#25 Eli Crane - Navy SEAL Sniper

Eli Crane joins Shawn Ryan to talk about his time as a Navy SEAL Sniper, starting his multimillion-dollar company "Bottle Breacher" in his garage, and running for Arizona State Congress. From childhood lessons to failing sniper school, Eli is an example for every American who has ever had to persevere through life's great struggles. View the rest of the interview on Rumble https://rumble.com/v13itqk-shawn-ryan-show-eli-crane-navy-seal-sniper.html Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:29Speaker 01

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• 0:59Speaker 03

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• 1:30Speaker 04

  There is good and evil in this world. And I know you've seen it.

• 1:39Shawn Ryan?

  You gonna become a dirty politician?

• 1:41Speaker 04

  There's a bunch of guys that did the same types of jobs that we used to do that are recognizing how much trouble we're in. And they're like, okay, foreign and domestic, I'll go.

• 2:03Speaker 04

  If you talk like that,

• 2:06Speaker 04

  you get killed. You could be thrown into prison.

• 2:11Speaker 04

  You have two choices. You surrender, or you're dead. I know some people have different answers for where that comes from.

• 2:20Speaker 04

  But I think, I think it's spiritual.

• 2:23Shawn Ryan?

  If and when you become a congressman, what are you gonna do when that big suitcase full of money is staring at you right in the face?

• 2:44Shawn Ryan?

  What's going down? We got another phenomenal SRS episode coming at you. This one is a former SEAL sniper running for congress in Arizona. We dive deep, as always. And the second half of this episode is actually on Rumble. I don't make the rules. I can't control it. It's not friendly on this platform. So it's over on Rumble. You can go down to the link in the description and head over there after this interview if you want to watch that portion. If not, that's fine, too. But I do have an ask.

• 3:23Shawn Ryan?

  I've said it before, guys. It really is getting harder and harder to reach the audience on this platform. So what helps is when you like, comment, subscribe, turn the notification bell to all. Hopefully, get notified. If you don't, there's not really much else I can do. But here is the good news. Here, there is good news.

• 3:49Shawn Ryan?

  The gummy bear famine is now over. So head over to vigilanceelite.com.

• 3:58Shawn Ryan?

  Get your hands on some while they last because they never last long. But hey, thank you all for being here.

• 4:06Shawn Ryan?

  Love you guys. My family loves you guys. And if you need me, I'll be out here in the woods hiding out from everybody else. All right. Love you. Enjoy the show. Bye bye. Eli Crane, welcome to the show, man. So you are a Navy SEAL sniper, entrepreneur, bottle breacher company, one on Shark Tank, and now you're going into Congress. You're running for Congress in Arizona.

• 4:39Shawn Ryan?

  What, I mean, you're gonna become a dirty politician?

• 4:44Speaker 04

  I know, man, just having people even say that, it's hard to even hear, you know, politician because there's such negative connotation with it. And for good reason.

• 4:56Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you know, I listened to a couple of your podcasts and I heard you say on one that when you were going into the SEAL teams that you had to stand up for the country. It was after nine 11. And

• 5:12Shawn Ryan?

  when you said it, you made it sound like you were never going to have to do that again. And now here you are again, standing up for the country, doing something that I don't think you really

• 5:25Shawn Ryan?

  want to do. You're doing it for the betterment of the country and that's very commendable.

• 5:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, politics is never something that I wanted to do. And it doesn't mean that I haven't been interested in it because I've always found it fascinating. But actually getting in that arena is something that I never wanted to do. That's, I think that's the biggest difference when I look at, because I see a lot of similarities.

• 5:54Speaker 04

  When I look at. Joining the Navy the week after nine eleven in in wanting to serve in that capacity. I see a lot of similarities between right now wanting to run for office. But you know, that's definitely one of the biggest differences is that I always wanted. I wanted to be a SEAL for a very long time and I worked very hard to get get there. This is something that I really never wanted to do, never planned to do, but I'm just so concerned about this country right now that. You can't complain about it if you're not willing to do something about it, right?

• 6:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, I gotta be honest, you know, you seem a lot different than most of the politicians that I've met. Most of the politicians have. They have like a little peppy attitude and and and. And it's almost like an elevator sales pitch and you're very calm, collected to the point. I don't think you really care what people think. Uh, you're just gonna say it how it is and and I gotta be honest, like, that's really refreshing to see, especially dinner last night when we were talking about all these different things. But before you do go into office, wanted to give you a little present here.

• 7:17Speaker 04

  And, uh.

• 7:18Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, boy.

• 7:20Speaker 04

  Better be some damn gummy bears in here. I heard about the gummy bears.

• 7:24Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, if you do get elected, maybe you can pass those out over there in Congress and lighten some of these assholes up.

• 7:30Speaker 04

  Are these as good as Harbor Road gummy bears?

• 7:32Shawn Ryan?

  They're better.

• 7:33Speaker 04

  They're better than Harbor Road?

• 7:34Shawn Ryan?

  They're trying.

• 7:34Speaker 04

  Oh, my goodness.

• 7:37Shawn Ryan?

  And you got me something.

• 7:38Speaker 04

  I do like some gummy bears. Thank you, man. It's an awesome cap. That is awesome. Thank you, Sean.

• 7:49Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome. And then you got me something from your company Bottle Breacher, so.

• 7:55Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 7:58Speaker 04

  We call that the Moab, the mother of all breachers.

• 8:01Shawn Ryan?

  Oh damn.

• 8:03Speaker 04

  It's a thirty millimeter bottle breacher.

• 8:07Shawn Ryan?

  That's serious.

• 8:08Speaker 04

  It is serious, man, so. The case is real, um. It once fired and then the projectile you get has to, we had to, we have to machine those. You can't, you can't get those.

• 8:21Shawn Ryan?

  This was fired.

• 8:22Speaker 04

  The, the casing was, it's once fired brass, yeah.

• 8:26Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome, man. I'm gonna have you sign this and it's gonna go right over there on the set. So, awesome dude, this is cool, thank you.

• 8:37Shawn Ryan?

  But, well.

• 8:41Shawn Ryan?

  Want to get right into the interview, but before we do, uh, I just wanna say, you know, we'll start with childhood. I wanna talk a lot about your sniper career, uh, because we haven't talked about that with any other Spec Ops guest on here. So I'd really like to dig into that, get into your transition, how you became an entrepreneur. And then we'll get into the dirty politics. And, uh, so how I wanna do it is, we'll take break whenever we want. When we hit the dirty politics, uh, that this show is going over to Rumble. So you wanna talk about some things, not everything's YouTube friendly. And so I'm linking the Rumble description below, so when we get to that point, if you wanna listen to the politics

• 9:26Shawn Ryan?

  and, uh, your opinions and views and how, how you think we should, uh, be going is, uh, in the, how we should take the country in a new direction, um, that will all be over on Rumble. So, but, let's start with childhood, where'd you grow up?

• 9:44Speaker 04

  I actually was born in Tucson, Arizona, and I was raised in Yuma, Arizona.

• 9:50Shawn Ryan?

  In Yuma?

• 9:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, um, my, my dad moved us down there, he was a pharmacist. And, uh, he went to pharmacy school at the University of Arizona in Tucson and then moved the family down to Yuma because there were some good job openings down there. And so it ended up being, uh, you know, an interesting place to grow up because it's in the desert, it's one of the hottest places in the country. I think what, looking back on my life to this point, I think one of the things that made it funny was, you know, I spent, I did three tours in Iraq and a lot of my buddies were always complaining about the heat. And I was like, ah, this is kinda like being from Yuma, you know, with Arabic street signs, so. Um, and, you know, Yuma has some of the best Mexican food in the world, you know.

• 10:36Speaker 04

  Uh, we've got sand dunes right outside of Yuma. Um, once you cross right into California because Yuma's right on the California border, but like if you like to, you know, off-road or, you know, go to the lake, Yuma's a pretty cool place. Really? Yeah. What'd you like to do as a kid? You know, I loved to play football. I loved playing sports. Football was my passion. And, uh, yeah, I also loved to shoot when I got the opportunity to shoot. I was just, you know, fascinated with, um, you know,

• 11:12Speaker 04

  hunting with my BB gun, my pellet rifle, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Good family life? Yeah, yeah, it was, it was pretty, it was pretty good. Um, you know, until right around the time I was about seventeen and then my family was pretty much blown up. Um, but yeah, you know, I consider myself lucky to have had both my parents until I was seventeen, so. Do you wanna go into that at all, or? I don't mind going into it at all. What happened at seventeen? Um, my parents got divorced. Um, you know, there was, uh, some infidelity in the home. And, uh, you know, my parents decided to split.

• 11:54Speaker 04

  And, uh, in a way, uh, in a way, I'm grateful for it. Because I got to see, you know, firsthand what.

• 12:06Speaker 04

  What that can do to a family and um I think a lot of times, stuff like that can be generational. And um so it was it was good for me because in in ways because. I wanted to make sure that that was never something I brought into my family. And to protect protect my family because I saw that I saw the fallout. I saw the aftermath of it. Um, and I never wanted my kids to experience that. And it doesn't stuff like that when a family, you know, gets destroyed like that. It doesn't just affect.

• 12:45Speaker 04

  You know, the the people directly involved. I mean, it has collateral damage throughout friend groups and, you know, all sorts of things. And so. In a way, I'm glad I got to experience that and just the pain and the hurt that comes with it so that I can, you know. Re- remember how it felt and make sure that I never do anything like that.

• 13:07Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. Did you have uh any brothers and sisters?

• 13:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've got uh two brothers. Got an older brother uh named Zach. He's a chemist in Colorado and then my younger brother, Gabe. He's a he's a lawyer now, but he was um and I think he's still in the Marine Reserves, but. He was a Cobra pilot.

• 13:31Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, wow.

• 13:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, graduated from the Naval Academy. It's kind of cool. Um, he's two years younger than me, but. It's kind of cool, man, for, you know, for a good for a good while there. My little brother kind of became my hero because. You know, I remember growing up and wanting to play football and um.

• 13:50Shawn Ryan?

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• 14:35Shawn Ryan?

  That's upstart.com/shawn to check your rate today. Don't forget to use our URL to let them know we sent you. Loan amounts will be determined based off your credit score, income, and certain other information provided in your loan application. Go to upstart.com/shawn. Life is hard enough as it is, so people that make life easier really tend to stand out. For example, my friend Adam, guy is an IT website genius. Anytime I have any issues with website or IT stuff, Adam is always there with the answer and to guide me through whatever process I need. It's like if you own a growing business and need to hire.

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• 16:00Shawn Ryan?

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• 17:27Speaker 04

  When I started to realize that probably wasn't going to happen, that I didn't have the necessary skill to make it as far as I wanted to go. It was really cool watching him because, you know, being his older brother, I'd always give him a hard time. Like, he would, you know, he would, in high school, he would go into his room and he would just, like, study flashcards. You know, and he'd study, you know, he'd study SAT books and, you know, how to get his SAT scores up. And I'd give him a hard time, and he'd be, "Dude, let's go, let's go, let's go throw the football or something." And he was, you know, but he was really diligent with it. And then, I had, you know, was just graduating from high school, and he was taking a lot

• 18:11Speaker 04

  of these entry tests and applying for scholarships. And he got into West Point, the Naval Academy, and the Air Force Academy.

• 18:19Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 18:20Speaker 04

  I mean, just, and it was, what was cool is, like, you know the deal, Sean. You see people on television or whatever, and they're, you see them, you watch, we all love to watch a success story, right? I think that's why people love the Shark Tank so much. They want to root for the underdog. They want to see how it's, how somebody can, you know, go from nothing to something. And it was just cool because I got to watch my little brother do it. Right in front of me and I got to watch the process too. Not really being able to connect the dots on, hey, will this ever amount to anything? Or could we have just been hanging out playing and, you know, running around the neighborhood? And it was really cool to watch him be successful like that because it really opened my eyes to what,

• 19:04Speaker 04

  you know, what was possible if you applied yourself.

• 19:07Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, that's, is he helping with your campaign at all, being an attorney or?

• 19:11Speaker 04

  You know what? He's not, but we have had some, we have had some discussions about that because I know that, you know, if I get the opportunity to go serve in Congress, I know that there will be a lot of legalese, a lot of documents that I have to, you know, look through and having somebody that speaks that language and reads that language and somebody that you trust.

