#1 Mike Glover - Green Beret

In this episode Shawn Ryan sits down with Mike Glover, a former Green Beret, CIA Contractor, and currently the CEO of Fieldcraft Survival. Mike talks about his childhood and how it lead him to an impressive career as one of the world's most elite operators. Mike opens up about his experiences training to become a Green Beret, his personal experiences in combat, what lead him to become a CIA Contractor, his struggle to transition into civilian life, and his latest adventures as a business owner and entrepreneur of Fieldcraft Survival. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:29Speaker 01

  Ally here with cash when you need it. You know, for the taxi that saved you, the guy who helped you move. Wait, are you supposed to tip at the car wash? Don't be in... Ally's 75,000 fee-free ATMs mean you always have cash when you need it. Ally Bank Member, FDIC.

• 0:52Shawn Ryan?

  I've been dying to ask you this question.

• 0:56Shawn Ryan?

  You got out September 3rd, 2001.

• 1:02Shawn Ryan?

  A week later, September 11th happens. The towers go down.

• 1:09Shawn Ryan?

  What is the first thing that went through your head?

• 1:17Shawn Ryan?

  If you have one piece of advice for

• 1:21Shawn Ryan?

  the kid aspiring to be an SF operator? Selection isn't an assessment of what you're actually doing. I want to take a call and... You take calls on your podcast? I take calls.

• 1:34Speaker 03

  What's up, brother?

• 1:36Shawn Ryan?

  Keebler, you son of a bitch.

• 1:37Speaker 03

  It was from an operation where they had killed this bad guy, and they took his leg.

• 1:56Shawn Ryan?

  It's official.

• 1:58Shawn Ryan?

  We're up and running. This is episode 001. I want to personally welcome everyone to the Sean Ryan Show. Our first guest today is Mike Glover. He's a badass operator, a former Green Beret. We've worked together, known each other for a long time. I asked him some really tough questions that I think you guys are really gonna like. If you're watching this on YouTube and you want to listen, please head over to iTunes, hit the subscribe button, give us a rating. We want to make this motherfucker go ape shit. All right, without further ado, welcome to the show, Mike Glover.

• 2:53Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Mike, welcome to my show. How do you like Tennessee?

• 2:59Speaker 03

  I love it, man. It's beautiful. Thanks for having me out here. It's amazing. I've never been here.

• 3:05Speaker 03

  Never. I don't think I've ever been to Tennessee. I've been to the border with North Carolina and Tennessee.

• 3:12Shawn Ryan?

  Doing some cross-border ops?

• 3:14Speaker 03

  Cross-border ops behind friendly lines, but it's beautiful, man. I love it. Thank you for having me.

• 3:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it's been a pleasure, man. I've had a really good fucking time since you've been up here and it's great catching up with you. You know,

• 3:32Shawn Ryan?

  the last time I saw you, we were in Yemen and getting shot at. We didn't really get to know each other out there and

• 3:43Shawn Ryan?

  and started listening to your podcast and we kind of kept in touch a little bit, maybe once or twice a year, but we got a lot of shit in common, man. I mean, you showed up and

• 3:56Shawn Ryan?

  The first thing we did is go look for some treasures at the antique shops.

• 4:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, I didn't realize how much we had in common. You know, you're obviously half Japanese, I'm half Korean. So you get the Asian thing in common. I'm also a big antiquer. I've always been. I don't know if isolationist is part of the, what we have in common, but I'm about off-grid living, just getting away from people. And yeah, man, it was Yemen and you had that assassination attempt and it was a pretty big deal, getting shot up. And we QRF'd you and it was a good day. I mean, it was a good day that you didn't get hurt and you came back.

• 4:40Shawn Ryan?

  Good day to get compromised. But yeah, that was.

• 4:46Shawn Ryan?

  That was a weird trip, but we're out of that now and you're here and yeah, you know, we got. We were talking about isolating ourselves and I mean, I think a lot of us do that. One thing I also noticed is how giving you are and right now you got a toy drive going on, so. For any of you guys out there that want to donate, Mike's got a toy drive. I want to bring this up now so I don't forget. But I think that's just really fucking cool that you do those kinds of things and you are constantly giving back and.

• 5:22Shawn Ryan?

  That's cool, man.

• 5:24Speaker 03

  We always try to give back any way we can. I mean, we've probably given in excess of $50,000 last year to charities to.

• 5:32Shawn Ryan?

  $50,000?

• 5:35Speaker 03

  Charities to men and women who have died in the line of service, whether that's police, military, first responders. A lot of it, we don't even advertise that we do it, but we leverage the community that we have. And crowdsourced from like-minded people who want to help people out. And yeah, I know you've done that before, but it's a huge thing for us and every holiday season, we like to do the toys. It's the one instance, you know, I'm not a big materialistic kind of person, but if a kid who's in a bad situation, which we all have seen that or experienced it ourselves. If that could bring a little joy during the holiday season, which is a tough time for a lot of families,

• 6:21Speaker 03

  then, you know, so be it. We'll raise a whole bunch of toys and give them to less fortunate people.

• 6:28Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome. Well, when's the deadline to get the toys to you?

• 6:31Speaker 03

  Honestly, there is no deadline. I'll hand deliver them myself. If people want to donate toys, they could send them to our address. It's on PhilCroweSurvival.com. As long as it's before Christmas. And then after the fact, just stay tuned to the channels because we're always doing something.

• 6:49Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, man. Well, speaking of Christmas, what is the one thing you want this year more than anything?

• 6:59Speaker 03

  You know, it's the first time. I mean, it's not the first time, but it's solidified now. It's the first time where I'm good, man. I don't want anything.

• 7:08Shawn Ryan?

  You don't want anything?

• 7:09Speaker 03

  I've got everything.

• 7:10Shawn Ryan?

  You have everything?

• 7:11Speaker 03

  Look, my favorite, some of my favorite things to do are the freest things to do.

• 7:16Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 7:17Speaker 03

  Picking up rocks. I rock hound. So if I see cool rocks, I pick them up and I put them on my shelf.

• 7:23Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you did steal a big bag of mushrooms from my property down there.

• 7:26Speaker 03

  I harvest mushrooms. And I stole a bag of turkey tail mushrooms from your yard.

• 7:34Shawn Ryan?

  I hope that makes it through the airport.

• 7:36Speaker 03

  I'm going to try to fly with it.

• 7:37Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you know.

• 7:38Speaker 03

  We'll see. The only thing they could do is arrest me.

• 7:40Shawn Ryan?

  Well, speaking of Christmas, even though you don't want anything, I got you a little gift here.

• 7:45Speaker 03

  Ooh, okay.

• 7:46Shawn Ryan?

  So.

• 7:49Shawn Ryan?

  Any guesses?

• 7:53Shawn Ryan?

  Go ahead. What do you got?

• 7:55Speaker 03

  So this is a box of Milk Duds.

• 7:57Shawn Ryan?

  Is it?

• 7:59Speaker 03

  Is it?

• 8:00Shawn Ryan?

  Is it?

• 8:04Speaker 03

  It's something. Man, this is a lot of weight. I don't know. Okay, now I'm taking it.

• 8:07Shawn Ryan?

  All right, open it.

• 8:08Speaker 03

  All right, here we go.

• 8:08Shawn Ryan?

  Open that motherfucker up.

• 8:10Speaker 03

  Here we go.

• 8:16Speaker 03

  Is it gonna punch me in the face?

• 8:17Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 8:18Speaker 03

  Alright.

• 8:20Shawn Ryan?

  It's not a dick in the box or anything.

• 8:22Speaker 03

  Man, look at you.

• 8:23Shawn Ryan?

  Hey.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  I should've guessed.

• 8:25Shawn Ryan?

  Just a little something for the ride home.

• 8:27Speaker 03

  Thanks, man.

• 8:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:29Speaker 03

  This is 10 more pounds I don't need, uh, that's gonna be on my ass. Oh, this is awesome. Thank you.

• 8:36Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome. I saw you carry them for your EDC, so I figured I'd get you, you know.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  I do, I absolutely do.

• 8:41Shawn Ryan?

  A bigger pack for your...

• 8:42Speaker 03

  These will not be donated. These will be mine. I'll selfishly take these. Gummy bears and Milk Duds.

• 8:50Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. Well...

• 8:53Shawn Ryan?

  Let's just do a quick overview of, uh, you know, how you grew up and then we'll get into your military career a little bit. And then, uh, I really am excited to talk about field craft, but, you know, where did you grow up? What was your family life like? Did you have any brothers and sisters?

• 9:11Speaker 03

  So, I was born in a military installation in California, Fort Ward, California. My dad had already been in the military for a year or two. And...

• 9:25Speaker 03

  I was born in a military family. My dad was in the Army, my uncle was in the Navy. I have a great-great-grandfather who was a general in the Civil War. It's always been part of our, uh, DNA. I mean, this is...

• 9:40Shawn Ryan?

  You had a grandfather in the Civil War?

• 9:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, a Confederate, uh, grandfather, uh, General Hood.

• 9:47Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 9:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, he was a boss. He made general at the age of 37. He, uh, lost his leg in Gettysburg, lost his arm in another, uh, battle. He was a boss. He, he went to West Point. He was, uh, known as a battlefield general, like he was the guy that did a lot of ops. And he looks batshit crazy. If you see him online, he looks, he looks like a boss, but, you know, he had a pretty sad story. He, he eventually died. And then all of his kids were basically harvested out in the adoption system.

• 10:27Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 10:29Speaker 03

  But my family, on my dad's side, the white side, uh, all grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. And we grew up in the rural south. I mean, my, my family's from Georgia. And they all migrated, migrated, crossed the border into Florida. And, you know, I grew up in Daytona Beach, Florida, for the most part. And I say for the most part because I was all over the place. I lived my first four years in life in Germany where we were stationed. My mom and dad separated when I was about four or five. She went to North Carolina, my dad went to Florida. And so I spent time between Florida and North Carolina with two separated parents. Kind of just living life growing up.

• 11:12Speaker 03

  I had a good upbringing. We were poor as shit. I remember not even if one year I couldn't even afford, my mom couldn't afford to buy me shoes. Holy shit. So I wore flip flops the entire school year. My mom didn't even have a car growing up. We walked everywhere.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  So, you know, sad stories of, you know, my life was hard. I walked to the grocery store and we had to walk miles to get groceries. And it's stereotypical in American society, but it was true. I mean, we just didn't have a lot. My dad was bouncing around from apartment complexes to trailers. I remember when I was 15 years old, laying in my bedroom in my mobile home and being able to touch all the walls with my arms and legs. That's how small it was. Wow.

• 12:06Speaker 03

  So, yeah, didn't have much, but we were, we were rich because

• 12:12Speaker 03

  we didn't feel like we were poor. All love, huh? All love, man. My, my dad's a real loving guy. And he tucked me in every night. He read me bedtime stories. He told me he loved me. He was empathetic. He was a real compassionate and humble person. And growing up with that was real impactful because I understood what emotional intelligence was.

• 12:41Speaker 03

  He was dumb when it came to women. He was a womanizer. Made a lot of fucking mistakes like most men do. My mom was a disciplinary, you know, she, she ruled with a Kung Fu grip. She used to beat my ass. And I needed that. I needed the balance of both.

• 12:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:59Speaker 03

  To be able to be successful. And luckily for me, I had, I just had good parents. And, and a really decent upbringing. So yeah, lived, lived that way until I eventually ran away when I was 16 years old. And I wrote my grandma a letter because I was living with her at the time.

• 13:16Shawn Ryan?

  Where did you run to?

• 13:19Speaker 03

  Down the road.

• 13:20Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, I did that too.

• 13:22Speaker 03

  Like a couple of miles. But I lived, I actually lived in a motel for on and off for almost a year.

• 13:29Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of, was it like?

• 13:30Speaker 03

  It was a shit motel.

• 13:31Shawn Ryan?

  Paid by the hour motel?

• 13:33Speaker 03

  Basically.

• 13:34Shawn Ryan?

  But you weren't having any fun in there, were you?

• 13:36Speaker 03

  It sucked. It was a little shit motel and I thought I was living baller life because I was living on my own, but it was, it sucked. I, I'll never forget, like I was leaving the motel to go to work. And it was too far to ride a bike. Because it was, I mean, it was miles. It was like 12 miles away. And so I decided to start taking the bus, but I had to wake up like an hour early. And I was getting on the sidewalk to get on the bus stop. And this is just me being 16, living on my own. Wearing my little getup for the job I had. And a Jeep drove by full of like teenage kids.

• 14:20Speaker 03

  And they threw a Wendy's flurry or whatever the Frosty. And it hit me in the chest and exploded all over me.

• 14:29Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 14:29Speaker 03

  And I remember, like I got hit with it. And I just continued to walk and I just sat on the, the park bench. You know, the bus stop bench, just waiting for the bus like, holy fuck, man. People suck.

• 14:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:43Speaker 03

  And it just was like, man, this is my life now. So I knew I had to do something different. And so I did. I joined the, I joined the army at the age of 17.

• 14:54Shawn Ryan?

  You joined the army at the age of 17?

• 14:57Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 14:58Shawn Ryan?

  No shit. Where did you enlist?

• 15:00Speaker 03

  I enlisted in Jacksonville, Florida in the infantry.

• 15:05Shawn Ryan?

  Did you have any? At seventeen years old, who signed for you?

• 15:10Speaker 03

  So, my grandmother signed for me to go in the military because she was my legal guardian. And.

• 15:17Shawn Ryan?

  So, did you have any guidance? Or did you just, I mean, that's what you knew you wanted to do? And you just made it happen? You just went there, you didn't talk to anybody, it was just you and the recruiter, or did you have a mentor?

• 15:32Speaker 03

  I didn't really have a mentor. I had, you know, I had some decent recruiters, they weren't the best, but I knew about the military. I mean, I played army with my cousins growing up my entire life. Like, if you were to ask back then, even as kids, who was the most likely to go in the military? I mean, I slept with a Glock BB gun underneath my pillow. I planned complex raids and operations as a child. So, I already knew. In fact, I made my dad a bet that I was gonna go into special forces. I think I was ten years old.

• 16:09Speaker 03

  Where I was interested in the Navy, I was interested in Green Berets. And I asked him, obviously being biased, who was the best? And he said, Green Berets. And so, I said, I wanna be that. And I bet him, I actually bet him an MP5.

• 16:24Shawn Ryan?

  You bet him an MP5?

• 16:25Speaker 03

  I said, if I get in, you're gonna give me an MP5 SD. Because I was fascinated with guns. I had, I read about guns and had magazines and books. And I always say, yeah, he still owes me an MP5 SD.

• 16:41Shawn Ryan?

  I was just gonna ask, where is it?

• 16:42Speaker 03

  Never paid up. He'd have to sell his mobile home to get that.

• 16:45Shawn Ryan?

  Well, yeah, those are pretty, what are those, like twenty-five grand now?

• 16:48Speaker 03

  At least, at least.

• 16:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:51Shawn Ryan?

  That's a good bet, though. An MP5, nice.

• 16:53Speaker 03

  Solid.

• 16:54Shawn Ryan?

  So, you still want one, you could've said that, and, you know, maybe it would've shown up for Christmas.

• 16:58Speaker 03

  That would, see, yeah, if I can get him an MP5 SD, I've actually tried. I've reached out to a couple of companies. I need an SD.

• 17:05Shawn Ryan?

  Maybe we could do a little barter here.

• 17:08Speaker 03

  I even, I don't, I don't even need the SD model. If you're listening to this, look, I don't need the tax stamp, I don't want the drama. Just give me the, the standard model.

• 17:17Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, and it like, the uh, with the special selector switch?

• 17:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:23Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 17:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, with the uh Ziploc bag.

• 17:26Shawn Ryan?

  Would you rather have an MP5 or an MP7?

