Well, That F*cked Me Up! Surviving Life Changing Events.
Well, That F*cked Me Up! Surviving Life Changing Events.
S6 EP18: Ron's Story - Breaking Free from My Own Ego!
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Ron Camacho is a veteran law enforcement executive who currently serves as the Chief of Police for the North Charleston Police Department (NCPD)
Ron was an angry, egotistical supervisor. He was running over people, “collecting men’s tears” in disciplinary meetings, and strutting through the halls like he'd won something. His ego was out of control and he had no idea. Then his wife (now ex) gave him an ultimatum: marriage counseling or out of the house. He didn’t know it then, but therapy was going to save his life.
Six months of intensive therapy ripped open wounds Ron stuffed down for years. And in the process, something unexpected happened: the anger started to leave. The ego started to deflate. He started to see himself, and everyone around him differently.
Dr. Ron Camacho brings a deeply personal story centered on overcoming significant life adversity and rebuilding through discipline, mindset, and personal responsibility. His journey reflects a clear “before and after” transformation, with a strong emphasis on resilience, recovery, and the long-term process of regaining control after life-altering challenges. What an amazing episode!
Book: Bringing Ego to the Forefront: The First Step Toward Ego-Free Leadership – Books – Manuscripts
Site: Camacho Consulting
Welcome to another episode of Well, That Fucked Me Up. I am your host, Luke Colson. And today I'm thrilled to have Ron Camacho on the call with us. How are you doing, Ron?
SPEAKER_01Very good. Honored to be here. Thank you very much for having me.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for coming on the show. And where are you calling us from?
SPEAKER_01I'm in North Charleston, South Carolina.
SPEAKER_00Very good. I've never been to the South. My plan is to get their ASAP because I see it on the TV and I'm like, yeah, I have to travel. I live in LA, even though it doesn't sound like it. I've been in California for 11 years. So I'm um I'm enjoying my time in the States and probably will be here for a long way to come.
SPEAKER_01Beautiful weather down here in South Carolina. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So, Ron, every week we have a guest who comes on and talks about surviving life-changing events and experiences. Um, and everyone's story is different. Um, everything we've been through. What kind of makes us who we are, um, can be a one-off event, can be a series of events, can be physical, can be emotional, can be relationships, can be can be um really anything that affects us and and often traumatizes us and and how we get through it. Um and so with that, Ron, where would you like to begin?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so as you can see, I'm a police officer. I'm actually a police chief here uh of uh North Charleston, South Carolina. Yeah. So uh I've been a cop for 30 years, GTA for about 10 years uh here at this particular department for about a year and a half.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_01Um I've had a very um great career, yeah, but part of it uh the middle part, um, I was dealing with a lot of anger issues, a lot of ego issues, and a lot of things related to trauma. Wow. And um how that came about, I was put into a high pressure situation. I was a young, young lieutenant, right? 11 years on, which is not um not normal, and told, fix, fix this unit. You're you're now in charge of people that have 20 years on, 30 years on. Wow. And you're you're now yeah. Very high. Yeah, you're now and I that was a detective division, you know, and and that was in York, Pennsylvania. Uh kind of a violent, um, violent place in uh in the middle of Pennsylvania. So I'm under this amount of stress and um, you know, became angry, became very much uh arrogant because uh I was getting results and that was going to my head. And I thought getting results or leadership was about you know following my will, and I was gonna break you, I was gonna make you know, follow my will. And I thought that was leadership.
SPEAKER_00You know, so and I'm sorry to stop you there, but it's so funny because I've just been speaking to a couple of people about this, and obviously not in the world of being a cop, right? But people misunderstand, right? And they think by getting the best out of people, you're gonna intimidate them, you're gonna yell at them, you're gonna you're gonna be erratic in your behavior, and you're gonna force them to do what you want to do, and you think that that's being a leader, and that's what's gonna get the best out of people, and that's just the last person people want to work for, right?
