Hector Bravo UNHINGED
Official Hector Bravo Podcast
Hector Bravo UNHINGED
Unfiltered: A Navy SEAL's Journey
From the tough streets of East St. Louis to the elite ranks of Navy SEALs and onto entrepreneurial success, Ty Smith's life journey embodies resilience in its truest form. Growing up without a father but with a police officer mother who kept him accountable, Ty found his calling at just 12 years old after watching "Navy SEALs" starring Charlie Sheen. That moment planted a seed that would guide him through life's challenges.
Ty's path wasn't without setbacks. His first attempt at the infamously brutal SEAL training ended when he quit during Hell Week. But this failure became a pivotal moment that ultimately strengthened his resolve. After serving as a military police officer in Sardinia, Italy, the events of 9/11 – which Ty experienced while flying into New York – reignited his determination. He returned to SEAL training with newfound maturity and purpose, successfully completing the program and embarking on multiple combat deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq.
What makes Ty's story particularly compelling is his candid reflection on war's human dimension. He shares a profound moment when, during a raid, he nearly collided with two young Afghan girls fleeing a building he was about to clear. This split-second encounter forced him to confront war's impact on innocents and triggered deep questions about purpose and faith. Throughout intense firefights and dangerous missions, including a harrowing ambush by Taliban fighters, Ty's training prepared his actions while his humanity processed the experience.
After 20 years of military service, Ty successfully transitioned to entrepreneurship, founding ComSafe AI – a company using artificial intelligence to detect workplace issues in communication channels before they escalate. This "left of boom" approach mirrors his military mindset of preventing problems rather than managing their aftermath. Through it all, Ty's journey demonstrates how resilience, adaptability, and maintaining core values create success across vastly different worlds.
Ready to hear more stories of extraordinary resilience and transformation? Subscribe now and join us as we continue to explore the journeys of remarkable individuals who've beaten the odds and created extraordinary lives.
Hector Bravo. Unhinged Chaos is now in session.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to our channel Warriors. We are still growing. Today another banger of an interview. We have a former Navy SEAL turned entrepreneur and businessman that goes by the name of Ty Ty. What up, dude?
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me, brother. I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 2:Thanks for being here, man. So where are you from originally?
Speaker 1:I grew up in East St Louis, illinois, just east of the Mississippi River, separating Missouri and Illinois, but I grew up on the Illinois side.
Speaker 2:I kind of had a feeling you weren't from California just a hunch. You know what I mean. Yeah, what brought you over here? Was it the service?
Speaker 1:It was the Navy Joined the Navy when I was 18, right after I graduated high school, didn't really have anything else going on other than a dream in my back pocket of being a Navy SEAL. I knew I wasn't going to sit around and do nothing. I was the son of a lady cop, you know, and so I decided to chase my dream into the United States Navy.
Speaker 2:Being the son of a lady cop, were you under a strict household.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness, yeah, I couldn't get away with nothing bro.
Speaker 2:Nothing, nothing. Did you attempt to get away with things?
Speaker 1:I mean, I was just like any other kid, but I was a good kid. I wasn't out chasing trouble, I was an athlete. I was a football player in high school. I wasn't that good at it, but it was my passion. I was also a wrestler. That's what I was really good at. So I wanted to stay on the straight and narrow so I could be eligible to play sports. But I was just like any other kid where I could find mischief from time to time. But fortunately, because I was being raised in a household I was being raised in, you know, I at least had common sense and for the most part I stayed away from trouble.
Speaker 2:Was there trouble around? Were you observing other kids? Partake in trouble.
Speaker 1:Oh, constantly. You know East St Louis Illinois is not an easy place to grow up Right, and so there was plenty that I could have gotten into, but fortunately I had a really good family, bro, and they kept me out of the streets for the most part and I had good people. They kept me out of the streets for the most part and I had good people to look up to in my family and really teach me the difference between right and wrong.
Speaker 2:A pattern I'm starting to see is usually not always, but if they got a strong family foundation, then you're usually on the straight and narrow for the most part.
Speaker 1:I think so. So I didn't grow up with a father, unfortunately. So I didn't grow up with a father, unfortunately, and so it could have been really easy for me to find my way into the streets looking for that male mentorship. But fortunately my family is so good and I had solid uncles that I just I never found my way deep into those streets. And again, my mom was a cop and so it'd be very difficult for me to do that, because I had friends she was keeping out of trouble and so my mom's not stupid. She knows that. You know, if I even came close to mischief, she knew what was going on and fortunately I just never went far down that you're the average of the five people you hang around with dude.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's cool because you answered the question before I even asked it. It's like, hey, how did you manage to maintain that strict regiment without the father figure in the household? But you said your uncles stepped up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my uncles were amazing. Unfortunately, only one is still alive and he's my uncle by marriage. But he's been my uncle by marriage for gosh 40, 50 years and he was in the Army and he was the first man I'd ever seen in a uniform like I can remember the day he came to my grandmother's house for the first time, I believe, to ask my grandfather for my aunt's hand, and he was in his starched army fatigues, shiny boots. I'd never seen a man look like that and it certainly imprinted on me facts so what was at that age time frame?
Speaker 2:what was your goal, man? With it to become a police officer, place professional sports, or and or join the navy so at that time I was only about six or seven years old.
Speaker 1:I didn't know what the hell I wanted to do. But by the time I turned 12, I saw the movie navy seals with charlie sheen. And that was what did it, bro, that that dream went right into my back pocket and I never let it go. Yeah, and that was what did it, bro, that that dream went right into my back pocket and I never let it go. Yeah, damn dude, that was what guy. I was bitten by that bug.
Speaker 1:You know the thing, hector, is growing up. I got bullied a lot and especially when my mom became a cop, I got bullied even more. And I think that because I didn't have a dad at home even more. And I think that because I didn't have a dad at home, maybe there was something or someone inside of me that was always looking for a way out, or some kind of hero to come along and save me. And when I saw that movie, I mean those men look like the closest things to heroes I'd ever seen. And I went. That's what I want to do when I grow up. So yeah it worked.
Speaker 2:Clearly it worked, man, and as I'm getting to know you and I'm asking these questions, things are starting to make sense now, man, cause I, like you, don't strike me as the type to be a Navy SEAL man. Do you get that often?
Speaker 1:I do Uh, especially because of the color of my skin.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't want to fucking call out the elephant in the room. Man, let's be honest, you know we are less than 1%.
Speaker 1:I think African American men are less than 1% of the SEAL teams. I think Latinos are less than 1%. I think the smallest community in the SEAL teams are Asians. I didn't know that. Not only that, but I was coming out of East St Louis, illinois. Like you know, all the high schools we don't have swim teams. You know what I mean, true, so we don't have, you know, people that are putting us in the water and making sure that we understand how to save ourselves or we're comfortable in the water. Fortunately for me, I was kind of a water baby, because my mom would just throw me in water. We would go to a friend's place and they would have a pool at their apartment complex and my mom would just be like, get in, you know. Or we'd go to the lake to go hang out or go fishing, and my mom would be like why not get in, you know? And so, fortunately again, that stayed with me and I always loved water, and so it was kind of a no brainer to join the Navy.
Speaker 2:You loved water, but how was your stance on guns or firearms?
Speaker 1:You know I've always been a gun guy. I've always been fascinated by firearms and the military and law enforcement, and I think I get that from my mom dude, bro, you're like the I mean, it's like the picture perfect candidate to like.
Speaker 2:You pave the way, dude. It's all starting to make sense now, man. So how does a Navy work when you enlist and can you pick an MOS? Is SEALs an option right off the top?
Speaker 1:So when I joined the Navy in 1996, it was not an option right off the top At least I was told by my recruiter. It wasn't an option right off the top. But you know, everything happens for a reason, hector. Even if I had gotten there right away, it wasn't my time. So when I came into the Navy at 18, that was my dream.
