Two Purple Hearts: The Kyle Steiner Story

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Speaker 1: Root force.
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Speaker 2: If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough. You're listening to soft web Radio Special Operations, Military Nails and straight talk with the guys in the community.
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Speaker 3: What's going on. This is rad your host for soft Rep Radio give you all those cool sound effects. What's going on? Welcome back to the program. And if you're new to the show, welcome for taking the leap and clicking on this link to seeing who we're talking to, which you already know. But before I introduce you to him, let me talk about the merch store soft rep dot com forward slash merch or I think it might be store dot merch dot soft Rep. Look up soft Rep merch and you will find all sorts of cool branded items for you, designed by guys and gals behind the scenes here a soft Rep in the Special Operations community that they think you'd like, like a shirt that says soft Rep real simple. Right, second we have well I got distracted by my ministry shirt. But second second, I want to talk about the bookstore. We have a book club. Right, so if you go to soft rep dot com forward slash book hyphen Club, you can check out a cool book out there that would you know, help grow your muscle of your brain. Take your brain to the gym, which is a library or a book and read it and gain some knowledge. And that soft rep dot com Forward slash Book hyphen Club. Go check that out now. My next guest is Kyle the Kyle Steiner, Okay, from the United States Army. I'm gonna read his bio real quick and then we'll get talking to Kyle. Kyle Steiner's mill terry career is marked by a service as a US Army Green Beret and Chief Warrant Officer. He has been involved in numerous high stake missions, including the infamous deployment in Afghanistan, where he was part of the infantry company that saw nearly eighty percent of all combat. Steiner's experiences in combat have been featured in acclaimed documentary such as Ristreppo or Corngall. Despite being shot in the head during his deployment during this deployment, he survived and has since completed multiple missions to the Middle East, Central America, South America with US Special Operations teams. His military career has been distinguished by numerous awards, including two Purple Hearts, three Bronze Stars, as well as the RCOM Army Accommodation Medal with v device. Steiner's expertise in managing teams and assets under pressure is a testament to his leadership skills and operational experience, and we're going to talk to him. Welcome to the show, Kyle, Thanks, brother, happy to be here. I am happy to have you on board. Now. I would be not telling the truth if I hadn't said I've seen Rastreppo, right, the documentary or Streppo just a jump been to that, you know. I saw that title in your bio. We talked about it a little bit and I watched the whole thing. It's very eye opening about what went on. It reminds me of the Lord of the Flies. There's a novel called Lord of the Flies where you have a bunch of kids who are plane crashed on a deserted island, and it's like, who put you in charge? Well, you guys seem to at least keep the in charge intact with your chain of command, you know. Can I ask you something? Were you a part is it one hundred and seventy third? Is that who you were a part of at Ristreppa? What unit were you with with us at Restreppa?
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Speaker 1: Well, Yeah.
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Speaker 4: At that time in the war, they were starting to kind of change brigades and battalions, so they were making something called a VCT of Brigade Combat Team. So the one seventy third Airborne Brigade Combat Team abc T. Well, it consisted of two paratrutemeantry regiments, second the five h third and first of the five away and well it.
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Speaker 1: Became first of the final third.
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Speaker 4: So I was at a company second Latune, second of the five oh third ariastrodimetry regiment of the one third, one of.
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Speaker 3: The one seventy third. And that's out of Aviano, right Italy.
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Speaker 1: No, that's where we jump out of it. It's out of Vicenza.
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Speaker 4: So it's an hour and a half or two hours south of Aviano, but that's where we go to jump, is obvious.
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Speaker 3: So are you a thirteen Fox series? Is that what that would be? Uh? Go? Are you a Ford? No?
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Speaker 1: I was an eleven Bravo. That was an eleven.
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Speaker 3: Eleven Bravo just all infantry, yep. So no no Ford observers in that mix or nothing like that.
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Speaker 4: With the we had one attached ta yeah and yeah, he was actually right next to me when I got shot in the head.
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Speaker 1: Awesome, dude, he called our fire.
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Speaker 4: I mean, we were dropping eighty ninety percent of the uh the indirect fire assets in Afghanistan at that time for those fifteen months. Like it was all our one, five fives, our one twenties are our jade ms, the A tens Just like you live near us.
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Speaker 3: They're like, we're just gonna park here, Okay, we got fo real parking. Like you're like, we need a burt. They're coming through and you're saying a lot of acronyms, and for somebody that doesn't really live in the acronym world, you know, I mean you're talking about artillery and the rounds coming out of these guns. Let's quote unquote call them big boys, like and dropping out of aircraft. Jadam's right. That's like a huge munition that has multiple abilities to navigate.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, anything you see above your head, and like depending on where we were on the mountain side, you know, certain aircraft can't go they have altitude ceilings. So we A tens that's the low flying kind of slower jet, but huge cannons like Batman cannons on it.
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Speaker 3: And thirty millimeter thirty milimeter gatling gun, right and the plane is built around the gun. It's like, well, how do we make this gun fly? And they're like, make it look like a hog, a wart hog with the logging. Yeah, exactly, the war hog. You know, put some shark teeth on it. That should carry it. You know, you're like, all right and so, but it has great capability but limited ammo. Right, Like, you guys could probably use like three of the straight same runs from the same guy, but he can come in and it's like he's got to go kind of relow because he burns everything up so quick on runs.
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Speaker 4: But we were dropping all the artillery one five fives with the big cannons and one oh fives and then mortars.
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Speaker 1: Are the tubes that you drop it.
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Speaker 4: So we were just taking and using those more than anybody else in country at that time.
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Speaker 3: And the reason why it was such, I mean, you guys were in a position of power at that outpost. It was like high ground. You guys were able to see around you and down and you know kind of had the high ground. The sun art of war. I was gonna say, sun sue but out of war, right, is that what I'm thinking?
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Speaker 4: Well, yeah, because the Cornal outpost where the company area was set was at the base of the valley, and then once we got there. Tenth Mountain held it for a little while before we got and when we came into country, they just decided to start stationing platoons in the fighting positions of the Taliban. So they were like, well, they're keep shooting at us from up there, so why don't you guys just go build.
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Speaker 1: Something in that spot.
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Speaker 4: And we just hijacked their areas, which they had like dug out fighting positions. All the brass from the ak's and the pkms, the Afghan weapons was just all over the ground and we just kind of we just kind of devoted their areas.
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Speaker 3: And but it.
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Speaker 4: Was like two and a half hour walk up this mountain, where at certain points there was ropes tied to trees because it was just so steep, so you know, there was no way to drive up there, so anything we got was airlifted by a helicopter and dropped to us. So the first night we went up, it was sandbags and pick axes and shovels and we just dug a little semicircle with sandbags and hunkered down there. And the next morning, you know, they thought they were like, hey, you know, they took our spot.
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Speaker 1: So we just got rocked, you know. And that's why I ran into.
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Speaker 4: A guy years later from the Department of the Army Historical Society and I didn't know this, and he informed me, said, oh, you know you were part of the Restreppow crew and I said yeah, and he said, you know, you guys set a couple of records for engagements during the GUOT And I said, oh, that's he said, yeah, two thousand September two thousand and seven, it was like one hundred and eleven firefights in that month.
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Speaker 1: I think we had fourteen and one day in that month.
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Speaker 4: I mean, we were just getting rocks non stop because we were right in their backyard, you know, and the maneuverability was nothing.
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Speaker 1: We couldn't go anywhere.
