Trading Secrets - 235. Robert J. O’Neill: From killing Osama Bin Laden to his ventures post-military, the unbelievable BTS of Navy SEAL training, realities behind the mental role in operations, and the financial realities of it all!
Episode Date: May 19, 2025This week, Jason is joined by former Navy Seal, entrepreneur, New York Times bestselling author, speaker, and podcast host, Robert J. O’Neill! Robert is one of the most highly decorated combat veter...ans of our time. He served at Seal Team two, Seal Team four, and eight years at the legendary Seal Team six. Having taken part in leading over 400 combat missions around the world, he has decorated 53 times with honors. More notably, Robert took part in the rescue operation Red Wings, which extracted the lone survivor Marcus Latrell. He was the lead jumper for the rescue operation that saved Captain Richard Phillips and some from the Somali Pirates, and he was a team leader for Operation Neptune Spear, the mission to kill Osama Bin Laden. In this powerful episode, Robert shares how mastering free throws opened his eyes to the power of muscle memory and the importance of setting both short- and long-term goals. He discusses how a breakup unexpectedly led him to enlist in the Navy, the rigorous journey to becoming a Navy SEAL—including the numbers behind selection, the grueling Hell Week, and the intense “drown-proofing” training designed to teach calm under pressure. Robert reflects on the critical need for adaptability, managing stress, and keeping things simple under extreme conditions. He opens up about the long-term emotional processing of his time on the SEAL team, takes us behind the scenes of the mission to find Osama Bin Laden, and shares the mindset that fueled that operation. Robert also discusses the aftermath of becoming publicly known as the man who killed Bin Laden, the financial realities faced by many in the military, and his efforts to support veterans through new initiatives. Finally, he explores the concept of the butterfly effect—and shares his perspective on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Robert reveals all this and so much more in another episode you can’t afford to miss! Operatorcanna.com https://vetsolutions.org/ https://sotf.org/ Host: Jason Tartick Co-Host: David Arduin Audio: John Gurney Guest: Robert J O’Neill Stay connected with the Trading Secrets Podcast! Instagram: @tradingsecretspodcast Youtube: Trading Secrets Facebook: Join the Group All Access: Free 30-Day Trial Trading Secrets Steals & Deals! Photobooth Supply Co: Weddings, parties, corporate events—photo booths are a must-have for every party! And with PHOTOBOOTH SUPPLY CO, you get the hottest photo booths, step-by-step guides, and expert one-on-one coaching to help you get up and running fast! Curious how much you could make by running your own photo booth business? Check out their FREE Profit Calculator at STARTPHOTOBOOTH.com/SECRETS Quince: Once the temps start rising, don’t get stuck in the same worn-out rotation-same tank, same shorts, same everything. Upgrade your daily uniform with Quince. Their pieces are easy, elevated, and somehow make me feel more put together without even trying. Treat your closet to a little summer glow-up with Quince. Go to Quince.com/tradingsecrets for free shipping on your order and 365 -day returns. Booking.com: Whether you're looking to earn that extra income, fill those vacant weekends, or grow your business, head over to Booking.com to see how you can get started today. The reach is global, the bookings are consistent, and the control is yours. For the bookings you've dreamed of, list your property on Booking.com
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Welcome back to another episode of Trading Secrets.
Today we are joined by former Navy SEAL, entrepreneur, New York Times, bestselling author, speaker, and podcast host, Robert J. O'Neill.
Robert is one of the most highly decorated combat veterans of our time.
He served at SEAL Team 2, SEAL Team 4, in eight years at the legendary SEAL Team 6.
Having taken part in leading over 400 combat missions around the world, he has decorated
53 times with honors.
More notably, Robert took part in the rescue operation Red Wings, which extracted the lone
survivor, Marcus LaTrell.
He was then led jumper for the rescue operation that saved Captain Richard Phillips and
from the Somali Pirates.
and he was a team leader for Operation Neptune Spear,
the mission to kill Osama bin Laden.
Today we are going to talk about his life as a Navy SEAL,
his transition into corporate America,
which includes becoming an author,
public speaker, podcast host,
and even starting his own veteran-owned cannabis company.
Robert, like truly, from all the guests we have,
I say it a lot, you've done it all,
but like you truly have done it all.
Thank you for being on Trading Secrets.
We appreciate it.
This is exciting.
Yeah, this is awesome.
Let's go back.
to the early days. So, you know, you're growing up, and it was in Montana, right?
View Montana. So you're growing up there, and I think about my early days growing up in Buffalo,
New York. I grew up with Rob Grunkowski, and we knew it the early day. Just trust me, the same
guy today. I had so many images just that of what you guys wrote to. We had a great time.
He's the same guy today that he was back then. Nothing's changed. But I say that because we knew
from like literally the day he was, like he was four years old. We're like, this kid's going to be the guy.
Like, he's going to be the guy.
Also, I had the Fordshire player with Patrick Kane and hockey growing up.
We knew he would be, and he becomes one of the best hockey players ever do exist.
I'm curious when I see everything you've done.
Were you that guy?
Were you the guy in school and stuff?
Like, oh, that's the Navy SEAL.
That's the sniper.
No, no.
I was actually the guy that when I told people I joined the Navy that they would tell me I wasn't going to make it.
I think the only guy who believed in me was my dad.
My family told me I'd make it, but I think behind my back, they admitted later.
They weren't sure just because it was never my thing.
I wasn't a tough guy.
I didn't have really a killer mentality, but what I had from growing up there is my dad and I
played basketball quite a bit.
Yeah.
And we got really good at shooting free throws because we had a deal that when we would work out,
before you leave the gym, you got to make 20 in a row.
One of us has to make 20 in a row.
Okay.
And that can take three minutes.
It can take an hour.
Okay.
But it's like starting to make 20 in a row.
And the deal we had was it's 20 in a row at the beginning of the season to leave and it's
24 steak at the Derby, which is the best steakhouse of Butte, Montana.
Okay.
And that goes up in increments of five.
So it's always 20 to leave, then 25's a stake.
Then you make that's 30, and it goes up.
And he got to the point, it was nothing for us to make 70 free throws in a row.
He made 91 one day, which was the family record for a week.
Okay.
Because a week later, I made 105.
Wow.
And what that got me, though, and I didn't realize at the time, that taught me muscle memory.
Do everything like you do anything.
If you want to be good at something, do it 10,000 times.
You want to be great, do it 100,000 times.
And so later on in life, when I became a sniper, when I became a close quarters battle instructor,
everything from the squeeze, the follow-through of a sniper rifle to, how are you going to get to your pistol?
Not necessarily pull it and shoot, but if you're wearing a jacket like you're doing a personal protection,
practice moving your jacket with your thumb.
Put your thumb to your solar plexes, move it, you know, you're right there.
So the muscle memory and just the continual training do it the same every time you're going to learn eventually
instead of the instant gratification.
So you're saying everything from being the team leader of Operation Neptunes,
where you kill Osama bin Laden to training to become a Navy SEAL and Hell Week,
your testament is free throws.
Free throws just to get good at something.
And I learned early on about short-term goals as opposed to long-term goals.
And that advice came to me from an instructor because I didn't know how to swim when I joined
the Navy.
Yeah.
It was a fluke.
Which is kind of wild.
It was a fluke.
I joined because of a girl.
I got dumped by a girl.
And it was just time to leave town.
You know, everyone that age, 18, 19, you have a bad relationship.
I got to leave town.
I had two buddies I grew up with, Ben and Jim, who always wanted to be Marines.
They were two years older.
They joined the Marine Corps.
And every time they came home, it's a Marine, like uniform, stud, haircut, Marine.
So when it was time for me to leave town, the easiest way is to join the Marine Corps,
you'd be on a bus, Paris Island.
It's going to suck, but it's going to be awesome.
Yeah.
I went to join the Marine Corps.
The Marine recruiter was not in the office.
The Navy guy was.
And the only reason I went in there is my two Marine buddies told me a joke at the time
that the Marine Corps is actually part of the Department of the Navy.
It's just the men's department.
And I walked in there.
I'm like, hey, where's the Marine?
If anyone who know you would, because he's a Marine.
in the Navy and he goes, why do you want the Marines? He's like, well, I don't be a sniper. I hunt.
And he said, look, no further. We have snipers in the Navy. You need to be a seal first. No big
deal. And then we'll send you to sniper school. And that was it. I didn't know how to swim,
but I went to seal training. And the short term, long term goal was from an instructor.
First day, we were there. He said, I know you've probably read the books and seen the movies,
regardless of what you've been told. This course is not impossible. People graduate. Look at me.
I'm living proof. So I will never ask you to do anything impossible. But I will make you do something
very hard, followed immediately by something very hard, followed by something very hard,
day after day after day for eight straight months, and that sounds like a lot to get from now
to there, but don't think about eight months from now.
Do it like this.
Wake up in the morning on time, make your bed the right way, and then brush your teeth.
You just started your day with three wins.
Pretty good.
Make it to the 4 a.m.
Workout on time, and as I'm beating you, don't think about the pain.
Concentrate on your next goal in life, which is breakfast.
After breakfast, it's lunch.
After lunch, your next goal is dinner.
After you finish dinner, do everything you need to do to get back inside that person.
perfectly made bed and because you took the time for yourself in the morning to make your bed the
right way, regardless of how bad today was. Tomorrow's a clean slate. It's a fresh start.
And what he said is when you feel like quitting, which you will, don't quit right, never quit
right now, quit tomorrow. And if you can keep quitting tomorrow, you can do anything.
Is the idea behind that if you quit right now this moment, that's a, that's a reaction,
not a response. And if you take the time, it's then a response. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't,
don't react, do respond. A reaction is emotion. It's like the, it's okay to write that
nasty email, don't hit send for 24 hours. If it still bothers you, it might be worth it.
But quitting right now, it's like pain is temporary pride lasts a lifetime.
Okay. Genius. I can't wait to get into Hell Week. We will get into Hell Week before we do get
in the Hell Week. I did hear you say something or I read something about, I believe it's called the
Die Fair program. Is that what you signed up for? And can you tell, especially Finance Podcasts,
can you tell a little bit about compensation and then also what that program means?