• 19:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:34Speaker 04

  That, that's gonna be huge.

• 19:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I'll bet. Well, at what point did you, I mean seventeen, that's late, you know, in your, in your childhood.

• 19:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:45Shawn Ryan?

  And basically early adulthood, what, at what point did you decide you wanted to be a SEAL?

• 19:54Speaker 04

  So it was right after that time period. I was, I think I was eighteen, nineteen-ish, right around that timeframe. I knew, I knew that I wanted to be in the military. You know, my parents had done a pretty good job, I think, raising us to understand that, you know, freedom isn't free. Even though that's cliche and it gets said all the time. They would point, we grew up in Yuma, there was a Marine Corps air station in Yuma. And I remember them pointing out Marines at our church and even service members all the time

• 20:33Speaker 04

  and being like, hey, those guys do some, those guys do something that's way bigger than themselves. You know, make sure you show them respect. And that was something that always registered with me. And that there were people that, once they became adults, their focus wasn't merely making money.

• 20:56Speaker 04

  Or providing for their families, healthcare, insurance, etc. There were people out there that devoted their lives to something, a service that was so much bigger than them. And that was something that, you know, always resonated with me. And so I thought to myself, that might be something that I want to do when I get older. And so as I was, as I was getting through school and realized I didn't have what it took to play football at the levels that I wanted to play. I started doing a lot of reading and a lot of studying.

• 21:40Speaker 04

  Okay, if I'm, if I'm gonna make this decision, if I'm going to go into the military, what route do I want to go? Because I knew there were a bunch of jobs that you could do. And the special forces community to me was very attractive. One of my favorite authors is a guy named John Eldridge, and he writes this book. It's called Wild at Heart. And he talks about, and it's a faith-based book, but he talks about how the biggest question that every young man has is, do I have what it takes? Do I have what it takes to be a man? Do I have what it takes to be a warrior? Do I have what it takes to be a good husband? Do I have what it takes to be a good father?

• 22:23Speaker 04

  And we're always asking, we've always got that question. And so this was long before I ever read that book, but that was definitely a question that I had. And you might've had the same question yourself.

• 22:38Shawn Ryan?

  I definitely did.

• 22:39Speaker 04

  Did I have, do I have what it takes to hang with the best? Do I have what it takes to make it through the toughest training in the Department of Defense? And initially, the answer was no.

• 22:51Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 22:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. I didn't make it through SEAL training on my first try.

• 22:56Shawn Ryan?

  What, before we go into that, what drew you into the SEALs specifically versus Green Berets or Marine Reconnaissance, PJs?

• 23:09Speaker 04

  So the research that I was doing said that it was the hardest in DOD. Almost, almost across the board said it was the toughest training in the Department of Defense. And the other thing too was I, I loved the water, like I loved swimming.

• 23:31Speaker 04

  Or at least I thought I did. Right? Yeah. Until I got to, you know, SEAL training where they actually use the water. They weaponize it against you to try and break you. And um, so those were a couple of reasons right there. But then as I was researching and looking through, even though the SEALs were considered to be the water specialists, according to liter- literature I was reading, they still did everything that everybody else did as well. And as you get, as you go through that pipeline and then you start working with other groups, you realize that yes,

• 24:12Speaker 04

  certain groups have certain specialties, but I just thought it had a really good variety. And my dad gave me a piece of advice when I was in high school, he said, Eli,

• 24:25Speaker 04

  the trick to being happy in your career is to pick something in life that you would basically do for free. He, he wanted to make sure that I didn't chase something because of money or security. I think that was something that he did and he wanted to make sure that his son didn't do it. And um, and I'm glad that he did because

• 24:48Speaker 04

  I think that's why a lot of, I think that's why a lot of individuals have midlife crisis. Because once they get halfway through their life. They realize that we only go around one time. And life is short. And if you're not living a purpose driven life. If there's not more to your life. Then just paying the bills. And I'm not knocking anybody for doing that because some of the biggest sacrifice. Some of the biggest sacrifices I've ever seen are men and women. Who work a monotonous job that they don't like to provide for their family. And I think that that's fantastic. But I think that you can do, I think you can do that.

• 25:34Speaker 04

  And live a purpose driven life and where there's a mission outside of. It's greater than those things.

• 25:42Shawn Ryan?

  I think you're absolutely right. I I've seen a lot of that with um when I used to train people. You I would get a lot of these. Gents that would come in and they'd be in their 50s, late 40s to early 60s. And. It's it's like they were making up for.

• 26:05Shawn Ryan?

  Lost time, right? You know, they were they were it's almost like there becomes. And this isn't everybody, you know what I mean? But there becomes like this fantasy of what it would have been like if they had done. X, Y, or Z. And in my in my instance, what I was saying was what would it have been like if I would have? If I would have been a SEAL and uh and a lot of that was guys that chased the dollar that became extremely wealthy. And and what I've noticed with people that become extremely wealthy is it just it's like this never ending. Beast that you're just feeding, you know, it's there's never it's never enough. It's never enough. It's never enough. And then they figure out. This is about experiencing things, not money.

• 26:51Speaker 04

  100%.

• 26:52Shawn Ryan?

  You know, so and I'm glad you said that because I've never actually put that into words like you just did. Yeah.

• 26:59Speaker 04

  Interesting. No, it is. I noticed, you know, I noticed that too.

• 27:07Speaker 04

  So I'd be, after failing and then coming back and I became a SEAL at 25. And then I made my first million dollars at 35. And by all accounts, people looking from the outside would be like, oh, man, this guy's got it figured out, man. He's, he's crushing it. He's, but to your point, it's true. I mean, there, it doesn't, I've been poor and I've been wealthy. I'll take wealthy any day, but it, in my opinion, it doesn't fulfill you. Um, and I think that's why you see so many celebrities that they get to this,

• 27:51Speaker 04

  or pro athletes, or whatever it is that you put on a pedestal, they get to this level. And we all think, oh, they've arrived, right? And then they have problems with addiction. Often you'll see suicide. And a lot of it, in my opinion, is, is because when you get to the top, or whatever, whatever that level is for you, or whatever you want to achieve, and you realize you're still the same human being. You still have the same flaws. You still have the same fears, the same, the same anxieties that you did before. Even now, a lot of times they're elevated because it's a lot further fall from the top, right? And, you know, that's why my faith is everything to me.

• 28:33Speaker 04

  Because it's not something that the world can take from me ever. And, um, but yeah, it's just been interesting to be able to experience some of those things and see that, you know, uh, you know, King Solomon talks about it in the, you know, book of Proverbs, how it's all, um, how it's all a waste of time. You know how it's all vanity. It's all, it's, it's all a waste of time. And it's, um, and I know that that probably sounds depressing to a lot of people out there that are chasing it. And I think most of us, we're the type where we need to, we're like, whoa, that's great, Eli, but I'll figure that one out on my own.

• 29:18Speaker 04

  I'm gonna keep, I'm gonna keep chasing this. And, and do chase it. I think that, I think that you should experience it for yourself. But there are so many things that are, you know, bigger in life than, you know, title and money. And, and that's one of the reasons that I know I'm really not worried about. People ask me all the time. They're like, so let's say you become a congressman.

• 29:45Speaker 04

  What makes you think you're not gonna be like everybody else?

• 29:49Speaker 04

  I've seen a lot of things that a lot of people haven't. I've experienced a lot of things that a lot of people haven't. And I know where it leads. And so this isn't, this isn't about another feather in my cap. It's about, once again, service. And it's, once again, this country's in trouble. And it needs the next generation to step up and say, I'll go. I may not be perfect, far from it. I don't have all the answers, but I'll go.

• 30:22Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that's refreshing to hear. Very, all of it, for where you're going, you know, that's, it's like I was saying at the beginning of this, when you, when I talk to politicians, they're always,

• 30:38Shawn Ryan?

  it's, it just never seems genuine.

• 30:40Speaker 04

  It's theater.

• 30:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:41Speaker 04

  It's theater. It's put on, put on the blue suit with the white shirt and the red tie. Get the American pin flag, and this is the approved narrative. This is what you can talk about. And people are sick of it. They really are. It's one of the only reasons I think that a guy like me can even run in, in today's world. Because people are just like, well, he might not, he might not say the politically correct things. He may not look like a politician, but I think he's telling me where he's really at.

• 31:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:16Speaker 04

  You know, and it's like, it's sad, it's sad that it's taken.

• 31:23Speaker 04

  The current events that we we've been experienced to get to this place, but.

• 31:29Speaker 04

  I am grateful to see that it's not just me. There's a bunch of guys that did the same types of jobs that we used to do. That are recognizing how much trouble we're in and they're like, okay. Foreign and domestic, I'll go, I'll go. I can't can't do much worse than the people there now, right?

• 31:54Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 31:55Speaker 04

  So.

• 31:57Shawn Ryan?

  We'll get into that in a little bit, but so you you want you joined, you went to BUDs, you didn't make it the first time. What happened?

• 32:08Speaker 04

  Reality happened.

• 32:11Speaker 04

  No, it's I mean, it's the toughest training in the world and I was immature and I I wasn't well prepared. And because I didn't do what I needed to do to be prepared. And so, uh, you know, it was interesting, man. I I actually made it through hell week. Uh, which I would say the majority of team guys would tell you is the hardest part of training. Some will say it's not. It I guess it just depends on how you look at it. But I made it through that week and then about a week and a half later, I was performance dropped from training.

• 32:52Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 32:53Speaker 04

  Yep. And then.

• 32:55Shawn Ryan?

  What was it?

• 32:57Speaker 04

  What was what?

• 32:57Shawn Ryan?

  Was it the runs or was it?

• 32:59Speaker 04

  It was a combination. I'd failed lifesaving three times.

• 33:03Shawn Ryan?

  Oh.

• 33:03Speaker 04

  And then, um, that I went to an academic review board and they were like, look, we know you're tough. You made it through hell week, but we need the best of the best here and you're not measuring up. They're like, you failed to run, you failed to swim. You failed an obstacle course and you ranked in the bottom 25% of your class.

• 33:26Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 33:26Speaker 04

  Yeah. Which is, I mean, it's like, um.

• 33:31Speaker 04

  That, you know, that's hard. It's hard, it's hard, it's hard, but it's how SEAL training is designed. It's good and I deserved it. And one of the biggest reasons I, I believe I was ranked in the bottom 25% of my class was because I was immature and I wasn't, like if there was a job to be, you know, it's, it, it buds. It's not just a timed runs, timed swims and o, o courses. It's like, hey, we need that office cleaned over there. You know, after hours, once, once the training day is done, who, who wants to get it? You know, my hand wasn't flying up in the air like, hey, I got it. I'm on it. And it was just,

• 34:10Speaker 04

  my, my attitude was more self-preservation than being a team guy and taking one for the team. And I think a lot of the times that comes with maturity and I lacked it. And so I, I absolutely deserved to go away and I'm glad that they, they keep the standards and I hope they always do. I hope they keep those standards high.

• 34:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. How old were you?

• 34:37Speaker 04

  I was 20, 22.

• 34:40Shawn Ryan?

  22?

• 34:41Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 34:42Shawn Ryan?

  Where'd you go?

• 34:43Speaker 04

  I went to the USS Gettysburg in Mayport, Florida. We called it the USS Regrettesburg.

• 34:53Speaker 04

  I thought that might get you, dude.

• 34:55Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man. What were you doing there?

• 34:57Speaker 04

  I was a gunner's mate. So, um, you know, like worked in the armory, um, worked on the ship small arms. And, uh, I did a lot of sweeping. I did a lot of brass polishing, a lot of cleaning. And it was good. It was good for me because I needed to grow up. I needed, you know, I needed that, uh, an extra dose of tough love.

• 35:24Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I've never talked to anybody on this about fleet time.

• 35:28Speaker 04

  Really?

• 35:29Shawn Ryan?

  So let's talk a little bit about fleet time. How long were you in there?