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Speaker 3: Bro. Bro. Yeah. And if you haven't seen the documentary Strepo, it's very humbling. It's funny. There's some moments of like you guys being you and then all of a sudden coming in fire wearing shorts and no shirts and just like it's it's it's just Lord of the Flies, but with some chain of command.
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Speaker 4: It's just like I describe it as Lord of the Flies to people, because I'm like, nobody ever came up there besides our basic command.
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Speaker 1: Every couple of months, you'd.
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Speaker 4: Get a general, you know, call over the ready like hey, I want to SEEPI strepo and we'd be like okay. So we get to call like hey, you need to shave up and actually put something on, and we'd all sit on the edge and look down and the helicopter would land and we could see them explaining like all right, you know, general, like we you're gonna have to walk up there, and he'd be like, oh, okay, well next time. Then they never came, you know, so we just sat up there waiting for him. So yeah, we were fighting shirtless. I think at one point you can see Nisha had cut his boots into what looked like bowling shoes, and we just you know, I mean, we went like eighty eighty some odd days without changing our clothes.
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Speaker 1: Your pants were so like crusty, they would just stand up on their own. Yes, here's what it is, you know, for fifty straight.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, dude, just getting it dropped off to you. Did they ever drop anything like other than mrs to you? Like anybody's like yo, here. Man, here's some like, you know, some butterfingers or something. Man, keep you guys going.
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Speaker 1: Every now and again, the pilots would.
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Speaker 4: It was funny because the pilots would for Thanksgiving, they did bring us a couple of things, but they.
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Speaker 1: Would open their their their door.
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Speaker 4: They had the sling load with the official stuff that we give us, and then they kind of throw us out trash bags and stuff that they had gotten that different basis, most notably like books. Was awesome because we were like, man, we're just sitting up here whoodling our fingers or fighting or digging, you know, pulling guard. So they would they would kind of throw us to your little lickys and chewies. But like the one time the dude gave us a boxer like hot sauces for uh for for the mrs. And we were so pumped. We're like, we got like three hot sauces. We like, we make these things. And it might have been an hour or two later we got into a firefight and it got rock and some dude walked out of this hoop's just covered in hot sauce because it destroyed. And we were like, no, the hot sauce, come here.
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Speaker 3: We love each other absolutely, lock some of that off your chair. Oh dude, Oh bro, So I love that you can still smile today. I know there's a lot that goes down in a firefight. You know that you guys have to compartimentalize and just move forward through. And you know Ristreppo came, you spent so much time there. They shut down that outpost. I think after you guys were there, right, wasn't it like kind of like dissolved or like we're not gonna need it a later?
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Speaker 1: First first introy Division videos.
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Speaker 4: First, they had just been changed from neck and eyes some means they were in strikers to light infantry and they got to take it for a little while. And I don't know where it went from there, but I do know it got destroyed before the pullout.
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Speaker 1: Somebody I ran into somebody who was an EOD guy and he had a video then bringing it.
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Speaker 3: To blow up.
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Speaker 4: And to be honest with you, that that hurt more than seeing the pull out of Afghanistan, because I was like, man, I spent so much time digging that like hole right there.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, you have no idea that the wind kept blowing and I finally fixed it.
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Speaker 4: Guys, yeah, like all the spots we built and they just blew it up and they thought, you know, there was cheers and I was like, man, that sucks, because it's a fond memory for me. Yeah, there was a lot of bad things that happened, but still it's a very fun place to me for my brother.
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Speaker 3: How old were you when you went through that changing of your life.
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Speaker 1: I had my twenty first birthday there.
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Speaker 3: Oh wow, that's gnarly dude. And so you were in since you were just a young man seventeen. Did you enlist after school or in school or what?
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Speaker 1: Yeah?
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Speaker 4: I listened after school and I had a one year delayed entry program. Tried college for a minute. It didn't really work out, so I ended up going getting in the infantry. I was about nineteen and then immediately pretty much training and to pulling straight to there.
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Speaker 1: That was my first taste of combat, you know. And you know, at the time, so many people were in to SAWF.
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Speaker 4: I became soft later on, but nobody knew what the just the old grunts, you know, the old the eleven bang bangs were doing. The infantry was just out there just sucking and ate. It's funny. At one point f team came in to kind of pass through. A Special Forces team passed through and they just stopped for a minute, looked around for a couple of hours and like, what are you guys doing up here? And we're like, they told us to be up here. You know, we're like by a burn borough that we made. It's cold and you know, and so but we were doing what we were told as as just young infantrymen and it was great.
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Speaker 1: I look look back on it fondly. I really did.
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Speaker 3: Were you inspired by any of those SF guys to then follow through with the SF program where they just like out there doing a stress test and they come across you, You're like, what are you guys doing up here? Like we're just chill, We like walk through, we walk on water. Why are you here? You know?
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Speaker 4: Yeah, we thought they were cool, man, We thought and your interactions with SF guys very obviously depending on who you get. But I had tried to go s F when I was younger, right off, right off the street, and it didn't work out.
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Speaker 1: I was too immature and you know, a nineteen I didn't know what I was doing.
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Speaker 4: So you know, I got a non select from the selection course just saying I was immature, ended up going to the one seventy third Airborne and then later on seeing them multiple times, you know in BDUs with their beards when we had quick reaction where we'd go and help people and then they were they would just kind of show up and I was like, Wow, they're cool. And I remember one time I was pulling guard. I don't know what I was doing. I was pulling guard somewhere and I was just standing in the rain as an infantreatment does, like like pretty pretty cold rain, and this dude kind of looked at me and he.
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Speaker 1: Was like, what are you guarding?
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Speaker 4: And I was like that the radios or whatever, and he's like, well, it's twenty one days to a Better life, which is insinuating.
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Speaker 1: Go back to selection. So yeah, I did. I did definitely get it inspired by then.
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Speaker 4: It was my wife, my now wife, ultimately that inspired me because she later asked me after I met her, like, well, you tried this thing and it didn't work out, like you should probably try again, And it kind of dug into me and I was like, all right, lot again.
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Speaker 3: You gotta show off for the girl, bro, you gotta do it for the girl. You're like, oh, she wants the door open it, okay, I got this. Oh she wants some green break, No problem, right, let me go get a meanie on. And you know, growing up in that culture and in that lifestyle, I thought everybody in the military. When I'd walk with my dad holding his hand, we'd go on an Air Force base here in Utah and he'd go get his nets for my mom or whatever. He'd have his bret on. We're all walking in. Dad's got his beret on. I'm holding on Dad's hand and some Air Force guy comes walking out wearing a truck or hat and I said, Dad, how come he doesn't have a beret. And he's like, come on, that's all he would say, come on, just come on. And I'm like, oh, doesn't everybody have a beret? No, nobody. Not everybody has a green beret specifically, right, it's a politician, a teacher, sometimes a soccer coach. That is all put into one dude's brain, and he wears that green beret as a symbol of, you know, we're just not the same, you know, and everybody knows that. And congratulations to you for going through all of that and going through your selections and going through your Q course and going through SEER. Okay, so Q course his qualification course, SERE his survival, evasion, resistance and escape. So they can pretty much like try to proof you from giving up information. Ye, any stories from syr that ring out in your head right now?
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Speaker 4: I mean, you know, I'm pretty heavily tattooed, So I always go back to the me standing on a log completely naked, pretending to fly like an airplane while the captors, you know, made me say, look at me, I'm the painted man you.
