maybe like memes and vibes on the internet maybe i'm a little bit of a believer there but other than that uh and then i i hear you talk about this and it's like look you're you're uh i'll call you a normal dude right in terms of like it's not like you were into a bunch of like woo woo stuff up until this point and then the way that you describe it

Starting point is 01:36:20 you're like it changed my life right and i think that it's almost the contrast before and after that's so fascinating to me you know and and it sounds like when you came back a bunch of good stuff started to happen did you change anything when you came back like like action wise okay So you mentioned things you took away, right, in terms of alcohol and caffeine, things like that. What else do you notice that you changed? Man, I just I quit listening to all the bullshit. You know, I quit. I quit listening to what I thought social media wanted me to do with my business.

Starting point is 01:37:00 I quit guilt. You know, we all deal with a lot of guilt. It's how do I tell this person I don't want to do this? or how do I, I just don't feel it anymore, you know, and it's starting to come back a little bit, but it's, and, and because you're not focusing all your energy on, well, I don't want to hurt Anthony's feelings and, and because I don't want to fly down for his podcast. So how do I tell him this? And why the fuck is that person thinking that about, you know, instead of worrying about all this shit, it's, Hey man, I, I, I can't make it down or, you know, family,

Starting point is 01:37:32 you know, I can't, I can't do it. I have this, I need, and it takes, it takes the guilt away. And if you think about how much time you waste on trying not to offend somebody or trying not to make somebody feel bad or when somebody you have to get asked all the time, could you just could you can you do this for me? Can you do that? You know, you don't feel bad saying using the word no anymore. And it's just no, I'm not I'm not going to do it. I notice that there's momentum with the use of the word no. there's something i've been thinking about recently if i start to say no to people it becomes easier like the rest of the week or that month or whatever and then if i become undisciplined and i say yes once or twice next thing you know i'll say yes to everything like like there is

Starting point is 01:38:18 this momentum or almost like uh maybe confidence or i don't know how you would describe it but it's like if you have the ability to say starting today i'm gonna say no to people i want to say no to it is easier yeah and i don't know if it's like an identity thing like i'm somebody who says no I don't know if it's literally momentum or whatever, but it does feel like, uh, people who say yes to a couple of things, say yes to everything. People who say no are very disciplined in when they say no. And so it almost feels like just getting the right directional, like path of progress is an important piece to, it sounds like this was a moment where it really set you on a

Starting point is 01:38:53 certain path and you've just kind of stayed on that. That's, I never thought of it like that. That's a great way to put it. but um yeah you know i just i started i finally started saying no and and because i was you know somebody told me once it was actually my mother-in-law said every time you say yes to somebody you're saying no to somebody else and so i've always thought about that and then after doing the psychedelics i was like you know she's right and so i took all that energy of doing for people that they don't even really give a if you're doing it for them if they say if

Starting point is 01:39:28 If you say no, they're just on to the next person. Right. Hey, could you? And so I took all that energy and applied it to my family and my business and myself. And that's when things really, really started coming together for me. As you've gone through your career, you've had kind of, I'll call it three or four different careers, right? You had kind of the SEALs, CIA, what you're doing now at a minimum. Do you still have the same friends? Do you still have the same like peer group through all of that? Or have you found that either through necessity or benefit that you've kind of changed over time, right? And I think about this from the perspective of like if it's an intentional thing, right? So you go from the SEALs to the CIA, CIA to kind of the business world. If you don't have the same friend group, they may be offended. Oh, he thinks he's too good for us. Oh, he now doesn't have time for us or whatever. Do you experience that at all?

Starting point is 01:40:28 Oh, yeah. Okay. Do you? Hell yeah, right? And I mean there's people who will listen to this and be like he's talking about me. there's people who listen to this but he's definitely not talking about me but some of them are intentional right some of them are like hey this person is not conducive to what i'm trying to accomplish and like uh they're the energy vampire or whatever you want to describe

Starting point is 01:40:49 it but like sorry dude right usually dudes uh just honestly don't have time for this yeah and in those cases to me i don't feel guilty i actually like that's easier for me to deal with because i'm making the decision it's the people in your life that like you're just focused on what you're doing and so like there's not as many intersection points or like as much time uh that overlaps and you just kind of grow apart i still feel sometimes guilty to some degree or like i'm like damn i wish it wasn't this way and i almost have to like yeah but that's just the way it is yeah i don't know what about you well i was gonna ask if you figured out how to filter it yet i'm still working on this how i filter it yeah how do you do it right now i filter it

Starting point is 01:41:34 I, I try to filter it is when it comes to friends, who, who can you tell your successes to without people getting jealous of where you're at in life? And that's what I'm really starting to figure out is you can't, you can't be fucking around with people that aren't happy for you. If they're not happy for you, the only reason they're not happy with you is they're not happy with their own fucking performance, but they're not willing to do anything to up their performance. They're just going to keep you down wherever they're at. And so when I think of who I can tell my successes to, I'd probably tell them to five people, if that.

