Rich Brown - Reconnecting Men With Their Purpose/Tribe Through "The Guidon Foundation"

In this episode of Old Ranger New Dad, Seth Ryan sits down with former United States Marine Corps veteran Rich Brown — founder of: The Guido Foundation, co-owner of 'Honor Bound Fit,' and leader of an executive protection team serving high-level corporate clients.

But this conversation goes far deeper than resumes and titles.

Rich shares his mission to confront the growing crisis facing veterans, first responders, and young men who feel disconnected, directionless, or spiritually empty. Together, Seth and Rich dive into leadership, responsibility, service, brotherhood, masculinity, faith, discipline, and the dangerous cultural drift pulling many young men away from purpose.

This is not a surface-level “motivation” podcast. It is a direct conversation about becoming dependable when pressure hits, leading your family well, serving your community, and refusing to check out of life when things get hard.

The episode also explores:

- The Guidon Foundation’s mission to combat veteran and first responder suicide by connecting men with their purpose and their tribe.
 -Why many men feel lost after leaving military service 
 -The importance of brotherhood and accountability 
 -Building dangerous men with strong moral foundations 
 -Leadership outside the military 
 -Faith, service, and responsibility in modern America 
 -Helping young men develop purpose before crisis hits 
**If you are a young man searching for direction… a father trying to lead your family well… or a veteran struggling to find meaning after service… this conversation was made for you.

#OldRangerNewDad #Veterans #Leadership #Masculinity #Faith #Fatherhood #MarineCorps #ArmyRanger #MensMentalHealth #SelfDiscipline #Brotherhood #Purpose #MilitaryTransition #ChristianMen #TheGuidonFoundation

Transcript

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quick intro for my brother Rich Brown, which became a recent brother. Just meeting you and getting to know you at Military CreatorCon. most men say they'd step up when it counts. Few actually will. Today's guest is Rich Brown, a former United States Marine He's built his life around one mission, developing men who are men who are ready to protect lead and take responsibility when pressure hits with a foundation forged in the marine corps and sharpened for the real world Rich brings a blunt, no excuses perspective on what it actually means to be dangerous in the right ways and dependable when it matters most. He's not here to motivate you. He's here to challenge you to become the man your family, your community and this world needs you to be. So that, my brother, is your intro and now if you would, kind of tell us a little bit more about that, uh both your time in the Marine Corps and then the Guidon Foundation. Guidon On Foundation is the nonprofit that I started to address veteran and first responder "Self-deletion and to try to teach leadership and inspire young Americans to serve God and country. Honor Bound Fit is a gym that I co-own with a good friend and that was kind of what I considered our first case study for the Guidon On Foundation. And then through Leftwich Global Protective Services, that's my executive protection company that that I lead a security team and provide bodyguarding essentially for usually Fortune 50 CEOs. Yeah. different organizations are you a part of on a full-time, part-time basis then? two businesses and a nonprofit. Wow, that is quite the load on your shoulders. I'm starting a new business, so you know, can't get enough, I guess. naturally. So yeah, so fill us in if you would just on each one and to be honest when you first told me about the guide on foundation of what you guys are doing as I kind of alluded to there in the intro, that's what immediately keyed me in and I was like, bro, you got to come on my podcast and share that because that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to motivate the young men that are the future leaders in America. Now, some of them are going to be future Marines. Some of them will be Rangers. Some will be police officers, but some are just going to be leaders in their community, in their church, of their family, just of their buddies. So that's what we're both on the same mission. uh So yeah, that's what I love about it. the kind of main program under development at the Godon Foundation right now is what we're calling Ronin Leadership Activation. And the status quo right now amongst most veterans is I'm going to get out of the service. I'm going to use my DD-214 as rolling paper. I'm going to play video games, check out from society, try to get the disability claim I can get. and just, you know, live the rest of my life on the couch, coasting into the casket, right? Unfortunately, you know, decompression is great, but that kind of behavior leads to isolation if you don't find something new real soon. We've got a huge veteran "Self-deletion" problem in our country. Veterans are leading the charge on removing themselves from society through homelessness and "Self-deletion" And I think the general perception among most Americans is that that's all due to combat trauma and PTSD, right? I think you and I have both dealt, both been in quite a bit of combat. Probably both have uh a disability claim that equals PTSD, et cetera. But I'm not suicidal, right? I don't think you are either. And I think... where the disconnect is, is we don't have a problem with combat trauma and PTSD. What the problem is, I would say it's a deficit of purpose, right? If we, if we look at our military community, you see quite a bit of reverence, right? Just having the uniform on, people will get, will show you a certain amount of respect. There's absolutely no question about what you're doing with your life, what path you're on, et cetera. You have a tribe and a purpose built into your career from the day you stand on those yellow footprints or whatever the equivalent is for the other branches of service, right? And then you leave and we prepare you for job interviews and how to make a resume and all that kind of stuff. What we're not teaching active duty military members about transitioning out of service is how to find and reestablish that new tribe and purpose. Because if you don't, It's going to be dark, right? You have to have a community around you. You have to find a new cause to rally around, or you're just going to stagnate and eventually it gets real dark. just walk us through for you. So did you immediately, when you were deciding to get out of the Corps