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Speaker 3: Know, has no kidding.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you.
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Speaker 3: Know, my dad didn't warn me about tattoos. He's like, you know, if you have a tattoo and you go in the military er and you know, if you get captured, you know they're gonna flay every layer of your skin off while you sit there trying not to give out. If they're gonna flay, and they're gonna know the ink, and they're gonna know where it was put on you, and they're gonna know all these things. He would scare me so bad to get a tattoo. Well guess what, Dad, I got a tattoo. Now where are you at? But seriously, he was serious about that.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, well, your dad was a Vietnam guy, you know.
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Speaker 4: And I feel like I feel like, man, they take see you a little more seriously with the Green Berets.
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Speaker 3: I don't know.
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Speaker 4: I don't know what the Seals go through, but I know pilots and certain support people have to go through modified versions this year. But we get the full kitting kaboodle, you know, we get the naked, the cold water, torture, slapping, everything. And it's because the predominantly the guys that were captured in Vietnam were green brace. The guy who invented, actually pioneered at Seer School was Nick Roe, who was a green brain who wrote a book, five Years to Freedom, you know, and it's his his memoir being captured for five years. So he pretty much stood up Seiar School. So I feel like they put a little more emphasis on it for us. And plus the documentary had just kind of come out with strepfle and I was terrified that they had like print outs of.
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Speaker 1: Me, and I was like, Manna, they're gonna just swag me.
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Speaker 3: Oh bro, yeah, because now you're like Hollywood. You're not just painted man, You're like painted Hollywood man. Per se by being injured, stripped that Oh you got some creds. Oh, I can only imagine, you know, like the attitude that instructor would have if they found any intel on you.
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Speaker 1: Yoh yeah it was.
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Speaker 4: It was Hollywood is kind of an understatement, man, because for a while they showed restruffle. So when I went through Basic, you go through this like improcessing center for two weeks and then you report to basic training.
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Speaker 1: So you're like getting your duffel bag with your gear and you're sliding down the bench, you know, as they're like the women just throw like uniforms, boots and hats in this bag and they have TVs.
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Speaker 4: And when I went through, it was Banded Brothers and Gladiator played on a Loui NonStop. I found out later that later that the later generations watched for Streppa on a loop. And I didn't realize it until I was walking through the Atlanta Airport. Most infantry men are graduating from Fort Benning, Georgia and then going to Atlanta Airport to fly out Hartsfield Airport to fly out.
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Speaker 1: To their unit.
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Speaker 4: And I got like mobbed, and mind you, I was coming back from Afghanistan as a Green bray. I had a beard. I had really long hair that came and flipped up and they were like, oh, it's him. And I had to walk up to the drill sergeant. It was like, why do why do two hundred privates know who I am? And they're like, oh, man, we played that thing on a loop and they just watch it all day.
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Speaker 1: And I was like, Okay, well.
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Speaker 3: Great, So I am sitting with the one and only Kyle Steiner from boot camp. Ladies and gentlemen, Okay, if you watch that video, he is here with me today and I am thanking you for joining us. This dude is great. So far, so good. Lots of positive vibes coming out of you for such toughness, dude, Okay, like you had to go through a lot, right. So your your Special Forces career, what was your specialty on the teams? Were you like an eighteen echo radio guy or were you the Delta of Bravo which is armor, YEP.
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Speaker 4: Weapons and tactics. That's how I got into it. I went to the Q course and I was like, you know what, I want to get to my my ODA, my A team as fast as possible. So I picked the shortest routes that I could. Now my uncle's a gun and I had a lot of backing at it, so you can write little justifications. I was like, hey, my first choice, say team Bravo. I have extensive experience with gunsmithing and stuff. And then I think they knew who I was. And I also picked Spanish and seventh group that didn't work out initially. I actually was put in French first, but luckily a guy an SF guy that I.
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Speaker 1: Saw when I was invistryman and he knew me. He had become a cadre an instructor in the course.
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Speaker 4: And he saw me and he says, he says hey, And I was like hey, man, and he was like, do you want to be in French.
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Speaker 1: I was like no, you know, I picked Spanish. He was like, hold on a minute.
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Speaker 4: So he went and grabbed some random dude in Spanish and moved him to French and moved me over to Spanish. There's a poor guy in Africa right now that it's my fault.
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Speaker 3: And I'm like, oh, man, oh just know that dude, that's like, you know, he's just literally he had the power to swap you out at that point. Dude.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, he just kind of looked around.
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Speaker 4: He looked at like the length of the lines and was like, man to put him in French and put you back in Spanish. And I ended up in that line, walked up and said my name, like I'm supposed to be here, and they were like all right, but yeah, I was in eighteen Bravo.
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Speaker 1: Really cool.
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Speaker 3: Course.
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Speaker 4: I love being an eighteen Bravo And I was that for six seven years, and then I went to be an eighteen Fox, the intelligence sergeant, which you have to get after you've done a certain amount of time as one of the four core Moss and then so I became a Fox, did that for a couple of years. I made E eight, and but by that time I had I had acted as a team sargeant Operation Stargeant for a little over half a year, and but I had I had submitted my warn officer packet prior to the board results for E eight, not thinking I didn't make it, just knowing I wanted to on a team.
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Speaker 1: When you go warrant, you delay the paperwork side of the job for another six years or so. Yeah, fast rope and you're back doing it with the boys.
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Speaker 4: You're a little slower one of my once I became a warrant officer later on down the road and people knew who I was. I been grouped for, you know, fifteen years. They told me that I was like the Brett Farv of the team, but like the Brett Vikings era, like, yeah, he's still miraculous, but he's not as fast as he once was.
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Speaker 1: And every now and again I'll throw a pick, and I was like, all right, well whatever.
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Speaker 3: I'll take it. I'll take it, like all that, all o that, Because did you go in as a chief war as a warrant one and then just climb your way up to three or chief four or five? What'd you get.
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Speaker 1: To right now?
00:20:42
Speaker 3: Two?
00:20:43
Speaker 1: So I went in as a one.
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Speaker 4: Yet now they have now they have a delayed entry where because you can't go to SF warrant without a certain amount of time on a team, certain amount experience, they have a way for you to get too right off the bat that takes away two years of your team time, so now only.
00:20:59
Speaker 1: Four years additional team time.
00:21:01
Speaker 4: Sure I went through right at the beginning of COVID, so like they had the memorandum to give us two right off the bat, I would have qualified, but it just never got signed.
00:21:09
Speaker 1: Nobody came to work for like six months.
00:21:11
Speaker 3: So right, it was COVID, Dude, everybody's like, wear your mask, you're gonna get shot out by bullets.
00:21:17
Speaker 4: Yeah, Bien was a ghost town man when because I was in the workforce when they shut it down, and like it was eerie, man.
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Speaker 1: No courses were happening, nobody was going to work.
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Speaker 4: You can see like tumble weeds bowling across the roads, but the warrant officer course for SF still went to work.
00:21:30
Speaker 1: It was like only us just walking around.
