ProtectED with Peter F. (STEP podcast Premiere Episode)

    In this compelling episode of the "School To Embassy Project," we are honored to welcome Peter, a distinguished Special Operations Master Breacher from the 75th Army Ranger Regiment. Peter's extensive career involved training and instructing on how to make entry into a variety of structures, from the most fortified to the everyday. Drawing from this elite experience, Peter has developed an innovative solution that can transform classrooms into safe rooms in a matter of seconds, even for elementary school students.

Discover the incredible layers of security built into his ballistic bookshelf system—features so advanced and thoughtful that no one else has addressed them. Peter's solution is more than just practical; it's a game-changer in ensuring the safety of our children.

Tune in to hear more about this groundbreaking innovation and why it's essential for every school. Don't miss this chance to learn about something that could make a significant difference in your community.

Contact me directly to learn more about ProtectED and how you can implement these life-saving measures in your school:   SchoolToEmbassyProject@gmail.com  (Subject line put:  "ProtectED Inquiry from Peter's Episode"

 Subscribe to STEP on my website at   www.SchoolToEmbassyProject.com 

                                 **Also on YouTube  https://youtu.be/S-EeVf4GTlw**

#SchoolToEmbassyProject #EndSchoolShootings #Podcast #MentalHealthMatters #CommunitySafety #YouthSupport

Transcript

0:01

Step podcasts, obviously very excited to have you on. And I just want to jump right into things. So if you would just kind of give a little bit of your background, you and your wife and kind of why you came up with the product that you came up with. So, you know, my background, so just going into my background, you know, grew up in New Jersey, grew up in a law enforcement family. My father was law enforcement. My younger brother went into the military and that kind of drove me into joining the military, my younger brother, and he never lets me forget. You know, so. So the way it all happened was my younger brother was in 10th Mountain. I was going to college in California and this was 99. He called me, it might have been late 98, I think it was late 98. He calls me and says that he's getting deployed to Bosnia. I didn't know anything about it. I didn't know anything. The only thing I heard was my little brother was in the military and he's deployed to Bosnia. The thing that crossed my mind was, and I don't know who, you know, maybe older people remember this, but there was a scout vehicle. I think it was in Macedonia or something. They got captured by the Macedonian government. I think it was Macedonia. And it was this big thing. We were in high school. It was this big thing, you know, US soldiers taking captive. So. That still being fresh to me, my brother Sadie's going to Bosnia made me kind of go like, well, shit, I got to go protect my younger brother. So I went down to the recruiter, told the recruiter what my situation was. My little brother's getting deployed. He's in 10th Mountain. How do I get there? How do I make sure I deploy with him? Not knowing anything, right? That's not really possible when you go to a recruiter. And the recruiter. He's like, well, you need to become a ranger. He shows me a video, says rangers lead the way, they go everywhere first. So if my brother's going, I'll go. Knowing that's totally false. Now, knowing that's totally false. But whatever. Got me to sign the paper. So, yeah, yeah. So I call my brother. My brother's like, hey, make sure don't let them tell you you're going ranger and you not have it in your contract. So your contract. has to say option 40 that gets you to rip, right? So this was, again, back in 1999. So, I remember we go down to MEPs, I would go to MEPs in Sacramento. First time I go down there, there's like a, they try to put me in military intelligence and the guy's like, hey, you know, sign this you know you'll become military intelligence and i was like where's the ranger stuff and he goes you'll when you're in basic training you tell them you want to be ranger you know typical typical tell them you want to be ranger and they'll they'll send you to rangers and i call my brother he's like absolutely not do not sign that paper so you know love story short went back and forth to meps two or three times i think it was three times i went back to meps and I was in Chico, California, Mecca was in Sacramento. So every time they took me down there, they would get me a hotel room. They take me down the day before, get me a hotel room, wake up in the morning. So I think by the third time they knew after the second time they knew I wasn't signing anything without option 40. I was 22 years old at the time too. So, you know, I was probably older than my recruiter. And I basically told him, listen man, I have not signed, let's say option 40. I'm not signing anything, so whatever. That got me into the Rangers November 99. I went into basic. You do your basic training, your airborne school. You go to RIP, which is back then the Ranger indoctrination program, which is now the Ranger Assessment Selection Program. And then I got assigned to third Ranger battalion, so. Wow. So that was in, so you're roughly about February, March of 2000 is when you're in RIP. Gotcha. Okay. was, yeah, March. March was when I went into RIP in March. I graduated RIP in April, so it must have been end of March. Graduated RIP in April. And then, I mean, right at the end of April. And then I got, they said that two weeks of hometown recruiting. So I actually got to, and I don't remember many dates. But the one day this is I remember today I got to third grade Italian which was May 11th. So I got to third grade Italian May 11th. Yeah, and. same month, same time, probably the same week you're graduating from RIP. I'm graduating from Marine Corps bootcamp. I joined Marine Corps in September of 99 and got to bootcamp in January and graduated the end of April in 2000. That's funny. That's funny. And same experience here because I had already been in the Marines and the reserve for a couple of years, the recruiter tried to lie to me. After September 11th, I wanted to re-enlist and I wanted to go into special operations. And they literally tried to tell me the same thing. And I called every recruiter in the state of Oklahoma and asked every recruiter answers questions that I already knew the answer to. And all of them lied to me except for one recruiter. And then I finally go talk to the guy. He doesn't know anything. He just keeps giving me the right information. And there was a SF guy who was top 10 % so they made him be a recruiter. He didn't recruit anybody, ever. He just literally sat there and played on a computer. But he knew everything, so that's who I ended up talking to. Same thing, I think I went to MEPS like five or six times. And that wasn't until I literally had to tell on the recruiter to, because he was shady, he just didn't know anything, to his commander at MEPS. I saw him talking to him, and I went over and started talking to the guy. He was like a major, I believe. And was like, yeah, well, actually I'm still waiting for a ranger contract. you know, your recruiter keeps telling me that I can get this contract and this contract and I can just walk across the street and go right there to ranger school. And, and I know that's not true, you know, coming from the Marine Corps and that just completely embarrassed the recruiter. So he was done with me. but anyways, that's, it's just funny that the exact same time when I, when I hear from guys like you, you know, the, we're, we're going through very different things, but. That's something that I do share just as off topic a little bit, but with guys that are thinking about the military. Go to MEPS as many times as you have to. Do not sign a piece of paper until it is the one that you actually want, period. And I've... tell anybody I go if you will I'll go to the recruiting office. I mean, it's a big decision It's a life. It could be life altering. I mean it is life altering. It could be life -changing So I tell everybody that ever asked me, you know Advice I go listen I'm not trying to be funny or weird call me when you go to the recruiter and I'll go with you or I'll call them and be on the phone when you go because I You know, not that they're bad people or not that they, you know, do things intentionally, but in the end, they're trying to get you to sign a dotted line. And that's it. Right. They have no vested interest. You know, really they're vested interest. You know, they're loyal to the army, which they should be. And they're just trying to fill needs of the army. Or if they're brand new, they're just trying to get somebody to sign a dotted line. So. It's not that they're bad people. It's just, you know, what their job is, right? Yeah, yeah, sorry to sidetrack us