Andy Stumpf: Identity, Failure, Fatherhood & Truth

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Andy?
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Yes.
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Why are you special?
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What does that even mean?
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That's a good question.
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No one's ever asked that coming back, but do you feel you're special at all?
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You've done anything special?
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No.
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I feel like I've pursued things in my life that are interesting to me.
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What does it mean to be special?
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I think a lot of people would say, well, maybe that means you're unique, but every human is unique.
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Like I don't like tomatoes and I don't know why.
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My wife thinks that she's Italian, so therefore marinara sauce might actually flow through her veins just based on how she reacts around Italian food.
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It's just like gravit gravitational pull for her.
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Um, so we're all unique in our own way.
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Um, but as far as being special, that is not a word that I have ever applied to myself.
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We came to Montana to share five great stories.
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We ended up finding a lot more.
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The Americana series, Montana.
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I'd like that you said that we start this for a reason because probably if someone goes, Yeah, I'm special, I'm the most special thing ever, we wouldn't be interviewing them and talking with them just because yeah, it's a little weird.
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I will think the audience is gonna think you're special.
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Most may know you, but I mean you're a businessman, set a world record in a wingsuit.
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We may ask about that.
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As Corey said, like a flying squirrel.
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An author of Drown Proof, we'll probably hit that a little bit.
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Um, you're a pilot, a podcaster.
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I didn't even mention you're a Navy SEAL yet.
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So that's some special accomplishments, I'll say.
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Uh, you should really do something with your life because you haven't, I don't know if you've accomplished anything with all that.
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Those are all things that I've done, though.
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None of those things are who I am.
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Bingo.
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I love that you say that.
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So again, I don't like tomatoes, but I like other things.
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And everything you describe, other than the book, which I legitimately was tricked into writing by another Green Beret, you guys are very crafty.
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Um I just pursued things that were interesting to me, but they aren't who I am by any stretch of the imagination.
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So I don't think any of those things make me special, nor do I think any of those things are inherently special in and of themselves.
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They are just the things that happen to draw my attention.
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Yeah, I love that.
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I want I want to go back to when you're younger though, 11, 12 years old.
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You're carrying bricks around your dad's job sites.
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Who was that, Andy, as a kid?
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Probably a little shit, to be honest.
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I mean, it's interesting now.
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I'm way closer to 50 than I am 40.
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And I struggle to remember who I was at 40.
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And then I look back and like, well, what was I like at 30?
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What was I like at 20?
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And I can remember the broad brushes and the broad strokes, but if I try to go all the way back to 11, to be honest, you'd get a better answer if you asked somebody else.
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Like if you talk to my father, because I, having now had three children and watching them pass through that age, and my youngest is now 18, and my oldest is getting ready to turn 23.
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I I struggle remembering even I remember the job sites.
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I know exactly what you're referencing from the book, but I don't remember really how I thought about things or the person that I was.
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And now having three kids again that have passed through the age of 11, I mean, it's just transitory towards your trying to figure anything out.
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I wasn't even in the Dunning Kruger curve yet.
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That was a little bit later.
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I was probably about 16, where I think I had figured everything out.
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I'm honestly, I probably was a mess, like all 11-year-olds are.
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Yeah.
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I've I feel like I was the same way.
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Like I was, if you ask most people, I should probably should.
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I had energy.
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And also the what's expected out of an 11-year-old.
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My dad hired me because he didn't have anybody else to hire.
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Yeah.
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You know, it was after the earthquake in Santa Cruz, so they needed as many people to do stuff.
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And again, carrying bricks, the you don't have to go through a vocational course for that.
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It's like hey, not much skill there.
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No.
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And I could at 11, I graduated high school at 150 pounds.
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So at 11, I had to have been under triple digits.
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Yeah.
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I don't even know how many I was carrying at the time.
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Yeah.
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So I think he was paying me more out of just shame and guilt.
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But I love that you said that you hate what people ask of kids at that age or younger of what you want to be when you grow up and that kind of pressure.
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That was always something that, you know, my dad being a minister and I was around people all the time and they do it, you know, just to kind of conversation started.
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But as a kid, it really annoyed me because I was like, let's apply logic to this for a moment.
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What the heck do I even know about adulthood yet?
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How could I possibly make that decision?
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So it kind of shrugged it off.
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And my dad eventually said, you have to be polite and answer them.
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It's like 10-4.
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So then the next time I got that question, I always said, I want to be a duckbill platypus.
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And it left them wishing that they hadn't told me not to answer, I guess.
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But I think a lot of people, you know, conversations with young, young children, which I'll call an 11-year-old a young child, they're tough unless you have kids because most people that ask that question, it's a boilerplate.
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Um, like going into a dinner with people that you know.
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Hey, how's it going, Andy?
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What do you do for a living?
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You know, and then as an adult, whatever.
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That's it's a it's a placeholder.
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If you don't have kids and you don't really know how to connect with kids, which can take time anyway, and but they're there and you want to engage with them, it's just like a normal boilerplate question.
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I don't think there's any malicious intent behind it, but I do my strategy with my own children was instead of asking what they want to be or what they want to do, it's just what are you what are you currently interested in?
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And we'll just water where the grass is currently growing.
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Yeah.
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Um, so as you grew up and you started figuring out what you wanted to be, what led you to become a SEAL?
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So my father was in the first squadron of patrol boats in Vietnam, the Mark Ones, which I ended up many decades later working on the Mark Vs, which I think are still current.
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I wouldn't be surprised if they have Mark Sixes yet or even beyond that.
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But his experience in Vietnam, um, he was not very vocal about, as many were in his generation.
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I think you would probably agree that our generation of veterans was treated way differently than theirs, and it's almost criminal.
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Polar opposite.
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It's it's criminal to see how that generation of veterans was received at home and then treated.
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And a lot of them were really, really quiet.
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And I still, I probably have still to this day not heard my dad talk about his service more than maybe a dozen times.
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And I don't really ask him about it because I figured if he wanted to talk about it, he would bring it up on his own.
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Yeah.
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But we he was, you know, the a boat is an insertion and an extraction platform for a maritime force, and the Navy's maritime force happens to be the SEAL.
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So he was not a SEAL, but he worked with them from time to time.
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Um, and honestly, if I had come from an army family and he had mentioned Green Berets, or if I a Marine family and he had mentioned the, you know, the LERPS or recon, I probably would have just gone down that path as well, too, because at least in my experience, the vast majority of the special operations, which is the umbrella for those listening, special everybody says special forces, what they don't mean is that that means the Green Beret, and they and they're not trying to call everybody with the same brush, they just don't understand.
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So special operations is the umbrella.
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Special forces is very specific.
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If I had come from a family on his side that had not been in the Navy and had been in the Army, I probably would have pursued being a ranger or a green beret.
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It was these occupations are defined by their similarities, not their differences, especially in the post-9-11 era.
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So it was probably just more random happenstance.
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Sure.
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That makes sense.
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That makes sense totally.
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And I think for a lot of people that I've met from the special operations community feel the same way.
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But you pass buds, you earn your trident shortly after you're with your platoon in Arizona, and you get in a little trouble.
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And oh, I got a lot of trouble.
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Yeah, and the CEO makes you cut your trident off your uniform.
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In my mind, that was probably, in my words, like a hero to zero moment.
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Oh, yeah.
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Of like a dream crushed.
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What were you thinking?
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I mean, I was glad he didn't take it farther than that.
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So he could in the Navy, it's called your NEC.
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In a lot of other branches, it's called your MOS.
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And I think that really just is the number by your name in a computer system.
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So on the Navy side, it's a 5326.
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Once you earn your triad, they change your NEC to a 5326.
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He could have stripped that.
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So he could have taken it farther and ejected me from the SEAL community.
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So I a little bit in the back of my mind was, Whew, this is at least survivable.
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But from somebody who had been looking at that job since the age of 11, and and I was underage at that time, so I was probably approaching maybe my 21st birthday, and I'd finally made it into the Navy, into BUDS, made it through BUDS, made it to Team 5, made it through the training afterwards, which was then called SQT.
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Actually, no, STT is what we called it.
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SEAL tactical training.
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Now it's called SQT.
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Um all the way through that in my first platoon, doing exactly what I wanted to do.
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Um, everything, you know, all this stuff of me getting in trouble was based off of my own poor decisions and lack of action, and I could self-justify it in that moment.
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I this or that of that, all of it was just a lack of action, you know, or not stepping in when I should have.
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But to have him cut that off, and I had just had the uniform starched.
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So it slightly changes the color pattern of the uniform.
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So there was a little bit of a color difference where the patch used to be.
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It was a reset for sure.
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Um, and I definitely, you know, standing in front of his desk was the end of the process.
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It started with the chiefs board, which is in the Navy's in E7.
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So all the E7s, not all of them, but the senior E7s, the command, interviewed everybody in the platoon.
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Then I was the last person to go in.
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Then there's XOI or you know, executive officer's mast.
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Then there was the captain's mast where he slid the uh scissors across the desk.
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So it's not like I just got went to Arizona and went right in front of the skipper.
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I think the master chief yelled at me a substantial amount, actually.
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Sure, there was a few cuss words thrown at me.
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I don't remember this, but other people there said that he flipped tables when we got back.
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So maybe I just went co-black and forgot about that one a little bit.
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Um, but it was a process and it was an eye-opener.
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And like, like I wrote about in the book, that was a huge shift in mentality for me.
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Um, there was an essence of being grateful for that, but also the realization that if anything like that happened again to me in any close proximity to that or ever again, it might be the end of the career.
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Oh, yeah.
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I mean, yeah.
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And I mean it it's weird how things like that happen for whatever reason.
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And then you go on, you end up being a you know, instructor back at BUDS, and you move to SEAL Team Six or DevGrew.
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Like a lot happens after that.
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That would you probably wouldn't be sitting here right now if that happened.
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Who knows where your life would have gone?
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I don't know if I'd be sitting here right now if that hadn't have happened.
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You know, it's uh as with most of the things in the moment in my life where I feel like they were the most horrific thing that was happening currently.
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Almost all of them, if not all of them, I look back and I'm very grateful for those experiences.
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That one included because it was a shift in who I considered myself to be as a person and what I thought my station was, not only in the world, but in that community.
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I love that.
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You your regular SEAL team, then you what were you seeking going to DevGrew and that what I will call the pinnacle of tier one?
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What were you seeking going there?
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So when I joined the Navy, I didn't know it existed.
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And then I ended up going to because of the attrition rate at BUDS, now they have changed the way that they do this.
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But when I went in, you had to go to an occupational course beforehand, just in case you didn't make it through, so you would be of service to the military afterwards.
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So you get your job training, then you go to BUDS, and I went to a radar scope operator course, which was on the Damneck Navy Annex in Virginia Beach.
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On the north side of that is where development group is.
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I had no idea.
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So the whole time I was there, I still had no idea.
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I check into BUDS, go through BUDS, go through get to team five, jump school, all that stuff.
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Um and two guys in my first platoon were getting ready to screen for development group.
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And that's the first time I had heard of it.
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And I was like, What's this?
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Why why do you guys want to go there?
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What is this all about?
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And to me, it just seemed like the natural progression.
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Um, the vast majority of guys don't end up going there.
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And internally, at least when I was in the teams, it was not viewed as negative if you didn't make that choice.
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It was a choice you could make, much like going to sniper school if you wanted to or you got the chance or any of these other schools.
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Some people wanted to go down you know the ASO route and they wanted to do you know human type stuff and develop sources and networks, and other people said, Nope, I have an allergic reaction to that.
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It's a different skill set, right?
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For the most part, or is there more crossover than I'm thinking?
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It is at a conventional SEAL team, you uh for easy math, let's say you're responsible to know and be able to perform at a hundred things.
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At development group, you have five.
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So you get to hyperfocus on those five things and the the support network there that exists is a dozen people, maybe 15 to one for to support to operate a ratio.
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So it'd be the same as going to a doctor.
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You can go to a generalist, but if you're gonna have brain surgery done on an invasive type of cancer, you're gonna go to somebody who specializes on exactly that.
