#94 Dom Raso - SEAL Team 6 / DEVGRU Operator

Dom Raso is a former SEAL Team Six / DEVGRU Operator whose career spans across twelve years and multiple combat deployments during the Global War on Terror. Raso served in Gold Squadron, an outfit that suffered a staggering loss during an attack on August 6, 2011 when a Chinook CH-47 (call sign: Extortion 17) was shot down by insurgents. This was the most devastating day in SEAL Team Six history, as well as the single largest loss of life for U. S. forces since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001. Raso is well known for his contributions to DEVGRU in the way of research and development and combative techniques. Post his military career, he took those same lessons learned to create his brand Crush Everything / Dynamis Alliance. As CEO, Raso seeks to prepare the next generation by embracing sacrifice and using it as a positive energy to "crush everything" that he does. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://lairdsuperfood.com - USE CODE "SRS" https://shopify.com/shawn https://betterhelp.com/shawn https://ziprecruiter.com/srs https://hvmn.com/shawn https://blackbuffalo.com https://ShawnLikesGold.com | 855-936-GOLD #goldcopartner Dom Raso Links: Crush Everything - https://crusheverything.com IG - https://www.instagram.com/domraso X - https://twitter.com/DomRasoJr Podcast - https://crusheverything.com/podcast Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:56Shawn Ryan?

  Welcome back, everybody. This week, we have a Tier 1 operator. It's a good friend of mine. We served at SEAL Team 2 together briefly, and then he moved on to Development Group, which is the Navy's Tier 1 Special Operations Unit. This is a story about overcoming loss, finding, keeping faith, being a good dad, and being just an all-around good person.

• 1:32Shawn Ryan?

  This is a heavy episode. It's one that I've been wanting to have for a very long time, and it took some convincing, but it was well worth the wait. I can promise you that. Ladies and gentlemen, if you get anything out of these episodes, please head over to Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Leave us a review. That really, really helps the show out more than you could imagine. And please like, comment, and subscribe to the YouTube channel.

• 2:08Shawn Ryan?

  Ladies and gentlemen, once again, this is such a heavy but good and it's just an awesome episode. It brings a lot of good into the world, which we could all use right now. And without further ado, please welcome my good friend, Mr. Dom Razzo to the Sean Ryan Show. God bless you all. We'll see you next week. Much love.

• 2:47Shawn Ryan?

  Dom Razzo, welcome to the show, brother.

• 2:49Speaker 03

  It's so good to be here, bro.

• 2:51Shawn Ryan?

  It has been a... Look, I've been wanting to get you on here since I started this podcast four years ago. And so to finally have you here sitting across from me, man, it just, it means the world to me and it is a real honor. You have been an example that I've followed for ever since I started my entrepreneurial career. And it's just, it is, it's a real honor to have you here. So, thank you.

• 3:21Speaker 03

  Thanks, brother. Yeah, dude, it's God's timing, you know, and he reached out to me the first time and, you know, I'd wanted to come out here. I'd even think we'd planned it. It was like, that's gonna be the day. And whatever, I got bumped off for, but here we are, man. I mean, it's, it's an honor to be here, too, you know, just seeing the influence that you're making in everybody's lives. And it's very surreal, you know, in a lot of ways, but it's just awesome to see and, you know, it's great to be here, bro.

• 3:45Shawn Ryan?

  Well, thank you. Thank you. Let me give you a quick introduction for those of you that don't know who Dom is. But Dom, former Navy SEAL of 12 years, we spent a little bit of time together at SEAL Team Two, not much. We actually never got to deploy together, unfortunately. Then you went on to SEAL Team Six Development Group, went into Gold Squadron. Now you are an entrepreneur. You have a few different businesses, Dynamis Alliance, which the motto is "Will to Fight," Adaptive X, which is your gear company, and your newest venture, I believe, is Armor Up, correct?

• 4:23Speaker 03

  That's our fitness program that we have. So Crush Everything is the overarching of all those.

• 4:29Shawn Ryan?

  Roger that.

• 4:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, those are all underneath that. But that's what happens when you're an entrepreneur. But yeah, that's, that's the majority of them.

• 4:36Shawn Ryan?

  Amazing career as an entrepreneur as well. A man of very strong faith, a warrior for Christ. You're a family man, father of five and a very successful marriage. So you are, you know, like I had mentioned previously, you're just, you are a great person, man. There are not a lot of people, there are not a lot of positive examples for the youth today. And you are one of those few positive examples that, that, that not just younger generations,

• 5:15Shawn Ryan?

  all generations, men and women can, can look to you and you're going to lead them in the right way. And that means a lot to me and I know it means a lot to people. And, and also, you know, I told you this personally before, but just the way you carry yourself, both as a family man in your personal life and as a entrepreneur and a warrior for Christ. Dom, you're just, you know, I've never seen you ever waver on your values, your beliefs. And you, no matter what's thrown at you, no matter what kind of adversity you're facing,

• 6:00Shawn Ryan?

  no matter what the money is, no matter any of that stuff that can, that can influence people into going into a darker place, you, you don't bend a knee. And there's not very many people that I can say that about. And you are one of them. And I paid attention to you from the beginning, you know, your branding, you know, as a businessman is outstanding. I took a lot of notes, um, watching you when I was first starting out and, and I just. I owe you a huge thank you, man, because you have been an inspiration to me. So, and to many.

• 6:37Speaker 03

  That's really awesome. It's humbling to hear, and again, very surreal, just to be sitting here. And, you know, one thing that you did say I'd have to correct you on is that I do bend a knee, and that's to God, and that's where a lot of the credit, all of the credit for everything, you know? And that's like the Spirit moving through my life, through all of our lives together, my family. I mean, everything that you've just mentioned, when you sit back and think about it, it's like those are things that God has blessed me with, you know? Even through the difficult times and through the things that I jacked up, He still, His mercy and forgiveness was there for me to be able to work through all that.

• 7:18Speaker 03

  And I really have, I think, the one thing that has really been important to me, and I think that matters the most for all of us, is to seek the truth relentlessly, with everything that we have. Because if we don't, we end up living something that is less than that. And I think that for us, we have a duty and an obligation to do that, and that's part of what's fired me up so much. And I'm just pumped to be here because of you and what you've done and your influence, and also what's become of you communicating with people and putting stuff out. I mean, I know a lot of people that have changed what they do because of you too, and that impact is awesome.

• 8:00Speaker 03

  And again, we have talents that God has put in front of us, that's for anybody. We all have talents in a different way, and so to put those to use, you're actively doing it, and it's not frickin' easy. It's tough. And we have to work through some of those things every single day. And you've said, you know what? One of the things that I heard recently that I really liked is like, a saint wasn't somebody that, you know, just stopped showing up. They weren't like, they weren't different than everybody else. They just kept getting up again and again and again and said, "I'm gonna lean into this." And, you know, you get punched in the chin when you do that, and it's worth it, though, so.

• 8:36Shawn Ryan?

  Definitely. It's definitely worth it. And I want to expound on that subject a lot towards the end of the interview. So, but everybody that comes on the show gets a gift, so Dom, I got you a gift.

• 8:54Speaker 03

  Thanks, brother.

• 8:57Speaker 03

  So, where are my kids right now? Because they would be crushing these. I've eaten my fair share of Vigilance Elite gummy bears. And I remember when you first released these, I was really stoked for you because I knew that it was something unique and different that, you know, nobody else was thinking of. But my kids love these, they're gonna be stoked. And so is this for the kids too? Or is that for me to make my next blade?

• 9:22Shawn Ryan?

  That is, so I heard a rumor that you developed your blade from Play-Doh.

• 9:28Speaker 03

  That's actually true.

• 9:29Shawn Ryan?

  And so?

• 9:30Speaker 03

  I don't know where you heard that from, but that's true.

• 9:32Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know where I heard that from either, but...

• 9:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it might even been this color, actually. My kids will have a blast with this. Actually, I really do believe that it was that color. But when I was in there, you know, I was like, how do I convey to Winkler that this is the perfect grip? And so I literally had a piece of Play-Doh, I took it from Dominic, my son, and I was manipulating it, and I was like, well, this thing has to be forward and reverse grip. So I went forward, reverse, forward, aggressive, and I sat there for three hours, just kind of like tweaking it a little bit, a little bit. And I got it exactly where I wanted it, and I let it dry. I let it dry. And then I took a bunch of pictures of it and I sent that to Winkler.

• 10:08Shawn Ryan?

  Do you have your blade on you?

• 10:10Speaker 03

  Well, I have the Razorback on me.

• 10:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I'd love to, I'd love to have the audience see it.

• 10:15Speaker 03

  This Razorback was the compact version of the initial blade. The Dynamis Blade is the full-size version. That was our, that's like our OG, started it all, write a passage. I said, out of all the things that I've done in my career, how do I make the perfect carry slash combat blade? Because they have to be able to do both. And I wanted to, you know, get the motor memory down. So, that was, this is the compact version. This is the Razorback, of course. This was attributed and named after Adam Brown, to give him a little bit of a tribute. Huge impact on my life, so, um, yeah, that's the Razorback.

• 10:52Shawn Ryan?

  And those are on your website currently?

• 10:54Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 10:55Shawn Ryan?

  Good. I'm gonna pick one of those up too. So I think I have the original one, and I'd love to grab one of those too, so...

• 11:01Speaker 03

  Well, I got you a gift.

• 11:04Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, really?

• 11:05Speaker 03

  I did.

• 11:06Shawn Ryan?

  I love gifts.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  And so, on that note, I got you a Crush Everything gift pack. So here, I'll just pass it along. And it's in a really fancy Perry's Steakhouse.

• 11:22Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man. These are the belts that we were just talking about.

• 11:26Speaker 03

  Those are the belts we were just talking about, and I actually got one for your wife.

• 11:28Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 11:28Speaker 03

  So, you know, you can load those up and do whatever you need to, but hopefully those are useful.

• 11:33Shawn Ryan?

  These, we just had a long discussion about this on your EDC Pocket Dump, so anybody that is curious, I highly suggest you watch that. It's one of the most informative ones we've done.

• 11:57Speaker 03

  He knows how to open it. Look at that. He knows what he's doing.

• 12:00Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man.

• 12:02Speaker 03

  So that is the Revere Blade.

• 12:06Shawn Ryan?

  The Revere Blade?

• 12:07Speaker 03

  That's the Revere Blade, and that would be if our original blade and our Razorback had a baby. That's what it would come out like. So it's a full-size, concealable combat blade. And we've got the IWB sheath there as well, and the waistband sheath.

• 12:24Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 12:24Speaker 03

  But that's yours, brother, so you don't have to go far to get it now.

• 12:27Shawn Ryan?

  This is beautiful. Thank you.

• 12:31Shawn Ryan?

  I'm gonna have you sign this, and I'm going to frame it and put it in the studio. This has a lot of sentimental value to me.

• 12:42Speaker 03

  Well, so this is, this is the last thing I'll give you, but the most important. And, you know, full circle, seeing how far this has traveled along the way. There's a spark of faith in all of us, and our relationship got reinvigorated when we started talking about our faith. And this has just been a symbol of that. And I can't tell you how many people texted me and called me and told me that you gave Jim Caviezel the rosary. That made a big impact, just even with the small community that I have, of how powerful that was. So I'm taking, again, the one that I have, and I'm giving it to you. This is the olive wood.

• 13:25Speaker 03

  These beads are from Bethlehem. You know that, and you know the power of what this is. But I wanted to also give this to you on the show and, you know, make sure that this was back to you. And, you know, you have it. It's important, you know, especially as a weapon. So here you go, brother.

• 13:41Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I wanted to make sure I gave that back to you. Thank you.

• 13:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:45Shawn Ryan?

  I did not know that these beads were from Bethlehem.

• 13:48Speaker 03

  They are. The olive wood beads are from Bethlehem.

• 13:50Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 13:51Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 13:52Shawn Ryan?

  That, thank you, man.

• 13:53Speaker 03

  And so you've got a couple more variations in there that will actually explain the card on it about where it's from, why they're from Bethlehem, and some of the, uh, some of the design work that goes into those.

• 14:04Shawn Ryan?

  Man, thank you, Dom.

• 14:06Speaker 03

  Of course, brother.

• 14:06Shawn Ryan?

  Nobody's getting this one but me, so, but, uh...

• 14:10Speaker 03

  You say that now.

• 14:11Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 14:12Speaker 03

  If some of the, you know, there's always a higher calling at times, and, uh, that's proven that out, so.

• 14:16Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 14:19Shawn Ryan?

  Put that right there for now. And, uh, thank you for these as well.

• 14:29Shawn Ryan?

  All right, so, we're gonna get into the interview, so I'd like to do a full, just a full scope life story on you. Start from childhood, moving into military career, transitioning out, what you're doing now, faith, fatherhood, being a family man, spiritual warfare. We have a lot to talk about, Dom. So, um, I'm gonna kick it off with, uh, with a question. I have a, a patron on my Patreon that is, he has been waiting for this interview for a very, very long time. His name's, he goes by Moose.