here. But yeah, so you're graduating from RIP. You get May 11th, you arrive at 3rd Ranger Battalion. Did you get to pick which battalion you went to? How did that go when you guys graduated? I, so when the recruiter showed me the video, You know, and I was like, yeah, that's what I'm going to do. My brother's like, yeah, go to third, you know, go to Ranger regiment where you want to be. I did some research and the first thing I was a horrible student. I was actually playing football in college when all this was happening. And I was at my second college because the first college I pretty much fell out of. And I had I actually had surgery after my freshman year of football. and I thought of giving up college and I tried to get into the military that at that time I tried to get into the Marines the Air Force. And because I just had surgery nobody would take me. I had you know shoulder reconstruction so. They. Where was I going with that? yet so i i but where the heck was i going with that So just talking about going through meps and you graduated from, you went to third ranger battalion, how did you pick which battalion you went to is what we're going on originally. Let's look at something else. Okay. Yeah, yeah, okay, so what made me... So where I was going at was I never read books, right? And when I signed up for the Ranger Regiment, or when I got a Ranger contract, I went and found Mark Valden's book just came out about Black Hawk Down. So I read that book. I read that book, and right from then I was like, I want to go to... Bravo Company 3rd Ranger Battalion. So what my drill sergeant in basic training was actually from 3rd Ranger Battalion. He was in ACO 3rd Ranger Battalion and he left regiment to be, you know, he was in RRD and then left regiment to be a drill sergeant. He wanted to come back to regiment I told him I want to go to B Company 375 I want to go to B code 375. You know I don't think he had any say in it. He was a drill sergeant and understanding you know a drill sergeant being a D6 or D7 that you know they can put words into their bodies right. So now I go to RIP and just constantly in RIP I was like I want to go to B code 375 I want to go to 375 I want to go to B code 375 and I had a RIP instructor Northrop was from B code 375. I think he really liked me. You know, again, I was older, I was 22. I come from playing football. I had some life experiences that made me a little rougher around the edges, I guess that that that I was just a different recruit. I was a little older, you know, I was four years older than most recruits. with some life experience and a little different attitude. Yeah, yeah, exactly. 10th Mountain and wanting to get deployed. Yes, so some of you know the Rip instructors either loved me or hated me some loved me some hated me But Northrop, you know took a liking to me and he was from Bico. So when I got to 375 You know, they assign you don't get to go in there and be like hey, I want to be third Ranger battalion now, so now I think you get to put in a wish list back then you did it It was just wherever they put you so I didn't get to pick anything. I was just very vocal about where I wanted to go. Any time, the small amount of time you had with a rep instructor to get, you know, have a personal conversation, I made sure they knew why I was there and where I wanted to go. So when I got assigned to B code 375, I was absolutely ecstatic about it. You know, so I definitely wound up where I wanted to be. So whenever we were picking hours, they literally just had you, everybody was lined up and then they're like, okay, anybody who wants first bat run over here, second bat run over here, third bat run over here. And everybody literally had to fight each other physically to get to stand in line. And if you could unearth the man that was in your spot, then you could be going to that battalion. So it was chaos. yeah, there was none of that. There was none of that when I walked through. So. you, so you arrive May 11th. obviously again, this is 2000. So, you know, a little bit there before September 11th happens. Walk me through, if you wouldn't mind, you know, what it was like, you're, you're, you're probably got your feet underneath you at, by the time September rolls around of a one, we're head, are you already a team leader at that point or? going to Ranger School, where you at at that point. Yeah, so I actually started ranger school. Hold on one minute. I gotta get my dog. My dog's barking crazy. Hold on one second. And it did be good. Good pause, Mo. Absolutely. Babe! Christine, can you get the dog to stop barking for something? You might have to just come down here and do something. There, you want a treat? Alright, sorry about that. No, you're good, brother. So September 11th. Yeah, you said that you were going to Ranger school. Yeah, so I had a... Again, people loved me or hated me. I actually left for Ranger School in July of 2001. June, July. Or I went to Pre -Ranger. I went to Pre -Ranger July. So, you know, Pre -Ranger is three weeks run by regiment. And to be quite honest, I thought Ranger School... Pre -Ranger was harder than Ranger School. For sure, yeah. because it's just three weeks of getting smashed and getting you prepared. So I went to pre -ranger, went to ranger school. I wound up recycling the first phase of ranger school. So I recycled. And when I recycled, that put me into... I had like a weird thing. I don't know. Like I didn't leave Ranger School. I was in the gulag a little bit waiting for the next class to start. And the next class started the week of September 11th. So September 11th was on a Tuesday. Someday was when that Ranger School started. And we were actually at the little CIF issue for your Ranger School equipment on September 11th. So that's where I was. I remember Bet that was surreal. Yeah, I mean, well, you know, and maybe from New Jersey and my dad being a Port Authority police officer, which the World Trade Center was their headquarters. You know, so I, you know, I knew New York. I grew up in New Jersey. My dad, the Port Authority literally owned the World Trade Center. You know, that was their headquarters and they own all the bridges and tunnels or they run all the bridges and tunnels and the airports. So when they said. I remember the guy coming in and just we were standing in line getting our equipment and he came in and said, hey, the US has been attacked. The World Trade Center is gone. And I was literally there the Christmas before. I was there two Christmases ago. I took my girlfriend's family. My dad took us to the top of the World Trade Center. And because he was a cop, we didn't have to pay for the observation deck. It was really memorable. from our wife's family, now my wife's family because you know they felt like VIPs like everybody else had to pay and do this all this stuff. We just cut for wines, we go up different elevators and we get to the top and I was like there's no way those buildings are gone. And then you know the next few days you don't get to see it back then we didn't get to see anything so I actually didn't see anything until we got our first package. We didn't get to see the TV. The only thing we heard was from the RIS, the Ranger Instructor's mouse. We didn't get to see anything. The first time I saw anything was in November. October? The first time we talked about anything was like in October when we were going from Mountain Face to Florida, which was, you know, 45 days after September 11th. About 45 days after September 11th. So up until that point, we did not get to see anything. Or maybe when we got to mountains. I think when we got to mountains. So whatever, for three weeks we didn't see anything. No photos, nothing. The only thing we got to see were that's kind of hard to, I don't understand why the instructors wouldn't show you guys that, like, bring you in and let you see that. to see anything though. And the first thing we got to see, the first thing I saw was newspaper articles. My parents, when you get your first mail package, which is after the first phase, you get a box and I just saw newspaper articles. Still didn't see no live footage, nothing. The first time we saw live footage was the night of... The first time I saw anything, the first time we got to see TV was you get that little eight hour pass between going from mountains to Florida when you're prepping for your, you know, you jump into Florida. So you get an eight hour pass there and they let you in the, they got like a little bar thing. And that's the first time we saw TV and live footage of, you know, what was going on. What was there any guys that was in your, anybody in the rip class that didn't believe them? Because we all know like that's a gimmick that's been going on for decades. Now it happened in bootcamp Marine Corps bootcamp where they, they run in and, you know, and act like the world, you know, America's been attacked where it war who, who wants to go, who wants to quit right now? Raise