• 17:29Speaker 03

  Um, honestly, because I'm more nostalgic in uh old school, I'll do the MP5.

• 17:35Shawn Ryan?

  Alright, alright.

• 17:36Speaker 03

  Like MP7s don't impress me, I mean it's, it looks cool because you guys made it look cool, but outside of that, I've shot them and used them in combat and they're not that exciting.

• 17:46Shawn Ryan?

  You have used those in combat?

• 17:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've carried an MP5.

• 17:49Shawn Ryan?

  And you don't like it?

• 17:50Speaker 03

  Or I've carried MP7. I've ne- I've never killed a bad guy with one. I carried it on like PSD kinda stuff. Um, because they conceal a lot better, obviously than an M4.

• 18:04Speaker 03

  But the units, in special operations units that I've been in, guys don't typically run them.

• 18:10Shawn Ryan?

  No shit, I've heard guys rave about them.

• 18:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, the Navy's big about them. I mean, entire organizations and troops are using uh those. And I'm sure that's for a good reason.

• 18:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I, I mean, I do think that would have been the perfect weapon for what me and you were doing together.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  100%.

• 18:30Shawn Ryan?

  But, a lot better than what we were using.

• 18:32Speaker 03

  100%, I agree with that. I was wondering why we didn't have those available.

• 18:37Shawn Ryan?

  And it is pretty fucking cool looking.

• 18:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 18:40Shawn Ryan?

  You know, that's half of it, right? But, alright, so 17, join the military, go to infantry, and how was that? Was it everything you had hoped and dreamed?

• 18:54Speaker 03

  It's funny because I remember the first, I went to Fort Benning, Georgia, infantry basic training. And I joined with an 11x-ray, option 40 Ranger contract. Which means that in basic training, I would be plucked uh after AIT, Advanced Individual Training, and then I would go to Ranger Regiment. And so that was the plan. Yeah, and you know, the option 40 contract, contract guarantees you a Ranger slot like the Ranger instructors are going to come pick you up and you're going to go to Ranger Battalion. I didn't think basic training was hard. I thought it was easy. As a 17 year old with a myriad of life experiences that were a little bit more difficult than most, it wasn't hard for me.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  I mean, I remember distinctly, because I was a squad leader in basic training, either threatening or punching or like checking dudes, grown men who were crying, who wanted to kill themselves, who wanted to get, you know, leave, get back to their girlfriends or the wives. And thinking to myself like, holy crap, man. This is like, at the time, 15 weeks of your life and you guys can't suck it up to, to do a job to get trained up in the, in the military. And so I band together with a whole bunch of dudes that were just solid dudes that eventually went into special operations for the most part.

• 20:18Speaker 03

  But was, what was unfortunate is I got selected to be 11 Hotel.

• 20:24Shawn Ryan?

  What is an 11 Hotel?

• 20:26Speaker 03

  It's like, basically it's an infantryman who drives, who, who rolls in a Humvee. So you learn heavy weapons like 50 cal, the tow missile system, and you're considered anti-tank. And I, I actually liked it because I was like, oh man, I ain't got, I don't have to walk. I mean, I can have, like, I'm a mobility expert because I learned the GMV or the Humvee at the time. And I thought it was real cool, except that when they selected us, they did it randomly. I mean, they said, hey, you guys are bravos, which is just basic infantry. You guys are charlies, which is mortar men, and you guys are hotels, which is heavy weapons.

• 21:06Speaker 03

  And then when the recruiter or the Ranger instructors came to pick us up, I was, you know, I was Fabregas gassed. I was like, what the fuck's going on? Like, why am I not getting picked up? And they said, well, there's no 11 hotels in Ranger Regiment. Which I was like, okay, that's not my problem. Well, it was my problem. And so I didn't get to go to Ranger Regiment like I was supposed to. I still have the contract. Uh, 11 x-ray, option 40. And that was just their way of downsizing. I mean, I'm assuming incentivizing people. And then at basic training is basically fucking them. And they told me I couldn't go and I didn't have any other options.

• 21:46Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 21:47Speaker 03

  So I picked up the phone and called my uncle at the time, who was a sergeant major in the infantry. And said, hey, I don't know what's going on, but this has happened. And within, I would say 48 hours. They changed my MOS to 11 Bravo and basic training.

• 22:05Shawn Ryan?

  Which is?

• 22:06Speaker 03

  Basic infantrymen.

• 22:07Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 22:07Speaker 03

  And from 11 Hotel, which is now my primary and my secondary is 11 Hotel. And they said, we're going to send you to, to a unit called the Old Guard, the 3rd Infantry Regiment. And when you get there, you're going to put a 4187 to go to Ranger Regiment. I didn't even know what the hell the Old Guard was, the 3rd Infantry Regiment. I didn't, I had no idea.

• 22:28Speaker 03

  Went and saw the recruiter. A civilian came in and crossed out 11 Hotel, wrote 11 Bravo, put his initials. And I was like, damn, it's that easy? Um, and then I went and, uh, went and processed the 3rd Infantry Regiment in Fort Meyer, Virginia.

• 22:44Shawn Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 22:47Shawn Ryan?

  How, I mean. That had to be just fucking gut wrenching to. I mean, your dream was to become a Ranger at that time, correct? And they just fucking yanked it right out from underneath you.

• 23:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:01Shawn Ryan?

  And, I mean. How long, I mean, did you mope around about it? Or did you say, fuck it, this is my new direction and I'm going to kick its ass?

• 23:11Speaker 03

  So I knew, I knew I had a timeline where, you know, 4187 back in the day was the way in which you submitted paperwork to transfer units. And it worked typically. Um, it didn't work for me, uh, long story short. But I knew when I got there as an E1. That I had, number one, my uncle had been in the Old Guard. He had been a tomb guard. At the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. So, uh, I had big shoes to fill. And so when I showed up. I was all about the grind, man. I didn't show up, I didn't show up day one in the military to, you know, to hang out with chicks, to get drunk at bars, and to fuck off.

• 23:52Speaker 03

  My entire objective was to go in special operations and I didn't give a fuck about anything else. So when I showed up, I went to work. Uh, I immediately as a private, got my expert infantry badge, which is pretty rare as a PV1. In fact, when I tried out to get my expert infantry badge, me and my platoon leader were the only ones in my platoon that got our expert infantry badges. Um, which is basically a test, a common core task, uh, and they assess you. Hmm. And then, uh, you do a ruck march and all this stuff. When I got back from that, uh, I went to airborne school. What year is this roughly? Ninety-seven. Okay. When I got back from that, I went to ranger school. Everybody's like, "You're going to ranger school?" I was like, "Fuck yeah, I'm going to ranger school."

• 24:35Speaker 03

  I just distinctly remember being different than everybody else I was around. Friday night, dudes were shotgunning corps lights in the barracks. I was putting on a rucksack to go out, and that's no exaggeration. Like, and, and I didn't falter. I don't, I don't think I ever once in that unit drank at all. No shit. So you're about, what, eighteen at this time? Eighteen. Yeah. And you didn't give in to any of the pressure? None. And they, they gave me a hard time and I was like, "Fuck you, I'm not interested." That's impressive. Um, so when they were going out getting wasted, they would see me rucking across the Potomac River, going to Georgetown, carrying a rucksack. And I went to re- ranger school, um, as an eighteen-year-old.

• 25:18Speaker 03

  Graduated as a nineteen-year-old, went straight through, no issues. Um, got back and then I a- assessed, it's a selection process, to become a guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Which, to this day, is the hardest thing that I've ever done. Um, that training to become a tomb guard took me nine months. Holy shit. To earn my tomb identification badge, which I, which I have. And I go, I spent the rest of that time guarding the Tomb of the Unknowns. Um, which is great because I didn't have to fucking deal with people or dumbasses. I kinda got to do my own thing. And, um, yeah, I, I finished up my infantry time as a tomb guard trainer. I trained two tomb guards for a year. No shit. Yep. So.

• 26:04Shawn Ryan?

  So you, and you became, obviously, you know, the best at that. With, I find that impressive that you, your primary focus was to get into special operations. Yet, you still took that job, it sounds like extremely seriously, as, you know, I mean, it's a fucking honor to, you know, even see that, but, um, I mean, that's, doing something that you weren't set on doing and kicking its ass, I mean, that, uh, is pretty, pretty fucking commendable.

• 26:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I didn't have a choice in it, so, the, the path, the Army's like that, it's a big institution. So you don't have a lot of choice, or a lot of opportunity. And so my idea was, if I, you know, given what I was given, I have a choice in which to be successful, and at that time, be all I could be in the Army, so I chose that.

• 27:04Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. So moving forward.

• 27:09Speaker 03

  Well, moving forward, I actually had a break in service and decided to get the fuck out.

• 27:14Shawn Ryan?

  What day did you get out?

• 27:16Speaker 03

  September 3rd of 2001.

• 27:19Shawn Ryan?

  I've been dying to ask you this question.

• 27:23Shawn Ryan?

  You got out September 3rd, 2001.

• 27:30Shawn Ryan?

  A week later, September 11th happens, the towers go down. What is the first thing that went through your head? Knowing, you know, your primary mission was, or your primary goal was to become a Green Beret in special operations, kicking fucking doors in, going to combat, that whole lifestyle.

• 27:55Shawn Ryan?

  And then you immediately know we're at war.

• 27:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was.

• 28:00Shawn Ryan?

  And you're not in it.

• 28:01Speaker 03

  The biggest kick in the balls that I've ever had because, I mean, backing up a little bit, I had the option to re-enlist. Obviously, I was on retention's radar for like, hey, this guy's an airborne Ranger qualified dude. He's an E5. I made sergeant when I was 20 years old.

• 28:22Speaker 03

  And so I was a team leader in the infantry, had good NCO ARs, and so it's like, hey, man, this guy's a good guy we want to keep in the military. But I told them that I want sniper school and I want HALO school en route to 18th Airborne Corps LRS, or Long Range Reconnaissance, or Ranger Battalion. And I was adamant about that. I actually went into a sergeant major's office who was the Military District of Washington, so he's a command sergeant major. He knew my uncle. And he said, Mike, what can I give you to stay in? I said, these are the things that I want. And he goes, which I found out later is true, HALO or Free Fall School is not a re-enlistment option.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  And it's not. Back then, you didn't have a lot of incentive for staying in, so they used to give you schools to stay in. And I said, Sergeant Major, well, we can make it an option, right? Because that's what I want. He's like, Mike, I can't do that for you. I mean, I'll call and I'll try. And he did, but it's not an option. So a CSM even can't make it an option. And so I said, okay, that's my, I gave the options on the table. And they decided not to facilitate what I wanted as a dream. And so I decided to get out. I had a buddy who re-enlisted with me that I went to Ranger School with, or re-enlisted without me, and he went to 3rd Ranger Battalion. He jumped into Afghanistan on October 19th, 2001.

• 29:50Shawn Ryan?

  Son of a bitch.

• 29:52Speaker 03

  And so the moment it happened, I was actually in college. And I had gotten out of the military, obviously, but I had transitioned into the National Guard component. So I'm sitting in a chow hall at Fayetteville Technical Community College.

• 30:10Speaker 03

  Getting my associate's degree so I could further my education. And saw the events happen. I did some crazy shit, man. I immediately started making phone calls. I went home. I packed a duffel bag of my equipment. I threw my battle dress uniforms, my camo uniforms in the washer and then dried them. And was making calls like, what are we doing here? What's happening? And I was at the time, I was in 30th Heavy Armor Separate Brigade. And I was in the scout platoon and I was a team leader. So I had a little miniscule position that could affect something. But I knew we were going to war. So I had a choice to make, which was real easy, which was I'm going back in the fucking military.

• 30:56Speaker 03

  So on September 12th, like 09:00 in the morning, I'm making phone calls to get back in.

• 31:02Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, that had to be like,

• 31:05Shawn Ryan?

  at the exact same time that's happening, two completely separate emotions. One,

• 31:11Shawn Ryan?

  you know, tragedy, we'd just been attacked and a lot of people died. On the other hand,

• 31:20Shawn Ryan?

  you know what that, what comes after and everything you've ever wanted to do since you said you were 10 years old becomes a reality. And you're not there. I mean, that had to be, was one more overpowering than the other?

• 31:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was, I mean, I felt for the people, obviously, but I knew that I was in a unique position to make a difference in the fight. Because I was, I was an NCO. I mean, I was a non-commissioned officer. And I knew that there was an opportunity for me to get in the military and, and fight and get some vengeance. And that's what I wanted to do. I joined the army to fight. The reason I got out, because there was no fight to be had. If there was a war, if there was something going on, I would have been in it.

• 32:07Speaker 03

  You know, I, I think. Something important to note is the biological instinct in men, most men, the men I associate with, to fight. I mean, I, it's not, it's to fight each other in training, because that's what we do as kids. We fight and we, we grow up in those environments where we're displaying our masculinity and there's a whole bunch of psychological and physiological things that are associated with that. And I don't think we grow out of that. We grow up and we want to fight and defend. That's what men do. And so it definitely was part of my character and my DNA.

• 32:52Speaker 03

  And I don't think it was fake. I think it was something very real and I wanted to fight, so I had to go back in.

• 32:58Shawn Ryan?

  How'd you get back in?

• 33:00Speaker 03

  It was a battle, because the Army didn't really know how to handle a whole bunch of dudes who were prior service guys that wanted to go back in.

• 33:07Shawn Ryan?

  Was there a lot of guys that wanted to come back?

• 33:09Speaker 03

  There was a lot of guys. During that time period, a lot of people who were prior service, who had gotten out, I mean, even older guys who had gotten out, wanted to come back in and serve. So I had to go through the whole process again, which was...

• 33:22Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 33:23Speaker 03

  I had to go through MEPS, you know, as an E5, going back through MEPS. You know, the whole duck walk thing, all that stuff. I had to go back through all that to get back in. And they had a program, which is kind of similar to what's called 18x-ray now, where you can come in off the streets and try out for selection. And if you make it, they'll send you to a special forces training. And if you don't, you simply just go back to your sister unit. Or if you don't have a unit, whatever your job is, they'll find a job for you in that position.

• 34:00Shawn Ryan?

  Now, how old are you at this point?

• 34:02Speaker 03

  At this point, I'm 21 years old.

• 34:04Shawn Ryan?

  You're 21 years old.

• 34:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:06Shawn Ryan?

  You just saw the towers come down.

• 34:08Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 34:09Shawn Ryan?

  And the only thing on your mind is, I gotta fucking get back in there.

• 34:12Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 34:12Shawn Ryan?

  No shit. I mean...

• 34:16Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, that's, I mean, that's, that's a lot of courage.

• 34:21Speaker 03

  I was young.

• 34:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, that's a lot of courage.

• 34:25Shawn Ryan?

  So you got back in?

• 34:27Speaker 03

  Yep, I got back in and got the opportunity to go to selection and I did that in 2002. And I was successful and.

• 34:39Shawn Ryan?

  Were you, where were you at in the mix? Were you, would you say you were top of the class, middle?

• 34:44Speaker 03

  I was probably about middle of the class, which is where I wanted to be. I'd always been told and grew up, you know, obviously going to Ranger school where I didn't want to be the spotlight Ranger. I wanted to be the gray man.

• 34:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:58Speaker 03

  And so I wanted to be somewhere in the middle, not standing out for the wrong reasons or even necessarily the right reasons. I just wanted to be middle of the pack.

• 35:09Speaker 03

  I'm a really good rucker. I could, I can carry a ruck really well. I remember even intentionally slowing down on rucks just so I wasn't advanced. As the first person, running, different story with my size, I'm not the best runner, but I'm a decent runner, probably middle of the pack. And so when I, when I got selected, I, I had confidence that I was probably going to get selected. I didn't prepare, I prepared as much as I could, but my feet were hammered dog shit. I mean, my feet were just jacked up.