00:21:32
Speaker 3: You're like, why am I not essential? You're like, am I not an essential person to have to like, oh wait wait wait not essential? Like me too, man, I have a It was the weirdest time because I had two tactical stores that were operating during COVID and everything shut down. But they said only essential businesses can operate. And we sold like ballistic goggles, so a lot of surgeons and everybody were coming in to get these goggles for surgery, and like everybody's buying them from us. So we got to stay open. And one time I had the fire department come in. I'm like, oh, they're gonna shut us down. Okay, I get to go home now, right. They're like, no, Rad, don't ever close. Don't you ever ever close. I'm here picking up Amma for my kids. Don't you ever close? And I'm like, I just want to be home for three weeks too, you know, but you know, and driving on the freeway speaking to Fort Bragg. Driving on I fifteen, I was the only like car driving to work up north. I just don't know how to explain that. It was almost like when President Obama flew into Utah, the freeway was completely empty and I was like the last car that was like making it through the motorcade security detail or whatever, and it was empty like that. I don't know how to explain the barrenness unless you live through this, you know. So if you live through COVID and you knew it was barren, imagine tumbleweeds flying across a base where you have people drilling and marching and moving and just complete all the ants stopped.
00:22:54
Speaker 1: Yeah. I acquainted to I am legend like we's just walking down the road.
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Speaker 3: Yeah. It was like Vanilla Sky when Tom Cruise is running down Times Square and he's looking around like where is everybody? That was real that actually happened in COVID. Dude, it's like no one's around, bro. So now we're COVID, you know, stressed in our lives, and you're now going through your warrant course and uh, you're already tapped up as an SF guy. You just don't want to be put behind a desk. I knew a lot of guys in my dad's unit. One guy he retired, but they're like six months later, they're like, why is he still shuffling up on the team to jump someone just brought up? Didn't didn't he retire? And so they had to go up to Scottie and say, hey, you retired like six months ago or seven months ago, and he's like, ah, guys, you know, I'm just guys loopholes. Man.
00:23:49
Speaker 4: They've done good at closing him, But there used to be loopholes for dudes to like not get jump master school so that they could just never ascend but just stay at this position of always being operational.
00:23:59
Speaker 1: And they've Army is.
00:24:00
Speaker 4: Kind of caught onto that stuff. So you really got to play your cards right. And I love to look at myself for an example. It's one of my few bragging points that I'll say myself because I never left to be an instructor. I stayed operational the entire time, So I have like one hundred and seventy some months operational total.
00:24:18
Speaker 3: Wow. Yeah.
00:24:20
Speaker 4: I was able to change jobs, change a teams just at the right time where they're like, oh, he's new now, so we can't give him up for two or three years.
00:24:27
Speaker 1: And I would just keep doing that to try along my time, right.
00:24:32
Speaker 3: Because you liked what you did and you wanted to stay in that system of it. And again next thing you know, you're like, oh, that's the outpost up there. Well we'll check on it later. You don't want to be that guy.
00:24:43
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, it's funny because I just wanted to hang out with the homies. You know what my life star my Army career started as, and what it ended as is me just wanting to be with the boys and do do cool stuff, you know, And that's that's what I ended up doing.
00:24:55
Speaker 3: Are you in a band? Are you in a band? Are you a musician at all? Because you seem like a Rocks are No. No, dude, I'm not saying it's the tats or the slick back hair or the black shirt. Let's see what does that shirt say? It says operation operator mindset? Is that what it says?
00:25:09
Speaker 1: Yeah?
00:25:09
Speaker 3: What you repon operator mindset? What's going on there?
00:25:13
Speaker 1: It's it's my business.
00:25:15
Speaker 4: It's I've been starting to do these things where I'm doing like leadership retreats for middle management and C suite corporate executives. But unlike most of these that you see where it's just like, oh, come out and play war or come out and do this, we're we're I'm putting them in so like an air software, right, we run after the flat air software where I give a little bit of a leadership class to some of these guys that are not getting the most other employees. And what I do is I put them in team leader and squad leader positions much like ranger school, and then I have them maneuver people, and now they can see the clarity of their guidance.
00:25:47
Speaker 1: Right, Your words mean something.
00:25:48
Speaker 4: You know, you've ever seen that old thing where you have a guy kind of stand up and explain without showing how to make a paper airplane to a class of ten people, and you come up with ten different paper airplanes because your words matter. So I kind of go through drills like that, where I do different things. I put them a little bit of hardship. But again, it's not like a buds type thing where I'm smoking these these businessmen at all. It's just say, man, wellness is important. We gotta we gotta have clarity of mine. We sit around the fire, you know, we smoke some cigars and have some whiskey and we talk about things.
00:26:16
Speaker 1: But mostly it's trying to get them to see things from their employees' point of view.
00:26:19
Speaker 4: I also do leadership consultations with with just them individually, and we'll go through picking up the slack for people. So I'll do range drills, actual live range rules where I'm like, hey, you know, his gun goes down, what are you going to do? You got to pick up fire? Right, We're just talking guns now. It's just basic differenttry tactics. But you know, the range doesn't lie. So if you freeze up there, you know, how are you doing in the boardroom?
00:26:40
Speaker 3: Right?
00:26:41
Speaker 4: So I equate military leadership and teamwork application to a business setting so they can kind of see where they where they're at under stressed and under fire, real stress because the boardroom is not stressful compared to you know combat, and you're just getting hit with airsoft guns in this but that's.
00:26:56
Speaker 3: Not you know, the mindset is you don't want to get hit by said airsoft gun, right, I do this all the time. This is my livelihood of doing kind of the same thing you're talking about. In fact, within my team that runs the operations, we're built as like a ODA. We're built as a twelve man team and up to thirty six, so we have a little bit of a rank structure, and there's different people on the team that do different things. But the point is that that at the end of the day, they're all what we considered rtos. My guys are all radio telephone operators. So I'll take one guy and bet him with five or six guys that are you know, novice, and then I'll take another guy and the bet him with the other six guys, and we're all talking to each other, right, and they're working the guys, but the whole time he's observing the leadership of that team, making sure that he's staying on the course of the grid and the map and you know, whatever we have. We make a map for the land nap based off of battleship, so you have ABCDEFG one two, three, four, five sixty seven right, and I'll be like, hey, yo, my guys haven't had any contact for the last twelve minutes. Can we move to hotel too. He's like, well, I'm at India too, so let's just meet. So they start moving into Hotel India. Next thing, you know, you just kind of guide the team leader. You're like, sir, I think we should probably move over to this area. Intel just came through. And however you want to do that, I'm going to fall back into the guys and fight with you. And so my whole goal is just to rto him to make sure that he can lead their direction correctly and you know, get it done. That's just what we do. I love that you utilize it as well. One of the things that my dad, former Greenbery guy, used to say, but when I started my business was you know Aaron, Yes, Erin is my given name, rad is my last name. So he's like, Erin, I want you to know that what you're doing is something that we've always needed on the teams. I'm like, well, how Dad, He's like, well, we would go out and do a stress test for like seventy two hours and going up and down the mountains of Utah looking for waypoints. And at the beginning of that, we're always told to expect contact. He's like, so here we are, get it up, all ready to do our Joe Live. We have our everything we need, we're blanks, everything's ready to go. And they're moving out and they go up a hill and at the same top of the hill is like number three, but they can't touch it. They have to go back down to two and then go back to three. And then at the end of the whole stress test, there's a dude stoking a fire and he's just like, you're good, and he's like, where's this contact at where's this contact that we all just like grew up expecting in our lives as a Green Beret, you know. And he's like, that's where Airsoft would come in to, you know, be that contact. And today I have used that with the guys out at the Camp Williams and whatnot as opt force. So to see from twenty years ago, Dad saying, hey, this is a good idea. This is how you should implement it to how do I find my way into working with SF guys while being not s F guy Okay, it's interesting how that life just kind of blended together. And I'm grateful and thankful to the nineteenth Group. I where my Dad's ring everywhere I go. Ever since he's passed. You know, my mom gave it to me as a gift. He died right before my birth day and three days later she's like, here, I want you to have this, and I've worn it every day since twenty thirteen. Is he was married to it, so it's on my right hand. He was married to it on his left, so it just rocks here. But you know, I just always look down and I see those three you know, lightning bolts that crossed the sword on the crest of your patch, the Special Forces arrowhead, and I just know Sea Aaron Land, and I just know that you guys are just the best of the best of the best with honors. Okay, It's like, you know, I'm not trying to get teary eyed, but it's real hard for me not to think about my father growing up in that life. And when I see guys like you or my close friends that are dressed up in their full class a's I just and and if I see a blue cord on you I'm like, are you dad, Dad? I'm like, is that my dad? Are you back? It's just something solemn about that uniform that you guys would wear, in the shiny boots of those jump boots that he would wear. And you know, we'd go to the VA ceremonies for the veterans on November eleventh around town and he'd be in his gear and all these people would just clamor over to him and like just like want to talk to him. And I'm like, day, this is my dad. What do you guys? What you guys all surround my dad about? You know? But you know I get it today and I just want to say, you know, thank you for going through that hard work of where you're at now. You know you're still all those things built out inside, but now you're just going to take that into a direction. That is what I call cocoons. Right. We cocoon ourselves every two years or so and come out with new colorful wings of butterflies. You know. So it's like whatever cocooning you've done and all these different wings that you've sprouted, and now today you know, you're working with businesses, you're trying to create successful you know leaders still still, you know that's your that. I don't know how you're gonna get away from them. That's why are you in a band? I'm like, is there anything else you do besides grow people?
