Speaker 1: Hey guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: you today about a way that you can help support
Speaker 1: the podcast if you're not already to support the channel
Speaker 1: is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon
Speaker 1: memberships that start at just five dollars a month, and
Speaker 1: when you sign up, you get access to all of
Speaker 1: our episodes add free. That's the big bonus for that.
Speaker 1: I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for
Speaker 1: our subscribers, but this is the biggest and best way
Speaker 1: that you can support the Teamhouse channel and podcast if
Speaker 1: you'd like to, and we really appreciate that, So go
Speaker 1: and check us out at patreon dot com, Slash the Teamhouse,
Speaker 1: Special Operations, cobt.
Speaker 2: OS, Spiona, The Team House with Your Hopes, Jack Murphy
Speaker 2: and David bark.
Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to episode three hundred and four of The Teamhouse.
Speaker 1: I'm Jack here with Dave and on tonight's show is
Speaker 1: Justin Warrez. Justin served in fitth Special Forces Group, deployed
Speaker 1: to Iraq, also served in nineteenth Special Forces Group, and
Speaker 1: then he went into the private sector and started a
Speaker 1: company called KRG and today is working for j Golt
Speaker 1: Aircraft working on some pretty interesting projects there. We're excited
Speaker 1: to talk to you tonight justin thank you for coming
Speaker 1: on the show.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me fellas. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 3: I've been listening to you guys for quite a while now,
Speaker 3: so thank you. It's cool.
Speaker 1: So we've got a quick ad read to do before
Speaker 1: we jump into the interview.
Speaker 4: Here, So we want to get a shout out to
Speaker 4: our sponsorn, ghost Bad. So. I'm a very hot sleeper.
Speaker 4: I wake up in the middle night's sweating. I have
Speaker 4: to have a fan on me at all times. And
Speaker 4: if you're like me, if you sleep hot at night,
Speaker 4: you know just how disruptive it can be, whether you're
Speaker 4: having trouble falling asleep, you're waking up sweating in the
Speaker 4: middle night, or all of the above. That's where ghost
Speaker 4: bed can help. As the makers of the coolest beds
Speaker 4: in the world. Ghost Beed is your go to for
Speaker 4: cooling mattresses, cooling pillows, and even cooling bedding. From their
Speaker 4: signature ghost Ice fabric to patented technology that adjusts your
Speaker 4: with your body temperature, every ghost Sped mattress is designed
Speaker 4: with cooling in mind. So whether you want a pleasure
Speaker 4: mattress that cushions your shoulders and hips, or a firmer
Speaker 4: option with exceptional support. Your ghost bed will keep you
Speaker 4: cool and comfortable.
Speaker 5: All night long.
Speaker 4: When you purchase a ghost bed mattress, your comfort is guaranteed.
Speaker 4: You can try out your mattress for one hundred and
Speaker 4: one night's risk free.
Speaker 5: And make sure it's the right fit for you.
Speaker 4: Plus, they offer free shipping and most items ship within
Speaker 4: twenty four hours. If you're not sure which ghost bed
Speaker 4: is for you, check out their mattress quiz. You'll answer
Speaker 4: a few questions and get your personalized recommendation. Or reach
Speaker 4: out to the friendly team of experts for.
Speaker 5: All the help you need.
Speaker 4: Even better, Team House listeners can get fifty percent off
Speaker 4: site wide for a limited time. Just visit ghost sped
Speaker 4: dot com slash house and use code house excuse me
Speaker 4: at checkout Again, that's ghost sped dot com slash house
Speaker 4: with code house at checkout and save a whopping fifty
Speaker 4: percent off site wide, Save on your air conditioning bills,
Speaker 4: and get a ghost bed.
Speaker 1: All right justin let's uh, let's jump into it.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about your origin story, about
Speaker 1: how you grew up and and what your path was
Speaker 1: that took you towards the army.
Speaker 3: Sure. Yeah, So I grew up in a small town of Wyoming,
Speaker 3: came from you know, poor family pretty much peasants basically
Speaker 3: on both sides. My my mom's side is white, my
Speaker 3: dad's side as a Mexican, and like I said, had
Speaker 3: basically peasants all the way back. But I was fortunate
Speaker 3: that my parents realized the importance of well, first of all,
Speaker 3: they wanted a better life for me. And I should
Speaker 3: probably clarify when I say poor. We weren't dirt poor
Speaker 3: like you see in some places, like the kind of
Speaker 3: poor I saw in like the South for example, when
Speaker 3: I when I joined the Army and went over to
Speaker 3: the Carolinas and stuff. But anyways, Uh so my parents
Speaker 3: realized that, uh, the way to improve your life was
Speaker 3: through education, and so that was a that was the
Speaker 3: value in the family early on. And ah that kind
Speaker 3: of led to me being as far as I know,
Speaker 3: the first one in my family to go to college,
Speaker 3: to go to like a four year college. Uh. Being
Speaker 3: from Wyoming is you know, has lot of advantages. There's
Speaker 3: not very many people there, and it's it's a it's
Speaker 3: a fun place you can do a lot outdoor kind
Speaker 3: of activities, fishing and shooting and stuff like that. So
Speaker 3: I grew up doing a lot of shooting just you know,
Speaker 3: birds and prairie dogs and stuff like that, and target
Speaker 3: shooting and fishing and stuff like that, and you know,
Speaker 3: really really got a feel for you know, sort of
Speaker 3: being outdoors and but also just kind of the West
Speaker 3: and and that sort of lifestyle that's kind of still
Speaker 3: goes on out here today. So from you know, I stayed.
Speaker 3: I stayed in Wyoming through college. I ended up going
Speaker 3: to University Wyoming. And when I was a kid, I
Speaker 3: wanted to be a World War two fighter pilot, which
Speaker 3: of course is you know, not something you can be.
Speaker 3: But I used to watch all the shows and yeah,
Speaker 3: and you know, we used to read all the books
Speaker 3: about World War two and stuff like that, and and
Speaker 3: uh uh, but I was I was pretty a pretty
Speaker 3: poor vision. You know, all all through life. I had
Speaker 3: real thick glasses and then contacts later on, you know,
Speaker 3: as I got older. Uh fortunately the Army got me
Speaker 3: lasick once I was graduated the Q course. But so
Speaker 3: so anyway, as I kind of when I was like
Speaker 3: maybe preteen, the idea was maybe get me into the
Speaker 3: Air Force Academy. And because you know, we couldn't. No
Speaker 3: one in my family could afford to pay for college
Speaker 3: for me, and I you know, there wasn't any way
Speaker 3: I can do it. So it's either some kind of
Speaker 3: a scholarship academic or athletic or something like that. And
Speaker 3: and uh, really I wasn't athletic enough for scholarship. I
Speaker 3: was a pretty pretty good tennis player, but not that
Speaker 3: not you know, not collegiate level, I don't think so
Speaker 3: between the vision and well that was really it is
Speaker 3: his vision. And and you know, honestly, I didn't really
Speaker 3: uh try too hard dur in high school, I would
Speaker 3: say I was I was smart enough. I was kind
Speaker 3: of I kind of think of it as I was
Speaker 3: cursed with being smart enough to not have to really
Speaker 3: work that hard in high school to get through, which
Speaker 3: is it sounds like a kind of a good thing
Speaker 3: in a way, but it's actually not, because, as you
Speaker 3: learn in life, the key to success is not to
Speaker 3: be smart. It's actually to be resilient and to keep
Speaker 3: pushing through when you have when you've come up against challenges,
Speaker 3: you know, academically or what have you. Uh So Anyways,
Speaker 3: ended up going to University Wyoming, and my dad had
Speaker 3: pushed for me to you know, go into the medical field.
Speaker 3: Is you know, he saw that as a way of
Speaker 3: of you know, attaining a good income, status, social status,
Speaker 3: all the kind of stuff that you think is great
Speaker 3: when you know you're come from an immigrant family or
Speaker 3: come from a poor family, whatever whatever it may be.
Speaker 3: But I think I really just never had the passion
Speaker 3: for that. Nevertheless, I ended up getting a pre med
Speaker 3: degree from University Wyoming, and and I was all set
Speaker 3: to go to med school. I'd take my MCATs. I
Speaker 3: had already started applying, I was kind of midway through
Speaker 3: the application process, and then September eleventh, but you know
Speaker 3: that the attacks and those happened in my senior year
Speaker 3: would have been obviously two thousand and one, but I graduated.
Speaker 3: I waited until I graduated in two thousand and two,
Speaker 3: and I signed up like a delayed entry or something
Speaker 3: like that. I can't remember when exactly I signed up,
Speaker 3: but I left maybe a few weeks after I graduated.
Speaker 3: I left for basic training.
Speaker 1: And so this is, if if I recall correctly, so
Speaker 1: after nine to eleven happened. Don Rumsfeld decided we needed
Speaker 1: more special forces and that brought about the eighteen X
Speaker 1: ray program. And was that how you enlisted through the program?
Speaker 3: That's exactly right. Yeah, I had looked so probably you
Speaker 3: guys heard this story. But I saw the movie Block
Speaker 3: Hawk Down, and that got me thinking. It just sort
Speaker 3: of opened my eyes to some of the some of
Speaker 3: the things that were that were available, you know. And
Speaker 3: obviously it portrays the Rangers and Deltas as these super
Speaker 3: cool guys, right, and it's like, oh man, that's really neat.
Speaker 3: But the other thing that that that movie did was
Speaker 3: showed me that, you know, sometimes there's stuff going on
Speaker 3: that you know, you don't know about. And not that
Speaker 3: I don't know exactly how to described this, but there's
Speaker 3: people that are doing things I'm half of the country
Speaker 3: that know that people don't know about and I don't
Speaker 3: know that. Uh, I don't know how to really describe it,
Speaker 3: but it kind of it kind of spoke to me
Speaker 3: a little.
Speaker 1: Bit like it was something you wanted to be a
Speaker 1: part of.
Speaker 3: Well, it was something that I didn't want to not
Speaker 3: be a part of. I think, you know, because I
Speaker 3: didn't want to be sitting idly by. I guess it's
Speaker 3: kind of where I'm going with that, you know. Ah
Speaker 3: So anyways, forgive me, I'm just getting over a cold.
Speaker 3: I was up in Vermont cold last week.
Speaker 5: But uh.
Speaker 3: So so between the watching this movie and then and
Speaker 3: then the Texas September eleventh, you know, it was actually
Speaker 3: my brother and I we just got together one day
Speaker 3: and we sort of simultaneously started talking about, hey and
Speaker 3: think about joining. And we'd both been doing the research
Speaker 3: on SF and and H and rangers. Really that was
Speaker 3: the two kind of routes we were looking at. And
Speaker 3: somehow we had learned about the X ray program, which yeah,
Speaker 3: had just just come about. And it turns out we
Speaker 3: were we He left in like April O two and
Speaker 3: I left in JUNEO two. We were in some of
Speaker 3: the first two classes X rays that went out. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so we were we were very fortunate because you know,
Speaker 3: we all heard horror stories of you know, trying to
Speaker 3: get going to the regular army and then get into
Speaker 3: SF or rangers, and our in our basic class it
Speaker 3: was half it was half X rays and half rip
Speaker 3: contract guys. And uh none of the rip contract guys
Speaker 3: made it because they were all infantry and rangers didn't
Speaker 3: need infantry at that point. So we were fortunate that
Speaker 3: we chose the way we did. And uh, A lot
Speaker 3: of a lot of the guys that I was with
Speaker 3: in Basic were had come out of college or super
Speaker 3: good dudes. Uh, and most of the most of us
Speaker 3: made it as x rays.
Speaker 1: What was that like going through the X ray program
Speaker 1: and like the I don't know if SOPSY had been
Speaker 1: stood up yet, what was it like as a very
Speaker 1: young guy or a young ish guy you got college
Speaker 1: under your belt, but still new to the army and
Speaker 1: going through all of this stuff for the first time.
Speaker 3: It was pretty wild. I got to say, Uh, you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of a lot of discomfort, you know, is
Speaker 3: uh kind of how I guess you could say. But
Speaker 3: we ended up we were we did have SOAPSI, so
Speaker 3: we did you know, Infantry Airborne School. Uh, and and
Speaker 3: then we got to SAPSI and up till then, I
Speaker 3: hadn't been super impressed with the Army. I gotta say,
Speaker 3: and I'm not trying to hopefully I'm not sounding like
Speaker 3: Arragon or anything, but there was a lot of silly
Speaker 3: stuff that they had us doing. You guys know how
Speaker 3: basic is. It's a lot of stuff and it's like, really,
Speaker 3: this is the army and then Airborne school is supposed
Speaker 3: to be tough and you sort of run around like
Speaker 3: at a walking pace. And ah, so we got to
Speaker 3: SAPSI and then we saw what stuff was really about.
Speaker 3: And yeah, we had a SAPSY instructor. He's pretty he
Speaker 3: was pretty famous at the time. His name is Ralph
Speaker 3: Ralph Jensen. He was this German guy from tenth group
Speaker 3: and he was a scuba guy who had I don't
Speaker 3: know how he got to SAPSI. I heard he I
Speaker 3: heard he did something wrong, you know, and group got
Speaker 3: sent over there. You know how it is. Nobody wants
Speaker 3: to be there.
Speaker 5: So uh.
Speaker 3: Anyways, Jensen was brutal to us. I mean he just
Speaker 3: worked us, you know, it worked us over night and day.
Speaker 3: I mean pool, pool, pt just everything just low crawling
Speaker 3: through the through the sand pit, you know, pouring water
Speaker 3: and it's all just all the stuff everybody goes through,
Speaker 3: you know. Ah. But at that time, it's like, wow,
Speaker 3: this is this is pretty intense stuff. And and I
Speaker 3: don't know if more guys quit and sopsy then than
Speaker 3: the rest of the course, I'd say I'd say there's
Speaker 3: a chance there was more guys that quit there, Yeah,
Speaker 3: than then quit later on because it was it was
Speaker 3: pretty brutal. And and when it came time for selection, Uh,
Speaker 3: selection was was not wasn't as intense as what SOPSY was.
Speaker 3: With the exception of it was the weather was a
Speaker 3: lot words, which made it pretty miser really for us.