Well, it sounded like a lot because it was a $2,500 bonus, which to me is a dude working
to McDonald's.
Huge.
That's a big paycheck.
I could put gas in my Buick Skylar.
But it gave me, it was a guarantee.
I had a buddy tell me, he went to the Army before I went to the Navy and said,
get it in writing, which is great advice for anything.
Like even if someone says, we'll do business over handshake, it's like, cool, sign the paper,
I'll shake your hand.
Yeah.
So he said, because he tried to be a ranger and they didn't give it to him because he didn't sign it.
Yeah.
So the DiFara program guaranteed me a chance to take a test to get into seal training.
Gotcha.
And then because not everyone's guaranteed a chance.
Okay.
What the recruiter will tell you, if you believe it or not, they'll lie to you to get you in.
they'll tell you when you get there you can volunteer but you know get it in writing okay so that guaranteed me a shot at it and so yeah so when i but it also gave me five months to prepare which is good because i still i was going to college at montana tech i still had my ID so i can get into the pool and try to learn how to swim real quick so i had five months to learn and then i left so that was basically it 2500 bucks if you make it through okay so 2500 are you paid it all a stipend like while you're training or going through the process well we yeah when you they start paying you at boot camp it's not very much okay and then when seal training is odd though it's
It's not like boot camp where you're all in the same room and they wake you up every morning.
It's Monday through Friday.
And you need to be where they want you.
They're not going to come get you.
You better be there with a full headcount, everyone they're accounted for, and then ready to work on the dive.
Okay.
So once you go into the seal training, then, how long is that process again?
Nine months.
But that's nine months for the basic underwater demolition seal training.
Okay.
They're not really teaching you much.
They're just beating you.
Okay.
It's three phases, all physical for the first 11 weeks.
Nine weeks of diving, combat diving, open and closed circuit.
and then 11 weeks of land warfare, so explosives and smaller arms.
Damn.
Okay.
In that nine months, the percentage of people that start versus the percentage of people
that complete the training.
20% make it.
20%.
That's a big number.
Like, my class was big with, we started with about 217.
We graduated 33 originals.
Interesting.
The class before me was seven.
Okay.
But now my joke with people is my class was so hard, we graduated two and they made
us fight it out.
I like that.
That's bullshit.
Yeah, exactly.
I love it.
So, I mean, 20 to 33%, if you don't make it through and you do fail out, do you
have a chance to do it again? Yeah. Yeah, depending on your attitude, really. Because some guys,
the younger guys are the ones who quit because they're like, well, the fleet, because if you don't make it,
you're probably going to the fleet to a ship. And it's so bad in training, you're like, well,
I'm just quit and go to the fleet. How bad can that be? That's worse. People in the fleet work harder
than we do because it's nonstop around the clock. Not as hard physically, but it's a really tough
taxing job. Yeah. The older guys who come back from the fleet, they make it because they're like,
I'm not going back to a ship. Yeah, they're like, hell no. All right. So if they like you,
they'll let you back. I think there's something about Navy SEAL training that it like there's so many
people no matter who's listening to this right now, whatever job they are, they're struggling in a
relationship, they're struggling financially. There's so many parallels at just a magnified level.
And so I want to kind of dive into it a little bit, but when you saw the people quit, whether it was in
their eyes and their physical ability, their mental ability, what was the common consistency
behind the people that were quitting and the people that made it? And like, what are some pieces of advice
based on the people that made it that people back home listening right now can take into their life?
Loudmouth and tough guys didn't make it.
Interesting.
And when you show up, because everyone, you know, you can never tell what anyone's
feeling inside.
Yeah.
And so loud mouths you think are tough guys, but they're afraid.
It's the guys that eventually made it were the guys who just kind of get it.
Like, I'm going to do this.
I'll do that.
I might not win everything.
You know, like you have the one percenters, like the LeBron James and the, you know,
Michael Jordans that are just 1%.
But most of the guys are just normal dudes that are going to get through it.
You'll learn quickly that it's a mind game.
If your mind quits, your body is going to follow.
If you're, once your mind goes, you're never going to talk it back in, but you can convince your body through your mind to do anything.
You can stay up that extra few hours.
You can do that extra work, run the extra mile.
If you only keep your mind in it.
And your body's going to get beat down.
And people don't quit just because it sucks, but they quit because I'm tired of the shin splints.
I'm tired of my busted knee and my broken ankle.
I'm tired of the pain.
I'm just one after another after another.
They're trying to see who will just keep pushing through it.
I even got to a point when we were on the mountain to rescue La Trell, awake for three days.
I remember saying to my guys, this is why training is so hard.
Because if we wanted to quit right now, where are we going to go?
We're in the Coringall Valley, man.
You're done.
Yeah.
That's it.
Unbelievable.
All right.
So you go through it all.
I mean, you talked real quickly.
I don't want to pass this.
You talked about the one percenters.
When you talk about these one percenters, the Michael Jordans of LeBron's, we all
know them in sports and athletes and maybe even CEOs or business leaders.
We don't get to see them behind the scenes as far as the people that serve our country.
Like define the one percent.
You know, well, with us, you know, work hard, play hard.
Those are the dudes that can go out till midnight one in the morning smoke, a couple of cigarettes.
Run five minute miles at four.
Like that just studs.
They can knock out 36 pull-ups in a row.
Okay.
Just they're just a 1%.
Okay.
Just studs.
The guy that can, you know, they can do when we tie all damn day and then get on the
floor and do Jiu-Gitza, then do CQB for hours.
Just freaks to nature.
The rest of us are normal dudes.
Okay.
Got it.
But just like I said, the guys that get it can keep a solid attitude.
Don't get too emotional.
Don't get too excited about anything.
And even with quitting and seal training, get to a point where if someone's like, I'm just
going to quit.
It's like, I can't talk you out of it.
Yeah.
Your mind's made.
up and I'm not going to try. It makes perfect sense. There's a famous, funny TikTok trend that
goes viral about how often do dudes think about the Roman Empire? And most of this listening
audience is female, about 75%, so they have fun with it making jokes about it. I would also
say that connects to like Hell Week. A lot of like my buddies and I will talk about who's the person
that can make it, what does it look like, et cetera. Can the people that don't have a clue that
are listening around now, they don't even know what Hell Week is. Tell them what it is and tell
them like some of the biggest challenges and just paint the picture. Well, Hell Week is, it starts on Sunday
afternoon and you don't sleep until Friday afternoon, early evening. And you're in what's called
a boat crew, seven dudes and you're carrying a boat on your head everywhere. You go, big heavy boat
and you're running together. And that's basically to teach a teamwork in a really hard way.
But you're running the whole time. You run a few marathons during the week. You're wet and cold
and miserable the entire time. To the point, you're so saturated from saltwater, sand being
wet that by Wednesday, every part of your body that's touching cloth starts to bleed. It's really
weird. Wow. And but like the short term goal is the next meal. The long term goal for me was get it
to Wednesday when the sun comes up because hopefully I'll be so delirious. I'll just push myself through
it. Yeah. And we decided, because you're only with seven dudes. There's a whole class there,
but you're only seeing these guys. Yeah. And we decided, okay, if you're having a bad time,
just tell one of us and maybe we're having a good time. If you're having a good time, tell one of us
and maybe we're having a bad time. We'll talk her way out of it. And so you're learning to be a team,
We don't go anywhere without anybody else.
But on Thursday night, we were rowing around Coronado.
It's called Around the World.
It's a long, long row.
You're rolling these boats.
And we were going past North Island, which is a jet base.
And I said, hey, guys, is that an aircraft carrier right in front of us?
And they're like, no.
I said, okay, if there's no aircraft carrier right there, I'm assuming that's not a fire breathing dragon on the flight deck.
And they go, no.
I'm like, okay, I'm having a really good time right now.
So if anyone needs help, tell me, I'll carry you or whatever, and followed by immediate lows.
But you're learning that you can push yourself through.
anything you're learning that your teammates can help you or you can help them.
And it almost instills it doesn't matter who get, you know, if we succeeded, it doesn't matter
who gets the credit.
The team did it.
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Was there ever a point that you almost quit? Every day. Really? Yeah. Well, it would go through
my mind coming from Montana. Like, they would ask me if I just got off a submarine because I don't tan.
So even for me, like if there's a 4 a.m. workout, I got to be up at 3 just to put on sunscreen.
And then we all got to run to the workout.
And the workouts are so weird because you work out in the spot.
It's an outdoor concrete slab called a grinder where you do a thousand push-ups a day,
a thousand sit-ups a day, a thousand flutter kicks, 500 pull-ups.
But, you know, water and off of courses.
But it's a mile from that to the chow hall.
So every single day, regardless of anything, you're running six miles just to eat
on top of the 14 miles you're running every single day.
And it's one after another.
They tie your hands behind your back, your feet together, throwing in the pool for an hour,
teaching you what it's like to not be able to breathe.
Right, right, right, right.
Right.
What?
Yeah.
It's called drownproofing.
Yeah.
I don't know who came up with that name.
Okay.
But they throw you in there and they first, they teach you that Boyle's Law works, like compression
and whatever.
If you exhale, you can sink, go to the bottom, come up, inhale, exhale.
And you're calming down.
Then they have you float for 10 minutes, floating, tied up, figure it out, then swim a couple
hundred meters.
Then they'll throw a mask, got to grab it with your teeth.
And you don't know what you're doing, but what they're teaching you is that panicking is not
going to help.
So stay calm.
That's it.
And people freak out because you're not realizing.
they're watching you.
Yeah.
And if you start to drown, which happens, they'll come get you in the do CPR.
They're not going to let you die.
No, but you don't know that.
But you don't know that.
And you just got to just calm down.
Like right now, if you're worried about something that your worry doesn't have anything
to do with, you're wasting your energy.
Just drop that bag of bricks.
It makes perfect sense.
But getting tied up in a pool, it's kind of like, all right, what is this?
