The Pomp Podcast - #1228 Remi Adeleke | Navy SEAL Exposes Hollywood Secrets

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

Remi Adeleke is a former Navy SEAL, and also the author of 2 books, "Transformed: A Navy SEAL’s Unlikely Journey from the Throne of Africa, to the Streets of the Bronx, to Defying All Odds" & "Chameleon: A Black Box Thriller. "Chameleon" is his brand new fiction story of his life, and many of the experiences he went through. This man has not only gone from being a Navy SEAL, but he has also broke into the media & entertainment industry. ======================= Backed by world-class investors, including Google's AI Fund, Range has redesigned wealth management from the ground up. Range delivers a tech-first experience that provides fast, high-quality, transparent wealth management services making it simple to optimize and grow your wealth.With Range, you get comprehensive services like tax optimization, investment management, and estate planning with no hidden fees. That means no AUM fees.Get started today with code POMP15 for 15% off any quarterly plan for your first year at ⁠⁠range.com/pomp⁠⁠ ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 250,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/

What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Remy Adeleke is a former Navy SEAL and also the author of two books, Transformed and Chameleon. Chameleon is his brand new fiction story of his life and many of the experiences

that he went through. This man has not only gone from being a Navy SEAL, but he also has broken into the media and entertainment industry in a way that few only could wish to do. He's all over books, screenwriting, movies, and TV shows. Remy's a special human, and I'm glad that you all are going to get to hear our conversation. Here is our episode with Remy Adeleke. This episode is brought to you by Range. Are you day trading, a crypto enthusiast, or a tech worker? Or are you just an overall investing enthusiast? Listen up, you need Range. Backed by some of the world-class investors, including Google's AI fund, Range has redesigned wealth management from the ground up specifically for us.

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This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Remy here with me. Remy, you've got this really interesting background where you were a Navy SEAL. You've gone on to have movies and books and TV shows and kind of this whole world of media and entertainment. When you think about your life, are you an entertainer, whether you're in uniform or you're now professionally working in the media and entertainment business? Like there is this element in the military of you're constantly entertaining those that are next to you, those you're interacting with.

Like, is this just something that is a thread throughout your whole life of entertaining other people? I don't, you know, I mean, maybe when I was a kid for sure, you know, when, you know, when I'm watching movies and trying to mimic movies and, And especially like Martin Lawrence and Eddie Murphy, those guys trying to make my friends laugh. I would say in my younger years, when I got into the military, I don't think so. I think for me, it was just all about getting the job done and all business. And in fact, it was towards the end of my career that I decided that I wanted to go into business consulting full time. And so I got my bachelor's and then in my last two years in the teams. And then right after I got out, I was in grad school getting my master's.

And again, my plan was I was working with YPOers and other guys, essentially taking special operations principles that translates into business. And so that's what I was going to do. And then Hollywood came knocking and then I kind of found my way in Hollywood a few months later. So it definitely wasn't something that was planned. It was something that kind of just came out of nowhere. When you say that Hollywood came knocking, what do you mean? I was in grad school and I got out in January 2016. I was probably in my second and third semester of grad school,

gave my master's in organizational strategy. And that was January. And then fast forward to May of 2016, I was in my office, this very office right here, writing papers. And I got a phone call from a woman who worked with Michael Bay. And she said, hey, Bay's looking for a former Navy SEAL with your background to consult and work on Transformers the last night. And she said, hey, can you send me some pictures?

First, she asked me if I was available. i said yeah i'm not doing anything but writing papers i can get up to la tomorrow and then she uh she asked me to send her some pictures and i did and the next day i was on set so that's essentially what i mean i wasn't out here chasing it somebody just essentially knocked on my proverbial door and gave me a call and then the next set i'm day i'm working on set and one day turned into three weeks three weeks turned into six months and it was in that period that i really began to to to realize that i love storytelling i love being able to utilize my experiences my background to help formulate and create and share a story because story has such a huge impact on

not just people in America, but people culturally and internationally all around the world. One of the things that every single person I know in the military or every successful business leader is there's a sense of urgency, right? And there's also a sense of being open to opportunity and being able to kind of seize the moment. And so obviously if you get a phone call and the next day you're on set, that's like the epitome of doing this. Is that something that you've had your entire life? Did you learn in the military? Why are you uniquely able to do that versus someone who may be like, yeah, you know, I'm interested, but I'll get back to you in two weeks and kind of, you know, we'll go from there. Yeah. I think it comes from the teams being in the SEAL

teams, you know, where the acronym SEAL stands for sea, air, and land. And so we, it's kind of beaten to us in seal training to this uh ability to be flexible this ability to be a jack of all trades and be open and and we also train to contingencies uh so once you get through seal training and then you um get to your seal platoon and you do your work up a lot of your workup whether it's cqc land warfare diving it's always not just training for the mission but it's also training for the what-ifs right the curveballs that come your way and so i would say that that was essentially ingrained in me through the community. And so when I got out and this kind of curveball came my way, it was just like, all right, let's jump into it. For me, it was like,

I know that that wasn't my plan and that's not what I wanted to do, but it's a part of my nature as a frogman to jump into crazy things and be open to the opportunity. And then once you get the opportunity or you get the curveball, you do it with excellence. So you operate within that space with excellence. So I would say wholeheartedly, it didn't come from my upbringing. It came more so from my time in the teams. That makes a lot of sense. You were born in Nigeria and then ended up in the Bronx in New York. Talk a little bit about your early childhood and some of the things that happened there, but also some of the lessons maybe you took away from Yeah. So my dad, he was a very successful entrepreneur, businessman, you name it,

he did it. He was one of the first black men on the board of the World Trade Center in New York City, did a lot of business in New York City. And he was also one of the first black men on the board of the British Financial Planning Council in Great Britain. And he amassed great wealth in the West. And then he returned to Nigeria. He's actually born in Nigeria. He's firstborn son to my grandfather, Chief Adeleke. He had nine wives, kept on having daughters. My dad was the firstborn son, so he inherited the title of chief and kind of became the heir to the year of a throne, so to speak. And so after his time in the West, again, he went back to Nigeria and his plan was to essentially develop an African Wall Street. And the title of the project was