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Could the generalist do that?
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Yeah, maybe.
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And you also might not remember who you are when you woke up.
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And that's to me the difference between a tier three unit or a tier two unit and a tier one unit.
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They are actually they still know all how to do the same things, but by stripping away all of the other things, you get incredibly capable and competent at fewer things.
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Sure.
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And then when those things come up, especially at a national level, those are the commands that they are called on for that reason.
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So it's actually a reduction in responsibilities, is one way that you could look at it.
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I'm not saying it's uh easier by any stretch.
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Sure.
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But you just, I mean, shoot, move, and communicate is your sole priority and responsibility there.
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So speaking of responsibility, what did being a SEAL teach you about leadership?
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I saw the best leadership I've ever seen in my entire life in the SEAL teams, and I saw the worst that I've ever seen in my entire life.
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I think more than anything, it showed me that it's more about the person than it is about the position that you hold.
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And actually, my my thoughts on it now is that leadership has absolutely nothing to do with the position, the rank, title, business card, office space, parking spot that you have, and everything to do with who you are as a person.
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I love that.
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Yeah, I I love that.
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I love it.
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I read in your book where you're talking about running the coffee shop.
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You own a coffee shop, co-own a coffee shop now, and how that is harder to lead than seals.
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That really makes perfect sense to me because as a Navy SEAL, you've got a group of high achievers that want to do this together.
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They want to do that.
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You'd hope so, right?
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Sorry.
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You'd hope so.
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Yeah.
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On a good day.
00:15:08.799 --> 00:15:17.440
On a good day, but they're at least interested in living, you know, so they're all kind of trying to, you know, get to where they're operating together, I would assume.
00:15:17.679 --> 00:15:30.639
So to me, that made perfect sense because I could see how when you've got that, you know, these high achievers and you've got this, you know, common goal, common bond, but in a coffee shop, that's kind of the opposite.
00:15:31.039 --> 00:15:33.679
Well, you're leaving out there contractually obligated to be there.
00:15:33.840 --> 00:15:34.879
There's punitive measures.
00:15:35.200 --> 00:15:35.759
That's fair.
00:15:36.000 --> 00:15:46.080
There to get to a team, let's even though the courses may not be sequential, you're going to do probably 24 months of selection and refinement.
00:15:46.159 --> 00:15:48.480
And I don't know of a civilian organization that does anything.
00:15:48.960 --> 00:15:50.080
And all volunteer.
00:15:50.320 --> 00:15:50.720
Correct.
00:15:50.879 --> 00:15:51.840
All volunteer.
00:15:52.480 --> 00:16:05.600
So at the end of that, you generally, for the most part, have an incredibly bought-in group of individuals that are aligned on the true north of that particular compass.
00:16:05.840 --> 00:16:08.320
At a coffee shop, you know, Vic and I were just there.
00:16:08.399 --> 00:16:12.320
It's what do you guess the average age was, Vic, of the coffee shop employee?
00:16:13.039 --> 00:16:13.759
Early 20s.
00:16:14.960 --> 00:16:18.080
I have we have people there who are working their first job, 16 years.
00:16:18.399 --> 00:16:19.679
My daughter worked there when she was 16.
00:16:19.759 --> 00:16:21.600
I fired her twice, by the way, at the coffee shop.
00:16:21.840 --> 00:16:22.159
You know what?
00:16:23.360 --> 00:16:24.080
You know what?
00:16:24.320 --> 00:16:28.399
And when I say that, what I mean is I had the manager fire her twice because I have to deal with that.
00:16:28.720 --> 00:16:30.720
Um, all three of my children work there.
00:16:30.799 --> 00:16:31.919
I've fired two of them.
00:16:32.080 --> 00:16:33.519
Uh we can relate.
00:16:33.679 --> 00:16:38.639
We have our our daughter who's doing a phenomenal job as our social media coordinator.
00:16:38.720 --> 00:16:46.720
No, but it it does come with some finesse of how you navigate that because you're still, like in my case, I'm still mama at the same time.
00:16:46.799 --> 00:16:53.039
So there's a difference in the way that I approach those conversations versus how I would a traditional employee.
00:16:53.360 --> 00:16:53.600
Yeah.
00:16:53.759 --> 00:16:58.559
So we're talking, I think the earliest we've ever hired somebody was 14.
00:16:58.960 --> 00:17:04.000
So 14, and we have some employees that are, you know, they're through their professional phase of life.
00:17:04.160 --> 00:17:06.720
And now they're just looking at something like, hey, I want to work three days a week.
00:17:06.880 --> 00:17:07.039
No problem.
00:17:07.119 --> 00:17:07.839
Like, what do you want to do?
00:17:07.920 --> 00:17:08.480
We'll figure it out.
00:17:08.960 --> 00:17:10.799
For most people, I know it's transitory.
00:17:10.880 --> 00:17:13.359
Nobody wants to be a barista for their entire life.
00:17:14.079 --> 00:17:15.599
Except for maybe in San Francisco.
00:17:15.839 --> 00:17:18.960
You know, where there actually is the world's best barista competition.
00:17:19.039 --> 00:17:19.200
Yeah.
00:17:19.359 --> 00:17:22.559
For the six people that win that ever, like you can do that the rest of your life.
00:17:22.640 --> 00:17:26.720
Everybody else, you're going to be there for a season or a phase of your life, and I totally get that.
00:17:26.880 --> 00:17:29.279
So I don't expect them to be bought in.
00:17:29.440 --> 00:17:32.480
I know that they're there to fill a checking account, probably.
00:17:32.559 --> 00:17:35.759
They're they're they're looking for an economic void and ability to fill a fill it.
00:17:36.079 --> 00:17:56.799
There's sometimes like a it's a it's a need in the coffee shop to just shift them into a position because our favorite barista, who I don't know what magic he would do in the coffee shop, but he made the best cup of coffee, but he was only in that position because he was waiting for this other store to open up and he was going to be the manager and they were short.
00:17:56.960 --> 00:18:00.319
But when we found out that he wasn't their full-time barista, we were very sad.
00:18:00.640 --> 00:18:02.160
We may not go to that location anymore.
00:18:02.480 --> 00:18:02.960
We don't.
00:18:03.279 --> 00:18:12.640
But in that realm, taking the average age, we'll call it 23 and under, I think we employ three guys.
00:18:13.200 --> 00:18:15.440
The rest are women.
00:18:15.920 --> 00:18:16.079
Yeah.
00:18:16.319 --> 00:18:19.359
Not my core competency when it comes to the leadership model that I've seen.
00:18:19.519 --> 00:18:21.599
Yeah, how many of them were you run into in the SEAL teams?
00:18:21.920 --> 00:18:22.160
Zero.
00:18:22.319 --> 00:18:23.440
I mean, they're there as enabling.
00:18:23.759 --> 00:18:27.920
And women have been on the front lines of combat roles since the inception.
00:18:28.000 --> 00:18:32.000
It's it's honestly a disservice that it's not talked about more because it's 100% real.
00:18:32.160 --> 00:18:34.079
But in the SEAL community, it was all guys.
00:18:34.160 --> 00:18:36.000
Um, it is open to women trying out now.
00:18:36.079 --> 00:18:43.839
I there has not been one that I did that I am aware of that has even made it to through or to the first day of training because there's a pre-training pipeline up associated to that.
00:18:44.240 --> 00:18:45.200
But it's just different.
00:18:45.599 --> 00:18:58.079
If you take the same principles that were that made you successful in the SEAL community and you applied them in the same way that you can in the SEAL community, you you're gonna have a real rough day at the time.
00:18:58.400 --> 00:18:59.119
Like marriage.
00:18:59.279 --> 00:18:59.839
Yeah.
00:19:01.119 --> 00:19:01.279
Yeah.
00:19:01.680 --> 00:19:02.960
You're a pretty thoughtful guy.
00:19:03.039 --> 00:19:06.160
I think most people would think that or they can see that now.
00:19:06.480 --> 00:19:12.400
Going back to ending your SEAL career, you were injured, you you fought your way back to a platoon and deployed again.
00:19:12.880 --> 00:19:13.599
What was that?
00:19:13.759 --> 00:19:15.920
Was that harder physically or mentally?
00:19:16.240 --> 00:19:18.160
I mean, it was an equal mix of both.
00:19:18.400 --> 00:19:24.559
For the hardest part up front was psychologically, because physically I couldn't actually train.
00:19:24.640 --> 00:19:28.960
I needed to give my body time to recover and I needed to get off the meds that I was on.
00:19:29.200 --> 00:19:34.079
And then so the physiological battle I think came a little bit later.
00:19:34.319 --> 00:19:37.119
The psychological one was the one that I started with.
00:19:37.279 --> 00:19:37.920
Not by choice.
00:19:38.000 --> 00:19:42.240
That's just the way, you know, when you're sitting in a hospital bed or you're and you can't really move?
00:19:42.480 --> 00:19:50.400
Yeah, walk around, you know, with drop foot for a year, you know, you're left with what you got, which is yourself, you know, fighting yourself, which is a tough enemy.
00:19:50.720 --> 00:19:55.440
So, how much of your identity was being a SEAL at that point?
00:19:56.960 --> 00:19:58.960
As in when I got out of the military or during?
00:19:59.359 --> 00:20:05.440
Or even in that moment, as you're laying there in the hospital bed, not guaranteed that you're gonna go back and be deployable, right?
00:20:05.519 --> 00:20:11.440
Like in that moment was there a realization of like, who am I beyond being a SEAL?
00:20:12.079 --> 00:20:13.359
I never confused the two.
00:20:13.440 --> 00:20:17.119
I always reminded myself that this is what I did and not who I am.
00:20:17.599 --> 00:20:25.039
The biggest question or this frustration that I had was is that I was out of command, doing what I wanted to do, operating at that level.
00:20:25.200 --> 00:20:28.400
So it wasn't really, hey, who who am I outside of this?
00:20:28.559 --> 00:20:31.599
I was just pissed that I was put on the sideline.
00:20:31.839 --> 00:20:34.079
So that was more the the focus there.
00:20:34.319 --> 00:20:46.160
I I of I always knew and consistently reminded myself and tried to, especially since I've been out of the military, and have the ability to speak to people who are still in.
00:20:46.319 --> 00:20:48.240
Just don't confuse the two.
00:20:48.400 --> 00:20:48.720
Yeah.
00:20:48.960 --> 00:20:50.960
And some people are more successful than others.
00:20:51.039 --> 00:20:56.000
And I think, yeah, I I don't believe in absolutes, so I try to avoid terms like always and never.
00:20:56.079 --> 00:21:02.720
But very often those who struggle the most after military service are the ones that attach a lot more of their identity to what they did.
00:21:02.960 --> 00:21:05.440
Yeah, I believe that so often the one yeah.
00:21:05.759 --> 00:21:06.559
Yeah, well said.
00:21:06.880 --> 00:21:10.720
The ones who that's all they are, they struggle afterwards.
00:21:11.039 --> 00:21:11.599
Well, how could you not?
00:21:11.759 --> 00:21:14.079
And I don't think that's necessarily true of just the military.
00:21:14.160 --> 00:21:14.319
Yeah.
00:21:14.559 --> 00:21:16.880
I've watched that happen in first responder communities.
00:21:16.960 --> 00:21:18.640
I've watched that happen to medical professionals.
00:21:18.720 --> 00:21:20.000
I've watched executives.
00:21:20.240 --> 00:21:20.799
You watch it.
00:21:20.880 --> 00:21:33.039
Well, anybody who achieves a level of recognizability or status associated with their occupation is going to struggle, especially if you are used to operating in that world and being recognized or appreciated for that.
00:21:33.119 --> 00:21:37.440
And then it's either your time comes up or it's taken from you for whatever reason it may be.
00:21:37.599 --> 00:21:38.960
That's not the easiest thing to deal with.
00:21:39.200 --> 00:21:43.920
We saw with Corey's dad, not to put you out there, Larry, but I mean he was a Methodist minister for 40 years.
00:21:44.160 --> 00:21:44.799
Yeah.
00:21:45.039 --> 00:21:46.240
And then it went away.