your hand if you want to leave bootcamp and then, you know, a couple people raise their hand and they're like, you know, obviously they. to actually kick them out for that. So that's like a gimmick that's been going on for a long time. Did anybody not believe the RIs at that point? No, I think there was definitely a lot more of activity going on. And the other thing that was real, so there were some kids that their dads worked at the Pentagon or kids. There were some there were some guys, their dads either worked at the Pentagon or worked at the World Trade Center. My dad had just retired from the Port Authority, so he didn't work at the World Trade Center. But they let those students call their families just to check. And then I think there was one or two where they had family members killed or something. So it was very real. And you saw the activity on Benning, you know, which I thought was the battalion lead ring. Well, right. There was flights just going out nonstop. You know, you come to find out, but they didn't fly out of Benning. But, you know, you don't know that. And they did pull. okay. didn't pull any of the 11 bravos, but all the Intel kids got pulled There were some Intel kids that got pulled there were some combo kids that got pulled out of the course to deploy so, you know, obviously the 11 bravos there there's You know where it works, but not only over there deep there deep in in 11 bravos early, you know the 11 series in regiment so They didn't have to pull lots, but your, you know, really the important skill sets, the Intel, Como, all the support elements, they got pulled. Yeah, I would imagine just from having been in ranger school when something happened, I was in ranger school when Pat Tillman was killed. And we were in Florida phase, it was actually the first day of Florida phase. Same thing, we got to go into the chow hall and there was a TV in there. We saw that on the news. And then, you know, we'd go out and tell the other, like rangers what's going on. Cause we had all served with Pat on missions. And. I remember like, I mean, Ranger school was, Florida phase was about to come apart because we were Ranger, we were S, we were as I guess, SOCOM heavy. They ended up recycling all the, anybody who was in SOCOM, they recycled the one Navy seal, they recycled all the SF captains and they rolled all of us in Darby over to the next class, which was again, all the SOCOM, you know, vets coming into that class. So we were super heavy. percentage wise on actually experienced guys and then we went straight through which come to find out later on was because best Ranger competition was coming up they recycled all of us so that they could have minimal RIs so those guys could go train for best Ranger competition so they literally recycled everybody who knew what they were doing and everybody who'd got their go the first time except for a couple of guys I'm sure that was you know by design and You know, one of those being Domei, Kristoff, he was my Ranger buddy in first bat, our first phase, Darby phase. And he went forward. We all got recycled. but anyway, I, I bring all that up because. I mean, one of the RIs said something disparaging about Pat Tillman. And again, I don't, you know, I don't remember exactly what it was, but, and I didn't even hear it, but he yelled. at another R .I. They got into an argument and the guy was yelling and the sentiment was that Pat had in training moved forward and you know would have gotten caught in crossfire which is again what we hear in the news is that we don't know that there was anything to do with blue on blue you know green on green whatever that this was friendly fire. But still that Ri had said that and again we all think he gets killed by the enemy and so like dudes were going over there to beat that Ri to a bloody pulp and like it was crazy like So I can only imagine for you guys when that's all going down like you guys want to deploy you want to go with your guys You're you're stuck in Ranger school and you're like get me out of here. What do you talk? I'm a Ranger like get me to my unit. I get it. They're heavy. I Cool, I can be heavier. Let's all go. Who cares about this stupid school? You know? learn as you mature through the Ranger Regiment, or really as you mature through the military, things seem as they are based off you at that time, your experience and your level of responsibility, right? So like, you know, how I saw things at the time, you know, when things went down, for instance, you know, Haditha Dam or, you know, jumping into Iraq, right? Like my vision of what was going on and what the mission was, was the vision of an E -5 sniper team leader at that time, right? You know, you talk to, you talk to like an E -7 or E -8 that was a platoon sergeant or first sergeant. And you both talk about the jump and you're like, hey, I understand it was there as a sniper team leader. This is what I understood it as. And this was our mission and this and that. And then you hear it from them and they're like, well, actually it was this, this and this. You know, when Pat Tillman was killed, that within 24 hours, I'll tell you, at least for us within 24 hours. I'm not gonna say names, but a sergeant major came and called us all together and I mean this was within 24 hours. It was on the news. They called us all together and he straight up told us it was fratricide. There was no question. And that's why I was kind of like shocked when I heard all the news and everything that was going on. That like there was a cover -up. I was like what cover -up? Like they told us right away. It was fratricide. But again, that's at our level. I don't know what was going on at the top level. I just know what the battalion put out to us at that time. Right. And, you know, the, you know, I'm of the mindset like when you're doing something, I would put in guides for awards all the time. Because I didn't take for granted what was going through their mind. Right? Like, regardless of... What mistakes you made and this is just in general or what mistakes you didn't make right? You what was your mindset when you were running up that hill or you know? I had an instance where someone was arguing with me about the word I wrote for somebody and I was like well What was what was his mindset on that rooftop compared to other people right? It doesn't matter You know what you think was going on right? But what was his mindset on that rooftop or you know, what was? that individual's mindset that made him do that, right? He believed this was happening and he believed he had to take action, right? So, regardless of all the other stuff going on, right? Just, you know, at whatever level you are, you're gonna have a very, what's real to you may not be reality or it may be reality, right? Because it can go the other way. The people on top might have, a vision of what's going on but not really understanding what's on the ground. Just in turn like, you know, like I said, I'm an E -5 sniper team leader jumping into Iraq. My understanding of what the mission was, you know, was completely different than what was being briefed at the top. Gotcha. And so again, you're in Ranger school, you're in Florida phase. How fast was Florida phase? How fast did that go by? Did that crawl or did that fly by with you guys getting ready, you know, knowing that we're going to be at war when you get out your deploy. me, I think it would be, so again I was BCO 375, right? So we jump in, when we jump into Florida that night, we get, they call, or that, you know, you jump in that early morning, right? And you get, you get truck, the trucks pick you up on the drop zone, you get to the barracks, you line up in your companies, they made it, they asked for all the BCO Rangers, to report there was like four of us, three or four of us, I think there were four of us total. And they just, you know, this was where we found out StoneCipher and Edmonds was killed in the helicopter crash, but they didn't tell us anything. They just said, hey, you guys know Stone, are you guys all Beko? We're like, yeah, they go, you know, Stone, this one R .I., real, real dick, I don't remember his name, but he's like, you know, StoneCipher and Edmonds? And, you know, we're all like, yes. and he said they're dead and then just walked away. Like they didn't give no context nothing, you know. So obviously, you know, one of the guys was was was Edmunds, you know, one of his best friends. He got really distraught and we, you know, carried on. I think Florida phase, you know, you. You know, you I think I don't remember, you know, when I think back now, I think it went really fast. I remember just wanting to get out of school and deploying and wanting to re enlist right away because I enlisted on a my my original enlistment was two years, 364 days. It was one day, shot three years. I don't know how I got that contract. So I got 99. Right? This is 2001 going into 2002. So I was already into my final year. So I