We're Out of Time - The Green Beret Who Lost His Leg and Returned to Combat | Nick Lavery

Episode Date: July 28, 2026

Some people survive adversity. Nick Lavery went back for more.Richard Taite sits down with Chief Warrant Officer Nick Lavery, an active-duty Green Beret, Silver Star recipient, and the first above-the-knee amputee in history to return to combat with a U.S. Army Special Forces team. After losing his leg in Afghanistan in 2013 during the most catastrophic insider attack of the Global War on Terror, Nick refused a medical retirement, spent a year recovering at Walter Reed, passed a grueling 15-week assessment, and deployed back to Afghanistan for full-spectrum combat operations.Nick and Richard talk about rebuilding identity after loss, how faith carried him through recovery, why veterans struggle to ask for help, the double edge of the warrior mindset, and what he learned from losing nearly a dozen brothers in combat — and three times that number outside of it. Nick also opens up about retiring after 20 years of service, the identity crisis that follows when the uniform comes off, and building his next chapter through MCHN, the human performance company he founded.Nick is the founder of MCHN, CEO of Precision Components LLC, and bestselling author of Objective Secure: The Battle-Tested Guide to Goal Achievement.Richard Taite is one of the foremost experts on addiction in the United States. He lost 25 years to addiction before achieving 21 years of sobriety — an experience that drives his work helping others through it.“We’re Out Of Time” dives into the issues America can’t afford to ignore — addiction, mental health, parenting, resilience, and hope. Raw truth, real stories, life-saving conversations.Learn more about Nick Lavery: https://mchn.co/ & https://www.precisioncomponentsllc.com/More on Richard Taite and Carrara Treatment Wellness & Spa: https://linktr.ee/richardtaitehttps://www.wereoutoftime.com/

You do see a lot of service members that are all of a sudden finding themselves as veterans, and then they're going, what do I do now? And my response is, well, we can't go back in time. However, for those that are earlier on in that process, I'm like, start thinking about this today. Yeah, I realize you've got 24 months until you think you're about to be a civilian. Now is actually the time to start doing it. Do not kick that can down the road. Do not procrastinate.

Retirement or ETS is going to show up like that. And all of a sudden, they wake up and that no longer again, exists and I didn't put any thought or action into what the next chapter looks like up until this point and it can get ugly pretty quick. One of the things I tell everybody, man, live life like you are the hero in your movie. One Call placement is affiliated with Carrera treatment, wellness, and spa and One Method treatment centers. If someone has a problem with substance use disorder, please call one call placement. That's 8888-8-3-1-1581. And if we can't help you, we'll make a referral to someone who can please we're out of time our guest today has spent his life proving that impossible

is often just somebody else's opinion nick lavery is an active duty green beret a silver star recipient and the first above-the-kne amputee to return to combat with the u.s army special forces team after losing his leg in afghanistan he's an author speaker husband father, and a leader whose message isn't about surviving adversity, it's about finding purpose through it. I also had the privilege of interviewing Nick's wife, Sergeant Major Tony Lavery, of the U.S. Army Special Operations, whose own remarkable story adds another dimension to their family's journey. When you finish this episode, you'll want to go watch hers. Please welcome Chief Foreign Officer Nick Lavery.

So thank you for being here. I really appreciate it. You know, I hear things like, thank you for your service all the time. But it sounds to me like thoughts and prayers. Okay? It just doesn't mean enough. They say it like, I love you.

Not I love you. Okay. It's just a different vibe and it drives me nuts. So I wanted to thank you for coming on because you're a true hero. You protect us. You've done great things. You're still doing great things. And I'm very appreciative.

We're living in a very scary world right now. And we are divided as a country. And that's repugnant as far as I'm concerned. All we've got is each other. Our Republican brothers and sisters, our Democrat brothers and sisters and our independent brothers and sisters. So, again, thank you for everything that you do, man. I appreciate that, brother. Thank you. So you're a pretty rich man. Have you ever seen a movie called Meet Joe Black? Is that with Brad Pitt? Yes, it is. Yeah, I feel like I may have seen it at some

point, although don't ask me to regurgitate it because I couldn't tell you, but I feel like I've seen it before. I'm not going to. I'll just refresh your memory. Anthony Hopkins. Anthony Hopkins is the man who is the head of the family. He owns a huge publishing company. The most elegant man in probably any movie I've ever seen. And then you've got his daughter who looks at Brad Pitt so intently and is so in love that her eyes well up. Okay? That's how much she loves him. When I saw that and it still hits me today, I'm like, I want that.

I'd give anything for a woman to love me like that. Anything. The truest form of love I've ever seen. I know it was acting, but I'm pretending and I loved it. That's how your wife. thinks about you. She is so in love with you. I've never seen anything like that.

How do you take that in? Do you feel grateful all the bad things that have happened? To have her and to have children with her is got to be something that you look at and say, I win. I win. Yeah, man, I guess to put a single word on it would be grateful, although that doesn't quite do it justice. We have a unique bond and we've lived a unique roller coaster ride together as a team, even before we were married.

But certainly coming up on 10-year wedding anniversary, which is this year, actually next month. And I can assure you that her sentiment towards me is. is compounded, I'd say, by a factor of 10x from me to her. And her and I would probably debate that back and forth, which is part of the fund and also I think part of what allows us to operate the way that we do and have the household that we have that we're blessed to have. And also has enabled us to do great things

in the professional world as well, as having that unique dynamic. And her and I were just talking about this the other day during one of our more, more interpersonal connection conversations that we have structured within the way that we just live our lives. And she, I think, framed it a way that was great was some of the effect of we're both incredibly capable as individuals. However, we both also rely on each other at the same time and kind of having that concurrently happening where we do rely on each other for our fulfillment

