Bryan Ray Recalls His Experience On The Battlefield, Overcoming Trauma & Embracing Health w/ HVMN

The Team Never Quit podcast is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. Partner up with Navy Federal to pay down credit card debt. Learn more at NavyFederal.org. I had an event in Afghanistan that challenged me morally. I was directly responsible for the death of some young children. Of all the things I had done overseas and all that part of things I had seen, that was really rough. I got 913 at this tower here in Svernon, North Carolina. Who is Never Quit? Who is Never Quit? Who is Never Quit? Great deal. Alright everybody, welcome back to the TNG podcast. I'm your host, Marcus Matrell. Every week it's my job to fire you up, to ignite the legend inside of you, and to push you to your greatness. Join me every week as I take you into my briefing room with some of the most hard-charging people on the planet. They're going to show you how to embrace the stuff of life, keep you the values of working your ass off, and charge you whatever life throws at you. This is the Team Never Quit podcast. Don't fuckle up, Flutter Cump. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Team Never Quit podcast. Remember guys, make sure to check out our social media pages at Team Never Quit, where you'll find all our latest news, C-special updates, and for our Patreon subscribers, some pretty sweet exclusive drops coming soon. And most importantly, please don't forget to show your love and support and hit that subscribe button. Just one click goes a long, long way. We are so excited for this show. Today we have on Brian Ray. Let's kick this off with our Patreon question of the day, which is, what things creep you out the most? It's a good question. You kind of, like with us, stuff will give you the heebie-jeebies. And then there's, and I didn't really know what that meant until it happened to me. So when someone sings to me, it freaks me the fuck out. Like directly to me. Like, it happened to me. It happened to me. It happened to me. Right? No, it happened. That's my point. It had never happened before. So I didn't know what to do about it. And like one person came up and wrapped their arms around me while they were singing to me, and my body started doing this. I didn't, I would never thought, but now that's my one of mine. Yeah, I didn't, it's kind of like man, it just made me feel, I don't know. So I guess that's how you know. Marcus's stage, and this stage in his life, he is- It's what a dude sings to me. He's more welcoming. Yeah, that's a bizarre thing. It is, right? Yeah. Like I'm never singing with you or singing amongst you. Right, who you come up singing to me? I've never been sung to. Maybe my daughter, maybe like Happy Birthday, might be like the limit. Let's go ahead and put that in the wind so I'm walking through town one day and be like, Hello? I'm gonna, I'm gonna remember that now. Yeah. I'm gonna remember that. Oh, there's a friggin'... I hate being cranked. That's what freaks me out, and my kids love to prank me. Last night- They're just getting good at this. Addy was standing behind the bedroom door. I went to get her clothes for today, to prep her. And I walk in, all the lights are off, and she's hiding behind the door with that scary Donald Trump mask. I don't know where she got it, but there's one that's like a Halloween mask that looks super freaky, like a waxy mask. And she jumps out from behind the door and screams at me with that. And I had scissors in my hand, and I almost stopped her. Stabbing the leg. Don't ever do that again. Geez. Don't do that. There's consequences to it. Yeah, do not freakin' scare me. I don't think you're supposed to scare me. I did that behind the door thing on my mother one time, and she whipped our ass. She whipped my brother just for thinking about it. Yeah, I can see that. I should have whipped her, but I hate it. It's pranks freak me the F out. I hate being pranked, and my kids know it, and they love it, and they use it on me. Geez. So, that's mine. It's the best thing to do. Yeah. Cause you get scared so easily. I get scared so easy. And I'm a freezer. I'm like the flight person. I'm not a, actually not even a flight. I'm a freeze. Yeah. That is one of the best. It should be one of the worst. Yeah, it's not that hard. Yeah, I don't run, and I don't fight back. I'm just like, everything is taken out of me. And I'm like, well, even then sometimes he'll come home in the middle of the night from work or whatever, and he'll kiss me, like, peck me on the head. And I'm like, I just do this. Oh no, the worst is driving down a freeway or somewhere. And she'll look, she's looking somewhere else and she'll see something. She'll reach over and do the claw thing into my shoulder. Yeah. To freak out, get a freeze. It doesn't let go. And I don't, you know, I'm over just minding my own thing. And, ah, dude. It's always one of the most important things. So for all you guys out there don't know that. That's an actual thing. Yeah. It's a deep, they shut down and they can't, they can't do anything. They're not trying to piss you off or anything. They just don't know what to do. Yeah. Like the life is sucked out of me in that moment. Like, yeah, you're spirit left. Like, it's not here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Spirit quit and, ah, they only left. Wow. And thank God I'm married to you because I, I'm helpless when I come here. If anybody scares me, I'm just, I shut down. Yeah. Hunter, what about you? What freaks you out? You know, so I, I don't get freaked out too easily. I'm great with, with hides and kind of just animals and all that. I kind of just enjoy the adrenaline. But one thing that has freaked me out a whole lot is, ah, going up to the top, top row of, ah, bungee jumping and just looking down in that first little jump off. That was probably one of the scariest, freakiest moments of my life. Well, you also did the highest bungee jump in the world. That is true. Hey, you're in this family. Yeah. A bigger home, right, son? Yeah. You were in New Zealand and you did like the highest thing next to a freaking cliff. I, as his mother, I'm standing, I'm like, opposite side. You did not. Yeah. That's for all the pranks. That's it. I was freaking out. Oh, yeah. It was so scary. It was awesome. How that freaked you out. Yeah. John? When the kids get quiet, that is freaky. When the little ones are playing and you hear that little chuckle and then all of a sudden nothing, you're like, that is weird. Yeah. Something has happened. Yeah. Sometimes they're just playing quietly, but sometimes they're coloring on the wall. I feel like that's more of a defensive spider sense. Yeah. And then you're freaking out. Yeah. I know we've heard of it. Especially in like a house of chaos when it's quiet. I know me and my wife have looked and been like, something is wrong. Because on the other end of that, they're waiting to hear if you heard. Right. Yes. Right. That's probably was waiting for the footsteps. What broke? Yeah. Yeah. Man, think they heard that? Yeah. So we've got a great guess for you guys today. Retiring Special Forces Officer Brian Ray has had a long and successful military career where his last duty station found him at Fort Carson, Colorado, where he took part in running the Mountain Warfare School. His services has led to some emotional struggles. And today we will talk about what his journey to healing looks like. Brian is currently starting his post military career with a company called Health Via Modern Nutrition or HVN. They have released a ketone supplement called Ketone IQ that is proven to help improve the cognitive and physical performance. Welcome to the show, Brian. Thanks. Appreciate it. Thanks for the warm intro and the warm welcome. Yeah. Thank you for being here. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's back it up a little bit. All right. You said you were born in Womack and your dad was going through the Q course. So tell us where you come from. Yeah. So tell me about your people. Yeah. So my people. So I was a, I guess my family, my mom was kind of a vagabond, back in the day. I was born at Womack in Bragg. I'm sure many people are familiar with that place. And while my dad was going through the Q course, not long after there, they split different directions. My dad went on to continue his career and I moved to Lancaster, Pennsylvania amongst the Amish community and how's that? I thought it was cool. I loved it. Is it? It's cool, right? Yeah. It was really cool. Yeah. So I mean, I wasn't living as an Amish, but in the Amish town. No, but around. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not a mystery surround. Yeah. I think I was a bad idea. Yeah. But yeah, it was good. Yeah. So like horse and horse and buggy, like was like a normal thing. Oh, some of the best Instagrams or we know that I'm just going to skip them. Marcus, we had a Patriot tour in, is Harrisburg like an hour from there? Yeah, it's not that person there. Yeah. So we had a Patriot tour in Harrisburg and I wanted to see an Amish family. It was just on like my list of things to get like a picture of like family and a horse and buggy. And I made Marcus, we rented a car for this. Drove to Lancaster. I was looking for him like I needed to bring him home. That kind of, she's like, I need to see this. I want you guys to bring him home. Yeah. You hear about it. Yeah. And I just, in the south, you don't see that. And so I just really wanted to see it. I wasn't going to do anything. I just, I just wanted to see. Yeah. I just wanted to see that. Yeah. It's different. It's very, this society, it's a very different thing to see. Yeah. So we go driving around. We go to Lancaster. I'm telling you, like, stop dude. Like I know they're here somewhere. Could not find any Amish. Wow. I'm told though, wouldn't it? No, it was like normal summer. And I Googled like Amish restaurants or Amish, you know, I'm trying to like find. How do you Google, how do I find, where are the Amish? Yeah. So I Google maps like we're like, what a question. But a question. That said, it was an Amish restaurant. There was no like visible Amish people there. They weren't dressed in what you would think they would be. You wanted the hard core stuff. I wanted to see like a horse and buggy. Yeah. And so we drove around for hours. We saw lots of covered bridges and really pretty scenic, you know, farmhouse type things. But we never saw an Amish until we were going to the airport and I'm in the airport relieving. Yeah. And there were two Amish dudes in the airport and like, okay. You got it. A little bit. We literally drove around at Lancaster. They were waiting on us. You know, it's funny. You mentioned that. You mentioned that because my mom and my uncle, she told me what they used to do as kids because they lived in that area is they would dress up like Amish and charge tourists to take pictures with them as a racket. I wouldn't have been here. I wouldn't have been here. That's ingenuity. Yes. It's funny you mentioned it because you're getting growing up in that. Like I was like, why do people want to come see the Amish? Like they're just part of normal life. But I guess. So did Amish Moffe you find out about that? I don't know. Just trying to shake you down. I don't know. Probably. They're probably eating. They just put that out there. We did that. What's rum-springer like? You can tell when that's going down? No, I was too young living there when that happened. I had moved away from Lancaster before I would have understood what was happening in there. You were with your dad or your mom? I was with my mom for a while and I looped my grandma there. She raised me for quite a bit of time in Lancaster. Y'all are from that area again? Yeah. People are from that area. That's my mom's side of the family is. Roger that. So I grew up there for a while then moving out to Missouri. My mom had found another guy that she was going to marry. So we moved to St. Louis. Then when I was around 13 or so, I moved to Germany to live with my dad who I hadn't like I didn't know him. I didn't grow up knowing him when I was. At 13? Yeah. Okay. She said do you want to grow up and do you want to go meet your dad? I was like yeah, I guess that'd be cool. That's not your phrase. Yeah. Well pretty much. I was like okay you want to live with him? I was like I don't know. She's like you're going to move to Germany. You know like. Oh my god. I mean talk about that because that's a big deal man. You're not just leaving to go down the road. You're going out of country to stay with your dad. So I'd actually. Who's the special forces guy? Yeah. But again I didn't know anything about what he did except for he was in the army and he moved around a lot because I didn't live with him. Like he didn't grow up as my dad. You know. Yeah. Rambo is already out on the TV. It already was but even then like I had uncles who are Marines. Oh sure. Okay. Back it up a little bit. You got a family full of them. Yeah. Yeah. And my uncles they were all military. My mom was a linguist. She was MI as a linguist. She spoke Mandarin Chinese and then she got out for personality disorders or whatever. I think she's got. I still wonder if sometimes that's just code for I moved on with like an agency or something. I don't know. Like it's weird. She does weird stuff. You know she lives in Uzbekistan now doing stuff. So like. Oh wow. Very interesting. Weird story. Yeah so I moved to Germany to live at a small MI base which is in bad eye bling which is in like Bavaria. Beautiful country. You know awesome place. Went to an American high or American middle school there before I moved to Colorado Springs in 98 and that's where you know I went to high school. That's where I call home because that's where I spent the most time. But until that point I'd never been in the same school for more than one year consecutive. I moved to a different school every single grade until I got into high school. Yeah. Right. But it wasn't army related until I was in middle school. It was just happened to be that my mom moved around a lot