#80 John Lovell - How a 75th Ranger Built One of the Biggest Tactical Training Networks | Part 3

John Lovell is a former Army Ranger turned creator, homesteader and best-selling author. Lovell is the founder of the Warrior Poet Society, a values-based community geared towards training, preparedness, and spirituality. Part three of this four part series is all about the closing of Lovell's career as an Army Ranger and his transition into civilian life. Lovell outlines his early days in business and the beginning of his marriage and how to build a strong foundation in a relationship. We also learn about the origins of the "Warrior Poet Society," Lovell's now ultra-successful online community. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://lairdsuperfood.com - USE CODE "SRS" https://shopify.com/shawn John Lovell Links: Book — http://warriorpoetway.com Website — http://warriorpoetsociety.com X — https://twitter.com/johnlovell275 YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/c/johnlovell275 Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download 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.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends. Like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest, or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 1:00Shawn Ryan?

  Previously on The Sean Ryan Show.

• 1:05John Lovell?

  I was kicking open some palace doors. Kick, kick, kick. And then the door flings open. And immediately coming through the fatal funnel of the doorway, we took incoming fire screaming right past me. I was a sawgunner at the time. I came up and I shot him in the face and just dropped him. I'd never killed someone that close.

• 1:31Shawn Ryan?

  My first mission, real mission, was in Haiti. And we didn't really see much. At the time, it was the biggest deal that I had ever encountered. How did you mentally prepare? When we come back, we'll start to talk about why you left the military and get into your transition into civilian life.

• 1:52Shawn Ryan?

  All right, John, we're back from the lunch break and we're getting ready to wrap up your military career. But one thing that I did want to ask you is you had mentioned that you had lost some buddies. I can't remember if it was on here or if it was on, if it was on our break. But how do you, how do you deal with loss? How did you overcome that?

• 2:15John Lovell?

  I don't think I've overcome loss any more than I've overcome fear. It's like fear, sorry to pivot, but folks think of fear, it's kind of like, all right, you've been in the thick of it. So surely you mastered that. I'm like, no, no one can ever master fear. Just because you were a hero before doesn't mean you're not going to play the part of the coward tomorrow. Every day the rents due and you're going to rise up and prevail. And so similarly, loss, I don't know, I doubt I'll ever really get used to that, you know, of like, if I lost my wife, how am I supposed to limp through this life without her when we're so inextricably linked and knit together? But how would I deal with

• 2:59John Lovell?

  that loss? I'm like, I don't know how I would. It would not be pretty, though, you know, of like, I don't know how I'd, how I would deal with that. So now, this far on my journey, how I deal with loss is I've got two buckets for it. One, is if someone who shares my faith, I believe I will see them in greener pastures one day. And so to me, it's not a goodbye forever. It's a so long, I'll see you soon. I'll see you later. So one of my dearest friends, who was my first mentor in the Christian faith, I was in Ranger Battalion with him. His name's Kevin. And so I served with him. And then years later, him and the ministry

• 3:44John Lovell?

  would marry me and my wife together. And he'd be one of my good buddies. So he survived all the war tours and whatnot, but then got in a motorcycle wreck, died. And so that, I mean, I didn't handle super well. And that still hurts, of course. And I knew other dudes that died in Ranger Bat. Nobody I was really, really close to. Some guys that were like my platoon, you know, and some of my buddies who got shot up, you know, and And so tha- that's hard, you know, that's hard. Uh, but when someone's in the same theological camp, think of like, oh, well, as the Apostle Paul

• 4:28John Lovell?

  put it, well, for me to, to live as Christ and die as gain, which means if your theology's really worked out, you're okay with dying. It's kind of like, oh, I'm gonna die and then go be in everlasting joy with Jesus. That's not a bad gig. And when somebody you know belongs to Jesus, goes and sees Jesus, it's not this huge tragedy on their part. It is on ours who are left behind and missing them. At least this is intellectually true and I'm emotionally catching up to this reality that I recognize, you know? And so, um, anyway, that theologically is, is a bit of a bedrock for me, where I have, I have the underpinnings

• 5:13John Lovell?

  to deal with loss. Now, when someone doesn't realize that this life does carry over into eternity, um, and they do not land in, you know, in a good place, uh, to think of like, yeah, I will never see that person ever again, and they have gone to torment. That's really hard. That's really, really hard. And so, um, I don't know how to handle that, uh, except to tell people about Jesus, you know, like, I don't know how to handle that. So.

• 5:49Shawn Ryan?

  Do you mind if I chime in?

• 5:51John Lovell?

  Please, yeah.

• 5:52Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, this is a subject that we continuously touch on, you know, and we had, we had spoken about how many people, how many people from the veteran community watch this show and have lost somebody. And, and so what I would like to kind of add to that is something that's helped me get through, cause I'm new to faith, you know, and, and, um, so this isn't things that I was thinking about, uh, for a lot of the friends that I've lost and in, in, so what's kind of helped me, cause it's really easy to go down that road of self-destruction.

• 6:29John Lovell?

  Yeah, man.

• 6:29Shawn Ryan?

  And pity and feeling sorry for yourself and, and it turns to anger, you know, and, um, you have to, especially when it comes to guys that have died in combat, I think.

• 6:44Shawn Ryan?

  I think a lot of us considered it an honor to die in combat. I don't think anybody I know that was killed in combat would have would have changed anything about

• 6:58John Lovell?

  Really?

• 6:59Shawn Ryan?

  being there in the fight, maybe, maybe certain tactics, you know, in different situations, or maybe wrongly, you know, but as far as being on the mission, everybody knows there's a good chance that it's gonna be you.

• 7:11John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 7:11Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and, but we all still do it, and we do it because of the guy on the right and the left to us, and the team, and the brotherhood, right? And, and you have to think, one, would that person have wanted to be doing anything else at that specific moment in time? Probably not. You know, I don't know anybody that would have taken themselves off the mission.

• 7:34John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 7:36Shawn Ryan?

  Number two, how do you think that person would want you to live the rest of your life?

• 7:40John Lovell?

  Good call.

• 7:41Shawn Ryan?

  You know, do you think they want to see you self, in self-destruction mode, and, and feeling sorry for yourself, and not living your life to the fullest because they're no longer here?

• 7:53John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 7:54Shawn Ryan?

  I highly doubt that if they did do, if they did think that way, they probably wouldn't have been close to you. You know, and, um, so that's, that's just some stuff that I think about when I've experienced loss, is you owe it to them to live your life to the fullest, you know, and their honor.

• 8:13John Lovell?

  That's good.

• 8:14Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 8:15John Lovell?

  Yeah, I could, I could totally get behind that. If I'd kicked off, I would hope that, uh, me going out would strengthen your resolve to, uh, perform your mission better. Or you get out of the military, find a new mission, and then go out and crush. Find a new community, find a new mission, don't be looking back on me and what we did. Find a new mission, find a new community, drive forward, improvise, adapt, overcome, brother. And, and, and let me be a little bit of fuel in your tank, so that my legacy is to help you guys climb higher. That would, I, I, that would be, what I don't wanna know is like, oh, you got sad,

• 9:00John Lovell?

  and you drowned yourself in a fifth of Jack every single night before you ate a gun.