did you decide, I'm gonna be starting these organizations, I'm gonna do a nonprofit, I'm gonna be starting all these other companies, or is that something you just, you knew you were still driven and it naturally came to you? Kinda how did that work for you? So to be clear, I've been out of the Marine Corps longer than I was in. I was in 2004 to 2012. And I think... I think my freshman year of high school, I read Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and I had a lot of ideas about being a business owner and what that would look like and so on. And then my sophomore year, a bunch of assholes flew airplanes into the World Trade Center, et cetera. And so my life took a huge change. I enlisted in the Marine Corps the day after my 17th birthday and I left for boot camp four days after high school graduation. I ended up graduating high school with a 1.89 GPA. And I went from, I'm gonna be a business owner to the only thing that matters in life is I'm gonna join the Marine Corps and serve my country. And my grades went with it. you know. So I was blown up in Iraq on January 23rd, 2007. And shortly after returning from Iraq, I was stationed at Quantico at the basic school to teach young lieutenants. And about six months after being there, I was diagnosed with a TBI. So at the time, the "Self-deletion V-Bid that blew me up threw me 15 feet through the air. That was diagnosed as a moderate concussion. I was diagnosed as a moderate concussion because I played football for seven years. I'm sorry. I played football for five years. I wrestled for seven. you know, I was, uh, I was a tough kid and I'd had a lot of hits in the head. So I knew exactly how to answer all the questions. Cause I've been through that pop quiz a hundred times. know what answers they expect. And I just gave them off the cuff. Well, when you put me through actual imaging and give me actual tests, it turns out that. explosion was a lot more significant and I had a traumatic brain injury. And so I knew 3 and a half years before my EAS that I was not going to be allowed to reenlist. They told me that I could finish out my contract that I was obviously doing well at teaching lieutenants so I could continue doing that. But they weren't going to send me back to the fleet to lead troops in combat because there was too much risk for, you know, if I receive information on the fly. being able to repeat it back accurately and actually execute the orders that are given. So I had 3 and a half years before my EAS to figure life out again and what my life was going to look like after service. So I started my first security company two years before I got out of the Marine Corps. So I never struggled like most military members do with finding their next thing because I had a huge runway before I had to take off. so One of the only compliments my ex-wife ever gave me, and I think one of my favorite compliments was that most military members are going to job fairs after their military service to try to find their next career. I actually went to a job fair the week after my EIS with a table to recruit other veterans to come work for me in my business. And so no, I never had to struggle with identity and purpose. I will say life has changed quite a bit. Um, I was in a near death car accident about 3 years ago. And because of that, uh, and ongoing kind of, uh, symptoms of injuries from that car accident, I'm not able to perform executive protection. I'm not able to do the bodyguard work as I once did. And so now I'm adjusting to, you know, uh, leading a company without being, you know, one of my favorite quotes about leadership is that shepherd smell like sheep. Right? If you're going to lead any group of people, you need to be among those people and showing them the right way to do it constantly, et cetera, et and going through the same struggles they are. Now that I've been removed from the field, I'm trying to find new ways to lead without being amongst my sheep, so to speak. So that's been a struggle. will say I've had a, I've been very fortunate to watch my uncle grow old, right? Because he's about 90 years old now, but he grew up as a man's man. He was born and raised in think Northern California. And by the time I met him, he was in his 50s, 60s, something like that. And he would plow his mile long driveway by himself. If the tractor needed to be fixed, he fixed it. had an old farm truck and was constantly fixing the carburetor on it and all those kinds of things. And anything that needed to be done, he did it himself. And, you know, that's a good example, I think, of how men typically we... We identify a lot of our self-worth connected to our competency and our character. Are you a good person? And can you do the things that we expect a man to be able to do? And to watch my uncle, who, like I said, was a man's man, get older and have to accept help, because he can't do all the things that he used to be able to do. and watch how much of a kick in the gut that is. think it's, it's prepared me a lot for even this struggle I'm going through now where I can't do the things I used to be able to do. And having to accept that, and like I said, accept help, uh, it's a gut check, right? I'm, I've been very fortunate that I've been able to, uh, you know, watch somebody that I respect deal with it ahead of time, right? And kind of prepare me for it. I don't think most men get that, especially as we put our parents into retirement homes and stuff like that. Yeah. And I agree with you 100 % I've experienced kind of the same thing. Watching people that also that are veterans that were just ahead of me a generation ahead that I respect a lot and just conversations with them of what they're not able to do anymore. there's a guy that actually goes to my church and he's been in shooting competitions since he could hold a rifle. he's now like starting to look at his 3 gun safes, full of all the rifles that he has and you know, finally like selling some of them off and getting rid of them. it's to hear him talk about it's like he's getting rid of his kids, but it's more of like he's realizing now that he wants these to go to a good place and he's never going to use them because he has way too many rifles and guns to use. And it's like, going into the gym when I was a contractor in Iraq, you there was a guy in there and he was in his mid 60s, late 60s. He was in his late 60s. And he's a bodyguard in Iraq at that moment currently. And I recruiting, I had a guy apply that was in his, he was like 71. And we were going to process him through because he was in such good