wanted to re -enlist, right? I wanted to like get out, re -enlist, go avenge my brothers and just remember being really upset. And, you know, reality is not a lot went on. The guys jumped in. There wasn't like this big, you know, all this. Stuff the guys jumped in they handled their business. They got out some, you know some of the battalion You know, I I always you know third battalion jumped in but my company didn't jump in I Heard right away. My company didn't jump in and I was like a little bit like man I really didn't miss anything Come to find out we'll come to find out the only squad from Bico that had a jump was my squad So then again, I'm all like how the hell did I miss this right? And for people that don't understand, like one of the unicorns that you chase in the military or you see somebody with a jump star, a mustard stain, you get on your jump wings, you get a little yellow star on it, and that means you've jumped into active combat. And so yeah, that's something you can't just... sign up and go to that school or be really good and get know that some you have to be the right place the right time and just magically get to jump into combat so anyways yeah, so you know, it was like what it is, but you know, in the end, you know, come to find out, you know, we didn't miss anything early on in the war. I think the first, you know, few and far between, I think Roberts Ridge was like the first real combat. And my Ranger, my buddy in Ranger school was in that. He got a Silver Star in that battle. And, you know, I think that was the first real, not that there weren't engagements, but that was like the first real close combat, heavy combat that the guys saw. And that was, you know, again, that was a year, over a year after the war started. So. Right. I arrived to Ranger school. Again, those guys passed from first bat, Kroos Anderson in commons. And, you know, we just, as soon as those guys got back from deployment, all we knew is those three guys' names and we got destroyed all day, every day, just knowing that we're about to go to combat. Of course, I think a lot of them took out their extra energy on us and just smoking us. because they wanted to and we better be the strongest Rangers that have ever existed because we're going to be going into harm's way. And so, yeah, I think not having been at Roberts Ridge, but having literally immediately upon returning from Roberts Ridge, all those guys are who I served with. And so that was, even though I don't know those guys, I've heard so many stories of them. It's almost like I can almost remember. so many things about them because of all the stories that I've heard. And I think that's something that's fantastic about the regiment and about, you know, especially special operations that you keep those memories alive and you keep sharing those stories. But anyway, so just to skip forward, because I know we're already half hour in, I know there's a lot of stuff with your military time. Let's skip forward to how you get into. Breaching becoming a master breacher and then kind of where that leads us to protect it Yeah, so when everybody was deployed and I got out of Ranger school, we're sitting there, all of 3rd Battalion's deployed. They were running, back then it was called EARS, Explosive Entry for Rangers, which was a two week, what is now Master Breacher, right? So because I was standing back there, I got put into EARS, which normally you don't go... into is a TabSpec 4, it's more of an E5, E6 thing. But because I was back there and everybody was reported, I got to go to it. So that was my first Master Breacher course. You know, when you get to the line, when I say a line company, you know, people have different terms, right? The Ranger Regiment is called a line company, right? And, you know, the people that are in the video game world or the... The LARPing world, right? Those are your assaulters or the people that, you know, door kickers. So when you're in there, you kind of get, you can kind of fall into a specialty. There's a number of things. You know, I fell into the breaching thing just by circumstance of me being back there and third range of Italian having to send people. So that was beginning of my breach and that was 2002. I went to my first master breacher course. And then I did a number of breaching courses after that. I did TEAS, which is a big law enforcement course. I did another when it was the new master breacher course through regimen. I did a course, FET USA, which was a course in Vegas. That was a law enforcement heavy course. So after that, You know, and obviously the war really picked up the insurgency picked up. So we were breaching every night. And because we're breaching every night, we were always looking for new training. So did a lot of breaching, you know, became the company master breacher. And yeah, that kind of the other. you stayed in BCO 375 the whole time or how, how much did you move around? in BCO 375. So I went back and forth between, I locked out. I went back and forth between BCO and HHC for snipers. So I did, you know, I did my... you said you're doing snipers, yeah, you'd be HHC. yeah, I did like I literally instead of getting any staff time. I just went back and forth between Biko and Snipers. So I did Biko. I went to Snipers, team leader, section leader, back to Biko as a squad leader, back to Snipers, platoon sergeant, Biko, platoon sergeant. And then I went to the UK to be the LNO for the SFSG, you know, British unit. OK. Very cool. Wow. much my whole career. And then I went to 175 for two years. Left there, not on good circumstances. I did a year first sergeant time there. I candidly tell people I got fired, which in my mind I got fired, but whatever it was. You can't see it on my paperwork that I got fired, but bottom line is I didn't leave there on good. good terms and then went to the asymmetric warfare group and then retired from the asymmetric warfare group. So that was kind of my path to where I am today. That's awesome. So real quick. so the master breacher, you did mention a couple of times, law enforcement heavy, something most people don't know. And I definitely didn't know until I was in the Rangers that you spin and special operations. Like you said, we're going to reach out and find the best training that we can possibly find period. It doesn't matter if it's civilian or military and everybody just assumes everything that's the best is going to be in the military. Not necessarily. So a lot of times we will. I know for reenlistment bonuses, we would get options for a reenlistment bonus instead of taking money. We'll send you through this civilian driving school, civilian sniper school, civilian, you know, breaching school, all different types of civilian schools that you can go through. I would imagine yours being breaching that that has to do with you're working with either civilian or federal law enforcement. I'm curious. Both. Okay. Yeah. did things with FBI HRT, the national team, and then just the local law enforcement. If you can go out and make it happen, you can literally do the world is your oysters. anything. If you can just, yeah, if you can justify it, you can do it. That's one of the things I loved about getting to know, cause I switched over to HHC. I was BCO in HHC too, in 175. And when I went over to HHC, then I'm hanging out with all of the guys that are in charge of, you know, training and in charge of testing out different things. And that's what I finally learned from them is they're like, dude, there's no limits to this. Like we could just go out and find. somebody who's good at something and if I can justify it on paper and I can, then we can go do that training. So we ended up getting to do some really cool training and getting to, I got to train with Air Force. I got to fly in spooky over Baghdad. So I actually had to fly to Kuwait, get on the plane there. Then it flies a Spectre gunship over Baghdad looking for a terrorist training camp. We didn't, we thought there was going to be one. They were going to light it up. it ended up not being, but it's still getting to do stuff like that. It was just, Hey, you want to go do this? Yeah, of course I do. All right. Grab your stuff and head to the helicopter. Like that kind of thing is, is really cool. And that's where it's not so regimented, no pun intended. you know, in the regiment where you can get attached to, you can go to, civilian side schools, different things like that, wherever the best training is. So you go through all of this specifically on the breaching side. So for people that don't know, like when you're blowing the doors off of just about anything that's out there and you're doing it in every way that you can possibly imagine, and it really is that, right? It's your imagination because you're trying to figure out new ways of doing things and ways to improve upon always. You wanna be great at the basics and then improve upon those things. And so from there, at what point, During