But everyone's doing it.
You heard that.
And I was like, what the hell?
I've heard stories about like even like, like, you'll have to piss on yourself.
You'll have to shit your pants, like things like that.
It's a weird mind game because when you, like, you do the, say you do your two-mile ocean swim, you get dressed, you run a mile to the chow hall.
And they don't, like, they, you can eat anything.
They want you to be putting calories in your body.
So like, okay, I want four double cheeseburgers, but we have a four-mile run after this.
So maybe I shouldn't.
But it's not, it's not uncommon to, if you got to pee, you got to pee.
Yeah, just do it.
If you got to drop a deuce, maybe go in the ocean.
So no one will see it.
Do your four-mile run and keep it up.
Just keep going.
Yeah.
It's, you know, it's nasty.
but we like training to be harder than combat
because you've probably heard it before
the more you sweat and training
the less you bleed in combat.
And we know, it's just, again,
it's just one of those things where we can,
you'd be surprised where you can push yourself
through your mind to do.
Another thing that you talked about
from a mind perspective and quitting
was this theory of sympathetical quitting,
I think you called it.
Yeah.
And can you tell people that?
That goes back to the tough guy thing
where he's so tough.
Oh, he just quit.
Shit, I'm not that tough.
I better quit too.
And you watch guys.
It's not uncommon to have the loudmouth quit.
And 20 guys follow them.
It makes sense.
And at first you're kind of like, guys, what are you doing?
Then you're like, you know, whatever.
I don't want you in combat.
Yeah.
Because I don't need you quitting when the bullets are flying this way.
Makes perfect sense.
And you think about how many people in life just look left or right to that person.
And then they quit and whatever it is because they see their leader, their peer pressure or something like that.
Well, it's almost too where it feels like anything, anything violent that happens.
A lot of times people just die of shame.
Yeah.
They're just so easy just to put your head down and let it happen.
Yeah.
Like actively participate in saving your own life sometimes.
Unbelievable.
And it turns, I mean, you're with your team, you're with your swim buddy.
And if you're by yourself, they're going to hammer you.
Yeah.
But you learn a lot of, you know, it's a lot of internal stuff that you learn.
It is.
All right.
So you see the Marines with growing up.
You then say, hey, I'm going to go be a Marine.
You become a Navy SEAL.
You get through SEAL training.
You're now, like, at the highest point of, of anyone that's serving, like, you are the guy.
When you finish seal training, are you rewarded by the government in any other way?
Obviously, pride is massive.
But is there an additional compensation benefits, retirement for being at that level?
When you reenlists, they will offer you reenlistment.
up to your 16th year, because at 16, they figured they got you to 20, so no more.
But they got up to, I think, maybe 70,000, which is good for an enlisting guy.
That looks nice.
I actually had a dude one time.
He reenlisted for $45,000 pre-9-11.
And he said, real quick, though, re-enlisting is like you've served your time and now you're
re-enlisting for that period.
I'm going to give you four more years.
And they'll give you a bonus for doing that because they want to keep you in.
Because they've just dumped a lot of money into you to train you.
Of course.
But I had one dude that re-enlisted for $45,000.
This is before the iPhone.
He goes, I got a weird thing.
I'm going to put it all into Apple.
Like, you're an idiot, dude.
Stop.
Not that bad.
Oh, damn.
All right.
He's over there sipping a martini and his mansion laughing on me now.
Yeah, right?
But like Navy SEALs then are getting, you're technically getting paid similar to people in the Army, Marines, et cetera.
Yeah, you have a base pay that every rank has.
Okay.
And then they'll pay us additional pay for diving, jumping, combat pay, hazardous duty,
save pay if you get to a Tier 1 unit, which it's good when you're there because everyone's making the same amount of money.
But you don't realize that you're really, really underpaid.
Okay.
Interesting.
It is fascinating, but obviously so much pride, a legacy they'll live on forever, quite frankly.
One thing I heard you say is that snipers will kill more people.
I think he said assaulters will kill more famous people.
How profound is that?
It's one of those things I was saying as a joke, and I just figured it would work.
Because our snipers were getting something.
Like they, when we would go, especially to Iraq, before we'd go to a, because you're going
in an urban environments, going into buildings, snipers get up high and they're just looking out for you.
And they always spot the bad guys, really, really good dudes.
and they just, yeah, they blast people that are trying to get us, they'd save us.
Same with the Rangers.
We'd always hear them go hot.
You know, it's going to be a good night.
But I just had that, because I was a sniper going to Seal Team 6, but I want to be in the room.
I want to be on the hostage rescue.
I want to go after the Tier 1 targets.
But I was even saying, too, even though Delta Force is going to get bin Laden, maybe I'll get to meet the guy because I'm an assaulter at Seal Team 6.
Yeah.
But it's not going to be us.
There's no way.
Interesting.
But if you just make yourself available, wherever you are, be there.
Yeah.
And if you put yourself out there, it might come to fruition.
You speak it into existence.
since obviously you did.
We'll get into that.
But you're part of Steel Team 6, of course,
the mission to kill Osama Bin Laden.
Before that, over 400 combats.
I mean, was there anything within your legacy
and length of combats that even came close
to what you guys were doing as far as the Bin Laden mission?
And were any of them as risky as the Bin Laden mission?
There were a lot more risky missions that we did.
Interesting.
And what the missions that we did before, though,
it was really good.
I hate to say training because we're in combat
and we're getting in shootouts.
but we were learning from it because you'll learn a lot more from failure than you do from success
and so we would because a lot of our tactics al-Qaeda was they would monitor and they would
look us up on the internet they would find our tactics and they would adjust to what they thought
we do we'd have to readjust so we're constantly changing our training making sure our guys are
prepared before we go and we learn little things like if you see movies and something happens
and people start screaming go go go yeah and yelling a shooter blah blah blah we learn shut up
if i see you turn a corner and point up you don't need to yell stairway
I'll assume it's either a stairway or you ran into a 14-foot terrorist.
Interesting.
And if you're putting a bomb on the door, you don't need to yell, fire in the hole.
I'm assuming you're going to blow it up.
That's it.
So you might as well yell, here we are, here we come.
Just shut up.
Keep it simple, too.
Like when someone, they asked me about the bin Laden rate, some compound that big, how did 23 you guys clear it?
That's not a lot of guys.
And it's like, well, if the guy in front of me went left, I went right, and we just kept doing that.
Space.
Keep it simple.
Yeah, keep it simple.
Yeah.
So we would learn from it to the point where we got, I mean, we got really good.
And we would just learn from targets.
And then we would always, every day I went to work at CL Team 6, I would wake up excited because
I get to go to work with people who are better than me.
And instead of undermining someone that's successful, I would ask them, like, if someone
outshot me on a competition, I wouldn't try to cheat their score.
I would say, hey, what time do you wake up and what's your workout?
What do you eat in the morning?
Why did you move this house to that side?
What are you, what's your thinking process?
And making the team better.
You know, it's exciting.
And we learn from everything.
When you're doing your work as a sniper, I have read that majority of the work,
is actually surveying.
It's like, right?
A lot of it's just surveying area
as opposed to shooting.
Is that the case?
A lot of it is watching.
Watching.
It's boring.
Okay.
Before we went, right before 9-11, we were in Kosovo.
We do three-day missions in the mountains watching towns.
And it's just, it's so monotonous.
It's so boring.
You're looking through the same scope.
And that's where I learned to count.
Just start counting one to a thousand, thousand to one.
To what?
Keep yourself entertained?
Yeah, because you're looking, but I want to keep my mind on something.
Interesting.
Instead of just like, you know, fading out and falling asleep.
Yeah.
And that helped.
But even with snipers, a traditional sniper shot, pulling the trigger, simple.
Holding it where someone tells you to hold it is simple.
The spotter's got the hard job.
So a spotter will lay right behind you with a spotting scope over your shoulder.
And his job is to tell you where the target is, sort of guess the distance.
The further you get out, your distance needs to be spot on.
So whether you're lazing it or doing mill dot counts or whatever.
And then the spotter can actually see the vapor trail of the bullet.
So he's got to correct for the shooter.
Interesting.
So all I say is like, you know, two left up three.
And then the sniper just holds and pulls.
and the spotter's got to be right.
And the spotter, well, just something I want to backtrack to you.
You said, like, what is this guy eating and what is this guy working out?
I would never connect nutrition and weightlifting to a potential success of a shooter, a sniper.
So, like, what are the things that go into making those people the best of the best in their business, those people, you?
Like, what is it?
I think, well, the nutrition is with anything.
Like, you're going to, and I'm guilty, you know, instead of eating a fast food in the morning, having a protein shake or something like that.
Because everything with shooting, like, your heart rate might go down.
What are you, like, what is making you better than me?
And I want to copy you.
That's basically it.
And so do you, like, they say most successful CEOs in this country actually have
super low cortisol levels and they're just not, like, impacted by stress.
Do you see a connection into that?
I think so.
I give myself my own advice every day.
Yeah.
And I'll flip out about the dumbest stuff.
But I have to take a deep breath and a step back and realize that stress is a choice.
like I can be stressed out or I can just not
but it takes a minute for me to do that
like even today with something with traffic
I'm yelling I'm like that's not gonna speed her up
or speed him up or whatever chill out
so like the concept of like anxiety and stress
you're just like no you control that yeah you can't
but you can also let it spin out of control
it's like panic is contagious
if someone panes we all like look at
why did we run out of toilet paper in 2020
yeah it's not a survival mechanism
it's just nice to have
but someone bought it all someone else saw him
so we bought ball. And it's panic. And like, look at an airport. If someone from Zone 5 tries
to board of Zone 1, chaos. Yeah. And it's true. It's good point. But you know what else
is contagious that I learned is calm? Because no one can tell what you're thinking. And if you
could portray calm, people will see you and be calm. And that makes everyone calm.