00:31:53
Speaker 4: No, man, I love I love help plan and mentoring dudes like dad, because you got to think about it. You know, the military, the US military is the most successful for relation who ever exists on planet Earth, you know, I mean, we know how to lead people in the most stressful situations. Ranger School is one big leadership school. People like to think it's just like this toughness school and it sucks, lose a lot of weight and you don't sleep very much.
00:32:12
Speaker 1: But the point of it is, can you motivate thirty guys that are starving and sleep divived to accomplish a goal to work together while they're falling asleep, while they're just their stomach is grumbling, they are hallucinating, they're so sleep to five different things, you know, the hallucination stories of Ranger School wazoo. So can you motivate them to pull the best out of themselves when it matters? And you take those lessons and you input it into the settings in the civilian world and it just it compounds exponentially. It's really really something that something to see.
00:32:46
Speaker 3: It really is, it really is. I mean, did you ever get Halo qualified as a jump airborne guy? Did you ever jump out with square shoots and whatnot? You did all that Halo jump Master? Yeah? Did you ever have any close calls doing that? Yeah? I did.
00:33:00
Speaker 1: I had a close call.
00:33:01
Speaker 4: It was we were doing we were doing a jump and it was a full night wall loocker jump, so oxygen, the mask, the night vision, the rock, the web, the rifle, everything, and we were having we were getting graded and I don't know what happened, but I had a guy that was tracking me and he didn't have anything on. He was a civilian guy from a company up in Canada, Flight one. They're like professional skydiver. So we have him come in and watch us in the air, see how we're doing. And I jumped out hit the blast, and I didn't realize that the bolt on my oxygen mask had been loose. So it's got a snap that you snap in, but then you snap it into some some strappees that are bolted on your helmet. I did not realize that it was loose, so as soon as I hit wind, it came undone and it started slapping me in the face with the wind and it made my nose bleed. So this I'm in, I'm in pitch dark, but I could see the red blood kind of go up my goggles and I was like, oh man, So I'm trying to wipe it away and flying and I'm bringing my hands and I'm starting to like wobble and stuff. And I realized that I go to check my altitude on my altimeter and my mask hit. We have a tiny chem white that's really really small, and there's just a it's still in this package with a square cut in it. You crack it so it just lets out a little bit of light to see your altitude that had broken. But now I'm looking at my altimeter and I've got green keem light like, so I can't see my altitude.
00:34:19
Speaker 1: I can't see through my goggles.
00:34:21
Speaker 4: And I kind of look over and just see a glimpse of the guy tracking me, and he was just like shaking his head and he was like pointing to like get away from everybody.
00:34:28
Speaker 1: So I like tracked away as far as I could and pop my.
00:34:31
Speaker 4: Shoot and just came down completely blind, blood and chem white juice everywhere.
00:34:36
Speaker 1: And like I land and that and that guy came back behind me and he was like that was that was wild man. That was close. And I was like, I don't know what. I don't know what's going on.
00:34:45
Speaker 4: It's funny because the riggers were all concerned with the parachute because the chem white juice is toxic and it can like eat through it. So they're like, we need to get into the washing machine. And I was like, still like all messed up, Like come on, man, help me out.
00:34:56
Speaker 3: Put me in the Washington You need the washing machine, bro, you like, put me in the washing machine. And that chem light juice. We used to crack those open all the time and throw them all over us and walk in the movie go camping and look like Predator got us and whatnot. I mean it's that green juice from the movie Predator. If you ever saw the predator get shot and he leaves that green juice on a leaf, that's the chem light.
00:35:16
Speaker 4: It's really covered up. My altitude couldn't see through. They were bloody.
00:35:20
Speaker 3: I was like, this is oh my gosh.
00:35:22
Speaker 1: It was terrifying.
00:35:23
Speaker 4: I was like, I because you don't want to run into anybody, You're typically looking down, looking up waiting to see and I'm like, man, I don't want to like smash into anybody on any either side of the pipe. So I tracked way away and just pop my shoes and was just like looking around for strobe lights infrared strobe lights, hoping I didn't run into somebody.
00:35:40
Speaker 3: And the guy was able to see you like having these issues while he was writing down with you, uh you know, tracking you as you said, and he was just like, get away. So I mean, did you have nods on? Is that did you jump with nods on?
00:35:53
Speaker 4: Or somebody jump with them kind of open a little bit so they're about right here so you can kind of see below and if you need to, you can just kind of look up or move a little bit.
00:36:00
Speaker 1: So I had him on, but I was I was just kind of looking at him.
00:36:03
Speaker 4: I remember popping one down to see but I still had blood everywhere, and I could just see him.
00:36:07
Speaker 1: This is the signal for like track away, So he was like, hey, just track away.
00:36:10
Speaker 4: So you kind of get into like a knife position and you track as far as you can't away from what you called the stack and the stack of dudes that are coming down to the line, you know, like answer the rope.
00:36:19
Speaker 3: Uh.
00:36:19
Speaker 1: He was just like track away because I can't see behind me.
00:36:21
Speaker 4: I can't see anything, and I don't know what's gonna happen when I'm to play this shoot.
00:36:25
Speaker 1: So that was my really really close call.
00:36:27
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, that's not really dude, Like he's like, just get away from us. Yeah.
00:36:35
Speaker 1: I had a line wants too in a foreign country.
00:36:38
Speaker 4: I had a static line jump in a foreign country, and they, you know, they briefed us and they're like, hey, just so you know, you're jumping into a pasture, so you're gonna have barbed wire fence, uh, kind of separating the animals.
00:36:49
Speaker 1: And then you have these these.