and for raising our children and for our businesses and for the things that we're doing in and out of the military like we rely on each other as husband and wife we can also go out and kick ass as individuals into this crazy world regardless of what the circumstances are and i'll close this out here real quick ma'am because i could go up in days about tony and i'm sure she'll come up again through a conversation which she typically does but you know like our initiation into like a real i'd say relationship as two people that moved from being buddies for a long time and training together and working together and whatever was at my lowest point in life when I was broken in a hospital

fighting for my life, totally dependent on others. Like that was the initiation of what we have today, you know, going back now 13 years to when that that really started for us. And that was obviously really hard to do. But her and I both looked back at kind of the inception of our relationship as it stands today with just an enormous amount of gratitude because if you can make it through that together and not only come out the back end having survived it but be stronger because of it like what's the world going to throw at us that we can't that we can't take down as a as a team you know

so it just put us in a great position to build a wildly unique foundation that we then have built upon now since then that's that's beautiful uh Boston or Maine Boston. Boston strong. Yep. Yeah. I swear if I would have picked, I would have picked Maine because it's always, you can't get there from here. That's what they say. You said something in one of your videos that was probably the coolest thing I've heard in a long time. Get it right. Enlightened me. There are no atheists in a foxhole. Yeah, one of my favorite expressions.

Give it to me. Elaborate on it for the people. Yeah, I mean, it's tough to frame that without going back a little bit further in time. You know, through my upbringing, I'm half Irish, half Italian, grew up Catholic. Sundays was for church and football my entire life as a young person. I ran away from faith in Christianity, specifically like Catholicism, like as fast as I could. I couldn't stand it. It was a chore.

I wanted nothing to do with it. You know, and so once I got past the point where it was obligated of me, which was really post high school because I went to a Jesuit private school, I ran the other direction. I was like, I'm good. Like, I don't need God. I don't need faith. Like, I'm a man of my own deciding and like, this is all on me and like free will.

And like, I'm just going to do me. And I had like no grounding in intentional grounding, I should say, in faith through that portion of my life. And it really wasn't until I got into the military post-college on my first trip in Afghanistan when that expression you just shed kind of came to fruition for me. And, you know, you're in a gunfight, rounds of flying, you know, explosions are going off a little place and you find yourself saying like, you know, please help me or give me the strength or like something.

And it's like, who are you talking to or like, what are you talking to? Like that was the initiation that kind of reintroduced faith into my life, something I had, again, I'd run completely away from. And it was still a very small, like iterative kind of relationship development between me and God, you know, at that point. But then once I was wounded and everything that we know, according to modern medicine, would not only suggest, but dictate that I was supposed to have expired multiple times during that experience. and that's really where things went to a whole other level.

That was when Jesus came into my life, into my heart, spoke to me directly. And things just went into a whole other direction, another level of my relationship with God and Jesus and my Christianity and really becoming more and more interested and curious about learning scripture and learning what does it mean to be a Christian and the Holy Trinity. And those elements that I had heard those words before, but they didn't mean anything to me.

Now, of course, they do. And they are deeply ingrained into the way I live my life. And my number one priority is to serve God. I'm a soldier of God. And I live through that means. And that's taken my life personally and professionally into overdrive. And every day I'm living on borrowed time through his blessing. And I get to wake up every single day, particularly on the hard days.

And I get to serve him. And by virtue of doing that well, I get to serve my fellow man. God to the kids. Oh, God has been a persistent topic of discussion. We have a nine-year-old and a five-year-old. And, you know, church on Sundays is a practice that we uphold. We say grace before every meal. We pray intermittently together.

Just the other day, we were traveling back as a family. And flights got delayed. And it's, you know, typical people are going crazy. And my Tony was in the bathroom with my youngest and my oldest. we were out there and it's like somewhat chaos flights are getting canceled people losing their minds and i just looked at him i say hey man you you want to you want to pray real quick for a safe travel back to so we can get back home and he's like yeah let's do it so like right there in the airport amongst chaos he and i we just held hands and we set a quick quick prayer um and that's so it's become

just part of our operating system and my oldest who's nine he's taken it on him so he's been educating me on christianity and god and the story of abraham and i'm like where did you even learn that. He's like, he's going into his little, you know, tablet time or screen time. He's like purposefully seeking out this kind of content and he's absorbing it, which is, which is awesome. So yeah, you know, Tony and I, when we first realized we're going to be parents, it was like how much we want to introduce, you know, Christianity and faith and God into this. I think that that's a, that's a healthy conversation to have is like, what's the framework here that we're going to kind of go off of to help raise and develop good, upstanding young people? It wasn't as deliberate,

nine years ago as it is today. That's been, I think, part of the journey, but both my boys are full blown. They're off and running into the direction of Christianity and Jesus and God. And I think that that's amazing. I love it. So as you can see, I've got a ton of questions and I haven't read them. And I don't know if I'm going to ask one question on the list. Right.

Okay. Because I don't talk to people like you very often. and one of my biggest regrets was not going into the military. But I was a full-blown drug addict. Full-blown. I didn't have parents that talked to me about it. Hell, they didn't talk to me at all about anything. Okay?

And so it's just been a huge regret for me. And so what I've done is I've treated hundreds, maybe a thousand, veterans in my life. And they are the easiest people to treat for drug addiction and alcoholism. And the reason they're the easiest is because they've got a baked in discipline, right? And you can literally, someone could be having an episode or struggling in that. moment and acting out. And you can literally say, soldier, and they just straighten right up. And then you get in a hug. You whisper in their air. This isn't how we do this. We love you. Right. And it's just, what is it like in the military? I asked Tony the same thing. And then talk to me

about veterans. What is that stress like to the point? to where people have to self-medicate in order to either get through the current military or the trauma afterwards. It's a good question, man. I got to preface it by saying, you know, every service members experience and journey is different. You know, I think just we all kind of tend to get labeled as, and it's okay. There's nothing wrong with this, you know, as service members or like veterans. And those are like massive genres of millions and millions and millions of unique circumstances and experiences.