shape. Now. I mean, that those are such a rare case. And like you say, if you've been playing football in high school and getting your head smashed a little bit, wrestling, and you have one bad car wreck, one explosion, which I was blessed by God never to get hit with an ID. But yeah, man, it doesn't take much for you to realize how frail the human body is and how little it takes for one's life to leave. And being a police officer, you see that all the time. somebody just fell over on a moped and hit his head while wearing a helmet and it killed him. And yet a lady blowing 80 down the interstate and plowing directly into the wall and she's fine in a minivan. You're like, I don't know how that works, but it was your time to go. You know what I mean? So I connected a lot of different things there, sorry. But yeah, brother, Real quick on the IED, so you guys were just out doing patrols? I was in Haditha Iraq at the time. And yeah, so there's, there's a number of different books out about our time there. That one's called, there's, one called Warriors of Anbar. It's about our unit. And it's kind of a... celebration of a success story because when we arrived in Haditha it was after the Haditha massacre which we'll go into. I think it's a terrible brand name but we were there after that and the unit before us their response to that incident or having they had relieved the unit that was involved in that and their response was basically to button the hatches and just keep a low profile. That's not how you win a war, it's not how you keep territory, it's none of the above. And so our response was quite different when we relieved them and we kicked out probably nine patrols a day and probably equally as many at night. But we, you we were doing hearts at heart's in mind during the day and we were rolling up bad guys in their beds at night. And in eight months we went from could not leave the wire without taking contact and often taken indirect fire on base to, you know, families were coming out of their homes and waving at us goodbye as we left and throwing us soccer balls and stuff like that. so the AO completely changed while we were there. But this particular incident, like I said, it January 23rd, 2007. I was supervising Iraqi police officers at a vehicle checkpoint near a patrol base we had set up. And a 13-year-old boy drove his grandfather's bongo truck up to our position and it was loaded down with artillery rounds and explosives. Nothing left of the kid or the vehicle. if through me about 15 feet through the air through the hood of the vehicle, almost 150 feet in front of our position. The two Iraqi police officers were injured, but I think they both made it. And I was medevaced by a Humvee and uh It was beginning of a complex ambush, but everybody made it out alive, so to speak. and indirect fire for people that are civilians is just rockets, mortars, anything that they're launching at you that are on a direct bullet. Yeah, man, that's rough to go through that. But again, it's to me, I always want to hear like the things that you've come through, just a little bit of detail, because for me as a young kid, if I were listening to a podcast, because that didn't exist when I was a kid, man, hearing hearing what somebody's gone through. And again, now you're on a podcast talking about the multiple businesses that you're running, these organizations and how you're still pushing on. Really, that's where that man, that drive and that purpose comes in. That's what separates the fake people that are on social media claiming to be CEO. have, you know, life coach. They're all the things and they're the most important entrepreneur on everything versus somebody like you that's actually been through a lot and is still pushing through even though, you know, you've had to overcome adversity in multiple different avenues. You know, we measure our economy and, you know, the way things are going in our country with a number of different metrics. I think a metric we should probably keep track of as a measure of success is how many 21-year-old life coaches are out there. uh that is unfortunate today and there are some 18 year olds are making more than both of us combined easily on YouTube scamming people and just reading stuff off of chat GPT to them and it's just like, I mean, you're asking an 18 year old so if you don't know, yeah. But you know, I think that's the difficulty for content creators, for podcasters, but when you're trying to help young men like you are to the Guidon Foundation. It's like we really have actual experience. This isn't something that we had in mind when we were a young kid to be building up the generation because of so many metrics that are showing that they're falling behind in almost every category that I can recall. And it's just like people that life experience, who've been through very, very hard times and have not only learned it, but sat with it, processed it, and are able to distill it down into wisdom that you can adopt and apply to your life. And then you don't have to go through those mistakes to learn those lessons. And that's what I did well as a kid because I paid attention when we read the Bible and to the Bible stories and distilling down the wisdom from it. It's easy to go, yes, Solomon or Samson grabbed a hold of a lion and, you know, shredded it with his bare hands. it's like, okay, that's cool. You know, but you're you're hearing about David killing a giant with, okay, well, that's cool. But you're not getting anything out of it. You're not and it's not until you get older and you start really applying and you're going, I mean, if David could do that, right? And that once you start applying, when you hear somebody on a podcast who's flown through the air in a vehicle-borne IED and seen the person who came to kill you was a child, you know, and just seeing their body, what was left of it and going through that and then picking yourself back up quite literally and, you know, metaphorically and getting back after it. And I think that's the hard part for young men is to weave through all of the pretenders who are just wanting to get more eyes and versus getting to people who are really trying to change this next generation and help them. So we talk a lot about unseen wounds rather invisible wounds or whatever you want to call it. And typically people they're referring to PTSD or brain damage or some, some form of that. Right. And that's certainly relevant, but I like to bring attention to, um, You know, I don't think it's necessarily PTSD. I do say that I have a certain amount of scar tissue