00:36:50
Speaker 4: Cows here and there, and I don't know what it was as a stack line jump, but they also didn't tell us that there was a tire fire out there. So I'm like going and I looked down and I can see this huge group of steer, like the big ones with the horns, and I was like, oh man, I don't want to catch one of those of the butt. So like I'm moving around and then I can see the fence starting to come into play. I'm like Okay, there's barbed wire fence, but those cows kept following right underneath me. So as I moved, they were just this huge herd of like forty cows. I was like, man, So as soon as I got close within like one hundred and two hundred feet, I was like, I'm gonna hit these cows and take one of these horns, you know, right. So I like flared hard and went backwards and actually landed in a tire fire. So like I'm on top of the tires as they're on fire, and I was like rolling off of it.
00:37:33
Speaker 1: Yeah. The riggers were running out to get the canopy because that's up in flames.
00:37:38
Speaker 3: Oh mg, dude, Yeah, that's crazy. A tire fire. That's not good.
00:37:44
Speaker 4: No, And you know, they were like, well, why did you land on the tin of fire? I was like it was between that the barbed wire and the cows, all right, Like I did my best.
00:37:50
Speaker 3: Here, yeah, And it's not like you could sit there and pull the cords down. I mean a ecstatic line. Shoot, it's kind of hard to guide, isn't it.
00:37:58
Speaker 1: You have to like kind of stuff and turns like this.
00:38:01
Speaker 4: So I was like, hey, I just didn't knew I didn't want to hit a barbier because that would have split me, and I knew I didn't want to hit a cow, so like the work, the best of the three options was the fire.
00:38:10
Speaker 3: And did you were you injured during that jump? Did you get burned?
00:38:13
Speaker 4: I mean it was like the lightest jump ever because I hit this like squishy touch like old like old tires, and it like bounced and it's a couple of tires coming after me. You know, I don't think I might have sensed my sleeves a little bit.
00:38:25
Speaker 1: But I was like, oh that was wild.
00:38:27
Speaker 3: Oh dude, So okay, So you've been shot, You've been bounced off a tire fire, you've been knocked out by your oxygen mask on a halo deployment, slapping in the face and bloodying you up and uh and and this is the life that you love? Yeah, yeah, I dude, that's what's up. That's what it takes combat diver.
00:38:50
Speaker 4: So I like that's that's like one of my huge biggest points of pride is that I'm an Army combat diver. And you know, past that school at kind of an old age after I went warrant and uh yeah, yeah, I love it.
00:39:01
Speaker 1: I love doing all this stuff.
00:39:02
Speaker 3: You know, I told my I was talking to my bring up my dad again, right, I love his valor. I love my father. And he was always you know, chasing one thing. You know, there's always someone in green beret and they're badass, but there's always someone in green berets who's like better and another bigger dude on the block, Debo, there's another dude on the block that's bigger than you. In the teams, You're like, bro, you've got And I was like, Dad, what what what badge? Like? Did you not get that you wanted? He's like combat diver. He thought that if he had that little scuba guy on his hit. You know, he loved to dive too, so he was doing it his whole life. He just never got a chance. His theater of operation was like the Philippines and Thailand and Southeast Asia, the whole Pacific. You know, that was it, and he just never got that combat diver. So he's like, yeah, there's always someone out there that has something a little bit more than you out there, so never think that you're always the best, because there's someone out there that's got a little more. And I was like, what what do they got that you don't got? He's like combat diver badge. Yeah.
00:40:03
Speaker 1: I wanted it so bad, you know, I had.
00:40:04
Speaker 4: I became a sniper early on, and then I went to the Crift companies, which are like crisis response companies, so it's all hostage rescue and direct action stuff. And then I became a Halo and actually was on a Rekie team because Halo and Sneiper kind of go.
00:40:18
Speaker 3: Go hand in hand.
00:40:19
Speaker 1: And I had always wanted to be a diver.
00:40:21
Speaker 4: I had gone to pre dive the prep course right when I became a Green Beret and something happened with Manning and I wasn't able to finish, and they were like, hey, you go ahead and uh, you know, go to this team forget dive for now.
00:40:31
Speaker 1: And I was like all right.
00:40:32
Speaker 4: And then I had I had a really good friend who died in the thirteen trip and he was a diver, and you know, I remember them giving out hats and bracelets for him and it had a dive bubble on it. I remember asking for one, like, hey, can I get a memorial hat for it? Was Alex Myola and I kind of they were like, eh, you know, it's kind of for the divers. You know, he was a diver and that me and I was like, oh, hell.
00:40:52
Speaker 3: No, you're like yeah, I'll just saying like those little yeah.
00:40:57
Speaker 1: I got mad.
00:40:58
Speaker 4: And then and then years later when I went to the war course, I was having a brief with the command chief one officer, and he was like, well, what do you want to do?
00:41:04
Speaker 1: Cans like I kind of want to go back to combat.
00:41:06
Speaker 4: He's like, well, the only teams that are going to combat that don't have a one officer or dive teams. He's like, would you be willing to go to dive school. I was thirty six at the time, and I was like, yeah, I'll go. I went to dive school with thirty seven other Green Berets and only fourteen of us passed.
00:41:19
Speaker 1: Like that school is terrible. It sucks so.
00:41:21
Speaker 3: Bad, but you got the bubble.
00:41:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got the bubble.
00:41:26
Speaker 4: It's funny because I didn't win any events. I was like middle of the pack, to the back of all events, just barely making it. And then your final event, they just drive you out in this boat like way out there and they're like, hey, we want to let you know that you guys all pass. But your last thing is a free open swim. Your dive bubbles are on the shore, and I won that and they're like, this is the only thing you want? Is like, you know how long I've wanted this. I'm like, my old ass is like, just get in the surf trying to get to this thing. And they had a bud of beer and our bubbles were on eat on a can of beer, and I was like, this is the greatest feeling ever. It is one of my greatest accomplishments. My point surprise that I was able to pass that.
00:41:59
Speaker 3: You know, very proud of you for doing such a hard course and going through that and getting that bubble. And you probably went and got the hat and walked back to that dude and said, well suth bro.
00:42:08
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, hey, I do a sheriff now and we talk about it. I'm like, you have no idea that the fire you lit under me when you said that. And I went and passed it, you know, and I crushed it. It's funny because you know, you have you have three chances at this test, and it's the test that gets everybody there, and the first one I blacked out, completely blacked out, woked up, woke up under the ambulance with oxygen. They're like, yeah, you went out, man, because I mean most people do go out at some point underwater and that's the scary part, like, hey, they have to come and revive you. So I went out, and I remember feeling so free after that, being like, okay, well this isn't that bad. Like I've already blacked out now I know what it's like and uh and if it works out, great and if it doesn't, I'll go back home and watch my sons play t ball.
00:42:47
Speaker 1: And it worked out, you know, and I was like, ah, I.
00:42:53
Speaker 3: Love that, dude. That makes me feel so good. I love that you chase your dreams and crush them right like. And I love that your girlfriend, now wife, if it is still now, is the one that helped really light your spark. Like you said the sheriff lit a fire to you. Well, she lit the bonfire under you. Bro. You're like, I gotta press this chick. She wants a green beret.
00:43:17
Speaker 1: I mean I met her in Italy. She was studying.