Not one is in the same. And you can use like some cliche examples that would state the difference. Me, I came in directly into special forces. I've only been a green beret now coming up on 20 years of service. Like my entire military experience has been in special operations during peak GWAT era. compare that to and this isn't better or worse than i'm just saying that it's different compare that to um an admin clerk who served a year and a half and then got medically retired for whatever reason or just decided to get out of the military like those those journeys are just so different so it's it's

hard to paint this like massively wide brush that accurately answers any question really pertaining to like veterans or military or mental health as it pertains to service members. But I can say from my own experience and working with others that do different things, of course, over two decades, I think one of the greater challenges that we have, and there's two that I'll highlight. One is the negative stigma that's associated with raising your hand or outing yourself that you may have some challenges that you're dealing with. And the fear that is going to come with that, fear of being judged negatively by, your peers, fear of losing your security clearance, fear of missing the next deployment or the next training cycle. There's a lot of different fears that can come with that. And being seen as a

liability versus an asset, I would argue, is one of them for most service members. Certainly when you get into the realm of special operations, like that that's really it, in my opinion. It's I need to be seen and deliver as an asset every single day, which yes, is true. And so should I, be struggling with something and I'm like, ooh, you know, like, I think I may need some like help here. There's this massive fear that I'm going to be seen as a liability and like, I can't have that. So I'm almost willing to do anything to avoid that kind of perception of me as a potential liability. And that's one.

And the other component I'll highlight or element that I'll highlight is the sense of nobility that's wrapped up in just putting one foot in front of the other and continue to go and continue to add on more weight and just keep going. There's, there's, there's, there's, it's something to be proud of, which is, which is fair to say, because you're dealing with a double edge sword. Like the same thing that makes us as great as we are as a military or as a single individual, mental toughness, discipline, consistency, work ethic, like all these great character traits that are required for us to do the hard jobs that's demanded of us are the same exact character

traits that can lead to an absolute catastrophe. It's just what direction are you moving in and what kind of weight do you continue to add on before something breaks? Like, that's inevitable. It's going to happen. We all have limitations as a human being mentally, emotionally, socially, physically. The wheels will eventually fall off if you keep moving into this direction. But so it's easy to justify either ignoring obvious symptoms or problems or handling it yourself by virtue of self-medication. or any other vice that you may choose to try to use to help take away the pain, to help distract you from what's really going on, because it's,

I'm an operator, I'm a soldier, I'm a Marine. These are like built into our identities. And so it becomes a lot easier to justify some of these other options because it's wrapped up in this sense of duty and responsibility for a noble cause. in defense of our country and to serve my fellow man is a unique additional hurdle that I would say service members have to address mental struggle, physical, emotional.

It's another layer of difficulty that we have to deal with. Can you talk about how you lost your leg, what happened at that time? and I noticed something when I was going through your Instagram feed. You have your pants, I think it's on your right leg, right? Yes, sir. Okay. And on your left leg, the pants go all the way to the bottom. But on the right left, right?

And I noticed that. And I want to know about that because I probably, probably wouldn't do that. A lot of people wouldn't. They would, they would make certain that, you know, they both had both legs covered, right? And so they wouldn't have to answer the question or be looked at or any of that. And I just thought that was the coolest thing ever. So can you talk about that part of it and what actually happened? Yeah. I'll, I'll tell the quick story of how I actually ended up losing my leg. It was Afghanistan 2013.

This was the result of an inside attack, meaning a guy that we've been working alongside of. In this case, was an Afghan national police officer turned on us. You know, so he opened up with a belt-fed machine gun inside our perimeter from about 30 feet away as the initiation of a pre-planned complex ambush. So what we didn't know, there were about 30 Taliban fighters. is that had our compound almost entirely surrounded. So when this guy initiated from inside our compound, they all began launching mortars and rockets and built a machine

gun down on top of us. So it was a really rough day at the office, you might say. 12 U.S. casualties in total, three of which were killed. It's considered to be the most catastrophic insider attack that we know of during the entire global war on terrorism. Most of the damage to me was to my right leg.

Took about five or six rounds, vaporized it. FEMA, shadow. for moral lottery severed. I treated myself initially with a series of tourniquets and a procedure that's known as an internal pressure dressing, which is as squeamish as it probably sounds. And by the grace of God, really, and by virtue of the help of dozens and dozens of people that continue to help me, I was able to survive that attack. I was met with a variety of different complications as I was eventually extracted out of

Afghanistan, eventually got to Walter Reed, or I'd be there for a year, going through surgeries, learning how to live life as a one-legged guy, learning how to use a prosthetic and things like that, before eventually getting back to my unit at the time was at Fort Bragg and just continued my career, you know, from there. But we can dive into however much detail you want, but I wanted to just give the context. And I wanted to get to your second question. And I laugh because this is a question or comment that comes up in a wide range of forms from some that are just generally curious. Like, why would you do that? Some come from a position of what you just shared, which is, man, like if that were me or maybe that is me, like, I don't want to make it public that I'm missing a limb for

whatever reason. Some it's on the complete other end of the spectrum where it's like, oh, you're trying to look cool. And so like I think that that's lame that you're doing that. And you get everything in between. And I chuckle regardless of where it is on that spectrum. I'll answer the question for you quickly because it's a good one. It's one that I don't usually talk about very often. So glad you brought it up. It's something kind of new for me.

It really began, Richard, as a way for me to get past almost to your point of this sense of embarrassment that I had early on in my recovery, where I wanted to like hide the fact that I was a one-legged guy because something that we also just talked about, I was afraid of being seen as a liability because I made my mind up. I'm not getting out of the army. In fact, I'm going to stay in. I'm going to stay in special forces. And in fact, I'm going to get back onto the detachment and continue to deploy to combat,

something that had never been done before as a one-legged guy. So I had this massive fear that if people saw me as a one-legged guy, then that would work against my desired end state, which is, of course, laughable because it's not like anybody, I wasn't fooling anyone. Everyone noticed he knew I was missing a leg, regardless of. this is whether I had two pant legs on or not. You know, so as I began to make my way back to doing what I wanted to do and ultimately successful at doing, I realized that there was much more value for me and others

to just own my reality. Like, this is who I am, but this is at least a huge pot of who I am, covering up with some cloth or being afraid of taking my prosthetic off. So then people really are looking at a one-legged guy. There's value in that. And so not only am I not ashamed of it anymore, but there's part of me that's like, this is who I am. And like, I'm still going to kick ass and dominate anyway. So there was kind of a mental component to it that initiated that.