00:21:46.319 --> 00:21:48.160
And he was who am I now?
00:21:48.559 --> 00:21:53.039
Figure out what was next, who was next, what how that, you know, could shape out.
00:21:53.359 --> 00:21:54.400
Now removed.
00:21:54.720 --> 00:21:57.200
I mean, you've been, you know, removed from the community.
00:21:57.279 --> 00:21:59.759
I mean, not in uniform for a number of years.
00:22:00.400 --> 00:22:01.920
Do you look back at it differently now?
00:22:02.079 --> 00:22:05.440
That you're maybe a little retrospective on the outside looking in?
00:22:05.920 --> 00:22:10.799
The farther I get away from it, like I really look forward to the day that I've been out of the military for as long as I was in.
00:22:10.880 --> 00:22:12.559
I'm about four years away from that.
00:22:13.440 --> 00:22:22.720
Um the farther I get away from it, the more appreciative I am of the things that I was able to experience.
00:22:23.279 --> 00:22:24.640
I mean, that's just what it was.
00:22:24.720 --> 00:22:25.200
It was just a job.
00:22:25.519 --> 00:22:26.000
That's what it was.
00:22:26.240 --> 00:22:26.400
Yeah.
00:22:26.640 --> 00:22:28.880
This is more of a recent realization.
00:22:29.519 --> 00:22:32.480
It is uh what year did you join?
00:22:33.039 --> 00:22:33.920
1998.
00:22:34.319 --> 00:22:35.920
So you fall into the same boat as I do.
00:22:36.000 --> 00:22:38.240
You got to experience the pre-9-11 military.
00:22:39.039 --> 00:23:01.200
There is a very bizarre phenomenon going on right now, and it is vet on vet, specifically special operations, unit on special operations unit vitriol, hatred, shit talking, and tearing down that is going on largely online.
00:23:01.519 --> 00:23:03.279
Like a lot of monkeys fight in the zoo.
00:23:03.680 --> 00:23:04.160
Yeah.
00:23:05.200 --> 00:23:10.640
I remember when that was the norm because pre-9-11, we didn't have anybody to fight.
00:23:10.960 --> 00:23:13.359
So we had to fight ourselves and each other.
00:23:13.519 --> 00:23:18.000
And so that's exactly what we did because we were idiots and we didn't know any better.
00:23:18.079 --> 00:23:23.440
And then post-9-11, we all got thrown into the same bowl of soup together and worked fantastically well.
00:23:23.680 --> 00:23:27.279
Some of my best friends come from communities that are not the SEAL community.
00:23:28.079 --> 00:23:33.920
And a lot of people are are expressing an um confusion about what's happening.
00:23:34.160 --> 00:23:49.359
And I look back and now I can say, Oh, what's happening is we're going back to the way it was before because the modern era, as the operational temple slows down, is just returning to the homeostasis of what it was before.
00:23:49.599 --> 00:23:56.720
So although I hate to see it, it's almost natural to a degree.
00:23:57.519 --> 00:24:14.319
But then I also another realization I've come to the more that I talk to people outside of the military, is that those individuals who are publicly doing this stuff online confuse how important they think they are and their community is with how important the rest of the world thinks that it is.
00:24:14.559 --> 00:24:14.720
Yeah.
00:24:14.960 --> 00:24:16.400
Not that many people really give a shit.
00:24:16.559 --> 00:24:16.720
Yeah.
00:24:16.960 --> 00:24:17.599
And I'm glad.
00:24:17.759 --> 00:24:18.000
Yeah.
00:24:18.240 --> 00:24:20.559
They're really vocal inside of, you know.
00:24:20.880 --> 00:24:22.960
Do you guys know what the most popular sport on earth is?
00:24:23.200 --> 00:24:23.599
What's that?
00:24:23.839 --> 00:24:24.079
Soccer.
00:24:24.400 --> 00:24:24.720
Soccer.
00:24:24.880 --> 00:24:25.119
Yeah.
00:24:25.200 --> 00:24:25.440
Yeah.
00:24:25.680 --> 00:24:27.759
Who's the most famous soccer player right now?
00:24:28.240 --> 00:24:29.839
Messi or Ronaldo.
00:24:30.480 --> 00:24:31.119
Maybe.
00:24:31.599 --> 00:24:33.359
Most people couldn't give you any of those names.
00:24:33.440 --> 00:24:33.599
Yeah.
00:24:34.000 --> 00:24:40.960
But their feed is flooded, at least in the US, with veterans talking shit at each other, saying Rangers are better than SEALs and SEALs are better than Green Berets.
00:24:41.519 --> 00:24:44.480
But then Delta Force is better than everybody, and this, that, or the other.
00:24:44.559 --> 00:24:47.680
And the reality is none of that matters and nobody cares.
00:24:48.079 --> 00:24:51.440
And and most people don't even know what the difference is between the people.
00:24:52.240 --> 00:24:57.359
A lot more people know what messy who messy is than those which who I had to look up, by the way, but I don't follow soccer.
00:24:57.680 --> 00:24:59.759
I actually love that you're bringing this up.
00:24:59.920 --> 00:25:13.839
There was a we don't watch a lot of TV, but somehow it was during one of these periods of time where I think maybe I was recovering from something and I stumbled across this television show where it was a dating show in the US in LA.
00:25:14.240 --> 00:25:14.400
Okay.
00:25:14.720 --> 00:25:15.599
This already sounds horrible.
00:25:15.920 --> 00:25:16.640
No, it's amazing to be a good idea.
00:25:17.119 --> 00:25:19.839
It was horribly horribly getting there.
00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:25.279
So then they brought all these soccer players and some of them more famous than others, but they were all from Europe.
00:25:25.440 --> 00:25:27.680
From well, there were some from other places.
00:25:29.200 --> 00:25:30.079
Mexico, I think maybe.
00:25:30.400 --> 00:25:31.119
Outside the US.
00:25:31.359 --> 00:25:31.599
Yeah.
00:25:31.759 --> 00:25:42.640
Anyway, all these famous soccer players were brought up to LA and you know, traditional MA type women were brought into the fold to try and date these men.
00:25:42.799 --> 00:25:53.440
But then they were given fake jobs to pretend that they were like, you know, a construction worker or sales or like it just, it was, it was a hot mess express.
00:25:53.680 --> 00:26:00.640
But at the end of the day, it was because these women wouldn't be judging them based off of their fame and their.
00:26:01.039 --> 00:26:08.240
But the the point was that in America, we as a large population do not know who these soccer players are.
00:26:08.400 --> 00:26:11.519
But so I was looking them up as I was like watching this show.
00:26:11.680 --> 00:26:16.799
It was just funny to me that in other countries they're very well known, but here, no clue.
00:26:17.200 --> 00:26:17.680
Not so much.
00:26:17.839 --> 00:26:18.079
Okay.
00:26:18.720 --> 00:26:21.279
Yeah, it was uh horribly amazing to watch.
00:26:21.440 --> 00:26:22.160
Like in a bad way.
00:26:25.440 --> 00:26:26.160
Not doing it here.
00:26:26.319 --> 00:26:28.559
No, just a little gift is before we continue there.
00:26:28.799 --> 00:26:29.759
Do you want to explain what it is?
00:26:29.920 --> 00:26:33.200
Yeah, we're just giving a little gift from Liberty Speaks and uh GovX.
00:26:33.359 --> 00:26:35.359
So we GovX are in a what do we got?
00:26:35.680 --> 00:26:36.319
T-shirt and the Yeti?
00:26:36.480 --> 00:26:36.720
Hell yeah.
00:26:36.960 --> 00:26:40.160
T-shirt or Yeti and uh Ridge um power bank.
00:26:40.240 --> 00:26:41.759
So just a little thank you for coming on.
00:26:41.920 --> 00:26:44.880
Not that we're done, just want to give you a little something.
00:26:44.960 --> 00:26:47.279
How do you give someone something that has so much?
00:26:47.440 --> 00:26:49.440
But this is a gift from GovX.
00:26:49.759 --> 00:26:55.119
Uh just for Ridge photo, uh phone charger something.
00:26:55.920 --> 00:26:57.440
We really we really appreciate it.
00:26:59.519 --> 00:26:59.839
Thank you.
00:27:00.880 --> 00:27:02.640
Both of you have how many years service?
00:27:02.960 --> 00:27:03.599
I have 20.
00:27:11.119 --> 00:27:12.559
Um kicking cancer.
00:27:13.119 --> 00:27:14.240
Yeah, that's what I'm doing.
00:27:14.319 --> 00:27:20.160
I'm doing just talking to this at the beginning of the year with thyroid cancer and taking one day at a time and trying to beat this thing.
00:27:20.400 --> 00:27:21.599
That's crazy about it.
00:27:21.839 --> 00:27:22.799
Thank you all so much.
00:27:23.440 --> 00:27:25.680
And what a blessing to bump in the button you guys have.
00:27:26.000 --> 00:27:28.480
Now back to regular scheduled programming.
00:27:28.960 --> 00:27:30.480
How did Cleared Hot happen?
00:27:30.640 --> 00:27:38.640
Because you don't seem like a guy, or maybe it's me, that 15 years ago is like, I'm gonna start a podcast, and yeah.
00:27:38.960 --> 00:27:50.960
Um I'm actually a believer that I've never had a unique idea in my entire life, but I try to follow the advice of people that are far more successful than myself, which is almost everybody in every room that I go into.
00:27:51.920 --> 00:28:03.359
Um I was trying to get uh eyeballs on the wingsuit record jump, which was predicated on raising money for the Navy SEAL Foundation.
00:28:03.680 --> 00:28:09.279
And that is the first time that I ever really worked with a brand or had a sponsorship or endorsement relationship.
00:28:09.920 --> 00:28:19.359
And in part of that, I got invited on a very small CrossFit-centric podcast called the Wadcast Podcast.
00:28:19.839 --> 00:28:24.559
And one of the hosts was a guy named Tate Fletcher, who I met that day for the first time.
00:28:24.640 --> 00:28:26.880
We hit it off, stayed in contact ever since.
00:28:27.119 --> 00:28:31.599
He introduced me to Brian Callen and Brendan Schaub, who hosted The Fighter and the Kid.
00:28:31.920 --> 00:28:37.680
And unbeknownst to me, Tate has known Rogan for decades, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt.
00:28:37.759 --> 00:28:39.680
I think he actually did some fighting as well.
00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:43.039
You'll, if you know who Tate is, you see him in a bunch of movies.
00:28:43.119 --> 00:28:44.000
He's in Sicario.
00:28:44.640 --> 00:28:46.160
He's usually the guy getting killed.
00:28:46.480 --> 00:28:52.480
You know, not an immense amount of speaking roles, but like his beer, it's like, I'm like, oh Tate, you just got killed again.
00:28:52.559 --> 00:28:54.240
Man, you get killed in every movie you're in.
00:28:54.960 --> 00:29:01.440
Um he went on Joe's show, and somehow I came up and Tate said you should have this guy on.
00:29:01.519 --> 00:29:02.400
And Joe said, Okay.
00:29:02.720 --> 00:29:09.359
So the first time I went on Joe's show and met him, I was with Tate, and it was based uh around again that fundraising stuff.
00:29:09.519 --> 00:29:12.160
And uh Joe and I stayed in contact after that.
00:29:12.400 --> 00:29:25.920
The second time I went on Joe's show, it was afterwards, and and I am not unique in the suggestion that Joe made by any stretch, he's probably spawned thousands of podcasts, but he said, Hey, you should look at doing a podcast of your own.
00:29:26.559 --> 00:29:42.079
And you know, when it goes back to taking the advice of people that are more successful than yourself in that realm, and this was nine years ago, um even back then, Joe was pretty high up on the mountaintop when it comes to just overall size.
00:29:42.400 --> 00:29:44.720
Yeah, he's been doing pretty well for a pretty good amount of time.
00:29:45.039 --> 00:29:45.599
He deserves it.
00:29:45.680 --> 00:29:46.960
He's a fantastic human being.
00:29:47.200 --> 00:29:49.519
People judge him for a lot of things they don't know him as a person.