lagoon city he bought a massive plot of land in marico for eight million pounds this is in the 70s there was a military coup shortly after and that land got taken by the government he went to court for a number of years for the nigerian government and then finally they came back and said okay we won't give you marico but what do you want for compensation and so he asked for lagoon and they laughed at him because they said what are you going to do with the lagoon and he hired dutch engineers and dredged the foreshore and created one of the first man-made islands uh in the world um which is now known as banana island but it was known as lagoon city i was born around that time so um i was born into riches and wealth and we traveled the world and and my dad

hosted parties with dignitaries and and one of his best friends was the uh designer architect of the world trade center japanese guy uh and uh you know my dad was just super influential and and because of his success you know we lived a great life but fast forward to 1987 the nigerian state government um the nigerian government is inherently corrupt all around but the state government came in and said that the federal government was never supposed to give my dad the lagoon as compensation because the foreshore belongs to the um state government and they conveniently waited until the land had formed and construction had had started on the island as far as buildings uh to to do that so um which i mean they all knew what was going on for the years that it took to turn

this lagoon into an island but they conveniently waited my dad went to go fight him in court died mysteriously three weeks later and we went from very rich to very poor and uh my mom then being american brought my brother and i back to the states and we grew up in the bronx um it was a very rough environment um crackheads drug dealers crime um i remember seeing the mafia guys going to the quarter stores with their big collars and shake down the store owners for their taxes uh it was a very very rough environment and uh as i grew older eight nine ten i began to become more conscious of my surroundings because my mom she did a fantastic job of masking the reality of what had happened and keeping us in this bubble for as long as she could but as i

got older and i got a chance to venture off that's when i began to to notice things more so and that's when i also began to try to find a father in the streets and hip-hop culture rap culture all of these things that were prevalent in the late 80s and early 90s and that led me down a really bad path started out stealing from my mom and then that progressed to stealing from stores that progressed to stealing from drop jobs that progressed to selling drugs and then that progressed to running high-level scams and by the time i was 19 i had built a massive legal enterprise where i was bringing in 10 10 like tens of thousands of dollars a week running a cell phone scam because cell phones had just become prominent so that was a uh in a quick nutshell that was my

uh nigeria the bronx upbringing well let me i want to unpack some of this because it is this a fascinating story, right? Where basically you get the highs and the lows in a very short period of time, kind of as a kid when you're very formidable. When your dad was going through this, on one hand, there's this, you know, probably proud of your father to go and fight back against the government and say, hey, no, look, you took my land. I need to be compensated for it. At the same time, as you described, there's this mysterious death. And I don't know how much kind of you guys know or didn't really spend the time to try to figure it out. How do you think back around, you know, a private citizen, private property rights, and then

government and kind of their ability to do things like that, whether it's in Nigeria or in any country really around the world, like what are some of the lessons maybe that you took away from that as a kid? Uh, you know, I was too young to really take away any lessons. I was five years old at the time. Um, but I would say now as an adult, looking back in retrospect is, you know, just the, the greatness of America, you know, our ability to, to, to have those rights and not have to worry about buying a house and then the government come along one day and saying that that house doesn't belong to you. So, you know, now it belongs to us. And just having the freedoms that we have here. So I look at it more so in retrospect. And, you know, I've been able to,

you know, build wealth, you know, starting from the bottom. But to where I am at now, I've been able to kind of build wealth because of the freedoms and the laws and the rules that we have in place, which do not exist in Nigeria. I get Nigerians on a daily basis that email me or message me on social media, and they say, please, can you please bring me to America? Or can you please come back to Nigeria and help fight the government and run for power?

I get a lot of people that ask me to come back and run, you know, get into politics, and I don't have a desire to because I know how corrupt the system is. It's going to take a complete dismantling of the Nigerian political system in order for it to be what it can be. And Nigeria has the potential to be great because it's a very rich and resourced country. When you look at the natural gas that can be produced, oil, cocoa, gold, and all these other minerals. I mean, look at what China's doing there.

They're going into not just Nigeria, but other parts of Africa. And they're just buying up all of this real estate in order to be able to mine and pull these resources out because because of the resources that are in Nigeria and in these other parts of Africa. And so Nigeria does have the potential to be a very wealthy and successful country where majority of the people are thriving. But the corruption is just so out of control. So I know that was a long answer, but it's short that it's more of a retrospective look than essentially having an assessment when I was that early of an age. Yeah, when I went to Nigeria and stayed in Lagos and not on Victoria Island, but actually like in Lagos near Computer Village. And I've told the story before on the podcast, the energy in Nigeria is just off the charts, right? And you're just walking around and for whatever reason, it's just, you just know it's a special

place. And, and, uh, the, the way that people interact with you and with, with each other and stuff is, uh, uh, something that you wish you could just bottle up. And you're like, man, this place has so much potential. And then you look at, you know, the population, uh, size and how fast it's growing and the estimates that, you know, there's gonna be more Nigerians than Americans by 2050. And just all these different, uh, components are like, this place could be amazing. But when you talk to Nigerians, the government and the corruption is one of the things they

point to. And they say, yeah, we just got this like governor on the speed we can go until we kind to fix that problem no 100 and the crazy thing is like in the inner city of new york city there's other inner cities when people are in poverty uh young people specifically uh what do they look to to get out of poverty for the most part at least speaking from my experience it's like sports uh music or you know selling drugs right because that's what they're exposed to in nigeria um every kid from the time they're young they're taught whatever you do work your way into politics because if you can get into politics and that's the way you can get rich, you have people who

become governors or senators in Nigeria having no wealth. They're just great talkers and great manipulators. And then they come out of office, billionaires, not millionaires, billionaires. And so that's the goal for a lot of people in Nigeria is to get into politics because they know, hey, once I get to the, as a matter of fact, I remember finding Nigeria in 2018 to finish writing my book. And as soon as I got off the plane, the customs officer said, what gift do you have for me? Like, do you have a gift for me? You know, in order to get through customs, you have to give me a gift. And then we got pulled over and the police said, how much money are you going to give me in order to get through? So it's so systemic, the corruption. And it's whatever position somebody's