Starting point is 01:42:16 And so that's who I concentrate all my energy on and everybody else. If we were friends and you're not happy for me now, that doesn't mean we're not, I hate you or I'm not going to talk to you, but I'm not going to focus much energy on you anymore because I know there's always going to be that underlined resentment, you know, and that jealousy and it, and that shit's toxic, you know, it is toxic. I had a, um, I went to a dinner and it was a dinner I should not have been at. There was four or five different billionaires there and they're all friends. And so you're at this dinner, maybe there's eight to 10 people, whatever it was.

Starting point is 01:42:51 Um, and you already feel like a little bit of an outsider, right? Cause like they're all friends and you're like jesus like some of you uh in a business sense i look up to you i want to learn from you like all this stuff and uh the things that they were talking about at this dinner i was looking around i was like you guys sound like the most arrogant fucks i've ever heard right but what i realized was no like like after i left the dinner i was like these guys grew up together they literally had nothing and so they used to talk about like the first customer they got together. Right. And they'd come and they'd be like, Oh, I got my first customer. Like, Oh, that's cool. Like, you know, whatever. And it's risen. And now they're talking about,

Starting point is 01:43:31 do you want to buy, you know, a $50 million boat together? And none of them were judging each other because it was like, they had risen up to this level of success, but they also were on the same level as well. So it wasn't like, uh, one of them was a billionaire and the other, you know, was unemployed. And so like, if the billionaire was like, I think about buying this boat, the other person's like, well, fuck you. You know, I'm trying to find a job. and so there was like the the path together i think kind of created some camaraderie but also the ability to talk to people who didn't judge them even though they were talking about things that everyone else in the world would be like that's what you're worried about you're literally

Starting point is 01:44:09 worried about like you can't find staff for your boat right i'm just making up whatever but to the other ones they're like no i can't either yeah right how are you trying to solve that problem and so it sounds similar to kind of what you're talking about of just like the people who want to see you successful, the people who you feel comfortable sharing the truth with are actually the people who you end up kind of spending your time with. Yeah. No, I don't think it always has to be like levels. Okay. I think, I think it just has to be who's happy for it or who's happy with themselves. You know what I mean? Cause you see this, that would be like a financial or business uh scenario but then you have family scenarios and you know you get a lot of people

Starting point is 01:44:53 who i don't know what your family situation is but if it's good you probably have a lot of people who are in a shitty family dynamic who are jealous of what you have with your wife and your kid you know we see that uh me and my wife see that or or you know they're they're jealous of your business they're jealous of people get jealous on how many followers you have on twitter you know And and and so when you see that, when I see any of that come out, I'm like, all right, we need to pull back here and and concentrate more on on on these people because they're happy for us. They're happy in their lives. And does that make sense? It makes 100 percent sense. And actually, when you mention things like social media, I've talked to people who have immense millions of subscribers on YouTube or whatever. and every once in a while they'll say something to me to the effect of like sometimes i wish i

Starting point is 01:45:46 could go back and have none yeah right because you mentioned earlier like what your audience wants some of them are like hey you know there's one person i'm thinking in particular he's one of the top 15 youtubers in the world he's like when i started doing this i had certain interests those aren't the same interests i initially have today but i feel like i got a job now yeah and like they've almost become the audience is the boss yeah which is a little weird as well right do you feel that sometimes i did before psychedelics now i don't talk about the business that you have built like how do you think about uh what it entails and like what are you trying to accomplish right i always think of like businesses have some sort of mission