all of that time, were you thinking about an invention or about building something in the future or this isn't something that you come up with until you've already left the military? Yeah, so I think, so, you know, now we get to right now, you know, I. So in regards to protected or my company, I know the initial ideas was 2007. Virginia Tech happened. I was deployed. I just remember always thinking when you're in that mindset and you're going out every night and hitting targets, you're always looking at things in our world, in the tactical world. And I tell people, like, you know, the gunfights and everything they're intense but they're not like tv it's not like non -stop it's moments you know there's moments of intensity and then there's hours of nothing or or you know it might be intense you might have a three hour gunfight but the actual intensity of what people see on tv might be fifteen minutes right it's like minutes here minutes there and and so on so When I looked at, when Virginia Tech happened, and I'm looking at the timeline of how long it dragged on, I'm just like, what are people doing? So that kind of like put it in my mind, right? And then when Sandy Hook happened, you know, obviously that, I was always one, I felt really bad for, you know, I got PTSD over the kids, right, overseas. Like that's my, you know, seeing the fear in kids. them not understanding why we're there, me blowing a door in and coming into their house in the middle of the night. They don't get to choose what their parents are a part of and just seeing that fear. So when Sandy Hook happened, you know, again, like I could be in the closet with those kids or in those rooms with those kids and see their exact face. And it just really hit me emotionally like. You could see those faces. All these people can imagine it. I can see it. I've seen that face for over my 20 deployments, however many combat deployments I have. I could see those faces. So having the asymmetric warfare group, mindset where you know identifying current emerging threats facilitate rapid solution development you know my personal experiences with children overseas i just felt like you know what can i do to try to save a life and and you know i understand what it takes to get through a door i understand what people might try to do to get through a door so I just felt like if I can block the entry, if I could have blocked the entry to, you've all the, if I could have blocked the entry to, you know, Sandy hook or, or any of those places, right? If I could just, you know, if you look at the timeline from when it's initiated, if I can block a door in seconds and deny entry, that would save the most lives. So that's where, you know, I came up with the idea for protect ed. I started working on it in 2014, which was where we kind of like I got back from the UK and got with a buddy Tim Cahalan and we started thinking of ideas. And funny enough, I came back from the UK. I haven't seen my friends in a few years. I go to New Jersey, meet up with my buddy Tim, who was building a new house and was building a safe room in his house and was showing me it. And I was like, yo, I got an idea. How about we do something for school shooting? So that's pretty much how the idea came about. And the focus was, again, I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm not going to fix mental health. I'm not going to get into the political debate of guns. And quite frankly, you know, We're never gonna remove guns, bad people will always have them. So where can I help? Looking at it, the facts are when people get trapped in a room and they have nowhere to go and somebody enters that room, that's where you have 10, 20 people being killed. So if I could prevent that portion, I'm not gonna save everybody, but if I can prevent that, It's saving a life, right? So if you know, we created a bookcase. I came up with a bookcase that's on wheels that has ballistic paneling in it or panels that stop bullets and you it's just like any other bookcase in your room that's on wheels and it just rolls in front of a door. You push it against the wall. It latches into the wall and denies entry into that room as well as ballistic protection. And that, you know, again, It takes about, an adult can do it in about 13 seconds. We got videos of two fifth graders doing it in about 23 seconds. So if you look at the timelines of the previous mass shootings, they're not gaining access into classrooms until anywhere from 90 seconds to four or five minutes. And people think it ends in four and five minutes, but that all depends on the response. So, you know, I can eliminate, I can eliminate, or, or stop the killing, you know, after that first 15 seconds, right, by getting people behind, you know, into a room that they can barricade and create a safe room. Right, right. And that's, that's the key I think is, and the reason why, again, I had to have you on the podcast, I had to connect with you when I found out about this, because this is what I've been looking for. I have the same passion of, okay, what is my background into? What can I at least speak semi, fluently about? I haven't been a master breacher, but I've been through breaching. I've been through a lot of the training and then I've done stuff. in real life, both law enforcement, military, and private contracting. And I thought the same thing. I was like, I don't have the answer to this. I'm not a psychiatrist at the same time. I'm starting a podcast, one that's going to be STEP School to Embassy Project, where we're finding solutions. And that's what I ultimately wanted to find. And I think that so far, for sure, your solution is by far leaps. and bounds ahead of anything else that I've seen out there. There's a lot of people that are coming up with ways to block a door, but that's not going to stop bullets from coming through the glass, which is what happened in Parkland, where if Parkland just, just again, we're all Monday morning courting backing all of this. If Parkland had been outfitted with, with your product, the first two kids in the hallway who who get shot, by the way, you can go on Amazon Prime and watch the, for free, watch the whole breakdown of it, that law enforcement did a whole recreation with little characters that are, you know, black circles and shows where he shot who, and he never made entry into a single room. He shot every person, 17 killed, 17 wounded, all through the glass of the doors. He never made entry into a single door because he was a student there and he already knew. all the doors were locked automatically. The teacher had to use the key to unlock the door or you had to unlock it from the inside. So two kids were in the hallway. Those were the first two shot. And so from those first two kids shot, obviously again, there, there are still going to be kids who are going to get killed in this. There's still going to be people who it's not going to save everyone at the same time. If it saves a life, it's worth it. If it saves most people's lives, then it's far beyond worth it. It's something that really people should be looking into as mandatory. I mean, if I'm sending my kid to the school, that school better be taking it as serious as I am. And, you know, with somebody who has experience specifically in getting into anything that he needs to in a breaching environment, like that to me lends itself to your credibility as... the subject matter expert when it comes to something like inventing the product to at least keep somebody from physically making entry into and turning the room into a right shooting fish in a barrel is literally the the saying for a very good reason. They have nowhere to go. And I've recently just in my local area driven around and I've seen different windows in schools that on the outside have these nice shades that are all built in. But there's no way you could get, again, this is me looking from the outside, there's no way you could get out of that window. So again, you're literally creating a scenario where it makes it even more dangerous. Yeah, you're blocking some of the sun, but you're not thinking about this tactually. Yeah, you're not thinking of it from a tactics perspective and thinking of solutions if somebody, God forbid, comes into your school. So. That's why I absolutely again, just really want to focus on learning more about your product. And that's the reason why, you know, with my podcast, I'm going to be, you know, putting your product on my website and, and having a link so people can go look at this and hopefully again, finding a solution that works for you. And so you guys have already outfitted at least one school with this, not saying the name of the school and again, all that, but just. where did that happen and how did that come about? Yes, we have a pretty good foothold in New Jersey. I mean, we're probably in about 15, maybe 16 schools now. We got some new contracts. We'll probably pick up another. But we're a grass roots