Episode 1: Shock Value

XFedUSSS: Welcome to XFed fully loaded podcast. I'm your host, Mike Haynes. Well, you've stumbled upon something unusual. This is not typical. This is not typical of me. This is not typical of the podcast world. My goal is to set myself apart from the typical podcast that you may come across. I understand many of them are educational. Many podcasts are for shock value. I hear vulgar podcasts. Things to shock the viewer, things to grab the viewer's attention, such as things like sex and money and crime. There is a ton of topics that I'm going to be talking about as well that I think you might find interesting. From my personal life, my sexual past, my sexual conquests, my dating history. My successes and my failures, my childhood, my struggles with my marriage, being a husband, my struggles with confidence, with being a good partner, struggles with being a good father, the learning that I had to do and still am doing to be the best man, son, coworker, father that I can be. And try to do all that, juggle all that while working full-time, trying to run several businesses, trying to create generational wealth. The number of hats that every man is expected to wear is incredible. And I didn't realize that until I got married and I had my first child. But I'm up to the challenge. Many men before me have done it, and I think I'm doing pretty good so far. I have a really good track record of success and accomplishments. I have a wall downstairs full of accolades and awards that I'm really proud of. And there's room for more. So what I'll tell you about my goal for this podcast is this that it won't be the typical structure. I don't have a set plan for a specific subject to talk about every day, every week, or follow a specific timeline. I want to run this podcast like my brain runs. Basically, scatter brain. It's all over the place. So whatever, whatever pops in my head, whatever comes to my mind, is how I'm going to run the show. Is That's how I'm going to structure everything here. Excuse me. So how I plan to do this is that whatever topic strikes me that particular week or that episode that I go to sit down, I just want to record what comes to my mind so I don't lose it. All right. So you guys have seen the logo. You see the brand. Some of you have gotten here because of my Instagram page. Some of you have followed me because you're my friends and family, and I asked you to. Some of you are my coworkers, and I appreciate your support. I appreciate all of you and whoever's interested in the things I have to say. I would like to just make an impact on someone. I noticed that my Instagram comments are full of people that are telling me that the things that I'm saying and posting are impacting their lives. That has inspired me and motivated me to do more and talk more because Instagram limits me to like three minute reels. And while I have a YouTube page, I don't really go on there. I guess I'm gonna have to start. But I felt that creating a podcast in my mind, it's a bit cheesy for me. I'm not gonna lie. I feel like this is cheesy. I feel like I'm following people and jumping on a bandwagon that's been around for like 10 years. that's just my personal opinion. I'm not knocking anybody who does podcasts because some of them are extremely successful and extremely educational. And you can learn a ton of things from a lot of people, their different experiences and their expertise. But what I want to do is take advantage of the freedom of my speech, and I can use different language and I don't have to be worried about getting banned or my page getting flagged. Or someone getting upset and reporting me and then I lose all the access to people. I don't want that. So I figured, as reluctant as I am to come over here to this platform, I find it incredibly cheesy and odd to come over here. I'm not gonna lie to you. I don't want to be a follower and be like, no, he's got a podcast. It's just a more free method so I can speak and be who I want to be. Not saying that. What I post on social media is not me. The message is from the heart. It's just I have to watch my language. And I am a professional man, but I'm also what I would call a real man. And I come from a gritty background and a construction world, surrounded by men playing sports, and being a man is rough. And with that, I will say that sometimes that language. And being able to just like emote and say, you know, things like fuck that or they just flow out of my mouth naturally. It's not attractive, I understand. And I clean up my language depending on which environment that I I'm in. However, I feel this is the most free environment for me to speak. All right. With that being said, a couple things about me that I do want you to know moving forward. I did some time with the Secret Service. The Secret Service is split up into a couple of different divisions and branches. So you have the agents, the suit and tie guys that you see on TV close to the president. And then you have what's called the Uniformed Division. And in the Uniformed Division, which I was, they are more focused around building defense, access control, letting people in the gates, scanning people, hand won, magnetometers, checking their pockets, empty your pockets, put it on the belt. I've been trained on the X-ray machine like at the airports like TSA to check for bombs and bullets and contraband and things like that. And control tactics and boxing and wrestling, jujitsu, firearms like crazy. The amount of weapons that we fired and the amount of firearms qualls that we had to go through, the quick decision drills, the stress, the PT, the exams, the written exams. Can't score below an eighty on anything