• 35:47Shawn Ryan?

  What, is there anything about, so selection is what you have to go through to become a, an SF guy and a Green Beret, for those of you that don't know, but

• 36:03Shawn Ryan?

  was there one thing that you just really dreaded about selection? Like, for example, when I went to Bud's, the first thing that I was really worried about was the 50 meter underwater swim. I didn't know if I could make it and I was going to pass out trying, but that was the first hurdle that I was like, shit, man, I hope I make this. Is that, was there a specific event that you knew about in selection that you were dreading?

• 36:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's weird. But I was actually dreading the obstacle course, the nasty Nick.

• 36:34Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 36:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, I just, you know what, I had, I had an aversion to heights when I first went into the military. And what I, what I recognized in a latter time was I wasn't scared of heights. I just didn't have confidence in my physical ability. So when I developed my physical ability to push and pull my body weight, I had confidence going over an obstacle. So it was less about heights and more about my abilities to carry my own weight. So if you're, you know, I'm carrying a, you know, I'm climbing a 40 foot tower or obstacle course.

• 37:15Speaker 03

  Then I would have confidence because I knew I could secure myself or, you know, not shake and potentially go to muscle failure and fall. So I was, I kept thinking about that. I remember thinking about that. But then when I did it, it's called the nasty Nick, which is named after Colonel Nick Rowe, a Vietnam era veteran. Who started a lot of things at Camp McCall at the training facility.

• 37:39Speaker 03

  I didn't have a hard time. I just, I got through it. It was a lot easier than I thought it'd be.

• 37:45Speaker 03

  My feet, again, were torn up and I had to suck it up, but all in all, it was a fairly decent experience.

• 37:52Shawn Ryan?

  One piece of advice, I mean, I know you get a ton of DMs.

• 37:57Shawn Ryan?

  If you have one piece of advice for

• 38:01Shawn Ryan?

  the kid aspiring to be an SF operator, what would it be? One piece?

• 38:07Speaker 03

  One piece would be, selection isn't an assessment of what you're actually doing.

• 38:16Speaker 03

  It's an assessment of what you did prior to doing what you're doing. Meaning if you show up and you do a 12 miler and your feet fall apart. Well, your feet fall apart, but it's because you didn't prepare three months or six months prior and condition yourself. So the only thing they're doing is assessing you. It's kind of like us for contracting where they're just assessing your resume. They're not training you. So, show up prepared and ready to assess. Not show up and have some expectation that you're gonna get trained and build up to it. You better be ready to perform.

• 38:57Shawn Ryan?

  That's solid advice. I'd say the exact same thing. So, you graduate selection.

• 39:05Shawn Ryan?

  Where do you go next?

• 39:07Speaker 03

  So immediately, we go straight into the qualification course and start training and they identify what our MOS or job specialty is gonna be and they make me a 18 Bravo, which is a Special Forces Weapons guy. Weapons Sergeant is the title, which is an expert in weapons. So, that's the pipeline that I started, which, you know, small unit tactics, culmination in Robin Sage, SERE School, high risk, a language school,

• 39:41Speaker 03

  unconventional warfare training, the list goes on.

• 39:44Shawn Ryan?

  What was your favorite? What was your favorite, I don't even know what the hell to call it, genre?

• 39:50Speaker 03

  Phase, yeah. My favorite phase or genre was unconventional warfare. I mean, unconventional warfare, I didn't know how they were gonna teach us unconventional warfare, but when they taught us and then we went into Robin Sage, which is a pretty famous or known at least,

• 40:11Speaker 03

  field training exercise where you simulate and, you know, build an auxiliary underground network of guerrilla fighters, train with them and then operate with them. It was super interesting, man. I mean, to jump into, behind enemy lines into this town and interact with chicken farmers and, you know, gas station clerks was pretty awesome.

• 40:36Shawn Ryan?

  This is what fascinates me about the Green Berets is that you guys can go in in such small teams and create an entire fucking army and...

• 40:49Shawn Ryan?

  And do it so efficiently and you know when in Iraq let's fast forward just a little bit for a second in Iraq.

• 40:58Shawn Ryan?

  When I was with the SEAL teams, we had to have a for the most part. Almost every op we did, we had to have an Iraqi face and. The mission became fit, which is, you know, training. Our counterparts. We had no fucking clue what the hell we were doing. We're SEALs, we're assaulters and. We can't even take care of three guys.

• 41:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:25Shawn Ryan?

  The correct way because we've never been shown how it wasn't our mission and then you guys are out there. And it's the opposite. There might be three of you. And a whole army of people and. I mean, how do you, how do you even fucking start? How do you recruit? How do you start that? How do you gain the confidence and be able to trust? A local national?

• 41:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a process for sure. I mean, there's a, there's a deliberate process behind it. It's never done like willy nilly. You go in there and you have a plan on building rapport. Assessing, recruiting, vetting. And that process is pretty complex. It involves biometrics, it involves genealogy, it involves. Tests, evaluations, psychological evaluations. It's a pretty drawn out process and yeah, it's.

• 42:19Shawn Ryan?

  Sorry, is there like a specific profile you're looking to start with or?

• 42:24Speaker 03

  No, for sure. It's mission dependent, right? Because one mission. You know, if it's a 1208 and you're looking for counterterrorism guys who are. Kicking in doors and shooting bad guys in the face is different than if you're looking for. You know, assessing and recruiting patrol officers who are going to be interacting with. The local populace, you know, they're not going to be assaulters. So there is a tactic behind it and then they teach us those tactics. And when they, when we go into, it's super interesting because when you go into Robin Sage. They.

• 42:59Speaker 03

  They hire OP-4 that are military cadets, West Pointers, like all these young, impressionable minds that want to be you. And then you have to start them from scratch. You know, they don't have a big background in it. You have to get them online. You have to build rapport. You have to break bread. It's super interesting, man. What a lot of people, a lot of people don't realize, which I didn't realize until I was in, is foreign internal defense, or even counterterrorism foreign internal defense, which is FID, is not just a training mission, but a means to access and placement to that environment.

• 43:38Speaker 03

  So before the Vietnam War started, we were in Vietnam, Green Berets were, training the Vietnamese. We ex-filled Ho Chi Minh and trained that guy before he went in, obviously, took over. So it is an opportunity for us to do other things. And now, that bilat mission, bilateral mission, which is you and a host nation force, is how you conduct operations. Because now you can't do it without it. Because you can't, you can go in there as a unilateral package, and if you don't have a strategy behind that, you're gonna go in, kick a dude's door in, kill a bunch of bad

• 44:20Speaker 03

  guys, displace the environment, and cause a whole bunch of issues. You have to have some host nation force to be able to, you know, strategically win that victory.

• 44:31Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. I want to, I want to touch more on this, but we'll wait until your first deployment. So, back to selection.

• 44:38Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 44:39Shawn Ryan?

  Your favorite thing was Robin Sage. So, how long is selection? And did you finish it without any, any hiccups?

• 44:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, so selection is obviously the, for SFAS, Special Forces Assessment, and selection is the first thing. And then you go into the pipeline, which is known as the Q course, or the qualification course, and that includes all the different phases. And I didn't have a hard time with anything. I, I, you know, without sounding egotistical about it, I just got through it.

• 45:09Shawn Ryan?

  No shit? First time, every time?

• 45:11Speaker 03

  First time, every time. I didn't have any issues. The hardest thing for me was learning a foreign language. And I learned French. It took me four, four months to Parlez-vous français? Or whatever, how you ever say it?

• 45:28Speaker 03

  It was hard because I had, I knew how to speak, or I know how to read and write Korean, which is completely different, obviously, than, than French. Different, different backgrounds and bases. But yeah, that was difficult for me to be doing patrolling and small unit tactics and all this high-speed stuff and then sit in a classroom for four months and learn a foreign language. That was the hardest part, but I got through that as well.

• 45:53Shawn Ryan?

  So you went, you already knew Korean, but they send you to learn French?

• 45:58Speaker 03

  I was, I was a French-speaking Asian dude that deployed to the Middle East for the most, or most of my career.

• 46:05Shawn Ryan?

  A really good-looking Asian dude.

• 46:06Speaker 03

  Thanks, man, I appreciate it. So are you.

• 46:08Shawn Ryan?

  I like my cabin and like three people.

• 46:10Speaker 03

  I know, that's awesome.

• 46:12Shawn Ryan?

  But, alright, so you go, where did you, after the Q course?

• 46:18Speaker 03

  So, it's, it's a cool little story, but when I joined, when I went into SF, they give you orders based off a paragraph and line, which is just a, a way in which you identify what group or what battalion. They're basically, it's basically a number that assigns you to a paragraph and line that specifically points you to a direction of a unit. And I knew, I knew I was going to 3rd Special Forces Group, which is the group that I wanted to go to because they were the group that was going to war. And it was right down the road, right down the road from my training. I went into that group and started looking at battalions.

• 47:03Speaker 03

  At the time, 3 battalions, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Battalion. I wanted to know who was the best battalion. I went into 1st Battalion, kinda poked my head in, looked at their little display cases and stuff, went over to the 3rd Battalion, did the same. And then I went, went into 2nd Battalion. And 2nd Battalion's motto at the time, I think it's still the motto, was "We do bad things to bad people."

• 47:27Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 47:27Speaker 03

  And it had the Harley-Davidson outlined kind of thing with "We do bad things to bad people," Bush Hogs, 2nd Battalion. And I walked in there and in a trophy case, they had this leg. It was a, it was a wooden leg, sitting in the display case with a shoe on it. And it, I thought it was a guy's leg that had served in the unit. And I got closer and it was like a... It was a, it was a peg leg, basically. I was like, whoa, that's weird. And next to it was like a five by seven picture of a terrorist laying a pile of blood with a whole bunch of special operations guys standing around him.

• 48:09Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 48:10Speaker 03

  And it was from an operation where they had killed this bad guy and they took his leg. And then they put the leg on display from this bad guy because he would, he had been known as like one leg Willie or whatever the hell his name was. HVT Omar, one leg Willie. So they took his leg and they put it in display in the, in the, um, the foyer of the battalion. And I, I said to myself, this is the battalion I need to be in. I, I knocked on the battalion sergeant major's door and I said, Sergeant Major, my name is Staff Sergeant Mike Glover. I want to be in your unit. I want to serve and go to war with you guys. And if you know special forces and maybe this is part of you guys too,

• 48:54Speaker 03

  if you want something done, you have to go out and get it. So me asking him to be serving his battalion, he said, why, what would make me want to have you serve in my battalion? And I told him I was high speed. I was motivated. I was wanting to go kill bad guys. Like, that's good enough. Shook my hand, handed me over to his personnel person, gave me a pointed subject and paragraph and line to go straight to his battalion. I got assigned to Charlie Company, which was going to war soon, immediately in process and went straight to war.

• 49:29Shawn Ryan?

  That takes a lot of balls to knock on the door as a fucking new guy and say, hey, I want in. I want to go with you. I mean,

• 49:39Shawn Ryan?

  as a leader, if I had that happen to me, I probably would have just, that alone would have been enough. And be like, I know how much fucking balls it takes to come and pound on this fucking door and walk past my wooden leg that I took off that guy. And, uh, and you got what you wanted. That's fucking awesome. So.

• 50:01Shawn Ryan?

  Were the, were the boys pretty accepting when you showed up?

• 50:06Speaker 03

  They were. I mean, they knew we were going to war soon, so they didn't have a lot of time to fuck with me, you know, special forces. If you show weakness on a detachment, if you are fucked up, if you're running your mouth, if you're saying dumb shit, there is a likelihood that you potentially are gonna get messed with.

• 50:32Speaker 03

  I came in hard charging, squared away, kept my mouth shut. I knew the game. I mean, I played that game as a tomb guard candidate for nine months. Keep your fucking mouth shut, do your job, go home, repeat. So, when I got to the team, I didn't have a hard time integrating and nobody really fucked with me because they knew I wasn't a shitbag. I was there to work.

• 50:56Shawn Ryan?

  Were you drinking at that time?

• 50:57Speaker 03

  No.

• 50:58Shawn Ryan?

  You're still straight laced.

• 50:59Speaker 03

  I never drank alcohol, ate sugar for the most part, or ate like shit my entire twenties. Never.

• 51:08Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 51:09Speaker 03

  Never.

• 51:09Shawn Ryan?

  Now, a lot of teams would probably actually frown upon that.

• 51:14Speaker 03

  They, they did. I mean, some guys did, and I didn't care.

• 51:21Speaker 03

  I, I was raised this way with my mom where

• 51:25Speaker 03

  I don't care about what the fuck you think about me. I'm just trying to do me. I'm more concerned, concerned with bettering myself than what your perception of me is. And I knew there was a right answer and a wrong answer. And for me, being in special operations, the right answer was conditioning my mind, my body, and trying to be the best I could. I, I thought alcohol was a liability and it, it still is. I've seen it destroy teams. I've seen it destroy relationships. It's fucked up a lot of people. My mom, my family has their own, had their own issues with booze in, in some ways. So, I, I didn't want anything to fucking do with it.

• 52:09Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. I mean, that's, it's almost part of the culture.

• 52:17Shawn Ryan?

  In a unit like that and as a young new guy, what are you, maybe 22, 23 at this time?

• 52:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, at the time, I'm after the Q course, because it was two years, I was damn near 25.

• 52:29Shawn Ryan?

  Showing up to a team who's already been to war and back, they invite you to go have a beer with them and welcome you to the team. And you say, I don't drink. I mean,

• 52:42Shawn Ryan?

  that's hard to do. That's real hard to do.

• 52:45Speaker 03

  Well, I had, you know, it wasn't for religious reasons. It wasn't for an ideology. It was because I was always training to do something. So physically, I was always in some prep phase. So they would ask me, why aren't you drinking? Well, because I'm running tomorrow morning or I'm doing a ruck tomorrow morning. What do you mean you're rucking? We're at war. We're in Afghanistan. You're going to ruck? Like, yes. Because I'm, again, taking my life that I had prepared my entire life for, basically, seriously.

• 53:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:21Speaker 03

  And that bugged a lot of people, man. I got a lot of hate for it, but you know, you want to be an alcoholic. You want to drink alcohol and be a fuck up? Go fuck yourself. I'll be here rucking and taking care of my body and myself. And yeah, now I drink occasionally. I won't drink more than a couple beers. That's my limit.

• 53:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:39Speaker 03

  Because I just don't like alcohol, but I like the social interaction. I like the taste of an IPA. But it's not something that I need. And it's definitely not something that I used when I was in the military.

• 53:52Shawn Ryan?

  You show up to third group and how long are you there before deployment?

• 53:56Speaker 03

  Two weeks.

• 53:57Shawn Ryan?

  Two weeks?

• 53:58Speaker 03

  I'm there two weeks before we deploy.

• 54:00Shawn Ryan?

  So you didn't even have fucking time to get to know the team before you're in it with them?

• 54:04Speaker 03

  I barely got my, my issue of equipment before we ripped out and headed to war.

• 54:11Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. And the team didn't even have, really have time to see if you were a good fit?

• 54:15Speaker 03

  They didn't at all.

• 54:16Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 54:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was and, and on top of that, the senior, because we, we operate in twos on a detachment. There's another 18 Bravo who's going to be my senior. He even.

• 54:28Speaker 03

  Got hurt or injured, so he couldn't deploy. So I was going to be the Bravo, which is a big responsibility in a fire base in Afghanistan. You slide into the number one slot as a new guy. Yeah, yeah, I'm in charge of base security, base defense, tactics, weapons, and we were going to war. You're going on your first deployment. Yeah, my guys had already ripped out and they,

• 54:56Speaker 03

  you know, they had already sent the PDSS, the pre-deployment site survey guys. And so they were just turning and burning, coming back, picking up the main body. So when I got there, it was a rush to get everything packed. Guys didn't want to be in the team room because they want to spend it with family. And then when I hit the ground, I mean, I was running. We immediately deployed to Afghanistan. How many guys are on your team roughly? Well, I think at that time, maybe 10. 10 dudes. Yeah, we're most attachments are light by nature of guys coming and going. And like I said, my 18 Bravo senior was in surgery. So he had to get a surgery recover.