from that attack. it took me a long time to kind of reevaluate my stance on, on religious faith after that attack, because that 13 year old boy committed "Self-deletion in order to take me out because that's what he was. was instructed by his religious leader, his "imam" that that's how you get into heaven. Right. And so knowing that, and that experience really, really messed with me. I can say that You know, I've managed to reestablish my kind of affirmation and that's that I have, I have 0 % faith in man. I have a hundred percent faith in God. but I really struggle with any type of religious authority. I can never be Catholic. I, I can't believe in any type of leadership structure or rank structure within religion. and the only way that I'm able to lead my life in a Christian way. is, you know, I have people that I respect, I have people that look up to and that I'll listen to, et cetera, but it's me and God, right? Just talking directly to the man and, you know, reading the instruction manual, as you said, right? The Bible. And doing my best with that because I still struggle with, I don't go to a church and I should, I know I need to, but it's hard to get over that, like I said, scar tissue. I think this next generation I think what you're saying definitely resonates with them because resonates with it because if you, again social media is where everybody lives, you grew up with social media. you click on one video that is the next round of whoever it is that's getting arrested for tax fraud and evasion and swindling their congregation out of money. And I say this, and my grandfather, my dad's father, He did this. He literally found a group of very easy to manipulate people and he convinced them that he had received uh new instructions from the word of God, from God himself. And in addition to the word, God is now telling him when he's coming back, when Jesus is coming back. And so he got everybody convinced that he has been hearing this new thing and he started using revelations as as is the playbook and figuring out the dates and times and telling everybody when the end times were coming. So we need to sell everything we own houses, cars, all of it. Sell everything you own, bring it together. We're going to live in a commune. And when Jesus comes, we're going to be the first ones to meet him in the sky._ God already told me, of course, they did that. They brought all the money to him. And then he was on a flight with my father as a child to South America. And he lived. So my father grew up in Paraguay in South America from the age he can remember until he was a midway through high school. And then they moved to Texas. And that's where he (my grand father) lived to the end of his life. he took them for over a million dollars, all those people. this is my own family. And my dad lived through that. that so many people in churches that meanwhile just have want to have their way and it ends up splitting the entire church because of their ego because of their whatever they're feeling on this or on that and it never has to do with the Bible it's just always has to do with their ego and them wanting control and it's men And Women it certainly isn't all men doing that tell you what, man, you don't strike me as a proud person. wouldn't, you you seem to have quite a bit of humility. But I hope you take a certain amount of pride in how you've lived your life because your grandfather and your father didn't exactly give you great examples of how to be a competent and... a man of a lot of character. And so I hope you take some pride in what you've been able to do with your life. appreciate it. Yeah, I I do. At the same time, you know, I'm raising a little boy right now and I'm scrutinizing every part of what I'm doing because I don't want to put him through or, you know, mess him up in any way. I just want to give him the best loving, you know, childhood that I could possibly give him. And that again goes back to my purpose for this. The only reason I'm... contacting you and setting this all up and having all of these connections so that I can do all this work and I'm not making any money for any of this. The point is, it's legacy and it's I want other young men out there to learn the lessons that I'm gonna teach my own son. And that's the one thing that name all, name the top 100 motivational speakers, not doing that. They're not teaching you what they're teaching their son. Yeah. You know, it's something I've been chewing on a lot lately, I think in the last year or so, is this realization that, you know, we all want to give our children a better life than we had. And unfortunately, a lot Americans take that as I need to remove all the obstacles from their life. But we know as well as anybody that adversity is typically the best teacher. And it kind of gives you something to, you know, how do you make sure that you're setting your kid up for success without giving them fake adversity, right? Or even worse, maybe authentic adversity. And, you know, I think it comes down to teaching those principles, you know, developing in them a strong character. And then I think we have to get our kids into competitive athletic events, etc. Something to give them something to fight against, you know what I mean? Yeah, 100%. That's exactly what you said that. The very first thing I thought of was, my son's gonna be in jujitsu, for sure. And he's going to do... races like obstacle course races, Spartan races, all of those types of things. And that's where for me anyways, that's where my mind goes to is, I don't have to let him go with his cousins into the woods and they create a fight club where they pit him against other kids from school. That's what happened to me. That's, it's not what I'm saying. I wouldn't recommend fight club and inventing that on your own. Instead, it's like, you know, that adversity is going to be him versus him and getting making sure that he understands like you go against somebody else in jiu-jitsu you go against somebody else when you get a job you go against somebody else right you're in competition for whatever race. the top performer, whatever it is in life, that can happen in a good positive way. the negative side that I don't need him to be bullied by the drug dealer and get jumped. in order to go, well, that's why you put them in public schools so they can really get a good taste of what it's like in the outside. I mean, maybe, or also the kid that brought a gun to school and was going to shoot me and my buddy when we showed up after school to a fist fight. Luckily, the drug dog smelled his locker. had