But there's also a very real practical component to it because especially when you do the work that I do, you live the lifestyle that I live. It's aggressive. It's physical. I'm moving around. I'm running. I'm jumping. I'm lifting. I'm training.

It's hot. I'm sweating. I usually have to, certainly when I was on the teams, I'd have to take my leg on and off to like wipe it down. and reset it, put it back on anywhere upwards of six, seven, eight, nine, like 10 times a day. And so if you've got full pants on, in order to do that, I have to take my pants off. And then I can do the adjustments I need to do. Well, if you cut the pant leg, I can do everything I just described and I can keep my pants on. So not only is it just more efficient through that lens, but you're also avoiding some

potentially awkward moments. If I'm in like a random place in public, I'm not ripping my clothes off. So there's that. And then also from a sense of practicality, you know, my prosthetic knee, it works on a hinge. So think of like a door opening and closing. Any additional element that adds friction to that actuation of the limb is just going to make it that less, that was less efficient. So I just have less friction opposing my knee trying to articulate the way that it does. So it started out more psychologically kind of grounded. which was beneficial to me. But then there's actually a no very technical and practical element to that as well. And it's just gotten to a point

where all my clothes are that way. Everything is the same. It's not solely if I'm going to go conduct a military operation. It's just like, this is the way I dress, this is the way I live, and these are my reasons for it. That's it.

Yeah, that's cool. Did you say that you went back into combat with one leg and a prosthetic leg? Yeah, I did. That was the goal from the time I was in the hospital. And, you know, I hadn't a clue as to how I might do that, but I set myself on that course. It was impossibly hard, and it required a lot of help from a lot of people for me to do that.

And once I made it clear to my leadership that I felt like I was ready to try to to get back onto the team. And despite there had never been a above the amputee to go back to an SFODA, they gave me the chance to prove, demonstrate my ability to do that. Ram me through the ringa ended up being like, I don't know, 15 weeks or so of different assessments and tests. I do anywhere from like two to four a week, just like boom, boom, boom, boom, rapid fire. A lot of that was obviously physical, but they really did their diligence.

I was doing proficiency evaluations, cognitive assessments. psychological screenings, they really did a full workup. And I mean, rightfully so. Like, there was a whole list of commanders that were about to assume an enormous risk by taking a one-legged guy, putting them back onto a team that was set to go back into Afghanistan to conduct counterterrorism operations for six months. However, at the end of that pipeline, I was giving the approval. I went back to the same team I was on when I was wounded.

And about seven, eight weeks later, we were back in Afghanistan, conducting full-spectrum combat operations. Can I ask you a question? This just came up for me. You went through all these psychological assessments and all this testing and they put you through 15 weeks of training and vetting, really. They were vetting, right, to see if you were capable of doing this, both mentally and physically. And if that's the case, how the hell did these afghanis okay get their way into your unit and without complete vetting and knowing who the hell they were you mean that what led to the insider attack and how i was wounded to begin with the guy the guy that from 30 feet away had a machine gun and

shot 12 people, right, and decimated your leg. How the hell does that happen? Yeah, it's a good question. It's important to know that what makes green berets unique compared to the rest of special operations is we are purposefully built to work what's called with and through indigenous personnel. So oftentimes we're referred to as force multipliers. Our primary mission set is called unconventional warfare, which by definition means that we are going to work bilaterally, which is a fancy word for what I just said, with and through. You really will almost never send a group of green berets

to go solve a problem just by themselves. We have a lot of special operations units that do that very, very well, and their purpose built to work that way. We are force multipliers, meaning you're going to take 12 of us. You're going to drop us off anywhere in the planet, ideally for us in what was referred to as denied area, and we are going to fine, train, recruit,

and lead a much Laja fighting force into combat to solve problems. So a 12-man SF team is built to be able to lead and manage a fighting for a partnered fighting force of up to about 800 locals. So like that's what we do. And I think getting more to your point and your question is do we have systems and processes in place to validate and vet? Absolutely.

Do we also have elements of internal security mechanisms that we deploy regularly while we're conducting these operations? The answer to that is also yes. However, none of those systems are. are infallible. There is no way to prevent an insider attack. Our job is to mitigate it to the best that we can and weigh that risk calculus against the potential outcome opportunity by virtue of working through this group to achieve that desired end state. So you are inherently going to assume an enormous and unique amount of risk by the way green berets operate as green berets.

And it's just not for everybody. Aside from having to be able to do all the cool guy movie star shoot move communicate jump out of planes shoot guns like that stuff yes we need to be able to do that stuff but we also need to be able to train others on how to do that but then by virtue of that method you have to assume an additional degree of risk because at times you are literally going to turn your back on a local that you may have only known for a week or two or a month or six months you know so it's inherently dangerous I mean being in the military is inherently dangerous this just I would say adds another layer of threat that comes along with that. But the key point is that none of these systems of processes are infallible. There is the risk that you will take by virtue of

operating in this way. And so, yeah, we have systems. We got things in place. We do. Clearly, they failed. But what I love about what happened to me is this is a case study that has been examined and has updated current training methodology as a result of what happened to us. And the high reality, Richard, is we typically only get better by virtue of getting things wrong. Like that's where the wisdom is located. It's by virtue of failure. And so we failed in that instance at that time. Things were missed. There were gaps that were exposed that we were blind to. And as a result of that catastrophe, we were able to get better as a fighting force. Have you ever had the thought since the war with Iran that this is something that could be used, what you do, to help the people, the good people of Iran, rise up against these Mullahs?

