The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 217. DJ Shipley: On Psychedelics, Discipline, PTSD & Rebuilding the Mind After War

Starting point is 00:00:00 I had my best friend get killed on a hostage rescue December 8, 2012. That was a tough thing to go through, man. There's no greater bond than just you 100% knowing that the guy beside you is willing to give his life and you are willing to give your life for the mission. I mean, you've been in some that are just, you pin down, feel helpless. Your buddy's dying in your arms. This guy's shooting at us. I've got to save him while I'm not getting shot at.

Starting point is 00:00:23 And you can't take out the human aspect of you spent so much time together. You'll never reach that level of culture. in the civilian world because people are not willing to do what you guys had to do to develop that culture what is the culture 1% bread every day be a pro be even better than you found it don't be an asshole at the end of the day how do you want to be a good navy seal be a good dude and one of the things i really identify with is that you are not afraid to be selfish with the first part of your day so that you can be selfless and give the rest of your day away i'm trying to live to be 105 i'm trying to be an asset to my family as long as humanly possible and there's a big physical component that

Starting point is 00:00:58 I'm exhausting everything I can to be there and be present on the moments where they really need to be. What about the mindset of having been a seal? What did you draw out of that culture and that career that's now just a part of who you are, not what you do? I think ultimately, and somebody do really good is... Hey, guys, welcome back to the ultimate you win.

Starting point is 00:01:27 Hey guys, welcome back to the... ultimate human podcast. I'm your host, Gary Brecker, human biologist, where we go down the road of everything, anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. Today is a really, really unique podcast. Not only is our guest, former member of SEAL Team 10, but he's a father, he's an entrepreneur, he's a husband, and his advice, I've actually, I told him today, I actually take some of your advice, I started following your morning routine. And if you know anything about me like my morning routine is sacred but um welcome to the podcast DJ Shipley you you invaded my morning routine and now I'm actually taking taking some advice from you um you know it's astounding

Starting point is 00:02:09 you know you've been here for for a few hours and uh I always end up running a podcast before the podcast with my guest um but it's been great getting to know you brother we we had an awesome order we're both freezing right now because we just got out of a cold bunch but we did uh hyper barracks And then we got in the sauna and then did a little coal plunge. So we're both, the lights are on. Oh, yeah. Fire on all eight cylinders, man. Thank you very much for having me.

Starting point is 00:02:32 So, you know, there's so many avenues that we could go down with this podcast. But, you know, what I found really unique about your story, I feel like you were kind of like the uncommon Navy SEAL. I mean, you come from a long line of military and your family, you know, your fathers, uncles, even your mother. and grandparents, War War II, your father was a seal. Your father-in-law, too. Your father-in-law was a seal. Your mother was, she was in the military. She was in the Navy.

Starting point is 00:03:07 She was in the Navy, too. So you kind of have no choice, right? Yeah. I find that there's kind of a common theme that runs through my podcast. And I feel like the people that are the most impactful in this world, the people that are the most passionate, passionate, like, purpose driven are people that solved the problem, something in their life. And that became the foundation for greatness. And for you, was that how you were shaped as a Navy SEAL? I mean, because you were actually 17 when you went

Starting point is 00:03:44 in, right? So, and I found it really fascinating that you said, you know, today's day and age, I probably wouldn't have made it, just because the qualification, not the qualifications have changed, but the caliber of the people coming in. There's so much more educated and well prepared, more than I was. You know, it's 2025. The internet's infinite. They can

Starting point is 00:04:05 download a David Goggins and Jock and all these other people that they can read about the pipeline, they can see it on, you know, Discovery Channel. We didn't have any of that. Yeah. And the human potential has grown so much. I mean, the bear for entry, if you look at the screen test and what it takes to get in, it's not a very hard thing

Starting point is 00:04:21 to do but the numbers these kids are producing now they wouldn't even looked at me really bottom of yeah good enough to get through good enough to make it through but now the scores are all based off of physical push-up push-up sit-ups pull-ups running swimming all of those things the numbers are so much greater than what i was able to produce in 2002 it just shows the you know the human potential it's really climbing fast yeah did you go in because your father sort of gave you no choice i mean one of the interesting things, and I want you to tell this story, but is when I hear you talk about your story, I mean, you really grew up in this seal environment. He actually, it didn't take you on missions, but he took you around those guys a lot growing up, not just because they were over

Starting point is 00:05:04 at the house, but, you know, you went out to the base. I grew up there. Grew up there. And so it was kind of like this environment that you were in. And I recall you talking about how you never really around a lot of normal people. Never. So what was that like, you know, being a young kid, you know, fathers and Navy SEAL, high achiever, coming from a long line of military families and that sort of growing up around this base because I don't think a lot of people really are in tune with what that kind of youth is like. When people think growing up in military, they think, major dad, right, flat top hair cut, he comes in, blouse uniform, you know, seal teams are very, special operations is very unconventional. So they never felt like they were in the military. You'd see the uniforms and you'd see all the stuff,

Starting point is 00:05:54 but it felt more like a professional sports team than anything else. But it was the culture, the way they were. Living out of 15-passenger, 15-passenger vans, and out of hotels, always gone on the road, dropping off dirty laundry, but just, you know, the humor, the dark humor, just the physicality. When these guys would come over, I mean, I can remember being a tiny, tiny child in watching the guys pour into our house.

Starting point is 00:06:20 house and just, they all looked like superheroes. Their specimens. I mean, they were freaks. And I just, I always wanted to be one. I really wanted to be a veterinarian. Like, in the back of my mind, I loved animals. I love being around that. So I'd always say that.

Starting point is 00:06:34 I wouldn't be a vet. I want to be a vet. And they would just, you don't want to be a vet. Yeah. Well, I mean, you had like chickens, goats. Yeah. Like every animal in the world when you're growing up. So you're, you know, you're in that farm lifestyle.

Starting point is 00:06:46 I grew up on a 300-acre tobacco farm. So I know what it's like to be in that urban environment, you know, skateboarding was your outlet, you know, and then you used to bust yourself up a lot, skateboarding. Oh, that's kind of funny. I've been hurt. And so, you know, was your dad around a lot? I mean, at that time, he was always on deployment, right? Always. It's gone.

Starting point is 00:07:11 I kind of rough average it out, 250, 300 days out a year gone. Wow. that's continuous the entire time but when he was back he put you in that lifestyle you know you're on the base you're around his guys did you did anything strike you like did you notice that culture were you like were you young enough to grasp it like these guys i mean they're messing with each other they have a funny language they joke a different way they all look like physical specimens but could you feel that culture like as a child taste it it was palpable and you know now that i've i've been on the other side, I could see where his frustration is coming back and trying to assimilate

Starting point is 00:07:53 normal life. There's always a friction point because he'd never heard the word to know. And now I think back to all the small things like, hey guys, everybody's got to come up my house. You know, we had a hurricane. We've got 14 trees falling down and 60 dudes show up at the house with cases full of beer and chainsaws. And they chop up every single tree. No one complains about it. They do it. They burn it. They haul it out. That's just what you do. You've never heard the word no. Or I can't do that. Or it's too head. it's too long we can't make it they always just did it so you get used to that being the performance anxiety like they've never said no they've never said we can't do it they're always going to find a way

Starting point is 00:08:29 because the collective is always trying to solve that problem together yeah i think that's what makes it so infectious because everybody deals with stress and problems all day long nobody has a group where everybody goes i'm going to stop everything i'm doing right now and we're going to solve it together right now yeah and that's what the essence of that culture is i think it's so unique because is, you know, how do you take a young farm kid? Because you go into the seals at 17 years old. So you don't know what combat's like. You probably don't even know what Buds is like.

Starting point is 00:08:59 You have no idea what to expect. I mean, you have a little maybe idea of the culture from being around your father and all of his buddies. But I always find it fascinating. I think it's just such a metaphor for life. It's a metaphor for culture, for families, for businesses, is how they take these dispartite guys that don't know each other, they're young, probably can't find your ass with both hands at 17 years old, right?

Starting point is 00:09:25 It's not like you have this vision of being on this team and, you know, you know how to build culture. Those are not things that are just inherent to you. And you go into this program, which is really designed to weed you out. I mean, it's really designed to fail you or to break you. and the shocking fact that you're not broken leaves you with a unit that's tight but then talk to me about like the culture building because lots of people do hard things and lots of people do hard things in groups right it's one of the reasons why I think CrossFit was so successful

Starting point is 00:10:04 for example because it was the first time you know for most of the people in that class that they pushed themselves to absolute exhaustion. I remember after CrossFit Wads, everybody's laying on the floor, sweating. But there was that unity, you know, the conversation afterwards where you're just dripping off sweat. It didn't matter if somebody was a schoolteacher. Another dude was a firefighter. Another guy was a, you know, he was there from a SWAT team from the county.

Starting point is 00:10:33 You were all on the same level for 50 minutes, you know. So how does that culture of. involved. I'm really interested in, because there's an intentionality to it. You're bringing in these guys from all over the country. You're putting them through a battery of tests, but all that battery of tests is doing is saying, who's the hardest, who's the most determined, who has the greatest willpower, who has an unbreakable ability to deal with suffering. But at the end of that, you don't just magically get culture. No. Can you talk about shared suffering. And then a lot of is the unknown it's the fear of the unknown nobody knows what's coming next you've never done it

Starting point is 00:11:16 before in some of the evolutions you do i mean i'll say it to everybody there's a point where your mind will take over and it'll tell yourself you're going to die right now they don't realize how cold you are they don't realize what stage hypothermia you're in and you're going to die if you don't say something and you'll look to your left and right and nobody's throwing their hand in air you go i'm not going to say anything i don't want to get pulled out of here i don't want to get the pro because if my core temperature does drop and he kicked me out of here that's not what I want I'd rather I'd rather die right here in the surf zone close out the whole chapter knowing I did everything I could yeah I think people hit that when the collective hits that same point it's new different

Starting point is 00:11:55 than CrossFit yeah at a certain point during that wad during that workout you think your heart's going to explode do and no one else is stopping and you just keep going like there's a little internal governor inside your body you just override you go one more one more like we've all done these crazy runs where you're like my heart's going to stop right now like i have to stop and yet you don't yeah once you do that so many times and you see everybody else do the exact same thing it builds this internal strength that nobody else can feel but you but you get stronger as it gets harder people start to leave they're all quitting and you see guys show up to special operations like they look like dolf lunger and in rocky four you're like really i can't believe that kid

Starting point is 00:12:33 grew up and looks like that and once do the same thing i do like why aren't you on the cover of men's health and they quit in five minutes yeah how that cold water changes everybody like they don't want to be here and i think that's where a lot of my success was is that was a barrier for entry i have to do all of these things in order to do that and i've been around it so i see what the in state is everybody who i've ever met has gone through this exact same thing they picked up that same boat the same logs been in the same water you have to do it yeah if you want a college you got to go through college this is my college yeah i have to make it through You know, we talk a lot about mindset, and I remember you telling a story about how you're, you know, you're in California, you're in, you're in the surf, you're in the water, water's cold as shit.