SPEAKER_01100% totally wrong, totally wrong way. I I describe myself at that point in time as Genghis Khan, and now I'm leading, you know, I've learned, I've transformed. Yeah, so um I got promoted again to captain. So now I have even more responsibility, but that anger is still there, and that drive to continue to, you know, make my people, you know, continue to work hard and do the right things was still there, and the stress is still there. So I'm not I'm not there solving crime, but I'm responsible for them making sure that they're solving crime, making sure that we're you know doing the right thing by the community and pickle and uh a very difficult pickle, yeah. Yeah, and um the stress finally got me to crack and um you know uh the marriage started going bad. I had an affair, and uh my ex, she was my wife at the time, she said, we gotta go to counseling, you know. So we went to counseling, uh marriage counseling, and um it was funny, we're supposed to go to marriage counseling, which millions of people do, it's not a big deal. And we kind of shocked the counselor. So when you sit before the counselor and you're an angry person and you start talking about stuff, and she starts digging and you start talking about these traumatic events from your childhood, and you know, she's that's where she's finding a lot of this anger is coming from, a lot of this hurt, a lot of your insecurities. And she's like, Hey, we can't even deal with the marriage, we gotta deal with you. Yeah, yeah, you're really messed up, you know, you're after up, right? So um and and I say this, you know, you know you're messed up when you make the counselor cry. Not once, yeah, twice when you're sharing her your stories from uh you know your childhood. So um, so they're you know, going through intensive counseling for you know about a good six months. Felt like I was running a marathon, you know, at those sessions, emotionally drained, um dealing with trauma, you know, dealing with uh, and I wasn't physically abused, it was just mental, you know, you're not good enough, you know, you're you're uh you know, you're not gonna amount to anything. And I was I was a kid who never got in trouble with the law, didn't drink, didn't smoke to this day. Don't drink, don't smoke. And it was just that constant, you know, punching down of you're just not gonna be good enough, you're not, you know, you're not gonna amount to anything. Which, you know, for any parent that might be listened to this, that sticks with your kids.
SPEAKER_00So it stuck with me. So very interesting, this, because that's what happened to me as a kid with my father, right? And it was it's like this in the side of your head, like a like a woodpecker. That's you're not gonna be able to do that. You can't do that, you'll never amount to this. I I well, that doesn't surprise me that you failed that class because that you're a failure. This is what I heard, right? Every single year of my childhood. And it felt like he was just picking on me, and it didn't feel like he was picking on my older brother, and everything I did was wrong. It felt like everything I did was wrong. I was too scared to speak by the end because what would come out of my mouth he would tell me that was was wrong. Sometimes commented on the way I said a word was wrong. Everything was wrong. The criticism nearly fucking killed me. And in my experience, I I so with you with in your experience as you got older, you obviously had this pressure because you wanted to you didn't know it, but you were trying to prove you were trying to prove to somebody that you could you could be a success, right? And we'll come to that in a minute. For me, I never believed that I could become a success, so I started drinking and and and misbehaving in all kinds of crazy ways. And and it's funny how it's funny how the trauma catches up with us, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, 100%. So um you're right. I I took that that that affected my um, you know, I became insecure and was insecure. And people who knew me back then, right, when I was a teenager or my young 20s, they would say, You you weren't insecure, yeah. You you seem very confident. It was false. Yeah, totally false. You know, you start looking totally insecure, right? And that affected me all the way through, you know, into my policing career, you know. And um to I I tell this if people know me now, I can't fix anything, right? Because anytime I was trying to work with my father to fix anything, paint something, you know, that turned into uh hey, uh screaming match, right? About you don't have the difference between this screwdriver, that screwdriver, this hammer, that hammer, and I would shut down. And to the to this day, I can not it's it takes me triple the amount of time it would take you to you know put something together.