Speaker 1:But my recruiter set me up with anti-submarine well, I'm sorry aircraft air crewman candidate school, followed by search and rescue swimmer school, followed by anti-submarine warfare school. So he set me up with an air crew pipeline, even though that wasn't what I wanted to do. But he told me that, hey, I don't know if you're all that good a swimmer, so I'm going to have you go through search and rescue swimmer school first and we see how you do. And so that's what I ended up doing Graduated top of my search and rescue swimmer class, went to AW anti-submarine warfare school and just hated it and made a big deal out of me not wanting to be there, and I wanted to be in SEAL training instead. And so eventually they let me go. I got to BUDGE training for the first time. I think I was maybe still 18, maybe 19 at that point made it like a day in the hell week and was like I'm not ready for this, I'm out of here and I quit.
Speaker 2:Hold on, Hold on a second man. I could only imagine that the swimming portion for the search and rescue was no walk in the park.
Speaker 1:It was not, and when I got there, they could tell that I had to heart to get through, but I didn't have the technique. And so, fortunately, every one of my instructors in Search and Rescue Swimmer School they were really good people and really fair people and they're like, hey, man, you got it, we're going to work with you. And that's what they did, and I went from being the slowest swimmer in the class to the fastest swimmer in the class. I just needed someone to teach me a technique.
Speaker 2:Real quick off topic and on topic at the same time. That was in the 90s, late 90s.
Speaker 1:You said yeah, it was 96.
Speaker 2:Do you think leadership has changed since that time frame?
Speaker 1:Man, that is a phenomenal question. No one has ever asked me that before, brother. I do think that leadership has changed, especially in the military, because we ended up going into the global war on terror and that changed everything from the way we fought to the way we led on and off the battlefield. We just learned a lot of lessons. A lot of them were learned in blood, and so absolutely that affected leadership Facts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was 20 years man, that was prolonged.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know. So you went, you showed up, somehow you made it to buds, and what was it that you quit? Did you ring a bell?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah. So the first time it threw through I rung the bell about five and a half weeks into the 26 week basic underwater demolition school. And here's the thing, man. I can remember that night like it was yesterday. I wasn't too cold, I wasn't too tired, I was just scared. I was young, was immature, I had a chip on my shoulder and I was just like again. I was kind of like dude. I've never even seen men like this, let alone spend time around them. I kind of got lost in my own head. And if you do that in budge training you are done-ski. Let alone if you're in hell week, you're done.
Speaker 2:Well, if you get in your head anywhere, you're done man, you're done. Well, if you get in your head anywhere, you're done man. I coached my daughter six-year-old, and when I see her up to bat, I see her getting in her own head and I'm like hey, stop that.
Speaker 1:Right now You're defeating yourself. Yeah, and so I ended up going to 95-45 school military police school for the Navy and I took orders over to Sardinia, italy, and went over there and was supposed to only stay for two years and I was going to come back to budge training and the instructors that because they liked me, they were like dude, like you're a black dude that's strong in the water, like by that time I was a fish. They were like you got it, man, I was just mature and come back. And they meant it that they ended up letting me back. I ended up staying in Sardinia for almost five years just because I loved it so much what is that Italy In Italy?
Speaker 1:yeah, I loved it so much. Did you travel A little bit? I spent time in the UK. I traveled all over Italy. You go to Rome. I ended up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love Rome, that's awesome dude Ended up going to Spain for a little bit, but my heart was in Sardinia, italy. I just fell in love with that place. Man, and, fortunately for me, one of my best friends to this day he's an Italian dude named Nino Spinelli. He was really good friends with a couple of Italian SEALs guys from the Incursore Italiano and those guys kind of took me under my wing and they were telling me the same thing like man, we see you training, you got it. You just need to keep training, keep your head clear and go back and you're going to make it through that training. And that's what I ended up doing right after 9-11.
Speaker 2:Now, during this period, man, were you like? I mean, I can only imagine you were in top physical condition Were you like performing higher than your peers in your regular unit?
Speaker 1:Oh, 100%, like way above them. But I had a much larger goal. A lot of those people when they got to that command, that was like their twilight tour.
Speaker 2:They were gonna get out. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:But it wasn't even that. They were like, hey, I'm getting out after this. A lot of them, a lot of those men, were budge drops like myself at the time, and they were like, hey, I gave it a shot, that was my dream, Didn't work, so now I'm going to get out of the Navy, whereas for me I was like, no, this is a stepping stone, I'm not going out like that, I'm going back to SEAL training and I'm going to make it through. I just had no idea that one of the biggest motivating factors in my decision to go back to SEAL training was about to happen, which was 9-11.
Speaker 2:Before we get to 9-11, what stuff were you doing on your own to set the bar higher?
Speaker 1:Because you know.
Speaker 2:PT will only give you in the morning Sure. What were you doing?
Speaker 1:So the Italians called me the crazy American, because every morning they would see me coming out of the surf zone like the actual ocean, you know, at the the butt crack of dawn, finishing up like a two mile ocean swim by myself, and I would have tennis shoes staged on the beach and shorts and I would come out of my wetsuit, I'd put on shorts and I just have my fins and I just leave it and I go on like a 10 mile run and that's before work.
Speaker 1:No way, dude, that's how I would start my day and at the end of the day it was very likely that that same day I'd do another four or five miles. I would race the sun, see if I could get home before the sunset, and the typical stuff I was doing push-ups and pull-ups and dips and core work like it was nobody's business. And at that point I had gotten in my own head in a good way, in that hey, I'm not going to let any of these people see me fail. And I know a lot of these guys are betting against me because I'm hearing it through the grapevine and at this point it is me versus me and I'm going to do whatever I have to do in order to make it through. And so I pushed myself harder than any SEAL training instructor ever could have pushed me. I just did it to myself, getting ready.
Speaker 2:Where did that mindset begin with you? That's a mindset, dude.
Speaker 1:I agree I would have to go way back to my childhood man and say that it was that little kid. So by that time, you know, I'm getting ready to go back to SEAL training. I've got some maturity under my belt. I'm 21, 22 years old. You're in your prime dude. I'm in my prime. I didn't have any injuries Again. I was in the best shape of my life by that point. But I was still a very immature, very insecure young dude. And so I have to go back to that little kid that's inside of me to this day, Absolutely Right. But I just wasn't acknowledging him at that age. But I have to go back to that little kid that was growing up, being bullied, being told that he wasn't shit, he was never going to amount to anything, he was dumb, he would never go to college. There was a, there was a, a storm inside.
Speaker 1:So, you use that as fuel? Absolutely there. There was a fire inside of me that was just raging in my gut and I I just had this chip on my shoulder, like I'm going to show all of you, and that's what I did.
Speaker 2:Oh boy, did you? You? So, when 9-11 happened, were you in Italy?
Speaker 1:So when 9-11 happened, I was in an airplane flying into New York City.
Speaker 1:Brother, what the hell. I was stationed in Italy and my mom had gotten sick and she was in a hospital, and so I got one of those you know, remember, the Red Cross messages would come across and then you would have to go on emergency leave. Yeah, and so I was on emergency leave, flying from Sardinia to Rome and then from Rome into New York City, and I was going to go from New York City to St Louis because my mom was in the hospital, and so I was in an aisle seat on the left side of the plane for you sailors and Marines out there. I was on the port side of the plane, and on the right side, or the starboard side, in the aisle seat was this older black lady that was like a couple shades darker than me, and, remember, this is 2001. So this is when they still had those corded phones in the back of the headrest in front of you, where you could take it out, swipe your credit card and make a call.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're right.
Speaker 1:And so the pilot comes over the loudspeaker and he's like ladies and gentlemen, we're really sorry, but we have to land the aircraft immediately. All airspace is being closed. We don't know what's going on, but something's happening in America. And at that time, that's when the second plane hit the second tower. And so the lady next to me, she pulls that phone, swipes her credit card, calls her husband in New York City to find out what happened. And, brother, in my whole life, I had never seen anything like this happen. In my life. To this day I haven't seen it.