That makes a lot of sense. But again, like, it sounds good in theory. Yeah. I'll be screaming
at someone today. Yeah. Yeah. Let's actually take that into practice. Right. So so many people here
will deal with crazy days or bullshit bosses or they get screwed over on a deal, whatever. They go nuts. They
freak out. And your line of work, like your, your pinnacle of what is probably the most
frustrating, scary, lonely, sad, fearful is probably knowing that you're doing something
that is like actually taking a human's life. In your mind, how do you, how do you deal with
that as it connects to your career? Like, what are some of the things you do to process that?
Well, at the time, you're doing what everyone else is doing. And so if everyone's special,
no one's special. When I was at SEAL Team 6, the only people I knew were SEALs, SEALs families,
and bartenders. So it was normal. Like in your life? Those are the only humans you do.
I know, you know, I know guys who would make headlines. Not necessarily their name, but the
mission they were on. I know guys that would save lives. Then I'd see him in the gym. And it was just
normal. So killing people was normal. The problem is later, seven, eight years later, when you're
like one of my things, there's a guy I think about every day that I killed him in his room
in front of his wife. And I killed his brother in the living room. I came in there and I,
and I think, all right, why did I kill him? Well, he went for his gun. Why did he go for his gun?
Well, because I was in his room at two in the morning, his worst nightmare. Why was I in his room?
Well, because President Bush decided he didn't like Saddam Hussein because he tried to do something
to his dad, so we invaded Iraq. And then I start thinking, well, what if I would have met that
dude somewhere else, like in Paris over coffee? Was he funny? I don't know. He went for a gun.
He's obviously a bad guy, but that's the stuff that goes through your head.
So right now, I mean, I've been to combat a ton, but I'll be the first guy to say, war's not the best thing.
Maybe we should take another route.
Because it seems like the people that want to send us to war never go to war.
Don't have family members go to war.
But they sure make a lot of money on it.
And then eight years later, when those things come to fruition, like what are some coping mechanisms you've dealt with?
Well, talking with guys that were there.
And I like to think we never hit the wrong target.
I've been fortunate because I never killed the wrong person.
And I mean, I know these are bad guys, but it's almost like it.
Can we just take a second here?
Yeah.
Maybe this is something.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Am I an asshole for being in your house right now?
Yeah. But at the time, it's like, we're trying to see who can get more kills.
Yeah. We were at a point in Iraq where if we only killed 11 guys in a night, we're like, we just wasted our time. That wasn't even worth it. Wow. And what were you, like when you were killing in Iraq, what were you, like you, okay. What Al-Qaeda was, so there's a Sunni-Qaeda. So, there's a majority of Muslims. We run into Shia, too, but that's in the Shia split. Yep. They don't like each other. And so they, the easiest place to fight Americans was in Iraq. So they come from Jordan, Egypt, anything, Sunni. Sunni is the majority of Muslims. Right. We run into Shia, too, but that's in the Shia, but that's in the Shia.
part of town like McTada Al-Sauder. But what the Sunnis were doing, and this is why it's tough
with the civilians, they would come into Sunni parts and make the Sunni families let them stay with
them. So these are bad guys and they're not friendly to them. And here's where you're dealing with
the people in a combat zone that just want to get on with their lives. They deal with Al-Qaeda all day
and then they have to deal with us at night. And they got to tight-rope it because they're either
going to go to Abu Ghrave or they're going to get their head cut off. So what we would do is we
We figured out how to talk to the people.
And what we learned was, don't interrogate, but talk to, like, the youngest kid in the
house.
Pull him aside.
And, like, I would keep an interpreter behind the kid.
Sure.
And I would say, finally, like, dust him off.
Finally, the man of the house.
Who are these dudes?
Like, who don't you know?
I don't know.
Those three guys.
And, like, they can't see him.
I don't know.
Those three guys.
It's like, boom, that's not kind of.
Okay, gotcha.
And so you're doing your due diligence through negotiation, which people do every day
in their jobs.
And your idea here is, like, we're trying to separate the good from the evil so we
could take it down.
Most people are good people, seriously.
Al-Qaeda's are they're not good people.
And these guys don't want them in there.
So we figured if we can start killing al-Qaeda, the Sunni will be on our team, which
they were.
And it worked during the 07.
It was called The Awakening.
And we were fighting al-Qaeda, who deserved to be fought.
And we were winning over people, too.
It was something to watch.
But, you know, again, you get politicians and lawyers evolved.
It gets all screwed up.
It gets all screwed up.
Legendary SEAL Team 6.
Obviously, you are a massive part of that.
But I want to ask about SEAL Team 2, SEAL Team 4.
see just exactly like how are those teams orchestrated like how you hear these names you hear these
titles like how do you how is it you that gets called it was it was again keeping things simple
at first there was seal team one and seal team two so the odd number is in coronado even in
virginia okay that was the first teams so now the even numbers are all in virginia 248 10 3 3357
but at when seal team 6 was commissioned that was in 1980 there was 1 2 and then richard marcinco
commission six because he knew the Russians would say, okay, we know about seal team one, two, and six,
where the hell are three, four, and five? Just a psychological aspect of it. But six is the is the tier one
unit and you need to do another selection course to get there and that is the hostage rescue
national mission force. So we're going to get the hostage rescue at sea. We're going to get the
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When you get called to that team and you're looking around any form of imposter syndrome,
just saying like, why do I belong here?
You know, it was once you calm down, I was really worried about my sense of humor because
these guys are funny.
Okay.
I can do the physical stuff, and I'm, but like even like, selection is really hard.
And we thought we were good.
So we call it close quarters battle, CQB, which is the,
the SWAT team entrance you do.
And you got to get really good at that because for us, combat came down to an entry point,
like a door or a cave entrance, a ship hatch.
And once we got through the hardest selection course in the world, I like, we're good.
And then I got to my squadron.
The first run, they're just gone.
I'm like, hell, those guys go.
They're just clearing the house without me.
Wow.
So, tactic, speed, and humor.
Okay.
And the humor is interesting.
You wouldn't expect that.
You can't lose your sense of humor because if morale takes a dump, the whole team's going
to fall.
Yeah.
And keeping it simple, one of our models is nobody wants to work.
work for a dick.
Yeah.
I had a dude tell me that nobody ever worked for me.
They work with me.
Prime example.
Because the difference between officers and enlisted, the officers are technically in charge.
Okay.
And they enlisted are lower, but they kind of run the team.
We were in Iraq at 07 deployment, and we would hit a house full of terrorists, but then
we'd find intelligence to go to another house, follow on targets.
Okay.
Hit another one, another.
Now we're sweaty.
It's hot, even though it's night.
And I want to hit another one.
I would keep my maps like a quarterback.
Yeah.
And my boss, who's an officer, my commander, was right here.
And I said, all, here's the deal.
We're in building one, one right now.
I want to hit two.
And I go, you know what?
Shit, sir, you're in charge.
And he said, he's a good leader.
He said, oh, make no mistake.
I'm not in charge.
I'm responsible.
You're in charge.
Don't fuck me.
He's like, that's a good leader right there.
The amount of life lessons you learn in a role.
You learn the hardest way of all ways.
One thing I heard and I read about was about, and I think the exact quote you used before
you got into the monologue was you said the woman who found bin Laden told you
that I don't know what's inside, but there will be a stairwell, and then you're going to run into
Khalid bin Laden's son.
But before we go there, when I stopped at the woman who found bin Laden, how many times were
you guys on missions or do you know of missions that were deployed in which you thought
bin Laden was found and it wasn't?
That was the first time.
Yeah.
We thought he was a ghost.
He's gone.
We're never going to find him.
My last deployment a few months before the bin Laden raids ended at about February
of 11, and I was actually on the base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, the CIA.
based where the bin Laden team was, I didn't even know they were there.
I didn't know they were tracking him.
And I didn't know this particular woman.
Her only job in life was to find him.
And she was there.
And how did she find him?
At some point, they intercepted some phone calls from one of his old couriers to his mom in Kuwait.
And what they were, she asked where he was and he said, I'm working with the people I used to work for.
And they just knew that she was, her son was attached to bin Laden.
So this guy was so smart, he would drive around places like Karachi, Pakistan.
man, someone would drive and he's on his phone, and they can't quite find him because he's moving.
So he would make a call, they'd understand him. You've got to find him. And we're talking in
Karachi, like bazaars and people everywhere. You got to find one car. You don't know what it looks
like with a guy on a phone. That's going to take years. They finally got him. And then they
got to track him back where he's going. And the way they would do that is get a local and
follow him to a spot where he'll lose him and then keep someone there. And then if you see him
again, follow him there. And then keep him there. And they did that for years until finally the
guy took a right down a dead end road. Okay, he went to that house. That's something. Now they
started watching that. And then they got to watch the house. And they were, the bin Laden's were
really good at their operational security. Like they didn't, they burn all their trash. They grew
their own food. Nobody gets in. They call them the pace or they would see one dude that
would walk around. And the smart people would see like his shadow and based on whatever he's
this tall that matches. He never stops to do menial work with other people. He's really
important. That's someone. It's either a major drug dealer or that's an al-Qaeda leader. And she was
the one that knew it. And she turned out to be 100% right on every single person in that house.
Unbelievable. When she did say that she thought he was there, did she give a percentage
of likelihood? She knew 100%. We would finish training. Like, we would work with helicopters all day
long, all night long, working our problems, working our contingencies. Then we'd go back to
the hotel. Someone had made a two-scale model of his house. We'd talk about everything. Keep talking.
When we were done, she would say, okay, guys, Osama bin Laden right now was on the third floor of
this house. I don't understand why we're not going sleep well.
Same thing every night.
Guys, we've got to go.
He's going to leave.
Yeah.
Some of the greatest evils that we've ever seen in the history of the world, some people
also put in this classification as like genius.
Would you put like a bin Laden?
Would you space that?
Like he's it like you're saying IQ genius.
Charismatic.
Millions of people love them.
Because when you go into combat, you got to figure everyone thinks they're the good guy.
And so he had followers that literally would blow themselves up for him because he told
them if they martyr themselves, they go to paradise.
And no, but they know it.
And you have to see it to believe it.