Starting point is 01:46:25 or goal that they're going after like what are you driving towards there you know everybody it's everybody's it's all preparation right i want to make more money so that my kid can go to the best private school i get the car i want i could live in the good neighborhood i don't want to be in a in a neighborhood with a bunch of crime and right it's all money and possessions and stuff like that and i don't think a lot of people invest for what's coming after this life and in in whether that's you know whether you believe in uh some type of religion or whatever. I just believe if you inject good into this world, then good shit is going to come your way. And that's all I fucking care about, man, is I want, you know, I, I, we do heavy,

Starting point is 01:47:19 heavy, heavy interviews, uh, where I'll bring, you know, um, a Delta guy to his most vulnerable state that he's ever fucking been in, you know, mentally. And because he's there or I go there or whoever's on the show goes there that that lets everybody because he's a delta guy or because i'm a seal and a cia guy or because you're a you know business phenomenon uh you know people look at that and they're like well fuck it that guy if that guy could admit that and and and then i can do that or if that guy can work on himself and admit these faults then i can do that and if he can get if he's been through all that shit i can get through my little mess you know and and that's one aspect the other thing i like to accomplish is i'm you know with podcasts a lot

Starting point is 01:48:15 of people all they care about is i i need to get i need to get the guy with a million followers on my show because everybody's going to want to listen to what i never listened to that shit i always liked getting the guy that nobody would give the fucking time of day to because he's new starting a business you know struggling grinding it out and I can pull him and be like hey man I see what you're doing and you're fucking doing a good job and and I want to give you an audience that you probably never would have had exposure to and and I'm lucky you know and I use it for good but when people come on my show their fucking business goes through the roof and so I'm very selective on on on who i bring on especially when it comes to you know the former military guys or

Starting point is 01:49:01 or the uh cia guys but i bring them on and the audience gets to learn all these lessons their business takes off they learn a lot uh i'll do a lot of consulting you know for guys after the show um after release i'll make sure like hey man are you ready for this shit because you know like i just did this guy cody alford and i called cody like the day before his episodes released i'm like hey what are you doing you know how are you ready you're gonna fucking blow up and he didn't believe me and he's like man i just it's rough my best friend just died tell a little bit about cody's story because i think he's actually like a pretty interesting uh uh maybe example cody yeah of the types of people that you would bring on cody

Starting point is 01:49:50 normal guy you know didn't grow up in a in a wealthy family wasn't like a super athlete anything joined the marine corps was the fastest guy ever in the marine corps to make e8 um was one of the was one of the first guys uh to stand up marsoc phenomenal operator for not like the guy's just a the badass he's he's he just wins it every fucking thing he does and no matter what the struggle is he overcomes it so just phenomenal career phenomenal operator um a very just a solid human being call him up he's he's a little depressed his best friend of just died uh obviously understandable his business he's grinding grinding grinding he's not getting a fucking break and he's like man i just i don't have any shirts in stock i don't

Starting point is 01:50:50 have this i don't have that and i'm like what the i was like hey man this fucking opportunity is not going to come again i was like so here's what you're going to do you're going to fucking do a pre-sale on all your fucking shirts you're going to stand up a patreon account you're going to get your online coaching going? And you're going to have all this shit on your website by tomorrow. And he's like, people don't like pre-orders. I was like, I was like, you don't get it. I was like, nobody gives a fuck about your apparel. They give a fuck about you. And what you just told me on that show, people are going to want to support you. They don't care if you're selling fucking bathwater, they're going to buy it because you shared your darkest, deepest, most inner

Starting point is 01:51:33 vulnerabilities and insecurities and they're going to take that learn from it and they want to support you and sure as shit you know i talked to him a week after and he's like man he's like i just had the biggest month you can take every month of last year put it together and it wouldn't be the month that i just had after your show and i was like fucking hey man keep it going you know but um so to be able to do that you know is a big responsibility and and and it's it's a gift and it's putting good into the world because cody has a great message he's a solid human he's a good person he's putting out things that are helping people and really all i did was just give him a platform to tell everybody what he's doing what he's been through and and boom and i've done that

Starting point is 01:52:23 with you know a lot of people so that's what i get out of it anything else you know it's kind of icing on the cake and and and i've always been a believer that if if you do good and you just the money's going to be there you know i i think the money's just it's just it's going to be there and for me you know business and money was there you know it took a while but But that's what I get out of it. What's up with the gummy bears? The gummy bears? I think the first – I haven't told you this yet.

Starting point is 01:52:57 I think the first episode I ever saw is when he did DJ Shipley. And I didn't know who you were. I didn't know anything about it. Somehow YouTube recommended it. Shout out to Susan and the YouTube team who – great recommendation algorithm. And I clicked on it. I don't even remember why. I don't remember what the title was, whatever.