00:43:20
Speaker 4: She went to Berkeley, and she was studying abroad and lived in Rome. And I met her at Florence right by the statue of David, you know, the famous statue. We met last and I was probably drinking with the buddies and we met and you know, years later when we were dating, you know, she saw me a green beery walked into the p X one time in Italy and we don't know what he's doing there because there's no Green Bay station in that area. You think he came down from tenth which was in Stutgart, Germany, and you could hear a pin drop. Everybody was like whoa And my now wife was like, why is his hat different? Was right, and we were just like looking at him, like he's at Sibarro getting like a piece of pizza and we're like, how cool he is? And then I explained it to her that night. I was like, it's something I wanted to do. I tried as I failed, and she was real hard on me. She was like, then go back, like you're going to take no for an answer, you know, just once and then leave it at that. I was like, all right, So I went back and just absolutely crushed it. Now I had already gone to Restrepo, so I had a lot of combat under my belt. I had it walking mountains, so the walks with the rucksack.
00:44:18
Speaker 1: Wasn't that hard. But years later, you know, she applied.
00:44:21
Speaker 4: I asked her if she wanted to do something more with her life after she got her undergrad and she's like, well, I took the law school exam and I was going to go to law school. I was like, why didn't you steady in the score as good as I wanted to and I flipped it background. I was like, oh yeah, oh well, what's up, Like, let's do this again, Let's crush it. She ended up taking it again and getting in the top one percent of the country. And then my wife attended and graduated Harvard Law School.
00:44:44
Speaker 3: So I was like, congratulations to her. Okay, women in stem bro, women in stem that's what we say at my house. Okay, my daughters, my wife powerful, they snowboard their hardcore. My daughter wants to be the president. You know. She speaks multiple language, just Chinese, you know. So it's like women in Stem dude, way to power that, yeah, you know.
00:45:05
Speaker 4: And the funny thing is is like she had been grew up in San Francisco area, her mom was a She's a first generation American. Her mom is German, came here on her own did everything, and you know when she got the letter for Harvard was the first one she got. She was like, oh, I got accepted to Harvard, and I was probably eating something. I was like I'm sorry what And I didn't know.
00:45:21
Speaker 1: Harvard, Yeah, where she all applied.
00:45:23
Speaker 3: I was like Harvard.
00:45:25
Speaker 4: I was like the Harvard and she was like, yeah, I don't know if I want to go there. I was like, I'm gonna stop you right there. I'm from a small town in Wisconsin. Harvard doesn't really exist to us. It's kind of like Hogwarts. It's just yeah, exactly, I'm not sure it's real. If you get into Harvard, you go to Harvard, like, She's like, well, I'll be away from you for you go to Harvard, Like that's you cannot pass that up.
00:45:44
Speaker 3: Come on, right, it's a deployment. You know. She handled you going away for a minute. You were probably like you can't handle me being gone. She's like yeah, go on, yeah, You're like, but wait, but wait, don't you need me next to you with the pillow and stuff. She's like, go on, go on now now with let me ask you something about your deployment. Something that I lived with with my dad was we I only moved twice. I moved from California as a young man to Utah for his station here, and then he went off and did all of the stuff as an s F guy. Right, so I got to grow my roots here. I didn't get really pulled out and go to different military school or military basis for school. Was that the same way with you where you pretty much this is home. Everybody gets to stay home, and then you went and did everything. Yeah.
00:46:27
Speaker 4: Yeah, SF guys don't move a whole lot. And the reason for that is because we have to have continuity within the group. You know, like your your father he covered what was called Indo Pacom India Pacific Command. We covered South and Central Command down in South America and Central America sentim and each each Green Beret is part of a group that covers an area, so like you speak that language or a multitude of languages in order to cover that area more adequately. The regular Army PCs is people every three to four years because they want a transition of skills to sort of say, right, so this guy was here, he knows how this works. Let's put him over here in first I D so he can bring that knowledge from here to here, you know, And.
00:47:06
Speaker 1: That's how they do it. They don't do that with us.
00:47:08
Speaker 4: So Seventh Group used to be command stationed at Fort Bragg. I graduated and stayed at Fort Bragg from the Q course, and then Seventh Group writ large as a unit moved to Egland because Transcom was moving to Brag and they were just like two crowded. So when Seventh Group moved to Brag, I moved with them in early twenty eleven, and I was in Florida from that point until I bought my retirement home in Wisconsin.
00:47:31
Speaker 1: Where I'm from.
00:47:32
Speaker 3: Nice. Let me guess Two Rivers. You're you moved into Two Rivers right off the shore of Lake Michigan there, huh, and you go to I'm close to yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, you go to Sheboygan or like phil RoHS Burgers and like, uh you know, uh yeah yeah yeah. So my dad's from Two Rivers. He was born in Yeah yeah. I think maybe Manitowaca is where he was maybe born. I don't know, yah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I love I love me some Wisconsin cheese. I love me some you know, holy mackerel on the fridge, the magnet, my Grandpa had. You know, it's like macrol with holes all in it. Say, he was a fisherman right there off the you know Lake Michigan. He actually worked on reels, Like he was really good with like little screws and reels and making them all work. So crazy how he could live off of fixing reels back in the day, and today you got to have like four jobs to try to make rent. You know, times have changed, you know, Sweet little two rivers Manitowac, Milwaukee, Milliequake, dude, Yeah, I love that. I love that You're from Wisconsin. Bro. Yeah, my dad's was. I love it. I've been there a couple of times as a young man and got nothing but love for Wisconsin. Yeah.
00:48:40
Speaker 4: Man, we have a ton of acreage, kind of like a micro farm, and like it's where I wanted to raise my children, you know, and have open spaces.
00:48:47
Speaker 3: You know.
00:48:47
Speaker 4: We got foxes, deer, coyotes on the property everywhere, so my kids can just run. We got two ponds, and it's really the serenity I've been looking for after twenty plus years in the military. Just kind of take a step back trying to get some chickens this spring. See what I can do that, you know, stuff like that.
00:49:01
Speaker 3: I love it. I love it. I love it. I'm sure whatever you do is going to be the best because you just strive for that and your smile delights the room. Okay, I don't know where you got shot at the head, but it looks good. Okay, I'm gonna tell you right now. I'm not sure. I'm like, looking at you, I'm like, where did it get about?
00:49:19
Speaker 2: No?
00:49:19
Speaker 3: The dimple in the chin? Is that what it is? No, I don't know. I'm looking for dimples. Where did you get struck at? When you got here?
00:49:26
Speaker 1: Right in the bed of the head.
00:49:28
Speaker 4: So I got hit in the helmet right back here, and it kind of entered the layering of the kevlar and scooped around and then came out on this side.
00:49:36
Speaker 3: Wow. Are you rated out of the military or you're out now right? No?
00:49:41
Speaker 1: Official retirement date isn't until this summer.
00:49:43
Speaker 4: I'm almost called a so calm fellowship where I'm allowed to move my family home essentially and then work an internship kind of a skill bridge thing. So I've got something here with actually my family's gun range mission specific worldwide, and I'm just doing things there I'm learning the business side of it, but I'm also getting to shoot in my spare time and stuff like that, so it's pretty fun.
00:50:04
Speaker 1: So I got that in order to be able to move the family here, you know.
00:50:06
Speaker 3: And do you still wear the gear the uniform, still go to report in or anything or you're out.
00:50:13
Speaker 4: No, I'm not out, but I'm on like a one hundred and eighty day sabbatical, so I don't I don't really have to just check in via phone. I just talked to him yesterday and they're like, hey, how's it going, And looks pretty good. And I get like an inventory sheet once a month on how it's going, what I'm learning, what I'm doing day to day.