Speaker 1:I'm looking at the lady who is closer to me than you are right now, because you know how small the aisle is, going down the center of an aircraft, and I watched the blood leave this lady's face from the top of her head down to her chin. She went from being two complexions darker than me to lighter than you, shocked in shock. She hangs up the phone and she's just kind of looking at her lap and everybody's like what you know? And she whispers terrorists are flying airplanes into buildings in new york city right now and, dude, you could hear a mouse pissing on cotton in that airplane. Damn, dude, and that's where I was on 9-11 shit man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so how long after did you go back to uh?
Speaker 1:about four months four months, yeah, so the airspace was closed for like two to three weeks. If you remember, I was uh in england because we were over a small town in england when the aircraft was down. So I got on train, went down to the embassy in london, checked in, call my command, let them know I was okay and I was kind of hanging out in London until they reopened the airspace.
Speaker 2:So you actually enlisted pre-war time, pre-combat, pre-war. Looking back in hindsight, how was that pre-war? Was it hoping for war? Was it happens to happens? What was your thought process?
Speaker 1:That's a great question. No, I was never hopeful of war, I just wanted to be a Navy SEAL. I had assumed at that point that if you were a Navy SEAL, whether there was war going on, you're going to get after it, right? Because these guys are behind enemy lines. They're going and doing stuff in the shadows, right. So I had no idea. So, no, I was never hopeful of war. It just turned out that war was coming, and so I ended up going back to budge training. I checked in in February of 2002.
Speaker 2:February 2002, man, I graduated high school in 02.
Speaker 1:Oh, did you? Yeah, I graduated in 96.
Speaker 2:Okay, was it? Well? I was about to ask you a dumb question, man. Was it cold in February? San Diego was the water.
Speaker 1:Yes, because I had a winter hell week and it was cold. How was that? And you know that the water in the wintertime is cold.
Speaker 2:But you're from St Louis. I can only imagine it gets cold in St Louis.
Speaker 1:Oh, it gets really cold there. But here's the thing, bro, at least me, I don't get used to cold.
Speaker 2:Nobody does so.
Speaker 1:I wasn't acclimated Right, I wasn't acclimated, and when I hit the surf in Coronado in February for the first time, it literally took the air out of me. I've never been so cold in my whole life.
Speaker 1:It's like a kick in the nuts oh my gosh, like it literally took the air out of me and I remember standing up and like not really being able to breathe and I went, holy shit, what did I just get myself back into? But like that I was just like, nah, I'm going, you know, and I just kept going. I never looked back. Were other people quitting at this time? Oh, 100%, you know the deal. Dudes are quitting day one all the way through. Guys are quitting and in. In fact, there are a couple of guys that quit when I was in second phase. Man like you're, you're in combat swimmer now, so you're past hell week and now you're really focusing on learning the, the, the skill craft. Now you still have to go through pool comp, so you're not totally out of water. Pool comp gets a bunch of dudes out of seal training before they make it to third phase but is that when you're expected to finish?
Speaker 2:is that when they tie the hands behind their back?
Speaker 1:no, that's, that's in first phase. That's uh, that's drown proofing in first phase yeah, that's, yeah, that's in first phase. That's, you start training for drown proofing before you even go through hell week and then, when you come out of hell week and you heal up, is when you have drown proofing testing I watch youtube channels of drown proofing and that shit gives me anxiety.
Speaker 2:Just watching it, man. Would you describe it as very um?
Speaker 1:it's psychologically stressful, but it's supposed to be what about physically stressful? Not really, because once they teach you the technique, once, once you got it, you got it. Okay, but it's in your head that, dude, my hands are tied up behind my back, my ankles are tied together and I'm in water. That's like 15 feet deep. Oh hell no man.
Speaker 2:So it's totally a mental.
Speaker 1:Thing.
Speaker 2:Did people get dropped during that portion of the course?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, you have people that just can't pass it, you know, and so they get multiple tries and they can't pass it, and so they end up getting dropped for performance. But you also have dudes that just freak out and they're like I am out of here and they quit.
Speaker 2:How were you handling the lack of sleep portion of this whole ordeal?
Speaker 1:Dude, I was young, that didn't bother me at all you know how it is absolutely young like you could go out and party all night and get two hours of sleep and you're ready for muster and bright eye run 12 miles drunk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you don't care right. What about, like food? Were you guys being fed sufficiently? Oh dude when you're.
Speaker 1:It's not like ranger school, bro, like they feed you. I didn't know that tremendously well. Okay, and they are sticklers for hydration. So, yeah, you have great nutrition the whole time. Going through. You might not get a lot of sleep right, but you are getting fed and hydrated properly at what point do you guys start messing with weapons qualifications? That's third phase, that's third that is yes.
Speaker 1:So you've got two months of first phase where they are really trying to break you physically and mentally. That's third phase, which is where you start to really feel special. Um you, you start getting the weapons training. You start learning land warfare training. You start learning urban assault, uh, close quarters combat.
Speaker 2:You start really getting into the fun stuff which one did you find most fun that that phase?
Speaker 1:definitely yeah, because, again, like I've always been a gun guy, right, I've always been a dreamer as far as you know, special operations is concerned.
Speaker 2:I was like man, I'm really learning this stuff now so afghanistan kicked off and I believe, oh one shortly after 9-11 were your guys's instructors talking about hey, you guys are going to be fucking deploying.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, man. And here's what's crazy Most of those guys had never seen combat Most of the instructors because they were between wars, right, you had the Gulf War and if they came in after that and very few guys actually got in on the Gulf War because it was so short, right and so most of those dudes didn't have any combat experience, and so they knew themselves like oh shit, I'm about to go into combat for the first time. And I ended up going into combat for the first time with guys that had never been to combat. And you know, you fast forward. Throughout my career I actually ended up working downrange in combat with dudes that were my instructors, putting me through budge training years before I did.
Speaker 2:Now, fuck, I don't want to jump too far ahead, but at that point were they super high up the chain of command.
Speaker 1:Some of them yes, some of them were the same rank as me because, remember, I didn't make it through budge the first time, so I ended up going out to the fleet as a military police officer, and so when I came back through seal training I was in e4, and then when I graduated seal training, they made me an e5, okay, and so I was catching up and so a couple of those dudes, you know, I ended up making e6. They were still e6s, that makes sense, you know. And so we were they just.
Speaker 1:They just did a different path initially and you were going this way yeah, and then you guys met up downrange.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a trip, dude it's funny because I surpassed some of those dudes. Uh, a couple of those dudes ended up, you know, kind of staying floating at that e6 level, whereas I kept going and eventually made E7 or they got out and I ended up retiring as a senior chief, whereas some of those guys they got out, you know, after their first couple of actual combat tours, you know, and they moved on to other things, but I just kept going.
Speaker 2:Now here's a psychological question for you. You said a lot of your instructor. Well, the majority of instructors had not seen combat. One of the questions a warfighter asks themselves before seeing combat for the first time is fuck, I wonder how I'm going to perform. Right, you have that experience. The before and the after, it almost seems like, hey, your training kicks in. It almost like seems like you're gonna be all right. Right, as opposed to. I think most people perform accordingly than not. Would you agree?
Speaker 1:I think so, but that's where the training comes in, right. That's why seal training is as brutal and repetitive as it is, because they're hammering it into your head that, hey, we already know that once bullets start flying, the human instinct is to freeze, right? And so we're going to hammer it into your head that you're never going to freeze, you're just going to respond based on your training. And that's what you would do. It's effective, right, it is 100% effective, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Field training is the most realistic training in the United States military. I think it is brutal. It is very realistic because they are training you to stop thinking at the surface layer Right. Once bullets start flying, you fall back onto your training and when you really need to think, we want you to zoom out. We want you to see the battlefield from 30,000 feet. We don't want you to get stuck in a problem, so we're going to teach you how to be a tactical thinker and a strategic thinker all at the same time while you're being shot at, so while you're under duress, absolutely, which is why the training is so difficult.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And then you want to think like psychology, psychologically, what happens to the brain? You're right, fight or flight. Um, uh, narrowed vision, you know. Auditory exclusion, yep, all of this fucking happens. So you have to fight through it and train through it to fight your body's response absolutely, and that's what they teach you to do, and it's very effective. Extremely effective dude. Which unit did you go to after you graduated? I went to SEAL Team 8.