and we did different things. So. And we just figured out why. Was your dad and was he like a good person to live with or was it a good relationship? Yeah. What's that like over there military was. So that being a small base I don't know it didn't actually wasn't that much different from you know because I was on the economy a lot anyway we didn't live on post. I only went on post for school but other than that I still went on the economy for everything. So I don't know it was just I guess I was really indifferent to the fact that I was living a military child lifestyle because I got I just feel like it. I didn't have a big connection to the military even though like I've been so high. Well I can't just cool like that or I say cool like that. Yeah. You don't even know most of the guys are in when they're in anyways. Yeah and that's that's what it was like like you know my dad wouldn't come home and like we wouldn't talk army stuff and he never were uniform at home. So it was just like there is that. Yeah. So we don't talk about that and I don't ever hear people talking about that but that is a different type it's completely different lifestyle. It's not like being in it's not. Yeah it's completely different you know he that that life didn't didn't really come home there was influence to it he had pictures on the wall I thought it was cool and we'd go play paintball with some of his guys occasionally so I was definitely intrigued by it but you know. So we got friends over there when you were a kid. In Germany? No. No. Keep you running into any of the guys the military say man. No you know I find out everybody on my dad will bring him up. He's like I remember this one guy when you see this he's working at this freaking you know so this T-Sock or he's working at this other place you know it's cool to see where some of those guys went but you know yeah I wasn't in the business of collecting friends I guess because I was so used to not like carrying them around so you know I was just like I had a lot of positive acquaintances growing up but like not a lot of people that were just like yeah this is my boy like we grew up and did everything together you know that wasn't until high school started so. Yeah it is. Now that you say it like that in the military in the beginning especially it's tough to make friends you make you get to know them and you get the ability to work with them. Yeah. And then they use the moulis. Yeah. And then what's funny is like people were like oh yeah you know that guy yeah it's my friend it's like when's the last time you're talking oh I probably eight years ago. Yeah. And people don't understand that. And even know his name I just knew his nickname. His call sign was like I've known guys 20 years. Yeah. You're like that's your freaking name man I didn't know that. Yeah but it's funny like looking bad it's like all these guys are still guys that I could call up even if I haven't talked to him no one ever since at any time and say hey man I need your help or if he called me at any time it doesn't matter if we haven't talked for a decade like they're still friends. So what is that? Well how about that? Yeah. That's a weird dynamic right there because we cut out all that other stuff that most people hold on to as friendship and then we get right to the. Yeah I was like man I ain't talking like I had 15 whatever years man but it doesn't matter. Yeah. So your dad gets transferred to Colorado Springs. Yeah. So we moved to Colorado Springs and he just he continued to deploy. My mom moved back with us to Co-Live which I can't really call it Co-Live because my dad was gone all the time anyway so it's not like you know they were there together at the same time that often but she was now you know taking care of us in his house until I graduated high school. That's even cooler bro because she got stationed somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. And then they pulled her back. Yep. I don't know. We'll see. Like I said her story. Interesting. Yeah she's been to Ecuador she's working in Qatar. She does a lot of things that make me question like. It doesn't give you more special forces than you right? And me sitting in this room and if it does we know the dude probably right? We can have her. And we start hearing all those. Yeah where's mom at? Yeah. Park her in here. Yeah. And that's all when she gets done. Yeah exactly. I don't want to burn. Every time she moves somewhere and does something weird I worry about it on my security clearance. So I'm like man is this going to flag me because she's working like I don't know maybe probably not. Maybe she's working the back side of it. I got a bad ass mom too man. Yeah. It's just a they're great to have. Yeah. Yeah. It's wild. That's the stuff you don't appreciate till you're older. Older. Realize. Matt how can you? Yeah. How could you possibly appreciate that? I couldn't until I got older and I mean mama's boys yeah but you don't know that because they're not mean but they're just awesome. Yeah. They do cool stuff. Yeah that was me with my dad. I was like it wasn't until I had already been in for a couple years and I already done deployment and all this stuff that I like really started getting closer with him because I realized what he had been doing the entire time. How about that? You know whereas before he was just a guy that went on army trips you know. All right see you dad. So what made you realize that you wanted to be in the army? I wouldn't say that I ever had like a big passion for it like I always wanted to do it but I didn't do well in school. Not like not academically but more so I always felt like I had better things to do so I skipped a lot of school. We were right by the mountains so I'll go four wheeling I would just do dumb shit and pardon my language because of that I barely graduated so I knew I wasn't ready for college so I was like I'm just going to join the army for a couple years. Figure out what I want to do. Why you're in or what you got out of high school? So this was while I was in high school. What scratched that? How did you get that? Because this is what now that we've been out long enough and guys talk about it. What most people want to say what was it? There has to be something. I remember what it was for me. It's like something started scratching that army itch as opposed to the marine. You got it in your family with multiple infantic. I knew if I was going to go in for the longest time I wanted to be a marine and that's just because that's what my uncle is wearing his uniforms. I'm going to say it. Marines have the best thing to use for them. I want to be a marine. I think every kid wants to be a marine marine. They have a good, best uniform. They've got a great recruiting program. Like what does the army tell you? They're like hey we want you to just be good. Be awesome. And the Marines are like we want to slay dragons. That's right. You know what I'm doing? When it comes to stick your ass in a submarine and throw you under the water. They had good hard music. They had a good message. What the hell? Yeah. So the Marines, the longest time I was like Marines. But I think my dad had just enough influence before I made the decision that I was like all right I'm going to be an army guy. His only advice was don't be a leg. That's it. I was like all right that's fair. What's that mean? A non airborne guy. Okay. Yeah. You don't get any wings. Okay. You just want a ground. You know kind of a drag. Trust me there's a great term. There's a bunch of terms we got for that stuff. There's a term for everything in there so you know what you're talking about. That's how that works. Yeah. So he said just don't be a leg. I was like all right I won't be a leg. So I joined up as an airborne infantry guy. And I was like all right I'll do a couple of years. See if I like it. And if not I guess I'll get out. Do college I guess. But still I didn't have a desire to get a degree. I didn't care what I would have done. So that was it. I joined up as an unassigned airborne infantry guy. And I ended up at Fort Polk Louisiana. The first duty station. I drive by there at least once a month. Yeah my grandparents live like an hour from there. That's back to us for me man. I go through there just for the scenery. Yeah. The way we go from here we drive right in front of it. Wow. You know it's funny people always when I hear that like oh that place sucks. Absolutely whatever but I actually really enjoyed it. Like I already like I love I already loved everything about the south. I loved Cajun food. I love the hospital. I already liked it. You know especially like being a single guy like I didn't care what it was like there. They don't like it. They don't know what they're in. Yeah. That's the problem. Yeah like I thought it was great. You know I spent a lot of time growing up in a place called Dauphin Island just south of Mobile in Alabama. So like I always liked when I was down there I liked everything about the culture and everything. So I was excited. It was a great duty station. The unit was awesome. Who'd you start with? So it was the first of five on ninth. Which is an op for unit. So when guys do their training rotations. Oh I've been there. I'm going to talk to them. So yeah the Geronimos you know they're the bad guys. I know exactly who they are. And they said the same thing. Matter of fact this we brought it up man I climbed in there asked about that. I was like some of you guys don't appreciate what you're asking. We give in your car a blanche to beat the dog piss out of everybody. Where do you think we're going to put you? I mean you know I'm talking that's. Yeah it's a good one. Yeah it was a great place. Hell yeah man. I see the unit. I'm not sure why I realized internally what the unit is. It's an airborne infantry unit. It's straight up normal infantry battalion with a specialized mission to train these guys. But you're still real unit. So the ability to train as a bad guy to fight the good guys is extremely eye opening. Okay so my opinion or perspective now they're the most highly trained unit we got. All the it's like those air force bubbles that fly the the the helicopters all the time because they got nothing else to do. They're the spirit man those are the ones you want. They're the ones that came and got me. Yeah. I mean because that's all they do. Yep. So you're either training to be a good guy in regular infantry tactics or you are acting as a bad guy and you're learning guerrilla warfare you're learning like and it wasn't cheesy stuff like if you were going to put in an IED. You had to put in an I had to pick ax a road and put a real one in and you had to tie the deck you had to tie everything correctly and have it inspected for them to allow you to use it against you know whoever was training there. So like you felt what it was like to be sitting there watching a convoy go by you know like you feel all that. It is. So I thought I was a really great starting point. I tried to tell that to you man. I did. So you didn't spoke to them a few years ago as like a man. No one knows you're here. Yeah. The geronimals are great. And most people try to avoid the damn geronimals man you hear that freaking what do you think. Oh dude every time I see the little logo every now and then I'll see it on somebody's shirt and I'm like you heard your on them oh yeah so super cool unit. I actually didn't think I was going to deploy from there because it was such a training unit but right around that time this was 2003 they said hey you're going to go support 10th Mountain you are now back to regular infantry you're going to Iraq you know it was about a 30 day lead time and that was it and we were there you know a couple months after I got there so that was deployment number one I just turned 18 so. Oh wow. Oh my gosh. Oh good for you man. I threw you right in. Right in yeah it was like it wasn't OIF one it was like OIF one and a half. So like we still weren't flying in so we still all so when infantry guys came in they would go into Kuwait I mean a lot of guys been to camp buring you know just freaking desert. The same thing we do. So we go there and then we would escort the vehicles up to Baghdad and that's how we are in the field was to escort a convoy in. That's how we got in. So funny story obviously we're going in and I was the RTO and I had my lieutenant in the vehicle with me and he was just super excited as most young lieutenants are like we're going to go change the world we're going to whatever and even like that's a real thing man. Hey bro that that's a real thing when I saw that what is that yeah like man. There's a gun and I was like I was like you're younger than him but I was I was a rifleman and I was just like dude we're going to freaking get down and I was excited about the fight and this guy was like man we're going to like hearts and minds and I was like that's cool man and I remember probably still one of the funniest things I've ever seen that just smashed that dream is you know you know the water bottles over there they're not normal. They're like one and a half of your water bottles and we're passing these people on the side of the road who would stand there and family is just looking desolate like they and he was like I'm going to give these next people we see some water. I was like all right cool man so we're driving by and he takes this thing of water, hucks it out the window and it explodes. It's all over these people like runs them all like he just like drills these people with these water bottle in his attempt to show compassion and it was just like I don't think there was a word said I think he just looked right back forward and just sat there quietly and I was like wow that's one of those this is what you think expectations as opposed to reality right I was like I want to hear their story when I was a kid I got drilled by a water bottle you know yeah so I just thought that was a great start. We saw I saw one time we were driving through and wanted to throw a bunch of candy a bunch of kids around and they flooded to the street yeah you know what I mean while the