Speaker 1: So you think the SAPs course, as brutal as it was,
Speaker 1: it did a pretty good job of preparing you guys
Speaker 1: for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, I mean we were landing Evan all the time,
Speaker 3: and and uh, you know there was a lot of
Speaker 3: gut checks in there. And I remember, you know, I
Speaker 3: kind of think of of my path in life. The
Speaker 3: success that I've had is it's it's uh, it's dependent
Speaker 3: almost as much on the things that I didn't do,
Speaker 3: some very key, key sort of crossroad points where I
Speaker 3: didn't I didn't take an action, and and uh it's
Speaker 3: as dependent on those points those things as as the
Speaker 3: positive actions that I did take, like for example, joining
Speaker 3: as a as an x ray. But the first one
Speaker 3: of those was in Sapsey and and uh, I remember
Speaker 3: we were landing Evan in the rain and there was
Speaker 3: a there was a guy in with us. I didn't
Speaker 3: think much of him. He was a you know, kind
Speaker 3: of small, kind of just not just not that impressive
Speaker 3: of a guy, I thought. And and I was going
Speaker 3: through there, and I hadn't really got the hang of
Speaker 3: land that have yet, So I was kind of half
Speaker 3: lost and walking through the woods with whatever it was,
Speaker 3: sixty odd pounds on her on my back, just miserable,
Speaker 3: and and I I was, I was kind of just
Speaker 3: wanting to quit, you know. Of course, I don't know
Speaker 3: if you guys had this, but they always had the
Speaker 3: threat of sending us to Korea or the or the
Speaker 3: deuce eighty second, So that was that was a pretty
Speaker 3: good motivator to keep us from quitting. But anyway, so
Speaker 3: I'm thinking, ah, maybe the Deuce ain't that bad. And
Speaker 3: then then pops into my head, pops this this guy
Speaker 3: who's in Sopsy with us, you know, and and he's like,
Speaker 3: you know, SF just isn't for everybody, That's what he's
Speaker 3: saying to me in my head, and so I was like,
Speaker 3: fuck you, I'm not quitting, and uh, and so I
Speaker 3: pushed on and so that was that was sort of
Speaker 3: one of those sort of key like uh, crossroad points
Speaker 3: in my life. Then it was like I pushed on.
Speaker 3: I you know, made it through sopcy and made it
Speaker 3: through selection and the course and all that stuff. But uh,
Speaker 3: kind of a strange kind of occurrence there because I
Speaker 3: never really had something like that happening again.
Speaker 1: And so you go on to the Q course. Uh
Speaker 1: you were in eighteen Charlie.
Speaker 3: I was, Yeah, I was afraid I was gonna get
Speaker 3: assigned a delta to be a delta.
Speaker 1: Because of your medical background.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I wasn't like a E. M T or
Speaker 3: anything like that. You know, a pre med degree is
Speaker 3: basically just science, you know, physics and biology and math.
Speaker 3: But I don't think they knew about it even and
Speaker 3: I didn't. I'll I wanted to get deployed as quickly
Speaker 3: as possible, so I wanted to be I don't want
Speaker 3: to be an echo. And Charlie's sound groups sounded great,
Speaker 3: you know, construction and explosives, that sounds pretty awesome. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I got to sign a Charlie and it was very
Speaker 3: fortunate for that.
Speaker 1: And then you get assigned to fifth Special Forces Group,
Speaker 1: Fort Campbell, Kentucky. What was it like hitting the ground there.
Speaker 1: We're still sort of early on into the War on Terror?
Speaker 1: What is it like two thousand and four, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Late two thousand and four. Yep. It was a pretty
Speaker 3: intimidating environment actually because you know, the Fifth Group guys
Speaker 3: were the ones that went in Afghanistan, you know, and
Speaker 3: and they were the ones that were taking the fight
Speaker 3: to the enemy, doing the bulk of the work up
Speaker 3: up till then. You know, I know, other groups have
Speaker 3: been coming online, but a lot of it had been
Speaker 3: Fifth Group, and so there were guys there who were
Speaker 3: pretty you know, salty, pretty crusty guys, you know, combat experienced,
Speaker 3: and uh So it was intimidating partially because also because
Speaker 3: Fifth Group had such a reputation. I mean, it was
Speaker 3: like it was sort of like going to Ranger Regiment,
Speaker 3: you know. And I'm not you know, I'm not saying
Speaker 3: it's like that. I never been to Ranger Regiment, but
Speaker 3: just the idea in my head, it was like Fifth
Speaker 3: Group wasn't the relaxed, you know, long hair and everything,
Speaker 3: you know, a cool guy, uh kind of gentleman school
Speaker 3: kind of kind of environment. It was like it was
Speaker 3: it was the hard asses and we do everything the
Speaker 3: hardest way possible and that kind of stuff. So so
Speaker 3: it was intimidating and and you know, I had I
Speaker 3: had some advice from from a guy who was who
Speaker 3: was uh who was in Jaysock. I was riding dirt
Speaker 3: bikes with him, and he told me, you know, if
Speaker 3: you get a chance, volunteer for like the hardest, the
Speaker 3: hardest things that you can, you know, so the hardest school,
Speaker 3: scuba school, stuff like that, you know, and because you
Speaker 3: always want to you want to get to the higher
Speaker 3: levels of of of group and and and the army.
Speaker 3: And when I got to group, the the I leave
Speaker 3: as a company sergeant major might have been the time
Speaker 3: Sergeant major. He's like, well, I don't think about where
Speaker 3: where where I should send you. We got the slot
Speaker 3: open on the scuba team and a couple of other teams,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, and I hated from from sopsy. I
Speaker 3: hated the swimming, I hated the pool. I hated all
Speaker 3: that stuff. And so I didn't I didn't go to
Speaker 3: the to the to the dive team. And looking back,
Speaker 3: that was probably a mistake, although you know, I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't regret it, you know, a ton really, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hear, well, we.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some guys are real into that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: It's one thing if you're just doing it, uh, if
Speaker 3: you go to dive school just just to challenge yourself.
Speaker 3: But I still have zero interest in swimming or you know,
Speaker 3: water or anything like that, scuba diving, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: So anyways, I.
Speaker 1: Was just gonna ask you what team you did end
Speaker 1: up on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I went to five five one, which is uh,
Speaker 3: you know, I would have went to Triple Nickel, I
Speaker 3: think is the is one, which was a pretty notable
Speaker 3: team at that time. And even five five one had
Speaker 3: done some some pretty good work in Afghanistan in the
Speaker 3: early days and have been written up in the like
Speaker 3: the Soft Journal or something like that. I can't remember,
Speaker 3: but like I said, when I got there, or you know,
Speaker 3: I mentioned earlier, when I got to the team, I
Speaker 3: will was the I was the senior Charlie right off
Speaker 3: the bat, and most of the guys didn't have much
Speaker 3: experience at that time.
Speaker 4: It's interesting that you say that they didn't have a
Speaker 4: lot of experience, so you know, guys were doing their
Speaker 4: hard time and then kind of getting out because the
Speaker 4: rotations were so rough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they weren't. And I don't know if that's if
Speaker 3: the contracting world was pulling the guys, you know, with
Speaker 3: that lure of the money. I don't think they had
Speaker 3: introduced the what they called the Devil's money at that
Speaker 3: time was one hundred and fifty K bonus to stay
Speaker 3: in once he hit eighteen or whatever. I don't know
Speaker 3: if they had that, but the contracting world there was
Speaker 3: a big that was a big draw, and I don't
Speaker 3: know if they were doing that or not, or were
Speaker 3: just so tired of being in Afghanistan and whatnot, because
Speaker 3: it was those guys were. They weren't living like we
Speaker 3: lived when I deployed. We lived and Saddam's mother in
Speaker 3: law's palace in Baghdad. You know, we weren't living hard
Speaker 3: like those guys were. So I don't blame them, you know,
Speaker 3: for getting out. And it's not like they just got
Speaker 3: the group in two thousand and one. You know, those
Speaker 3: guys have been there, right, so they had already been
Speaker 3: in the army a while.
Speaker 1: Let me do a insert a quick ad read here
Speaker 1: and we'll jump back into the interview. I just want
Speaker 1: to tell our viewers about Mando. You've probably heard us
Speaker 1: talk about Mando Whole body deodorant before we saw doctor
Speaker 1: Shannon Klingman in ads and saw Mando on TV, and
Speaker 1: so this is a sponsor that was recommended to us.
Speaker 1: And the interesting thing about this is that, yes, you
Speaker 1: can use this on your whole body. Your whole body.
Speaker 1: It's dermatologists tested and gentle on all of your bits.
Speaker 1: It controls oder for seventy two hours. It's clinically proven.
Speaker 1: You can choose from four alone quality sense, or get
Speaker 1: uncented if you want to get stealthy. So I've been
Speaker 1: using the deodorant for a few weeks now I really
Speaker 1: like it has a good smell. What do you think?
Speaker 3: Not bad? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is it holding up right there?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: The ad wants me to get graphic too, So I
Speaker 1: mean I guess you went for it. So yeah, you
Speaker 1: can put it on in the morning and it's good
Speaker 1: all day, even if you go to the gym, you
Speaker 1: go on a run, whatever you gotta do, it still
Speaker 1: smells incredible. So I truly can't recommend this product enough.
Speaker 1: Are you ready to make the upgrade to Mando? New
Speaker 1: customers get five five dollars off Mando's best selling starter
Speaker 1: pack with the code teamhouse at chopmando dot com. So
Speaker 1: go and check that out again. New customers get five
Speaker 1: dollars off Mando's best selling starter pack with the code
Speaker 1: Teamhouse at Shopmando dot com. The starter pack is perfect
Speaker 1: for new customers. It comes with a solid stick deodorant,
Speaker 1: cream tube deodorant, two free products of your choice like
Speaker 1: mini body washed or deodorant wipes, and free shipping. So again,
Speaker 1: luckily we have this discount discount code for you to
Speaker 1: get you hooked up on our favorite smelling whole body deodorant.
Speaker 1: You get five dollars off that starter pack with our
Speaker 1: exclusive code that equates to over forty percent off your
Speaker 1: starter pack. So use the code Teamhouse at Shopmando. That's
Speaker 1: s h O P M A n D dot com.
Speaker 4: Thank you guys, and then our second start or third sponsor,
Speaker 4: Fabric Life Insurance. If you have anyone relying on you
Speaker 4: on your income, then you should seriously consider having life insurance.
Speaker 5: Is as simple as that. A term life insurance policy.
Speaker 4: From Fabric can help give you peace of mind that
Speaker 4: the people depending on you will have some financial.
Speaker 5: Support if if something unexpected happens to you.
Speaker 4: Fabric by Gerber Life is term life insurance you can
Speaker 4: get done right here, right now.
Speaker 5: You could be covered right.
Speaker 4: From your couch in under ten minutes with no health exam.
Speaker 4: If you've got kids, and especially if you're young and healthy,
Speaker 4: this is.
Speaker 5: The time to lock in low rates now.
Speaker 4: Even if you have life insurance through your employer, it
Speaker 4: may not offer enough protection for your family and it
Speaker 4: may not follow you if you leave your job. Fabric
Speaker 4: has flexible, high quality policies that fit your family and
Speaker 4: your budget, like a million dollars in coverage for less
Speaker 4: than a dollar a day. It's all online and on
Speaker 4: your schedule, so apply when it's convenient for you. There
Speaker 4: is absolutely no risk, there's a thirty day money back guarantee,
Speaker 4: and you can cancel any time. Fabric was designed by
Speaker 4: parents for parents, and now they partner with Gerber Life,
Speaker 4: trust by millions of families like yours for over fifteen
Speaker 4: fifty years.
Speaker 5: They have over nineteen hundred.
Speaker 4: Five star reviews on trust Pilot with a rating of excellent.
Speaker 4: Fabric is more than life insurance, free, digital wills, investment
Speaker 4: accounts to invest in kids' future, and more, and you
Speaker 4: can mandate it all from your phone. Join the thousands
Speaker 4: of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family.
Speaker 4: Apply today in just minutes at Meetfabric dot com slash Teamhouse.
Speaker 4: That's meetfabric dot com slash Teamhouse. Meetfabric dot com slash Teamhouse.
Speaker 4: Policies issued by Western Southern Life Insurance Company. Insurance Company
Speaker 4: not available in certain states. Prices subject to underwriting and
Speaker 4: health questions. And you should have a will and you
Speaker 4: should have life insurance, particularly if you have young children.
Speaker 4: Meetfabric dot com.
Speaker 1: So justin tell us a little bit, you know, is
Speaker 1: you don't have to like name names or get into
Speaker 1: personal details that you don't want to. But I'm interested
Speaker 1: if you could talk about your ODA about five to
Speaker 1: five one, Like what were this of characters like and
Speaker 1: and start walking us through like getting prepped up for
Speaker 1: deployment in two thousand and five.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, so you know most of the guys had
Speaker 3: uh had been there just one rotation and they had
Speaker 3: I think a year max group for a lot of guys.
Speaker 3: Like I said, I was a senior Charlie. So I
Speaker 3: was all here, I'm all amped up because I'm gonna
Speaker 3: take over, you know, take over all the Charlie duties
Speaker 3: and I'm gonna I'm gonna build as a castle and
Speaker 3: you know, just go crazy with Charlie stuff and a
Speaker 3: lot of us were like that, Well, you know, we
Speaker 3: had I think two other X rays on the team
Speaker 3: at the time, and so we're pretty young team. And
Speaker 3: but we did have our team sergeant, our first team
Speaker 3: shot at the time was it he was a silver
Speaker 3: Star winner and so he was like, you know, he
Speaker 3: was like amazing in my eyes, like he could do
Speaker 3: no wrong, and uh, yeah, he was. He was kind
Speaker 3: of a wild guy. I remember in our you know,
Speaker 3: you do your you know, your pre mission prep and
Speaker 3: all that stuff, and then you brief the company commander
Speaker 3: on what's your mission is going to be, what's you know,
Speaker 3: just to hold that whole commander briefing before you deploy,
Speaker 3: and and I remember the he was saying some wild stuff.
Speaker 3: I don't remember what all, but the company commander was
Speaker 3: a super sharp guy. Ended up going up to the
Speaker 3: Pentagon and he's like, okay, so what kind of what
Speaker 3: kind of numerical superiority are you guys looking for when
Speaker 3: you engage the enemy in combat? And and my team
Speaker 3: sergeant said thirty to one And a company company commander says,
Speaker 3: you want thirty guys for every every shithead? And no
Speaker 3: he's he says, oh, he says if there's thirty of
Speaker 3: them for every one of us we're going in and
Speaker 3: so I think I think that kind of played into
Speaker 3: some events that followed. And you know, it ended up
Speaker 3: that the guys had they had sort of misstep on
Speaker 3: the previous deployment, and they didn't really do anything super wrong,
Speaker 3: but they had done some gray area stuff trying to
Speaker 3: help out, trying trying to right or wrong a mistake
Speaker 3: that that one of the guys had made. I won't
Speaker 3: get into it too much, but they were they were
Speaker 3: trying to do the right thing, but they just went
Speaker 3: about it the wrong way. And you know, it wasn't
Speaker 3: any kind of war crime stuff like that. It was
Speaker 3: of financial related stuff.