• 55:36Speaker 03

  And so we deployed that year to Afghanistan with a little bit of a light package.

• 55:47Speaker 03

  What year? This was oh five, early oh five. So that's a hot year.

• 55:53Speaker 03

  Yeah. Now, are you doing, are you running Indige? Yeah, part of the job is running Indige. I mean, when I reported as an 18 Bravo, I was in charge of about 144 Afghan commandos. Holy shit. So there are 10 guys, there's 10 SF guys. Yep. Running 144 man army. Yeah. And basically I was the commander of them. So I was in charge of all of them. As a new guy. As a new guy. Holy shit. Yeah, I'll never forget, he said, hey, your guys are formed up waiting on you. Waiting on me. Yeah, you're the 18 Bravo, get up there and be their commander. Because everybody else had other stuff to worry about, you know?

• 56:35Speaker 03

  I mean, the 18 Charlies had to run the fire base, which is a full-time job of the, you know, base security and the actual physical structure, the generators, the water system, everything. The commo, base defense, the commo guys. What are your living conditions like? Shit, I mean.

• 56:55Shawn Ryan?

  Tents?

• 56:56Speaker 03

  Living on a cot, uh, living on a cot surrounded by stacked sandbags in a concrete-ish, just a mud, mud hut.

• 57:07Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 57:08Speaker 03

  On the second floor of a, a little structure.

• 57:11Shawn Ryan?

  So you're way the fuck out there in a, like, at your own firebase. There's no PX.

• 57:16Speaker 03

  Nothing.

• 57:16Shawn Ryan?

  There's no chow hall.

• 57:18Speaker 03

  Nothing.

• 57:18Shawn Ryan?

  None of that shit. Are you eating local food?

• 57:21Speaker 03

  Mo- a lot of the time we were, or Mirmite, or MRE. I mean, we were the furthest northern firebase on the, on the border with Pakistan. Uh, and we had really not a lot of support. I mean, the closest support was JBAD, which is still hours away. I mean, if something, if something went bad.

• 57:43Shawn Ryan?

  So how trained up? You show up in country, you're looking, you're the, now the commander of 144 Afghan force.

• 57:54Shawn Ryan?

  How well are they trained? Did you, did you guys, was there like a changeover from another, another team? Or are you starting from scratch?

• 58:02Speaker 03

  No, uh, some of them were trained up by prior ODAs. I think first group was there before us. Before that, there was another third group team. And so they had a, a little bit of training.

• 58:16Speaker 03

  But that's, I mean, man, when you're talking about Afghans in a rural province, province of Afghanistan that have no education, have no aptitude, don't know how to read, write. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's all relative.

• 58:33Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, if there's one thing they're good at, it's jumping jacks.

• 58:38Speaker 03

  It's jumping jacks. Yeah, climbing mountains. Climbing mountains in flip flops and jumping jacks. That's their forte.

• 58:45Shawn Ryan?

  You've seen that video, right of the?

• 58:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:47Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 58:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:48Shawn Ryan?

  But, so they're pretty green. They're, I mean, so you take over and...

• 58:57Shawn Ryan?

  I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but I'm assuming the first thing you want to do is figure out what they're actually capable of doing.

• 59:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, you have to.

• 59:12Speaker 03

  No matter what the condition or the situation, when you come into a new firebase or fall into new indig, you gotta vet them. You gotta put them through some kind of process to be able to see what their current capability is. We did that. It wasn't much. So we started from scratch.

• 59:29Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 59:30Speaker 03

  We were doing small unit tactics every single day. I was doing small unit tactics with them every single day that we weren't operating. And this would be the force, not only, this is before Afghan commando units, Afghan border police, Afghan national police, this is before all that. So they didn't have a job. Their job for us were, they were Afghan commandos working for special forces guys. We paid them directly cash. So these were our first line of defense in QRF if anything went wrong.

• 1:00:08Shawn Ryan?

  So you show up in country, you gotta get to know these guys, you gotta train them, you gotta figure out what their capabilities are. You gotta improve those. How long do you have before boots on the ground, first operation?

• 1:00:24Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, again, that's relative as well because when you infill into a remote firebase, the one we were at in the middle of nowhere was surrounded by high ground. It was just a couple Americans in the middle of the Wild West. So we were getting rocketed, we were getting reports of attacks and all these things that were happening.

• 1:00:50Speaker 03

  So we were in it. We were in the thick of it already. But the, I mean, we didn't have any time. It was immediate. I think we went on an op two days, three days after we hit the ground. Immediately went and did a link up with one of the Afghan, you know, seniors or Afghan elders in a village. And that's a movement to contact. I mean, you're just rolling, hoping you're not going to get blown up, hoping you're not going to get in a tick with the guys that you haven't vetted yet.

• 1:01:19Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit. We're talking two fucking days.

• 1:01:23Speaker 03

  Two days.

• 1:01:23Shawn Ryan?

  And you're out the door with them on a movement.

• 1:01:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. We had no choice.

• 1:01:27Shawn Ryan?

  How did that go?

• 1:01:29Speaker 03

  It went uneventful. We had activity, but nothing significant happened, luckily for us. And we just started building more rapport with them, vetting them, training them, and improved our situation over time.

• 1:01:45Shawn Ryan?

  So you're out, you meet the village elder, you come back, you debrief. Are you happy with what you've just been handed with the 144 guys? Or are you going, holy shit, we have got a lot of work to do?

• 1:01:58Speaker 03

  No, I will say, here's some, just a little bit of forward history on the guys that I train. Those same guys that I train had worked with special operations, including special missions unit from the Navy.

• 1:02:14Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:02:14Speaker 03

  Prior to working with us. So there were some good dudes. And when I left that firebase, a guy by the name of Rob Miller ripped into that firebase and was with those guys as an 18 Bravo from 3rd Special Forces Group when he was killed and earned the Medal of Honor, posthumously, of course. And those men, those Afghans that were with him, were the Afghans that I trained, that were trained prior. And so they were squared away. I mean, they had heart. They were disciplined. They wanted it, man.

• 1:02:52Shawn Ryan?

  You're impressed with them.

• 1:02:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was impressed. A good example was, they instinctively knew when...

• 1:03:03Speaker 03

  Or if there was a potential significant act gonna happen, call it SIGACT, and they would immediately get to the high ground and they were good about displacing themselves and then talking to the local community because you have to understand that these people lived in that same community. So they knew everybody around them and they didn't want to be the guy that failed their mission and got an American killed. So they had buy-in. So yeah, I was impressed with them. We had a lot of work to do, obviously, but they had a good base and all the guys in Nuristan Province that I operated with that were Afghan, in the village of Nurey and Asadabad and Barakout, all great, great men.

• 1:03:49Shawn Ryan?

  Did you, how long did you spend with this team?

• 1:03:54Speaker 03

  So that particular trip was nine months in Afghanistan and that team, I spent a year and some change with them.

• 1:04:01Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, nine months is a long time to get to know somebody. I mean, people get married in less time, in less time than that. Do you,

• 1:04:10Shawn Ryan?

  did you develop more than a professional relationship with them or was it always just, you're the commander and they're the, they're the John D's or they're your guys? Did you, did you get close? Did you keep in touch?

• 1:04:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, I didn't keep in touch with a lot of them because I knew we were gonna leave and it would be difficult to retain that. I tried to get close to them, but I knew there was a line. What I didn't want is to compromise the mission or the rapport building from another detachment that came in there because you know how it works. They just, the button gets reset every time a detachment comes through there. People try to reinvent the will. And I heard years later them asking about me when I was coming back, which is unfortunate because...

• 1:05:04Speaker 03

  We should have went back. We should have had continuity and stayed with those specific, you know, Afghans for a longer period of time because I think that's how ultimately you win is when you you have men that you build these relationships with and they're more loyal to you because you've built the rapport that's necessary.

• 1:05:28Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it's unfortunate, but it's also got to be a good. I mean, that's got to feel pretty fucking cool that they're still asking about you years later after several teams have come in and left. You must have made a hell of an impression on those guys.

• 1:05:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, I wanted to. I'm not. I'm the kind of guy where I'm not afraid to build rapport. I smoked cigarettes in Afghanistan with them. I hated it, but I knew that was part of their culture. I drank tea with them and smoked cigarettes, sitting on mats like a bunch of schoolgirls, talking about, you know, politics and the military and their families like Afghan men do. I mean, that's what they do. So I socialized with them. I hung out with them. I did a lot of laughing and joking with them, but I knew the line because I still wanted them to respect me as a commander. So when I asked them to potentially sacrifice their life because they had an assault bunker or do something

• 1:06:29Speaker 03

  that might take their life, I wanted them to do it. And so I kind of knew the psychology of it. I was just big into that. So I had my limits with with them. But yeah, they're the greatest. I mean, partnered forces that I've worked with in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc. I've met some really good people.

• 1:06:48Shawn Ryan?

  Did you if you did you have an engagement other than base defense or like getting rocketed or the base getting attacked? Did you have any engagements outside of the firebase?

• 1:07:01Speaker 03

  We had a few. Yeah, we had a few significant events happen. We got in a little tick.

• 1:07:09Speaker 03

  In the Coach Valley, little gunfight, we brought in A10s, we brought in the Marines. We lost MH47, it was shot down, or not shot down, it was crashed down. They, it had a catastrophic failure and crashed. So whatever, $100 million helicopter MH47. The battalion commander for 160th was on that bird. So it was a big, big operation. And so, yeah, we did, we did get engagements. Most of our actions, most of our activity was in the firebase. Getting shot at, getting rocketed, and then responding to those rockets, responding to those attacks.

• 1:07:52Shawn Ryan?

  How was, because base engagements are a hell of a lot different than outside of it, when you're on a mission. A lot, you know, base defenses, I mean, usually it's pretty locked down to a T and everybody knows exactly what they're doing. It's when everybody has to find cover and fucking communicate and, I mean, we don't have to go into details on that, but when you got back, were you impressed with how they performed? And, I mean, it's always a shit show, you know, when, when you get contacted outside of the base. So, were you impressed with their performance?

• 1:08:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I didn't have a problem with my guys' performances. They did well, typically, all the time. Operating through language barriers, that's another story. The lulls in time, there was a whole bunch of, a whole bunch of logistical things also. I mean, my guys didn't run radios, we run ICOM radios because local traffic. We couldn't, we couldn't give out 100 MBIT radios during an op.

• 1:09:02Shawn Ryan?

  With crypto.

• 1:09:03Speaker 03

  With crypto and everything else. So, there were challenges. We, we did a lot of basic 7-8, small unit tactics in order to accomplish a lot of objectives. Using flares, using smoke.

• 1:09:17Shawn Ryan?

  No shit. Fucking Vietnam's air tactics.

• 1:09:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was, we were big on that. That's how we did most of our stuff. We did most of our, I did most of my commanding and controlling of my indige via hand and arm signals.

• 1:09:30Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 1:09:31Speaker 03

  And we had SOPs, four smoke, uh, four shifting with fire, all that kinda stuff. So it was back to Vietnam. I mean, it's back to basics.

• 1:09:40Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. What are these guys carrying? Do they have nods? Do they have helmets?

• 1:09:45Speaker 03

  At this time in the war, no nods, no helmet. We eventually evolved into that, but we, we were straight AK-47s and flip flops.

• 1:09:54Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man.

• 1:09:55Speaker 03

  I mean, it was, we, our guys didn't even have uniforms. They're rolling around in whatever we can get them. I actually exploited a program, uh, that was a nonprofit that was providing clothes and toiletry items to soldiers overseas and got this nonprofit to send me helicopters full of equipment to be able to outfit my Afghans with just clothes, with just toothbrushes, because they didn't have it. And we weren't paying for it. So they needed stuff. I mean, it's so funny seeing these, these dudes running around with Harley-Davidson shirts and flannel jackets and USA ball caps, but we had to do what we had to do.

• 1:10:40Shawn Ryan?

  Are there any field craft survival cats over there now?

• 1:10:43Speaker 03

  I hope so, man.

• 1:10:44Shawn Ryan?

  They're better fucking.

• 1:10:45Speaker 03

  I've seen them. They're, they're own SF guys, but.

• 1:10:47Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 1:10:50Shawn Ryan?

  What would you say one of your first lessons learned after your first combat deployment? Maybe your first engagement, maybe his first base defense. I don't know. What was the first,

• 1:11:02Shawn Ryan?

  the first thing that you realized, holy shit, uh, we need to, we need to make some changes or, or, I mean.

• 1:11:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:10Shawn Ryan?

  The first lesson, major lesson learned?

• 1:11:13Speaker 03

  I had a major one. I mean, I, I almost had a, look, as an 18 Bravo, I was in charge of the base defense plan. I made it. I wrote it. I rehearsed it with the guys. I implemented it.

• 1:11:26Speaker 03

  And I, I would die on that, you know, that's, so it was a, it was a huge responsibility and I fucked it up from the get go. I had senior guys that had been to war prior to that. You know, when I was in the Q course, they were doing invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. We had guys on my, in my company that were killed the trip prior in Afghanistan. So we were vetted, you know, we had a good detachment. They let me run with a base defense plan and I did it. And made a lot of mistakes. I mean, I fucked a lot of stuff up. One thing that distinctly remember was I had a base defense plan to be prepared for

• 1:12:10Speaker 03

  an indirect attack that turned into a direct or more complex attack. Cause that's how you do it, right? You prep the objective, you get everybody's heads down and then you do a direct assault and get inside the fire base and start killing people from the bad guy's perspective. Shit, did they fucking get in? No, they didn't get in for, for, for this particular one, but they, what they were doing was hitting us with 107 rockets. 107 millimeter rockets air stabilize themselves. So they have basically a mechanism to stabilize their trajectory. So they won't go ass over in and just frap into the rocks. They'll stabilize and it will send it on a trajectory and you could aim them off of a rock.

• 1:12:53Speaker 03

  It got shot, it got aimed and those things, they have hundreds of meters of kill radius on the back end of those 107 millimeter rockets. And they were hitting our base, like our small little base, there were rockets that were landing in our fire base. We had one that destroyed our, one of our fuel refu, uh, fueling points. I had an SOP to get my guys out of their bunks, get their kit on and get on the rooftops to defend against a direct assault. Well, the problem is, and I didn't learn this until the hard ways, you get up on top of a rooftop when a 107 millimeter rocket's coming in, you are putting your guys' lives at risk.

• 1:13:33Speaker 03

  And I got to a rooftop with my 18 Charlie, we were engaging, I was engaging the point of origin, which I saw where the rockets were landed with a 240 Bravo. I couldn't even affect that area. Was thinking about traversing a 120 mortar.

• 1:13:51Speaker 03

  And as I was about to get off the roof, a 107 came over me and my Charlie and hit the fuel point and almost killed us. I mean, if we were on the, the, the back end of that 107 millimeter rocket, it would have, it would have ripped us in half. And they were known for killing people because the shrapnel and everything else is devastating. So, the biggest mistake I made was thinking that doctionally, there was a tactic that needed to be implemented. The right answer was to keep my guys inside their bunks, at least for a period of time, and reinforce the positions with armored vehicles, which we had, a couple

• 1:14:31Speaker 03

  of GMVs, and, and then respond that way. Put my Afghans on the wall, have them defend the base, but don't risk putting guys on the rooftop where they could easily be, be taken out. I mean, obviously 107 is not forgiving, and no matter what situation you're in, you get hit directly in a vehicle, in a building with a 107, it's gonna be a bad day, so.

• 1:14:55Shawn Ryan?

