Yeah, you know what you and I talked about this last night. I I think it's kind of a fun conversation to have, especially with as long as you spend the regiment. But, you know, I I remember watching, you know, the movie Blackhawk Down and then working in and around where I worked, and you see that dynamic really is, you know, the Rangers are a certain way, Delta Force is a certain way. And it really, you know, kind of speaks to the difference between kind of Rangers and a Navy SEAL, then like Navy SEAL's whiteside SEALs. And I want to caveat, I was neither, but working in and around those folks, like, you know, the Rangers are just such a premier unit because of, you know, maybe it's the hazing, I don't know. But you bring an 18-year-old, 19-year-old kid, you know, that that's that's graduated rip that's going to be doing DA. There is this adult supervision, you know what I mean? Like almost hands-on, you know, this, this, this leadership, this, you know, this, this standard. You know, I think that's that's probably why, and maybe you can tell me, you know, that's why they still in war zones, you got to get haircuts, you know, we're not because they're kids versus, you know, you see some of the issues, especially you've heard with white side seals, it's because you take these young kids and you give them all this training and then you cut them loose and they don't have maybe the level of supervision. Is that is that your experience or am I speaking out of turn?
SPEAKER_01No, you're you're 100% right. I mean, what Y Ranger Regiments able to do in the special operation capacity, they're able to do with these young privates, these young privates that are untested, you know. Yeah, sure, they went through a crucible event, you know, with the pipeline and everything else, but you know, like Navy SEALs, you know, when we talk about Whitesoft SEALs, they go through their crucible event too. Okay. Or you even take X-ray or 18 X-ray programs, you know, where they go through basic training and go through Q Corps or SFAS and Q course. Like, what's the difference maker? Well, the difference maker is exactly what you're saying: the standards. Like they're beaten into your head. Like, you don't, you don't, you don't have a time, you don't, you don't have a moment not to obey the standards. And everybody has these standards, every branch has standards, the army has standards too. The difference is the range regiment enforces them. And also your inability to enforce the standards or obey the standards can get you kicked out of the organization. And we are going to do it. You know, you get a DUI, you're out. We're, you know, it's not a matter of if like, oh well, he's a good no, you're out of the organization, man. You know, back in the day, like you write a bad check, you're out, you know, like all this different kind of stuff, you know, or you don't you you fail to meet required events or you know, get your range tab within the first two years, you're gonna get kicked out, or quite frankly, you're just not up to stuff physically, mentally, or whatever, then you're out, and we're going to kick you out of the organization, and we can do it. And that's kind of the beautiful magic of Ranger Regiment, too, is we can just kick them to the regular army. You know, Green Berets, where are they where do they go?
SPEAKER_03Navy SEALs. I mean, like, where did they get? It's almost like a lot of Navy SEALs, some of the stories I've heard. And and look, man, I'm not a Navy SEAL hater, it's not like they have their place, yeah. Whatever. I want to make it crystal clear. I was in the army, so uh I love the army, I love our our our units, and I I worked in in and around JSOC, and it's it's just different. You know, you hear the stories, it's almost like the seal bravado of you know, bar fights and getting arrested and and D wise and they you know covered up, or it's you know, almost like this accepted thing, and and that really is the different regiment. I mean, I've had a couple people on the podcast who did great things and you know got kicked out of the regiment because they they made a mistake or they screwed up and they've you know they've come on this podcast and owned it, like, hey man, I did this thing and I yeah, I was out. I think it really does make the difference of you know, of having an elite level unit with young men, like I don't want to say kids because they're grown adults, but 18, 19 year old kids doing, you know, what you know, uh 35-year-old men can do. I mean, because you know, during the height of the GWAT, the Rangers were doing, you know, the missions alongside Delta Force. They weren't just a blocking position, they're hitting their own targets, you know, doing, you know, doing the thing, which is you know, it's very unique to to the Ranger Regiment and what they do and what they're capable of. It's it's pretty unique to any military in the world, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I mean, and that's where Ranger Regiment, you know, like a lot of I used to understand it like a different way, where like we were the red-headed stepchild of the special operations community. I used to look at it a different way, though like we were lesser. Now what I realize is no, it's actually because we blend, we're we're a blend of the two. Like, sure, when you're in range regiment, you get special identifiers, but it's not an MOS change or it's not a deletion from the conventional system, like some of the units, you know. Like when you go to some of these units, you're kind of not really in the military anymore, you know. In range regiment, you're still in the army, you still have to do all the army requirements, okay. The NCOS schools, you still got to go to all those, okay? You still have to meet all the same requirements, even at a unit level. I mean, that's this is why this is kind of like a standard thing. Let's just take something like very, very basic, okay? Like arms rooms. Well, arms rooms have certain protocol they have to follow, okay? Regulations and policies they have to follow. Well, in the in the regular army, you just have to follow the army regulation and the post installation regulations, okay? For your arms room to be certified. Well, because we're in special operations, we have to follow not only the post installation, the army installation, JSOC's installation, ranger regiment's install, I'm sorry, regulations, and also USASOX regulations. So we actually have five layers of these regulations for something like that. So it just bodes to we're under tighten, we're under tightener scrutiny, and we can't get away with that stuff. You know, in other units, yeah, a guy gets a D UI just sweep it under the rug. You ain't doing that in the Ranger Regiment, man. I I dude the cops that have rested my guys half the time. I know them 20 years. You know, there's no brushing under the rug, it's going to make its way up through the system because there's reporting channels, and you know, you're gonna have to get rid of that guy. Plus, you know, additionally, our officers have to cycle out of the unit, you know, they got to go serve in the conventional army before they serve in ranger regiment and everything else, and it just keeps us. I don't I don't want to use the word honest, but it just makes sure that we bode by the right system. Now, I will say things happen. I'm not saying that there's no such thing as a perfect unit. Ranger regiment's not perfect, you know, and it's a great point to highlight. You know, you you know, you've had a couple guys on, and I know a lot of guys too, they got in trouble, you know, they you know, they stepped on their cranks and things happened. You know, and it's unfortunate. And sometimes, you know, it's also a byproduct of the organization as well. Then the speed, you know, you take that time from like 2002 to you know 2011, the speed the regiment was moving at, not not even just combat, not just combat. We're talking about training, we're talking about evolution. I mean, like every training cycle during that time was different because we realized different things we needed to be able to do, or another level of what we needed to be able to do. So we were constantly adapting, constantly changing. And you know, the the leadership, man, like you know, you have guys that do stuff, and yes, you know, as a leader, you should always look out for your guys and you should try to take care of your guys, but when you're moving at a pace and you got 40 guys, and a guy steps on his crank or something happens, it's not right to say it, but like, dude, that's a distraction, man. I'm going to war. Okay. Last last deployment, I had two dudes, you know, get blown up or whatever, or you know, some of these platoons are like they lost like two dudes, you know? And like, you know, you're you're trying to get ready for the next one, and you know, this guy gets in trouble or something happens, and you know, you try to take care of guys, but they get lost in the mix and it sucks.
SPEAKER_03When you've spent years serving others, it's easy to put your own health on the back burner. At Precision Wellness Group, they are changing that. Founded by a former special forces medic, emergency medicine physician, and hormone and longevity specialist. Dr. Bosley's mission is to help veterans, first responders, and motivated personnel nationwide to take back control of their health. This is why I personally trust Precision Wellness Group and optimizing my health goals. With telehealth appointments available in nearly every state, Precision Wellness Group can offer you personalized hormone and peptide therapies straight to your door. Grab Dr. Bosley's top five supplement guide in the show notes to start fueling your momentum, and then visit Precision Wellness Group.com to get started. Listeners, please mention Vanguard50 for your 50% off, your one-hour in-depth consultation with Dr. Bosley. For our home viewers, you can also scan the QR code on the screen right here to directly lock in that Vanguard wall deal on your initial telehealth or in-person visit. Take a tactical approach to optimize your health at Precision Wellness Group. Yeah, that's a great point. And JSOC was busy. You have Iraq, Afghanistan, you know, the global mission was shit cooking off in Africa, Yemen, you know, Somalia. I mean, Africa has never really gone away. It's just not talked about as much in a lot of the places. No, you're right. Yeah, absolutely. And so there was, you know, the op tempo was just, I can't imagine what it was like, you know, especially during those kinetic years, you know. And that kind of just brings me to my next question. You know, at the height of operations, there were, you know, 20, 30 ranger missions happening every night between Baghdad, Mosul, Tikrit, you know, and then you throw other places where the the, you know, the Rangers was at as well. I mean, you completed, you know, well over a thousand combat operations, you know, across your deployments. Is there a few that stands out as kind of like defining missions for you personally?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, there's there's a lot. There's there's definitely a lot of missions that that stand out. I'll I will I will talk, you know, about you know, a couple deployments in particular because they're just an amazing kind of culmination point of you know, everything that we've been talking about, the evolution of Ranger Regiment and Global War on Terrorism, you know, and the realization that we could be, you know, we could lead strike forces, you know, and it was two rotations to Ballad that I had, you know, and there's a third one to Baghdad. And you know, it's not to take away from any of the other deployments. The other deployments were phenomenal, and there's plenty of things that set out. And I'll talk about it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and it's hard for me as a podcaster. I mean, you got 14 deployments, dude. I could talk to you for two days, but I don't know if people would want to listen to, you know, a two-day podcast.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, the the the one that the one will always stand out, and I think, you know, well, it won't always it well, it'll always stand out, but I also think it ties into this conversation that we're having right now. Is, you know, it was uh our first rotation of Blood from my platoon, and uh, you know, basically the intel was is that there was not only personnel for like suicide attacks, armament, and you know, just insurgency cells that were basically using this river to boat guys down, you know, from all different kinds of locations. And basically it was a I don't want to say a saving house uh a safe house, it was like a staging point where they would get these guys, they would get them improcessed into their system, you know, whatever that was, give them the stuff that they needed, and then ship them out to these different regions. And it was kind of this the safe house, so to speak. Well, it was actually more of like a kind of a compound because it had a bunch of buildings adjacent to it and everything else. And the intel was is that these guys had done all their training, okay, and so that they could get into the country, they were traveling light, but this house also a foreign fighter network, right? Ah yeah, I'm sorry, I forgot that point of it. Yeah, yeah. So we were very much of a lot were targeting the foreign fighters, okay. But so when they would travel across the border, or they would get, you know, in there, or they were training in other parts of Iraq, wherever they were coming from, this is for this region, this is the house they would come to to get their gear, okay, get supplied, get their whatever it was gonna be a suicide vest, AK, you know, whatever it was, this was the house for it. But at the same time, what we're told as far as the intel is is that because of that, it also had guards, had, you know, you know, early warning systems, all this different kind of stuff. Okay. So this is what the Intel told us. And at the time, you know, we were we had the ability to use something called a thermal barricade grenade. And uh thermal barric grenades are very different than a regular grenade. I'll never forget the first time I saw one on the SR, dude. And uh they were pretty new to us, and I was kind of the I don't want to say I was like the expert, but I had done the most training with them because I was on part of the testing crew for them and all this different kind of stuff. So, you know, Patoon Sarr, you know, first aren't everybody else is like, I we think this is a good opportunity to use this thermobaric because it's gonna do a lot more in a flashbang, a lot more grenade. This is a hard target, like there's gonna be a lot of bad dudes in here that just are fresh out of training and are ready to get their jihad on, you know. So I'm like, absolutely. Okay, so the first room, like you know, and I did like a you know, and analyze the structure and everything else, and I'm like, this is where the there's three different doors to this building, but this is the door that we should use, we should breach and then throw the thermobarrack in because it'll have the most damage and the most stunning effect basically in the building, okay. And so the the lead team leader, and I won't say his name, but the lead team or he wasn't mine, I was I was weapon squad leader at the time, but you know, basically we land on the X, so landing on the X means we're landing as close to target building as we could possibly get, okay. And because of the channel systems, we couldn't actually get super, super close to this building and some of the power lines and stuff. So we were probably like 50-75 away from this building, not as close as we'd normally like to get. But basically, you know, they beeline it, you know, for that the BP positions, security positions, and everything else go in. They breach that front door, they throw the thermobarrack in, and yeah, it all breaks loose. Not in a good way, not meaning like a firefight or anything else. In that room was all the women and children. It ended up not being a safe house. I you know, I don't know if we ended up I don't I really honestly couldn't tell you, and somebody that was there could maybe help me out here. I don't know if there ended up being weapons and stuff in this house, or even any men, to be honest with you, in this house. Because this Herm American aid basically landed in the midst of you know, a bunch of women and kids. And it was brutal. Um, it was really bad. You know, a couple of the kids right off the right off the rip, you know, were killed. I think one of the women were killed, definitely dismembered some people and there were some arms and legs laying around. Yeah, so we went into triage mode, like right off the rip, you know, trying to save kids. Uh save women, you know, clearing the rest of the house. You know, but it was it's one that'll always stand out for a couple different reasons. One is is the war is terrible. And we didn't do anything wrong. We did what we thought based off the intel, and sometimes unfortunately, intelligence wrong, just like we talked about with the Jessica Lynch mission. But when it's wrong, it comes at a cost to civilians in this situation. But it also comes at cost because the individuals that were part of that, individuals that threw that grenade and did all that stuff, uh they gotta live with that for the rest of their life. And I'll tell you right now, you know, you know, that that lead team leader, I'm trying to try to get him to some stuff next with next month with me because he's not alright. He's not good. And a lot of the guys that were on that mission are not good.
SPEAKER_03Talk to me about like you guys come back off that that target. Like, what is the conversation like as far as like the intel piece? Like, what did you guys ever figure out like what happened?
SPEAKER_01So what we ended up deducing from that was it w the intel was right, but they had moved it. When I don't know, we don't know, but it was there because I believe there was some things that we found in the building. Again, I I don't remember because that's not the part that I remember, you know, the the other parts of the part that we're yeah, the the trauma, you know, but we'd found stuff that indicated it had been there. Like that that it an Intel was not wrong, but they had moved it. And when that had happened, we're not sure. But yeah, I mean the conversations afterwards were like, okay, we've got to hit another target like really quick. You know, it's kind of like if you have a parachute malfunction, like the best thing you can do is immediately jump again, you know, to renew your confidence that not everything, but also, you know, with those guys that like, hey, not everything, we're not gonna make the wrong decision, you know. But yeah, it was it was tough, man. And it was it was a it was a very real moment in the brutality of war.
SPEAKER_03You're a squad leader at that point, so you're in charge of a you know, a couple dudes, obviously. What was that? What was the AAR like coming off that target of the debrief?
SPEAKER_01You know, you don't want to beat up guys like that. They're they're they will you know, I know we didn't understand it as well as we do now. But you know, at the time, like we all knew, all of us. Even the people that weren't in part of that decision-making cycle, everybody was affected by that. I mean, you know, shit, dude. I mean, I know I was on a part of that decision-making cycle, but that part bothers me. But the other part that bothers me is is looking at a, you know, young girl that doesn't have an arm anymore, and you know, this like weird superimposed vision of my son who's the exact same age. Like right over the top of her. Like you know, coming home from that deployment, you know, and picking out my son. And you see your son, and then you see this girl without an arm. Like, you don't need to beat up pupil. You need to analyze intelligence.
SPEAKER_03You know Yeah, and I didn't really necessarily mean like, you know, No, I gotcha.
SPEAKER_01No, no, no, no, I say that because you also gotta understand the AR, Ranger ARs are some of the most brutal things that ever happened. Like Ranger ARs, most of the time you come out thinking you're gonna be fired, even if something went well. Like, you know, but in that circumstance, like we were like, we don't need to we don't need to do that. Like it's gonna it's gonna be bad enough, you know. But unfortunately, that's you know, that's how things go, man.
SPEAKER_03And and I think the the thing that most listeners probably won't understand is that you know the the war doesn't stop. Like you guys could have this horrible incident, and I would guarantee that within 24 to 48 hours you guys were out again.
SPEAKER_01We went out that night, we got a huge firefight.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Or the next night, sorry. Yeah. And so it doesn't stop, man. And like, you know, and I think that's I you know, I we've had some other people come on the podcast, and even my own experiences, you know, you you don't really process that while you're there. At least I m I didn't. And then you come home, and then you finally have some downtime and you start processing whatever, or if you, you know, try to medicate yourself out of processing it.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think that's a that's a the fatal error, is especially during those times, you know, that environment and everything else. I mean, you know, it was shortly after that that that deployment just became one of the most kinetic deployments, you know, ever. There was you know, there was other lot of kinetic deployments and a lot of other operations, but we lost ourselves in that. That became something that we just pushed back. That's something that happened. That's not something that you know, because we got other things, we got you know, nightly freaking targets that were hit and then we're getting in firefights and you know, people are getting shot, people are getting blown up, like all this crazy stuff's happening, you know. And you know, for guys like me, you know, okay, okay, sure. I didn't have a kinetic, you know, rest of my career that was quite like you know that deployment, but I still stayed in the army. You know, those other guys, they they you know, they got out and they, you know, tried to put a life back together. And my the reason we're saying that is uh the uh we didn't deal with that. We just pushed it and diverted away from it. And now a lot of us are dealing with that stuff.
SPEAKER_03Great point. You got another interesting engagement. You're on an objective, bunkers on a on a hilltop, RPGs, PKMs coming in. Yeah, you're maneuvering with a Gustav team, lodging into bunkers, then a convoy with white lights comes up behind you and starts shooting 50 calendar Mark 19 in your position. Walk us through what happened next. How did you realize they were Americans?
SPEAKER_01And that was an interesting pretty much told the story. Well, I mean, there's a hell of a lot more to it. So Veteran Hill, which the anniversary is coming up, it actually happened on Veterans Day. When was that year? 2007? Was that the year? I think it was 2007, if I remember right. But yeah, basically, it wasn't that wasn't an Intel thing, that was nothing else. That was just a really, really shitty coordination. Because you know, you gotta think by that time we're starting to really armor the Iraqis trying to build up their army, their militias, their police, neighborhood watches, all this different kind of stuff. We did know we found out later that we'd stood up like the first Kurdish, you know, tank battalion, and they they were stationed there because they just picked up their tank and they were getting ready to take them up north, like all this different kind of stuff. But there was supposed to be this SF team that was attached to this infantry battalion and uh this Kurdish tank battalion, okay. Well, apparently they had ran to go get Chow, you know, and like resupplied. So there was no communication, and also it had not been properly tracked, you know. So you got blue, you know, you got these different, sorry, I almost said it, but you had these different systems that tell you where friendly forces are. Okay. Well, apparently it had not been accurately updated, so we didn't know they were there. Our higher headquarters didn't had no idea they were there. So we're just walking to an objective. And we see this huge hill, you know, this like mountain, you know, and kind of ridgeline, you know, kind of in the middle of the desert. And um, you know, tell the guys, hey, let's just skirt around it. Well, what was the objective? What were you guys doing that night? We were going out just to find an HV. Oh, you know, so we were just doing an offset. We did like a three to five K offset. Going after a high value target. Yeah, just you know, I don't even remember who it was. I think we actually ended up doing it later and it ended up being a dry hole. We're like, well, that was bullshit. I get ahead of myself. But anyway, so we we skirt around this ridgeline because like we're like, we're not gonna go climb that damn thing, you know, get up there. Well, as soon as we got basically like the whole platoon online out into this open desert, because we were kind of before that, like in this palm grove, like channel and everything else and road. So like you know, there was cover and concealment and like terrain. We were basically now just in this open desert. Our you know, AK 47 fire like opened up on us, and we're like, oh, it's coming from like the top of the hill. And you know, at first, like we kind of like did a couple pop, you know, shots back because we couldn't really honestly kind of see where it was coming. We knew it was coming from the top of the hill, but we like couldn't actually see the muzzle flashes, and then it really started to amping up, and and then it became PKM fire, and now we're like, oh shit balls, you know. So guys now are firing back, and it just got worse and worse. You know, now it's RPGs, you know, and RPGs are coming out. I mean, they're coming out quick, you know. And the good thing is, is you know, anybody that knows about high-angle shooting, you know, you gotta compensate, you know, for how the rounds travel. Luckily, they're hitting all behind us. Most, pretty much everything's hidden behind us. Sometimes there'd be some sporadic stuff like in between us. Like there's a great story that one of my guys talks about, like how he's dodging, like he felt like he was on, you know, like in the movies because he felt like he was dodging machine gun fire trying to get up to his sawgunner to give him another drum. But you know, for the most part, it was like behind us. And then, you know, through the series of that, we see off to the left a convoy, a white light convoy coming down the road. And we identify, okay, those are definitely Humvee's, okay. And you know, so we're trying to like make comms with them or whatever, you know, we're trying to figure out what's going on because we know that's not like Taliban, okay. That's like friendly forces of some kind. What friendly forces they are, we don't know. We're just trying to kind of suppress them, okay, at this point. And you know, lays them, try to get, you know, we're doing IR flight, we're doing all kinds of different kinds of stuff, like trying to show them we're friendly forces. Well, anyway, so this Humvees convoy comes up behind us and then they stop. And they're like, fuck. And they're like, oh, firefight, let's get some. And they start shooting at us with like 50 cals, you know, and dudes, you know, probably shooting out of windows from their up on armor high Humvees with M16s. And so now we're like in this goddamn Polish ambush with friendly convoy and whatever the hell is going on here, right? And at this time, we're we're starting to get because the ISR was not really even watching our info. They kind of were, they were flashing back and forth, but we're trying to get them realigned so they can see what's going on here. And it, you know, it takes them a couple minutes because we're still pretty far off target. And so they get like reoriented and then they start telling us, okay, hey, definitely friendly forces, like it's some kind of outpost, some kind of Iraqi outpost. They're trying to figure it out. Jason, you know, they're they're really in back to headquarters, you know, saying, hey, figure this out. And they're also telling us, like, hey, it looks like they got a bunch of tanks back there behind that berm. We're like, tanks, like we didn't even know that we'd gotten the Iraqi T-72 tanks at this point. But eventually the convoy, like, we signal to them, we're lazy to them, they realize we're friendly, and they diddy mouth out of there, okay. And we're trying to think through different ways so we can signal to these guys, hey, we're friendlies, like, you know, we're not enemy, you know, we're not just some random 40, you know, man Taliban crew that came out here to kill you all, right? We're trying all kinds of shit, right? So we do an F-16 flyover. Well, the F-16 flies so low that the heat signatures from the RPGs set off the flares which illuminate us. Now the fire gets more effective. Because now they're like, oh, there they are. And we can also hear them cheering because they think the F-16s are about to fucking bomb us. We're like, oh my god, like this is just getting worse and worse and worse, right? So, but at this point, like things are starting to get really effective. Like, I got guys like you know, starting to get hit by RPGs, you know, and you know, blown out of holes and stuff like that. I want to keep keep in mind there's no cover and concealment, none. So I pull my Gustav gunner and I'm like, well, we're gonna at least start just destroying bunkers. Like, we got to do something here. I mean, friendly fire is not very friendly when you're getting shot at, right? And I'm just you know, I'm thinking at any time I'm gonna start getting Kazabak called, you know, dudes are hit, you know. I mean, it's just a matter of seconds, right? So we start launching Gustav rounds into these bunkers. Well, that escalated things because now the ISR is telling us, hey, the tanks are starting up. Well, so Gustav goes Winchester. I try, you know, we try a smoke round, and I'm like, you know, that was that was we actually literally out because my Gustav, that was the last thing, he only had like five or six rounds, right? He's like, should I shoot my smoke round, you know, in front of us to like mask us? And we I'm like, well, we're not gonna break contact. Because if we break contact, we're gonna be right in their beaten zone of where they're shooting. Because still, it's still pretty much over the top of us. In fact, we actually move forward a little bit because it just they're still just shooting over the top of us, they're not very effective. I'm like, just shoot the goddamn smoke round in one of those bunkers. Of course, my Gustav gunner that hits every damn shot misses the smoke round, you know, and it just skips across the top and lands. Because the smoke round, it probably would have killed because the smoke round in a bunker, a gustoff smoke round in a bunker, man, it would it would smoke inhalation or at least lit somebody on fire, you know. But anyway, so now the tanks are mobilizing and they start coming around. And I'm sitting back in a hole with my P, not a hole, it's not really a hole, that's an exaggeration, but with my PL, the JTAC, or it's Chad Jenkins, Brad Temple, or Brandon Temple, and me. And we're kind of like sitting here, we're like, dude, somebody come up with a good idea here. Like, what are we gonna do? And then all of a sudden, just like everything goes quiet because of this vacuum of a 105 shell going over our head that just like it like sucks in the sound, then it sounds like a fucking freight train coming over your head. Now we're getting shot out by tanks and coaxes, and they're getting online and they're trying to flank us. These tanks are flanking us, okay? And there's much, much debate about this. Who who said it? I Chad says it was me, I don't believe it was me. Brandon says he don't know, he was just sick of getting yelled at, so I don't know who said it, but somebody said tell the Apache pilot to land in front of the tank. And they did, man. And I will tell you that that Apache pilot, the ball's on him. He literally landed right in front of a T-72, having no idea if that dude's about to shoot. Landed and hopped out and ran over and landed in broken English and broken Iraqi and said, Those are Americans, stop shooting, top it, knock it off like you're you know, this is a friendly fire incident. And that's what de-escalated it.
SPEAKER_03If you're an Apache pilot and you flew that mission, I hope you hear this. I will kiss you on your mouth. Yeah, yeah. You got you got some balls, bro.
SPEAKER_02Good old.
SPEAKER_01So we uh we we broke contact and the uh Bernie Felino, who was a first star, he's like, We're gonna go hit the target. I'm like, no, we're not gonna go hit the target, Bernie. We're going home. And we called in the helicopters and we flew home. I was like, and he's like, he's like, I was just saying that to Joe Cat.
SPEAKER_03I was like, I know, but we just used one of our nine lives out of how many.
SPEAKER_01Well, it was actually because we were out of ammo. Damn.
SPEAKER_03That's wild, man. What what kind of what what what lessons learned did you take from that? Because that's very an interesting story.