Speaker 1:Which is where Little Creek, virginia, virginia, norfolk, virginia Beach area.
Speaker 2:Because there's East Coast and West Coast, correct, mm-hmm, did you get a pick so?
Speaker 1:I did, but it was almost like a joke, because most guys they get their choice. I wanted to stay in San Diego because it reminded me so much of being on the Mediterranean, like I had been for four and a half five years previously in Sardinia, italy. So on my dream sheet, which is what they call it like hey, fill out your dream sheet. I put all West Coast SEAL teams and of course they sent me to an East Coast SEAL team man.
Speaker 2:Maybe they needed you on the East Coast, dude.
Speaker 1:I think it was because of my language capability, because I had come out of Italy as a nearly fluent Italian speaker. In fact, the Navy was paying me to be an Italian speaker. I was the translator between the Italian Carabinieri, their military police and the American military police in Sardinia, Italy, and it was pre-911, so it was before that reorg. Back then, certain teams had certain areas of operation where they were likely to deploy to, and a lot of the east coast teams were slotted for europe and south america and so they want america yeah, so they wanted the, the spanish speakers on the east coast.
Speaker 1:They wanted some of the guys that were speaking. That makes sense. You know european languages on the east coast, so I think that that's why I ended up getting sent out there what kind of training and locations were.
Speaker 2:Did you ever go out to like Sealy or Nyland? If you could do the land warfare.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so when I ended up coming back to the West coast seal team. So I came back to the West coast in 2007 as a buds instructor for about two and a half years and then I went to seal team one around 2009. And when I got to SEAL Team 1, yeah, we did our land warfare training out in Nile. We did a lot of stuff out in La Posta. We would go up to Bridgeport to do cold weather training at the Marine Corps cold weather training facility up there. We do diving trips down in Florida. Really, yeah, we would be all over the place. We were gone most of the time and then you would deploy and be gone more.
Speaker 2:How much of a threat are sharks? It's an honest question, bro.
Speaker 1:You know what it is such an honest question, and I think that that's location dependent. I think that diving out here on the West Coast it's much more likely. But you want to hear a funny story? When I was at SEAL Team 8, we did a diving trip down in Cocoa Beach, florida, and at the center where we were training out of, when you were getting ready to start a dive, in order to get to the open water, you would turtle back through a channel. And so what I mean by turtle backing is, like you know, we dive the Draeger system, and so it's not tanks on your back, it's a system that's actually sitting on your chest, and you don't have these big Twin 80 oxygen tanks on your back. You have a small tank that's about yay big, because this is a rebreather system and everything sits on your chest.
Speaker 1:And so in order to get to the open water, we would have to walk down these stairs about 15 feet into this canal, and so all the guys would go get in the canal and you've got walls on either side of you that are like 15 feet Damn. And so for turtle backing, you're literally laying on your back looking up at the sky. Now you've got the rig on your chest and you're kicking out through the canal in order to get to open water, where we would then go on back, put on your breather, flip over to your stomach Everybody would descend underwater and then you would start your journey. But before we got to open water, we're channel backing through this channel and every and dudes are just kind of coking and joking and talking shit and everybody's kind of kicking it out. And all of a sudden I look to my right and I see all of the instructors up on the wall and they're all like they're pointing, they're looking, dudes are taking pictures and we're like what's going on? And they go.
Speaker 1:Nobody panic and I went. What does that mean? So I look over to my left.
Speaker 2:And you just see all of these beady eyes. No way, dude, just watching us go by.
Speaker 1:It was like a pack of alligators, oh they were alligators. Yes, Just watching us kick by, and I was just like you.
Speaker 2:you gotta be shitting me all right, nobody panicked, and so we end up making it out.
Speaker 1:Of course, were you like in a channel like like like it was a channel, bro, there was nowhere to go. No, there was no escaping, and the instructors all told us at the end they were like I think the only thing that saved you guys is that there were more of y'all than that were of. Them were more of y'all than that were of them and so they didn't. Horrifying dude, it was terrifying, damn. Yeah. And I mean I like I've seen some sway lay stuff underwater that, you know, kind of makes you go like what do we do now?
Speaker 1:like I'm pretty sure that that was a shark. You know what I mean. But you have no choice, you just got to keep going.
Speaker 2:That's so weird dude. That's so weird because to me it's an extra element that you got to worry about, as opposed to the fucking enemy shooting at you or trying to kill you, right?
Speaker 1:But here's the thing you can't allow yourself to worry about it.
Speaker 2:That's so damn crazy dude, you just have to keep going.
Speaker 1:Damn late 2003 or 2004,. I deployed to Kandahar Afghanistan, for the first time as an operator. So when I got to SEAL Team 8, I still had to go through. I had to jump into a SEAL platoon and go through an entire workup with that platoon which consisted of about a year and a half of additional training. Because you go through you go through unit level training, you go through squadron integration training, you go through professional development, which is where they're deciding like, hey, we're going to send this person to sniper school or to breacher school, halo, you can get Halo training during that time. I ended up getting it a little bit later, but I went through about another year and a half of training with a SEAL team and with a SEAL platoon before I deployed for the first time. So I had a tremendous amount of training before I got downrange. Yeah, extra training, yeah, oh, I was ready. I was more than ready.
Speaker 2:Tell me about what your thought process was. Man um, getting heading to afghanistan with that training, with your maturity level. Now, with your success of getting to where you wanted to be, what was your thought?
Speaker 1:process. Dude, I was excited. I was chomping at the bit. I wanted to get overseas and start running operations and start shooting bad people in the face and I was pissed off. I was ready to go down range and make the Taliban pay for what they had done to our country Taliban and Al-Qaeda. I was just excited and ready to go do the job. I don't think I was scared at that time because I still didn't fully understand what I was getting into, so I was still sort of ignorant, but I was just excited.
Speaker 2:Did it ever cross your mind that you could become a casualty of the war?
Speaker 1:Of course, I was just more concerned with one of my friends becoming a casualty of war. Right, that is something that SEAL training does a very good job of of humbling you and making you understand that, dude, it's not about you, correct, it's not. It is about the men to your left and your right, and if you won't embrace that, we're going to get you out of here. You don't belong here.
Speaker 2:And I think maybe that's why the United States military in general is such a great fighting force because it isn't about you, it's about the person next to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they teach you to be selfless. Yeah, like I, I have very little concern for me, correct, and like you can talk all this shit to me. You want like I don't care, like what am I going to do? Get up and kick your ass. But you say something to my brother I don't like, right, there's a very high likelihood I'm smash your face in, I feel right, and they, they beat that into us. I feel you know. It's not about you. It is about the people to your left and your right, even after the mission. It's not about you. It's not about you now squaring away your gear. No, that's last. It's team gear, your buddy's gear second, and then your gear last.
Speaker 2:Nice dude.
Speaker 1:How long are deployments? Usually four to 11 months. God damn dude, it depends on where you are in the cycle. It depends on what's going on. Typically they're six months, but I've been on deployments that were four and a half months and the longest deployment that I did, I think, was just at around seven months.
Speaker 2:That was the longest you did. Yeah, so as you go into Afghanistan, were you guys relieving another unit that was leaving?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were. So we were on rotation just like everyone else, and I think that we were relieving a platoon from SEAL Team 4, if I remember correctly.
Speaker 2:At that time frame, how would you describe the enemy?
Speaker 1:Very capable, not scared at all. So there's a difference between war fighting in Afghanistan and war fighting in Iraq. In Afghanistan, I don't recall ever even hearing about a Taliban fighter. That was a coward. In Iraq, they want to blow you up. They don't really want to fight. You heads up the Taliban. It's like a rite of passage for them. No, they want to fight, they want to throw down and they are not afraid. And so you have to be on your P's and Q's because if you're not, they will get you out of there into the next life fast.