in Nigeria from the smallest position as a customs officer, they're going to shake you down. And if they can shake you down for $5 as a customs officer, just imagine what the governors and the senators and the Ministry of Oil, I mean, it was a story that came out, I want to say around 2014, 2015, where the Ministry of Oil, you know, they found, and again, I might be butchering the story, but the spirit of it is she was cutting side deals with other countries and shipping oil to these other countries. So if a shipment of oil costs, I don't know, $15 billion, I'm just throwing out a random number to give this example, she would sell it for $5 billion, pocket the $5 billion, the ship would disappear, the other country would get the oil,

and now she's a billionaire. And then when she got caught, she jumped on a plane to London. And when the Nigerian government was like, you got to come back and face charges because you got caught, she's like, I have cancer, so I need to stay here and seek treatment. So, you know, that's what everybody, that's not everybody, but that's what a good number of Nigerians, you know, do in politics is they just steal and their kids are raised to, hey, don't try to become a basketball player or a doctor or a lawyer. Try to become a politician because that's how you're going to get rich and be able to get your family out of the poverty that they're in, you know, which is sad. There's some families in America who have the same strategy of just getting. Oh, 100 percent. 100 percent.

Oh, yeah. and people who just go into politics for that reason because they've they've but i would just say it's more widespread in nigeria than it is and it's more overt it's more widespread and it's more over in nigeria here it's more clandestine because of our rules and the laws and our rights but hey it's it's it's disgusting uh wherever it happens you know completely agree um talk about your mom obviously being uh kind of in a situation where uh your father had generated great wealth You went to Nigeria. You and your siblings were born there. And then all of a sudden, you kind of returned back from wealth to a degree of poverty. How did she handle that,

navigate it? And was the move back to New York more of like running to the familiar? Or was it running away from the situation? How, as you grew up, did you kind of talk to her? What did you learn? Yeah, my mom was just, she's just a beast. I think there was a trigger for her after my dad died, she contacted a cousin that she had grown up with. And he was well-to-do, a lawyer in New York City. And she reached out to him and said, I don't have a nickel to my name. I'm coming back to New York or I'm back in New York. I can't remember the time period. This was shortly after my dad died, though. And can you just loan me some money until I can get myself together and get my kids squared away with food and clothing and schooling and all that?

And about five minutes later, his wife called her back and said, how dare you call up my husband and ask him for money? You know, don't you ever do that again. And it hung up the phone on my mom. And it was in that moment that a switch went off in my mom's head. The boats have been burned. No one's coming to my rescue. I need to figure this out on my own. And so my mom, you know, she worked multiple jobs.

She started out as a teacher in the South Bronx, but then she would also work in museums and art galleries in midtown Manhattan. to be able to expose my brother and I to the arts for free so that we can get a secondary education through her teaching. She started a creative writing business called First Impressions Writing Services, where she would, again, teach, work at the museum, and then people would give her term papers. She was chat GTP before there was a chat GTP. And she would write term papers and resumes and letters for people and get paid. So she would just work grind hard. I mean, She would wake up in the morning before my brother and I would wake up, run. We had 17 flights and 17 floors in our building.

She would run up and down the stairs for a workout because she couldn't afford a gym, come back downstairs, wake my brother and I up, get us ready for school, send us to school. Then she would go work, come back from work, help us with our homework, work another job, feed us, work another job, and then put us down to sleep and then work some more. So that was something that I saw as a kid. And I would ask my mom, mom, why are you working? I didn't understand it as a young kid. And then now I look back, it's because she was trying to provide for two boys. And again, she was trying to create an environment for us that where we could thrive and become something.

And I remember asking her in my early 20s, I said, mom, why didn't you ever remarry? And she said, because I didn't want to bring any confusion into the house. And I knew that my main focus needed to be you guys, because it's you and your brother were successful, then everything would be all right. And then I would be all right in the long run. And so, and so that's why she worked as hard as she did. And it paid off, you know, all eventually paid off. And, but more importantly, it gave me the template for how to work. It showed me the importance of, of putting in the work and going the extra mile. My mom would always tell me and my brother, whatever you do, do it right the first time. She would make my

brother and I read New York Times articles and books and then write reports on those books and articles. And if the reports weren't near perfect, which for me, my brother, he's an engineer, so he would do better than me. She would make us pick another article book and start all over again from scratch. Right. And what she was trying to instill in us was the importance of doing everything right the first time and doing everything with excellence. And she was also trying to instill into us the importance of being able to write, because from her perspective, if you knew how, if she figured if my brother and I knew how to articulate ourselves in a literary format, we would never be without a job. We would always be able to work. And so she was

just forward thinking in that sense. And so I say all I have to say, you know, she set the template for me. And I know without an unequivocal doubt that I would not have made it through the military, made it into SEAL training, made it through SEAL training, be who I am and where I'm at today without that constant reminder and that example as a young boy of hard work and the importance of hard work. So how do you go from doing book reports and article reports to running cell phone scams? That's a jump, right? And to some degree, it's like inside the house, almost like you're one person. And then it seems like outside the house, you're a different person, right? Like talk, talk through a little bit as to how that happens and how do you balance that in your head now?

Yeah, I was a chameleon, you know, just like the title of my book right there, Chameleon. I learned how to be a chameleon at an early age. I learned, OK, this is how I need to be with my mom to keep her off my back and then figuring out what I'm doing. And this is who I need and how I need to be when I'm out in the streets doing what I'm doing. I needed to do, you know, not like exceedingly above and beyond in school, but I needed to meet the standard in school. And as long as I'm meeting the standard in school and I'm graduating to the next grade on time, she's going to stay off my back. So and that will allow me to do what I do. So I would just so the easiest answer to that was I was a chameleon. And and for me, it was especially the young age. It was all about making money.

And I think a big part of that also was I had my dad's entrepreneur DNA and mindset, you know, so I didn't really want to work for people. And that's why when I did work for people, you know, I stole or I figured out a way to create a business out of the business that I was working in, if that makes sense. And so it all boiled down to wanting to make money and wanting to be affirmed. You know, I think that that was also a big part of it. You know, I believe that every boy needs a father to affirm him and to teach him how to be a man. If not, he's going to seek affirmation from other things, people, relationships, et cetera. And that's the same thing with every girl. Every girl needs a father to teach her how to be loved by a man and to a father to affirm her so that she's not seeking affirmation in relationships and the wrong things.