Starting point is 00:13:19 And you guys are all linked up and you're doing whatever calisthenics and you're going through the program in the water. And you're suffering and you feel like you're going to die. And then you look over, you see like a kid with a inflatable, like pink flamingo, like floating in the surface. You're like, how is this 14-year-old boy, a 10-year-old boy floating next to me? I feel like I'm going to die. So that's, it's got to be where the mindset comes in. And so during, during buds, which has got to be the hardest thing you've ever done in your life. I don't know if that is or not.

Starting point is 00:13:57 At the time it was, sure. Okay, at the time. At the time, it was for sure. Because we're going to get into that too. And at that point, you're not a unit yet. You're just suffering as a group, right? So that camaraderie, that culture has not started. This is the weeding out process.

Starting point is 00:14:17 You can feel the culture in the cadre. And I think that's one of the things that nobody ever gets to see unless you're, if you be exposed to it early, you can watch the subculture inside of it. So you can see the clash is getting pounded. And you can watch the instructors. They'll go off to a little corner, they're drinking coffee. They're dipping Copenhagen. They're talking smack.

Starting point is 00:14:35 But you can see how much they love each other. because they've all been through this before and it's like man I really wish I had that cup of coffee it was over there well if I ever want to have it I gotta get through this do you get to see the culture from a distance and the closer you get to graduate and the more you feel like you're connected to it

Starting point is 00:14:51 really gotta go through all these steps but they bring out the best and brightest to be bud instructors they're all physically fit they represent what the essence of being a seal is so well so when they come out there and they're leading PT they're a freak really and they're in it with you a lot

Starting point is 00:15:07 of times too right they're leading the PT so you get a guy that'll drop down and i mean you'll do a 500 push-up workout that's 500 and i mean wide grip close grip diamonds all kinds of crazy stuff and you go mount a bar and they'll have a guy that'll hang on that bar for five straight minutes doing pull-ups and guys are cycling through and he's not dropping and you're looking at him like how is he able to do that he's been prepping but he sets the bar so high you think you'll never be able to get there yeah he's been right here with me falling out after his first set of 10 like he can't hang on the bar anymore he's so exhausted but they always give you this pinnacle like if you just keep going you'll get to that spot don't take your foot off the gas i think you do a really good job of showcasing that yeah and i mean

Starting point is 00:15:51 a lot of the culture is based on you we we talked about this in the sauna today like i mean your training has got to be as difficult as the combat situations that you're going to go into so that you're not shocked by the exhaustion the temperature change you know you know you're the environmental shifts, you're prepared because your training was so difficult that the missions become, as you said earlier, routine, right? I know exactly what I'm going to do at this second, at the next second, at the next second. And, you know, when you, when you graduated or you, you know, you completed this, is that where the culture really began? Is that where you really, Because at some point, a seal has got to be willing to exchange his life for his, for his comrade, right?

Starting point is 00:16:45 And I think there's no, like, greater risk. There's no greater bond than just you 100% knowing that the guy beside you is willing to give his life and you are willing to give your life for the mission. that level of trust must be something that's really difficult to emulate in the civilian world, right? I mean, the mediocrity and averages of life after you've done something like that and then taken those skills, deployed them in combat, which I want to get into too. Coming back from that, doesn't life seem like very mediocre? It does. It does.

Starting point is 00:17:32 Yeah. Most people have never had an opportunity to sacrifice himself for something they couldn't take with him. Like you'll sacrifice for a hundred million bucks, but you won't sacrifice for 70 grand a year, right? Knowing you can't take the pinnacle of that profession, you can't take it with you once you're gone. And at a certain point in your career, you realize that, and you just don't care.

Starting point is 00:17:51 You just want to play another game. Right. Talk about Tom Brady a lot. Yeah. He could have wound that thing up and retired early and still been the greatest ever. Yeah. He wasn't done. He wanted to play one more.

Starting point is 00:18:01 game that's very much for him and not for anyone else yeah yeah it's like for the group yeah yeah you got to be willing to sacrifice it for the group yeah once you see people how far they're willing to push you'll do evolutions you're like there's no way i can do that there's yeah there's no way i can do it and then as soon as you get through it it's like a little confidence boost you're like well if i got through that well i can get through this i can get through this somebody said it the other day like if you change the entire selection in order to do that you had to run the moab 250 if you want to be on this team you have to run the moab 250 every single person would run the moab 250 really if that was the new selection process everything else is up get through this

Starting point is 00:18:47 evolution you can do this job everybody would do it wow the attritionary would still be the same training protocols would say be the same or be different but you'd still get through it yeah if everybody had to climb everest you'd have a lot of less people but they would still climb that verse. When did it first click for you like when when did you decide I am in the right place this is the right time this is what I'm meant to do like when did that when did that culture snap into reality for you was it after buds was it after you actually performed a mission was it like it's probably probably halfway through my first deployment I was in Iraq, 2005.

Starting point is 00:19:28 We had Operation Red Wings in Afghanistan happened with Marcus LaTrell. That was the other half of my SEAL team. Yeah. When that thing happened, that shock was our own little private 9-11. That's when the publicity, I think, of the SEALs just started.

Starting point is 00:19:41 I mean, you were in it, it was very much a, I feel, just this very secretive organization beforehand. I mean, a lot of people didn't even know that we had them. The movies didn't really start coming out until, like, 2002-ish.

Starting point is 00:19:54 I mean, we had Charlie Sheen. Navy SEALs back in the day's greatest Navy still movie ever made yeah you had tears of the son with Bruce Willis you had a couple things but yeah I mean it wasn't I mean kids made fun of me in high school what your dad do he's the seal yeah right no he's a commando and they're like what's up oh god nobody knows yeah say it now everybody knows right it's a household name now but it wasn't back then like you were doing it for something that nobody else could whatever see yeah I've said that before like I've seen 12 people do the most amazing things you're

Starting point is 00:20:25 you'll never get to see. I can't explain it to you. You'll never understand. Yeah. But the juice is totally worth to squeeze. It is. And I think that's really when you get invest in the culture. When you watch that group of people do the most heroic things you've ever seen

Starting point is 00:20:40 and no one else will ever witness it outside of us 12. Right. I never even talk about it. Right. Some of the things that have humbled me the most is I have seen things that almost haunt me with how heroic they were and they don't even talk about them. They don't even debrief it. Wow.

Starting point is 00:20:56 It's like, what? I mean, I was just on my very first times I brought it up in debrief. Like, are we not going to address this incident that happened? And he looked right at me and he goes, when you get in the end zone, act like you've been there before and walked out. Really? Wow.

Starting point is 00:21:12 Wow. Like, I've seen quite a few things up until that point, and that was definitely the most heroic thing I had ever seen. You don't even want to talk about it. Yeah. Okay. Wow. Okay. That's the bar.

Starting point is 00:21:22 Yeah. Yeah. Not the glory. first time that you ever saw real combat? Because, you know, before we, just to preface this, when we were in the sauna, we were talking about how I've had this fascination with not just professional athleticism, but like a professional athlete that can dominate their sport over a really prolonged period of time. You know, like a Lance Armstrong seven tour de France, you know, a LeBron James or Michael Jordan or Tom Brady, who's not just excellent or excellent wants, but is

Starting point is 00:21:55 excellent over a prolonged period of time, which means they were able to block out all the other noise, right? All the pleasures of the flesh, all the fame, all the fortune, all of a sudden going from virtual obscurity to fame, which has its own set of challenges, and block all that out and stay excellent for a long period of time. That's always fascinated me. And I described to you how a former wide receiver from the running back that had won multiple Super Bowls was telling me that he he described this moment where he would break off the line and he would be barreling down the field giving exactly 100% of every ounce that he had in his body. He knew that he did not have one more ounce of energy or effort to give. And he would tell me like at that moment,

Starting point is 00:22:51 there'd be 70,000 people in a stadium, and I could, like, hear a single voice, right? I could hear one person saying, go, Billy, and he would, like, cue into that one voice. And he knew, you know, 25 yards later that the trumpet player was standing too close to the sideline, and that's where he was going to go out and he's going to wipe out that trumpet player. And what he told me was he's like, I could feel the ball snap. Like, I actually knew the ball was in the air, even though I hadn't looked back to see that it was in the air. I feel the defender coming across the field to hit me. And at that moment, just given 100% effort,

Starting point is 00:23:28 and I would put my hands up, I would grab the ball that I would get hit, would end. But he said there was that period. He would just chase that moment like a rat to cheese. And I have to imagine, because I know nothing about combat. By the grace of God, I've never been shot at. And I'm never shot at somebody. But I have to imagine that when you're in a combat, situation and and the risk is not whether you want to lose a game the risk is whether or not

Starting point is 00:23:55 you go back or you know you go home in a coffin or you you come back to maybe see your family like the level of risk the stakes in a game like that the level of trust and confidence that you've got to have on the people around you can you can have zero doubt not just in yourself but in whether or not the people that are on your flank are going to do exactly exactly what they're supposed to do. Like, where does that come from? And can you talk about, like, what was the first time that you saw real combat? And you came back and you're like, this was worth it.

Starting point is 00:24:32 This is for me. Fortunately for me, in that first deployment, you got to see a face full of combat the entire time. But it skewed over the years. He got more violent, more violent, more violent, more violent. In 2007, it really uncourt in Fallujah. You really got some really serious combat in your face, close proximity. It can't be ignored. And then all the things that would freak out normal people, they no longer freak you out.

Starting point is 00:24:54 And it's because the training has been ingrained so much. And they've taken it so above and beyond what's necessary to normal people. But nothing fazes you anymore. Like you're walking up to a door. You're under night vision. There's not an ounce of starlight. There's no moon. It's jet black.

Starting point is 00:25:11 And as you're walking up, all you're seeing are infrared lasers. I mean, a foot off your head covering everything around you. And if that door opens, as you're touching it, they're going to, take a shot right past your head and you don't move you don't you don't need to he's going to make that shot every time and you just trust it because you've been exhausting all the resources and the boys are those are your boys behind you with the they're training 52 weeks out of the year i mean they're exhausting everything they can mentally physically spiritually emotionally tactically to make sure that we don't ever have to say no or i can't do that you can always

Starting point is 00:25:42 make the shot we can climb up and over the mountain we can jump out of the plane we can do all the things. And you build that trust through time. I've seen you show up every day. You're in here at 5 a.m. You're in the gym. You're at fight club. You're on the range. You're in the killhouse. You're jumping. The wind tunnel. Everything you have to be great at, you're really committed to greatness in all those areas. Unfortunately for us, there's not a whole lot of room for anything else. Right. So all the external stuff, you kind of got to block out and really be good at departmentalization. Here's something most people don't realize. Salt isn't just about flavor. It's about biology.

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Starting point is 00:26:45 Make the switch to Baja gold. Your taste buds and your biology will thank you. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. When you're in that moment, like a real combat situation, how much of your confidence comes from planning and that you're confident that you know what to do, even if this situation shifts? No plan ever survives first contact.