startup. It's me and my buddy Tim. New Jersey, how we got into the foothold in New Jersey. I'm in Georgia. Tim's in New Jersey. He's a childhood friend. My family is from New Jersey. So when we were developing the product, we were trying to figure out a way to a mechanism. We're trying to figure out a mechanism for our latch. And me and Tim were stumped. I was like, hey, let's just try to shoot a video that shows the concept. We can send it out to some engineers and have somebody help us. So I reach out to family members in New Jersey. I said, hey, did anybody have? any ties to a school that we can just shoot a concept video in for our product. So, you know, one of my family members knew a school. We got into that school. The principal wanted to see the product. The superintendent just happened to be there. They brought in their head of security because they heard a little bit of what we're trying to do. And when they saw it, they were like, hey, as soon as you're done with this, We want you to come back to us. We'd love to be your first customer. So we finished the product. Again, we started in 2014. We finished the product in 2021, early 2021. And we showed them the finished product. They actually gave us some ideas. They gave us an idea that we didn't think of. And when we've completed it and showed it to them, you know they immediately place a purchase order for it so they did a trial run on that first year and then the next year they filled the entire high school. Other schools started hearing about it and then it just started filtering through so you know we you know I feel like the federal government should pay for it you know that the school is obligated you know the federal government is obligated to to make sure our kids are safe. So my wife's a teacher. I got into a little argument with her school about what they do, which is completely ridiculous. I don't even want to talk about it. But my wife's a special ed fifth grade teacher. You know, you'd be shocked. Well, I mean, you know, she's told to give scissors out to five students, pick five students to hold scissors and stand behind her. I mean, it's a little ridiculous for fifth grade special ed class to have to do that. But, you know, just some of the things that are here's the reality. You know, this is this problem's been going on for years and years. Alert alert. you know what they use came out in 2000. To this day, kids are still getting massacred in classrooms. I'm not saying, I'm sure that stuff does help. It has helped in some instances. But, you know, when somebody is determined, you know, we hear like, if you just lock the door, they're not gonna break in. Well, What happened in Uvalde? What happened in Sandy Hook? You know, some of those doors were locked where they gained entry to, right? It was that person was determined to get into that classroom, whether he broke out the window and unlocked it, whether he shot the door lock, right? When you have a determined person, they're going to, you know, those, the determined person creates the most havoc and most death, right? So, you know, that's, you know, what I feel like we should be prepared for. for sure. And when schools are built, again, right, it's easy for us to go, well, why wouldn't you put a really solid door in that way nobody can get it? They're not thinking like that. They're building a new school. They're looking at things. If you just build the school correctly, you wouldn't need our bookcase, right? But even now, even now you have schools that are all glass and all windows, like brand new schools being built. You don't want a school to look like a prison by no means, but there are other ways to build schools to make it pretty, you know, or, you know, pretty aesthetically beautiful, whatever you want to call it. There's other ways to do it besides just glass and windows everywhere. So it's kind of frustrating watching new schools being built without the security mindset. for sure. Of course, again, that is the reason why the name of my podcast and my vision is, right, our schools need to be more like embassies because embassies are not ugly, necessarily. They're literally built to blend in with the surroundings to not stick out, but they're by no means like appear to be armed to the teeth. They have all, you know, some type of barrier to entry, which In a few countries can obviously be a little bit ugly with the gates and those things that they have, but the embassy itself, it appears to be inviting. You don't show up to the embassy and be necessarily scared you're going into an embassy. And once you make entry into one, you obviously notice that the glass on the doors are very, very thick and it's a very, very heavy door, but it still opens easily. But once that door shuts, and now you need to go through the next door, that door is locked behind you. If they want to keep you locked in, you're just locked in there. And so it's step by step. There's multiple areas where somebody who's coming in to do harm can be stopped without overt somebody coming out and everybody getting into a big gunfight. The whole point is to be able to stop people with the minimal amount of force as possible so that you don't have to. appear to be scary, appear, you know, and not to have some type of a school where it looks like a prison. At the same time, having a bookshelf, I think that's, that's the point. Everybody else's solutions that I've, that I've come across are ugly, bulky. They don't fit in whatsoever. There are ways to block a door, but they don't blend into the surroundings and they certainly aren't as easily functional for children that they could, right? In In these school shootings teachers unfortunately are killed and so when a teacher comes out of the hallway and they get killed now the doors they're left open or maybe the door shuts and the teachers on the outside and you've got these kids there. Okay, some of them are freshmen some of them, you know are middle schoolers some of them are college level if they can know to grab this bookshelf and just move it over into place and push it. with very minimal amount of force and it locks into the brackets. And now it buys them time. And I think that's what you're, when you're speaking of it, you know, yeah, it's not the answer to everything always forever. Cool. But what it does is buys time. And what we found out as you start looking into the shootings, again, I'm going to keep going back to Parkland because I think that so many of the lessons learned from other shooters, the Parkland, shooter implemented those. He learned lessons and then tried to improve upon them. And one thing that he did again, shooting from the outside, well, if everybody had quickly blocked their door, you know, it would have, he wasn't looking to sit there and try to gain entry into a single room. He's just trying to rack up a high body count as is, you know, the, the common language with most of these. So they're looking for easy targets where you, You know, the teachers don't have guns, the people that are there to protect don't necessarily have guns, or there's a school resource officer somewhere here on campus. He's by himself and, you know, who knows how long before he gets here. And, and, you know, you've all, D is a great example of where I think everybody in America had to wake up to realize just saying that we have a police officer here by himself is not the answer. And ultimately. I can tell you from being a police officer, I'm not there standing in your classroom waiting for a gunman to come out in the hallway. Like we are blocks miles away, you know, working traffic accidents, doing all kinds of other stuff. And now we get a call that there's a shooting. Guess what? That's the 300th one that I've received this year so far. And okay, maybe it is, but. Probably it's not. And literally I went and did a, I spoke to a school board and talked to them about active shooting here in Florida, in central Florida. And while we were there, and I'm going over my little presentation with them, they all got alerts of multiple swatting as they call it, right? Where they say there's an active shooter right now actively shooting in this school, and then they hang up. And of course it's, through a VPN and the numbers coming from overseas, who knows who that is? Or it might be in the US, but there's no way to trace it. So here they are being told that there's an active shooter currently shooting children in the school. And they got multiple alerts while we were sitting there just in a 45 minute hour long timeframe. So that's all in the backdrop of this. When you think that it's really happening and the police are... screaming over here to you also understand that the reality is they're not right there. So it's going to take them a minute to get there. And when they do get there, like again, we they've been getting these alerts nonstop from people that have been falsely calling in swatting calls nonstop all day, every day. And