#1228 Remi Adeleke | Navy SEAL Exposes Hollywood Secrets

Remi Adeleke is a former Navy SEAL, and also the author of 2 books, "Transformed: A Navy SEAL’s Unlikely Journey from the Throne of Africa, to the Streets of the Bronx, to Defying All Odds" & "Chameleon: A Black Box Thriller. "Chameleon" is his brand new fiction story of his life, and many of the experiences he went through. This man has not only gone from being a Navy SEAL, but he has also broke into the media & entertainment industry. ======================= Backed by world-class investors, including Google's AI Fund, Range has redesigned wealth management from the ground up. Range delivers a tech-first experience that provides fast, high-quality, transparent wealth management services making it simple to optimize and grow your wealth. With Range, you get comprehensive services like tax optimization, investment management, and estate planning with no hidden fees. That means no AUM fees. Get started today with code POMP15 for 15% off any quarterly plan for your first year at ⁠⁠range.com/pomp⁠⁠ ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 250,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/

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

• 0:03Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone. This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Remy Adaleke is a former Navy SEAL and also the author of two books, Transformed and Chameleon. Chameleon is his brand new fiction, story of his life and many of the experiences that he went through. This man has not only gone from being a Navy SEAL, but he also

• 0:47Anthony Pompliano?

  has broken into the media and entertainment industry in a way that few only could wish to do. He's all over books, screenwriting, movies, and TV shows. Remy's a special human, and I'm glad that you all are going to get to hear our conversation. Here is our episode with Remy Adaleke. This episode is brought to you by Range. Are you day trading, a crypto enthusiast, or a tech worker? Or are you just an overall investing enthusiast? Listen up, you need Range. Backed by some of the world-class investors, including Google's AI fund, Range has redesigned wealth management from the ground up specifically for us. They deliver an all-in-one tech-first experience that provides fast, data-driven, high-quality services

• 1:29Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  school problems, and now it's available to all of us. Use code POMP15 for 15% off any quarterly plan for your first year at range.com/pomp. Again, use code POMP15 for 15% off at range.com/pomp.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 2:53Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Remy here with me. Remy, you've got this really interesting background where you were a Navy SEAL. You've gone on to have movies and books and TV shows and kind of this whole world of media and entertainment. When you think about your life, are you an entertainer, whether you're in uniform or you're now professionally working in the media and entertainment business? Like, there is this element in the military of you're constantly entertaining those that are next to you, those you're interacting with. Like, is this just something that is a thread throughout your whole life of entertaining other people?

• 3:25Speaker 02

  I don't, you know, I mean, maybe when I was a kid for sure, you know, and, you know, when I'm watching movies and trying to mimic movies and especially like Martin Lawrence and Eddie Murphy and those guys trying to make my friends laugh. I would say in my younger years, when I got into the military, I don't, I don't think so. I think for me, it was just all about getting the job done and all business. And in fact, it was towards the end of my career that I decided that I wanted to go into business consulting full time. And so I got my bachelor's and then in my last two years in the teams. And then, right after I got out, I was in grad school getting my masters. And again, my plan was I was working with YPOers and other guys essentially taking special operations principles that translates into business. And so that's what I was going to do. And then Hollywood

• 4:10Speaker 02

  came knocking. And then I kind of found my way in Hollywood a few months later. So it definitely wasn't something that was planned. It was something that kind of just came out of nowhere.

• 4:20Anthony Pompliano?

  When you say that Hollywood came knocking, what do you mean?

• 4:22Speaker 02

  I was in grad school and I got out in January 2016. I was probably my second and third semester of grad school, getting my master's in organizational strategy. And that was January. And as fast forward to May of 2016, I was in my office, this very office right here, writing papers. And I got a phone call from a woman who worked with Michael Bay. And she said, hey, Bay's looking for a former Navy SEAL with your background to consult and work on Transformers to Last Night. And she said, hey, can you send me some pictures? First, she asked me if I was available. I said, yeah, I'm not doing anything but writing papers. I can get up to LA tomorrow. And then she asked me to send her some pictures. And I did. And the next day, I was on set. So that's

• 5:06Speaker 02

  essentially what I mean. I wasn't out here chasing it. Somebody just essentially knocked on my proverbial door and gave me a call. And then the next day, I'm working on set. And one day turned into three weeks, three weeks turned into six months. And it was in that period that I really began to realize that I love storytelling. I love being able to utilize my experiences, my background to help formulate and create and share a story. Because story has such a huge impact on not just people in America, but people culturally and internationally, all around the world.

• 5:40Anthony Pompliano?

  One of the things that every single person I know in the military or every successful business leader is there's a sense of urgency, right? And there's also a sense of being open to opportunity, being able to kind of seize the moment. So obviously, if you get a phone call and the next day you're on set, that's like the epitome of doing this. Is that something that you've had your entire life? Did you learn in the military? Why are you uniquely able to do that versus someone who may be like, yeah, you know, I'm interested, but I'll get back to you in two weeks and kind of, you know, we'll go from there?

• 6:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it comes from the teams, being in the SEAL teams, you know, where the acronym SEAL stands for Sea, Air, and Land. And so it's kind of beaten to us in SEAL training to this ability to be flexible, this ability to be a jack of all trades and be open. And we also train to contingencies. So once you get through SEAL training and then you get to Your SEAL platoon and you do your workup, a lot of your workup, whether it's CQC, land warfare, diving, it's always not just training for the mission, but it's also training for the what ifs, right? The curveballs that come your way. And so I would say that that was essentially ingrained in me through the community. And so when I got out and this kind of curveball came my way, it was

• 6:53Speaker 02

  just like, all right, let's, let's jump into it. You know, for me, it was like, I know that that's what that wasn't my plan and that's not what I wanted to do, but it's a part of my nature as a frogman to jump into crazy things and, and be open to the opportunity. And then once you get the opportunity or you get the curveball, you do it with excellence. So you operate within that, that space with excellence. So I would say wholeheartedly, it didn't come from my upbringing. It came more so from my time in, in the teams.

• 7:25Anthony Pompliano?