  You finish that deployment, you come home, what's next?

• 1:15:00Speaker 03

  I get back from that deployment and Iraq was, was getting bad, and I wanted to go to school. So I went to, to put my name in the hat to go to SEFARTEC, SEFARTEC, which is Special Forces Advanced Target Reconnaissance, Target Acquisition, Interdiction, Exploitation, whole bunch of words and an acronym that doesn't even look, look right. It's SEFARTEC, whatever. People call it SEFARTEC, and it's our CQB Advanced Schoolhouse for Haas's Rescue, for direct action, for vehicle interdiction. We learn all that stuff there. It's a, I

• 1:15:43Speaker 03

  believe, an eight-week school, maybe nine weeks, so it's pretty long. And it, it is the minimum qualification that you need to serve in a Commander's and Extremist Force, which there's one of those per group, which is a, you know, reinforced company that's designed to conduct Haas's Rescue and crisis response across the world.

• 1:16:05Shawn Ryan?

  How much CQB do you have? What's your background in CQB before you show up to that school? What is the basic?

• 1:16:13Shawn Ryan?

  Kind of mold for an SF guy.

• 1:16:16Speaker 03

  Usually at the team level, you learn in, it's called SFAWIC. You learn basic CQB. Sometimes it's Strongwall. I think at that time, it was probably Strongwall, real basic CQB. You don't learn points of domination. You don't learn Haas's rescue considerations. Maybe a little bit, but it's not, there's not a lot of it.

• 1:16:38Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:16:39Speaker 03

  So at the, at the basic team level, if you don't have a Sephardic qualified guy, you might not know a lot. You might think you know a lot, but you really don't. And, and I thought I knew a lot, but I didn't know anything. I showed up and didn't know shit about CQB until I got there. I knew how to shoot. I was a decent shooter with pistol and carbine, but I didn't know much.

• 1:17:03Shawn Ryan?

  After that school, let's fast forward to the next deployment. Did you utilize that a lot or was it back to what you were doing before?

• 1:17:12Speaker 03

  No, it was, in fact, I was in Charlie Company, Second Battalion. The CIF was Bravo Company, Second Battalion. One company designated per group, so they were right next door. So I used to see those dudes come in and they had longer hair, they had cooler uniforms, they had better guns. And I wanted to be in the CIF. At that time, you had to have two years team time to even think about going in the CIF. But I had a real good rapport with my company sergeant major and he went next door to take the CIF. So he was the, he was my sergeant major. He became the CIF sergeant major. And, you know, long story short, I wasn't supposed to go to CIF as a new guy with only a year and some change on the team. But I went to Sephardic and came recommended out of Sephardic.

• 1:17:58Speaker 03

  And so they pulled me over. I mean, I wasn't supposed to deploy to Afghanistan for another year. But I went next door and I was in Iraq a month later. I mean, out of Sephardic, I'd, from that trip, I came back, I went straight to Sephardic, which is two months. I had 30 days and I was straight back in Iraq.

• 1:18:16Shawn Ryan?

  So you did a nine-month deployment, come back for roughly 90 days.

• 1:18:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:22Shawn Ryan?

  Two months of that is...

• 1:18:24Speaker 03

  Training.

• 1:18:25Shawn Ryan?

  Becoming an assaulter at the highest level and then you redeploy.

• 1:18:29Speaker 03

  Yep. Redeployed at Iraq for a counterterrorism mission, which is all CQB.

• 1:18:34Shawn Ryan?

  Did you have any, were you married at the time?

• 1:18:37Speaker 03

  At the time, I was married, but I was married young and didn't, I mean, to be honest...

• 1:18:45Shawn Ryan?

  Came secondary to the mission.

• 1:18:47Speaker 03

  Absolutely secondary to the mission. We barely knew each other. I mean, on the ground, I had a couple of months with her. So it was, it was turning and burning. In fact, I had a hasty marriage because I had, saw some dudes get killed, killed our trip, you know, operation, I was part of Operation Red Wing that trip and we had a couple of other Chinooks that were down, we had guys that we lost in the company. So it was a bad trip, it was a bad year. A lot of Americans were killed that year.

• 1:19:15Shawn Ryan?

  It's a fucking small world, you know, the fact that you were there, I came there right after that, which means we were there at the same time and as we talked a couple of days ago, you, you met my fucking best friend who just passed away.

• 1:19:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:34Shawn Ryan?

  It's, it's fucking crazy, you know, how small the world is.

• 1:19:37Speaker 03

  It is a small world, man.

• 1:19:39Shawn Ryan?

  But, so you did utilize, sorry, sidetracked there, but, so you did utilize that school on that next deployment?

• 1:19:48Speaker 03

  Every operation.

• 1:19:49Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 1:19:50Speaker 03

  I explosively breached every other target, every other night. We went out every night, sometimes twice a night, going after bad guys and it was, it was a real active campaign. It was us and I believe SEAL Team Eight and we did joint ops where it was like, like two SIF guys and five SEALs and we went out with our indige and conducted counterterrorism missions.

• 1:20:15Shawn Ryan?

  What'd you think of working with the SEALs?

• 1:20:19Speaker 03

  My first impression of them weren't great because we had a few interactions with them where I'll never forget, you know, at the time I was, I believe, still in E6. I hadn't made E7 yet, but I had combat rotation behind me and I was on my second deployment. And had been in training for years, had been in the military and the infantry. And so I had a background.

• 1:20:43Speaker 03

  I'll never forget one of the young SEALs being told by one of my guys who was a senior guy. Oh my God, I was the most junior guy in the CIF. A CIF, a commanders in extremist forces filled with the most senior guys in the group. I think my detachment years later, everybody made Master Sergeant the same time. Wow. Like an entire senior team with guys with multiple deployments. I had the least amount of combat. Guys on average had three or four rotations and this is early GWAT. He said, "Hey, maybe you should hang out with these guys because, you know, we could do some cross-training and maybe teach you guys some things." And he said, "What could your guys possibly teach mine?" You gotta be shitting me. He said that.

• 1:21:28Speaker 03

  And, and I was humbled to the fact that a lot of my own guys were so senior and already legends in the community. Like there was already stories about them. So I paid attention. And, and we had a lot of experiences like that with the young SEALs, but some of them, a lot of them weren't. I mean, Jeremy Wise, who eventually went to work for the CIA and he was, he was killed unfortunately in a suicide bombing. He was there, he was great. A couple of guys that are now in other special missions units were working with me and they were great. So I didn't have a horrible experience, but it was different. I mean, a young SEAL coming out of training.

• 1:22:12Speaker 03

  21, 22, and even at that time, I was 26 at the time. So it was different, but we got along good. I mean, we didn't have problems with operating with them. And we had a lot of action. We had a lot of fun that rotation.

• 1:22:30Shawn Ryan?

  What is your next assignment? So you're at the, you're at third group. You go to the CIF. What comes next?

• 1:22:38Speaker 03

  Another, another rotation in the, in the CIF. I mean, the CIF is a grind.

• 1:22:45Speaker 03

  I did three CIF rotations that I racked back to back.

• 1:22:50Speaker 03

  Going to war, coming back, going to war, coming back, going to war, coming back. I eventually moved up into reconnaissance in special operations. And became a sniper, went to sniper school, went to free fall school. And started specializing my efforts on long, on the long gun. So between unilateral operations, which is working with task force, the joint task force. I think at the time, we were working with Tom DiTomaso, who's a famous Black Hawk Down platoon leader. And he was a special missions unit commander. We, we operated under him and under task force 16, which is Stanley McChrystal's big,

• 1:23:35Speaker 03

  you know, kill, capture conglomerate of the best units in the world. We were part of that effort when we went out and crushed bad guys for years. I mean, it was, it was a good run of killing a whole bunch of bad guys.

• 1:23:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:49Speaker 03

  So I did that for three rotations in a row. Then I did go to selection.

• 1:23:58Speaker 03

  Just call it West Virginia selection to assess for use of SOC. I served in US Army Special Operations Command in a couple of positions.

• 1:24:08Shawn Ryan?

  Which was a great. For those of you that don't know, use of SOC is.

• 1:24:15Shawn Ryan?

  An operational unit at the highest level.

• 1:24:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:24:18Shawn Ryan?

  Tier one at this point.

• 1:24:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:20Shawn Ryan?

  And really, once you get there, I mean, you've just become the most elite warfighter in the world.

• 1:24:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:24:29Shawn Ryan?

  How do you feel?

• 1:24:30Speaker 03

  Well, I don't know if I was one of the most elite warfighters in the world. I never looked at myself that way.

• 1:24:35Shawn Ryan?

  Everybody else does.

• 1:24:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I had, I had some good experiences and some bad ones. Look, special operations is a great community to be part of.

• 1:24:50Speaker 03

  But it's a community of the most alpha males on the planet. I did have a bad interaction with my time in that organization with a couple of characters.

• 1:25:02Speaker 03

  That were, it was a personality conflict. And it's the first time in my career that I felt like achy in my chest. I had anxiety where I was like, man, what, what the fuck is going on here?

• 1:25:15Speaker 03

  I don't typically tell that story because of the nature of, the nature of the, the organization. But I had a bad, I didn't have a bad run. I recovered from it and, but yeah, I, it, it was that unit, that organization.

• 1:25:35Speaker 03

  All special missions units are operating at the speed of war. Which is, which is a lot different when you have to deal with bureaucracy and bullshit.

• 1:25:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, it, it seems like the higher you go and

• 1:25:54Shawn Ryan?

  operational units like that, the more fucking dramatic the guys can get.

• 1:25:59Speaker 03

  That's a hundred percent true. The guys, the guys that I worked with were amazing. I mean, I worked with a lot of great guys and I just got my PP spanked. I got in trouble there. Nothing crazy.

• 1:26:11Shawn Ryan?

  Was it just personality conflict?

• 1:26:13Speaker 03

  It was a personality conflict. I mean, I pissed the wrong dude off. And, you know, I learned a lot of lessons from it. But I had a good time in that, that organization.

• 1:26:25Speaker 03

  Got to see, got to operate and got to do a lot of cool shit that I'd never would have done otherwise. And it was a real cool learning opportunity. So much so that I got promoted at such a young age.

• 1:26:41Speaker 03

  That, you know, I made E8 at the age of 30. Damn. I made Master Sergeant at 30. And promoted the last guy on the promotion list in that organization. So, you know, it was like a point, they promoted us in like point whatever and that and a whole number. So I was like, there's 160 on that list that year. I was 159.7. No shit. On the list. And so I made Master Sergeant while I was there and I had a choice. I can go back and retrain and, and, and do the job for the next 10 years.

• 1:27:22Speaker 03

  Or I could do what a lot of guys do when they make Master Sergeant and become a Team Sergeant. Which for me was the pinnacle of a, of a career in special operations. To be the Team Daddy, to be the Team Sergeant was huge. So Sergeant Major Bob Erby, who is a legend in special operations. He's known by everybody. He's, man, he's got probably more operational time than anybody in Special Forces Command. He, he heard about me and another guy, I can't mention his name, but he heard about us. And he asked us if we would leave the organization for an opportunity to stand up with new commanders in Extremist Force from scratch.

• 1:28:06Speaker 03

  Meaning there was no commanders in Extremist Force for the continent of Africa. And he asked us if we would like to stand it up, which meant, obviously, working with Joint Special Operations Command. We had relationships built, rapport built. We had experience with specifically reconnaissance, special reconnaissance, uh, snipers, free fall operations. So we, we said yes. And we were given, uh...

• 1:28:40Speaker 03

  We were given everything we needed to be successful. Unlimited budget, we got to pick, hire and fire our guys.

• 1:28:47Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:28:48Speaker 03

  And it was a huge, amazing opportunity to do that. To start a mission from nothing, where there's no, nobody in the company and then build it up from scratch and we did that.

• 1:29:00Shawn Ryan?

  You've got a hell of a career, man. I mean, holy shit. And then to, to watch your face when I tell you, or when I ask you, what does it feel like to be one of the most elite warfighters in the fucking world and to watch your face, be taken back like, oh, I don't consider myself to be that.

• 1:29:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:29:22Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, I mean, a lot of guys do that. I think it's ingrained into everybody and it's, I mean, I can see how uncomfortable you were when I just fucking said that, but it is the truth. I mean, there are not very many people that get to that level and with that much combat. And, I mean, that's fucking impressive, man.

• 1:29:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, thanks, man.

• 1:29:50Shawn Ryan?

  So you leave there and then, what happens?

• 1:29:58Speaker 03

  So I leave and start grinding to build up this unit, hire and fire a couple guys and build up a skill set for special reconnaissance in the continent of Africa to be able to respond to crisis that potentially happened. And there was no, there was no, at the time, organization that was covering down on Africa because it used to be third group's responsibility, but because of the war, we had a change in hands and change in responsibility. So we stood it up.

• 1:30:38Speaker 03

  It was a grind. We got validated by Special Operations Command. And that was ironically enough, September 1st of 2012, we got validated. And a week later, or September 11th, Benghazi happens. I had already been notified prior to Benghazi happening that my team and myself was going to be the first guys into Libya to run what's called a 12 weight program, which is a congressionally mandated counterterrorism program to counter al Qaeda.

• 1:31:17Speaker 03

  Which therein lies the Benny, therein lies the point. Which is before September 11th, 2012, I had already been identified, we're going to go in there, stand up a counterterrorism force to counter al Qaeda. So it's often been said that, hey, oh, there was no threats there. There was threats, there was bombings, there were shootings, there was attacks on the UN, foreign nationals, ambassador, embassy staff. So I was getting all those intel sit reps before that happened. And then obviously that happened and it changed everything. Where were you when that happened?

• 1:32:02Speaker 03

  Ironically enough, I was back in a special missions units compound, doing a cross talk brief with basically a key leader engagement. With the team lead from Team Libya that had been designated, and me and the other guy from my unit, because we were former unit members of that unit. We were there doing a cross talk. I'll never forget, I went, I went there and met up with a J3, which was at the time a Colonel. And he told me last night, this just happened, and this is what's going on.

• 1:32:43Speaker 03

  And so I stayed an extra few days to assess the situation and to get tied in. Because at that point, it was my unit's responsibility to...

• 1:32:55Speaker 03

  React and respond outside of obviously the primary main effort. That unit that I was in's responsibility of responding to that crisis.

• 1:33:05Shawn Ryan?

  So was this happening, was Benghazi happening real time when you found out?

• 1:33:09Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah, it was happening in real time. It had, it had, it was, it had, it was still active and it was still happening. And I was watching on ISR things, things unfolding.

• 1:33:19Shawn Ryan?

  Jesus Christ.

• 1:33:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:33:23Shawn Ryan?

  Is this what ultimately led you to separate?

• 1:33:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, so that's exactly right. Long story short, I deployed to Libya soon after that and stood up a 1208 program. And we had all the right things done to go after the guys that were responsible for the killing of the four personnel that were killed in Benghazi. You know, Ambassador Stevens, Smith, and then Glenn Doherty and Tyrone Woods. So we went there, I was deployed there for over six months.

• 1:34:06Speaker 03

  I busted my ass and tried everything I could to kill or capture those guys with obviously other special operations units that were there. And other, one other special operation unit that was there. And we offered up a full platter. Kill, capture, bilateral mission, unilateral mission, whatever you want, we'll do. And we were told that the political climate wouldn't allow for it, so we're not going to do anything.

• 1:34:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:33Speaker 03

  And so, let's just say I was disgruntled when I came back. I had a lieutenant colonel that I was co-located with that was a reserve officer from Africom, who was a fucking piece of shit, who was drinking every night, getting drunk, who didn't give a fuck about the mission, who was making excuses every single day about not wanting to work, not wanting to do the op. And so when I get back, I said, "Go fuck yourself."

• 1:35:01Shawn Ryan?