• 35:34Speaker 04

  So they recommended that I come back in a year, the, the SEAL instructors. But, um, if, if the CO from the ship let me go, then he wouldn't get a replacement for me. So they were like, no, we're not letting you go, um, early. And so I did two and a half years onboard the ship. Did two cruises on the ship and, um,

• 36:00Speaker 04

  You know, it's just. It's interesting to me and my hat is off to the men and women in our Navy that do that job for 20 years because it's not an easy life, man. It's not like to me. And guys like us, it's kind of like being on a floating prison. It really is. I mean. Think of a 450 foot boat. With 400 plus people on it.

• 36:31Speaker 04

  You work. If you're underway typically. You work from. Revelies at like six in the morning. Your day will start at seven after chow. You'll go to probably five in the afternoon at least working your day job. And then you'll stand a night watch every night.

• 36:53Shawn Ryan?

  Every night.

• 36:53Speaker 04

  Every night. So you'll stand either the eight.

• 36:57Speaker 04

  To midnight. The midnight to four. Or the four to eight every night. And there's no, there's no like days off on Saturday or Sunday. You're always underway like it's, it's just constant. And so like when you're out for a month at a time, which is, which was very routine for us. I mean, you, you're working a month straight that schedule. And it, it gets to the point where people get burnt out.

• 37:23Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 37:24Speaker 04

  And it's not like the teams where your reputation is based on performance. Per se. It's conventional military. So you don't get in the SEAL teams, you get treated very well.

• 37:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:41Speaker 04

  In, in conventional military, you know, it's a, it's a, it's completely different. So it's to the point where they, you know, at times will have to have eh, like an aft watch that sits at the back of the ship and looks over the back of the ship. You know. For

• 38:01Speaker 04

  you know, other vessels. But also for people that will just jump over the side.

• 38:08Shawn Ryan?

  Did you guys ever have that happen?

• 38:10Speaker 04

  No, we never did, but it did. It happened on other ships. It never happened on our ship.

• 38:17Speaker 04

  But it, it does happen.

• 38:19Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, that's like watching water boil.

• 38:23Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, it's why it's a, it's a wildlife, man.

• 38:29Shawn Ryan?

  Did you get a lot of flak coming from BUDs? Was there a lot of animosity towards you?

• 38:35Speaker 04

  A little bit, and I think one of the biggest reasons is because guys that come from BUDs do not want to be in the fleet. So we have, you, you have an attitude, a chip on your shoulder. And I think that's the biggest thing.

• 38:50Speaker 04

  And al- also, I think there's like, probably a little bit of a superiority complex that comes with it. Like, hey, guys, I wanted to be a SEAL, not do this, not do this job. So I think it, we, they're called BUDs duds. You know, so, or BUDs failures, or whatever you want to say, but I think a lot of it is because of the attitude that BUDs duds show up to the fleet with.

• 39:17Speaker 04

  And I think that that's where a lot of that comes from. And I, I struggled with that attitude as well. Um, I struggled to take ownership of my failure for a while. I remember showing up to the ship and my master chief was talking to me and, um, and he, you know, looking back on it, he was just talking about, he was, I can't remember how the conversation went, but I remember getting defensive and, and talking about how I didn't deserve to be dropped because I'd made it through Hell Week and I never quit.

• 39:55Speaker 04

  And I still hadn't taken ownership of it yet. And I could tell as an older, wiser leader, like he, he knew that there, that I, I, I needed to take some ownership of that. But I wasn't ready to take that ownership yet and because I was immature. And I think that that's one of the greatest things that you can ever.

• 40:21Speaker 04

  Realize is that, hey,

• 40:26Speaker 04

  ninety, ninety-five percent of the time in your life,

• 40:32Speaker 04

  you're where you deserve to be. Now that, now, and I want to preface that with, everybody starts from different places. But once you've been given the opportunity, and that's what I love about America. You know, once you've been given the opportunity to go out and start working on things. We have, we have people in this country. I think I was sharing with you last night at dinner. A third of the millionaires in the United States every year weren't even born here. They're immigrants. Because they come here, they size up the landscape and the situation and they say, you're telling me what I have to do is I have to work my tail off. I have to make really good decisions.

• 41:17Speaker 04

  And I just, I have to sacrifice. And I just do that over and over and over again. And sooner or later, I can, I can live in that house over there. Yeah. And, and the stats show it all the time. A third of the millionaires created in the U.S. every year are immigrants. And that's, that's, to me, that's, that's what I love so much about this place is like, if you're willing to take ownership of where you're at and where you want to go. And if you're less focused on where you start the race from, but just where's the finish line for you? And how, how am I going to get there?

• 41:58Speaker 04

  You can, you can live, you know, you, you can live the American dream. You can be successful here. And

• 42:08Speaker 04

  it, it was the same and it was the same in the teams. Now, everybody can't go into the Navy or the military. I get that, right?

• 42:16Speaker 04

  But, uh, you know, that was just another experience for me. Um, where I realized that if you work your tail off,

• 42:27Speaker 04

  and you're willing to take ownership and you're willing to sacrifice, you can do something great.

• 42:33Shawn Ryan?

  Glad you said that.

• 42:36Shawn Ryan?

  So you went back to Bud's?

• 42:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:39Shawn Ryan?

  After two and a half years, you got off the USS Grattisburg.

• 42:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:45Shawn Ryan?

  How was it showing back up?

• 42:47Speaker 04

  You know, it was interesting because when I was there the first time I was in E3. When I came back, I was in, I believe I was in E4. Maybe an E5. Yeah. I should know that. Yeah, I think I was in E5. I was in E5 when I came back.

• 43:10Speaker 04

  So there was a little bit, little bit difference there in that you had more responsibility. But it was, it was scary for me because um, as a kid, I was diagnosed with asthma or exercise-induced bronchitis. And so um, I was horrible at the runs, like, because my lungs, even after albuterol, like, in albuterol treatment, only function at like 60%

• 43:38Shawn Ryan?

  Oh wow.

• 43:39Speaker 04

  of what, what they're supposed to for their size, right? And um, so like I was, every run, almost every run I passed, like I, I would come in right at, at the bubble. Maybe, maybe 10 seconds to spare, maybe more like, usually like five, like I, remember how you'd hear him counting down on the beach like,

• 44:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:00Speaker 04

  five, four, three, and

• 44:03Shawn Ryan?

  Oh damn.

• 44:04Speaker 04

  crane comes across the finish line. And usually I was dry heaving every time. But um, so the second time I came back, I caught pneumonia, like, right in first phase. And so I failed my first two runs in first phase.

• 44:23Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 44:24Speaker 04

  And I was, so I was, they were like, hey, look, if you fail one more run, you're gone. So here I am, I had just signed orders to come back to SEAL training.

• 44:38Speaker 04

  Knowing that if I didn't make it through, I was gonna have to go back out to the fleet for four more years. Be back on that floating prison. Knowing that I probably would, there, there was a decent chance if I couldn't get over this pneumonia, I wasn't even gonna make it back to where I was the first time. So that, as you can imagine, created, you know, just a lot, I mean, really, there was a lot of anxiety. And a lot of pressure and a lot of fear, just dealing, just knowing that.

• 45:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Damn, you failed the first two. How did you, how did you, uh, I mean, how'd you even get in with that? Did you lie on the medical exam or?

• 45:16Speaker 04

  Well, so like I said, some doctors had said that I had asthma. Some doctors said I had exercise-induced bronchitis. So, um, I told them that I had exercise-induced bronchitis. But by the time I was older, like I could, I could pass the, the, the, the Navy physical, you know, fitness test or whatever, with, with decent scores. And so they're like, okay, yeah. You know, cause they, there, there's, there's a lot of kids that have like breathing issues or asthma when they're younger. And then as they get older, it kinda, you know, levels out quite a bit. And so, um, you know, I, I definitely didn't play it up. I definitely downplayed it like, hey, this isn't, this isn't a big deal at all.

• 46:01Speaker 04

  But it was, it was just something that I really wanted to do. And so, um, you know, I found a way to make it work. And the way I was able to make it work was by getting really light. Um, I walk around probably about usually around two hundred and twenty pounds, but I got my weight down to like one seventy-five. So that I could, you know, just.

• 46:25Shawn Ryan?

  Nimble.

• 46:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, just so I could, my lungs could keep up with a smaller frame, right?

• 46:33Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 46:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:36Shawn Ryan?

  But you made it.

• 46:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, I made it, um,

• 46:41Speaker 04

  and, uh, with, um, Bud's class two, five, six, and then I went, uh, immediately to SEAL Team Three.

• 46:50Shawn Ryan?

  Did you, is that where you wanted to go with Team Three?

• 46:52Speaker 04

  You know, I wanted to go to the West Coast. I really, I don't recall necessarily wanting to go to a certain team. I just wanted to be on the West Coast if possible.

• 47:03Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's take a quick break real quick. I know you went to Chris Kyle's platoon, right?

• 47:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:09Shawn Ryan?

  So we'll talk about, we'll pick up right there when we come back.

• 47:12Speaker 04

  Cool.

• 47:14Shawn Ryan?

  Alright Eli, so we're back from the break. You just showed up to SEAL Team Three. You're in Chris Kyle's platoon. Is he, is he a chief at this point, or?

• 47:23Speaker 04

  So I'm not in Chris's platoon yet.

• 47:26Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 47:26Speaker 04

  So, um, the very first thing, we checked in and SEAL Team Three was deployed. And so, they, they had like a command, like somebody, like a chief that was running stuff at, back at the team. They had also checked in after the team was deployed. And so we would report to him every day. There were like five of us. That went from my bud's class to SEAL Team Three. And so, we were just showing up to the team. We'd clean a little bit. And then, you know, they told us that they were gonna try and send us to some schools while the team was gone.

• 48:04Speaker 04

  Um, and we wouldn't be joining them. And so, I was like, oh, this is, this is good because, um,

• 48:14Speaker 04

  my wife was living in Tucson. She'd just finished up, uh, her degree at the University of Arizona, where I had dropped out of, to join the Navy, years, years before that. And so I was like, oh, great, we can start our life together. And so, I was like, why don't you move out here? And, uh, so she moves out. And, uh, I'm like, they're not gonna send, they're not sending us on this deployment. We're just gonna go to schools. This will be a good little, you know, uh, one of the more chill times, I think, while I'm doing this job. And sure enough, she moves out. Two weeks later, they're like, yeah, yeah, change of plans. You're going, you're gonna, you're gonna deploy, you're gonna go overseas and ju- join up with, you know, one of the deployed,

• 48:59Speaker 04

  uh, task units over there. And so, they had to send us to SERE school first. They sent us to SERE school. I can't remember what, what happened, but the other guys, I think the other four or five guys, they all went to the same SERE class. And then they had flown over before me. And I went like, two weeks after them. I went to SERE school by myself. And then...

• 49:23Speaker 04

  And then I flew over by myself. So that was kind of wild, flying over to a war zone by yourself. You know, no guns, you don't know what, you have no context for what that's gonna look like and so. Uh, but flew over there, joined up with a Bravo platoon at SEAL Team Three. And the OIC was a guy named Rourke Denver.

• 49:47Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, good.

• 49:48Speaker 04

  And, uh, and then, you know, joined that group and it was cool because they, they put us through a little bit of like some fam courses, like making sure that we knew what we were doing. And then they, they started bringing us out on ops, like they, they let us turret gun. They let us carry, you know, the forty-eight, the forty-six, um.

• 50:12Shawn Ryan?

  What year was this?

• 50:14Speaker 04

  So this would have been two thousand and six.

• 50:16Shawn Ryan?

  So it was hot.

• 50:17Speaker 04

  So right, yeah, right as you were getting out, like I was, you know, getting in and, um. So I was in Habania at the time and, uh, it was a, it was a really good experience. And by the, you know, by the end, we were, they were working us into the rotation and just trying to make sure that we were, you know. Because when we, when we went through an SQT, they didn't have, and I'm sure they didn't have for you either, but we didn't have night vision. We didn't have lasers, so all of that stuff we had to, you know, um, kind of learn on the job. But, yeah, it was, I mean, I felt lucky because we knew that we were the only guys in our class that

• 51:01Speaker 04

  were getting into the fight that quickly.

• 51:03Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, so you went straight from Bud's SQT to SEAL Team Three? And roughly about two weeks later, you're on the ground in Iraq.

• 51:12Speaker 04

  So it probably would have been more like a month.

• 51:15Shawn Ryan?

  A month?

• 51:15Speaker 04

  A month and a half, probably, on the ground, but still real quick, real quick.