weed and guns in his locker that day. So as you can tell, I'm going way off into all these different stories. But I'm just thinking of my childhood. There's so many times where I could not be here right now and were just crazy things that my mom we were literally talking about this hours ago claims that she has no idea that I was ever put in pits made to fight other kids I'm like all of my teeth were knocked out in the woods you didn't you thought I literally ran face first into every tree in the woods for years she still is like well I just didn't know I'm like okay okay well I'm gonna pay more attention to that if my son has that. My son has missing eight front teeth. I'm going to figure it's more than just accidentally went through the trees. so anyways so If he does, I would suggest maybe homeschooling. What's your stance on that? you have children, right? I have an 11 year old girl and I would, I've given homeschooling quite a bit of thought. I would be very pro homeschool for myself and my daughter. if I didn't have 50-50 custody and that was a huge barrier to entry. I will say one of the things that a barrier. put up as barrier is well, the math teacher is a person. college. They've done the extra math and they specifically focus on this. person that's teaching English is really good at English. That's their passion. They've gone through all this higher education. The funny thing is, because I was homeschooled part of my life and then put in public school for the other half, I went kindergarten through sixth grade in homeschooling. and then skipped seventh grade, went into eighth grade when I went into public schools. And when I tested, I could have graduated and been college level math. Science and history were 12th grade level. English was fifth grade. So my mom who didn't graduate high school was my teacher. And so she was good at math. And she was good. She understood history and science and teaching that. But she had a lack in the English department and it did carry down. But that's not to say that you are, you know, my mom again had a ninth grade education. If you graduated high school, you're going to be fine. Like my mom didn't bother to spend her time doing spelling. She also grew up in Southern California and they had dirt bikes. They had dirt bikes, they would ride out and go check out the Charlie Manson Cult compound. So that's where they lived, right around the corner from where Charlie's little colt, Charlie Manson's colt was at. So yeah, they had a lot of distractions back in the day, in the sevens, when everybody was just getting high and not very fast. not that's yeah. well, first of all, I'm wearing this t-shirt. It's kind of my jab at Hillary Clinton and her book and anybody who thinks that they can raise their kids better than their parents. Right. I heard somebody recently say that, you know, if you live in an agnostic village and you allow the village to teach your child, you will have an agnostic child. Right. And so this idea that like it takes a village. Well, our village kind of sucks, right? There's a lot of people in our village that don't need to have any connection to our children whatsoever. And so that's that's kind of what the shirt's about. But to that point, how old is your son? Yeah, so I don't know if he's going to make it to the sixth grade, not because of his own ability or your parenting, but because I think we're going to very, very soon, we're going to have to acknowledge that the way our public education system is set up right now is fundamentally broken and it probably should have been done away with already. I think by the time he's ready for sixth grade, we will have something that looks entirely different. It will mostly be guided independent study through, you know, agentic AI, et cetera, et cetera. don't know, it's gonna be a completely different landscape. Yeah, yeah, with you there. is, everything has changed so fast since Chachi became first. Oh yeah. is second that that went live and just everything changed and so many people didn't even bother to stop stirring their coffee to even take a look at it. And I'm just like, Most people are terrifyingly unprepared for what's coming. And it's going to be beautiful and fantastic and equally terrifying because we're going to spin our wheels trying to figure out how to adjust and it's going to be messy. Yeah. the more reason why. with young people, though, with mental health specifically, again, with my child and all of the data that's coming out. If you just hand your kid a screen, they're going to fall behind in so many metrics of just being spatially aware of their surroundings and being able to just like you can't just take a kid, put them on on screens and ignore him for, you know, five years of his life and then go kick him outside and be like, like, okay, go have fun. You've changed their brain makeup and all their other neural connections are completely different from what we had as a kid. My parents would, hey, the day has started, you get your homework done, and then you can go outside and play. And it's like I forgot every day that by the way, when you go outside, you don't get to come back in unless you need to go to the bathroom or take a drink. And you can go to the bathroom outside. Most of the time for the guys so it was like you just got kicked outside and you just got on your bike and just rode off down the road and they didn't expect you back until you know, seven eight o'clock at night and Dude, I remember so many times that I'm out there running around just running down the road out in the middle of the country And there's just dogs run up on me. I got to figure it out I got some pit bull chasing me now I'm grabbing a stick and I'm you know, ten years old at this point 10 years old at this point. was a that was a unique time It wasn't unique at that point but it's it was unique because it's like we were the last the Gen Xers which is I'm the very last of the Gen X and then Millennials came in and is everything everything really started to change dramatically with with that generation and I like you say I'm excited to see what is possible for my son and being able to have a living doing wildly different things than what we had as our options. Hard labor, military, hard labor. If you're a trust fund baby, you come from a family of professors, you're just going to go to college and live there. was just so usually you did what everybody else did. And for my family tree who didn't graduate high school, none of them. And my cousin's driving here right now and he's lived on oil rigs now for