  God, are you serious?

• 1:35:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:35:03Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I know, I know how fucking tough that can be. I mean, I didn't, I didn't watch, I didn't, we didn't have Fred feed or anything like that, but to watch an event going down, I mean, that's one of the most, when you know you can fucking help.

• 1:35:18Shawn Ryan?

  It's one of the most helpless feelings in the fucking world and I've experienced that as well. Uh, we were working with a foreign counterpart and uh, should have been on that fucking op, but uh, we weren't and their helos went down and we listened to the entire thing on the fucking radio and

• 1:35:38Shawn Ryan?

  and then we saw them when they got back and uh, I mean, and the event that you had to, you know, stay on the sideline for is, I mean, yeah, I could see how you'd be that disgruntled. I mean, you got out with 18 fucking years in, right?

• 1:35:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:35:57Shawn Ryan?

  Two years to retirement.

• 1:35:59Speaker 03

  Yep, yeah. I got back, um, I did get recruited by the CIA at the time.

• 1:36:09Speaker 03

  They recruited me for a job.

• 1:36:12Speaker 03

  And I had finished my college degree, my bachelor's degree, the year prior to that. So that was a prerequisite to become a staffer uh, for them. I came back with the anticipation of doing that job, but the sequester happened, which was a stop loss on all, or a hiring freeze on all jobs. So I wasn't able to do that job, uh, which kind of fucked me up, you know? I was prepared to do that. So I transitioned off active duty and then went into the National Guard component where I took a team in Texas, a 19th Special Forces Group, and was just waiting on the word, waiting on an opportunity.

• 1:36:54Shawn Ryan?

  Let's rewind a little bit here.

• 1:36:58Shawn Ryan?

  So you let, you separate from the army,

• 1:37:02Shawn Ryan?

  finish your degree. How long do you go from your last day in the military to?

• 1:37:11Shawn Ryan?

  CIA.

• 1:37:13Speaker 03

  So, the contracting side?

• 1:37:18Speaker 03

  Six months.

• 1:37:19Shawn Ryan?

  That's it, six months.

• 1:37:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, six months.

• 1:37:21Shawn Ryan?

  Did you even want to give being a civilian a shot? Or you just couldn't wait to get back over?

• 1:37:28Speaker 03

  Well, my anticipation at that time was I only wanted to do one other job. And that was to be a paramilitary operations officer for the CIA.

• 1:37:38Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:37:38Speaker 03

  That's it. The first casualty of the war, the global war on terror was Michael Spann. And he was a former Marine officer and a member of that job and position. So I wanted to do that. I was ready to hang up my life, meaning my personal life and everything else to just stay at war.

• 1:38:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:02Speaker 03

  Because that's what I wanted. And I was chasing the rainbow.

• 1:38:05Shawn Ryan?

  A lot of guys, I mean.

• 1:38:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was, I was there in Libya, seeing those dudes operate. And it's like, you know what, man? I want to be part of that. These guys are squared away. They don't seem to be dealing with a whole bunch of bullshit. And that's what I'm going to do. If I can't kill bad guys in special operations, then I'll get out and kill bad guys somewhere else. And that's, that was what my thoughts were at the time.

• 1:38:33Shawn Ryan?

  That's funny how that mindset just goes across the board. Because that's one of the reasons I wanted to go.

• 1:38:43Shawn Ryan?

  And not a whole lot of people actually know that about you. I'm really in tune with your following on Instagram. I'm really in tune with your YouTube and, and your eight social media channels that you have under Fieldcraft, plus your personal. And you never fucking bring that up. Not a whole lot of people know that you jumped over to CIA and then, which is where, where we met.

• 1:39:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:39:10Shawn Ryan?

  So, and I'm really curious to hear what you have to say. What was your first impression? I mean, you go through training. Let's breeze through that. But you show up in country, your first deployment with the agency. What, what's your first impression?

• 1:39:31Speaker 03

  So, the reason I did that job is they gave me that job as an interim.

• 1:39:40Speaker 03

  From my staff position, which would have been paramilitary operations guy. So I, I did that job thinking it was a temporary thing. Thinking it was only going to be a rotation or two until I got the call. When I showed up, I realized really fast that all the things that I thought about the, those positions and then the, the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow didn't exist. And they were dealing with shit just as much as I was. And so I started realizing that the job I was in wasn't that bad. In fact, it was pretty decent. I mean, it's, you know, without getting into too many details,

• 1:40:26Speaker 03

  there was an op, operational relevancy to it, which made me feel good about what I did for a living. Good pay, good experiences and not a lot of bullshit. I mean, or you kind of change your scale of bullshit when you go there, right? But I had just came off active duty where I dealt with a lot of bullshit. So it wasn't that bad. And so for the first time, I think I was pretty happy with what I was doing.

• 1:40:56Speaker 03

  The op, the operation ops tempo was, was decent and the rotation schedule was good.

• 1:41:03Shawn Ryan?

  Were you at a flagpole?

• 1:41:05Speaker 03

  I wasn't.

• 1:41:06Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, you went, okay.

• 1:41:07Speaker 03

  I went straight to Yemen.

• 1:41:10Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:41:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:41:11Shawn Ryan?

  Where we met.

• 1:41:12Speaker 03

  Where we met, yeah.

• 1:41:13Shawn Ryan?

  So that was your first deployment?

• 1:41:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:41:15Shawn Ryan?

  So, uh, what was your impression of the guys, of me? What was your impression of me?

• 1:41:21Speaker 03

  You know, what's crazy is people ask me that, obviously a lot of special operations guys ask me that. The best dudes I've ever met have been in that job. Because, one, because I know.

• 1:41:33Speaker 03

  Because of the vetting process that they're the best shooters in the world. Even better than my standards in special operations.

• 1:41:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:40Speaker 03

  I mean, I've shot with the best shooters in the world in special operations and I get to this job.

• 1:41:47Speaker 03

  And I was super impressed by the standards. The shooting qual is the hardest shooting qual in the government. There's no doubt about it because I've been to firearms instructor development course. I can't parry to vet the hardest and most difficult courses. Outside of the US Marshal, um, outside of the US Marshal service.

• 1:42:09Speaker 03

  The, the air marshal service, it was, it is the most difficult qual. So having that confidence that these guys are vetted, qualified to be where they're at. And that the myriad of backgrounds and experiences are brought together. I thought it was real cool, man.

• 1:42:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:27Speaker 03

  I was super impressed. You're always going to have a dude here and there. But for the direct hires that I operated with, the independent contractors. There's nothing bad I could say about any of them. You know, some, some of them were quirky and weird, just like we all are.

• 1:42:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:43Speaker 03

  But operationally wise or operations wise, the best I've ever worked with.

• 1:42:50Shawn Ryan?

  Well, that's cool to hear.

• 1:42:53Shawn Ryan?

  Did you find it? One of the biggest struggles that I've, that I had working there was the integration of tactics all because you're working with all the best units from all the, from all special operations. Everybody has their way of doing shit. Everybody thinks their way is the best. Some guys

• 1:43:16Shawn Ryan?

  like myself can shut the fuck up and learn new ways and realize, hey, you know, this is what we have to do. And this is, I mean, we have to be uniform if we're going to work together. And then there's, you know, the other crowd that they can't let go of, you know, their specific or their unit specific tactics. Where did you fall in that spectrum?

• 1:43:38Speaker 03

  I try to strike a good balance. I did have recent GWOT experience and tactics and you know how that is, the further displaced you get from the war, there's a whole bunch of different tactics that change.

• 1:43:53Speaker 03

  So I was heard, you know, when I brought up things, but I also try to be very careful about, one, being a new guy, but two, understanding that as long as the tactics worked, there could be a different way to skin the cat. I mean, there were things that I didn't necessarily agree with, but there are going to be different viewpoints and tactics, but if it works and doesn't violate security, I'm okay with that. So I had a better, easier time and like I said, I needed that job. I was transitioning, you know, obviously off of active duty. I needed that job and I needed, I needed to be in a good place in that position.

• 1:44:37Speaker 03

  I had just made Sergeant Major in 19th Special Forces Group. So going back home, I had responsibilities and so I just couldn't get caught up in any bullshit. There was drama like there is anywhere else. I just go to my room.

• 1:44:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you were a room hobbit.

• 1:44:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, stay in my room.

• 1:44:57Shawn Ryan?

  You did a lot of squats that trip. I literally saw your butt rising.

• 1:45:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, oh yeah.

• 1:45:02Shawn Ryan?

  Week after week.

• 1:45:03Speaker 03

  Two to four hours of squats a day. I had a nice ass after.

• 1:45:07Shawn Ryan?

  You did. Real nice one.

• 1:45:10Speaker 03

  Man, so nice.

• 1:45:12Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, that's cool though, because I mean, honestly, most guys in that outfit don't have near the fucking experience that you've brought to the table. I mean, you just, we just, in an hour, went over your, you know, breeze through your military career and, I mean, holy shit dude, that's a lot of fucking trigger time, that's a lot of deployments and that's a shit ton of experience. I mean, you named all the major schools. I think you left out JTAC, which we had talked about earlier. I mean, it's gotta be...

• 1:45:48Shawn Ryan?

  Hard to bite your tongue with certain things and anyways.

• 1:45:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:45:55Shawn Ryan?

  How many, how long were you over there? At the agency?

• 1:45:59Speaker 03

  I did a total of seven trips. Six point five because my last trip wasn't a full trip.

• 1:46:07Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:46:09Speaker 03

  So I think before we met, I did one, maybe one rotation before that, maybe.

• 1:46:14Shawn Ryan?

  It's hard to piece together.

• 1:46:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, I did, yeah. So I did a total of six point five. And my last trip was early 2016. And again, I don't advertise that experience, but I was going deploying back into war zones between my trips with the CIA. So I was going down range, coming back, going straight on a deployment with 19th group.

• 1:46:42Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:46:43Speaker 03

  And coming right back in. And so it became redundant and it became

• 1:46:51Speaker 03

  pretty overwhelming to get anything accomplished in civilian life.

• 1:46:55Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Mike. So we covered all of your operational career up to this point and I want to kind of wrap that up because I'd like to move along with field craft and transitioning and what you're up to now. But before we do,

• 1:47:14Shawn Ryan?

  I want to take a call and.

• 1:47:16Speaker 03

  You take calls on your podcast?

• 1:47:17Shawn Ryan?

  I take calls. So

• 1:47:20Shawn Ryan?

  I met this kid maybe three years ago and he was a fucking soup sandwich. Showed up to one of my training courses, had the fucking Delta beard, had all the fucking tactical shit, didn't know how to use any of it, fucking completely unsure of himself, just living in a total fantasy land. And he started training with me more and more and more and became really interested in actually doing the fucking job instead of looking the part. And I know you get blown up on the IG and so do I. With DMs all the time of people who want to do it. Well, this fucking guy actually is doing it.

• 1:48:02Shawn Ryan?

  He went and signed up and he's waiting for his selection date. And I'm super fucking proud of him. I nicknamed him Keebler. Like Keebler the elf? Yeah, like Keebler the elf. Cause he used to have this stupid fucking beard, but uh- Those cookies are delicious too. They're so good. I know, right? So good. So, I'm gonna give him a call. He's got a question for you about um going through selection, I think, or, and something with uh the National Guard, so here we go.

• 1:48:44Speaker 04

  What's up, brother?

• 1:48:45Shawn Ryan?

  Keebler, you son of a bitch. He in the factory, a pot, a steel pot factory? You're in my podcast and I got Mike Glover here. I know you got a question for him.

• 1:48:54Speaker 04

  I, I do. Uh, um, how's it going, guys?

• 1:48:57Shawn Ryan?

  Good, man.

• 1:48:59Speaker 04

  Cool, cool. You want me to uh, just ask the question that I sent you the text about?

• 1:49:03Shawn Ryan?

  You don't have that stupid fucking beard still, do you?

• 1:49:06Speaker 04

  No, just a, just a mustache right now.

• 1:49:09Shawn Ryan?

  Jesus.

• 1:49:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, I gotta, gotta grow it when I can, right?

• 1:49:13Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. Well, hey, let's hear your question.

• 1:49:16Speaker 04

  Alright, uh, so, I have a question that a bunch of uh, the National Guard SF students have, um, I mean, one that I have for myself as well. Uh, people are just interested hearing, uh, you know, how, what the life is like inside of like 19th and 20th group as far as contract work goes. Working for the GRS while being in National Guard SF, if you have any information on that.

• 1:49:42Shawn Ryan?

  Which is so happens I do. It looks like you're in luck, Keebler.

• 1:49:46Speaker 04

  I, I figured, uh, I figured Mike Glover might be the right man to ask.

• 1:49:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I obviously did that for a living where I was doing contracting and then coming back and operating in that 19th group. I was in Charlie 119 and I had a good sergeant major, I had a good company commander, but I was also a team sergeant in that company before I made sergeant major. So, the time period in which I was a team sergeant, I had stood up a team from scratch. We didn't have a detachment when I rolled in there. I got to handpick some guys and put them on my detachment and found that, you know, operating overseas, no matter what your position was, was commonplace in those guard units.

• 1:50:35Speaker 03

  I mean, you're gonna have a lot of guys that contract, how half the guys that work in 19th group, more than likely contract. Now, with that being said, depending on who your client is, or who you contract for, is gonna determine whether or not it's okay. Most of the time, I would say 99% of the time, it's fine. There's no issues with it. Because, again, you're not doing, you're not doing anything during the year besides the one week in a month. And, you know, as long as you could try to make the two weeks a year, that's

• 1:51:14Speaker 03

  fine. A good company in special forces will work with you via the B Team Operations Sergeant. So if the B Team Ops guy is switched on, which mine was, he's super squared away, he facilitated guys who missed their two weeks, two weeks a year annual training. And that was okay. He just made up for it by sending them to school, by making them do details at the schoolhouse or at the unit. And so it's not an issue. I mean, it's just what happens. I think a lot of people don't understand this about the guard component of SF. It's a secret. And it's one of the best kept secrets in special operations and I'll just leave it at

• 1:51:59Speaker 03

  that. It's a great organization to work for. I had a good time.

• 1:52:03Shawn Ryan?

  Does that answer your question?

• 1:52:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, it definitely does. That's definitely helpful because over here, like even the guard liaison, they don't really have any information on that. They just kind of try to tell the guys to just, once you get to your group, be the guard bum, just go to as many schools as possible and try to hop on to other ODA's deployments. So I just wanted to hear from a contract perspective of it.

• 1:52:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:52:26Speaker 04

  Appreciate the info.

• 1:52:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, if you're a guard guy and you go to SOTC, if you go to sniper school, for example, that counts as all your time because you're activated, obviously. So just going to a school or going to some training when you're off time. I was very proactive when I came back for a contract trip. I would show up and be on the clock and hanging out, fixing stuff in the team room, training guys that showed up new. So there's always something that you could do to make up for the time on the back end. And at the end of the day, it's not that big of a deal. If you have a federal government position or job, contractor or not, you're pretty secure in your position. The guard can't really fuck with you.

• 1:53:07Speaker 04

  That's good to hear.

• 1:53:09Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Keebler. What are you doing today? Why the fuck aren't you at work?

• 1:53:14Speaker 03

  Why aren't you rucking me now?

• 1:53:15Speaker 04

  I actually am at work. I'm outside standard security for the 18 Bravo compound, killing the game.

• 1:53:22Speaker 03

  Hell, yeah. I remember that compound. That's solid. It's changed a bit since I've been there.

• 1:53:27Speaker 04

  It's probably exactly the same.

• 1:53:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:53:30Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Keebs. Good luck to you. Talk to you soon. If you don't make it, don't ever fucking call me again. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

• 1:53:39Speaker 03

  But seriously.

• 1:53:39Shawn Ryan?

  No, I'm not.