Starting point is 00:27:10 It doesn't. Just like Mike Tyson. Everybody's got a plan to get punched in the face. It's like for us, because you're so diligent in the debrief and all the planning, you're so meticulous, all the operations kind of stack on top each other. You can draw information from this one and apply it to this one. But when it rapidly changes, everybody just adopts a different tactic right now. Can't do that. We've got to do this.

Starting point is 00:27:32 And you don't even call an audible. You just do the audible. It just naturally transitions into it. But that's because you've only been thinking about that one thing the entire time. like tom brady's not thinking about pickleball no he's not thinking about his golf swing he's watching game film and just studying this one thing so he can when he gets on a line of scrimmage he can read it in real time right i mean all the little micro moves that are happening he's just process information everybody on our team's the exact same way they're just processing speed

Starting point is 00:28:01 is so fast compared to the opposition but unless you just get us in a mud suck and get really lucky we're going to solve that problem really really fast regardless of whatever you're going to have to do yeah i mean i remember you talking about the amount of preparation that you went through um you know phones emails patterns um you know you know a hit on a on a target that was going to be watching their favorite football game that day football by soccer um that day you knew if you took out the satellite he would get up from the football game go to check on the satellite, and that's where contact would be made, the amount of preparation and investigation and intelligence that you would do beforehand, was that a lot of the confidence that you

Starting point is 00:28:53 had going in? So when you got out of that, when you jumped out of that plane and you were on your way to the ground, you technically never been there before. I mean, maybe you had a model city that you had used or a model compound that you had used. But you've never been there before. you don't know how prepared they are. You don't know if something's changed in the plan that you had hoped would be executed. I find that fascinating because it's such a metaphor for life, for business, for our families, you know, that people are not adaptive. They crumble and they get stressed from change.

Starting point is 00:29:28 I think it's our expectation that we set, and then we're constantly disappointed that things don't mean our expectation. Our spouse doesn't mean our expectation. our business partner doesn't meet our expectation our competition our partners so when you're a seal how much of that planning is giving you the comfort when you're in that zone and your life is on the line like what does a typical mission look like building up to that moment when it's go done a lot of it depends on your currency right in the height of the global war on terror sometimes depending on where you are sometimes two times a day you hit a daytime you hit a night

Starting point is 00:30:10 sometimes it's three or four a night back to back to back sometimes it's a dry spell might be a bigger target you know you've been after this guy for a while you think you have a group of intelligence folks all they do is build a target package on this guy they have watched the target move he has ever done for the last six months no blinking coverage they know everything about him and they're just spoon feeding to you so you go in there you're eating lunch and you're just watching the ISR feed watching the satellites where does he go where doesn't he go right-handed left-hand he's always he's kicking a soccer ball at 2 p.m. with his kids at 6 p.m. he's walking next door and he's coming back with an RPG

Starting point is 00:30:46 okay he's got a motorcycle stage two houses down his wife doesn't know about blah blah this is how he's doing all this so you really get to see a real picture when you drop down on the floor of it it always looks different but if you've done your homework i know how many doors how many windows inward opening outward open is there a storm door is there is there 10 on the windows mean you can tell everything how high the walls are how many sections of aircraft ladder we have to bring me all the different things when you get there i have gone through every possibility every contingency we've been through so this happens option two here we go yeah option two's not going to work go to three three is not going to four boom boom boom four's not an option

Starting point is 00:31:28 make one up here we go and i mean it happens so fast because everybody's an individual thing you might be looking at this gate going I don't know how I'm going to get through this and he comes over and he's like we're going up and over the top and we are up and over the top yeah yeah I mean like you don't even have time because everybody's on the same page as you yeah some people just farther in the Oulu process and you are yeah so that's where the strength the team comes and I know a lot of a lot of different organizations he put so much pressure on developing the individual and there's nothing wrong with that yeah for us it's a strength in the group yeah we don't do solo missions that's not our jam we do everything as a group and that's really where the source of strength comes from because I know you are just as committed as I am if you weren't you wouldn't be here yeah what's an average team size that that you would do a deployment with a mission with it all depends on the target size but no more than I don't say more no more than typically 20 guys and that's it's all the supporting assets me that's everybody you do it in very small teams yeah like a typical assault team is five to seven people

Starting point is 00:32:33 Really? Hopefully you have two assault teams. I mean, you run out of bodies really, really quick. Yeah. I mean, we have done some really complex stuff with nine guys, 10 guys. Really? You get done at home, you're doing debriefing. You're like, I'm glad we didn't have 50 people.

Starting point is 00:32:49 Yeah. Had 50. It would have been a nightmare. Yeah. What about 25? Like 25 would have been a zoo too. Yeah. Sometimes less is more.

Starting point is 00:32:56 Because you got to get in and get out. Yeah. Right? If you don't mind me asking, what was the gnarliest mission that you were? ever went on. Anytime you introduce water, it's always gnarly. That ocean is big, black, and scary. And it's unforgiving.

Starting point is 00:33:13 He doesn't care who you are, doesn't care how much you've prepared one slip up. And now you're soaking wet, you're freezing cold, and the surf zone is just consuming you. Yeah. So we did one off the coast of Africa that was very dicey, shark-infested waters and the whole thing. And the reason that thing became so complicated is because they didn't want to. to kill him they wanted you to capture him yep so you have to put hands on that becomes the issue

Starting point is 00:33:40 because if you don't want to be captured and you have an AK and grenades and suicide vest it's very hard to capture you so if anything goes wrong any early warning network dogs are barking he happens to walk outside to smoke a cigarette he usually doesn't do that after midnight now it's 1 o'clock in the morning he's staying on the front port smoking a cigarette very dicey very different so all those different things but anytime where you are anytime where you're kind of hamstrung like you have to bring him home alive yeah what if you doesn't want to come alive like now i've i basically assumed all this risk to put myself in position to put hands on him and now it goes lethal like i still have this thing in the back of my mind i don't want to have to say no you told me not to kill him i'm going to

Starting point is 00:34:22 exhaust everything in my arsenal to not kill this guy right but at a certain point we're going to have to do something because now we can't get out of here right now we're pinned down Somali is very unforgiving. Why was Somali is so, I think, you know, I don't have a good reference point, but I think, you know, people think of Somali and they're like, okay, it's, they're chucking spears and rocks, I mean, but apparently not. You've seen Black Hawk down? Yeah. That's exactly how it is. Really?

Starting point is 00:34:51 That is one of the best movies and these guys are, yeah. It's one of the best war movies ever made in. How, how accurate of a depiction do you think that? that was pretty accurate that i mean you have to ask tom saturday and the boys that were on the ground but from my experience i went there exactly 20 years later to the day our operation was 20 years after mogadishu in the beltway was so concerned they don't want anybody to go into mogadishu really very gun-shy over that helicopter's getting shot down that's not what we want americans getting drugs to the streets we're trying to avoid that at all costs so they had

Starting point is 00:35:25 to assume a lot of risk for us to be able to go and do that but i mean i tell people my very first time i ever drove into Mogadishu in broad daylight you know we're in this big convoy and there's a dog you're very visible yeah i mean yeah i'm a white dude i stand out of mowdishu i'm not the white as dude you'll make you know what i mean tad it up yeah we're driving through here and we've got a bunch of ethiopians we're in rems we're doing the whole thing and right in the center of a car market there's i called a loose traffic circle and there's a dog sitting there with a human arm hanging out of its mouth no oh wow there's no police there's no red lights it's whatever you want everybody's walking around with AKs and machetes and you just don't know what they're doing you don't know what they're

Starting point is 00:36:08 you don't speak the language yeah it's violent and it's not it's not organized enough that you really have I would imagine like a specific hierarchy if we wipe out this hierarchy then they're all disjointed there's sort of this loose band it's all tribal of yeah very very tribal what was what was the mission there were going after uh going after a bad guy who'd done a bunch of bad stuff he did a he did a mall attack killed a bunch of people and yeah we were we were supposed to swim in grab him extract him get him out to a vessel and then prosecute him later for crimes against all the things he'd been doing and everything was going great to swim in was great everything was an approach and we got

Starting point is 00:36:54 contacted on the roof. So a three-story building. And all the intel that we're getting is this is his beachside bungalow. Like this is a place he goes with the family to chill out to kind of rest and regroup. And that's what we were talking about the football game. I'm like, okay, we're going to go over there.

Starting point is 00:37:10 Twist off the satellite. He'll walk outside. Wrap him up. Peel him over the third story. Swim him out. The whole thing will be over. Easy peace. How do you just swim somebody out that doesn't want to go?

Starting point is 00:37:21 That's one of the things we talk about physical readiness. Like sometimes you have to you have to sedube people and you have to force them to do something against their will physically and that's a superhuman feat so you have to be able to overpower them we had a bunch of things we were trying to do and we got guys set on the roof the whole thing was getting ready to commence and a guy came out of the third story cracked looked out our guys don't shoot him because he can't see a gun yet next thing you know AK comes around a corner he's shooting at you skipped off one of the boy's helmets shot a strobe off his helmet and the whole thing cracked off when it did all three fours

Starting point is 00:37:53 lit up. Sistine gunfire, belt-fed machine guns, AKs, everything going off, all in one shot. He was that ready. Yeah. So what they didn't tell us

Starting point is 00:38:04 is we had a gap in coverage. We weren't seeing everything and they were hauling dirt out all day long. They were digging out bunkers the entire time, sandbag positions in there getting ready for a fight.

Starting point is 00:38:16 I don't know how they knew, if they knew, it was just bad coincidence, but when it went, it went all floors. shoot out all the windows and throwing grenades out the front door right in front of you

Starting point is 00:38:26 but you can't kill him so at a certain point you have a right to inherent self-defense I have to be able to shoot back but in the back of your mind the last thing he said was don't kill this guy right like but I can kill everybody else though

Starting point is 00:38:39 you don't know who they are you can't see them they're just they're shouting you're shouting in Swahili and a mix of English and it sounds like Arabic you don't speak to language you don't know who he is

Starting point is 00:38:49 and you can't see him It's not like I walk in a room three. You were sitting here and like, I'm not going to shoot you. I'm going to shoot everybody else. It's not like that. So we put you in this weird shift of now I feel like a failure. Like, what are we going to do now? Well, now we have to get out of this place.

Starting point is 00:39:04 Right. Now we've got technicals massing. The whole city's coming alive just like Blackhawk down. They're going to surround us and we're all going to die. As soon as that starts happening and starts calling in other assets, right? They start coming to that site. Yep. His wife's on the phone, springing up everybody.

Starting point is 00:39:16 And they've got all these little tribal pockets that are all over the city. And here they come. Oh, boy. So now you're getting the updates. How deep were you at that time? How many guys? About 20 guys in. And now we've got technicals that are massing.

Starting point is 00:39:29 They've got Dishkas. They've got belt feds. They've got RPGs and they're all closing in on you. So we've got to get out of here. We've got to get out of here right now. Yeah. Well, we're blocked off. They're shooting out of every corner of this place.