• 9:06John Lovell?

  I'm like, bro, you're making, you're making my sacrifice worse.

• 9:13John Lovell?

  In the way that you are turning inward of like, um, uh, in that way. Honor me better than that, you know? Go live, because I don't get to.

• 9:24Shawn Ryan?

  Great way to put it. Great way to put it. You know, one other thing that I wanted to ask you before we, before we get into the end of your military career is you had spoken a little bit about how you've adapted your leadership. As you advanced through Ranger Battalion. And so what? How did your leadership abilities develop? And, and, and, and what changed from kind of the, the, the typical? Maybe mold of a Ranger leader?

• 9:57John Lovell?

  So what I had experienced is leadership through kind of fear, strength, competency, all those were ingredients in the cocktail mix that was leadership. Do this because I'm experienced, do this because I'm strong, do this because I'm scary, yell, yell, yell, do your thing. Um, and that's typically how you, you raise up pride, but that's, that's not as much how you talk to peers and whatnot. More, you know, when you're

• 10:26John Lovell?

  Spec Four Mafia, whether you're, you know, buck sergeants or squad leaders, whatever. When you're mission planning and stuff, it's brothers, you know, outside of the big command structure, you're probably on a first name basis, uh, you know, depending on your unit and like second bat in our years, uh, you know, that was kind of where kicked out. We would default more to first names and we were putting our heads together and figuring out how we're going to take down something. And I never advanced real far up to be huge in mission planning, but at a smaller level, taking down buildings and, and, uh, breach points and, and, and things like that, I was in. And so we had more of that camaraderie.

• 11:08John Lovell?

  But what I wanted to do as I was a team leader and then squad leader, which I would punch out as a squad leader. Uh, is I wanted a different variable. I wanted my guys to uh want to follow my leadership. Not because they had to, but because they wanted to. And I found of like, what would it look like? If my guys knew I was really looking out for them and I really loved them. And I'm, I'm still hard on them. I'm not get, I'm not cutting them out Valentine cards and send them, you know, uh, flowers or anything. I'm like, I'm still a, I'm still a gritty, fire breathing ranger. Uh, but what would it look like if my boys knew I'd eat a bullet for them? What would it, what would it look like?

• 11:52John Lovell?

  And what I found is I started modeling that, uh, you know, the verses of like greater love hath no man than he would lay down his life for his friends. And I looked at Jesus, who's a leader, but he led through sacrificial service. Uh, and that, and what happened is he just, he inspired a whole group of people, strangers from all kinds of different backgrounds. It's a leadership mess when you look at who the disciples were, uh, and he inspired them all to die for him. Like, wow, something to that. Maybe I should lean into that leadership model since we are in the, let's sacrifice and die for each other kind of business. And so I leaned into that.

• 12:31John Lovell?

  What I found is, is when I, I really took care of the boys and they knew that, and in my very gruff way, you know, would, would love them, they'd love me back. And it, it kind of came to, I knew I'd arrived when we went to a bar one night. I didn't go to the bar very often, uh, just because it didn't have anything for me. You know, I'd have a beer and then I'm done. You know, that, that's about it. And I wasn't, you know, chasing girls. I, I was looking for a wife and I didn't think I was going to find one at the bar. But I would go every once in a while just to kind of, uh, a spree day court, let me hang out with the Joes. Uh, you know, every once in a while I'll just go out and that'll be a cool thing. And it, it's just one night where I can verify no one's going to drive drunk and no one's going to get in a bar fight and go to jail.

• 13:14John Lovell?

  Uh, and so that was good too, because rangers get crazy. And so, uh, I was there, but uh, somebody I didn't know, uh, some dude comes up and he's talking to me. You know, and that's cool. And we're chatting back and forth, completely benign. He's a military guy, so am I, and we're chatting back and forth. And some of my, some of my dudes from my squad kind of like inch in and they're like eyeballing this dude and they just kind of inch in front of me and out to come between me and him. Now, I think that they were pretty inebriated, but whereas I was just having a good conversation, they had inserted themselves in a position of defend me from people that they don't know. And I'm like, bro, guys, it's cool. It's good. We're just chatting. There wasn't, it wasn't

• 13:59John Lovell?

  anything intense, but they didn't want anyone near me. They didn't want anyone near me, you know? And so I thought that was, that was pretty cool. So you know you're a good leader at that point. The boys back you. That's when I saw my guys have my back, you know, in, in a real cool way of like they were, um, the impulse there, these, you know, yeah, yeah. Anyway, young dudes. And so I just remember that and it was right. I remember that because it was right as I was, I'd been trying to do those dividends. I'd been trying to make those investments and I wasn't just like screaming at dudes. And now I had hard standards and if you didn't meet the standard, well, there's some type of remediation. There's some type of pain or something, but it wasn't done angrily as if I hate you, you dirtbag. Now I'm going

• 14:44John Lovell?

  to hurt you. It was they understood, no, when I cause you pain, I am making you better because I want you to be better so that we can be better. And they felt the impulse, the, the rationale behind it was different. So even when I caused them pain, it was done in a loving way. You adopted that style of leadership at what age? Twenty-two, twenty-three.

• 15:11Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra because it's not just a superior light beer. It's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 15:40Shawn Ryan?

  That's impressive.

• 15:41John Lovell?

  Well, I didn't get, I didn't say I was good at it.

• 15:43Shawn Ryan?

  Especially, that's impressive, especially in a, any soft unit. I mean, that is the, the road less traveled, you know?

• 15:53John Lovell?

  Well, I was, you know, what I noticed is, is different soldiers adapted or responded very differently to different kinds of leadership. I had one dude and he was just so jacked up. I ended up firing him. He shouldn't have been at Ranger Battalion in the first place. I did everything I could to turn him into a Ranger and he just wasn't capable of it. Shouldn't have been there, he got fired. I still remember the kid's social security number. That's how much paperwork I had to do on this guy.

• 16:17Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 16:18John Lovell?

  I still remember his social. I know my, my social, I know my wife's and I know this guy's social.

• 16:25John Lovell?

  That's all, I know three social security numbers. I don't know my kids, but I know this guy. I did that much paperwork on this guy and eventually fired him. I couldn't, I couldn't make him into a Ranger. I tried, but that was, that was my leadership failure, I suppose. Um, other guys, I had one guy who's a former SWAT cop. He's a little bit older, squared away, and the guy was just so hard on himself. If I was to, even when he was a private, under me, even if I just kind of like, if I was to wade in this guy, this guy already beats himself up so much, he doesn't need me to throw a right cross to him. He doesn't need any punishment, because what he does to himself internally is far worse than any, he's self-correcting, leave him alone.

• 17:08John Lovell?