00:50:28
Speaker 1: And I'm free and clear here and hopefully this lasts right up to my retirement date. It should be around May June.
00:50:34
Speaker 3: Is this a normal opportunity for SF guys to have to do this fellowship style transition from the military or is it for yeah, yeah, yeah, it's yeah.
00:50:43
Speaker 1: I mean they have two versions of it.
00:50:45
Speaker 4: They have skill Bridge, which you were doing a conventional retirement, you can do the skill bridge, or that they have the fellowship and you have to get the business. You choose has to have a memorandum of understanding via SOCOM on like what they'll teach you. They won't pay you, you know, it's unpaid intern You're there to learn something to help you continue your life after the military, and a ton of big businesses already have them.
00:51:07
Speaker 1: I had to set one up because this business didn't have.
00:51:09
Speaker 4: An understanding in place, But like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, all those places, they already have them. So guys are constantly going to those big things doing a six month internship at Amazon as a general manager or something like that.
00:51:20
Speaker 1: Wow, trying to learn that stuff.
00:51:22
Speaker 3: So they caught wind of having that implemented in their organization, so they can bring guys like you into their organization under that that fellowship or that that situation. So a business can then opt in to have it and then be accepted under the SOCOM guidelines. Is that what I'm understanding?
00:51:40
Speaker 4: And then they can yeah, and then they have that memory of understanding, so if anybody else wants to get into that kind of work or learn X, Y or Z, they can just fall in under that, get their signed and be like, yeah, this is an approved company, Like I want to do it with them, you know, I was offered to Amazon and Google and things like that, and I said, that doesn't really appeal to me. There's a bunch of private equity firms that teach you to kind of put you in general managersians and teach you that kind of stuff. And I wanted to come back home and kind of do some a little more down to earth. And that's that's how that's how I started with your mindset and different things with in conjunction with this.
00:52:09
Speaker 3: That's very cool and very outside the box thinking too. I see what you did there, Okay, so very cool, very cool. Yeah, I would, I would. I love you, dude. I think you're great. Kay. And and and you just keep doing what you're doing. And I know I've had you on here for like almost an hour and just bsing and thank you for being open to talking to me about some of these things, and you know, smiling about it. And thanks for raising your hand in a ninety degree fashion several times to say you'll take one for the team, dude, seriously. And the blood and the chem light juice, I can only just like see it in a movie, bro. And and I hope there's something out there for you in Hollywood. Dude, because I mean, you should be like playing yourself, oh, or at least playing a rocker in a band. Dude, I could just see it, you know. You just give me this like, yeah, I love it, Dude, I love it. And you know, thanks to our buddy Mike Mutual who sent you my way. Dude, I think that you've been a classy person to talk to. I know, I just tip the snowflake on the tip of the iceberg with you, okay, But you know you're always a welcome addition back onto the show. If you ever say, hey, Rad, you know my operator mindset has blown up and this is what's going on with it, or this new thing just happened, or I got more things to talk about that I can talk about. You know, I'm never here to have you out anything unless you want to. So if there's anything you ever want to talk about, just reach out to us. I'm sure my audience. You know, even if you're reaching one person right now, and it might be that guy who's in the teams and he might be listening to, like what's Rad talking about with this SF guy? They might know who you are. They're going to say, oh, I didn't know there was a fellowship program.
00:53:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, you know I'd love to love Yeah, I've enjoyed this for sure.
00:53:54
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. And is there any way that anybody can reach out to you at operator mindset if they have anything to offer you. Are you looking for any additional you know, correspondence with vets that are in the same field as you.
00:54:03
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I might operate different. Dot Com teaches you to operate different. I do a men's coaching thing mostly for civilians, to teach him how to operate in our mindset and frame of minds. And I founded that early on when I was coaching my sons in wrestling, and you know, my sons were performing at a high level and I heard a dad. I overheard a dad say his son asked him like, why aren't we doing that? And his son's like, well, you know, their dad's an operator. It's different. And I remember hearing that. I mean, like, it's not that different, though, man, like you can be the example too. You can set an example for your sons the same as us, Like, I'm no different than you in that regard. It's a mindset, you know, that allow us to push forward through uncomfortable times. Become comfortable being uncomfortable, you know. So I kind of frame that in the in the sense of making operate different. I will teach men how to operate different. And that's my passion too.
00:54:50
Speaker 1: I love doing that.
00:54:50
Speaker 4: I love like giving guys advice, giving father's advice who feel like they're stuck in a rut.
00:54:54
Speaker 1: And you know, the kids, the kids aren't aren't living up their expectations.
00:54:57
Speaker 4: I always tell them, like, hey, man, if if you look in the mirror and it's not a man that you would want your sons to turn exactly into, then you need to make the change.
00:55:04
Speaker 1: Because he's watching more than he's listening to.
00:55:06
Speaker 3: You know. Yeah, that's true. That's way true. And I'm going to steal that and just use it more of what you just said in my life. I agree with you. You know, we are leading by example. They watch our actions. They see us. You know, you flip that car off in the road. They see it and they're like, oh, I'll flip that car off in the road. It's just like, you know, I love that. Wait, wait, good, good, good snippet right there, right. If there's one thing you can do is just lead by example. I love that dude, I love it.
00:55:32
Speaker 1: But I'm on Instagram at real Kyle Steiner and Facebook.
00:55:36
Speaker 3: I think that's real Kyle Steiner. Ye say that loudly?
00:55:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, because otherwise I would alter from Ohio State.
00:55:47
Speaker 3: Or I'm a basketball player from Wisconsin with my second dame. There's a dude out there with my name. I'm like, what's up? How come I can't have my Instagram account as my name? It's like this dude from your back, I'm like, life goes on. I'm the real you know what I'm saying. Hey, And I love the fact that you coach. You know, I love the fact that you are that soccer coach I was talking about, right, I'm like, you guys are all in one. My dad's same thing baseball. Every all year long, he would train me for baseball. He drilled a hole through the baseball's axis, took a piece of red paracord, and then tied it through it with a knot and then a knot so he could swing it a baseball. And he would, and he would wear a gardening glove because every time I'd hit it, it would pull the rope out of his hand. So he'd get it going like seventy miles an hour because there was no one that could pitch that fast to me, and I didn't have a pitching machine anywhere. So he's like, well, if you're gonna hit fast balls, let me just so he'd swirl it like a helicopter and then I would just stand there and then it would just come right in front of my quack, in front of the plate, and I would just I'm just saying, I love you guys, dude, and I love your mantra and to free the oppressed, dale press, the lever, the whole thing. I love wearing my dad's ring and living under his shadow. And thank you for for being you and being on the show today.
00:57:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, brother, nice mind. Pleasure really was.
00:57:04
Speaker 3: Really and I just want to thank you again. And you're always welcome back in. And if you want to learn more about Kyle, just google Kyle Steiner Army and you'll see his bio in all of the Internet. You can look up for Streppo. You know, he's got so much going on and Operator mindset and Operate Operate Different dot com. So check him out. Follow real Kyle Steiner on Instagram and just add one more like to his his picks and his comments and and if you want to learn more, just click on the link down below in whatever we've typed out and you can find all that information here at soft reap dot com. And again, big thanks on behalf of all of us at soft rep to Kyle for joining the show today, so thank you appreciate it. Yeah, and this is rad On, behalf of Kyle Steiner, saying peace.
00:58:07
Speaker 2: You've been listening to self Red Ladia