• 15:03Speaker 03

  Moose.

• 15:04Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, so I'm just gonna read his question.

• 15:09Shawn Ryan?

  Developing the precise mindset required to reach the position of Dev Group demands a unique mental approach. How challenging did you find it to adopt that mission-focused, perfectionist attitude into your life post active duty?

• 15:26Speaker 03

  The one thing that I left the command with, and I can say this like it happened yesterday, walking out those doors, knowing that I might not ever step foot back in that building where so much of my life was changed, and turning around and looking back at the brick, I said to myself, I said...

• 15:49Speaker 03

  One thing that I was taught here is that if there's something wrong in the world, or if there's something wrong in the team, or if there's something wrong with a department, or if there's something wrong at period, general, end of story, it will not change unless I do something about it. And it's true for every aspect of our life, is that we have to take ownership for the things that we're seeing and that we're identifying that need to be fixed. And if we don't step up and we are not the ones, we should not expect it to change. And I think that that's the major thing that I left with,

• 16:34Speaker 03

  knowing that at every turn, being an entrepreneur, being a father, being a husband, interacting with people in our culture, recognizing the issues politically that we were dealing with. I was very quickly recognizing that if I don't do something about it, it's not going to change. And how beautiful is it when we get to do that as a team? How beautiful is it when we get to do that as a city? How beautiful is it when we get to do that together? That's when the world changes. But it starts with us. And that's one of the biggest things from a mindset perspective that I walked away with, knowing that I was the guy. You are the guy. If you're listening to this and you have something going on in your life, you're the one.

• 17:18Speaker 03

  You have to do something about it. And when we take action, the world around us starts to change. And when we don't, nothing changes. And we shouldn't expect a different result. And again, we all know the definition of insanity, right? We keep approaching the same problem again and again, expecting different results. We use the same tactic and we think something's going to change. We should at least clearly understand that it won't unless we change. And so I would say that that's the major thing that applied, I used to my advantage, walking out those doors. Now, it wasn't perfect to begin with at all. That had to grow on me and how that transformed. Clearly, since the day that I look back at that door until right this very second

• 18:01Speaker 03

  has been a transformation process in so many different ways. But I'll leave it at that because I'm sure we're going to get into a lot of this stuff. But the other aspect that I think was probably equally as important and that enhances that idea is that my favorite quote, at least in a combat perspective, was by George Patton, and that's, "A good plan executed violently now is better than a perfect plan executed a week from now." So I knew that I couldn't overthink the idea of what was going to happen. I couldn't overthink walking through the door. I couldn't overthink the project that I had to lead. I couldn't overthink the trip I had to set up. You've just got to get going. And sometimes it literally happens in a second or it happens within a period of hours.

• 18:46Speaker 03

  But you've got to take action because I knew that I would learn more through the action and my screwing up and doing it wrong and not getting it right than I would that if I sat there and tried to make this perfect plan and put it all whiteboarded and making me feel all good. Because today, what does everybody do? They overanalyze everything. Everybody puts themselves in a state of paralysis. They don't actually lift a finger. Everybody's looking at their watch, making sure they've got, this is reading the way it's supposed to, instead of actually doing what they know is right, using their heart to know what they know is right. So for me, that quote, I think probably saved my life. I think that quote probably saved the lives of the guys around me.

• 19:26Speaker 03

  And really applying that to everything that I did post military was the same exact result. Go fast now, as hard as I possibly can, and I'll figure it out on the fly. And I'll end that in saying, there's also, I think, some cons that come along with that mindset that I don't want to miss and I don't want to just leave on the table as like, oh, that's going to be your best quote, go ahead and do it. What happened to me from an entrepreneurial perspective is that I applied that mindset to everything that I had going on and I was trying to do too much. Too fast, too spread thin. And I always equate it to like when you're in a boat, you know, when you slow down in the boat and the big wave comes and hits the transom and it follows up on you. That's what life did to me because I tried to apply that mindset with no

• 20:11Speaker 03

  planning. And I was just trying to head first. We're going to figure it out. We're going to figure it out. At some phase line and in some situations, we should take the time to pray through and plan what we want to do. My wife always reminds me of the scripture that says, you know, you have to count the cost. If you're going to do something, count the cost. And I think that that's true. And if we apply that mindset along with the violent plan, we can have a really good outcome and then doing it faithfully. So I would say that is probably the best way I can explain what I took away, how I applied it to my entrepreneurial life all the way up until today.

• 20:46Shawn Ryan?

  Man, those are some great, great life lessons. One being in short, I think a great way to summarize it would be you create your own reality, whether you like it or not. You create your own reality. Number two, do one thing, do it extremely well and then move on. And I learned that lesson also as an entrepreneur. And I will say, you know, it was like swimming around in circles, you know, I was doing reality TV stuff on my channel. I was, I had 10 different things going on. I wasn't really good at any of them. And then one day

• 21:27Shawn Ryan?

  I finally said, this, all I'm doing is this podcast. That is it. I don't, no more shiny objects. I'm not going after it. I don't care what it is. And once I adapted that mindset or adopted that mindset, things really started falling into place and in a hurry. And so, great advice, Tom.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  I think that that's absolutely true because I was telling you earlier, the book, The Four Hour Work Week. I mean, I literally read that as I was transitioning out. And I would tell you, you know, there's a lot of things that I look back in my life, I'm like, okay, I wouldn't change a thing. But for the, for the purposes of this example, I think I would go back and burn that book. Like literally light it on fire. Tim Ferriss jacked me all up. Like because I had this mindset that I was just gonna go delegate all the things that I was increasing in. So as soon as I got good at something, then it was time to pass it off to do more. Right? And it was a disease. It's a virus. And, and I'm not doing what you just explained, and that was become the best at this.

• 22:31Speaker 03

  Know how to explain it, teach it, live it, do it with your eyes closed before anything changes. And I think we live in a world where we expect everything to grow and scale. We want all these things to happen. And that's what everybody wants. Everything's driven by analytics and measurements, and those are good for some cases. But from the standpoint of reading the four hour work week and not truly taking accountability to that, I spread myself too thin, too fast. And I didn't really appreciate the process of really doing those things well before I passed them off to somebody else. I always just, anybody that joined my team, I'm like, um, you're just gonna like figure this out, right? So I'm gonna give you a little bit of the skill, but then you're gonna kind of take it on and do it on your own. Where, where I should have done it a little bit more intentionally than that. So.

• 23:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you know, the, I think I know exactly what you're talking about. And, and, and, you know, it's important to know, for me, it's important to know every single aspect of my business. If my team, it's great when you can delegate and you got a big team and you really don't know anything. Yeah, it can go great until it doesn't. And then what the hell are you gonna do? And so it's, it's good to know, you should be able to fill every single role in your own business, in my personal opinion. So if somebody leaves, somebody quits, somebody gets hurt, somebody goes on big, whatever happens, you can immediately step in and fill that role and it's business as usual. Nobody knows the difference other than you have a little bit less time off your plate, but.

• 23:55Speaker 03

  Thousand percent.

• 23:56Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, well, Dom, let's get into your life story.

• 24:00Shawn Ryan?

  I want to start at the very beginning. Where did you grow up?

• 24:05Speaker 03

  So I grew up in New England. I grew up in Rhode Island. And that environment has definitely played a part in my life. You know, being around the water. You know, I grew up around, right down the street from the ocean. So that played a part in really, like, I don't like thinking about being anywhere without the ocean. So Rhode Island, Ocean State, New England type of feel, you know? A lot of those kind of traditional things that we think of when we think of New England. Cold, water, guys out there fishing. That was, that's kind of transcended throughout my life as well, you know, even for my children. But I grew up there and, you know, we had everything from, you know, really good Italian and Portuguese food.

• 24:49Speaker 03

  I knew a lot of Italian and Portuguese people. That's like how I grew up, you know? Very, very tight family, very, very, um, kind of like, just traditional, you know, feeling, you know? Big festivals and feasts all the time. It's part of what I miss in Virginia Beach, you know? You don't get those. You don't get that big Portuguese feast, the big Italian feast, you know? Like, those are something we look forward to often. So, yeah, I grew up in New England.

• 25:14Shawn Ryan?

  Mr. President? My company for me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami.

• 25:21Shawn Ryan?

  They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 25:24Speaker 00

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us out. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 25:30Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze the earth, that's what.

• 25:34Speaker 00

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 25:38Speaker 03

  I'm not the first then.

• 25:39Speaker 00

  Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under 17, not admitted without parent.

• 25:44Shawn Ryan?

  Good family?

• 25:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was very blessed. I mean, everything I look back on, I mean, I obviously struggled big time when I got into my teenage years. But the majority of my upbringing, I was very, very blessed, you know. My family was great. I was the type of person, kid, child. I, for some reason, got along with everybody in my family. Whether it was at the gatherings for Thanksgiving, at my aunt's house. And we always made it a point to gather. That was the beautiful thing that I want to keep going and that we're missing today a lot. It's like families fragment and they don't get that. So I really appreciated the aspect of always coming together, always coming together. In fact, I think they do it so much in some cases in some families, they take it for granted.

• 26:28Speaker 03

  You know, and I always remind people, I might never take that for granted, that's your family. So, you know, we had a broken home in a sense. You know, I look at now as a blessing. It's hard to not think of any of this as a blessing, because it put me here talking to you. But my mother and father, they were never married. I remember as young as I can remember, and I would, I would say I was probably four or five. You know, and all I can remember is I have this visual of just, there's multiple cop cars outside. Mom and my dad were just yelling at the top of their lungs together, battling and arguing over me. And so they never were on the same page about that. And I, and I had to show up to court a lot.

• 27:12Speaker 03

  And I was pitted against my parents in a lot of cases. How old were you when this was going on? You know, that memory is probably around four or five. And then pretty much from that point until, you know, my teens, I had to go back and forth on a lot of that. Child support, you know, my mom needing help. My dad, you know, wanting to be with my dad and then having to choose. I mean, one of the hardest things I ever remember as a child is I have this person in front of me that I have no idea who they are. Sitting here asking me to choose of which parent I wanted to go with, right? I'm in a courtroom in Providence. My mother sobbing her eyes out. My dad's standing there at the end of the table. And they're like, which parent are you gonna, you know, which parent are you gonna go with here?

• 27:57Speaker 03

  Right? Well, they're, I have, still to this day, I have no idea what the actual issue is. But there they are in court and as a child. And so that developed me earlier on to have a very, very, very adaptable mindset. Because I knew I had to go back and forth between mom and dad and kind of understand how to, to make those decisions. A lot of kids are in that position right now. Hundred percent. So I would.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  How did you choose?

• 28:27Speaker 03

  Very, very, very emotionally and very drastically. You know, my mother was very tough on me from a standpoint of like, she'd have no problem like smacking me off of a seat if I did something wrong, you know? And she mentally could kind of get to me like my inner core, you know? Like she was the person yelling at me on the phone while I was in BUDS, getting ready to go to Hell Week, like motivating me, right? She had that tenacity where it's like, don't you dare think about quitting, right? So her mindset at a young age, it really developed kind of like this, you know, like I have very like on edge, like so on edge with my mother. But man, I can't help but to say it's such a blessing today because she hardened me. She prepared me for the world.

• 29:12Speaker 03

  She prepared me like, anybody yells at me now, I'm like, yeah, okay, whatever, pal. Like, you know, you're not my mom. But to choose even at this point now, because I went back and forth. But initially, I think I had said, I'm gonna go with my father. But that didn't necessarily work because of his work schedule. So then it was split where I had to be with my mom for the week and then my dad came and got me on the weekends. And so like my dad was the fun guy, right? My mom had to do all the things that were tough. She had to get me to school. She had to make sure I was eating right. She had to make sure that I was getting taken care of. I remember her walking down the street to pick up food from the local church because she had no money, you know what I mean? She didn't have, she couldn't pay for anything. So she was on welfare for a while. I remember her using food stamps for quite a while.

• 29:57Speaker 03

  We took the bus everywhere, carried bags of, you know, groceries to, you know, through the street with, you know, shopping bags that were cutting off my circulation. Like I remember all those memories, like just walking miles to get back home. But eventually, you know, developed that mindset of like, oh, my dad's the fun guy. He's coming on Fridays and he would pick me up. We'd get in the car, he'd speed down the road and we'd hang out for the weekend. We'd go fishing and doing all these things. So I developed a really good relationship with my father because he was there, you know? He was picking me up and he was interacting with me as part of my life. And I realize today, like what a major blessing that is to have a father that cares for you and how many people out there do not. Yeah.