  Because if you kick him and he's already punishing himself, eventually that's going to be a bitterness toward you, you know? And so, I just let him self-critique. It's just one, he's doing his thing, I'm like, you under, you know what, you know what I'd say? He's like, I know, I know what you'd say, Sergeant. And my, and do I need to say it? He's like, you do not, Sergeant. And it's never gonna hap, and he's like, never happen again, Sergeant. I'm like, I believe you. And that'd be it. Whereas if it was this other kid, I'm gonna light him up. I, I'm going to hurt you physically. I'm gonna make you do so much PT that I'm gonna permanently engrain like a hot firebrand into your inner psyche so that you would never dream of doing that. You won't even have a dream about doing that again.

• 17:53John Lovell?

  And so, what worked for one, didn't work for the other. And so, I had, I realized, man, people tick different ways. And those are two dudes, I can see their faces right now. They responded so differently.

• 18:08John Lovell?

  Still others of like they ran on a little bit more, the fuel they ran on was more of like anger and they spooled themselves up and they were intense and they needed me to get a little intense too to kind of get them into something. And so other folks have like, this guy do real well, he just needs to know what in the world's going on. He doesn't do well being left in the dark. And if you just give him a little bit general idea of the plan. So when you disseminate information, I need to make sure his key core questions are answered enough so that he can be good and drive on. Otherwise, his brain just eats himself. His morale plummets. He needs certain amount of information. That's just how his brain works. And so whereas the other guys, they

• 18:50John Lovell?

  don't need as much information disseminated, he is going to, his morale would be, it'd be better to not feed them for two days, you know, than to do that. And so I was making a study of who responds to what and how should I adapt based on the individual needs, not the, I will yell at everyone until I get my way. And though that seems pretty Ranger ific, that was not a good way to do business. Wasn't good leadership policy.

• 19:19Shawn Ryan?

  You, you were able to identify all these different styles of leadership and what resonates with your guys at age 22 years old?

• 19:25John Lovell?

  It, it wasn't as refined as I can now see it looking back. It was kind of trial and error. I just knew I wanted to lead differently than some of the ways I was led. Now, I'd also be quick to say of like, though I had some bad leadership, what I feel like is this was not a healthy form of leadership. I also had some really, really good leadership in Ranger Battalion. I love my platoon and the boys I served with, the guys, and we had really stellar, I was in at a time where our platoon leader was a former Delta guy who had been, and so his desires, I'm going to make this platoon in the image of, you

• 20:05John Lovell?

  know, the place I came from. And he set out to do that. And we had a on the ball, Staff Sergeant, or I mean Sergeant First Class Platoon Sergeant, on the ball. And so these guys were known far and wide around Ranger Battalion. And so we were in like, Our platoon was set apart as something really special because of these leaderships. And I got to enjoy that immensely, all the benefits of that. That was the leadership scripture I grew up on. My team leader was pretty toxic, but I knew enough of, alright, I saw some things I wanted to emulate and some other stuff I wanted to reject. So it started, it jump started a leadership study for me.

• 20:46Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. That's, I mean, that's impressive. There's not a lot of 22 year olds thinking like that. I don't think in any unit, so it's a compliment.

• 20:56John Lovell?

  Well, thanks.

• 20:57Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome. But let's move into, before, before we wrap it up, the military career. Is there anything throughout your five deployments that you think we should document in this episode?

• 21:14John Lovell?

  No, I've said all kinds of stuff I've never said before. I've, some of the, some of the kind of big war story pieces, those are the ones that stood out in my mind. And so I've retold all this. It's amazing how foggy my mind gets. Like, I don't think about all this stuff. I, I don't talk about even a 10th of all this stuff. And of like going into what I just said of like, man, I don't know if I've talked about that more than one or two times, you know, of like, anywhere, just, there's some of the detail there of like, I've never gone into this. So, um, no, we're, we've covered a lot.

• 21:51Shawn Ryan?

  Good. I'm glad you're doing it here.

• 21:52John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 21:53Shawn Ryan?

  So what, you did five deployments, you did Afghanistan, Iraq, and then three more Afghanistan deployments?

• 22:01John Lovell?

  Right.

• 22:03Shawn Ryan?

  What, when did you decide you're ready to move on?

• 22:08John Lovell?

  So I would, I'm not a military man. I was just a man that was in the military. And there's, I found, especially with some scrapes of death, you know, quite a few, that was insufferable. Also the op tempo, a lot of dudes kicked out. They were just done. And so by the time I was got out, I was actually promoted to weapons squad leader. That's, that's the highest non-commissioned officer position in the platoon under platoon sergeant in my short time of like, man, I got, but it was, it wasn't because I'd earned it. It's because the other dudes who were more screwed, they got out. So it's gonna like, ah, here I am, weapons squad leader. I should have been weapons squad leader.

• 22:49John Lovell?

  That wasn't very long before I kicked out, but I also got infuriated by bureaucracy. And that sucks. And we were very insulated from it. Like, uh, Rangers, we have our fences and MPs are not even allowed in unless it's following military police, unless it's kind of following hot pursuit kind of thing.

• 23:09John Lovell?

  But we're very private and us being second Ranger Battalion meant we were across the country from regiment headquarters. We're in Washington and all the other Rangers in Georgia, under all the commanders. And so we got to get away with all kinds of stuff. Back in a day when it was far more free and then you're kicked out on these small, you know, uh, patrols and, and, and kicked out things where we wouldn't shave for weeks. And so we're feeling like, all right, yeah, we're getting all SF grizzly, you know? And so, uh,

• 23:42John Lovell?

  anyway, of like all kind, we got away with all kinds of stuff that I think Rangers today wouldn't get close to, but even still, a lot of the bureaucracy was just maddening. Of like, I remember one time where there happened to have been a sergeant major who had a Ranger who was man in a 50 gun on an active security perimeter. You know, of like, he's doing a real world thing and he made him get down out of the turret to blouse his boots. Like, ah, this kind of stuff really makes my blood boil. So it wasn't, looking back, I'm like, man, I'm so spoiled that of like, I, I wanted like no restrictions. I, I,

• 24:25John Lovell?

  all this silly stuff of like Ranger Suck It Drill and Ceremony of like marching around and saluting and stuff and, you know, shine your boots. And I'm like, what in the world does any of that have to do with combat effectiveness? Exactly. And, and a big fat goose egg. Zero.

• 24:41John Lovell?

  You know, and so now I can immediately turn around to make a case for why it could should be done at the most basic rudimentary, let's get everyone knowing how to march. It's like, yeah, but once we have done that, it's better to be, let's establish discipline, not in how shiny we can make our boots as targets for the enemy, but instead, let's do it in our work ethic, our knowledge base, our nutrition, our choices, our tactics. Let's be really disciplined there. So some of that stuff just drove me crazy. I was burnt out on war and had a lot of life I wanted to live. And so I put in, I did not reenlist. They threw everything at me to reenlist.

• 25:25John Lovell?