I tell people, like, when you go to Thanksgiving dinner and that one crazy aunt who's
completely religious and out of her mind, they, and she knows she's right.
They're worse.
They know they're right.
And they're killing themselves over this.
Unmiliated.
So, yeah, he was a genius.
Okay.
Let me get into this, though, with bin Laden.
So you're called to action.
It's go time.
You've practiced 100 times over.
When you're getting ready and I'm trying to make parallels of the craziest examples ever to exist
in the world to like anybody at home that's getting ready for maybe a big day.
But you're getting ready.
Are you like, let's kill this motherfucker?
Are you like, I might die today?
Are you like shit in your pants?
Like, what is going through your brain?
There wasn't fear.
At all?
No, but we expected it to be a one-way mission.
But how do you not have fear in a moment that really creates a lot of fear?
It's not going to matter.
The way we're going to die, we won't know.
Because it's a 90-minute flight in on helicopters that we don't know if they work.
And we're not at war with this country.
First World Air Defense, 90 minutes to fly in.
There's going to be a gunfight as soon as we land.
If anyone's going to blow his whole house up and kill everyone inside it's bin Laden, we're going to run out of fuel.
We don't have places to refuel on the way in.
So we might end up dying fighting Pakistani police.
We might end up in a Pakistani prison.
That'd be a slow death.
We were so convinced that we weren't coming home that the guy that actually was with me on the last set of stairs wasn't planned that way.
It just worked out that way.
He said, don't take this the wrong way because I'm going.
100%.
I just need to say it out loud.
If we know we're going to die, why are we going?
Which is fair.
And what we said to each other was, we're not going for the fame or the, we're never getting the reward.
But we are going after bin Laden for the first Americans to fight al-Qaeda toe to toe to the death.
And those were the passengers on United 93.
We're going after bin Laden for the single mom who dropped her kids off at elementary school on a beautiful Tuesday morning.
And an hour later, she jumped to her death out of a skyscraper because that's a better alternative than whatever is going on inside.
And like, she looked down and made a choice and maybe grabbed a stranger's hand.
and her last gesture of human decency
was holding her skirt together
as she killed herself.
They were never supposed to be in the fight.
We're supposed to be in the fight
and that's why we're going.
That's the conversation we had with each other.
Wow.
And it was, I mean, even before we left,
it wasn't handshake, it was a hug
and like, time to go, boys.
And you, in your head,
there was a big likelihood
that you weren't coming back.
Well, I even ran into,
they called her Maya in the movie.
I ran into her on the way to the helicopter
and she was outside.
She came over with us.
He's in Jalalabat.
And she was pacing.
And I said, hey, why are you nervous?
And she goes,
are you kidding me? Why aren't you nervous? And I said, because I do this every night, man.
I fly somewhere. I fuck with people. I come home. Yeah. And I was walking away and I go,
of course, you need to be right on this one. So I understand why you're pacing. I'll see you in a few
hours. All right. Give me of all this experience, which is so wild. What is like one takeaway
to keep your composure in times of mayhem? What is breathing, mental, telling yourself.
Get rid of the noise. You know, if, again, if some, if you can't affect something with worrying,
let it go. Um, the whole, what someone else.
says about you is none of your business. Breathe. Yeah. Slow down. Slow is smooth, smooth
as fast. If you want to be fast, slow down. Yeah, I like that. And I think the big thing I'm
taking away is like reconditioning your thinking, right? If you're thinking like, if we know
we're going, just that reposition of this is why we're going. Think about how your attitude
shifts, your energy shifts, like every motivation shifts, just reframing. We even had the braveheart
talk where, because we told guys, you can pull yourself off anytime. You don't have to go.
We have alternates. Yeah. And you can go and you can live for 50.
years. However, on your deathbed, would you give every single day for one shot at this guy?
Yeah, yeah. And the answer better be yes. And it was for everyone. I love it. And then going
into it's like, we didn't get dressed up for nothing. Like Breyfart said, we're going to kill
this guy. Yeah, 100%. And then you can do it. You guys get in there and you tell the story about
how you get up there. And all of a sudden, you're three feet from Bin Laden. And one of your
seals says, are you good? And you, and you're like, now, what do we do? What do we do now?
Yeah, what do we do now? Yeah. I was, when after I shot him three times,
his wife, Amal, he was like pushing, sort of pushing her toward me.
And I was moving her because I was in the room alone, but I know other guys are coming in.
And we are the good guys.
So I don't want her to get hurt.
And I actually looked down and I saw his two-year-old son Hussein standing there.
And this is the humanity of it.
As a father, I was thinking, this kid's got nothing to do with this.
So I've moved them back.
And then I turn it around.
I can hear Bin Laden, take his last breath.
And a guy comes up to me, goes, are you good?
And I said, what do we do now?
And he smiled and he said, well, now we find the computers that you do this every night,
hundreds of times. Come on.
Yeah, I go, yeah, you're right. I'm back. Holy shit. And he goes, yeah, you just killed Osama bin Laden.
Your life just changed. Get to work. Yeah, it would pull me back into it. Okay.
Because we're supposed to be dead. And I was like, well, shit, now we can leave.
Once you were in, like, once you guys were exiting, was there any risk at that point?
Or were you guys in the clear? A whole bunch of risk because the locals, because this is a resort town.
This isn't a war zone. The locals were kind of coming out because we crashed a helicopter.
Yeah. Yeah. It's loud on a Sunday night. There was a dude outside tweeting about that. And the locals were
we brought a dude with us though
and no kidding I still don't know who he was
yeah I think he was a targeting officer
or something okay but he spoke fluent
Urdu okay so he didn't know accent
and he was yelling at the people go home this is an
ISI exercise no big deal and so
but we had to blow up a helicopter and bring another one in
to get out so it was busy
plus we didn't have our Air Force guys with us
they're our experts and calling an aircraft
I mean we know how to do it we're not as good as them
like the most dangerous guy you'd never heard us as a combat
controller in the Air Force yeah but we didn't bring him
we just us so we had a call one
And they came in, and then we hopped on a big helicopter to leave.
We flew in on stealth helicopters, but this is a Chinook, which is the size bigger than a school bus.
It's got two rotors.
And we got to fly that out.
So that can get shot down.
And then we got 90 minutes to fly out and think about it.
But worrying about a missile is not going to stop it, so occupy your mind another way.
You've talked about this publicly over and over, wrote an amazing book, have a podcast, all the things.
I mean, have you ever had concern about your identity being out there, given that?
And, I mean, how do you manage that?
Like, I mean, we joke around in the Bachelor franchise.
Like, don't say anything.
We're going to get a lawsuit.
You, like, how do you deal with that 24-7?
Well, I mean, it's, okay, the way it worked for me was, even in the house, guys that were on the second and first floor.
So, okay, my nickname was Nisro, Nisro, stood for Navy SEAL, Rob O'Neil.
They just called me Nizro.
Yeah.
And I'm known for telling stories and keep morale high jokes and shit.
And every single seal that as soon as they found out bin Laden was dead, they would ask who got him.
And they'd say Nisro, and they'd be like, shit, we're never going to hear the end of this.
But every seal asked that.
And so when we're flying back, other seals in Virginia Beach heard and a buddy from Coronado called them, don't tell anybody.
But dudes would be out and at a bar, the bar, who got it?
Well, don't say anything.
But so by the time we landed back in Virginia Beach, everyone in the seal community knew I did it.
I had guys from the White House called out and congratulations and up in New York.
So my name's out there already.
And, you know, I try to keep it that way for a while.
You can't get that toothpaste back in the tube.
and it's better to acknowledge a threat than to put your head in the sand and think it doesn't
exist. So, I mean, it's there. And I, you know, I have security stuff I do, you know, guns, dogs,
cameras, but the unfortunate thing is they need to be right once. But an important lesson is to think
it like, I'm a target, but so is every American. And there's sleeper cells here now. And not to
scare everyone, but would it be easier for Al Qaeda to come find me a hard target or would it be
easier to go to Times Square? Yeah. What are they going to do? They want to.
on a big, beautiful target, not me.
If they get me great, but they're going to get in a fight too.
Yeah.
It's not fun.
Believe me.
I mean, it's one of those things where it's like, it's like, has there been like any
attempts?
No, there's been a couple foiled, but I don't know how serious.
It could be.
I don't know.
All right.
So your life change is the second you pull that trigger.
I have so many more questions I'm going to ask, but I do want to bring it back to the podcast.
When do you start to see your life change publicly?
And then even financially with some of the.
with the accolades. I started my process of I wanted to get out after the raid it was just too
there was it was too high profile yeah and then August 6th 2011 extortion 117 was shot down we lost 31
Americans yeah 17 guys from seal team 6 and that's when I was like okay I got to get out I've got
daughters I want to see him get married it's like a bullet needs to be right once that's the
unfortunate sure yeah so I started the process of getting out but I'm getting out before 20 years
so I don't have retirement I don't have health care I don't have a savings so I got to figure
I actually extended for six months
so I could go back overseas
because we lost so many guys
that went back to war to backfill
and then I had until August
to figure it out and I didn't know what to do
at the time I didn't know that
like effective communication, stress management
is something people want to hire
but I didn't know I had that
like I know guys now that would rather go to combat
than fill out a resume because combat makes sense
this doesn't I don't know what shoes to wear
with a tie but once like
I started a foundation called special operators transition
Foundation. And we introduce veterans to the private sector. And I have yet to have a CEO and not say that's the best employee I've ever had. Oh, I'm sure. Because it's like, you've come in with these attributes and we'll teach you the job. Yeah, and you'll get it done. So it was easier than I thought, not easy. But I got into public speaking just, and I wasn't even telling the Bin Laden. I was just talking about our success as a high performance team. And it just resonated.
Financial transparency here. Like we talk, I'm just kind of like bewildered by this. But like that day that you killed bin Laden financially, like how much money did you have your name?
Paychecks a paycheck, so maybe $2,500 every two weeks.
So like maybe a $2,500 in your bank now?
Maybe, depending on how many hair dids the girls got, my daughters.