00:29:50.079 --> 00:29:52.799
Um wait, can you say that again?
00:29:53.119 --> 00:29:57.680
What people judge him for for the what they see, right?
00:29:58.000 --> 00:30:02.160
Yeah, they judge him for a snapshot or a soundbite, and they don't they don't know him as a person.
00:30:02.240 --> 00:30:09.200
And they think that because he has says something on the podcast, oftentimes, and I know this because this happens to me, you're thinking out loud.
00:30:09.440 --> 00:30:13.440
It doesn't mean that you deeply hold a belief or it's something that's the foundation of your life.
00:30:13.920 --> 00:30:17.519
But you can clip that and then But this is also the game that we play.
00:30:17.599 --> 00:30:22.480
If you hit upload on the internet, you lose control over what's done with the content, so you know be careful with what you say.
00:30:23.279 --> 00:30:26.240
Um, he said, Hey, you should you know consider starting a podcast.
00:30:26.400 --> 00:30:40.319
And again, I was working with brands at that time, and the brand I was working with, or one of them was 511 Tactical, their ambassador manager, said, you know, well, why don't you do that?
00:30:40.640 --> 00:30:46.880
And as part of, you know, the the value exchange here and working with the brand, we'll buy you your first podcasting setup.
00:30:47.039 --> 00:30:47.200
Nice.
00:30:47.440 --> 00:30:55.519
So it was this little Zoom HD6 and two microphones that looked a lot like this and really short stands, and it all fit in uh in a pelican case and I could travel with it.
00:30:55.599 --> 00:30:57.119
And that's where the idea came from.
00:30:57.279 --> 00:30:59.920
Um, I did not come up with the name Cleared Hot.
00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:04.960
Somebody else had suggested it based off of my military background and having been a JTAC.
00:31:05.119 --> 00:31:13.920
And for people unfamiliar, the to release ordinance from an aircraft, it's a very choreographed and synchronized exchange of information, usually through a nine-line format.
00:31:14.319 --> 00:31:22.000
Um, and the last thing the controller on the ground says is that you're cleared hot, which means they accept the responsibility of what comes off of the wings of the aircraft.
00:31:22.319 --> 00:31:23.359
So I liked it.
00:31:23.519 --> 00:31:25.119
I was like, yeah, that actually fits really well.
00:31:25.200 --> 00:31:28.000
It has a lot of meanings other than just, you know, the two words right there.
00:31:28.079 --> 00:31:30.160
So that's what we met with, and that's where it came from.
00:31:30.319 --> 00:31:34.400
The Americana series Montana is brought to you in part by our friends at Lone Depot.
00:31:34.559 --> 00:31:44.319
We know a bunch of veterans at Lone Depot who have made it their mission to educate service members and veterans about home buying, the benefits they've earned, and to be there for them throughout the process.
00:31:44.640 --> 00:31:50.880
We appreciate Lone Depot for supporting Not Special and helping us bring these stories for Montana to you.
00:31:51.200 --> 00:31:51.599
That's awesome.
00:31:51.920 --> 00:31:54.960
When did you realize people were actually listening to you?
00:31:58.880 --> 00:32:00.799
I still don't think about that much.
00:32:01.440 --> 00:32:08.079
Um I guess it would be when people started emailing me and asking me questions.
00:32:08.559 --> 00:32:16.319
I mean, you can you obviously can look at the back end, as you guys know, and see uh stats, which are shockingly limited.
00:32:16.400 --> 00:32:25.279
Somewhere upstream, there's just a tremendous amount of information that people like Apple and you know these device owners and platforms use to monetize things.
00:32:25.440 --> 00:32:25.680
Yeah.
00:32:25.839 --> 00:32:28.319
Obviously, which again, that's the game that we play.
00:32:28.400 --> 00:32:31.119
So it's it's their platform, they can do with it what they want to.
00:32:31.680 --> 00:32:38.000
Um but you know, you can get geographic and maybe rough age, male, female split.
00:32:38.079 --> 00:32:39.599
I don't know even how accurate it is.
00:32:40.079 --> 00:32:45.200
So yeah, you can look at those numbers, but I mean that's the number of people that hear you.
00:32:45.359 --> 00:32:47.519
I don't know if that's the number of people who are listening.
00:32:47.759 --> 00:32:48.000
Yeah.
00:32:48.240 --> 00:32:51.519
So I like the differential clarification.
00:32:51.839 --> 00:32:56.799
I would say, I would say when people started reaching out and asking more personal questions.
00:32:57.359 --> 00:33:02.720
I just assume that they're not to us, and I'm pleasantly surprised when someone says that they are.
00:33:02.960 --> 00:33:05.200
It's always kind of like, oh, thanks.
00:33:05.359 --> 00:33:06.000
Yeah.
00:33:06.319 --> 00:33:07.920
I don't know if you felt that way.
00:33:08.079 --> 00:33:09.920
You just kind of are like, oh, huh.
00:33:10.240 --> 00:33:13.839
It's very humbling that people would reach out and ask for your opinion in anything.
00:33:14.319 --> 00:33:22.000
And then on the other side of that coin, to me, it's very concerning because I usually think in my head, where are the people in your life that you should be asking this to?
00:33:22.160 --> 00:33:27.759
Where are the the formative mentors that you have, the coaches, the friends, the family circle?
00:33:28.000 --> 00:33:34.640
And then on, you know, to take it a step farther, sometimes it's easier to ask an uncomfortable question to somebody anonymous that you don't know.
00:33:34.880 --> 00:33:36.640
You experienced this recently.
00:33:36.720 --> 00:33:40.480
Um, I won't say where, but you were invited to a very prestigious school.
00:33:40.720 --> 00:33:54.079
They have a leadership program where they take kids and um, you know, from different groups and that just, you know, when somebody has that it factor and they're like, you have something, and leadership is one of those it's right.
00:33:54.160 --> 00:33:54.319
Okay.
00:33:54.559 --> 00:34:06.640
And there's something special about the kid, not a title of where they are in their, you know, youth sport, but then they're all put in this cohort from ninth grade to hopefully twelfth grade, should they make it through the full program.
00:34:06.799 --> 00:34:08.320
So Herb was speaking on it.
00:34:08.559 --> 00:34:09.840
It was college, so it was done.
00:34:10.239 --> 00:34:12.960
It was freshman to my gosh, you're so right.
00:34:13.119 --> 00:34:13.840
I'm so sorry.
00:34:14.000 --> 00:34:14.960
It was, yeah.
00:34:15.360 --> 00:34:17.679
But they were sophomores and juniors mostly, I think.
00:34:18.079 --> 00:34:19.519
Sophomore and junior league university.
00:34:19.920 --> 00:34:21.199
The goal was to get them to senior.
00:34:21.280 --> 00:34:24.719
But anyway, afterwards, two of them approached Herb.
00:34:24.880 --> 00:34:26.000
Do you remember what they asked you?
00:34:26.239 --> 00:34:28.239
One said, How do I pick a wife?
00:34:28.480 --> 00:34:36.400
And I was like, because I talked about like it was a talk on like living, owning your journey, being better.
00:34:36.559 --> 00:34:39.840
And I'm like, I don't feel qualified to tell you how to find a wife.
00:34:40.159 --> 00:34:44.559
Slowly, like what I ended up saying was like, don't worry about that today, just enjoy life.
00:34:44.639 --> 00:34:46.159
You're 21 or something.
00:34:46.400 --> 00:34:48.239
I don't remember the other question, but that one I remember.
00:34:48.559 --> 00:34:53.599
Yeah, but it just it that struck me of that commonality of what you just expressed.
00:34:53.760 --> 00:35:13.920
And um, sometimes those questions that you would think would be asked of others, you know, in their lives, but maybe they don't have those people, or maybe it is that comfort of the unknown to just and so I mean that kid was he was over here from from a European country and he was so he was just going to college here and wanting to stay here afterwards.
00:35:14.000 --> 00:35:15.679
But yeah, FaceTime man, yeah.
00:35:16.000 --> 00:35:17.119
Like, hit up your dad.
00:35:18.159 --> 00:35:20.480
I don't like the situation.
00:35:21.119 --> 00:35:24.159
We're always like, we're probably not the ones to take marital advice from.
00:35:24.239 --> 00:35:26.719
It's like taking financial advice from a panhandler.
00:35:26.960 --> 00:35:28.159
Yeah, I can tell you what not to do with it.
00:35:28.400 --> 00:35:30.000
You know, like yeah, we could tell you what not to do.
00:35:30.079 --> 00:35:33.840
I mean, it's working out great that with this one, but we could tell you what not to do previously.
00:35:36.320 --> 00:35:39.360
Speaking of marriage advice, I'm I'm excited for you to ask this question.
00:35:39.679 --> 00:35:41.039
Okay, dear God.
00:35:41.440 --> 00:35:46.079
You and your wife Leah have BJJ black belts.
00:35:46.159 --> 00:35:46.800
Yep.
00:35:47.760 --> 00:35:50.400
How do you settle a disagreement?
00:35:50.880 --> 00:35:52.800
Like every normal person should by talking.
00:35:53.519 --> 00:35:53.840
Okay.
00:35:54.079 --> 00:35:54.400
All right.
00:35:54.559 --> 00:35:58.239
I just envision there being a mat, and you're like, all right, hit the mat, let's go.
00:35:58.480 --> 00:36:01.360
That's a recipe for a really short relationship.
00:36:01.599 --> 00:36:05.760
So I am an aggressive hobbyist when it comes to jujitsu.
00:36:05.920 --> 00:36:06.159
Okay.
00:36:06.320 --> 00:36:08.079
My wife has been training for 17 years.
00:36:08.159 --> 00:36:09.519
So we both have black belts, yes.
00:36:09.599 --> 00:36:11.360
She's a third degree black belt.
00:36:11.599 --> 00:36:15.840
Um, each, so it's a tape, piece of tape or a fabric that they'll put on your black belt.
00:36:15.920 --> 00:36:18.079
Each of those takes three years to get after your black belt.
00:36:18.320 --> 00:36:22.320
Her next one is five years, and then it's like two at five, and then another one at seven.
00:36:22.400 --> 00:36:25.840
So they're just marks of your continued participation in the sport.
00:36:25.920 --> 00:36:27.280
So she's been at it for 17 years.
00:36:27.360 --> 00:36:29.440
She teaches, she coaches, she competes.
00:36:30.079 --> 00:36:32.559
It is a large part of her world.
00:36:33.199 --> 00:36:35.119
And I couldn't be more supportive of that.
00:36:35.599 --> 00:36:42.559
I give exactly zero shits about the outcome of jujitsu matches.
00:36:42.639 --> 00:36:48.800
I like it because it's a physical activity, it's uh mentally challenging.
00:36:48.960 --> 00:36:51.519
You can train as hard as you want to, and you might match up against somebody.
00:36:51.679 --> 00:36:56.320
There's luck, there's timing, there's the game that they play, it might completely counteract your game.
00:36:56.639 --> 00:37:00.239
So that yeah, I I want there to be a separation between the two.
00:37:00.320 --> 00:37:00.480
Yeah.
00:37:00.639 --> 00:37:03.840
The reality is that size and strength is real.
00:37:04.000 --> 00:37:06.880
I've been in an athletic endeavors my entire life.
00:37:07.039 --> 00:37:12.159
I have the physical ability to win in a jujitsu contest against my wife.
00:37:12.400 --> 00:37:12.559
Sure.
00:37:12.800 --> 00:37:13.360
But why would I?
00:37:13.599 --> 00:37:14.159
It's not worth it.
00:37:14.400 --> 00:37:15.519
Yeah, I was joking.
00:37:15.679 --> 00:37:17.840
I don't really figure that that's how, but that's it.
00:37:18.000 --> 00:37:19.119
Well, you can win that match.
00:37:19.360 --> 00:37:22.159
Yeah, in my analogy here.
00:37:22.239 --> 00:37:24.400
It's like, do you want to win the battle and lose the war?
00:37:24.639 --> 00:37:26.320
You know, so exactly.