unfortunately that builds into just more dimensions of this very difficult subject to try to. to fix, for lack of a better phrase. like, you know, there's a human factor to all this. There's a huge human factor, right? And I've seen guys just get burned out and scared to go in the door in my previous, you know, in the military. And these are guys, these are, you know, I've seen a guy on his six, seven deployment just finally on target one night be like, I can't go through that door, right? And I had to pull him. So like, there's, You know, there's the human factor, even, you know, look at Parkland. Like you could talk about police response, but an officer was there. Uvaldi, an officer was there, right? Like the whole, you know, you talk about a layered approach and that's exactly, again, my product is a part of the layered approach, right? You got detect, deter, right? Delay, deny, defend, defeat, right? Those are the 60 and you need to have something in each of those, right? Law enforcement is on the defeat end, right? The first responders or the people on, they're part of the defend portion. My product falls in the delayed deny, right? Then you have the school, police and systems that you have in place, that's part of the deter, detect, right? So, you know, we just, if you look at those, you need to put a, you know, a couple of solutions in each of those buckets, you know, and as you know, plans for failure, like we, in special operations, you have a plan, right? But you also have your most likely and most dangerous, right? And you have contingencies built in like, You we build contingencies. You know, I love to use the bin Laden rate. You know, everybody's like, man, that helicopter crashed and it didn't stop. No, because they had a plan. What if an helicopter crash it like we plan you plan for failure, right? Because, you know, there's a good chance it's going to happen somewhere. So just, you know, you know, schools should look at it the same way. You know, just I was at a Rhode Island. conference for you know school police you know and we were talking about how many do you have any school and they're like the majority of schools we have you know one officer and united estate how many of you i've been in the military rating there's a good number that were in the military and i i straight up as a hit when you plan in the military you know what do you say if you have one yet none if you have to get one right so You know, if you use that mindset, one officer is still the same as having none in there, right? What if he's the first one that's targeted because people know or he's just he's only one person. Where is he going to be when it starts? Right. So you just have to, you know, again, our product is part of the layered approach. It is not the either. You need other products. You know, our product will delay and deny, you know, by those. critical seconds, minutes for responders to come. We do have a mirror on the back of our bookcase that the, you know, it could be a shooter, it could be a stab or it could be anybody, but the assailant, we put a mirror on the back of our bookcase. So the assailant, you know, as he does come by the bookcase or he does, you know, look through the window, he's gonna see this mirror, he's gonna see a reflection of himself, right? that's like our psychological deterrent to try to buy seconds or get him to realize what he's doing. You know, so we're really, we're really trying. those are the layers. Sorry. Go ahead. yeah, I mean, those are layers within our product, but that's just our product, right? We need more layers that those are the layers that are built into you. Delay, deny, right? You know, even our product again, even our product, we have layers in our product, you know, and that's because of how we grew up, right? So it's a layered approach. It's a problem that's going to take many solutions. You know, there's no easy answer. You know, the other thing, you know, it's real easy. You know, again, so I'm a Colonel at a Sheriff's Office. I run all the special, you know, I'm over a group of special operations. I'm the SWAT team commander, you know, and even I won't tell. people in a school we run the school shooting training or active shooter training the alert training for our school police right and I'm not going to sit there and tell them hey you know all I need you guys to stand by and we're going to come and save the day right I mean essentially that's that's what we're telling kids and students right we're telling them what to do we're not telling them how to think through the problem and we're basically saying hey you know close the door, lock it, hide in the corner, and the adults are gonna take care of it. Well, the adults haven't been able to take care of it on numerous occasions, right? Hey, the police haven't been able to take care of it. The school resource officer or school police haven't been able to take care of it on occasions. And then there's other occasions where they have, right? But this whole mindset of like, standby, we'll come and save the day, isn't really helping the victims. Right, again. So, and that's one thing I just want to mention was just that, like, you can tell, again, start looking into other products and what you're going to see is one layered approach. It's, this is to just block the door to keep them from, from gaining entry. But then it doesn't, okay, well, what happens if the teacher actually got shot in the hallway, they staggered in and the kids had to put and block the door and now the teacher's out, he's out of the fight. Now, how do the police and fire get into the classroom to save the teacher and or any other students that were harmed? Okay, well, you've got to be able to unlock it from the outside. There's so many layers into the thought process that you guys put into this, not only with the level of ballistics that you're able to stop. So again, this isn't small time bullets that are being stopped. This is, again, AR -15s have now been used. Pistols of course are the easiest to defeat when you're coming up with ballistics. But again, shotguns and rifles are being used and having that mirror on the back again, the psychological side is the thing that everybody skips by immediately. Whereas you go back to the church shooting where the kid went in and I forget his name off top of my head and I will definitely add that back in. So he goes to a black church, white kid, he's racially motivated, wants to shoot up a black church. He goes in, and this is from what I've read, first person account, he went into that church and everybody was so nice to him that he decided to go to a different church. And that church that he went to where he shot up, not saying there weren't nice people at all. What I'm saying is what he said, was that the first church he went into, everybody immediately just welcomed him, blah, blah. And then he felt like he knew he didn't want to shoot that church because they were too nice. And now they're actually people in his mind. So when he went to the other church, he specifically tried to keep distance between people and not let them come over and welcome them, even though they were trying to. And, you know, it's sad, but... Again, this goes to show the humanity that's still in. Everybody just immediately, I was just talking with friends about this last night and they're like, well, all these psychopaths. Problem, they're not all psychopaths. The problem is they're doing things that we want to put that label on, but they're real people who are making horrible, horrible decisions. And it takes a little bit to get down this road, but the exact same thing is happening on a psychological level. where they, even the shooters, know that they don't, because they're human, they don't want to see their victims as people because then that will make them feel bad and want to stop. And then the Aurora, Colorado shooting, I just watched a documentary on that and literally when interviewed, supposedly again on the documentary, he wanted to throw smoke in there and to not shoot the people that he was sitting around because he'd already seen their faces. So when he threw the smoke, it filled up. And so now he can shoot into smoke, not knowing if the bullets are going into people. Again, these are two people who everybody wants to label as just a hardcore killing machine psychopathic robot, which they're not. And so again, you know, it takes layers and you never know if it actually is the ballistics that really stopped this guy eventually, or it's, you know, looking into a mirror that could possibly stop somebody from shooting. you. the whole point. We just want them to stop shooting that those seconds could mean the difference between either them choosing to put the gun down. And there's kids who are now up in Detroit shot multiple kids and stopped when the police showed up and he handed them the gun with seven rounds still in the bullet in the gun and magazine and like more ammo on