Speaker 2:Absolutely dude. Were there any lessons that you learned initially, where you were like fuck, my training didn't prepare me for this or this was a shocker?
Speaker 1:That's a great question, oh my gosh, that's a great question. And the answer is yes, but it didn't have anything to do with my combat proficiency, Hector. There was nothing or no one that could have prepared me for the human feelings that I would experience being a special operations commando at war for the first time in my young, 22, 23-year-old life, and I remember on, if I remember correctly, it was the very first operation that we did. We hit a target, we were clearing a compound, A bunch of guys went right. I was some of the guys that went left and I remember I was about to make entrance into this opening, this small room, and I was the number one man going into that room.
Speaker 1:And as I was about to go into that room, these two beautiful little girls they couldn't have been any more than three years old, they were twin Afghani girls they came screaming out of that door as I was making entrance into the door and in that split second I could see how scared they were, how vulnerable they were, and it also forced me to acknowledge that I was about to trample these two little girls and I couldn't allow myself to get caught up in that.
Speaker 1:It was that split-second moment of, okay, maneuver around and get in that room, and I got dudes coming in hot right behind me. Do not get clogged up in the fatal funnel in that doorway. That's where good people die. But for that split second I acknowledged that like dude you almost hurt those two little kids and you're really worried about whether your brothers behind you are going to hurt them accidentally too. And no one could have prepared me for the human feelings that I experienced later that night sitting on my cot just kind of going what the hell am I doing? What are we doing? I thought I was here to find bad people and hurt bad people. Immediately I was put into a situation where I could have hurt not just good people but little kids, and nothing could have prepared me for what was happening in my brain and my heart that night.
Speaker 2:I think that is profound, bro, and I'm really glad you say said that for anybody future combat, uh, future military veteran soldiers that go overseas man, because we had to learn that the hard way, the fucking hard way, it's hard. Um, I know exactly what you mean when you say that. It's like fuck.
Speaker 1:I didn't anticipate that I still think about those little girls to this day. Absolutely, I think about them all the time. I wonder how they're doing. I wonder if they're alive. I wonder if they're okay. I wonder if they remember that situation. More than likely not, they were, they were young. I wonder what do they think about me? How do they feel about americans? Like I think about them all the time the good news is you're human.
Speaker 2:The good news is you're not a psychopath.
Speaker 1:I am not a psycho. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:That's good that's the good news. Yep, glory be to god. Correct, because you felt that you know what I mean and that shit's real as fuck. Yeah, it is um. You, right now, you said glory to be to god, correct, because you felt that you know what I mean and that shit's real as fuck. Yeah, it is um. And right now you said glory to be to god. During that time, did you have a spiritual belief or foundation?
Speaker 1:I did. I had a spiritual. I had a religious foundation, I should say, because I grew up in the church. Um, my grandmothers would drag us to church just like everybody else. I had a tight relationship with God. But I got to be honest with you, brother, during that deployment I am responsible for sort of distancing myself from God. I really started to question religion, to question religion during that first tour and it took me a long time to repair the relationship from my side, because God is always there.
Speaker 2:Absolutely God, never leaves you.
Speaker 1:Even if you turn your back, even if you go over here for a little while, god's still standing there waiting for you, like are you ready to come back?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wouldn't say it's turning your back, but, like you said, more of losing your way. Sure, and you're right, god is just like hey, he's watching, he's watching you just Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I was starting to question, but I eventually found my way back. Yeah, he was right there, waiting with open arms, just like always. Is that's good?
Speaker 2:that's good man after, did you do a couple trips to afghanistan in a row, or were you like bouncing back and forth between iraq and afghanistan?
Speaker 1:I was bouncing back and forth. So my first deployment was afghanistan. My second deployment was iraq.
Speaker 2:My third deployment was iraq were you in iraq in 0405?
Speaker 1:I was in Afghanistan in 04, like 0405, something like that. Then I was in Iraq in 06. The surge what were you at? In Iraq? It was right after the surge. And so that first Iraq deployment I was with a SEAL teammate platoon and I was the unlucky platoon that was picked to bodyguard Nouri al-Maliki, the newly installed Iraqi prime minister. And it was a no-fail mission because they knew that they were going to try to kill him because America had installed him and we were trying to bring democracy over there. Right and so right, you know, the president of the United States was like hey man, like we can't let this dude get killed, we need an a team on him. So they were like put a seal team on that dude. And so it was my platoon that they picked, and for the first three and a half months of that deployment I was basically an executive protection agent. I was in civilian clothes every day, armed to the teeth, and I was bodyguarding the prime minister of Iraq, me and my team.
Speaker 2:At that time, for fuck, blackwater was around. At that time Was Blackwater present.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we worked with those guys a bunch, yeah, yeah. And so we did that for about three and a half months and finally were relieved and pulled off of him and thrown back into what it is we do best, which is direct action raids. And so that was in Baghdad, and when we were relieved from that duty and we were ready to go and get cleared hot and start running raids, we shifted over to Fallujah.
Speaker 2:God damn dude. Direct action raids. What did those look like for you guys? Was it like 2 am raids witha helicopter?
Speaker 1:insert Dude it was all night raids.
Speaker 2:All night raids.
Speaker 1:Some of it was helo bound, I think. If I remember correctly, most of it we were operating from vehicles and back then it was the wild, wild West right.
Speaker 1:So you didn't necessarily have to submit a formal con op, a concept of operations, where you got to drop a bunch of slides and go brief. Know the the special operations task force. It was like no, we hit this target. It's a dry hole. But we got intel from this target that the place we're looking for is actually is actually up the street and around the corner right. So everybody bring it in like this is what we're gonna do. We're kind of like drawn in the in the dirt like this is the new con up.
Speaker 1:We're gonna go hit this target. Everybody got it. Yeah, all right, load up, let's go. And you'd be hitting two, three, four, five, six targets a night. You'd be out operating all night long. You guys have suppressors on your weapons at the time, of course, and night vision and lasers. Right, yeah, we own the night.
Speaker 2:What were you, did you have, what did you have? An M4?
Speaker 1:I had an M4. Back then we were rolling with the pec twos for lasers, absolutely. Yeah, and the PVS 14s for night vision, yup.
Speaker 2:Yup, how effective or appropriate did you think those weapon systems and that equipment was for that timeframe?
Speaker 1:I thought it was very appropriate, right, because it still comes down to the individual operator being a point shooter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can give me fucking iron sights.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter. I am trained and I'm ready to go. They're going to miss. I will not. Exactly yeah.
Speaker 2:Was combat what you had expected? Was it fulfilling or satisfying to you? Fulfilling and satisfying In the sense of an adrenaline rush. Were you getting high off of the adrenaline?
Speaker 1:Honestly, I don't ever remember getting an adrenaline rush or getting high off of the adrenaline. I'm sure I did experience adrenaline rushes because I've been in some really nasty gunfights, like gunfights where I knew in my heart I was going to die that day.
Speaker 2:Could you talk about one of them, Sure Um?
Speaker 1:so I was in a gunfight in Afghanistan in uh 2011. In 2011, I was assigned to SEAL Team 1, but I was farmed out to development group as an augmentee, and so I went over and joined Gold Squadron in order to be the partner force team leader. So a lot of times they don't let us operate unilaterally. You got to take some of the Afghani commandos with you, or you're in Iraq. You got to take some of the Iraqi commandos with you, and so I had a small team of I think it was eight Afghani special operations commandos working at their tier one level that were assigned to the troop I was assigned to at Gold Squadron, and so, as a senior E6, I was responsible for those dudes on the battlefield and off the battlefield. I ran their training, I mustered them everything. I made sure they understood what we were doing once we got on target.
Speaker 2:Were they squared away.