traffic was going oh yeah that's dangerous stuff so well sure but they didn't think like that young was like I was trying to give him some freaking candy I'm like oh I get what she's trying to do you know yeah I mean I like kids I like yeah I like all the stuff you know that's cool I understand I want to throw some candy out but sure yeah from the other side of that it's and we didn't know any as kids man we don't expect that we didn't get that training no no that's the one thing that looking back on it I was like man the culture thing was a big one yeah but it's probably one of the most rewarding parts of it though even in all the places I've gone is just seeing the culture of the people who live there and just seeing like people have it a lot harder than we do in this country in most places and it's great to see how people can still be happy and they can still love their family I don't know man that's a different perspective so like even in a place it's like torn constantly by war like you can still be happy with what minimal things you have so that's why it's like it's easy to be like do what you can plan it about man like we've got a lot of opportunity here so yeah yeah but now that was that was a that was number one as a regular infantry yeah and that was my only infantry deployment the rest of that were all were all under group so when you went there is that when you decided you wanted to go into special forces yeah that confirmed it I already had an idea that I wanted to do it especially because my dad already been there who in there pushed you that way there was gonna be somebody right it was seeing team guys on deployment like well that helps yeah like when you're like doing bullshit bro yeah if they video that and just sent that back yeah we wouldn't have there wouldn't be a lack of guys coming in everything was better like they had a better gym they wore cooler shit they ate better food yeah and then the weapons everything we were on it we were on a checkpoint one time because that's we did like the snap TCP so we're set up a checkpoint real quick and you know do our thing and looking for people with bombs or whatever and this van rolls up with these bearded dudes and like what the heck is going on here and as they roll up to the windshield they're holding up a little American flag that they're waving and I see it and I was like well this is weird yeah I was like probably E2 at the time at the furthest most point of the TCP yeah right these guys roll up and they've got like mp5 across the lap and you know they show military ID card I was like ah I've got some dudes here you know like what is this and you know they waved them on through and I was just thinking damn that that was pretty cool man like best way to describe is when you see for the first time you can they roll it we're family so like little brother watching big brother just coming off doing something cool yeah it's that's actually it was it just like felt like they always did cooler shit and they always had better stuff and you know it just really spawned now it's like man if I'm gonna do this that that's the side of the house that I want to be on and I got me to fast forwarding ahead years and in the same country I'm finding myself driving around in a Toyota Corolla man jammies on with a frickin gun in a backpack the Corolla's hoping that I don't get killed by a US army guy yeah like oh you know I was like man we gotta shout out a lot by them yeah I was like that was a really scary especially like here's the intel report there's gonna be a white Corolla it's an ID there's gonna be a that would be the intelligence there's gonna be a bongo truck that's got weapons in it oh great you know they just called out what we're driving in well the pass down they wouldn't they wouldn't spare they wouldn't send it all the way down that was that was a problem is like the guys wouldn't normally shoot at us yeah but when they leave their station someone else would come in the intel wouldn't make it all the way to the new guy yeah and he just that's how that that would happen to it yeah so I have a little cousin that is um he's actually taking his Azvab this week and he wants to go army and he thinks he is probably just gonna have to go in regular infantry somehow and then he wants to transition into the special forces later on yeah is it hard to do that for the kids that are listening that want to do that something like that you know the yeah so the 18x program which is the program where yeah you come right in off the streets go right to I mean you go through the infantry but then yeah you go you go right to the Q course after selection all that um I have met some of the best guys I've ever worked with that were 18x rays and some of them were right out of high school guys some of them were guys with master's degrees that just didn't want to do that that's what they wanted to do and then I've also worked with prior service guys who went in the longer route who were great guys and some that weren't so I I can't say that there's any difference but I'll say if you if you want to do it and you just want to get right to it just just go 18x ray because here's the thing like if you don't make it you're still an infantry guy and then you can just try again but you might have had a chance to go in right away and get right to that side like is there value to gain having been on the conventional side absolutely but I don't think it's enough to where you should think it's an obligation like it's possible answer that question yeah you don't have to wait a certain amount of time you can just decide to yeah like if yeah like if you meet the prerequisites just just go yeah I don't know I guess if it's if it's something your heart is set on just go yeah yeah I don't know I keep trying to put him in the air force but he you know they will listen to us Marcus tells all the young kids to go in the air force and then they're gonna go be CCTs yeah but yeah but right right DJs you know have great accommodations yeah but yeah they're gonna have still top secret yeah do cool stuff I mean did you get taken care of really well oh so well and Marcus says that they have the best bases by far far yeah they're standard of living is so good it's like the rich folks yeah in the family yeah in the neighborhood you feel it when you walk in feel it too like they're just like I'm just saying this is an absolute fact man I was like yeah you like walking into the rich kids house you're like oh yeah cool leather chair yeah and then the food like if they even think about going camping with us a mall will show up in a volleyball court the pool yeah we're not making this up no yeah it's true they have much better accommodations we get to hang out with them we're like the bastard sons so they let us hang out with the rich kid they're all right that we get to ride in their Bentley's and yeah airplanes they're engines are Rolls Royce right probably probably yeah so they had the Rolls Royce's yeah did you find the screening and everything to get into the green brazes was that like a super challenging part of your career yeah yeah definitely but I think more of it was mental because you know when you're when you're when you're was that that was 2006 I think is when I went to assessment so well that was when I was pretty heavy yeah taken that was right after started in 2000 files yeah so like most of the guys who were instructors there most the guys were doing the selecting those are all guys like they're rather wounded or they're on a SWIC tour after doing multiple deployment so like yeah it was like they know that means something in our community when you got guys like that who your instructors it's a lot of it's yeah like they knew that the guys that they were putting through are guys that are going to be on their teams when they get back you know so there's definitely a lot invested in making sure they tell you that they said that all the time yeah like this isn't the last time you're going to see me like we're gonna work together when they would work or I mean beat the dog what if you were screwed like if you screwed up on something man and be like hey I they could tell because you gotta understand man that the most the deadliest some bitches on the planet are ones teaching you yeah who are you gonna do talk back I mean that's just not how yeah there's a when you're in the student mode you get a student feeling yeah that goes along with that yeah and when you're with your peers and they talk to you it doesn't matter younger you're just like hey right yeah it is so I'll never forget that yeah I so I think meant like physically I would I was I was really fit um I felt good about all the stuff I did I wasn't the fittest guy there but I never like struggled that much in that sense but there's always gonna be like am I who they're looking for you know am I the am I the guy they want and you know there was different times where I was doubt I was like man look at these guys this guy's a freakin stuff this guy was a decathlete this guy's a whatever and you start comparing yourself to everyone else and just wondering man like am I the guy and it's just something you do to yourself you know you always want to wonder I think especially like young men growing up like what does it take to be a man when did you feel like you were actually a man am I I didn't I don't think I really felt like I was a man till I was a father of all the things I've done I thought kids all the things that deployments everything until I was a father and I like really committed to the marriage and everything I didn't feel like I was a man you know so like mid to late 20s so you know in that you're still in that sense of it and I carried that with me in my training too like I always felt like I was trying to fight to get into this love you know so um but yeah I mean as soon as them suckers came on the ground that's a title yeah it talks about that title yeah man and father right no you get to earn them yeah do you think that's part of your growing up like feeling like you never really had a home too like I think looking back that's a lot of it just because you know and I don't definitely want to like make it sound like I'm talking bad about my father because you know we've all ultimately like are much closer than we used to be but I think that was a big part of it you know I didn't grow up with some other than my uncles but uncles are always just crazy uncles you know whatever like they're the cool guys great yeah I didn't have the one who was like teaching me the values and the morals and all that stuff I adopted them pretty well just based off my surroundings but you know I didn't have somebody to show me what it was like to be a man it was like we occasionally went camping and did cool things but not enough to where like I felt like I really understood what it meant is is a man somebody that you know attracts a lot of women is how many girls think you're attractive is a man somebody who's strong or who's like you know a great athlete or whatever you know those are the things that superficially you think that that's what's going to make it that's what's going to make you feel like you finally become a man and it's none of that stuff right for those are all in there yeah they're all part of it you said it perfectly hey which one's that one though that's your athlete right now and that's this and this any other but yeah when one of one of one a man walks in a door they immediately say it like that yeah yeah so well I feel like being a man is also someone's got to make you feel like that too yeah like it's not just a feeling that you have inside but you if it's your wife you know making you feel like you're a man or your kids make you know like how you have that dad feeling or whatever like okay someone's actually depending on me I think that's the that's the word like it's dependability if someone's depending on you and you can be held accountable for failure like if you can be held accountable for the failure of something else like now you can be a man because now like yeah no and it's be blamed for something and take the account of the family fails if you whatever all that like that's when it was then you're a man i'm willing to protect if your family's happy yeah and your life's still shit yeah you're doing your job yeah yeah i'm supposed to i mean if they got to give childbirth all right they got to go through that ours or well look we'll be outside yeah whatever comes with that yeah so if you're getting your nuts kicked in congratulations you got your damn man card right yeah okay that's true that was a big that was a huge part of it i overlooked that yeah i think i think a lot of people struggle with that like what does it mean to be that what does it mean to be a man with i think face kick down everybody i think everybody finds it at a different time right oh absolutely yeah ages rank yeah so for me like yeah i'd probably done almost half my career before i was like really felt like i wasn't a kid anymore that's how long it took to beat me and you down bro it's just kind of get that that car same way yeah like man i how do you even know if you're doing this right it's like man if you're if it's always crazy chaos and you're getting your beat down in the good book it says that's that's what's supposed to happen to you yeah it's so interesting too because you see so much about like toxic masculinity now and all of these things online and on the news like trying to just demasculate yeah to demasculate men but there is a role for masculinity and we have to have that in our society when you call the fire department do you want masculinity to show up or do you not right like i don't know i mean i think i think everyone's a fire putter yeah i want the fire putter all somebody who can get the job done right yeah i'm all about strong masculinity i can't stand this you know wave of i don't know people talking this bullshit about how we're raising too tough of men or how you know what is that just a struggle to ensure they do grow up tough enough right you know it's the yes the world made us