SPEAKER_00It's embarrassing, but that comes from it's so wild, isn't it? To just imagine like there's you, right, in your life and your world and in a different part of the world, and there's me growing up in London, completely different people, completely different families, but we're going through the same thing. Like I would wash the dishes after lunch that my mum would make on Sunday, we'd all have a big family lunch. And my dad would come and inspect the washing of the dishes, and then start telling me how once again I failed to clean the dishes in the correct way. I mean, it's the same thing, it's like any any anything that I did was wrong. And you start to believe that after a while.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. Yeah. So the beauty of the the counseling, which I would say turned into therapy, right? Yeah, was that eventually it was hey, you you gotta own your own shit, right? And you start working on yourself, you start getting these tools to start accepting you and who you are, and start healing that because you're talking through it and and you're accepting who you are, and I started healing, right? And I started pushing through that and becoming a a different person. And you know, eventually, um the the marriage didn't survive, right? But I survived as the person and I transformed and I started really um you know diving into the world of um you know self-awareness and ego and introspection, and I used those tools um very much to make myself and reinvent myself into a better person. And um, and almost to the point where eventually what I did was I went back and examined his life and said, What made you into that? That's right, and what happened to you, you know, that caused you to be that. And my father had some major, major trauma in his life, yep, you know. So you you go and you you you go that, he wasn't able to break that chain, but I was able to break the chain with my children, you know. I'm in a sus.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, and I'm and similarly, I've done the same, right? So I'm what I've also been able to do, you know, I've been sober for seven years now, and I've broken the cycle of this inherent alcoholism and addiction that runs through our family. And my father, bless him, was beaten, physically beaten with a belt by his dad, right? So, sure, he's telling me that I'm not good enough and I can't do the dishes. He didn't he never hit me, similar to your father, but we're talking about manipulative emotional abuse, and that can really, really mess with a with a person's head. I I I have an interest. So, were you uh in charge of the same department through all of this as your time from when you were an egotistical, angry boss to uh as you started to transform and the people around you as this transformation started to take place, obviously very slowly, how do people start sort of react to that and how did that affect your life?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so unfortunately, um when I transformed, that transformed. So that transformation happened in the last six months of my time there in that department.
SPEAKER_00Got it.
SPEAKER_01And I retired early, got it, and I had this opportunity to go to Afghanistan as a police advisor.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_01So believe it or not, I go to Afghanistan as this police advisor, and my stress level drops immediately, and I don't have any stress. And um really just start digging into that and then start, you know, looking at the people around me and just examining things and examining why who makes a good leader and who doesn't make a good leader and how, and then you know, reading up on that those things and um incorporating that slowly into my leadership abilities and then making amends, you know. I don't drink right, but uh I took some some points from the 12-step program, and when I could, I made some amends to some of the people that uh from my old department, you know, people that I did wrong, you know, people that you know I bumped into, or maybe I had some bad interactions with, or you know, or people, you know, just in general, you know, there were things that I did that I was embarrassed about. Yeah, you know, and I if I run into somebody, I would go and I would, you know, apologize and kind of make amends and uh you know just make uh for me to say I'm sorry now is very easy. Yeah that word wasn't in my vocabulary when I was in that when I was in that mind state, you know, uh back then.
SPEAKER_00That takes an incredible change in a human being to be able to do that. Like I would never be able to talk about the things that I did in my in my worst drinking years, but now I can because it's in my rear view mirror, and the people that were dragged along the way, you know, again I've spoken to them and people see change and people want people to change, but I guess that quite a few people were surprised, right? That you had had such an amazing transformation because it sounds like you were this person within the police force for quite a long time, and that's just the way you did that's just the way you went about your business, right?
SPEAKER_01Right. And like people here in my my old the department that I was before here, and the department that I'm here, like they when somebody from that original apartment comes to visit, because it's South Carolina, they want to come and visit here, and I'm in a very large uh department, and we have a lot of nice things here, right, to see. Um they come and they tell these stories, right? One one of my best friends came to visit and he was like uh telling the assistant chief, right? My number two, hey, do you have um do you have uh egg cartons in between the walls so you know you don't hear Camacho scream? And he's like, Scream, what are you talking about? You know, or we went to another office and he says, Oh, do you do you hear him yell? He's like, uh, you know, I don't know, you know, but I was mad. My best friend who you know saw me and interacted with me every day, he saw me mad every day. Yeah, you know, and he wasn't even he was my best friend and he was a hard worker for me, and he wasn't even the the um he didn't catch that anger, right? He was on team Camacho, but he saw me, you know, rip into people, he saw me, you know, um really you know put that pressure on people to get them to you know comply and and do what they needed to do. So um, but and I talk to this guy all the time, but he's it's still hard for him to see who I am now, yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, yeah, that's absolutely extraordinary. Do you think a couple couple of questions? Firstly, do you think it was really hard to work under you? It sounds like do you think people respected you? Because it sounds like you got shit done, but uh do you think you were a nasty boss?