Speaker 1: Is this the story about the team that had the
Speaker 1: kiddie and they kept putting money into the kitty and
Speaker 1: then taking it out.
Speaker 3: There wasn't a kiddy. I've heard the story get distorted
Speaker 3: a lot of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that could be the case too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, there wasn't a kiddy. But they they they
Speaker 3: they got creative and with some financial stuff basically. But anyways,
Speaker 3: we we had a warrant who wasn't well liked, and
Speaker 3: we had been through a series of warrants. We had
Speaker 3: a guy who came out of seventh Group who was
Speaker 3: wearing a silver star that he didn't earn and in
Speaker 3: one of the Baalian formations. So we went through like
Speaker 3: three warrants. Yeah, it was brutal. We finally get this
Speaker 3: warrant and we think he's going to be good. He was.
Speaker 3: He was a stud, a physical stud, but he just
Speaker 3: was such an asshole and nobody liked him. And and
Speaker 3: I think he was getting booted off the team. I
Speaker 3: think he's getting voted off the island basically. And and
Speaker 3: he went to uh to the Jaggers whoever, and said, hey,
Speaker 3: this team did this, you know. Anyways, he told them
Speaker 3: all the all the stuff, all the secrets, you know,
Speaker 3: Like I said, nothing was that bad. But in my eyes,
Speaker 3: I wasn't worried about anything. But anyways, they right before
Speaker 3: we deployed, they they dispersed the team, you know, disbanded
Speaker 3: the team and uh everyone went different places. And I
Speaker 3: ended up uh deploying straight into up see Jasoda and
Speaker 3: ballade like high high level command, you know, and I
Speaker 3: was a I forget what they call it, but the
Speaker 3: battalion rep up there and I'm an E five and
Speaker 3: surrounded by you know, colonels. Colonel McDonald was running the
Speaker 3: whole show in the whole country at that time and
Speaker 3: brief in him every day, and everyone else that's doing
Speaker 3: the job as as generally an eight I think, because
Speaker 3: it's all guys who were combat weary and you need
Speaker 3: a little downtime or something like that. Anyways, I spent
Speaker 3: the first maybe half of my first deployment at see
Speaker 3: Josoda doing admin stuff, and I was absolutely miserable, obviously,
Speaker 3: as any team guy would be up there. I did
Speaker 3: meet Vince mackel up there, a hell of a good dude,
Speaker 3: and a lot of good dudes up there, you know.
Speaker 3: But that was the first time I got exposed to
Speaker 3: sort of a toxic political uh sort of just that
Speaker 3: sort of a leadership, that sort of top high level
Speaker 3: leadership environment, you know, just the kind of stuff that
Speaker 3: you hear about and just dread about that goes on
Speaker 3: at the top levels of command. And I saw all
Speaker 3: that stuff firsthand. And and there's a lot of dudes
Speaker 3: that cared, especially Colonel McDonald really cared a lot about
Speaker 3: the guys. But the overall attitude and kind of how
Speaker 3: I describe it is, or I think of it as
Speaker 3: like they all felt like they could just win the
Speaker 3: war if they could get these goddamn pesky team guys
Speaker 3: out of the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it.
Speaker 3: Was really really kind of tainted my view of things.
Speaker 3: And on top of that, I was really pissed off
Speaker 3: about the team getting disbanded because the team sergeant got
Speaker 3: prosecuted and the team's team leader got prosecuted both. And yeah,
Speaker 3: so so two guys that I looked up to were
Speaker 3: just prosecuted for some what I considered total bullshit and
Speaker 3: not just just one of those things where you're like, hey,
Speaker 3: the leadership should have said, hey, you had the right intention,
Speaker 3: you've dumb about it, you know, move on kind of thing.
Speaker 3: But uh yeah, so they I kind of got. I
Speaker 3: kind of got that glimpse of that view of officers
Speaker 3: stabbing each other in the back and shit talking and
Speaker 3: stuff like that, and I saw how the ground truth
Speaker 3: gets twisted ten degrees or twenty five degrees at every
Speaker 3: step until at the top of the chain it's one
Speaker 3: hundred and eighty degrees and they have absolutely no idea
Speaker 3: what's going on, right, all right, so it's their idea
Speaker 3: is one hundred and eighty degrees out I guess is
Speaker 3: more accurate. So, but there was there was good things
Speaker 3: to it too, of course, but but yeah, that was
Speaker 3: just a miserable time, unfortunately, I was. They brought back
Speaker 3: the team together and and then finally sent me down,
Speaker 3: uh back to the teamhouse, which was in Baghdad, just
Speaker 3: south of the Green zone there.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's interesting. They reconstituted your team like halfway through
Speaker 1: the deployment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they pulled most of the guys back, we
Speaker 3: enlisted guys. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Interesting, And so I they found you guys, a new
Speaker 1: team sergeant, new team leader.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think we didn't have a team leader, but
Speaker 3: we had a team sergeant. He was he was a
Speaker 3: hell of a good guy, but he was a real
Speaker 3: weak team leader. Probably probably one of the nicest guys
Speaker 3: you've ever meet. But he should never have been a
Speaker 3: team leader or a team sergeant. Sorry.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if he wanted to be a
Speaker 3: team sergeant, but he was. He was miserable, I could tell,
Speaker 3: and and things just evolved, you know, because you can't
Speaker 3: you just can't have a weak team sergeant.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: I think of an SF team as a as a
Speaker 3: pack of wolves, you know. It's uh, it's a bunch
Speaker 3: of people with big egos and who who think they're badasses,
Speaker 3: who think they that they know how to do it best. Uh,
Speaker 3: and you need a strong leader who can basically wrangle
Speaker 3: all these guys and basically channel all that energy.
Speaker 1: Jim Jim Morris, who was a team leader in Vietnam,
Speaker 1: he described once in his one of his books that
Speaker 1: being a team leader on an ODA is basically being
Speaker 1: the manager of twelve pre madonnas. There's quite a bit
Speaker 1: of truth to that, but there is that what comes
Speaker 1: with that, There is also a lot of capability too.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean the guys were when you know,
Speaker 3: everyone's everyone is studs by that point, right, and uh,
Speaker 3: you know, when you think of like the guys being
Speaker 3: in shape guys, the guys were all you know, you
Speaker 3: had guys who were like real studs on the team
Speaker 3: compared to everybody else. But then when you take a
Speaker 3: team guy and you take him out to the civilian world,
Speaker 3: it's like the slowest out of shape team guy is
Speaker 3: you know, destroys the pavilion. Uh, you know, world as
Speaker 3: far as fitness and stuff like that goes. And then
Speaker 3: you have all the capabilities obviously that that you know
Speaker 3: on top of that, But not to disparage civilians, I'm
Speaker 3: just saying that's the that's the the standard of of
Speaker 3: s F is that even if you're the slowest guy,
Speaker 3: you better be a damn good runner. And you know,
Speaker 3: if you're the weakest, you better be still strong. And
Speaker 3: you know, you got to be able to rock really
Speaker 3: well and carry a lot of weight even if you're
Speaker 3: a small guy. So yeah, there's there's a lot of
Speaker 3: there's a lot of strong personalities basically hopefully not too
Speaker 3: much of the prima donnas like some other branches have,
Speaker 3: but but yeah, you need a strong leader, and we
Speaker 3: didn't have one, and so it was it was not
Speaker 3: a pretty time on that deployment. Uh, we didn't. I
Speaker 3: don't think we're super productive. You know, the guys wanted
Speaker 3: to go out and be but you know, we just weren't.
Speaker 3: And you know, we did what we could.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean you kind of started off on
Speaker 1: your back foot there too, with a team being disbanded
Speaker 1: and then reconstituted halfway through. And as you said, there
Speaker 1: you're you know, no team leader position there. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: guys kind of got you know, that's pretty tough for
Speaker 1: anybody to kind of go through. But I mean it
Speaker 1: sounds like there were guys on the team to trying
Speaker 1: to get you out the door, get you out doing things.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, we were. We had some very aggressive guys.
Speaker 3: I mean we and I was aggressive.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I wanted to go out and take my sniper rifle
Speaker 3: and go out into the city if I if I
Speaker 3: would have been able to, I would have just walked
Speaker 3: out at the gate of our compound and just went
Speaker 3: out and set up a sniper position, started shooting guys.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: What they you know, we didn't have Essentially, we were
Speaker 3: like a brand new team at that point, and I
Speaker 3: was a brand new guy the group. No one's gonna
Speaker 3: let us do that kind of stuff, you know. So
Speaker 3: I was playing all kinds of crazy stuff being a
Speaker 3: Charlie and I was super into explosives and whatnot and
Speaker 3: unconventional warfare. I was rigging up schemes to uh, you know,
Speaker 3: install you know, remote detonated bombs in places to take
Speaker 3: out key leaders and stuff like that. I mean, I was,
Speaker 3: I was pretty gung ho, you know.
Speaker 1: So I take I take it that that con op
Speaker 1: did not get approved.
Speaker 5: I take it.
Speaker 3: No, you know, that was kind of the day before
Speaker 3: con ops were really that first deployment was was before
Speaker 3: con ops were had really taken a hold as much
Speaker 3: as they would later on. And I probably didn't see
Speaker 3: that the con op process anyways, maybe they where I
Speaker 3: just didn't know about it, you know. But but yeah,
Speaker 3: so we ended up kind of you know, doing doing
Speaker 3: what we could and and whatnot. And we definitely did
Speaker 3: some some ASO work and stuff like that, and you know,
Speaker 3: drove around in Lovez with you know, in in Hodgey
Speaker 3: vans and stuff. Was still no this this has been
Speaker 3: a bag dad. Yeah. So I was at the same
Speaker 3: we ended up. The team was at the same house
Speaker 3: for for both deployments that I was at, which was
Speaker 3: just south of of the Tigris River, just south of
Speaker 3: the green zone there. So it's a pretty It was
Speaker 3: a really cool compound. I had an amazing range set
Speaker 3: up there. I had a thousand yard maybe maybe it's
Speaker 3: nine hundred meter something like that range going, just really cool,
Speaker 3: uh set up. We had a big flat range for
Speaker 3: the training the jun d's and stuff. Yeah, so I
Speaker 3: was glad to get out of ballog for sure.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like, you know, you guys weren't as
Speaker 1: you know, productive as you had wanted to be, or
Speaker 1: maybe some of the other guys on the team wanted
Speaker 1: to be. That deployment Well, walk us through redeploying back home,
Speaker 1: and now you're kind of getting ready to go right
Speaker 1: back out the door again, right, you know, like you said,
Speaker 1: to the same place.
Speaker 3: Yeah, essentially. So as soon as we got back, I had, uh,
Speaker 3: there had been a position that opened on the there're
Speaker 3: third Battalion, let's say, Charlie Company, third Battalion. They're making
Speaker 3: an OPE company. Yeah, and so I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: that sounds interesting, you know. So I was going to
Speaker 3: go do that, and then uh, I don't know, I
Speaker 3: just decided not to for some reason, you know, but
Speaker 3: I they ended up sending me the Fox Course, which
Speaker 3: is really where I hit my stride in group.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just want to I'm gonna I'm going who
Speaker 1: vaguely allude to this this so the OPE Company Operational
Speaker 1: Preparation of the Environment is doing like some more unconventional
Speaker 1: intelligence stuff, and that company, as I recall, they were
Speaker 1: all going to be like long hair teams and all
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. I don't know how much of
Speaker 1: that actually happened. But and then why don't you tell
Speaker 1: folks about the eighteen fox course and what an eighteen
Speaker 1: fox is for people out there.
Speaker 3: Who don't know, Oh yeah, I'd love to the So
Speaker 3: eighteen fox is the intel intel sergeant and essentially what
Speaker 3: that is is it's not it's like it's almost like
Speaker 3: an all source intel analyst. Basically, you're the guy on
Speaker 3: the team who's responsible for developing intelligence to target and
Speaker 3: developing targets for the team to go prosecute. So you know,
Speaker 3: you're doing everything from reading uh intel reports that are
Speaker 3: coming from the agency, from other teams, uh regular Army,
Speaker 3: and and you're obviously anything your own team is is
Speaker 3: producing and you're you're in a lot of ways an analyst.
Speaker 3: You put that information together, you start developing a target
Speaker 3: packet and and uh, it's it's a really interesting job,
Speaker 3: you know. And and part of it is is you
Speaker 3: know you're yuh planning out that uh you know, you
Speaker 3: do a lot of not a lot, but doing the
Speaker 3: doing the uh Terrade models, like real detailed Terrade models,
Speaker 3: so so that the team can see which building you're hitting,
Speaker 3: how you're gonna how you're gonna park the hum V
Speaker 3: is how you're gonna flow through the buildings that kind
Speaker 3: of stuff. It's it's really a really dynamic kind of thing,
Speaker 3: and there's a lot to it. The course itself was
Speaker 3: like three months long, maybe maybe more, I can't remember,
Speaker 3: but it's at Bragg there and they go over a
Speaker 3: lot of stuff. It's you know, you learn photography, uh,
Speaker 3: you learn like mapping software, so you can do you
Speaker 3: can do a lot of interesting things with with mapping
Speaker 3: software as far as uh, you know, figuring out points
Speaker 3: of observation and and and uh you know infield points
Speaker 3: and stuff like that. Uh. And so you learn that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff. You learn and how to how to
Speaker 3: pull intelligence off of them, you know, from the agency
Speaker 3: and everywhere, like I was saying, but also from from
Speaker 3: just open source stuff and how to how to do
Speaker 3: that and how to interact with like the sauda's and
Speaker 3: and then it goes down to prosecuting the target and
Speaker 3: then and then the aftermath doing the s S and
Speaker 3: you know, how do you exploit the the information and
Speaker 3: the stuff that you're picking up off the objective and
Speaker 3: that kind of thing. So really, uh, a really dynamic
Speaker 3: kind of it's kind of a high h end up
Speaker 3: being pretty highly trained, I guess after that is what
Speaker 3: I what I would say, it's one of the probably
Speaker 3: one of the longest courses, and uh you know sef
Speaker 3: I would think, apart from the Q course, about as
Speaker 3: long as as uh as probably the level three course,
Speaker 3: I would guess, but you get a little bit of
Speaker 3: that too.