Speaker 1:For the most part, these dudes were really squared away. Man, and I've seen a lot of them that were not squared away, but these dudes were pipe hitters. I was really, really impressed with them, and so I was also responsible for, uh, the afghani translators, um, and there were two or three of those guys, and even those dudes were actually surprisingly squared away and they were not punks, they were there to throw down. They were really good, and we hit a target one night that turned out to be this two-story high school, and we got ambushed going into that target, and to this day, I do not understand outside of it was the glory of God how none of us got injured, let alone killed, because when we were ambushed, we were actually getting ready to assault this school.
Speaker 1:We had snuck our way into the compound, or so we thought we were sneaking. Snuck our way into the compound, or so we thought we were sneaking. It took us longer to come over the mountain than we thought, because the terrain ended up being much more gnarly than we thought, and so it took us at least another hour or two to get over the mountain and down into the valley where this compound was, and so by the time we were coming down into the compound, we didn't realize that the sun was coming up a little bit behind us, just enough to silhouette oh hell, no man the taliban watched us come down the mountain into the compound.
Speaker 1:They just let us come right in because they were going to ambush us where did they ambush you guys from the compound?
Speaker 2:the?
Speaker 1:school. They were all dug in in the school. We knew there were a bunch of bad guys in there, but by this time we were like fuck it, we're going, heads up, we are coming in, get ready. What do you? What do you think tipped them off? I mean, they could see us, they could see us, uh, coming over, and so I think one of the other things that may have tipped them off I don't think so, but it's possible Within this compound there were only two structures. There was this big-ass two-story high school and there was this smaller shed that was near the entrance and there was a dude on top of that shed that was on watch and one of the boys zipped him up, but it was still pretty quiet. Maybe they heard, maybe they didn't. We didn't think they did, but it's possible that they did right. But without a doubt, they could see us, because we were still on night vision and we had the sun just starting to crack, yeah, right behind us, and that was enough to silhouette us to where they.
Speaker 2:They watched us come in at what distance you, approximately what distance you think they opened up on you?
Speaker 1:they opened up on us at no more than 30, 40 yards.
Speaker 2:No fucking no more than 30, 40 yards, hector.
Speaker 1:We were getting ready to to go in and enter the school and we were pretty much online. This is why I'm like, lord jesus, like how did none of us get hit? And every window of this school opened up? There were at least 15 to 20 bad guys in there. Every window lit up at the same time so what becomes priority then? Fucking hitting the, hitting the objective still no, because you still got to be tactically smart right, you don't want to rush to your death, correct?
Speaker 1:you no longer have the tactical advantage. There you go at all uh the. The mission at that point becomes get all the boys out of here without anyone dying. Okay, get some standoff, see if we can regain the tactical advantage. And that's when you know we've got air coming in, we've got attack helicopters, fighter jets coming in. So at that point the objective was get some distance between us and all of this gunfire.
Speaker 2:What do you think that was like a training compound or for them? What were they utilizing those schools for?
Speaker 1:They had kicked the kids out and they were utilizing it as basically a home, like an apartment for all the bad guys.
Speaker 2:Jesus Christ, dude, did you guys ever go in there and wipe that fucking place out?
Speaker 1:Oh, that place was no longer there by the time we finished with it. Yeah, that was also the first time I had ever, like me personally, encountered a barricaded shooter and what it feels like to go, you know, heads up with a barricaded shooter and it is terrifying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it sounds horrible.
Speaker 1:It's terrifying. And we came sounds horrible, it's terrifying. And we came heads up with a barricaded shooter three times in that op, not once, but three times, and fortunately it wasn't me going through the door and it's like, oh shit, there's a dude barricaded Fuck dude. Remember I was in charge of the Afghanis and so we would always have them up front leading the assault of the Afghanis, and so we would always have them up front leading the assault, and so I had about four or five of those dudes in front of me as we were going in to try to. Now, you know, we've hit it with a bunch of rockets, missiles, a bunch of 30 millimeter explosive tips, so we've softened the target.
Speaker 1:And so now we're like all right, well, let's, let's try to go in. Right, there's still some dudes in there, let's, let's go get them. And so the Afghanis are always up front, but I'm right behind them, and so I'm, you know, we go back in and there's some dudes crawling around, and so we're zipping those dudes up and I'm peeking over shoulders and watching as the Afghanis are are are very deliberately trying because the gig's up. We know there's bad dudes in there, so we're going really slow. No need to rush into a room, into your death, right, and there is nothing like the sound of an RPK or a PKM coming out of a room. You know, and you hear that belt fed go off and the Afghanis are kind of screaming. You know, and you hear that belt fed go off and the Afghanis are kind of screaming and like you know what they're saying, and you got to get on the radio and go like hey, boss, barricaded shooter, pulling the dudes out of here. Right now we need to soften this target more. Bring the planes back in, bring the helicopters back in. And we ended up having to do that three times before.
Speaker 1:Ultimately, it wasn't us that made the call, it was the Afghani commander on scene that made the call pulled me aside. After the third time we tried to go in and he said Ty, if we keep doing this, somebody's going to get killed. We know that this is a high school and you guys don't want it. Because we didn't want to level it. We have rules of engagement and if we could get dudes out of there, we didn't want to destroy a school that kids go to. But he made the call and said hey, we need to drop this entire place or one of our guys is going to get killed.
Speaker 1:At that point I got on the radio to my senior enlisted and my ground force commander and said hey, sir, this call is coming from the Afghani commander. He thinks that we should level it. At that point and we had been on target for a while, we had been playing that back and forth tennis match with him for a while he said okay, let's, let's drop it. And so we ended up leveling that place. Um, and believe it or not, funniest thing after the place got hit with a couple of 500 pound bombs, um, at the end of it, there was still one fighter that came out with his hands up and a dog next to him.
Speaker 1:The dude was literally unscathed, wow not a scratch on him like his internals must have been all jacked up, but he was like nope, that's it, I quit, I give up and cruised fucking blood coming out of his ears.
Speaker 2:Man dude.
Speaker 1:The dude was literally unscathed. But that was a fight where I couldn't believe it. I knew that I witnessed a miracle of God, that not a single one of us was killed, not a single one of us was wounded.
Speaker 2:How was the threat of mines and or IEDs at that point?
Speaker 1:It was very real. It was real, it was very, very real.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, hey guys, consider becoming a patron, where you will get first exclusive dibs on the video before it airs to the public and you'll get to ask the guest special questions that you have in mind. So that's also another way to support the channel. Thank you, guys, appreciate all of you keep pushing forward. Make sure you hit that link in description below never encounter them or find them before they blew up um of dude.
Speaker 1:That's one of the reasons I'm just. I'm so grateful to God and I wake up every morning and before I get out of bed, before I even let the bottom of my feet hit the floor, I thank God that I still have feet and legs to get out of bed and stand up on my own, because there were so many times throughout my career where we did encounter IEDs and our EOD guys. Those dudes are some of the baddest dudes on the fucking planet. You'd be in a gunfight while those dudes are working on a bomb with bullets flying all over the place. Fortunately, I was never blown up and, glory be to God, none of the friends that were with me were ever blown up. So throughout my whole career, throughout so many crappy situations, it is not lost on me that God not only protected me, but he always protected everyone with me. That's good dude.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a blessing, bro, it is a real blessing, that is good dude. How many years did you do in the service?
Speaker 1:20, 20 to the day, and about 14, 15 of those were in special operations.
Speaker 2:Damn Towards the end. Were you ready to get out, or were you hoping to stay in? Or what was your thought process?
Speaker 1:No, I was ready, because my last deployment I was a platoon chief. It was an Afghanistan deployment. It was a summertime deployment, so it was fighting season deployment. It was a summertime deployment, so it was fighting season. I took my boys back to the Tanguy Valley where I just was a couple of years before that with gold, where that fight that I just told you about took place. During that time we had lost extortion one, seven, you know, greatest loss in NSW.
Speaker 2:Was it in that area?