• 30:39Speaker 03

  And how critical that is to have that father figure in your life, which again, I mean, I could go right to talking about faith right now and why that's critically important. We all have a different journey. But I eventually was split, went to school. And as I started to develop some of my own personal choices and impact and talking to other people, I think eventually we were back in court again. And my mom was just really, really tough and it just got to the point where I wanted to be with my father. And so I was pushing for that. So I was kind of bucking the system with her in pretty much any way that I could. And it got really intense. I mean, we were living in an apartment for a while. You know, I remember our apartment life to this day.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  That's why, you know, when people are, you know, living in really, really tight quarters, I can very easily relate to that. You know, people yelling at each other down the hall, you know, everybody knows everybody's business. So I kind of wanted to get out of there. I feel like I was really being pressured by my mom in a lot of ways, physically, mentally. And so I eventually stopped with my dad and said, you know, how do we do this? And man, to this day, it like sucks that it had to be that way. But, you know, I talked to my dad and eventually had to call like whatever those people that you call, right? When things get really tough like that.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  And so talking to my dad and having to call that person. And then, you know, the biggest thing is like, the reason I'm getting emotional is because like the look of my mother when I had to say, you know, I did this, you know, I'm the one that brought this person here because you're not treating me right. Because her love still existed. And in a lot of ways, looking back at it, it was tough love, but I didn't necessarily understand that. And maybe it was or it wasn't right. But in the big scheme of things, it really wasn't that big of a deal, you know? And I just wanted to get out of there because I felt like it was getting so tough to kind of understand things and. You know, again, I don't want to use the word abuse, right?

• 32:48Speaker 03

  Because parents have to, parents have to understand that they are responsible. It is their duty to correct their children. And that's not my responsibility to tell somebody else what to do. But at some point, when you're a kid, it kind of feels like you're being attacked. It feels like they're going above and beyond. And that's the way it felt, and maybe she was. But bringing that person in between our relationship and having her look at me with like, "You did this to me? Like, you chose not to be with me?" It crushed me. But it was a decision I made and eventually stayed with my father. And we, you know, had a great time together. I was happy with the choice, but still had to deal with that dragging feeling of like, "I did that to my mom, I did that to my mom."

• 33:32Speaker 03

  And we still maintained a good relationship. And in fact, I think leaving there helped develop our relationship back and strengthen it a little bit. So we tend, you know, I think maybe I was going with her on some weekends and with my dad during the week. I had switched schools. It's like, I don't even remember staying at one school for more than two or three years. So I was like, I was always adapting to different people and different things. That's why I feel like today I can just, you can put me in any room, anywhere in the world with anybody. And I'm like, "Yeah, what are we talking about? Like, we're fine." And so that's part of my adaptability story. And then growing up with my father, you know, really doing more with him, getting involved, watching what he was doing, that helped influence me as well. But that was a big portion of my, my childhood that I don't think I've ever talked about before.

• 34:16Speaker 03

  I think that's probably the first time I've ever said that openly about the back and forth with my mom there. But that situation as a child was so difficult. They have to choose between the two. I know they both cared for me, you know, and there's so many different situations out there that people are in. I think the one thing I wish I would have had was more faith and some more faithful direction. And who knows if that was the case, they probably wouldn't have gotten in that situation to begin with, so.

• 34:41Shawn Ryan?

  Where did you, I mean, speaking of faith, I mean, I know your faith is maybe the strongest I know, you know, right now. But um.

• 34:51Shawn Ryan?

  Where did that come from? I know, I know, I mean, you mentioned it. It came in in childhood. Who was the influence?

• 35:00Speaker 03

  Both of my parents were. And to be honest with you, I talk about this with my brother all the time. Is that my mom was adamant about putting us in the curriculum for the church, you know, and making us go through CCD and raising us in the faith. For whatever reason, and even my wife and I talk about it today, because while she wasn't a devout Catholic and she wasn't disciplined in her faith, it was very, very important to her to continue to push us in that direction. And so we went through the formation as a child to go through CCD, to go through Holy First Communion and to get baptized. And I was actually older when I got baptized.

• 35:43Speaker 03

  I want to say I was around eight or nine when I actually finally got baptized. And so that experience, seeing all my family come together, it did not get handled, and I didn't have anybody with me that really said, do you have any idea how important this is? And what you're getting ready to do? And that's why I'm so different today, because I recognize that. But in the formation of that, my mom knew it was important. And I know there's a purpose for that. Even though she wasn't doing it herself, it was, it was important enough for her children to go through. And so today, looking back on those experiences, I see a lot of the reason that I saw it the way that I did. But that's where it came from, you know, at an early age.

• 36:24Speaker 03

  And in New England, and even throughout the country and everybody, I mean, the immigrants coming in from overseas and everybody else having an influence in Catholic faith, it kind of became almost just this check in the box. It's part of what you do. You grow up this way. I mean, I can't tell you, it is, in some cases, heartbreaking to me to hear a lot of people like, oh, yeah, I grew up that way, but, you know, and there's always this but. The culture gave us this but. And that's exactly how I grew up, you know? And I was talking to you earlier, the 60s, the 70s started to come unravel all that and spread lies throughout our community and our culture and our faith. But ultimately, you know, looking back on it and how it happened, she was one of the ones that pushed me, you know?

• 37:06Speaker 03

  And she was one of the ones that kept me at least abreast to it. And while nobody looked me in the eye and said, this is the most important thing that you're ever going to do in your entire life, at least it was on my heart. Like, I never outright rejected God. I never said like, you know, that he doesn't exist and I don't need him because it was there, but it just wasn't taken seriously. Nobody taught me that. You know, my godfather, even to this day, could probably care less that he's a godfather. And every time I go to a baptism, I look men right in the eye, even if I don't know them, and I say, "Do you have any idea what you just did?

• 37:42Speaker 03

  Do you have any idea the oath

• 37:46Speaker 03

  that you just took

• 37:50Speaker 03

  for that child?"

• 37:53Speaker 03

  And so, from my childhood, I didn't have anybody that came up to me and looked me in the eyes and told me that. And I think, in a lot of ways, that's what we're missing for our youth. But faith was a part of my upbringing. It was there, it was a breast of it. I mean, I outright rejected my confirmation. You know, we can go into the whole story of my faith, but you know, I was listening to garbage music, I was listening to the world, I was influenced by my friends and my influence, you know, of people that just didn't care. And all I probably would have needed was somebody that took it seriously to say, "Hey, I just need you to pay attention just a little bit more here, because this is everything." And I probably would have done it. But for whatever reason, out of God's graces, he put me through this journey and this path.

• 38:37Speaker 03

  And so now, looking back at my faith, when I outright rejected my confirmation, I was like, "No, I'm not ready for this. I don't understand this. I don't, that's not for me." And that's where I left. You know, I separated from the church, I separated from the understanding of it, and then I went up and signed, you know, joined the military shortly after that.

• 38:56Shawn Ryan?

  Let's backtrack just a second. What does a godparent mean to you?

• 39:02Speaker 03

  So, in the name itself of a godfather, a godmother, you are among the first around that child that is taking an oath in front of God, that is saying, "I am volunteering my life to raise this child, to be their first teacher."

• 39:29Speaker 03

  Their first guide and their first protector. And we miss that today. Godfather's been deduced down to the movie, you know? And so to me, we have to get back to the responsibility and the vocation that we've been given under that oath. And it's definitely something that God put on my heart because I don't let anybody get out of the church without talking to them. Because I don't think that most guys even understand what they're signing up for. And when we are in communion with each other as a family and a Godfather truly does that, that might be the person that saves them

• 40:13Speaker 03

  from a difficult situation in their life or gives them just enough of spark of faith to get through the difficult challenge that they're getting ready to go through. And I don't, until I really started to grow in my church community and the brothers that I have around me, I am sorry to say that I probably couldn't have found somebody that I knew as a Godfather that was actually living up to the call of what it actually means. And just like parents at baptism, we are giving our lives to be the first teachers and the first guides. And what we're seeing today out of our faith and people stepping up to say, "I'm gonna do that", I don't think people are taking it seriously.

• 40:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:52Speaker 03

  Obviously, a lot of people are, but the Godfather means exactly that. Godmother, Godfather, you are volunteering to give your life to be a teacher to that child, to raise them in the faith and doing it right. Because they're gonna look to you as that example. They're gonna look to you as that faithful director in their life. And I think we need to continue to redefine and reawaken what that means for everybody that's saying, "I'm gonna be with this child in the most important part of their life to become priest, prophet, and king, and be able to bring them into the house of God and to be accepted and to be brought into the communion of the church", you know?

• 41:30Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. I never thought of it like that. I guess I have kind of always considered it to be the parent's replacement. If that makes sense.

• 41:42Speaker 03

  And that could be too. And that is, I think, when you really deeply dive into the fact that there would be a faithful director in the faith, well, then that's kind of one of those things. It's kind of like why the first commandment is love your God, love God with all your heart, all your mind and all your strength. Well, if you're doing that job well, well, then it would, without thinking about it, you'd be like, the Godfather clearly would be the replacement. You know, if they are stepping up the way they're supposed to, that's the first person the children are going to look to be like, help me. You know, my parents aren't here. I need you because you've been a faithful guide to me. I've trusted you. You've been there at my baptism all the way up and through my childhood. You're the guy or girl that I'm supposed to confide in and rely on. So I don't think you're wrong at all. I think you're absolutely right. I just think it's a part of that job, you know?

• 42:27Shawn Ryan?

  What, switching gears here, and we're going to keep touching on faith because it is, it follows you throughout your entire career as far as I'm, as far as I know. Where did the, where did the influence to join the military come from?

• 42:45Speaker 03

  So I, my buddy John Divine, which I don't know if you know Divine Canines, he does a lot of good stuff out there. We literally grew up across the street from each other. Not sure if you knew that.

• 42:53Shawn Ryan?

  I didn't know that.

• 42:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, we were best friends growing up, like literally best friends. To this day, we have childhood memories of running around the neighborhood with each other, playing paintball, playing tag, manhunt, all those things. Like that was us. And so that we had a beautiful relationship as children to be able to interact at that level. And I remember one day we were walking down the road and, you know, he kind of mumbled something like, oh, there's these guys that are like the tip of the spear that are like super awesome. And my dad's friend knows them and he knows a guy that's one of those dudes. And I was kind of like, wait a minute, what are you talking about? Like, say that again. He's like, yeah, these like Navy SEAL guys, you know, and that's kind of where it started. But for whatever reason, that's why I can recall the moment like it was yesterday. Cause

• 43:37Speaker 03

  I was like, what did you just say? What is that? I want to know more about that. And so he kind of explained in whatever child way he would, right? And probably expounding and exaggerating in like 10 different areas. And I was hooked from that moment and I wanted to know more. And so he kind of contrived. You know, or, or put together some kind of ideas about who these guys were. And I think our next trip was to the library, you know, shortly after that, where they had like two books, you know, in the library on Navy SEALs. It was like, one was like a picture book and one was like the history of Vietnam. It was like very super, super simple. Now you can't even keep up with them. But it was also that beautiful moment of pulling those books out to think, whoa, this is it. This is what we wanted to find.

• 44:21Speaker 03

  And, you know, it was like a treasure at the library to be able to find that thing and look through those pictures. And I think from that point on, it was a continued formation in our hearts to put pieces together about why that was important and why we wanted to do that. You know, manhunt, tactics, survival, that was all kind of natural to us. I mean, we would go down the end of the road and surf torture each other, you know, for hours on end. Uh, we'd go to the local pool and try to drown each other and tie each other up. I mean, it was the documentary on the Discovery Channel, right? Oh, yeah. The old one, the first one, the one where they're mowing down everything with the sixty in the woods, right? The branches are breaking, you know? And that would just drew me in from the warrior perspective.

• 45:05Speaker 03

  Now that I look back on it today, there was something in my heart that just needed that to be a part of my life. And I wanted to be at that high level of engagement, knowing that we were going after bad guys and after, you know, good and evil was very clear to me at that point. And so getting rid of what was bad, being the best that you could made sense. And so in a childlike manner, you know, from that point, we kind of just imitated as much as we could, as much as we knew how, ultimately until it became, you know, reality. And again, that's why I'm always fascinated. And you said it earlier, I forgot what exact quote you used, but like God allows us to manifest our thoughts into reality. And that's a crazy thing when you really take ownership of that.

• 45:48Speaker 03

  And so this is another example of us, God allowing us to manifest our reality. And so we made a bet with each other. We were sitting on the front porch, we were playing with G.I. Joe's and I looked him in the eye and I was like, I'm gonna bet you that I become a SEAL first. He's like, all right, deal. And we shook on it. It was 50 bucks, 50 bucks. And we had that deal going for so long and I gave him such a hard time because I beat him. And he eventually got in though, and it was an interesting relationship when he didn't make it the first time. He's got a really interesting story as well, just from the standpoint of like what he had to do to get there.

• 46:26Speaker 03

  The second time and it was, it was really crazy. I mean, he had to beg, borrow, steal, and he did everything in his power. To get to it, but that was his determination. He eventually made it. And we kind of had a little bit of a lull there because it was like this awkward, you know, like I love you, brother. But what's going on? And I think he was a little bit, you know, just wrapped up in himself about why things happened the way they did. But then eventually when he made it was like boom, we just sparked like, dude, you made it, you know, you fulfilled. Here's two best friends growing up across the street from each other and then you made it, I made it and here we are, you know?