Starting point is 00:39:41 And the only egress is right in front of the front door, right in front of the gate where he's shooting. Now you're lobbing grenades back and explosive charges trying to get a little bit of gap in coverage and it it never stopped it felt like that hollywood that rambo belt that machine gun just fuff and it never ends it was like that wow and you only have so much ammunition because you brought what you brought you don't take a whole lot and that's the difference in special operations you watch a lot of guys you know if you ever seen a documentary restrepo those guys are running out with nine 10 12 magazines right we're running out

Starting point is 00:40:16 four right because you know you shoot what you kill like I don't know need to have 12 round magazines that's not the gun fights we're trying to get in that's not typically what happens and yeah i mean it it got dicey really really fast now guys are blown up massive concussion bleeding out of your ears bleeding out of your nose it's a nightmare and then you got to get those guys out um were there any guys that were injured i mean severely injured i mean i was injured a bunch of the guys were but it was a lot of tb i a lot of concussive stuff and then you know torn shoulders torn hips just from the surf zone very unforgiving

Starting point is 00:40:51 boat's flipping over and just yeah a lot of bad stuff happens and then so you retreated from that and went back out took back off did everybody make it everybody made it that's where camaraderie comes from you know

Starting point is 00:41:05 and I mean but I mean you've been in some that are just you pin down feel helpless everybody shot up you know your buddy's dying in your arms essentially and you're like oh my god but this guy's shooting at us

Starting point is 00:41:18 I've got to save him while not getting shot at, what are we going to do here? And you can't take out the human aspect of it. You spent so much time together. My best friend now, Cole Fackler started all these businesses with him. We've done all these deployments together,

Starting point is 00:41:32 went through buds together. Like, I spent more nights consecutive sleeping next to that dude than his wife ever will. Yeah. 180 days at a shot, like no break. Really? Every breakfast, every lunch,

Starting point is 00:41:42 every lift, every op for years. Now, why is that? Is that so that you know everything about, them. You do. Yeah. So, I mean, and the trust level, by the time you're in business, I mean, trust is not an issue. Right. I mean, because, you know, you get back into that civilian life. And that's, that's what I'm so fascinated about. Like, how does this culture evolve to the point where everybody knows that everybody else will take the same level of risk with their life that you will? And there's never, you never second guess that, right?

Starting point is 00:42:19 it's because you never hear no never hear it in what training anywhere you come over here help me do this yep come over to my house at Saturday 6 o'clock and morning help me move yep everybody they just do it always really never hear no hmm you can actually just build trust through that wow I need for you to do this physically they're in the gym every day they can pull it off physically hey I need to make this shot they make the shot hey we got to do this jump they make the jump you've never failed so far and that's because you're exhausting all the resources in the training, if you're not missing a day, you're living this like it's your only thing.

Starting point is 00:42:54 If you look at the work ethic, it's like he's putting in the work. He's showing up. He's a true believer. He's bought in. I can see it. Listen, there's what I share on this podcast, and then there's what I share with my inner circle. If you've been following me for a while, you know how I hold nothing back here. But my VIP community, that's where the real magic happens.

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Starting point is 00:44:10 and step into your ultimate potential. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. How do you manage a family or, you know, even if you're not married and have kids, God, God forbid, at that time, you do. You know, how do you manage a family? How do you assure your family when they're hearing all these stories that it's not going to be you? Because there's not a whole lot of communicato going on. I'm sure there are dark, you know, dark meaning no communication periods. I can't imagine what it's like for a spouse to go through something like that.

Starting point is 00:44:50 Were you married during this time? I was. I got married in 2009. So I had already been a seal. I had done three or four rotations. My wife's first husband was a seal. Got killed with Marks LaTrell on the ground. Oh, wow.

Starting point is 00:45:03 Her dad's a seal. So she was already ingrained the culture. She was a veteran herself. She's a little condition. Okay. She was. Yeah. You know, that's the hardest lie you'll let her tell.

Starting point is 00:45:15 Yeah. It's not going to happen to me. Right. so she could see the transition but why i mean you know she could see the transition from starting at team 10 and then transition over the national mission force the tier one element you have to change and that group becomes smaller more intimate and now you don't leave it now you know you're up you're out of the house at 5 a m you're not coming home till 11 12 o'clock at night training all night always with the boys everything you do is with a group even on weekends you're

Starting point is 00:45:41 all doing it at somebody's house you're eating brunch you go to the normal place and three or four guys and team are in there slide all tables together everything becomes one big community yeah and you can feel the resentment build up like you're spending so much time with them and that's your justification do the best in the world yeah if i want to elevate they're all better than me they're going to drag me up with them but i've got to be there i've got to be in that van i've got to be on that airplane i've got to be in that hotel room i have to be at his house like we have to all be together that's the only way because there's so much nonverbal communication there's so much buy in and if you're running a nine to five schedule with us you're not a true believer yeah so a lot of guys just

Starting point is 00:46:18 sacrifice the household wow it's not the thing you want to do it's a thing you have to do but the divorce rate in special operations is over 100% it is oh yeah oh yeah it's just i'm a unicorn like the fact that me and my wife are still married and we shouldn't be she should have divorced me multiple times right she should have you ever heard my story like i i i burnt a candle at both ends and yeah but i mean most guys been divorced two and three times my first my first my first true chief or second one I think he'd been married six times really I mean it's they're not used to it so guys you know they graduate high school you've got your girlfriend she goes off to college you join a Navy you come back together she has no idea she's gonna be sitting at

Starting point is 00:46:58 home in a city she's not from for 300 days solo yeah what that's like she doesn't want that life yeah she leaves you what do you do collapse on a team take it take it and run yeah I've got my boys I'm good you keep doing that same thing until you retire to you get forced out medically or whatever and then you have nothing left yeah so that's not what i tell guys now but in the moment i wouldn't change it yeah you have to be able to sacrifice everything else because and that was my big turning point when i really started to isolate and wall myself off from my family is i saw the risk i had my best friend get killed and he was a true believer like nick check was one of the greatest navy seals that has ever walked his planet there was

Starting point is 00:47:40 no denying it everybody knows it really and he got killed on a hostage rescue December 8, 2012. When he got killed, it crippled my wife. And where was that? Afghanistan. He was shot? Yep.

Starting point is 00:47:54 Crippled my wife. Crippled me. Because she knew him very well because he was one of your boys that was in that sphere constantly. I went the buds with him. We did our first platoons together. He went over the Tier 1 command

Starting point is 00:48:05 right before I did, pulled me in. Now we're in the same team. I mean, before his first deployment with that organization, he retiled my entire kitchen floor, him and my wife together. like he left there covered in soot from cutting tiles and jumped straight on c17 and flew to

Starting point is 00:48:18 afghanistan no yeah i mean he is one of the greatest humans that's ever lived wow and when he died i was uh i actually had my both my uncles one was an army ranger one was a marine they were in town of virginia beach and we were eating at yard house and i got a phone call from one of my friends and he goes where yeah he's like i eat in dinner with my uncles walk outside walk outside and he's like hey man um nick got shot okay how bad is it there's a long pause and i could feel my anxiety start to build up i could feel the goosebumps coming and you could tell by the whimper in his voice he's like he didn't make it and i fucking crushed like my i'm so surprised i didn't throw up yeah i mean i walked back in there i sit down at that booth and i can feel my wife staring at me because she saw

Starting point is 00:49:05 the number she knew it was one of the guys from the team and my hands were shaken and i'm staring right in between my two uncles and i could fear burning a hole in the side of my head and she goes what's going on i went nothing i have to go to work and she grabbed me and spun me and i looked at her and made eye contact and i just started convulsing just ugly crying at that table and i was like he's gone she's ugly crying we drive into work and do the whole thing and that was the hardest thing because he was the reason or one of the reasons he was one of the things i used to justify how much time you spend at work showing up early staying late staying late training on weekends christmas morning new years everything everybody was doing

Starting point is 00:49:43 that wasn't me that was a cultural thing that everybody did because it buys down the risk and she looked me and she goes if it buys down the risk how is he dead yeah it's a dangerous game it's a dangerous game but right now i have to exhaust all the resources to buy down as much risk as humanly possible at the end of the day you're running to an eight-foot room with people we've belt that machine gun shooting at you. Yeah. It's dangerous. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:50:08 And that's what happened. Now, why weren't you on that mission with him? Were you not? So we had extortion 1-7 happen when all the guys got killed in the helicopter crash. I remember that. August 6, 2011. All the bullshit that came out in the media about that. That had to be so frustrating.

Starting point is 00:50:22 I've heard you talk about it. Oh, dude. It frustrated me. It frustrated my father. He was a Navy captain. He was a Navy SEAL. But it frustrated the hell out of my father. He was like, I don't believe in, you know, ban and free speech.

Starting point is 00:50:34 with these people. Dude, I have goosebumps a second, but I never been so mad, never been so disgusted with people for saying the things they were saying. People that have absolutely

Starting point is 00:50:43 zero inkling into what's going on there. They have no line into it at all, probably never served in the military. Just on there, there's just the keyboard warriors, you know?

Starting point is 00:50:54 And even some of the family members. Those guys came out and it was an inside job. Yeah. Not an inside job. Anyway, that happens and every other team had to cough up some bodies

Starting point is 00:51:04 to rethink. all those people. So Nick got put over and that was the best of the best of the best on there. If you look at him, I mean, the amount of combat experience was on that helicopter will never be recreated. Never. I hope we never go to a conflict that long. But I mean, you had guys in there with 14, 15, 16 combat rotations. So think about that in the Vietnam. Guys come back and like, we've got three tours in Vietnam. That's substantial. This dude's got 16 to Afghanistan. Wow. The amount of experience in between that dude's two ears, you're never going to understand yeah the amount of things he's forgotten about hunting humans you'll never even

Starting point is 00:51:39 understand yeah you lost them all in one shot we got a back film you back film and that's what happened to him that next deployment got killed in a hostage rescue and you know I looked at her and it's like it wasn't for a lack of preparation it wasn't for a lack of commitment yeah his number got called yeah and he went through it with no hesitation and that's what happens to me that's what happened to me yeah you got exhaust all the resources but that was a tough thing to go through man I just I walled that up and I just I never wanted to think about it again but I keep a picture of him in my refrigerator I see him every day but I haven't processed at all I keep that in a special little box buried way down deep and every now

Starting point is 00:52:17 and then it'll uncork and come out yeah it sucks man and the reality of it oh reality of it sits but you went on after that I mean I mean that happened 2012 yeah I don't retire until 2019 wow so you were deployed after that too yeah right after yeah um and were the other guys deployed with you that that were also very close to him that yeah never talked about it never talk about it just one of those unwritten risks of the job you don't want to think about it yeah because it sucks because in the military when people die there's only one or two things it was either a freak accident or that guy wasn't really as good as we're going to make him

Starting point is 00:52:58 seem during his eulogy right you're always going to paint him up like oh he was the greatest he was the greatest no he wasn't yeah he was see average at best he he was a nine to five or yeah he did a very hard job but was he exhausting all his absolutely not no he wasn't yeah 30 pounds overweight blah blah blah this dude was a phenom in everything he did everybody knew it really if you take a you take a hundred people you don't want to be on the other side of him in other words no you take a hundred people that work at that organization 96 of them are absolute true believers a couple of guys squeak by but even them they're so good that it doesn't really matter right it all kind of averages out

Starting point is 00:53:36 but when you lose a guy like that and that was like extortion every single dude they lost was like that yeah all of me yeah you just see the families you see everybody else and you see all of us well yeah i never thought that would happen to us i never thought that would be a reality the same thing for june 28th like my father was in a military there was no combat going on back then A little bit of skirmishes, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, but not that he was involved in. So I wasn't going to funerals this entire time. So that was not a part of the culture. No, Navy Seals getting killed was a freak accident.