00:37:26.639 --> 00:37:28.719
It's not worth until you're going home.
00:37:28.960 --> 00:37:32.079
Yeah, we we can drill together, but we just don't competitively roll.
00:37:32.159 --> 00:37:32.320
Yeah.
00:37:32.639 --> 00:37:34.880
Because jujitsu isn't magic.
00:37:35.039 --> 00:37:36.000
It really isn't.
00:37:36.159 --> 00:37:41.039
It's angles, it's leverage, it's timing, it's pattern recognition.
00:37:41.519 --> 00:37:43.440
But at the end of the day, it's easier.
00:37:43.519 --> 00:37:45.519
I'm six foot 215 pounds.
00:37:46.239 --> 00:37:49.199
I can muscle my way through stuff that she would never be able to.
00:37:49.280 --> 00:37:56.400
And even her with perfect technique, because of that difference, I can force ugly things to work that I shouldn't be able to.
00:37:56.480 --> 00:37:56.559
Yeah.
00:37:56.719 --> 00:38:01.280
And the last thing I want to do is diminish the way she feels about all the work that she has put in because of that.
00:38:01.599 --> 00:38:01.920
No.
00:38:02.800 --> 00:38:03.119
Yeah.
00:38:03.199 --> 00:38:05.840
I am you want to talk about your book.
00:38:05.920 --> 00:38:07.920
I I maybe had some bars.
00:38:08.079 --> 00:38:09.679
I want to hear how you got tricked into this.
00:38:09.840 --> 00:38:12.079
How do you get tricked into writing a book?
00:38:12.480 --> 00:38:18.800
So my buddy Mike Glover, who was a Green Beret, had he has written two books at this point.
00:38:18.880 --> 00:38:20.400
I think he's got another one in the works.
00:38:20.559 --> 00:38:22.159
And he had been chipping away at me for years.
00:38:22.320 --> 00:38:23.760
Oh, you need to write a book, you need to write a book.
00:38:23.840 --> 00:38:25.280
And I just I didn't have any interest in it.
00:38:25.519 --> 00:38:30.559
We have a mutual friend Jack Carr, who will openly tell you he had two desires his entire life.
00:38:30.719 --> 00:38:33.039
One was to be a Navy SEAL, the other one was to be an author.
00:38:33.199 --> 00:38:34.559
And he's crushing both of them.
00:38:34.719 --> 00:38:34.880
Yeah.
00:38:35.119 --> 00:38:35.920
I was not that way.
00:38:36.000 --> 00:38:38.880
I never had a desire to be an author, quite frankly.
00:38:39.119 --> 00:38:46.480
Um, many times openly I've publicly said there's probably too many SEAL books, especially ones that focus around like Really SEALs write books?
00:38:46.719 --> 00:38:46.960
Yes.
00:38:47.199 --> 00:38:49.840
You get issued your publisher right after you make it through Hell Week.
00:38:50.800 --> 00:38:58.559
Um Yeah, and I don't my philosophy is always the same.
00:38:58.719 --> 00:39:01.679
Your earned experiences are yours to do with whatever you want to do with.
00:39:01.760 --> 00:39:03.519
I'm not here to tell you how to live your life.
00:39:03.679 --> 00:39:07.280
I don't care what people do with them until they start flirting with the truth.
00:39:07.519 --> 00:39:12.320
And as soon as you cross that line, then I have an issue with it because you're no longer using your experiences.
00:39:12.400 --> 00:39:13.280
You're lying to people.
00:39:13.679 --> 00:39:20.239
There's a lot of books out there in the SEAL space talking about combat operations that I would say flirt with that line in the sand.
00:39:20.400 --> 00:39:21.840
Oh, I gotta ask this question.
00:39:21.920 --> 00:39:22.719
It's not on the board.
00:39:23.039 --> 00:39:23.679
Oh my god.
00:39:23.840 --> 00:39:24.239
Go for it.
00:39:24.480 --> 00:39:37.840
Okay, so I've studied a lot of neuroscience um, you know, studies about operators, their brains, the impacts from that, those lived experiences, traumas, whatever you want to categorize that as.
00:39:38.320 --> 00:39:39.280
Those are an excuse for lying.
00:39:39.519 --> 00:39:49.920
They're not an excuse, but do you think any element of it is they genuinely believe that that has happened that way because the way that their brains have now adapted to the truth?
00:39:50.159 --> 00:39:51.280
They think the lie is true.
00:39:51.440 --> 00:39:51.519
Right.
00:39:51.760 --> 00:39:52.239
Is that what you're saying?
00:39:53.519 --> 00:39:55.679
Like, could that be anywhere in the possibility?
00:39:55.920 --> 00:39:57.840
Why even put that out there as a possibility?
00:39:58.000 --> 00:40:02.480
All that is is another off-ramp or another door in a hallway of excuses that people could take.
00:40:02.719 --> 00:40:03.039
Sure.
00:40:03.199 --> 00:40:04.639
Is it is it possible?
00:40:04.800 --> 00:40:05.280
Sure.
00:40:05.840 --> 00:40:14.000
But maybe that's where like good checks and balances come from your people around you that were there to say, would you mind reading my book to see if this is how you remember this?
00:40:14.480 --> 00:40:15.679
You would think that that happens.
00:40:15.840 --> 00:40:16.079
Yeah.
00:40:16.159 --> 00:40:16.480
Yeah.
00:40:17.199 --> 00:40:19.599
It would have for me, I would be like, You were there.
00:40:19.679 --> 00:40:26.960
My brain can be a little foggy on this because I earlier couldn't find these boots that were literally right in the suitcase that I had put them in.
00:40:27.119 --> 00:40:27.519
Yeah.
00:40:28.000 --> 00:40:31.840
I have to tell you though, I should be honest and hopefully don't get up and walk out.
00:40:31.920 --> 00:40:34.960
I've never listened to a full episode of Cleared Hot.
00:40:35.199 --> 00:40:36.000
Neither have I.
00:40:36.639 --> 00:40:37.360
Same with this.
00:40:37.599 --> 00:40:38.880
But I've seen snippets, right?
00:40:38.960 --> 00:40:39.119
Yeah.
00:40:39.280 --> 00:40:42.320
But so I kind of went into this book open.
00:40:42.800 --> 00:40:45.199
I gotta say, this is like a seal book.
00:40:45.360 --> 00:40:46.400
I can't wait for this book.
00:40:46.480 --> 00:40:47.360
Like, I like this guy.
00:40:47.519 --> 00:40:48.880
Yeah, it's not a sealbook.
00:40:48.960 --> 00:40:52.159
I think the first sentence in it is if you're looking for the book of war stories, move along.
00:40:52.400 --> 00:40:54.639
Like not exactly those words, but yeah, yeah.
00:40:54.800 --> 00:40:58.079
Not a pretentious bone in your body, and like just actionable.
00:40:58.159 --> 00:41:01.519
And this is my I have I don't want to put words in your mouth.
00:41:01.599 --> 00:41:04.719
I believe a lot of special operations community go and like, yeah, do this.
00:41:05.119 --> 00:41:07.280
And it's like, well, no, we're not special operations.
00:41:07.519 --> 00:41:08.719
Life isn't a one-size-fits-all.
00:41:08.960 --> 00:41:10.960
Yeah, and it's like again, though, not relatable.
00:41:11.440 --> 00:41:12.719
Well, and that's what I fall back on.
00:41:12.880 --> 00:41:16.000
Their earned life experiences, their choice to do with what they want to.
00:41:16.159 --> 00:41:17.039
That isn't who I am.
00:41:17.199 --> 00:41:23.039
I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I was to put on that as a like a facade of who I am.
00:41:23.199 --> 00:41:25.679
And so I tried to stay true to who I am.
00:41:25.920 --> 00:41:30.159
But the way it ends up happening is Mike chips away at me and says, Hey, let's write a book together.
00:41:30.320 --> 00:41:31.840
That was his the wedge.
00:41:32.000 --> 00:41:33.679
I was like, what do you mean?
00:41:33.840 --> 00:41:36.239
He goes, Well, as a green bray, you were a seal.
00:41:36.480 --> 00:41:40.159
Have you ever heard of a book where we pick a dozen topics?
00:41:40.239 --> 00:41:49.119
And what we do is we each discuss it from our lens and our experience, and we could figure out a way like his could be italicized, a different font and text, right?
00:41:49.199 --> 00:41:51.199
So you can tell like two different voices.
00:41:51.440 --> 00:41:58.000
So we set a date that we were going to come together and share our work, and we'll just say that one of the two of us actually did any work.
00:41:58.239 --> 00:42:00.079
I'll say someone did some work and someone didn't.
00:42:00.400 --> 00:42:04.639
Let's just say that, yeah, there's a reason only my name is on that son of a bitch.
00:42:04.880 --> 00:42:09.440
But he had, to his credit, had found a book agent.
00:42:09.679 --> 00:42:14.480
And actually, what I really needed at that point was somebody who takes a book idea and creates a pitch deck out of it.
00:42:15.199 --> 00:42:21.440
It was, and I'm not a creative person when it comes to being able to like I can't draw.
00:42:21.599 --> 00:42:24.719
I don't know what is a good graphic on a t-shirt.
00:42:24.800 --> 00:42:27.519
I I could maybe say this is a rough idea, but I need other people.
00:42:27.920 --> 00:42:29.280
So is this really picture?
00:42:29.360 --> 00:42:31.760
I don't I saw it and I was like, oh, this is awesome.
00:42:31.920 --> 00:42:32.079
Yeah.
00:42:32.239 --> 00:42:33.519
This is why you pay people to do stuff.
00:42:33.920 --> 00:42:35.679
So this is my theory about Green Berets.
00:42:35.920 --> 00:42:36.079
Yeah.
00:42:36.480 --> 00:42:38.079
Then they all wanted to be SEALs, me too.
00:42:39.679 --> 00:42:41.360
We just aren't that good in the water.
00:42:41.599 --> 00:42:49.760
No, I was gonna say you take one guy with a really great idea that can convince hundreds of commandos.
00:42:50.079 --> 00:42:50.960
Well, that's the job.
00:42:51.679 --> 00:42:56.159
I mean, unconventional warfare and foreign internal defense by doctrine is the Green Beret mission set.
00:42:56.480 --> 00:42:59.840
So he just applied the Green Beret mission set to you and others.
00:43:00.159 --> 00:43:02.960
He the technical description of what he did is lied to my face.
00:43:03.280 --> 00:43:13.280
But so the the book pitch got put together, and and another thing he did is he had found a book agent, which is also a role I wouldn't have known what to do.
00:43:13.679 --> 00:43:13.840
Yeah.
00:43:14.079 --> 00:43:18.719
I gave said pitch to said agent who did whatever agents do.
00:43:19.119 --> 00:43:28.719
And she said, you know, publishers do not every day they don't look at these things, so they kind of chunk them and they'll get together and they look at a bunch at any one time.
00:43:28.880 --> 00:43:38.480
So she said, probably I don't remember the exact words she said, but I think she said, you'll probably hear back in three to six months, something along those lines, because it's not anything to do with what you did.
00:43:38.559 --> 00:43:38.800
Yeah.
00:43:38.960 --> 00:43:41.840
It's just they it's not every day they're sitting there working through this.
00:43:42.320 --> 00:43:45.760
And I think uh about two weeks later it got picked up.
00:43:47.360 --> 00:43:47.760
It was quick.
00:43:48.000 --> 00:43:48.400
It was quick.
00:43:48.880 --> 00:43:52.320
What is a what does drown proof mean to you outside of the water?
00:43:53.039 --> 00:43:59.039
Yeah, the book itself, I mean, uh let's be real honest, uh it is impossible to be drown proof.
00:43:59.360 --> 00:44:03.920
People think I think that seals are impervious to the effects of water.
00:44:04.079 --> 00:44:08.079
I can give you many examples of seals currently within the last five years.
00:44:08.239 --> 00:44:11.679
Two guys drowned on a shipboarding operation in uh in the Middle East.
00:44:12.400 --> 00:44:12.559
Yeah.