  That makes, that makes a lot of sense. You were born in Nigeria and then ended up in the Bronx in New York. Talk a little bit about kind of your early childhood and, and you know, some of the things that happened there, but also some of the lessons maybe you took away from it.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. So my dad, he was a very successful entrepreneur, businessman, you name it, he did it. He was one of the first black men on the board of the World Trade Center in New York City, did a lot of business in New York City. And he was also one of the, the first black men on the board of the British Financial Planning Council in Great Britain. And he amassed great wealth in the West and then he returned to Nigeria. He's actually born in Nigeria. He's the firstborn son to my grandfather, Chief Adeleke. He kept on having, he had nine wives, kept on having daughters. My dad was firstborn son, so he inherited the title of chief and kind of became the heir to the Euro of a throne, so to speak. And so after his time in the West,

• 8:15Speaker 02

  again, he went back to Nigeria and his plan was to essentially develop a African Wall Street.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  And it was the title of the project was Lagoon City. He bought a massive plot of land in Mariko for eight million pounds. This is in the seventies. There was a military coup shortly after and that land got taken by the government. He went to court for a number of years for the Nigerian government. And then finally they came back. Said, okay, we won't give you Mariko, um, but what do you want for compensation? And so he asked for a lagoon. And they laughed at him because they said, what are you going to do with a lagoon? And he hired Dutch engineers and dredged the foreshore and created one of the first manmade islands. Uh, in the world, um, which is now known as Banana Island, but it was known as Lagoon City. I was born around that time, so.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  Um, I was born into riches and wealth and we traveled the world and and my dad hosted parties with dignitaries and. And one of his best friends was um, was the designer architect of the World Trade Center, a Japanese guy. Uh, and uh, you know, my dad was just super influential and and because of his success, you know, we lived a great life, but fast forward. To nineteen eighty seven, the Nigerian state government, um, the Nigerian government is inherently corrupt all around, but the. State government came in and said that the federal government was never supposed to give my dad the lagoon as compensation because. The foreshore belongs to the um, state government.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  And they conveniently waited until the land had formed and construction had had started on the island as far as buildings uh, to to do that. So, um, which, I mean, they all knew what was going on for the years that it took to took to turn this lagoon into an island, but they conveniently waited. My dad went to go fight him in court, died mysteriously three weeks later, and we went from very rich to very poor. And uh, my mom then being American brought my brother and I back to the States and we grew up in the Bronx. Um, uh, it was a very rough environment, um, crackheads, drug dealers, crime. Um, I remember seeing the mafia guys go into the quarter stores with their big collars and shake down the store owners for their taxes.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  Uh, it was a very, very rough environment and uh, as I grew older. Uh, eight, nine, ten, I began to become more conscious of my surroundings because my mom, she did a fantastic job. Of masking the reality of what had happened uh, and keeping us in this bubble for as long as she could, but as I got older and I got a chance to venture off, that's when I began to. To notice things more so, and that's when I also began to try to find a father in this. Streets and hip hop culture, rap culture, all of these things that were prevalent in the late eighties and early nineties. And that led me down a really bad path, started out stealing from my mom and then that progressed to stealing from stores. That progressed to stealing from jobs, that progressed to selling drugs. And then that progressed to running high level scams. And by the time I was nineteen,

• 11:11Speaker 02

  I had built a massive legal enterprise where I was bringing in ten, ten, like tens of thousands of dollars a week, running a cell phone scam because cell phones had just become prominent. So that was a, uh, in a quick nutshell, that was my Nigeria to Bronx upbringing.

• 11:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, let me, I want to unpack some of this because it's this fascinating story, right? Where basically you get the highs and the lows in a very short period of time, kind of as a kid, when you're very formidable. Um, when your dad was going through this, um, on one hand, there's this, you know, uh, probably proud of your father to go and fight, uh, back against the government and say, hey, no, look, you, you took my land. I need to be compensated for it. At the same time, as you described, there's this mysterious death and I don't know how much kind of you guys know or, or didn't really spend the time to try to figure it out. How do you think back around, you know, a private citizen, private property rights and then government and kind of their ability to do things like that? Whether it's in Nigeria or in any country really around the world, like what are some of the lessons maybe that you took away from that as a kid?

• 12:05Speaker 02

  Uh, you know, I was too young to really take away any lessons. I was five years old at the time. Um, but I would say now as an adult, looking back in retrospect is, you know, just the, the greatness of America, you know, our ability to, to, to have those rights and not have to worry about buying a house. And then the government come along one day and saying that that, that house doesn't belong to you. So, you know, now it belongs to us. Um, and, uh, and, and just having, having the freedoms that we have here. So I, I look at it more so, uh, in retrospect and, and, and, you know, I've been able to, uh, you know, build wealth, uh, you know, started from the bottom, but, um, to the, to where I am at now, I've been able to kind of build wealth because of the freedoms and, and the laws and the rules that we have in place,

• 12:50Speaker 02

  which do not exist in Nigeria. I get Nigerians on a daily basis that email me or message me on social media and they say, please, can you please bring me to America?

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Can you please come back to Nigeria and and and help fight the government and and and run for power? I get a lot of people that ask me to come back and run or and you know, get into politics and I don't have a desire to because I know how corrupt the system is. It's going to take a complete dismantling of the Nigerian political system in order for it to to to be what it can be. And Nigeria has the potential to be great because it's a very, it's a very rich and resource country. When you look at natural, the natural gas that they that that can be produced, oil, cocoa, gold, and all these other minerals. I mean, look at what China's doing there. They're going into not just Nigeria, but other parts of of Africa, and they're just buying

• 13:43Speaker 02

  up all of this real estate in order to be able to mine and pull these resources out because because of the resources that are in in Nigeria and in in these other parts of Africa. And so Nigeria does have the potential to be a very wealthy and successful country where majority of the people are thriving, but the corruption is just so out of control. So I know that was a long answer, but it's short that that it's more of a retrospective look than and then essentially having an assessment when I was that early of an age.

• 14:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, when when I went to Nigeria and stayed in Lagos and not on Victoria Island, but actually like in Lagos near Computer Village, and I've told the story before on the podcast, the energy in Nigeria is just off the charts, right? You're just walking around and for whatever reason, it's just you just know it's a special place. And and the way that people interact with you and with with each other and stuff is something that you wish you could just bottle up. And you're like, man, this place has so much potential. And then you look at, you know, the population size and how fast it's growing and the estimates that, you know, there's going to be more Nigerians than Americans by 2050. And just all these different components, you're like, this place could be amazing. But when you talk to Nigerians, the government and the corruption is one of the things they point to. And they say, yeah, we just got this like governor on the speed we can go until we kind of fix that problem.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  No, a hundred percent. And the crazy thing is, like, in the inner city of New York City, there's other inner cities when people are in poverty, uh, young people specifically, uh, what do they look to to get out of poverty for the most part, at least speaking from my experience, it's like sports, uh, music, or, you know, selling drugs, right? Because that's what they're exposed to. In Nigeria, um, every kid from the time they're young, they're taught, whatever you do, work your way into politics. Because if you can get into politics, then that's the way you can get rich. You have people who become governors or senators in Nigeria, who haven't, having no wealth. They're just great talkers and great manipulators. And then they come out of office billionaires, not millionaires,

• 15:44Speaker 02

  billionaires. And so that's the goal for a lot of people in Nigeria is to get into politics because they know, hey, once I get to the, as a matter of fact, I remember finding Nigeria in twenty eighteen to finish writing my, to finish, um, uh, writing my book. And as soon as I got off the plane, um, the customs officer said, what gift do you have for me? Like, do you have a gift for me? You know, in order to get through customs, you have to give me a gift. And then you, and then we got pulled over and, and, and the police said, how much money are you going to give me in order to get through? So it's so systemic, the corruption, and it, and it's whatever position somebody's at in Nigeria, from the smallest position as a customs officer,