Speaker 1: But go ahead, I was just gonna say. And and
Speaker 1: then afterwards you went back to five five one to
Speaker 1: be the intelligence sergeant on that team.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, and I was still only I don't know
Speaker 3: if I was even in A six by that time,
Speaker 3: and that's typically an E seven slots, a senior guys slot.
Speaker 3: But they, you know, they sent me because I had
Speaker 3: an aptitude for learning and that kind of thing, you know,
Speaker 3: I had an agree you know whatnot. But then probably
Speaker 3: no one else wanted to do it either, because there's
Speaker 3: you know, paperwork involved in that kind of stuff. Uh So,
Speaker 3: went back to five five one, and we didn't have
Speaker 3: much of a train up, uh and and much time
Speaker 3: to get ready before we before we deployed again. But
Speaker 3: we got a new team sergeant who was uh he
Speaker 3: was a stud and he was from from the stale.
Speaker 3: He was from A one to five. The name is
Speaker 3: Robert Pittman. He was later killed UH working as a
Speaker 3: contractor or. He was working for.
Speaker 4: UH.
Speaker 3: I believe a w G. Although I'm not sure on
Speaker 3: that one. After he retired UH in Afghanistan. But UH
Speaker 3: pitt was was UH. He was a hell of the leader.
Speaker 3: And he was one of the first, one of the
Speaker 3: first and one of the few actual good leaders that
Speaker 3: I saw in the army. And UH, and I don't
Speaker 3: I still don't. I couldn't tell you how to be
Speaker 3: a good leader. I'm not a good I'm not a
Speaker 3: leader myself, but I certainly can see it when it
Speaker 3: When I saw it, you know, I could identify it.
Speaker 5: What did you identify?
Speaker 1: And Pittman that you know, struck you as like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this guy's on it.
Speaker 3: Uh. Part of it was, you know, he he knew
Speaker 3: what he was doing, so he was tactically proficient. UH.
Speaker 3: He was a hard ass. And so he didn't he
Speaker 3: didn't he didn't let the guys slack. And he didn't
Speaker 3: you know, sort of sort of back down or kind
Speaker 3: of let let guys influence him too much, or like
Speaker 3: a do we really need to train today? That kind
Speaker 3: of thing. You know. It was he had the discipline
Speaker 3: and uh, you know, and but but he also what
Speaker 3: not only is tactically proficient, he was a stud with
Speaker 3: PT you know, so he kind of he kind of
Speaker 3: had the skill set combined with the only thing I
Speaker 3: can really think of a of a trade of a
Speaker 3: good leader is like self self assured and self confidence.
Speaker 3: You know, there's and and uh, just know, just being
Speaker 3: sure that you're right when you're making a decision. And
Speaker 3: that's a that's a difficult thing, I think. And then
Speaker 3: and he had that, you know, he was he wasn't
Speaker 3: he wasn't arrogant, he you know, he was he was
Speaker 3: just confident that he knew the way forward and that
Speaker 3: you needed to keep pushing forward. It's just like when
Speaker 3: you go in the house. You know, you don't stop
Speaker 3: in the doorway. You push, you push through and and
Speaker 3: you make decisions on the fly and you just trust
Speaker 3: your training and your instincts.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a bit of a cliche, but I
Speaker 1: mean I once heard someone say that a leader is
Speaker 1: someone who takes the team somewhere that they couldn't go
Speaker 1: without them, right, And it sounds like he was that
Speaker 1: type of team sergeant that kind of filled that void
Speaker 1: that was left by some of the previous leaders.
Speaker 3: Absolutely when I when I e T S, you know
Speaker 3: you do your uh your interview for your final uh
Speaker 3: and c oe are I think it is or whatever?
Speaker 3: And I told him, I said, uh, you know, this
Speaker 3: team was one of the weakest teams in group and
Speaker 3: with the same personnel. Effectively we had to change of
Speaker 3: leadership and now we were one of the best teams
Speaker 3: in group.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 3: You know that's that that is a kind of difference.
Speaker 5: Amazing.
Speaker 1: So tell us about that deployment going overseas with him.
Speaker 3: Well, uh, we we were set up to Taji at first, actually,
Speaker 3: which was a pretty nasty place, a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: going on up there on I DS and whatnot. We
Speaker 3: are pretty hungry to get in the action. So uh.
Speaker 3: He rode me pretty hard to always have targets on deck.
Speaker 3: He wanted, I forget how many, like ten targets are
Speaker 3: like ten target folders ready to go at any one time.
Speaker 3: And so it took me a while to kind of
Speaker 3: find my footing because I was pretty intimidated by Pitt
Speaker 3: and I don't I have a difficult relationship with authority
Speaker 3: in general.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 3: It was difficult being around Pitt at first, you know.
Speaker 3: And and I don't think he really trusted me and
Speaker 3: really thought that much of me at first, because well,
Speaker 3: I will say, I want a little bit of credit
Speaker 3: because I got the honor graduate of the Fox course,
Speaker 3: which to me, I expected that of myself because I
Speaker 3: was pretty academically advanced before I joined the Army, and
Speaker 3: so everything you learn in the Army is really not
Speaker 3: not difficult when you compare it to like college level,
Speaker 3: you know, calculus and and stuff like that. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: I expected, I expected to do well. But but apparently
Speaker 3: that turned out to be a big thing back at
Speaker 3: the company. And I hadn't even told him about it.
Speaker 3: They heard about it secondhand, and so I earned some
Speaker 3: credit that way. But but I also I had had
Speaker 3: one of my first big mix missteps with him in
Speaker 3: that first just a couple of weeks of Taji and
Speaker 3: we went out on a mission and uh, we're going
Speaker 3: to go capture this guy. And I hadn't developed a
Speaker 3: target packet the previous team had. He was some shithead
Speaker 3: who was who was out there and and and this
Speaker 3: guy had This is going to sound silly, but the
Speaker 3: guy had air conditioning at his house and if you
Speaker 3: know about Iraq, no one has air conditioning, especially like
Speaker 3: in the country, but this guy has air conditioning. And
Speaker 3: you could see on the imagery all these air conditioning
Speaker 3: ducts all over his house and stuff. Well, you know,
Speaker 3: you don't just get that by being a general good
Speaker 3: person Iraqi. Uh And and I don't remember what all
Speaker 3: else intelligence we had on him, but I remember I
Speaker 3: remember that specifically, and so we we our first mission.
Speaker 3: I think it was one of our first missions. It
Speaker 3: was going to be kind of a test of the
Speaker 3: team where we did a foot movement on foot from
Speaker 3: the from Taji from the base out to this guy's
Speaker 3: place and ended up being I don't know what it
Speaker 3: was five miles or something. I can't remember it was.
Speaker 3: It was just a grueling, grueling ordeal that we that
Speaker 3: we put ourselves through. But uh, you know, I want
Speaker 3: to make sure that I that I mentioned this because
Speaker 3: I want to also show people that I I make
Speaker 3: lots of mistakes. Uh So, anyways, we're during one of
Speaker 3: our you know, our movements. We're walking down we were
Speaker 3: actually moving on a road at this point, and uh,
Speaker 3: I had my PBS fifteen's you know, they're real heavy.
Speaker 3: That's that's a dual night vision one. They're real heavy.
Speaker 3: I had taken them off because my neck was getting tired.
Speaker 3: I put them in my pouch. I hadn't put them
Speaker 3: in there properly, and in the little pouch, they said,
Speaker 3: and they fell out. And and uh yeah, so half
Speaker 3: a mile half a mile down the road, we uh
Speaker 3: I discovered that I didn't have my nods anymore. And uh, boy,
Speaker 3: I tell you what, that's a that's a kind of
Speaker 3: feeling I don't want to ever have again. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: just that feeling of Jesus, How how could I be
Speaker 3: so stupid? How could I, uh, you know, just do that?
Speaker 3: And and because it's a big it's a big deal.
Speaker 3: People maybe don't know it's a big deal when you
Speaker 3: lose night vision on a back on Fort Bragg or
Speaker 3: anywhere and a training mission. But when you're in country
Speaker 3: like that, and and you know, that's a that's a
Speaker 3: pretty pretty damn big deal. Anyways, when I was able
Speaker 3: to run back and find him, and a guy went
Speaker 3: with me, and we found him, thank god. I don't
Speaker 3: know what would happened to me if if we hadn't
Speaker 3: found him. I don't know if I got a court
Speaker 3: martial or what. I probably would have been kicked out
Speaker 3: of groove. But anyways, so that was that was something
Speaker 3: that that Pitt. You know, I sort of lost credit
Speaker 3: after my gaining some credit with him, but he was
Speaker 3: he was a hell of a leader. And and eventually
Speaker 3: I found you know, they moved us back to bad Dad,
Speaker 3: and I got in my groove as a fox, and
Speaker 3: I worked in the morning tonight doing intel and I'm
Speaker 3: not joking from them from the moment I woke up
Speaker 3: to the to the moment I went to bed, I
Speaker 3: was reading reports and and I basically I don't know what,
Speaker 3: I don't know how what what clicked, what what switch
Speaker 3: flipped in my brain? But I had never I'd never
Speaker 3: really considered myself that hard of a worker. I would say,
Speaker 3: I don't think I had shown that kind of tendency
Speaker 3: towards that that direction. But something flipped and and I
Speaker 3: just just poured everything into into finding shitheads and and
Speaker 3: uh and that's then we started rolling basically just hitting
Speaker 3: targets all the time. And you know, as I mentioned before,
Speaker 3: we we've turned into a DA team and we we
Speaker 3: kept pretty busy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so so lay it onnest as you like get
Speaker 1: into this sort of like rhythm of uh in this
Speaker 1: sort of continuum of targeting that you're developing the intelligence,
Speaker 1: you're going out on targets, developing more intelligence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's uh, it's a pretty it's a pretty cool
Speaker 3: thing when the team's running. Well, you know, we didn't
Speaker 3: we weren't developing a lot of our own intel. We
Speaker 3: didn't have any any uh really s so qualified guys,
Speaker 3: But we're being in bag dad. We had intel coming
Speaker 3: in from everywhere. So so we were going on hits,
Speaker 3: you know, all the time as often as possible, basically,
Speaker 3: And I was doing as my damnedest to keep that
Speaker 3: target deck full. And I'm just ready to go at
Speaker 3: any time.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: We're not going out every night or anything, but but
Speaker 3: a lot more frequently than than the other teams. And uh,
Speaker 3: you know, we never really got in any in any
Speaker 3: uh you know, like big prolonged firefights or battles or
Speaker 3: anything like that. We were just and and in some ways,
Speaker 3: sometimes I look back at it, I'm like, I wish
Speaker 3: I could have, you know, said I was in this
Speaker 3: battle like you guys, remember when that religious cult came
Speaker 3: and attacked one of the.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, We've talked about that on here once or twice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I think if I remember right, I was
Speaker 3: in country when that was going on, but I I can't.
Speaker 3: I can't say for sure, but I bet I remember
Speaker 3: hearing about it, you know, and I was like, those
Speaker 3: guys are really getting in it. We I was kind
Speaker 3: of jealous of that, but we were doing we were
Speaker 3: doing hits, and but we were doing it in a
Speaker 3: different way because we're going in super fast and you know,
Speaker 3: the middle of the night, and we're we're blowing doors
Speaker 3: and we're snatching guys and and getting out of there,
Speaker 3: and so it was it was a little bit different
Speaker 3: kind of a of warfare, I guess for us than
Speaker 3: it was for some of those guys. But it was
Speaker 3: still you know, you know, I had a lot of times,
Speaker 3: a lot of missions where I was pretty sure I
Speaker 3: was going to die. Uh. You know, we got hit,
Speaker 3: we took an I d like everybody else has done.
Speaker 3: And uh again, I thought I was going to die
Speaker 3: on that. But I wasn't even injured. A couple couple
Speaker 3: of teammates were or one teammate and a couple of
Speaker 3: turps or one of our turps. But you know, We
Speaker 3: were doing as much as we could to try to
Speaker 3: do our part to you know, clear the battle space
Speaker 3: of guys who are doing stuff that they shouldn't be doing.
Speaker 3: And by that time things were starting to shift. Now
Speaker 3: you're starting to see the conops. Oh your con ops
Speaker 3: not doesn't have the right font. You know, we started
Speaker 3: that started to creep in right kind of over that deployment,
Speaker 3: and ah, it was started to shift towards you couldn't
Speaker 3: so you couldn't put our mission is to go kill
Speaker 3: this guy X, the X guy whatever, kill or capture.
Speaker 3: You couldn't put that anymore. It was it was capture
Speaker 3: or detained, which is like the same thing, right, But
Speaker 3: the mission started to shift as the deployment wore on
Speaker 3: from a war to essentially a police action, and the
Speaker 3: emphasis started to become on, hey, are you gathering evidence
Speaker 3: that this person is a bad guy? You know, what
Speaker 3: kind of case can we make against them in court?
Speaker 3: That kind of thing. That really started to put a
Speaker 3: sour taste in my mouth and a lot of guys too.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: So once we uh we took an id I forget
Speaker 3: when it was but towards the end of the deployment
Speaker 3: and after that I think that they worried that we
Speaker 3: were going to go back and sort of do retaliation
Speaker 3: against this area because we went over to the Uh
Speaker 3: it was just south of Solders City. I can't remember
Speaker 3: what it's called now, but I looked it up on
Speaker 3: the map one time. We were doing just kind of
Speaker 3: a presence patrol there. I don't I don't even know
Speaker 3: why we were doing it, really, but he took an
Speaker 3: I D and and and uh, you know, I'm sick. Anyways,
Speaker 3: I won't go into the details, but I was pretty
Speaker 3: upset about it, and I was determined to find out
Speaker 3: who did it, and you know, as the fox, I
Speaker 3: felt that was my responsibility. But they kind of pulled
Speaker 3: us off line and the commanded and they let another
Speaker 3: team go in and prosecute the target ran out of my.
Speaker 1: My bourbon there, so they so they brought in another team.
Speaker 1: They was that because your guys were injured or they
Speaker 1: were just like I think you had mentioned that they
Speaker 1: were afraid you guys were going to go on like
Speaker 1: a revenge spree. Uh, if they've set you loose.
Speaker 3: They didn't tell us. They didn't. They didn't say that exactly,
Speaker 3: But that's my that's My perception of it is they
Speaker 3: thought that we would go in and start killing people.
Speaker 3: And you know, in the heat of the moment, I
Speaker 3: had said that I wanted to go back there and
Speaker 3: kill everybody. And you know, obviously we're not going to
Speaker 3: do that, right, But.