SPEAKER_01A couple, a couple different things. And so we landed back, you know, we landed back, we got off, and I was like, a total squall leaders. I was like, dude, just like everybody go take a minute, like we'll do the AR, but we're not gonna do it right this second because no one got hurt, but it's still a legit firefight that was a green uh blue on green, you know what I mean? And and it and it wasn't the first firefight, yeah. Sure, tanks, that was a new one. Okay, I'll be honest with you. The tanks was definitely a new equation that none of us had experienced before, but RPGs, PKMs, AKA, like that wasn't a big deal. Honestly, what most of us were just in almost kind of shell shock about is how is no one dead? Like it, I got it, they're shooting over, but it just blew us all away. So, you know, and we're just like, why? You know, so like and I so I walk into the talk and Bernie's on the phone, he's like, he's right here, and he's like, Burke, phone. He hands me the phone, and it was General Corilla, he was a battalion commander, and I this is why I don't, I don't, I really quite frankly don't care what anybody else has to say about him. I I will never ever care. It doesn't matter to me. You can win a soldier's love by simple acts, right? I'll I'll still to this day, I don't care. I'll follow that man into hell because his first words out of his mouth were I'm sorry. Not we're sorry, not an excuse, not placing blame, not pointing fingers, nothing. His first words out of his mouth to me, a platoon sergeant. He's a battalion commander, you don't have to answer to me. He's a but I'm I'm I'm just a nobody, you know. I'm just a platoon sergeant, was I'm sorry. And I was like, sir, you know, I was like, thank you, but like what happened? He's like, we don't know. He's like, we missed it, we're trying to figure it out. All we know is we weren't tracking that was there. We're analyzing our systems. I'm sitting down, he's like, I'm setting down everything tonight. We're not doing any more operations tonight. We got to figure out what's going on because things are not getting reported. We missed that. He's like, I and then, you know, he said, How is it no one's dead? I was like, I sir, I'll never, that'll be one of the mysteries you and I'll ask until we're old men. Like, I have no idea how no one's dead. And so, you know, we did. We, you know, we analyzed a lot of things, and you know, this SF team, it just really bowling down to this single ODA that was in charge of these guys, didn't report the movement that they had taken up a new position from wherever they previous were, not only not report it and say this is where current forces are at, and two weren't there because we would have just switched over to the comet freak and talked to those SF guys, but they weren't there, they had made uh some kind of resupply run. So just you know, so you know, it was a couple different things.
SPEAKER_03Wow, that's an interesting story. It's pretty crazy. Actually, just processed that. I'm just like I'm a visual person, something like you guys are literally in the open desert, tanks are coming, people are shooting from a uh it is crazy. Then it's killed.
SPEAKER_01I've I've heard they actually did this as a vignette in the Captain Square course for a while. Oh, really? You try to see if they could solve it and tell them how to de-escalate it. And what I've been told is that no one's ever got it right because no one ever said, Hey, ladnant Apache on the road. Whose idea was that? I don't know. We stay there's much debate. Chad says it was me. Brandon said he doesn't know, he just knows he was screaming again, screamed at a lot. So I don't know. I don't think it was me, but I have no idea. It worked, it did.
SPEAKER_03Um most of the time you guys were hitting PODs, period of darkness, you know, we own the night. That's you know, kind of what we say. But I know in Baghdad, you guys at some point started doing daylight missions in Baghdad, which kind of put Baghdad in a spiral. Why did you guys switch to doing daytime and what made it so effective?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so you know, you think of Baghdad, you know, and you think of you know a SOF as a whole, like man, we I mean the the saying used to be between you know the you know the few ODAs that did stuff or the CIF guys, you know, the Delta guys, Navy SEALs, you know, and then the Rangers, like man, Baghdad SWAT. Like, dude, we messed that town up. Like we were hitting shit all the time there. Well, and you know, we got the British there too, you know, and then the you know, just all the special operations, you know. That was our playing ground to be like SWAT teams, hitting shit, bang, bang, bang, and stuff all over the place, you know. So any cells that wanted to operate out of there, they had to adapt. And so at the time, we got the mission to take down the media cell, you know, the the Al Jazeera media cell that was doing a lot of the, you know, a lot of the propaganda stuff, you know, and a lot of the training videos and everything else. We needed to task them, but they just had such good TTPs we couldn't target them. You know, we'd track them, see them, get them during the day, but at night around mosque, you know, or they would do their final prayer, you know, before our you know, before dinner time, you know, they would, you know, drop all tech, you know, do all these different things, and we'd lose them. We just couldn't find them. You know, we couldn't find these guys. And they were the guys that, you know, they needed technology and they needed to do all this different kind of stuff, but their techniques, like we just couldn't catch them. Everything was a dry hole. We'd lose guys, you know. We try to track them, we'd find different means, but we could just never find these guys. And just one one, it was it was a kind of an evolution of thoughts. My first thought was is let's go out with a marine convoy. Okay, we'll literally use marine vehicles, and that'll allow us to do some different things, but because they don't react to these general presence patrol guys, they don't they don't care about them, they know they're not targeting them, you know. In fact, if anything, they'll just take them out as targets opportunity, you know, you know, shoot at the marines or blow them up, or you know, the you know, 100 first guys, whoever is theirs, they're afraid of the soft guys because the soft guys are the guys that are rolling them up in their beds at night, you know. So we figure they don't they won't pay attention to us, you know, during the day. So we tried this one with the Marines. Well, because of Marines procedures and battlefield owners and them having to say, you know, to the Shurahs, you know, the Sheiks and everything else, they gotta tell them that, hey, they're going to be patrolling in this area, you know, because they're trying to make good. So it I'm sure it got leaked out that, well, this isn't a real mere, you know, a full Marine patrol. There's some other guys on there. And so it didn't work. So we're like, okay, that didn't work. We tried it. I even literally had some of my guys like in marine uniforms and stuff like that. Like they were super pissed off about it. So we're like, all right, screw this. Let's just this just isn't gonna work. We're just gonna straight up roll out. Speed is violence, and we're just gonna do this stuff during the day. We're target them during the day, we're gonna go back reverse, you know, because everything else, you know, was we're on verse schedule, and we just started banging targets during the day, and we decimated the network. We rolled them up, we caught them with their pants down. They'd never seen, never expected it, and we were able to do it. And we knew we only had a limited time before they adjusted again. So there was probably about a like a I would say about a 13 to 15 day period where just anything and everything that was related to the network that we were trying to collapse, we hit. And what it really resulted in was about every three hours we were rolling out on a target, just nonstop for like you know, 13 to 15 days. And then they they adjusted again, tried to adapt and stuff like that. So then we were able to get them at night, you know, and it just and then finally, I think it was like right around the 20-day mark. I remember coming back from one and it was a brutal day because it was so hot. This is the middle of summer, this is July, so it's like 130 some degrees in the back of these strikers. I just told the ground force commander, I was like, I need 24. I gotta shut the guys down there. I mean, we are we are dying here, like we're dying. Um, we gotta shut the ground force down for 24 hours, just let my guys recover, hydrate, and everything else. And he's like, No. I was like, sir, please just ask. He's like, okay. So he asked, and the task force commander was like, Yeah, that makes sense. If Burke's saying that, like, shut him down. So they shut us down for like 24 hours, and then yeah, we got back after it, but you know, it it definitely had a shelf life. But there was about like 15 to 20 days where we just destroyed the media cell.
SPEAKER_03Wow. You kind of hit a breaking point in 2009. You know, you end up yelling at a superior officer or something you'd never done before. What exactly happened and you know, what was going on? I mean, I can kind of put all the pieces together, but I'll let you tell it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so you know, up to this point, I've been on every deployment that 275 had been on. I've been deferring schools that I needed to go to, you know, for my professional development. I had no idea who my kids were. None. Because not only was I deploying all the time, I was also running a lot of specialty programs. I mean, I was a battalion master breacher, I was helping out regiment in kind of like an assistant match breacher capacity for running a lot of agency breaching courses and stuff like that. Cause we were also doing a lot of stuff with SWAT teams at the time, too. I mean, and just different agencies, you know, across the the spectrum. So, I mean, training cycles were honestly brutal, more brutal because, you know, I just was so busy and I, you know, was trying to juggle also being a family. When you're deployed, you don't have to juggle your family. They're, you know, you care, you try to be involved, but at the end of the day, it's there's a tyranny at distance, right? But I was running this special course that I put together because we were I really, really wanted to do kind of an exchange of like TTPs and like lessons learned and all this different kind of stuff from you know different different agencies and SWAT teams and a lot of different folks. And I just remember at the time, you know, I'm like a platoon start and platoon starts at the time, man, because the task force focus, like they kind of had the keys to the kingdom, man. Like, you know, they kind of they were there at the leading edge of the tactics and a lot of decision making and everything else. It's not that the first arts or the sergeant majors and the officers weren't there, it's just like everybody and also we were dying a lot and getting injured a lot, you know. So, because you know, just being platoon sergeants, you know. And uh so it was I did it was just kind of a fighting platoon sergeant time, like it was the era of the fighting platoon sergeant, right? So there was entitlement, especially because I was very immature as well. I was super immature, you know. I just no one told me no. Yeah, it's like if if you if you're telling me no, that means you just need more information, and I might give you that more information, but you're gonna end up telling me yes, you know, to whatever it is. But again, you know, I could be on deployment and say, hey, I want a new gym, and they'd ship me, you know, you know, $300,000 worth new gym equipment because I asked for it, you know. So anyway, put this training course together. And one of the things that we wanted to do, they said yes to a lot of things is we wanted to hit a 747 because I had a good buddy that was an air marshal, and I just wanted to do it, thought I would cool, you know. Who doesn't want to take down a 747? You know, is it mission relevant? Absolutely not, but I wanted to do it, you know. And I remember this major, I go to the S3 shop, I got word that he denied that portion of my request for the training exercise. And I'm like, this. So I go over to the S3 shop and I'm like, you know, I walk in, you know, I'm an E7 and I'm walking into a room full of E7s, master serents, captains, majors, sergeant major, you know, like all this stuff. And I'm like, where's the you know, major baba? And I'll spare his name. And he's like, he's back there. And I'm like, you know, and I just go in and I I mean, I'm just talking to this dude like he's a specialist. And I'll I'll I'll give him credit always, you know. He just remained calm. He's like, Well, I understand, but there's no practical reason for you to take down a 747. So I've already talked to the battalion commander about it. It's denied. You're not gonna be able to do this as part of your training direction. And again, I'm you know, I'm just being a turd, man. And I'm just like, you know, F you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you know, I walk out and uh the Ops Art Major Daryl Thiees, you know, brought him up before. He enter he intercepts me. He's like, You I will come talk to you in a minute. Like, you go walk back to your company, I'll I'll come find you later. Because he knew exactly what that major was gonna do, exactly what he should have done. He went and talked to the battalion commander and recommend me for an Oracle 15, man. Insubordination, man. I mean, disrespect, like that was a that was a real piece of shit thing to do. And as I'm walking back, you know, I'm fuming pissed. I am so mad, right? And I'm walking back to my my company, and you know, I respected, you know, I respected Daryl and Bernie, he come and talk to me too, and they're like, dude, that's not cool, man. Like that, that, you know, like we got your back, but and we'll be able to, you know, we'll be able to walk this back, but that you can't be doing that shit. And I remember at the time I was like, you're right. Like, I'm fucked up. And as I thought about it more, and you know, I'll always laugh because my PL he was with me the whole time through this whole thing, you know, David Stroud, and he's just such a good dude who went off to have a great career and serve in the unit and stuff. I just remember him looking at me like this dude's fucking crazy as a fuck. With this guy because you're salty at this point, right? Yeah. I was actually the most senior platoon sergeant in the battery at this time. And I just remember, I'm like, my reaction was one, so arrogant, so entitled, but was over the top. Why am I what what what is going on here? And that's the first time I realized like all this stuff that we've been, you know, we've been talking about this as I was been, I was, I was bad. I was really messed up in my head. Also, I had gotten I'd gotten injured pretty bad too. So physically, I was a mess. You know, I had 30, you know, 33 shop noons all over my body. I was all jacked up. And I was just a mess, man. I was I was a shit show. And so we did that training exercise. It was awesome. Okay. And just so you know, this was actually prior to that Baghdad deployment. Okay. So we did that Baghdad deployment. The SAR Major came out, and because I know where you're kind of going with this, that SAR major, the SARM major at the time came out, and I basically told him on this deployment, I'm like, hey, I need a break after this deployment. I've been on every deployment. I'm the senior platoon sergeant. I'm eligible. I'm gonna be eligible for master sermon, but I need to go to the school. If I don't complete the school that I was supposed to have done three years ago, I won't be eligible for the next rank and I need a break. He's like, okay, you know, and he 100% like the plan was I would come back from that deployment. I would be on rear D, I would go to the school, I would do a couple other things, and then I would take another platoon, the Recce platoon, after that next deployment. But I basically missed that deployment. Anyway, so we get back from Baghdad after leave. We're doing some training stuff. Sergeant Major comes out to the training range, and basically he's like, hey, somebody fell you know out of the rotation. I don't have a backfill for you as a platoon sergeant. So you're gonna stay in platoon sergeant as this deployment for this deployment, this guy upcoming deployment, and then you're gonna take the reccu platoon after the deployment. You know, and I looked at it and I got it. Like I understand, like, you know, they you know, they, you know, things happen and people fall off, but I'm like, Sergeant Major, like I really need you to really reconsider this. I need you to think about this and see if you can source another solution from regiment or something. I really need to stay back from this deployment. I I I need you to honor what we talked about. And if he would have worked with me or he'd have said something different, I would have probably had a different reaction, but I'll never forget. He looked at me and he goes, Well, that's nice. But at the end of the day, you're in the army, you're gonna do what the fuck I tell you to do. And he turns around and gets in his truck and he drives off. And I'm like, F you, dude. Yeah, absolutely not. Because, you know, it's important to note, I'm I'm a terrible army guy. I hate being told what to do, especially when you tell me I can't do something that I want to do and we're pretty determined on it, and you use the army's rank system against me, like you and I are not gonna get along, right? So, anyway, I got back from that. I got back from that training that you know that that night and everything else. I started making some falls. I found this job up at ROTC, called up to HRC because at this point, after you've served a so in range regiment, anytime you get promoted, you owe the you owe the regiment two years, okay? Or when you arrive, you owe them two years. But if you get promoted to team leader, you own two years, you squad leader two years, platoons are two years, or whatever it is. Well, I'd already filled that and more. So I can leave at any time I want. I I'm fenced to the organization, but if I choose, I volunteer to leave, I can leave at any time I want. So my buddy was working up at HRC Ranger Branch specifically, which does all the manning for the army, found a line item for an ROTC unit and basically had him put me on orders for that organization. And you know, found the job, all this different kind of stuff, and then came back, told Bernie what I did, which was my first serent, and he was like, I wish you had talked to me, but I understand. And then the sergeant major pulled me to his office, told me I'd never serve in the 75th Ranger Regiment again, and I was a cowardice piece of shit. How did that sit with you, man?
SPEAKER_03Fine. I mean, kind of looking back, you know, you were you were pretty much at your your breaking point. I mean, obviously didn't break, but you know, what do you think some of the warning signs were that you were reaching at that point, maybe that you missed prior to that?
SPEAKER_01So I mean there was there was so many different things. One, I was just completely vacant to my kids. You know, and you know, spouse at the time, all that different kind of stuff, family at the time. I I mean I just I was there because my body was there, my mind was never there. Every night when I would get home, so I had like my garage, you know, and I had this mini fridge that was that sat right in the garage door, and right in that was beer and a cold jack that I kept in the freezer, you know, those mini fridges that got those little freezers. So I would grab a beer, pop that thing open, have it pretty much gone. Sometimes I'd grab two, but I'd have at least at half gone or gone before I even entered my feed ever and entered the house. I was every night, every, every single night. Okay. And by the time, you know, I go get changed, you know, and before I sat down, like with my family, you know, to like to actually sit down and like talk, you know, I mean I'd say hi and stuff like that. I would have went, grabbed another beer, and poured a glass of scotch and I'd put it in the fridge inside. I'd finish that second beer and or Jack Daniel, sorry, and then I would I'd be drinking that glass of scotch by the time we sat down to dinner. And I wouldn't get drunk. Like that would be about it. Maybe I'd have another glass, but that would be about it. But I would do that, you know, before like really interacting with anybody. And so it was that, it was also just like my temper, man. Man, I just fly, I fly off the handle to my guys, I'd fly off to the handle to superiors like this. And I just I told I remember I remember telling somebody this. They, you know, and I I wish I could remember who it was because I think they were really trying to figure out if I was okay. Okay. And it was a friend that had left the unit, you know, left the organization, I think was on the civilian time. And he just asked me how I was doing. And I remember this because I could tell you where I was driving. I remember the road, you know, going to my house. And I told him, I said, I feel like I'm a passenger to my own life. And he's like, What? I was like, Yeah, dude, I don't feel like I'm living my life. I feel like I'm watching it as a passenger. I'm not in the driver's seat. And yeah, that was that was an indication that something was about to break and I needed to do something to fix it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think this is a good point. Let's uh let's take a quick break. Coming back from the break, man, I mean, you know, it's kind of cool that you at least had the wherewithal. I know you were going through a lot, but to realize, man, you know, you needed a break. And sometimes it's it's especially it's hard for dudes, especially with at you being at such the tip of the spear, to be like, man, I need a break. But I can't imagine, you know, what it was like trying to trying to be good at what you're doing and still trying to be somewhat, you know, have a family. So ultimately you go to ROTC, you know, where did you go and kind of, you know, what what was that like for you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, it was a hard decision, you know, nonetheless, but I kind of realized one that it I needed to do it and you know to be able to show up for folks. I needed to fix some stuff, and two, my family needed it. You know, but I went up to ROTC, University of Washington, Seattle, and it was awesome. It wasn't, it was, it was pretty uh it was a culture shock at first. You know, I showed up, they were already at advanced camp for the summer. You know, the secretary that works there, Jennifer, she's an awesome person. But she's like, hey, everybody's pretty much gone for the summer, they won't be back. They're either doing advanced camp, but you didn't make it in time to go do that rotation, and then everybody's taking vacation and everybody'll show, start showing up back at the end of August. And uh, you know, this is like six weeks away. I'm like, Well, what am I supposed to do? Tell them she's like, they left like a folder for you to do some stuff, just knock that out and do whatever. So I go over there and it's like a folder, like setting up some preparatory logistics stuff. And I knock that out like in like two days, you know. I'm like, okay, build some out borders, all this shit, you know. And I'm still like, okay, I'm showing up, I'm doing PT, like, and I'm sitting there like all day, and I don't have like things to do, so I'm like trying to do like other stuff, and then eventually I'm just like, I'm just gonna do whatever, you know, and I start bringing my kids up, you know, because Seattle's awesome, you know, especially in this time, you know. So we go hang out in Seattle, there's rock walls, there's all this different kind of stuff, so waterfront. So I'm like just having fun in the summer, taking long weekends, leaving early, you know, leaving out two, start taking my kids to school, picking them up from school, you know, cooking, like I'm just like doing all this stuff that I just had never done. But it was hard, you know. It was like uh, you know, going from the the frying pan to the deep freeze. I mean, it messed with me. I I was enjoying it and I was doing some stuff that I normally hadn't done, but at the same time, it was unsettling as hell. But then, you know, closely after that, cadets show up and they're open minds, man. And they look at me and you know, and I don't want to say this like I'm trying to brag or anything, but most of the ROTC instructors are guys that are, you know, during this time are guys that are pretty much modern day draft dodgers. I mean, literally, these guys had never deployed. I mean, we're talking about guys that you know were we're nine years into the war and had never deployed. Like you're you're avoiding it at that point. You're avoiding it at that point. So, you know, it was so these cadets, man, they just looked at me, you know, and they saw scrolls, they saw tabs, they saw CIB, you know, master rated, all this, or no, at that time I wasn't master rated, I was senior-rated, you know, jump master. You know, and they're looking up to me, you know. And the PMS was a guy that I, you know, had gotten to know, and he was a tanker, he's a really cool dude, uh, Sergeant Major Mullenbeck. He eventually became a sergeant major, but it was a lot of fun. I love training those guys. But at the same time, you know, I got the itch. You know, I know I need to get back in shape. I'm kind of putting my body back together, I'm healing, I'm recovering, I'm doing rehab, and it was awesome because there's a sports medicine coach, you know, at the University of Washington, you know, Washington that does the softball baseball players, you know, basketball players, all this different kind of stuff, multi-million dollar facility, you know. And once they found out I was a veteran and I got to know them, they were like, hey man, come in, you know, just as long as we don't have players, you know, at the time, like we'll we'll take care of you, you know. So they were giving me like programs of rehabilitational stuff. It was awesome. They had full Olympic swimming pool, actually, two of them. So I was swimming a lot and I was like getting back on track, right? I was getting back in shape. And University of Washington has a beautiful campus. Oh, dude, it's unbelievable. Their football games are still some of the most beautiful football games I've ever been to because the backdrop's like Washington, and people pull up their yachts to watch the football game. Like it's so cool, it's it's really, really cool, right? So it yeah, it was a lot of fun, and we got free tickets to the the the football games and the basketball games and stuff like that. Like we repelled, you know, during halftime one time on the basketball game. That was super cool. But, you know, in the cadets, man, they were just sponges, you know, they're smarter privates, is what I used to always say. You know, they were open to everything, they loved to train, they wanted to do stuff. A lot of the seniors that were like you know, real gun-ho guys, you know, that really, you know, they wanted to be rangers, you know, they would ask to do additional training. So, you know, I'd start as I got back into shape and everything else, I started doing different stuff with them. Ranger Challenge is a big competition in ROTC. You know, so I started training up guys for that. And then I started training with them and everything else. You know, we competed in the Sandhurst competition. We were the first one of the first teams from Eighth Brigade that took eighth, you know, placed in the top 10 at the Sandhurst competition. So it was it was just a lot of fun. But you know, two other things were happening in the background. One, uh I just had a ditch. I just I you know, I I knew I needed to get back. I'm losing guys, you know, my platoon was involved in a huge houseborn IED. Luckily, no one was killed, but a lot of people were injured and I wasn't there for it. Um, it sucked. It was absolutely terrible. I mean, I'm losing friends, and they're dying overseas because the war's still going on. And then two, the realization that the person that you're supposed to be with in marriage is just not who you think they are, and you don't want to be with them anymore. And, you know, it's tough. You know, I'm conflicted, man. You know, I'm trying to be a family man, you know, I'm trying to do this stuff, I'm trying to repair things, and then and then at the same time, I just got this, you know, gnawing in the back of my head that I'm missing the war. It doesn't matter what you've done previously, no one cares what you did yesterday, everybody cares what you're doing today, you know. And while I'm training the future officers that are gonna lead our army, that's not enough for a guy, you know, like us, you know. So, you know, I eventually in the 2011 I go to you know, Delta Force selection. And unfortunately, I mean my training was top-notch. I mean, I was I was on point. I probably peaked a little bit too early. You should peak when you're there. I peaked a little bit too early. But the other thing that I really, really messed up is I never really kind of addressed the feed issue that I had. I didn't know it at the time. Pain's pain, you train through pain. I'm in my 30s, you know, like you just don't know any different. But I had I'd I had really bad plantar's fasciitis, I had stress tendons, I had stress fractures, I had all this different kind of stuff, and I just kind of masked it and I just thought it was normal for a lot of different reasons. And so unfortunately, you know, before, you know, so the you know, one of the last evolutions, you know, stress week and stuff like that, where you're just grounding and I mean you're just you're just grinding. I was unsuccessful. And I didn't make the time for the day, I mean, right before the 40s. So I was cut and you know, I come back and that was that was a blow, man. You know, I had all these cadets that knew what I was going to do, my whole family, everybody knew, you know, and everybody's like, oh, you know, I'm this stud, you know, Ranger, like, of course he's gonna make it, you know, and we're never gonna see him again because he's gonna disappear off into the spooky. And at this point, you knew a bunch of people over there too, I'm sure. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, you know, Josh is over there, Mark's over there. I mean, Matt Nyman's over there. I shit I Brandon Jackson, you know. I mean, I could this list could go on and on. I mean, all my friends are over there, everybody I grew up with was over there, you know. And uh yeah, and you know, things I come back from selection, and uh I'm sorry, it was 2010 when I went to selection, my apologies. And I come back and I'm just like the other thing because the other thing about selection is it's not just a physical aspect of it, is you have a lot of time to think, you have a lot of things to analyze fight life, even when you're doing stuff, you become so good at land nav that it's almost like uh it's background noise, like you know, you navigating because you just that course is not a group course, no, it's an individual course, but you just become so good at terrain association, you're like, okay, I gotta go two clicks this way, I'm gonna cross three spurs, I'm gonna go down into a valley, I'm gonna cross a creek, and then I'm gonna be at my next RV. Like you just you just become so good at it that you're you know, it's background noise, and you're in the front, you're thinking of all these things. You're thinking about life, you're contemplating it, you know, and I wasn't contemplating should I be doing this? I knew this was what I should be doing. I knew this is what I was doing. What I was contemplating was my marriage. And if this is a person that I wanted to drag across the country with me, if I was successful. And you know, like they say, everybody's got an excuse, and my excuse was my feet. The reality was is I didn't want to make it because I didn't want to do that. That's really the reason, you know, and I could have ran faster, you know, I could have made the time. But uh my mind, my subconscious slowed me down in some capacity. So I came back and you know, my daughter was born. I think I think right before I left, maybe a couple months before I left. She was pretty, I think she was pretty young when I left, maybe. I'm trying to remember. I don't quite remember, but uh anyway. And so I come back and I'm just like you know, it takes me a couple more months because I got a newborn. You know, who wants to be the dickhead that leaves his wife or the newborn? But the truth is that our marriage had been over a long time ago. And there's a lot of different things, and I'm not gonna sit here and you know dive into all that and who's wrong. It doesn't matter. But the truth is, is that's not who I was supposed to marry. I'm thankful for it because you know I had I have three awesome kids, and I had to go through that to get to where I'm going. And a lot of events would have needed to happen in order for my life to take the pathway that it had. Delta Force selection being one of them. So come back, you know, deal with some things for a while, eventually make the decision to, you know, leave, which was tough. Probably one of the hardest days of my life is is after, you know, I left. I'm sitting down, I'm staying with a good buddy of mine, Chris Frost. And uh he's out doing like a you know some training because he's still in ranger regiment at the time, and I'm sitting there just eating teriyaki at this place down in DuPont. I got a beer and a bowl of teriyaki, and I'm the loneliest I've ever been in my entire life. Yeah, I'm just sitting there drinking my beer, crying into my teriyaki, like, you know, I'm that dude that, you know, is getting a divorce now, and you know, now I'm gonna be that part-time dad. And like that's the thing that I left Ranger Regiment to prevent, and now here I am again. God, you know, I'm just like fuck, man. And uh so, you know, a bunch of different things happen, and you know, we'll talk about you know, meeting Sarah in a minute, but I also came down on orders and I was supposed to go be part of a mid-team and go to Fort Riley, which would have been a six-month train up. This is back before advisor brigades, okay. S Feb, you know, so his mid-teams that go do advisory work in Iraq and Afghanistan and everything else, and I got you know, the army's like, oh man, look at this dude. You know, he's Ranger qualified, all this stuff, you know, he's promotable, or he's gonna be promotable to master, he's perfect for a mid-team. And so I come down on orders, and I'm gonna go to Fort Riley, Kansas, do a six-month train up and then deploy for you know, God knows how long, uh nine to fifteen months, you know. You know, I I had heard of horror stories and I'm like, absolutely that cannot happen. Because the plan was is I was gonna go back to selection, you know. But because of the marriage, you know, again, moving to Fort Bragg, you know, half, you know, halfway across the country from my kids. I'm just like, this is not the time. I can't go to the Mitt team. I'm not gonna go back to selection. And you know, there's just too many things to figure out right now. So I'm like, well, there's only one other option, that's go back to Ranger Regiment. And it's not like I settled, I don't want to make it sound like that. Like, I love Ranger, I wanted to go back, you know. But so hit up the Star Major again, you know, this is the third time saying his name, Daryl Thiees. I call him and I'm like, hey, Serge Major, I want to come back. I need you to sponsor me to go back through selection, you know, because you have to go back through Ranger Assessment Program in order to do it. And he's like, Absolutely. Um, I'm like, okay, so I go back through and get hired, and you know, now I'm uh going back to Ranger Regiment. What's it like going back through Ranger Selection as a you know, so there's the two the there's RASP one and RAS two. Rasp one is for like E5 and below, RAS two is for you know, all above NCOs and all officers. Uh it's good, it's perfect. It's exactly what needs to happen. And now Rangers actually the Ranger Regiment's actually changed it that if you change positions, you have to go through RASP. So if you go from Patoon Sergeant to First Sergeant, first sergeant to sergeant major, or I'm sorry, squad leader to platoon sergeant two, you have to go back through RAS two. And I think it's absolutely the right call because it keeps the right guys in the in the range regiment, uh, assesses their leadership because you do extensive psych profiles, you do peer valves, you do all you got to do all the critical events, you gotta do, you know, field exercises, all this different kind of stuff, you know. And people are like, well, you know, why would you make a guy that's living the, you know, living that do that? Well, because we maintain the standards, and there's nothing wrong with us having benchmarks of checking that. Just because you've been in the ranger regiment for 12 years and you need to go be, you know, you're gonna go take a first arrest job doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you go back and make sure you're the right guy for the job. I will say that, you know, it results in, unfortunately, because especially the physical events, some guys just don't pass and they don't get a comeback or they don't get that next job. And that sucks, and we lose out on talented guys. And I can think of three friends off the top of my head that unfortunately just weren't gonna come back and it sucks. And the ranger regiment was less for not, but but by and large, it makes sure the right guys, you know, stay in the organization. So like it or hate it or not, it you know, it's it's the right thing. Another major difference between Ranger Regiment and a lot of other special operations units. Yep, yep. It's uh a lot of people still have you know gripes about it, but I think it's 100%. I remember when they rolled it out, I was a lot of people fought it, but because I'd spent time at ROTC and I'd come back, I was like, this is absolutely the right call. Also, they say now too, you have to go out and serve in the conventional army for two years before you can be a platoon sergeant at some point. And again, people complain about that, and a lot of people don't come back and we lose people, but it's still it uh it's it's a great program because it makes sure that the right guys come back, okay, and it makes you a better leader. Being a leader in the Rage Regiment, it's hard, it's complex, it's difficult because of the mission and the men and all this different kind of stuff, but leadership's actually pretty easy because you get the cream of the crop. And if they're not up to snuff, or quite frankly, you just don't like them, you get rid of them. Okay. But, you know, when you go out into the regular army, conventional army, you gotta fight through, you gotta find talent, you gotta motivate guys, you gotta you gotta use different principles, leadership principles. Um, it makes you a better leader. The leader I left as a platoon smart and came back out, you know, and you know, this is that, you know, combat versus garrison leadership. I left a combat leader that was very shitty at garrison. I came back a good garrison leader because I understand army program. Army and I'd exercised some different leadership. I came back still very tactically sound, but now I had this, you know, I'm good at garrison too, and I understand leadership and creating dimensional leadership or I'm sorry, multi-uh depthful leadership in organizations.