or you go home. The Amount of training that I received there was incredible. So I want to speak about certain things about my past and my time there, but I don't want it to just be about Secret Service because I would run out of things to say. And I think I would run out of really interesting topics. And what I also don't want to do is I've thought about this since I started the idea of a podcast, is that I really don't want to. I don't want to say too much on here and give too much information away to the people that might want to do this and give them an edge. I don't want them to I don't want them to get any f any advantage or anything more than what I had for them to be able to you know to to have the experience. And I don't want them to be robbed of that. I want you, whoever is listening to me, And has the idea that you want to join this or the the air marshals or the US Marshals or FBI, I want you to earn it. And I want you to be proud at the end when you walk across the stage and get your badge and your gun that you've earned it. And I I earned it. All right. And everyone in my class earned it. And everyone before me and after me who graduated Flet C and JJ RTC has earned it. And I think I would be Doing people a disservice if I gave you too much information that made the journey easy for you. And I don't want that. I think that would be really unfair. Like it's a really small percentage of people that get a chance to do that anyway. So I want you to earn it, like I earned it, and my class earned it. So I'm really going to be talking more about my experience through the academy, what I felt, what I went through. Some of the challenges, some of the the great things that happened to me, the amazing people that I met, the lessons that I learned. And I want to go from I want to stay there. I want to stay in that realm. But I want to sprinkle it in as I talk about other things. And I noticed that the topics that I talk about on Instagram and I post about these reels about boundaries and self discipline. And abandoning yourself and self respect. Now, these are all things that I've gone through myself in my own life with girlfriends and relationships. I was married once. I did a terrible job in marriage. I was an awful husband. I was terrible. I won't lie to you. And I ha I needed some work. I needed a lot of work. I was not a good partner. I admittedly plenty of times was not a good father. And I continue to make mistakes as we speak. I make mistakes every time I I'm with my son. maybe I don't say the right things at the right time. Maybe I have an opportunity to connect with him and I don't take it. Maybe I'm reading his cues or his signals wrong. Or, you know, like for if for example, one time he came in my room and he was scared of, you know, some sound outside, some noise outside. And he came to my doorway and he's like nervous and I'm like, you know, just go back to bed, Mike. And that was an opportunity that I could have had for him to come in my bed with me. And I could have kept him safe or make him feel safe. So I I have a ton of regrets and I replay so many memories and situations in my brain that happened that he came to me and I didn't handle it right. And I think if you're a parent or you're going to be a parent, you're going to have those things. It's going to happen a lot. And I wanna talk about that. I wanna talk about that. I wanna talk about the struggles of relationships and and toxicity and and deceit and lies and the importance of being truthful and honest with your fucking partner. I wanna talk about all that shit. And and because I wasn't with certain partners and I lied and I I wasn't I wasn't faithful and I was a coward and I didn't break up with them like face to face and I should have done something to give them that courtesy and that respect and that honesty to look them in the face and tell them something really, really fucking uncomfortable. But like most men, like most men, I can't speak for women, but like most men, we're fucking cowards. Some of us are cowards. And we can be cowardly at times. I'm not gonna say I'm a coward in general, just in in the area of relationships where I just didn't like that confrontation or the feeling that it gave me to let someone down. To disappoint someone, to tell them something really fucking hard and then have to sit in the room with it. That's what I was running from. It wasn't so much of telling somebody the truth. It's just easier to ghost someone. It's easier to stop answering someone or just block someone. That's the easy way out. And I encourage everybody not to be a bitch. Don't be a bitch. Just be a man. And if you don't like something, you don't like someone. The love is fading. It's over. You just be honest, man. Just be honest. Be real. Tell the truth. Tell it's tell the truth, man. You know, I heard a thing that that resonated with me and and it's happened to me. I've been lied to before. I've been hurt, I've been betrayed, I've been absolutely backstabbed. And, you know, the truth hurts one time, but a lie hurts a thousand. And that's a true statement, man. I I mean I can I can take a really hard truth and be like, damn. But at least I got the truth, and it's one time and I can decide what to do with it. But if someone lies to me and I'm operating under false pretenses, you're taking away that that right from me. You're taking away my autonomy to make a decision as an informed adult. You're you're robbing me of that decision, and I'm living a life based on your reality, not mine. And that's what a lie is, and I think that's really fucked up. And the times that I've lied to. you know, a partner or I've lied to a girlfriend or something about where I