00:44:12.800 --> 00:44:14.079
Chambers mom loves.
00:44:14.320 --> 00:44:14.480
Yeah.
00:44:14.880 --> 00:44:16.400
And bodies never recovered.
00:44:16.719 --> 00:44:17.039
Yeah.
00:44:17.280 --> 00:44:20.320
I know of a seal that drowned in a river crossing in Afghanistan.
00:44:20.400 --> 00:44:22.000
It happens in training from time to time.
00:44:22.079 --> 00:44:27.199
I know of two seals that were found at the bottom of the pool at the Little Creek training complex.
00:44:27.280 --> 00:44:34.159
It seems like they were, it looked like they had a safety observer and there was a shallow water blackout, and the other this is all an assumption, by the way.
00:44:34.559 --> 00:44:37.599
That somehow they both ended up deceased underwater.
00:44:37.760 --> 00:44:38.719
That's how they were found.
00:44:38.960 --> 00:44:46.400
You would think that coming from that world where there's an evolution, which is where the name of the book comes from, called drownproofing, that it wouldn't happen.
00:44:46.559 --> 00:44:47.280
But that's not the case.
00:44:47.440 --> 00:44:50.079
So it's impossible to become drownproof.
00:44:50.159 --> 00:44:55.840
What it really means is become as good as possible at surviving whatever it is that is happening around you.
00:44:55.920 --> 00:44:59.440
So then hopefully at some point you can layer thriving on top of that.
00:44:59.519 --> 00:45:00.639
But the survival comes first.
00:45:01.440 --> 00:45:12.960
I love that too, because I think any time that you consider yourself drownproof, invincible, you add ego to that and you strike me as anything but egotistical.
00:45:13.280 --> 00:45:14.159
My wife read the book.
00:45:14.320 --> 00:45:15.840
This is how she describes it.
00:45:16.159 --> 00:45:24.880
She goes, you know, a lot of books they start off like yours did, but then they go on this hero's journey and they build you back and in this arc.
00:45:24.960 --> 00:45:28.639
And she was like, that didn't happen in your book.
00:45:28.800 --> 00:45:29.840
I just kept waiting for that.
00:45:29.920 --> 00:45:34.079
But it was just a slow descent down into how how many mistakes you've made in your life.
00:45:34.719 --> 00:45:37.199
So yeah, I mean, I was just honest.
00:45:37.280 --> 00:45:39.039
I was honest about the mistakes that I made.
00:45:39.199 --> 00:45:40.639
I I don't have that arc.
00:45:40.719 --> 00:45:45.599
I am stumbling my way through life just like everybody else is doing the best I can to fall forward instead of backwards.
00:45:45.840 --> 00:45:53.840
The Americana series Montana is brought to you in part by our friends at Alliance Nationwide Exposition, known as the Hotel Show Pros.
00:45:54.079 --> 00:46:02.000
Alliance helps organizations across the country bring trade shows, conferences, and events to life from planning and logistics to the show floor.
00:46:02.320 --> 00:46:08.880
We appreciate Alliance for supporting Not Special and helping us bring these stories from Montana to you.
00:46:09.039 --> 00:46:11.039
What are you most proud of?
00:46:11.360 --> 00:46:13.119
Being a father and a husband.
00:46:13.440 --> 00:46:15.280
It's two great achievements.
00:46:15.599 --> 00:46:18.159
Well, I failed at the husband one the first time around.
00:46:18.239 --> 00:46:19.679
Um, I feel like I'm doing a lot better.
00:46:19.840 --> 00:46:21.199
So I even in that, right?
00:46:21.280 --> 00:46:23.440
And I wrote about that in the book as openly as I could.
00:46:23.599 --> 00:46:23.760
Sure.
00:46:24.079 --> 00:46:34.320
I'm always very cautious about that because I do have a platform that my ex-wife doesn't have, and it's not fair for me to share details outside of the very broad details of what happens in any divorce.
00:46:34.400 --> 00:46:37.199
I'm yet to meet one where both parties are like, it was amazing.
00:46:38.400 --> 00:46:40.800
Um and so I'm always very cautious with that one.
00:46:40.880 --> 00:46:45.280
But that's another example of like I, you know, it's easy to blame the other person.
00:46:45.360 --> 00:46:48.079
It's really hard to take a look in the mirror and own your aspects of that.
00:46:48.239 --> 00:46:53.760
And you know, I was part of, you know, I was 50% of that relationship and it didn't go the the way that we wanted it to.
00:46:53.920 --> 00:46:54.239
Yeah.
00:46:54.400 --> 00:46:57.599
With my kids, I've failed with my kids more times probably than I've succeeded.
00:46:57.679 --> 00:46:59.679
They've seen versions of me that I wish they'd never had.
00:46:59.760 --> 00:47:02.320
I've said and done things I wish I hadn't done or said.
00:47:02.639 --> 00:47:04.239
Um, it's just the reality of my life.
00:47:04.480 --> 00:47:04.639
Yeah.
00:47:04.880 --> 00:47:06.079
Just try to get better.
00:47:06.320 --> 00:47:09.920
I mean, you're a California kid, you've traveled the world.
00:47:10.320 --> 00:47:11.599
Why Montana?
00:47:12.079 --> 00:47:14.159
Out the window, you're looking at Flathead Lake.
00:47:14.320 --> 00:47:16.400
The eastern side of it, which I think we're taking a look at.
00:47:16.480 --> 00:47:25.760
I'll have to look at it again when we go out there, is the western edge of the Bob Marshall National Wilderness, which is 40, 50 miles from west to east, I think.
00:47:26.000 --> 00:47:28.480
Um, between Glacier, the glacier abuts.
00:47:28.800 --> 00:47:29.920
You guys went into Glacier, yeah.
00:47:30.320 --> 00:47:36.159
So the road that you took to drive into Glacier is the border between Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall National Wilderness.
00:47:36.320 --> 00:47:40.400
So huge, almost contiguous portion of very protected wildland.
00:47:40.719 --> 00:47:43.679
On the other side of that is a town called Great Falls.
00:47:43.840 --> 00:47:46.880
Um, and there's an Air Force base there, Malstrom Air Force Base.
00:47:47.039 --> 00:47:51.760
My ex-wife's father was on that Air Force base when he met his wife.
00:47:51.920 --> 00:47:53.199
They had children.
00:47:53.760 --> 00:48:01.199
And people who are from Montana, in my experience, wherever you meet them, they have this poll to want to go back.
00:48:01.519 --> 00:48:05.440
And I get it now that I've lived here for about eight or nine years.
00:48:06.239 --> 00:48:15.119
So my ex wanted to come up and visit, but she did not want to look at visiting or potentially if we were even talking about moving Great Falls.
00:48:15.280 --> 00:48:18.400
Not that there's anything wrong with Great Falls, but it's a lot more flat.
00:48:18.480 --> 00:48:22.960
And one of the things she remembered from growing up was in the wintertime, the wind rips through there.
00:48:23.360 --> 00:48:30.320
In the valley here, it's interesting because a lot of that will go over the top because it's it's an incredibly large valley, miles wide.
00:48:30.400 --> 00:48:30.559
Yeah.
00:48:30.719 --> 00:48:34.239
But if you look, you know, like the laminar nature of the weather patterns, it'll go over the top.
00:48:35.519 --> 00:48:39.360
So a little bit more temperate and moderate when it comes to the winters.
00:48:39.440 --> 00:48:42.800
And she had a family member that worked here in Calisbell.
00:48:43.199 --> 00:48:47.360
So we used this as the place that we would come to visit, and we came and visited a few times.
00:48:47.599 --> 00:48:53.920
We ended up buying an investment property near Flathead Lake that was being used as an Airbnb.
00:48:54.000 --> 00:49:01.199
So we did literally a virtual handoff of the keys, used it as an Airbnb, and then we stayed for a month there, an entire December.
00:49:01.360 --> 00:49:21.280
I picked my sons up from school in the afternoon on a Friday and drove a just ridiculously unreasonable and dangerous distance that day, overnight for a couple hours in Idaho Falls, I think it was, finished up, came up here, and it was just an incredibly like banner snow year.
00:49:21.360 --> 00:49:24.400
There's a picnic table, we would wipe it off every day, six inches of powder.
00:49:24.880 --> 00:49:27.039
Kids are out there, we had family coming up.
00:49:27.199 --> 00:49:28.239
It was just awesome.
00:49:28.320 --> 00:49:34.079
And then we went back to our house in San Diego where you could spread your arms apart and touch the stucco on the houses.
00:49:34.320 --> 00:49:42.800
And you could tell your house was like house one alpha that just had the door on the other side of the driveway from the one across the street and a different paint scheme.
00:49:42.960 --> 00:49:44.239
Nothing against that either, by the way.
00:49:44.320 --> 00:49:46.960
I love I love California and I know why people live there.
00:49:47.039 --> 00:49:50.079
There's also many things I don't like about California, hence why I left.
00:49:50.320 --> 00:49:52.480
We kind of just sat around and said, What are we doing?
00:49:52.639 --> 00:50:01.840
And my oldest son was finishing seventh grade, and I did not want him to go into high school blind, move and go into high school.
00:50:01.920 --> 00:50:03.760
It's hard enough being a young man or a woman.
00:50:04.239 --> 00:50:07.199
So we kind of came to the conclusion like we need to get them up there.
00:50:07.280 --> 00:50:11.280
If we're gonna do this, I want him to do eighth grade, then go into high school.
00:50:11.599 --> 00:50:13.519
We just agreed, like, let's go.
00:50:13.679 --> 00:50:16.320
Put the house on the market a few months later, boom, done.
00:50:16.559 --> 00:50:19.119
Crossed the border July of that year, never look back.
00:50:19.360 --> 00:50:19.679
Nice.
00:50:19.840 --> 00:50:21.679
Yeah, it is so beautiful up here.
00:50:21.760 --> 00:50:24.239
And I can't get through my mind, maybe you can help me.
00:50:24.480 --> 00:50:31.519
It's it's isolated, ish, ish, but it's solitude and like just peaceful.
00:50:31.760 --> 00:50:34.800
How do you see it being here now almost 10 years?
00:50:35.039 --> 00:50:36.639
It well, it can be either of those things.
00:50:36.719 --> 00:50:47.280
I mean, we rent a house in town because of proximity to the coffee shop or the studio or the jujitsu gym, or my middle son was living with us with us at the time, and we found a place that was walking distance to his high school.
00:50:47.360 --> 00:50:48.639
So people may not know this.
00:50:48.719 --> 00:50:50.239
We have all sorts of things in Montana.
00:50:50.320 --> 00:50:53.119
We have running water, we have electricity, we have the internet.
00:50:53.599 --> 00:50:55.599
We saw Krispy Kreme donuts, and we're like, what?
00:50:55.679 --> 00:50:56.639
Like North Carolina.
00:50:57.119 --> 00:50:59.199
We're like you're going to like Afghanistan.
00:50:59.280 --> 00:51:02.159
Not we're in two Starbucks, a black rifle coffee.
00:51:02.239 --> 00:51:03.280
We even have an airport.
00:51:03.519 --> 00:51:04.880
Y'all sold me with Krispy Kreme.
00:51:05.039 --> 00:51:05.920
You could have stopped there.
00:51:06.079 --> 00:51:06.719
Yeah.
00:51:07.119 --> 00:51:08.320
So, but that's in town.
00:51:08.480 --> 00:51:14.639
But so where we are sitting right now, which nobody, I mean, I know you guys shot some b-roll, but what nobody would be able to tell is what it takes.
00:51:14.880 --> 00:51:16.880
Vic, like 30 minutes, 30 minutes drive.
00:51:17.039 --> 00:51:17.519
Yeah.
00:51:17.840 --> 00:51:25.519
Most of that time actually was once you get through Lakeside and come up the road heading towards Blacktail Mountain, which is uh one of the locally owned ski resorts.
00:51:26.079 --> 00:51:28.000
You can be as isolated as you wanted it to be.
00:51:28.079 --> 00:51:33.119
So it's more of a is that why so many people from special operations, sorry to cut you off, come to Montana?