I didn't know how much it cost to go to get a pedicure until my daughter started doing it.
But like the guy, I mean, it's the guy who literally is a Navy SEAL who gets called upon
and kills Bin Laden is broke.
Yeah.
I mean, these are normal dudes.
Navy SEALs.
When we rescued Captain Phillips, it was Good Friday, April 10th, which is my birthday in 2009.
I was at my daughter's Easter tea party at her preschool.
Yeah.
And then I got a call that a guy by the name of Captain Phillips had been taken by Somali
Pirates.
They called my team to go get them.
I had to kiss my daughter goodbye.
15 hours and 46 minutes later, I had a full headcount in the Indian Ocean.
And we rescued Richard Phillips from Somali Pirates and we were still broke.
Unvolved.
Dudes are mowing their own lawn.
Can't afford the mortgage.
They get a call.
They got to go.
To me, that feels like a serious, serious problem.
We don't realize it is, though.
It's like everyone's struggling.
So we're just going together.
Miserry loves company.
Yeah.
And then you're, you know, again, the guy that kills Bin Laden is still trying to
to find ways to work and make money even after that, like just grinding out, just trying
to make a couple of hours.
Well, I think about to the family side of it.
I'm a girl dad, four daughters.
My youngest daughter at the time was four maybe for the bin Laden rate.
I couldn't even tell anyone we were going.
I just got back from war.
And I couldn't tell her leaving whatever.
And my little girl went up.
I don't know what at that age you put into a little pink carry on.
But she came downstairs and she put it by the door.
I said, well, when you come back, we're going on a trip.
My little four-year-old is like, I'm going to die next week.
There's a toll that these guys, men and women.
We're just the guys that went there.
There are so many women behind the scenes.
Of course.
And they're the smart ones.
I always tell people, I was smart enough to carry a sledgehammer and a gun.
Just point me in the direction.
We'll figure it out.
Yeah.
Oh, my gosh.
Just absolutely crazy.
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slash secrets. That's startphotobooth.com slash secrets. So you decide to hang them up after
that, but you don't even hit your full
retirement. It's still
like the, and your identity's at risk, there's
death threats and there's still nothing that the government
is doing to help. Like, not even
like a little, hey, little money out of the do something.
Nothing. You did. That's fucking crazy.
They gave the last press secretary for
the White House Secret Service detail.
I have to pay for my own security.
Well, I mean, just, yeah, especially when you
started to get to politics and you started to get a little bit of
insider trading and like what's going. It's fucking crazy
that like you're still paying for your
I mean, that's, that is asinized.
Have you fought that at all? Have you done anything in that?
I'm not fought it. I've brought it up. Yeah. I'm headed to D.C. soon just to talk about
PTSD, all kinds of brain, traumatic brain injury stuff with Congress. Just to, you know, I'm not worried about myself. I'll figure it out.
Yeah. Yeah. The politics of it, it's, it's tough to go paycheck to paycheck and you watch politicians who can pick stocks better than Warren Buffett.
That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like they're really good at this. Or, or do they know something we don't? Or do they know something that we don't?
Uh-huh. When you're about, like, as far as CIA, you said that your identity was protected, like you only knew a handful of
of people like is like is that like you don't have any friends like people can't know what you're doing
everything's a secret what you're doing for when the missions were secret but it was just our community
yeah because we knew a lot of us still knew each other from seal training in 1996 okay and that's just
what we know we know we travel all the time we're on the road all the time and our families just
know each other yeah so it just was like you know it's like even like we know some motorcycle
gangs because we'll ride with them on sunday so yeah you know but it's basically the same crew
everywhere we go and that's just all what we knew understood all right that was in 2011 fast
2005, now an author, podcast host, public speaker. You own your own cannabis company and
entrepreneur that took two years to get licensed. Have you started to see some financial success
with some of your entrepreneurial efforts? Yeah. The biggest lesson I learned was what my fair
share in taxes is. Yeah. Because in the Navy, they were just withholding it and you don't realize it.
And then once you get out, you're like, I got to hit you in face. I got to cut a check every
quarter. Who's getting this? That's why I get pissed off. Because I've been to Liberia.
Yeah. And when I went there in 2003, there was a civil war in cannibalism. And to find out
that millions of our tax dollars went over there so they could understand their voting rights.
Yeah.
It's like, dude, they're wearing life vests on land shooting each other.
They don't care about their voting rights.
Who's keeping that money?
Right.
But yeah, I mean, yeah, it's interesting.
I learned, you know, you can get paid for what you're worth.
And a lot of my foundation came from public speaking.
Like when I was told that public speakers get paid and they told me how much I had to say,
hey, is this white collar crime?
No one pays that much money.
It's like, oh, this is just the private sector and people pay for shit here.
Yeah.
The government's not going to pay you.
Is it fair to say with public speaking,
you made more in public speaking than you made in your entire time serving?
In the first six months.
In the first six months, unbelievable.
I mean, well, I'm fucking glad you're in the private sector.
Now you deserve every single bit of it.
You know, it's funny to the difference between being in the military and the private sector.
I went out to my very first speech.
I was in Florida.
I'd never spoken publicly.
Yeah.
I didn't have any training.
And I got to go out.
It's like 2,000 people.
And I called my age and I was like, hey, I'm a little nervous.
I've been shot it, but I don't know if I'm going to faint out there.
And she goes, hey, here's the key.
Have three glasses of red wine right now, not.
two, not four, three, you'll be fine. And so I went out there and there happened. It was the
Airline Pilots Association. And so they were captains, airline captains. Yeah. And they were
Marines. And so I got immediately heckled for being a Navy and I'm like, this is a safe crowd.
Yeah, you're good. You're good. So I got through it. I can do it. How wild is that?
For anybody out there that gets nervous about speaking, even Robert J. O'Neill who had to literally
think his life was gone, killing Osama bin Laden, had to take three glasses of wine. You're making
yourself so relatable. It's unbelievable. I want to give you the opportunity.
talk about your foundation and your new cannabis company and where if people they're interested,
how they can get involved with both and your book. So the platform's yours and like just tell us
all the things. We can start with your cannabis company. Yeah, check out operator canna.com.
And everything I do is the operator because I'm not just saying that I'm the operator. I'm
describing the life of the operator. And the operator is anybody. The operator is the dude who doesn't
get thanked for cleaning up the trash in Manhattan at 2 in the morning, but he's cleaning it up.
He's got a family too. He has to leave them. Doesn't make much money. The single mom,
the best one. Yeah. Because she is making the family run. And that's the core to anything
successful. She's an operator. So as an operator, I will tell you what I think. You tell me what you
think. And if I'm wrong, I'll admit it. And I'd like to get your input. So the operator
Kana is just, we got a couple's different strains, Indica, Sativa, and a hybrid. And it's because
of the post-traumatic stress, the anxiety, a lot of sleep problem. I had a lot of problems
sleeping. And, you know, with alcohol, I wasn't getting good sleep. And I'm getting a little bit
trouble sometimes with cannabis it helps me sleep chills me out a little bit gets rid of the noise
and so we're starting to sell it in manhattan we're looking to move with that that's that's that's
my primary right now just because it's it's a different way and it's a good way to help even tbi anxiety
and stress the psychedelics veterans exploring treatment solution that's solutions dot org okay and that's the
group that sends veterans to mexico to do to do psychedelics and or plant-based medicine so that's ibegain
we were talking about that before yeah which is a five
thousand-year-old brute from Gobone. And it just gets you into your brain stuff that you've
compartmentalized or shut down. It shows it to you again. You deal with it. You come out of it. And
this stuff cures addiction. It's cured. It's cured alcoholism, fertility problems. And that's why
we don't have it here legally because it cures. And it's a wonderful, wonderful plan.
Another issue in this country. Preventative vetting and cures. So with that, then my foundation
special operators transition foundation, sotF.org. And that's the one where we take vetting
veterans and put them in the private sector. And it started out as a, I want to help veterans get
another job. But now it's like, I want to help the economy because these are really solid
people and men and women because there are female special operators that no one knows about. We
have them. Makes a lot of sense. I also, it feels like anyone that comes on the show has a book
and we just had to find gentlemen who had a book. I asked him the same question. I always asked
this. So there's a million books out there. Obviously, this is yours. What is like the trading
secret of why someone should pick this up? Like, what is the big thing that's like,
This is the book you need to read and here's why.
It's proof that it doesn't matter what you look like or where you're from.
You can do anything.
Don't put yourself in a bubble that you think just because someone's from a different part of the country,
they're better than you.
You can do whatever.
That's it because I didn't know how to swim, join the Navy on a whim on accident,
and just made myself available.
I mentioned it before.
One of my favorite quotes is wherever you are, be there.
And just make yourself available and stuff can happen.
And I went from a bad relationship into the Navy on accident.
I mean, even the little things, like I tell my daughters now that, because I try to join the Marine Corps, the butterfly effect is, doesn't matter if it's a good or bad decision in 20, 30 years.
The impact it has is amazing.
I tell my daughters, if that Marine recruiter wasn't at Arby's at 1130 on a Wednesday, you wouldn't be alive.
How crazy is that.
Because I'd be in North Carolina, not Virginia.
Yeah, how crazy is that?
And again, take the shot.
Take the shot.
Apply for that job.
Try to get the role.
Write a book, write a play.
Take the shot.
And if you fail, you're going to learn.
because you learn from failure.
The frustration is the learning process.
Yeah.
And again, it's a very minor comparison to what you said on the ground.
But like in 50 years from now, when you're on your deathbed, like, you're going to be like, why didn't I take that shot?
That's good, too, is when you're on your deathbed, what are you going to be asking yourself?
You're going to be talking about your family.
You're going to be thinking about them.
Yeah.
Plus, if you get buried with your money, the government's going to take some of it.
That's true.
At the end of the day.
All right, that's the operator firing the shots that killed Osama bin Laden in my years is a seal.