was going. It could be something stupid. I might not have necessarily even been, you know, like cheating or anything, but just really didn't feel like explaining myself. Or like I wanted to buy a motorcycle one time and I bought it and I didn't tell my wife. And, you know, I kept it at a friend's house. And I'm like, what am I doing? Like I ha like now I made this decision. I backed myself into a corner that I own this asset now. And I I didn't tell my wife. I just went ahead and did it, made the purchase. Like now I put myself in a corner. I I I jammed myself up now. I can't even go enjoy this thing because I'd have to lie about where I'm going. And then say I was in a motorcycle crash or something. And now she she gets a call from the state troopers and like, yeah, we found your husband. He was he he's injured, he was on a motorcycle and she'll be like, What? Like how he doesn't even own a fucking motorcycle. And you know, if you think about the things that you tell people and how a lie can snowball and it can just get carried away, it turns into a runaway train. And then you have to maintain that lie and keep that lie going. And you have to like build stories upon stories. It's just so exhausting. It's so exhausting. And it's just not worth the energy to keep that up. Just just be honest. If you don't like someone, you don't like something and you're out of love and you just don't want this to work anymore and you're just not happy and you just you want someone else or you want something else, just go home and fucking tell your partner and just say it to their face. Just let them know. Let them make a decision. Let it let it hurt. It's gonna sting. It's gonna sting no matter what. But like that legacy that you leave behind of like you put all these years in with someone. And you you give someone 10, 15, 20, 25 years of your life, and then you know, you're you're messing with a coworker or someone you met at the gym, and then that whole time that you spent with someone, they're like, What the fuck was who who are you? Like, was any of it real? What else have you lied about? What else weren't you truthful about? So I want to talk about stuff like that, like really hard-hitting shit that changes people's lives and changes their their DNA and changes their their Their their brains and the chemicals and their brains from the trauma and the betrayal and not being able to trust another person. that shit's real, man. And the things that you do that you don't realize affect your children with like your snapping and your attitude and your patience level and your discipline and who you are. If are you safe to approach? Like, can your kids even come to you? And feel safe to tell you something that's bothering them, or or do you just shout at them and jump down their throat with every single little thing that they do? And to be able to notice these cues in your children, because the worst thing I think is that you want them to turn into teenagers or adults and just never feel safe to ever come and approach you and tell you what's bothering them. Like I can't think of a more awful life than my son. just not wanting to come and talk to me and tell me about what's bothering him and asking me for advice because he's afraid of how I'm gonna react. And that's where I think drugs and addiction and things would get tied up and and and get mixed up because they'll hide things from you bec out of fear because they're afraid of you. And I don't want that. I don't want that for my son. I don't want that for anybody in my life to be afraid to come and talk to me. I don't want that. So things like that are what I want to speak about. I want to speak about forgiving your parents. I want to speak about forgiving them for the things that they didn't know when you were a kid and the things that they didn't teach you because they were never taught. About forgiveness, about your your childhood. Maybe it was terrible, maybe it was abusive. But guess what? You have the ability when you reach a certain age to To walk out of that front door and say, I'm gonna live my life the way I want to. I when I get my own house and I have my own family, I'm not gonna live in a house that we smoke in the house. Or I'm not gonna live in an environment where we wear shoes in the house. Or, you know, you just walk in wearing muddy work boots and walk all over this carpet. You know, like people live like that. It's whatever. It's to them, it's normal. But, you know, there's certain things that people see growing up and then You might go to a friend's house or a neighbor's house or another relative's house and you see how they live and you're like, wow. I never knew that people did that. Or you see people actually sitting down at a dinner table eating dinner together, where someone like doesn't take the plate or the, you know, the stuff in the room and eat separate from the family. And you know, it's just there's a lot of things, even for me growing up, that I saw other friends of mine, their families. And how they handled things and how they had a structure. And I was envious of a lot of those because they seemed so normal. And I didn't really invite a lot of friends over my house. Not because I was embarrassed of anything or my parents, but I just didn't I didn't really rock like that. I didn't really get down like that. But so I want to just lay out the structure and the plan and the idea and the motivation for this podcast. It's basically just to be free. speak a little bit more openly at greater length about things. And I have plans to bring on a former classmate from Secret Service. we graduated together. He's a a wonderful human being. He's he's great. He's funny, smart, cool