Starting point is 00:54:13 Guys falling off the back of a truck and hitting their head. The guys dying in a parachute accident, drowned, like randomness. Not like that. And getting shot out of the sky with the best pilots in a world, which is not something that I ever thought was going to happen. Even though you get numb to the risk. Yeah. Because you're so successful. Like, that'll never happen.

Starting point is 00:54:32 That's an anomaly. Then it happens to you and you're like, oh, my God. If I just been lucky this whole time? Were you ever deployed when you lost somebody close to you on a deployment? Not lost. No. No. Came really close.

Starting point is 00:54:48 Should have lost a bunch of them. Oh, yeah. Because I've heard you talk about IEDs and the danger of that and how you were in a convoy multiple times. And it was either the one in front of you or the one. behind you or it was delayed when it went off, but for whatever reason, your number just didn't come up. I mean, in that, that's, I mean, how that doesn't play in the back of your mind when you're on one of these missions. We were talking a little bit in the sauna earlier about where mindset sort of integrates with training. And this is, this is where I want to bring

Starting point is 00:55:20 this back down to, to the every person because I think so many people can, can benefit from the, not just the mental toughness, but the mindset that you developed and the mindset that you still have today. I feel like you apply a lot of your, you know, your military training to your life still today. So, you know, back in, let's just call it civilian life, father, husband, father or two, you're, you're seven and ten? Twelve and seven. Twelve and seven. And so, you know, 12 and 7-year-olds, wife, you're in the real world now. You know, so what about the mindset of having been a seal and having been such a part of a team like that?

Starting point is 00:56:08 The ability to set that kind of culture outside of a SEAL team, it's impossible. I mean, you'll never reach, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you'll never reach that level of culture in the civilian world because people are not willing. to do what you guys had to do to develop that culture. So what do you take away from that, you know, building a business, raising a family, being a husband, like, what did you draw out of that culture and that career that's now just a part of who you are, not what you do? I think ultimately, and somebody you do really good is you'll have a guy who is the exact

Starting point is 00:56:51 representative of what you're trying to mass produce. It could be your boss. It could be a dude who's three or four guys down on the team, but he's the guy. If you close your eyes and imagine what you think a Navy SEAL looks like, open your eyes and he's standing right there. Okay. Close your eyes. What is he going to say when he opens it? Open his mouth and he says and you're like, oh, okay.

Starting point is 00:57:09 Get him on the flat range. He does the thing. Get him in the shoot house. He does a thing. Jumping out of airplanes. He does the thing. He represents the best of what it's supposed to be. Right.

Starting point is 00:57:18 My job is to emulate that. My job is now there's 50 of a sit in a room. I need one representative to stand up and. be the example. I should be able to just, you, Brian, get up. You're our guy. If everybody represents what we think the essence is, then we set it. It's really hard to do that or ask for it if you're not represented yourself. So that's the first thing. The guys I really model myself after they lived and breathed it. They woke up. They did fitness. They did fight club. They were on the flat range. They did all the core things they had to be and they represented the group really,

Starting point is 00:57:48 really well. And they would always say it's like the culture is not going to morph to you. You have to morph into the culture and if you don't you can't be part of it we don't take half-timers part-time beat it got to live it at full value and it's like that and everything yeah it's really hard for me to talk about mental health if I'm drinking a 12-pack every night posting hateful stuff on social media it's really hard to talk about physical fitness if I'm 50 pounds overweight right right right but if you live it and they see it as the example I'm not a unicorn I'm doing the same thing I've been doing my entire life yeah do it too so we started gbRS we did the same thing first thing in the gym we had a squat rack a 70 pound dumbbell and a barbell like i mean that's what we

Starting point is 00:58:28 it's nasty in there dude now now we've built the whole thing up now it's hyperbaric chambers and a whole thing but the routine is the same yeah like when i say i'm training five days a week i don't mean kind of yeah i mean five days a week i got this morning 5 am got a lift in next door came over here did morning routine with you yeah i'm not missing it for anyone right not my 20 minute walk not my diet not just what i eat but what i consume if i just live it and you're close in proximity you'll naturally have to pick it up yeah if you and me are on board he's on board the three of us she's on board everybody will just start to adopt it yeah before you know you look around everybody's living the same routine we're all living the culture what is the culture one percent

Starting point is 00:59:09 bread every day be a pro leave it better than you found it don't be an asshole be a good dude at the end of the day how do you want to be a good navy seal be a good dude yeah what's that require be good at all your jobs and represent a group before yourself just do that dude i love that man god is such a great metaphor for culture it is you know i'm big on culture too and and i i'm the same i believe in lead by example you know my wife and i just did eight 14 cities 18 days the the team was with me on on a lot of that what i've noticed too is we're doing so much more on our team with less people because we've got people managing work, not managing people. When I first started the company, we just hired somebody for everything. You know, oh, we need a marketing director.

Starting point is 00:59:57 Let's hire a marketing director. We need to do a media buy. Let's hire a media buyer. You know, we need a social media director, this buyer, somebody from social. Oh, we need somebody to answer emails. Let's have people answer emails. And then as the team actually started to shrink, we started to produce more outcome. And in this space, you know, which just in this social media space, I mean, everybody is bought into the mission. When we have meetings, I'm clear about the culture, I'm clear about where is this company going to be in and where's the ultimate human platform going to be in three months, where

Starting point is 01:00:28 is it going to be in six months, where it's going to be nine months. What are the big things that we're going to do next year? We're going to do a lot more than, you know, like we're going to try to put 20,000 people. we're going to put 20,000 people in the stadium. You know, we're going to host a live event for a million people online. We've never done it. But I know that we can do it. And I think what you've done fostering this culture is so this lead from the front,

Starting point is 01:00:56 it's more about, it's like when you're raising kids, they learn more from observation than they do from what you tell them to do. This whole do it because I told you not do as I say, not as I do. they learn more from what you do. And one of the things I really identify with is that you are not afraid to be selfish with the first part of your day so that you can be selfless and give the rest of your day away. Can you talk a little bit about that? Like, you know, because I've actually borrowed some of your, believe it or not.

Starting point is 01:01:28 And my morning routine is sacrilege, man, that's like it's my time. My wife knows it. The team knows it. my assistant knows you schedule meetings and travel around sleep and exercise sleep exercise everything else and that has been such an incredible mindship for me right because the most entrepreneurs have that mentality you wake up and start to grind um but if you if you do that eventually you just start putting yourself in the backseat nothing to women you're used to self-sacrifice because you're mothers, that's what you do. I don't like that approach. It's also 82% of all autoimmune diseases in women because they have this. It's called

Starting point is 01:02:14 caregiver syndrome. They just put the needs of everyone else before the needs of themselves. And they don't realize how detrimental that is. They think that that's being very selfless. It's actually being selfish because you don't care for yourself. There's only so many withdrawals you can take from a bank account before you make a deposit, right? And we're no different. So how do you structure your day? and what is a typical day for you, you know, look like? In a perfect world, in one where I control all the variables, there is nothing that's going to stimulate me on that phone or an email before 10 a.m.

Starting point is 01:02:48 My answering text messages, not on social media. What time are you up? 5am. 5. Wow, 5 hours. So in a perfect world, in a perfect world, it's 5. Realistically, because I started doing the math, I'm not having enough time with my kids to make a positive impact. So I was waking up at five.

Starting point is 01:03:05 I was out of the door before they woke up. Knowing that no matter what I am unwracking at 7 a.m. That's what time the workout is. That's what time my trainer comes in. We used to do it at 6 a.m. Now he doesn't have time with his kids. My business partner does it. I don't.

Starting point is 01:03:21 Now when we come home, you know the grind as an entrepreneur. Yeah. You coming home at 6? I mean, you coming home at 9. Now I'm not seeing him for weeks on end. Right. I don't want to keep having that.

Starting point is 01:03:30 I have to have a shut off at some point. But I'm getting pulled in so much. different directions if i don't make time for myself i'm not going to find it later right and i hear these guys like i'll get a workout on and drive home no you won't no you won't not five days a week you won't so for me i've always been accustomed to sacrificing sleep i know that's not what the doctor wants i know that's not what i'm supposed to do but that's what i'm used to doing so if i come in on the red eye like tonight i land at 1230 in norfolk 1230 a.m i'm still getting up at 5 a.m and i'm still doing my entire routine i don't care i'm not sleeping until 8 well i'll skip a

Starting point is 01:04:03 work out because of jet lag I don't do that I wake up I knock it out but I'll wake up at five I've got my whole evening routine where I do I lay out my clothes night before I've got a brand new bottle of water sitting next to my bed my phone's at 100% charge change your man right after the human podcast I started doing that it's like but if you look at it the majority of people my wife included I'll throw her in the bus right now she'll wake up her phone to be at 16 at what point is your phone going to sit on the charger for two and a half hours to fully charge that you're not going to be on it it's not now you're running around with your primary system of communication

Starting point is 01:04:36 already almost dead I don't want that but if I have it right next to my bed that's where people lean over they hit the snooze and lay back I've got mine stretched all the way over I have to get out of bed I just carry the momentum with me

Starting point is 01:04:48 I swing feet out of bed grab the bottle of water unplug my phone I've already got the water I've already got the cell phone phones at 100% I don't check to see text messages I don't roll over and scroll on IG for an hour

Starting point is 01:04:59 I'm up I'm out toothpaste on toothbrush get it wet put it in my mouth, go to the bathroom, by the time I spit out toothbrush, pills go down, drink with a bottle of water that I had the night before, get dressed, left sock, right, I like your pissing end brushing your teeth at times, compressing time. Yeah, I got that. Because I'm trying to get out of there as fast as humanly possible, because if not, I'm going to make more noise. I'm going to wake the wife up, you know, wake the kids up.

Starting point is 01:05:22 That's why I don't have, you know, I've got a big Getty Tumblr. I don't want that with all the pots and pans in the cups. Now I'm rumging around, making noise. She calls it the orchestra. Yeah, so is my wife. If you stop putting my stuff away at night, I've laid it out for a reason. Machine goes on, coffee goes in, I'm staying next to my red light. I've got my methylene blue.