• 16:23Speaker 02

  they're going to shake you down. And if they can shake you down for five dollars as a custom off, officer, just imagine what the governors and the senators and the Ministry of Oil, I mean, it was a story that came out, I want to say around twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, where the Ministry of Oil, you know, they found, and again, I might be butchering the story, but the spirit of it is she was cutting side deals, uh, with other countries and shipping oil to these other countries. So the, so the, uh, uh, shipment of oil costs, I don't know, fifteen billion dollars. I'm just throwing out a random number to give this example. She would sell it for five billion, pocket the five billion, the ship would disappear, the other country would get the oil, and now she's a billionaire.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  And then when she got caught, she jumped on a plane to London, uh, and, uh, when the Nigerian government was like, you gotta come back and face Charges because you got caught. She's like, I have cancer, so I need to stay here and seek treatment. So you know that that's what everybody that's not everybody, but that's what a good number of Nigerians, you know, do in in politics is they just steal and they their kids are raised to, hey, don't try to become a basketball player or a doctor or lawyer. Try to become a politician because that's how you're going to get rich and be able to get your family out of the poverty that they're in, you know, which is sad.

• 17:37Anthony Pompliano?

  There's some families in America who have the same strategy of just getting

• 17:40Speaker 02

  Oh, 100%. 100%. Oh, yeah. And people who just go into politics for that reason because they've they've but I would just say it's more widespread in Nigeria than it is. And it's more overt. It's more widespread and it's more overt in Nigeria here. It's more clandestine because of our rules and the laws and our rights. But hey, it's it's it's disgusting wherever it happens, you know.

• 18:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Completely agree. Talk about your mom, obviously being kind of in a situation where your father had generated great wealth. You went to Nigeria, you and your siblings were born there. And then all of a sudden, you kind of return back from wealth to, you know, a degree of poverty. Like, how did she handle that, navigate it? And was the move back to New York's more of like running to the familiar? Or was it running away from the situation? Like, how as you grew up, did you kind of talk to her? What did you learn?

• 18:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, my mom was just, she's just a beast. What I think she there was a trigger for her. After my dad died, she contacted a cousin that she had grown up with. And he was he was well to do, a lawyer in New York City. And she reached out to him and said, I don't have a nickel to my name. I'm coming back to New York or I'm back in New York. I can't remember the time period. This was shortly after my dad died, though. And can you just loan me some money until I can get myself together and get my kids squared away with with food and clothing and schooling and all that? And about five minutes later, his wife called her back and said, uh, how dare you call up my husband and ask him for money? Um, you know, uh, don't you ever do that again. And they hung up the phone on my mom.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  And it was in that moment that a switch went off on my mom's head. The birds have bones, the boats have been burned. No one's coming to my rescue. I need to figure this out on my own. And so my mom, you know, she worked multiple jobs. She started out as a teacher in the South Bronx, but then she would also work at museums and art galleries in midtown Manhattan to be able to expose my brother and I to the arts for free so that we can get a secondary education through her teaching. Um, she started a creative writing business called First Impressions Writing Services, where she would, again, teach, work at the museum, and then people would give her term papers. She was Chat GTP before there was a Chat GTP.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  And she would write term papers and resumes and, and, and, and, you know, all, and, and, and letters for people and get paid. So she would just work, grind hard. I mean, uh, she would wake up in the morning, uh, before my brother and I would wake up, run the, we had seventeen flights in our, seventeen floors in our building. She would run up that and down the stairs for a workout because she couldn't afford a gym. Come back downstairs, wake my brother and I up, get us ready for, for school, send us to school, then she would go work. Come back from work, uh, uh, help us with our homework, work another job, feed us, work another job, and then put us down to sleep and then work some more. So that was something that I saw as a kid, and I would ask my mom, mom, why are you working?

• 20:39Speaker 02

  I didn't understand it as a young kid. And then now I look at back, it's because she was trying to provide for two boys. And again, she was trying to create an environment for us that where we could thrive and become something. And I remember asking her in my, my early twenties, I said, mom, why didn't you ever remarry? And she said, because I didn't want to bring any confusion into the house. And I knew that I, my main focus needed to be you guys because if you and your brother were successful, then everything would be all right and that I would be all right in the long run. And so, and so that's why she worked as hard as she did and it paid off, you know, it, it, it all eventually paid off. And but more importantly, it gave me the template for how to work. It showed me the importance of.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Of putting in the work and going to extra work. My mom would always tell me and my brother, whatever you do, do it right the first time. She would make my brother and I read New York Times articles and books and then write reports on those books and articles. And if the reports weren't near perfect, which for me, my brother, he's an engineer, so he would do better than me. She would make us pick another article, book and start all over again from scratch, right? And what she was trying to instill in us was the importance of doing everything right the first time and doing everything with excellence. And she was also trying to instill into us the importance of being able to write because from her perspective, if you knew how, she figured

• 22:04Speaker 02

  if my brother and I could knew how to articulate ourselves in a literary format, we would never be without a job. We would always be able to work. And so she was just forward thinking in that sense. And so I say, all I have to say, you know, she set the template for me and I know without an unequivocal doubt that I would not have made it through the military, made it into SEAL training, made it through SEAL training, be who I am and where I'm at today without that constant reminder and that, that, that, that example as a young boy of, of hard work and the importance of hard work.

• 22:38Anthony Pompliano?

  So how do you go from doing book reports and article reports to running cell phones cams? Like, like, that's, that's a jump, right? And to some degree, it's like inside the house, almost like you're, you're one person. And then it seems like outside the house, you're a different person, right? Like, talk, talk through a little bit as to how that happens? And how do you balance that in your head now?

• 22:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was a chameleon, you know, just like the title of my book right there, chameleon. I learned how to be a chameleon at an early age. I learned, okay, this is how I need to be with my mom to, to keep her off my back and then, and then figuring out what I'm doing. And this is who I need and how I need to be when I'm out in the streets doing what I'm doing. I, I needed to do, you know, not like exceedingly above and beyond in school, but I needed to meet the standard in school. And as long as I'm meeting the standard in school and I'm graduating to the next grade on time, she's going to stay off my back. So, and that will allow me to do what I do. So I would just so the easiest answer to that was I was a chameleon and and for me it was especially the young age, it was all about making money. And I think a big part of that

• 23:43Speaker 02

  also was I had my dad's entrepreneur DNA and mindset, you know, so I didn't really want to work for people. And that's why when I did work for people, you know, I stole or I figured out a way to create a business out of the businesses that I was working in, if that makes sense. And so it all boiled down to wanting to make money and wanting to be affirmed. You know, I think that that was also a big part of it. You know, I believe that every boy needs a father to affirm him and to to teach him how to be a man. If not, he's going to seek affirmation from other things, people, relationships, etc. And that's the same thing with every girl. Every girl needs a father to teach her how to be loved by a man and to a father to affirm her so that she's not seeking

• 24:27Speaker 02

  affirmation in relationships and the wrong things. And so in retrospect, I can say that the main reason I got into the stuff that I got into was because unconsciously I was seeking that pat on the back from my dad that I never got because my dad died. You know, I was seeking for people to, hey, you're the man. You're doing great. You're doing this. And so that's how I was that's why I was able to progress from doing things I was doing and selling drugs and and eventually, you know, running the high level scams, the cell phone scams.