as a cucumber. And a little bit younger than me, but we shared the exact same experience in the in two academies back to back to get the job. And he went through everything I did. Like my other classmates. And I think we started off with 24 of us and eighteen graduated. So we all stuck together. A lot of us didn't like each other. It was very clique in the academy with the groups and who was friends and who wasn't. there was some age gap ish issues there. Like I was one of the older students, me and this other girl from Missouri. We were the two oldest students, and then The other ones were in their early 20s, like a kind of a mixture in their 20s. And they kind of all stuck together because they had more things in common. But I I think I wasn't one of the favorite recruits to the group. I I did have some friends. There were some guys that that loved me and we were still friends to this day. And then I had some classmates that that really didn't like me at all, and I didn't like them back. And we knew it, and we kept our distance and we kept our space and we respected each other. But We all I think we could all say that we all love each other, if that makes any sense. But we may not like each other, but the camaraderie and the respect that I have to give them and they have to give me for getting through all of those difficult challenges together, all of the stress, all of the firearms qualls, all of the scenarios that we had to go through, the running, the shooting, the PT. All the blood, sweat, and and sometimes tears that you had to shed to achieve this goal. I may not have liked a lot of them, but I respect the shit out of them because they did everything I did. As a grown man, a strong man, I've seen some of these little tiny females shoot shotguns and, you know, shoot rifles and and do incredible shit, just like the men had to do. So they got my respect. And You know, we may not have always agreed on things in the academy. There was a lot of was a lot of disagreements. There was a lot of, like I said, clickish behavior. But at the end of the day, if I ever saw one of them hurt or in trouble, if they call me now nine years later, and I haven't spoken to a lot of them in nine years, if they call me and they said they needed me, I would be right there. Regardless of my feelings for them or not. But because we share that bond. And that we've been through the academy together and we did really hard shit together, it it forms a family. And unless you've been through something like that or some sort of academy or really struggled and bonded with people like the military, that brotherhood is what I'm what I'm after and what I love and what I crave. And that's why I created the community that I did on the school app and the school. school community. I want people to join the community so we can all be friends and we can all bounce things off of each other and be there for each other because it's really important. We all go through different shit at different times, whether it be divorce or financial issues, we lose a parent, we lose, God forbid, a child, right? Suddenly, or you have any other regular struggle in life, whether it be your job or you're just stressed out. And you need someone. We need we need people. We need a group around us. We need a support group. And sometimes you can't always go to your parents. Sometimes you can't go to, you know, you don't really want to go to your spouse and trouble them with the things that are bothering you. you know, so I think it's important that we that we build that community and we have a strong group of friends around us for men specifically to be able to go to and talk to. So you don't dump all that stuff on your wife or your girlfriend because they have enough of their own stress and problems with the kids, and they have their own emotional things that they look to you as a man for, for your stability and for your calm in the storm, or you be that tree that bends but doesn't break for them. And women are like weather. They're like the weather, and we must be. You know, we must be the sky as men and let them be the clouds. And and the storm passes and then all of a sudden it gets sunny and bright, and then dark clouds come rolling in, but then they get pushed out by clear blue skies again. So I think we need to be more fluid and more resilient with that and work for that to be as strong as we possibly can for our partners and be there for them and be a safe place for them to land. And I've learned a shit ton over these last four years of my life. I got divorced six years ago, and I met someone about a year and a half after my divorce, and the woman turned my life upside down. So in some good ways, but more bad ways. And has taught me a ton about myself, about life, relationships, has made me a completely different person than I was four years ago. has changed my mind about several things. And I thought I was tough before Secret Service, which I was. I was resilient. I have extremely strong willpower to get through anything. I manifested my way through the academy. There was a a bulletproof vest that they kept in the back of the classroom at the academy. And it was a Secret Service outer carrier, bulletproof vest. And it had the It had Secret Service on it, on the chest and on the back, it said Secret Service Police. And at the end of every class, when it was over, I would be the last student to walk out and I would go in the back of the room and try that vest on. And I would feel what it was like to wear that vest. And I manifested myself wearing that vest. And I said, I'm going to wear this vest. I will have this vest on at some point. I will graduate. I will walk across that stage. And