this way yeah yeah so they get so loved to you yeah all right so when you bumped out of the cue course where they you went so i went to tenth group from there so um i was an Arabic speaker and a communicator so i graduated as an 18 echo echo um as a staff sergeant and what was your language Arabic y'all are pretty square away with that like what team guys will send them learning some stuff that probably never going to speak yeah yeah well at that time everybody you know because we always obviously go through phases but because everyone was so invested in Iraq and Afghanistan those are the main languages you're going to learn iraq you're going to learn Arabic you might learn french you're going to learn spanish for the guys who are going down south america yeah or you're going to learn like iraq or do you approach you thing about y'all y'all y'all y'all y'all have to do that yeah that's not in our program that's one of the differences yeah i mean it's definitely it's it's nice to have the amount of times i've actually used my language skills i'd say fairly minimal um and iraq a little bit but their dialects different enough you know slang yeah when we say dialect we're talking about slang it's like walking in any party united states man you hear the language man there's some country folks that they talk so damn slow you you you you it's hard to pick up what they're saying yeah go down south so fast yeah talk to the cations budgero and to boom right there we have got no that's what we're walking into over there yeah like when they send us back in time we get with the with the cousins and everybody you're looking around like man i i kind of understand what you're saying but you're slang is so off i don't so that's what it's kind of like it's like taking it's like taking an oxford grad correct sending him to the deepest swamp in wisiana and having a conversation right like saying language but you're gonna miss and i was like that was like yeah that was like my formal arabic training against you know the places that i went that you did so semi-helpful not not entirely but still great skill to have so um yeah so with that i got sent to tenth group um which was great that's when my dad grew up and it was back to Colorado Springs which is where you know like i said from local home going into your dad's house i don't know i mean is it cool same locker it was cool same stuff still there the tree's fresh name in i mean give me something yeah i mean i had only been to his team room one time and looking back i'm pretty sure at one point i was in the same building i was trying to remember i was like is this the same building i went to when i was a kid and he showed me the guys and all that stuff but uh yeah but it was just cool being put up as he passed excuse me i'm sorry he passed no he's still in he just retired for the second time because he transitioned wait you're retiring tomorrow yeah and your old man is retiring when he just retired his second position so he i think you need to step up then i know but i don't want to do that stuff i don't know anybody else catch that yeah so he went where see get your mom and him yeah man he retired and went to sock north over the tea sock over the theaters near force base and he ran some he ran um some sensitive stuff i go over there for like another 18-19 years or so so he just finished there um yeah family service thank you for it yeah thank you thank you family yeah seriously yeah no thank i mean amongst common common company here so of course reciprocated um super cool exciting and got to 10th group and that's when the deployment started um had africa a couple times which is great absolutely love africa deployments yeah and uh back to Iraq in 2010 that was a bad year for us too yeah that was a weird year weird yeah that was a really weird year about time anytime anytime something's wrapping up or something is very politically tied the mission sets get weird yeah that's right that's what was going down yeah so it was like i've i've now been to two combat zones where the president on tv is saying we have now stopped and all combat troops are going home and you're watching it on afn right before you go out to go do a hit like oh remember that all combat troops were gone huh here we go like just us here just us it's like weird i remember that yeah we were saying that there was like people were saying oh there's no more war there's no more combat and you're like do our friends and his brother was still over there i'm like uh they're lying yeah and it keep yeah like that happens like a lot i feel like it's a big signal that the call combat troops have left all right well then it'll be done that means your pia your boys are still over there doing that that means that we have to do it all yeah that means that we don't have route clearance anymore that means that we don't have like there's not a lot of activity to where you can seamlessly like do what you need to do now you're the main show every time you go out they know who you are they know they know which they know who has many guns on their trucks you know so like it definitely changed all they move around the hammock yeah but i'll say like that was a very that was a very non-connect deployment yeah but the regular army guys were getting hit all the time we never got hit i think this they they knew what the response was going to be you know our roe was pretty unrestricted when it came to them yeah so like and we were eager for a fight we were working for a fight whereas the regular army guys they were all buttoned up and all their stuff you know like at one point they weren't even allowed to have their weapons hot they had to have like they had like the saw gunners had to have like ammo or and yeah there was like amber condition whatever it's like who even comes up with that we saw a guy like they would clear their weapons they would do the test pit before they roll out and then like clear their weapon and then go out the gate i'm like this is weird but those guys get hit all the time but they would just sit there and just take it in the armor and then just roll through whatever but yeah we did tons and tons of operations and it was just super quiet no at that point they knew that if i fight back i'm going to get killed if i get arrested i'm going to get released so i'm just going to like sit there and just if you take me and we wait on me to kill you yeah so like like oh all right that's it you know and we have isr making sure that because we got we know like we integrated into those neighborhoods and figured out who the gangs were and how that shit was working and once we did that it was like we yeah wasn't a problem yeah so super weird super weird time i mean fun deployment but not very kinetic deployment um but still great there's never i've never had like a bad asset deployment even if it's got stuff in it you know like so well though those are the ones you wind up talking about the most yeah not not the not those high high target ones man like like i said the kinetic ones the ones where we're always doing something so that's where we're going off and we're sitting in idle hands right yeah like we find stuff to do dude so much fun tell you what team guys can be troublemakers if you don't have a job for those dudes they're like i had a uh guy who he graduated with westpoint remember we always had to do that look busy all right he was yeah he was told he was told before he took a team he's like look running an sf team you're not going to have to worry about chapter and guys all the time you're not going to have like you're not going to have joe problems you're going to have international incident problems like if you have a problem on your team it could be big huge these are grown men who do have great ideas and they're incredibly smart and where they get bored and they can be creative so awesome yeah i mean you can't believe what we come up with yeah yeah idle idle special operations oh man that's the best be very creative that's why when they start getting them doing dumb stuff right yeah you're like hey man let's just keep you busy yeah have i have i seen an m-rap turbo turned into a jet for a hot tub yes i have oh my god i think that would play out yeah so if i did get it get emailed over on the high side great idea for you guys try this yeah check this out yeah so yeah don't so yeah let's yeah don't have board sf guys if they're not doing anything send them home yeah yeah then start harassing the agency guys and everybody else we can find oh yeah yeah okay so rotating how many years yeah so did you do yeah so 20 yeah so 20 and done for me and now we're doing what and now we're moving on to hvmn the company that's that has the ketone shots let's talk about that yeah so um how do you come come into this yeah so my my final position in in the army was working at the special operations mountain warfare training center it's it's gone by many names but that's the one that it's finally landed it's a real place and this is a real guy yeah it's a real place a real guy and uh my specialty in special forces has always been uh in as a mountain guy and which is it's like a niche within a niche not a lot of guys even know it exists or what they do i didn't even by the time i got there so uh everything i had done it i slept with all mountain oriented i was a mountaineering instructor so teaching climbing teaching ropes systems skiing and all that stuff and then when i became a warrant that's what you're gonna do for job that was a job did you hear that i mean everyone always glazes over that and that's the most fascinating that's not even the brochure either was yeah there is definitely a lot of people at that time that were like you realize you have the dream job you get to ski you get to be a ski instructor you're skiing you're climbing you're in the mountains all the time whatever yeah it was in colorado springs yeah so there was definitely like it there was definitely times where i was like you're probably thankful for the route that i had gone and how i got to that position so and the best is the middle rank too when you get because you don't have the top response i mean literally you get to show up to work work out eat and be like hey man what do you want me to do yeah being an instructor there was great i mean having a family and having kids was tough in that which it is during your entire career but we were gone a lot probably more often than being on an ODA as a mountain instructor i was gone so i was in the same state but i wasn't in my bed you know so which makes it worse probably yeah because you're like right there you're gone and like it's also hard to like you know when your spouse knows that you're like gone and you're skiing and you're staying in a fail oh we don't we don't ever talk about that yeah like because i heard when some of the i wouldn't married when i was in and went allowed but i would hear some of the guys they come in you see them you could tell there's a difference between being pissed off when a dude pisses you off yeah and when your wife rips you oh yeah it's a different look all together she knew it was an important job she knew what i was doing was said they would go camping but i was it so hard you're going camping i like oh well sometimes it's hard the army makes things worse than it needs to be that's what we do you know they leave that part out yeah so uh yeah so i was a career mountain guy from there i went uh i went got my commission as a warrant came back and took a mountain which means what so i became a war officer so you're going to be the assistant detachment commander so you're an officer with prior enlisted service in special forces so um with that you're the second guy on the team if the team splits you're the number one guy for your split team and now you are i guess like there's a lot of core competencies that revolve around it but the biggest part of it is you are the continuity on the team your time there is going to lapse several team sergeants several commanders and you're the one who's ultimately progressing the team as a whole to get to it once you make that and you get in that position you have to hold that position yeah so you'll stay on a team yes so you'll stay on a team for another couple years which it's a great opportunity to get more team time but then also to apply the knowledge and experience you have into growing and building a team sure like is there a limit on how much time you can do operational because for our guys yeah some of the guys get like a three year kind of deal it's not a it's not really a hard number but just with with the amount of people we have and the jobs that's what happens you got to rotate do yeah guys just have to take positions you know so for me you know so the personal yeah yeah it's just the way it is you know like guys need to go be instructors guys and guys hate that hold on back to veil so if you're having to go yep if you're having to go to veil are you staying at are you camping out there or this one the airport comes in a plane because they get it so uh i'll tell you the name of the place we stayed and then just you can draw your conclusions it was called the veil racket club oh my gosh and it wasn't camping in your wife just can't show up i mean she's got mom duties we got kids that go to school we got raising lillins i i will be through i always wanted to find a way like every time every time i'm doing something that just feels great that i like doing i always feel guilty that i can't bring my wife long i always try to wait i got we all feel like that honey i got a gay we do but it's just it's just not in the car so never racking you know i will regress when i say veil racket club i know it sounds like bougie but it was cheaper to stay there and it was right next to the training areas there's a lot of good ice climbing hey bro we're retired i was over don't ever apologize the cool shit we got man so yeah i mean ever since where we stayed there but a lot of people definitely like raise their eyebrows yeah get pissed off don't let the new kids stay there that's fine yeah fix the problem we