Has that ever entered your thought process? Yeah. I mean, not only has it entered my thought process, but we trained for that exact scenario. That's that's what we do. You know, special operations specifically, I mean, the military in general has never turned off. It's just like, what are you doing? Are you training and preparing? Are you like actively engaged in some kind of operations?

You know, so the contingency planning and training isn't solely focused on what's going on today. It's like what could potentially be going on tomorrow. So for a long time, we as a nation have known who our major state actor threats are. And Iran's not like a new one that just like popped up out of nowhere like, oh, we should probably start to pay attention to these guys. Like, that's been a persistent threat now for decades. And so the entire fighting force and as well as special operations has invested countless hours and months and years into how would we actually go about doing this.

And so, yeah, it's a thought. but more so it's one that we've put into practice. I use that word on purpose countless times just throughout my somewhat short career in the grand scheme of things 20 years is that we've worked that problem set specifically many, many times. Okay, so then the next question

or the next responsible question would be handicap that for me. Handicap the success based on your breath of experience okay. Handicapped that for me. Would it work 50-50, 2080, 80-20? What do you think? Just I'm not, you're not under oath. I'm just asking for your best guesstimate. Yeah. It's an impossible question to answer that simply for me to say like if you deployed the green berets against the Iran problem set tomorrow, we'd have an 80% chance of success. Like that would be like a ridiculous answer to give because there are just countless unknowns. One of the most significant

being, what is the desired end state? What's the outcome we're looking to achieve by virtue of employing these skill sets into this problem set? That is ultimately where things begin. And then you can like backwards plan and put together something to eventually reach that, that point that you're trying to get to. And like that could be a complete range of options that would exist starting at the executive level branch of our government. And so could I tell you, yeah, we got about a 51% shot if you just like let Socom loose into Iran and just like do what we do. It would be a short-sighted response to the question. I wish it were that simple.

And I could just say like, yeah, man, we got it. We got like an 80% shot. but it's just in this complex arena and in this complex world, the answer, unfortunately, isn't that simple. I'm not married to anything because I could never say, hey, let's just go in and deal with this and free these people and get rid of the 47 years of terror that these people are doing. But I'm not going.

I'm not there. Right? So it's kind of what bums me out. is when people haven't served in the military and they don't understand the horror of it, of war, to go ahead and be hawks like that. I think a couple things. One is we get to serve in the United States military. That's a privilege, one that we all asked to be a part of.

One of the undeniable truths of what makes the United States military as powerful as it is, is it's an all-volunteer fighting force. No one forced any of you to come do this. In fact, it's a privilege to get to do this. You have to, one, decide you want to, and then meet the criteria to go do the job that you want. So there's that. And then second is we live in a nation that many of us are willing to die for

to protect for our First Amendment and that you get to have, not only get to have your opinion, but you get to voice your opinion. Not to say that there are consequences attached to voicing your opinion. Those are oftentimes maybe an important point that gets missed. I can just say anything to anybody and like nothing will ever happen to me. Like that isn't reality. So I think it's great that we get to have opinions and we get to have even spirited

disagreements and discussions on these things. That's one of the reasons why I get to wear the uniform, why I decided to wear the uniform. I don't expect 375 or so million people to all agree on anything or, or certainly not my opinion on things. And so if I receive that kind of criticism, here's where I typically go with it is on one hand, we have never lived in a time period

where a lack of information exists. I don't know has long since come and gone. We are easily able to find things out should we be interested in. One of the greater challenges may be sifting through a lot of the bullshit to find something that's true. but I don't know isn't a thing anymore. So the accessed information has never been as easily accessible as it is today.

Most of us walk around with this computer attached to us all day long that can tell you the answer to basically any question that you have. So this like blind ignorance on one hand is like, man, like how could you think that way when you could get some answers to this or a better understanding very, very easily and quickly? That's kind of on one side. On the other side, and here's where my head goes, especially when I see something that I disagree with. is perhaps it's by virtue of the United States military that has created this warm bubble, this blanket around this nation that's so thick and so secure that it allows you to be that ignorant.

Because in the absence of the military defending the gates into this country, the real world would be right in front of you. And then perhaps you might have a different opinion. But what we do in a way enables ignorance of those in which we are sworn to defend. And that's part of the warrior culture. You're the one that's going to be the one looking at the cruel, nasty evil of the world and addressing that so that they don't have to ever know it existed. And so regardless of what kind of demonstration or sound bite or something that I see from someone, those are the two things I weigh.

is like, how could you be this, this ignorant to what's, what is in reality? But then the other hand is, hey, listen, like, this is a sign that me and my brothers and sisters to my left and right in uniform are doing our job well because you can be this ignorant. Because without us doing what we do, the truth would be directly in front of you. And that's just the route that I go in those moments. So you said something that, uh, uh, I found very interesting. You said you voice your opinions and you go back and forth.

And that's basically how the sausage is made. Right. And I was always under the impression as a layperson that the military ain't a democracy. It's there to defend democracy. So who are you arguing with? Oh, no. I'm talking about like the general public and their, in their opinions. I think you use the term like hawking.

Like people are judging what we do. It's like how dare you because you don't know what we do? It's like you're not supposed to know what we do because we're the ones that decided to do what we do. You see this in all aspects of life. You'll see this with parenting and marriage relationships and business. I've gotten to business. Like it's easy to not be in the realm of entrepreneurship and be like, you know what you should do is blank, blank, blank. And you're like, okay, like thank you for your opinion.

However, you have no idea what this world is like. and that's okay. It's not, for me to expect you to have the same kind of perspective that I have as someone that's been doing this for 20 years, that's ignorance on me. That's on me if I'm going to get that worked up by someone that obviously has no clue as to what the insights are like. And so I just rooted in, hey, I chose to do this. I get to do this.

The fact that I get to do it and we get to do it this well is part of what allows you to have the opinions that you have. and that's okay. All right. I'm going to ask you a difficult question. During that fight and over the course of your career, how many brothers of yours have died in combat? What is it done to you and how has it informed who you are today?