  And I, you know, said no to all that. I wanted to go in the military. I wanted to find, I wanted to find a wife and get married. And I think the Lord wanted me to do some time in the military, but he had a plan to build out this whole warrior poet thing that I preach and hope to faithfully embody. And that means being extremely well rounded in many other areas. And if I had stayed in some 20 years, like some, some of my buddies did, that would have been entirely way too monolithic. Warrior poets, I never would have been born. I never would have been able to make the jump into

• 26:09John Lovell?

  the civilian world, having spent my entire, you know, the entirety of my Young adult life. Career, doing that. And a lot of guys have like, I go and hire instructors, you know, we have a training company, we train folks. And I was initially looking for resumes of as former soft guys. I wanted the soft moniker of like, all right, what special, what special operations unit were you in, you know, and what'd you do? And I thought that would be the most important. And it's just not. People want somebody who's got some experience, who knows what they're talking about. And you got a resume, but I thought resume was this important. And actually, it was, it was far less. It was, I wanted you to have a real world resume that was congruent with what you

• 26:50John Lovell?

  Teaching, but really I wanted a master communicator and I wanted somebody that fit our ethos and our culture more. And that was a better fit, somebody with a coach's eyes, somebody with a, you know, who, who people liked listening to. And so that ended up being far, far more important as an instructor than, uh, hey bro, how many bodies did you stack and over what period of time? That ended up not being a good thing. And when I had buddies who had been in for a full career, they just couldn't make the jump to teach civilians. They couldn't, they couldn't see past the own, their context that they had had. To them, they're still multi cam madness running through the desert and trying to teach civilians how to do it. I'm like, no, no, that's not the context.

• 27:33John Lovell?

  That's not the kind, they don't understand half of the military acronyms that you just rock, rock there with your incredibly specific vernacular. It like they couldn't make the jump. So, um, I was happy to get out and I had a plan. I'm going to go to college. And I'm going to buy a duplex and I'm going to rent out the other side to offset my mortgage and I'm going to shop for a wife.

• 28:00John Lovell?

  That was my plan.

• 28:02Shawn Ryan?

  How did that work out?

• 28:03John Lovell?

  I did my plan.

• 28:05Shawn Ryan?

  Did you really?

• 28:05John Lovell?

  I did.

• 28:06Shawn Ryan?

  You went to school, you got the duplex and you bought a wife.

• 28:12John Lovell?

  Yeah. At the time, the Ukraine was running a two for one special. And so, you know, I just kept the one that I liked the most and it was a great deal, great deal. Free shipping. This is all terrible. You actually got to cut this because this is, this is human trafficking kind of joke. Very inappropriate.

• 28:30Shawn Ryan?

  But, but you did, you bought a duplex, you're running the other side out, you went to school.

• 28:35John Lovell?

  Yep.

• 28:36Shawn Ryan?

  It all worked out.

• 28:37John Lovell?

  That's what I did. Uh, now I'd been on the prowl for a wife for, even in the military. And so I was, I wasn't looking to shack up anymore. I was trying not to do that. And I'm trying to be pure and I'm just thinking about wife, you know? And that, that's the hope, that's the goal. And, um, so I was on the prowl for a wife and I hadn't, I'd gotten to the point where I hadn't actually dated anyone more than about two or three days. And I went a couple of years without even kissing a girl, um, which for me and my background, that was something. Uh, so, uh, anyway, I was looking for a bride, uh, and when I got into my college town.

• 29:21John Lovell?

  In Georgia, I went to church and I'm looking to get involved in different ministries. And I'm like, that's where you find a good wife. That's where you find a good woman is in these places. And so that's where I was shopping, but I would be pretty frustrated. I knew enough of what I didn't want, but what I didn't want excluded just about everybody. I just kind of, even in this big college town, I couldn't find a girl that I wanted to marry. And I began to think over time that my standards were just too high. You know, I had my list and maybe all this is just unreasonable expectations, so. Were they? Nope, I met my wife and found out my expectations were high enough.

• 30:09John Lovell?

  Where did you meet your wife? Church, but it's a little spotty because she was dating someone else who would become a buddy of mine. Oh. So I wasn't interested in her. I knew, I'm like, that girl is a hottie. I recognize that, but she's also struck me as a diva, you know, and like, have you seen the hot crazy matrix? I'm like, oh, she is hot crazy. No, that's a 10 out of 10 right there. Uh, bro, good luck, good luck. Um, anyway, their relationship fell apart and they, they had been broken up for, uh, you know, uh, quite a while. And, uh, what I couldn't see before, then one day, I feel like it was just like turning on a light switch.

• 30:53John Lovell?

  And all of a sudden we looked at each other with completely new eyes like, holy cow, how did I miss you? Uh, and we started dating and it was, uh, I knew, I, I fell hard and I fell fast. And so that would begin our courtship and it was about five months after we really kicked things off. We were married. Five months? Yeah, we, we were engaged for two months. Wow. Yeah. What's your wife's name? Rebecca.

• 31:28Shawn Ryan?

  Good for you. And you're in your 17th year of marriage now.

• 31:31John Lovell?

  Yeah, so.

• 31:33Shawn Ryan?

  Congratulations.

• 31:34John Lovell?

  Thank you.

• 31:35Shawn Ryan?

  What's the, what is the secret to a successful marriage?

• 31:40John Lovell?

  Um, some of you listeners are like, oh, come on, don't say this. I'm like, it's not cliche. It's true. It's true. If you can, if you can pull off love in Jesus more than your spouse, you got a chance. Almost all marriages are fail and divorce, or you end up living together as glorified roommates. That fire goes out. So you gotta do a few things. One is tap into the source where love actually comes from. That's Jesus.

• 32:06Shawn Ryan?

  Those of you that have been around SRS for a while know that we take mental health very seriously here. So seriously that in almost every episode, you'll find a segment where we discuss how to improve your mental health. And part of improving your mental health is keeping your mind sharp. And part of keeping your mind sharp is giving it the fuel that it needs to balance energy, focus, cognition, and just regenerating your brain. That triggered me to go on a journey to find the supplement that supports brain health with the cleanest of ingredients on the planet. And I found it. I was actually going to start my own company and do this, but I found Laird Superfoods.

• 32:50Shawn Ryan?

  I've partnered with them. Now I'm a partial owner and I really believe in these products. Here's my favorite product. Performance Mushrooms by Laird Superfoods. Brain Fuel. You can put this in your coffee. You can put it in your tea. You can drink it raw. You can mix it with their greens. You can do all kinds of stuff. Bottom line is, this is the best possible supplement with the cleanest ingredients, all sourced in the United States that supports brain health. And here's two other products that I'm a fan of. Laird Superfoods Creamer. Guess what? Contains functional mushroom extracts. Put this in your tea or coffee.

• 33:32Shawn Ryan?

  And most of you know I'm not a caffeine or coffee drinker, but a lot of you are. And they just happen to have Laird Superfoods Coffee, Organic Peruvian Coffee with, you guessed it, functional mushrooms that support and regenerate your brain. Go to lairdsuperfood.com. Use the promo code SRS. You'll get 20% off. Guys, this is the real deal. These are the finest of ingredients. Check it out. lairdsuperfood.com, promo code SRS, 20% off.