Speaker 4: But there there's there's a certain amount of moral injury
Speaker 4: that I imagine happens when your team suffers a loss
Speaker 4: and you want to I don't want to say get revenge,
Speaker 4: but you want to get the justice for that, and
Speaker 4: they're like, you, guys, sit this out.
Speaker 5: We're bringing somebody else to do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it didn't sit well without us, but what are
Speaker 3: you what are you gonna do? You know? And the
Speaker 3: guys we were we exercised professional discipline in the entire trip.
Speaker 3: I did myself and and the guys did. And we
Speaker 3: were not a team who was who was like a
Speaker 3: bloodthirsty team. And and especially with pitt As as our leader,
Speaker 3: you know, we were we're very professionally, we're very effective
Speaker 3: at efficient team that kind of thing. But you didn't
Speaker 3: see uh from us. There wasn't a bunch of people
Speaker 3: shot who didn't need shot. There wasn't there wasn't, you know,
Speaker 3: just just shooting even for just a hell of it.
Speaker 3: And and really that brings me kind of the next
Speaker 3: point in the crossroads in my life. Uh, that there
Speaker 3: was really impactful. I guess I didn't really realize at
Speaker 3: the time, but when I but now is it, as
Speaker 3: you know, more of an adult, I'd look back on that,
Speaker 3: and I think that was that was a pretty big deal.
Speaker 3: One day, on the second on our second deployment there,
Speaker 3: we started taking uh heavy mortar, heavy rocket fire and uh,
Speaker 3: we're so we're our compound situated right by the oil
Speaker 3: refinery in Baghdad, and we would take the compound would
Speaker 3: take rockets because everybody dow we were there. They thought
Speaker 3: we were an an agency team or something like that
Speaker 3: there the bad guys did. So we take rockets and
Speaker 3: mortars and stuff like that. And the oider refinery would
Speaker 3: take rockets and orders. And I don't know if if
Speaker 3: they got it because we were there, or we got
Speaker 3: it because they were there, what, But regardless, one of
Speaker 3: these days we started taking uh incoming pretty heavy and
Speaker 3: clothes and and and so we're looking around trying to
Speaker 3: see what's going on, and and it's this is these
Speaker 3: are rockets, for sure, not just not just mortars, big
Speaker 3: big explosions, rocking the whole area, the whole house, you know.
Speaker 3: And uh and and somebody yells out, hey, there, we
Speaker 3: got a spotter on the roof. And you know, you
Speaker 3: guys know that somebody on the roof with a cell
Speaker 3: phone during a during a rocket attack typically means yeah,
Speaker 3: that's a spotter, right, yeah. And they're calling and they're
Speaker 3: and they're directing fire onto you. So I get I
Speaker 3: get grabbed the Mark thirteen, which I which was my
Speaker 3: sniper rifle, and I always had set up and I
Speaker 3: had my whole rage range cards and you know, uh,
Speaker 3: I had the whole area laid out right. And so
Speaker 3: we see this guy, he's across the river. I want
Speaker 3: to say, he was only three hundred meters something like that.
Speaker 3: And uh and the captain gets up on the spotter
Speaker 3: and he says, and you know we and we of
Speaker 3: course I DM and draw down on him, you know,
Speaker 3: And I got my I got my dope tiled, which
Speaker 3: I think might've been point blank at that point. But
Speaker 3: the team start of comes over the radio says take
Speaker 3: the shot, and I'm on the Mark thirteen and and
Speaker 3: and I'm brought ready to shoot this guy standing there
Speaker 3: with the cell phone on the top, and he's looking
Speaker 3: at us. You know, of course he is, because there's
Speaker 3: like explosions going on, you know, he's trying to see
Speaker 3: what's going on. Well, something kind of just clicks in
Speaker 3: my head. I was like, that's a lot of that's
Speaker 3: a lot of rockets, because it was like at that point,
Speaker 3: it was like four or five maybe that had come
Speaker 3: in like, man, something's not quite right. And so I
Speaker 3: didn't shoot him, and I put around into like the ground,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of away from him, and he went away.
Speaker 3: And it turns out that it was a dang the
Speaker 3: artillery unit from that big army base. So it's down
Speaker 3: in Southwest bag down there, they're putting one fifty fives
Speaker 3: into a into a palm grove just on the other
Speaker 3: side of the or refinery because they're just doing terrain
Speaker 3: denial there and they never told us, and we thought
Speaker 3: they're yeah, we thought they were walking rockets onto our
Speaker 3: onto our compound under our house. You know. So anyways,
Speaker 3: kind of a long story. But as I think about
Speaker 3: it now, like yeah, yeah, and if i'd have shot
Speaker 3: that guy, uh, you know, how would my life have
Speaker 3: taken you know, a different turn. Yeah, because in hindsight,
Speaker 3: he obviously wasn't doing anything wrong, but probably not. Anyways,
Speaker 3: you know, some of those guys, a lot of them
Speaker 3: are doing something wrong, but you know he he wasn't, uh,
Speaker 3: And so anyways, I look at that, I kind of
Speaker 3: I kind of consider, as I said, my life has
Speaker 3: been sort of the direction of taken has been almost
Speaker 3: as much stuff I didn't do and stuff I did
Speaker 3: do right, And that was one of them.
Speaker 5: Iraq.
Speaker 4: I'm both at right and I understand there were a
Speaker 4: lot of very hard decisions being made all the time
Speaker 4: by you know, not just guys with a couple of
Speaker 4: trips under the belt, like yourself, but by you know,
Speaker 4: some eighteen year old PB two sitting in a in
Speaker 4: a you know, on the gun on a humvee that
Speaker 4: you know, you're rolling down the road and you see
Speaker 4: somebody on a cell phone and it's like is this
Speaker 4: guy is like is he going to detonate? Something like
Speaker 4: if I don't shoot him, are my friends going to die?
Speaker 4: Because I don't if I do shoot him, And he's
Speaker 4: just an idiot who's standing by a convoy with a
Speaker 4: cell phone, you know, and like those are decisions that
Speaker 4: people had to make all the time, and they never
Speaker 4: knew if they were right or wrong until after the fact,
Speaker 4: and sometimes they didn't even know that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, yeah exactly. And how many how many
Speaker 3: of those guys have carried that kind of stuff? You know,
Speaker 3: who did take the shot and and you know how
Speaker 3: many how many people has that affected?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Or who didn't take the shot? And they got blown up?
Speaker 4: And it's like, was that the guy? Was that the
Speaker 4: guy that killed my friends that I could have shot
Speaker 4: and didn't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, that's a lot of it's a lot to
Speaker 3: put on you know, a twenty twenty something, Yeah, it is.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of that's a lot of stuff there. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But uh so anyways, uh as as that as that
Speaker 3: deployment ended, that's that's when they sort of brought online,
Speaker 3: you know, the conop restrictions are becoming worse and worse.
Speaker 3: And then they they brought out they came out with us, hey, hey,
Speaker 3: don't don't target jam, which is shaw Mahdi for you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: people who don't know that's the uh Mahdi is the
Speaker 3: h MS guys. But they're the not the soones of
Speaker 3: the sh that's the sha militia. And you know, really,
Speaker 3: by the time of our second deployment, these guys are
Speaker 3: the Iraqis are fighting each other as much or more
Speaker 3: as they're fighting us. I mean, those guys are doing
Speaker 3: unspeakable things to each other, and people maybe don't realize that,
Speaker 3: but the kind of stuff that we're finding out about
Speaker 3: and whatnot, I mean just just sub human behavior on
Speaker 3: a on a lot of the part those guys there.
Speaker 3: And that's why I call them shitheads, you know. Uh,
Speaker 3: I gotta say one just as an aside. I'm always
Speaker 3: jealous of the World War Two guys who who get
Speaker 3: together with the German you know, guys at some reunion
Speaker 3: when they're sixty years old, and they will shipping about
Speaker 3: their day, you know, on their their buddies and whatnot.
Speaker 3: You hear about that kind of stuff, And I'm like,
Speaker 3: that's never going to happen for us, you know, because
Speaker 3: of because of the kind of behavior that those that
Speaker 3: they were doing, the kind of the kind of things
Speaker 3: they were doing to each other, that's just not we
Speaker 3: We're just never going to have that. And I'm kind
Speaker 3: of kind of jealous of those guys, the World War
Speaker 3: Two guys for that and maybe the Vietnam guys. I
Speaker 3: don't really know as much. But anyways, Uh, I would
Speaker 3: tell that. I would tell the guys when we got
Speaker 3: on target, we'd snatch up who we're looking for or whatever,
Speaker 3: and and I would I would tell everybody else, Hey,
Speaker 3: if you stop killing each other the America and we'll leave,
Speaker 3: We'll get out of here, because by that time, we
Speaker 3: all just want to go home, you know, why not?
Speaker 3: And and you guys know how it is, a lot
Speaker 3: of those guys didn't. A lot of the Iraqis didn't
Speaker 3: want us to leave. They want us there because they
Speaker 3: knew there was some stability with us there, and they
Speaker 3: knew what was going to happen with the Iraqi army
Speaker 3: when they when they would take over when we left,
Speaker 3: So you know, what are you going to do?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: But that was kind of the state of affairs, is
Speaker 3: basically what I'm trying to say is, you know, these
Speaker 3: guys are killing each other and then they tell us
Speaker 3: stop targeting the largest terrorist organization in the city.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: And so that was that was kind of the sunset
Speaker 3: of our of our tour, and then we came home
Speaker 3: just you know, shortly after that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and at that point, what's going through your heads?
Speaker 1: You went to nineteenth Group at that point, were you
Speaker 1: thinking about going to school? I mean, what was kind
Speaker 1: of like going through your mind during that time period.
Speaker 3: Well so, so I got out because of sort of
Speaker 3: that bitterness of that original what happened to the team
Speaker 3: and being up there at CSTAF and seeing that kind
Speaker 3: of stuff, and then the general just a general jackassery
Speaker 3: that goes on in the army. Uh. And also I
Speaker 3: just considered that the war was over. You know, I
Speaker 3: was like, yeah, that's it's not a war anymore. So
Speaker 3: it's either somewhat of a you know, anti insurgency and
Speaker 3: her counterinsurgency and somewhat of a police police action. And
Speaker 3: and you know that's when they had the surge going
Speaker 3: on and the and the regular army. They were using
Speaker 3: the army as nation building at that point basically, which
Speaker 3: is which is the wrong thing to do. But so
Speaker 3: I got off active duty. I joined nineteenth Group because
Speaker 3: my my buddy had said that his data had been
Speaker 3: in the in the Guard s F and had a
Speaker 3: really cool experience and and I wasn't ready to sort
Speaker 3: of you know, put that all behind me, and you know,
Speaker 3: for the longest time I wished I was deployed again.
Speaker 3: I mean even back and when I was in Colorado
Speaker 3: and but not. All I wanted to do is be
Speaker 3: be deployed again. It sounds crazy, uh, but uh, but
Speaker 3: that's you know, that's how it was. You know, Uh,
Speaker 3: there was a certain Uh I tell people that it's
Speaker 3: a there's a a very interesting purity of purpose there
Speaker 3: where you're you don't worry about the power bill, you
Speaker 3: don't worry about how you're going to feed yourself so much. Uh,
Speaker 3: you don't worry about much other than the mission, doing
Speaker 3: the mission, keeping yourself alive, uh, trying to take bad
Speaker 3: guys off the battlefield, and and you know, trying to
Speaker 3: trying to keep your teammates alive and help out as
Speaker 3: many as many people as you can. You don't have
Speaker 3: that back in the States. And that's part of the
Speaker 3: that's part of the lure of being deployed. And then
Speaker 3: part of it is just there's just something about it.
Speaker 3: Like you guys know, there's something about about combat and
Speaker 3: the deployment that that you can't you can't explain to
Speaker 3: anybody else who hasn't done it. It's just it's just something.
Speaker 3: But nineteenth group was I was served in there with
Speaker 3: some very impressive people, some guys that I think very
Speaker 3: highly of. The overall experience, I wasn't impressed with. It's like,
Speaker 3: can you name me one part time NFL quarterback? That's
Speaker 3: kind of how I look at it, right. It's being
Speaker 3: Special Forces is it's it's it's something that is like
Speaker 3: a full time you're dedicated to that task kind of thing.
Speaker 3: And being in the Colorado Guard was a little bit
Speaker 3: different too. The Texas guys had an amazing experience as
Speaker 3: a hell of a unit down there. They're well funded,
Speaker 3: they're they're well regarded by the state, and you know,
Speaker 3: they keep them at that time. This is all this
Speaker 3: is all nearly twenty years ago now, but I had
Speaker 3: definitely had some good experiences and met a lot of
Speaker 3: good people in the Guard. And I didn't to play
Speaker 3: with the Guard. I was. I ended up training training
Speaker 3: up people who are going to selection. So I was
Speaker 3: like a Sapsey instructor is kind of how I ended up.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, like the guys I've spoken to like it
Speaker 1: seems with the Guard like they either love it or
Speaker 1: they hate it, Like it really goes in either direction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of guys have had amazing experiences in
Speaker 3: the Guard. My buddy Matt Pacino went into the Guarden,
Speaker 3: like Massachusetts or something. Fortunately he was killed in Afghanistan,
Speaker 3: but he, you know, he was a he was a
Speaker 3: hell of a dude. He was a guard, you know,
Speaker 3: fifth group to guard and he and I think he
Speaker 3: really enjoyed his his time in there while he was there. Uh,
Speaker 3: the guys that I was with, everybody on active duty
Speaker 3: left immediately left the Guard, left that unit immediately, everybody
Speaker 3: I can think of. Anyways, it was just I don't know,
Speaker 3: I don't I'm trying to I don't want to say
Speaker 3: anything too negative. So but it wasn't my favorite experience
Speaker 3: for sure.
Speaker 1: So what was the next thing for you? You know,
Speaker 1: I guess you decided to leave the Guard at that point?
Speaker 1: And what was it like going into the private sector?
Speaker 3: Uh, you know, it's so I had obviously the Guard's
Speaker 3: part time. So when I my last little bit in
Speaker 3: the army, I had designed a rifle and when I
Speaker 3: got off active duty, I bought a lathe and a
Speaker 3: milling machine with my you know, combat pay, saved up
Speaker 3: combat pay, and I learned how to use those things.
Speaker 3: And I made this rifle. This is two thousand and seven.