And so in retrospect, I can say that the main reason why I got into the stuff that I got into was because unconsciously I was seeking that pat on the back from my dad that I never got because my dad died. You know, I was seeking for people to, hey, you're the man. You're doing great. You're doing this. And so that's how I was. That's why I was able to progress from doing things I was doing and selling drugs and and eventually, you know, running the high level scams, the cell phone scams. What was the scam? This episode is brought to you by Accenture.

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with a cell phone company. We'll just call it WCT because that's what I named them in my memoir, Transform. But I was working with this company called WCT, and I was able to get a license to cell phones. Cell phones had just come out. The first phone was like the Nokia, and it had the snake game on it, and then you had Motorola flip phones and all that. And everybody was, you know, was, was, was enticed, especially in New York city by this. And so, um, um, what I would do was I eventually connected with a guy

who I went to high school with and his girlfriend worked at a hospice. And so he would get me, um, uh, name, date of birth, uh, addresses, social security, uh, number. And then I would activate phones on so on one person's line of credit i could activate up the three phones and uh the bill wouldn't come in for 30 days and then uh the person had 30 days to pay the bill which they wanted uh so then the phone would stay on for 60 days and then in 90 days the phone would turn off and so i found a niche a niche with with drug dealers because they loved the phones because they had unlimited uh cell phone calling because i was i was doing unlimited phone calls for unlimited minutes before it existed uh because they would have the phone for 90 days

unlimited phone calls and then uh it would turn off and then i would get them a new one so they weren't easy it was hard for them to be tracing the people who was everything um uh we were using were essentially either on their way to to on their deathbed or or they had died in the process of me activating the phone so nobody was was uh was uh looking in on it and so essentially that's that's kind that was the cell phone scam and i would sell the phones for between 300 and to 900 depending on the phones and then the motorola two-way pagers came out which were like they looked like little miniature laptops and they were there was a gray one and a black one and so i would sell those for about five to six hundred dollars a pop and uh that's essentially how i

was i was making money and then i started a record company i keep this on my desk as a reminder because this was our compilation album and uh and i would essentially launder the money through the record company uh and my exit plan was to essentially you know get enough compilations album albums together and sell some numbers so that we could track and we could show proof of concept to record companies and then sign a label deal because that's what you know jay-z and and damon dash did at the time they were selling drugs they used drugs to essentially fund their music business and then that's how they that was their exit plan the music business and and murder inc and a lot of these other guys so i was trying to follow that template so that was uh that was a

a cell phone scam and that's kind of how it all worked together so you go from that to 2002 i think it is you enroll in the navy and what you mentioned earlier is your dad was on the board of world trade center he knew the designer uh or the uh you know engineer and architect of uh world trade center 9-11 drove the decision to join the navy or completely unrelated no it was completely unrelated um um i had ended up getting involved in a deal with a drug dealer that went bad sold him another number of phones that were supposed to stand stay on for 90 days they only stayed on for two weeks um he he had already flipped the phone so i so if i if i sold him phone for 500 he didn't turn sold the phone for a thousand dollars so he owed a lot of people money

and they were upset so um after he threatened my life my mom's life was threatened huge wake-up call for me that's when i decided hey i'm not doing this anymore uh and uh tried to sell the record company, that didn't work itself out. And then finally, in 2002, that's when I kind of looked at my life and I saw that my life hadn't amounted to anything. And I realized that if I stay in the Bronx, I'm going to either end up dead or in prison because there were people who were doing the same things that I was doing and they were ending up in federal prison. And so, that was, it was more self-preservation. It wasn't about, hey, let me join the military after the act of war 9-11 or any of that stuff let me just join the military because if I don't I'm going to

end up dead um and so I and I went to go join and then the recruiter she ran my background uh and she found out that I had two warrants out for my arrest uh which I didn't know I had a warrant in New Jersey and I had a warrant in New York I was I was petrified because at this point I didn't know what the warrants were for so uh at the time and so uh I thought it was for the stuff that I was doing and you know was it related to the phones and uh got up got ready to run out of the office and she stopped me right before i got out you know right before i crushed across the threshold and she said hey where you going i said i'm getting out of here she said uh you have a suit i said no she asked me if i had a collared shirt and some nice pants i said i'm sure i could find something

and she told me to come back tomorrow and i said for what she snapped at me and said just come back tomorrow okay and uh growing up in the streets of the bronx especially when i was hustling i had to learn how to read people. And that would later serve me well. And when I got into human intelligence and from her response or reaction, the way she had been for the last hours in her office, I was able to read that she, whatever it was that she was going to do for me, it was going to be good. I didn't know exactly what it was going to be, but I knew that it would be good. And so I came back the next day and she took me to both judges. She had on her dress uniform and took me to both judges, to judge in New Jersey, judge in New York, advocate on my behalf. She kind of used

the 9-11 as a way to get me in. She said, hey, he's trying to join the Navy after an act of war. 9-11 took place nine months earlier. And I think you should give him a shot because he can't join the military with warrants or record. And the first judge expunged my record. I just had to pay court fees and court fines. And the second judge who he was, his courthouse, the courthouse was coincidentally blocks away from ground zero. He, you know, so there was a lot of empathy there. he expunged my record. And then that was kind of how, and then she fudged the paperwork to sneak me into the Navy. And that's kind of how it all happened. So it was all about self-preservation. So when you get in, do you go straight to SEAL training or you go to the regular Navy first?