Team Warrior, before I wrap, it's current. It's something I have been wondering about endlessly. I'm a big, I'm a big true crime guy. And the assassination attempt of Donald Trump, I feel like it like came, went, no one says a word. And I'm wondering from your perspective, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask, what's your take on what happened? You know, what do you just, you know, when you looked at like the surrounding area of it with your brain and your skill set, where are things that you saw wrong? Like, what's the overall?
take from Robert J. O'Neill on that. Inside job. Basically what happened to Trump. Like,
you just said that so confident. Well, yeah, exactly what happened to Kennedy happened to Trump,
except they missed. You know, you kill Kennedy, you kill Lee Harvey Oswald, problem solved.
This kid missed. Then they killed them. He was supposed to hit Trump, kill him, it's over.
You don't get that. John F. Kennedy said, I'm going to smash the CIA to a thousand pieces
because of what they did in the Bay of Pigs. Because he said, we're not invading. So they went ahead
and let the Cubans go, thinking, hey, we need air support.
And Kennedy said, no, I told you we're not doing that.
I don't like what the agency is doing.
And you heard Chuck Schumer say, don't cross the intelligence agencies.
They will, seven ways from Sunday, they'll crush you.
Trump is the doge.
He's going to go see what they're up to.
And I want to be careful.
Because the agency is like a shadow government that they're not elected and they have a lot
of power.
I think it was an inside job.
I mean, there's no question.
Or, okay, it's an inside job.
But give me the odds.
The odds in your brain, like, it's someone who's-
90-10.
90-10.
It's 90% inside job, 10% in competence.
Interesting.
And JFK?
Inside job.
Yeah.
Look into Dulles.
Yeah.
Look into how LBJ got to where he was.
Yeah.
Look at the surgeons that said that he got hit in the front, how they, his brain's gone.
Yep.
Little things like, look at the, how many rows of seats from that car Kennedy was in?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's three.
Everyone thinks there's two.
Yeah.
Did one of those do shoot him?
Yeah.
I first, I mean, a lot of conspiracies.
Yeah.
My last question for you is you've been behind closed doors.
You've seen so much of what the public.
out way down the road and you've seen the public only probably see a small percentage of what
the reality of the situation was based on like what we know today is like American citizens
when we think about all things like the craziness of like these drones and aliens and all this
shit like what percentage do you think based on the doors and the meetings you've been in we
know versus what's actually happening like well the issue I think is a little bit of narcissism
where people get in these backdoor rooms that I've been in at the capital yeah
and they just think the American public is too stupid to know it yeah
Well, there's going to be martial law.
They'll flip out.
It's like, okay, so you're going to lock them down in their houses for two years?
Yeah.
And just give them money you print.
This is not good.
So the stuff we don't know, it's almost an arrogance where here's like when people, as a
combat leader, when people say, well, it's a need to know basis and you don't need to know.
I would call bullshit.
It's like, I want you to know what we're doing and why all the time.
Yeah.
Because you're going to be more efficient that way.
Sure.
Why would I hide something from you?
Yeah.
And they just like doing it.
It's a power thing.
Narcissists and sociopaths are just attracted to Washington, D.C., not a lot of successful
businessmen go into politics. And then when they get that power, it's the dude that got beat up
in fifth grade. Now he's a congressman. That's worth 80 million dollars. Being worth 80 million
dollars working on a $220,000 a year, I don't know how many years you'd have to work to save that
much. It's a lot. Well, that's some of the problem when we talk money and I hear what, you know,
like the fact that you're literally on the ground killing Bin Laden and then you have no money
to your name. Like, it's just, there's a lot of things that are asked backward. Give me a number,
though, percentage-wise. What do you think the American public knows versus what is actually
happening like 50% of it that's a little higher than 50% I think 60% okay so it's probably about 30 40%
there's other stuff I mean you got to figure what will be explored 5% of the ocean yeah oh yeah
yeah there's some of the fish that they're finding in marianna's trench there's pirate
yeah they're fucking nuts down there house is scary enough on the surface that's true
all right good stuff well we got your trading secret from the book we got a great episode here
we got to end with just Robert O'Neill's trading secret all things life the things you've
been through can't get this from a textbook can't get it from
a professor. They can't certainly get it from a TikTok tutorial just based on what you've
gone through. What is one life, financial, professional, personal trading secret you'll leave us
with. Never quit? Yeah. You're never out of the fight no matter what. Again, take the shot.
Yeah. I'm trying to, I feel like I'm repeating myself because to me it's so basic. That's it.
Try again. Do it again. Wake up and do it again. Yeah. I think I always like to say what my trading
secret is. And I think my trading secret is the idea of the quitting, just the concept of like
wait until tomorrow and then if tomorrow are going to be.
quit because there's so many times it could be anything it could be just like what you're doing
or around a relationship or a friendship or a concept or a project you're just like fucking
fuck i'm done but just like just keep going and like how many times you thought in your training
you were going to quit every day you didn't quit you end up being the guy and in history books forever
that killed osama bin laden freaking unbelievable mr o'neal where can everyone find everything you got
going on right now robert j o'neal dot com okay oh and e i'll i'm rebuilding it right now
But what's available is my personalized and signed books, because I will put your name,
whatever you want, and within reason, in the inscription, put something there.
The best example I have is some dude bought his friend that he worked with a birthday present.
He had me sign, Jeff, you kill it selling mattresses like I kill bin Laden.
I love Rob.
It's a lot of fun.
Where can people get that?
Robertj.onneal.com.
Robert j.onel.com.
Okay, awesome.
We're going to buy one of those, and we're going to give one away.
So pay attention to our social two trading secrets podcast.
We're going to buy one for our listeners.
And Robert, thank you so much for coming on and trading all these secrets.
Awesome.
Great to be here.
Thank you.
Ding, ding, ding.
We are closing the bell to the Robert O'Neill episode.
Oh, my shit, David, a lot of action, maybe the most action we've ever had on this podcast.
There is so much to cover in such a short period of time, especially with the timing of American Manhunt of Sama bin Laden being premiered documentary on Netflix this past week.
I watched it.
This interview was intense.
interview was so intense that
I think both of our shirts, especially
here, I showed you the picture, especially
his shirt too, man, was just like
covered in sweat. Like it was an intense
episode. If you haven't checked out the YouTube, make sure you do it, but
David, curious Canadian, what are you thinking?
His shirt was soaked. I need
to see live footage of
inside the house, the compound of
that he shot Osama
Balana in to see what his current
sweat status was then, because
a million times, a trillion
in times more intense than a Jason Tartick interview.
But what timing for this?
I actually watched that Netflix documentary not even knowing that we were going to release
this podcast this week.
So the timing was great to get the little bit of insights and areas of his life that I had
no clue about and then compiling with all the things that I watched in the documentary
were, it's a truly fascinating.
It's one of the most fascinating things that maybe happened in our lifetime.
starting with 9-11 all the way through to the capturing or sorry the killing of osama bin Laden
and it's just to get the details of this this far down the road of it having place 25 years almost
i mean riveting exciting crazy some sad stuff in there but oh my god is this guy have a resume
i had no clue before i could get to you i had no clue that he was also part of the captain phillips
rescue and the lone survivor rescue.
Like those two alone could you could make a, you could, you know, make a career off
of.
But all three nuts.
This guy, nuts.
It's like what this guy has done in one lifetime, David?
I'm just like, I try to take away some of his principles to like, as far as just like
some of the stuff he lost, learned in Navy SEAL training.
It's just the mental wherewithal and all these things.
So I could like slowly apply them to my life.
But when you hear what this man has done, you're just like, I need to do more important things.
Well, no, not just let, not even that.
It's not that you need to do important things.
You are doing important things.
I'm doing important things.
Everyone is doing relatively important things in their life.
His and how he stumbled on it.
He didn't even know he was on the path to do important things.
And I think that's one of my biggest takeaways from his episode is he basically said, like, you know, try everything.
Like you'll never know how it turns out, those type of things.
despite though my biggest takeaway from the entire thing all the stories all the hell week all the
navy seals training has nothing to do with that this guy has no business we should not have
access to this guy to bring him on to the podcast well this guy it's interesting you say that
let me jump in here because you know this is this is the big debate and there's a lot of articles
about this and there's a lot of talk about this um your standard
Standard protocol when you serve as a SEAL and on special missions like this and all the things is to not speak about it.
I think that's like standard protocol.
And you'll see in the documentary on Netflix, if you watch it, you'll see some of the people from Navy SEAL Team 6, their faces are blurred out because like that is kind of, that's what you're supposed to technically buy, like, principle.
guess and history do and i think day real quick i think what i've heard buzz is that rob o'neill has
gotten uh ostracized from a little bit from some of his peers and his group because he has gone
out there and spoke a lot about this but from my vantage point like you heard me in this episode
when a man of this caliber has served the way he has and has done for his country what he has
the idea that he could just be like left broken, you know, on your own and not be able to use
any of this experience in storytelling for empowerment and inspiration and education is, in
my opinion, ludicrous. So I think it's, I commend him for saying, hey, like, if I'm kind
of stuck between a rock and a hard place here, I'm going to use the experience that I've had
to leverage it appropriately to take care of me and my family. Because I, for soul,
long took care of my country and put my family's entire future from the perspective of parenting
and guidance and everything at risk for majority of their life.
It's a good take and it's a good perspective and I'm glad that you caught me before I went
on a rank because I was probably going to go on a pretty electric grant there.
But it is a good catch-22.
too. It is the ultimate sacrifice of, of, you know, signing up to serve your country and he did
serve his country in every way that he was asked to. And through that, you're not doing it for fame
and you're not doing it for fortune. You're doing it for the purpose of what the military
serves in terms of protecting the country. So you're right. Like, you sign up for that. So
I guess you, like, in my opinion, it's like, how does this guy not have a statue? How is this guy
not, like, talked about amongst, you know, presidents and things like that, like with the importance
of roles that he's played in some of the most, you know,
pivotal moments in the history of the military and the country safety.
And here he is on our podcast.
And here he is talking about how he doesn't get a pension.