• 46:59Shawn Ryan?

  Were you guys, did you guys, were you in the same class together?

• 47:02Speaker 03

  We were not in the same class. No, we didn't have, we never deployed with each other.

• 47:06Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 47:06Speaker 03

  We never, we never did. I mean, that would have been beautiful, right? It was like one of those things that would have been epic, right? Best friends going to battle, but we didn't actually deploy or do anything together, so.

• 47:14Shawn Ryan?

  So did you go, did you go right into the teams?

• 47:18Speaker 03

  Yes. So when I was in pre bootcamp, maps, whatever, you know, they put the choices in front of me and I was just like, I want the shortest. Possible school to get to Bud's and like, all right, well, it's this parachute rig school. I was like, okay, cool. Go down to Pensacola, did that for, I think it was like a six to eight week school, super short. And I crushed myself down there, you know, really putting out, making sure I stayed in shape, learning new methods. I mean, I was doing all the weird things, breathing out of my nose the whole time, trying to sprint and you know, like all the crazy stuff that we try to do. And then I went right to Bud's after that. And then that's where that started. That was 2001.

• 48:00Shawn Ryan?

  When did nine eleven happen?

• 48:03Speaker 03

  Right in the BUDS classroom in first phase.

• 48:06Shawn Ryan?

  Do you remember?

• 48:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, I remember when they came in, they turned the TVs on, you know? I know Eddie, I don't know if Eddie talked about it, but uh, that was, that was a surreal moment, too. We're literally in BUDS and.

• 48:17Shawn Ryan?

  What phase?

• 48:18Speaker 03

  It was first phase and I'm trying to think, were we in hell week? No, I don't think we were in hell week. It might've been like post hell week. I can't remember the timing, but it was like right around that time. It's either in or the week after and they turned the TVs on and it was just like, whoa, you know? We signed up for this before that happened. So that realization of like, this is what we came here to do. We just got attacked and now there was this reality that hit. And that's transcended throughout my military career, like right from that very moment, even though it was serious before, it takes on a different reality when you know it's real. You know, it takes on a different feel.

• 49:02Speaker 03

  That's part of why I'm so intimate with all the gear and the training that I do because your life depends on it. And so now you know, whatever you're getting ready to do in BUDS, your life depends on it, literally. So don't screw up, don't make a misstep because that you've, that's going to account for when you kick the door down with the guy standing next to you, which at that point was me and Eddie, you know, we went to BUDS together, did everything together, you know?

• 49:25Shawn Ryan?

  Can you, what was said when they flipped the TVs on?

• 49:32Speaker 03

  You know, I can't remember what exactly was said. I, I just know that, you know, the instructors don't just turn the TV on in the, in the BUDS classroom. That's not something you do. So it's like, okay, this is serious first and foremost. And it's almost like no words needed to be said. You know, that's kind of how I remember it. That couldn't, that might not be the case. Maybe somebody said like, look at this that's going on in the world, or you know, we just got hit with another plane. I could make words up, but the truth is, I don't remember. It was just this solemn kind of reality kind of setting in. You know, you remember the BUDS classroom, right? Like, just sitting there, like, on the desks, everything's quiet, nobody's moving, these two TVs are on blasting this, you know,

• 50:14Speaker 03

  these planes hitting the towers, and we're just like, whoa, okay, game on.

• 50:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:19Speaker 03

  It's time to work.

• 50:20Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it happened, happened early in the morning, you know, not super early in the morning, but it was what, mid morning?

• 50:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:27Shawn Ryan?

  And so if you do remember, what was the, I mean, what shifted? How did, how did training, it had to have shifted. I wasn't there yet. I was, uh, I just graduated boot camp, so I don't, I don't have a reference, but I would, I would love to know what, what the,

• 50:49Shawn Ryan?

  how the mood shifted from pre nine eleven to nine eleven. I mean, you're, you're in one of the toughest military training programs in the world, to be one of the most elite operators in the world. And to, to, to be in at that time and to witness that shift, I'm very curious.

• 51:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it was just the reality and the weight. You know, you kind of get those, the feeling of the classroom was that nothing needed to be said, but then after the fact, you know, you have your buddies, we're still going through BUDS, there's still a chance that, you know, that some guys aren't going to make it. And there's just this kind of like undertone, almost whispers like, is this really happening? Like, is this, this is going down? And that means that if we just got attacked, then there's a high probability of us having to deploy immediately when we get to our team. Well, that wasn't the case. So I do think, you know, these phases are so different. First, second, third phase, all the way through your training, it's constantly shifting and adapting, and no one's the same.

• 51:55Speaker 03

  So it's hard to kind of contrast a baseline of what the mood would have been and what, what it is now. But I definitely think that what was carried throughout the entire thing is the fact that we all knew that we were going to war. You know, so when we did approach a training object, I don't know what BUDS would have been like in second phase without knowing we weren't going to war.

• 52:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:14Speaker 03

  You know what I'm saying? Like, it was just, that was the reality for us. So I think that.

• 52:20Speaker 03

  I would probably say, thinking about this in hindsight, our BUDS class was probably where the spark started for a different, totally different vibe in there.

• 52:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:29Speaker 03

  Because pre our class, 236, there wasn't a war going on. And so you were just going through, you wanted to be a SEAL. It was something that, you know, you had the chance to do. But then very stark contrast to that is that boom, 9/11 hits, we're in the BUDS classroom. And now everything's different. You know, so I wouldn't have known what it would have been like without it. But I do sense that throughout that time, we just recognized that this is real, you know? And that stayed true, you know? When I got to the teams, it was like, all right, guys, your first deployment, you're going right to Afghanistan.

• 53:01Shawn Ryan?

  You got to the team, your first deployment was Afghanistan?

• 53:04Speaker 03

  Yep, I ended right in Afghanistan. Right in the 50 cal, right in the first truck. That was my first position ever, 19 years old. Sitting up there. You know, crazy to think about.

• 53:17Shawn Ryan?

  It is.

• 53:17Speaker 03

  Really is.

• 53:18Shawn Ryan?

  It is.

• 53:19Speaker 03

  I look at 19 year olds now and I'm like, what, what are you doing? You know what I mean? Seriously, what do you got going on?

• 53:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:24Speaker 03

  You know, what's so important that's keeping you away from actually becoming something, becoming a man? You know, I beg to say that I was barely even a man yet at 19. You know, still trying to figure it out. I mean, when would I put the mark on myself to say that I was a man? Which goes back to write a passage and all that other stuff with our faith. But, you know, geez, maybe when I got to the command.

• 53:42Shawn Ryan?

  How, so let's breeze through BUDS. You get to the team, you show up to SEAL Team 2. And I mean, how quickly did you know you were going to Afghanistan? Was it immediately?

• 53:57Speaker 03

  Yes, because of the fact the war was already in action and like full swing. You know, everything was just completely changing, resources were going over there. And it was more of the fact, I think, in the platoons where we're waiting to see where we were supposed to go. And so like any good team does, they always gauge who's good at what, you know? So they put you to the best spot, you know, depending on who, what platoon is doing, what and who's.

• 54:27Speaker 03

  Ready for that. I think they put a heavy emphasis on CQB, urban assault. And I think that our platoon excelled in that really well. You know, we had some good team leaders, some good troop chiefs. And I think, I think that gave us an advantage throughout our workup that at some point in the workup, they're like, all right, you guys are the guys going to CENTCOM. You know, you guys are the guys going to Afghanistan. So I'd like to think that that was a nature of us excelling at that, you know?

• 54:58Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I remember, I don't know, I'm, I'm actually very curious to hear about what happened on your first deployment because I was at SEAL Team Eight, then we got pushed over to SEAL Team Two, or we were going to CENTCOM. Then we became the bastard children of SEAL Team Two, and we wound up going to Europe. And I'm gonna be honest, I don't know exactly how to verbalize this, but I was so happy to hear that you guys were getting after it over there, but at the same time, it demoralized me.

• 55:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:32Shawn Ryan?

  Because

• 55:33Speaker 03

  I could definitely see that.

• 55:34Shawn Ryan?

  I'm sitting in, in Europe.

• 55:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:36Shawn Ryan?

  On a booze cruise, chasing women, chasing booze, getting into bar fights and, and wondering why I went through all the training that I did just to it was like a frat party over there. You know, I'm, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna embellish or make it sound cool. It was ridiculous that we were even there. And I remember hearing the briefs, we would sit in, I think we had a weekly brief, you know, and we would sit in and it was, hey, you know, our boys over in Afghanistan just killed

• 56:14Shawn Ryan?

  a couple hundred in an airstrike, you know, that JTACs are calling an airstrikes and so and it just made me feel like shit. It really did. And there was a lot of jealousy and, and as you can imagine, but what were you guys doing over there? I mean, what, what was it like? That was early. That was what, 2003, 2004 timeframe?

• 56:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, so.

• 56:39Speaker 03

  Thank you for giving me the visual of having to be in those shoes because that was the first time I've really thought of that, you know, of you guys, you know, staring at that. I don't know how I would have reacted if I was told that I wasn't going to go to Afghanistan and doing that where I thought I was going to, you know, and we really did feel and the guys that were veterans there, like, you know, all of our guys that have got some experience, they made it known, like, you have guys have no idea how lucky you are to be here. You guys have no idea, like, we've been waiting for this forever. And here you are now, you know, my first operation that I ever did in my entire life, I'm running through poppy fields, shots are going off, and I'm crawling through caves and tunnels, you know, the first op, you know, there's barrels full of marijuana and

• 57:22Speaker 03

  there's heroin all over the place, and I must have cleared at least 100 rooms, at least, in that compound. That was my first op, you know, sun's breaking over the horizon. And so like, that was what I got to experience, and I do feel very grateful for that. But it is, it does suck to think back and be like, man, what would have, what would my mindset have been? I would have been pretty bitter, for sure. And so it does suck, but there's clearly a purpose for why it happened that way. But we stayed very active, very, very active. I mean, it was as close as I believe that you could get to operating at the command level and not being there. And I think because we had guys that were influential in that case, and we had troop chiefs that were, you know, from the command.

• 58:04Shawn Ryan?

  For the civilians listening, the command is SEAL Team Six or Devol in that group.

• 58:09Speaker 03

  Yes. And so we had a heavy influence from that area. And so the ops felt similar, kind of more conventional, but as similar as I think they would have as far as like a ground assault, direct action type of mission. I had experience with direct actions. That was my first op I ever did, running toward the target, kicking doors down. And that's pretty much the op tempo that I kept throughout my first deployment, was going to direct action type stuff. We did a couple of presence patrols.

• 58:45Speaker 03

  Which is where the Humvee in front of me got blown up, you know, it had a piece of the truck hit me in the helmet. You know, I thought it was us right when it happened. But that story in itself was like, man, we were going, we were patrolling, we ended up getting into more contact during the day. And thank goodness, I had gone to scout before that. So I had gone through scout and I'd been very adamant about, you know, making sure I knew how to use my optics and everything was dialed in. And I had an optic on my 50, which, you know, I think it helped in that scenario, but I also didn't like it for an urban or close when I'm going through and having to hold my 50 like this. But from a, from a

• 59:29Speaker 03

  perspective of when we get that ambush, I had a sense of the direction of where it was going to come from. And as soon as the contact had happened, I literally was the first one. I actually was so, when I, when I heard it over the radio, my adrenaline dumped so much, I didn't even really, it wasn't like I lost control of myself, but I didn't communicate with anybody around me. And I only did that so I could find out where it was and where it was coming from. And I could get aligned with the shot because I didn't want to wait for them to pull the trigger first. You know, so I was like, I had my binoculars like this and I'm listening to the radio, I'm listening to the radio and I'm looking, looking, looking, and then boom, I see him right over the rock like clear as day. He

• 1:00:12Speaker 03

  grabs the RPG, goes right like this, he props himself up. And I was like, that's when I dropped this, whatever the heck was in my hand, I swung the 50 cal and I did that quick, like, okay, there's the rock, there's that spot, there's the dark spot, dark spot in the mountain. I did this like twice and I dropped it and just swung the gun over and tried to just start putting fire down. So I didn't even say anything, you know, but what I said was my 50 cal's talking now and everybody else in the convoy was just, that spot just got lit up. And eventually an A10 came over, which was beautiful. By the way, it was my first ever troops in contact, you know, A10 coming to the rescue, dropping, you know, artillery on him. But

• 1:00:51Speaker 03

  Or air support, but that was a, a cool experience. And so that was really the first time I got into contact.

• 1:00:59Shawn Ryan?

  That was your first engagement?

• 1:01:00Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:01:01Shawn Ryan?

  How long did it last?

• 1:01:03Speaker 03

  I would say that firefight from us, you know, the lull pretty much happened until we couldn't really see what was going around that area anymore because it just got really dusty and cloudy. So at that point, we stopped firing and I don't, I don't know. It wasn't a back and forth.