SPEAKER_03You mentioned earlier when you had that kind of falling out with that officer that ultimately led you to make the decision to go to RETC. You you one of your statements you made, which I thought was interesting, was like you were very kind of immature. What do you think allowed between, you know, that incident where you yelled at that officer and then you coming back? What do you think helped you mature?
SPEAKER_01Like really awesome question. No one's ever asked me that. A couple different things. One, it made me appreciate where I came from and how much of a privilege it is to serve in the 75th Ranger Regiment. That's definitely one. Two, it made me expound my leadership. Like you can't just expect, like, you've got to not that I didn't train Rangers. I definitely trained Rangers, but Rangers at the end of the day, you you they're gonna figure shit out because they wanna be there, they want to impress you. And I'm not saying that cadets or regular army folks don't want to, but the drive's very different. You got to give clear task conditions and standards. You gotta communicate, but you gotta be a better communicator. And then third, I figured my shit out. I did I had some hard, humbling things. I fell Delta selection in front of, you know, I ate our 86-man cadet body, student body. And I had to come back and stand up in front of them and said I failed. I humbled the shit out of me. One, that I failed. I let all my buddies down that were expecting me to show up there. And two, I just stand up. So I got I ate some humble pie. And then also I failed my divorce. You know, and you know, we could have you know conversations about that, but you know, it is what it is. And you know, the it should have probably we should have never gotten married, but at the end of the day, you know, failure is a failure, and you gotta chalk it up. So there's a lot of humble pie, you know, and now here I am, a 31-year-old living with one of my pri you know, one of my friends. It used to be one of my privates, you know, and I'm poor as you know, church mouse. So I had a lot of humbling, humbling experiences, you know. And then also, you know, I met my match in this world, and that's a humbling experience. It's an uh enlightening and fulfilling experience, but at the same time, it's also humbling because you're like, oh, wow, there's a counterproduct out there that can match my my intensity and match me as a human being. And you're like, I didn't think that existed.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, sometimes I've said it takes a bad marriage to appreciate a really good marriage, yeah. 100%. What was it like? And we'll get into your current wife because I know she's really important to you. She comes up to you pretty much anytime I ever, or she comes up anytime I ever talked, you know, talk to you, which I think is super cool. And I know we've talked a lot about her off camera. What was it like co-parenting as a ranger, dude? I mean, you're constantly deployed, and you know what what what's that like? It uh it almost broke me.
SPEAKER_01So a couple different things happened. I came back to Ranger Regiment and immediately went to staff job, you know, and and rightfully so. I, you know, I needed to kind of get assimilated. A lot of things had changed. The political landscape had changed, especially in combat. Like the two years, you know, two and a half years I'd gone. I'd stayed tied into the community and I still came back to the 275 and trained on a lot of things, especially like breaching stuff, because you know, I still had a ton of experience. So, you know, I would come back and do stuff for them and with them, you know. At the end of the day, I'm still in the army, you know, so I could do that. I needed to come back and kind of figure, you know, do some new things. Plus, staff is all about professional development. Before you're gonna be a first time, you gotta spend time on staff. And so I came back on staff and you know, did a deployment and then you know, did another one and had to come back early from a deployment because of a bunch of shit that was happening with my kids. And I came back, I had to come back like halfway through that deployment, and that was terrible. That sucked. And all these things transpired with my kids, with you know, co-parenting, you know, because my wife has an ex too. It was just this like perfect storm of stuff. And there was actually a point where Bernie Fellino now, he's the he's he's about to be the sergeant major, Daryl Thies is still the sergeant major, but you know, Bernie's around and everything else. And I go to Bernie when they get back from the deployment, and I'm like, listen, I might yeah, I might not be able to take this first time job. And uh I'll show fracture my hip. And he's like, You you can do it. I was like, you don't understand what's going on in my personal life. Like, uh it's a shit show right now. You know, there's a lot of shit going on. And him and my wife had a conversation behind my back. And Ellen is Bernie's wife, and Sarah, they're they're really close, you know, they became really close because Bernie's you know, he's a he's an important human being in my life. In a lot of ways, you know, especially later on in life, just as important as Josh was. Okay. And basically, you know, one night we're sitting out back, and I'm just I'm I'm just a basket case you know, I'm not a basket case, but I'm like stressing because I'm like about to I'm at this inflection point that I'm like I'm gonna have to just end my career in Ranger Regiment because my personal life is not is it's not all gonna be sustainable. And I'm about to step in to be a fursorn, which is just gonna complicate matters because now I'm in charge of 140 dudes, you know, I'm responsible for these 140 dudes. And my wife is like, listen, I got it. And and just to make clear, you've gotten remarried. Yeah, okay, yep. And yeah, 2014, yeah. I got remarried in 2014, and she's just like, listen, man, I got this. You do what you gotta do as a first star. I'll take care of the rest. Just do what you gotta do. People are counting on you to do it. I know you want to do it, I want you to do it. Just we got this, we got this together. And I remember, I'm like, you know what the fuck I can't do. Like, you can't, like, I can't. I mean, I'm being honest, like, I can't expect you to do this. They're not your kids. Like, I know you love them, they're your stepkids, though, you know, and we're still pretty new, you know, in this whole thing and this whole goal party thing, you know. She's like, no, this is what we're doing. I guess, I guess maybe I I said it wrong. Like, this is what we're doing, and we're gonna do this together. We're we're a team, we're gonna figure this out. You know, because there was points where I told Sarah to leave me. I'm like, my life is such a shit show, you should just leave me, you know, and she's like, No, that's not, that's not how this works, you know. And anyway, yeah, but I mean, it was still terrible because you know, things just amped up and my kids were doing stuff, and a lot of it was retaliation stuff because they're split household, they're pissed, you know, that I, you know, we got a divorce, you know, all this messed up stuff's happening to them. You know, she's got, you know, my other son Hayden, you know, my stepson, you know, he's torn too between how households, he's got a father that's deploying all the time as well, you know, and it's just a man, it was painful. It was super hard to be a first art, but we had we had such a great time, and I'm glad we made it through it.
SPEAKER_03What was it like to have Sarah's support to do the thing that you were built to do?
SPEAKER_01Undeserved I've done a lot of bad shit in this world.
SPEAKER_03Not a good person. I disagree, but I'll entertain this conversation.
SPEAKER_01I've done I've done I've done a lot of shit, man. Not the greatest person in the world. And you know, I know that people, you know, will say things like, you know, thank you for your service. And and and I I don't get mad at it, and I'm not I don't I'm not telling people don't say that. Like, say it. You know, if that's the best you can come up with, like say it, because it means something, it does. But it's like it was never I wasn't serving. I was doing what I wanted to do. I was doing what I thought I was put on this earth to do, okay, which was close with and destroy the enemies of my country and train people to do it better than anybody else. Like, that's what I was put on this earth to do. It wasn't about service, it was about fulfillment, selfishness, because it made me feel whole. And when I wasn't doing it, I was a train wreck. I mean, uh yes, I had a lot of fun at ROTC, but I was also struggling mentally. I'm watching my buddies die, I'm hearing about my platoon getting blown up. Like man, I there was a lot of drunken nights. Okay. There was a lot of you know, me passed out on a floor because I drank myself into oblivion because I I I couldn't deal with the fact I wasn't doing that. I I was doing something meaningful, I felt, but at the same time, it's not the same. It's very different to be going through a door and you know, canoeing dudes' heads and as opposed to you know teaching a cadet, you know, an MS2 how to do land nav. Very, very two different things with you know purpose and direction, you know, and motivation, all those different kinds of things. And so, you know, back to your original, you know, question is is I didn't feel like I deserved that support. If I felt at any moment, if I'd have came home and Sarah said, I'm not doing this, I'm leaving you. I'd be like, Yeah, that's probably a good call. Good, good, good, smart decision on your part. Go lift to your go live your best life and take your son and you know, go off and you know, do what you think you need to do, and I hope you find that person that's gonna give you what you need. Because, you know, also this is obviously overlaid and absentee. You know, I'm not around, man. I'm training, you know, and we're still busy, we're still deploying, we're still doing stuff, you know. I'm not there, man. And I'm guilty about this, you know, and I'm trying to not only hold a family together, meaning, you know, my kids and you know, this mix, but I'm also trying to build a new family. And I'm failing at all of them. But you know what wasn't failing? Me being Charlie Company's first art. That wasn't gonna fail. I wasn't gonna let that fail. Absolutely not. It doesn't matter if I was up till three o'clock in the morning, you know, dealing with some bullshit, you know, with the family, or maybe, you know, arguing with Sarah, arguing with my kids three o'clock in the morning, you know. Guess, guess who was there at 4 30 in the morning preparing to be a company first art? Me. Okay. And who was there till, you know, midnight that night doing what they needed to do? Oh, yeah, missing practice, missing counseling, missing therapy sessions, missing, you know, this, that, and everything else, asking Sarah to freaking, you know, pick up my kids. You know, yes, our kids, but at the you know, our my kids drive to my ex's house, not kill her, by the way, because of some other shenanigans that that woman had pulled, and ask her to suck it up, pick up my kids, put on her best front for them, put them through that, all that stuff, so that I could do this. And I didn't deserve that, and I still don't deserve that, and I'm still I'm still trying to repay that. I'm gonna ask you a hard question. Okay, do you think it was worth it? 1000%. It was absolutely worth it. It was worth it because I feel, and if anybody in Charlie Company wants to tell me differently, absolutely please tell me. But I feel like I was the first start they needed because of the shit that I was going through too, because there was a lot of guys going through the stuff I was going through, and I was able to relate and I was able to help them, and I was also able to be sympathetic towards them because I I could go, yeah, dude, I totally get you, and I'm not gonna hammer you for it, you know, and you know, the battalion as a whole, like we're in this transitional phase again now, you know, from the juggernaut warfighter stuff to, you know, playing a landscape that was changing in Afghanistan and Iraq and everything else. And and and then the third part of that is is um I look at my family now, okay. You know, we're all back together for the fourth of July this summer, okay. We're planning on what Christmas is gonna look like and everything else, dude. And my kids, man, they all have different relationships with each other, they all have different relationships with me and Sarah. But just watching them like commingle and figuring out life together and talking to each other and they're talking behind the scenes about stuff, like we all had our discourse, and there's different pockets where everybody wanted to kill somebody else, you know. It's yeah, my sons, because I mean my my oldest sons, I mean, they're one year apart, and my oldest son, Aiden, he went from the man of the house when I wasn't around, you know, to the oldest son to now he's a subsurdient son, you know, and that that man, you want to talk about a power struggle between those two. Jesus Christ, the amount of times I had to pull them apart, thought they were gonna kill each other, you know. Well, Hayden more than Aiden because Hayden's a better fighter. But you know, the point being is is like absolutely, man, because we went through that and we're this now, and it's not perfect, it's not beautiful, it's it's it's still arguably a shit show on any given day, but it's beautiful because it's mine.
SPEAKER_03But I think it goes back to the conversation that we had early on in this podcast about the struggle. Yeah. And I think, you know, your kids obviously had a struggle, let's call it what it is, you know. Yeah. And that looks different for everybody. But, you know, you and I were talking this morning. We got up early and went to the gym, and I think we were coming back, and you know, we're just talking about how you don't get, you know, there's a lot of people that look back in their life and oh, I wish it would have been this, or what if I'd have done that? But that's not the that's not the hand that we're dealt. And there's a reason why the windshield is so much bigger than the rear view mirror, you know what I mean? Because you're not supposed to stare at the rear view mirror, you know what I mean? Yeah, but I mean I I like how, you know, it at least you're you know, I feel like you you fully understand and you're really coming to terms with your life and the decisions and the things that you did, and it's just cool to see that that evolution, you know, take place in the course of this conversation. And you know, I I I think for any people that don't, you know, for anybody that doesn't understand what it's like to serve in a leadership capacity, especially the higher you go, you know, it's man, it's really hard to be good at both. And I don't know a lot of people that have done it really well. I'm not saying it can't be done. Yeah, it absolutely can. But I mean, especially in our community, I wasn't a ranger, so I say hour, I just mean the military. It it's yeah, well, I mean, it's really hard to be a great soldier and then even better yet, a great leader and be great at the family, right? Because so much require. I mean, both of those jobs require so much. So, you know, it's it's something I like to talk about. I like to talk about obviously leadership. I like to talk about the family stuff too, man, because it's you know, this podcast isn't about you know, this isn't social media where we just put our best foot forward and we only tell the good shit because that's not life. Yeah, you know, so it's you know, you were deployed 10 months out of the year, dude. I mean, how do you come home? Did you just try to make the best when you were home with your kids with the time that you had, or you know, what what was that like?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, so I had a major one time that told me this, and this is actually when we're up at second cavalry regiment, and you know, because uh Sarah and I, you know, we're we we would struggle with this, you know, a lot. And you know, I I think it's also important to note too that you know, Sarah and I realized, you know, you talk about reflecting and wish you could do things different. It was never us, like her and I never had the issue, like per se with each other. It was always these external factors that was causing the discord between us, you know. And many a times we would like be like, Man, I wish we just didn't have this, you know. But now, with you know, hindsight 2020 being what it is, and you know, a lot of reflection and thought, it's like, well, yeah, that'd have been nice, but it's not reality. And now we're that family that's prepared for whatever, you know, and we're the thing we're the people because of all this adversity, and that we can work through these things, we can also give advice to other people, like you can work through this. If we can work through that, you can work through this, you know, especially my kids, man. I mean, you know, what in that distance of a future where like some of them weren't talking to each other and they were you would ask them about it, they'd be like, I'll never speak to that individual again. And now they're sitting there, you know, just you know, drinking and having fun and making fun of me or you know, whatever, you know, and just getting along like peasing a pod, you know. So, and they're still sorting through it, you know, they're still sorting through it, and it's not perfect, but it's a lot better. But you know, back to you know what you were saying, shit. What was your question?
SPEAKER_03I don't know that I had one. I think it was more of a statement just talking about, you know, the struggle and kind of you know what makes us and you know, kind of just really focusing on your marriage again for a second.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03You know, you and your your current wife, you guys been through a lot together. I mean, you were back in Rager Regiment, gone, deployed, yeah. You know, you guys, you you went over and then obviously you became a command sergeant major, which takes you know, even more. What do you think is some of the you know, the secret sauce that that that helps a marriage, you know, in in this capacity where you're look, man, I mean, you really, especially a first sergeant, command sergeant major, you know, you're really having to put a lot in when you're in charge of that many people. You're kind of on call 24-7. Yeah. What do you think the, you know, what do you think makes a good teammate?
SPEAKER_01Um I think there's a there's a couple different factors. And I remember what I was gonna say earlier. I had a major that told me that it's not about the amount of the time, it's about the quality of the time. It's great, you know, the quantity versus quality conversation. And you know, because exactly what you said, you know, when you're a leader, man, you're you got, you know, depending on what capacity you're talking about, you know, you're a company first time, you got 140 children, you know, and sometimes they act like fucking children. Oh, you know, and when you're you know, you got to give a safety brief off that yeah, right? You know, your squadron of battalion, CSM, you know, you got 840, and then you know, at the regimental brigade level, it's 4,500, you know, like you got you know all these responsibilities and they're constantly just dragging you away. It's not an intelligence battalion, it's a knucker drag, it's a knuckle dragger battle. Oh yeah, 100%, yeah. And there's some intelligent folks in there. Yeah. No, you know, and you just got to focus on what you don't have as far as time. You got to focus on the, you know, making the most of it when you do. And it's very difficult to do, especially in command positions, you know, because you know, you're trying to be in the present, you're trying to focus on things, but you can't because you get that call, you know, at nine o'clock, two o'clock in the morning. You know, I mean, there's one morning at two o'clock in the morning, I get a phone call and I got an active shooter in my barracks, you know, and my wife's handing me body armor, you know, as I fly out the door, you know, and it's like, you know, I'm just trying to enjoy some sleep, you know. And I think it was like a Friday night, you know, we had Saturday morning plans or something like that. And now I'm having to deal with this kind of crap, you know, or you know, bunch of you know, a bunch of uh Cav Scout guys climbing a water tower at, you know, 11 o'clock at night, and I find out about it because of my son's Snapchat account, you know, which is a whole story behind that, you know, when we're over in Germany. So, you know, it it's tough, but you just you gotta realize that you're a team, and right now this is the team's mission. And you got to kind of get the team behind it, you know, and we really realize that in Germany because it in Ranger Regiment, yeah, there's FRG, you know, there's some of this stuff, and you tie the family in, but the you know, I also just kind of I don't know, stupidly kind of thought that that's my work, this is my family. I'm not gonna let them overlap. But in Germany, because of how you live, one, you all live, you know, Vilseck, Germany, it's very small, okay, and you're surrounded by Germans, okay, and there's only like 5,000 people on the installation, um, you know, 15,000 between Graf and Vilseck, you know, but that's not that many people. And you have to live on the base. So, you know, anytime you go shopping or, you know, anytime you go within like 30, 45 minutes, you're gonna run into your soldiers, you're gonna run in, you know, and they they know who your wife is, they know who your kids are, you know, and all this stuff. And you're it sucks in the fact that you're kind of on display, like in your life, you know, all the time, but also you realize that this is a team effort, and we've all got to be on the same team, you know. And at dinner time, we got to talk about things, like we got to talk about, you know, what's going on, you know, what's what's urgent, you know, what what's affecting my work that's gonna affect your guys' life and you know, all these different kinds of things, you know, like training exercises and stuff. And in Germany, that's the first time we'd ever really kind of experienced that. So, you know, you got to make it a team effort, you know. And I'm not saying that like the wife or the you know, your kids or your spouse, like they need to wear your rank, you know, because no one likes that shit. Well, that's a whole nother conversation. Yeah, it's a completely different podcast, but that's more in the officer role, though. Yeah, well, you'd be surprised, but it is, but there's also senior NCOs that are pretty bad about it too, and their spouses. But my point is is that hey, this is we made this decision together, like, and this is well, we did and we didn't, but like we gotta, it's a team effort, you know. So let's involve everybody and let's have open the conversations about it. Let's also talk about frustration points, you know. Like, you missed my birthday. I'm I'm upset about that. Okay, I'm sorry. Here's why. And I know that doesn't make it any better, but um, you know, there's a responsibility, this is what I gotta do. So, how can I make it up to you? Okay, I know I can't recreate that birthday, but there's a way, you know, there's time. Let's figure it out, let's do it together. Okay.
SPEAKER_03When you've spent years serving others, it's easy to put your own health on the back burner. Now, Precision Wellness Group, they're changing that. Founded by a former special forces medic, emergency medicine physician, and hormone and longevity specialist. Dr. Bosley's mission is to help veterans, first responders, and motivated personnel nationwide to take back control of their health. This is why I personally trust Precision Wellness Group and optimizing my health goals. With telehealth appointments available in nearly every state, Precision Wellness Group can offer you personalized hormone and peptide therapies straight to your door. Grab Dr. Bosley's top five supplement guide in the show notes to start fueling your momentum, and then visit Precision Wellness Group.com to get started. Please mention Vanguard50 for your 50% off, your one-hour in-depth consultation with Dr. Bosley. For home viewers, you can also scan the QR code on the screen right here to directly lock in that Vanguard wall deal on your initial telehealth or in-person visit. Take a tactical approach to optimize your health at Precision Wellness Group. If you have like one important piece of marriage advice to give, you know, that E7, E8, you know, maybe even a command sergeant major that's trying to find that balance. What do you think is something that that really worked for you or helped you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Take down your barrier and communicate. Awesome. We all think we gotta shoulder this burden and it comes naturally with the job. Communicate. Okay. Understand that your decision to serve in the military comes at a sacrifice, not for you, for them. They're giving time up with you. Unless you're like an asshole, okay, or you're a shitty father, like they want to know their father. You know, and you're you're part of your responsibility is to raise your children as a father, okay? And show and teach them and mentor them and all these different kinds of things. But you're sacrificing that because you're mentoring and you're developing and you're showing other people the way of life. So be sympathetic to that, that they have feelings, they have emotions about that. And if you want them to communicate that to you, and you need to accept that and you need to have conversations about that, and you need to make accommodations to that, it's gonna require you to break down your barrier and be open to them about things that you're upset about and things that you are you you feel bad about and have open dialogue communications about that stuff. We think we need to be hard and tough, and we do to a certain degree to be able to do the jobs that we do, but we also that doesn't mean that we need to be that with our families. Yeah, great, great piece of advice, man.
SPEAKER_03Kind of transitioning back into your own story. You know, in 2014, you had a a pretty bad hip injury. I mean, you fractured your hip, and you thought maybe that your career could possibly over. What what happened?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I would love to tell you that it was like a really cool, like, you know, so I'm I'm falling through the air, you know, we jumped out at 16, you know, thousand feet, we're on oxygen, you know. No, that's none of that shit. So I'm on rear D. This is the deployment that I came back for. I ended up being the Rare D first Art. And one of my really, really close friends, he ended up, he's kind of like the unofficial god godparents to my kids, Ray Ray, uh Ray Halderson. He's getting ready to retire next year. So he was one of the rear D NCOs, and we we formed a really good friendship, okay? And he's just a good dude. Well, my wife messed up one night and she told him that my birthday was coming up, okay? And you don't do that, okay. In Ranger Regiment, when it's your birthday or like first time things, like a couple different things are gonna happen, but it's gonna involve you getting tackled, it's probably gonna involve you getting duct tape, and it's probably gonna involve you getting thrown in a shower, okay? So, anyway, it's my birthday, and I remember waking up, you know, I'm I'm 34 at the time. And uh I wake up and I'm like, man, I look pretty good for 34. Like, I feel good, I'm gonna go for a good run this morning, life's gonna be good, right? So I have my formation with my rear D guys, and I dismiss them. I'm like, you know, Patoon Sarge, go take charge, conduct PT, all this different kind of stuff, and they're all like standing around. And I'm like, hey, I said you guys are dismissed, like go do PT. And they're like, just standing around. And they're not like giving instructions out, they're just standing around, like just standing there. And then I see how like the corner of my eye, Ray Ray, coming like between, and I see he's got something in his hand, and then he goes, Get him, and they freaking just bombard me, right? And I, you know, I cracked the first couple guys pretty good, you know. I definitely smashed the nose, but anyway, so they're balling me up and I'm trying to get like back in the building, you know, all this different kind of stuff, but I mean they're just all over me, and I'm like, okay, I'm just thinking like one thing, like, don't fall on the concrete, okay, because I'm standing on the sidewalk, like, because that's gonna hurt. So I'm like trying to get over to the grass, like, you know, and I'm fighting, throwing elbows and all this shit. And finally, I get to the grass, I'm like, whoo, I'm like, okay, I'm walking, I just I don't have a choice. I got like seven Rangers at me on me, you know, and they're freaking sitting there, you're gonna punch me in the stomach and all this different kind of stuff, grab my arms, trying to force me on the ground. I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna go down, you know. Well, so I start to go down, and then right before I do, somebody pulls my leg, and I end up doing the splits with my knee, like kind of bent, and with seven rangers, and I go to the ground and it just pops, and I instantly start screaming. I'm like, you know, because it hurt, man. It was, I mean, it was just a shooting pain. And anyway, so then like he gets them off, and I like stand up, and I'm like instantly, I'm like, you know, I just want to deck him. He's like, he pulls out this cake. He's like, Happy birthday for a sergeant. And I just take the cake and I just smash it in his face, and I go into the aid station. And uh Doc Marion and Doc, or I'm sorry, nurse practitioner uh uh Maryland's in there, and Doc Witted's in there and stuff like that. I'm like, hey, I just something bad just happened. And so they sent me over anyway. Make a long story short. I basically had a hairline fracture on my on the top of my ball, my femur halfway down, complete or half partial tear of my femur or uh my labriel, and then also on the back of my pelvic, my my my pelvic hip, you know, that comes down, it took a huge chunk of that out. And I'm supposed to, again, you know, going back, I'm supposed to be taking Charlie company when everybody gets back from the deployment. And now here I am with like a fractured hip. And there's actually a really, really funny story about this. So I'm on crutches, right? And I come home, I come home early that afternoon, and Sarah, she she must have like saw me on one of the cameras or something like that, and she comes out and she's like, What? Because I didn't call her, I didn't tell her anything. And she's like, What in the hell is going on? And I'm like, I broke my hip today. And she's like, How? I'm like, I don't want to talk about it. So anyway, she gets me upstairs because I mean, I'm dude, it's bad. Like, it's really bad. So I get up, she gets me up into the bed, and she's just pressing, she's just pressing, she's just pressing, and I'm like, I don't want to talk about it, I don't want to talk about it. Like, I'm just I'm in so much pain right now. And finally, I'm just like, you know what? Just call Ray Ray, he'll tell you the whole story. She's like, fine, I will. So anyway, she goes outside under the back porch and she calls Ray Ray. Well, he tells her what happened. And dude, my wife, man, she destroyed this dude. You know, she's just he's supposed to take over Charlie Company. I have to leave in a couple days to go, you know, to go on this trip, you know, work trip and all this different kind of stuff. Like, who's gonna bathe him? Who's gonna feed him? All this different kind of stuff, you know. And and he, you know, and I can hear him, she's got him on speaker, and he's like, oh, he's like, Miss Burke, I'll I'll I'll come take care of him. I'll I'll I'll feed him, like I'll bathe him, all this different kind of stuff, right? And I mean, she's just laying into him, and I'll never forget, and she's gonna kill me for saying this. She's like, she's like, he broke his hip, you know what that means. I can't even have sex with my husband. And Ray Ray's like, well, there's nothing I can do about that.