Speaker 3: By a chance occurrence, I ran into some guys from
Speaker 3: mag Gol. They're they're at the shooting match and I
Speaker 3: ended up getting a meeting with them and showing them
Speaker 3: this rifle I made. And I had also made the
Speaker 3: stock for Remington seven hundred, and I caught their eye
Speaker 3: and so they hired me. And this was in you know,
Speaker 3: late two thousand and seven, and so I went straight
Speaker 3: from not straight, I mean I had a summer basically
Speaker 3: where I was just kind of chilling and working on
Speaker 3: this rifle. But then I went I went into working
Speaker 3: for mag Gool after that, and right into the firearms
Speaker 3: industry and then doing the guard thing on the side.
Speaker 3: Obvious one one week and a months deal, but that
Speaker 3: was very incredible. No one knew who Magpoll was back then.
Speaker 3: That was like just as the p mag was, I
Speaker 3: mean not even really gaining steam, just kind of starting
Speaker 3: to pick up. And I worked on the Masada, which
Speaker 3: was one of the most anticipated rifles at the time,
Speaker 3: and so Magpull went from it was in the process
Speaker 3: of going from like this no name, nothing company to
Speaker 3: yeah they made good stuff, but now they're doing this
Speaker 3: Masada rifle which became the Bushmaster ACR, and they're doing
Speaker 3: all these cool things. They got the p mag which
Speaker 3: everyone is you know, has a million of now, and
Speaker 3: so I was really on the ground not quite the
Speaker 3: ground floor, but you know, pretty early on. And they're
Speaker 3: in that process of the sort of the growth and
Speaker 3: the really exciting products coming out of magpool.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. I mean, it's pretty cool that you
Speaker 1: designed and built your own pRIFLE in your free time.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I was. I've always been kind of mechanically minded,
Speaker 3: so it was it was, uh, I don't know, I
Speaker 3: guess that's just me.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: We when I was younger, I had made a maybe
Speaker 3: some things that could be used as suppressors, you know,
Speaker 3: in case the ATF is listening. But you know, so
Speaker 3: I used to be into all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I was one of those guys, one of the charlies
Speaker 3: who went home and started making stuff in my kitchen,
Speaker 3: you know, even though they told us to be really
Speaker 3: careful about that kind of stuff. Explosives, you know, so
Speaker 3: what I'm talking about. Uh So I's just been that
Speaker 3: that kind of guy. But you know, it was very
Speaker 3: it was very fortunate too that they took a chance
Speaker 3: on me. And I was getting ready to go become
Speaker 3: a sniper for a contractor like I don't know, Triple
Speaker 3: Canopy or somebody, and then Magpull offered me that position,
Speaker 3: and I was him and and hat and my brother
Speaker 3: told me, hey, you were you were born to do this,
Speaker 3: and so that's what I so I took the Magpool position,
Speaker 3: even though it didn't pay much, because you as an
Speaker 3: SF guy, you can make a lot of money contract
Speaker 3: and sure in those days. Uh So, it was a
Speaker 3: that was a life changing experience for me. I worked
Speaker 3: with some amazing industrial designers there surprisingly not a lot
Speaker 3: of those guys had any kind of real firearms expertise
Speaker 3: as far as like the handling, the usage side of
Speaker 3: the Indian user side, you know what I mean. Uh So,
Speaker 3: I was one of the guys that they leaned on
Speaker 3: for that. And then gradually I learned solid Works and
Speaker 3: I learned the solid Works which is the three D
Speaker 3: design software, and then I became part of the design team,
Speaker 3: and I've worked on a lot of the different products
Speaker 3: that they that they put out, and then worked on
Speaker 3: mainly the three to eight version of the Masada rifle,
Speaker 3: which still has not entered commercial production, but is is
Speaker 3: coming from our company, So it's been in progress like
Speaker 3: nearly twenty years now. But I was very, very lucky,
Speaker 3: and that set me up to then transition to our
Speaker 3: own company with my you know, my brother and my
Speaker 3: business partner who was a fifth group guy with me
Speaker 3: way back even into the course, John Lucas. So before
Speaker 3: I finally got out of the Guard, I went to selection,
Speaker 3: you know, Delta selection, and I had to give it
Speaker 3: a shot. And and you know, that's kind of one
Speaker 3: of the high points or interesting points to me in
Speaker 3: my life. And uh, I didn't. I didn't really. I
Speaker 3: don't know that I was really dedicated or really that
Speaker 3: I really wanted to be there that bad. But I
Speaker 3: knew that I had to give it a shot because
Speaker 3: I was I was getting out of the Guard, so
Speaker 3: it was like my last chance, you know. I knew
Speaker 3: I wasn't going to going back to active duty. Uh
Speaker 3: And so I tried that out and I basically self
Speaker 3: selected and I quit and you know, went back to
Speaker 3: my civilian life at that point.
Speaker 1: So so that that was kind of the decision point
Speaker 1: for you, like I'm I'm out of the Army here.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, I knew I was getting out of the guard.
Speaker 3: But you know, it's I had heard that everyone everyone
Speaker 3: in s fos it to themselves to go to selection
Speaker 3: to see how this is. This is the saying, I'm
Speaker 3: not trying to disparage anybody, but see how a truly
Speaker 3: professional organization is run. And and and I did, and
Speaker 3: I was impressed, and you know, I got myself an
Speaker 3: amazing shape. But in the end, I uh, you know,
Speaker 3: I think I just got wrapped up in my own
Speaker 3: head and I quit. And I've always been a pretty hot,
Speaker 3: like sort of higher level anxiety kind of guy, and
Speaker 3: just kind of I just thought, Ah, these guys, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm not what they're looking for. And also I didn't
Speaker 3: really I thought all they did was siki me and
Speaker 3: I really wasn't in love with that idea, you know,
Speaker 3: after doing it for a while. So h yeah, that's
Speaker 3: that's kind of the gist of that. But it was
Speaker 3: it really just I'm not proud of quitting, but it
Speaker 3: also just wasn't my path. Yes, it was.
Speaker 5: A decision point for you, like there there there's.
Speaker 6: Like there's no there's no dishonor there's no shame in
Speaker 6: like realizing that something isn't for you.
Speaker 5: Or that you have other priorities.
Speaker 3: Well they you know, they people used to say that
Speaker 3: in s F selection and it was like the answer
Speaker 3: to that was, well, how this is not what group
Speaker 3: is like? You know, how could you quit during s
Speaker 3: F selection? Yeah, that's not this is not what groups like.
Speaker 3: It's the right of it, you know. And I and
Speaker 3: I did never I never did find out what what
Speaker 3: delta is like. Now I've heard I've heard stuff from
Speaker 3: the guys who come on your show and stuff that
Speaker 3: you've interviewed. I'm like, man, that'd have been really cool. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, it isn't just a bunch of knunckle draggers,
Speaker 3: you know doing CQB. They got a lot of cool
Speaker 3: stuff going on, you know, a lot of interesting things.
Speaker 3: So I kind of I kind of was bummed about
Speaker 3: that a little bit. But at the same time, you know,
Speaker 3: my my path was set, Like you know, my brother
Speaker 3: was right. I think I was born to to be
Speaker 3: a designer, you know, and and for that in that time,
Speaker 3: it was firearms and it still is so and I
Speaker 3: still I still designed the products for KG.
Speaker 1: Tell us about that about going from Magpole to starting
Speaker 1: your own company with your friends KRG.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So we Uh, I was gonna go, I was
Speaker 3: gonna leave Magpool and then I was going to go
Speaker 3: contract in order to build up some money to then
Speaker 3: strike out of my own and my but my brother
Speaker 3: had already been contractant for oh Man, he did like
Speaker 3: four years or something. At that point. He wasn't he
Speaker 3: wasn't that far into it, but he had saved up
Speaker 3: some money and said, hey, what if I just put
Speaker 3: in this money and you get started right away? And
Speaker 3: uh and and John had this idea for this product,
Speaker 3: which was which is our boat lift. It's a little
Speaker 3: boat mob that you put on the Remickton seven hundred
Speaker 3: for for people who can't do any kind of permanent
Speaker 3: modifications to their rifles, their snake rifles, and and so
Speaker 3: we all basically just found this company and my brother
Speaker 3: funded it, and then I lived off of my you know,
Speaker 3: savings from combat pay and this, you know, working the
Speaker 3: Magpole and stuff like that, and so for we started
Speaker 3: in my garage and and that at the first. At
Speaker 3: first I did everything, you know, I machined parts and
Speaker 3: design stuff and whatnot. And and then once our little
Speaker 3: boat lift things started selling. My mom started working for
Speaker 3: free for us, and I was working for free, you know,
Speaker 3: And and it was just one of those deals where
Speaker 3: we just kind of gradually picked up steam just over
Speaker 3: the years, you know.
Speaker 1: And Monster Garage was that Monster garage. Yeah, to the building,
Speaker 1: to the shipping. That's awesome.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And you know, we've had a lot of luck
Speaker 3: along the way too, and a lot of a lot
Speaker 3: of things have gone our way. You know, a lot
Speaker 3: of things haven't gone our way too. But we were
Speaker 3: we're lucky to be getting into the to this industry
Speaker 3: right at the time when every all the boats were rising,
Speaker 3: right because there was a lot of g wants spending.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of interest in firearms. And then you had,
Speaker 3: you know, without getting too much into politics, he had
Speaker 3: Obama become president and there was a lot of anti
Speaker 3: gun talks, so people were spending crazy money on firearms
Speaker 3: and everything. Uh So yeah, I was we just you know,
Speaker 3: I worked my ass off. Everyone worked their ass off.
Speaker 3: My brother was still contracting, pulling in money. I was
Speaker 3: spending my savings down and then so then I ended
Speaker 3: up using my gi bi able to go back to
Speaker 3: college and I studied philosophy, going for a philosophy degree.
Speaker 3: And then I was getting money because you get a
Speaker 3: stipend as part of the g I build. I was
Speaker 3: paying for my housing and stuff. Uh. And then I
Speaker 3: went to contracting with Blackbirds, like I had mentioned earlier.
Speaker 3: But that that and that kept U that kept us going,
Speaker 3: you know. And and I you know, I lived like
Speaker 3: a college kid, ah and didn't take didn't take money.
Speaker 3: I mean it was years you know, ramen noodles and
Speaker 3: and not not spending money on stuff. And uh. And
Speaker 3: you know, I've I've been I feel like I've been
Speaker 3: rewarded life is. I feel like life has rewarded me,
Speaker 3: uh for for hard work and then some of the
Speaker 3: some of the hard choices I made when I raised
Speaker 3: my hand and you know, said yeah, I'll do it.
Speaker 1: And that leads you into uh, you're now working with J.
Speaker 1: Golt Aircraft, another one of your companies, and so you're
Speaker 1: you're not a totally unrelated but I mean from firearms
Speaker 1: to aircraft, it's a pretty big jump.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it really is. So you know, again, very fortunate
Speaker 3: that we were able to grow the company. And then
Speaker 3: I want to say twenty seventeen, I was able to
Speaker 3: start taking lessons to become a pilot, and I learned
Speaker 3: to fly, and then sort of that childhood love of
Speaker 3: airplanes was kind of rekindled, you know. And I'd seen
Speaker 3: this replica Spitfire when I was in college, and I
Speaker 3: was like, man, that'd be so cool, because I figured
Speaker 3: I'd never be able to afford a real Spitfire, which
Speaker 3: they sell for around four million. Now I still can't
Speaker 3: afford one, but I wanted to get this replica. And
Speaker 3: I talked to these guys and anyways, turned out that
Speaker 3: we were taught about just going down there and buying
Speaker 3: them out, this whole company that makes these little plants. Anyways,
Speaker 3: the company was, it wasn't the deal didn't happen. It
Speaker 3: just didn't come together. But we thought, man, we could
Speaker 3: we could just make our own, which was a really
Speaker 3: neat a really neat thought, and one of the dumbest
Speaker 3: things we ever thought about, you know, all and wrapped
Speaker 3: up in one you know. But so by that, you
Speaker 3: know a few years later, this maybe I don't know,
Speaker 3: four or five years ago, I'm kind of getting burned
Speaker 3: out from just working morning tonight on the on the
Speaker 3: firearms side, and you know, I didn't have social life
Speaker 3: and that kind of stuff. I was, you know, I
Speaker 3: was very fortunate in twenty fifteen I met my uh
Speaker 3: now my wife, and that's most that's been one of
Speaker 3: those other like really defining points in my life. So
Speaker 3: that's been a big deal. But but other than that,
Speaker 3: you know, and she's been amazing and and sort of, uh,
Speaker 3: I've sort of become a little more balanced. But before that,
Speaker 3: it was just I mean, work and and and uh
Speaker 3: and exercise. That was my day, you know. So I
Speaker 3: needed to step away, and I kind of I kind
Speaker 3: of started stepping back from running the whole company, the
Speaker 3: kre GEE, which is Kinetic Research Group, and the and
Speaker 3: the kinetic comes from obviously, you know, kinetic energy, but
Speaker 3: also kinetic strikes. H. So I started to push more
Speaker 3: into the aircraft side. We said, hey, we could just
Speaker 3: build our own uh design to build our own aircraft
Speaker 3: as replica. And so that's what I've been working on.
Speaker 3: And I started with, ah, you know, all these books
Speaker 3: you see behind me, that's virtually every aircraft design book
Speaker 3: that's ever been written. And so just started going through
Speaker 3: those books and and learning and uh.
Speaker 1: You know, are you building a spitfire in your garage now?
Speaker 3: Is that what you're telling me, Well, we we've upgraded
Speaker 3: the garage, we have a hangar now, So yeah, that's
Speaker 3: that's essentially what's going on. Yeah, so we're we're several
Speaker 3: years into it and a voteload of money for sure.
Speaker 3: But it's it's a hell of a it's a hell
Speaker 3: of an experience. It's it's an incredible learning experience. And
Speaker 3: you know, I tell you it's I think everybody should.
Speaker 3: You know, life's short, and I think it's personally, I
Speaker 3: think it's too short to do one thing. And but
Speaker 3: also and some people that's not that you know, they
Speaker 3: don't feel that way. That's okay, but but I think
Speaker 3: it's also you need to always be challenging yourself and
Speaker 3: you need to keep your you need to keep your
Speaker 3: brain functioning by by learning new things and and just
Speaker 3: taking one of one of these big risks is kind
Speaker 3: of one of those things. You know, like, you know,
Speaker 3: you could do it whatever you wanted. You know, you
Speaker 3: could take up you know, the piano or something, or
Speaker 3: try to learn a new language or something like that.