• 1:01:21Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:01:21Speaker 03

  It was like, I saw it before it was going to happen. Before that guy clicked the RPG, I was able to get my 50 cal up. And I actually, when I aimed, I aimed a lot lower than I thought I needed to because I wanted everything to just blast up in his face. I wanted whatever little ricochets or whatever fragments of rock were just going to explode up into his face and get him to at least respond, you know, so I wasn't looking to like put the bullet into his chest. So that, that at least got him to respond. And then maybe even after that, he might've ducked back behind the rock, you know, but all the, all the stuff going up there after the fact, you know, they confirmed it the, the next day. But that was my, don't you dare pull that trigger because he was getting ready to prop up and get comfortable.

• 1:02:04Speaker 03

  So, yeah. I don't know how long it lasted. I would say if I had to guess, I would say

• 1:02:10Speaker 03

  seven to 10 minutes.

• 1:02:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:11Speaker 03

  Maybe, you know, just constant fire up there because I didn't want him to pop his head back up either.

• 1:02:16Shawn Ryan?

  Who confirmed it? Was it you guys? Did you guys go up and?

• 1:02:18Speaker 03

  Uh, no, no, it was, uh, whatever crew went in there the next day, whatever conventional crew went in to, to do the sweep.

• 1:02:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:25Speaker 03

  So.

• 1:02:27Shawn Ryan?

  So would that have been the brief that I got? I mean, this is literally 20 years ago.

• 1:02:32Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 1:02:32Shawn Ryan?

  You know, so, and, and, and I just remember hearing how many, how many airstrikes you guys were calling in and that was.

• 1:02:42Shawn Ryan?

  Happy, jealous, but it sounded like a really good deployment.

• 1:02:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. Again, it was a blessing. I mean, even the humvee in front of me that, you know, we lost those guys. And then, you know, the guy Olet, Brian Olet, that was the first dude that I ever operated with, spoke with, broke bread with, cleared with, that we lost. I wasn't with him when it happened. He got hit by IED, you know, traveling through, you know, one of the operations. And he was kind of more of a fluid position. I couldn't tell you what he was doing, but he was on a fluid position. So he would come with us, he would go with this other force. And that was when we lost him. But that was the first emotional, like, you know, man, I just was eating with that guy. It was literally just sitting down

• 1:03:28Speaker 03

  with that dude, you know, funny, life, you know, bringing life to the party, you know, really just kind of set on my heart as us all kind of realizing like, oh, okay, like, we're here, you know, and Pat Tillman, too, like, that was separate. That was more of like a separate thing that happened on our deployment shortly after Brian Olet. But that was another like, big spin up. But Brian Olet was one of the first guys that, you know, we lost.

• 1:03:52Shawn Ryan?

  How did you process that?

• 1:03:56Speaker 03

  I think for me at the time, you know, because we live such a compartmentalized life, that's exactly what I did with it. I was a very, it was a very matter of fact, like, that's what we came here to do. There's going to be a risk to this. And I believe I got emotional about it. I think I cried for sure. You know, I think I cried for his life. And, you know, the things that always start to process are, you know, well, who's his family? Right? Did he have children? You know, those are the questions that you start asking yourself when you lose somebody. What effect is that going to have on somebody else? I think selfishly, we as warriors, which it can be good and it can be bad, but we compartmentalize it so much to the point where we can't even think what's going to

• 1:04:40Speaker 03

  happen to our families too much if we overthink it, because it will start hampering our ability to make a good decision. It will start, it will start stopping us from going into the gunfight, you know, because it's like, oh, man, well, if I go through that door, and, you know, I get hit, well, then my kids are going to suffer. There's an element to that, for sure, to prey on, to think about. But for me, it's the weight of the fact that we lost a dude. And it impacted me in a way that that kind of

• 1:05:11Speaker 03

  Made me confront reality as it was. So it gave me a rep. Not, it wasn't the guy standing next to me every day, you know, wasn't my best friend, but it was a guy that I got to interact with and know, you know, and go to the head with and, you know, eat with. And so it was a very close relationship that all of a sudden wasn't there anymore. So it was like this, this almost taking it that young is almost training to like, this is going to happen again.

• 1:05:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:35Speaker 03

  You know, for sure.

• 1:05:36Shawn Ryan?

  You know, Dom, I, I talked about it with Eddie as well, but I didn't realize you'd lost, I didn't put that together, that you'd lost somebody on your very first deployment. And I just want to say that, you know, I've interviewed a lot of warhammers, a lot of veterans on this podcast. And, and we always talk about loss and, and how to cope with it. And in, in your career path, Ben, I mean, from, from your first deployment through Gold Team,

• 1:06:14Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, the guys, the operators over at Gold with extortion, with Adam Brown, with, with, and, and I don't know all of them with, with Luis, you know, I've never, ever, out of all the interviews I've done, I've never heard anybody experience more loss than the men over at Gold Squadron. And my heart goes out to you, man. I mean, that was, you, you, you guys have been through some heavy, heavy loss. And I want to dig into that later, but

• 1:06:56Shawn Ryan?

  I, I, I just wanted to say that because, because it's important. A lot of people deal with loss and, and, and nobody has more experience on, on.

• 1:07:07Shawn Ryan?

  How to do it than the few of you guys over there?

• 1:07:12Speaker 03

  Definitely, you know, even hearing you, you know, say it back, I think I live with it in a very interesting way. And I don't really have all the answers of exactly how I move forward with it. I mean, I've got a lot of ways and a lot of methods and prayer and all of the things that I've tried to do. But when I do reflect on it, when I do stop and think about it, it does, it can crush me if I let it, you know, but I have done my best to try to use it for the better of the world, you know, to try to, you know, sit and contemplate and honor, I always talk about honor, you know, living a life that those that have gone

• 1:07:54Speaker 03

  before you would be proud of. Well, what is Lewis going to be proud of? What is all the guys that I've ever lost going to be proud of for? You know, Adam looking at me right now as a Christian, you know, would Adam be okay with me the way I'm acting as a Christian? Or am I being lukewarm? All of the men that I got to fight with, spar with, I mean, it is kind of surreal in a sense of what God has allowed me to experience. And there is beauty from it all. And I think that's the key thing, is taking those experiences, knowing that this life is not forever, and, and really using them to the best of our ability. But

• 1:08:36Speaker 03

  it was heavy when it was happening. And I know we'll dig into it more later.

• 1:08:44Speaker 00

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• 1:09:18Speaker 00

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• 1:09:53Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Dom, we're back from the break. We just wrapped up your first deployment. Now you're back at SEAL Team Two. And so I just want to continue with your story.

• 1:10:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, so that deployment, like you said, the contrast of what you gave me of really putting into perspective about the dudes that didn't get to go over there and do what we did, makes me even feel more grateful about what we did. And that deployment was definitely engaging. You know, we did a lot of different dynamics throughout that deployment. And troops in contact. I had the IED situation that happened with the Humvee in front of me and a lot of other engagements that I ended up getting in. But then, also, I also went through a divorce in that deployment as well.

• 1:10:40Shawn Ryan?

  You did.

• 1:10:41Speaker 03

  Because I was actually married through civil court. You know what I mean? I just did the whole go to the courthouse. It was really, came down to, you know, a situation where I was living with somebody. And, you know, you're young. You're trying to figure this out. You're trying to contemplate what's right, what's wrong. And I had no good guidance on what to do, which is why it didn't end up working out. But it really, like, money became an issue. You know, we needed BAH. So it seemed like the right thing to do, to go down and be like, oh, well, if we're in the military and you're married, which, by the way, you know, if I give any advice on that situation, it's like, don't do it just for the money. Don't do it because of these things. Put your faith in between your relationship, because this is why these things tend to happen.

• 1:11:26Speaker 03

  So I ended up, you know, working through a divorce on an Iridium phone, sitting in a fob, you know,

• 1:11:30Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man.

• 1:11:31Speaker 03

  overseas. So that was, that was something I was just dealing with, kind of on the side, kind of trying to put it in its place. But things got, things got very challenging there as well.

• 1:11:39Shawn Ryan?

  So divorced at 19.

• 1:11:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:43Shawn Ryan?

  Nineteen or twenty?

• 1:11:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think like the official, like everything going through.

• 1:11:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:49Speaker 03

  But I was working through that process, you know, at that time.

• 1:11:53Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. Wow, I did not, I did not know that either.

• 1:11:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, just another, just another part of the journey that I learned from. And, you know, after that deployment ended, you know, I already thought about, you know, going to the command because it had come up before, like that was a thing. It was kind of foreign in the distance. It wasn't really a reality, but it was there. The spark was there. So I think coming back from that reality, that, that deployment started to allow me to prepare for that mindset. And then when I got out of that relationship, you know, I lived as a single team guy for a while, you know, trying to figure out my life, you know, and where I wanted to go after that. But my heavy focus started to come into going to the command. And that really like dialed, that got rid of all the distractions I had going in my life to really give me something to, to look forward to, you know?

• 1:12:43Shawn Ryan?

  I got a question.

• 1:12:46Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you call it the command? Why don't you call it dev group? Why don't you call it still team six?

• 1:12:51Speaker 03

  I just think.

• 1:12:51Shawn Ryan?

  Is that out of habit?

• 1:12:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's out of habit. You know, I tend to be, you know, I'm like, that's part of my life. It's gone. Anything that would bring attention to the guys that I know are still doing work. Why am I the one that needs to shed light on it? Because I do feel like there's an absolute need for secrecy in the operational flow of how and when to do things. So if I'm the catalyst or the spark that draws unnecessary attention, then I don't want to be that guy. And so I think out of the nature of my conversations, I've always just brushed it off.

• 1:13:35Speaker 03

  You know, I've always just been like, you know, you know, we can talk about other things, you know, it's a great time while I was there. And I know that there's a back and forth about what's out there, what's not out there, what they've released, what they haven't released. And that's a whole like political and cluster in itself. Like I barely even understand it still to this day. So I tend to just be more protective of talking about stuff.

• 1:13:59Shawn Ryan?

  It's understandable.

• 1:14:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:00Shawn Ryan?

  Just curious, a couple of questions before we move on. Previously, you had mentioned, and I got this a lot too in my career, was you should be, you should feel lucky to be here. You need to earn your way to combat. What are your feelings on that? What were they at the time when people were telling you that?

• 1:14:21Speaker 03

  Well, I remember guys saying that we were lucky to be in those situations. And because I didn't really have any other experience to go off of, and I kind of had to trust what they were saying, I believed it. I mean, I believed in the contrast of our time, that there wasn't much going on elsewhere in the world. We were in the right spot. We were in combat operations. When you're actively engaging and you're actually going on operations, it's easy to kind of hear that and say, you're right, we are very lucky and blessed to be in these situations. As far as earning your way, I think that that goes along with proving yourself. You know, selection and training is something that I talk about a lot. And I think that the selection

• 1:15:05Speaker 03

  and training process is a beautiful thing for anything that we do. In fact, I don't think it's done enough in a lot of cases. But the selection that you went through and the training that you went through ultimately allows you to get to the point where you've earned, you can call it that, you can call it whatever you want, proved, or reached a level of trust within an area of your life. You know, when we're linking up with other team guys, for the most part, in combat, you can kind of figure that he's got some base level of knowledge of knowing how to clear a room, knowing how to take care of himself, willingness to fight, and he's not going to quit. Right? That's kind of like a base level. Well, without the

• 1:15:47Speaker 03

  knowledge and the proving and the earning and the getting to that point, I don't really have that about him. So I think that that's important to recognize in the sense of when we say we're lucky or we had to earn to get to this point, we have to realize what that is. And I think that the selection and training absolutely puts guys in the right place. Like I was talking about before, the military has gotten really good at this. Or else you wouldn't be able to put something like the command or dev group together and to get guys to be that precise, that surgical, that pointed, you know, to put this guy with this bullet right here and now, you know, that's incredible. It's like a mini miracle every time it happens, you know? So there's something to be said for that selection and training.

• 1:16:29Shawn Ryan?

  Just, I'm curious, I mean, And we have two different perspectives here because you went right away. It took me uh, an entire deployment cycle to actually get the opportunity to go to combat. But it always, it irritated me when people would say that to me because, you know, I had joined to fight for my country and I had always felt, well, I mean, the community is the one that gave me the ominous dominance to, to, to be here and to go to war. And I always kind of took it as an excuse on why we're not there. You know, and it's, it, man, it irritated me a lot. It, cause it's,

• 1:17:14Shawn Ryan?

  you know, it's a lot of training. It's a year, what, six months of BUDS if you make it the first time, then SGT, which is what, four months, then jump school, which is another month then. And if you're, if you show up at the beginning of the cycle, you have another year and a half before you ever, so you're looking at what, two and a half years before you ever get the opportunity to go to war or on a deployment. And then you get on deployment and it's, well,

• 1:17:44Shawn Ryan?

  you gotta earn your way. And it's like, man, I've been here for

• 1:17:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:47Shawn Ryan?

  two and a half years now and I'm,

• 1:17:49Speaker 03

  Well,

• 1:17:49Shawn Ryan?