• 34:10Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for listening to the Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes, and leave the Sean Ryan Show a review. We read every review that comes through, and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show.

• 34:31Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 35:01John Lovell?

  It also allows you to have a reference point. So both of you, as you grow closer to Jesus according to a biblical model, you are getting closer to each other as you move toward that similar point. Otherwise, hey, you're not the same dude that you were 10 years ago. Do you have any chance that you're going to be the same dude you are now in 10 years? No. No, you're going to be different. And you don't know exactly what that's going to look like. And then you could say the exact same thing about your spouse. And though y'all may be near and close on, in this point in your journey, at this point in time, you're near. In 10 years, your future self and her future self may be worlds apart. Irreconcilably, what is the guarantee you're actually going to grow together over

• 35:45John Lovell?

  time just because you share a house? Well, good luck. That's just not how it works. Too much data proves that that is not to the, um, is just not a true statement of like, oh, time and proximity means that we are ideologically growing closer. It's just not true. People change. Uh, this allows an anchor point, a reference point, and it provides a basis, a standard, which can, uh, be our foundation and our dispute resolution center. So neither one of us are the ultimate authority. Scripture is, period. All ties broken right

• 36:25John Lovell?

  there. You mean like all controversial ties, not familial. And so, uh, you know, love Jesus, then you gotta date your wife. Uh, never, never stop pursuing her. Uh, this is something big. I was just listening to, uh, Mark Driscoll, um, on, uh, Instagram, who hates us all. Uh, and he said, hey, date your wife or someone else will. Whoa, that's savage, but it's true, man. Hey, uh, once you get married, that's not the finish line. That's the starting line. And whatever you did, uh, to get her to marry you in the first place, keep doing that and you will, uh, be able to walk hand in hand and happily ever

• 37:07John Lovell?

  after into marriage. My marriage, man, it's good. It's strong. It's fun. It's vibrant. It's romantic. It's passionate. It's working. And so somebody can castigate me all they want, uh, regarding some of the foundational things that I've just said regarding faith, but what you can't deny is it's working. Maybe I'm a moron, but it's working. So it must not be so dumb after all. How's your marriage? Great point. And so I'm like, if it works, then maybe, just maybe you should remove the chip from your shoulder and lean in and think that there might be something that I'm on to here. Cause most marriages are not working and mine is growing stronger over time, not weaker.

• 37:50John Lovell?

  Uh, or becoming more in love, not more embittered. And that is extremely rare. And it's taken a lot of effort because our first two years was not good. Why is that? Because I was an extremely strong personality and she was too.

• 38:10John Lovell?

  I say it's, it is what happens when an immovable object meets an unstoppable force. And that was us. And so our marriage and our first couple of months was really great. And after we'd settled into happily ever after together, after a few months, we started locking horns and hard. Now, her, being a woman raised in the 21st century, she is caught up in the ether of mad third wave feminism. Every woman today is caught up in the effects of at least third wave feminism, meaning feminism is so infiltrated and affected our culture that

• 38:51John Lovell?

  a lot of our marital relationships have been affected by feminism in ways that we can't even understand. And for her part, she always wore the pants in all the relationships she had been in. And she had had kind of control and power in that. And she was a bit of a man eater. You know, she was beautiful and she was smart and she was strong and she was opinionated and she was a little unyielding, you know, and so, anyway, and I believed I

• 39:28John Lovell?

  was in charge and I was supposed to be the leader of my home. And so, um, that ended up being very tough. Our next two years would not be rainbows and butterflies. This would be tough. How did you work through that? So, most folks will think you have marital problems. There aren't a lot of marital problems. Communication, that's the marital problem. There's not much else. Everything else is just personal problems brought into a relationship. It's, oh, your selfishness bumped into her selfishness. And so you had a marital problem. But it was really just, no, you're

• 40:09John Lovell?

  evil and you suck and she's evil and she sucks. And when you put that together, it's explosive and bad. And so, and I'm not, I'm not saying people out there, you're evil and you suck. I'm saying you and me and you, everyone's evil, uh, except Jesus. And so we've got to somehow become less selfish people. We've got to become better people. And that just, that took a couple of years to gain a level of selflessness that would actually make marriage, uh, be good. And that, that was a har- that was a hard fought war. Cause I thought I was a pretty selfless guy before I got married. Doing ministry and I had some money from military.

• 40:54John Lovell?

  And so I would take out big groups of friends and I'd pick up the check. And I was in my own like gruff military way of like, I thought I was infiltrating into the civilian populace. And I'd become one of them and all of them look like I'm this wildly intense Chi I Joe action figure. Come to life like hardcore and in a little bit psychopathic. That's how I was perceived and I would find this out much later. That I wasn't this super spy Houdini infiltrating the like, no one knows where I just came from. No, everyone was keenly aware intuitively that I'd just stepped off the battlefield. So I was an intense force to be reckoned with relationally, even though I was doing everything I felt like I could

• 41:39John Lovell?

  in my power to be selfless and loving and kind. Still, me trying my hardest was still way too harsh, uh, to nurture a, a new blushing bride. I thought I was being sweet and understanding and patient and selfless because I was trying hard. And compared to my former peers, I was, but I still wasn't good enough to actually, um, flourish this woman I'd been given and I had to get better.

• 42:15Shawn Ryan?

  How was that

• 42:20Shawn Ryan?

  journey to improvement initiated?

• 42:23John Lovell?

  Uh, the Lord had to deal with me specifically. Cause I had to just bump in of like, so I thought I was a selfless guy. And then you get married and all of a sudden I don't have me time anymore. It's us time when I'm not, I'm, I'm, I'm working and I'm working on a degree. So I'm full time school and, and work. And now, you know, I've got a bride to think about. And when I have downtime, it's kind of like, I'm just gonna sit on the TV or sit on the couch and I'm gonna watch Conan the Barbarian.

• 42:58John Lovell?

  Arnold Schwarzenegger, I'm gonna bring it way back. Fun story. That was one of the very first movies we ever watched together.

• 43:04Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 43:05John Lovell?

  Uh, so, uh, anyway, I'm gonna watch that. And she's like, well, I don't want to watch that. I'm like, all right, well, have a good one.

• 43:15Shawn Ryan?

  There's another TV over in that room.

• 43:17John Lovell?

  No, that's fine. Have fun with it. And then I, you know, maybe you do compromise on a movie like, fine, we'll watch over the hedge. Boo. Watch a little cartoon movie and she's like, all right, it's not so bad. She's soft. She's sweet. I like cuddling up with her. I'm like, all right, well, what do you want to watch now? College kid, you know, I'm like, let's watch back to back, double header. Now, now it takes me and my wife three nights to finish one movie.

• 43:42Shawn Ryan?

  I'm right there with you. Like sometimes longer.

• 43:46John Lovell?