Starting point is 01:53:17 but like i clicked on it and uh you had like a piece of the interview up front i think i remember being like oh shit okay it's all there's like three hours i'm like oh fuck i got like five minutes yeah so let me let me uh save this one and i remember uh that night i sat down to go watch it and uh my wife was coming in and out of the room and about 20 minutes into she goes what the fuck are you watching right sitting here listening to these two dudes talk whatever and but i was hooked right now i was just like okay like this is gonna be a great conversation as i went further and further, I realized like, oh, this is two guys who have very unique experiences in the world, but there's that high trust environment. They're going to talk about things in a way that just

Starting point is 01:53:56 isn't going to be done elsewhere. And then, I don't know, a couple minutes into the interview or whatever, all of a sudden it's a fucking ad. And I'm like, oh, okay, cool ad. Then I realized it was ads for your gummy bears. And I was like, what a fucking guy. He's got all these bad-ass guys coming in, having these great conversations, but he's selling gummy bears. If I ever talk to And I'm going to ask him, what is up with the gummy bears? So where did the gummy bears come from? Why did you say, hey, we should go actually have a product with gummy bears? What is this?

Starting point is 01:54:25 So it kind of started. So before I did the Sean Ryan show, I was teaching tactics, how to clear rooms, shooting tactics, shit like that. And every time I enter a space, I like to research what is happening in the space. So I started training. started building social media and i was looking at what everybody else is doing what are excuse me what are all my peers doing well they're all acting like hard asses they don't eat anything but protein shakes and chicken breasts they never have any fun they're always serious you know they look like an asshole so i was like all right i'm gonna do the exact

Starting point is 01:55:05 fucking opposite i was like i was like i'm a seal cia guy so people are already scared shitless of you just knowing that about you so we have to disarm them if they actually want to learn anything and so and and and make yourself approachable and and and allow people to realize oh this guy's just a fucking human and so how i did that is i started i when everybody else was posting their their milkshakes that they're taking in the morning and their testosterone shots and their chicken breast I was like, I like fucking donuts and milk duds and gummy bears and ice cream. And I'm a human. I like, I like candy.

Starting point is 01:55:47 Sugar tastes good. And, and people like that, you know? And so, and I, so that's kind of how it started. And then, you know, I was just looking at people like, oh, well, you have to have apparel. You have to have products to sell. And so I was like, all right, well, I have sleep problems. Let's do CBD gummies. and we'll make a CBD gummy line and, and, uh, whatever. And my marketer was like, don't do

Starting point is 01:56:13 that. You're going to get sued for marketing to kids. So I said, all right, fine. We'll just do regular gummy bears. And, um, so I was like, all right, let's just order, let's find them, make them and market them and see what happens. And I just took off and, uh, just, just regular gummy bears and so so it just stuck you know and then we ordered more and they sold out and then we ordered more and they sold out so now it's it's just like this staple of my business yeah and uh you obviously do a great job kind of integrating into the show when you get the ads and all that stuff um is it something that you want to take and put into stores and kind of grow you know as if you were a candy company i guess or uh is it something that

Starting point is 01:57:01 just like, no, we want to keep doing the content and have the conversations and that. And this is just, you know, a thing that is part of what we do. Uh, but it's not really going to be a massive focus. I would love to get something in stores, but I don't, I don't think that's the, I don't think that's the product because nobody's going to go to Walmart and buy a 10, a $10 bag of gummy bears when they can get three times the size of a different kind of gummy bears for three bucks. so it's a you know it's a novelty item and it's a way for for people that like what i'm doing to to support me and so i'll probably just keep that online you know and as you think about uh the content itself one of the things i notice is uh it's very high quality

Starting point is 01:57:44 right um it seems like you've been one very thoughtful but to really focus on the quality um you've got the interviews uh do you have aspirations and kind of uh plans to do things outside of just the interviews or like how do you think about like other pieces of content i started i started doing a lot of i spent a lot of time dabbling in different projects and and so everything from going up to alaska and doing like a quasi survival series to going down to tijuana and doing a whole cartel like kind of kind of cartel border southern mexico or northern mexico kind of uh newsy type content that most people won't do because they're too scared to go get in those neighborhoods and do it but where i'm going is is