Starting point is 01:05:39 I've got all my stuff. I just took that perfect timeline and I shifted it now. But I mean, I've got to do a cold plunge. I've got to do a hyperbaric session. I've got to do all that before 7 a.m. So now I'm on this teeter-totter schedule where if I wake up at 6, I'll be able to get my morning routine. I can leave the house at 645, walk in, I'll unrack, and then I'll shift it. So I'll do hyperbaric at the end of the day.

Starting point is 01:06:02 I can make time for that. At the end of the day, it's just for me. Everybody's powered it down. Right. But I'm really trying to give my kids and my wife a positive introduction first thing in the morning. Yeah. In the evening, if I come through at 6 o'clock, most people have their kids in bed, shower in bed by 9, 9.9.30.

Starting point is 01:06:17 Yeah. I've only got three hours. Yeah. Right. So for me, it's about sacrificing my time just for me. So it doesn't inhibit anybody else. I'm not asking my wife to wait. I'm not asking my kids to hold on for me.

Starting point is 01:06:30 hey we have to shift this i'm knocking out everything that makes me better right now the things you're in control i'm controlling because once 10 a m heads you know the deal you're a slave to the masses but i have to be able to teleport and become the person i need to be that little representative every door i walk through so if i go into this meeting what's the version of dj needs to walk through that door wow right so it's a great way to think about it so if you ever watch the content i do i always do the clap the guys in media made me do it for the sound bites It's like, get the clap. I clap before I do everything because it tells me whatever version of me right now,

Starting point is 01:07:06 I have to switch it into this mode. They don't need an operator right now. They need a kid to come through and play Barbies for an hour. I've got three hours before bed. My 70 wants to play Barbies. Sister, we're playing Barbies. Here we go. Yeah, yeah, here we go.

Starting point is 01:07:18 You know what I'll do it. I'll do the tea party. I'll take them on a 20-minute walk. We'll do a bike ride. But it's so hard to do if I feel bad about myself because I didn't do fitness. Yeah. I didn't do any time for me right now. I feel slow.

Starting point is 01:07:29 I feel lazy. Yeah, I've got brain fog, and now I'm not present anyway. I might physically be there, but mentally I'm not there. Right. If I get my fitness in first thing in the morning, I'll do whatever you want to. Yeah. We can watch movies all day. We can do Netflix and chill.

Starting point is 01:07:42 I've already got my fitness. Yeah. I can't compromise on that. I watched the thing with Michael Phelps the other day, and he talked about his schedule. Swimming twice a day, 52 weeks out of the year, never missing a session for five consecutive years. Oh, that's brutal. That is what it takes. I just do a more realistic approach for me.

Starting point is 01:08:02 I don't need to be Michael Phelps. I don't need to be David Goggins. I don't have to run the bad water, 250 or whatever. The Moab 2.50 or whatever. I don't need to do all that, but I need to do something that makes me better than I was the day before.

Starting point is 01:08:13 And sometimes that's just a consistency of doing the same thing over and over. Does it hurt me? No. You know, I'll talk to guys that are like, oh, you do too much. Like, you'd grow more, you'd be healthier if you only lifted three days a week. I'm doing that workout more

Starting point is 01:08:28 for my mental health than I am my physical health. Because I know what happens. Those two for me are really tightly intertwined. Yeah. And if one goes, the other ones are right behind. Hey, guys, let me tell you about one of my favorite new hydration drinks. Now, this is for distance athletes, hits cardio exercises, people that sweat a lot or exercise intensely.

Starting point is 01:08:46 An A game is a hydration drink. It has eight essential vitamins. It has all of the electrolytes, the entire suite of B vitamins. Before you freak out and read that it has 21 grams of sugar, which it does, the sugar is coming from natural cane sugar and honey, my preferred mechanisms for getting glucose into the blood during intense exercise. It also has natural flavors, but these natural flavors don't come from bacterial fermentation. They actually come from real citrus fruits, and the color is from vegetable juice, not artificial dyes. So next time you're looking for a great hydration drink

Starting point is 01:09:16 and you're exercising intensely, a game is your choice. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. I've had some really bad injuries. And when I can't get up move i'll lay there in my mental health just decline so fast and that's not good for me it's not good for the group it's not good for my family so that's how i justify it i'm sacrificing what i want to do right now which is probably sleep in and be lazy i'm doing this because it makes me better for everybody else i said it with andrews like everybody says they'll they'll take a bullet for their kids like i jump out of a building for my kids you won't get on a treadmill for me right like you've seen a bunch of eight year olds run out of 300 pounds i haven't yeah i'm trying to live to be a hundred

Starting point is 01:09:56 I'm trying to be an asset for my family as long as humanly possible and there's a big physical component of that. We're training V-O-2 max for longevity. Like I've got some kidney stuff going on now. I'm exhausted and everything I can to be there and be present on the moments where they really need me to be. I just live a normal routine for me. It's no.

Starting point is 01:10:14 I watched the thing with Schwarzenegger. Did you work out today? Yep. You can work out tomorrow? Uh-huh. I brushed my teeth last night. I brushed them this morning. I'm going to do the same thing tonight, same thing tomorrow morning.

Starting point is 01:10:24 It's part of my routine and I never plan on breaking it. right why would i i've been doing roughly this routine my entire life especially since i was 17 why break it dude we're such circadian creatures we're such creatures of habit or creatures of routine the body craves routine you actually there there are a lot of studies that support this too that the more um regimen that you are about your routine you know even when you travel you know if you take it with you like you did today when you when your routine is portable the more grounded your body is, the more you are capable, it's, you know, when you levy these hermetic stresses on your body,

Starting point is 01:11:00 the more you're capable of adversity and change and, you know, dealing with like, you know, trauma and problems because they don't have a tendency to overwhelm you, you're strong enough to meet those. So your first 90 minutes, two hours of the day, you're up, you're still at the house when the kids are up. So you see him in the morning. Okay.

Starting point is 01:11:21 I'm trying to know. now with this hyperbaric chamber because I just did stem cells they didn't want me to jump in the chamber right away wanted to give it a time so it was really a 6 am to 645 and then I'd cruise in I know the exact time we got one in today so yeah like cars cars filled up the night before there's nothing's going to derail me so I don't have to be late I hate being late the anxiety builds up in me it's like I'm not sitting the example I'm 25 minutes late right I've got to be a master at time management it doesn't have to be I don't have to be a Nazi but I need to be able to justify everything. So when my wife says, oh, it'll only take us 10 minutes to get there, I already know it's going to take us 25. I already know it. It's like, but I'm really good. She'll ask me, she's like, how far are you out? I'm like 12 and a half minutes. And you're 12 and a half minutes out. Yeah. Barring a wreck or a red light that I just missed, like I'm sub 13 minutes out from being home. Yeah. I understand the timelines. I know exactly where I'm at, but it makes you accountable and it's small things. So I talk a lot about micro winds. If you look at my entire routine and microwinds,

Starting point is 01:12:21 we can break it down by the minute. At the time I leave that house, I've done 25, 30 things under my control every single day. You get accustomed to being successful. So now when you get to that meeting and it doesn't go your way, when you look at it of the course of your day, it's a rounding error. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:12:38 That's one thing out of 85 things I did were positive date under my control and I control them. It builds confidence in you and when everybody else sees it, you're doing the same thing as me. Now we've got 25 people in this room. Everybody's stacking it microwinds all day long. you're used to being successful. Just continue it.

Starting point is 01:12:54 So now when you hit a blip on the radar, it's a blip on the radar. Back on track, back on routine, keep going. I'm not OCD. If you look at my, you look at my general area, it's chaotic. It makes sense to me. I know exactly where everything is.

Starting point is 01:13:07 You don't need to understand my system. Just take the broad, you know, the broad concepts. I'm controlling the controllables and I'm trying to be 1% better than I wish yesterday. Yeah. That's funny, man. I've had a lot of lawyers over the years. And when you walk into a lawyer's office,

Starting point is 01:13:21 the more shit is just stacked up everywhere that looks like random haphazard nonsense, the better lawyer they are. That guy's got everything tucked away as one piece of paper sitting on his desk and the pencils perfectly lined up next to it. Like, yeah, you don't have a lot on your mind, man. Exactly.

Starting point is 01:13:37 So I love the routine you have to be like where you cause these little breaks so that you say, who's going to show up right now? I'm about to show up for my family and you talked about the technique that you used when you're popping the garage door, checking my phone, you know, I'm intentionally setting my next phase of what I'm going into. Like, I'm walking into this house with the intention to being present for my kids. I think that is just phenomenal because I think so many times,

Starting point is 01:14:10 and I'm a huge victim of this myself, is that, you know, your work day never kind of really ends. have always on your phone. You kind of always distracted. You can kind of get to emails anytime. And you're not thinking intentionally about who's showing up right now. You're still at work, even though you're at home. You're sort of half there. But you have this intentional way. I want you to talk about that a little bit about, you know, you have this routine that you go through. I think a lot of this has to do with very like your military training. But, you know, you have a routine that you go through so that you're like, okay, I'm going to show up. This is their time with me. I'm going to be a dad.

Starting point is 01:14:50 You know the deal. You're so stressed throughout the day. All the little connections you have to have, all the sidebar conversations, the social media, the business, the finances, everything else.

Starting point is 01:15:00 Is that the person they need for a seven-year-old? No. Does she need a Navy SEAL to come to the door? Absolutely not. Right. But my whole life, it's only been that. So I talk about dials,

Starting point is 01:15:10 not switches. I flick that Navy SEAL switch at 17 and I never inflict it until it almost cost me my marriage in my life, right? when i went down to mexico and did the ivy experience that's what it showed me was the dials not switches so when i came back i'm like i've got to strip out everything else what are the only two things

Starting point is 01:15:27 that really matter we've got the business and i've got my family what can i do to support both of those things and i can't do them simultaneous to me multitasking's a falsehood you can't do them both right i can't be on her two-hand texting and have a normal conversation with a 12 year old about navigating seventh grade i can't do it why would i lie to her and why would i lie to her and why would i lie myself and say I could. Right. I can't. So when I leave work, we'll call it five o'clock. I'm rolling out of work at five o'clock. I sit in my car. I have it in park, start the whole thing. I put on Chris Stapleton pretty much every day. That's awesome. I love Chris Stapleton. Put you in a good mood. It does, man. It settles me down. And that's what you talk about, you know, diet, not just what you

Starting point is 01:16:05 mean, but what you consume. If I'm blaring, and there's been times, Metallica, mega death, that kind of energy is not what I need to go home and be the best version of myself for them. So I put on something that calms me down, puts my heart rate at 42, nice and chill, and I pre-rehearsed everything I'm going to go through. So before I put it in drive, all my texts are cleared. I respond to everybody I need to. If I need to mark them on red, I mark them on red, check social. Do not disturb. I've got a 12-minute drive home.