  I'm ready.

• 1:17:50Speaker 03

  One thing that's, one thing that sticks out to me was a common phrase that we heard and it's like, you can't chase it.

• 1:17:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:57Speaker 03

  You know, you can't chase the war. Um, that stuck with me because there was, there's a sense of faith that has to come with that too. That you were put in the right spot for the right reasons at the right time. And I, and we kind of deal with the human element throughout that, that experience. So I think that not chasing it and kind of letting things evolve is something that's true. Because there is a matter of circumstance in some cases, because you just end up being at that team, at that platoon, and that's where you're going. And, you know, it does suck to think that we would sit around. To me, I have a very interesting perspective of it because the second I got there, I hit the ground running and I didn't stop until I left.

• 1:18:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:34Speaker 03

  You know, literally that chunk of time we were at war, I was on the ground the whole time, you know, never decided to pull back. And it wasn't really till things start getting political that I decided to, you know, stay home. And even then, the guys were still going out because that was when extortion 17 happened. But I think that there's obviously an element of, there would be frustration if I didn't get to go do what I wanted to do. I mean, there is a level of joy that I took with being like, I do want to fight for freedom. I do want to go after bad guys and protect my nieces and nephews and all of our children here at home. Freedom, man, freedom to me is, you know, taking on a whole new level at this point in my life, but I still understood it then, like what freedom was. We have the

• 1:19:18Speaker 03

  ability to go do all these great things in our country. How do I be a part of protecting that? So when you're, when you're training for it, when you're living it, when you're eating and breathing that, and then you don't get to implement those, oh, man. I know it's frustrating in some cases because we were staring at, it's kind of like staring at the bad guy that's planting the ID, but you won't let me go do anything about it. You know, I'm literally watching the guy dig on the road and plant IEDs and you're telling me that nobody's gonna go? What? I mean, that was probably the most pissed off I've ever been overseas in the talk, you know, in the command center, watching this happen, looking at everybody in there, give me blank faces, like, we're not gonna do anything. Who do we need to call? Well, he's sleeping. We'll wake him up, you know?

• 1:20:02Speaker 03

  And so those things still go on today at a micro level and at a large level. And I think that it's just a circumstance and we have to pray and ask God, like, why did I go through that circumstance? Why was that my path?

• 1:20:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:14Speaker 03

  And again, oftentimes when we're put down a path where we don't do what we expected to do, or it doesn't turn out, it's because God was either protecting us or guiding us something much, much greater, you know?

• 1:20:27Shawn Ryan?

  Good answer. So, the command, it caught your interest after the first deployment.

• 1:20:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, so after the first deployment, you know, I really started to hone in on how to be better at these skills. You know, what I need to be prepared for, you know, being in combat and then coming back and really being able to analyze what we did well on the deployment. Like that made training even more intense. So if we didn't take it seriously in BUDs when they said, somebody just attacked us. And if we didn't take it seriously, actually being in combat, like then getting back from it and be like, okay, we almost died. We lost a guy, you know, our training was ramped up even further. I think that's when SEAL Team Two really started to like get good at what they were doing. And then my focus just turned to the command and like, hey, that's a possibility for you. You could go screen. I was like, really?

• 1:21:16Speaker 03

  I can go screen, you know, and however old I was when I actually decided to screen, it was like 22, maybe 21. End of 21, early 22. My 19, 20, 21, 23 gets very fuzzy about when was what. So apologize if I'm not completely accurate there, but it was around that time I started the screen. And then I put a lot of my focus and energy into that, trying to figure out what I need to do. And my troop chief looked right at me and he said, you're probably not going to make it. You're too young, you know, you've only got one deployment, you need to have two. And so I kept the process going anyway, because I wanted to go give it a shot. And that's when the workup started to happen.

• 1:21:56Speaker 03

  I didn't actually go and do the screening until I came back from my second deployment, you know, but the start of the process went, you know, we were in the process of doing it. And then my second deployment, I did a lot of, and this one I don't really talk about too much, but I did a lot of surveillance stuff.

• 1:22:15Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:22:15Speaker 03

  I did a lot of like bouncing around all the, you know, places that we weren't supposed to talk about where we were going and, and just doing a lot of low vis, plain clothes, which is where I even further fell in love with surveillance. We did a surveillance course before we went to that deployment and I crushed it, like doing all the things like follows and vehicle work. And like, I still to this day really enjoy that. It's like artwork for me. And so when I actually got to go do it for real, that like put everything together, you know?

• 1:22:44Shawn Ryan?

  You were, okay, I know where you were at.

• 1:22:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:22:47Shawn Ryan?

  So how weird. So I was supposed to go to Afghanistan, my first deployment, then you took it.

• 1:22:56Shawn Ryan?

  Then second deployment, I was gonna go and do that. I was, uh, they, uh, the MI6 put that course on, are we talking, this is the same thing, right? And, um, and then luckily, we got yanked out of that and did go to Afghanistan. But, uh, but interesting. Do you not want to talk about it still, or?

• 1:23:18Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, I just don't know what they've released and what they have. And I don't want to go down a road that I'm putting myself in a weird spot. But, uh, it was an amazing experience in the sense of like, I'm, I'm boots on the ground. I'm outside of like really bad guy territory, taking images and doing surveillance and photos.

• 1:23:37Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it's a total 180 from what you were doing.

• 1:23:40Speaker 03

  That was the greatest part about it is that I was literally kicking the door in and now I'm having to sit crunched in a little trunk with my MP5 sitting right next to me, clicking photos as fast as I can while this guy comes out of the door. Um, but I do, and I did enjoy surveillance and that's what kind of brought the everyday carry concealed kind of lifestyle to life to me, to realize like, oh, I actually still need to be able to go do a direct action, but I need to just look like a dude that fits into this environment. And that's where I was like, I gotta get good at this. Cause this is a skill. How you carry, where you carry, where you place stuff in your car, what are the tactics in a small team? How do we as two men clear a building? How do, how do you go on the other side of the block and me get in a contact and you come help me, you know, while we're

• 1:24:22Speaker 03

  not supposed to be seen? Like, that's really cool stuff to me to, to think about. And to this day, that's why I wanted to like, I, I always say that my mission statement is to build the Iron Man suit that you can't see. You know, like I want to be capable, but you have no clue, you know? And so that, that deployment was really cool in the sense of, uh, you know, really engaging with the bad guys at another level, another layer, like right next to them, but they don't know that I'm there, you know?

• 1:24:53Shawn Ryan?

  That is something that not a lot of SEALs get to experience, a mission like that. That's I, me personally, in my short career at the SEAL Teams, uh, that was probably my favorite training course I ever went through was, was that it was, it was just very unique compared to what everybody else was doing. But, um, at what point did you go to sniper school?

• 1:25:16Speaker 03

  That was in the middle of my first and second deployment, somewhere in there. And that was one of the schools where I wanted to go to sniper school my whole childhood. Um, it was like a dream come true to actually be in sniper school. Uh, you know Josh Rich?

• 1:25:33Shawn Ryan?

  I do.

• 1:25:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I went to, he was my shooting buddy.

• 1:25:36Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 1:25:36Speaker 03

  He was my shooting buddy. So dude, we had such a blast and I went to, I went to sniper school with Adam Brown, you know, he was actually the class leader in sniper school. But Josh and I, man, we had, there was a beautiful story about us going through sniper school together, but it was in the midst of first and second deployment and it was one of the best schools to this day that I've taken, um, just from a standpoint of marksmanship and precision and discipline. I mean, we barely slept trying to get stuff dialed in. And the one cool story that I have for Josh and I is that, kind of like I talked about in the very beginning, was like the relentlessly seeking truth piece is that we were after

• 1:26:20Speaker 03

  the truth and we knew we were going to deploy together, which by the way, we had just deployed together, right? So we were in Afghanistan. And so this is the contrast now even talking about this and thinking about Josh and I knew that we were probably going to have to go on an op together and shoot somebody. And so the reality kind of took a different level of to us. And when everybody's calling wind, when you start playing games about who's calling wind and reading your own wind and then not trusting your buddy, there's a, there's a really cool dynamic there. And we knew a lot of people at one phase where you have to go over this bump. It's like a turning corner because it's like a turning point. And most dudes were getting frustrated with their wind collar because

• 1:27:01Speaker 03

  The wind wasn't right. And so they were calling their own wind. I would say 50% of the guys were like, I'm just gonna call my own wind because I know what it is. Bang, boom, hit. So what happens is the breakdown in trust with your wind collar and the shooter starts to degrade. Cause you're not, he's not getting the real time feedback of screwing up. So Josh and I had the, this middle point where we were like, almost throwing blows with each other on the firing line. Like, like log books getting tossed. Are you kidding me? Like my score is at stake here. And we got so pissed, but then that one night, that we were like, we gotta figure this out. Everybody else was out of the classroom. We were the only ones left in there.

• 1:27:41Speaker 03

  And we were literally like mad scientists, drawing stuff up on the whiteboard, getting clear paper, putting stuff up, going through scenarios, running through the drill again. Why do we keep doing this? Why does this keep happening? You need to get it better at this. You need to get better at that. Well, we did that for a few nights in a row. And we slowly started to see progress. And then all of a sudden, towards the end of the marksmanship portion of it,

• 1:28:04Speaker 03

  there started to be a really fast swing with Josh being like, every single time he's hitting black. Every single time I'm hitting black. So we, we had to gain, we had to go through that valley together, but really trust each other and keep doing the right thing. And then boom, we're all the way up at the top now where we got top shooting pair and he got honor man.

• 1:28:21Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man.

• 1:28:22Speaker 03

  You know what I mean? Like, it was pretty epic. Like every shot, like I could just see it. But we had this, this unwavering trust to make sure that they were calling the wind. Because we were getting ourselves in situations where it wasn't as clear as, hey, we're just on a nice firing line, controlled environment. We know what's going on. I can see all the markers, the flags. Well, now you're going out where there's nothing to call wind off of. And now you're like, wait a minute, like where's the littlest thing? So this is where he owns that environment now. Let him be immersed in that environment while I'm being immersed by taking the shot. And of course they go hand in hand. You learn both, right? We can call our own wind. But it's the trust that that process exists for of having that level of accountability.

• 1:29:05Speaker 03

  Because once we were able to get through that, we really quickly realized like, hey, Josh, what is that? He'd be like, it's three and a half left. I'd be like, dude, I think it's three. He's like, you know what? I just saw something else. I think you're right. Let's go three and a quarter. Boom, take the shot. So it was like this, this process that happened. But the reason I get so excited about that is because we got top shooting pair, you know, and. I think that because we were willing to throw blows, we found the truth of what it was supposed to be. So anyway, that was sniper school. And then being in it with Adam Brown, too. I had the other story I have from sniper school is that it still like haunts me to this day in a good way. But I was late for class and the look that Adam Brown gave me when I walked

• 1:29:48Speaker 03

  into that class, I will never forget my entire life. He was like, like you were late to this class. And it went right through me, the way he looked at me like disappointing because you know, he was reporting to the instructors and he was really pissed at me, really, really pissed, like to the point like he didn't talk to me that day. And I was just like, man, I just pissed off the class leader, you know, still trying to learn who Adam Brown is and just work with him a little bit. But we ended up reconciling, made a long conversation afterwards. I told him I was sorry and I apologized. And he just he gave me a brotherly correction. He's like, hey, man, you screwed up. You were late. You shouldn't have done it. I'm like, I know. And we grew from that. So those are the two coolest stories I have from sniper school.

• 1:30:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I had a, I got the opportunity to work with Adam, you know, it team two on my second deployment and in the in the lead up to it, he got in a bad car accident on that deployment. But man, what is he just a another phenomenal human being, you know,

• 1:30:50Shawn Ryan?

  unwavering in his values and and into the team and and you know, it was unfortunate because I didn't appreciate it as much as I should have at the time. And but looking back now,

• 1:31:07Shawn Ryan?

  what an opportunity.

• 1:31:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, I I wish we had talked about God more, you know, I think I can say that for a lot of people. But Adam Brown was one of those dudes where it's like, you just knew that he cared, man, you know, and you can say that about some people. But when he looked at his wife and his children and he talked about them, it's like, dude, this guy has got it together, or at least he's trying the best that he can. And the perseverance that he showed, even with losing his eye, you know, after the fact, he's like, he was not gonna let that stop him. He's the only dude I know that went to sniper school with one eye. You know, he's the only dude that I know that went to the command with one eye, you know? And being in green team with him, you know, went to green team with him as well.

• 1:31:53Speaker 03

  It's like, is this guy gonna be able to do this with one eye? And, and his attitude and mindset and tenacity is what carried him through.