almost 20 years as a roughneck and and you know his his his face has sustained enough damage that it's visible he is you know he's been through several life-and-death situations and even recently another one and it's like and I get why people see crazy dangerous jobs, look at the military the way they do again, because of the perception as you already pointed out of everybody just assumes you're going to get PTSD if you're a veteran and you're going to just be screwed up for life. Almost like we, you know, we all got agent orange. Like that's the way it feels like people perceive the veteran community. And that's still, even though people haven't been going on regular rotations into combat for a decade and a half. Yeah, so there was a lot there. will say so. No, no, no. Three, 3 to five years within the next 3 to five years. Everything we do regarding our economy and the way that we make a living and so on is going to fundamentally change. If it can be automated, it will be automated. If it can be reduced to a process that can be done by a computer or a robot, it will be. And the smartest people in our country right now are saying that roughly 70 % of all white collar jobs will be eliminated. That doesn't even include blue collar jobs, right? Most of the blue collar jobs will be eliminated probably quicker than that. You know, you've got people like uh Elon Musk talking about not just universal, you know, low income or universal basic income, but universal high income because the way we look at labor or the way that labor is performed will fundamentally change to a point where groceries and your basics and so on are pretty da*n close to free. And I'm an evil capitalist. And so I struggle with a lot of these ideas with, you know, universal basic income and that kind of thing. But if you go back to root principles and you go back to, you know, these ideas that capitalism is based on, you know, you look at Adam Smith and Wealth of Nations and talking about how, you know, the fruits of my labor, whether that be physical labor or intellectual labor, that belongs to me, right? I put in the effort to make that happen. But if we are living in an economy where we don't need your labor anymore, what does that look like? How do you find value in yourself? How do you establish value? How do you trade value if you don't have to participate in the system? And so. you know, communism and socialism have been used to spread a lot of evil and kill millions of people and so on. And they all started from, how do we use government to take people from poverty to, wealth somehow, or at least, you know, middle income wealth, whatever that looks like. But if we're starting with abundance, right, if we have abundance because we've automated everything and taken people out of the equation, that may look completely different, right? I don't know. I guess we'll see when we get there, right? It's gonna be a wild ride for us because of having lived in that, I mean, duality of time before smartphones, time before the internet. Like, I grew up when there was no internet. And then I remember when the internet first started and floppy disks and playing little tiny dots on a screen as a game. And you're like, what we're doing now? This doesn't even make sense. I don't know how Call of Duty works. I don't know how in the world they're making everything just so seamlessly You know, I'm connecting with people all over the world and we're playing in the same games and it's so fast and you're just just to sit back and think where it was when I started to where it is now and then you look forward to where it will be Everybody's gonna think the same thing man. I can remember when you had to touch a video console to play a video game. How weird was that? And I think to influence is for people that like you're wanting to, uh you know. mentor, you're wanting these young men to make more of themselves, to be able to step up and be the future for whatever that looks like. the same thing that I I know that I don't know what's coming. So I know that I'm going to have to pay attention very closely. Because I mean, if you're if you're trying to apply your life's experience in in the previous generations to what it is, to what it is, there is nothing new under the sun as spoken in the Bible. And when you break things down, it's still not new. It has changed very differently. But there are... pitfalls that people are young men are going to fall into the next generations are going to fall into if they don't pay attention to the old heads that that earned their right by, you know, growing up the hard way and then applying that to the new technology, whereas everybody else is going to be enveloped in this. And then it will just seem like how do you differentiate yourself? Well, you do hard things. what are hard things? And that's where with this generation and the young men today, doing things, physical things that set you apart, they don't just physically build your body to look stronger and better. It's not just that. is the, I specifically, this is a question for you. I thought of this when I was in Marine Corps bootcamp. I'm Marine Corps bootcamp and I'm thinking of when I first stepped on the yellow footprints. Was it the pull-ups or the push-ups, getting smoked? Was it learning how to do drill? What was it that took me from nasty civilian to death-dealing devil dog here 13 weeks later? And you're like, if you try to explain what you did in boot camp, what you did in boot camp, you can't just explain stories to them or linear explain what you did and then them go. and so from that you took one class and you're now like paying attention to all your surroundings all the time and hyper vigilant. You're like, yeah, duh. If you haven't been through the stress. through the stress, then you don't understand how those pushups change your brain and change you for the rest of your life. that? Again, there's a lot there. Well, I tell you what, I don't know how much time we have left, but I'm going to try to connect the general theme of everything we've been talking about into one kind of overall hypothesis here, right? So I think one of the things that gets kind of overlooked as part of that boot camp process, I've heard it applied to special operations selection. The people who make it through special operations selection, whether that be seals or green berets or whatever, uh, it's not typically the guy who looks best naked or who was the captain of his football team or whatever. Almost always it's that person who, when sh*t gets really tough, they look outboard and they