Starting point is 01:16:33 And I start to pre-rehears everything. So if my kids had a doctor's appointment, if they had parent-teacher conference, my wife went to, what do I need to check in with? And what's the version of me they need to see right when I come home? super stressful day my wife had a medical appointment my father's sick in the hospital all these different things i don't need to come in here blaring on all eight cylinders ramping everybody up i've got to meet them where they're at in the shared energy across the board so if i come in super hostile like you won't believe what happened it spikes everybody up yeah if i come in switzerland nice and easy where's everybody at hugs and kisses to everybody nice positive interaction i was cool today great i'm actually there i'm not on my

Starting point is 01:17:14 phone yeah how it's cool uh-huh uh-huh yeah oh hold on one second this is my favorite yeah hold on i can't do this anymore to the 12 yeah you're more important than this phone you're more important to me than business and i actually mean it now yeah i'd leave the whole thing right now if i had to for the family and i was never like that before when i was in teams that was the only thing that mattered yeah i'm not proud to say it but if she would have taken the kids and left i would let her yeah i wouldn't have left teams for that i would now because now i really realized the strength of that family that's really what I want that's really what I'm trying to hold on to but I've got to be able to give them the best version of myself and if I'm outside of that routine

Starting point is 01:17:53 they're never going to get it now I'm thinking about I didn't get my fitness in I'm not leading by example the culture's failing I'm failing now I go home and I feel like a suboptimal version of myself yeah I can control that I can control that with just a routine and it's not OCD like I don't have to move pencils around this doesn't have to be there right the small low hand fruit yeah a little bit of structure just bring it in yeah and now I'm accountable for every minute out of my day worry at 215 right here yeah I can you can justify everything you're doing because it's not for me yeah it's for you it might look like it's selfish right now

Starting point is 01:18:27 okay you came in on the red eye spend the morning with the kids can't yeah because one day will turn into two two will turn in the five a week turns into a month really really fast I've been inside the gym in a month I've been so busy yeah I'm about to get back on the train no I'm not I'm not taking phone calls not a zoom phone, nothing before 10 a.m. Not doing it. That's so legit, man. I think that level of discipline and structure, just that level of organization, routine is so important.

Starting point is 01:18:55 It's so important to your circadian rhythm. It's so important to the success of your business. It's so important to your ability to be regarded as a leader. It's even important to your ability to handle and be resilient to stress. Because you talk about mental illness and the mental struggle of PTSD. quite a bit. You had an experience with it yourself. And I'm really interested in your Ivo-gain experience.

Starting point is 01:19:27 Because, you know, I know lots of people that have done Ivogeen, ayahuasca, ketamine. They're not really mixed stories. They're different stories, but they have, in most cases, very similar outcomes where this was like. the life-changing for them, like literally life-changing. And I'm talking to, you know, badass men like yourself that are not going to make shit up, that are not trying to sell some I've gained journey, and they're not fruffy about

Starting point is 01:20:00 things. You, what made you make the decision to go and try that? Did you know people that had done this? Okay, you knew people that had done this journey. I had a former teammate, Marcus Capone, him and his wife, he was the quintessential. Navy SEAL. He's six foot five, built like a brick shit house. I mean, he is the dude. When you see him, like, you're surprised he's not carved out of Granite and Mount Olympus. I mean, that's the way he looks. And I watched him, you know, he was at SEAL Team 10 when I went there. And when he checked

Starting point is 01:20:30 in, he was larger than life. He represented everything you wanted to be. Just, you know, how you want to be the best basketball player. Way out Kobe Bryant's routine or just live it. Yeah, it's the same thing. Just following his footsteps, he'll lead you to the promised land. And that's what he did and when he went over the tier one side very busy very hectic a lot of combat lost a lot of friends and you watched it slowly but surely morph him eyes got jet black drinking too much family finally said it was enough he was going to transition out of it and you watched him death spiral you heard the rumor mill like he's drinking a lot it's why he's going to leave him like i think he's suicidal all these different things and he kind of goes dormant for a while

Starting point is 01:21:11 He kind of loses track of him. And his wife, Amber, in the background, she was done. They tried talk therapy, stillie gangling blocks, all the neurobehavioral. Everything you could have tried, they've already tried. Nothing was working. He's actually getting worse, especially with all the medications. Now you had an alcohol, no sleep, insomnia, and he became a shell of who he was. And she found Ibigan and sent him down to Mexico to do it.

Starting point is 01:21:34 So a combination of five MEO and I began, they made this little infomercial on social media. It was basically like his story. he looked completely different i i couldn't believe it was him and i was at the exact same point my wife was going to leave me i was going to let her and we watched that thing and she's bawling she slides a phone over i watch it i'm bawling because i see the change in him and she looked for the better for the better wow he looked like he was reborn but he wasn't foo-foo like he wasn't you know grounding beads in his hair doing the whole thing right you hear guys go to the west coast now they're doing they're licking toads and they're doing all this weird

Starting point is 01:22:13 stuff my typical west coast oh my god yeah yeah you claimed another one but he was better he was the same guy but you could see the dial in him he was the same dude he can roll it to 10 really really fast be the most violent person you've ever seen really but he can hover to two all day yeah that's what i couldn't do that's what none of my friends could do we were always at at eight nine ten intensity always i just wanted a break i want to be able to power it down i didn't know how she's like if you love me you'll go and i went down there was some really really heavy hitters from your guys that you're yeah yeah and that medicine is the only thing i've ever found stronger than the ego wow but you've built yourself in this this vessel you think is the

Starting point is 01:22:55 essence of your craft and you need something to break through it you're like well i pride myself nothing can break me not physically not mentally not spiritually emotionally nothing like i'm very resilient up to this point but i needed something to him hammer through me and break me down to bare metal. And that's exactly what it did. How was it administered? What was the setting like? Like, what was the procedure like?

Starting point is 01:23:17 Very therapeutic. I mean, they've got counselors. You're essentially a four-story villa. You've got nurses, EMTs, chefs are there. People just taking care of all your needs, everything. They give you a drug test when you get there. They confiscate all your medications. Make sure you're not on Adderall, any kind of stimulant.

Starting point is 01:23:34 There's no nicotine, caffeine, nothing. So you are fully sober for the first time for a lot of the guys first time in decades I mean I was taking 60 plus pills a day so when I went down there I was the worst I'd ever been well mental health was the worst physically I was the worst I just I didn't want to play the game anymore right and if I'm being honest I had no intention of coming back from Mexico I really I was so suicidal I just wanted to die I didn't care and I think in the back of my mind I kind of hope I was gonna kill me so I wouldn't have to go home and face the music and all that kind of stuff and everything i thought i was going

Starting point is 01:24:12 to see is not what i saw i thought i'd see nick check i thought i'd be in the back of helicopters i thought i'd see tall grass and all the stuff we lived through and i didn't when i say zero not a singular memory of military it got it from the day i joined to the day i retired none of it no i've been navigating four times and never once never once not a singular bit of it and maybe because that's not where your regret lies that's not my trauma that's not i've loved every ounce of that even the stuff that's bad even the stuff that i thought was giving me nightmares it's not it's a bunch of childhood stuff and then it's a realization that i'm doing the same thing to my kids and i don't want to be like that i don't like i have regrets on the way i've treated my wife conversations we've had infidelity

Starting point is 01:25:00 the whole thing it's like i did all that and it's so hard to realize that's what you've done so when you wake up the next day they call it the gray day it was like i had a 300 pound noose around me my posture was broken i didn't want to go home at the same token that was the first time i'd ever been homesick like if if elin must would have had a teleportation machine right there i would have jumped home right but i still had this reservation like i still don't want to go home it's this weird this weird shift you find yourself in but everything you've been suppressing your whole life is now at the very

Starting point is 01:25:33 top of your throat now it's coming out of your mouth you sit down this big school circle and okay let's talk about your experience last night and everybody just looks at each other I'm chatty Kathy like I want to send it right and I start talking and everybody else starts piping up I start talking about wanting to kill myself and suicide ideation

Starting point is 01:25:53 dependency and all this stuff and everybody else like me too me too me too me too really and then i get pissed i'm like really what do you mean you too like i've known you for 20 years you're my best friend what do you mean you too he's like yeah i'm the same boat you're going to let me sit in my guest room and shoot myself in a head and you weren't going to say anything you knew i was suffering nothing you're just going to watch it happen and i made that decision right then i was like i am never going to sit here and mum's the word i'm not doing that yeah next day we do five driving me ODMT and it it must be what finding religion is truly like wow when it happens you

Starting point is 01:26:31 set up oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my i mean you're freaking out and you feel interconnected to everybody like it's so hard to describe until you've done it you can't believe you feel that good you can't believe you feel that grounded that balance that interconnected that much empathy in your life really but it's controllable it doesn't make you a pacifist and that was my biggest concerns like i don't want to run around here with flowers and beads in my hair yeah sorry for all the things i did it's not like that a bit it gave me a full dial i can roll it to 10 so fast but i can set her to too and be the coolest dude in the world i'm the most normal dude you'll ever made i wasn't like that a couple years ago really i was wound so tight i mean i wouldn't leave my

Starting point is 01:27:14 house i always thought i was going to be under attack i'd have blades and guns and all kinds of tools on me because i thought it was always under attack i'm not Like, I can control all these different things, and it made me such a more well-rounded person than I was before. Yeah. And it's all because of that medicine. And now once you're off all those pills, my headaches are away. Were you cold turkey off of all that? Yeah, to wean off because I was on some ball to Adderall.

Starting point is 01:27:38 I mean, it takes a while to get off them. But, man, once you're stone cold, sober, no booze, no nothing in you. I can't believe I feel this good. I mean, I dip Copenhagen for 20-something years. Cold turkey, one shot completely done. And I didn't want to quit. Every ounce of addiction in your body. he's gone. So addicted to women and chaos and everything else, it's gone. You've had this

Starting point is 01:28:01 this whole time. So I told Marcus and Amber when I came back, you know, they meet you on the other side of San Diego and, you know, hugs and kisses and whole thing. And I grabbed them both and I was like, I'm going to get on the nearest building. I'm going to screaming from the rooftops. I promise you. And I went on Sean Ryan, unblurred my face and told my story and I became an advocate for the medicine. I remember that. If you have, if you think you've exhausted everything, you haven't gone down there and done that there is still room left on the table you can still make progress really a bunch of guys like i've done the immersion i've done this i've done that i've done talk therapy stelly gangling blocks all the medications and they provide a little bit of relief but it's not

Starting point is 01:28:38 the entire thing and i was suffering so bad and i can see all my friends suffering too i'm so sick of putting friends and caskets for self-inflicted stuff right we can't do it anymore get the message out And that has been the greatest thing that's ever happened to me in my family. And when you, how many days was it? The original one was a three-day protocol. Now they do a five-day. So they do Reiki massage, breath work. They do it all.

Starting point is 01:29:05 Sweat Lodge. It's a full protocol. Wow. It is perfect. We do it through Ambial Life Sciences. They run the most amazing clinic. Really? Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 01:29:16 And so when you were getting ready to leave there, you had clarity maybe for the first time. in a very long time. Stone cold, sober, and it was the clarity that I didn't even want. Like, I knew I had to go home and confess my wife about all the infidelity and all the things I'd been doing, but I had such a clear picture of how it happened. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:29:37 And not a lot of people ever have that. They just think it was an impulse, yeah. Yeah, I was so hung up on the job that I had to set up these walls and these different barriers so I couldn't let my family get inside to cloud my judgment. Because you have to be able to self-sacrifice right now. it's so hard to do when I'm thinking about my wife. I'm thinking about those two kids.