• 51:20Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. Were you nervous?

• 51:22Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:23Speaker 04

  I, I remember, cause my wife had moved out with me and she, I remember one weekend, like, or right before I left, like she was, you know. She was pretty, pretty upset with me cuz I, I just wasn't present. And my mind was just like, I knew what was in front of me. I knew I'd never been to, into a war zone like that before. I knew I didn't know, and really, any of the guys that were already on the ground, working together in that platoon. Um, and I knew I was flying over by, you know, by myself. And it was just like, that's a lot, you know, that's a lot, and that's where my headspace was, and so.

• 52:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, there was definitely a, you know, a lot of anxiety there.

• 52:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, but, I mean, was it literally just you on a C seventeen and a bunch of?

• 52:18Speaker 04

  No, so, um, some of my flights were civilian flights going over. And they had me dress, you know, they had me dress as a civilian going over. Um, and I can't even remember all the, cuz you have to take multiple flights. But I remember, I just remember the, the final flight, the final flight in, calling somebody. Um, I was given a phone number, called this phone number and, uh, you know, somebody came and picked me up at the airport. And drove me to where I was gonna be. And, you know, it was, it was interesting because.

• 52:57Speaker 04

  Then I showed up and they were like, hey, go talk to, uh, GM one Pierce and, uh, did you, you probably never knew Dave Pierce, man, but. He's probably the raddest ar- armor to ever live.

• 53:09Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 53:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, ginger dude. Like I show up, they're like, yeah, go talk to GM one Pierce about getting a weapon. And so I find who this guy is. I'm like, hey, uh, GM one, I was told I could come, uh, get a weapon from you, where can I get one? And he's like, at the gettin' store. Like he was just a total smart ass right off the bat, and I'm like, who is this guy? And he, you know, just had this straight face, but, you know, you came, you came to appreciate this guy and just love him. He's one of my best friends now, but, um, you know, it was just like, come on, bro, can I get a gun? You know, quit giving me a hard time, just give me a gun, dude.

• 53:52Shawn Ryan?

  What kinda stuff are you guys doing?

• 53:58Speaker 04

  The platoon was doing a lot of sniper over watches and a lot of DAs. And so occasionally we'd get thrown in on some of that. And we were just doing a lot of turret gunning. And as a new guy, obviously all the collateral duties. Make sure that the, you know, make sure that the trucks are gassed up. They're clean. Uh, make sure that the heavy weapons or the crew served weapons are clean. We did, we did a lot of that. We did some FID as well. Um, you know, it was our job to also, when, when the partner force, um, which I'm trying to remember.

• 54:41Speaker 04

  I think it was just some Habania or some, some Iraqi army unit that we were partnering with. When they would come over, they would usually come over a couple of hours before the ops. And I remember, I remember, you know, it was our job to watch them and make sure that they didn't get into anything or go anywhere they weren't supposed to go. And it was funny because we had this little makeshift movie theater. I remember. And, uh, you know, we would, we were told, you guys can let them have one snack. And then, you know, you just put on a movie for them. And, uh, I remember one of my buddies Nate, one day he put on, um, the movie Team America.

• 55:26Speaker 04

  And I mean, just like, I was just like, oh my God, we're going to get in so much trouble for this. But, but it was pretty, it was pretty funny just watching these guys watch Team America, you know? And, uh, so we, we would do a lot of that. We would do a lot of the collateral duties and, uh, you know, every once in a while we got to get in on a pretty cool op.

• 55:46Shawn Ryan?

  What were you guys hitting? Were they, what kind of targets?

• 55:50Speaker 04

  You know, there was, um,

• 55:54Speaker 04

  A lot of, a lot of guys making, you know, V bids, IEDs.

• 55:59Shawn Ryan?

  Factories.

• 56:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, that type of stuff. Um, a lot of, a lot of residents, you know, re- resident homes, just stuff, stuff like that, but, um. Yeah, for, for me, it, I wasn't really, as a, as a new guy that came over three months into deployment, I wasn't involved in, you know, the targeting or the intel side of things at all. It was just like, I was on a need to know basis.

• 56:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, go hit this house.

• 56:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:28Shawn Ryan?

  Were you guys getting in a lot of engagements? Was it a lot of dry holes? Mixtures?

• 56:33Speaker 04

  Um, yeah, I would say, I would say it was, uh.

• 56:43Speaker 04

  It was, I would say it was more like a mixed bag.

• 56:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:46Speaker 04

  You know, definitely, um, you know, definitely, uh. You know, a hairy event here or there, but for the most part, it was just, you know, overwhelming, you know, overwhelming our target or the enemy before they could, you know, do anything. And you, you know how that goes. I mean, when you roll in to somebody's neighborhood with fifteen or twenty team guys. And, I mean, can you ima- can you imagine being on the other side of that?

• 57:20Speaker 04

  It's like, you have two choices. You surrender, or you're dead. That's it. You know, I mean, you might, you might, if you're good, you might get one or two of us, but you're not gonna, you're not gonna survive that. You're just not. And I think you see real quick that most people

• 57:45Speaker 04

  make, make the choice of survival.

• 57:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Walk us through your first op. Like your first real world op. What were you carrying? What were you feeling? What was the anxiety like?

• 57:59Speaker 04

  My first real world op, I was in a turret.

• 58:02Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 58:02Speaker 04

  Yep. I was, I was on a fifty cal. And it was interesting because.

• 58:11Speaker 04

  Have nothing to compare it to. You don't know.

• 58:15Speaker 04

  You don't know what that's gonna be like. You don't know if it, the moment you leave the base, people are gonna be shooting at you.

• 58:23Speaker 04

  And like, I remember, you know, one of the things I noticed was how they would use like telephone lines. To try, you know, down telephone lines to kind of restrict access. And I remember. Spotting at night, you know, down telephone, down telephone lines and guys being like, hey, make sure you, make sure you duck back in.

• 58:47Speaker 04

  And just, you know, holding security for guys while they, while they went and did their mission. But.

• 58:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, I had a, we had a 50 cal. I think I had my M4 in the, in the turret with me, a SIG 226 on my side. And I think my M4 had a Hippoly laser on it.

• 59:07Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, wow, that's.

• 59:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like, they're ba- basically a big infrared spotlight.

• 59:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:15Speaker 04

  With the cross, with the crosshair in the middle of it. And so. You know, it was just pretty wild. That was, you know, for, for me, anyway. Pretty, pretty mundane op. Overall, but just being, you know, a month and a half out of, out of buds. It was pretty cool.

• 59:33Shawn Ryan?

  What do you think your biggest fear was heading out the door for that?

• 59:37Speaker 04

  Just failing, letting the guy down, right? I think they, they had shown so much trust in us to even bring us out on ops without, cause. For the viewers and the listeners out there. Most of the time, you'll go through a year and a half workup before you'll ever go on a deployment. So just the fact that they trusted us to, you know, go on these ops with them and watch their back. Was a big deal and I definitely didn't want to let them down.

• 1:00:05Shawn Ryan?

  Man, it's cool that you said that. You know, I was expecting getting shot, getting blown up. Your biggest fear was letting the team down.

• 1:00:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I mean, that doesn't mean that I didn't have those other fears too, because I did. I knew going in that that the the biggest risk was to get blown up with an IED.

• 1:00:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:28Speaker 04

  And, you know, some would argue that, especially when you're turret gunning, you're you're pretty much the mo- the most vulnerable person, because half of your body's sticking out of the vehicle.

• 1:00:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:39Speaker 04

  Um, but, um, you know,

• 1:00:45Speaker 04

  I'm just grateful that, you know, I got to come home to my family, my kids, and but there there's a flip side to that, too. You know, I mean, you know that

• 1:01:00Speaker 04

  others didn't, and I think that that's been one of the things I think I've struggled with the most, is just some of my buddies that didn't come home and, you know, why, you you you you ask why me? Why did I get to come home and, you know, or or and I it's not, it's maybe a little narcissistic, but even sometimes you let yourself go there and well, if I was there, would it have changed anything, you know?

• 1:01:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Did you guys lose anybody on that deployment?

• 1:01:35Speaker 04

  Um, SEAL Team Three did, yeah. Our platoon did not. But, uh, Task Unit Two, Bruiser,

• 1:01:46Speaker 04

  probably, I don't know, maybe a month after I was there, Mark Lee was killed. He was the first SEAL killed in Iraq, and he was killed down in Ramadi, which was like thirty miles from us. And then, so, we had worked that night as well, and I remember coming back.

• 1:02:05Speaker 04

  And I don't remember if I was on the op or if I if I stayed back, but I just remembered we just hot washed the trucks, brought them back, got them ready, because by that point, we knew that, um, one of our guys had been killed right down the road, and so we just, you know, regassed up the trucks, got them cleaned, and then we convoyed down to MSR Michigan to Ramadi um, for the, uh, memorial service. We we held like a little memorial service there and, um...

• 1:02:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, that, you know, I remember um, kind of feeling like a fish out of water because I'd never met Mark. And um, he was a, he was a new guy like me with, that was his first deployment.

• 1:02:58Speaker 04

  But I remember wanting to show respect.

• 1:03:04Speaker 04

  You know, to the, to the older guys and to his brothers who knew him.

• 1:03:09Speaker 04

  And uh,

• 1:03:12Speaker 04

  yeah, I mean, it was, it was pretty, it was pretty crummy because not long after, I think it was um, Ryan Jobe was shot. I think in that same, I believe in that same uh,

• 1:03:31Speaker 04

  engagement and he was shot in the face.

• 1:03:35Speaker 04

  And um,

• 1:03:38Speaker 04

  and both of those were new guys.

• 1:03:41Speaker 04

  And so as a new guy, you're thinking to yourself, well, is it because they're not wired tight? Is it because they're not doing, you know, wh- wh- why is it new guys that keep getting hit? And so you're, you, you're running the math in your head. And it wasn't, but maybe another month and a half later that Mikey Mansour in that same deployment was killed as well, another new guy. And so I just remember, you know, thinking, hey, you know, the odds are that it, it's gonna be, you know, if, if somebody gets killed in this unit, it's, for whatever reason, it's gonna be one of us.

• 1:04:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:24Speaker 04

  But um, and I know that that's silly, but you, you do start, you do start picking up on the trend, right?

• 1:04:39Speaker 04

  But yeah, I mean, it's, it makes it real, really quick when guys at the team, you know, are dying.

• 1:04:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:48Shawn Ryan?

  So you wrapped up that deployment?

• 1:04:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:50Shawn Ryan?

  Actually, you know what, if, if you're willing to talk about it, what was that memorial like? Cause I've heard of guys having Viking funerals out there on, you know, in country and, and if you don't, then that's perfectly fine.

• 1:05:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, I just remember.

• 1:05:10Speaker 04

  I can't, I can, all I can remember was.

• 1:05:16Speaker 04

  All I can remember was us, an anxiety level because guys were pissed, guys were furious. And I'm like this new guy, Pion, who just, you know, wants to show respect and not, you know, make anything about, make anything about me and just like, head down, you know, um.

• 1:05:44Speaker 04

  I remember.

• 1:05:47Speaker 04

  Like I, I think I walked up to the casket or something and, uh, I can't, we were supposed to do, we were supposed to do something, but I can't remember if we were supposed to salute it or, or, or what we were supposed to do, but, um. Some, somebody came up to me afterwards and had, you know, said something like I didn't show enough respect or something like that. And I was like, uh, well, man, I apologize, dude, you know, and, um. But it was, it was one of those, it was one of those moments, I think, where guys are, guys are pissed off. They're looking to take it out on somebody and when you're a new guy in the team, like you are, you are a prime target.

• 1:06:29Speaker 04

  Um, but I, I, I do remember they were playing music in the background and, you know, one of the, uh, one of the songs they played was Crazy Game of Poker by O A R. And, uh, I remember that because it was one of my favorite songs, um, but, you know, I just.

• 1:06:50Speaker 04

  You know, I just felt, I felt awful for Mark and his family. I knew that he was married at the time. Um, and I felt awful for the, the other dudes that just lost their brother. And I felt awful that I'd never got a chance to meet him just because, you know, I'd heard so many good things about him. One of the cool, one of the coolest things, cause I've got a chance to, uh, be, become pretty close with Mark's mom, Debbie.