• 24:56Anthony Pompliano?

  What was the scam?

• 24:59Speaker 03

  Everyone's got a hard question about AI, your job, your kids, where it's going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/spotify and keep thinking. That's claude.ai/spotify.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  So there was a I won't mention the cell phone company's name, but I was able to get a license for the cell phone company. We'll just call it WCT because that's what I named them in my memoir, Transform. But I was working with this company called WCT and I was able to get a

• 25:43Speaker 02

  License to cell phones. This one's cell phones had just come out. You know, the first phone was like the Nokia and it had the snake game on it. And then you had the Motorola flip phones and all that. And everybody was, you know, was, was, was enticed, especially in New York City by this. And so, um, um, what I would do was I eventually connected with a guy who I went to high school with and his girlfriend worked at a hospice. And so he would get me, um, uh, names, date of birth, uh, addresses, social security, uh, number. And then I would activate phones on, so on one person's line of credit, I could activate up to three phones. And, uh, the bill wouldn't come in for thirty days. And then, uh, the person had thirty days to pay the bill, which they wanted.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Uh, so then the phone would stay on for sixty days and then in ninety days the phone would turn off. And so I found a niche, uh, a niche in with, with, with drug dealers because they loved the phones because they had unlimited, uh, cell phone calling. Cause I was, I was doing unlimited phone calls before, unlimited minutes before it existed. Uh, cause they would have the phone for ninety days, unlimited phone calls. And then, uh, it would turn off and then I would get them a new one. So they weren't easy. It was hard for them to be tracing the people's, everyone's, um, uh, we were using were essentially either on their way to, to, on their deathbed or, or they had died in the process of me activating the phone. So nobody was, was, uh, was, uh, looking in on it. And so essentially that's, that's kind, that was the cell phone scam.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  And I would sell the phones for between three hundred dollars and to nine hundred dollars, depending on the phones. And then the Motorola two-way pagers came out, which were like, they looked like little miniature laptops and they were, there was a gray one and a black one. And so I would sell those for about five to six hundred dollars a pop. And, uh, that's essentially how I was, I was making money. And then I started a record company. I keep this on my desk as a reminder, cause this was our compilation album. And uh, and I would essentially launder the money through the record company. Uh, and my exit plan was to essentially, you know, get enough compilations, album, albums together. And sell some numbers so that we could track and we could show proof of concept to record companies and then sign a label deal.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  Because that's what, you know, Jay-Z and, and Damon Dash did at the time. They were selling drugs. They used drugs to essentially fund their music business. And then that's how that was their exit plan, the music business and, and Murder Inc. and a lot of these other guys. So I was trying to follow that template. So that was a, that was a cell phone scam and that's kind of how it all worked together.

• 28:13Anthony Pompliano?

  So you go from that to two thousand and two, I think it is, you enroll in the Navy. And what you mentioned earlier is your dad was on the board of the World Trade Center. He knew the designer, uh, or, or the, uh, you know, engineer and architect of, uh, the World Trade Center. Nine eleven drove the decision to join the Navy or completely unrelated?

• 28:33Speaker 02

  No, it was completely unrelated. Um, um, I had ended up getting involved in a deal with a drug dealer that went bad. Sold them another number of phones that was supposed to stand, stay on for 90 days. They only stayed on for two weeks. Um, he, he had already flipped the phone. So I, so if I, if I, if I sold him a phone for 500, he had turned, sold the phone for a thousand dollars. So he owed a lot of people money and they were upset. So, um, after he threatened my life, my mom's life was threatened. Huge wake up call for me. That's when I decided, hey, I'm not doing this anymore. Uh, and, uh, tried to sell the record company. That didn't work itself out. And then finally, um, in two thousand and two, that's when I kind of looked at my life and I saw that my life hadn't amounted, amounted to anything.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  And I realized that if I stay in the Bronx, I'm going to either end up dead or in prison. Because there were people who were doing the same things that I was doing and they were ending up in federal prison. And so, um, that was the, it was more self preservation. It wasn't about, hey, let me join the military after the act of war, nine 11 or any of that stuff. Let me just join the military because if I don't, I'm going to end up dead. Um, and so I, and I went to go join and then the recruiter. She ran my background and she found out that I had two warrants out for my arrest, which I didn't know. I had a warrant in New Jersey and I had a warrant in New York. I was, I was petrified because at this point I didn't know what the warrants were for. So, uh, at the time. And so, uh, I thought it was for the stuff that I was doing and, and you know, was it related to the phones?

• 30:02Speaker 02

  And, uh, got up, got ready to run out of the office and she stopped me right before I got out, getting, you know, right before I crushed, crushed the threshold. And she said, hey, where you doing? I said, I'm getting out of here. She said, uh, you have a suit? I said, no. She asked me if I had a collared shirt and some nice pants. I said, I'm sure I could find something. And she told me to come back tomorrow. And I said, for what? She snapped at me and said, just go back tomorrow. Okay? And, uh, uh, growing up in the streets of the Bronx, especially when I was hustling, I had to learn how to read people. And that would later serve me well. And when I got into human intelligence and from her response and reaction, the way she had been for the last hours in her office, I was able to read that she, whatever it was that she was gonna do for me, it was gonna be good. I didn't know exactly what it was gonna be, but I knew that it would be good. And so I came back the next day.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  And she took me to both judges. She had on her dress uniform and took me to both judges, the judge in New Jersey, uh, judge in New York, advocate on my behalf. She kinda used the, uh, the, uh, uh, nine 11 as a way to get me in. She said, hey, he's trying to join the Navy after an act of war. Nine 11 took place nine months earlier. And I think you should give him a shot because he can't join the military with warrants or record. And, um, the, uh, the first judge expunged my record. I just had to pay court fees and court fines. And the second judge who, uh, he was, uh, his courthouse, the courthouse was coincidentally blocks away from ground zero. He, you know, so there was a lot of empathy there. He expunged my record and then that was kinda how, and then she fudged the paperwork to sneak me into the Navy.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  And that's kinda how it all happened. So it was all about self-preservation.

• 31:31Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you get in, do you go straight to SEAL training or you go to the regular Navy first?

• 31:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I go to the regular Navy first. I wasn't qualified academically. I didn't have the ASVAB scores and I couldn't swim and I was super skinny. So I went to Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton first. I did a year there and I just, as soon as I got there, I just trained hard. You know, I didn't have a car, so I'd run three miles uphill to the pool, jump in the shallow end, try to figure it out, run three miles back. I got an ASVAB for dummies book, which is like an SAT book and I studied that book religiously and then I, I watched Bud's two, three, four documentary and saw how the guys worked out. I built my workout plans around what they did and, and within a year of checking into the command, I was checking out and on my way to SEAL training. So it was a year process.