Speaker 1:It was in the same area and I was taking my boys back to the same area, and so I knew that we were going to get into a tremendous amount of fights. And we did. And so by that time I felt like I had checked every box. And again, I was blessed I still had 10 fingers, 10 toes, and I was ready to move on. I was really starting to dive into education. I was finishing my bachelor's degree. I was ready to turn the page and go do something else, and so I was talking to friends that were lawyers, friends that were businessmen and women trying to figure out hey, do I want to go to law school? Do I want to go to business school? I ended up choosing business school, but I was ready to move on and go do something else, primarily because I felt like I checked every box. I wanted to check as a commando.
Speaker 2:You mentioned that particular area of Afghanistan, Extortion 17, and those Taliban. How did that work when it came to the Taliban man? Is it like because I never deployed to Afghanistan, but is it like, hey, if you're a Taliban from this area, this is your area of operation? Or do these Taliban travel throughout the country of Afghanistan?
Speaker 1:That's a great question. No, those dudes travel all over the place In that particular area. The reason why it was so hot was because it's a valley. It's the Tangi Valley that leads right up into the mountains of Pakistan. So that's the route into fighting season and the route out of fighting season, and so, as we were getting there into spring, early summer, right at the beginning of summer that's when all of the fighters are coming out of hibernation, out of the mountains of pakistan, are coming down through the tangy valley in order to spread out through afghanistan, to take the fight to the americans and all of the the western forces that were there, and so we were, like their greeting party, right there at the mouth of the valley oh, fuck you guys, would greet them there pretty much because they were coming down from the mountains into the valley.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we're, we were like surprise, it's Sets and the Guns to meet you. Yeah, that was a hell of a welcoming man, yeah, man. So that was definitely the craziest deployment of my career and I was just blessed that I happened to be the platoon chief. That's awesome, leading the charge with an incredibly badass ground force commander and my buddy scott so a couple years back, there was a withdrawal of afghanistan that we all watched publicly.
Speaker 2:What were your thoughts and emotions?
Speaker 1:oh, dude, I I was. I was very much so in my feelings for a couple of weeks around that I was heartbroken, I was confused, I was angry at the administration for pulling us out of there the way that we did it. I thought it was completely unbecoming of America. I thought it was unprofessional. More than anything, I thought it was unbecoming of america because throughout my entire military career, we were taught that you never leave anyone behind on the battlefield not ever right and I felt like that's what we were doing right, it was not a good representation of our country.
Speaker 2:I agree, right, and that was all, for I am not a politically I not a white, I'm not a extremist, by any means man. But I have come to an understanding. There's a difference between country and government.
Speaker 1:I agree, yeah, and I just I didn't agree with it. I was confused because I had lost so many friends to the global war on terror in Afghanistan. I was at a point where I was asking myself what the hell was all that for.
Speaker 2:Now do you see the bigger picture of how a government operates and politics?
Speaker 1:I do, and, honestly, it makes me feel ashamed. Yeah, man, it makes me feel ashamed. Like what the hell are we doing? This country is $34 trillion in debt now as a result of all of that madness. And what did we get out of it? What did we change in those places?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean companies benefited from the war. They profited big time, A tremendous amount.
Speaker 1:And guess what? It wasn't our families, correct, we were the ones over there fighting, but it wasn't our families benefiting from it, right? You know what I mean? Yeah, you've got these big ass companies where you know, and all these politicians that are supposedly only on paper, making 80, 90 000 a year, but they're fucking multi-millionaires. Now, excuse my french the crime, dude.
Speaker 2:It's a fucking crime. It's corrupt, crazy. It is literally unethical.
Speaker 1:It's evil bro, it's fucking literally evil and criminal in my opinion, and not all of them, of course there are no.
Speaker 2:I hear what you're saying politics too, right, uh.
Speaker 1:But make no mistake, it's not lost on me that it was very unethical the way all of that went down, absolutely, man. Yeah, I agree, dude. Think about how beautiful and badass the united states of america would be if we infused it with 34 trillion dollars right now and we pull all that money back.
Speaker 2:I was probably that fucking speeding trains from the fucking west coast to the east coast man goodness dude just like europe?
Speaker 1:it would be amazing. I don't think anybody in this country should be poor, right?
Speaker 2:you know what I'm saying at least I mean downtown san diego, looks like shit man come on.
Speaker 1:This is san diego, california. It's one of the most beautiful places in the world to live and we got people outside of this building sleeping on the streets, struggling with drug addiction, struggling with mental health afflictions, but we're sending billions of dollars overseas to Ukraine and everything else. To Israel. We're posturing for some kind of conflict with China and Taiwan. Possibly we're posturing for some kind of conflict with China and Taiwan. Possibly maybe it's like what the hell are y'all doing? Like can we focus on our own country for a while?
Speaker 2:Well, americans, now more than ever, see it for what it is now.
Speaker 1:Thanks to people like you.
Speaker 2:And like you man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and like you, but no, well, thank you. But people like you are outspreading the word now Like. This is the real news. Right, correct? Because I don't trust CNN. I don't trust Fox.
Speaker 2:Nobody does. I don't trust.
Speaker 1:MSNBC. I don't trust any of them, Right? This is where Americans and people all over the world are getting the actual hey, what the fuck happened?
Speaker 2:Facts dude. You know what I mean. Facts dude. You know what I mean. Facts man Wow, I didn't anticipate that part of the interview, but I'm glad we freaking took it there, dude.
Speaker 1:Very important. Yeah, man, I appreciate you. I appreciate people like you.
Speaker 2:Likewise, dude Likewise. So you went through business, you went through college. How was that experience for you, man?
Speaker 1:So I did my undergraduate studies online with Ashford University that later became the University of Arizona Global Campus, and when I started my undergraduate degree it was right at around the 15-year mark, and I'm grateful because I had mentors in the Navy men and women, seals and people that were not SEALs, that loved me and cared about me and they were like hey, bro, you're about five years from retirement, are you coming? Are you going? What are you doing to prepare for life after the military? Are you going to college?
Speaker 2:Oh, you're so lucky dude.
Speaker 1:I am so blessed and highly favored by God, but these people loved me enough to care about what my future would look like when I no longer belong to them Right, and so I ended up getting enrolled at Ashford University and found that I was actually very talented at academics Like none of it was that hard to me, at least in my undergraduate studies. Now, when I got to grad school at USC, that was another thing. Because I did not enjoy finance and accounting and statistics. I was definitely challenged at that stuff.
Speaker 2:What about? It was challenging to you.
Speaker 1:I had never been good at math. I had never believed that I was good at math. In fact, I was always telling myself I hate math, I suck at math.
Speaker 2:right, and maybe that's true, but it certainly didn't help that I was telling myself that well, I mean, I suck at math, right, but I don't even think if I told myself I'm great at math, I would excel. You know what I mean? I'm pretty sure I would still suck at math, man. So was there a change? Did you actually excel in math?
Speaker 1:no, it wasn't that I excelled in it. It's that I realized wait a minute, like I, I can do this okay I might not like it, but like yeah I can do it if I buckle down and and study and and like did you have to learn it? Yeah, like I had to try yeah it came everything else.
Speaker 1:I didn't really have to try, I did it anyway, but just because that was my mindset at the point, like, wait a minute, this is the assignment read all 28 of these pages. Okay, that's the, that is the mission. I'm reading every word on all 28 pages, right? But it wasn't like oh man, I gotta really fight to retain the information and understand it, whereas in math it was like no, I like everybody, turn off all white noise.
Speaker 2:I gotta buckle down and really were you like doing a little study?
Speaker 1:cheat sheets and guys dude I, I was tricks everything that I do, it's like I'm overdoing it, so like, yeah, I like every trick in the book.
Speaker 1:I was focused on making sure I was learning and I was gonna pass going to war with that math absolutely you know like I have photos of that, like my ex-wife took of me, and it'd be like one o'clock in the morning and I'm sitting at the dining room table and I got a Jack and Coke right here. I'm in a tank top, you know, and I'm just surrounded by books with my computer in front of me. I took it very seriously.