• 1:32:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:03Speaker 03

  All of that. And he could do whatever we did with one eye. But what an incredible human being and example. The book Fearless, which I'm sure you've read. That's a hard book for me to read. I can't even open it without getting emotional. But Adam Brown, above all, you know, he was a warrior for Christ.

• 1:32:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:23Speaker 03

  And one thing that I would change about our relationship is I would have went right back and be like, dude, we gotta talk about Jesus. Like, let's, let's dig in here, you know, what can we talk about? I'm sure you, at that time, you would have schooled me and taught me a lot. But we'll get to talk about it at some point.

• 1:32:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Adam was a, one of the most dedicated people I've ever known.

• 1:32:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:32:44Shawn Ryan?

  But, yeah. I actually took the picture that's on the cover of that book.

• 1:32:50Speaker 03

  Oh, you did?

• 1:32:50Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:51Speaker 03

  No way, I did not know that.

• 1:32:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, that was at, that was at the range in, in, somewhere in Afghanistan. But.

• 1:32:58Speaker 03

  That's cool.

• 1:32:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, what a, I'm just happy that I got to meet the man.

• 1:33:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:33:05Shawn Ryan?

  But, so, another thing, just, this is way out there, but you, you were an entrepreneur very early on. In fact, I remember, I remember the first time I met you, somebody had told me you owned two or three houses already, and I was like, we can buy a house? And.

• 1:33:26Speaker 03

  That's kind of how I felt about it too, you know?

• 1:33:29Shawn Ryan?

  And I walked right into the. Some real estate officer just said, hey, I want to buy a house. And, um, and once again, you were the influence from that. How, how many properties did you own back then?

• 1:33:42Speaker 03

  At the time, I think it was about three. And on my first deployment, I had bought the house. I bought it when I was 19. And, you know, I had been doing the research over there and I remember paying rent and all those things that kind of worked up in my heart. I'm like, I don't want to pay rent to somebody else. We should own our house. And so I looked into what the, what the details were that and did a lot of research. Honestly, the guy Doug Gregory, and God bless his soul, he's not here anymore. But he was the guy that's like, he was willing to do it. He, he helped mentor me right away, right at 19 years old, right when I came to Virginia Beach, I met the guy and he brought me to all these houses and he just started kind of giving, uh, advice. And I was like, what would you do in this scenario? What would you do in this scenario? And I just, we just had a great relationship.

• 1:34:25Speaker 03

  And he told me earlier on, he said, if you bought a house from me, he said, I would, I will manage it for you if you end up renting it for 5%. So like a really low rate, you know, something that you couldn't even like say no to.

• 1:34:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:39Speaker 03

  And so as a friend, he was like, I'll just do it for you, you know? And, and I was like, cool. So I bought my first house, went to deploy again. And I was like, well, I might as well try this renting thing, you know? And when I did that and he took it over and him and I worked really well together. I just kept doing that. I would deploy and buy a house, deploy and buy a house. And so to the point where I left team two, I think I was at three at that point. And then I bought my fourth before I went to the command.

• 1:35:04Shawn Ryan?

  Oh my gosh. So you-

• 1:35:05Speaker 03

  And I just was like, I was like, this is easy. I realized that you could buy a house for a really low amount of money with all the closing and all the things that we did. And I actually never used my VA loan. And I did that on purpose because I knew these weren't my forever homes. You know, I knew I didn't want to lock my VA loan up into something that I wasn't going to be able to stay in. So I very strategically looked at smart loans that I could get on the house that allowed me to put a little bit of money down. And then praise God, you know, everything has worked to that point of growing in equity and growing. And, uh, it's something that I did, I just was having fun with on the side. You know, like all of us, we have something we want to do and we have free time. And for me, it was that. It was like, oh, cool. Real estate, this sounds fun.

• 1:35:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:47Speaker 03

  You know, I got a good buddy that's helping me out and, uh, I saw the fruits in it right away because we were making money as soon as we started renting it, we were making a little bit of money.

• 1:35:55Shawn Ryan?

  It's crazy, man.

• 1:35:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:35:56Shawn Ryan?

  20, what, 21 years old with a mini real estate empire businessman. I mean- You really had your shit together and I'm sure that paid off or is still paying off. But, but um, let's move on. So let's move on to going to green team.

• 1:36:16Shawn Ryan?

  How was that? Where did it start?

• 1:36:18Speaker 03

  Uh, so green team oh six, that was right when I was picked up. And by the way, getting there is interesting because they told me that I wasn't gonna make it when I screened. I passed all the screening. I did everything right. Passed the physical, passed the mental, passed everything. And then I remember my troop chief came back and he said, hey, you didn't make the cutoff because I was the youngest dude to sign up. So it was like, you're just, you're probably not gonna make it. He even told me that upfront. And when I screened, they came back, they gave me a definitive no. And I was like, man, it's like, that stinks. But I wasn't, I didn't really have my hopes up that much just because I knew how young I was.

• 1:37:02Speaker 03

  And I think about a week and a half later, two weeks later, he's like, hey, I need to talk to you. I thought I was in trouble and I was the way he said it. And so I went and sat down with him in the office and he's like, hey, I got good news. He's like, they just, you were the last one they pulled in. Two other guys dropped off and I was able to help get you in the list. So at 23, you know, I'm over here going through green team.

• 1:37:27Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:37:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, I showed up to gold squadron when I was 23 years old. I remember looking at the board, the first thing I did when I got into the team room. And so I was like, I wonder how many guys have got in here at 23. I went and looked at the board. And there was, I think the youngest guy was like 25 or 26, you know, and it was like mind blowing to me. I was like, okay, well. Uh, here I am. And I don't know if since then, there's gotta have guys that have got in that are around the same age or younger. But that was kind of crazy. And I was so pumped about that. And I just completely continued to shift my focus on, I wasn't dating anybody. I wasn't doing anything. I wasn't going

• 1:38:10Speaker 03

  out drinking. I was very locked on to go into the command. I was like, I did not want anything to come and disrupt my plan for getting to the point where I wanted to go. Because I knew how fragile that was. One wrong thing, boom, it's done. So I really did try to protect that time. And that's where, you know, I say that I tried to do nothing that was going to distract me. And that's where my wife came back into the picture. I went up north and actually went to see my family, my dad, and linked up with her for just to go out to dinner. And like, since that night, that's it. It was just, we knew right away that, you know, we're probably going to spend

• 1:38:51Speaker 03

  the rest of our lives together. And she was the distraction. But she ended up being a beautiful distraction, because she actually helped with a lot of what was going on in Green Team. She ended up moving down to Virginia. And all the way through that process, like, I knew this is one thing about Green Team that will always stand out in my mind. I had a book I was supposed to read, Blink. And it was a great book. I had started, I was super fired up about it. And we had to read these specific books, you know, going through the training course. And I had the day come up where we were supposed to have read it all. And so I was smoked from training that day. You know, I literally came home, my clothes are soaking wet. I'd hand them off to

• 1:39:36Speaker 03

  her. She'd have dinner ready for me, you know, and I remember going to bed that night, like, I gotta finish this, you know, and I think I got about halfway or three quarters of the way through, and I just passed out. And I woke up with that, like, I didn't finish the book. And I know I gotta leave in like, five minutes. And she's sitting there at the edge of my bed. She's like, it's okay, I read it for you. It's like, I knew right away. I was like, you are amazing. So she gave me the Cliff Notes on everything that was in the book. And I was like, so pumped that day. I went in so squared away, like, ready to talk about the book. But that was, that was the instance, she started to kind of help me too. Like, so, having somebody that can help you through those difficult times is huge. And that was a moment that was, that was, for us, we'll always remember

• 1:40:21Shawn Ryan?

  Where did you meet your wife?

• 1:40:23Speaker 03

  Where? In high school.

• 1:40:25Shawn Ryan?

  In high school?

• 1:40:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, in high school. We, uh, we dated in high school. And, you know, we were kids, so we were trying to figure it out like everybody else. And, you know, we really had a very, very, very strong bond earlier on. To the point like, I think I told her, I'm gonna marry you someday. And she kind of gave me like, yeah, okay, whatever, right? But we're kids. And so we kind of went our own separate ways. We didn't really have a falling out or anything. And, and we sort of kept in touch. And then at one point, you know, when I was getting ready to screen from Green Team, on my second deployment, I remember saying to myself, I gotta get this girl out of my head. It's like, I literally just have to stop forgetting about her because it's never gonna happen. There's gonna be nothing that ever comes of this relationship.

• 1:41:09Speaker 03

  And then I believe it was 24 hours later, I went to check my voicemail and there was her voice. After I just said like, God, you gotta get this girl out of my head. And she was like, Hey, I was just checking in on you. And I was just like, am I hearing this girl's voice? And that's where we went. I went home, went on the date, and then we've been together ever since. So it's nice to know somebody that long, you know, because we know everything about each other. She knows everything about me, you know, from my childhood and on. So it is, it is beautiful to have that relationship with her, you know?

• 1:41:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah, that's, that's awesome.

• 1:41:44Shawn Ryan?

  So what was, for those listening that don't know what Green Team is, Green Team is the training selection process to get into development group.

• 1:41:54Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:41:55Shawn Ryan?

  And so what was, what was your first impression on day one, week one of Green Team?

• 1:42:03Speaker 03

  That it was, that it was gonna suck and to be prepared for it to suck, you know, they're, they're at the level where I try to explain to people. Every time you go up the selection and training process. Bud's is kind of like, we know you're not going to quit after you get out. Well, now it's a higher level of thinking. Their expectations of you are higher of your intelligence and how you apply different problem solving. So for me, I was just going to do whatever it took to get to go through it and get through it. But that it was going to be very, very, very difficult. But at the same time, there were glimpses, kind of like going through CQB. They're like, man, this is awesome. We're moving at a pace that we've never moved before. You know, this is just feels different.

• 1:42:46Speaker 03

  So the training felt different, the environment felt different. And you know, everybody's trying to reach the same thing. You know, you're, you're in a regular team and you kind of got your decent shooters. And you got your guys that, you know, suck at shooting, you know, but in the green team, like everybody's shooting good. Like everybody's trying to, you know, reach a level of excellence. So that part I really enjoy. I enjoyed that part about being around other people. And then having other guys in the rafters and always yelling at us and correcting us because that means that I can improve. Any type of feedback that I'm getting means that I can improve. And I'd say Eddie, Eddie and I, at, at the, at the heat of really where green team and people get kicked out.

• 1:43:27Speaker 03

  Him and I were, had these long days and we would still get in the car. And I, and I thank Eddie for this a lot. Still get in the car and go drive to the gym that was 30 minutes down the road. Some guys were like, I have no idea how you're doing that. The instructors are like, you're crazy. You know, we'd show up and the instructors would be in there and I don't even know how we did it, to be honest. There was just something in us and, and Eddie's drive and my drive that just said, let's go. We don't want to, we're not working out specifically to gain strength, but we're running through the house. We're doing all these other drills and Eddie always wanted to maintain that level of brute force. And that's something I always respected about Eddie. It's like, you look at that dude and he's like, that guy will crush you. You know, whether you're in the train or you're, you're, you know, out in town.

• 1:44:10Speaker 03

  That's why me and Eddie became really good friends because, you know, we're not only kicking doors down together, but we always relied on each other for that. So that was a level of like, just another layer deeper that we went, which made it even more special. But I mean, those long runs and everything we did, I mean, it was, it was a kick in the, kick in the butt.

• 1:44:29Shawn Ryan?

  What, what did you find, what did you find the most challenging for you personally?

• 1:44:38Speaker 03

  In Green Team specifically,

• 1:44:43Speaker 03

  I think the thing that was most challenging was the fact that you have the rope to hang yourself. So you have to be able to manage how far out you go, how far you push, because they'll let you fall right off the cliff. And when you're in the house and you're really running, I like to ramp things up as much as I possibly can. You know, especially when I'm under that pressure and I'm being tested. Like, I want to make sure I'm reaching the pinnacle and the apex and whatever's expected of me. So I think for me, it was the challenge of trying to get to that point and finding out where the limit was. You know, of not going over the edge where I'm pissing the instructors off, or I'm doing something that's going to get me in trouble. And that kind of showed itself, you know, when we were clearing rooms

• 1:45:27Speaker 03

  and we were doing stuff, like it got really, really close. Like you have the, you have, everybody's barrels like, you know, so how far you go over that ledge is really up to you as an individual. So I think for me, it was just learning where that was in my maturity level, you know, being 23 years old, still trying, I mean, I was getting corrected by men often. Like, hey dude, why are you doing that? And honestly, and some of the things that I did, I look back and I'm like, I really have no idea why I'm doing that. Thank you for telling me, you know? That's a lot of what men need to hear. They go screw up, they trip over themselves. And thank God I was with guys that were bold enough to correct me. And that's really what a lot of the teams are, is being around other like-minded individuals that are leaning into this leadership. But I grew up a lot through Green Team.