Starting point is 01:58:40 after the psychedelics i decided it would be best to just concentrate on one thing and make that one thing really really really good and so that's what i've done and and i think i will just i will continue to build this show up and instead of doing all these different types of content getting more diverse guests is kind of where i'm headed yeah um i really enjoy the conversations uh and i always think about um conversations are only as good as the questions they ask what's the research process like that that you kind of go through and then how do you determine what are the questions you'll ask versus the things you like i could ask but not really something that either you're interested in or you think will be valuable for the audience i used to do i used to

Starting point is 01:59:26 do a ton of research i think the dj shipley one you had like a whole notebook full of questions yeah i did and um i used to do a ton of research and then i kind of just got into a groove and i got better to talking it talking with people and so sometimes i'll just go in there with no plan at all and a lot of times those wind up being the best ones but um you know and now i can do that with the operator type guests is i kind of know i have a flow i know a little bit about them you know and it's easy to research because i can ask around about them but i i really hindered my business with research uh early on it was i put so much fucking pressure on myself to know everything about the guests that's coming on i try to read every book they wrote i'd try to

Starting point is 02:00:20 you know do their online training programs and it it hindered my business so i i was condensed it and then if i can i just shit can it to be honest with you and and what i go off of now is i just got really good at reading the guest i know what they're willing to do i know what they're not willing to do and and i always push the limits with the questions you know i ask the questions that that people don't want to ask and um like here's an example i just interviewed this hasn't come out yet but i just interviewed this guy um who in his childhood he had a peeping tom for four years in his windows parents didn't believe it then his dad became abusive and uh and um and i And he had been through a ton of shit in the military, MARSOC guy.

Starting point is 02:01:15 And he started standing up. He didn't want to get into the abuse from his father. And so normally people would just go, okay, well, he doesn't want to talk about it. Let's go on. We didn't want to talk about it. So I said, hey, it doesn't appear to me that you don't want to talk about this because of what happened to you. It appears to me that you don't want to talk about this because you want to stand up for your fucking abuser. And I was like, all you're doing on this show is telling the audience what you experienced and your interpretation of that experience.

Starting point is 02:01:55 so my question is why the fuck are you standing up for the abuser and questions like that you know will it will just it'll blow the interviewee out of the fucking water they're just like shit you know called me out yeah and and it turned into a really really good conversation but um finding those kind of rabbit holes to go down i've found is is and there wouldn't i would never found out that he was, you know, abused as a child had and gone down that rabbit hole because it wasn't anywhere, you know. And so that's another thing with mine. People, they get in that interview room and they've seen a lot of the other episodes and they kind of know what they're in for now. So they're willing to go deeper. You only agree to show up if you're going to have a conversation.

Starting point is 02:02:48 Yeah. I enjoy talking to other people who do a lot of interviewing because I find the conversations are, uh, much more meaningful. Right. And, um, I think I've come to the conclusion is because they know how to ask questions and they also, uh, know that if you're going to ask the questions, you got to be willing to answer questions. Yeah. Right. And it's like, I've got a couple of friends who will ask me stuff and I am whatever. And they're like, no, no, no, no, no. Hold on. If you're going to ask other people questions, you got to answer them and I'm like, okay, fair. Uh, so you got to be careful. People don't weaponize it against you. Right. Um, the last thing I want to talk about is just like, you've built this incredible audience. What have been some of the

Starting point is 02:03:23 coolest moments for you. Like most people would look at your life and be like, wow, it's amazing to be a Navy SEAL. It's amazing to work for the CIA. It's amazing to do all this stuff. But my guess is that you actually have like some pretty cool things that now you're like, I cannot believe this or that because the audience is made up of such diverse people. Uh, it's gotten so large. Like what, what are some of the cool moments that you've experienced there where you're just kind of like, I got to pinch myself cause I can't believe this is real for somebody who's been through kind of what i've been through man there's a lot i will say i don't dwell on success much do you no i don't have time for it it's my uh maybe not biggest downfall or like challenge but uh i also

Starting point is 02:04:08 am not probably as good as i should be in terms of uh giving people uh positive feedback like i kind of more focus on the negative feedback i'm just like like the positive shit is the expectation yeah uh which i think is which is like that too yeah i think it's kind of a uh if you're into the military or that whole world i think it's not a lot of guys walking around being like good job there's a lot of people being like you're fucking up um and so uh i've tried to get better at it uh but um yeah the successes are just kind of yeah just like what's next yeah i'm like that too uh some of the things that stick out i guess the eric prince interview is awesome you know just to to have somebody like that sitting in front of you with the circles