SPEAKER_03But uh it was oh, Ray Ray felt pretty bad.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, dude. Oh, I still give him shit to this day. And he bows his head in shame, you know. But I'm I'm thankful it happened, man. I mean, here's why. You know, my wife had just finished up a 500-hour uh rehabilitational realignment yoga course with uh young garlow yoga. And you know, I went and talked to the medics and you know, the doctors, and they're like, surgery, like that's it, that's your only option. And instead, I just started doing I started doing yoga, I started doing, you know, just natural, you know, methods and everything else. And I mean, I went and you know, did almost another 10 years on that hip and jumped out of planes, did all the shit that I didn't until I couldn't do it anymore. So yeah. How would uh how did the rehabilitative yoga help? Man, that's very interesting. You know, it really what it was was strengthening the muscles and stretching out the muscles and you know, the other and you know, increasing mobility in other areas. Don't get me, and it was important because I still was doing the things that I needed to do, so therefore it was causing pain and stress in other areas, you know, and especially like a younger yoga, it's all about centralizing, you know, it's dividing the you know, the spine and the hips and you know, focusing on symmetry between, you know, those two, the those kind of planes of field. So it's not that it healed it, it's that it allowed me to recover the other areas from the compensation and it just not messing me up as bad as it should. I mean, don't get me wrong, like it didn't really heal it. Sure, the bone healed the hip fragment, they still don't know where the hell it went. It's somewhere out there. And it's probably like worked its way up to my brain. I'm gonna freaking probably die of a brain aneurysm at any point. But anyway, you know, in the labriel and eventually completely tore, but I'm able to stay standing and and do things because of you know what I've done in the other areas, and you know, it alleviates pain too. It does alleviate pain, you know, because the muscles compensate to tighten nerve endings, all that different kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_03So did you end up taking over Charlie Company? I did. I was what was it like being a ranger first sergeant? It was being a first sergeant in general is hard, but I can't imagine what it's like in a ranger unit.
SPEAKER_01It was uh it was awesome. You know, I you know here's how I describe it being a ranger platoon sergeant was the best job I ever had. Being a ranger first sergeant was the most rewarding job I ever had because you you really see the impact of the things that you're doing, you know, because you're doing it's first kind of time, you're doing things kind of indirectly at times. You know, you're mentoring dudes, and you watch team leaders become squad leaders and squad leaders become platoon sergeants, and platoon sergeants go off and become first sergeants. You watch officers, the mentorship you give them, the advice you give them, and everything else, like really get their role and become XOs and become company commanders and everything else. So it's like super rewarding because you're you're you're still in the fire, but you're removed a level, so therefore you see you see the development and the and the and the leadership techniques that you're implementing, like actually having results, and you're not so consumed with the day-to-day that you miss it. Like you see it a lot more as a first arm.
SPEAKER_03What's the I mean, what's did you deploy with the company like? Uh huh.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we deployed twice.
SPEAKER_03What's uh what's a first armed do on in a range?
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, it it depends. I will say that my deployments were a little bit different just because the political landscapes changed so much, you know. You know, so we had one mission, you know, one one deployment where we were training, you know, the Afghan special force, you know, special mission unit. So we were just in charge of their entire training pipeline, their basic trainings, all that different kind of stuff, their training plans, their training cycles. These commandos or ARU or they were KKK. Oh, the Kateos guys. Oh yeah, Kate. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry, Kateos. Yeah, you're right. No, I get confused. But and then we did a couple missions with them as well, you know. And it was it was fun, you know. It was obviously, you know, we want to deploy and take the fight to the enemy, but you know, there wasn't a lot of that happening that, you know, during that deployment. It was it was a little bit more hands-off because the political landshape was.
SPEAKER_03What are you what are you doing as a first run at the company level, though, on a deployment?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so for that one, so for that one specifically, I was I was like the task force C because that a lot of civilians working. So it's a lot of coordination, a lot of movement. We're also controlling a lot of fobs, you know, and bases and everything else. But normally, like a normal deployment, like you're coordinating, you know, and you're going and you know, yeah. Well, all your platoons co-located, or were they all spread out? Uh two of them were, and then one was spread out. So, yeah, two of them were co-located, and one was doing we were because we were trying to do a new injection point with some agency folks with one of the Katehas. Was it a company or a platoon? I can't remember. I'm saying they were they were down in Kandahar.
SPEAKER_03So I kind of want to talk about, you know, I I know you've lost some friends, man, and I know this is is always hard to talk about, but I've said it at least on a couple of podcasts, you know, a soldier dies twice, you know, once on the battlefield and once and nobody speaks their name. And I know some of these guys are extremely important to you, and you know, you've lost some people, and we've kind of hinted at some of them through the way, but I I mean, I know you lost, you know, your JTAC in in 2011. Chris, can you tell us a little bit about him?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Chris Domay, he was actually he was my company JTAC, he was never my JTAC, but but I knew Chris, you know, I'd known him from a private because you know he'd been a bico, um, he'd been part of the Recy element and a couple other different you know elements. And uh, you know, Chris was just man, that guy was hilarious. You know, he's just funny as shit. And uh we had this weird collection of platoon sergeants at the time under Bernie Falato. So it was me, Jericho Deadman, David, David Whithy, and uh Gabe Hoft was uh kind of the headquarters platoon sergeant, and then Chris Domay was in charge of the AT section. And I'll tell you, man, we god, we made Bernie's life a living hell because we just you couldn't get anything accomplished with us at a meeting because we're just giving each other shit and making fun of each other and just just being rude MFers, you know. And but man, Chris was one of the guys that stood up the JTAC program for the army. So the way it used to work for special operations as a whole is all their JTACs were Air Force guys. Yeah, this is the first time I'm actually hearing the so no, it's a good conversation. So what that means when you're JTAC is is not only can you when you okay, so like an FO can control artillery fire, okay, mortar fire, you know, they can do all that stuff, but they have to do coordination, additional levels of coordination if it's anything coming from the air or coming from the sea. Okay, and at JTAC's the only one does that because now you're talking about controlling RAWs, not that you don't have to control ROS for artillery because you got to make sure aircraft are out of the space and everything. Oh boy, god, why'd you have to ask me? It's basically the the ROWs is airspace layer. Okay, okay, so what altitude everybody's at? Now I'm sorry, I don't remember what ROS is. So, but different aircraft not only fly at different heights, but also when they're either collecting, okay, if they're collecting or spotting or doing whatever, they they don't they have a loitering altitude, but then they also have an engagement altitude, whether they're doing fire or collecting. So when you're trying to do some of this coordination, whether you're talking about artillery, mortar, whatever kind of fire or aircraft fire, you have to control the entire ROS. And you gotta you gotta make sure you know what every altitude is everybody's at, where they're at, where they're loitering at, and everything else, so that if an F-16 wants to decide to do a strike or an A10, they're not also going to accidentally shoot something else out of the air. Okay. Plus, you have to coordinate where all of the ground movement is, you know, so that you don't, again, you know, now you know shoot friendlies on the ground. So, but in order to do that with aircraft, we had to have JTACs. Well, we only have so many Air Force JTACs, and it was a problem. It was a problem getting firepower where we needed it because there was only so many. So, you know, basically it was proposed, and I don't know the entire backstory of it, that hey, maybe we should send Army FOs, the best of the best, to go get JTAC certifications. And Chris Domay was one of those first ones. So he went, you know, Tiro 2-1, he went and he passed the JTAC program with a couple other guys that did it as well. But it's not just that he did that, he also paved the training pipeline because it's very hard. It is not easy, it is a lot of lot goes into that. The training pipeline for the entire army, what became the entire program for the army to change JTACs or to train JTACs, but then additionally also make Air Force JTACs better and also fight the JTACs, you know, that are on the Air Force side, they need to be with us more, not just for combat, not just for some training, like they need to be embedded with us more, so they understand the ground movement piece of it more. And he was kind of the spearhead for that. Him and so, you know, him and some other guys. Obviously, there was command focus on this stuff, but he was he was one of the first guys into the breach, and he was just he was amazing. I never had an appreciation for a JTAC until I watched Chris, and it actually wasn't in combat, it was actually a training exercise, and they were just doing you know some control stuff with you know uh a fighter, uh like an F-18 and a couple other ISR birds, and it was just out Leshi Mount Site and everything else, and they were just running iterations, and they were purposely like testing each other, okay? And you know, they were all certified, all this different kind of stuff, but they were just testing each other and they were also taking new guys and giving them test runs, okay, test runs so that they could prepare for the GTAC course and just watching him work that and the calm that dude had. I mean, it was unbelievable to watch. And I was like, you know, I remember telling him, you know, and I knew Chris pretty well. I'm like, dude, you're a master of your craft, man. Like you're you're like watching, it's an art, it's an art to be able to do this.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, man, they say air traffic controllers, so not even combat, air traffic controllers. It's one of the toughest professions and it has the highest suicide rate. I can't imagine what it's like to be a JTAC because now you're doing the same job and you're adding combat, explosives, shooting people. It's uh that's yeah, that's a tough job, man.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was it's it's amazing, yeah. Do you know what happened to him? So they were on, I was not on this deployment. It was a deployment in Afghanistan, and they were they were doing an offset infill into an objective. It was a larger objective, I want to say the whole company that was there. I know it was large enough that I know Daryl Thieves was there. That's like the fourth time I mentioned that guy's name. But basically, Chris was you know just walking, you know, why they're doing an offset infill, they're walking into the target. And Ashley White, who was a CST at the time, I I from what I've been told, she was having like some comms issues, and she like stepped off to the side, you know, while the platoon was walking to kind of unfuck, you know, her comms, which she was having issues with. And JTAX, man, they're like the best at comms. Like JTAX, if their comms are not up, they're useless human beings. So they they fixed stuff Johnny on the spot. They're arguably better than our combo guys at fixing shit, you know. And uh, so he like stepped off to the side. Well, she apparently like stepped to the side to make space for him and step stepped on a place for played IED and killed them both.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, man. That's that's a tough loss. Chris Horn was that the same objective?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so that was Sabra objective when it was during actions on, yeah. And uh he he he stepped on a pressure plate and a brief and basically a fatal funnel.
SPEAKER_03So they continued on to the objective after that? Wow. That's again a lot of people don't understand you know, special operations, dude. It's just it's just a different animal, you know. Matt Waters lost his leg. You mentioned him uh, you know, when you guys were doing the foreign foreign fighter camp on a previous podcast. Can you talk about what happened with him?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so this was actually during the invasion of Iraq, uh, towards the end uh end of the deployment. It was called Objective Reindeer, and basically it was a foreign fighter camp that was identified up north and infilled, and it was in this giant Wadi. And when they were assaulting the Wadi, an RPG basically went between his squad and you know, blew off his leg. And you know, Matt Waters, you know, Matt Waters is not dead, just to clarify, by the way. I don't want people to think he's dead. Matt Waters is very, very doing very well. He's working from down for Daniel Defense down in uh outside of Savannah, Georgia. Is it Black Creek? I think it's Black Creek. He's having some issues with his house right now, but he's doing very well. But you know, he went on, you know, after that, after his ranger career was over, and you know, he's a very successful cop in Tacoma PD, but that was the first guy from like Biko that like 275 that had like a major injury. That was a free he was the first one, and that that was pretty jarring. Obviously, it wasn't you know, we didn't lose him, but it was it was pretty jar. Plus, that objective was pretty gnarly as well.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think I brought that up because it was early on, yeah, early on in the war, and I I remember hearing you talk about that objective on another podcast. I think that's why I put it in my notes. Casey, man. I know you talked about him early on when you got to to regiment, and I know you know he was kind of one of the dudes, you know, that you he was a roommate, I think, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so yeah, he was my roommate. And you know, Casey, Casey was in AT when I showed up to second platoon. Uh, we actually I want to say we did part of Ranger School together. I can't remember if he got recycled. I can't remember what happened, but we graduated ranger school like at the same time, I think. Or maybe he graduated a month after me. I don't remember what happened. I but we but we knew of each other, and then we ended up being in second platoon together. At first, he was a team leader in first squad, and I was a web gun team leader, and then we ended up being team leaders together, and then we ended up being squad leaders together. We were roommates, and at the end of the day, Casey was just, you know, he was a boy from Montana. He was from Great Falls, Montana. I actually lived outside of Great Falls, that's where Hogla, Montana was. You know, so we just we just handed it off. And he was a little bit older. The funniest story I have about him, and I'll I'll keep it very brief, is they we used to do this something called it was uh recruiting trips, and it's where they would send a couple rangers out to different high schools and areas, and they would do briefs and they would show videos, rangers in action, and then they would try to recruit guys. This was prior to September 11th, right? Well, they pick Casey and I and they send us to Miami, Florida. We show up and we're like, wait, why two boys from Montana that speak no Spanish? And you know, and we're having to brief these high school students. I remember the first. One we did, and I was like, I remember turning to Casey, and I'm like, I don't even think they're paying attention to us. And the teacher's like, that's because none of them speak English. We're like, Well, that would have been good to know, like, right off the rip, you know. And but Casey, you know, him and I had a love-hate relationship. We fought like brothers a lot. We got in a couple fist fights, but he was just such a good dude, man. God, he can make anybody laugh. He's the only guy that could make front of the battalion from commander in front of the battalion, and the battalion commander would laugh about it. And I'm talking, he was like a like a specialist or a sergeant, like during this time. But you know, he was just hilarious, you know, and he used to have funny sayings, and you know, we should we shot shot deer together. We had a lot of fun, but uh, you know, we lost Casey. He actually left Ranger Regiment and went to work with Blackwater and was killed, was killed when their helicopter they responded to our Marine troops in contact, where a bunch of Marines ended up almost, you know, getting taken, captured, and everything else, and they responded to that, and the helicopter was shot down and they crashed in downtown Baghdad, and uh Casey was killed.
SPEAKER_03Another friend that you've talked about a lot during this podcast was Matt Nyman. I know Matt Nyman hit you different because you had just recorded an episode with him in early January, and he was killed in an avalanche in Alaska, I think two days before it released in February. That episode became the last recorded words, I mean, that anyone had of him, most likely in that, you know, in that that venue. How did you process that?
SPEAKER_01Matt, Matt was tough on a lot of different levels. Because Matt, you know, I talked about him about my early Ranger days. You know, I wasn't a fan. And we reconnected many years later, and we actually connected on a deployment, his first deployment with the unit, Delta Force, outside of the house in Baghdad. I was leaving, he'd just come in and we reconnected. We had this long conversation, and we're getting ready to get on the helicopter to fly back to Biap, and then you know, pound sand out of the out of country. And Crab G comes out and they're like, Hey, we got a target, Matt, you gotta go. And he's like, dude, cool. See you later, man. Good luck. Give him hell, you know, all that stuff. Hugged, boom, you know. So we were like reconnected and we kind of buried the hatchet, you know. We hadn't talked. We still probably saw each other, but like we really hadn't talked, right? So did you have an actual chance to like talk and bury the hatchet with them that night? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That to a certain degree, yeah. You know, not super depthful, but you know, because we're both passing too. Yeah, you know, and then that's the night that he was on the helicopter crash, lost his leg, and you know, almost died, you know. And you know, so then fast forward, and I saw Matt many a time throughout that, you know, uh other times just throughout the year, you know, like his wedding, you know, one of his kids getting baptized and stuff like that. Because he he ended up coming back up to Tacoma at some point. I don't know if he lived there, I don't quite remember, and I was still up there, but then we kind of lost touch and then we reconnected. And you know, this is early part of 2021, and we reconnected and he'd went off and he did some awesome stuff in the civilian world. Uh, he was doing you know summits, you know, as a dual amputee, you know, all over the globe with this company. And I was just like, man, like I wanna, you know, I just started this podcast, or I'm getting ready to start this podcast. Like, I want to have you on as a guest, you know, I want to talk about adversity and all this different kind of stuff. And then so we recorded the episode in January and then found out on February 3rd, you know, he died in Avalanche training, you know, for summon of I believe Everest or maybe it was McKinley, I can't remember. And man, it sucked in so many different ways. Like I just kind of reconnected with this guy. I'd learn I I'd now respected him for the journey of his life and how he'd overcome so much adversity, you know, because he man, I mean, you know, he lost his legs and you know, he came back and they just threw drugs at him. So he battled opioid addiction really bad, you know, and he had to, you know, deal with that, you know, and he had to deal with so many other things. He ended up cutting the other leg off because it was bothering him so much, you know. I mean, he had a long road to hoe, you know, and then okay, I can't, you know, do what I want to do, you know, in the capacity I want to do it. And he found a way, you know, and he was working, you know, cyber defense stuff and using some of the stuff that he had learned in the military, in the unit, and everything else to go work for companies like MasterCard, you know, and all that. And I was just like, so dude, that's so awesome. Like, I'm so proud of you. Like, you have pivoted from having a career that was unexpectedly cut short to success in the civilian world, and it's amazing. Like, and you know, and it was really cool, but it was also I I I just I couldn't mourn. I didn't mourn. Maybe I should have, but I was just so grateful because I'd literally not only have been able to have this very thorough conversation with this band that I'd known for a long time, and close some doors together, you know, for each other, you know, and just talk about the future and then you know, be able to share that with the world. And I've done, you know, I've done some some interviews and some other news stuff, you know, uh talking about this, you know, and it's just it was it was such an honor to be able to do that. And then, you know, be able to reach out to his family when they're just I mean, just the world's collapsed for them. But be able to say, hey, I do have something I think you're gonna like.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, how did his family react when you asked if you should release that episode?
SPEAKER_01Well, I didn't ask him to be honest with you at first if I could release it. You know, I what I asked him is is I want to send this to you so you can listen to it. Because it's the last time Matt's voice was recorded. And you know, obviously I begs the question like, why'd you record this? And I like and I'm like, Well, it's a podcast episode. Here's the podcast we just started, and I was planning on releasing it, but you know, now I just want you guys to have it. And you know, his family was like, No, no, absolutely release this. The everybody we want everybody to hear his story, you know, and this is the most complete story of Matt Diamond. You know, what uh what podcast was that? That was always in pursuit, so that was my previous podcast. And what what what episode was that? Episode seven. Is that something we can still find? Uh huh. Yeah, we actually we we have it on both platforms now. So always in pursuit is still out there. There's two seasons of it, episode seven, but then also I took it and I put it over on Legends of the 75th episode too. Make sure we snag a link for that and put it in. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, man.
SPEAKER_03The last one, of course, man, is something, you know, I know I remember you and I talked about it on the phone, and I've heard you talked about it on other podcasts, but you know, Josh Wheeler, somebody that was extremely you're extremely close with, you know, passed away October 22nd of 2015. Kind of tell me where were you, you know, where you were and and and how you learned about it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so we were down at, you know, I was a ranger for a serent again, Charlie Company's first serent, and we were down at Fort Hunter Liga doing a giant training exercise. And so we were in this, you know, make you know, makeshift skiff, basically doing a debrief, talking about, you know, the training mission we were about to do and everything else. So, you know, but because of what we were talking about, the assets we're using, all this different kind of stuff, you know, and the targeting methods and everything else, all our phones were outside, you know, on the table with the you know, with the the guard. And anyway, so we do all that, and I go out and you know, the private, it was one of my privates that was on the on the watch. He's like, Hey, first sergeant, your phone's been blowing up. I'm like, oh, okay. So I grab it and I just see like a bunch of missed calls from Chris Frost. And uh and a couple other like randoms, but the primary one was like Chris, he called me like a bunch of times, and I'm like, oh my god. And you just know, yeah, like there's no reason Chris is gonna call me, you know, seven times in a row or whatever it is, leave a bunch of voicemails and send me a and send me a text that says, Call me now. You know, there's only really, you know, in these times, there's only one reason. Well, technically the last time Chris did that is because he got captured in Libya, but that's a different story. But anyway, okay, so I don't want to tell that story. It's not my story to tell. But anyway, so I call him and I just answer a phone man and I'm like, who? And he's like, Josh. And you know, again, you know, I'm like, I I know a lot of Josh is and I don't want it to be the Josh that I know it's probably gonna be. And I'm like, which Josh? He's like, dude. I mean, and it's just like uh no. That's that's not possible. There's no possible way. Josh Wheeler. I mean, that's Superman that guy's undestructible. Like that's a guy's the best of us. Like there's no way he can be taken off this earth. Like, that's that's just not possible. And you know, he's just such an important guy. I mean, I credit I credit a lot of people for my career, but I credit my I credit Josh and I just need people to understand, because people do this shit, you know. I'm not doing this because like I'm trying to like, you know, build up off his death, man. Like, Josh has a reason I was in the army. If I'd have got out of the army, which I was going to get out of the army, if I'd got out of the army, I don't know where the fuck I'd be. I'd probably be in jail or I'd be dead. That's for damn sure. I knew that. I would not have the family I have, I wouldn't have the life I have, I wouldn't have been able to live the career that I live. There's no way because I would have been so unfulfilled and unsatisfied. And also I would have got out, you know, September 11th happened. Like I have no idea. I just know it wouldn't have been good, you know? And I just looked up to this man in so many different ways. And also, you know, there's a lot of things I talked about a lot of you know, a lot of the things, but other reasons I looked up, I mean he was in Delta Force and he was successful. He went through a divorce, it was terrible, absolutely abysmal divorce, you know, and you know, there's a lot of different reasons for that. And he made it and he got remarried and he had a new son. He just had a new son, by the way. Like, you know, and I watched him work through all that stuff, you know, and he'd worked through things in, you know, in the unit too. You know, he had his trials and you know struggles in the unit, just like everybody does, you know, and he'd work through that stuff, and you know, we would talk about that stuff, you know, and it just like god damn it. Like, no, there's just no goddamn way that somebody like that can't be here anymore. It's just not fucking fair. It's still not fucking fair, man. It's not the best of us, the man that deserves to be on this world more than any of us, is not here anymore. You know, and dude, it fucking broke me, man. I'm trying, I'm I'm a fur start. I got all this other stuff going on, you know. I got a I got a fractured hip, you know, I got a my fucking home life is in shambles because of all these, you know, kids' issues and everything else. I'm at odds with my ops arm major at the time too, you know, Ray Barrett, who's a great friend of mine, like him and I are about to fucking come to blows on a daily basis. And like it was just too much, man. And apparently, you know, I don't totally remember, but Adam, Adam Nash will always be thankful for him. He was a uh battalion sergeant major at the time. Like he just he just saw me just disintegrating as a human being, and he summarized quickly enough because he happened to just be standing there, though like what was going on, and he got me into his truck, okay, and he just drove and he just let me like be. And you know, I just coming fucking unraveled, you know. But he he just knew he didn't want me to be doing that in front of everybody, you know, because I would have. I I I would I wouldn't have cared. The president of the United States standing right there. I'd I'd I I there was there was no possible way I was not gonna come unraveled. There was nothing that was gonna keep me from that. And uh eventually, you know, he takes me and he I go back, you know, to the hooch, you know, you know, the place that I'm staying and stuff, and I'm like re you know, re get my wits about me and everything else. And I don't even you know, I don't even know if I hung up with Chris. Like I'm I'm just a fucking mess, too. And Chris is a mess as well. You know, Chris Josh was just as you know important to Chris as well. And and I got like, I gotta start calling people, I gotta tell people, you know, and I called a lot of people, you know, and I don't remember them all, but you know, just guys that I knew were very close to Josh. But the last one was a guy named Sergio Chipperez. You know, he's a one-termer guy, you know, he was really older. He's one of my he was my one of my two or three gunners, you know, he's a teacher, you know, he's just a really cool dude. And he's still just an awesome guy. And uh I called him, and I I just I I I powered through all these other guys, and then for some reason I just crumbled again when I was talking to Chip. And I don't know if it was maybe something he said, you know, or like his reaction. Like, I don't know what it was, and he's like, you know, I remember him asking me. I do remember this part. He's like, Mike, are you okay? I'm like, no, no, dude. And I'm not, I'm far from okay. I'm not good, man. This is not, I'm like not gonna be okay. Like, I'm just I it wasn't like, you know, oh, I just need some time, like, you know, I just gotta process. No, I was like, I there was no punctuation on that. No, I'm not gonna be okay. I'm just not, and I'm still not, man, to this day, man. I still just don't think it's fair, you know, and I know I'm not his kids, man. I'm not his wife. You know, they have they have more of a reason to be sorrowful than I do, that's for damn sure. But this dude, man, he was he was a lot of things for a lot of people, especially me. And uh so I'm going through all this, man, and I still gotta do stuff. You know, we got live, we got live fire that night. I gotta I gotta figure this out. Like, I just I just I just gotta figure this out. And you know, my company commander, he like come and check on me, you know, and I'm just I'm just like I literally was like laying in my bed, you know, like just not curled up in a ball or anything, but I'm just like, I just I like I just don't know what to do. Like I just don't know what to process, what to think, how to how to move, what to I just all I know is that I'm just not okay. And everything is just coming crashing down in my life in general. And Josh is now gone, and I've lost all these other people, and I've never dealt with this stuff, and all this trauma from a kid, and it's like just all like and I'm just um all this stuff's like building up, and it's like this, you know, pressure vessel. You know, you imagine like a pressure cooker, and the only thing is, is like this just the only prevailing thought that emerges is I don't want to do this anymore. I just I just don't wanna I just don't wanna deal with this shit anymore, man. Like I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna be on this earth anymore. I I just I can't I can't deal with all this trauma, I can't deal with all this loss, I can't deal with all this pressure anymore. I'm done. I'm fucking done. You know? You win, universe. You beat me, you know, is the prevailing thought. And I'm I'm turning it into a shit show over here, man. But no, no, no, bro.