• 1:07:18Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, really?

• 1:07:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, Mama Lee. She's an amazing woman and she still does a lot today for the community. Um, and, uh, one of the coolest things that I learned about Mark was that he would carry the forty-eight without a sling. And if you've ever carried a Mark forty-eight machine gun for longer than five minutes, you'll realize really quick that you want to sling on that thing.

• 1:07:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:42Speaker 04

  Or to put the carrying handle like in your carabiner on, on your kit, but he wouldn't, he wouldn't do it. Like he was just a beast.

• 1:07:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:50Speaker 04

  And I'm like, you know, that made me respect him a lot.

• 1:07:53Shawn Ryan?

  He was my, uh, headmate and buds when I showed up for a while.

• 1:07:55Speaker 04

  Was he?

• 1:07:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. He was really humble, uh, cool guy to be around.

• 1:08:02Speaker 04

  Was he?

• 1:08:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:04Shawn Ryan?

  But.

• 1:08:07Shawn Ryan?

  So you wrapped up that deployment, you come home.

• 1:08:11Shawn Ryan?

  Back with the wife.

• 1:08:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:13Shawn Ryan?

  How's that going?

• 1:08:15Speaker 04

  Uh, it was, um, it wasn't good. It wasn't good. Um, and, and, and the, the biggest, I think one of the biggest reasons it wasn't good was because of immaturity. Uh, you know, on both of our parts, but, um, we also,

• 1:08:37Speaker 04

  we had also just had, it's like pretty close. After I got back, I got put into Chris Kyle's platoon immediately. And then during.

• 1:08:48Speaker 04

  Um, during ULT, I think it was, we had our first kid. And so not only did I have Chris Kyle as my O P O, who loved to just hammer new guys, like he, like he loved it. Um, and so I had that going on at work every day. And then I'd come home and I had a newborn in, you know, in my bedroom at night. And so you combine that with immaturity and two people that are trying to figure out how to be married and, and live together. Um, you know, it was just on, on top of, you know, I would say some, you know, extra stress that comes with that job.

• 1:09:32Speaker 04

  And, you know, it was a combination for,

• 1:09:40Speaker 04

  I don't know what a good word is, maybe dysfunction.

• 1:09:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:45Speaker 04

  Yeah. And it's not like, you know, it's not, I'm not saying it was, I'm not saying it was always bad or anything like that. But one of the things, Sean, that I want to do for the rest of my life, man, is I just want to try and bless other people and help other people, man. Because when you front and when, when it's always a facade and you're always trying to put on this like, oh, everything's hunky dory all the time, you're not helping anybody.

• 1:10:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:12Speaker 04

  And most of the people out there watching this right now, that's not their reality. They're struggling with something, you know, and it, it took, it took me and my wife a while, like, um, probably took 10 years before I felt like we had a good marriage.

• 1:10:30Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:10:30Speaker 04

  And I didn't know that that would ever even, I didn't, I was at the point where I didn't know that that would, was even possible. Like it was even in the cards for me. You know how you have a certain experience for even a year or two? And you're like, oh, this is probably what it's going to be like. You know, there's probably no changing this. Well, when, when you've been at something for 10 years and it's like,

• 1:10:54Speaker 04

  At best, good. Most often, it's

• 1:11:00Speaker 04

  mediocre. You're like, this is the ceiling. I mean, this is, this is the reality. And so, um, yeah, I mean, at that point, it was, it was tough because there were just a lot of new, brand new dad. I didn't even want to be a dad while I was in the, in the military because I didn't want to be, um, I don't want to be away from my kids and I didn't want to be an absentee father. So now we've got a newborn, sleeping in our room every night, go in, dealing with one of the biggest hazers known to man. He like, you know, and it was just like, talk about walking around it on eggshells at work.

• 1:11:42Speaker 04

  I mean, I don't know what your platoons were like. I don't know what your new guys, your new guy experience was like, but when, you know, I had, I had buddies that we graduated where there were a couple of doors down in a different platoon and they're like, no, man, it's chill. You know, we don't get messed with much and not us, bro.

• 1:11:58Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 1:11:59Speaker 04

  Oh dude, yeah. It was like, we were always like watching each other's back. I mean, it was always like, it's almost like you resume swim buddy rules, like, hey, don't, don't go in there without a swim buddy, you know? Could get out of control quick, but you know, looking back on it, man, it's, it was, it was good in ways just because what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

• 1:12:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. What was he doing?

• 1:12:27Speaker 04

  I mean, it was just like, um, you know, it was, it was like, uh, there were a lot of, a lot of rules, right? A lot of rules. Like I remember one of the rules was, you know, you have a crazy, you have a crazy week, you know, training or whatever, and then you get a. Go home, spend time with your family on the weekends, right? But that not in my platoon, bro. Like you had to be, the rule was you were supposed to be at any bar in San Diego within twenty minutes, ready to buy, buy a beer, get choked out and clean up puke out of the, the, you know, the, the, the restroom.

• 1:13:06Speaker 04

  Like, I remember and having like, it didn't matter if you and your wife had like a date night and you guys needed some ti- you know, some time. Date night? No. Get your ass down here. Be at, be at Danny's in fifteen minutes. And it was just like, it was just like, thankfully, because I had a newborn at home and Chris like was big on family. He let me off the hook more than the other guys, but, because I was the only guy, uh, there was only like, I think two or three guys in that platoon that even had kids. So Chris did like, you know, he did give me a little leeway because I had, I had a kid.

• 1:13:46Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 1:13:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:13:49Shawn Ryan?

  Did you go to sniper school at that platoon?

• 1:13:52Speaker 04

  Well, this gives me another great opportunity to talk about failure.

• 1:13:56Shawn Ryan?

  Perfect.

• 1:13:57Speaker 04

  Yeah. Um, so I, uh, I, I tr- I did go to sniper school, but I didn't make it through sniper school. I made it through pick and then scout and I didn't qualify. Um, with the, uh, with, with the M four.

• 1:14:15Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, good.

• 1:14:16Speaker 04

  And so you have to qualify, um, expert to, to move on and I didn't qualify. So, that was, that was hard because I came back and basically, you know, I had to tell Chris that, you know, that I'd let him down. Because he, uh, he, I was the only one that he sent.

• 1:14:35Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man.

• 1:14:36Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, you can imagine.

• 1:14:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, especially of all the snipers out there to have to tell that to.

• 1:14:42Speaker 04

  Yep. Yep.

• 1:14:43Shawn Ryan?

  Chris Kyle.

• 1:14:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:44Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:14:45Speaker 04

  It, it was rough, man. Um, and I mean, you want to talk about like feeling like a complete turd? You know, I did. And.

• 1:14:57Speaker 04

  Thankfully, I got the opportunity um during the next workout to uh go back through and they didn't make me, they didn't make me go through pick and scout. They just let me go to sniper sniper school once I qualified.

• 1:15:11Shawn Ryan?

  No, nice. For those listening, sniper school, I don't know if it still is, but it used to be broken up into three portions and so.

• 1:15:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:15:19Shawn Ryan?

  Pick was learning a lot of taking pictures, sending them over a secure net, over satcom, radios, all that kind of stuff, right? Scout is all stalking. So basically learn all the reconnaissance type stuff, building high sites, all that kind of stuff before you actually get to the shooting portion.

• 1:15:41Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:15:41Shawn Ryan?

  Correct?

• 1:15:42Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:15:42Shawn Ryan?

  Cool.

• 1:15:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, and um you know, man, it's it's crazy like when you look at

• 1:15:52Speaker 04

  just like scout, for example, like stalking, you know. The second, when I was going through sniper school this the second time, um and I actually got into the third portion, which is actually the sniper portion where you all you do is shoot. But you you still have to do some stocks and then some live fire, um some live fire shots um in the midst of it. It's it's wild when you just look at what you have to do. For for the audience out there, I'll give you like an idea of like what uh I remember out in Atterbury, Indiana, which is where we do our sniper portion, they had this like

• 1:16:36Speaker 04

  this grass stock and it's a thousand yards. And so you don't have, you didn't really have, I mean, it you when you when you show up, when you show up, like they drop you off on the edge of this field and then you have to, you the the instructors will be a thousand yards away where the targets are. And so most of it is just grass and it's like, you know, probably about probably about that high. And there's a there's a tree here or there, but most of it's just grass. And so you'll spend and you had to get within, I think it was like three hundred yards of your target. And you don't have a rangefinder, so the only thing you can use to range is your, the, the reticle in your scope, your night force scope,

• 1:17:20Speaker 04

  which is what we had at the time. And so what you would do is you'd basically spend three hours crawling in, in the grass so that they couldn't see you. And you would have a drag bag, so you'd have your, your gun tied to your body, tied to, tethered to your body. And you would drag, you would drag your gun so that it wouldn't create, like, you wouldn't wear it as a backpack to create like a bigger profile, so that they could see you. So you have like forty guys on this grass stock that, you know, you all take off at the same time. You, you know, you've got four hours. You've got to get within, build an FFP or like a final firing position within like three hundred yards

• 1:18:01Speaker 04

  of the target. You've got a bunch of instructors at the other end. All of them have spotting scopes. And they know where you're starting from. They know what time you're starting. And so all they're doing is just burning the, the field, like looking at the field. And then behind you, you have what they call walkers, which are other instructors. And so how it works is you, everybody takes off. And guys are like, you know, looking at the field. Is there any dead space? Are there any like high points of ground that I can use to stay behind so that these guys over here can't see me? And everybody takes off. And you hope you pick a good, you hope you pick a good route to, to start going down because sometimes it's hard to tell like

• 1:18:43Speaker 04

  what the terrain's gonna look like five, six hundred yards down the road. Um, and so, um, you take off. And if they, if you hear a whistle blows, everybody has to freeze right where you're at. Cause the instructor had, the instructors down on the spotting scope have seen something. And so what they'll do is, is they'll be like, okay, um, and they, so what they'll do is they'll put the spotting scope on one of the walkers, one of the instructors that's just walking the field with, with the snipers that are moving through. And I'll be like, okay, say you're a walker. All right, Sean, I got a, I got a, I got a student. He take, take twenty paces forward, instructor Sean. And so you'll take twenty paces forward.

• 1:19:25Speaker 04

  And then they'll be like, okay, come right five paces and then you'll come right five paces. Be like, okay, back two paces left. And then you'll take two paces left, okay? And then he'll be like, all right, there's a sniper at your feet. I can't, I know, I know that's where I saw him duck in. And if if you if there is a student, you know, right right at his feet within a couple of feet of him, that's one hit. Right? And so you can only get, I think you can only get three hits. Per stock? Per stock. And you can you can't get you can't get the same you can't get the same hit twice. If you get the same hit, like if.

• 1:20:04Speaker 04

  And it gets a lot harder than that because even even that's even that's difficult, but then once once, you know. Um, you get within three hundred yards, that's where or within within that. Range where you have to build a final firing position and take a shot. This is when it gets really hard. Because now you start building a final firing position and so you've got clippers on you, you know, you're. You're vegging up, you're taking veg that matches the environment that you're in and you're stuffing it in your ghillie suit. You're preparing your hat and you're doing it all like really slowly so that the because these guys. Movement will pick up quicker than anything else in their spotting scope.

• 1:20:50Speaker 04

  And so you find try and find a good find. Uh, bush or something to get into or even just some tall grass and you're moving really slowly um. To try and make sure that there's not, you know. That that there's enough veg in between you and them to where once they start burning the area, they won't be able to see you, but. Once you say, okay, I feel good about my spot. I've got enough. Related veg in my in my ghillie suit. Um. Yeah, I'm I'm ready to take my shot. I don't think that they're gonna be able to see me once they start burning this area. What they'll do is they'll. You you'll be like, oh, say I'm the sniper, I'll be like, all right, shooter ready. And I'll I'll call out because I'm still three hundred yards from them, right?

• 1:21:35Speaker 04

  So they can't hear really my voice very well. So I'll be like, hey, instructor Sean, I'm I'm ready to take my shot. And they'll be like, okay, so you'll come up over the radio and you'll be like, all right. I've got a shooter that's ready and you'll make sure that you're not close to me yet. You'll make sure that you're 10 yards from me. And then you'll say, okay, I got a shooter that's ready. And so what the instructor started doing is they start, they know that there's a shooter 10 yards from you. He can't be further than 10 yards. And so they start burning the bushes, the grass. Can they see anything? Can they see a glint off of your scope? Can they see like a piece of your shoulder that you didn't veg up or whatever? And they'll be like, okay, you know, um, move to five, five yards and then instructor Sean, you know, will move five yards from the shooter.