• 32:18Anthony Pompliano?

  What was training like?

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Bud's, it was, it sucked. It sucked and being, being, I couldn't get away with anything because you know, less than 1% of Navy SEALs are African American and then when every class that I had been in, you know, I'm like one or, one of, one of, one or one of three African Americans in the class and, and so I couldn't get away with anything. One, two, so I stood out like a sore thumb. And then on top of that, you know, I, I, the cold water, I had no body fat. So when I'm in the ocean, I'm freezing. At the end of every two mile time ocean swim, I mean, the borderline hypothermic or hypothermic. So that sucked. And it's just a brutal, it's

• 33:00Speaker 02

  a brutal process, man, and it has to be because they're trying to create warriors who will be able to go in any situation outnumbered, outgunned, and still get the job done. And so it's absolutely necessary. It has to be tough. I mean, the attrition rate is anywhere between 80 and 90%. The class I graduated with started with two, 270, 29 of us finished. And that's just the way it is every class. So it sucked. It sucked bad, but it was necessary.

• 33:31Anthony Pompliano?

  I've talked to a lot of SEALs about this. What do you think about all the public pressure to make it softer, to basically water it down?

• 33:38Speaker 02

  I hate it. I, I, I think it's all political for diversity sake. I say that in air quotes. I think, you know, that's, you know, that's a job where you have to have.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  A person in it that's qualified, you know what I mean? And it's not a job where you could water it down and to get numbers in or to meet a quota. Otherwise, you're going to create casualties. I will say that the SEAL Teams, BUDs training and in the SEAL Teams, that was the first community that I felt like I was a part of that didn't care at all whether I was black or white. And they didn't care. All they cared about was can you do your job? You know, can you perform? And if you can't perform, you're out of here. If you can perform, then you're you stay in. And I I hate the idea of of people trying to politicians. And you know, the majority of people who are trying to, you know, water it down, change it are people

• 34:35Speaker 02

  who had didn't serve or will have never served, not just in the military, but in special operations. So it's easy to arm your quarterback and say, why aren't there enough this group or that group? And then why ain't enough blacks in there? Why ain't enough women and this and that? And how about you go through training first and then you tell me why?

• 34:56Anthony Pompliano?

  What many people don't realize, I was in the regular army and special operations is even dead on steroids is the trust that a team needs, right? And so to your point, it's not only can you do your job, you know, in training, but I'm assuming when you're kicking in a door in Iraq or Afghanistan, you need to know that the person next to you can shoot straight, can move, can communicate, has your back, is going to not fucking run out of the building the first time somebody shoots back, like all these different things. That trust and that confidence and competence that comes with having people who've gone through the training is a huge piece. Like the psychological component is really important.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  100%. It's total buy in, you know? I like like example you use was perfect. When I go into it, when I was doing direct action missions, downrange, I won't mention the countries I, you know, that I operated in. But, you know, when I was doing DA missions and we went and I had to, I was a point first man in, a second man in, I knew if I was first man in, the guy behind me is going to cover my corner, be the second man in, right behind me covering down the section that I can't see. I didn't have to worry about, is he gonna, after I go in, is he gonna really clear his corner or am I going to get shot in the back by somebody who's hiding in the corner? I knew that he was gonna do, what are you gonna do? And even even more more than that, I knew that when whoop hit the fan, like when things

• 36:14Speaker 02

  were out of control, that that dude was not going to quit it at, because it's not just about. The fear of of of of going in and somebody running out because they scared to get shot at. It's more about yo, you've been your half your platoon has been shot up or the birds crashed. Or you've been on an op for freaking eight hours and it's 130 degrees out. It was just supposed to be a quick snatch and grab and you know that each guy is still going to give 110%. You know that each guy is not even paying attention to the fact that he might have have been shot and bleeding out. I mean, case in point, lone survivor, that's a great, that's a great case study right there. You know, that proves why we do what we did, why we do what we do because you know, those guys,

• 36:57Speaker 02

  Marcus and and Axel and and Murph and those guys, they were in the middle of a storm and they kept on fighting. They weren't fighting for themselves. They kept on fighting for the guy to their right and they left outnumbered, shot up, you know, guy died, another guy died, still going, still fighting for each other. And and that perseverance, that that no quit attitude in the face of ominous, you know, absolute distress, death, you name it. You can only get that out of our, out of the program that we, that we come out of. And so, um, so yeah, man.

• 37:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, I think a big part of it too is you can't recreate that scenario or or other types of scenarios in training, but you sure can put people through a lot of pain, right? And kind of test them mentally. And so how much of the training did you feel was it was physical versus mental?

• 37:53Speaker 02

  It's all mental. In my, in my opinion, every guy that shows up to training physically has what it takes to to be there and make it. Otherwise you want to get in, you got to pass like a 500 yard swim, pushups, situps, pull up certain numbers, all that stuff. And you can't just pass it. You have to score what's called competitive scores. And then you got to take a physical examination and a psychological, all this stuff. So every single person that shows up has what it takes physically. The question now becomes who has what it takes mentally. All the instructors are doing, and this is what we did on the Special Forces Fox show. And this is what I do when I work with, work with corporations and pro athletes. All we're doing is taking physical tools to drive home intellectual points. We're using the physical to challenge them mentally.

• 38:36Speaker 02

  And that's what it's about all at the end of the day. So for me, my personal opinion. It's it's 90% mental, 10% physical. I mean, the the and that 10% physical, that that I mean, they're just using that 10% to to put to to push that 90% eh within your within your psyche and your brain.

• 38:55Anthony Pompliano?

  So one of the things I hear people who've never served in the military before, never, you know, gone overseas or anything like that, they'll talk about fear and how fear really is this thing that obviously soldiers don't get scared, right? Obviously SEALs don't get scared. Talk a little bit about fear, whether you ever were scared, you know, when you're out in the field or operating on missions and whether that was something that could be debilitating or actually something that you could use to your advantage and kind of spur yourself into action.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think fear is good. Fear is a good thing because it keeps you from doing the wrong thing, in my opinion. I my greatest fear when going on missions, what it wasn't death. I gave up the I gave up the fear of death the moment I raised my hand and said, I'll join the military. And then even more so when I freaking said, I'm gonna go to Buzz. And then even more so when I said, I'm gonna be a frogman because I knew that I could die at any moment. You have to give up that fear of death. My greatest fear was doing something or not doing something that would lead to the serious injury or death of my teammate. That was my fear. And that fear was good because it it really helped focus me on doing

• 40:09Speaker 02

  the right things. You know, as I said, I was a I was a human, I was a medic, but I was also a human guy, which stands for human intelligence. And so I got to go to different intelligence schools and I had to learn how to run sources and do all that cool stuff, tradecraft, all that cool stuff. And that's kind of where chameleon kind of came out of. And and so I was building the intelligence packages that would lead to us, well, that would lead to us going on direct action missions. And so I had to really vet my information with my sources and against other information and double vet it and check it and do because my fear was getting a piece of information or maybe I'm in a meeting with a