Speaker 3: But I think that's very important in life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you were pretty big there justin you didn't
Speaker 1: just like yeah, let me learn Spanish on duo linga
Speaker 1: or something like that. You're a self a self taught
Speaker 1: firearms designer and aircraft manufacturer. That's a that's a big
Speaker 1: weak man. I'm jealous. You've got the type of brain
Speaker 1: that can do that. That's amazing.
Speaker 3: Well, I think, thank you, that's quite a compliment. But
Speaker 3: I I feel like I feel like I'm probably I
Speaker 3: may have maybe a little more intellectual capability than average,
Speaker 3: but I'm not a genius. And I don't think that
Speaker 3: any of this stuff is beyond most people. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: the resilience. I mean, I've I've got some of these
Speaker 3: books where I looked at an equation and I was like, man,
Speaker 3: And I've had college calculus and I'm like, man, I
Speaker 3: don't understand this. And it's taken me days of thinking
Speaker 3: about it and working working through a problem a bunch
Speaker 3: of times, and then just having that tenacity really and
Speaker 3: and I never really had that before. And I think
Speaker 3: that probably came.
Speaker 1: From from s F you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that's anybody could do this now. Not everybody
Speaker 3: could could do a carbon fiber spitfire and put that
Speaker 3: into production because of the just the cost, you know.
Speaker 3: But every anybody could design a small aircraft if that's
Speaker 3: what they wanted to do, you know. And and that's
Speaker 3: this is what I see as my as my life's
Speaker 3: passion and mission at this point. So it's like Victor
Speaker 3: Frankel said, you know, uh, whoever has the the uh
Speaker 3: the why I can endure anyhow? And I just push
Speaker 3: your dad, I know. But uh, you know, you guys,
Speaker 3: everyone knows Victor Frankel whatever, or they look it up.
Speaker 3: But essentially, if you have a purpose, you can overcome
Speaker 3: mountainous obstacles to achieve your end goal. So anybody could
Speaker 3: do it if they want. And so I want that.
Speaker 3: I want people to think about that. And like, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm just this. You know, I came from a poor family.
Speaker 3: No one had had any education. Uh you know, my
Speaker 3: parents were teenagers essentially when I was born, Uh, you know,
Speaker 3: pretty humble beginnings. And and I don't have any special gifts,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't have anything like uh Russell Crowe
Speaker 3: and that when movie beautiful mind you know, it's just
Speaker 3: a little bit of smarts and and the desire and
Speaker 3: and just that willingness to be uncomfortable and feel like
Speaker 3: you're an idiot. Kind of like, I don't get this,
Speaker 3: but I got to push through it. And that kind
Speaker 3: of leads me to to one thing that I that
Speaker 3: I I want to want to convey to people is that,
Speaker 3: like a lot of people now talk about how the
Speaker 3: American dream is dead, this and that and the other thing.
Speaker 3: You hear that, and it's what they what they're trying
Speaker 3: to say is that you know, oh, this new generation
Speaker 3: is never going to own a house and have two kids,
Speaker 3: and you know, that's what the American dream is. Whatever,
Speaker 3: that's not the American dream. I'm I'm living the American dream.
Speaker 3: And you know, you look at me. I'm not that
Speaker 3: remarkable of a guy. You know, nothing's really standing out
Speaker 3: about me as you look at me. But yet I've
Speaker 3: been able to shape my life in the in the
Speaker 3: way and to the potential that I feel like I'm capable.
Speaker 3: And that's what the American dream is. It's to shape
Speaker 3: your life, uh, to the direction and to the extent
Speaker 3: that you want to and that to reach your fullest potential.
Speaker 1: It's the pursuit of happiness. Right, You're you're really living that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And the dream is that part of
Speaker 3: the dream is that in America. You can do that
Speaker 3: because you don't have like a caste system holding you
Speaker 3: down where you know where I could never be an
Speaker 3: aircraft designer because you know, my parents weren't royalty or
Speaker 3: you know, it didn't weren't landowners or stuff stuff like that.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: So, so the American dream is really it never was
Speaker 3: about uh being wealthy. It wasn't about having a Bugatti
Speaker 3: or Lambeaus. And you know, it wasn't none of that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff. It wasn't about having kids, It wasn't
Speaker 3: about how It was just about sort of this freedom
Speaker 3: and and uh, you know, sort of sort of this
Speaker 3: base level equality of opportunity and and as you said,
Speaker 3: this freedom for people to pursue pursue happiness. That's a
Speaker 3: bit of a misnomer. Happiness ensues from living living the
Speaker 3: right way, is how I view it. It's not something
Speaker 3: that you chase after the happiness, Ah, having that happiness
Speaker 3: is like uh money or wealth. Happiness ensues from doing
Speaker 3: the right things in life as a as a living
Speaker 3: living a good person, living in a good life, and
Speaker 3: wealth ensues from doing the right things in relation to
Speaker 3: the market right, which which is finance. People refer to
Speaker 3: as the market. The market is everything from the from
Speaker 3: the butcher shop to to to you know, the sock exchange.
Speaker 3: The market is all the stuff that the money is
Speaker 3: sort of involved in. But you do the right things
Speaker 3: in either of those arenas and you're going to the
Speaker 3: happiness is going to ensue and the wealth is going
Speaker 3: to ensue.
Speaker 4: Justin, I was going to ask you, because you know
Speaker 4: you say like you, I love how you casually tossed
Speaker 4: off Victor Frankel like everybody knows it, But unfortunately I
Speaker 4: don't think everybody does. And if you haven't read his book,
Speaker 4: Man Search for Meeting, it's it's a short book. It's
Speaker 4: an easy read and everybody everybody should read it.
Speaker 5: What are some other.
Speaker 4: Authors or some other people with these ideas that have
Speaker 4: inspired you or guided you along this way?
Speaker 3: Oh boy, that's a good question. Victor Frankel is definitely
Speaker 3: very influential. A guy named me Hi Chicks and me
Speaker 3: Hi who wrote a book called Flow. I essentially just
Speaker 3: I'm constantly rereading and re listening to it. I have
Speaker 3: an on book audiobook to him. Those are two big ones.
Speaker 3: But then also so shifting back a bit, you know,
Speaker 3: I mentioned we're poor my family's ideas of success, from
Speaker 3: my dad's idea of success was having ferraris and that
Speaker 3: kind of thing, having money to be able to, you know,
Speaker 3: do what you want, but also to kind of have
Speaker 3: the fun stuff in life. Right. But so I never
Speaker 3: I never learned it. I never learned about money because
Speaker 3: it was always a there was always an attempt to
Speaker 3: reach those things without being able to afford them. It's
Speaker 3: basically poor people behavior continues that continues to this day.
Speaker 3: Rights by buying toys on credit essentially. So when I
Speaker 3: was in the Q course, there was a guy who
Speaker 3: one day came in and said, hey, I just made
Speaker 3: four thousand dollars in the stock market, and he had
Speaker 3: been an investor, he had learned about investing and all
Speaker 3: this kind of stuff. And I thought, oh my gosh, And.
Speaker 5: Here I was.
Speaker 3: I had two cars, a sports car and I had
Speaker 3: a four wheel drive van, and you know, I had
Speaker 3: debt on maybe both of them, I can't remember. And
Speaker 3: I had a dirt bike and all these toys, right,
Speaker 3: and zero money to my name. And so that was
Speaker 3: one of the things I'd maybe been thinking about a
Speaker 3: little bit before. But I was like, man, I made
Speaker 3: all this money and have nothing to show for it,
Speaker 3: and I'm in debt and this guy just made four
Speaker 3: thousand dollars something like that in the market. And so
Speaker 3: that kind of kicked me into geared learning about money,
Speaker 3: and I think everybody should learn about money and circling
Speaker 3: back now, one of the books that was very influential
Speaker 3: for me was actually Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and the
Speaker 3: dude's kind of gone off the rails. It seems like
Speaker 3: maybe now I don't really following too much, but uh,
Speaker 3: Robert Kiyosaki, that book. I wouldn't push anybody to get
Speaker 3: any other ones, but that book, it's it's served to
Speaker 3: frame my mindset about how money works and how you
Speaker 3: build wealth. So you got Victor Frankel, and then and
Speaker 3: then Chicks and Me high on sort of this personal
Speaker 3: development side, and then and then you have uh, Rich Dad,
Speaker 3: Poor Dad, and and a host of others. I mean,
Speaker 3: I've read so many books about money, but uh, those
Speaker 3: are those are some very influential ones as far as that,
Speaker 3: because like it or not, finances are a big part
Speaker 3: of life, and it's a big part of having a
Speaker 3: happy life is having your finances in order. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: I hope those are some good, some good recommendations for people.
Speaker 3: Another one on the finance side is, uh, it's called
Speaker 3: The Richest Man in Babylon. And you know, that's an
Speaker 3: old book. It's a it's a yeah, it's a it's
Speaker 3: a fictional you know, tail, but it's it's the lessons
Speaker 3: are invaluable and essentially it's even on this list of topics,
Speaker 3: i'd come up all right, had I wrote down to mention. Really,
Speaker 3: what what he wants people to do is invest ten
Speaker 3: percent of their income right off the top. Invest it,
Speaker 3: you know, put that money away and make that and
Speaker 3: don't put it in the safe, don't put it in
Speaker 3: its savings account, don't put it in a bank. Invest
Speaker 3: it so that it makes money for you. You know.
Speaker 3: Compounding is is the what they call it, the eighth
Speaker 3: wonder of the world or whatever the other next wonder is.
Speaker 3: Compounding interest is even Einstein said that compounding is such
Speaker 3: a powerful force, uh, that you need to get it started.
Speaker 3: And and saving money is just not enough to try
Speaker 3: to build wealth. So you know, I would ask that
Speaker 3: anybody listening to this take ten percent and before you
Speaker 3: do anything else, Even if you're twenty five and you
Speaker 3: think that you got lots of time. You don't really
Speaker 3: you know, take ten percent and put it, put it
Speaker 3: in an index fund. That's what I do. I'm not
Speaker 3: giving investing advice. What I do is I put it
Speaker 3: in an index fund. You don't, I don't buy a bitcoin,
Speaker 3: don't do silly shit like that or speculative type stuff.
Speaker 3: You know, don't try to get rich quick. Take your
Speaker 3: ten percent and put it in. Put it in an
Speaker 3: index fund, a low cost index fund. I use Vanguard.
Speaker 3: I put it into vooh, which is Vanguard's S and
Speaker 3: P five hundred index fund. And and let that stuff compound.
Speaker 3: But that book is is very influential. That's that's the
Speaker 3: richest man in babylone.
Speaker 5: Justin.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate this interview, man, and you're sharing your
Speaker 1: story and all of your insights, and I think it
Speaker 1: has been a unique perspective, not just on the military,
Speaker 1: but on life too. Before we let you go tonight,
Speaker 1: I mean, are there any final things you would you'd
Speaker 1: kind of and I really like the way you interwove
Speaker 1: some of these lessons learned into your story. Are there
Speaker 1: any we failed to hit during this interview that you'd
Speaker 1: really like to tease out there?
Speaker 3: I think about the only I mean, I have a
Speaker 3: bunch of stuff. I mean, I can, I could go
Speaker 3: on and on. But you know, I've I'm forty six now,
Speaker 3: and I've I've failed a lot, and I've learned a
Speaker 3: lot of lessons. So I feel like I have a
Speaker 3: lot of things to share. I have a lot of
Speaker 3: things I want to convey to people. I have a
Speaker 3: whole article I wrote, not an article, but I started
Speaker 3: laying out sort of these principles of wealth, and not
Speaker 3: that I'm a super wealthy guy, but just from stuff
Speaker 3: I've learned from from actual, you know, life experience. But
Speaker 3: one thing that that I would like to for for
Speaker 3: sure add in to people, add into this interview is
Speaker 3: that I think, I think that as a society, we
Speaker 3: have a lack of, uh of an appreciation for the
Speaker 3: importance of exercise. And and that's in all ages, but
Speaker 3: especially as you know you're past you get past twenty
Speaker 3: five or whatever. I look at it as exercise is
Speaker 3: to to the adult mind and body, what reading is
Speaker 3: to like a child's mind, right, It's reading does something
Speaker 3: to your mind when you're a kid. It isn't just
Speaker 3: the pleasure of reading and learning facts. It's the actual
Speaker 3: deciphering the symbols on the paper, and you know, maintaining
Speaker 3: the information you're taking in the whole process. It's it's
Speaker 3: very important. I think I see as as developing the
Speaker 3: young mind, and and exercise is sort of that for
Speaker 3: your body and your mind as an as an adult.
Speaker 3: And and if you can, you know, anybody's listening to this,
Speaker 3: you know, get a little strength training and and some
Speaker 3: some cardio work in and try them once a week. Ah,
Speaker 3: run or whatever, walk up in a steep hill with
Speaker 3: weight to the point where you are breathing very hard,
Speaker 3: where you're out of breath, you feel like you're out
Speaker 3: of breath, and just get that exercise. It's done. I
Speaker 3: feel like it's done. Essentially a miracle for me because
Speaker 3: you know, when I got out of the army, I
Speaker 3: was I had a difficult transition to civilian life. You know,
Speaker 3: what's that here? Nice to have this, you know, I
Speaker 3: lost a lot of bodies, a lot of guys from
Speaker 3: group in the warm mhm when uh m hmm, when
Speaker 3: I got out, I was pretty I guess you'd say
Speaker 3: resentful of of civilians and h m m hm, m h.
Speaker 3: It's hard to explain, so forgive me.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's uh. I think even in like the
Speaker 1: Hakka Guri, the the samurai writes about this about you know,
Speaker 1: the samurai coming back and like resenting this civilians around them,
Speaker 1: like these people are fat, they're lazy, what's wrong with them?
Speaker 4: They don't have real problems. They don't understand what's going on, right,
Speaker 4: you know, they bitch about nothing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then also that coupled with they
Speaker 3: don't know you know, the kind of sacrifice is going.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, they had there's a lot of judgment with
Speaker 4: very little information.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and uh, not that they could know, you know,
Speaker 3: necessarily because there isn't. I mean, you can make shows about,
Speaker 3: you know, what's going on, like Ristrepo for example, was
Speaker 3: a very good one, but there's still you know, it's
Speaker 3: not I don't know, it's it's just a terrible situation basically.
Speaker 3: But so I was pretty resentful for you know a
Speaker 3: lot of that stuff that all the stuff we're talking
Speaker 3: about right here, and so I was pretty you know,
Speaker 3: kind of angry, and I've I've had a I've had
Speaker 3: a like a condition which is perfectionism, since I was
Speaker 3: pretty young, which it sounds like something you put on
Speaker 3: your resume to strength.