• 1:22:20Speaker 04

  And now they'll start burning five yards around the instructor. It gets worse. And if they hit you, if they see you at any point, that's a, you know, that's one hit. In your FFP for, you know, being visible to them. So if you get one more, you're done. So then they'll be like, okay, move within two feet. The, so the instructor moves like to where he's like right on top, damn near right on top of you. And as you're laying there behind your gun, you're like. Of course they're gonna see me. I mean, you're damn near standing right on top, right on top of me, but that's how it works. And you have to be so well concealed that. Even when he's two feet from you, they can't see anything. And it's not done yet because then you still have to take your shot.

• 1:23:03Speaker 04

  And it either, whether it's a live fire shot or it's a blank shot, you, you have to set things up. Cause when your gun, when, when you shoot a shot, it expels a lot of the gases, right? So if they see, if they see grass move, right? Or anything, that's a hit. And so, and, and it's still not over because you have to be within 10% of what you ranged that shot at. So you have to do, you have, there's no, there's no rangefinder. You're using the reticle in your scope. To um, range how far they are from you. And if you're, if you're um, more than 10% off.

• 1:23:46Speaker 04

  You, you fail. And so it's, yeah, and that's just this, that's just the, that's just the stalking, some of the stalking portion.

• 1:23:55Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:23:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:23:57Shawn Ryan?

  That's wow.

• 1:23:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's it's legit, man. It it really is cuz like especially once you've been like. Not all the stocks were grass stocks where you had to crawl the entire time, but I remember one of them was a, you know, no kidding it. Uh, a grass stock there was a thousand yards and you you crawled, you had to crawl for like three hours just to get up. I mean, that crawl for crawl for thirty minutes and let me know how you're feeling.

• 1:24:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:25Speaker 04

  You know, and you know, it's it's it's impressive what what the uh, the guys have to go through to get through.

• 1:24:35Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. So if you get three hits on the same stock, you're done?

• 1:24:39Speaker 04

  Yep, you filled the stock.

• 1:24:40Shawn Ryan?

  Cuz it seems like, I mean, whatever, you know, I mean, they're producing the best snipers out there, but. It seems like if you get caught right off the bat, I mean, and you're crawling.

• 1:24:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:24:53Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, you're not gonna, they could just track you.

• 1:24:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:24:56Shawn Ryan?

  The whole time.

• 1:24:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's it's.

• 1:24:58Shawn Ryan?

  So if they don't want you there, you're you're gone.

• 1:25:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, I I I think there's some, you know, I noticed that um, hunters did really well.

• 1:25:10Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 1:25:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, guys that were just used to, you know, always trying to outsmart the game and, you know, be camouflaged. Um, really well, I I noticed that they just did guys that really. Spent a lot of time out in the field hunting seemed to do really well at sniper school, which which was pretty cool to see.

• 1:25:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, makes a lot of sense.

• 1:25:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:25:33Shawn Ryan?

  How many guys made it through that?

• 1:25:37Speaker 04

  You know? We had a pretty, pretty high attrition rate. We actually lost, I wanna say five or six guys not be. We lost a couple because of sniper school, but we lost probably four or five guys because of a van fight.

• 1:25:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, no kidding like they some guys went to I think Bloomington, Indiana where IU is and got into a van fight coming back and just destroyed the van and they the cadre wasn't having it even though the guys were like we'll pay for it out of our own pocket. And so a bunch of dudes got shipped home.

• 1:26:20Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, typical team guy shit.

• 1:26:22Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:26:24Shawn Ryan?

  Did you guys have Murph there teaching?

• 1:26:27Speaker 04

  Nope.

• 1:26:28Shawn Ryan?

  Murphy, no, I was curious. So you went back to the team.

• 1:26:33Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:26:34Shawn Ryan?

  I guess if you want, we can breeze over that second deployment. You went back to the team as a sniper.

• 1:26:41Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:26:41Shawn Ryan?

  And then, and then what?

• 1:26:44Speaker 04

  Um, yeah, and then uh, it was unfortunate in ways because by that point, um, we were no longer allowed to even carry our weapons on ops.

• 1:26:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, so, yeah, so, um, it was 2010 and we were turning over. This was my third and final deployment in the teams. We were turning over, um, with the Iraqi, um, with the Iraqis and they, you know, they wanted to deescalate everything.

• 1:27:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:21Speaker 04

  And so snipers don't typically do that. And so we weren't, we, we weren't doing sniper overwatches anymore. The mid majority of what we were doing was DA's, a bunch of FID. Um, and one of the biggest missions we had on that deployment was to try and find, um,

• 1:27:43Speaker 04

  a guy that was MIA or KIA and they hadn't, they hadn't found his body yet. And it was, uh, Major Troy Gilbert.

• 1:27:53Shawn Ryan?

  Oh.

• 1:27:54Speaker 04

  He was an F-16 pilot and, uh, he was, uh, shot down over Fallujah. He was bailing out some, uh, SF guys that were in a pretty, pretty bad tick. I think back in 06. I think that that's when, when this whole thing went down and he got, his F-16 got shot down. And they, they got to the crash, crash site and there was enough.

• 1:28:22Speaker 04

  You know, like blood in the cockpit that they thought there was a good chance he was dead, but they weren't sure. But his body wasn't there. And so.

• 1:28:34Speaker 04

  They embedded a guy with us and I can't remember what, who exactly he worked for. He was a former SF guy, but. His job was to help try and bring any KIA MIA guys home. And so. We spent a good deal of that deployment looking for the major.

• 1:28:54Shawn Ryan?

  Did you get him?

• 1:28:56Speaker 04

  We didn't.

• 1:28:58Speaker 04

  They did get him. Uh, I, I think it was a group of team guys, maybe two years later, finally, finally brought his remains home, but. It was pretty cool. I got, I've got to meet his wife, um. Ginger and their kids. Um, dude, it was crazy, man. He had like five kids. And, uh, he had two twin baby girls that were like less than one when he was killed.

• 1:29:21Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 1:29:22Speaker 04

  And they are the kindest, sweetest people you've ever met. And I felt I. I, I remember I was at an event in Scottsdale, it was like a golf tournament, like raffle or something. And, uh. I think we, we donated some products to be raffled off and they asked if I wanted to come up and be a part of it. And I didn't. I didn't really know who was gonna be there, but when they were like, oh. Um, Gold Star, um, this Gold Star family's gonna be here. And, uh, I. You know, did the math, put the name together and I was like, oh, man, that's. Uh, a part of me wanted to tell, you know, tell her, hey, there, there really are guys overseas looking for your husband.

• 1:30:07Speaker 04

  Um, but I, I, I didn't.

• 1:30:12Speaker 04

  Felt a little torn. I didn't wanna.

• 1:30:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:16Speaker 04

  Bring up any of, you know, like upset or anything like that, but I I went and it I decided to go introduce myself and I introduced myself to her and I told her, hey, I there are guys looking for your husband. I know we were we were looking for your husband and she was just the sweetest lady. I'd ever met and she was, I could tell she was glad to hear that because I know they get told that by a lot of people. Like a lot of high ranking folks, but to actually have somebody that was on the ground, you know, um. Watching, you know, sledgehammers and pickaxes go into concrete slabs in case he was buried underneath it. You know, I think you could tell it meant.

• 1:30:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:59Speaker 04

  Something to him.

• 1:31:00Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, how where did they find him, do you know?

• 1:31:03Speaker 04

  It was like in the same area that we were, it was in the same, within the same area that we were working in, so it was kind of. You know, unfortunate, but I'm just glad that they found him.

• 1:31:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:14Speaker 04

  I did feel bad for the family, though, because I think that they had like three, you know. Three funerals for him. And I'm just glad they finally got to, you know, they finally got to, uh.

• 1:31:31Speaker 04

  Actually bring his remains home, you know.

• 1:31:35Shawn Ryan?

  Was he?

• 1:31:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, he was dead.

• 1:31:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, was he? Did they fucking mutilate him or anything?

• 1:31:43Speaker 04

  You know, I didn't, I didn't hear, I didn't, I didn't hear about that and I'm kind of glad I I didn't hear about it because. I remember when they were giving us the brief on, hey, you guys are going to be looking for the major. Um, I remember they showed us pictures of his kids. And and his family and that was something that always got to me, like. You know, even when even was even when Chris was killed, like I remember being fine. What, you know, through the memorial service, but he, as soon as I saw pictures of his kids, man. Because they don't get to choose.

• 1:32:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:22Speaker 04

  You know, they now they go through life without a dad and that just hurts, man.

• 1:32:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah, that's something that always got me at the at the memorial services when. See a five year old get a folded up flag handed to him.

• 1:32:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:32:40Shawn Ryan?

  And the bagpipes playing, but, uh.

• 1:32:46Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take a break.

• 1:32:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 1:32:50Shawn Ryan?

  Alright Eli, we're back from the break. We had a little discussion and I was gonna go right into kinda your transition and reintegrating into civilian life, but you'd brought up a specific story, so let's cover that real quick. It was on your first deployment?

• 1:33:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. You know, sometimes people will ask me, like, did you get, were you ever scared? And the answer is yeah, I was. And one of the, one of the times that was the scariest for me was actually on a sniper overwatch on my first deployment where we started getting mortared. And so to like, kinda unpack, unpack that, typically we would, you know, we'd,

• 1:33:48Speaker 04

  we'd go in at night and we would take a house that we thought would give us good sightlines for whatever we wanted to watch. And one, one day we were watching, I think we were watching MSR Michigan for people planning V-bids, or not V-bids, I'm sorry, IEDs. And we also knew that some partner forces were gonna be patrolling through that area, so we wanted to make sure that if they came under contact that we could support them. And so I remember we came in, you know, in the middle of the night, there was a family in the house. And when, when there is, and there often was, you, you can do a couple

• 1:34:32Speaker 04

  of things. You can either, you can either make them stay in the house, or you can let them, you can let them go. And either way, especially at that point in the war that was in 2006, the locals kinda knew what was going on, whether you let them out or you kept them, because they would kinda do, check in on people, because they knew that type of stuff happened. Like if, if the Ryan family didn't come out, send their kids to school by, you know, 0800, they knew there was a good chance the Americans were in their house, right? Or if you let them go, they're probably gonna tell people, hey, there's Americans in our house. And so...

• 1:35:12Speaker 04

  I remember going in there and then, you know, taking this house that we thought had good sightlines. And then um getting all getting all set up and ready to go for the next day. And as a new guy, you know, my job wasn't to be on a sniper rifle. My job was to hold security. And so I remember my job was to watch the west side of the house. And so they, you know, I found a good spot by by a window, a little bit back into the room where I could watch. You know, pretty much everything that was going down on the left side of the house. And, you know, I took off a lot of my gear. I just had like my frags like laid out laid out by, you know, by the window.

• 1:35:57Speaker 04

  And I had a mark forty eight machine gun. And um, you know, as the sun came up and most of our snipers, we probably had four or five snipers on the op. Most of them were facing north, watching this MSR Michigan, you know, road that was out in front of the house. And uh, I remember, I don't, I don't know, maybe, maybe, I don't know. Maybe an hour or so after daylight, one of our snipers took a shot. Killed, you know, killed a bad guy. And then probably, you know, probably three or more, three or four more times. Our sniper started, just started engaging people.

• 1:36:42Speaker 04

  I remember one of them, you know, one of them shot this uh, this guy in this car.

• 1:36:53Speaker 04

  Uh, on my side of the house where I could see it like he it was uh, shot him through a car windshield, like the front, the front windshield. I remember looking out the side of my window and sure enough, this right in the driver's side, you know, front of this windshield had a big old spider spider vein bullet hole in it. And this guy was dead. One of our snipers shot him through the head. And um, it was, it was in, it was, it got pretty eerie really quick because um, he, they, the sniper shot him right in front of a school. Oh. And so within, and I was, so I was watching this, everybody's amped up, shots are being fired.