Starting point is 01:29:55 I'm going to make her the first two-time widow in NSW history. I'm going to orphan my two kids. Like, I'm not doing this. Like, there's a hesitation that I can't have. So what do I do? I block them off. I don't put pictures of them up. I try to limit how much we FaceTime.

Starting point is 01:30:10 We won't talk for days on in. Like, I'm trying to keep you on the back burner so I can focus on the task at hand. Limit your options, narrow your focus. Nobody cares for my 63% husband. nobody cares it's not it's not what they care about they need me to perform right now it it calls for sacrifice i have to be able to sacrifice so we'd go on these trips and i'd live these alternate lives we'd go on jump trips and dive trips and you know i'm not just running around but because i'm not thinking about them there's that internal governor that's no longer there

Starting point is 01:30:41 it's like normal people would lean on religion strength of their family all that i didn't have any of those things i was just living this singleton life we're on the road 300 days out of of the year and it's so much easier to compartmentalize completely and not think about them when i'm fully single so in my mind i'm fully single wherever i'm at outside of this house i can be a complete different person now i come home i snap back into it am i really present no physically i'm there mentally i'm not there emotionally i'm not there right that's all the time that i regret so to everything i've done for my life up to the 40 years on this planet there's a stretch of four years i absolutely hate myself for i can never get that back and we came back through i mean i can't

Starting point is 01:31:24 believe we made it through it all the stuff i put her through but i told her i was like i'm going to re-earn my seat at this table every single day i'm left on this planet you will see a positive change in me every minute i'm alive because i owe it to you and if you ask you today i wake up every day with that on the forefront of my mind i'm going to re-earn my seat at this table by whatever means necessary. And the other thing is we cut out toxicity out of my life. I sat down at the edge of my bed with her and a lot of its personal relationships, went through my phone, started a and rolled all the way to Z. This person, this person, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, about 150 people block and delete, all of them. Really? Never going back. I've known you for 25 years. Every interaction's

Starting point is 01:32:08 been toxic. I mean, family members included. I can't do it anymore. I owe these three people, everything right now and I'm going to give you both barrels right now because you deserve it because I've been absent for our first 15 years of marriage. The Gwatt took you or took me from you now I've got to give it back and for me it's totally worth it but it is so hard to go down there and let yourself go. And is this is this over several days that you come to this or is it how is it administered? A pill form. So they grind it all down it comes from a route in West Africa. They grind it down to the capsule form take three or four pills you take one 20 minutes later take another one and you'll slowly start to fill the effects come on nothing crazy you get a little bit of

Starting point is 01:32:51 tracer and then you take the fourth or fifth final pill banging on the rock as you're staring yourself in the mirror and then all of a sudden wow am i feeling it you'll shake back and forth and everything will drift you're like oh boy here we go here we go you hear like bees buzzing in your ear and you put on the eye shades and whatever happens happens and some guys don't see anything some people you just feel emotions you can you can feel memories you're not even but you're conscious you're in charge you're in charge of your choices it's not like you're not on like a weird acid trip where it's okay but i mean like you get out of control you get up and go to the bathroom it's very hard to walk you don't have your sea legs they're assisting you but i mean you know you're in

Starting point is 01:33:31 mexico i know i'm laying on the bed i know that that guy's mad i know that's cold yeah put on the eye shades and then whatever your feelings what you feel how long are you in that zone from that 24 hours 24 hours yeah 12 to 24 so you don't actually sleep through it oh no no you're awake the entire time so that gray day you can't sleep either so i mean you're just up process guys journal they'll take audio notes all this but that medicine's in your body for probably six months so wow you'll be sitting in a red light and all of a sudden a picture or an emotion that you felt from six months in a past you're in treatment it'll click all the dots will connect you go that's why i did that and you'll go home to your old lady and you're like do you remember in 2012 this and she's like

Starting point is 01:34:13 uh-huh i was like this is why and she'll look at you and go that makes sense that makes sense and like it'll take you so long to process it but and that's what a lot of the guys do wrong is they'll go down there they'll have this amazing change they'll come back and be reinvented and they'll go straight back to that same toxic lifestyle yeah like you know you got to quit booze because it's consuming you you go to mexico you come back but your wife's drinking six, seven glasses of wine a night, it's not going to help you. Eventually, you're going to have one.

Starting point is 01:34:42 Yeah. It's going to turn to two, and you'll go straight back into it. If, you know, your buddy's at work hitting strip clubs, you know, every weekend, now you go back with them. You're back on the same path. You have to, you have to scrub out all the toxicity of your life and reinvent yourself, but once you do,

Starting point is 01:34:58 my God, it's like a superpower. Really? Everything is more vibrant, colors. The edges are crisp and clean. You feel interconnected to everything. It is truly amazing. That is wild, dude. You know what's amazing is I've had multiple people that I, some that I hold in very, very high regard, tell me almost identical stories. I still don't quite understand the mechanism of how it allows you to break through your ego because I feel like when you're in that state and you're not in control, you know, you're not conscious enough to process. process it and make a reasonable choice out that'll lead to a life-changing outcome.

Starting point is 01:35:43 But that's not what they report. So when you come into Ibegain, that's not the ego death. That conjures up everything else you've been suppressing. The 5MEO is what kills it. They call it the ego death for a reason. So good. And the ego is so dangerous. It is.

Starting point is 01:35:58 You think it's a source of your strength. Yeah. But for us, when you get in there, I did six rounds of 5MEO my first time through. Wow. How long were you there? each one of those is it's different from everybody else mine were probably four to six minute rides you kind of have a loose trap uh you can kind of track a little bit of time but it's so hard to describe it feels in trevor tell you if it feels like you're going to explode explode feels like you're drowning

Starting point is 01:36:24 just drown feels like you're dying just die whatever it's going to do don't try to fight it just open your arms and just breathe and let it happen and i was probably five rounds through and i wasn't having that breakthrough moment my ego wasn't dying I was holding on to it. I would scream and cry and I'd ball it up. And then I'd come out of it and I'd look at the practitioner and go, hit him again. This last one,

Starting point is 01:36:46 I don't know, because we used to go down there with nothing but seals. So they would hold space for you. You'd look around the room. You're like, okay, I'm going to take this medicine and put these eyeshades on in this foreign country and they're going to protect the house,

Starting point is 01:36:56 make sure nothing's going to happen. So it gives you that piece of calm. Yeah. In that very last time, I don't know if it was a practitioner or a team guy that was there. They knew how bad I was struggling. and they were like you want to kill yourself right yeah and then do it i changed my intention and the six time i smoked that medicine i did it with the intention to kill myself and that is what

Starting point is 01:37:17 broke me open it felt like my whole soul went into my sternum it cracked open and shot out of me i mean just laying there just i mean you got the eye shades on it it feels like every ounce of your soul is leaving your body one shot i mean screaming it's that profound when we get done i'll show you a video of me screaming it sounds like a Viking death they have a video oh wow screaming and you don't know what's happening that's just what your body's doing and when you wake up from that it's the most sobering thing you've ever had like everything in the world is right every wrong I've ever done I can fix you're like I'm good like I don't have to close this out like I got to go home and I got to confess right now and I got to rebuild this bridge brick by brick right now it gives you the motivation

Starting point is 01:37:58 you're seat at the table yeah yeah like I can totally come back from this I can totally do it Without that medicine, there was no coming back for me. Wow, that is so profound, because I know so many people are struggling from what they feel as insurmountable mental illness. Everybody's got it. And even to some extent, yeah. So we're doing a documentary to launch on Netflix, November 3rd,

Starting point is 01:38:19 and ways more. Is it really? Yeah. Oh, dude, I'm going to light that thing up for you, man. That's awesome. Yeah, November 3rd. About your journey? My journey, Marks Capone.

Starting point is 01:38:27 And then if you heard me talk about on the Sean Ryan podcast, Matt Roberts, through the arm doing that whole thing it's essentially marcus saving me me going down to get treatment us coming together and going we got to save mattie yeah now it's me convincing matt to go down his whole treatment protocol and then all of us going down to mexico together it films the entire procedure simultaneously sean is doing it too um Sean did it too yeah but um Stanford did a study on ibegan and what it's doing for the brain it's unbelievable i gotta dig into that. It's killing addiction. It's repairing all the

Starting point is 01:39:01 neural pathways in the brain. I mean, guys that are really, really jammed up, it's curing it in one shot. Don't start fucking with Big Pharma's pockets. Oh, Big Farmers are going to hate this. Especially missing Navy SEALs here. Because it's working, man. That's worse than any enemy you ever fought. But yeah, it's amazing that you know, empowering the body to just heal itself. I mean, such a huge, huge believer.

Starting point is 01:39:25 This has been amazing, man. first of all, I'm really thankful that you came down and came on to the podcast. And before we wind things up, I have a VIP group. These are my most loyal followers. They're a community that I've built that are really on the same journey with me. They knew that you were coming on the podcast. They've got some questions for you. I want to take you into that room and answer their questions.

Starting point is 01:39:54 But before we go, I wind down all my podcasts by asking me. I guess the same question. And that is, what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human? I mean, for me, being an ultimate human, it's a realization you're on a consistent progression throughout life. The person you are at 18, you're progressively getting better through your 20s, through your 30s, through your 40s,

Starting point is 01:40:18 and I'm going to continue that exact progression, understanding there's no finish line. There's no gold medal to win where I just hang it up and I go, and I'm not going to do anything else. I am going to live this exact same path, knowing there's still room to go, still room to grow, the entire way through. Different modalities, you've got a different pill that makes me better. Give it to me.

Starting point is 01:40:36 Different drink, different sleep, hygiene, whatever it is. I'm adopting everything positive in my life to make me better than I was the day before, and I'm trying to push that out to everybody, and I'm just trying to live it. To me, that's the ultimate human. Am I better than I was the day before? Yeah. I am. I will tell you, man, I'm around a lot of people, a lot of great thinkers, a lot of very

Starting point is 01:40:53 successful, unique individuals. You have an energy about you, rather. I mean, you really do. I feel like I've known you all my life. And I'm not saying like I feel like you're my best friend. No, I just feel like I've known you all my life. I can tell that you're a very genuine, very intentional, very humble person. And I really enjoy the last couple hours with you, man.

Starting point is 01:41:14 I truly have. I mean, it's been an awesome engagement. And like I say, I meet a lot of people, a lot of high achievers. But you have that special cord, like that authentic energy that I don't feel very often. So maybe it was the Ibogaine and it worked. I appreciate it. I appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, I'm excited to go in and meet some of the VIPs and get their questions answered.

Starting point is 01:41:37 But wow, what an amazing podcast. I'm going to have you back because I want to see how your journey continues to go. And guys, until next time, that's your sign.

The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 217. DJ Shipley: On Psychedelics, Discipline, PTSD & Rebuilding the Mind After War

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