• 40:50Speaker 02

  Source and I'm not paying attention to all the tell tell signs is he lying to me? Is he just trying to send me to a place where I go into the me and my team go into the building? Then somebody clacks off a bomb and we're all dead. I had to focus even more so and that focus came out of that fear of leading my teammates into a situation that that's going to kill them, right? And so uh uh it fear is good and it was always good. But again, it was more so the fear of doing something or not doing something that would that would hurt or lead to the death of my teammates. And that's something that, you know, when I'm talking to uh entrepreneurs and and CEOs of companies, that's something that I always preach. I said, you know, utilize that fear, but don't utilize it in a selfish way.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  Think about your employees, think about your subordinates, you know? Think about, okay, is this decision going to be a decision? That is not going to just hurt me, but it's going to hurt my teammates. And in in return, by hurting my teammates, hurt my bottom line. One thing I always try to tell leaders is that, you know, uh, it's the importance of taking a genuine interest in your people. Because if you take a genuine interest in them, not just see them as a stepping stall, stepping stone or sled dog or whatever the tag we put on it. Your people are going to want, they not only going to, they're going to want to meet the standard. They want to, they're going to want to blow past the standard. They're going to want to be willing to run through walls. And that was something I learned in the SEAL teams.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  I had an O I C who just really took a genuine interest in us. And so we wanted to perform beyond the standard, you know? It wasn't about him prying into our personal business. It was about him letting us know, hey, I care about you. What's going on? How's your day? How's things back at the family? What can I do to support you? What can I do to help make your job easier? And in doing all of those things and actually caring about us, you know, we wanted to work 10 times harder. And when you have that fear of disappointing your subordinates or disappointing your teammates, it's going to lead to you making the right decisions. So that that went and in making the right decisions, it's just going to create this cycle of success within your team, within your organization. And so fear is good.

• 43:01Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about the book and this black box thriller is kind of how it's described, it is based on your experiences. So it is not your story, but it is a story that is rooted in this experience that you had. Talk a little bit about human intelligence and what does that really entail? And then how much of what people see on television or in movies is real versus it's just dramatized because it's entertaining, but it isn't part of the actual job?

• 43:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I would say that black box chameleon is a fictional extension of my life. You know, it's in transform, my memoir, I couldn't go into the details about what I did and how I did it. And so this was my at my my way chameleon was my way to be able to do it in a safe way where I'm totally fictionalizing everything and creating different programs and so on and so forth. But yeah, human intelligence is a it's essentially it's using humans to collect intelligence. That's the easiest way to explain it. A good film comp would be one, as a matter of fact, and I could say that in one of the courses that I went to, the instructors played us scenes from spy games.

• 44:12Speaker 02

  So if anyone has seen spy games, that's, you know, about me kind of giving away information that shouldn't be given away to the general public. That's a good comp for what we do. You know, that's a that's a good example of, you know, finding somebody who and that's part of the job. Part of the job is finding somebody who has information or can get access to information that you need for a mission or maybe not even a mission, maybe just to get a an idea of what's going on in the environment that you'll be working in, right? It's finding that person, befriending that person, which is building rapport with that person. And then at some point, you know, tasking that person to do work for you to collect intelligence for you because

• 44:55Speaker 02

  me as a as a big black dude from the Bronx, you know what I mean? I couldn't I couldn't walk down the street of certain places in the Middle East or even in even in some parts of Africa because, you know, because even though I'm black, like, you know, Africans can kind of snoop out an American easily for the most part. And so we don't have the ability to walk down the street and get these jobs done. And so it takes these people, these humans, hence human intelligence, to go help collect that information. And it's about training them and getting them up to speed and knowing when to pitch and when not to and reading them as well. It's a big part of it. And that's why I would say that growing up in the Bronx really helped prepare me

• 45:39Speaker 02

  for that job, because you have to learn how to know how to read people, especially when you're doing the crazy stuff that I was doing. You have to learn how to read people, or else you're gonna end up, you know, talking to an undercover cop instead of talking to, you know, a client and ending up in prison. And so, yeah, that's essentially human. It's utilizing people to collect intelligence for you.

• 46:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, if you and I just were to sit down and talk about, you know, kind of this storyline, I think that I could learn a lot, right? Somebody who's interested in this stuff would pick up a lot of details and information and kind of just intellectually be stimulated. But you originally wrote it as a screenplay and converted it into a book, which means that it's got to be entertaining as well, right? And so talk a little bit as to when you sit down to write a fiction book versus the nonfiction kind of memoir style, it's very different writing. And so how did you kind of get yourself into the mindset and be prepared to actually write the fiction component after having such a successful nonfiction book?

• 46:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I think it wasn't too hard for me because in part, you know, I wrote a few fiction screenplays before jumping into the fiction book. So I had the writing the nonfiction book helped essentially give me the standard, right? It helped give me my right and left limits as it relates to writing a book, because those right and left limits are a lot wider when it comes to a book than writing a screenplay. And then after writing my first book, that's when I wrote my first screenplay, which was actually Chameleon. And those limits shrink exponentially, because you don't have as much space and

• 47:23Speaker 02

  latitude to explain and, you know, and give a sense of the world and have the characters give these long monologues. You don't have the space to do that in a screenplay. You have to get all of this information out in such a small encapsulated way. And so, writing Chameleon as a script and then writing other screenplays that I worked on, fictional screenplays. You know, it really, that's what helped me transition back into writing my book because now I had these restrictions in the fiction space as it related to screenplay. So now I wasn't able to now expand that into a book. So that's what I would say helped me the most

• 48:07Speaker 02

  was having that experience as a screenwriter, writing those screenwriting books. And then, and then now being able to go back to that fiction length or standard, like as you get, going back to that nonfiction length and standard that didn't transform, having that same length in Chameleon, but now taking all my fiction experience from three act structure, character arc, you know, the hero's journey, which you can't really do much of in a nonfiction space because there's just certain storylines in nonfiction spaces that don't go into the hero journey. Or if they do, we would talk about 30, 40 years that you got to stretch into the hero's journey. That's not the way the hero's journey works. And so,

• 48:50Speaker 02

  so yeah, screenwriting and then really helped me tremendously.

• 48:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk about kind of reviewing the book, right? So obviously you can have tons of people who are writers or editors and they can go and they can read words and they can tell you, hey, put a comma here, don't put a comma here, you know, use this grammar or whatever. But the substance of the book is not very well known by many people. It's not like we're writing about, hey, we went to the restaurant and then people are like, oh, I've had that experience, right? You're talking about things that are very specific. And so you've got a friend who I think was a CIA agent who read it and was, you know, helpful in getting you to convert it from the screenplay into the book. But did you have other people, whether they're Navy SEALs, other teammates, et cetera, kind of read through and just, hey, give me a gut check, like this is realistic and makes sense? Or did you kind of just have to fly, you know, blind on that part?