SPEAKER_01I here's here's what I said, what I say. If you were on my team, you loved working for me. Yeah, but the only people that were on my team were the workers. So in my first department there, when I was running stuff, the the workers, the top 10 to 20 percent, they were on my team, they're the people that got things done. But you can't run a police department with 20% of the department, you know, 80% of those people, you know, you got like the middle 40 or 50 percent, you know, what are they doing? The rest of that department um either were afraid, you know, some respected me, some despised me. Now that's not the case. Now there's mutual respect. You can like me or not like me, but there's respect up and down. Yeah, you know, I have no problem um explaining what I'm doing, you know, just really getting down there. And I believe my people understand that you know their best interest is at my heart. Um, I I have this saying, and this is really true. When I started putting other people before me, my life changed, you know, uh just blessings came from everywhere. My wife now, uh, she she says that she's you know, these things would happen, you know, these opportunities would come from left and right, and she would be amazed. She's like, What these things happen to you and and why? And it's because I spend my time um open and readily helping people whenever I can.
SPEAKER_00That's that's amazing. Do you think do you think I mean everything happens for a reason, right? You there was some infidelity, and that's what ended with you guys going to the counselor, and it really, if you hadn't have gone to the counselor, who only knows what would or would not have been found out about your trauma? So do you think I mean it's a sort of double-edged sword, isn't it? Like you ended up in counseling, but if you hadn't have ended up in counseling, who the hell knows if you would have ever started the journey to figure yourself out?
SPEAKER_01I I could tell you, um, I was probably gonna end up in three different ways. Probably gonna stroke out, right? Have a heart attack, have a stroke. Um, probably was gonna get physical with somebody, right? Uh, as I was still, you know, very active on the street and still had this super machismo, you know, thing. I mean, even to to my last couple days, uh well, maybe not my last couple days, but my last couple months, I caught a bank robber, you know, um, or just a robber, not a bank robber. Um, and um, or I would have swallowed a gun, you know.
SPEAKER_00That's the path that I was. So you were really in in turmoil.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So um and that's there's a lot of stigma with, you know, there's a lot of stigma still in uh the first responder world, you know, fire police and um um EMS with uh you know, getting help. And I tell my story all the time. I share it whenever I can to remove the stigma. There shouldn't be stigma anymore with us getting help. And I use this uh I use my story as a way to um to show that hey, um, you can change. There is avenues to help you change. And you know, people say people don't change. That's bull crap, you know that. You know, you can change you can change at 50, you can change at 60, you can change at 70, you can and when I'm talking to my 25, 30, 35-year-old cops, you can change, you know, and it's better to start changing now than wait till you're you know in the middle to end of your careers to start going there.
SPEAKER_00Do you do you find people in your community know, I mean, they it sounds like they know what what you went through and where you are now? Do you find a lot of people coming and confiding in you or asking you for help and advice? And what are you doing kind of now to use essentially what is your power to pass on the message to to to what happened to you and how you've come out the other side? Like in just like so much for the best. Obviously, your marriage didn't make it, but like you you must just feel like a completely different human being today.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I do. And um, so I've done a couple of things. Um, yes, I I'm a storyteller, and most of my police stories have to do with me doing something dumb and how you know how that has uh you know helped, you know, there's some good outcome that happens, you know, constantly showing them they don't do this, right? Good mentorship, don't don't step on this landmine, go this route. I already stepped on this landmine, so you don't have to do that. Um, or uh using a coaching method and helping them find their own path through their own words, through their own methods. But um what I What I've done is put together some classes on ego and introspection and self-awareness. Last year, I took the whole summer and I taught my whole department that. You know, took taught taught my whole department and had some real you know revelations and got you know them to open up their eyes and start thinking about these things. And part of that was two reasons to help them and their careers and to keep them out of my office. And we start we saw some really good results, you know. We cut down on use of force by half, you know, 49%. Uh we cut down on complaints from citizens, we cut down on the discipline that we were issuing, you know. So in one year, we saw some really good results. Now it wasn't just these classes. We have a coaching platform that we have here, a company called Performance Protocol. We brought in, and we're we're changing the culture here. So there's a couple of things that we have going on, but this philosophy is working, and it's beautiful when I have young officers coming to me when they're admitting their mistakes, and the first words out of their mouth is, This is my ego. Yeah, and I swell up like a proud daddy, you know. I'm like, oh my words have resonated with you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Or I have uh I have quite a few of my uh middle managers in different command schools, and they come back to me saying, Hey, they're talking about emotional intelligence, they're talking about the things that you've already told us about. I know I know what they're talking about because you've already told us about that. So those are the things that make me very proud and happy, and that's what I share with them, and culminating in, you know, I wrote a book, um, and I'm still in the process of finishing that up, and that's like the the grand finale with this, and it has to do with ego, you know, and just giving people techniques on how to deal with that their ego.