In combat specifically, you say, I think you use the word friends. brothers not friends yeah i'd say um about a dozen um by virtue of combat operations probably times three not in combat operations which is also indicative of you know the mental health crisis that we've got you know in the military is the numbers are staggering in combat versus not um how has that affected me uh It's enabled me quite a bit. I am amongst the few that have,

depending on how you want to describe it, already died in combat. I just happen to be able to come back and have this conversation I'm having with you. But particularly in moments of struggle or when things are inconvenient, I think about how blessed I am to be alive. I think about how fortunate I am to experience this heartache,

or this hardship that's in front of me right now and how any one of those dozen buddies that I lost in combat or the times three that I lost as an indirect result of what they did in service would do anything to have one more moment on this planet, to have one more conversation with their widowed spouse to hold their son or daughter one more time. And so I get a.

to do these difficult things with them looking down on me, praying for me, giving me support, giving me guidance, and also reminding me, hey man, like, go hot, like, you're there. So create the impact. Do the thing. And so it's been an empowerment tool for me. I'm mindful of them. They walk, they walk with me day in and day out. And we also have the amazing privilege to ensure with the amount of degree impossible to continue to look after those that they left behind. Probably the most disturbing thing you've said in this entire interview is you said you have a dozen brothers that died in combat, but times three of the mental health crisis. And the reason it's so disturbing to me is because in 2026, this shouldn't even be an issue

anymore. Treatment has evolved to the point where if you can get help, right, this can, this ain't a death sentence anymore. You can go on to live happy, joyous, and free. It's not, I'm not saying you're not going to have bad dreams or bad moments or a trauma response when some, you know, when a, when a car backfires, I'm not saying any of that, okay? I'm just saying, on the whole, you know I've dealt with so many of these guys um I've got a client who is on this thing and he was doing well but he was you know just grinding it out and we speak all the time and this kid is jacked he's working out he's got a girlfriend he's got a job he's going to AA he's doing everything right And it's like the greatest joy of my life.

And why are these guys not getting the help that they need? Is it because they don't know? You call one method center. I'll help you. Not that it's a plug or anything, but, you know, we're doing it. You know, what's your experience with why these guys are struggling at those numbers? Yeah, I think at least part of it is rooted in what we already talked about. In my opinion, it's not a lack of options or a lack of awareness that options exist.

In fact, it's almost to the point now, even just in military mental health support alone, there's almost too many options. If I were to just go on to Google and be like, I'm a soldier and I'm struggling with my health, like, what are my choices? There'll be like a billion hits that show up. And it's like, where do I begin? There's almost an, there's almost an overwhelming amount of them. You work down a list, man. You work down a list. Yeah. There's a way, of course, to like leverage the options. My point is that I don't think that it's a lack of options existing or a lack of the service member realizing that options exist. And so I think at least you have to have the hard

truth of man like you got to take the proactive action and you have to own the fact that you're struggling and you have to do it like no one can do that stuff for you you can't you may want to help someone change but if you want them to change more than they're willing to change then that that's totally out of your hands we can influence all day long but we got to start placing a greater emphasis of ownership on the individual you have to want to get bad up I want you to get better. I'm building as well as you, like services and options and resources,

like putting that stuff together so that it works. But at the end of the day, like you have to recognize you're dealing with something. Look at that directly in the face. Have the courage to stand with that and go, yeah, you know what? Like I'm slipping. I'm making some mistakes.

I can feel and know I'm going into a dangerous direction and then have the balls, have the courage, have the strength. to step forward and get proactive. Because I think if you make it past that one hurdle, you're going to see that there are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people out there that have invested the majority of their lives in this cause.

People are there. You know the resources exist. You have to be the one to take the step forward. I used to pull people right out of the streets, right off the streets and encampments. And it was really hard. man these guys didn't want to do anything they were stuck they were stuck in so much pain they were in a place where they couldn't launch they couldn't do that and i remember the first time

i saw the encampments i've always seen them it blew up around covid but during covid and after COVID. There was by the VA on Wilshire and San Vicente. It's the largest VA in the country. There were two groups of folks. There was people on the inside of the gate, intense and tiny homes, and there were people outside the gate on the sidewalk, and it stretched about a quarter mile long. And there was a difference between regular encampments and military encampments. Do you know what they were? These things looked like a military locker. No trash.

Everything tight. Everything. They made this space, the best space they could under the circumstances. And I would go there. And I would take one at a time and make certain that they were put somewhere. because I didn't have a treatment center at the time. And I would make certain of it. And then I kept it going when I opened my stuff

after my non-compete ended and I was allowed to do it again. And I can promise you, as a general rule, you're correct. But if, and I've met many military therapists, my buddy Jim Zener who runs L.A. County veterans, he walked the property with me for a couple hours, and I met all these folks, and I would tell them, why don't you go outside and get these people inside and into treatment? And you know what they said? They said the reason they're outside is because those are the ones on drugs and the ones inside are not.

And I was horrified. Because, okay, they're on drugs. Bring them in and give them the rehabilitation they need. Who cares? And they couldn't give me an answer. It was some policy nonsense that, you know, bureaucracies give you. You going back into combat?

You're going to do that? Am I going to do that? do that again? Yeah. Yeah. I just, I started my retirement, brother. So, um, I'm navigating through working myself out of a, out of a job in the uniform. Is there the possibility of that happening? Yes. Technically, you know, I'm an active duty green beret. However, a hundred thousand other options would have had to have been exhausted before I get the phone call that I need to strap it on and and head back overseas. So I think it's fair to say that my days in combat as a, as a soldier are behind me. So why are you leaving the military if you can teach all these young guys and give them

all the experience you have? You said, why am I retiring? No, no. I don't care about the combat. I was hoping you would say, no, dude, I'm not going to combat anymore. I was like that that was my, That was my prayer when I asked the question. But what I'm asking you specifically is you have this wealth of knowledge and experience and you've got all these young guys coming up. And they could certainly benefit from your experience. Why are you leaving the military when you could be teaching all these people? I don't know.