Yeah, I go to the regular Navy first. I wasn't qualified academically. I didn't have the ASVAB scores and I couldn't swim and I was super skinny. So I went to a Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton first. I did a year there. And as soon as I got there, I just trained hard. I didn't have a car, so I'd run three miles uphill to the pool, jump in the shallow end, try to figure it out, run three miles back. I got an ASVAB for dummies book, which is like an SAT book. And I studied that book religiously. And then I watched a Bud's 234 documentary and saw how the guys worked out. And I built my workout plans around what they did. And within a year of checking into the command, I was checking out and on my way to SEAL training. So it was a year process.

what was training like buds it was it sucked it was uh it sucked and uh uh being being uh i couldn't get away with anything because you know uh less than one percent of navy seals are african-american and then when every class that i had been in you know i'm like one or one or one of one or one of three african-americans in the class and uh and so i couldn't get away with anything one two so i stood out like a sore thumb uh and then on top of that you know i i had the cold water i had no body fat so when i'm in the ocean i'm freezing at the end of every two mile time the ocean swim i mean the borderline hypothermic or hypothermic so that sucked and it's just a brutal it's a brutal process man and it has to be um because they're

trying to uh uh create warriors who would be able to go in any situation outnumbered outgunned still get the job done and so it's absolutely necessary it has to be tough i mean the attrition rate is anywhere between 80 and 90 percent the class i graduated with started with two 270 29 of us finished and that's just the way it is every class so um it sucked it sucked bad but it was necessary i've talked to a lot of seals about this what do you think about uh all the public pressure to make it softer to basically water down i hate it i i think it's all political um uh for um diversity's sake i say that in air quotes i think you know that that's you know that's a job where you have to have uh a person in it that's qualified you know what i mean and it's not a job

where you can water it down and to get numbers in or to meet a quota otherwise you're going to create casualties. I will say that the SEAL teams, Bud's training, and then the SEAL teams, that was the first community that I felt like I was a part of that didn't care at all whether I was Black or white. They didn't care. All they cared about was, can you do your job? Can you perform? And if you can't perform, you're out of here. If you can perform, then you stay in. And I hate the idea of people trying to, politicians, and, you know, the majority of people who are trying to, you know, water it down, change it, are people who didn't serve or will have never served, not just in the military, but in special operations. So it's easy to arm your quarterback and say, why aren't there enough of this group or that group? And then why aren't there enough blacks?

And then why aren't there enough women? And this and that. And how about you go through training first and then you tell me why. well and i think what uh many people don't realize i was in the regular army and uh special operations is even that on steroids um is the trust that a team needs right and so to your point it's not only can you do your job you know in training but i'm assuming when you're kicking in a door in iraq or afghanistan you need to know that the person next to you can shoot straight can move can communicate has your back is gonna not fucking run out of the building the first time

someone shoots back like all these different things that trust and and that confidence and competence that comes with uh having people who've gone through the training is a huge piece like the psychological component is really important 100 it's total buy-in you know um i like like example you use was perfect when i go into it when i was doing direct action missions downrange uh i won't mention the countries out you know that i operated in uh but you know when was doing da missions and we went and i had to i was a point first man in a second man and i knew if i was first man and the guy behind me is going to cover my corner be the second man and right behind me covering down the section that i can't see i didn't have to worry about is he gonna after

i go in is he gonna really clear his corner or am i gonna get shot in the back by somebody who's hiding in the corner i knew that he was gonna do what he was gonna do and even even more more than that i knew that when hit the fan like when things were out of control that that dude was not going to quit it at because it's not just about the fear of of of uh going in and somebody running out because they're scared of getting shot it's more about yo you've been you're half your platoon has been shot up or the birds crashed or you've been on an op for freaking eight hours and it's 130 degrees out it was just supposed to be a quick snatch and grab and you know that each guy is still going to give 110 you know that each guy is not even paying attention to the fact that he

might have have been shot and bleeding i mean case in point lone survivor that's a great that's a great case study right there you know that proves why we do what we did why we do what we do because you know those guys marcus and and axel and and murph and those guys they were in the middle of a storm and they kept on fighting they weren't fighting fighting for themselves they kept on fighting for the guy to their right they left outnumbered shot up you know uh guy died another guy died still going still fighting for each other and and that perseverance that that no-quit attitude in the face of ominous you know absolute distress death you name it you can only get that out of our out of the program that we that we uh come out of and so um so yeah man well i think a

big part of it too is uh you can't recreate that scenario or or other types of scenarios in training but you sure can put people through a lot of pain right and kind of test them mentally and so how much of the training did you feel was it was physical versus mental it's all mental in my opinion every guy that shows up to training physically has what it takes to to be there make it otherwise you want to get in you got to pass like a 500 yard swim push-ups sit-ups pull up certain numbers all out of the stuff and you can't just pass it you have to score what's called competitive scores and then you got to take a physical examination and the psychological all this stuff so every single person that shows up has what it takes physically the question now

becomes who has what it takes mentally all the instructors are doing and this is what we did on the special forces fox show and this is what i do when i work with corporations and pro athletes all we're doing is taking physical tools to drive home intellectual points we're using the physical to challenge them mentally and that's what it's about all at the end of the day so for me my personal opinion it's it's 90 mental 10 physical i mean the the and that 10 physical that i mean they're just using that 10 to to put to to push that 90 within your within your psyche and your brain so one of the things uh i hear people who've never served in the military before never you know have gone overseas or anything like that. They'll talk about fear and how fear really is this thing

that obviously soldiers don't get scared, right? Obviously SEALs don't get scared. Talk a little bit about fear, whether you ever were scared, you know, when you're out in the field or operating on missions and whether that was something that could be debilitating or actually something that you could use to your advantage and kind of spur yourself into action. Yeah, I think fear is good. fear is a good thing because it keeps you from doing the wrong thing, in my opinion. My greatest fear when going on missions, it wasn't death. I gave up the fear of death the moment I raised my hand and said, I'll join the military. And then even more so when I freaking said, I'm going to go to buzz. And then even more so when I said, I'm going to be a frogman,

because I knew that I could die at any moment. And you have to give up that fear of death. my greatest fear was doing something or not doing something that would lead to the serious injury or death of my teammate. That was my fear. And that fear was good because it really helped focus me on doing the right things. As I said, I was a medic, but I was also a human guy, which stands for human intelligence. And so I got to go to different intelligence schools and I had to learn how to run sources and do all that cool stuff, tradecraft, all that cool stuff. And that's kind of where Chameleon kind of came out of. And so I was building the intelligence packages that would lead to us going on direct action missions.