well you know mountain should mountain should stressful like in a scary special for guys that don't do it so the the least amount of stress that doesn't need to be there that we can remove the better training we're going to get like we don't need a guy who's tired because he's not sleeping well who's like living in shit conditions while he's learning like we want a guy who's ready to learn and then they can move in where it sucks oh yeah plan on time yeah and we do get to that point but yeah there is a veil part which is pretty and there's some stuff you learn just in that that piece too yeah that's a different part of training yeah like you need to learn the tech class you do that in the beginning yeah that's the beginning of the course do that in the beginning get your ass with that that's how that works and then it is not a it is not a stressful course in that like you don't get yelled at we're very personable within students because you need to be we put it on ourselves yeah exactly I mean it's just feeds itself man like you especially we get older guys in there like hey we we do good at this we don't do it's its own kind of machine yeah it's not selection as soon as they locked us into place the first guys that came online started that and every guy who comes in after him has a duty to yeah and not an obligation to make it just speaking of needing to be at peak performance and all of that is that how you got introduced to hvm yeah so with that after my team time was done I was I was chosen to be the commander for the mountain school and right when I got there was the same time that hvmn was working on a on a grant that they had gotten from so-called so there was a DARPA project like 15 20 years ago called operation metabolic dominance and the whole point was like how do we protect guys brains when they're up at altitude because obviously like the higher you are you know the the less oxygen availability you have which makes you lose cognitive function it's a very real thing you know looking back at some of the mistakes I've made in the mountains I was like why would I ever have done this you know why did this happen well they make movies about how bad they are you two mountains yeah they even without bad guys the mountains will try to kill kicks my ass all down yeah and you know even you know personally I look back one of the worst times I had had was I was guiding two students I'd gone through all my checks it was on the multi-pitch repel where you know I'm guiding I'm going to repel down to the next anchor point set it up bring them down to me and I was about to set up for the next repel and I checked all their stuff I checked my stuff I have a very like procedural way I do it I was pride myself on how I did that I started on my repel undid my safety because I was like yep repels working and it just wasn't working right and I was like leaning back off this cliff I look up my belay device wasn't even hooked on to the rope I was only on my backup and I was just like why in the world have I ever made that decision and look man I was exerting myself in altitude which is why like there was just a cognitive loss and you can do things like that little mistakes like that could like take an operator out what would the students story have been if I had just backed off that cliff it'd be like yeah he said see you guys at the bottom and just went you know hey we thought well you know hey so check that guy yeah so so basically so when when I had heard that they were coming up with a thing that was going to help protect guys against that I was already immediately intrigued having been in that situation before so they came on board they came down and said hey this is what a ketone is this is how it helps your brain and we did some objective testing on it so take some bottles go out let us know what you think about it gen one was pretty hard to handle and it was incredibly expensive like when it first came over to like twenty five hundred dollars a shot so basically what you get in one of these like twenty five hundred bucks just because the technology wasn't there to produce to produce the ketones efficiently and since then they've now have one that's like these is like five bucks a shot now and it's actually palatable and it works better than the first one did so having worked with the company for three years or so basically facilitating the testing on it when I announced my retirement and I was handing them off to who was going to be you know handling that side of the house because they're still testing probably up until June they're going to be done they said how would you like to work on as an advisor would you like to come on board we've liked working with you in the past so that's how I got involved with with the program and to this day like it's it's so beneficial and it's one of those things it's like I imagine when Gatorade came out people were like why are you guys drinking salts and stuff why are you drinking the electrolytes we drink water we're fine it's kind of the same thing now it's like this is something that your body already does naturally like ketones aren't new your body will make ketones oh sure yeah but the way are we eat these days we'll never experience that naturally unless you hunt for it yeah but when you do that now you have to be on a keto diet and then you know you can't have carbs or anything like that and we don't have carbs that's another fuel source that you need when you're really exerting yourself so really the play is that you can dual fuel now you can take what's the most efficient fuel which is a ketone that your body actually produces and you can also have carbs on board for when you need it so you get all the mental clarity all the stuff that you need from the ketones and then you still get to have carbs you don't have to have a restrictive diet you drink it and like you're instantly in it so super super intriguing product super awesome like application for the ground guys and when the company said they're like hey i have an opportunity to get this into the hands of guys because i have guys that are paying for this with their own money which i hate like i'm sure you've bought plenty of stuff with your own money that you're like they should be giving me this the same thing so that's my end is so what does it out to when you bring that down to to sea level yeah that amplifies it right yeah exactly and you know going back to like biochem and then what it works it has to do with how efficient it fuels it takes less oxygen per particle to function so it burns more efficiently it's basically the path of loose resistance for fueling for the brain slow burning fuel yeah it's like it's like if your body ran on a diesel generator but it also had the opportunity to run on like 110 race fuel like you can now run both so your body's a multi-fuel system is freaking incredible so you get to put all the fuels in it your body needs and it uses what it needs when it's appropriate so it's kind of like some got some there's a candle we have in our house i walk past it all the time one of the prayer candles yeah burns for a month dude yeah it's super efficient fuel working month yeah and then there's some of them the fragrant candles in the house man it's like a go down like you can't catch fire and those aren't cheap good those aren't cheap you buy that that's that's what we're talking about yeah it's it's so burns and fast it's an efficiency and fueling and your body gives you the compensation to switch to both the body knows yeah anybody and body they make you jittery or anything no so that's the big difference like there's there's two big misconceptions that that i think definitely need to go out here one is that it's not a replacement for coffee or energy drinks or whatever because it's not a stimulant so like coffee works differently it's not a fuel source it's a stimulant and it's great like i freaking love coffee i just started as a few great habit i just figured out yeah you should oh if you remember with company views come there's there's a couple companies out there that make coffee yeah yeah so i literally just started to happen because my buddy started a coffee company and i'm enjoying yeah he didn't mention drink coffee before he just like in the last year started well i hope i hope that coffee company does well i hope that coffee company does well good for that uh yeah so so the one is that it's not a replacement for that it stacks really well with that using both you know and the other is that it's not a key i mean is it technically keto yeah it's keto like if you're on that diet but it's not for people who are doing keto right it can be but the point is that you don't have to because it's as well yeah so those people who are doing the diet yeah just it's just more fuel no for you yeah just more fuel so that's so interesting so your goal at the end of this is for the military to pick this up and just use it as part of like the implementation for just getting these guys not only healthy but like keep maintaining a certain it's a yeah like and i'm sure like even even your deployments i don't know how many wild tigers or rippets used to slam or whatever but we don't even remember they had stuff back in the day now crazy stuff guys have like yellow jackets and stack or two how about that frickin don't have to get at the gas station what was the yeah they stopped making the rip the rip the rip fuel with the uh yeah had the pseudo epinephrine i think it was yeah we could tell when you open that bottom yeah what looked at yeah so like oh the guys are like slamming pre-workout before an operation on that stuff and like oh that's like man like but that's what you had it's like hey man did you get a heart attack no i went right past it yeah yeah i was too busy i have two busy my heart was going too fast i have one later i'll have a later i'm already going way too fast to have our back yeah so yeah so ultimately yeah my my my goal would be for this to be made available to the guys on the ground that need it for the guys who the cyber warriors who want to have the increase brain function they want to be faster they want to think better they want to be clear great for those guys but for this to be in the obsense for guys to hit this thing before they go on operations or to have it in a frickin lurps like the little like mini mre's that have like you know the snacky poos and all that stuff in it like that's where it belongs that's the right place for it and stars underwater all the time man we ours would have to be condensed even smaller you couldn't bring anything that yeah and then well they tested everything they could on us to see oh sure yes us in the pilots right yeah see see how long we go in those kind of conditions yep and that's what it was all about yeah have you all done that have you branched out to different undersea the underworld man is way different and i was never a dive guy you know i'm not a big shark person and they don't have sharks in the mountains yet so that's where i will remain yeah he's not a big shark i either how about that man i got to be ill i was thinking down there man oh the one time i did so i did a water jump in florida and i they were like this is like the largest concentration of bull shark areas there are we're we're jumping here we're gonna jump in we're gonna be wearing black i'm gonna be having fins to make me looking i'm gonna look more like a fish that can't win because i'm a mountain guy and i'm jumping in and like we're looking off the tailgate of the ramp and my the jump master guy my team was even more scared of sharks than i was and he's seeing the shapes oh my god and he's just like his job is to say follow me i was not a i was not a free fog i was a static line guy the entire time so yeah that was me yeah you know go where the wind takes me for the most part um so yeah his job is to say follow me and we all followed him looking down like oh gosh you know so you we're dressing jet black yeah and then you got these fins on and your hands for all looking at your side and when you hit that water i mean it looks like a great big it's unbelievable what he's talking about static lines so imagine the sky in the air is like a big sea and when you hear a minute war or just like in the ocean you got the blue ocean you got manaward jellyfish and they got the menawar in the sky and you know the manaward jellyfish just kind of float through and if they hit you they kill you that's what it looks like when they when we jump out of there yeah i mean it's unbelievable when you hit the water i mean water jump is kind of great it is cool yeah you know you're not gonna get hurt yeah i mean that's a cool part and we had uh was funny is going in like we were like oh because none of us had really done that part because then we weren't scuba guys um so we were like oh i got my knife with me i got my whatever with me so we were like prepared for that scenario and one of my guys so we had our our fins tied up with like 80 pound test so we can rip him and put him on and we got to the water and he gets in the water and his fin had busted loose on the jump he said it came up and bumped him in the leg while he first got in the water he says every bit of me that thought i was going to take a knife and fight off a shark he's like i curl into a ball and scream yeah that's right that's naturally what happened so dude when the man the gray suit shows up it's like a humbly experience when you're not in your world down there yeah all right because there are some big stuff yeah especially a night oh yeah scary stuff i mean hats off terrifying to that side of the house but don't come down there if you if yeah so uh to answer your question i'm like whether we've explored that part of it so come as an umbrella the project was for altitude but the results that we're seeing in the testing is going to have application to all those guys and because so calm like the nsw marsock afsock you know uh sf command like all of them are under that that's all the direction that that would go when it comes to procurement options well you know with our