• 1:37:38Speaker 04

  We're starting to kill bad guys. And I remember, um, probably 10 minutes later, a bunch of women and children, first a couple of women, or a couple of kids, I think, came out, saw it. And then the screaming started, right? These women and children are just screaming and crying. And then I remember them pulling his dead body out of the car and pulling him into the school. And my spidey senses were through the, started going through the roof. It just made so, like, my spidey senses knew.

• 1:38:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:08Speaker 04

  They were like, there's no, there's no better way

• 1:38:14Speaker 04

  to start a fight than to rile up women and children. Because as they get riled up, emotions start getting riled up and then people want revenge. And I just knew it. I knew we were gonna get hit. And so, sure enough, like 45 minutes later, you know, the small arms start. You know, first it's indirect, you can just hear it cracking over, you know, cracking over the heads. And, uh, and then it starts getting more direct and you can start to hear it, you know, you know, um, hitting the building a little bit. And, uh, you know, all, everybody's on full alert, just ready to rock and roll.

• 1:38:52Speaker 04

  And I don't know, maybe 10 or 15 minutes later, the first more, hear it pop up in the air. And, uh, there's a guy named Mike, um, one of our snipers, who was on the same level as me. We weren't on the roof, we were on the, the level below the roof. And he had, he had propped his Mark 11 up on a desk and that's what he was using as his platform.

• 1:39:17Shawn Ryan?

  Mark 11's a sniper rifle, for those that don't know.

• 1:39:20Speaker 04

  Mark 11 is like a, it's like a sniperized AR-10 or a 762 magazine-fed sniper rifle. It with, with a suppressor on it. And, uh, I remember Mike, Mike was a badass, like, Mike was, you know, tough as nails, but definitely the type of guy you don't wanna mess with. And I remember as soon as that first, um, You know, mortar round popped up in the air. I heard Mike's voice change. And he yells over to me, he's like, "Take cover." And, uh, and I was like, "If Mike's telling me that, and I can hear it in his voice, this is serious." And so, first, first mortar round comes up, you know,

• 1:40:05Speaker 04

  hear it, hear it explode, not a direct hit. And then they just start popping these mortar rounds up in the air. And I'll tell you, Sean, I don't think I've ever been as scared in my life because it is like the movies, man, you know, you, you can hear those things whistling through the air. And the difference, like when you get shot at, it happens so fast, you don't really have time to be scared. Right? But with, with, when mortar rounds incoming, like, and you can hear those things whistling for five, six seconds in the air, the whole time you're thinking, is this it? I wonder if, if this, you know, if this is a direct hit, this hits, hits this house, we're done. And, uh, thankfully, um,

• 1:40:50Speaker 04

  these guys really didn't want it. I could tell they didn't want an extended fight. They kind of wanted to, to just, um, see if they could hit us with the mortar rounds and then, and then get the hell out of here so we didn't pinpoint their location and kill them, but, um, cause I think they only launched like four or five mortar rounds. One of them, I do remember one of them though hit on the west side of the house, probably like 60 yards from my window and frag, you know, flew up and through the window. And that, you know, that was, you know, pretty, pretty close, but I'm just glad that, you know, they, they were off on their, on their shots, but then, um,

• 1:41:30Speaker 04

  our AOIC at the time called in already and, uh, from, uh, I think from, from Habania. And that was pretty cool to hear the big guns start, you know, start going off in the distance and then the tree line that we thought we were taking, um, the mortars from, you know, started getting, started getting rocked and, and the fight, the fight was over at that point, but that's always, that's a scary feeling, man. Not only, not only hearing mortar rounds, you know,

• 1:42:03Speaker 04

  You know whistle whistle through the air and not knowing where they're gonna hit and you're taking small arms fire but like when you're when you're in a sniper overwatch or a situation like that you're you're usually in one of the worst neighborhoods on planet earth and there's like ten to fifteen of you and you're in somebody else's city and you're constantly thinking how many how many bad guys can they muster to send at us?

• 1:42:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:28Speaker 04

  And if you know when you know that you're probably not gonna get extracted till nightfall because nobody wants to risk the vehicles in in the daylight which you know we didn't always own we usually own the night you know that we you we could be in for it you know for a while.

• 1:42:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it's that it's like a feeling I've been in a couple of similar situations and it's like the feeling of helplessness you there's nothing you can do.

• 1:42:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:42:58Shawn Ryan?

  You can't figure out where it's coming from if you can like it's the tree line you can't

• 1:43:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:43:05Shawn Ryan?

  There's no target to shoot you're just gonna eat it and hope it stops soon you know hope you don't eat it and hope it stops soon and there's it's completely out of your control.

• 1:43:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:43:20Shawn Ryan?

  But yeah damn.

• 1:43:25Shawn Ryan?

  How did you guys get out of there?

• 1:43:27Speaker 04

  Uh like I said um they I think I think on that op we were gonna stay for a couple of days but I think they decided to pull us I think they pulled us that night and as soon as it as soon as it got nightfall um we uh we went to a rally point and and uh you know the our guys came in and picked us up.

• 1:43:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, but other team guys or?

• 1:43:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:43:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:43:58Shawn Ryan?

  Damn and when you say ten to fifteen guys they're spread out in different OPs right?

• 1:44:05Speaker 04

  On that one we were all in the same we were all in that one we were all in the same house but yeah that does happen sometimes where you spread them out but I want to say there were probably, there were probably ten, twelve guys on that op. Okay. And then we had a, our partner force was downstairs, holding, holding security.

• 1:44:26Speaker 04

  But yeah, it was, uh, you know, it was an interesting, you know, definitely. That was probably, it, it wasn't the closest call I've ever had, but it was the most scared I've ever been be, in, in combat, just because. The anticipation factor that come with mortars and you just being able to hear it for five, six seconds before it hits somewhere and you're wondering where it's gonna hit. That, you know, that. Yeah. What was the closest call?

• 1:45:02Speaker 04

  The closest call would be, would have been on my next, on my, on my next platoon, my third and final platoon. And we, uh, we got ambushed by three, three guys at about a hundred and ten yards. And, and I was like laying in the street, nowhere to go, just watching tracer rounds just fly over us. Oh shit. Yeah, it was, it was pretty wild, man. Um, I, uh, I was point man that night and so I was leading us, we had like a six hundred, six hundred yard patrol into the target house that we were gonna hit and we were going after a dude that was making V, V bids and IEDs and just a really bad dude.

• 1:45:46Speaker 04

  And unfortunately, it was the first night that we'd given our partner force the eight digit grid coordinates of the target that we were gonna hit and sure enough, we got lit up.

• 1:45:58Speaker 04

  You know, that's been going on in warfare for a long time, you know, just

• 1:46:02Speaker 04

  partner forces playing both sides of the, you know, the, the, the fence and, uh, it was, it was kind of surreal just because.

• 1:46:12Speaker 04

  The uh, there were, I think two guys had an AK, two guys had AKs and then one guy had a um, it looked like an RPK, a belt fed heavy machine gun and he had, he had belted together probably two, two belts, probably 200 rounds of tracer. So you could just see every round, just like flying over your head and thank God they were shooting, you know, maybe a foot or so high and so none of us got hit. But when, when I went back that night and looked at it on the uh, the, cause we had a pre, we had a Predator. We had two Apaches and then a C-130 overhead and I watched the Predator feed and we actually

• 1:46:56Speaker 04

  used some of the tools to like measure how far we were from them. And uh, it was 110 yards, which is not, that's not far for those type of weapons at all. So that was definitely the, my closest call.

• 1:47:14Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's talk about your transition. And um, so you came home, you did three combat deployments.

• 1:47:22Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:47:22Shawn Ryan?

  Come home, do you have two kids at this point?

• 1:47:26Speaker 04

  I had one kid at that point, the other one would come in about a year.

• 1:47:31Shawn Ryan?

  How was that, reintegrating?

• 1:47:34Speaker 04

  You know, um, it was still, like I said, my marriage didn't get good until like 10 years in and uh, so it was still, it was still pretty tough because I came home and probably two years after coming home, while I was on short duty, we started, after having our second kid, we started our small, small business bottle breacher. And so you bring the stress of running a small business together into a marriage that's not even, you know, really good to begin with, two small kids and you know, in, in my case, somebody who was dealing with.

• 1:48:16Speaker 04

  Whatever mental issues I was dealing with, you know, but I had some pretty severe anger and rage issues at the time. And I think I was, I had some pretty legit survivor's guilt.

• 1:48:30Speaker 04

  And maybe some other stuff going on, but um, you know, it was, I was just in survival mode because I knew, I knew at that point I was getting out and I was watching friends of mine get out and struggle to, to find something they could sink their teeth into, you know? Not just some, find some job, but um, you know?

• 1:48:55Speaker 04

  So that was, it wa- it was a very difficult time for us, but it was a, you know, I'm grateful because I'd learned so much in the teams about unconventional warfare.

• 1:49:11Speaker 04

  And I saw the application in business.

• 1:49:16Speaker 04

  And so just use that same drive, the same resiliency and tenacity.

• 1:49:26Speaker 04

  And use the same type of tactics, unconventional tactics to try and build a business. And so it was a bittersweet time.

• 1:49:36Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. So how, how long after you separated from the teams did you start Bottle Breacher?

• 1:49:42Speaker 04

  I started it while I was in the teams.

• 1:49:44Shawn Ryan?

  You started while you were in the teams?

• 1:49:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:49:47Shawn Ryan?

  How old were you when you left the teams?

• 1:49:50Speaker 04

  Let's see. Oh, man, are you gonna make me do math?

• 1:49:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:54Speaker 04

  Thought you weren't gonna put me on the spot.

• 1:49:56Shawn Ryan?

  Well, where I'm going is you made your first million at thirty-five years old.

• 1:50:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, so um, I was probably the thirty, thirty-three years old when I started it.

• 1:50:07Shawn Ryan?

  So you made your first million in two years of being a business?

• 1:50:10Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:50:11Shawn Ryan?

  That's amazing.

• 1:50:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was. And obviously, a lot of it had to do with Shark Tank. We, um, and obviously, it's not in business, it's not, it's not what you make, it's what you keep, right? But, um, in year, in year one at Body Breacher,

• 1:50:33Speaker 04

  uh, we were, we did a hundred and fifty K, which just blew my mind. When I started this thing, I, I wanted, you know, fifty, you know, or I'm sorry, like five hundred dollars a month. That was my goal for like supplemental income. And I, I wasn't even thinking about growing a company necessarily, just making some cool products and selling them for supplemental income.

• 1:50:54Speaker 04

  And so in year two, we really started ratcheting things up. And I think we were, we were gonna hit about that, we were projecting about nine hundred thousand dollars to a million in our second year. And then, um,

• 1:51:11Speaker 04

  that halfway through the year was when I pitched to go on Shark Tank. And we were doing about eighty thousand dollars a month out of that one car garage.

• 1:51:20Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, eighty thousand dollars a month?

• 1:51:22Speaker 04

  Yep. And we had, and it was a one car garage, Sean. So it was a manufacturing facility in a one car garage. We had four laser engravers in there. We had a polishing wheel in there. I had a little Honda EFI generator because my power, my house couldn't support all the, all the drain from all the equipment. We had two laptop computers in there. Um, like we had shell, shelving for, uh, you know, our the outgoing order rack. And then we, my kayak was like still hanging in the ceiling. Like it was, it was crazy. But it was wild. I remember going to an open casting call for Shark Tank. After I applied, the, I had applied online and not heard anything from them.

• 1:52:06Speaker 04

  So I went to an open casting call, which was like probably.

• 1:52:12Speaker 04

  Ten minutes down the road from my house down the one sixty-three. And I remember, I didn't even practice my pitch. I just walked, I I had this cool cigar box. I laser engraved the Shark Tank logo on it and my logo, the Bottle Breacher logo. And um.

• 1:52:33Speaker 04

  I remember, uh, Ke- did you know Kevin Lace?

• 1:52:37Shawn Ryan?

  I had never met him. I know who he is. I never met him.