  But like, we used to do double headers. Like we watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy in a day once. Like, what was I doing with my life? College, a bunch of, bunch of unbelievable. She's like, I don't want to do that. You, do you want to go for a walk? I'm like, no, I do not want to go for a walk. And then she'd get mad at me and she'd be like, well, why won't you go for a walk? I'm like, oh no, I, I will go for a walk. But you asked me if I wanted to go for a walk. I don't want to go for a walk. It's hot outside, lots of gnats. I don't want to do it. I've walked outside enough lately, babe. But so we got into all these little interchanges and I had to learn the ways that women communicate.

• 44:27John Lovell?

  Uh, and then we get in a fight about the idea of like wanting to go on a walk and will you go on a walk? And I'm upset of like, well, if you want me to go on a walk, just say, will you go on a walk with me? She's like, I don't like your tone. And I'm like, I don't like that you're upset with my tone. Stop yelling, you're yelling. And so it's just how in the world do you communicate with this alternate species? You know, of like, holy cow. Uh, women were this enigma machine. And there was this, I remember we got in a knock down, drag out, drag out fight over, um, face wash. Cause a little bit later, after we hadn't been married too long, we started, uh, really needing to budget.

• 45:13John Lovell?

  You know, and so we're budgeting, let's do good finance stuff. And she, she goes to the store and I say, hey, babe, just get the necessities. And she comes back with this fancy face wash.

• 45:26John Lovell?

  Uh, and I'm like, Becca, I said necessities. And she's like, well, I needed this. I'm like, no, needs is, uh, basic food, doesn't have to taste good. Uh, water, shelter, fire, you know, of like, needs. She's like, no, I needed this. And I'm like, we have soap of like, but this is this special kind of frou, frou, whatever potpourri soap that she needs. And she's got 12 different kinds of soap that all have a certain purpose. And I'm a little skeptical that all these soaps are the same freaking thing with a different rebranded bottle and markup prices. I don't think, I think the base is just soap. And then everything else is this cosmic game that Johnson and Johnson plays with all of us. I have no idea. And, but anyway, we paid a lot for that.

• 46:11John Lovell?

  And so we got in a fight about it. And it was something that started stupid, but our pride bumps into each other and our misunderstanding. And so then I'm like, all right, I'll do the mature thing. I'll ask all of our friends to weigh in and we'll vote to figure out who, which one of us is right. Which I say that was the mature thing. That wasn't the mature thing. That made everything worse and made my friends feel really, really awkward and it did nothing, uh, to settle me and my wife's dispute. But these are all little examples of Ranger John not realizing how harsh, brash, it's stupid. I was, and she didn't realize, uh, what a man eater she was. I was harsh and she was controlling.

• 46:51John Lovell?

  And so both of us had our own different junk that we had to get better on. And so it was just awful learning to communicate and feel like, oh, I would start out the effort completely out of patience and then have to find reservoirs of patience that I didn't have. And so, man, just little by little, I was made to grow so that I could actually do this gargantuan task of loving this woman well. It's a hard thing to do, to actually truly love someone, not as you think that you're loving them, but as they need and want to be loved.

• 47:35John Lovell?

  That's an entirely different measure and it's much harder. And you have to pull it off or your marriage has seeds of destruction sewn in it that you don't know about and that will later blossom into divorce.

• 47:51Shawn Ryan?

  I'm glad we covered that. I am very glad we covered that. Move, let's move back a little bit and then I want to hit Fennman. I want to hit feminism. I want to go there and cover that. But transitioning from military to civilian life, a lot of people, you, you and I both know this, there's a suicide epidemic going on in the veteran community, talk about it all the time, you know, the drugs, the depression, the PTS, TBI. Now they're calling it operator syndrome. What, what kind of challenges did you face reintegrating in?

• 48:32John Lovell?

  I was ready to reintegrate. And so I wanted a new mission and I kind of treated. Funny enough, I treated moving into the civilian world kind of as if I was going on a different type of mission and was still in the military. So perhaps I'm pitching myself my own little operations order. You know, and what I'm going to do, I'm going to move in to this area of operation. I'm going to train these insurgents to be on home team. We'll call them friends. Like, I don't know, just made it my next new mission to integrate into this otherworldly environment with, with people.

• 49:16John Lovell?

  And um, I, I wanted to find a new mission. I did not want to be one of these guys that was looking backwards on what I had done. And I definitely knew it was going to be a great barrier to making any new relationships is if I had to have them compete against the folks that I just had, or to lord it over as if to shame them for not being Rangers. I'm like, I just understood before I even met any of them, they will be weaker in many ways, they will drive me nuts, but they're going to have attributes and, and stuff about them that's going to be better and, and cool. And I went there of, um, I went there with more of an open hand recognizing these civilians

• 49:59John Lovell?

  will be better in some ways than my Ranger buddies and they will be worse in others. And I just wanna, that's okay, that, that's fine. But improvise, adapt, overcome, right? That's, that's the special operations mantra. Well then, carry that into the civilian world. The civilian world is not going to change for you. You have to change to be able to integrate. And if you don't find a new mission and you don't find a new band of brothers, you're not going to make it. So whatever PTSD you have, it will be made worse over time because you do not have a new band of brothers and you didn't find a new mission. You just looked back.

• 50:40Shawn Ryan?

  So live in the future.

• 50:42John Lovell?

  Live in the present.

• 50:43Shawn Ryan?

  Or live in the present.

• 50:44John Lovell?

  Live in the present and work toward a, toward a future that you are, are, are planning for. But you have to find a new mission and you have to find a new Band of Brothers. And they're not going to look anything like your past Band of Brothers. But understand that they are better in some ways than your old Band of Brothers. Find out how they're uniquely better. It's going to be easy for you to spot how they're worse. They're going to be worse in a bunch of different ways. That's easy. You, I don't need to tell you to do that. You'll know how they're worse. Like, why isn't anyone on time? You're supposed to be 15 minutes earlier, you're late. You know what? Why isn't, uh, why isn't anyone taking any of this seriously?

• 51:21Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you think that's what we default to? Cause it's an interesting point and a perspective that I've not thought of or heard of. Why do you think that? And this isn't, I don't believe this is just soft veterans or veterans. I think this is just humanity, but you know, when you say, you'll automatically know how they're worse. Why do you think we always default to that mode? We never look for how they're better.

• 51:48John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 51:49Shawn Ryan?

  We always look at, oh, they're not as good. You know, we're, we are quick to look at the flaws.

• 51:55John Lovell?

  Why do you think?

• 52:02Shawn Ryan?

  Why do I think we do that? Oh man, that's a tough question. I think that I do that. And I could be wrong, you know? I haven't had time to think about this, but I think that that happens because we had, we had spoken about this earlier. In special operations community, you are always striving for perfection.

• 52:25John Lovell?

  Hmm, that's good.

• 52:26Shawn Ryan?

  There is no room for, everything's a competition. Fastest shooter, fastest runner, fastest swimmer, strongest guy, most kills, most operations, longest end. Doesn't matter, everything you do in special operations is to prove your worthiness.