SPEAKER_00And when will the book be done? Like when can we when can we share that with our listeners?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um I'm in pre-sale now, so I'm trying to get this published.
SPEAKER_00So I can give you the link to uh put it on the show notes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01If you could, that would be awesome. Yeah. And it'll be published in January. If I get enough people to to uh to to buy a pre-sale, but it the sales are looking really good.
SPEAKER_00Okay. And a couple more questions before we sign off, because this is just fascinating to me. I'm assuming ego is it's ego must be like the main culprit. I I'm I'm making assumptions here, but in the police force, I think you get quite a few people in the police force whose fathers or their mothers were in the police force. So there's a lot of expectation to follow in the family, right? So is it is that true? Is there like a lot of pressure on people who become cops to succeed?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I mean, we have some legacy, not as many as they used to, got it, you know. Um, and we really do a lot of work, you know, with our psychological test to make sure that we're getting the right person. We're looking for those two, you know, the helpers, right? We're looking for those people that have that helping mentality.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You have to be in shape, you have to have the ability to uh critically think, you know, all that sort of stuff. But um but we're we're doing that sort of stuff, but with young people, right? Um it doesn't matter what generation you are, um, there's always ego with my middle middle managers, my 35 and 45, 45. There's always ego with my people that are in their 50s. There's ego, it just it just doesn't matter. So, you know, we're always having those conversations, and by us discussing that, by us being able to talk about that, and the book is called Bringing Ego to the Forefront. By us being able to have these concussions, it brings it easier, right? Yeah, it's a lot easier for us to get to the problem very quickly. Yeah, and sometimes uh a technique that I've used before in the past is to, you know, once we've discovered something, I'm not a psychologist, but I will send somebody to a psychologist to work with through their problem a little more. Sometimes it, you know, maybe a counselor, sometimes they need a little more uh intensive work. We'll send them to a psychologist, but it's all for them to get better. Incredible.
SPEAKER_00Uh and last question just to wrap up. You said you took early retirement, but then you went to Afghanistan, and now you're obviously unretired, and here you are working as chief of police. It when is there a world where when you're no longer a police uh in the police force, this becomes a full-time um thing for you? Uh helping helping people and coaching people and do doing that as a set almost like a second career.
SPEAKER_01Well, we'll see how the well the book does, you know. I don't know. But yeah, I love I love this department here. They really good thing about the South, they're very hospitable. And this department has really, and this community has really opened their arms to me, and it's it's really awesome seeing like these philosophies and the culture changing and seeing the results. Like it's we can talk about culture changing, and I can say culture's changing, but we have statistics to see the culture changing. Yeah, you know. Um, I I do one thing well, which I guess is run teams, run police departments, I think. Yeah, um, and I'll be here for as long as they'll have me. Yeah, but um, you know, and I can't even think about retirement, you know. I I'm not one of those guys, so who knows what the future brings, but um I I on part-time, you know, I still help, still teach, yeah, um, teach those classes. And again, my life's about service and helping others get to the next level.
SPEAKER_00What an incredibly inspirational story. This is exactly why I do the podcast, you know, just hearing everything you've said today is amazing and it's so inspirational. And maybe there's people listening who see a little bit of themselves in, you know, how you're how you were and how your behavior was, and they might be like, oh, you know, some people not realizing maybe that they're slightly uh overshadowed with trauma. And you know, we all have we all have shit that we went through, and some of us worse than others, but we bring it, we drag it along with us until we until we figure it out and we get rid of the baggage, you know. So thank you so much for coming and sharing your story with us. Um, we'll make sure that there's any links to where people can find you, the pre-sale of the book on the show notes. And it just remains for me to say thank you for your time today. It's been brilliant.
SPEAKER_01Thank you very much for having me, and thank you for what you do. This is important. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, sir.