say, Hey man, how you doing? Right. It's that ability to not cocoon, not isolate and look outboard and check on everybody else. And there's some magic in that because it's reciprocal. It's almost like giving a hug. It's really fu#king awkward to hug somebody if they don't hug you back. Right. It takes two to participate. And there's some empowerment in that. back to the Guidon Foundation and what we're trying to build, we have two programs that we're building in parallel. One is the Ronan Leadership Activation Program. That's reaching out to veterans and trying to get them involved in leadership. And there's kind of 3 pathways for that, right? And it's all based on the Corps value of, you know, build or join an organization that you are proud to be a part of. And so if there's an organization that you see that you want to be a part of, we'll try to get you involved in that almost like a recruiting service, almost like a headhunter type service. The difference is once we get you into that, that program, a part of that organization, you're going to stay connected to us through, monthly online meetups where we're coming together as a, a kind of a cadre to discuss what issues all the members of this program are dealing with in their you know, in their positions with whatever organization they're in and kind of helping each other problem solve and learn from each other's mistakes, et cetera. There's another path where, you know, if you have something that you want to do, if you have a program you want to develop, we'll help you do all that almost like an incubator, right? Whether that's a service oriented, you know, private company or a nonprofit or whatever, we certainly have the resources. know the people to help. kind of remove a lot of the obstacles from learning how to do that on your own. And then there's the third option, which is my favorite, because I'm extremely biased. And that's we'll allow you to plant what we're doing with the Goddard Foundation locally in your community. whether that's the fitness things we do for charity or the other program that we're developing alongside this is the Service Leadership Academy. And that's where we take roughly 35 local high school seniors, rising seniors on their summer break before their senior year, we put them in a classroom and we teach them about leadership from the perspective of veterans and first responders and guest speakers. It's an eight week program. It's two four hour days per week and it finishes, it's, you know, it starts with self leadership, self awareness. How do you lead yourself? Cause if you can't lead yourself, you can't lead others. Then you start learning about what good and bad leadership looks like, how it can be abused. We've talked about cults and all that kind of stuff. And also good examples of leadership. The third phase is all about developing and leading teams, but then that fourth phase is your community leadership project. So we're going to divide all these students into four teams, and they're going to go out and find a problem in their community and attempt to have a positive impact. You're not going to end hunger. You're not going to cure cancer, but you can find a shi#ty situation in your community and try to have a positive impact on it in some way, or form. So that's the Service Leadership Academy. That's how it connects to the Ronin _ Leadership Activation Program. Those are two programs that we're developing in parallel, but to go back to kind of where we started. You know what? Remember the Los Angeles wildfires like two or 3 years ago? Remember the dumbest part about that? is that they had a whole reservoir of water that they wouldn't touch, that they wouldn't use to put out those fires. I think more recently than that, we had 500 tons of food in Africa that we paid for as American taxpayers to give to the starving people in Africa. And they destroyed all that food because bureaucracy, right? So we had the solution to the problem and we didn't tap into it. And then we started talking about AI later in the conversation and how Roughly 3 /4 of all white collar jobs are going to be eliminated. bunch of blue collar jobs are going to be eliminated and how people really struggle when you remove their purpose and their tribe. Right. So we've got veterans around the country who have struggled with purpose and tribe. They can already identify with people like, you know, I didn't make this comparison until a couple of weeks ago, but who else struggles with, finding purpose and value in themselves through some type of change is stay at home moms who have identified as a great mother for the last 20 years and then their kids leave. Now what do I do? Who am I if I'm not a mother, right? Yeah, you're still a mom, but when that responsibility leaves, how do you find value in yourself? And so I say that as a way of saying, we're trying to develop these veterans and first responders to lead people in their community to solve problems. And I think what we're doing is giving them the reps to help all these other people who are about to be facing that same transition because their job's been eliminated through AI, robotics, et cetera, et Did I connect that all well enough? Did all that make sense? It did, it did. ironically, I mean, you hit the nail on the head. I mentioned my cousin's driving here right now. Their last kid is graduating college on Friday. And so they're about to go through that change. And then he's going to be planning on retiring from being a roughneck. So they're going to have to see each other all the time with no kids in the house for the first time since they've known each other. You know, that's that. You know, it sounds wonderful. The positive impact of that could be they can get an RV and travel the country and have no, you know, nothing stand in their way, you know, enjoined retirement and so on, or they can struggle with purpose. And I think we can both think of at least one senior enlisted staff, NCO or officer who retired and within a year committed "Self-deletion" because they just didn't have the self-worth anymore. They didn't know. how to find value in themselves when you take their career away. A lot of marriages end when people EAS because they built their marriage around being in the service and being a military spouse and then they can't figure out how function when they're locked in a house together, right? And my wife and I both being veterans, you know, that challenge was there. I think just like you said, well, mine was different because they literally were just like, hey, I had to tell my first