And here he is talking about how he is almost treated like a,
in a corporate America salesperson who doesn't meet their Q1 numbers
and they're like, you know, kicked out of the company.
And he's finding ways to make revenue.
And he's finding ways to make a living.
That to me was the overall, like once you peel back all the like,
the really, like, edgier seat stuff.
When I got off, when I, when I, when I, the episode hit end, I was just like,
this guy's like, he's still grinding to, to make it, to make it all.
Grinding.
To say he made more in six months of speaking than he did in the life, his whole life of
serving the country.
I guess it goes back to what you sign up for, though.
I guess it goes back to what you're not signing up for the military for fame or fortune.
And that's why I think on all these holidays and moments, we do get to honor.
troops and military we we you know even more so like you got to you you have to like it's the
ultimate sacrifice even if you're legendary status i mean yeah i agree and there's so many things
i think to take away from this episode i know you're talking about like some of your big takeaways
but to me this episode almost felt like a book like when we were talking about navy seal training
so much to take away when we were talking about like um the actual sniper versus the guy who's
like doing the lookout and stuff and how he talked about how like the smallest things control
your heart rate how you eat what you do how you're breathing and the impact of that it's fascinating
to me but the one thing you know that they'll just i think be burned in my brain forever is when i'm
watching the documentary and then hearing the story and he's talking about how they get on the chopper
and when they're on the chopper once they pass in afghanistan um they're clear when they're
flying but once they go into pakistan for this mission they are now in enemy territory and they could
easily get shot down and so what he started to do was count and he started to go one two three
four five six just to like keep his mind active and he got to like five hundred forty seven he stopped
and he said no freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward and freedom will be
defended freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward and freedom will be defended
which was part of George W. Bush's speech after 9-11.
And he's like, I just kept repeating that to myself over and over and over
because that was my reminder of why I'm here, what I'm doing,
and the impact that we're going to have.
And when they're telling the story,
and he's telling it here and on the documentary,
and they're leaving, like mission complete, and they're leaving,
they have 90 minutes to get, after a helicopter,
literally just completely crashed.
Crazy.
Twitter's going all crazy about.
it. They're trying to literally not let one person see Twitter's going crazy. They have the person
that's on the ground for them that's trying to keep the civilians at Bay. And they now have to
get out of Pakistan knowing that they can get shot down at any moment, even after mission was
complete. It's just correct. I mean, I'm watching this documentary and I'm listening back to this
episode and my heart is pumping out of my chest. I just can't imagine.
living it it is and on the documentary they said that so what he didn't talk about in the episode
and what they talked about in the documentaries they got built because they practiced for so long
this mission kind of like he was talking about the free throws like repetition repetition
they built the most insane structure to replicate the compound and because they knew
what the exterior was like they didn't know what the interior is like and so they had these
like maneuverable ways to change walls and they basically went through every single way it could
set up and they practiced hundreds and thousands of times they went in there they executed
the mission and then they had to get all the data they said on the documentary that they were
on the ground for way longer than they ever anticipated 45 minutes and they're supposed to be
there for 30 to 32 minutes and they're there for 45 minutes yeah and then when you hear him talk
about the second chopper that comes in was the size of a school bus it's just like I can't even
imagine I can't even fathom that that all happened and the
The craziest part about the doc is when they talk about the lengths that they went
and the different strategies they use over 10 years to track down Osama bin Laden.
Just an absolute surreal opportunity we get to have him on the podcast while this is the
number two trending show and all of Netflix people.
When I, like, we've been doing the podcast for four years.
My wife, I turned to her today and showed her the video of who we were podcasting and she
saw his face because we just watched the doc she was on the edge of her seat excited to listen to it
so if you have listened to it or have seen the dock listen to this if you're listening to this
and haven't seen the dock either way you're going to get 10x more out of it and they're both
phenomenal yeah i mean perfectly perfectly said an absolute honor to be able to interview someone
at this capacity and to learn so much about the inner workings uh david i mean i feel like i don't
want to miss kind of some of the Navy SEAL training. I feel like we have to talk a little bit about
that. Like they're just being tied up and thrown into water and just be like don't die. Like literally
that's their and you have to find a way not to die tied up, hands behind their back, legs tied
tied, thrown into water, learning how to bob until they don't die. And just the one other thing I want
to say that just blew me away too was this concept of like,
how he said the strongest guy or the one that always act the toughest was always the first one out
and how every day he wanted to quit every day he planned on quitting but he was just like i'll quit
tomorrow morning that's one for sure i'll like when you're having a really hard day things just aren't
going your way when you're really struggling just being like you know just being able to be like
i'll get through today i'll get through today i'll get through today i'll get through today just get to the next
hour you know i i loved that that concept of small goals he talked about he said he really got good
at small goals instead of instead of long goals because small goals were that exact mindset to get
through hell week you can't think about the end of hell week you got to think about getting
cross that finish line through this task running and getting this food um i thought that was
incredible i also thought i mean i could talk about all the things that i couldn't do in hell week
which is pretty much all of them um i do love what he talked about about
how calm is contagious.
How I loved that.
And the one thing,
and I've caught myself doing this multiple times today,
is he said stress is a choice.
And the way that he talked about it was so true.
And I found myself starting to stress about things.
And I was like,
I'm choosing to build this up in my brain
that it's something that it probably isn't.
And especially if it's something that I can't control,
it's gone.
If I can't control it,
I ain't stressing about it.
If I can control it,
do something about it.
so that you're not thinking about it and stressing about it, right?
Like, that's, you know, that, I think those two things.
Calm is contagious and stress is a choice.
And then the last thing I'll say is, uh, I just love.
And panic is contagious.
Like the option, we talked about panic.
It's like one person panics about something.
We all panic, you know.
So I think it's interesting to hear that, yeah, calm is contagious, but so is panic.
And like, we have a decision.
And that's why it's important to surround yourself around the right people, right?
I loved his analogy where he was like, yeah, you ever seen an airplane board?
Like someone's own five tries a point.
Five does one.
Panic.
And then when you think about
panic and calmness being contagious,
it's like,
think of like a chaotic boarding situation
and like the airline attendant who's like calm
and it's like that that person's like keeping this going
or airline attendant who's like panicking and yelling at people.
It's like this is this just got off the rails.
So I thought those are great.
I mean, he says wherever you are be there
and make yourself available.
Those are great like those are great relative.
doesn't matter who's listening in your job, in your opportunity, in your life.
Like, make yourself available and wherever you are, just be there.
Just focus on being there, being present.
I thought those were amazing, amazing takeaways.
Yeah.
Can't say enough good things about this episode.
I feel honored that we had the opportunity to, you know, interview Rob.
I was sitting there today.
I binged the documentary on episode three, the last episode, I'm sitting there.
just sobbing in tears, you know? And after that to be like, wow, we got to sit down with someone
who had the largest role in killing this person who is like just pure evil in every form.
I don't know. It was like a little bone-chilling, a little surreal moment. And for anyone out there
that serves or anyone that knows anyone that serves, thank God we have those people. Thank God that we
have them to give us the freedoms to do what we do day in and day out so truly a whole different
ballgame this episode man a whole different ballgame a whole different ballgame a whole different ballgame is
right and the last thing i'll say too is like seeing the human being element um behind the shooter
was really really interesting too about his family his family life his four daughters and even
the reflections that he's having seven to eight years later about you know killing became normal and now
he's time has passed
reflecting on
you know the situations
that he found himself in
and people that he's killed
and you know
maybe asking himself
how did they view me
was I the bad guy
was he the bad guy
um really really bone chilling stuff
and you know
just to hear about where he's at
and how he thinks about things
and uh you know
he was parts of the most confidential
missions ever and he still has
his own questions about you know
big picture stuff so some
some crazy uh some crazy uh
some crazy soundbites, some crazy experiences, some crazy stories.
But like you said, at the end of the day, 400 guests we've had on,
what a surreal, surreal guest to have on the podcast at the timing of when he came on.
And even the elements of the PTSD, you know, like you said,
just about all the moving factors of that, the impact that has on those that serve
and the attention that we all need to give it, right?
and the resources that are necessary for that attention.
Just intense.
I will say that was probably one of the harder questions
I've ever had to ask of 200 plus episodes.
That was a hard one, just like asking him, like, about the idea of killing someone
and, like, how does that sit?
And that was, I don't know, it's just a wild moment, wild moment.
Wild moment, seems like a really good guy.
And, you know, again, a complete,
a catch-22 situation of someone who, you know, on one hand, I think I, my gut says this guy should
be treated like royalty. And then on the other hand, you talk about how he could be ostracized
from like, you know, the SEAL community and understanding what they sign up for and how
they do things and how they protect. It's just, it's a really, it's a catch-22 episode.
Everyone who's going to listen to this is going to, everyone who's going to listen to this is
going to have their views and opinions and it's going to hit them in different ways.
So crazy, crazy world we live in, like you said.
Yeah, well, yeah, I agree.
It's a catch-22.
You're going to have a lot of different opinions out there.
I do think the one opinion we can all share here is thank God that people were put on this planet, specifically in the United States, like Rob O'Neill, to protect us and to serve us and to put our freedoms in our country at the forefront of, um,
of their interests and thank God we have people like that to do what he has done and
the way he's served and all of it and all of the and all of the military and intelligence to be
able to be so dedicated to um set these soldiers up for success um there's you know they're
they are prepared they are dialed in so um overall great episode surreal episode
It's surreal.
Hope everybody enjoyed it.
Yeah, and I would just end with this.
If you haven't seen American Manhunt Osama bin Laden, go check it out.
Like, they show you the war rooms of, like, the decisions that Barack Obama had to make during his presidency
and the thought process and the way people voted on it.
And, you know, they're like live footage of them watching the mission happen.
And, oh, just an absolutely unbelievable documentary.
Check it out.
Rob, thank you for being on the podcast.
David.
great little recap here, an intense episode, educational, informational, and certainly an inspiring one.
And David, you got anything else?
No, I don't. We're good to go.
We're good to go.
Thank you for tuning into another episode of Trayek Secrets, one you can afford to miss.
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