crew too the one of the good things is if some of the guys start operating on it and it works then it'll pass around so fast by word of mouth and that's and that's the two even if you don't get it in the beginning yeah the guys will make their way up the chain yeah and pull it with them and that's really what and that's really what we're doing here is like it's me like it's getting out to the community getting out on the platforms so guys can try it and they because when the demand signal comes from the ground guys and it gets out to the units oh yeah then it's like okay check that's get these for the guys you know you only buy oakleys for so long before they show up in the supply room and then you pass them that's right and then 15 years down the road the regular army gets them yeah you know that's the way it is that's the way it is you have to create demand signals so those are the two that's kind of the case it's open to the public so anybody can go online and but what we're talking about is like our guys will test it yeah because you're not just throwing in an adornment human yeah you're going to put every possibility every guy i mean if they when they start drinking that stuff it's going to open stuff you'll road test it yeah exactly and like i welcome i would say like anybody who's in any of those units or any of those organizations that thinks this will work reach out and i will send you stuff on me to try it and give me feedback like i'm very aggressive a lot of that if you put that like this you can't believe it listens to this i want i want people to try it i want people to say this is the real deal you know if not i wouldn't be with the company if they said hey we're making another pre-workout you want to like be an army guy and talk about my pre-workout no and pound sand like but i believe in enough to where like i am happy with my like don't say nothing unless it works yeah exactly i'm not going to stand behind something that doesn't have application yeah everything i've seen on my end and my guys that use it and all that like it's the real deal so that's awesome well we're real good about that some of us especially i tested on myself for a long time before i passed it down so where does the like common everyday person that's not in the military get it so right now there's a couple we have ecoms we have the website and amazon also carries it and we're also launching in sprouts in march in like all 400 stores which is pretty big there's some these stores that have it like earth bar carries it but for the most part online is the way to go um you know try it out oh you hit those little substations like that it'll it's underground a little private synchronous you know how we talked about that earlier yeah like like if our guys find out about it yeah i mean you find out it's military grade as soon as you hear military grade then that's when they come online yeah exactly so yeah i mean i mean having having the background and having the fact like we didn't come up with the product like we didn't come up with it DARPA came up with the project because they knew it was the right deal i thought you met earlier like we didn't have any of this when we were coming in oh yeah no we didn't DARPA had already thought about it but it was too expensive and it tasted like shit and like it just wasn't happening so hvmn reintroduced the DARPA project back to so common said we we can make this happen so yeah like there's been a long history of like dod exploration in in ketone use for fuel that's so i think about that too man like we came through when those protein shakes still tasted like butt water i mean like it's close to drinking that trying to muddle like you know the canned the canned the canned gatorade protein shakes ew i've drank a lot of warm protein yeah oh my god but you know what ultimately like as as we evolve and we get better at our health and we get better understanding what's going on our bodies like people wear garments that read their heart rates people wear whoops and auras so like we're more in tune to what our body's doing than we ever were before and now it's time to apply that and treat the guys who should be treated like athletes like athletes because that's what they are like special operations guys they that's how they should be treated oh be cool they were so recruitness and like pain is like like they like to do football like yeah no kid that's the guy you want right there how much yeah yeah exactly we're switching yeah but that's it like the man behind the weapon system is always going to be more important and the more effective he is the better he's going to be yeah exactly like that you can actually have a dibs on who goes in yeah stop stop waste i won't say stop wasting but that's the right word stop wasting so much money on shit that works a little bit and then phases out immediately or becomes obsolete and invest a tenth of that into the man and make a better soldier you can't believe how hard that's the work ethic yeah i mean as soon as you turn that sucker on it won't they won't shut down yeah look how they burn out yeah that's its own little it's amazing yep oh that's the hardest thing when you rotate back to the world as a matter of fact yeah is when they put you in a bunch of it that don't work like that yeah it'll drive you crazy i imagine i had a buddy of mine who went and did a internship with a company as a civilian company i think i'm from Monterey where he was just talking about he's like i showed up and i was given like 70 percent i felt like i was blowing the doors off of the civilians i was working with because like i felt like i was shaming and i was like to them i was like crushing it and i was like yeah the work ethic is entirely different think about that because it turns around they're like i was trying to out show it show everybody up when in reality you're trying to show them what you're capable of yeah it's reversed for us when you come back out now yeah and it's so hard to throttle that that yeah it's like i'm not trying to show up and just show you how hard it were i'm just trying to do the job because we have a job i'm going to do it and that's you know to be honest oh here's the best is when you finish your job and you go hey man you want me to help you with yours then you're like well why would you help me with my job my job you're trying to take credit for my stuff no way i'm gonna go my salary on my team i'm trying to help you like don't worry about my job did you hear that for the first time it goes against everything we were taught yeah exactly and that's that's that's another big part of like being part of like when i first heard i thought it was to be like a huge warehouse where they've got 500 employees and all this stuff it's not it's a small decentralized team where everyone has responsibilities they all support each other and it's like this is a world that i'm used to and i can thrive in this so it's a team environment with something that i stand behind it's like yeah this this'll work yeah and it's giving back to your guys it's giving back to the guy that's what we're trying to do here too man it's fine make sure we wouldn't guys find a way where they know that's at and who's doing what exactly fine find a way to get to the guys that need it to where they don't have to because all our communities talk you got bastards like me yeah who you know whore around the army marines was like hey i got buddies and everyone of them yeah everyone and we talk yep daily everybody like the the community is so small like yesterday shoot i hung like everybody knows everybody you know like uh we freaking wrestled with tim kennedy yeah and then then we were hanging out with frickin uh the b rcc guys hanging out with mike lover who's friends with greg anderson who i just did a show with him not too long so like every single piece touches it takes long yeah so it's like if you're like if you're full of it you're gonna get you're gonna add it real quick yeah so like yeah i'm full of big puzzle it's cool because all that all that stuff they taught us we were in the military and we were kids because we were like comms and now we have instead of communicating back from now we're everybody yeah and we got the freaks and it's weird we know where we live yeah we got locations grids everything guys just starting to put that that overlay together once we pull that sucker tight you won't be able to get around us yeah oh yeah the network the guys like especially like you know the gee watt generation who were getting out and going to do things building the club i will say like when them gwatt show all of us because our war went over until they stopped it yeah even the guys in the beginning that's how it works you know you have to completely shut it down when that last man came up when that happened we all came home now it begins yep and every single one of those guys is still ready when you pick up the phone if something needs to happen so you know the network is strong yeah that's great one thing i've noticed is i've gone through my own struggles is that there's a lot more guys who have issues than are willing to say they have issues and we self disqualify ourselves because we're always told what ptsd looks like it's the guy that's he's this guy's selling all his stuff or this guy's acting different all of a sudden he's happy when he wasn't or he's like really hitting the bottle hard and there's all these signs and when you don't see that you think that you're okay or someone else is okay which is why every time like unfortunately guys are taking their lives a lot in this community which sucks it's always somebody you're like i never knew that that guy was going to do that he seemed like he had his shit together so there's a lot of people who are self-disqualifying themselves because they're comparing themselves to what they think it should look like or they're just embarrassed to like say they have an issue or even more so they don't want someone else to deal with their stuff which was that was me like this is my problem i earned my problem it's not my family's problem it's not a doctor's problem i'm going to own it and i'm going to live through my life and that was the wrong answer because i was like i wasn't right during that time problem do you mind saying what that was yeah so yeah so i had an event and i go into the story on it too in afghanistan that challenged me morally i was directly responsible for um the death of some young children and like of all the things i had done overseas and all like that part of things that i'd seen that one like that was really rough and you know i dealt with um like i dealt with guilt with it i dealt with like out of flashbacks on it and all this stuff but it's all stuff that i would like try to manage on my own because i was like i can still work i can still be a dad whatever but in private like i would have these you know things pop up and like my nose would start to burn and my lip would quiver and like i'd have to shake this stuff away and like i put it away enough to where maybe once twice a month like in the kitchen after the kids go to bed i would put on some tunes that i knew were going to take me there and like i just have a breakdown and i'm like yeah like i'm gonna i want to like hate myself i don't meet me around anymore and at the same time i want to go back i want to kill everybody like and i would go through those like pretty often i was just that was just going to be part of my life that's just who i was at that point i was a guy that did that in private nobody knew about it and it wasn't until a friend of mine who was on the same trip who told me he was retiring for PTSD he was getting medically retired he was like do like my wife noticed that i wasn't who i used to be and convinced me to talk to somebody and it changed everything and that's where that that's what happened with me and it wasn't until somebody i trusted that i knew that told me that they were feeling what i was feeling because we didn't talk about that stuff that i was willing to go get help on it and when i did oh it was rough really rough and this was recent this like this spring like i i dealt with this for years and um you know she she made me go into the stories close my eyes relive every single detail had to be there and i had to be able to relive it over and over and over again until i could finally get through it and then we could figure out why it was affecting me the way it was so um it's a huge problem in the community and i think normalizing conversation and saying that it's okay to have those feelings it doesn't make you less of a operator it doesn't make you whatever like you know in the end we're not robots we're still humans and especially if you grew up with a value system or whatever like you can do things that challenge those especially overseas you know like 360 degree combat women die children die friends die you know like it happens and some of those things can trigger that stuff so you know that's kind of like i guess the overview on where that went and you know i wouldn't say like you know is it team never quit because i quit i quit for a couple years i quit myself quit my family like i was like subtly quitting for a while until i bounce back so maybe it's like a delayed never quit i don't know you know so oh it's kind of like delayed obedience man yeah listen to us you get the urge to quit you feel like you're quitting yeah but there's still something there's some fire deep down inside there was enough that got you enough to where you went and got help yeah and that's not quitting no because that's actually restarting and saying okay i am an i can live with what has happened and i can live for my family yeah i can live for me and i can give back and your way of giving back is through your transition and helping the guys make sure that they've got this you know supplement but that's not all you are no that's just a part of who you are but you are giving back and that's not quitting it's not quitting on yourself it's not quitting on your family and you're not quitting on the guys coming