Speaker 1: If I'm ever in one of your aircraft, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be happy about that.
Speaker 3: Though. Yeah, yeah, it can go too far sometimes, right,
Speaker 3: And that's you know, that kind of it's people think
Speaker 3: it's kind of a good thing to be a perfectionist,
Speaker 3: but it gets to the point where it basically starts
Speaker 3: destroying your life, and so it just takes away any
Speaker 3: possibility of being happy because it's you're you know, you're
Speaker 3: constantly undermining yourself aspiration possible.
Speaker 5: I'm I'm very curious though, because you know, you.
Speaker 4: Have a successful firearms company and you were also doing
Speaker 4: you know, this other company with aircraft. And one of
Speaker 4: the problems, or one of the challenges with perfectionism is
Speaker 4: this whole paralysis by analysis, and people never even get
Speaker 4: started on projects because they never feel like they know
Speaker 4: enough or the situation isn't perfect. How did you manage
Speaker 4: to overcome that?
Speaker 3: You know, honestly, I don't sometimes I don't know. Part
Speaker 3: of it was BA on the aircraft side. I had
Speaker 3: to go through all every single one of the books
Speaker 3: to basically have that satisfaction in my head that I
Speaker 3: got to that point of knowledge, and then on top
Speaker 3: of that is I brought in other engineers to go
Speaker 3: throughout my work and so to, you know, to make
Speaker 3: sure that that I know what I'm doing. And you know,
Speaker 3: they were they I don't know everything, so they're helping
Speaker 3: out too. They're doing stuff on their own. But I honestly,
Speaker 3: I don't know. I think I think I think it's
Speaker 3: again as the SF stuff, it's just you just push forver.
Speaker 3: You know, you just have to do it. You have
Speaker 3: to make mission.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And on the carre g side, it's the same way.
Speaker 3: I've designed some rifles and some stocks that are you know,
Speaker 3: incredible and as far as their function and design, and
Speaker 3: I mean that sounds like I'm bragging, but I mean
Speaker 3: just the just the amount of thought and detail is
Speaker 3: what I mean that's went into them, and the function
Speaker 3: is is beyond what's available out there and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: And I had a rifle I designed. It was planned
Speaker 3: to sort of be the equivalent of like a fine
Speaker 3: English shotgun. I mean, you guys have heard of like
Speaker 3: party shotguns probably and stuff like that, two hundred thousand
Speaker 3: dollars shotguns. Well, you know, I've worked on stuff that's
Speaker 3: been to was intended to be to that level, and
Speaker 3: that hasn't seen the light of day, partially because it's
Speaker 3: not that's not a good business decision. But yeah, some
Speaker 3: it has handicapped me in some ways for sure. But
Speaker 3: but I think again the military stuff, the s F
Speaker 3: side says, hey, this has to be done, you know,
Speaker 3: you just do it. And and also I can kind
Speaker 3: of rest assured that I I feel like I pretty
Speaker 3: much outwork anybody in the industry.
Speaker 4: So so yeah, not to delve back into a sensitive subject,
Speaker 4: but you had mentioned it when you got out, you
Speaker 4: had that resentment for civilians.
Speaker 5: How how did you overcome that?
Speaker 4: Like what what?
Speaker 5: How did you get past that or did you.
Speaker 3: I would say, I would say, still haven't entirely. Uh Uh.
Speaker 3: I'm not a I never was a people person. I
Speaker 3: was never a leader. I was never interested in being
Speaker 3: a leader.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: I used to I used to be one of those
Speaker 3: people who would say, I fucking hate people. You know,
Speaker 3: that's that's the truth. You know, it's a harsh thing
Speaker 3: to say, but uh, part of its time, you know.
Speaker 3: I think I think I ended up with uh. And
Speaker 3: I don't know how this ever affected me, but I
Speaker 3: think I ended up with some probably a little bit
Speaker 3: of tv I stuff, because we used to blow doors
Speaker 3: from literally the other side of the door jam, I
Speaker 3: mean six inches you know, is Ha's how we would
Speaker 3: blow doors. It was no stand back that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: It was I would have a uniform covered in parts
Speaker 3: of duct tape, the little adhesive of duct tape, you know,
Speaker 3: to be all over me. That that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: And and we didn't know back then, and that that
Speaker 3: was a dumb idea, you know. And and so I
Speaker 3: think there might have been some of that because we
Speaker 3: blew a lot of a lot of doors, blowing walls,
Speaker 3: blowing you know, everything, a lot of a lot of demo.
Speaker 3: Uh So I think that that kind of factored in,
Speaker 3: and then that kind of sealed over time. I think
Speaker 3: as part of it, part of it was, you know,
Speaker 3: meeting my uh, you know, my my current uh she's
Speaker 3: my fiance car my wife. But meeting her and and
Speaker 3: having this amazing relationship has as that's really helped too.
Speaker 3: You know, It's just just I don't know, I don't know,
Speaker 3: I can't say exactly what the mechanism is, but that's
Speaker 3: been a big help.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: I feel like, you know, my life took a big turn,
Speaker 3: and she's been such a positive influence. She's a very
Speaker 3: positive person. So she's been such a positive influence in
Speaker 3: my life. Uh And and you know, I want to
Speaker 3: tie in something here that I want to I wanted
Speaker 3: to mention to people too, is is, you know, for
Speaker 3: people out there who maybe haven't found their partner yet,
Speaker 3: or or who are looking to looking for a better partner,
Speaker 3: or they feel like during a bad relationship, is you know,
Speaker 3: take a look in the mirror and realize that you
Speaker 3: only deserve the kind of partner that you are to
Speaker 3: the other person. And I don't that took me a
Speaker 3: long time to come to that realization, I would say.
Speaker 3: And you know, people have a tendency to think, ah,
Speaker 3: this person is not good enough for me without thinking,
Speaker 3: hey are you? Are you even that you know, pleasant
Speaker 3: to be around? And for a lot of you know,
Speaker 3: my life, I don't think I always have pleasant to
Speaker 3: be around. So yeah, you know, I didn't meet my
Speaker 3: you know, my spouse until I was like thirty seven
Speaker 3: ish something like that. And I if we'd have met
Speaker 3: before that actually would have been able to stand and
Speaker 3: be around me. So I want people to, you know,
Speaker 3: just kind of think about that is like turn that
Speaker 3: turn that magnifying glass back on yourself and say, hey,
Speaker 3: what what kind of person am I to be around?
Speaker 3: What kind of you know, what kind of love do
Speaker 3: I put out there? What kind of affection do I
Speaker 3: put out there into the world? And you know, give
Speaker 3: what you want to receive essentially.
Speaker 1: Justin where can people find you with KRG with j
Speaker 1: gult Aircraft?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 1: Where can people go and check this stuff out?
Speaker 3: Well, for the for the firearm side, you know, we
Speaker 3: make the long range chassis and stuff. That's our long
Speaker 3: range precision is our bread and butter. That's our focus
Speaker 3: basically on the firearm side. And and the companies are
Speaker 3: companies called Kinetic Research Group and new websites Kinetic Research
Speaker 3: Group dot com or you can just search for carre
Speaker 3: G carre G Chassis.
Speaker 4: The Uh.
Speaker 3: I'm not super involved in day to day things, so
Speaker 3: on that side, I'm not really the person to get
Speaker 3: a hold of excuse me. Uh. On the aircraft side,
Speaker 3: where we have a little YouTube channel that we started
Speaker 3: that has like one video that I put up a
Speaker 3: year ago that's jag Old Aircraft on YouTube. And and
Speaker 3: we really haven't been talking about things because we don't
Speaker 3: want to have a lot of hype and then not deliver.
Speaker 3: So we're waiting till we get the aircraft in the
Speaker 3: air before we're really uh cool, start pushing things because
Speaker 3: we're trying to sell these things, you know. But we
Speaker 3: also aircraft industries had a long history of people promising
Speaker 3: taking deposits.
Speaker 6: And then you know, I think the most important I
Speaker 6: was just gonna say, I think I think the most
Speaker 6: important question is when can can I come shoot some
Speaker 6: of your some of your systems.
Speaker 3: We'd love to have you guys down definitely. We could
Speaker 3: we go do some flying, do some shooting. We got
Speaker 3: some good ranges here, so I'm in. I'm in boys
Speaker 3: the area. Yeah, we'd love to have you guys. So
Speaker 3: anytime you if you make it out west. I know
Speaker 3: you guys are pretty far east there, but uh, anytime
Speaker 3: you guys are are coming out this way, we'd we'd
Speaker 3: love to have you. John and I are in in
Speaker 3: the Bois area. The rest of the companies up north
Speaker 3: outside of Corterley, northern Idaho. Dang, you're up to Canada.
Speaker 3: But but we're here and we got lots of toys,
Speaker 3: our stuff, we got other stuff, you know, and like
Speaker 3: I said all kinds of we can have all kinds
Speaker 3: of fun.
Speaker 5: Definitely, we'll hit you up when it gets warm.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it just turned we it was, it's been
Speaker 3: really nice and and then it's it's turning now. So
Speaker 3: but yeah, come in the in the spring or the
Speaker 3: falls here amazing. Summer's brutal. It's like twos on here
Speaker 3: in the summer. But but come down for sure. And
Speaker 3: anybody on who's who's interested on the aircraft side can
Speaker 3: go look at the YouTube or they can email me
Speaker 3: at Justin at Jagault Aircraft.
Speaker 1: We'll put some links down the description for people to
Speaker 1: go check out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's you know, just be patient because I,
Speaker 3: you know, I get a lot of emails and I
Speaker 3: really try to spend my time actually doing work, like
Speaker 3: working on the plane. So yeah, and then you know
Speaker 3: on the care gen design side too, So just be
Speaker 3: patient if I you know, if I'm slow and getting back.
Speaker 1: So and I also have some wares to sell that
Speaker 1: I want to tell people about my book, We Defy
Speaker 1: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History is coming out
Speaker 1: December ninth. It's up for pre order on Amazon now
Speaker 1: goes through Detachment A. The Undercover guys in Berlin Detachment
Speaker 1: K and Korea blue Light, the first counter terrorism unit
Speaker 1: green Light with a backpack, nuke guys and the commanders
Speaker 1: in extremist forced. So I'm excited about the book. Please
Speaker 1: go check it out if you guys have a moment.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 6: We have two viewer questions. I don't know if we
Speaker 6: have anything on Patreon d nothing, All right, First one.
Speaker 4: Thank you Bjorn. This you know you had mentioned you
Speaker 4: had mentioned selection and whatnot. But the question is ever
Speaker 4: work with a one five and how do they compare
Speaker 4: to CAG And I don't know.
Speaker 5: If you have an actual comparison for that.
Speaker 3: I don't John John was with a one five for
Speaker 3: a lot of years. I don't know how many, but
Speaker 3: he was. He was over on the sniper troop there.
Speaker 3: He'd be the one to answer that question. Maybe we
Speaker 3: can get him on with you guys. Yeah, he has
Speaker 3: a lot more time than I do. And you've got
Speaker 3: some cool stories. I don't know if you know he's
Speaker 3: not we're s F guys, right, we're a little shy
Speaker 3: and it's only recently I would even you know, want
Speaker 3: to be out there in public a little bit and whatnot.
Speaker 3: So he might have some more of that stuff. Sorry,
Speaker 3: I don't. I can't really tell how he won five compares.
Speaker 3: We always thought of those guys as a bunch of
Speaker 3: prima donnas, you know when I was on, when I
Speaker 3: was on just a regular team and and we were
Speaker 3: doing direct shack, direct action stuff, and we you know,
Speaker 3: our our team started came from me one five, so
Speaker 3: we felt like we were just as good as them.
Speaker 3: And how they compared to Delta, I have no idea,
Speaker 3: but uh, the stuff I hear about Delta is pretty
Speaker 3: it's pretty next level.
Speaker 4: So yeah, uh and then m Corbyn, thank you very much.
Speaker 4: Why was the vat U F for U course the
Speaker 4: Air the best fighter.
Speaker 5: From World War Two?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 3: Well, it sounds like a Corsair fan there. That was
Speaker 3: actually my favorite plane for the longest time. It was
Speaker 3: featured in that an old show called Bob Bob Black
Speaker 3: Sheet Happy.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: Pappy Boyington, Yeah, he was a quarter Laine guy, so
Speaker 3: he's a kind of local. Hebro up there. Used to
Speaker 3: love that show. That's probably one of the reasons I
Speaker 3: got so interested in it. And of course the course
Speaker 3: Air was wash an incredibly powerful engine with a with
Speaker 3: an incredibly large efficient propeller and and quite an armament
Speaker 3: and when you really look at what they're doing back then, uh,
Speaker 3: fighter performance is uh, largest most powerful engine you can find,
Speaker 3: the smallest airframe with the lowest drag that that can tolerate,
Speaker 3: you know, the landing conditions and stuff like that, because
Speaker 3: you still need to have some kind of low speed performance,
Speaker 3: especially land on a carrier. And then and then your
Speaker 3: armament and uh. And so the course air was a
Speaker 3: was a hell of a fighter. And then I mean
Speaker 3: there's a lot of nuance to it too, the size
Speaker 3: of the Alerons and you know whatnot. But I don't
Speaker 3: I don't know that I would say it's the best fighter.
Speaker 3: If you ask the Brits, the Spitfire is the best fighter,
Speaker 3: and they won't. They will not here I have word. Otherwise,
Speaker 3: you ask an American, it's the Mustang generally speaking, Uh,
Speaker 3: most people say it's a Mustang over the Course Air.
Speaker 3: So I can't. I can't say one is better than
Speaker 3: the other. The course air was was certainly amazing, and
Speaker 3: I'd love to have one. I'd love to fly one,
Speaker 3: that's for sure.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1: And next Friday we're going to have David McCloskey, the
Speaker 1: author of the new spy novel The Seventh Four. We'll
Speaker 1: have him on the show, So that's coming up next week.
Speaker 1: Justin again, thank you for joining us tonight, spending some
Speaker 1: of your time with us and sharing some of your
Speaker 1: life experiences with us.
Speaker 3: It's been a pleasure, fellows. I really appreciate you, you know,
Speaker 3: inviting me on. Like I said, I listened to a
Speaker 3: lot of your shows, and I hope you guys just
Speaker 3: have enormous success going forward, and if if I can
Speaker 3: do anything to help help that out, I'm happy to
Speaker 3: do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Justin really appreciate it. Alright, So we'll see
Speaker 1: all of you guys next Friday. Take care out there,
Speaker 1: have a nice weekend.