00:51:33.280 --> 00:51:34.000
You'd have to ask them.
00:51:34.079 --> 00:51:34.960
Yeah, that's fair.
00:51:35.199 --> 00:51:35.840
I have no idea.
00:51:36.000 --> 00:51:40.559
Um well, I mean, I have an idea of what it's appealing to me, but you'd have to ask them about sure.
00:51:40.800 --> 00:51:42.800
Um, it's a mix of both.
00:51:42.880 --> 00:51:53.920
So we live in Calispell, which I have access to everything I want, but if that became too much, you get in the car and go 20 minutes, and it can be as peaceful and isolated as you want it to be.
00:51:54.079 --> 00:51:57.519
So it's really a kind of a buffet platter of how you want to live your life.
00:51:57.599 --> 00:51:59.760
And I really appreciate that flexibility.
00:52:00.000 --> 00:52:06.960
I enjoy um the topography, I enjoy hunting, I enjoy the western mountain state stuff.
00:52:07.119 --> 00:52:08.880
I also enjoy winter sports as well, too.
00:52:08.960 --> 00:52:10.960
So it's a great place to be, and not everybody does.
00:52:11.039 --> 00:52:16.559
So it's really dependent on the person and what you what you want to do, what you get out of it.
00:52:16.719 --> 00:52:16.960
Yeah.
00:52:17.360 --> 00:52:21.039
I gotta ask, this I just saw this because you, you know, you are a seal.
00:52:21.280 --> 00:52:21.920
We're a seal.
00:52:22.480 --> 00:52:25.119
Do you ever just go swim in the cold water of Flathead Lake?
00:52:25.360 --> 00:52:25.920
Zero times.
00:52:26.159 --> 00:52:28.079
Yeah, I'm not yeah, kind of had that.
00:52:28.559 --> 00:52:38.800
It's not my first chosen activity, and the way I describe it to people is if if you worked at Bastin Robbins every day for almost 20 years, and on your first off day somebody said, Hey, do you want to go get a scoop of ice cream?
00:52:38.960 --> 00:52:40.079
The answer is probably not.
00:52:40.320 --> 00:52:42.639
It's like if I ask her, hey, would you like to go camping?
00:52:42.960 --> 00:52:43.280
No.
00:52:44.639 --> 00:52:45.679
It's like I'm set.
00:52:46.000 --> 00:52:46.960
Yeah, yeah.
00:52:47.360 --> 00:52:50.480
I can appreciate it from time to time, sure, depending on the setting.
00:52:50.559 --> 00:52:56.960
But yeah, I mean, water sport, you know, small watercraft and just voluntarily going into cold water is not necessarily my jam anymore.
00:52:57.440 --> 00:53:04.079
Do you see yourself and maybe you know, comparing where you were, you know, 20 years ago to now?
00:53:04.639 --> 00:53:06.239
Are you happy where you're at?
00:53:10.079 --> 00:53:15.119
I'm happy with who I am as a person, and that's about all I try to focus on.
00:53:15.360 --> 00:53:20.719
I think otherwise, you know, you like are you because people will hear that question, they'll say, Well, are you happy with what you have?
00:53:20.800 --> 00:53:22.159
I'm like, Oh, that's a trap.
00:53:22.480 --> 00:53:24.320
Are you happy with what you do?
00:53:24.639 --> 00:53:27.519
And I don't even know how I would describe what I do for a living.
00:53:27.599 --> 00:53:32.719
The easiest way in conversations is I just tell people I own a coffee shop because it like that makes it much easier.
00:53:32.880 --> 00:53:35.199
Well, if you say, Hey, I do a podcast, like, well, what's that?
00:53:35.679 --> 00:53:36.159
What's it about?
00:53:36.239 --> 00:53:36.719
Who do you talk to?
00:53:36.800 --> 00:53:38.880
How do you pick your guests or do you make money on that?
00:53:39.119 --> 00:53:45.760
And I don't mind, I don't mind any of those questions, but it especially if you're meeting somebody in passing, it's easier to say, I own a coffee shop.
00:53:45.840 --> 00:53:47.599
They're like, Oh, I drink coffee, like me too.
00:53:47.760 --> 00:53:47.920
Yeah.
00:53:48.159 --> 00:53:48.480
You know?
00:53:49.119 --> 00:53:58.000
You know, it's uh and again, it's I I enjoy talking with people, but you gotta pick and choose how deep you want to spend in a conversation when you're when you're in passing.
00:53:58.239 --> 00:54:04.960
So I think earlier in my life, I was concerned a lot more with either the things that I had or had done or and stuff like that.
00:54:05.039 --> 00:54:13.760
And at this point, I mean I'm definitely a work in progress, and I have a list, a laundry list of things that is 10x that I need to work on versus things that I'm doing well.
00:54:14.000 --> 00:54:19.840
Um, but I'm happy with who I am as a person, and I understand, and I probably didn't realize it until recently.
00:54:20.000 --> 00:54:24.639
What I I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I would know what I want to do with the remainder of my life.
00:54:24.719 --> 00:54:26.639
And so I'm happy with that station.
00:54:27.280 --> 00:54:29.440
And now I gotta ask, what do you want to do?
00:54:29.760 --> 00:54:32.480
I want to be a positive impact on the world around me.
00:54:33.039 --> 00:54:33.679
And that's it.
00:54:33.760 --> 00:54:39.360
And I don't know the prescriptive mechanism of doing that, but that's the underlying principle of what I want to spend my time doing.
00:54:39.599 --> 00:54:46.800
That's exactly what led us to this and to also bringing together the veteran community as well.
00:54:46.960 --> 00:54:48.400
Not just non-veterans too.
00:54:48.559 --> 00:54:50.880
Yeah, non-veterans too, but just the world as a whole.
00:54:51.039 --> 00:54:52.400
We hope to be a positive impact.
00:54:52.480 --> 00:54:54.159
So I can appreciate that answer.
00:54:54.480 --> 00:54:59.440
I mean, I we'd be dumb not to ask where sitting where you were maybe eight years ago doing a show.
00:55:01.119 --> 00:55:01.840
Where have you guys been at it?
00:55:02.000 --> 00:55:02.559
Where are you in?
00:55:02.719 --> 00:55:05.679
So our first episode was September 11th of 2025.
00:55:05.840 --> 00:55:06.559
That's when it aired.
00:55:06.960 --> 00:55:10.000
At this point, I think we have just over 17,000 subscribers.
00:55:10.480 --> 00:55:12.320
Yeah, on YouTube or whatnot.
00:55:12.480 --> 00:55:14.559
But I mean, any advice?
00:55:15.679 --> 00:55:16.960
Because you've been successful at this.
00:55:17.119 --> 00:55:18.719
I'm you I mean, it depends.
00:55:18.800 --> 00:55:24.159
Well, it depends on I could point to you successful in comparison to who.
00:55:24.639 --> 00:55:29.039
I mean, what's what kills people is the metric they use or the yardstick is Joe.
00:55:29.360 --> 00:55:38.320
It's like, hey guys, you might want to pick somebody else because he has tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions, of back-end download.
00:55:38.559 --> 00:55:41.519
Like you're trying to broad jump the Grand Canyon.
00:55:41.760 --> 00:55:48.159
Um sure, I mean, I guess I've had success, but measured as what?
00:55:48.639 --> 00:55:51.920
I would say uh don't focus on the subscribers.
00:55:52.239 --> 00:55:54.000
Don't focus on any of the metrics.
00:55:54.239 --> 00:55:57.760
Focus on staying true to who you guys are and what it is that you want to do.
00:55:58.000 --> 00:56:05.760
And if you do that, I'm not saying this makes it easy or it's gonna make it quick, because there are cheat codes to this content game, and some of them are pretty dirty.
00:56:06.159 --> 00:56:11.599
And I actually think a lot of them provide short-term growth but are long-term not sustainable.
00:56:11.679 --> 00:56:13.360
It eventually will catch up with you.
00:56:13.519 --> 00:56:13.840
Yeah.
00:56:14.000 --> 00:56:17.519
Um, so I would suggest avoiding those things and staying true to who you are.
00:56:17.760 --> 00:56:23.199
The Americana Series Montana is brought to you in part by our friends at Bellator Recruiting Academy.
00:56:23.760 --> 00:56:30.880
Our friends Sharif and Brian co-founded Bellator to help transitioning veterans build careers and talent acquisition.
00:56:31.119 --> 00:56:37.119
They're not just helping veterans get hired, they're teaching veterans how to become the people who do the hiring.
00:56:37.280 --> 00:56:43.519
We appreciate Bellator for supporting Not Special and helping us bring these stories from Montana to you.
00:56:43.920 --> 00:56:53.280
Yeah, we're just trying to seek good conversations that hopefully people can relate to and can learn from and show we're more united than people want to, you know, divide us in this conversation.
00:56:53.519 --> 00:57:04.639
And thank you for saying that because we've had this conversation where um, you know, you see some people come out with a brand new, you know, podcast, and all of a sudden it's just rocket growth.
00:57:04.880 --> 00:57:08.159
You focus on what their content is and you can see why.
00:57:08.320 --> 00:57:10.880
But to your point, that only lasts so long.
00:57:11.840 --> 00:57:13.199
That rocket growth is fake too.
00:57:13.440 --> 00:57:14.320
Yeah, yeah.
00:57:14.480 --> 00:57:16.159
And so don't be impressed by that.
00:57:16.320 --> 00:57:25.199
Just like our goal, we've said we'd take low and slow all day long, as long as we get to be who we are in real life every day.
00:57:25.840 --> 00:57:26.079
Yeah.
00:57:26.159 --> 00:57:30.320
And it goes with what you said about similarly, what you said of people reaching out about questions.
00:57:30.559 --> 00:57:36.079
So when people shoot us a message and they're like, hey, I show this to my husband, or like, I think you saved my life, whatever.
00:57:36.159 --> 00:57:37.199
It's that's way more than you.
00:57:37.440 --> 00:57:38.320
I got goosebumps right now.
00:57:38.400 --> 00:57:39.039
Like, that's why we're doing it.
00:57:41.840 --> 00:57:45.440
Is there anything we should have asked you as we get closer to wrapping it up?
00:57:47.920 --> 00:57:48.800
I don't know.
00:57:49.360 --> 00:57:53.760
Honestly, I I mean, I consider myself to be pretty resoundingly boring.
00:57:53.920 --> 00:58:00.880
So anything but anything but no, I mean from the outside, but again, like I I just do the stuff that I like to do.
00:58:01.119 --> 00:58:05.440
And I realize that some of the things that I like to do, other people are like, you're really weird.
00:58:05.519 --> 00:58:06.320
I'm like, okay.
00:58:06.559 --> 00:58:08.159
I mean, I'm not gonna argue against that.
00:58:08.239 --> 00:58:10.239
I mean, I'm I'm not I don't feel like I'm weird.
00:58:10.320 --> 00:58:12.239
I feel like I'm the most normal sane person that I know.
00:58:12.800 --> 00:58:13.280
I'm normal.
00:58:13.599 --> 00:58:14.159
Yeah.
00:58:14.960 --> 00:58:18.000
But I mean, again, that's where it's like, what does special mean?
00:58:18.239 --> 00:58:24.719
I think a lot of people would say unique and they're all correct in that, but then yeah, but you know, there isn't anything special about me.
00:58:24.880 --> 00:58:29.119
I just, I don't know, I took a different path in life than a lot of people did, but that doesn't mean I'm special.
00:58:29.199 --> 00:58:32.480
It just means I went left and a lot of other people would have gone right.
00:58:32.719 --> 00:58:33.039
Yeah.
00:58:33.440 --> 00:58:37.199
We we always end with this question though, what do you value most in life?
00:58:37.599 --> 00:58:38.079
Truth.
00:58:38.559 --> 00:58:39.599
Here's quick weather too.
00:58:40.880 --> 00:58:44.960
That's something we feel strongly is a responsibility, especially with a platform.
00:58:45.360 --> 00:58:47.199
Yeah, how do you do how do you handle that now?