Starting point is 02:04:55 that that guy runs in it's like holy shit and the knowledge that he's i mean i don't think half of america can even comprehend what was coming out of his mouth no and uh just i told you this beforehand but it's important to me that i say it on here that interview specifically i think is in the last for sure year maybe a couple of years it's probably my most shared interview in the sense of like after i listened to it i sent it to a bunch of people half of them were like pop you're crazy like stop sending me this shit right just like who the fuck is eric prince and the other half people like what yeah and uh uh the first half is interesting if you understand black water and a lot of the controversy and things that they went through the second half

Starting point is 02:05:37 was kind of like the world is fucked right it was kind of like one of the takeaways um and so highly suggest people listen to it but uh that one for you felt like that was a kind of a trophy that you were able to uh to have that conversation yeah and then another one would be the the what led to that interview was the blackwater guys and uh this is that's probably my favorite one um there was back in 2007 i don't know if you remember there was a big shootout in nassau Square and Baghdad. Obama-Biden administration railroaded those gents. Three of them were in for 30 years. One was in for life. They deleted the evidence. They deleted the drone footage. Whatever. They got railroaded. If you want to know the ins and outs, there's an interview out there.

Starting point is 02:06:25 I'm the only one to ever get those four guys in the same room to tell their side of what happened that day and uh with the the liberal news reporter who actually brought this to trump which led to their pardons uh that was and to see like to see those guys get to open up about that day because they've the media never gave them the fucking opportunity to tell their side it was just railroad these obama once these guys railroaded fucking railroad them they never gave them the time of day so to see like the peace come over them after that interview like we got our we got to tell the world you know what what really happened that day our side of it and well their side was not helpful for the public narrative no right and i think that we're seeing

Starting point is 02:07:21 that uh across the mainstream media over and over and over again uh social media changed that shows like yours have changed that where uh now people have a voice it does make you think damn how many you know stories of history if we got the other side yeah again not necessarily meaning that the other side is 100 accurate either but like maybe we would just kind of be in the middle and say like oh this is more complex than either side wants us to understand exactly um but yeah it is fascinating just to realize like these guys went all the way including jail and then got to their story yeah tried three times they tried them three times and uh to they they just weren't gonna stop until they got a guilty verdict and and um but are they mad those guys man you know

Starting point is 02:08:09 i think they're at peace yeah you know i think sitting in prison for seven years i think it was you know they it i think it gave them it's something that you know i can't ever comprehend But I think that just gave them a new appreciation, you know, for for being free, you know, and and they're just really appreciative of it. You know, one guy, Nick Slatton, he won't I don't think that guy will ever leave his town again. He lives in a small town in Tennessee. But, you know, Paul, he's one of them. he's out public speaking now, which is just, I mean, what they have been through to be able to come out in the public and it's just phenomenal, you know? And, uh, so, so the biggest wins for me,

Starting point is 02:08:59 you know, it's, it's watching the success that I can help bring other people, you know, is, is the real, that's what makes me feel the best. You know, there's, yeah, the business wins and stuff like that. that's always cool. But, um, you know, I think we're very similar. It's, we don't celebrate the successes. Who the hell are you going to celebrate them with anyways? That's a great way to look at it. Uh, where can we send people to find you on the internet or find more of the show? Uh, just Sean Ryan show, Sean Ryan show.com. Sean Ryan shows all the social media handles. And then

Starting point is 02:09:38 my personal stuff, Sean Ryan, seven, six, two. Awesome. Well, listen, I really appreciate you coming and doing this. I've learned a lot from the show. I really enjoyed talking today and we'll definitely do it again in the future. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you enjoyed this one. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to transition into a brand new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to thecryptoacademy.io. My team and I have been working with the top HR teams in the industry to develop an intensive three-week training program

Starting point is 02:10:12 with over 50 live events. We teach you exactly what you need to know to break into the industry, including live interview prep and resume review. Our students have been hired at over 75 of the world's best Bitcoin and crypto companies. Go to thecryptoacademy.io to learn more. Again, that's thecryptoacademy.io.

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The Pomp Podcast - #1129 Shawn Ryan | Inside CIA Contracting with a Navy SEAL

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