SPEAKER_03It's just I'm a I'm a I'm a power through it, you know. This is the reality of the rawness of this podcast. And you know, I thanked you when we started because it takes a lot of guts. You know, there's something that I've heard you say in other places, I don't remember if you said it to me or not, but it's it's definitely in my notes. You know, Josh Wheeler had told you before, you know, don't mourn for me for a goddamn second. I lived the way I wanted to live, I died the way I wanted to die. You know, I I feel like I don't know if I heard you say that on a podcast or or you know, that's definitely Josh.
SPEAKER_01That's you know, because we talked about this shit. You talk about this shit, you know, when you're you know, you talk about death, like yeah, and you had mentioned him very early on.
SPEAKER_03I mean, I I remember vividly, you know, like him telling you, and I think we talked about it earlier on the podcast, like, man, how did he how did he know? I mean, this is before 9-11. Yeah, right. And you know, man, from what you've told me and what I've read on my own, I mean, that why, you know, you hear that old adage, you know, of a hundred people, nine shouldn't be there, you know. He's definitely a warrior, no doubt about it, yeah, man. He's the one, you know. The ten, the ten we're thankful to have, but one one will lead us to you know to victory, and that that really seems to sum him up. I mean, how do you honor your friend Josh Wheeler while still processing that grief?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, man. Well, I live because, and it's you know, it's not just Josh, you know, there's a lot of friends, you know, you know, we've named him Casey Cass Van, Tom Fit Tagliano. You know, a lot of these guys are just you know, guys that you know continue to die. Man, I I just I have to live because they can't. I gotta be a good father because I can't. I gotta be a good man because I can't, you know, and they can't because what's it? You're not bad, I'm sorry. Oh yeah, I you know, they they just can't anymore. So I need to. And I gotta live for them. I really, honestly, truly do believe that. That's not like some cliche thing that I'm saying. Like, you know, and that's what finally like broke me or broke was the additional break to the break. Like, I was real, I realized, like, well, Josh is not here. That sucks. That's horrible. I'm broke, I'm fucked. I'm thinking about ending it all. I can't do that. That's that would be a disservice to him. I need to fix me. I need to go get help because I can't do this anymore. And I'm having these thoughts. I need to go do something about that. Because what would Josh say? What would Tom say? What would Casey say? What would my kids say? What would you know, all this different kind of stuff? Like, I I can't succumb to what the demons of my past and what everything is building. I can't succumb to that. That's dishonor to them, you know, and I'm not, you know, religious, you know, Valhalla, all this different kind of stuff, but it doesn't matter. It's not fair that this happened. I'm sure he wishes it would happen, it wouldn't have happened, his family wishes that it had happened, but it happened. So I gotta, I gotta, I this is just like anything else, I gotta sort through this.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, one of the things I've said in the past is may we always live a life worthy of their sacrifice. Exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01And I think everybody should do that, you know, and it's not just a military thing. It doesn't matter who you are in this world, somebody's made a sacrifice for you. You just might not know it. I mean, you need to live your life like that. And we know that's why we need to be good people, you know. We need to we need to try to do better in all things we do.
SPEAKER_03Looking uh looking back, do you think part of Josh's death hitting you so hard was because you'd been holding everything else in in your life for so long?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I do, I absolutely do, and I've said this before. I think Josh saved my life one last time. Wow. It's not it wasn't, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to I'm not trying to minimize you know Josh's death, but it just finally everything was just spearheading and just building. And it was it was gonna, you know, the top was gonna pop. That was just the thing that finally made it pop. And and then just this you know realization that like you know, what would Josh do? What would Josh want me to do? And Josh would, you know, say, hey man, all right, you know, Josh was smart enough to go, you know, hey, suck it up, buttercup. Like he wouldn't have said that. He would have been like, hey man, okay, we'll figure it out. Go get some help. You know, you can't obviously do this alone. So, you know, that's what Josh, and that that realization is finally what made me go get help and you know, work through you know, 35 years of bullshit.
SPEAKER_03Before we dive into that, let's take a quick break. Just kind of coming back from the break. I know we talked about Josh and we started talking about your spiral, and I'm definitely going back to the spiral. I just had a I had one or two questions I don't that were lingering lingering for me personally, I think. Josh Wheeler was killed on a hostage rescue mission. I think they're in Syria. The the same one, uh Tom Painter in the middle of honor. Have you ever talked to Tom Payne about Josh?
SPEAKER_01One time, very, very briefly. I've ran into Tom quite a few times, but you know, he just you know, especially middle of honor recipient. Most of the time when I run into him, you know, he's obviously people are fighting for his attention, you know. But uh I do have some folks that have have talked that like, hey, him and I should link up and kind of sit down because I know they were actually pretty close too.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you know, you and I talked about this at dinner last night. I I can't imagine what it's like to be Tom. You know, I know I think Tom was in the range regiment, and then you know, he gets to Delta. You and I both know how hard it is to to do that, to get there. You know, you're doing the thing that you work so hard to get. You know, you you do this mission, you know. Obviously, Tom did some pretty heroic shit, gets the medal of honor. You know, of course, Josh Wheeler gets KIA, and now this guy gets the Medal of Honor. Like that dude didn't ask for that, and now he's Stuck as a poster boy for the army. And I don't know if it's a congressional thing. I think once you get the Medal of Honor, I don't think they can, I don't know if they can't go back to war. I don't know what the deal is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I don't know. I do know, and I've I've heard this from a couple of people that they're trying to make him a one IC again. So they're he's they're trying to make him back in. Yeah, I mean he just seems like a good dude and he's quiet.
SPEAKER_03He is. He is very quiet, very humble. Um and you know the unit guys don't don't talk a lot to begin with, man. So I just I I just feel bad for him, man. Uh and not like you know, whatever. I just I can see it when you when you see that dude on a picture, like you know that that dude, like, he just wants to be back doing what he did before. You don't give two shits about the notoriety. Right. So we're cheering for you, Tom. Hopefully you get back to doing what you love, man. Yeah, absolutely. Kind of before we took the break, I mean, you were really you really bared your soul out, dude. Kind of how Josh's loss had really affected you and how it kind of really spiraled you. You know, you talked about you know wanting to just not be on earth anymore. And you know, I I know after Josh died and kind of everything came out, you you went and talked to the to the chaplain and and everything kind of all came out at once, I think, from from what you were telling me. Can you describe like what that feel like, you know, to just to to dump and and kind of start really cleaning out your soul, really, man?
SPEAKER_01You know, I'd made the decision that it was time to uh take everything that was in my head and everything that was bothering me and you know put it out to an individual, you know, and I just because you know of my life, you know, because of my position, you know, a chaplain, I sure, you know, I understand, okay, they're a man of God, all this different kind of stuff, but at the end of the day, he's a captain, you know, and so at first it was like slow, you know, and it was just talking about Josh and like how much it was bothering me, you know. I mean, I I don't really know, I don't really quite remember definitely how calm the you know he was, but more importantly, you know, the questions he asked, you know. Eventually there was just a point, you know, where the dam broke. And the best way I could describe it, I've never actually watched the movie. I just watched like part of it and it like gave me a headache. But you ever the movie like every everywhere all at once? It's like a multiverse movie. It was basically like that, and like I was jumping timelines, okay. Like I was I would be talking about my in my childhood, and then I'd be talking about you know, you know, different, you know, combat missions. Then I would be talking like third person, you know, I'd be talking, you know, I was just all over the place. And I do remember at one point like looking at him and realizing he is overwhelmed. Like, and I had to like pause. Like I was, I was, I was like breaking this dude. And I just remember him being like, I need he he said, you know, something to the effect of like I need to I need to call in like reinforcements or I need to call some help in here. And I'm like, you're telling me I'm so like that's not what you know, and now like that's like you know, I'm breaking this dude with my breaks, you know. And but you know, when we got through that, you know, and I pretty much there was definitely not a lot of coherent. I don't I doubt he was able to probably put that all together and probably if you know asked, he could not have formed a coherent timeline, that's for damn sure. But I did feel better because now there was another individual that knew everything, and there's no the closest was my wife, okay? But there were still things that she didn't know because there were things that were so locked up that they didn't come out until I released something else, you know. And I you and I have talked about this, and we've talked about the Abbott Gamer, which I have not done, but there's a lot of doorways and pathways in my brain that are blocked, and there's recessed memories, recessed emotions. I feel I've done a lot of work to pull them out, to deal with them, to address them, to think them through, reflect on, understand how they affected me, but there's still things there. There, there's still some definitely some doors that I just don't know about and some pathways and some memories and emotions that I don't know about. But, you know, on the back end of that, I realized, okay, this is not, there's not like this one and done fix, you know, and you know, there's all different kinds of drugs, you know, there's, you know, people, you know, when I was in the SAR major academy, you know, I'd go see a therapist. I'd, you know, because I was trying a bunch of different things, you know, I was trying therapist, you know, I was, you know, civilian and then also government, you know, therapy, you know, therapies and different kinds of techniques and stuff. But, you know, there's a lot of people like, well, you know, you got anxiety, you know, you got all this. And I'm like, I'm not, there's not a chemical solution for this. There's just not. And you know, it's twofold for me. You know, it's one that I just I don't believe in it because then you create a dependency. Um two, I have a highly addictive personality. Um, and it runs in my family, and I don't want to solve a problem by creating another one, you know, which maybe, you know, in hindsight, because I will say ever since that moment I've struggled with focus. I I have. And, you know, like even something as simple as like Adderall, you know, to help me with focus would probably be super beneficial for me. Because ever since I opened that dam, and I think really what it honestly is, I'm not a brain scientist, so Jesus, all you nerds out there don't like freak out on me. I think I had created my mind, you know, and you got to take TBI into account, you know, all these different because I'm I think about you being a master breach or two, so how many explosions you've been exposed to and the micro tears and the research they're finding out on that as well. Exactly. You know, I think I'd created like a bunch of pathways, and I was able to be highly functional and highly focused because you got to be very focused when you do the, you know, do the stuff that you're doing, you know, as a leader in special operations and just in life in general. And I think I opened up just the floodgate, and I think I fractured a lot of pathways and you know, adapt adaptations I'd made in my mind, you know, and I still think to this day I'm still trying to kind of put the you know, formulate the ch the tunnels for lack of a better term, because I think I definitely kind of I kind of broke my brain, if I'm being honest with you. And you know, mindfulness is the the thing and breathing techniques is the thing that has helped me the most.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I definitely want to talk a little bit about like what's worked and what's didn't. And right before we get there, I I guess my lap my you know, uh the question that kind of burns in my mind a little bit, and maybe it's to a broader audience, but why do you think it it took Josh's death for you to finally say, like, hey man, I need help?
SPEAKER_01I think it it boils down to the realization that no one has ever asked that question in that way. That's it's a lot more deathful answer. Sure. I mean um I don't think there is probably, you know what I mean, an unfortunate thing. Yeah, I I I really honestly think what it was is it was just the the realization of my mortality. I mean, I I I just powerful. I mean, I like I it's irrational, it's completely irrational. You think about it. I mean, at this point, you know, I got almost 20 years in special operations, people had tons of people had died. I'd watch people died, like it's not like I thought everybody was immortal, like, or you know, that I was just as there's a mystical thing, and I had almost kind of like this childhood reverence for Josh for some reason, and I think it's just because of the things he helped me do and the things he helped me sort through, and you know, the fact that he kind of you know saved my career, you know. So, you know, just the fact that that guy could die made me realize, well, we're all vulnerable, and I'm no different than everybody else. It's not like I held I want to be clear, I didn't hold myself on the same pedestal as Josh. Absolutely not. In fact, I had him on the pedestal and I'm down here, you know. But I just, if that could happen to him, then okay, then it can happen to me. And additionally, that it put me in a place where I just was like, I don't want to be here anymore.
SPEAKER_03What do you say to that that leader out there, man? That I don't care if it's a captain, a first sergeant, a platoon leader, a command sergeant major that's a cop, police supervisor, whatever, man. That dude that's had all that stuff stocked up, he's at his breaking point, you know, and is still fighting, either asking for help or coming forward. I mean, what what do you say to that person? Because you were him at one point.
SPEAKER_01Go get help. You're not the best version of yourself right now. You think you are, and it's because you've become adaptive and you've bottled things, but they're going to break, they're gonna come out, they're gonna manifest. They might not manifest like mine did. You might not have like a major breaking point like I did, okay? Which which actually was a good thing. It was not a good thing in a lot of different ways. There's probably a lot of confidence lost. You know, I'm thinking probably John Stehaley, you know, which is my company commander, he probably still looks at me like that, dude. Okay, like um, I love John. He's a freaking phenomenal guy, he's about to be a colonel. Um, but I I I but it it happened the way it was supposed to happen, you know. And it might be part of the reason that I didn't get selected to go back to Ranger Regiment. But anyway, my point is is that at the end of the day, you're going to break it. It's going to manifest in some way. And at the end of the day, it's not you it is holding you back being a better version. Dealing with that stuff, not dealing with the you know, the bottling up and everything else and the things that have happened to you, you're not showing up as your best version, either in your leadership capacity and whatever you know job you do, but then also for your family. Because I I definitely I have a tendency, and I still have it to this day, and I have to fight through it. I just I just have a void I can turn on, man. Like where I'm just I'm just dead. I'm dead of emotion, I'm dead of interaction, I'm just dead. I'm not in the present. I'm just there, but I'm not there, you know, and I have to fight through that. And especially when things are bottling up and I'm just not dealing with things, I definitely have a tendency to just turn that switch on.
SPEAKER_03And it's a def it's a defense mechanism. I'm gonna ask you a question. I know the answer to it, but I want to ask it so the audience can hear it. Do you ever do you have any regrets about going to ask for help?
SPEAKER_01No, not a single one. And yes, I no, I do actually, that I waited so long. Powerful.
SPEAKER_03What are what are some of the treatment avenues that you've sought after and what's helped you personally? I know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, you know, you got the the individual therapy, you know, the family therapy, you know, writing out, you know, and I don't know all the technical terms. I'm not great with this kind of stuff, but you know, like where you're writing out and you're talking about traumatic times and you're rewriting them and you're adding more detail every single time, you know, you know, individual therapy sessions where they're trying to deep dive into understanding and the effect of the trauma and what you did, you know, all this different kind of stuff. And all that stuff was helpful in a lot of the realization, like the depthful impact that it had. But the single best thing is reflection and mindfulness and and just breathing and and and just you know, can you take us through kind of what that looks like? So when I talk about like mindfulness is is like let's just take like a let's take like a situation, okay? Let's take like you know, Josh. Okay. So Josh dying. Okay. Why does that affect me? Well, there's a you know, just a face value, it's a loss of a friend, okay. The morning, the loss of the friend. Okay, that's that's like the surface of it. But you know, when you're when you're mindful and you're you're doing breathing techniques and you're reflecting on things, you're like, there's more there, and you're forcing yourself. And sometimes it has to be it. It's sometimes it takes a therapist or another individual that you know can take like kind of an objective view of things and say, that's not enough, man. Like, give me more. Like, okay, sure, you lost a friend, but why does that hurt? Yes, they're no longer here, okay. But why does that hurt? Well, it hurts because I I looked up to him. Okay, why did you look up to him? Well, I looked up to Josh because he was all the things that I wanted to be, but I wasn't. He truly cared, he he was committed, he was passionate. Okay, but why weren't then why weren't you those things? Well, I wasn't those things because I had a chip on my shoulder. You know, why'd you have a chip on your shoulder? Well, because I just never thought I was good enough because I was insecure in who I was. Why were you insecure as who I am? You know, and you just go down this like pathway. And it it's every when I'm when I I talk about this like sometimes, like you always got to be careful as like a podcast host or any, you know, any kind of capacity to doing this stuff, that you you you better make damn sure that if you're unlocking somebody's trauma, you're talking about their trauma, that they've done the work to deal with it, because you might have an un an adverse reaction to something that you're not prepared for, and also that individual's not prepared for. Like I I was able to eat, I I'm gonna be honest with you, you got me to be more emotional about Josh than I've been in a long time. It doesn't help, and I know that this is gonna really say, but today is the anniversary of 10-year anniversary, too. And I've been I've been texting my kids, you know, I've I've texted my wife, I've tested some friends, you know, about it and everything else. Like, you know, so I've I I kind of woke up with it on my mind, you know, and I it's always I don't want to say it's a hard day, but it's a day that is at the top of the mind. And I always make sure that you know people know that I'm thinking about that today because it's important for me, you know, it's important and they know how important, especially my kids. My kids know all of these individuals' anniversaries because I talk about it, I talk about what great they've been, and I always try to tell them something new about them, you know, because I want them to appreciate these men as well. But anyway, my point being is is you know, going back into this, is if I hadn't done the hard work and you saw me reach the point that I reached in this interview, dude, that might have been the end of the interview. I might not have recovered, you know? And a reason I highlight that is you you you got to be very careful. I've done the work to deal with this and I've followed that pathway of why this bothers me so much. And that's why I'm able to talk about it the way I'm able to talk about it. And I'm able to link Josh's death to the fact that I was sexually molested as a child. There's there it those are all connected. And, you know, through therapy and different sessions and different techniques, not only do I have those realizations, but then I'm also able to exist in them and and sit in them and unpack them in my mind. And as I start to get anxious about them, I start to get apprehensive, and I just don't want to think about them anymore. I make myself sit in them. Are they linked because they were both so traumatic? I think there's definitely cause there, but I think it's definitely, yeah, for sure. But I think it's more because I became who I became because of the trauma that happened through my life. And I had all these different, you know, the the insecurities and the feelings of not being good enough and abandonment, you know, is directly relatable to my sub-performance, okay, and what happened to me, you know, when I first arrived at the regiment, and that just building on all that, but then Josh coming in and completely making me feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be and I'm where I belong in this world, and I couldn't imagine doing anything different. And then from there, because of Josh doing that, I went on and lived another 20-year, 22, you know, 20 plus year career in the United States Army. And I I like to think I made a difference while I was in the army. So I think there, I yes, definitely the the traumatic effect of those two things for sure, but I think more importantly, it's because it's the journey of my life and they're all interlaced. Yeah, so that's a great way to put it.
SPEAKER_03You mentioned, you know, earlier on in this interview, you came really close to the edge, dude. And you know, you you basically said, you know, hey, I can't do this anymore. Obviously, you push through it. What brought you back from that edge? I mean, you know, we've talked a lot about it on this podcast. You and I have talked, you know, multiple times off the camera and last night and and previously. You know, we're losing a lot of veterans, man. Like it's it's a thing. And it's, you know, the number was 22. I think the number's closer to 40 now when you start considering you know overdoses and and and all the other things. What helped you come back from the edge, man?
SPEAKER_01A lot of different factors definitely have been integral in me coming back from the edge. And I think the the single the single biggest thing is that the realization that when you're in that mind frame, you're being completely irrational. You know, you know, you'll hear people say, you know, that people are depressed or people have anxiety or whatever's going on, you know, or they're being suicidal. Like, why are you that you know, like, why, man? Why are you depressed? Like, why are you thinking of suicide? Like, you have a beautiful wife, you have beautiful kids, you have a successful I'm a ranger first art. I mean, come on. That's like the epitome of anybody's career, okay? Sure, everybody like being a sergeant major is pretty cool, but man, being a first art, like, god damn, right? And oh, by the way, I'm a ranger first art, you know. You know, on all these different things, you know. Oh, I'm selected to go to Star Major Academy, too. I think I do it by this point as well. Maybe I didn't, I don't remember. But anyway, you know, I have all these great things going on in my life. Sure, there's a lot of things that are not going well. Okay, there's a lot of train wreck aspects of it, but it doesn't matter. My life could have been peaches and cream, you know, rainbow and sunshine. I wasn't thinking rationally. The only thing I was thinking about is how much pain I was in. And this new thing had been piled on top of it, and I just was being completely irrational. And it was the realization that I was being irrational, and and it, but no one could tell you that. It wasn't a therapist that told me that. It was my own realization that man, you're being irrational, you're catastrophizing everything, you're worst-case scenario in everything, and you're you got a moment of pain, and it's completely justified. 1000% you are justified in your sorrow, in your pain, in your mourning right now. You there there's no you're not being you're not being dramatic. You know, I wasn't being dramatic. I'm still not being dramatic about it. You know, when I talk about it, I'm not being it's justified. I'm I would it fucking sucks. It sucked then, it sucks now, you know. But my point to answer your question was is what drew me back was the realization that this is a moment in time. And there's people that are counting on me, there's people that I haven't even met yet that need me in their life.
SPEAKER_03You also told something in the story. I don't know if you realized it, but a couple I picked up a couple things when you were talking about you know, learning of Josh's death. One, you had a sergeant major that put you in the truck and drove you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So, you know, somebody realized that you were going through something, you allowed them to help you. You could have been like, Techno, I'm not getting in the truck, screw you, you know. But you realized and then the other thing is you called some people, like that may seem small part of the story, but I mean, those were other people that cared about Josh as well that that had affected. You know, do you think that helped at all?
SPEAKER_01I mean, you know, you know, at the at the time, yeah, definitely because I I don't know what I would have done if you know Adam hadn't, you know, got me in the truck and and and eliminated all the other things, you know. Obviously, I was being uh a train wreck in front of him, but I I would have been a train wreck regardless. And it might have been in front of all of my dudes, you know, and that I would have had I would have had a lot of embarrassment about that. I'm just gonna be honest with you. I mean, at the end of the day, when you're a Ranger First Armand, you gotta be the toughest mofo to walk in that company. And them to see me like that, like at the state that I was in, it was very different. I was still in a state later, but it was a very different state, and also it had been communicated, hey, here's what had happened to Mike, you know, here's what he's dealing with, you know. And all all the dudes in my company, sorry, I know you want to, but all the dudes in my company, they also knew about Josh too, because I talked about him a lot. I talked about leadership and leadership principles that Josh had bestowed on me a lot as a commit, you know, as a as a company first sermon. So they all knew how important he was to me because they'd heard me say it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and the only reason I bring that up is because you know, there could be somebody watching this or listening to this that, you know, they may not be in a first sergeant and they may not have somebody to drag them into the truck at their dark moment. However, comma, yeah, you can still reach out to people, man. If you're hurting, you don't have to suffer in silence. If you're going through something, whether it's a loss, whatever, man. Like people can't help you if they don't know about it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, I mean, that's that's probably the biggest thing. And I was I was fortunate. I mean, you think about the whole situation, I was very fortunate. You know, I had the the sergeant major that recognized that, you know, the commander, you know, the chap, like all this. I I had the opportunity there, you know, and the the resources were available to me, you know, and now guys, you know, retired, you know, or out of the army or wherever they are, you know, they're out there just in the wild. But listen, you you are trying to work through something that is it is coming to a culminate, you know. This is what I would tell everybody. You're you are at a culmination point, okay. And if you're having these thoughts and you're you know, you're thinking about these things, you are you are being irrational. Okay. And I'm not saying that to downplay what you're going through. That's not hear me. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying you are not best suited to help yourself through this. And I don't. Know who it is, and it might not be the first person you call. But what I'm asking people, please, okay? Just call people, anybody, call me, okay? I don't care who it is, just keep on calling people until somebody says, Where are you at? I'm coming to you. There's somebody there. There is somebody there. And at the end of the day, it'll be me or it'd be Asher if it has to be. And I don't care. I don't even have to know you. I don't give a shit. Because at the end of the day, the only people that are going to help us through it are people like us. Therapists, they'll help a lot. There's a lot of other amazing resources, but there's very finite amount of people that can sit down and go, brother, I know you're hurting, man. I don't understand everything. But let me let me let me give you some some relatable content here. And then let's let's let's vent for a little bit, man. Let's release this pressure. Let's talk about it, but then let's talk about the future. Okay. And let's let's let's talk about how we're gonna we're gonna work through this. Because, you know, I think about this and I think about this, and this goes into this. Okay, so this is 2000 uh 2015, okay. I went on for another eight years, okay, and had a career. Okay. After that, you know, I did a little bit less than a year in another year as a Ranger First Sergeant, okay. Went to the Sergeant Major Academy, was a battalion CSM, a regimental CSM, and a brigade CSM. Okay, and now you know I'm doing all the stuff I'm doing in the civilian world. What if that hadn't happened? What if I'd have succumbed to the demons and that was the end of it? I like to think, and I'm not saying this to be boastful, I think I've I've done some good in the last you know ten years. I think I think I've done alright. Okay. I've impacted some people, I've helped some people, I've pulled some I've pulled some guns out of people's mouths, and I've I've helped people in their journeys, leadership journeys, civilian journeys, and everything else. So my point is, is that there's people that need you that don't even know that you haven't even met yet. And they don't even know they need you. But they're there. You're just you're just at a bad point, and there's gonna be there's an opportunity for post-traumatic growth if you allow there to be. But you gotta find somebody that can help you through it. You never you know, you never go on a target alone. You know, you never make a mission plan alone. There's always somebody there to help you. And and this and this is just a new mission. And your new mission is to make it through it because then we need you.
SPEAKER_03And sometimes you're in the storm, and when you're in the storm, you think it's gonna last for forever and you can't see because the wind and the rain and everything is going on around you, but man, like the sun's gonna set, you know, and the sun's gonna rise the next day, man. Like, you know what I mean? You you may be in the middle of a storm, but it's it's gonna get better, dude. Like, I I truly believe that. And I don't I don't believe in a magical Disney way it's gonna get better. I mean, you still gotta do work, but I mean, yeah, you know, you're not alone. I I love what you said.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I'm not it's like, you know, my daughter asked me this the other day, and I'll I'll I'll relate it. She asked me, you know, about training stuff, you know, because she's she's she's just a firecracker and she's thinking she's got all these things that she's thinking about the military. Okay, right now she's a Marine JR O T C, but you know, she's been dropping the bomb lately. Like, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm going special operations, and I'm like, cool, okay. You know, so she's asking, you know, how do you make it through trough of tough times? And I think it really is it's directly relatable to this. I was like, I quit my mind a million times, I just never said it out loud. Or I said, I'm just I'm gonna quit because it sucks. I'm just not quitting today. Well, I'd say the same thing. Hey man, you can quit, just not today. Not today, you're not.