in behind you yeah it's i think it's just it's it's tough because you know you don't get time back it's it's it's it's expendable and it doesn't come back non-renewable source and when i look back at how i performed from the period from when it happened to when i started getting better like man i was just like like operational guys are like really good at still working when there's issues because that's just ingrained in us so you're like instead of being a functional alcoholic you're like a functional depressant like you can put it on and you can still work good enough but yeah like i wasn't where i needed to be and um yeah as a direct reflection of me applying guilt to the situation and just my own penance that i gave myself was like i don't i don't deserve success i don't deserve to be good i deserve to be like just mediocre like i was gonna get out of the army and just dig holes or just like do something mindless and just be a nobody that's who i wanted to be because that's what i felt like i'd earned with with what i'd done and you know we can go into the story i think it's valuable if if you guys we love you if you're okay with telling it yeah if uh you want to go there but um i think it's valuable again i don't like talking about it but i hope if if one person hears it and says man i'm willing to talk to somebody we don't like anyone to be uncomfortable and that's why like we try not to pull it out but if you're willing to say it and to talk about it then yeah i mean growth growth doesn't come from comfortability you know it comes from being uncomfortable comes from doing things so you know i'm happy to do it not just challenging myself but then also to potentially somebody that could help well if you're okay with telling it let's hear it yeah this was in afghanistan kind of southeast area and we were doing a counter-isces operation which is truly the the best enemy that you could be assigned against because like they don't have borders they're just true pure evil and just everything about fighting those guys feels righteous like like i care less about killing isis fighter it doesn't matter like it's the more the better you know just because of what they are and what they're going to do and we've seen what they're going to do to women and children and everything so we're doing a counter-isces operation and we're living at a ron site you know a rest overnight site which was the joke because it was more of a rest over year site it was like a bombed out building and that's just where we lived our security was the village around us you know they were the ones because we were in we had razors we had ATVs that's how we got around that's that was the only way to get around so you know our reputation with them was very important and we were also this this was should be 2017 2018 in and around that timeframe so um one of these one of the days we were looking at clearing territory it was really like capture the flag like they would put a flag up in an area and clear it out we would go take it and take the flag out try to put people back in there and expand territory and one of the places we were going to go we're like all right we're going to give this back to the populace it's going to expand our security and we'll kill a bunch of ISIS guys in the meantime so we had a ron site set up ahead so we had a couple guys there we had a sniper team there a couple security guys and their commandos and i was the ground force commander at the time the team leader was doing something else and i remember i felt i was super happy that day it was a great looking day we knew we were going to get in great operation i'd just gotten promoted like that day so i was like this is gonna be great you know and we get a call right away from the aircraft hey we've got two guys um messing around up in the hills up over your guys let's get kate cool keep an eye on him we talked with the sniper team hey yep we got eyes on and we can see him i'm not sure what they're doing yet bird calls back down hey two ADMs again and that's very important here ADMs adult males for those who haven't heard the lingo all right good fighting age men who are up on the mountains above our guys this is going to be a great easy kill and the reason why we're excited about that is like anytime you can do something in daylight just sends a message as well you know so it's like if they know that they're gonna step up or try something like there's no chance of success like you're gonna die which is great for our operation in preparation for taking territory so everything was still positive i'm still really happy about it and then we get the call again hey they're digging weapons out of a cache like oh this is just getting better and better you know again excitement good easy operation um now they start moving towards our guys all right that's it that's all i need like you now have adult males you know how positive identification of guns and they're now posing a threat to your guys so calling through the cct we had ac 130 overhead and when i made the call because of the operation we were out to do we wanted maximum like effect i was like don't just kill these guys like destroy the cash hammer down that way it's less resistance as we push through you know so they did and if you've never seen an ac 130 hammering down on something close it's freaking exciting and it's awesome like the puffs of smoke from the aircraft and it just sounds like everything it's super exhilarating it's it's awesome like i that's one of my favorite platforms after the a 10 so um so they hammer down and i get in reports from snipers hey yep these guys are dead they're slumped over they're done great mission success well not long after that we get a call and they're saying hey the villagers are saying that um you just killed some kids like now we the aircraft told us they were adults and they had weapons sorry maybe they're young you know because culturally someone might say that hey it's a kid but they might mean like a 17 year old or 18 year old it's still fighting age person so you know it's just translation issue so they're like no i definitely say they're kids and snipers like now i mean like i can't tell from here but what they did see is they saw people going up they saw women going up to the bodies to go remove weapons so they were going and hiding the weapons so at that point we're like okay shoot hey the villagers they say they're definitely kids we want you to pay for the funeral and all this and it's easy to not care that much sometimes because you know we knew they had guns and we knew it was like a easy like a clean kill but our relationship with the villagers was our security you know we didn't have the option to just blow it off and say yeah you know whatever if it is it is because like we don't need one of those guys to turn on us or allow an option for an ambush or whatever later so we still had a requirement to maintain reputation with the villagers so like our i need to get out there how's about a mile a half maybe two two miles away from the wrong side we get in the razors we shoot down to those guys and it's starting to get like super chaotic we have like my small handful of guys we have our commandos we have the villagers we have the local police and all those guys are starting to get really heated and like it's it's me like this is my element at this point to take care of it so i tell you guys you guys focus on security pay attention it's prime opportunity for a green on blue for like maybe a guy that worked in your unit that said this is the day they just killed some of our people i'm going to turn on you or for even you know again something to happen while we're distracted so we're up there we're trying to diffuse this and they say we're going to bring the bodies here so you can see that they were kids i was like no you don't need to do that i don't care we saw what we saw like this is over you know like no no we're bringing them here comes the truck white highlucks is pulling up the uh dry creek bed get to a rat they walk me over to it i tell the guys to pull off like you guys i will handle this you guys keep a lookout internally and externally and when we get to the truck um they pull the blankets back i can see the bodies in there they pull the blankets back and they only pulled them back like just on behind the neck and the first thing i knows was just how young these these were kids there wasn't a translation issue um probably like eight 10 years old and i had um i had boys that age at that time so immediately those boys faces became my voice faces like that's what i see and whenever i go back there that's the only part that's different from reality is that it's my kids faces and i just remember how clean they were like they weren't they were drained of color obviously but they weren't like they just looked like they were sleeping it was just like the innocence like everything was there it was just like shocked me and maybe that was five seconds long maybe to me it felt like much longer and everything around it was a blur at that time like everything like everything was mumbled it was just it was just me focused there um and then they pulled the blankets back the rest of the way and that's where like that's where all the carnage was um completely dismembered and just like they had to prove a point of just how dead these kids were so they took they're taking body parts they're taking like limbs and like holding them up in front of me like i'm even taking like these kids like lower leg and his foot just holding it up right in my face and just like little kids foot like look how dead they are you killed kids look at all this stuff and just like it was just like crushing me inside but like you don't have an you don't have the time to deal with that in that situation you have to you have to be in reality you have to take care of the guys you have to move past the situation again the longer you're there the worse it's going to get the better opportunity for something bad to happen far distracted so you know as best i could i reeled myself in and just said say hey look we didn't kill these kids ice has killed these kids they recruited them they gave them the weapons they told them what to do we facilitated the transfer but ice has killed these kids we're sorry we're not paying for a funeral this is what it is we got a bounce so we packed up we got in the again couple razors and atvs and we started rolling out and the the horrible thing about leaving that area from a tactical standpoint was you had to go through a dry creek bed so you're slow moving because it's big rocks you're moving through 30 foot cliffs on both side one of them would just rock outcroppings the other is like house built along cliffs so it's like it's prime time for an ambush it's like a little worst place you would want to be without armor moving through you know it would be a bad fight so as we were moving through i just started getting that feeling like when we're about to get hit and i've had that feeling multiple times through my career most of the time it's right it's a weird thing i think a lot of guys have felt that before like something's not right um and i just had this thought that like if we get hit i want to get hit first and i feel like i deserve it like i had at that point applied it to myself that i had earned like death like that's what should happen to me and not in the point to where like if there's a fight i wouldn't have like fought back but like i kind of was like this isn't gonna be my pen it's gonna happen right now and that's it i'm not even gonna face i'm just gonna get hit and be done lights out um and it didn't happen it was quite his mouth so we rolled through the rest of the way got back to the heart of the site um i ground my gear get in my room which i was sharing with my buddy matt and he was in there at the time and you know i went in and i just i just like grabbed him just like just broke down um it feels like me i just killed these kids dude like hands down like i just killed these kids and i was happy about it and like what the fuck are we doing now and it's just like all that all those thoughts everything i'd see everything i'd done just like all came collapsing down um yeah and it's just something i couldn't shake and from that point i just applied so much guilt to it that it's like those kids because of what i did i don't deserve to live film life anymore like and there's times when like i never i never thought i was gonna hurt myself but there was definitely times where i was like if something happened like i'd be okay with that because that's what should happen and i applied that to myself and i did that for a number of years um i mean like i said it was this years when i started and i was twenty twenty two and this happened that many years ago and i just put it in my pocket and i just just kept dealing with it on my own and i think the biggest sign that i knew i needed to really process it was driving my kids to school one day i started going there and normally i'm okay i can shake it off pretty well but i by the time i got it out of my head i probably driven 15 miles completely not in the real world like driving but like not really driving and i was just thinking like if there had been construction that wasn't there before if there had been a turn that wasn't if there if anything out of the norminary would happen i would have just wrecked the car without even know about it possibly like hurt or killed my own kids so at that point i knew that i could know like i was no longer handling it by myself like i was putting other people at risk and coincidentally right at the same time was when i talked to my friend who who had gotten help and who was already getting out and he introduced me to the lady that i started talking to and that was that was the beginning of healing and it wasn't easy like if guys think that they're going to go in and talk to somebody and it's going to be like oh you know i told my story now i'm good like it's going to be painful like it's not easy to talk about that shit it sucks and you have to