him. He didn't plan on going out. And he didn't plan on fighting it out with the police. He was just going to shoot until he was told to stop by somebody who had the authority to tell him to. So it's again, that's where there's so many layers to this. You guys have thought of that and added that into this, that most people, the vast majority of everyone, I would go out on a limb here and say, nobody's even heard of somebody making a product where they put a mirror on the back of it to make the. intruder look at themselves as they're trying to make entry. So that's again, just one of the many reasons why I really love your product. And again, I'm creating this podcast to find solutions. The other podcast that I started to talk about earlier on Switch is just that I have no idea what it's going to take to reach kids who are going down a dark path. But ultimately in my mind, instead of continuing to try to build a dam with water overflowing, going back 10 miles and turning off the leaky faucets that's creating the problem to begin with. Who knows how to actually do that? I don't think there's a person that does, but I think any person that we can make a difference by motivating them and possibly convincing them to not go down this path and to choose a different path. You never know where that is going to lead and how you might make a difference in one kid who wants to become a school shooter or thinks that that's some way that they are currently on a path to go toward that direction. And, you know, and again, ultimately you and I are, are both doing different things with different backgrounds, but with the same goal, any life that we can save in this country until they make murder illegal, until they make. drugs illegal until they make, right? Everything that you make illegal is still gonna be done and it even creates this need and a demand. And so everything shoots up as all of these people, cartels, try to provide the drugs that everybody wants. You know, it's the exact same thing. We're not gonna just ban something and it will stop. So what we need to do in the immediate is to find solutions that you can protect your school. So I'm hoping that students and parents see this, that school board members, that principals, that administrators see this podcast, hear of it, and look into your solution. Because again, I so far, this is by far the best product that I've found in my research. And I definitely wanna continue to learn more about that and share that with people. Because again, the ultimate goal of this is not to make some... you know not to be Joe Rogan. Ball doesn't, it's a step in the right direction but I'm not him. But ultimately again it's just we're all trying to save lives here in any way that we can and obviously I want to definitely have you back on sharing more about your military experience of course to me would be phenomenal but again I'm definitely going to put your resources on my website and have that right on the home page and. people can find out about it and contact me because I'm again going to be definitely sharing the word and trying to get this information out there to businesses as well because you mentioned one thing before we end, you mentioned that there are commercial businesses who want to turn their break room into a safe room. All you have to do initially put something in front of that doorway that's ballistic. And if there's not other entrance and exit points, well, you've at least created some type of a safe area. for people even in a commercial setting as well. Yeah, yeah, I think it all products specifically for businesses, retail spaces, it's a great product because, you know, we wanted this to be, you know, a drop ship, drop ship product, right? So, you know, you lease a space, you can't just put a ballistic door in, right? You got to rip out the door frame, you got to reinforce the door frame, you got to put in a new door, reinforce hinges. This you literally just like. You know, it's as easy as installing a mounting a TV. You have a bracket on each side and you put the brackets in, you set the latches and you're good. So, you know, retail spaces, even schools, like it's a lifelong product. You install it. You're going to move, right? You just uninstall the brackets. You take the bookcase with you to your new location. Schools can, you know, hey, we're going to build a new school or we want to, you know, Focus on a different area. You just unscrew it and move it to where it needs to be so You know even when I was you know doing stuff on the Saudi Yemen border I'm there in the middle of the night by myself and on a you know a host nation multinational base being the only American I didn't sleep for three months when I was on the door if I had this every night I went to bed I can just you know, put it over the door. At least if somebody's going to get through it, they're going to have to make a lot of noise before they made it to me. So a lot of applications, easy installation. It's not a wasted product. You use it every day. And, you know, again, you leave, you just take it with you. Right. And one thing you did mention, but you didn't say the word grant. Obviously the federal government should have a hand in this and this should be something that's spread far and wide at the same time. Realistically, schools are able to get grants. They find ways to use this. Obviously, I would assume tax write -offs and all those things, obviously, but there are possibilities with grants and you have that on your website. and people that can kind of walk, you know, schools and school boards and everything through that topic. Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. All right, brother. Well, I'm going to let you go. We've already been on for an hour and 20 minutes. Obviously, I'm going to edit this thing down just a little bit. But again, it's been great having you on. And again, you're definitely welcome to come back. I know that you're very busy. And I'm hoping to, again, be very busy launching this podcast. And this is going to be my very first podcast for that reason, because I feel that strongly about the product that you created. And... And I've been looking for a solution. I've talked to a lot of very, very valuable people with great opinions and great experience, military law enforcement, all of those at the same time. You know, I really want to put the solutions out there that I have found. And, and again, there is nobody that has the answer, but we all have pieces that if you put it together, can create a solution that will at least save lives for children in schools. And that is our, our mission. Yeah, great, great. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. All right, so I'm gonna go ahead and hang up now just I'm gonna hang up the call and then Well, I mean I can get at it all this out. Anyway, so awesome brother real quick Good call with Tom at 11. So I'll make sure he reaches out to you today. Yeah, so yeah, he travels and like I said, he works in Tampa sometimes. He's still in the garden support SOCOM down in Tampa. So he travels a lot. But 11 o 'clock today, I've got a meeting with him. So I'll talk to him, make sure today he gets you a contract out to you. Alright. Awesome. Yeah. All I'm going to be focused on today is, is on this so he can reach me anytime. Do you guys, one thing like the mirror on the back? I didn't know that about the product. So do you guys have any of those down here in Tampa? Is there any way that I could actually see one? or even, I mean, I'll hit Tom up. Obviously he could even turn his phone on camera, I guess, and walk me through one just so I can physically look at it. Because again, video, so the video on the website shows, does a 360 photo of it, so you'll see the mirror on the back and everything. I didn't see the mirror, okay, so I just missed that, my bad. So, okay. Yeah, we specifically at the end of the video did like a 360 so you can see it. And then again, if you go on the website and you go at the bottom, it has the YouTube really the YouTube link is the best thing for selling, right, because it has a video of kids moving it has the adult moving it. And it has a little diagram that shows how to lock it. So there's three videos on YouTube. Those are really the best. the best videos for the product or for sale. So I tell everybody just lead with that video because it takes away all the explanation and people will have all these assumptions that it slides on the wall or it's permanently mounted to the wall. If they just watch the video, it cuts your sales pitch literally 90 % off. So yeah. of minutes gotcha awesome all right brother will you Let me just, so just 11 o 'clock. I'll talk to Tom. I'll make sure he gets to see something today. Okay, sounds good brother, well I look forward to it. Thanks again for being on. take care. And you said just leave this running, right? Just leave this running? Okay. All right, sounds good. All right, take it easy. Yep. Take care. Bye.