Oh, yeah. Okay. So why am I retiring from the military? which is a good question. You know, I had set my sights on serving 20 years, many, many years ago. And it's a bit of sweet point in time for me, even though I'm early on, it's going to take me another probably 9, 10, 12 months or so to actually fully work myself out of the military. But I'm already starting to feel kind of like I'm missing it, even though I'm still kind of doing it. I think the short answer to the question is I find myself in a phenomenal predicament

where in my professional life I've got being a soldier and then I've got all of my business stuff that I've got going on. And one of the greatest challenges I have is that there's just almost only so many hours in a day. And I love most of what I get to do day in and day out. And so my company and now it's an organization. with multiple companies has really been this kind of passion project side hustle thing for the last five, six or so years. And so as that has gained traction and as I've started to see the impact

that some of those things are creating on people, I'm falling more and more in love with it. And so I'm real curious to find out what that looks like when I actually pull 100% of my professional bandwidth into that space. And As far as I see it, what I am doing now in the military, now this is, of course, specific to service members and soldiers, et cetera, if you remove the uniform and you remove that specific audience, a lot of what we do is it's the same type of stuff. It's leadership development. It's team building. It's organizational resilience. It's individual discipline.

It's consistency. It's physical fitness. It's health and wellness and longevity. And so I will remain a servant to my fellow man until I am no longer on this planet. Just the way in which I will do that is going to change overtime. So it was a tough call to make. It took me months of going back and forth. And my team time on the ODA has long since.

That ended probably two and a half or three years ago. So I've been in these more leadership positions outside of being the guy that's kicking down the door now for several years. and I love what I've had a chance to do in that realm. And to your point, these young 22-year-old studs showing up, hair on fire, ready to take down, you know, the global war and terrorism single-handedly. I'm like, dude, I was you like 10 minutes ago.

I swear, it just time goes by so fast. So I love pouring myself into the up-and-coming young soldier, Green Beret, human, whatever in the uniform. So it took me months to come to that decision point and had several conversations with me. my wife and my military leadership and Cheney Command and my business partners. And after about three or four months of analysis and a lot of prayer, I landed on moving this direction where I'm going to go to the 20-year mark.

And then not long after that, I'm going to hang it up. I'm going to go full throttle into this other direction. What came up for me, Nick, was any time somebody stops doing something that their identity was tied to for two decades, they're going to miss it. And the only thing that I think, not the only thing, but the thing you got going for you is you already have a place to go outside of that. You got that. So you're not going to have the low lows that people who don't have something to move right into is going to have. But we both know you're going to miss it.

Okay, when you retire, that's fact. I can tell right now. If you retire, is there any way you can go back and say, my dad, I'll just train these studs, I'll take care of it. I mean, is that how it works if you have a second, if you have a change of heart or no. Yeah, especially in today's competitive recruitment world. There's a lot of options to do that.

Actually, a couple of my buddies are literally doing that right now. They got out of the army. They're both green berets. They got out years ago. And I was just with one of them at a conference a couple weeks ago. And he's like, I'm going back in, man. I'm like, good for you. And so there is a mechanism to do that.

I'd say that that option will likely always exist. So we'll see what happens. Good. I'm not, now I'm not, now I'm not horrified for you. If God forbid you fall into a depression over it, because, you know, I know you're doing service work everywhere else. That I know. Okay.

But this is a different kind of service. This is like training guys to go out and save America. This is like, and so I get that vibe. that that's, you know, that's what gives you your self-esteem other than being a good father and a good husband, making certain that all that stuff. I would agree, Richard, to that point, man, I would agree a thousand percent. In my opinion, I don't think there's any professional realm to move into post-military service that is going to give you that same level of fulfillment and identity because it's so unique.

I would also say that that is one of the consistent mistakes I see as I, and we as an organization help transitioning military members is getting that dismantling that ideology right now. I don't care what job you move into, what professional realm you will move into how much they pay you or what fancy title you're going to get. Like bank on the fact that it's not going to fill the professional cup the same way that this one did. and that's okay because it's unique by design and it's different. And so, but there's a huge upside to this as well is that I think people look to try to fill this cup with this thing in the same degree. And I don't think that that exists. But you have an amazing opportunity to not only fill your cup to the same level, but perhaps

even more so to the point where it's overflowing or you need to build a bigger cup. If you're drawing from multiple sources, like my next profession or job will be blank, but I also can start to pull more from me as a husband or me as a spouse or me as a dad or volunteer work or my passion project or I'm going to write a book or like you can you can gain that same overall level of fulfillment and joy and drive in life pulling from multiple sources and then another point is service members typically just kick the can down the road And there are, of course, instances where all of a sudden someone's like, boom, like I'm a civilian, you get wounded. Medboard, it happens quick. This is like knee jerk reaction. Like, I didn't have any kind of time because this is all happened. I totally get that those situations absolutely exist. But if you're a service member and you are actively pursuing or moving towards getting out of the military, regardless of how long you served, like, wherever you think you need to stop thinking about what post military service looks like, back that up by like five times. And that's where. you really want to begin. Like you mentioned, Richard, like your confidence in me of being okay

moving post-retirement because I've got something to move into. That's absolutely true. 100% I'm blessed to have that glide path. However, I had to start building this thing that I'm transitioning into eight years ago. And it took an insane, as you know, an insane amount of brutal hard work, crazy sacrifices, stupid like risks. So I've earned this next chapter of my life through all these different things. And I'm not saying entrepreneurship is like the only option. The point I want to make is you do see a lot of service members that are all of a sudden finding themselves as veterans.

And then they're going, what do I do now? And my response is, well, we can't go back in time. However, for those that are earlier on in that process, I'm like, start thinking about this today. Yeah, I realize you've got 24 months until you think you're about to be a civilian. Now is actually the time to stop doing it. Do not kick that can down the road. Do not procrastinate.