00:58:47.360 --> 00:58:49.920
Shifting because you have a big platform.
00:58:50.559 --> 00:58:56.400
Two weeks from now, I just recorded almost nine hours of content on Roberts Ridge.
00:58:57.039 --> 00:58:58.880
Uh the last two days, actually.
00:59:00.159 --> 00:59:08.639
And up until this point, the only uh narrative that has been coming out has been largely from the Air Force side.
00:59:08.719 --> 00:59:13.119
And I don't mean necessarily the Air Force, but I mean the story of John Chapman.
00:59:14.079 --> 00:59:21.760
And unfortunately, there has been an immense amount of controversy surrounding his Medal of Honor upgrade and the Medal of Honor upgrade of Brit Slabinsky.
00:59:22.000 --> 00:59:25.440
Have you guys ever heard anybody from the Navy side talking about it or anything?
00:59:26.079 --> 00:59:26.239
Never.
00:59:26.480 --> 00:59:26.960
I don't think so.
00:59:27.199 --> 00:59:28.400
So in two weeks, you will.
00:59:29.039 --> 00:59:32.079
These guys have been researching this for the past six years.
00:59:32.400 --> 00:59:43.519
We sat down, the first episode's gonna be about four and a half hours long, and it takes us all the way up to everything that did happen, and then also everything that didn't happen until the Ranger QRF lands.
00:59:43.840 --> 00:59:52.880
Then I brought in, or they brought in two rangers, one from the guy who was on the chalk that landed and immediately established, I think it was four fatalities and multiple casualties.
00:59:53.119 --> 00:59:59.920
Another one of the rangers that landed in chalk two that walked for hours up there and spent, I think, 13 hours on that mountaintop.
01:00:00.000 --> 01:00:11.440
And one of the things that shocked me was you know, it's called Robert's Ridge, but there's an argument that it should be called Ranger Ridge because I think the SEALs spent somewhere between 11 to 13 minutes on the mountaintop.
01:00:11.679 --> 01:00:13.599
They spent 13 plus hours.
01:00:14.159 --> 01:00:24.400
So their experiences, what they thought that they were getting into, what they saw on the ground, what they found, and then two more hours with these guys.
01:00:24.480 --> 01:00:27.599
They're creating a documentary series that'll probably be out in two months.
01:00:28.880 --> 01:00:52.800
Requests, I mean, we're talking heavy receipts, email requests to the Air Force, interviews with the Air Force Chief of Staff, emails from the FBI clearly stating that they could not corroborate that the ISR footage that they looked at, the actions that were claimed from that ISR footage did in fact happen.
01:00:53.360 --> 01:00:55.039
Have you seen the footage from Roberts Ridge?
01:00:55.119 --> 01:00:56.079
Let me ask you this I have.
01:00:56.719 --> 01:00:58.000
That's eight minutes and thirty seconds.
01:00:58.079 --> 01:01:00.719
Yeah it's uh it's a narrative overview by Dan Schilling, the manager.
01:01:00.960 --> 01:01:01.519
Actually, hold on.
01:01:01.599 --> 01:01:03.039
I don't think I've seen every second of it.
01:01:03.119 --> 01:01:04.639
Let me just but I think I've seen a clip.
01:01:05.039 --> 01:01:10.480
So it's 29 million views, it's eight and a half minutes long, and it's narrated by Dan Schilling, the man who wrote the book.
01:01:10.880 --> 01:01:12.159
Yeah, he was alive at dawn.
01:01:12.559 --> 01:01:13.039
Air Force.
01:01:13.280 --> 01:01:14.480
He was right, TJ.
01:01:14.800 --> 01:01:26.000
Are you guys aware that there's actually two hours of ISR footage, and that video comes from him cutting and compressing together for that eight minutes and thirty seconds.
01:01:26.320 --> 01:01:27.039
That that makes sense.
01:01:27.519 --> 01:01:29.920
Potentially could have a different picture, eight minutes versus two hours.
01:01:30.239 --> 01:01:31.440
There's some context missing, obviously.
01:01:32.400 --> 01:01:34.320
Got to look at the full two hours and what they said.
01:01:34.400 --> 01:01:35.840
Well, there's two material findings.
01:01:35.920 --> 01:01:41.920
One was everything up until the Mako team, which was Britt Slabinsky's element, went off the side of the mountain.
01:01:42.000 --> 01:01:43.440
That's material finding one.
01:01:44.000 --> 01:01:59.199
Material finding two would be the actions that are appearing in that video after that event had occurred, where Dan is narrating through where John Chapman was fighting uphill, hand-to-hand fighting, and saved the lives of the QRF that was coming in.
01:01:59.360 --> 01:02:00.559
That is material finding two.
01:02:00.880 --> 01:02:13.599
The FBI viewed the ISR footage, and they I brought this up and and people can read it with their own language, clearly state that after viewing that footage, they could not corroborate that material finding number two occurred.
01:02:14.239 --> 01:02:19.199
There is a difference between watching the entire footage and compressing it down to eight minutes and thirty seconds.
01:02:19.360 --> 01:02:21.199
And I don't know if Mr.
01:02:21.360 --> 01:02:25.039
Schilling actually was transparent in the fact that he did that.
01:02:25.840 --> 01:02:30.000
There's 11 more orbits of that predator that went overhead.
01:02:30.719 --> 01:02:38.239
These guys took to specialists, they brought in computer modeling specialists that looked at the terrain.
01:02:38.400 --> 01:02:43.519
One of them went back to Takergar two years ago and walked it himself, flew DGI drones.
01:02:43.599 --> 01:02:44.079
Oh, yeah.
01:02:44.400 --> 01:02:46.639
Six years of effort went into this.
01:02:47.280 --> 01:02:53.039
And I said, I'm gonna repeat what one of the people on the show said.
01:02:53.840 --> 01:03:00.159
And what he said was essentially that the actions that John Chapman received the Medal of Honor for did not occur.
01:03:00.400 --> 01:03:01.440
His words, not mine.
01:03:01.760 --> 01:03:12.960
After sitting down and and listening to them, I have a lot of questions that wouldn't be hard to answer, but it's gonna require a lot of transparency.
01:03:13.199 --> 01:03:14.480
And I said that on the show as well.
01:03:14.559 --> 01:03:28.880
But what I also said was if that footage, if everything to include and oh by the way, nobody's ever seen that two-hour ISR footage, they also had AC-130 gunship footage and the comms associated with it.
01:03:28.960 --> 01:03:31.119
They have a lot of stuff that people have never seen.
01:03:31.920 --> 01:03:49.920
But, and I said this on the show, if that had ended up with the SEAL element abandoning a man alive on a mountaintop, I would still host that conversation and I would be as transparent and willing to have that discussion as if the information did not.
01:03:50.159 --> 01:03:52.559
Because all I care about is the truth when it comes to that.
01:03:52.960 --> 01:03:54.639
Okay, so why do you think it's important?
01:03:54.800 --> 01:04:06.559
Because I I feel like most people maybe within the circle of a certain, you know, community cares, but like why do you think it's important to like figure that out and talk about it?
01:04:07.199 --> 01:04:17.760
Well, one, what that medal means, and two, if we're gonna make people into heroes and portray them as that, it needs to be based on the truth.
01:04:18.559 --> 01:04:20.960
And the truth can be really ugly, and that's okay.
01:04:21.280 --> 01:04:24.559
But if you want to have integrity, you work through that, not around it.
01:04:24.960 --> 01:04:25.360
Check it out.
01:04:25.519 --> 01:04:26.480
Uncleared hot, right?
01:04:26.559 --> 01:04:26.960
Coming up?
01:04:27.280 --> 01:04:27.760
Two weeks.
01:04:28.000 --> 01:04:28.960
All right, check it out.
01:04:29.119 --> 01:04:35.599
It should be hot when uh we're this because this episode will air one October, so be out there, go check it out.
01:04:35.840 --> 01:04:37.199
It's gonna be a Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
01:04:37.280 --> 01:04:39.519
We're gonna do the first four and a half hours on a Monday.
01:04:39.840 --> 01:04:43.840
Wednesday will be for the Rangers, and then that Friday will be the final two plus hours.
01:04:44.079 --> 01:04:47.920
We'll make sure and put a link below so that people can just go directly over and check it out.
01:04:48.639 --> 01:04:49.119
It's gonna suck.
01:04:49.199 --> 01:04:52.719
It's a landmine, but there's no way to not prevent it from going off.
01:04:52.800 --> 01:04:55.360
The hand the family, Chapman's family, and rightfully so.
01:04:55.440 --> 01:05:04.800
And just like I said, I can't put myself, and we were talking about something unrelated before we started, I cannot put myself into the position of a family that lost somebody like that.
01:05:05.199 --> 01:05:15.199
Because understandably, in their world, they want their loved one to be honored and recognized and remembered for you know the outcome that they believe.
01:05:15.599 --> 01:05:32.480
And in their world, what they have been told is that the Navy did everything they could to prevent their son, brother, loved one from receiving the Medal of Honor, that he was abandoned alive on the mountaintop and that they've been lied to.
01:05:33.119 --> 01:05:42.639
If the information, and again, I am, and I said this during the show, I am willing to sit down with anybody who has information that can answer these questions.
01:05:42.880 --> 01:05:44.079
Open, open invite.
01:05:44.480 --> 01:05:56.880
If the information that uh Mitch and Brian presented is true, there is without a doubt the fact that the family was lied to.
01:05:57.519 --> 01:05:59.599
But it wasn't by the Navy.
01:06:00.239 --> 01:06:02.079
It was by the Air Force.
01:06:03.039 --> 01:06:04.559
That's gonna be powerful to watch.
01:06:05.039 --> 01:06:06.559
Yeah, we're definitely watching that.
01:06:06.880 --> 01:06:10.000
People are gonna Yeah, it's I'd love that.
01:06:11.039 --> 01:06:13.280
I'd like that you said that, like, it's hard for that family.
01:06:13.360 --> 01:06:14.719
Like I can't even fathom it.
01:06:14.880 --> 01:06:15.119
Yeah.
01:06:15.679 --> 01:06:16.480
I can't even fathom it.
01:06:16.559 --> 01:06:24.400
And that's why it's a landline because there's no way to have that conversation without the family saying, you are tearing down the legacy of our loved one.
01:06:24.559 --> 01:06:25.760
And I understand.
01:06:26.079 --> 01:06:29.119
But, and I said this on the show as well, too.
01:06:29.760 --> 01:06:40.320
If one of my children had been killed in in our old occupation, or maybe they ask you this, or would you want to know the truth?
01:06:40.639 --> 01:06:42.320
Yeah, that's an age story.
01:06:42.960 --> 01:06:44.559
I don't care what it is, I just want to know the truth.
01:06:44.719 --> 01:06:45.039
Yeah.
01:06:45.679 --> 01:06:46.800
Just want to know the truth.
01:06:47.199 --> 01:06:51.280
Now, I think that's where it gets cra what is the truth?
01:06:51.440 --> 01:06:55.199
And you're trying to get at it, but like when you're who do you believe?
01:06:55.360 --> 01:06:58.079
Do I believe that's coming from here, or do I believe what this person says?
01:06:58.159 --> 01:07:01.119
And some of this stuff is hard to ignore, to be honest.
01:07:01.199 --> 01:07:07.039
It's I mean, it comes down to basic math stuff and things that you can see versus things that you can't.
01:07:07.519 --> 01:07:08.719
So we'll see how it goes.
01:07:08.880 --> 01:07:10.159
I look forward to checking out everyone.
01:07:10.239 --> 01:07:10.800
Go check it out.
01:07:10.880 --> 01:07:12.800
Hey, we're just hey, thank you for this one.
01:07:12.960 --> 01:07:14.719
This is grateful for you spending your time with us.
01:07:15.199 --> 01:07:17.840
Great way to kick off our Montana series here.
01:07:18.320 --> 01:07:22.480
Subscribe, like, and comment, and don't forget to set those notifications.
01:07:22.639 --> 01:07:25.599
We'll see you next week with another special guest.
01:07:25.840 --> 01:07:28.239
Until then, on your journey.