SPEAKER_03It's awesome, dude. I got nothing to add to that. Any last thoughts on kind of mental health or or you know, anything on your journey you want to share? Because the next thing we're gonna get into is leadership.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, man. Uh, you know, the push-ups, you know, a lot of this different kind of stuff, you know. I don't think we need awareness raised about veteran suicide. Yeah. Uh that the I think we're all aware that's a problem. I think what we need is veterans, leading veterans. I think we need veterans interjecting with veterans. I'll say the same thing I've said on a million podcasts. Just start simple, man. Make a make a decision, okay? If you're a veteran out there, but even if you're not a veteran, but you know veterans, okay, or you're around veterans, okay? Or hell, maybe you don't even maybe you're not even a veteran. I don't give a shit, okay? Just make, just, just do this, okay? And maybe you're that person that's struggling right now. Just make this, you know, you can quit tomorrow, but today you're not going to. And today, I want you to do one thing. Call somebody and ask them how they're doing. And then when they lie to you, find out how they're really doing. And then when they keep online, do you keep on asking them and keep on pressing and have a conversation, have a meaningful conversation, and do that every day for the next 30 days. If you do that every day for the next 30 days, it'll change your life. I do that, and I've been doing it for a long time. And I try not to repeat people, okay? And I have times where I just, you know, life gets like today, you know, I probably won't get to it today, you know, because just, you know, this, this, this guy's been interrogating me for like 10 hours. But but my point is, is like, but I'll do it twice tomorrow then, okay? And just you know people and reach out, find people's phone numbers, find out people you know and call them and have meaningful conversations with them. Ask them how they're doing, remind them that you're there for them. It will change your life. You will realize how big your network is and how many people care about you and how much people are going through, and you can maybe provide a resource for somebody because you might find, you know, I'll I'll give you an example, man. Sorry, I I know you wanted me to probably be brief in this, but you know, I was, I was, I was talking brief podcast. Yeah, well, no, I know, I know. But, you know, I was talking to I was talking to a a good buddy of mine, and I hadn't talked to him in a while. We were just talking about some different things, and you know, one of the conversations we had is like, you know, how he, you know, is getting into writing and everything else, and he's doing, you know, all this different kind of stuff. And then you know, fast forward, I have another conversation with a dude that's becoming a very, very close buddy of mine yesterday. Okay. And he was talking about how he's thinking about writing this book, okay. And he's got this format for this book and everything else. Well, guess what? I'm gonna do tomorrow. I'm gonna link those two dudes up because they need to know each other exists in the world because they have a mutual aspiration and a mutual goal that they're trying to achieve. And I wouldn't have known the one conversation if I hadn't reached out to a buddy that I hadn't talked to in a long time. And this new buddy that I'm making, I I just I I you know, I mean, I wouldn't, if we went and hadn't been having the meaning of a conversation, I wouldn't have been afforded just an amazing opportunity to link those two up. I know they're gonna do something cool together. I'm really excited about that. But my point is, is that you can do that, and there's a million different examples of that, and be a connector, man. There's meaning in that, there's purpose in that.
SPEAKER_03Kind of starting this next chapter, which I'm really
excited about. I mean, you've got so much leadership experience, and you've been honest about some of your mistakes too. So I'm kind of excited to talk about leadership lessons with you. If you had to define what makes a good leader in one word, which is really hard to do, I don't know that I could do it, but what would you what would you pick? Passion. My passion.
SPEAKER_01If you're passionate as a leader, it means that you're passionate about the people that you lead, and it's also you're passionate about the leadership journey. And it means that you're never gonna settle and you're constantly just gonna be improving and getting better. And I can, you know, I could teach anything, but I can't teach passion. I
could try to instill passion, I could try to draw it out of people by understanding their why, for instance. But man, it's hard to teach passion. And it it's it it could just be passion about life. You're just passionate about life, man. Teach you the rest. You know, I uh in the military world and also in the civilian world, you know, a lot of people will be like, well, we really, you know, especially in the civilian world, they're like, we want to hire somebody that's you know a subject matter expert. I don't give it. I don't care. I don't care if you know anything about the field that I'm about to hire. If you're passionate and you're willing to learn, I'll teach you everything you need to know. Or I'll I'll hire people and I'll put you in places where you can learn for people and you can learn what you need to know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I heard you say somewhere else, if you don't have passion, you lack drive, commitment, and empathy. Unpack that. How how does a lack of passion specifically lead to a lack of empathy?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a it's a weird kind of it's a weird kind of bridge to kind of gap when you talk about passion and empathy. When you when you have passion, you know, it goes back into, you know, you're passionate about being a leader. Okay. And at the same time, the way it translates for me, and I'm not gonna sit here and say that everybody's like this, but when you're when you're passionate, that means you're also passionate about the people that you're responsible for, in whatever capacity that is. Well, in order to make them the best version of themselves and be passionate about their personal growth, you need to know them. And you might be able to, you know, and this is something I used to talk about a lot when I was in the military. You should be able to know your folks good enough that you can recognize they're having a bad day. And you should be able to know your folks good enough to go, hey man, I can tell something's going on. What's going on? Well, I had a fight with my girlfriend. Okay, cool. Let's talk about that. And then, you know, you can drive from that growth, okay, and you can find out things about that individual. And it allows for empathy. Because, you know, I I will say, you know, uh, you know, I've had leaders throughout the years, and I've had like even at high levels of leadership, I've had commanders that didn't have kids, okay? And I've had commanders and I've had other leaders that just weren't have never been married. And I'm like, hey, I want you to know, like, I respect you to the end of this world. Um, but when we talk about marriage or we talk about having kids, I'm just gonna ask you to step out of the room. Well, you know, no, you have no idea what you're talking about. You can't provide any empathy, you can provide no knowledge, okay, you can provide no experience, therefore, you're not gonna have a meaningful part of this conversation. So, you know, that kind of is tangent off of what I'm saying, but my point is that, you know, you to have to have empathy, you have to have understanding. And understanding is gonna be from your own personal passion about being better, but then also your passion for making people better. Like that, man.
SPEAKER_03I have this thing that I think about a lot, and it's the three attributes debate. If you locked leaders in a room for three days to pick the top three attributes, they'd come up with you know some amazing things, I'm sure. What would your three other attributes besides passion be?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, uh it's a good question. I kind of did like a semblance of this one time when I was in a squadron CSM and I had all the platoon sergeants, and we're doing like this like week-long event. We did, I don't want to say we did it quite like that, but like we were basically trying to like, I'm a big fan of threes. Like, I love threes, you know, and we're trying to kind of neck it down. And what we came down to is I think what other three attributes, and I think they just tie really into the conversation we've been having, is one self-awareness. Okay, you gotta be aware of the yourself, you know, who you are, how you are, your pet peeves, you know, all these different kinds of things and the things that drive you because you got to be able to, you know, communicate to those to folks so that those are not misunderstanding and they they understand why you're doing it. Okay, so that's definitely one. Purpose is the two. Like, why are you doing the things that you're doing? And it and why are you leading, why you find yourself in that in that position that you find yourself in is extremely important. And then the third is courage. And I don't mean courage like charging that machine gun nest. I mean courage to act, you know, courage to make decisions. Leadership's hard. You got to make really, really hard decisions. And, you know, a really a good example, one of the hardest things that I think leaders struggle is is to be truthful with people. You know, I've had to have a lot of hard conversations with folks where I'm just like, you know, and this is in the military and not in the military, where I'm like, listen, man, you're passionate, man. Um, you're motivated, you're awesome, but this line of work is just not for you. It's just not. And maybe someday it could be, but right now in this time and place, it's just not for you. We need to have a conversation about what the next step is. And my personal opinion is, you know, this job right now, what you're doing is not the right decision for you. And those are hard conversations. And I've had a lot of them throughout the years, and it takes a lot of courage, and it's extremely uncomfortable. And, you know, people will say, Well, you can always groom people. No, that's not true. Like, you should have the self-awareness, okay, and you should understand your people enough to know that their potential is just not suited for whatever you're talking about right now. And it has literally been like, this is how serious I am about this. I've had to have conversations with a lot of people, rangers, that like, hey man, I'm just gonna be honest with you. I think the best conversation you and I can have right now is what you would look like in civilian clothes. Because this, this, this lifestyle is just not for you. And you know, people can you know be pissed off at me. But here's what I'll tell you. I've I've probably had that conversation probably with a handful of individuals throughout my time. And uh I would say almost all those, most of them, later years, some of them many, many years later. Okay. Don't get me wrong, they weren't happy at the time, but many years later, you know, they reach out to me and they'd be like, You were right. Thank you. Thank you for having the courage to have a conversation no one else was ever willing to have with me. And so I think you know, it's those three things, man. Self, purpose, or self-awareness, purpose, and a courage to act.
SPEAKER_03That's very powerful. You know, I asked this question to another guest, and I I think you're another perfect person to ask this question to. Especially when you were, you know, a first sergeant, but even a platoon sergeant, but then you start getting to the command sergeant major level. How do you deal with toxic leadership? And by what I mean by that is if you identify that you have, you know, junior leaders or leaders elite under you, and you know they're toxic, how do you deal with that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Man, it's it's such a tough thing to deal with because the toxic leadership, there's always so many factors that and it it depends on what level you're talking about, but there's been something that's perpetuating it for a long time and they've been able to get away with bullshit. No one's called them out on it, no one's ever had the courage to come back to that. No one's ever had the courage to tell them the truth. And two, they're self-aw, therefore, it's just perpetuated they have no self-awareness. And the only way you can deal with it is just like directly. You just gotta tackle it. And if it's a superior, it's a superior. You know, I would tell myself when I would have to have conversations with superior officers or superior superior leaders, like, okay, well, I've had a good career, I'm pretty proud of myself. Like, I think it was okay. I'm gonna go die on this hill. I guess this is where it ends, but I'm gonna have this conversation because no one else is. And I'm not saying that like you are attacking it, like, hey, listen, Asher, you're an asshole. Everybody around here agrees that you're an asshole. Like, that's not like what I'm saying. That's not how you take it. Yeah, you still need tact. Yeah, you gotta have some tack, you know, and you gotta you gotta kind of back your way into it, but you need to have the conversation, you know. And the best way I've always done is is two different things, transparency and vulnerability. And I know that those people will look at the transparency one, that obviously that makes sense, but people will go, vulnerability. That's not right. Absolutely. You know, I could sit down, junior, senior leader, and I can talk to them about something that I messed up as a leader, and the and the and the realization that I had to go through, the growth I had to go through to realize that something I was doing, I'm not gonna say I was a toxic leader, and maybe people think I am. I don't know. There's probably people out there that think I am, but that I did something that was toxic and I didn't realize it or I did, and I just wasn't well aware of it, and I've talked about that growth pattern. And, you know, and then you know, when you're vulnerable with people and you kind of open your up, sometimes it's harder with senior people, I will tell you that. But when you kind of open up and you tell them about your misgivings, you know, and then you can simply just go, sir, why do you think I told you that story? You know, and there's a couple different ways they can go, but any intelligent person is gonna go because you're you're gonna you're you're about to deliver something that I don't want to hear. And you think me telling you by you telling me something that you don't want to talk about, probably because it's tough and it's vulnerable, you think that I'm gonna be more empathetic to what you're telling me. And I'm like, absolutely. So did it work? You know, and you can you can take it from that and then go, okay. If it if it didn't, they're like, you know, if they're still guarded up, they're like, listen, my job is to help you, even if I'm subordinate to you, okay? And I, you know, and especially I had the bet I always had the benefit of, you know, as a non-commissioned officer. It's always tougher if it's an officer to an officer, probably. But I could say I have the benefit, I am part of my job is to tell you things that other people don't want to tell you, or maybe even things that you don't want to hear. So if you don't want to hear it, that's fine. But I think it's gonna hinder. So if you don't want to hear it, tell me. But if you do, I just ask you to be open. And I'm here from a position where I'm trying to help you, I'm trying to make you better so that we can make this organization better in the capacity that we're both at. So let's just have an open conversation. And I'm not gonna sit here and lie to you and tell you that that works because it doesn't. I've had I've had fucking leaders that have doubled down in their toxicity, but I will tell you it has worked.
SPEAKER_03As you've mentored junior leaders, you know, I I go back to the story of of you when you first got to the ranger regiment, and you know, your squad leader and all the crap that you went through, and your platoons aren't allowing that, you know. I I I would imagine that those guys had learned that, you know, coming up in the ranger regiment. And I've seen it in my own career on more than one occasion where toxic leaders breed the next level of toxic leaders. So you rise to the ranks, you become a leader. How do you take people that have grown up in this bad leadership culture? And you know, like maybe deep in they've got some potential and kind of twist them, you know what I mean? To be like, hey man, I know you've done this thing and you did this thing, probably because you've learned it, whether you realize it or not. But hey, we're not gonna do that shit anymore. Yeah, how do you have you had to deal with that? Or I'm I'm just finding it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, I absolutely have, you know, and I was I was a proponent of it, you know, especially I was a terrible corporal. Oh dickhead, Sean Taetro. That dude, I don't even know why that dude talks to me. I was so mean to him. I was I was terrible, and I was just replicating behavior. I was a gun team leader, you know, and then you know there's a story behind it, you know, we're doing gun team drills, you know, at this exercise and everything else, and I'm just yelling at him, and I'm yelling at him and I'm stressing him out, and I'm fucking with him so bad, you know. The kid breaks down in tears. And I remember this dude, this unit dude was watching us, and you know, so we get done and I get frustrated with Tetro and I'm like, get out of here, you're gonna cry, baby, you know, like rah-rah, rah, you know, and this dude comes over to me, he's like, dude, what was that all about? Like, what do you mean? He's like, What do you think that that he just took away from that? Well, that he sucks. Okay, but is that helpful? Is that gonna make him better as an AG or as a member of your gun team? Why don't you show him? Like, why don't you actually like teach him and and show him it can be done, like what you're trying to get him to do and demonstrate it to and break it down to Barney style if you have to, and eventually he'll get it and eventually get better. And I'd love to tell you that I was like, Oh, yeah, that's the greatest thing, you know. I was probably like, fuck you, dude, you know, but later, you know, I can't, you know, I reflected on it and I was like, Yeah, this dude's probably right. But going back to your culture question, you know, I think it it ties into this, you know, this passion and empathy conversation. It's the same thing, you know. Why are you acting like that? You know, and you can be more direct with subordinate leaders than you, you know, you are senior leaders, like, hey, why are you you know, I see you doing this, I see you demonstrating this. Why are you doing this? Who hurt you? You know, kind of conversation. Like, who hurt you? You know, let's talk about that. Now, what kind of did you like when somebody treated you like that? Well, no, I hated it, you know. And that's what it took for me was somebody pointing that out to me that hey, like Mike, you're treating people how you got treated, and they had been there during this time, you know. Did you like it? No. Well, then why are you doing it? And I'm like, shit, you're right. Why am I doing it? I'm just replicating behavior. Somebody hurt me, so now I'm hurting somebody else. I need to fix that, you know. But talking about culture, I don't think it's ever too soon. This is the thing that I've learned that I think I think ties a lot of this together and just kind of wraps it up just a little bit. And I'm not saying the leadership conversation's over by any means, you know, we'll go as far as you want to go, but I'll talk about this shit all day. But I don't think I think we need to talk about culture more. Just as soon as we can. We need to be having this conversation of formational leadership. What kind of culture do you want? What does culture mean? You know, and how do you impact culture from the basic level? And it matters, you know, and it doesn't matter if you're in charge of one other dude. Okay, the culture matters, and it just needs to be a constant conversation, a self-reflection of what do you want your culture to be? Are you driving towards that culture you want to have? You know, open communication culture, you know, a culture of understanding, shared understanding, a culture, a culture of excellence, you know, whatever it might be. I think we need to inject that into leadership, not just in the military, everywhere, that it needs to be drove home all the time. And I think also it's because how we're actually ingrained as human beings, the culture of tribes, the culture. Of you know, group bands of individuals is what got them through adversity, hard times where they had each other's back, whatever it might be, where they were looking at each other for each other. When one person was down, the other person was up. I mean, I'll I'll even talk about it in marriage. And my wife have talked about this. We just inadvertently talked about this. Like, neither of us can be down at the same time. We got to take turns. So, so if I come home and my wife's down and she's down in the dumps or she's mad, well, I might have showed up down in the dumps and pissed off at the world as well. But I gotta I gotta be situational aware of her and myself to go, well, I guess I'm just gonna have to pack that one away today. And I gotta be, you know, Johnny on the spot with the happiness and the, you know, the rainbow and the sunshine, you know, and her vice versa. Like both of us can't be down at the same time.
SPEAKER_03Kind of, you know, bridging off of leadership going into kind of identifying future leaders. I found this interesting, man. And it's something I kind of derived a question out of. But five privates are setting up a tent, one takes charge even though they don't, you know what they're doing per se. What are you looking for and how they take charge, not the fact that they just take charge?
SPEAKER_01That they're trying to use the resources available to them, and the resources available to them are to those and other individuals. And you know, they're they're they're they're while they might not actually be achieving the, and I actually went, you know, this this thing you're talking about, I actually witnessed this one time. You know, it was a change of responsibility, and somebody had brought this tent, and it was supposed to be for this ceremony and everything else. And I don't think all the pieces were actually there. I have no idea where I came from. Like, I still have no idea. And I just happened to be like walking by, and I it was, it was like five privates standing out there in the quad at 275 trying to put this tent together, and I'm just watching this one kid, he's the kid like kind of taking charge. He had no idea what he was fucking doing. That kid never put up a tent in his life, okay? And you could tell he was just as new as all those guys, but he was doing a couple different things. One, he was like, Well, let's just try this, okay? And then that would work, or it wouldn't work. And he'd be like, Okay, that didn't work. Like, he'd be like, My bad guys, like he would take ownership of that. He'd be like, Okay, that didn't work, you know, and then like somebody else would be like, Well, what about this? You know, like maybe it's these polls. He'd be like, Oh, yeah, yeah, good point. Okay, let's try that, you know. And he was just willing to try things and listen and use the resources, which was the tent itself, all these different kinds of stakes, but the other individuals. And it wasn't that he was being a leader. I don't think any of them would have said, Well, that's our leader. It was just the guy he was willing to take the feedback, be the he was being the the connector for all of them, you know, and he was just kind of being the one communicating for all of them, you know, and they never got the fucking tent up, and I'm pretty sure it didn't have all the pieces, you know. And I just, you know, I don't, I don't remember what happened with it. But, you know, I think that's what I'm looking for is they're willing to try, they're not scared to try, they're not just gonna stand there and let somebody else just, you know, take charge and just haphazardly done things. They're not losing their shit, they're not sitting there screaming, they're not yelling, you know, or anything else, and they're just using the collective resources available to them to try to solve the problem.
SPEAKER_03That's a great point, man. I I heard you say on another podcast that you'd rather get in trouble for making a decision and it be the wrong one than not making a decision at all. How do you teach someone to be comfortable making decisions without all the information?
SPEAKER_01So every decision that they make is wrong, it's a learning lesson. It's not a mistake. I'm not gonna beat them up. They made the wrong decision. Okay, it's okay. Yeah, that just didn't work. Okay, now we know. Now we know uh, you know, Thomas Edison kind of theory. Now we know 10,000 things that don't work, right? You know, that's okay. And that's on me. I should have known that that probably wouldn't work and I should have probably mentored you better. But when they make the right decision and it works out, you praise it. Great job. I knew that was gonna work, man. I was just waiting for you to get to that conclusion, you know. All right, so let's build on that. And but also push decisions down, stop answering people's questions. This is the biggest thing that I see. Stop answering people's questions. What do you mean by that? Well, people will call you, people call you all the time, right? Okay, and they just, you know, and it I mean, it's different maybe sometimes with like peers because they're calling you because they need help, like they just don't know. I'm talking about people you're trying to mentor, you're trying, you know, your kids or you know, young, young, young, younger crowd. Stop giving them solutions. Say, well, what do you think, man? Give me some options. You know, I tell my kids this, especially my sons. You know, they'll call me and they just want me to solve their problem. I'm like, well, you come to me with a problem, okay? You come to me on the day of my no, you know, my kid, you know, but my kids say, you know, the same kind of thing is is I'm gonna be like, what are give me some solutions? Don't just give me problems, like, what do you think, you know? And help them sort through that, you know, and and help them realize like the solution existed. You were just it's not that you didn't know what to do, you just had you had a lot of options in front of you, and you just weren't willing to make a decision.
SPEAKER_03I used to tell my junior leaders, man, you better come to me with three different solutions. Cause if you ask me to pick one, you may not like the one I picked. Yep, absolutely. Another thing I heard you say was every single day you step in front of that formation, be a better version of yourself than yesterday. What does that look like practically? And what's one thing you know you you did or you do now to be better?
SPEAKER_01Because you're still in a leadership role. Yeah, you know, I know that sounds like something that you like that's a great bumper sticker, like be a better version, you know, it's on your mirror, be a better version of yourself. Like, no, I mean it's a practical thing, and what it comes down to is one single thing. Do you at the end of the night, before you close your head, close your eyes and you go to sleep, do you reflect on your day? And do you go, man, I didn't do that? Or man, I really screwed the pooch on that. And then make a decision that you're gonna do better, you're gonna do it or you're gonna fix what you didn't do the next day. And you just continuously do that. You know, it's this lifelong learning. Well, you're you are also, especially I think, as we kind of get older, life's the best teacher, like we're the best teacher, and but we gotta take those moments to kind of reflect and go, okay, what happened today? What did I not do? I mean, and what could I do better? And then just do it better the next day.
SPEAKER_03You're someone that transitioned from you know pretty high levels of military leadership into the civilian world. I know in the Ranger Regiment and I know in the unit as well, too, man. The after action reviews, and you alluded to it earlier in the podcast, they're brutal, man. They're very honest, and it's because people's lives are on the line, right? And you know, mistakes can cost people's lives in a combat, especially when you start doing direct action or hostage rescue. How do you take those lessons learned and those tough AARs and and try to bring those into the civilian world without being able to maybe you know attack your civilian counterparts because it's not it's frowned upon. But you know, how do you how do you take those lessons learned and the good from that but still apply them in the civilian mindset?
SPEAKER_01I mean, I'm gonna be honest with you. I I do I I hate when I say that because it makes it sound like the rest of the time I've been lying. Um, no, I still I'm careful about it, okay? But I still bring military adages over to my civilian life. Like, you know, we just finished this whole thing. Well, we didn't finish it, but we're at the final stages of the full implementation of this inventory kind of cleanup across our entire organization. And I literally sit down with my team afterwards and I'm like, hey, we're gonna do an AAR. And now it's funny, like the first time I say it, they're like, What's that? I'm like, an after-action review. And now as the team's grown, I don't have to answer the question because they all say it. They'll be like, Oh, it's an after-action review, it's a military thing. Mike uses it all the time, you know. I'm like, okay, but like I'll still do after-action reviews. And I'm like, hey, this is a military thing, but here's a philosophy behind it, here's a principle behind it. We did something, we accomplished something, it was great, but we can always get better. So let's just let's just talk about it, you know. And I take them, you know, through the formula, let's talk about the good, the bad, and you know, give me three ups, give me three downs, and you know, give me three one, you know, three sustains or whatever it is, you know, and we'll just kind of go through that format, you know, and we'll jot it down and we'll just, you know, we have improvement processes through it. And you know, it goes into the other big thing that I've done for the company, which is like Hoshen Connery events or Kaizen or Lean Six, you know, principles. It's you know, I the first time I kind of heard about some of this stuff, I'd heard about Lean, you know, Sigma and everything else. And you know, I see that there's these companies, you know, there we are a company that does Kaizan, or you know, we you know, we're continuously improvement. And at first, I'm like, okay, that's cool. Like, yeah, okay. And then what I realized was dude, it's just what we do in the military every goddamn day. And it doesn't have to be some structured saying or some giant event, like it's just about continuous improvement. Never ever settle, we've never arrived at perfection. We can always improve on every single thing we do, and that's literally what I ask my folks to do, you know. And it's funny that you say that because I actually sat down Monday before I, you know, so Monday, I I hold uh for my operational support team. Every Monday we do a kind of a stand-up call. Okay, and it's usually the afternoon on Monday, but that's because I know they're putting out fires, they're dealing with stuff I don't want. The first thing they're dealing with Monday is preparing for this meeting. There's no slides, there's no nothing. And we just go around the horn. And I the normally what I ask them is is tell me what you're telling me what you what you're struggling with and tell me what barriers I can remove for the week so you can accomplish your tasks. Okay, that's all. That's the only thing. And sometimes they'll also talk because it just it's a force of habit for them in the civilian world, they'll tell me what they're doing for the week. I'm like, dude, I already know what you're doing for the week. Like I told you what to do last week, so I know what you're doing for the week, you know. But this week I did it a little bit different, and I said exactly this. I said, give me one improvement thing we need to do as a team. Just one, you know, and through that it led, and this meeting ended up happening. Normally it's like less than an hour, and I always try to keep it less than an hour. It lasted almost two hours because and it wasn't because I was, you know, trying to make it long, it's because they were highlighting things that I just wasn't even thinking about. And I'm like, boom, okay. Well, then that is such a great point. We need to be talking more. You two need to be talking more. I want you guys to set up a call this week and connect on that, you know. And we just continued to do this, and you know, and I'm like, you know, and one was like, you know, this other individual. I'm like, I did not realize how much of that bandwidth you were taking me. You and I, let's let's talk tomorrow. I need to help you with this. I did not realize how much this was eating your lunch. I kind of was aware of it, so let's just do it, you know. And what I've watched in the like civilian world is that we're making decisions about things, we're not waiting on things, we're not saying, well, we got to push this up to higher. So that's like, no, we're we're making decisions in real time, we're making adjustments in real time, we're making improvement, and and you know, and I tell them like all the time, don't wait on me to make a decision, or don't wait on me to make a decision to talk to somebody about somebody, you know, just go, let me know. Fine, but just go, just go have that communication, bridge the gap, and get things done.
SPEAKER_03Kind of moving on to learning from bad leaders. If you were to have a notebook of things not to do from bad leaders, what's the number one entry you would have?
SPEAKER_01Oh man, what would be the number one entry? And I I thought about this one, and this is like one of those questions that, like, man, I ping-ponged around in my head for like ever because it's so hard to think of one thing, and and I and I just kept on coming back to this one thing. Don't be a dick. Yeah, it seems it's sounds simple, but it's it's powerful. Don't be a dick, man. Like everybody, and I think it's it's not just a like a leadership thing, I think it's just a life, man. Like, listen, you don't know what people are going through. And and and and somebody might be like rude, you know, on the subway, but man, like maybe they just found out their mom died, you know? Or, you know, I I I saw this guy that was just being an ass clown on the highway the other day. And at first, like I was, you know, I wanted to like just purposely like slow down, you know, and just like not allow this dude to pass. And then I was thinking about it and I was like, dude, maybe that dude's like racing somewhere, like maybe something like you know, you have no idea what's going on. Like, I'm just you know, I'm just gonna get out of this way, this dude, you know. I mean it could it could have been a million other reasons, but you just don't know. My point is is like, you know, we just we think that sometimes people are just targeting us specifically, you know, in different circumstances, and they're not, they're living their lives and they're going through things you have no idea about. And then there's people that are just dicks too.