Retirement or ETS is going to show up like that. And I think that that's a lot of the reasoning behind veterans spiraling because there's a huge attachment to their identity in this profession. And all of a sudden, they wake up and it no longer exists. And I didn't put any thought or action into what the next chapter looks like up until this point. And it can get ugly pretty quick. one of the things I tell everybody, man, live life like you are the hero in your movie. That's pretty cool.

All right. So tell me what you're doing now. And I'm interested to know. I know the viewers are interested to know. Yeah. I mean, the organization is just a weird way to look at it. It has really grown quite a bit, especially over the last couple years. but one of the more recent primary focuses is on our machine brand.

Actually, I'm wearing one of the shirts right now. On your what? I didn't hear that. Machine. MCHN. It's pronounced machine. And it's a comprehensive human performance and wellness company. And I think one of the X fact is it's really grounded in community.

And this is done virtually. But a housing unit that becomes our home base for all of our members. and we focus on challenging each other, holding each other accountable, a place to go for support, a place for guidance. And while I think good communities celebrate wins, I think that's a great thing to do,

we place a greater emphasis on our misses, on where we've come up short. And we own that and we put that out to the group and we hold each other accountable to those standards, to those desired outcomes, to those goals, and it's by virtue of that that allows us as a group to really propel forward. And then outside of that, there's just a whole series of different divisions

that provides strength and conditioning, coaching and programming, mindset and life design, coaching and programming, functional medicine, practitioners, which focus on longevity, health, and wellness. And these are just kind of the initial divisions within what machine has grown into. And it's been one of the greatest, blessings to be a part of something like this. I mean, to work alongside this team in this company, truly selfless driven individuals that are obsessed with leaving the world at a better place and doing so one individual at a time has been one of the highlights of my professional life.

But then also to seeing those impacts happen on our members and our customers and our clients has been incredibly rewarding. You know, like as a special operator, we kind of live by this code of anonymity this you know it's supposed to be about the work and everything's in the shadows and there's this mystique and you know you don't publicize what you do and i can respect that in fact up until the point like literally before i hit publish on my book objective secure i wasn't sure if i was going to do that like i had gone through the whole thing i wrote the i wrote the book i wrote the manuscript i got approvals from the dod like everything was good and i was sitting there on on Trigger shy on the published button because I'm like, I don't know if I'm doing the right thing

because I respect that sense of service over self. And it's not about proclaiming yourself forward or trying to turn yourself into this, you know, God. I get that. I love that. And so I was real hesitant. It's something I still struggle with today. But my point is through the lens and the effect and the impact and the impact of our members

within machine. every time I see some of those growth points, it's just another point of verification and validation that, yeah, you did take a risk, but this is the result of doing so. And that's just a tremendous sense of humility and pride that I get to do now, you know, day and day out. So you're building up broken people through,

self-care, which turns into self-esteem, which ultimately turns into self-love. And, hey, man, did we leave anything unsaid? I don't want to cut you loose. And for you to think, man, I should have said that. That's something I should have conveyed. Okay. Anything?

I would just say, well, in the machine community, do we have people that would probably identify themselves as broken? Yeah, probably. Some people that have hit that rock bottom and are looking for kind of a way out or another option, other than the ultimate way out. We have some members that would kind of fit that avatar for sure. But I'd say that we're mostly going after and enabling those that have finally recognized a few things. One is that life is a gift.

Two, life is finite. meaning it will end. And three, every chance that we get to wake up is another opportunity to pivot and become a better version of myself. It's for those that have decided that good enough is no longer good enough. It's those that have hit a point where, hey, mediocrity was my self-imposed ceiling and that's just not going to cut it anymore because the clock is ticking and I've had this growing sense of I know I want to be more. I want to do more. I just need the system to enable me to do that. that is primarily who comes into our ecosystem. And this isn't another social media platform.

This isn't just kittens and rainbows. Like it's not for everybody. Like when you're messing up, you're going to know you're messing up. When you are failing to uphold your personal standard, like that's going to be made wildly clear to you. There are expectations when you come into this thing. And we can't do the work for you. We can provide you the guidance and the resources and the tools.

By the end of the day, the ownership is on you. And you can either do it or you can't. And if you're unwilling to put in that work to become that best version of yourself, that vision, then this isn't the place for you. But you're essentially a success coach. And so you can pull people from a hopelessness state or right around there and get them to the point where they can actually be in this support group machine, correct or incorrect?

I wouldn't describe myself as a success coach. I would say that I have the privilege of leading an organization that has a team of specialists that all focus on their one particular area of comprehensive human performance and wellness. One of the things that irks me at least a little bit is when individuals and teach their own, who am I to judge? I look at to come at a service perspective as this all-encompassing, I can do all the things at a really high level. I can be your executive coach.

I can be your life design coach. I can be your personal trainer. I can be your dietitian. I can be your longevity specialist, your breathwork specialist. I can provide you with supplements and nutrition. Like I'm your one-stop shop. I would push back against that quite a bit and argue that the team approach is what wins. And if you position true experts within their craft,

to focus on the one or two areas that they do really well above all else at a high degree. And you operationalize that into a system. Now the end user is getting truly elite guidance, mentorship, coaching, tactics, and tools. But it's coming from actual specialists. Me, my job in machine, yeah, I'm like the CEO and founder. But my job is to put the team into places that they can win in order to create the greatest impact possible on our members. Like that, that's what I do. So am I a success coach?

No. Do I provide guidance and mentorship internally and externally? Absolutely. But what I really get to do is enable our true difference makers to win so that they can provide those wins to those in which we serve. All right, man. I'm going to leave it there. I think we should leave it there.

That was the perfect ending. I appreciate that, brother. See you next Tuesday. We're out of time. Please subscribe on YouTube. the thumbs up and leave a comment. Please subscribe on Apple Podcast and Spotify and leave a rating and a review and share the We're Out of Time podcast with others you know who will get value out of it. See you next Tuesday.