• 1:53:40Speaker 04

  Don't worry. I'm gonna make it. I've had some cool mentors.

• 1:53:43Shawn Ryan?

  All right. All right.

• 1:53:45Speaker 04

  All right, man.

• 1:53:46Shawn Ryan?

  Later.

• 1:53:46Speaker 04

  We'll talk soon. All right, bye.

• 1:53:52Speaker 03

  Smart question.

• 1:53:52Shawn Ryan?

  So that was Keebler.

• 1:53:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a good question, man.

• 1:53:55Shawn Ryan?

  So we're out of the combat stuff, we're out of the military and the operational units.

• 1:54:01Shawn Ryan?

  You're done with your last CIA deployment. And now it's time to start transitioning, which

• 1:54:11Shawn Ryan?

  everyone I know in special operations dreads the transition. How was yours?

• 1:54:18Speaker 03

  Uh, man, it was bad. It wasn't good. I mean, I made a lot of mistakes. I had a hard time.

• 1:54:25Shawn Ryan?

  Could you sleep?

• 1:54:26Speaker 03

  Nope, no sleep.

• 1:54:29Speaker 03

  Anxiety, waking up all the time in the middle of the night, looking out the windows, staring out in the sky in tears, not really understanding what the fuck's going on with me. Trying to get through the VA process and get some help, which is failing.

• 1:54:45Speaker 03

  Not having a job and just trying to grind it on my own.

• 1:54:50Speaker 03

  Failed relationships. I mean, the list goes on. It was a fucked up experience, yeah.

• 1:54:55Shawn Ryan?

  It's always, it's always, uh, I've never heard of one that went smoothly.

• 1:55:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, if somebody said, "Yeah, my transition was just super easy and it was no problem", I'd be super suspect of that person.

• 1:55:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Is there one thing that kind of gave you, gave you, I mean, I don't really know how dark it got. We did have a conversation and you had told me, I kind of shared my experience with you on when I tried to commit suicide and then you had a similar experience.

• 1:55:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, I had a night where, you know, I was prescribed Ambien, I was drinking alcohol and I had a pistol in my hand and, you know, the best way to, the best way to describe to me

• 1:55:44Speaker 03

  my own thoughts was the fact that, you know, in

• 1:55:51Speaker 03

  In our career fields, our job is to be an asset to our team, to our unit, to our country. And we take out liabilities. We kill bad guys that don't deserve to be on the planet. And that's what we do. I mean, there's no if, ands, or buts about it. Like, you're a trained killer. That's what you do in special operations. If you don't understand that, you shouldn't be attempting to be in special operations. Or be in it. And so, we're used to taking out bad guys. And I looked at myself at that point in my life as a bad guy. I had made some really bad personal decisions that affected my relationships to those closest to me.

• 1:56:34Speaker 03

  I had, you know, isolated myself. I was an active duty master sergeant, at the tip of the spear, having a decent family life. And now I was sleeping on an air mattress in a fucking apartment by myself. I had spent that time period, nobody wanted to be around me, including my own family. I spent Christmas, all of Christmas, and all of New Year's by myself, inside this apartment, drinking. And I was at a loss, man. I didn't have anybody.

• 1:57:08Shawn Ryan?

  Completely isolated.

• 1:57:09Speaker 03

  Completely isolated.

• 1:57:10Shawn Ryan?

  No phone calls.

• 1:57:11Speaker 03

  Nobody even wanted to be close to me. Nobody reached out to me. I was completely by myself.

• 1:57:15Shawn Ryan?

  Had they reached out to you, do you think you were even prepared to take any assistance?

• 1:57:19Speaker 03

  Probably not. No, probably not.

• 1:57:20Shawn Ryan?

  We find, we, most guys see that as a weakness.

• 1:57:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:57:24Shawn Ryan?

  Which is fucking sad, but...

• 1:57:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, I fell asleep drunk with a pistol in my hand and a bottle of wine in another hand, on the floor of my shitty apartment in Texas.

• 1:57:37Shawn Ryan?

  Any idea what pulled you through that?

• 1:57:41Speaker 03

  To be honest, not really. I don't know. I think I just got through it because I didn't have the courage to kill myself.

• 1:57:49Speaker 03

  I, it had nothing to do with empathy or compassion for others. I didn't kill myself because I felt for other people and they, how they would live without me, kinda shit. I, I didn't wanna be alive.

• 1:58:02Speaker 03

  But I just didn't have the fucking balls to do it, so I didn't. And you know what, what did, did help me? Is, it was a struggle. I mean, to breathe. I was breathe, like, I was taking one breath at a time, just to get through the moment. And I was researching all the stuff on depression and anxiety. And I read something that said that yoga helped a lot. There was a yoga studio a mile down the road that did ninety minute hot yoga. And I was like, fuck it, you know what? What else do I have to lose? I, I've lost everything. Let me just try. And so I went to a yoga class. And it did help me. Like, I did yoga, I sweated my ass off.

• 1:58:46Speaker 03

  And walked away from that experience going, man, this actually helped me a little bit. No shit. And just in increments, small increments, one day at a time, I started to pull myself out of it.

• 1:58:58Speaker 03

  I still had epic failed relationships. You know, I wanna blame my crazy ass ex-girlfriends for a lot of stuff. And they were crazy in a lot of ways. Most of them are. Most of them are, especially the hotter ones. But it was me. I was fucked up, man. Yeah. I mean, things that, you know, civilians aren't prepared with the capacity to even understand what's happening to them when you lose your shit. Or your temper flares, or you punch a hole through a wall. Or you just do stupid shit and say stupid shit. There's no context for them. So it all comes across as crazy. There's no empathy. I never got empathy from my ex-girlfriend.

• 1:59:41Speaker 03

  She never said, "I'm so sorry that you had to go through this," because she didn't even understand it. Yeah. So I wanna point the finger and be like, "Fuck you for not having empathy for me, but fuck me for just being a dick." Yeah. But again, it's not our fault, in, in a way. I mean, I, I think we should take personal responsibility for things that we do wrong. But there's no mechanism or even understanding.

• 2:00:06Speaker 03

  Back then, at least, of what the fuck's happening to this guy.

• 2:00:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:11Speaker 03

  He's an elite special operations guy. It was everything going for him and he's fallen apart. And I simply just started to realize that like when you take a dog of war and you let him off the leash and he bites and he attacks and he has one condition, which is operating at the speed of war. Then when you come home, you can't expect him to sit on your fucking lap and be a house dog. So there is a, a new reconditioning that needs to take place and it's a process. People who don't understand as spouses that there is a process. It's a failed expectation. You'll fucking lose every time.

• 2:00:53Speaker 03

  And that process might not ever go away.

• 2:00:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:59Speaker 03

  You know, I hate the spouses that make themselves feel like victims because of what their, their veterans going through. Everybody goes through trauma in some, some form or fashion. But I don't want that to define who I am at my core. Cause I know I'm a good man at my core. But I know I've made a lot of poor decisions based on the trauma that I've experienced, that I've experienced.

• 2:01:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:24Speaker 03

  And so it's a daily fucking effort and campaign just to make sure that I stay squared away.

• 2:01:31Shawn Ryan?

  I think a little big struggle too is, um, you know, um, there's a lot of things going on. During, especially at the beginning of a transition. And I think one of the first things that sets in for guys, I know one of the first things that set in for me was it's when you realize you're just a fucking human, you know, I mean, it's.

• 2:01:54Speaker 03

  You're not a god anymore.

• 2:01:55Shawn Ryan?

  When you're at the SEAL team, when you're at, you know, uh, you know, the SF team, when you're, when you're at the agency, I mean, you have this, this sense of like who you are and you're unstoppable and all the shit that you've been through and all the operations you've gone on, the gunfights, everything. You're, I mean, you're at the pinnacle of it all. And then when you come out, you realize you're just as fucking human as every other motherfucker walking around this earth. And that is very humbling.

• 2:02:30Shawn Ryan?

  Did you, I mean, did you feel that?

• 2:02:33Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 2:02:33Shawn Ryan?

  I mean.

• 2:02:35Speaker 03

  One, society's not prepared for us.

• 2:02:37Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 2:02:38Speaker 03

  They don't, they don't know how to, they don't know how to deal with us. Just like they didn't with Mac V Saw guys in Vietnam, after Vietnam, or post even World War II. A lot of men that come back from special operations and have these experiences can't replicate that in civilian life. So there is a complex where we think we're gods because we're identified as operator. We're identified as sniper, we're identified as all these high-speed things that are relevant in our communities, but irrelevant in society. You wanna assimilate in civil society, no one gives a fuck that you're a sniper.

• 2:03:21Speaker 03

  In fact, in civil society, you're a liability. Because you're fucking crazy. Or, oh, sorry you went to war, man, that must have been a tragic thing. And so they're definitely not prepared. And I don't think we are taught that to re-assimilate, we have to re-identify ourselves. And redefine purpose. Purpose for me in the military was killing bad guys. That's the only drive and purpose that I had. I woke up every morning, even as a leader in special operations. If I don't kill bad guys, I'm a failure. Whether that's kinetic, proxy, directly, killing bad guys was my job.

• 2:04:05Speaker 03

  How does that translate into the civilian sector, you know? Not very well.

• 2:04:11Shawn Ryan?

  It doesn't.

• 2:04:12Speaker 03

  It doesn't, not very well.

• 2:04:14Shawn Ryan?

  But, um.

• 2:04:17Shawn Ryan?

  So something pulled you through all this, but before we get to that, I have another question that I want to ask you.

• 2:04:27Shawn Ryan?

  Would you want, after everything you've been through,

• 2:04:32Shawn Ryan?

  I know you wouldn't have changed a thing, so I'm not gonna ask you that, but

• 2:04:37Shawn Ryan?

  you do realize now the toll that it took on on your personal life and you as a person.

• 2:04:47Shawn Ryan?

  What would you do if your son told you he wanted to become a Green Beret? Would you be for it?

• 2:04:54Speaker 03

  I would support him, but I would try to convince him otherwise. I don't think

• 2:05:02Speaker 03

  I had expectations of how it was gonna be, and then I experienced it, and the toll that it's taking long-term, I would never take that back for myself. Because I earned that.

• 2:05:16Speaker 03

  Good, bad, or indifferent, I earned it. But looking at the full process and journey and the toll it takes, I wouldn't want to do that to his family. I wouldn't want to do that to his loved ones, his family, his friends, to his mom. I would try to convince him otherwise, because one, some people think it's their only option. But, two, there's nobility in it. Some people think that selfless service and sacrifice is the noble cause, and that's okay, I get that. I get selfless sacrifice. But there's so many other things that are broader, where you could affect change and have a greater impact outside of the military.

• 2:06:00Speaker 03

  I didn't realize that until recently, until doing what I'm doing now. And I realized that I probably couldn't do what I do now. If you weren't a SEAL when I was in Green Beret, nobody'd give a fuck. But because we are, it's set a foundation. So, I don't know, I'm torn with that, but more than likely not.

• 2:06:19Shawn Ryan?

  It's a tough call.

• 2:06:20Speaker 03

  I want my kids coding at the age of five. I want them to be entrepreneurs by the age of 10. Because I know that entrepreneurship, because I grew up in it, entrepreneurship is the only single way to a means of controlling your own destiny, literally.

• 2:06:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:41Speaker 03

  Not figuratively, not like, "I got this." No, you got a boss, you don't got shit.

• 2:06:47Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. I think most guys are the same, you know, they um I think they would say the same thing. I would. And the shitty thing is, is

• 2:06:59Shawn Ryan?

  everyone I know in that community is stubborn as a son of a bitch and nobody is gonna fucking talk him out of it. But, I just was curious, you know.

• 2:07:08Speaker 03

  I have an expectation my son will go tell me to fuck myself.

• 2:07:11Shawn Ryan?

  Good.

• 2:07:12Speaker 03

  And I'm okay with that.

• 2:07:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:14Speaker 03

  I wouldn't fight him on it, is what I mean.

• 2:07:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:16Speaker 03

  I wouldn't. There is no contingencies for me and there's no resentment for me. You do what you gotta do, son. Do you. But let me give you the advice. And you could take the advice, or you could flush it down the shitter.

• 2:07:30Shawn Ryan?

  Or the real, you know, I mean, when I talk to younger, the younger generation that's coming up and they wanna do that, I make sure they do realize as much as possible what the other side looks like. It's not all the fucking glory that everybody thinks.

• 2:07:48Speaker 03

  It's not like Hollywood depicts.

• 2:07:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Not at all. But, alright, enough about that. So, Fieldcraft Survival. You guys fucking do all kinds of stuff. I've seen Fieldcraft talk about the keto diet. I've seen him talk about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, grappling, tactics, shooting, obviously survival, overland mobility. Am I missing anything here?

• 2:08:21Speaker 03

  There's probably ten other things.

• 2:08:23Shawn Ryan?

  But, I mean, it's impressive that you're in all these different spaces and you're, and how many people you're impacting. What was, what was the kind of the first, what was the first? Space that you entered in, in field craft and why did you do that?

• 2:08:44Speaker 03

  It was survival, was modern survival as I define it, which is being prepared for a modern world. You know, bushcraft is, is really interesting and really cool, but it's the E in the pace plan of contingencies. It's the emergency. If you're running, you know, I always tell people if you're rubbing sticks together naked in the woods, you fuck some stuff up. You've, you've taken 10 steps prior to that and fucked it up. So in modern survival, we focus on the core principles of modern survival. And beginning, in the beginning, it was, I've been to every SERE school in the military. I've been to peacetime detention. I've been to covert comms. I've been to restraint defeat. I've been to high risk, two versions of high risk.

• 2:09:30Speaker 03

  I've been to the, the uh, agencies, uh, SERE school. So I have a good understanding of the doctrine and then the training methodology behind it. And figured I would make a kit, survival kit, that allows you to survive for 72 hours. Because that's the period of time in which the average catastrophe unfolds where, whether that's being displaced from an urban to a rural environment, getting out of a bad natural catastrophe, uh, surviving in a, a period of time, that's, that's usually around 72 hours. So I made a survival kit starting out and then we started doing modern survival training courses that focused on the psychology.

• 2:10:14Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 2:10:14Speaker 03

  Instead of focused on just a skill set. Psychology is so much more important to understand. And understanding how it works, meaning how resiliency works, how survival works. And so I started studying, uh, case studies on why people live and why people die. And formulated a training plan based off of that. And then, you know, stood up field grass survival under, under that methodology.

• 2:10:40Shawn Ryan?

  We didn't, I don't, we didn't talk for, after that deployment in Yemen, we didn't, we didn't keep in touch at all. We didn't really get close that deployment or anything. And then.

• 2:10:52Shawn Ryan?

  I'm going through my transition and I see, I'm watching Fox News and all of a sudden I see fucking Mike Glover pop up on Fox News and uh, I didn't even know your real name at that point. And I was like, holy shit, I know this fucking guy. And that's, I looked you up, you know, and I saw Fieldcraft and I saw your personal IG and, and I was like, holy shit. And then I started following you more and more. And one of the things that I really like about what you guys are doing in the tactical space is you just fucking have this way of keeping

• 2:11:32Shawn Ryan?

  it real. And there's not, and you keep the, the tough guy bullshit attitude out of it, which makes for the perfect learning environment. But you keep everything very realistic. You're not out there fucking dancing around like an idiot. Um, you're focused on shit that works. And that can be, that can be kind of tricky in this space because everybody's looking for

• 2:12:04Shawn Ryan?

  the circus, the shit that looks cool. And you've created a successful training business without ever getting involved in that shit. How did you do that?