SPEAKER_03But yeah, I have I struggle with people that have road rage again to your point. It's like people are free, somebody cuts them off and they freak out. It's like you you have no idea what's going on in their life, and you screaming and yelling at them in her car and giving yourself a freaking you know, heidel hernia because you're flipping out, does nothing for anybody. Like, if you're that stressed out about being in traffic or whatever, man, like maybe you need to work on some mindfulness. Yeah, when you became a leader, how did you make sure you didn't repeat some of you know the bad mistakes of your previous leaders?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I joke about it all the time that like I I didn't have a book of what to be as a leader, I had a book of what not to do in the leader, and I just to be a successful leader in the early days, I just did the exact opposite. But you know, really kind of you know, adding some some context to that man is is that I just treated people like human beings. They're showing up to the organization just like I showed up to the organization one day. They're not any better, worse, or anything else than me. It's everybody had their first day. Everybody has a first day in any capacity, you know. So understand that and just make them better.
SPEAKER_03You know, you led it multiple levels in a ranger regiment, fire team leader, squad leader, platoon sergeant, first sergeant. I mean, as a platoon sergeant, you know, you were leading a ton of dudes most of the time in combat. How does your leadership change when you're responsible for that many people?
SPEAKER_01You know, definitely as a platoon sergeant, it's just man, you're just in the fire all the time. I mean, it's hard. You know, it's it's hard to sort through the noise sometimes because and especially, you know, I I obviously have a unique time frame that we talk about me being a platoon sergeant, you know. I mean, this is in the most kinetic times in the global war on terrorism. I mean, it was just it was just non-stop, you know, and um, you know, and there's this expectation of platoon starts, and I I I think about it, you know, that I was I hadn't did not have a lot of empathy for dudes, you know, and I talked about it very briefly before, but when it came because I was so focused on the mission, I was so focused on combat, anything that was outside of that was a detraction. And it might have been a dude, you know, I had a lot of dudes that got in trouble for a lot of different things. At the time, I just looked at them as assholes. Like, you're a dick, man. You did this thing, whatever it was, you know, DUI, you know, domestic violence, you know, you know, possession of drugs, you know, popping hot on a drug test. I mean, there's god, there's I I I couldn't even sit here and list them all off. Like, you know, and at the time, you know, I've just like, man, you're detracting away from the mission, you're detracting away from combat. Oh, by the way, you're now being removed from the equation, and I've got to train somebody up to take your place. Whatever play, I don't care what it was. You could have just been a rifleman, but guess what that rifleman's carrying? Not only that rifle with 120 rounds, okay, but also a skid kill, probably, or a law, okay, or whatever else, you know, weapon systems and a couple grenades. Like, and now I gotta find somebody else to do that, or I'm without that, I'm without that asset on the deployment. So in those days, man, it was, you know, I was, I was, I would, I I lacked a lot of empathy, a lot of understanding. I just I looked at those dudes as they detracted away from our primary mission, and then therefore they were a liability, and they were, I mean, it sucks to say, but I want to be honest, they were dead to me. I was done with you. Okay. But then years later, upon reflection and realization, I realized that a lot of those things that those dudes did is because they were living a dangerous life. And the things that they were doing were a byproduct of the things that we were expected to do. And they didn't like purposely like do that stuff, you know. At the time I kind of thought, you know, because there's like sayings like, you know, take that bad decision and put it in one hand, you know, and take your tambouret and put it in the other hand. Which one's more important? Life doesn't work that way, okay. People are not walking around with bad decisions in one hand and a tamboring the other hand. Like it sounds cool to say it, you know, in a safety brief or something like that. But dude, they're just they're out drinking because they're trying to drink away something, a breakup, whatever the fuck it was, okay, that just happened on that combat deployment. Okay, or maybe their dad died or he's got cancer or something like that.
SPEAKER_03Thermal bearer grenade going off and a bunch of grenades. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Or they're, you know, they decided to, you know, smoke pot or do cocaine because they just wanted something that made them feel good. You know, they wanted something that gave them some relief in the moment. And they weren't weighing all that stuff. They just, it's just like suicide, man. You know, they just wanted some relief for a moment and they made those decisions. Or, you know, they got an argument with their spouse and it just erupted because it was just another pressure, you know, it was just another discord that was happening in their life and they just lost control. But it was also built on because of all these things. My point is, is directly to your point, is when I was a younger leader, especially like you highlighted being a platoon sergeant, I lacked empathy. And later in life, I I started to extend a lot of empathy and I tried to understand why people were reacting and doing the things they were doing. I'm not saying I didn't held hold them accountable. I absolutely have the responsibility. It's literally in the non-commissioned officer creed. Your job description is to hold people accountable and to maintain standards, but I didn't crucify them like I used to. And I also used to focus on getting them help and making sure that even if I was kicking them out of regiment, ranger regiment, or I was kicking them out of the army, along with that process, I'd make sure that they got the help and they were taken care of to the best of my abilities. And I'm not gonna say that I did that the greatest always, but I tried to.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, and even as a first sergeant, you know, at that level, you're dealing with family issues, administrative issues, and and and combat leadership. How did how do you balance all three, dude? Because man, those are so Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, it gets tough, man, because when you're like at the first sergeant level or you're at the like serge major level, you know people's names for only two reasons. One, because they did something really awesome and you're like super proud of them and you recognize them, or two, they're just they fucked up bad. And it's hard to balance. It's really, really hard to balance. And you you struggle with it, and what you realize is that you gotta take like kind of an outsider view when you're dealing with some of those problem children because they're those platoon serents that you used to be, and they're just they don't, they just don't, they just want to be dumb with that dude because they want to be focused on what they're focused on. So when you're at like the first serent level, you gotta be the guy that kind of balances it out and go, hey, listen, I got it, you're upset. Okay, like uh let's see what's going on here and do this stuff, you know. And sometimes, I mean, as a first serent, especially, especially I've had like platoon sergeants, like I had a couple of instances where platoon serents like somebody would do something, they would just, man, they would freak out. And the reason for it was again, this is understanding, okay, is you know, and having a little bit of empathy is because they'd raised this guy, and this guy had done something and tanked his career, and they were upset about it, they were embarrassed about it, you know, and they were disappointed in this dude. So sometimes as a first round, I just had to take it out of their hands and say, listen, I'm gonna I'll deal with this guy, man, because you're just too emotionally tied to this. And it's not that I'm mad at you or I'm not taking away because I don't think you can deal with it. I just uh you just need to be free from this. But the balance is, you know, the balancing act, and it's really, really hard. The first run is the hardest position, I think, in the army to do. And the reason is is because when you're uh when you're a platoon serant, you know, you got a first art that's like still just like in the trench with you, and he can kind of deal with that stuff, and he has some different resources and everything else, but you also have squad leaders, you know, and you have people that you can directly kind of have do different things, okay. But when you're a first art, everybody wants access to your guys, everybody wants access to your information for those guys, okay? But you have no one to do it but you. Sure, you got a XO, but he's doing a lot of different things. You got a company commander that you're trying to unburden so he can run the company and command the company and plan the strategies and the future for the company. The best you're gonna have is a training room NCO. Everything else falls on your shoulders, all that stuff, and it sucks because when you're a first arm man, you go home. Like there's a lot of positions where I definitely think, but first arm was definitely the worst. You when you go home and you you you you you take off the uniform and you go to bed for the night, you know you've ignored about a hundred things. You've got done about a hundred things you need to do. Like, they're not things that like are nice to do, they're things that you should have done yesterday and you just didn't get to them. And you know, and it just because you don't have a lot of people you can task organize, and that's kind of the way it was for like me as a first far serent. But then a pivotal point for me was the realization that. Okay. Part of my job is, and this ties into this, is I also at the same time, in the right way without overdoing it, I also have to groom these platoon serents to be first sergeant some days. So some of these tasks that I think I need to take on, I don't necessarily need to offload them on them, but I need to train them and professionally develop them to simplify these so that I'm not having to do, you know, I need a manifest. Let's just say, okay, I need a manifest for an upcoming jump, right? Well, each one of the first or each one of the platoon sergeants sends it to me in three different ways. One sends it to me email, okay. One sends it to me on an Excel format because he's super organized, okay? And the third one texts it to me, okay, and only one of them sends me the Social Security numbers, okay. Well, I gotta take all that or have my training room take it or whatever, and I gotta formate it into one format so that I can send it up to battalion. Well, instead, I'm just gonna put it on a task tracker, and I've got everybody's names on there, and I'm just gonna tell the platoon sergeants, hey, delete anybody that's not jumping, and then that'll be the end of the mana, you know, and just it's no more work for them. It's divided by by platoon anyway, but it's in one simplified format for me, and now I don't have to go and do this all attriculation of information. And that might be a poor example, but I highlight that because I remember Del, Del Andrew who became a ranger first sergeant later, and him and I were talking about this. He's like, a lot of the things that you did as far as systems and processes, I used as a first sergeant. He's like, I didn't do it at first, and he's like, and I was getting super frustrated because I was having to format things and do all this different kind of stuff. I was getting all this different stuff different ways, and he's like, and I remembered you did this, so I just did it too, and I was like, I was blown away at how much time it saved me.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, um, I think time is our most important attribute, man. So I feel like even in my personal life, I'm always trying to figure out how I can save more time, be more efficient. I mean, you went from a ranger first sergeant, you know, leading a squadron as a command sergeant major in a cav unit, 850 people. You know, how was leading in the cavalry unit different than leading rangers?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's two different factors, you know, as far as lead at that level. One, it was no longer in a ranger unit. So it was very different. Very different. That's probably a whole separate podcast. Oh, it definitely is. And then two is is as a sergeant major, it's now about indirect leadership. Even as a first sergeant, you have direct leadership. Like you're influencing, you're still enough involved that the things that are happening, the trainings that's happening, you're still in charge of it. Like you're still there, you're still doing it. You know, I'm still doing squad live fires, I'm still doing platoon live fires, you know. Anything that's uh, you know, above the team level, I'm gonna be there for. Okay. But as a platoon or as a sergeant major now, as a battalion sergeant major, you're not involved in most things. The the most, you know, other than you know, yeah, sure, you're gonna go out and you're gonna check on training and do battlefield circulation. But outside of platoon live fires, you're not actually there and you're not actually running the training, except for that. Everything else is just happening without you. And my point is, is you've got to stray or you got to lead an organization indirectly through the policies, the culture that you build, and the influence that you have, because those things are gonna happen with or without you, or they're not gonna happen, and they're gonna happen to a certain standard, and it might not be the standard you want. So you've got to learn to influence that and guide that indirectly. Plus, especially me as a battalion sergeant major, all my first series were older than me. They've been in the army longer than I had. So that was always an interesting kind of thing. Like, well, gentlemen, I understand, and yes, you've been in the army 20.
SPEAKER_02This is how we've always done it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you've been in the army 23 years, and I know I've only been in the army 17 years, but this is what I think, you know. And you know, it's a it's a balancing act, it's it was difficult, but it was also about a lot of respect, you know. And I would I would tell them, like, hey, I you know, you know something I don't know, so teach me. Okay, and I'm fine with that, but this is something that I do know better than you.
SPEAKER_03In 18 months, you implemented a massive change in management. Kind of walk us through the in-processing platoon you created and why did that matter? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So when I took over 2nd Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Regiment, it was very apparent, like right off the beginning, and literally officers and NCOs told me this. We don't trust our non-commissioned officer corps. And the really, really sad part is that the guy that I took over for, he told me that too. So I take over for the SAR Major. He's a senior non-commissioned officer for this squadron, and he tells me, uh, yeah, the officers don't trust the NCO Corps. Well, I can't just fix that one, you know, at one level. I can't just be a really good SAR major like and fix that. Like I've got to build trust from the bottom up. And just, you know, you brought up the Emperor saying platoon. I just had to take a multi-directional leadership approach, meaning I was down doing team leader things with team leaders, squad leaders, platoon serents, first sergeants, and everybody. Plus, I also participated in things that the platoon leaders were doing and mentorship session and development sessions for the company commander. I had to be everywhere that I could possibly be as many times as I could possibly be there. And the best way to do that was, you know, the in-processing platoon because I started with the in-processing platoon. I had PT with them, the in-processing platoon basically for the first two weeks, because there's a lot of things when you PCS overseas that you have to do. Okay. And what was happening, and I was learning this, is dudes were showing up and they were still living in hotels, and the the squadron or the regiment was sending them on exercises. Their family's still in the hotel, they don't even have household goods. Their vehicle's not even registered on post yet. Their wife is 20 years old, never lived out the side of the United States, and her husband is over in Lithuania doing a training exercise for the next month. She has no idea who to talk to, who to ask, or nothing. So basically, they were locked down. They could not do anything except for the in-processing platoon axe. And we'd make special accommodations, like, you know, because some guys would come over and they have delay in delivery of household goods or whatever it was, but they were untouched. But I would go do PT with them every morning. And because they had to catch the bus and the in-processing timeline, it started at 4:30. So I'd go do that PT with them three days a week. And the PT sessions, I would never like make them crazy or anything. There would be like real short, high-intensity things because I always wanted to leave time at the end to basically talk to them. And what I was doing was a couple different things. One, I was telling them that I was available. If they needed anything, they were running into struggles, communicate with me. I was their direct point of contact outside of the in-processing platoon serent. If they have struggles and we need to make special accommodations for folks, and two, I was speaking the culture into reality. I was telling them what the culture of the squadron was. And I'm just gonna be honest with you, I'd lie my ass off. It was not the culture of the squadron. It was not at all. But I was telling them that's what it was because it's what I wanted it to be. I mean, that's what it needed to be. And also, I mean, and then I would immediately leave that and I would pick a platoon, I would pick a squad, I and I would do PT with that squad that morning, and then you know, I would do the same thing. Squad leader would leave PT and I would do the same thing. I would find out what their issues are, what the barriers were, what the struggles were, and I was speaking about culture and I was speaking about leadership empowerment and building trust as an NCO. And I was just repeating myself multiple times a day, and then twice a week. So you speaked the culture that you wanted into existence, exactly. And then twice a week we started a combatives program, and you know, that was after hours, you know. I think Tuesdays and Thursdays we called it cougar fight night, and it started off real small, you know, not very many dudes showed up, but it was awesome because they just see their SAR major, man. We're just rolling, you know. And I will tell you that it like I never made combatives about anything other than combatives, except for, you know, hey, like we need to be able to fight. It doesn't matter who you are, like our job's to fight, you know, because I didn't want to murder that with anything else. Fighting's about fighting. Okay, let's just keep it at that. And it grew because dudes were like, man, well, you know, and I had I had uh this master uh some first class hammer who was certified level three certified. So we started certifying guys too, you know. We started putting them through a curriculum, and now we're getting them combative certified, level one and level two. I think I sent him the master, so then he could end up certifying level threes, I think, as well. That might have happened like towards the tail end. I don't remember if I'm wrong about that. I apologize, but it also grew and it grew and more people started showing up and they got a chance, you know, to roll with the SAR major and they love that, you know, and everything else, you know, P.L. Bubba book studies, you know, book clubs and everything else, platoon start, uh, university, you know, platoon start and PT. I just do PT with just some platoon serents once a month, you know, and I'm speaking culture, I'm talking about culture, I'm talking about leadership principles, and I'll tell you, man, really what I honestly did is I ran myself fucking ragged. I was doing so much PT, I was so busy, I was down to like 190 pounds, okay? And like I was I was beat, but it worked.
SPEAKER_03Sounds like it. Training NATO partners, what's one thing Americans do that that our partners don't understand, and vice versa?
SPEAKER_01Non-commissioned officers. They don't understand how the n uh the in the United States Army are not non-commissioned officers the reason we can do the things that we can do. There is so many times that I would sit in these major meetings and with NATO partners, talk about strategy, talking about tactics, talking about implementation and utilization of resources and logistics and you know, all this different kind of stuff and just tactical movements at the strategic level. And I I I mean I just multiple times I would just, you know, have these general officers, you know, and and you know, very high level, you know, members of these, you know, NATO countries just looking at me and then like you know, talking to their aides or talking to others. And you know, I just I don't care, you know, I'm just kind of that guy. I'd be like, uh, you know, what's what's going on? And they're like, what rank are you? And I'd be like, I'm a sergeant major. And they would be like, like an NCO? I'd be like, yeah. And they, you know, they would just always be like, we our NCOs don't do that. And I'm like, well, that sounds like a you problem. Maybe we should fix that, you know, like non-commissioned officers are important. So just, you know, the NATO partners, they just don't understand. And there's many that are trying, but they just don't they don't understand that it it's about a culture and it takes a long time to build. Our our NCO story is the United States of America starts in the Revolutionary War. And there's really only a couple other countries in the world that have it right as well, and that's Chile. They're they're actually NCO corps order than ours, and Australia is pretty good about it. But that's about it. The rest the rest of the world does not have the NCO core that we have, that it's really truly in a legitimate part of their organization, and it's looked at for a lot of continuity and a lot of tactical prowess. And what a lot of people don't understand about the NC are the you know the NATO partners is is that it's not just because they do things differently doesn't always necessarily mean it's bad, it's just different, and there's a lot of things you can learn. You know, we were talking about Finland and how they do the conscription army, it's actually brilliant.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think kind of wrapping up some of the leadership stuff. You know, there's a couple things I want to talk about, leading up, leading down, and then peer-to-peer. Leading up, you know, when do you push back on the commander's decision or your boss's decision if you're in the civilian world?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And how do you do it? You know, I think I think I probably have a little bit of a different viewpoint than maybe a lot of people do, is I've had to kind of make a decision about what I'm willing to follow my my sword for. And what I've really kind of just equated it down to is okay, I disagree with this thing that this person wants to do. And I have to ask myself, how detrimental is it to the organization? If it's truly, truly going to be detrimental, like it's gonna be earth-shattering and it's gonna change the nature of the organization, then I absolutely need to sit down and have a man-to-man conversation. But if it's not, then I just need to shape it in a way and maneuver it in a way that I make sure we learn a lesson from it. And sometimes it might just have to be that individual that has to learn a lesson. Just because you're a senior leader and maybe even higher than me, doesn't mean you don't have lessons to learn. And if I could facilitate that, then congratulations.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. When it comes to leading down, you said leaders are priority masters. What's your framework for determining priorities?
SPEAKER_01Ooh, what's my my framework? I mean, you know, what's you know, I think it's you know the Eisenhower model, you know, what's urgent, what's a priority? And then I know we've been talking a lot today. Damn, I forgot the other two. But basically what it really, really boils down to is, you know, what if we don't do this right now um is going to be detrimental to the organization and is going to actually have uh secondary and tertiary effects. And what I've usually usually find is most things are not urgent. They're they're important, they're nice to do's, um, but most things are. And then also, I think another thing, you know, about the priority matrix is is you know, what especially in the civilian world, what hinders a lot of people is decisions. It's not that it's actually a priority, it's just that somewhere along the way somebody did not or skirted away from making a decision about something. I mean, the amount of times like the people be, you know, like emergency meetings would be called and everything else, you know, and I uh once I kind of gain to get you know a relevance of the situation or understanding of the situation, I'm like, wait, this this actually started right here, and we could have just made that decision, and none of this would be a conversation. So, what's the right decision at this point of impact? Well, it's this, okay, then let's ignore the rest of this.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's a that's a really great point. You know, one of the things I heard you say too is make sure the main thing is the main thing. How do you identify what the main thing actually is when you have a hundred things screening for your attention? Does that kind of go back to your point that you just made, like kind of determining me what the priority is, what's on fire? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I yeah, I I think I think it's sometimes just you know about like 50-meter targets, you know. You know, and what I'll usually jokingly say is, you know, when I like look through things, you know, and people bring me like all these things, you know, and I'm just kind of helping them sort through it. And um, you know, I'll just you know, I'll say, okay, these like five things that you're talking about, these are not our today's problems, those are future us's problems, and those guys are assholes, so they can deal with it. Okay, let's talk about these things. And, you know, more kind of to give like a concrete answer when you have, you know, keeping the main thing, the main thing. Well, it goes to organizational culture. What are we trying to accomplish? You know, I had a commander that told me this one time, you know, and you've seen it, you've been in the military, you've been in a lot of agencies, you know, commanders all have their top priority list. I'm I personally, personally, and this is the advice I give to all commanders, it should never be more than four. Yeah, but our name's the Spartans. I don't care then. Just call us the SPARS, okay? If you want to make your priority list based off of our unit name, then you better figure something else out or shorten the damn name. Like, I don't care, but it can't be more than four. And I had a commander that did this, okay? And I apologize, but I can't remember it off the top of my head. But the guy's name's Thomas Hove. He had four priorities area. And I remember the first time he was kind of going around the organization, you know, he was talking about his priorities, and I was kind of like, yeah, okay, but we all know how this works. Like, you're gonna say these are priorities, but we're gonna end up doing five through 100. And, you know, as I got to know him, and then I ended up, you know, getting promoted and I became the regimental sergeant major with him as the regimental commander, you know, I realized he's like, dude, those priorities aren't for my organization. He's like, Yeah, I go around and I talk to him, but he's not about the organization. I tell the organization so they hold me accountable to him. And I'm like, whoa, tell me more. He's like, if I find myself getting swamped with something, or the organization is getting swamped with something, I'll look at those four priorities. And if it's not aligned with those four priorities or it's not bucketed in those four priorities, then we don't do it anymore. I'm like, and that's where I really developed this focus framework for NCOs. And you know, I've wrote some stuff about it, and if anybody's interested, I can send it to them. But you gotta focus on three things as a leader, okay? Just pick three things, and there's no three things, okay, by the way. There, you you gotta decide those three things, okay? And just pick three things when you are about to go into an organization as a leader that you're gonna focus on, okay, and constantly realign yourself with those three things. And it's not that you're not gonna have four through 100, because you absolutely will, okay. But if you see yourself doing four through 100, fix it real quick. If there's not a long-term fix, okay, then you know, bench it, but you got to come back to those three things. And you're always coming back to those three things. And why it really, really matters is that not only matters in the priority conversation, so that you stay aligned and you stay true to your word about the three things that you're telling everybody else is a priority and yourself, but it also allows you to have quantify quantifiable experience to mentor others later. Okay. As a serent major, if I don't know what I accomplished as a first art, okay. When my first year as a first art man, if you would have sat me down and you said, Mike, what'd you do this year? I'd be like, I did a lot of stuff. Like, well, yeah, okay, good. Well, what did you do? Well, I did a lot of stuff. I already told you. Like, no, tell me what you did. And it well, I would have struggled to actually tell you what I did. I know I did a lot of stuff. I wasn't lazy, I wasn't being busy. But you know, I kind of realized this and I didn't have this framework yet, but I was my second year going into first sermon after I had my annual review. I'm like, I'm gonna pick some things that I really want to focus on for this company that I want to change in this company. And one of those things was culture, one of those things was leader empowerment, you know, stuff like this, you know. But I didn't have it quite built out. But in the time between being a first sergeant and a SAR major, and then assessing, you know, second cavalry or second squadron, I'm like, I'm gonna go in with three things. And these are the three things I'm gonna focus on. So that way, I want when I am mentoring first sergeants or I'm mentoring future SAR majors, and they're coming to me and they're saying this exact thing. How do I focus? What do I focus on? I could say, this is what I did when I was a first serent. You could take my three, I don't recommend it. Okay, make your own three, and it'll change, understand it'll change. I changed it multiple times, you know, after like six months, I'd be like, ah shit, that one's not as important as I thought it was now that I understand the organization better. But it gave me a tangible thing I could give them so they could just focus on those three things. That way, on the back end of it, not only could I say to myself, okay, I came in to do these three things. Did I accomplish those three things? Yes, I did. Then I accomplished my job. And I can I could be satisfied with that fact. But then as I move to the next level, now I can look back and I can mentor others based off those three things.
SPEAKER_03That's a great idea, and that's something I've never considered.
SPEAKER_01It works in business too. Yeah, I'm not I'm going to tell you as an entrepreneur, and that'd work as well. But I'll tell you when I figure it out. But I'm trying, I'm trying.
SPEAKER_03You know, you know, last question for leading down. You we talked about empathy earlier. What's the balance between empathy and accountability? When does empathy become enabling? I mean, because that's a that's a big thing, right? Like you want to have empathy. We talked about it. I think it's important, but again, man, we still, especially in the military, but even in regular business, man, I mean, you still gotta hold people accountable.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I think, you know, I kind of I talked about it a little bit earlier. Like I was empathetic to dudes, but at the same time, I still was gonna hold them accountable. You know, like, okay, you know, I had a start in first class that, you know, had a had a major, you know, a major issue that resulted in, you know, having to move his family back to the United States, you know, being empathetic and everything else, you know, what I understand is he's you know, he had all these different kinds of factors, you know, really bad, you know, company commander and PL, and he just reached a breaking point and pretty much, you know, he just had a breakdown. Okay. But at the end of the day, it resulted in a domestic domestic violence charge. So while I was empathetic and I get him help and I even sent him off for treatment, you know, we did all these different kinds of things. At the end of the day, when you have a domestic violence charge in the military, I mean, there's laws against this stuff. I had chapter, I had to put him in for a chapter from the army. So while I helped him, I also have an obligation to the military. So just because you're empathetic to people, and it doesn't matter, you know, the military framework definitely makes things a lot, you know, more black and white, that's for sure. There's not a lot of gray area, you know, because there's rules and regulations. But even in the civilian world, like man, I could be empathetic, you know, to my daughter, for instance, you know. I being a fucking teenager is stressful, man. It's hard being, especially, you know, nowadays, you know, and there's not a lot of things you can get away with because everything's on the internet, you know, and everything can be out there for everybody for always, you know. But at the end of the day, you know, while I could be empathetic towards that, and I could tell her, you know, I can be understanding, I'd be there for her, I can comfort her, you know, I could give her advice and everything else. I'm gonna say, well, at the end of the day, you still lied to me. So there's gonna be repercussions from that. You're grounded, you know, phone, whatever it might be, you know. So there's you it can be enabling, but you can't let it perpetuate behavior, you know, and let it give people I didn't, I I don't give people passes. Um, I'm still gonna hold you accountable. I'm gonna get you the help and I'm gonna help you, and I'm gonna be there for you. But I I'm absolutely going to hold you accountable. That behavior is not going to continue. Whatever we're talking about.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's good. And then the last one's leading peer-to-peer, which can be, man, yeah, you know, even in business. Like, although we're talking about some of these conversations in the in the context and the framework of a military, it still works in civilian leadership. As a command star major, among other command serve majors, how did you, you know, lead without authority, right? Like if you're if you've got a peer and you guys are the same rank, you know, I mean, how does that what was that like?