• 49:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I did. I, you know, Jack Carr, uh, who, uh, he's been very successful with, uh, the Terminalist series, which got turned into a TV show, which I had the pleasure of working on that TV show as well. He was one of the first, he was the first person that I sent the book to, um, because, you know, he knows the audience and he knows, um, how to write in a way that's not so heady, that's not above the head of, of, of, of, you know, the average person that didn't, doesn't have experience in the world that we operate in. And so he was the first guy I sent it to and dude, he, I mean, his, I mean, his, his quote is on the cover of the book. His, his blurb after reading the book is on the cover of the book, but you know, he gave me some really good feedback and, and, uh, and thoroughly enjoyed it. And then, um, Brad Thor, who, um,

• 50:43Speaker 02

  you know, he wasn't in the world that I was in, but, uh, he has a lot of experience writing those type of, I mean, he's been doing it for decades and number one New York Times bestseller multiple times over. And so, um, you know, sending it to him and having him read it and, and, and give his input. So that was, he was also very beneficial. And then Taylor Moore as well, you know, he, you know, him having worked in the agency and I had to kind of lean on him a little bit more so than the other guys, because this is not a Navy SEAL book. You know what I mean? This is not a book about Navy SEALs. This is a, this is a book about a world that I've never operated in. Um, you know, yes, I did the human stuff, but I never operated on a CIA level where I was, you

• 51:24Speaker 02

  know, uh, doing all that cool extra tier one type stuff in the agency. So, uh, I, I really did have to rely on those guys and, uh, and, and it was helpful for sure.

• 51:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk about the business behind all of this. Like you mentioned, Jack Carr is a good example, right? I don't know. I've lost count of how many books he's written at this point, uh, but it just seems like he keeps launching books. They're successful, right? He's obviously got, uh, the Amazon, uh, TV series that you mentioned. He, he's just become, you know, somebody who crossed over from the military world into kind of, uh, television, media, entertainment, been very successful. You seem to be on a very similar trajectory in terms of you've got TV shows, you've got movies and screenplays and now books and, and just kind of, you're hitting on all of these different components. How do you think about the business? Is it just you're the business? Is it more of like a, a publishing type house? Like just talk to me a little bit as to like, when somebody says to you like, what are you building? How do you answer?

• 52:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, for me, I'm building, it's a business, it's all, you know, it's, it all falls under one umbrella, which is my eighth wonder, which is, that's funny, because it's the name of my, my music company. I kind of kept retain that name for my production company, but it all falls under that, you know, it's a storytelling business. It's, uh, and, and, and our motto is to, uh, to tell authentic stories and do it in an authentic way, authentic and grounded way, whether that's through a book, whether that's through a TV show, whether that's, and whether that TV show was unscripted or scripted, like Special Forces Fox. I mean, I, I, I, I wasn't gonna sign on and do that show unless it was gonna be as authentic and real as, as, uh, as it was. And that was one of the, uh, my no-go-go criterias that related to doing

• 53:02Speaker 02

  a show. So, um, um, yeah, man, it's, uh, everything falls under that one business. And for me, it's all about how can one thing elevate the next thing and elevate the next thing and elevate the next thing. So, um, so, yeah, yeah.

• 53:17Anthony Pompliano?

  When you see the books, the TV shows and the movies, what is your favorite? And how do you actually decide? If you could only work on one project for the rest of your life, right? Like you get one last one. What's the evaluation criteria? Or how do you think about like what you uniquely find enjoyment in?

• 53:34Speaker 02

  What is gonna have the most impact? That's, that's for me is, is whether it's a book, TV show, film, what's gonna have the most impact? Because it was, it was story that changed the trajectory of my life. Like, we kind of breezed through my story a little bit, but, um, the, the first film that began to change and shift my mindset was Bad Boys. Uh, because that was, uh, that was, uh, the first film where I saw two African-Americans who looked like they, they were cool, but they were playing heroes. And so I remember being about 14 when that movie came out and I was, or 15, I can't remember exactly. And that's when I was just like, holy crap, like I could be something other than an athlete, drug dealer, or a rapper. Uh, and then a year later, The Rock came out and that's

• 54:18Speaker 02

  was my first time I was exposed to Navy SEALs. Uh, and so those two films changed, they, they shifted my mindset and changed. Trajectory of my life. And so that's the power of story. And I meet so many people, whether they're in the teams or outside or other avenues or other jobs. And you ask them, hey, why did you do what? Why did you choose this career path? And they'll tell you, oh, I watched this movie. I read this book or I listened to this podcast and I was just super. And I was just super inspired and I was just like, that's why I want to do that. How I discovered what I wanted to do in life was through a story.

• 54:57Speaker 02

  And so because I understand the impact of story, that's why for me, that's how I choose what I'm gonna do. Is it gonna have an impact? And yes, it is a business, right? So a part of it is, yes, we do want to make money, right? I'm not doing this for charity, but at the end of the day, I want what I'm doing to have some type of social or cultural impact or impact on on somebody on on a on a individual level, you know, like I like I mentioned when we were offline, you know, the underlying theme in in my book, Chameleon is, which doesn't come to the surface until the end was this importance of national unity. There's so much disunity in our nation. And if we continue down this divided path, it's gonna ultimately lead to our destruction.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  And so, you know, I I I wanted to intertwine that in a story because I want that to impact people. I want people to wake up and be like, ah, you know, I do hate this person because they're part of this political party or but maybe I should just go have a conversation. Maybe I should try and build a relationship. Or maybe I should just not attack that person because of our political differences. And, you know, I always try to say, you know, unity, there's a process to unity. It it it starts with conversation. Conversation leads to understanding. And understanding is what ultimately leads to some form of unity. And and so, you know, again, going back to the answer, it's all about what is going to have the most impact,

• 56:24Speaker 02

  especially in the time period that I'm operating or working in, whether that's making a film. And that was one of the reasons why I made my organ harvesting short film, which is now going to be a feature film. Um, and it's because I saw a need for it. I was working in. Human trafficking space volunteering with different nonprofits. I saw that I was unconscious of the realities of human trafficking until I got into that space. And then I was just like, damn, like, I didn't know much about this. I'm sure a lot of other people don't know a lot about this. And so how can I get more people engaged in this fight against this global issue called human trafficking? And I was like, oh, let's make a film. Let's impact. And so now I shifted my focus from other things that that I had already accomplished to, all right, this is my

• 57:06Speaker 02

  focus, because this type of project is going to have a bigger impact. And I made that short film, and now that short film is going to be a feature film. And so it all comes back to what is going to have the most impact in the moment. That's how I choose what I work on.

• 57:20Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think back over the media and entertainment work that you've done, is there one moment that you can point to and say, that's when I knew I could do this?