And so I had to really vet my information with my sources and against other information and double vet it and check it. because my fear was getting a piece of information or maybe I'm in a meeting with a source and I'm not paying attention to all the telltale signs. Is he lying to me? Is he just trying to send me to a place where I go into the, me and my team go into the building and then somebody clacks off a bomb and we're all dead. I have to focus even more so. And that focus came out of that fear of leading my teammates into a situation that that's going to kill them. Right. And so fear was good and it was always good. But again, it was more so the fear of doing something or not doing something that would hurt or lead to the death of my teammates. And that's something that,

you know, when I'm talking to entrepreneurs and CEOs of companies, that's something that I always preach. I said, you know, utilize that fear, but don't utilize it in a selfish way. Think about your employees. Think about your subordinates. You know, think about, okay, is this decision going to be a decision that is not going to just hurt me, but it's going to hurt my teammates and return by hurting my teammates, hurt my bottom line. One thing I always try to tell leaders is that, you know, is the importance of taking a genuine interest in your people, because if you take a genuine interest in them, not just see them as a stepping stone or a sled dog or whatever the tag we put on it. Your people are going to want, not only are they going to want

to meet the standard, they're going to want to blow past the standard. They're going to want to be willing to run through walls. And that was something I learned in the SEAL teams. I had an OIC who just really took a genuine interest in us. And so we wanted to perform beyond the standard. You know, it wasn't about him prying into our personal business. It was about him letting us know, hey, I care about you. What's going on? How's your day? How's things back at the family? What can I do to support you? What can I do to help make your job easier? And in doing all of those things and actually caring about us, you know, we wanted to work 10 times harder. And when you have that fear of disappointing your subordinates or disappointing

your teammates, it's going to lead to you making the right decisions so that that went and making the right decisions. It's just going to create this cycle of success within your team, within your organization and so fear is good when you think about the book and this black box thriller is kind of how uh it's described it is based on your experiences so it is not your story but it is a story that is rooted in this experience that you had talk a little bit about human intelligence and what does that really entail and then how much of what people see on television or in movies is real versus it's just dramatized because it's entertaining but it isn't part of the actual job Yeah. So I would say that Black Box Chameleon is a fictional extension of my life.

You know, it's it's it's in Transform. My memoir couldn't go into the details about what I did and how I did it. And so this was my at my my my way. Chameleon was my way to be able to to do it in a safe way where I'm totally fictionalizing everything and creating different programs and so on and so forth. but yeah human intelligence is uh it's essentially it's using humans to collect intelligence that's the easiest way to explain it um a good film comp would be one as a matter of fact and i could say this in one of the courses that i went to um the instructors uh played us scenes from spy games um so uh if if anyone has seen spy games that's you know without me kind of giving away information that shouldn't be given away to the general public, that's a good comp for what we do. You know, that's a good example of, you know, finding somebody who, and that's part of the

job. Part of the job is finding somebody who has information or can get access to information that you need for a mission or maybe not even a mission, maybe just to get an idea of what's going on in the environment that you'll be working in, right? it's finding that person befriending that person which is building rapport with that person and then at some point you know tasking that person to do work for you um to collect intelligence for you because me as a as a big black dude from the bronx you know what i mean i couldn't i couldn't walk down the street of certain places in the middle east or even in uh even in some

parts of africa because you know um because even though i'm black like you know africans can kind to snoop out an american easily uh for the most part uh and and so we don't have the ability to walk down the street and get these jobs done and so it takes these people these these humans hence human intelligence to go help collect that information uh and and it's about training them and getting them up to speed and knowing when to pitch and and and when not to and and uh and and reading them as well that's it's a big part of it that's why i would say that uh growing up in the Bronx really helped prepare me for that job because you have to learn how to know how to read people, especially when you're doing the crazy stuff that I was doing. Uh, you have to

learn how to read people or in order, or else you're going to end up, you know, talking to an undercover cop instead of talking to, uh, you know, a client and ended up in prison. Uh, and so, um, so yeah, that's essentially human. It's, it's, um, it's, uh, using, utilizing people, um, to collect intelligence for you. Now, if you and I just were to sit down and talk about uh you know kind of this storyline i think that uh i could learn a lot right somebody who's interested in this stuff would pick up a lot of details and information and kind of just intellectually be stimulated but you originally wrote it as a screenplay and converted it into a book which means that it's got to be entertaining as well right and to talk a little bit as to when

you sit down to write a fiction book versus the non-fiction kind of memoir style it's very different writing and so how did you kind of get yourself into uh the mindset and be prepared to actually write the fiction uh component after having such a successful non-fiction book yeah you know i think it was it wasn't too hard for me because um uh in part you know i wrote a few fiction screenplays before um jumping into the fiction book so i had the writing the non-fiction book to help essentially give me the standard right it helped give me uh my right and left left limits as it relates to writing a book because those right and left limits are a lot wider when it comes to a book than writing a screenplay and then after writing my first book

that's when i wrote my first screenplay which was actually chameleon and and and those limits shrink exponentially uh because you don't have as much space and latitude to explain and you know and give a give a give a sense of the world and and and have the characters give these long monologues you don't have the space to do that in a screenplay you have to get all of this information out in such a such a small uh encapsulated way and so um writing chameleon as a script and then writing other screenplays that i worked on fictional screenplays you know it really that's what helped me transition back into writing my book because now i had these restrictions in the in the fiction space as it related to screenplay so now i wasn't able to now expand that into a

book um so that's what i would say uh uh helped me the most was having that experience as a screen screenwriter writing those screenwriting books and then and then now being able to go back to that fiction length or standard like as you get going back to that non-fiction lane and standard that didn't transform having that same length in chameleon but now taking all my fiction experience from three-act structure character arc uh you know the hero's journey which you can't really do much of in a non-fiction space because there's just certain storylines and non-fiction spaces that don't pull into the hero journey or if they do we would talk about 30 40 years that you got to stretch into the hero's journey that's not the way the hero's journey works and so um so

yeah screenwriting and then uh really helped me tremendously talk about uh kind of reviewing the the book right so obviously you can have tons of people who are writers or editors and they can go and they can read words and they can tell you hey put a comma here don't put a comma here you know use this grammar whatever but the substance of the book is uh not very well known by many people it's not like we're writing about hey we went to the restaurant and people are like oh i've had that experience right you're talking about things that are very specific and so you've got a friend who i think was a ci agent who read it and was uh you know helpful uh in getting you to convert it from the screenplay into the book but did you have other people whether they're navy seals other