sergeant, hey, I need to get out. I need to ETS "End of Time and Service." I need to ETS out in two weeks. And I'm in Mosul. And they just kept dragging their feet. And finally, he's like, yeah, OK, well, you can leave. Just go hop on a plane with Sergeant so-and-so. He's going back tonight. Long story. short, like I had two weeks and I was in Mosul So it took like 3 days to get back. And then I just had to run and get signatures. I didn't go through a single TAPS class. I didn't go through anything. I didn't have time. It took two weeks just to get all the signatures. And then I went home and applied for jobs for six months and nobody would hire me. Who's going to hire a combat veteran Army Ranger who was also prior Marine before that? It's like. Yeah, yeah, you would. that's right. But I'm in small town, Oklahoma. I'm in Oklahoma City. I mean, it's a big town. But at that point, was still a town in 2005 So I think I, I didn't struggle. knew that I had worth but I know that I struggled with like, at what point is something going to start working for me everything worked in the military knew what I was supposed to do. I knew all these things. And I think just when I left, I went to the gym the next day and I never stopped that. And I never, you know, I didn't stop going to church. didn't start drinking. I didn't start doing bad things. I didn't start eating unhealthy. I just kept with my program with just the norm. I just kept doing what I knew worked for me before. And I think that's where a lot of, especially young veterans that veterans, they're retiring out, whatever they fall into that pitfall. They're just like, well, I guess I could Well, I guess I could take a few days off. haven't done it all this time. Yeah, mental health, there's definitely some reasons for that. And I'm definitely not gonna be a shining light for that, for an example of mental health if I just. the gas pedal, pedal to the metal the entire time. And I just don't spend a lot of time sitting down trying to figure out, you know, everything that I've been through and everything I've avoided and all these other things. But it also works for me. And because it works for me. You know, that's how my my marriage was able to survive everything that it has. And what you just said about marriages failing when they're getting out of the military and the empty nesters, I know of one couple we know of one here. They just left. They went up north in their van, their Sprinter van, and they live in that thing and they travel the country and he preaches and she and she does all kinds of women outreach stuff for God. And that's it. And they did other things for work. And now that's they know their purpose in life is just to finish out the rest of their days building the kingdom and And because of that yeah, you know their marriage is you know amazing and that's just they're so magnetic you want to be around them versus people that you know They they let all these things that you would think should be kind of common sense I mean, you know, you're you know, you're gonna ETS eventually you know that you're going to retire eventually, know your kids are going to leave eventually. And then it all happens one day and it's like everybody was just sitting there going, I never thought, I never thought this day would really come. Well, it is what we doing. And that's the last thing I'll say. We're, right at an hour. One of the most important things that I was taught in Marine Corps bootcamp. And I say it to my wife at nauseam. So I don't even say it anymore. I just look at her and she already knows what I'm going to say. And she says, don't say it. And that is. it. That is, make a decision to go with it. matter where you're going, make a decision and go with it. Is it Mexican? Are we going to eat Chinese food? It doesn't matter. Make a decision and go with it. We're going to Walmart, we're going to Publix, we're going to... Doesn't matter. Make a decision. We'll go there and we'll figure it out on the fly. If they don't have it, we'll go to the next thing. If this doesn't work, we'll go somewhere else. Whatever it is, just take action and you will figure it out. motion, you're going to be around a lot of other people that are also in motion, and they're going to also be able to help you and direct you and, you know, from time to time pick you up when you fall down. I love it. You know, in your example of the couple touring the country in their van, you kind of gave the solution to the problem in that example, right? Because most Christians, I think, don't struggle with discovering tribe and purpose after service because they have purpose. It's God. And you can plug yourself into hundreds and thousands of tribes around the country. I do love your shirt. How can people connect with you and then with Godown Foundation. of your honor bound. Yeah. Well, you can buy the shirt at honorboundfit.com. There's honorboundfit.com, there's guideonfoundation.com. We have all the Instagram, you know, all the social medias are all either honorboundfit, no spaces, no periods. Guideonfoundation, no spaces, no periods. Just about on every social media platform, I think, except for TikTok because I'm just too old. We need to get better at that. We need to get better at that. I'd love to see a Guidon on 22, man. I hope anybody listening to this looks into Guidon _ 22 and comes out to join us. It's an awesome event. I know you know Adam Peters, Adam Bird, James Van Pree, and they're all coming. It's going to be a great time. It's going to be a great time. It's exhausting. This year, it's going to be around Quantico, Virginia. It's Fredericksburg, Virginia. We're going to go from, and I hate to even say this, because I feel like some people are going to be like, well, wait. But this year we're doing our last year of just having the event in Virginia because it sounds like Adam Peters is going to help us get set up in Florida to have Guidon On 22 Southeast. And we may also have a connection to do Guidon _ 22 South in Fort Worth, Texas next year. So we're going to go from one location for 3 or four years. to then having 3 locations next year. Well, you know I'm down for that. uh God's country out here in Florida. brother, I have really, really enjoyed the conversation. I hope everybody's been able to take something away from it. And, you know, if if they have any questions, I'll be directing them at you and get some get some answers. And hopefully, like I said, we'll make a difference in some young men's lives and make our country better for it. That's great, man. I appreciate the time.