• 2:12:17Speaker 03

  You know, what it is, is it's kind of what I've done my entire life where I'm not worried about popularity. I don't give a fuck about flashy shit. I just don't care. I've never been that way. I grew up poor and I didn't have a desire to pretend like I was rich. So I didn't look at what most kids look at on social media, which is popularity. They look at likes, for example. Likes is not a metric to success. It's a metric to popularity. They're two different, distinct things. I'd rather have a hundred likes on a post from a hundred people who are willing to train and read my content and take things seriously in survival and preparedness,

• 2:13:03Speaker 03

  than have 25,000 likes of a bunch of nerds just geeking the fuck out over a picture of something that looks tactical. I never give a fuck about that. And I also don't give a fuck Teaching people things that are unrealistic. I know statistically that cardiovascular disease and cancer kill more people than anything on the planet.

• 2:13:26Speaker 03

  So yeah, you're less likely to be in a gunfight. So maybe instead of focusing on running and gunning unrealistically on a flat range shooting steel and paper, I'll instead focus on the basic skill sets of gun handling skills and safety and the fundamentals of marksmanship. Because I want to make sure the guy or gal who leaves my course could draw their pistol safely and engage a threat realistically than fucking run around with a pro mask on looking like a fucking operator when you've never operated a day in your life. I hate, I'm not a fan of that.

• 2:14:01Speaker 03

  I'm not a fan of it because at the truth and core of it,

• 2:14:06Speaker 03

  we all have choices and options. And I get the customer's gonna go where they want to go. But like I said, I have my tribe and people who follow us and people who buy shit and train shit. I'm good with that. I'm not interested in being the fucking, the Walmart tactician. Not interested at all.

• 2:14:31Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, that's cool because you're also, at the same time, you're, you're looking for a particular customer, client, student, whatever you want to call it, just by saying that. And I think that drives a lot of the, the, the,

• 2:14:49Shawn Ryan?

  I call them the end of the world fantasy people to the other. They don't want to do the fundamentals. They don't, a lot of them, you know, they just want to come out there and get a fucking picture of them wearing a bunch of shit that they don't know how to use.

• 2:15:03Shawn Ryan?

  And they don't want to put the time and the effort into actually become efficient with their equipment.

• 2:15:12Shawn Ryan?

  And how long did it take you to kind of like figure that out? Who, I mean, when you jump into the tactical space, you get all kinds of.

• 2:15:26Shawn Ryan?

  You get all kinds of people that want to train. You got the guy that just wants to protect his family and church. You got the, all the way to the opposite who's secretly fantasizing that he's gonna be shooting zombies on his fucking rooftop. How did you figure, wow, how long did it take you to figure out what, all the different profiles that want training in this space?

• 2:15:50Speaker 03

  Well, I knew the way I would attract the right people was by doing what we do, which is being real. Which is, which is having realistic expectations of training. And not trying to build a business off of a gimmick. Everybody nowadays come to the table on a business plan with a gimmick. And my mom raised me in business to understand that hard work, discipline, and your ethic is what's gonna get you to the top.

• 2:16:29Speaker 03

  And maybe that's one slow step at a time, but that scales more optimal for me because it doesn't deviate from my values. So, just putting out that would attract the right people, and it has thus far. We've grown slowly over the last few years, but I'm okay with that, man. I'm okay with slow growth.

• 2:16:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:52Speaker 03

  A lot of these kids are living in fantasy world because they want to be somebody. I feel sorry for them. They want to be something significant, and so they use their social media to virtue signal to the world that they're something they're not. It's called emulation. It's what emulators do. It's what we did, just in a different way. I mean, I used to read Mac V Sog books, sniper books from John Plaster, Carlos Hathcock, all those guys. And when I read those books, I went in the woods and I pretended. But I did that when I was a kid, not a fucking adult. And these guys are fucking grown ass men, LARPing on social media. Without the deliberate plan to do something significant.

• 2:17:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:36Speaker 03

  I always tell these kids who ask for advice, I'm okay with giving you advice. I'll give you free advice all day, as long as it means something at the end of the day. Not just you perpetuating a feeling. Because you tell your friends at the bar that, yeah, yeah, you're trying out for special operations. And then two years later, you're still sitting on your ass in your cubicle.

• 2:17:56Shawn Ryan?

  Your authenticity really comes through on your lives and everything else. And I think a lot of people are really, really drawn to that. Especially nowadays, more than ever with all the phony shit on social media. And I mean, all of your branches of field crap just seem to be growing very steadily. What's next?

• 2:18:21Speaker 03

  Next for us is partnerships with good companies that represent preparedness and survival. I mean, we all have different genres. You know, whether it's 511 Tactical or BCM. People have their narrow fields of fire. But we want to partner with good businesses and develop better equipment that helps people survive. There's a whole bunch of deficiencies in the game. Because a lot of companies are focused on the wrong priorities, in my opinion.

• 2:18:53Shawn Ryan?

  I agree with you on that.

• 2:18:54Speaker 03

  We're going to fix, we're going to try our best to fix those. And then continue doing media, man. I love the media thing like you do. I mean, this being your first podcast. I love podcasts because it gives opportunity to hear a long-form version of somebody's experiences. Instead of clickbait. And so I'm more interested in doing versions of that. Instead of doing shorter versions of clickbait. I do have a plan to write a book. I've written four chapters of it. It's probably one of the hardest things I've done, technically. Looking for a publisher or an agent to get that knocked out. Because I realize. I'm a good creative writer, but in 300 word increments on Instagram.

• 2:19:37Speaker 03

  Not in a 250 page book on mindset or survival. So yeah, man, we're just, we're continuing to grind. We got mobility coming out. Overlandtraining.com is a domain that I've licensed from Overland Journal and Expedition Portal, who are the OGs and bosses in Overland. So if you guys want to do overland training with us, overlandtraining.com, we got a whole bunch of shit going on. We're training all over the United States. I'll be in Texas in January. My guys will be in, I'll be in California in January. I'm all over the place, man. It's a grind that I'm in love with. It's something that I'm passionate about.

• 2:20:17Speaker 03

  And I've been in it for four years and it's, it's just something that I'm prepared to, to maintain. I'm in it for the marathon, the 50K or the 100K. I'm not in this for fucking a wind sprint.

• 2:20:31Shawn Ryan?

  I heard you say, I heard you say on another podcast that you never made it about money. And I have not heard very many people in business say that. And I always say that too, which is another one of the similarities that when you came up here. Do you think that really helped you with your business by not making it about money and making it about growing?

• 2:20:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. 100%. We all, we all have our incentives and it really shapes your behavior and your pattern of life. If money, you know, I love these people who come out and say, money is not important to me. And they fly in G6s. They buy Lambos and show the world they have Ferraris and, and materialistic shit. I don't fucking care about any of that. I literally don't. I have a couple sentimental things that are more likely rocks and warm memorabilia, but that could burn to the ground. I care more about people.

• 2:21:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:44Speaker 03

  And it's not a pitch. I've always been that way. I've always been in the military, willing to sacrifice my time, my efforts and potentially my life for people.

• 2:21:56Speaker 03

  So coming out of the military, that didn't change for me. I didn't, you know, some people I've seen, I've seen this happen, it's directly affected me. When motherfuckers come out and they get a little taste of what they think is popularity, and it changes who the fuck they are.

• 2:22:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:12Speaker 03

  That never interested me because I'm not, I never cared about popularity. I played high school football, I was a popular kid in school, but I didn't give a fuck. And so I didn't, I didn't wear my ego on my, on my shoulder. So when I make it about people, it changes the, the priorities whereby the bottom line for me isn't the profit margin. The bottom line is taking care of people. And by default, and this isn't, I mean, you could look at it in books as a marketing tactic or a business tactic, but it has to be genuine. And so when I make it about people, people take care of our company. People buy our swag, they tend, attend our training because they believe in the mission,

• 2:22:54Speaker 03

  because I've made it about the mission and not about a, a bottom line in marketing. I, I see good companies doing great things and then charging people, fuck man, $500 for a bag. Like, what? Like, what are you, what are you even doing? Um, I remember I dropped my, one of my mobility bags and I sold it for 200 bucks.

• 2:23:17Speaker 03

  Uh, it cost me 67.50 to make. That margin is low in textiles. I mean, it's low after all the shipping, receiving, the, all the labor, the overhead in the building, electricity, et cetera. You're looking at an additional bag, a 50% profit margin. Dude, that's no money to be made. People bitched about it and people complained, so I lowered the price. I even had that thing for 99 bucks just because I knew I wanted to make people happy. Now that's my downfall too.

• 2:23:50Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:50Speaker 03

  My downfall is, um, I'm not always looking at the numbers when in business you should be. You should be looking at the numbers. You should be paying attention to the numbers. But incentive wise, what should drive your behavior and what should drive your, uh, your business should be for the right reasons and that for me is people.

• 2:24:11Shawn Ryan?

  In field craft, you guys, it seems like you guys do a lot of prepping.

• 2:24:16Shawn Ryan?

  And are masters of it. And I don't know about you, but a lot of the clients that I've had think that there might be something they need to prepare for. So I don't know about field craft, but I have a feeling our clientele is very similar because we're both realists. And I would say the majority of my clients, not all of them, but the majority of them think that they need to be prepared for something. And you guys are big in the prepping world as well. They think something might happen, not necessarily the end of the world, but they just want to

• 2:24:57Shawn Ryan?

  be ready in case of a natural disaster, an EFP. There's a thousand different scenarios. What would you say for somebody that's completely green, they don't know how to shoot, they don't own a gun, they don't have food storage, anything, what would you say the number one priority would be? Where do they start?

• 2:25:23Speaker 03

  The number one priority for me is personal defense because, you know, the first principle of patrolling is security. And if you can't secure yourself, you can't secure your family, you can't defend your life, you can't defend your family's life. So I would say it starts with a personal decision to buy a firearm, learn how to utilize a firearm, and carry that firearm daily.

• 2:25:54Shawn Ryan?

  What firearm would you suggest, starting with pistol or rifle?

• 2:25:57Speaker 03

  I think universally, you know, I carry different guns for different reasons, but universally a Glock 19 is probably the staple concealed carry pistol. In contracting, we carry Glock 17s typically, but Glock 19s is the right frame size for most. It's the right size frame for concealment. It has the most accessories per gun in the industry. It's a good platform. It's reasonably priced. And I've used a Glock 19 when the military got them in special operations. And I've seen them, I've seen them throughout my military career, and I've never seen one fail.

• 2:26:39Speaker 03

  So a single action only Glock 19 is the start point.

• 2:26:45Shawn Ryan?

  I would definitely agree with that. It's like the Toyota Corolla of handguns.

• 2:26:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 2:26:50Shawn Ryan?

  They just never fucking die.

• 2:26:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:26:54Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, and then, so next would be,

• 2:27:02Shawn Ryan?

  so you would say pistol and then move on to rifle?

• 2:27:08Speaker 03

  No, the next priority for me is med.

• 2:27:10Shawn Ryan?

  Med?

• 2:27:10Speaker 03

  Med, absolutely. Thirty thousand people a year die in vehicle accidents. I wonder how many of those could have been prevented? I mean, four hundred idiots a year fall to their tree stands and hunting and break their legs and do dumb shit. So we're prone to accidents. We're prone to, uh, trauma. And I've, I've treated trauma in real life. I've saved people's lives with tourniquets. Tourniquet, which is a twenty-nine ninety-nine dollar piece of equipment from North American Rescue, which we sell on our website at fieldcraftsurvival.com, is the number one piece of equipment that in med that you need to carry. Stopping an extremity wound, a traumatic bleed from a femoral or brachial artery i- is, is life-saving.

• 2:27:55Speaker 03

  If you don't do that, you simply just go to sleep and die.

• 2:27:57Shawn Ryan?

  Are you guys teaching meds?

• 2:27:59Speaker 03

  We absolutely do, yeah. We teach T-triple-C Tactical Combat Casualty Care, which we were required by our contract to train. We teach a course, certified T-triple-C course through N A M T, this, the, the certification on, uh, tactical med training, trauma training. I just taught a CPR lifesaver course at my, uh, Tribe Expo recently. So we, we frequently teach med and I expect that if in contracting in austere environments, we are required to carry a tourniquet,

• 2:28:34Speaker 03

  based on our own understanding of what we could run into, that a civilian should do the same. Whether that's in your, inside your waistband, because we do sell an inside the waistband tourniquet holder, or that's inside of a bag or inside your vehicle, somewhere within arm's reach, where if you're experiencing trauma, you could save your life.

• 2:28:55Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 2:28:58Shawn Ryan?

  So number three, what would the number three thing be? We got pistol, we got med.

• 2:29:03Speaker 03

  If we're talking about equipment, specific things that you need to carry,

• 2:29:09Speaker 03

  the next piece of equipment would be the way in which you carry it, which would be the bag in which you carry. A lot of people don't think about it, but the extension of your capability of what you can carry on your person is limited. You can only fit so much shit in your pockets and your pants. And if you have a bag, meaning an everyday carry bag, that might be your purse, your purse, your European man satchel. It sets you up for an extended capacity. That's how we look at vehicles. I mean, if I have a med kit in my back pocket, that's a minimalist, you know, low vis med kit. Well, I want my fucking car to be an ambulance. I want there to be enough med equipment to treat my family, myself. And then you upgrade that to your house as well.

• 2:29:54Speaker 03

  I want a damn hospital at my house. So having the ability to carry all their stuff is super important. And in that bag, I would definitely include a survival kit, a modern survival kit that, that has the staples of survival, including the ability to contain water, purify water, start a fire, signal, communicate potentially, sat iridium, VHF, UHF. The list goes on.

• 2:30:24Shawn Ryan?

  Gummy bears.

• 2:30:25Speaker 03

  Gummy bears at a, you know, that are fat free, that have lots of carbs, lots of sugars, lots of calories. They're survival bears, is what we call them.

• 2:30:34Shawn Ryan?

  They're survival bears, yeah. Well, Mike, I know you got a flight to catch, so I'm gonna wrap this up, but I just wanna say,

• 2:30:44Shawn Ryan?

  man, I'm, I had a great fucking time. You came up and I didn't, I didn't know how this was gonna go. We hadn't seen each other in six, seven years and, I mean.

• 2:30:57Shawn Ryan?

  I think we think very parallel on a lot of things and it was a great time. We made some great content. I can't thank you enough for coming up here and it's been awesome watching you grow and watching Fieldcraft grow and I can't wait to see what comes in the years ahead. So, thank you for coming out.

• 2:31:20Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me, man. I'm looking forward to hearing your podcast and seeing what you guys have in the future. I mean, you're one of three YouTube channels that I watch. The other two are mushroom YouTube channels, Foraging for Mushrooms.

• 2:31:35Shawn Ryan?

  You do love some mushrooms.

• 2:31:36Speaker 03

  I love them. I love them. And so, yeah, man, I appreciate you guys having me out and, you know, open your doors to me and it's rare for me like you to get out. And when I do go out, it's only for specific reasons or specific people. And you guys are some really good people doing some really good stuff and I look forward to doing more with you.

• 2:31:58Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you. Yeah, I hope we can do this again sometime. Real quick, before we hang this up, where can we find you?

• 2:32:06Speaker 03

  We're all over social media, obviously. Fieldcraft Survival Fit, Fieldcraft Mobility, Fieldcraft Survival, Mike.a.glover on my personal, FieldcraftSurvival.com, OverlandTraining.com. If you need to find us, just Google us, you'll find us. We have a podcast on iTunes called the Fieldcraft Survival Podcast and we also have a podcast called the Modern Mindset 365 Podcast, which is all about mindset. So, yeah, definitely hit us up and look us up.

• 2:32:38Shawn Ryan?

  You heard it. Look them up. I think you should open another profile called Magic Mike, but...

• 2:32:45Speaker 03

  Magic Mike. I like that.

• 2:32:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, that's a good one. But, all right, thanks again, man. And we'll see you guys soon. We got to jet to the airport.

• 2:32:56Speaker 03

  Cool. Thanks, guys.

• 2:33:07Speaker 05

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