teammates, et cetera, kind of read through and just, Hey, give me a gut check. Like this is realistic and makes sense. Or did you kind of just have to fly blind on that part? This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business the result less time spent on operations more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most learn more at accenture.com spotify yeah no i did i you know jack carr uh who uh he's been very successful with uh the terminalist

series which got turned into a tv show which i had the pleasure of working on that tv show as well he was one of the first he was the first person that i sent the book to um because you know he knows the audience and he knows um how to write in a way that's not so heady that's not above the head of of of you know the average person that didn't doesn't have experience in the world that we operate in and so he was the first guy i sent it to and dude he i mean his i mean his his quote is on the cover of the book his his blurb after reading the book is on the cover of the book but you know he gave me some really good feedback and and uh and thoroughly enjoyed it and then um brad thor who um you know he wasn't in the world that i was in but uh he has a lot of

experience writing those type of i mean he's been doing it for decades number one new york times bestseller multiple times over and so um you know sending it to him and having him read it and and give his input so that was he was also very uh beneficial and taylor moore as well you know he you know him having worked in the agency and i had to kind of lean on him a little bit more so than the other guys because this is not a navy seal book you know what i mean this is not a book about navy seals this is a this is a book about a world that i never operated in um you know yes i did the human stuff but i never operated on a cia level where you know uh they're doing all that cool extra tier one type stuff in the agency so i i really did have to rely on those guys and uh

and and it was helpful for sure talk about the business behind all of this like you mentioned Jack Carr is a good example, right? I don't know. I've lost count of how many books he's written at this point, but it just seems like he keeps launching books. They're successful, right? He's obviously got the Amazon TV series that you mentioned. He's just become somebody who crossed over from the military world into kind of television, media, entertainment, been very successful. You seem to be on a very similar trajectory in terms of you've got TV shows, you've got movies and screenplays and now books and just kind of you're hitting on all of these different components how do you think about the business is it just you're the business is it more

of like a publishing type house like just talk to me a little bit as to like when somebody says to you like what are you building how do you answer yeah i mean for me i'm building it's a business it's all it's you know it's it all falls under one umbrella which is my eighth wonder which is that's funny because it's the name of my my um music company i kind of kept retain that name for my production company but all falls under that you know it's a storytelling business it's uh, uh, and, and, and our motto is to, uh, uh, to tell authentic stories and doing it in an authentic way, authentic and grounded way, whether that's through a book, whether that's through a TV show, whether that's, and whether that TV show was unscripted or scripted like special forces

box. I mean, I, I, I wasn't going to sign on and do that show unless it was going to be as authentic and real as, as, uh, as it was. And that was one of the, uh, my no go go criteria is it related to doing a show so um yeah man it's uh everything falls under that one business and for me it's all about how can one thing elevate the next thing and elevate the next thing and elevate the next thing so um so yeah yeah when you see the books the tv shows and the movies what is your favorite how do you actually decide if you can only work on one project for the rest of your life right like you get one last one what's the evaluation criteria how do you think about like what you uniquely find enjoyment in what is going to have the most impact that's that's

for me is is whether it's a book tv show film what's going to have the most impact because it was it was story that changed the trajectory of my life i kind of breezed through my story a little bit but um the first film that began to change and shift my mindset was bad boys uh because that was a that was uh the first film where i saw two african-americans who look like they they were cool but they were playing heroes and so i remember being about 14 when that movie came out and i was or 15 i can't remember exactly and that's when i was just like holy crap like i could be something other than an athlete drug dealer or a rapper uh and then a year later the rock came out and that's was my first time i was exposed to navy seals uh and so those two films

changed they they shifted my mindset and changed the trajectory of my life and so that's the power of story and i meet so many people whether they're in the teams or outside other avenues or other jobs and you ask them hey why did you do what why did you choose this career path and they'll tell you oh i watched this movie i read this book or i listened to this podcast and i was just super and i was just super inspired and i was just like that's what i want to do that's how I discovered what I wanted to do in life was through a story. And so because I understand the impact of story, that's why for me, that's how I choose what I'm going to do. Is it going to have an impact? And yes, it is a business, right? So a part of it is, yes, we do want to make money,

right? I'm not doing this for charity, but at the end of the day, I want what I'm doing to have some type of social or cultural impact or impact on somebody on an individual level. Like I mentioned when we were offline, the underlying theme in my book, Chameleon, which doesn't come to the surface until the end, was this importance of national unity. There's so much disunity in our nation. And if we continue down this divided path, it's going to ultimately lead to our destruction. And so, you know, I wanted to intertwine that in the story because I want that to impact people. I want people to wake up and be like, ah, you know, I do hate this person because they're part of this political party. But maybe I should just go have a conversation. Maybe I

should try and build a relationship. Or maybe I should just not attack that person because of our political differences. And, you know, I always try to say, you know, unity, there's a process to unity. It starts with conversation. Conversation leads to understanding, and understanding is what ultimately leads to some form of unity. And so, you know, again, going back to the answer, it's all about what is going to have the most impact, especially in the time period that I'm operating or working in, whether that's making a film. And that was one of the reasons why I made my Organ Harvesting short film, which is now going to be a feature film. And it's because I saw a need for it. I was working in the human trafficking space, volunteering with different

nonprofits. I saw that I was unconscious of the realities of human trafficking until I got into that space. And then I was just like, damn, I didn't know much about this. I'm sure a lot of other people don't know a lot about this. And so how can I get more people engaged in this fight against this global issue called human trafficking? And I was like, oh, let's make a film. Let's impact. And so now I shifted my focus from other things that I had already accomplished to, All right. This is my focus because this type of project is going to have a bigger impact. And I made that short film. And now that short film is going to be a feature film. And so it all comes back to what is going to have the most impact in the moment. That's how I choose what I work on. When you think back over the media and entertainment work that you've done, is there one moment that you can point to and say, that's when I knew I could do this? Yeah, I was working on Six Underground with Michael Bay.