Speaker 2:You know, it doesn't matter if you're shooting a gun at a range and working on your skillset or sitting at a table with a book. It's all the same concept of putting in the effort to become proficient in a skill set. You'll get out of it what you put into it, exactly. I have a six-year-old daughter, so that's what I try to teach her. She's only six man, so I'm a realist.
Speaker 1:No, I get it. My youngest will be six next month, Nice dude, so you graduate.
Speaker 2:When did you start your business?
Speaker 1:So you graduate. When did you start your business? So I launched my first business Vigilance Risk Solutions about six months before I retired from the Navy. So while I was on terminal leave, I was wrapping up graduate school and launching my first business, and that was in 2016.
Speaker 1:Wow dude, can you tell us about it? Yeah, so Vigilance Risk Solutions ended up becoming ComSafe AI as a result of the pandemic, but we started out as a technology-enabled security consultancy called Vigilance Risk Solutions and we were working for some small businesses, but primarily middle market-sized businesses and large enterprises, and ultimately we became a shop of threatened vulnerability assessment, risk assessment, emergency planning. We would build bespoke web-based training for some of these larger companies, like active shooter awareness, workplace violence prevention, corporate travel safety. We would handle their case management. So we had a case management platform where they could track breadcrumbs of all of these incidents that happened so that they could start planning to stay ahead of them. And then the pandemic hit about four and a half years into that business. We were doing really well. We were already generating seven figures in revenue. The pandemic hit and I went oh shit, it's about to destroy that business model. Yeah, because even though we had tech enabled the company, about 80 85 percent of the revenue was still coming from consulting how important is it?
Speaker 2:because there's there's businesses right like, like corporations, and maybe they want to be cheap and not be proactive in taking security means. How much more expensive would they actually be paying once a fucking catastrophe happens? Maybe they want to be cheap and not be proactive in taking security means. How much more expensive would they actually be paying once a fucking catastrophe happens?
Speaker 1:A lot more Fantastic question Could you elaborate on that.
Speaker 1:Because we were always trying to keep them to the left of boom Correct, because we would tell them hey, listen, by the time you come to us, you've already lost the time, you've already lost the resources. You've lost money because you're a publicly traded company and this shit's out in the news now, and so your stock ticker is just going down. You're already lost the talent. Those employees quit or you had to fire those people and the lawsuits are already rolling in because that woman was sexually harassed. And so now you've lost her as a talent. And what were you paying her? Half million dollars a year. Well, that money's gone and it's going to take you another half million to replace her, especially if you're using a recruiting firm, because these are very high level people that make a lot of money and she's suing you.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean, and the average sexual harassment lawsuit settlement was around like a couple million dollars at that point in time yeah so, yeah, it's like, hey, you could have brought us in and we stood up these, these processes and these procedures, or you fast forward to where we are now running com safe ai, because we designed this technology to catch it at its inception in the email channels or in the chat channels like slack, or teams like you could have been paying like what been on besides your company a quarter million dollars a year for this technology or for this process to know like, if not in real time, nearly in real time, when it's starting pretty much versus now.
Speaker 1:You got to settle for two, three million dollars and that's just one case, right?
Speaker 2:No, I see it, man. I see it. You mentioned you have another company.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we became ComSafe AI as a result of the pandemic. We came up with the idea, you know, based on all of our learnings, that hey, we can actually capture some of these incidents at their inception. We don't have to wait for it to develop. We don't have to wait for it to develop. We don't have to wait for that person to actually be discriminated against or actually be assaulted. We don't have to wait for the person that's being bullied to get tired of it and show up to the campus with a gun ready to solve the problem on their own. A lot of these incidents are starting in email, with people talking out the side of their neck, you know, being keyboard warriors, or in their chat channels like Slack and Microsoft Teams.
Speaker 2:So what do those things do? They trigger certain trigger words.
Speaker 1:Great question. So what CompSafe AI does is a sentiment analysis and anomaly detection platform, so it is well beyond keyword and key phrase searching. It can do that too. It's just the simplest thing that the platform can do. The platform understands semantics. It understands sarcasm.
Speaker 2:Wow, it's AI.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because it's AI. It understands when someone is joking versus no, this person is serious, and the next message is probably going to be a physical threat, right, and so the technology will send real-time alerts to stakeholders as that conversation is happening, in email or chat, depending on the risk that that enterprise wants to look for. So the enterprise that's. What's beautiful about our platform is that the enterprise gets to define their risk. So maybe they don't want to look for harassment and discrimination, maybe they only want to look for revenue churn. Well, what is your definition of revenue churn? And then the platform will look for it.
Speaker 2:So, since it's internal and the company, they're not violating any privacy because it's a company, the company owns all the data.
Speaker 1:They're not violating any privacy because it's a company. The company owns all the data. Right Own the email traffic, they own the chat traffic and the company has a fiduciary responsibility, not just to their stakeholders but to their employees in order to make sure that they're not just protecting employees, but they're protecting their revenue, so they continue to pay their employees and employees can continue to feed their families man, I was just thinking about sending an email.
Speaker 2:I said I can't wait to beat your guts, and you know ai may not. What do you mean by beat your guts?
Speaker 1:well, and what's beautiful about our platform is that, again, it's it's well beyond key phrase and keyword searching. This platform understands your environment. So, after a six to eight week period of time that has been implemented in that environment, it has a very good understanding of how people communicate with one another.
Speaker 1:Of what you should and should not be talking about Not just what you should and should not be communicating about, but it understands whether, again no, that person is serious versus no. That's just how Bill and Ted talk to one another. Wow, dude, like they're not actually going to get in a fight, they're just friends, right? And if it's unsure, it will look at the last three to five communications between those people to gather context that is so wild In order to understand whether, like no, that's just Bill and Ted joking with one another versus no, they're going to.
Speaker 1:This is going to be a problem.
Speaker 2:What is your take on AI in general, what are your thoughts on it and where do you predict it to go in the future?
Speaker 1:I think that it's very exciting. I'm really excited to see what the world will look like 10 years from now, now that AI has gone mainstream. I think that AI is going to make some of your neighbors right up the street richer than you ever imagined or they ever imagined they could be. Ai is going to make people wealthier than they could ever dream, and it's going to be people you would never guess would become wealthy. So I think that AI is going to shorten the wealth gap that we see all over the world and especially here in the United States of America. I think that AI is going to be responsible for saving lives.
Speaker 1:I think that we're going to cure diseases as a result of the invention of this technology. I'm not afraid of AI like some people are afraid of it. I don't think that we're like Skynet's going to come down from the sky and the Terminator's going to show up and kill everybody and the people that are left. They're going to be slaves and not going to have jobs anymore. I just I no. I don't think that that's what God has in store for us.
Speaker 1:And I don't think that that's what the good people walking around in this earth have in store for us. I think, it's really exciting.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, dude. I feel the same way. Where can people find you online or your business? You have a website you want to shout out yeah, thanks for asking.
Speaker 1:So you can check out CommSafe AI at wwwcomsafeai. Also, you can check out what I'm doing as an individual, paying it forward as an executive coach, a mindset coach, with Hero Consulting. You can check me out at wwwwearehero and that's hero with an I. So how do you spell that? So we W-E-R-A-R-E hero H-I-R-Ocom. And then also you can follow me on Instagram at Coach Ty Smith.
Speaker 2:Nice dude. Well, bro, it was definitely an honor having you here, dude.
Speaker 1:It was very educational man and I enjoyed the conversation dude, I really enjoyed it too. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2:Thank you, dude. There you guys have it folks. Another banger for you guys, man. Very interesting, very educational. I loved it. If you guys loved it too, make sure you hit that subscribe button. Keep pushing forward Unhinged line.
Speaker 1:Hector's legend engraved Living life raw, never been tamed From the hood to the pen. Truth entails pen. Hector Bravo, unhinged story never ends you, Thank you.