I pictured myself. I played the movie in my head. And I said, I will walk across this stage, shake that man's hand, get my cred book, get my badge, get my gun, and it will happen. And I just rehearsed it every day in my mind, and it happened exactly like I planned it out. Literally, exactly how I thought and envisioned it would happen. I say all that to say that I manifested that with pure strength and willpower and desire. Somewhere along the way after I got divorced and went through some horrible, horrible times. I lost my marriage. I lost access to my child. So now I co-parent from a distance. I don't see him as much. Now we're in a broken home. I lost two of my homes after the divorce. I was homeless for a little bit. I was at the bottom. I was at the top and I was at the bottom a couple years later. I I lost my vehicles. I hit a deer with a car and it totaled it and I couldn't afford the payments to replace it. So I was driving like twenty five hundred dollar cars that would break down all the time. So I've been up and I've been down. And when I was down, I felt what it was like to struggle with money and have to ask and depend on people and ask my mother and my brother for help just to survive. And to feel what it was like to be alone and broke. I've been there, man, trust me. I made a hundred thousand dollars for a really long time, a hundred, hundred K plus a year for many, many years to losing everything, to going right back to making it again. so I've been up, I've been down, and I've built my life a second time from the ground up. And during this last relationship that I was in, I lost that like drive and that hunger, and I became like scared and nervous to make moves and make Choices and decisions because I thought that it might set me back and put me back in the poorhouse and cause me financial struggle again. So those fears came out all over in my relationship and while while trying to be someone's partner. And I realized how much that became an issue. and there was a lot of issues and problems with the relationship besides that, but So we're we're gonna be talking about relationship issues and dealing with bullshit and nonsense and having boundaries, setting boundaries, knowing when to walk away, knowing when somebody's just not interested, or knowing when somebody's using you, or only using you for what you can provide. The cues and the signs and indications that someone's lying to you, how they handle their phone when you're around. Hi angling the phone away from you, hiding it under a pillow. It's face down all the time on silent, do not disturb. I mean, it's all there. All the signs are there, all the symptoms are there. So in this podcast, moving forward, I want to talk about all of that. Okay. This will be a completely, extremely broad range of subjects and topics that I've personally lived, seen, heard. And I want to address and I want to try to help people, whether it be from my experiences and tell you how I got out of it, how I solved it, some things that I haven't solved or things that I'm working on solving. That's my goal. And I'm gonna get graphic. I'm going to talk about things that are really uncomfortable for a reason. I want to challenge myself to say uncomfortable things to World where most men and most people are afraid to public speak in general, period, just to talk, period, and put themselves out there, let alone to tell people some of the most intimate and dark things about you, and maybe thoughts that I have. Like, I've always wanted to rob a bank. And that's true. That's that's been a recurring thought in my mind since I was a kid. Now the difference is is having that control and that personal that personal filter just not to follow through with the act, right? It doesn't become a crime unless you actually do it. So I can think about it. And I've thought about if I was a bad guy, how ought I do it? And I s you see r stories and read books and newspaper articles about the different ways that people have tried it. And I think it would be a rush. And I always was curious if I would be able to get away with it. And so yeah, that's that's a a secret and a fantasy. I just told you right there. That's me being vulnerable. I I've I've always wanted to do that. Don't ask me why. Maybe that's the in order to be a law enforcement officer and to be on that side of the fence, you have to think like a criminal, I guess, right? That's what they always say. To catch a criminal, you have to think like one, maybe be like one. So that stuff is ingrained in me. I saw a lot of crime and criminal activity growing up. With my father. My father was a wild man. He was a fucking con man. And I love him. I miss him. He's been dead 21 years, but he was a hellraiser. He was he was a special, interesting person. He was a character, let me tell you, manipulator, con man, con artist, just just one of the best I ever seen, man. But that's what I saw growing up, and I broke that cycle. I didn't follow his footsteps. I didn't want to live like that. Live in stress and worry all the time, looking over my shoulder. And I chose to go the route of the good guy. And I'm glad I did because my life is calm and a clear conscience makes a soft pillow. So I'm gonna end this episode here. Episode one. Enjoy. Hope you liked it. Stick around for more. Episode two, episode three, probably episode three. I will have my former classmate on here and we're gonna team up and talk about some of our experiences while in the Secret Service. So I hope you'll like that. I think that you'll love it. And like, follow, share, subscribe, whatever all those fancy do dead buttons do, and tell me your feedback, honest feedback about the podcast. Peace.