• 52:43John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 52:43Shawn Ryan?

  And. And and to strive for perfection and and earn your keep. And I think that that probably has something to do with it. I mean, what do you do after every single house run?

• 52:59John Lovell?

  Hmm.

• 52:59Shawn Ryan?

  What do you do? Debrief it.

• 53:01John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 53:01Shawn Ryan?

  Run it again. Debrief it. Run it again. Debrief it. Run it again. Where did we mess up? You don't get compliments during those debriefs. It's all critiques.

• 53:10John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 53:11Shawn Ryan?

  Constructive criticism. And so I think that that probably plays a major role in in why I'm like that.

• 53:20John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 53:21Shawn Ryan?

  You know, but I I think that all of humanity is like that. Maybe we're like that a little bit more over the top. You know, in the in in in in that aspect, but.

• 53:34John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 53:35Shawn Ryan?

  What's your take?

• 53:35John Lovell?

  Yeah, I I'd agree with that. I think that's a good read and expanded to say, hey, I think it's just a human nature thing as well. And special operations, it takes certain some good and bad elements of human nature and write it really large. You write it high. Uh, and so that means you'd be really good at certain virtues of courage, but but really good at certain vices too. So, uh, but I mean, even like, uh, you know, soccer mom. They want the best house in the neighborhood with the kids who are best at sports and make the best grades. And, you know, you got the newest, shiniest, brightest stroller with the newest minivan.

• 54:17John Lovell?

  And like, everybody wants to be somebody and you're keeping up with the Joneses and you're climbing that corporate ladder at work. And you made the most money and you got the corner office and the and so, you know, maximizing performance and wealth and status and to be critical of other folks. And I think it's just pride, it's ego. I want to believe awesome things about me. And there's two ways for me to believe great things about me because I want to believe I'm amazing. And that's one is I've got to accomplish and be the best. And two, I need everyone below me. And it is easier than earning and excelling. It is easier to just criticize. And we have this insatiable me monster, this pride thing going on.

• 55:01John Lovell?

  It's part of why I don't like do an interview. So I'm like, man, I've talked about myself so much, I feel very uncomfortable. That's why I just flipped of like, you ask me a question, I'm like, well, what do you think? I'm tired of talking about me. I'm so sick of me. My wife's gonna ask me something about me. I'm like, please God, no, don't talk about me anymore. Baby, talk about anything else under the sun. Shawn wore me out for the month on me. But maybe that's in our human nature, you know, of just to criticize and to pull people down. So I feel better about me. And it's an ugly thing.

• 55:37Shawn Ryan?

  Let's talk about, let's move into some of your mission work.

• 55:40John Lovell?

  Sure.

• 55:40Shawn Ryan?

  When did that happen?

• 55:42John Lovell?

  So my wife and I were married. We worked through those couple of years and they were really hard. After those two years of being married, we started, it started getting better, started getting fun. Year three, year four, going real well. I went into business, started a business and that went very well. And, um, you know, I was making good money. I started it from scratch. And so, and I'm working on a business degree simultaneously. It took me a long time because I didn't, uh, finish my degree right off. I kept working. I was working full time, started a company and, and married and then we moved and I went to a different college. And so

• 56:22Shawn Ryan?

  Was it your current company?

• 56:24John Lovell?

  No, this is an entirely different, uh, entirely different company.

• 56:28Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's go into that.

• 56:29John Lovell?

  Okay, sure.

• 56:30Shawn Ryan?

  What was that company?

• 56:31John Lovell?

  So it worked on commercial, uh, kitchen fire extinguisher equipment. So in all the restaurants, there's this fire suppression system that automatically puts out fires. And so, um, I helped start and then run a company that installed and serviced and maintained those things. They have to be maintained every six months. So it's a recession proof type business that allows for, you know, repeat whatever. And so I did all the marketing, the sales and naming and, you know, the books and the service until finally I could get a few other people work in it and

• 57:14John Lovell?

  Uh, brought that up, made it successful. I had it in the black within just a couple of months and wrote my own salary for it. And so it was successful right up and, and I worked that gig for a couple of years. Um, now that was happening, my wife and I, we were in a big house. We were enjoying it. She had this hot little Audi convertible that I'd bought her and those were some fun, happy years. We'd been married about three or four years and it was going really well. We were having some fun and we were kind of, we had two firm

• 57:53John Lovell?

  hands on the American dream. We were doing it. It was cool. Um, now the next thing would be a little disruptive. My wife and I are both very interested in ministry, though we're both working jobs. So she's working at this time too. We don't have any kids. Um, we are dreaming about, hey, you know, it'd be real cool if we did some missions work one day. I'm like, well, what are you thinking? Like a week or so? I'm like, man, it'd be fun to do something longer, to really give ourselves to a, a greater service. Let's really shake it up. Let's really help some folks. Let's do something radical for the Lord. Let's do, let's do a grand gesture. Let's do a great. And so that was really

• 58:36John Lovell?

  attractive. It, that was filled with, you know, uh, sacrificial service, which was very attractive to us. We'll love the Lord. Well, well, and it'll be a fun adventure. And if you don't do it when you're young, when are you going to do it? And so we're like, yeah, let's, let's punch it. I would do something like that. And then one, one night at church, an opportunity came by and somebody said, hey, who would like to go, uh, you know, do this missions work for a year? And we're kind of like, a year? Year? Would you do a year? I think, I think I'd do a year. I'm like, all right, well.

• 59:10John Lovell?

  Hey, what did I just kind of signed up? Uh, we did more due diligence than that. We talked about, we saw exactly what was going on and what that mission looked like and saw if it was a good fit. But very, very quickly, we flexed on that and we decided, all right, we'll do that. And we rented out our house, we boxed up all our stuff, we put it in storage. And then we punched out for the mission field and we didn't really do a lot of support raising. We just feel like I got some money, we'll just, I'll fund the mission, you know? And so we had a little bit of help, but really we, we helped fund it. And so I had some, I had some savings and I'm like, this will be, this will be fun. And so that's what we ended up doing. Um, we ended up going to San Jose, Costa Rica.

• 59:55John Lovell?

  So don't think beaches, think inner city. Uh, and so dirty, smoggy, every once in a while we'd punch out and go see pretty beaches. But don't think beach, we're inner city, you know? Lot of poverty there. Yeah, a lot of poverty, you know? A lot of people didn't have electricity or indoor plumbing. And so we'd be there, but we were also right there by the University of Costa Rica, Ucere. And so, um, there was that, we planted a church there. Uh, we were live in kind of student life directors for 30 different college students, college, college age students from all over the United States who would go there to learn Bible, engage in missions and learn Spanish.

• 1:00:39John Lovell?