• 57:31Speaker 02

  Ah, yeah, I was working on Six Underground with Michael Bay. I was in Italy. And it was a big star-studded cast with Ryan Reynolds and Corey Hawkins and a bunch of other people. And Michael Bay was like, we were shooting a scene and he had me next to him at the monitor. And he was like, yo, what do you think? You know, how would you, how would you, he wasn't asking because he needed an answer, but he was just, you know, asking to just kind of see where my head visually as a storyteller was. And he was like, what would you think? How would you shoot this? And I told him and then he went and it was like, all right, I'll try it out. I'll try it out on this tape. And he did it. And it was, it was cool. I don't know if he ended up using that, that take in the, in

• 58:13Speaker 02

  the final edit, but it was, that was when I was like, I could do this, you know, because from a storytelling standpoint, it doesn't get as, it doesn't get that high. The stakes don't get that high as it, as it does when you're a director, right? Writing a book is not a lot of money on the line, really, when you're writing a book, for the most part, right? You know, acting in a movie, I mean, you're, you're getting paid your check and you're getting told to perform a certain way. But the director is the one that's in charge of everything and in charge of, you know, millions of dollars of some films, hundreds of millions of dollars. And so to be able to be handed, you know, the reins for a millisecond and, and, and accomplish something, that was when I was like, you know what, I could do this. I could do this, you know?

• 58:57Anthony Pompliano?

  It is, it's incredible to hear kind of your story and see the success that you've had. Do you think that there's going to be more SEALs and people from the military who kind of fall in these footsteps? You mentioned, you know, Jack and a few others that have kind of started to do this. There's obviously the SEALs specifically who've had certain experiences. You mentioned Mark the Trail, you know, that either are able to turn their stories into movies or books and that type of stuff. But even just for the person who, you know, yes, they were in the military, but they didn't necessarily have some experience that turns into a specific book or a movie. How do you kind of see that transition becoming easier? Or maybe it's still going to be hard regardless of how much success you, Jack, or anybody else has?

• 59:38Speaker 02

  I think it's always going to be hard. I mean, the book, film and TV, but the entertainment business in general is a hard, it's a tough nut to crack. Even with people who are experienced and they've been doing it for a number of years, you know, it's a, you know, for, there's a saying in Hollywood, for a movie to get made, it takes a miracle.

• 59:59Speaker 02

  And so, so I think that it's, it's going to remain hard to get in, you know? But at the end of the day, those who really want it, kind of like when it comes to, came to, you know, not just SEAL training, but every other special operations training, even in military in general, right? Like, like you gotta have, if you have a deep rooted emotional reason as to why you want to do it, that's going to anchor you and you're going to keep holding out and then push through and, and eventually get through. But yeah, I don't see it ever being easier at all. Yeah.

• 1:00:30Anthony Pompliano?

  My last question for you is, the book is titled Chameleon. You mentioned earlier, like that's kind of who you were. What does that mean to you, right? What exactly is that in someone's life? And how could they maybe take the lessons that you've had in your life and then become a chameleon in theirs?

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, being a chameleon just means being able to adapt, being able to adapt to any situation. And, and I would say that that's also like somewhat of a business lesson. It's not a business book per se, but that's, that is a business lesson that people can take away from reading the book is like, how and when to adapt, you know what I mean? And, and, and when to become what you need to become, because the reality is. We're all chameleons all the time, you know, I'm not the same person I am with my wife as I am with you. I'm not the same person I am with my wife as I am with my kids. I'm not the same person I am with my kids as I am with my friends like, or yeah, I am with a boss who I like,

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  or a boss who I don't like, or business, like, like, we're always chameleons all the time. It's just, we're not conscious of it. And so, you know, uh, I, I would just say to people that, you know, that's, uh, that's kind of how it, that's how it all came to me. That's what it means to be a chameleon is to, is to really be focused on being what you need to be, uh, in the moment or in this situation to get the job done. And, uh, that's what I hope people are able to take away from the book. And even when we get to, there's a lot of interrogations in the book, right? And, and at the end of the day, that's what business negotiations are sometimes. It's like, how do you get this information out of a person that you need to get out of the person? So that that way you can negotiate a better deal.

• 1:02:08Speaker 02

  And so even in the writing of those interrogation scenes, I tried to put some, you know, some of those, uh, business negotiation beats and, uh, uh, uh, edicts into those interrogations so that people could be, oh, that's a good idea. Maybe I'll, I'll try that technique. Maybe I'll try this when I'm in a business room negotiating. So, uh, that's what I hope people get out of the book is one, you know, the importance of, uh, of, of political and, and not just political, but national unity in our nation. And two, hey, we're all chameleons. Let's just focus on being chameleons for the greater good.

• 1:02:39Anthony Pompliano?

  I love that. Where can we send people to find you on the internet or find the book?

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. So you can find me anywhere, uh, on social media, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, uh, LinkedIn, Remy Adelakay. I got a unique name, so you, it's not the official, it's just Remy Adelakay. And, uh, the book, you can find a book, uh, wherever books are sold. I did the audiobook read. So if you're an audiobook person, Audible, iTunes, wherever. If you're just a regular book person, like to read the printed copy, then Barnes and Nobles, Amazon, wherever books are sold.

• 1:03:07Anthony Pompliano?

  There's nothing like having the actual author do the audiobook, but I will tell you, I'll leave you with one funny joke. Um, or, or, uh, stories. I was listening to, uh, Ray Dalio's got a, a book that came out and he reads like the first chapter or two. And it's like, all right, now I'm gonna hand it off to this other person. And you, he like hoodwinked you a little bit, right? You're like, he's got like a real specific voice. It's kind of like a raspy voice and he's reading, you're like, okay, I got it. Ray's reading the book he wrote, whatever. And then he hands it off and you're like, hey, man, where'd you go?

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  Hey, I bet he's sold a lot of books like that because everybody listens to the first chapter. They're like, oh, because I think now on Audible, they allow you to listen to the first chapter.

• 1:03:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Maybe that's why he did it. Who knows?

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  That's funny.

• 1:03:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. Remy, listen, I appreciate you taking the time to do this. I really enjoyed talking with you and you've had this amazing career. You know, one, thank you for for serving our country and protecting people here at home.

• 1:03:59Speaker 02

  Thank you for your service as well.

• 1:04:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, well, I always think about military veterans are always looking for what's the next thing, right? You talked about adaptability and it's really powerful that you kind of had an idea coming out of the military, what you wanted to do and then saw an opportunity and just capitalized on it. And I think that it is inspiring for a lot of other veterans who say, look, you know, maybe I know what I want to do, maybe I don't, but there is something that is possible. I don't just have to go be a defense contractor or go and work in, you know, security or whatever. I can go do some of these other things. And so just keep doing you and I really appreciate it. And I think everyone else does as well.

• 1:04:34Speaker 02

  Same thing. I appreciate you, brother, and thank you and keep crushing it. And I see your wife is coming out with a book soon. So, so let me know.

• 1:04:44Anthony Pompliano?

  You and her can compete with each other.

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, two different worlds. I think she's in hers is nonfiction, right?

• 1:04:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, nonfiction.

• 1:04:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me know how I can help support her, man, and tell her congratulations on that as well.

• 1:04:56Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. I appreciate you.

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. All right, brother.