• 1:52:40Speaker 04

  So he uh, he worked with Clint Eastwood on the movie American Sniper. And Kevin was in my platoon um, from oh six to oh eight. And so Kevin was kind of tech, you know, like a technical advisor on the movie. And he reached out to me when he was uh, when they were wrapping things up with the movie and asked me if I would make uh, Bottle Breachers for the cast and crew of the movie. So it was really cool. I got to make Clint Eastwood a Bottle Breacher, Bradley Cooper a Bottle Breacher and just all, all the guys, whatever names Kevin gave me. And so we did a really cool like limited edition uh, Bottle Breacher for those guys and uh.

• 1:53:23Speaker 04

  Kevin did me a solid and he got a, a picture with him and Clint Eastwood holding up his Bottle Breacher. And so I took that picture and I put it on the inside cover of the uh, cigar box. And so I, I went to an open casting call where only the first five hundred people got guaranteed the opportunity to pitch. So, so I showed up like at one in the morning so that I could pitch to these guys at like one in the afternoon the next day. And uh, I got in front of this lady, her name was Mindy. And I, I sh- I opened the cigar box and it, it had the Clint Eastwood, you know, pitch, picture with him holding his Bottle Breacher. And then I had an assortment of the other,

• 1:54:04Speaker 04

  some of the other SKUs that we did, because I wanted her to see it wasn't just one thing, like there were, there were varieties that we could do, right? And it happened to be like Father's Day weekend. And so I laser engraved Happy Father's Day on some of them. And I was like, I was like, ma'am, would you believe it if I told you that I've sold eighty thousand dollars of this product? Out of a one car garage about fifteen miles from this location? And she's like, no, you haven't. And I was like, so I pulled up my phone and I had my Etsy app on my phone and I started scrolling and I showed her. This is how much revenue that we've done. This is how many orders we've done. You know, this is how many messages we have. And then I showed her the product. You know, some of the, I showed her the variety of products because you only have like a minute to pitch to these guys and then it's, it's right.

• 1:54:49Speaker 04

  You know, they want you to keep it real short so they can get people out of there. And so I said, do you have any, do you have any men like a dad or a brother in your life that would think that this was cool? And she's like, are you kidding me? My dad and my brothers would freak out over this thing. She happened to be from like Iowa or something and like, just, you know.

• 1:55:10Speaker 04

  And, and, and I was like, well, I'm going to leave these with you. You, this is how much we've done in sales. This is the backstory. You know, I'm still an active duty SEAL. This is Clint Eastwood. Does he look happy with this thing? And she's like, yeah. And so they, they told us when we did the open casting call, they were like, look.

• 1:55:30Speaker 04

  Don't call us, we'll call you, right? And if you hear from us, it won't be for a couple of weeks. That was on a Saturday. Monday morning at like zero eight thirty, I had an email in my inbox like, hey, we loved the pitch, we love the product, you're moving on to the next round. Now you have a week to make a video. So we had to call a videographer, figure out like a script and how we were going to shoot this thing and then.

• 1:55:57Speaker 04

  And we made a video and then we just started going down the Shark Tank pipeline process.

• 1:56:03Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, that is cool. So you were in there before you even separated?

• 1:56:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was crazy. I, uh, I actually, when I, when I went to Sony Picture Studio to pitch that in the summer.

• 1:56:18Speaker 04

  Of fourteen.

• 1:56:21Speaker 04

  I was still on terminal leave. So I had like a month left of terminal leave. And so it was wild, man. It was wild like it. Wait, no, no, no, that's not right. I'm sorry. Sometimes the days get mixed up, but. So I separated, I separated in October of fourteen. We went on the show in like, I think like July or August of fourteen. I was on terminal leave at the time. But then when um.

• 1:56:54Speaker 04

  I got out of the Navy like one, the month before our episode aired. So it was, it was just like boom, right from one thing to, right from one thing to the next.

• 1:57:05Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 1:57:06Speaker 04

  And it was, you know, it's like, um. You know, I talk, I talk about my marriage because I, I realize there's people out there that are struggling to, you know, figure it out. And that's why, that's why I talk about it, not because. I'm proud of, you know, not, you know, not being a good husband or something like that. But um, so yeah, we went from SEAL teams, two young kids, right into the, kind of like the deep end entrepreneurship wise. And uh. We went bef- the, the day before Shark Tank, we made like a hundred and fifty. Units on a good day. When I woke up the next morning, I had to make sixty thousand units. And answer like twenty thousand emails.

• 1:57:52Speaker 04

  And as you know, for people out there that make something. You know, you don't just. You don't snap your fingers and that happens overnight. It takes a lot of. Innovation because what, and we say this in the teams. But what used to work yesterday.

• 1:58:10Speaker 04

  No, it's not going to work tomorrow. You have to innovate and figure something new out. And we did.

• 1:58:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. What, what is it that you think brought you and your wife together?

• 1:58:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:58:23Shawn Ryan?

  After struggling for so long.

• 1:58:25Speaker 04

  You know, it was uh, it was one hundred percent um.

• 1:58:31Speaker 04

  Um. The catalyst was a Christian men's retreat that I went to.

• 1:58:37Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 1:58:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, one hundred percent. And I know that that does, that sounds um.

• 1:58:45Speaker 04

  Like uh, something that guys like us would typically avoid like the plague, but. And I did for a while. My but I had a, I had a good friend of mine who invited me to come to this Christian men's retreat. It, it was called Wild at Heart. And uh, he was also a Shark Tank business owner. He's like, Eli, you gotta come check this thing out. And I was like, oh man, that sounds pretty lame. I was like, what, what are we gonna be doing? Like singing kumbaya or doing trust falls or? Somebody gonna break out rattlesnakes or something like that? But no, man, it changed my life, man. It was, it was, it was awesome. And uh, and it just showed me how.

• 1:59:26Speaker 04

  I hadn't been stepping up. I hadn't been. I hadn't been fighting for my wife. I'd been so busy fighting with her. And, and trying to be right. It, that I hadn't fought for her and I hadn't fought for her heart. And it was so cool, man, because um. They take you back, they take you back into their story. And it's like four hundred guys that show up there. It's like from all walks of life, every profession. I've, I've met other team guys there. I've met a Rangers there. I've met doctors. All sorts of, all sorts of people, you know, all sorts of guys that are, you know, struggling with a lot of the same things and uh.

• 2:00:06Speaker 04

  It was just really cool because um, like if you go back in, if you go back into. The biblical story and the biblical narrative. We do have an enemy. Who's come to steal, kill and destroy. John ten ten says, the thief has come to steal, kill and destroy. And it, that, that ties into the whole good evil narrative. Do you believe in evil? Do you believe in good? What's the origin of it, right? And if you start asking some of those serious questions. Um, the Bible has a lot of answers on that. Now, I get it. Not everybody believes the Bible. I get it.

• 2:00:45Speaker 04

  But um, it was just, it was, it was an eye-opening experience for me because it framed it up in a way that like. It just made so much sense for me. It just made so much sense to me. And it. You know, one of the things they cover is why does God give you a masculine heart as a man? Because you were born into a world at war and everything that you love, you're gonna have to fight for it. And I realized that I not only was I not fighting for my wife,

• 2:01:18Speaker 04

  but I spent a lot of my time fighting with her. And, you know, it just made me want to be a better husband. It made me want to be a better dad. I knew that,

• 2:01:28Speaker 04

  unlike in the SEAL teams, I was given certain weapons for certain jobs. I knew I didn't have a lot of the weaponry or the training to, to be either of those things, but I wanted to pursue it and I wanted to get better at it and I wanted to work at it. And so it kind of lit a fire in me to just come back and, you know, really work at those things. And it changed everything and it took, it took time. But,

• 2:01:57Speaker 04

  you know, and, and, and there were other, there were other issues too. Like I was deal, like I told you, I was dealing with a lot of anger and a lot of rage. And

• 2:02:08Speaker 04

  there's a, there's a verse in the Bible that says, "I stand, I stand at the door and I knock and whoever answers the voice, or whoever hears my, hears my voice and answers the door, I will come in and eat with him and eat, and he with me." And I think just think it's so cool. That's something I love about the gospel is that when you, when you read the gospel and you read how Christ, you know, and Jesus was here on earth, he didn't make anybody follow him. He didn't make anybody follow him. But he's, he's knocking at, he's knocking at the door and I realized that there were certain rooms in my, in, in my heart that I didn't let anybody into because I needed them.

• 2:02:46Speaker 04

  That's how I protected myself.

• 2:02:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:48Speaker 04

  Hey, that room.

• 2:02:51Speaker 04

  You're not, you're not allowed in there, Sean. I don't care if you were a teen guy or not, I need that. That's how I protect myself. And if you get too close, watch out. And I realized, man, that that, that mentality was causing a lot of pain and a lot of hurt to those that were around me. It was good at times. It was like, there's a dichotomy there. I could use it to protect us, but the moment you, the moment you cross that line, I'd use it against you. And, and I remember praying about it and I was like, Lord,

• 2:03:32Speaker 04

  will you tear this, will you, will you just come into my heart and will you tear all of this out? All of this baggage, all of this anger, all of this rage? Cause I don't want it anymore. I'm tired of trying to carry it around. Yeah. And he did. It worked. Yeah, it did. Good for you. Yeah, man. How are you and your wife now? Pretty awesome. Yeah? Yeah. I mean, we're still,

• 2:03:59Speaker 04

  we're still two human beings and we still both struggle with selfishness. And I think that there's a verse in Ephesians that says his husbands were supposed to lay down our lives for our wife like Christ did for the church. And when you look at what Christ did for the church, he died for the, he died, he died for us. And I was, I was, I was dissecting that verse. I was looking at it. I was like, not only you, you're not willing to die for your wife. You're not even, you're not even willing to, you're not even willing to forgive her or you're not even willing to put your pride down and love her and, and, and fight for her. And, and it was just like, it was so cool, man, because it just, um,

• 2:04:43Speaker 04

  it gave me, it gave me some like, some goals and you know, some, a new perspective on how much I'd let her down and you know, and it was cool too because, you know, it.

• 2:05:00Speaker 04

  There is good and evil in this world, and I know you've seen it.

• 2:05:05Speaker 04

  I know some people have different answers for where that comes from.

• 2:05:10Speaker 04

  But I think, I think it's spiritual, man. And so I think a lot of this stuff that, that we deal with, I think all of it has spiritual connotation and spiritual foundation to it.

• 2:05:23Speaker 04

  And it's like, just like we were talking about getting shot at. You can be getting shot at, you can hear those mortars whistling through the air, but if you don't know where they're coming from, good luck, you know?

• 2:05:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:39Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that's a, I'm, I'm really glad we covered all that stuff.

• 2:05:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:05:44Shawn Ryan?

  It's a real honor to be able to interview you.

• 2:05:48Speaker 04

  Well, I, and I, again, man, out of respect, I know that that's not the answer. A lot of people don't want to hear it.

• 2:05:58Speaker 04

  Uh, you know, a lot of people would disagree.

• 2:06:03Speaker 04

  With a lot of that stuff and I'm, I'm cool with that. And I'm glad we live in a, I'm glad we live in a, a coun- a country and a place where

• 2:06:12Speaker 04

  you and I or myself and whoever's listening or watching can dis-

• 2:06:19Speaker 04

  can disagree or not, but not believe the same thing and we can openly talk about it.

• 2:06:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:25Speaker 04

  Cause I realize that there are places around this world. If you talk like that,

• 2:06:32Speaker 04

  you, you get killed, you could be thrown into prison. And to me, that, that, that right there is evil. I want you to be able to have a different opinion than me. You know, I, that's one thing I love about this country, man, is that like, and I hope, I hope it never changes. Is that we can agree to disagree and we can have difference of opinions and we have the right, you know, to worship however we want to worship or not at all. But the way I see it, and we were talking about some other stuff at dinner last night, but if some, if you, if you've stumbled across something or found something that worked

• 2:07:16Speaker 04

  and you don't share that with others, you're not a team guy at all.

• 2:07:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:24Shawn Ryan?

  Very true.

• 2:07:30Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's start moving into politics. So this is the portion

• 2:07:36Shawn Ryan?

  where we cut the show and from now on, the rest of this is gonna be over on Rumble.

• 2:07:42Speaker 04

  Why do we gotta do that, dude?

• 2:07:44Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you know, there's the YouTube-friendly version and then there's the not-so YouTube-friendly version.

• 2:07:49Speaker 04

  But I thought I just got done talking about freedom of speech. Did I not just get done talking about that?

• 2:08:05Speaker 06

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