SPEAKER_01I think, you know, when I when I talk to peer-to-peer and I, you know, see, you know, see things or you know, I see a peer struggling with something, you know, I just, you know, simply ask him, hey, do you want you want some help? Like, you want some feedback, man? Well, I'm not saying I got all the answers, but I've been through something like that. Here's, you know, and if you're open to feedback, I'll I'll give it to you. If you're not, you know, then that's okay too. But, you know, I care about you and you've helped me a lot. You know, and my peers helped me a lot, especially when I made the transition from the special operations community to the regular army. There was things in the regular I didn't even know existed. I'll give you an example, you know, and you m you you know, you know, about this, you know, reserves and stuff, but I didn't know promotion points were a thing. Well, in Ranger Regiment, when you're 11 Bravo, you get your Ranger tab and you get your IBA, you max promotion points. You don't no one talks to you about promotion, you're maxed out promotion points. You can't, you're you're going to reach the promotion points you need for E5 and E6. You're fine, right? So it was never a relevant conversation. And I remember the very first board I was sitting in with you know my first arms, you know, promotion board, you know, promotion board to promote you guys to E4, E5. And one of my first arms says, well, yeah, we'll we'll select promotion, but that won't get them over the top for promotion points. I'm like promotion points, like homo. And you know, I didn't want to sound stupid, you know, but you know, later on I asked some folks and they're like, Yeah, there's like this thing called promotion points. And just because you were selected by you know a centralized board, you know, you know, the start majors and the first arts doesn't mean that you're gonna make the promotion points. You need to do more college, class, you know, corresponding courses or anything else, so that you can get the promotion points to actually get promoted. I had no idea. So my point being is that you know, peer-to-peer, hey, you've helped me, man, and I got some feedback for you, you know. And in the civilian world, you know, I do, you know, I do that all the time, like, you know, with different individuals, you know, CFOs, CMOs, CEOs, you know, that are working in different capacities, the automotive world and everything else. I'm like, hey, I have no idea what you guys are talking about. You're the expert here, but I do know a thing about or a few things about organizations. So if you're open to feedback, I'd love to give you, you know, some some thoughts and you know how I would handle this situation.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and just listening to you talk to, I think that's a good point to make too. It's it's all in the delivery, dude. I don't care who you're talking to or what you're talking about, whether it's your wife or your coworker or your boss. I I think you know, I think how you deliver it's super important. What's the difference between competition and collaboration at the senior level?
SPEAKER_01I see. I never ever viewed myself in competition at the senior level. I always just thought it was about collaboration. I say that, but then I was always always top-blocked amongst all my peers. So I probably, I guess, was just kind of kind of void of the conversation. But I think competition is healthy, but it should never ever be detrimental, meaning that we're competing on such a factor that I'm gonna purposely sabotage you so that I I or I say something about you or I talk about you so that it falls you out of favor, you know, so that now I'm seen in a higher position than you. I think that's unhealthy competition. Competing and saying, hey, how many guys did you send to Ranger School this quarter? I sent six, you know, that kind of stuff, and jokingly doing that kind of stuff. But collaboration, like all of us is gonna, all of us working together is gonna make all of us better, you know. And I always tried to, you know, do that and live by that. And it's probably part of the reason I decided to, you know, not to go to the nominative pool is I think a lot of people were in competition with another, one another in negative ways and detrimental ways. They were trying to undercut each other or make each other look bad so that they could gain favor so that they were more inclined to get that next promotion. And I never ever thought that way. I I just never thought that way, man. If I'm gonna get selected, it's gonna be because of the results that I produce. Yeah, that's a that's a great point.
SPEAKER_03Anything else on peer-to-peer leadership you think is important? I don't think so. No, I think we covered it. That was a good question, man. We've uh we've doped through a lot of stuff. One of the things I wanted to cover, I don't know if we're gonna be able to do it in length because we've been going for a while, but I I want to talk about your transition. I know at some point, you know, you made the the decision to transition out of the military. You had some medical stuff going on, some you know, a bunch of different things on the in the career path. What was what was it like finally coming to the realization like, hey man, I need to move on to the next thing?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I'll I'll I'll try to actually wrap it up like in all this stuff and it because it all weaves together very quickly, and I can also throw in like the mistake I made. Yeah, absolutely, dude. So one, you know, I you know, I I we highlighted already, I had a labor real tear, okay? And literally I was doing the new army ACFT, okay? And I'd been trying to retire for a while, and the army was basically denying my retirement. So I'd made the decision that it was time for me to move on. But I was doing one of the ACFTs and, you know, just being a knucklehead, I've always been good at like picking stuff up and putting it back down, you know. So I'm good at deadlifts, right? And uh, but with my labriel, I had to be very careful about you know my warm-ups and everything else when I deadlift. But it, you know, I was just like, you know, I don't remember. I was just getting back from a trip. So I went out there and one of my one of my squadrons was running, you know, the ACFT and I went over the dev lift bar and I saw, oh, okay, you know, 225, you know, they had them all set up, you know, going all the way. I think I think though to max, you got to do 305 or something like that. And so on the trap bar. So it's not very heavy, right? So I did like a couple on the 225, no issues. And then, you know, just kind of like nonchalantly, you know, kind of talking with the grader and stuff like that, you know, and I think you gotta lift it three times. Maybe you gotta lift it five, I don't remember. And I just I didn't align my hips right, okay. And with that labriel, I always had to be very deliberate about my shoulder, you know, my my feet positioning with my hips and everything else, and then also be very, very rigid and methodical about how I did that stuff under load, okay. Even road marching, I had to be very deliberate about it, and I just was not being paying attention. And I got to the third one, and then my just tip gave out and I dropped the bar. And that's you know, considered a no rep and everything else. You let go of the bar, you can do it again. And I'm like, nah, I'm good. I'm just gonna, you know, take the take the whatever it was, you know, 245 or whatever it was. Because I knew I was like, ooh, that didn't feel good, you know. So I did the rest of the ACFT. It was it was pretty struggle, but I didn't really think much of it. Um I just thought maybe I kind of tweaked it, and then a couple days later it was super, super sore. Make a very long story short, I tore the rest of my lab reel on my hip. And I had to just be honest with myself. Like, even up to that point, like, you know, sitting in vehicles or doing different kinds of things, like I was not able to even even like sitting here now for this long, sitting in this podcast, like my hips actually like tweaking. Maybe it's because we're talking about it. Um, maybe it's like highlighting it. But uh, like, so you know, what am I gonna be expected to do, you know, as a as a as a soldier in the United States Army? Well, I'm gonna have to move, you know, long distance, I'm gonna have to be able to sit in vehicles, especially in the modern age. I just don't think I can do that. I mean, it was pretty bad, you know, it hurt really, really bad. And you know, so and just with a conjunction of a lot of things, I was like, man, I think I think I really need to go the med board route. And so I medboard out of the army. Okay. And uh I I I appreciate that because I got out on my terms. It was a decision. I knew I wanted to get out. I still felt like I was getting out of my terms, and then to trans, you know, pivot to the transition. I knew that I wanted, if I was gonna get out of the military, I was gonna decide to take off the uniform, I was gonna go in a different direction. I didn't want to continue to do in some capacity anything with the Department of Defense. And that led me down the chief of staff role in the private sector, and that led to the job that you know I currently have, even though that's morphed a little bit. But I just wanted to do something different because I wanted to challenge if I'm gonna be a civilian now, I want to see what else I'm capable of. I want to see what else I can do. Can I translate my leadership principles that I've learned in the military and have gotten good at? I feel okay, I feel like I've I did well in the military. Can I translate those into a civilian world and be value added to a civilian organization? And I was given an amazing opportunity, and I'm thankful for that. And I was able to build, help build an organization that's just doing amazing things, and I'm so thankful for that. I'm thankful for Logan Leslie as well. He's he's a he's an awesome dude, and he's given me a tons of tons of autonomy to do a lot of the things I do, and a lot of the guys that I work with, very understanding, you know, of of what we're trying to do and how we're trying to accomplish it. The mistake I made was not taking a break. So I gave up the the colors, you know, which is the battle flag, you know, for the brigade. And each each level of command, starting at company level, has them. It goes all the way up to the chief of staff of the army. They all had these battle flags, you know. We call them guide arms, okay? Or colors, one of the two, depending on the level. When I gave those, it was it was January 7th of 2023. Okay. I started my new job on March 12th. Okay. Now there was no break in there though, because we sold a house, we moved into a new house, my wife started a new job, my daughter started a new, well, moved in with back in with us, started a new school. My son uh left college, moved back in with us. We got a dog somewhere in there, too. And we did like all these things. There was no break, no break. I didn't take any vacation or nothing. And I immediately started that job. If I had to do it over again, I would have done all that stuff and I would have taken at least 60 to 90 days of some kind of vacation, some kind of reset before I started. Because I mean, I'm not gonna lie to you, that new job I started, man. It was no different than being a SR major, man. I was, especially that first 18 months before we'd really kind of built out the team that we have now. I I had no break, and it was it was a huge mistake. It was a very big mistake. So my advice would be twofold. One, don't jump into the next thing right away, even if you got it identified, don't do it. Okay. Take a break, purposely take a break. Make a financial, make yourself financially able to do it first, okay? But take some kind of break. Go do something, take a vacation, go do a retreat of some kind, you know. I should have uh there was always this, there's this Buddhist retreat in Nova Scotia that I've always wanted to do. I should have gone into that. It was like a month long. You know, do that. And two, just ask yourself, like, if you're gonna transition, you're gonna take in the uniform, what capacity could you operate in? And are you willing to step outside your comfort zone?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. That's uh that's extremely powerful. I you know, it's funny and when we were prepping, it wasn't until very recently I realized that you were still working. I mean, I I I think I found you through Legend of the 75th podcast. We know some some mutual people, and that's kind of how I found you. And you know, you you were you know obviously putting out those podcasts, and I remember, you know, as a podcaster when I found out that you were working full-time and at a as you know operations for a multi-million dollar company, I was like, my god, bro, when do you sleep? But that kind of brings us, you know, to you you transitioned out of the military, but you know, before you transitioned out, you actually started podcasting while you were still active duty. Yeah, we didn't get to really dive into to COVID, but you know, you you you had Kill Tank Radio, which was kind of your second cavalry regiment, uh, a podcast that you did kind of during COVID. Then you were also a part of Always in Pursuit podcast, which you hosted that as well. And then you started Legends of the 75th, which is kind of how I heard about you, which is you know, talking about obviously Legends of the 75th and you know some of the great things and really documenting that history, but you've also you know dove into the film room, uh the film realm with multiple projects. You have the Operation Cabanaton? Cabanaton, yeah. Oh yeah, Operation Cabanaton, which is something that you've been working on for a while with the Three Rangers Foundation. Can you tell us a little bit kind of about you know that that film if you want to talk about it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I mean Legend of the 75th, you know, it's a deviation off of you know, always in pursuit. Every time I'd have a ranger on, yeah, I get inundated with like other rangers that should have on. And it was the genesis behind, you know, Legend of the 75th. Um, you know, we've done 90 plus episodes now. And you know, we've had some just amazing people on. And you know, at the end of the day, we are talking about people specifically that served in the 75th, but at the end of the day, it's a leadership lessons learned podcast. That's just who I am by nature. That's what I'm fascinated by. And I just, you know, want to take this information and this experiences that exist in these individuals' uh minds, one to tell their stories, but two, also take their leadership lessons, and you know, whoever wants them, they're there.
SPEAKER_03You know, yeah, you've had some powerhouse interviews on that. I've I haven't even been able to listen to that many of them, but I mean, just perusing some of the names, they're big powerhouses in the community.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I appreciate it. You know, we've we've been very fortunate. And, you know, last year, 2024, we got approached about the 80th anniversary for object uh Operation Kibonaton, which was Six Ranger Battalions, you know, POW rescue, daring rescue in the Philippines, you know, to rescue 502 prisoners of war. Uh, we made the decision not only to take 22 rangers going on, that was all headed up by Dan Knight, but we also decided to take over uh individuals to you know capture the story and you know, a film, you know, a film capacity. You know, we're we're going through some trials and tribulations, you know, through that right now, and we're we're sorting it all out. I'm not worried about it in the in the slightest. You know, there's a ton of lessons learned. You know, you don't call on amateurs to do professional jobs. That's that's the biggest lessons learned, you know, that'll bite you in the ass every single time. You know, and you also always have to, you know, understand that some people's motives that they display on, you know, on the forefront is not actually their motives. You know, when you're when you're getting integrated into this community, you gotta buy into the community, you gotta understand that it's not about you, it's about the team. You know, so there's some lessons learned, but we've had the fortune through this whole process that I've gotten aligned with some great individuals. So we did a collaboration project with Vet TV, which is another great organization capturing veteran stories, doing all kinds of different veteran stuff. They do so many awesome things. You know, the Masquerade is kind of a comedy streaming service, but there's a lot more there, and I encourage people to go check it out. Got to do some military advising work for them for one of their TV series called Night Vision, which is really cool. It's kind of like a horror film. It actually might be a good film to you know, a TV series to watch around the Halloween time frame. Uh, is really cool, it's a lot of fun. And then also a range, you know. So we did a documentary together about the best ranger competition. It's called Rangers Leading the Way. Uh, executive producer for that. It's also available on our platform as well. And it just talks about the it's about the best ranger competition, but it's also about the ranger mentality and the mindset and the perseverance and the resiliency of those individuals that not only just drives the best ranger competition, but also the ranger community. Also working with uh Ranger Legacy Foundation and a couple other organizations and uh Creative Creatures uh Media Company and a few other companies to we're working on another project about the Ranger Hall of Fame, uh, which the Ranger Hall of Fame just highlights just absolute legends of this community that have just done amazing things. And we got a couple different projects that'll spin off that. So we got some other stuff in the works, you know, about other battles that have happened across the, you know, across the ages that Rangers were involved in. But you know, those are the the three major ones right now. But we are, you know, by the pot time this podcast episode releases, we're we're gonna hit pause for a little bit on Legends of the 75th. And all that I mean by pause is, you know, we we kind of boxed ourselves in a little bit with legends, you know, there's this belief that you know it's only it can only be listened to by Rangers, but I really, really truly believe anybody can listen to it and anybody can benefit it. Also, you know, it is a pay-to-listen podcast, which you know hamstrings us a little bit, but people now understand why we did that in the beginning. We did that in the beginning, one to fund it because I knew how much this stuff costs when you talk about high production. And two, when I first started it, you know, you look at our first season of Legends of the 75th, these were people that have never been interviewed, they'd never ever been on a podcast before. So they were very hesitant. And a lot of the ways that I got people to agree to do that stuff is because this you gotta you always gotta go back in time, you know. This is 2022 time frame. You know, a lot of people weren't doing this kind of stuff, you know, podcasting in this kind of capacity. Uh, the paywall was kind of a barrier. Like if you wanted to listen to the stuff, you had to pay listen to it. So, anyway, my point is that we're just gonna hit pause for a little bit. Um, we're gonna restructure some things as a as a business from a business, but then also I need to do a better job of setting our priorities. Like, what are we really doing, and what are we really focusing on? And we're gonna come back in 2026, probably in some different ways. And I've already got some stuff cooking, and it's gonna blow some people's minds. I bet you do, brother.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you're the senior vice president at Mainstream Auto, you got the legends of the 75th, not only the podcast, but all the media work you're doing. You got a family, four kids, you're staying connected to the ranger community. I mean, how do you balance all these different things?
SPEAKER_01I don't, yeah, I don't. I mean, I would love to, you know, and I probably conveyed that I got my shit together, you know, through this whole interview. That's going on like 10 hours, but um no, I'm just kidding. It hasn't been quite that long, but man, I I don't. I and that's part of this pause, this tactical pause, I'll call it, you know, that we're doing with Legends is I need to recalibrate some things because like we already talked about and I talked about my mistake I made in 2023. I jumped straight into a new role. I jumped straight into, you know, continuing with Legends. Legends was really kind of starting to gain its traction about that time frame as well, you know, and I have not stopped to pause to reprioritize some things. So I need to, I need to pause, not just, you know, as a husband, as a father, but also as a business leader and a leader as well. I need to kind of pause, reflect on some things, and I already got some ideas of how I might do this, but I need to I need to realign and and reprioritize things so that I can do exactly what I could practice what I preach. I'm not showing up as the best version of myself in a lot of capacities, and I need to readjust that.
SPEAKER_03That's a great man. I mean, it's I think it's good to have reflection. I mean, one thing I love about you is you're just honest and raw. I mean, you don't try to paint some picture of something you're not, and I think it's important, man. Sometimes we overload ourselves. You know, we have this thing in society where we, if you're not the busiest ever, then you're not doing something in the card. You're not in the grind. Yeah, man. It's like we hey, how are you? Oh, dude, I'm super busy, man. And some people are busy like a medallion. So it's it's good to hear people say things like, hey, I'm gonna take a break and and refocus and and you know, maybe even focus on my family or or whatever, man. It's it's it's refreshing to hear that, especially somebody that has not only accomplished what you've accomplished, but you're still accomplishing a lot, and you still have you know a lot of drive and a lot of life left in you. So that's that's kind of cool to hear. Uh as we kind of turn this thing to a close, you know, looking back at the 12-year-old kid in Montana wearing hand-me-downs, working at the grocery store, dreaming of being an airborne ranger, what would you tell him?
SPEAKER_01Man, I've been kind of dreading this question because no one's ever asked me this question. And I'm not dreading it in a bad way, but dreading it in a way that I like I want it to I want it to mean something because there's probably somebody out there that, you know, has parallels in their life and they're thinking about this. Everything you've been through and everything you're going to do is worth it. Take it a day at a time, a bite at a time, and just keep on moving forward.
SPEAKER_03If you could go back and change one decision you made in your military career, what would it be?
SPEAKER_01And there is no right or wrong answer. I wouldn't have listened and I wouldn't have let people influence me to make a decision that I was I knew was the wrong decision that resulted in PFC Lawrence getting shot through the Achilles heel. That is one thing that will always I knew, and we didn't tell the story, but it's one mission that will always stay with me. There's a lot of missions that have stayed with me, but there's one that I knew we should do an offset because of the intel and all this different kind of stuff, and I let people talk me into landing on the X, landing right on the building, and as soon as we landed on the building, we became under barricaded shooter, PKM shooters in this building, and Lawrence got shot through the Achilles tenant. He went off and he did very well in a different capacity within the army as a warrant officer, and he lived an awesome life. But I will always hang on to that because I knew that was the wrong decision. I let I went against my own instincts. That's powerful. If you could relive one day of your military career, what day would it be? I Charlie Company 275, my change of responsibility day for a lot of different reasons. One Charlie Company will always stay with me, and I'm pro I'm so proud of what we did, and I'd love to go back and relive that because it was such an awesome experience. Because it was just I went through so many things, not only personally, but also that that ceremony itself. My wife was standing there next to me. Me when I took responsibility. She wasn't literally, but she was figuratively because I was not going to take Charlie Company because of all the things that I already talked about. But she agreed to help me take on the burden so that I could do what I loved. And then, second, the other thing was, is I remember my son Hayden's face, and it was the first time he'd heard in formation 800 Rangers say the Ranger Creed. And I could see in his face, and I he leaned over to his mom and I knew what he said. He said to his mom, I see I knew what he said because he he leaned over and he said it to his mom, and his mom instantly went like this. He said, I don't want to be anywhere, right?
SPEAKER_03Josh Wheeler's legacy. If Josh were sitting here right now, what would he say about your post-military life?
SPEAKER_01I think he would say he's proud of me, man. I think I think he would say that you're smarter than you think you are. You're better than you think you are. And your life went the way it was supposed to go. I know you wanted to, you know, serve in the unit, but that's just not the way it was supposed to go for you, brother. And that's not a bad thing.
SPEAKER_03Powerful. What's one lesson from Josh you haven't shared yet that the world needs to hear?
SPEAKER_01You can come from humble beginnings, you can come from humble beginnings and change the world. And the world has multiple different dimensions and multiple different statements and ways that can be quantified. But this is a simple fact as I say here, because I can only speak from this aspect. Josh changed my world.
SPEAKER_03Amen. 14 deployments, dude. Eight to Iraq, sick that six to Afghanistan. What's the lesson from all that time down range? Careful what you wish for.
SPEAKER_01War is ugly. It's a brutal thing. It is literally men pitted against each other with the goal in mind to eliminate each other off the face of the earth. Don't take it lightly. Prepare for it with every fiber of your being. Because the worst thing that can happen is not you dying in combat. The worst thing that can happen is others die because of your unpreparedness.
SPEAKER_03Only the dead have truly seen the end of war. Fact. If you could only pass on one lesson from combat to the next generation, what is it?
SPEAKER_01Everything you do, do it as if it's last time before you go to war.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Amen.
SPEAKER_03Your wife, I know we didn't get to talk about her as much. She's uh I know she's a powerhouse in your life. She's come up in every single conversation I've had with you, literally. Which says a lot about you, and it says a lot about your relationship and a lot about, you know, you know, your your your thoughts about her, and and I I know, you know, she's an anchor for you. So if there's something you could say to her, what what would you tell her?
SPEAKER_01Her and I had a moment a couple weeks ago. It was about a month ago now. Um on a beach down in Florida, and we made a decision, a unilateral decision, that the next the next stage of our life was not gonna be a new chapter. It's gonna be a new book.
SPEAKER_03Got all the time you need, brother.
SPEAKER_01She's gonna be the heroine in this chapter. Or I'm sorry. She's gonna be the heroine in this book. And I'm gonna say something and only she's gonna get it. And I'll explain it to you off camera. She's gonna be the Alistair. Very cool.
SPEAKER_03Your kids, man. You got four kids.
SPEAKER_02What do you want your four kids to know about who you were before you were dad?
SPEAKER_01Before I was dad, before I was their dad, what I would have wanted them to know is that I was a warrior that was always destined to be a father.
SPEAKER_03I love that. If there's anything you could say to your kids, what would you tell them? I'm not perfect.
SPEAKER_01I've fallen more than I've gotten it right. But I'm a byproduct of the circumstances of my life, and I had a lot of things to sort out before I could be the person that I needed to be for them. But they've always been the goal, they've always been the focus, and I'm gonna spend the rest of my life being who I need to be for them because I know at times I was not. Love that, man.
SPEAKER_03Can't change the past, man. All we can do is make the future a little bit brighter. Man, this was our longest podcast.
SPEAKER_01That's what happens when you get two podcast hosts in the past. I know, man.
SPEAKER_03I just, you know, and there's so many questions that I didn't even ask you. I I you're just a dude that I I could have talked to for a long time. And a lot of my guests are that way. You were you just have so many different life experiences, not only from combat, man, and and you know, we didn't even tell a lot of war stories. I mean, uh the few stories you told were about mistakes or people's loss, you know, things that you made. And I I just love the fact that you were brutally honest, man. And you know, it takes balls, dude. I know you've been on a lot of podcasts, so maybe you were a little more apt and prepared, but I I don't I don't care if this was your first or your 100th, man. I mean, we we we opened your soul. This has been the one that's mattered the most. Yeah, you opened your soul up, man. And I I just can't tell you thank you enough. I I I thank all my podcast guests, man. You know, it's probably not you know lost on people. I my story's not available yet. And and you know, we're you and I have talked about that off camera. And you know, there'll come a day. So I I know that what it, you know, I I know how hard it is to get in front of a camera and fly your soul open, man. But this interview will definitely help people. You and I both know that we've talked about it. I truly believe it. I mean, not only just your lessons in leadership, you know, you were open and honest about some of your your failures as well as your successes, because you've had plenty of success as well, you know, both in the military and the civilian world, man. So I I from the bottom of my heart, I just want to thank you. Thanks for taking the time because again, you you have an extremely busy life. So to take, you know, time to fly out here and spend time with us on this podcast, I just wanted to thank you. So I appreciate that, man. Thank you. Uh well, thank you what you're continuing to do in the veteran community as well, man. You know, with the legends of the fit 75th and and helping folks and just being super active and you know, continuing to tell those stories, man. It's it's really cool. And you know, this was a fun interview for me personally because you are a podcaster and you know, you've been in this field a lot longer than me doing it. So it was really cool to to talk to you and to be able to interview somebody who understands the craft and you know what it takes to make a podcast because it's not as easy as everybody thinks, man. So where can where can folks find you if they if if they want to find out?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, the easiest way to find us is legends of seventy-fifth.com. Um, you can find me on all socials, either on Mike Esperk or Legends of 75th. You can find uh all the stuff we're doing, you can find me. Shoot me, shoot me a note. I I I won't promise that I'll be, you know, I got a lot of mediums for you know different messaging and stuff by like that. But if you want to reach out, talk about anything, you know, any recommendations, any improvements that I can do, anything that maybe I got wrong in the podcast, God called please, please.
SPEAKER_02Don't don't worry, YouTube's great about that.
SPEAKER_01Like I I didn't I didn't do it purposely, you know, I didn't do it on purpose. Unfortunately, I've been hit on the head a lot. But uh Asher, man, I gotta tell you, I've done, you know, I was telling your wife, you know, we were talking a little bit. I've I mean, between the podcasts that I've hosted and the podcast that I've been on, I mean, it's it's probably no exaggeration to say I've done this 400 times. And this has been the single best.
SPEAKER_03Thanks, man. That means a lot. We we spent a lot of time preparing for you uh because you're worth it and your story's worth it, and you know, hopefully we can do it justice. So everybody out there, man, that's you know, listened and and supported us, man. I I just can't tell you how much it means to to me, man. It's just me and my editor. And of course, you know, my my my wife has sacrificed a lot for us to do this as well. So thanks to continue to support the channel. I don't have a large team, we don't have a big budget, I don't have the greatest equipment, but but here we are, man. And it's because of the audience out here that continue to listen and support us. I mean, we hit 110,000 subscribers in less than 10 months uh on YouTube, which is kind of unheard of, and it's not lost on me that it's because of you guys. If it wasn't for all this, all these people supporting the podcast, the messages, the emails, the you know, the social media stuff. I I we really appreciate it. I try to read every single comment, especially on YouTube, on the podcast. I can't do it for all the shorts. We've had tons of shorts hit the millions, and it's really hard to keep up. But by all means, man, continue to contact us. You can send us an email. It's the vanguardwall podcast at gmail.com. I might have screwed that up in description in our previous YouTube descriptions. So if you've tried to email me in the past and uh you didn't get through, it's probably because I don't think I spelled the email wrong. And that's just because I've been so busy. So, and I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer either. So, anyway, man, thanks for all the love and support. You guys, if you guys want to support the podcast, we have a website, we're selling merch, we've got some cool new shirts out, so that's one way you can support us. But stay safe out there, and if you can't be safe, be violent out here.