relive it over and over and over and you record yourself and you have to listen to it between sessions and it wasn't until i could make it through and i could really process it that we could talk about why i was behaving the way i was and why why i'd apply this guilt to myself erroneously you know like really well i it didn't need to happen but i did and it stuck with me it became part of who i was so um at this point like i feel like i want to grow i want to do better and i can look back and say that i was the last couple years i was like 70 percent of who i could have been you know the better i did the worse i felt because again i feel like i was doing a disservice to those kids by by thriving you know so um once i was finally able to remove that and turn it into a memory and something that's developed who i am and understood why that was so impactful for me was the point to where i was able to be okay that that happened not okay like not obviously i didn't want it to happen but um i can live with it which is something that i wasn't doing well before um and i hid this from everybody like my wife didn't know about it my friends didn't know about it nobody knew i was suffering they just knew that i was it's like wasn't performing that well so um i guess that would be would be my message for guys like if something's not right just talk to somebody like it's easy to make appointments and whatever the worst that could happen is if you go there and it's just like yeah i guess i'm fine like you said i'm fine it's you know whatever the best thing could happen is it could like change your entire life moving forward so like don't compare yourself to other guys don't look and say well this guy was in this crazy situation and he seems to be doing fine who am i to go get help for this minuscule situation or whatever um like don't do that like everyone's different how do you know that guys do okay because we don't talk about that stuff well and i feel like everybody even though all of y'all have your own stories there's trauma and war yeah i'm point blank everybody's trauma is different but y'all have all experienced trauma and it's okay to get help yeah it doesn't mean you're broken yeah it just means mark us my calling it's normal to get help it should be normalized that's well here there's like there's some groups of people down here you throw a certain one and i'm gonna turn it off mm-hmm it's like when you tell us to quit something mm-hmm and you just we react differently yeah it's like you got to go in there and tell that guy's like hey man we got a training cycle for you yeah because you qualified for this one yeah you put so much heavy weight in and so much heavy lifted in then you qualified for this part of it yeah there's only one way to do that you got to go through what a lot of us have to go through down here i mean those bad times that stuff is yeah that unlocks the door for sure yeah you just didn't know which one it was yeah and then when you walk in and you kind of when somebody identify when you identify it yeah it's tough it's like it it's cracking that shell on something that was if you don't get about a week in man you get about a hard yeah and you learn from that and a lot of that times we go through so much most people go through an event and then they'll have some reflection time yeah man we don't have that no we stack another event there we and then we stack another one we continue and then when you get a pause time because here's what i hear is like guys would be like man i have 30 years ago and i thought about this one i was like well that's because you then started thinking yeah it starts in order yeah from your first one like oh you it's funny what bothers us it's like man it's one of the first ones i ever did yeah i don't even remember and you might have felt completely indifferent to it at the time yeah different right and we're so good at sticking that stuff in our pockets and saying i'm going to deal with it later yeah and then not dealing with it later because and what happens is we learn how to deal with it over time but at that moment in the beginning of time we didn't know how yeah so it's stuck in there it's stuck in there yeah before we could learn how to deal with it yeah and that's why it's always the ones you don't expect yeah anyway is that logical yeah no okay it is yeah and someone explained to me and when we were thinking about i was like yeah that's that's what happens yeah we don't have time because even when we get back the training's harder yeah you get back you're gonna like it's like pro basically you're gonna pretend that you rebuilt your family after the deployment in two weeks and you're gonna get right back to training yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so it's the octempo and i think i think that's why we see such an issue with guys at the end of their career five to ten years after they get out i'm sure you've gotten the phone call hey did you know what's his name just like killed himself and he's just like what are you kidding me like it happens more than it should in this community and i think that's a big part of it is like we don't we don't fully close the book on some of that stuff and well you got buddies in yeah they stay in yeah and then if you try to fix it if you got one foot in it you yeah like your buddy of course yeah exactly and i immediately dropped that back in there yeah and we're so in tune with each other that you got to ignore everything else yep so so yeah i just you know you said i you know it's great talking about the work stuff it's it's super cool i love that start of it but more important to me and personally again with having friends that i've lost they've taken their own lives and all this stuff too is that like if that's the one thing that happens out of this period that's the most important thing if somebody heard it and is like man like i've been doing a little bit of the same thing or maybe i'll go talk to somebody hands down worth it doesn't matter how hard it is to talk about it you know so i appreciate just allowed me to tell us yeah thank you for telling it i know it's really hard to just open yourself up and be vulnerable to like the thing that hurts you the most um but it will even if it helps one person that listens to it just to know that every single person that has been in war deals with trauma and going back to your personal story i can't imagine i mean i i really i cannot imagine what it's like um in your situation being in that moment seeing that it is kids but when you when you sit back and think about it you were given intel that it wasn't yeah the call that you made wasn't an intentional i'm going to do this and fuck it no matter what yeah you were given bad intel yeah and i mean mark is dealt with the same thing he was given shitty ass intel which ended up getting his entire team killed yeah so it's you can't have i mean i know you hold on to because it's natural to hold on to guilt like you did this yeah but you didn't well i've always retained that given the same information i would make the same decision every time i don't regret the decision i made i would still do it every single time and the outcome would be the same every single time right i just don't like it yeah it's not it's not oh that's the lesson yeah i mean what happened i mean that's the perfect lesson right there yeah so we went too a lot of them yeah and i mean we've that's how you know it probably when you're less than yeah with mark us is um experience in afghanistan especially after the movie came out yeah there were millions of thousands or whatever of people that would email in and you should have carried carrier pigeons or you should have done you know you should have just like that's not you don't have luxury it's a luxury yeah not they were so fast and you know what's the good idea though next time i get in it i'll use it yeah or you come with me yeah i'm like hey that's a great job if i ever find myself in this situation i'll do this yeah then they'll be like when they say something's like hey look man i i just did the best i could yeah i know you probably would do better yeah and next time they'll use you yeah and that's pretty much kind of like i was like yeah you know we do the best what we got yeah but yeah now be different for us yeah if you and i are both standing somewhere now and something goes down yeah trust me there's a lot of thought process it comes fast yeah but now it's completely different because they mean some of us had to actually go through all that mm-hmm yeah not just sit back and talk about i mean there are a handful of us that actually we're in there yeah i mean we had somebody here today he started talking about everything he i called everybody i know to make sure this dude was real yeah he what he was literally in every conflict since everyone of them yeah it's it's not there's all there we do have there is a guy yeah and a girl and when you run into him it's just you're so believable yeah like hold on i got to call somebody yeah i think i think that's why we do as a community because everybody knows somebody who's cooler and that's why you disqualify yourself you're like or has also been through equal trauma yeah like seeing you you compare yourself to what somebody else has done and automatic you're like well that guy did something that was way harder than what i did or that guy did something that was wave honor so like if i'm complaining or if i'm having issues that's just weakness you know that's what we do to ourselves you know it's like don't which isn't fair that's not fair at all because even the toughest among them i think the toughest is sitting right here um as this wife everybody has breakdown moments yeah everybody has pain yeah and you have everybody has to have a path of healing that's the funniest part as like people are like hey look at me and you're like man i'll see you guys going through that you don't break down i'm like nope but i stubbed my damn toe the other day i mean you can't believe what gets to us yeah oh i can't like what gets to guys like us yeah it's not the stuff that gets to everybody else they i watch these movies sometimes and i like i'm not i'm not crying you're crying so poetic yeah it's like it's funny what gets to us yeah and it gets over it's nothing gets over look man but yeah we got them yeah for sure gets to us and then as opposed to what doesn't like that's funny there's your book right there man yeah i know you get worked up about this it's a phobia in a fairy i don't have that but check out what does yeah and you're gonna laugh so i'd say that's ridiculous i mean yeah i know but it is it's a thing yeah well thank you for sharing that i know that's super hard yeah thanks for allowing the opportunity to hopefully um someone listening will it might change their life and they'll be here tomorrow oh well yeah well thank you for coming on yeah bro thanks guys for yeah thanks guys for her about to happen it's such an honor you know i love it okay so for our listeners uh they just go to yeah please www yeah so go to yeah to hpmn.com there's a couple options there's you can buy them in the shots which they're super convenient to travel with it's a little bit more diluted with the same amount of ketones so some people think they taste a little bit better or you've got the bigger bottles which is like your fridge bottle you know you'll just yeah so you know i'll take the biggest bottle they got yeah whole thing at one time you know how we do it oh man yeah if you do i wouldn't say those five different ways that down so that but you're gonna you're gonna be freaking feeling pretty good like you're gonna be jamming if you do that just saying you know our guys man oh yeah freaking find a way to get that in there yeah exactly yeah mark is does that i promised a video yeah oh yeah show you what he's doing yeah yeah i get that weird shit oh man i'm a delta so it's just a shot so yeah so there's the shots which is the small bottles which is one serving which is 10 ketones in about 45 milliliters of fluid and then there's the big bottles which is 10 servings in one bottle so cost effective wise and packaging wise it's cheaper to get the big ones just not as convenient they've got like three packs one packs subscriptions to save money just for the written all that what happens if you jam if you do take a lot of that you just feel great for longer i mean it's don't don't say it like that yeah i know i know these guys are he knows what i'm saying yeah oh yeah yeah keep for plenty if some work good more work better now i get it um yeah that's a real thing it's a real thing i have to bring that up yeah p for plenty exists you think you have you got a motor some of our dues oh yeah i got a freaking motor i'll say when i'm uh like if i'm doing um like they have the endurance exchange and running event and they've got these things that they do uh i've been in Austin for at the convention center and when i do that like i take shots with people like all day long and i'm freaking like because our guys will camel back that stuff oh dear coffee either but yeah in the afternoon yeah the only issue if you if you drank too much maybe you might have a gas throw issue like maybe okay you know if i had to pick one thing that could happen but other than that like you're not gonna OD on it you're not gonna get it you're not gonna feel too good like you'll just be feeling on it longer we're gonna try yeah i'll tell you know i'm just you know our guys man they'll be like yeah and it is body semi body weight dependent like i'm i'm a lighter guy like i weigh like 150 pounds so for me one shot does pretty well if i'm gonna work out or do something hard i'll take two but for like bigger guys you know especially like normal operator size not me i'm a small operator um i would take like two or three of these things before you're about to like really jam so that's awesome yeah well i hope it does well and it yeah congratulations to the next part of your career next guys really really appreciate it yeah awesome yeah super cool all right thank you ♪♪♪