I was in Italy, and it was a big star-studded cast with Ryan Reynolds and Corey Hawkins and a bunch of other people. And Michael Bay was like, we were shooting a scene and he had me next to him at the monitor and he was like, yo, what do you think? How would you... He wasn't asking because he needed an answer, but he was just asking to kind of see where my head visually as a storyteller was and he was like what would you think how would you shoot this and uh i told him and then he went and it was like all right i'll try it out i'll try it out on this

take and he did it and uh it was it was cool i don't know if he ended up using that that take in the in the final edit but it was that was when i was like i could do this you know because from a storytelling standpoint it doesn't get as it doesn't get that high the stakes don't get that high as it as it does when you're a director right writing a book there's not a lot of money on the line really when you're writing a book for the most part right uh you know acting in a movie i mean you're you're getting paid your check and you're getting told to perform a certain way but the director is the one that's in charge of everything and in charge of you know millions of dollars of some films hundreds of millions of dollars and so to be able to be handed you know

the reins for a millisecond and and uh and and accomplish something um that was when i was like you know what? I could do this. I could do this. You know, it is, uh, it's incredible to hear, uh, kind of your story and see the success that you've had. Uh, do you think that there's going to be more seals and, uh, people from the military who kind of fall in these footsteps? You mentioned, you know, Jack and a few others that have kind of started to do this. There's obviously the, uh, seal specifically who've had certain experiences. You mentioned Martin trail, you know, that, that either are able to turn their stories into movies or books and that that stuff. But even just for the person who, you know, yes, they were in the military, but they

didn't necessarily have some experience that turns into a specific book or a movie. How do you kind of see that transition becoming easier? Or maybe it's still going to be hard regardless of how much success you Jack or anybody else has? I think it's always gonna be hard. I mean, the book, film and TV, but entertainment business in general is a hard, it's a tough nut to crack. Even with people who are experienced and, and, and they've been doing it for a number of years, you know, you know, for, there's a saying in Hollywood for a movie to get made, it takes a miracle. And so, uh, so I think that it's, it's going to remain hard to get in, you know? Um, but at the end of the day, those who really want it kind of like when it comes to came to, you know, not just

SEAL training, but every other special operations training, even the military in general, right? Like, like you gotta have a, if you have a deep rooted emotional reason as to why you want to do it, that's going to anchor you and you're going to keep holding out and push through and, and eventually get through. But, um, I don't see it ever being easier at all. Yeah. My last question for you is the book is titled chameleon. You mentioned earlier, like that's kind of who you were.

What does that mean to you? Right. What, what exactly is that in someone's life and how could they maybe take the lessons that you've had in your life and then become a chameleon in theirs? yeah i mean being the chameleon just means being able to adapt being able to adapt to any situation and uh and i would say that that's also like somewhat of a business lesson it's not a business book per se but that's that there is a business lesson that people can take away from reading the book is like how and when to adapt you know what i mean uh uh and and and when to become what you

need to become. Because the reality is, we're all chameleons all the time. I'm not the same person I am with my wife as I am with you. I'm not the same person I am with my wife as I am with my kids. I'm not the same person I am with my kids as I am with my friends. Or I am with a boss who I like or a boss who I don't like. We're always chameleons all the time. It's just we're not conscious of it. And so, you know, I would just say to people that, you know, that's kind of how it all came to me. That's what it means to be a chameleon, is to really be focused on being what you need to be in the moment or in the situation to get the job done. And that's what I hope people are able to take away from the book. And even when we get to, there's a lot of

interrogations in the book, right? And at the end of the day, that's what business negotiations are Sometimes it's like, how do you get this information out of a person that you need to get out of the person so that that way you can negotiate a better deal? And so even in the writing of those interrogation scenes, I tried to put some, you know, some of those business negotiation beats and edicts into those interrogations so that people can be, oh, that's a good idea. Maybe I'll try that technique. Maybe I'll try this when I'm in the business room negotiating. So that's what I hope people get out of the book is one, you know, the importance of political and not just political, but national unity in our nation and to, hey, we're all chameleons. Let's just focus on being chameleons for the greater good. I love that. Where can we send people to find you on the Internet or find the book?

Yeah, so you can find me anywhere on social media, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Remy Adelake. I got a unique name, so it's not official. It's just Remy Adelake. and uh the book you can find a book uh wherever books are sold i did the audiobook read so if you're an audiobook person audible itunes wherever if you're just a regular book person like to read the printed copy then barnes nobles amazon wherever books are sold it's nothing like having the actual author do the audiobook but i will tell you i'll leave you with one funny joke um or uh stories i was listening to uh ray dalio's got a a book that came out and he reads like the

first chapter or two and it's like all right now i'm gonna hand it off to this other person and he like hoodwinks you a little bit right you're like he's got like a real specific voice it's kind of like a raspy voice and he's reading you're like okay i gotta raise reading the book he wrote whatever and then he hands it off and you're like hey man where'd you go hey i bet he sold a lot of books like that because everybody listens to the first chapter like oh i'm gonna because i think now on audible they allow you to listen to the first chapter uh so maybe that's why he did it who knows yeah yeah that's funny awesome remy listen i appreciate you taking the time to do this. I really enjoyed talking with you and you've had this amazing career. You know,

one, thank you for, for serving our country and protecting people here at home. Thank you for your service as well. Yeah. Well, I always think about military veterans are always looking for what's the next thing, right? You talked about adaptability and it's really powerful that you kind of had an idea coming out of the military, what you wanted to do, and then saw an opportunity and just capitalized on it. And I think that it is inspiring for a lot of other veterans who say, look, you know, maybe I know what I want to do. Maybe I don't, but there is something that is possible. I don't just have to go be a defense contractor or go and work in, you know, security or whatever. I can go do some of these other things. And so, uh, just keep doing you. And I,

I really appreciate it. And I think everyone else does as well. Same, same. I appreciate you, brother. And thank you and keep crushing it. And, uh, uh, I see your wife is coming out with a book soon. So, uh, so, uh, let me know. I'll be pumping that out there as well. You and her can compete with each other. Yeah. Well, two different worlds. I think she's hers is non-fiction right yeah non-fiction yeah yeah let me know how i can help support her man and tell her congratulations on that as well all right i appreciate you yeah all right brother