  And so we were kind of, uh, their student life directors. Now on mission where we're doing all this, including a plant, uh, planting a church that I was the pastor of, I was teaching Bible classes because I found out of like, I can, I really like teaching. And I found out not only did I like it, I was, I was pretty good at it. Now I'd already done some teaching in the military. Uh, I had an affinity for combatives, like in Ranger and Rip, I won our. I won the combatives contest for all of RIP. That was a lot of people. That was good. And in Ranger Battalion, I was one of the early guys who was really good at jujitsu

• 1:01:22John Lovell?

  and combatives at Ranger Battalion. And so that was an old hat and I'd teach that and I'd teach them the medical and as a team leader, you're always teaching, you know, it is squad leader, you're teaching as well. And I was pretty good at it. But I found that I got like a spiritual gift of knowledge and teaching at conversion. I was a terrible student my whole life up until conversion. And then all of a sudden, I became a good student who loved reading just overnight. A love of reading clicked on in my brain. Wasn't there and then it was there. And so I've read hundreds and hundreds of books now. And these years on the mission field, I would spend for four, four years, I spent abroad on the mission,

• 1:02:05John Lovell?

  on the Christian mission field. And I fell into deep, deep study. And this is theology. This is philosophy, Christian worldview, apologetics, all the ologies of missiology, ecclesiology, eschatology, soteriology, all the ologies and whatever of hermeneutics, homiletics, exegesis of like, I studied, I studied church history. I fell in love with it. And so I would spend

• 1:02:35John Lovell?

  wild amounts of time studying, like I would get lost in books where I would forget to eat. I would just get caught up like almost in a trance and I would look up and I would have, I would have studied eight hours straight. Wow. And then when I wasn't studying, I was teaching. This is where I learned to teach is on the mission field. And later that teaching knowledge would pour over into teaching tactical stuff. Now, the subject matter of what I'm teaching changed dramatically, but the actual delivery and being able to connect with students and be lighthearted and then come in strong of all the teaching I was doing hours every day for years. And theology is my favorite subject to teach. And I did it for years and, and loved it.

• 1:03:22Shawn Ryan?

  When was the Warrior Poets Society formed?

• 1:03:27John Lovell?

  So did missions work for years? Then I would come back. I would get into the tactical training space. So I'm leaving ministry now and I want to get back into the only real skill I have was rangering. You know, it's hey, let's do gunfight stuff and night vision training. And so I was working a job for a different company as a tactical trainer and I did that for a few years.

• 1:03:55Shawn Ryan?

  I'm curious why you didn't go back to the fire extinguisher business or the fire suppression business in kitchens?

• 1:04:02John Lovell?

  Um, I could have.

• 1:04:03Shawn Ryan?

  You built a pretty successful company.

• 1:04:05John Lovell?

  I could have, but it was someone else was the owner of it.

• 1:04:09Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:04:10John Lovell?

  And I came in and created it, you know, worked there. I should have been a partner, wasn't. Uh, and then it ended up, I was just the general manager. And so when I went for the mission field, basically here's the keys and I had no stake. And so it wasn't, it wasn't mine, you know? And so anyway, that was handed off. So that I could have come back to it. I think that was available to come back to, but um, I don't know. I had a different opportunity and I was gonna go back in into this. So, or back into the old military stuff. Now I had to start kind of gearing up training because on the mission field I had dwindled away to like I had a librarian body.

• 1:04:53John Lovell?

  I dwindled away into a skeleton. I was maybe fifteen, twenty pounds lighter than I am right now.

• 1:05:01Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, good.

• 1:05:01John Lovell?

  I was, I got skinny because I just read and teach all day. Uh, so I started training up and then got back, got into the tactical training and I did that for a number of years. Um, they were after more like military and law enforcement contracts and after training SWAT and night vision and stuff. And I wanted to leverage social media to access the civilian populace for everyday carry. That's what I was after. And so there was a quite a natural departure and Warrior Poets Society was born through it. In that, um, I wanted to bring to, I wanted to, I was on a certain journey. And I called it, and I came to call it the warrior poet way, you know, warrior poet society.

• 1:05:44John Lovell?

  That was my own personal journey where I'm trying to reconcile these different parts of me where I believe that a man should be fierce and strong and courageous and long suffering and gritty and hard to kill and a good protector and all the virtues of a warrior, of a strong man. But I also recognized, and that's not enough, you also need to adore your children and be emotionally available to them. And you need to romantically pursue your spouse and you need to be compassionate

• 1:06:28John Lovell?

  and loving and self-sacrificing and appreciate beauty and revel in awe and all these attributes that kind of like, that's the, that's the good stuff. That's the fire and the blood. We don't fight just to keep fighting of like, it's, it's not just fighting for freedom, but it's, there's the enjoyment of freedom. It's like, I like to say of like warrior poet, you see these two different elements. And you can even say, well, what is the more important of the two? And I would say, I think poet is more important, and this is why. The founders of the United States

• 1:07:07John Lovell?

  penned our Bill of Rights, the first one, freedom of speech, freedom of press, of religion, assembly, all the good stuff packed there. You can say what you want, you can meet with who you want, government can't stop you from doing it. You know, we have the inalienable rights to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, that kind of stuff protected and embodied in the First Amendment. They listed it first because to them it was preeminent, it was most important. This is the freedoms that you're supposed to do. Now, that's the most important, but the Second Amendment is the only way you keep it. That's it. And so you have the right to bear arms, meaning you got the most important stuff and you get to guard it from us, your government.

• 1:07:52John Lovell?

  So it's the Second Amendment, because the First Amendment isn't possible to keep without the Second Amendment. And so whereas the warrior and the fight exists as a means to an end.

• 1:08:05John Lovell?

  The beauty and love and relationships is in and of itself. Freedom of religion, faith, family, speech, ideas. That's where all that stuff is. It's the poet, right? And so I want to be a good warrior and poet. Because I realize a man should be fully both. You should be a lion and you should be a lamb. A lion, you know, if you're all lion, you may be able to protect your family, but you will not keep them. That is out of reach. You will divorce.

• 1:08:43John Lovell?

  Your family will fall into pieces and it'll probably be your fault, lion. And a lamb. A lamb is not going to keep the respect of a wife for very long. She'll love you, but I mean, she desires, you know, somebody who can protect and provide and lead. A woman wants to be led in many ways. You know, despite what the feminists would say, I still believe women want to be swept off their feet, you know?

• 1:09:16Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's take a break and not a break break, but let's, I wanted to touch on feminism.

• 1:09:22John Lovell?

  Sure.

• 1:09:23Shawn Ryan?

  Next on the Sean Ryan Show.

• 1:09:27John Lovell?

  But your point remains, no one, no one trusts the government.

• 1:09:30Shawn Ryan?

  Point being, why would you trust your kids to be educated by the government?

• 1:09:34John Lovell?

  If like, what happened to our kids? I'm like, well, you gave them the government for their entire childhood. And social media helped. That hurts to say because I know it hurts people to hear, but the government raised them and that's what happened. Government and social media hijacked a generation.

• 1:09:52Shawn Ryan?

  What do you think the goal is behind that?

• 1:09:54John Lovell?

  Control.

• 1:09:56Shawn Ryan?

  Control of everything?