• 1:46:12Speaker 03

  And again, I think the most challenging thing was the fact that I just didn't want to go over the edge and try to find that line. You know, that was, that was the tough part. Everything about it was written on my heart. I mean, I was supposed to be there. You know, the physical part of it, the mental part of it. I mean, if you told me I had to do that again, or even buds to be where I'm at now, I wouldn't even think about it. I would just go do it. I would just think, okay, that's fine. Let's go do it again. You know, because of the beauty that comes from that type of arduous training, you know?

• 1:46:43Shawn Ryan?

  How many guys were you in there with approximately?

• 1:46:48Speaker 03

  Thirty two, maybe somewhere around that, I think.

• 1:46:52Shawn Ryan?

  How many made it?

• 1:46:54Speaker 03

  Oh, man. Did you ask any of this questions?

• 1:46:58Shawn Ryan?

  Probably.

• 1:46:58Speaker 03

  Okay, well, maybe he's got a better answer. I honestly don't remember. I want to say it was a low number, maybe seventeen or something.

• 1:47:04Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:47:05Speaker 03

  I'd have to go back and like, look at the number. I'm not great with number, numbers like that, but.

• 1:47:09Shawn Ryan?

  What hangs most guys up?

• 1:47:13Shawn Ryan?

  What gets them kicked out?

• 1:47:15Speaker 03

  Uh, complacency.

• 1:47:17Shawn Ryan?

  Complacency?

• 1:47:18Speaker 03

  Complacency, hundred percent. I think that they, what I saw guys get kicked out for was they were pushing the limit. Like I was saying about finding the edge. And every time it felt like it was a level of complacency that was like, okay, I got this. And then boom, it would just bite him in the butt. It would just catch up to him and back, whatever it was, clearing in the room, sweeping somebody who weren't supposed to sweep. Uh, you know, one guy forgot his gun, didn't bring his gun to a training event. You know, it was just like.

• 1:47:45Shawn Ryan?

  That can be an issue.

• 1:47:46Speaker 03

  You can't help but to feel bad, like all, everything that you do just gets crumbled right then and there, like you forgot your gun, like you don't have your gun on the training. So complacency, I think, was the biggest factor. As with anything that we do, should go into the range right now. Our biggest enemy is complacency. If you and I went to the range to go put some rounds down, complacency would be our biggest threat because we're in a position of confidence. We're in a position of knowledge and now you have to steward that knowledge and position and, and skills appropriately. Cause if you don't, it can fly off the handle really quickly, you know?

• 1:48:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:24Shawn Ryan?

  So moving, moving, let's move towards graduating. What was that process like? What did it feel like?

• 1:48:34Speaker 03

  I think the culmination of is kind of exactly what I talked about about going up to the team room and looking at the board of recognizing how young I was and walking into that which felt like, you know, if I would equate it to anything, it would be like walking into the old Knights Templar, you know, lair, you know, in a dungeon that you've been thinking about your whole life and you finally get to see it. And you walk in there to be like the history, the, the good that's been done here, the, the blood, sweat and tears that have been put into this, to be a part of that now and to know that your whole life is going to change because you've been accepted into this, this brotherhood and this way of living and this, this intensity. I think just again, it was just another layer of

• 1:49:18Speaker 03

  reality to me to be like, all right, let's game on, you know, we do things here that are different than everywhere in the world, you know, it's, it's the finite portion of the people that get to do this. So it's just very, I was very grateful for it, you know, very grateful being able to graduate and get through that. And, you know, obviously calling back to the guys that, you know, confided in you and believed in you and pushed you to do it. That was always a good phone call, like call my troop chief and be like, thank you. And I appreciate it so much because of you, I'm here because you allowed me to do this. He could have said no. And he could have told me, don't bother or influenced me in another way. But all those guys, I think there was a tremendous amount of appreciation

• 1:50:01Speaker 03

  for the experience that I gained, what I was able to do and the people that allowed me to do it, you know?

• 1:50:06Shawn Ryan?

  Did you, did you guys, do you have an opportunity to request a certain squadron?

• 1:50:15Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:50:16Shawn Ryan?

  No?

• 1:50:16Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:50:17Shawn Ryan?

  How's that done?

• 1:50:18Speaker 03

  No, I, I think that it's just done by where they need guys. First of all, you know, that's always what it is, you know, if one team's hurting more than another, they're going to take dudes and how they split them up. You know, me and Eddie, obviously, are very close. We were close throughout training and we ended up in gold together, you know, so obviously there's definitely strategy on how they put guys in different places. You know, I have a big lion on my back with a cross that I got, that was my, that was my tattoo I got from my first trip to Italy, which was in Milano. And I went to the Duomo there, which was the third biggest church in the world.

• 1:51:00Speaker 03

  Going a little bit of a sidebar here, but the why behind it is I know I have this cross, the crown of thorns and this line on my back. I'm like, there's gotta be somebody that's also paying attention to the things that are important to us because even in the squadrons, the symbolism, the logos are our emblem and everything that is there is a part of who you are, right? It's part of your identity. So I think that that might, that played a part into it as well. But then, you know, I can talk about my tattoo at another point, but it was pretty cool how there was a cross over there and then getting into the squadron and looking up on the wall and seeing the cross and how much faith was there. It was already there,

• 1:51:45Speaker 03

  you know, and how much it meant to me now, how much it means to me now, but how much I didn't realize it was working on my heart, how God allowed me to experience these things in that squadron with those things that are right there in front of me. Well, why is that the case? Well, I know now, you know, why that happened. God's permissive will, you know, leading me to these things. But going into the team room, just kind of the weight of that history really affected me, you know?

• 1:52:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. You know, it's, it's, I'm glad you brought that up because I had, when I had interviewed Eddie, you know, and, and, and a good portion of that interview was about Eddie's faith and, and, and finding God and Jesus. And I had, I had brought up, you know, how my, my second deployment, it seemed to, uh, there was a lot of, we prayed before every op. It was completely foreign to me. I didn't, we did not do that in my first platoon, probably because we didn't go on any ops, but there, there was no, there was no faith, there was no God, there was no

• 1:52:56Shawn Ryan?

  Jesus, there was no, none of that. It was just debauchery. Then, then I got over to that platoon and there was a, there were 180 degrees. And a lot of the people that I was in my second platoon with wound up over at Gold as well. Eddie didn't put that together that, uh, until I kind of brought it up, or maybe he just didn't want to vocalize it, but it, it.

• 1:53:26Shawn Ryan?

  It's interesting to me how gold seemed to draw in men of faith. And it seemed, I mean, I don't know much about it, you know, but um, but looking at it from the outside and knowing who I do know who was a part of that squadron, it seemed like that was very much part of the culture over there. Is that, am I off on that?

• 1:53:54Speaker 03

  I don't think so. If I were to look back and if I were to say that I saw anything that would intentionally push that direction, I probably wouldn't have been able to point to anything. But hindsight now, there's a very clear purpose for why things have happened the way they are. I mean, you talk about me and Eddie, you know, me and Eddie kicking down doors together our whole career and then, you know, being in their car ride for, you know, three hours talking about God and Jesus, about how he's changed everything in us, that we didn't do that for each other, but we lived that life very clearly, knew everything intimately about each other in and out, you know, and then now, God has moved in our lives in a different way, you know, like that you can't deny

• 1:54:37Speaker 03

  the level of intensity that brings to the weight of what we've done and what we're doing now. And I think that faith is there. I think it's in everybody. The spirit of it is there. And one of the other things, aside from what the first question I was asked when I came on, is the other thing that I really took away from the command, because we all seek brotherhood. We all want to be in communion with each other. That is just a fact. Christ had 12 disciples and a brotherhood that went and changed the world. That is the way we're supposed to operate and live our lives.

• 1:55:19Speaker 03

  We need fraternal correction. We need men of value and virtue to be around us in order to live according to what God's asking us to. We need somebody else to hold us accountable, because if we do it ourselves, forget it. And I left that command with all those symbols and all those things around me and such good men, but I left saying to myself, one thing, I said, I cannot imagine what we could have accomplished if we were opening up scripture and had faith as our number one thing every day. I cannot imagine. I pray for it every day for those guys. I really do. Because I, what they would be able to change and affect, putting God first in their lives and not just making it. In some ways, living out in the squadron was probably one of the most

• 1:56:03Speaker 03

  secular things I've ever done in my entire life. Because of the nature of what we did. It's very, it's very cause and effect. It's very like, I can do this and I can make an effect on that. And it's very easy to ignore the spirit of God moving in our lives. It's very easy to be like, oh, I did that. I did that. I affected all these things. And I pray for those guys to be able to come together in unity under that. I think that a lot of guys did gravitate towards gold that had that sentiment, but I don't really think that they even still to this day know what that even means. I think there might be a couple of guys at the command that are faithful, but I think there's a lot that's missing there. That's kind of across the board, but something that I really took away of what God allowed me to understand from that experience.

• 1:56:45Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think that diminished over time? I mean, I don't want to mention a whole lot of names because I don't know what everybody's doing these days, but you know, you, Eddie, Adam Brown are the three that I'll mention. All, you know, Adam had very strong faith from the moment I met him. It sounds, I didn't, we didn't know each other very well back then, but it sounds like you did as well. Eddie found it later. I mean,

• 1:57:15Shawn Ryan?

  did that, did that diminish over time?

• 1:57:18Speaker 03

  Well, I certainly didn't have the faith, the level of faith that I have now. In fact, like I said, like God was on my heart. And you know, when we went on an operation and we prayed before the op, and there was only a handful of times that happened.

• 1:57:29Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 1:57:29Speaker 03

  Those were some of the most powerful and, and clear.

• 1:57:35Speaker 03

  Ops that I've ever had, like I literally felt God's protection with me on those ops. I think I heard Eddie say something very similar. Um, and, and that's was an absolute true statement. My faith was not anywhere near like I was like, okay, God, I know you're there. And when things would get tough, I would certainly pray. But it wasn't like I was disciplined with my faith at all.

• 1:57:57Speaker 03

  I think definitely being in the teams, definitely living, I think military across the board. Like if we don't even look at the teams and make it sound like they're all bad. Cause that's not the case. Every one of these instances, you can just draw across the board, the military, law enforcement, all these organizations, like they're all plagued with this, this political, cultural sense of things, you know, that have kind of crept into what's going on. And I think that's been degrading over the last 50 years. You know, like I was saying before, you know, in, in the world wars, you most every guy that was going on target or going over in war had a rosary or have a Bible or had some type of scripture close to their heart. And that's since just gone away. Oh, you don't need that. That's not important.

• 1:58:42Speaker 03

  Don't worry about that. That's just, that's just something that, you know, people used to talk about. Oh, that's traditional, you know, and it's faded, you know? So I, I think that the world

• 1:58:53Speaker 03

  just whispers those lies in our ears constantly enough to where now we're seeing the most elite men in the world are lacking in faith, you know? And, and again, that's

• 1:59:05Speaker 03

  just the nature of what's happened in the culture.

• 1:59:11Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it's the crusader, right?

• 1:59:17Shawn Ryan?

  Crazy.

• 1:59:18Speaker 03

  I have a, I have a, I have a, I've done a lot of praying about that comment right there and about why they exist, right? If we get into the whole idea, you know, typically when you bring that word up, it has a emotional reaction. So be it whatever it is. I, I encourage people to go look for the truth. But the knights have always played a part in protecting and helping.

• 1:59:45Speaker 03

  The Knights Templar, the most elite of the knights at that time, they were literally raised in that order to let people go pilgrimage to the Holy Land so that they could pray and worship to God because they were being ambushed, robbed, killed, and stopped, just like today. Same things going on today, it's no different. And so those guys, they, they had an extreme faith in Christ and the places that they were protecting, that were holy, that were holy grounds. And what's grown out of people understanding the Crusades and all that, just like any other military and all the other orders that got created,

• 2:00:29Speaker 03

  there were some things that happened that weren't good. There were people abusing their power and all of those things. But I truly believe that the knights that were there to help the innocent and to help those that can't help themselves were dismantled in an unjust way, completely on purpose. The, the knights became very, very powerful. The Templar had a lot of money, more than a lot of the kings of the time. And Philip Affair ended up borrowing a tremendous amount of money from the Templars because of their wealth.

• 2:01:07Speaker 03

  So he single-handedly tore them down under bribes and torture and putting people in places. He even had an influence on the Pope that came in to, to get his decision to be able to tear those guys down. And so all I'll say about that, there's a lot of nuances to that. There's a lot of history, a lot of theology, things that we would have to go a lot deeper into, things that I'm still learning myself. But my point is that the Knights Templar were dismantled and taken out of the church. And so the warrior that existed to stand for those that wanted to go worship and be a part and a pillar of the church were taken away. And ever since that's happened, we've

• 2:01:48Speaker 03

  had a weakening of warriors and men and faithful warriors for Christ inside of the church. And it's just transcended throughout time. That's why I believe that we're feeling this sense of in our modern culture today, we see these men raising up, we see these men strengthening in their faith, we see these men orienting toward their lives, their lives in right order and relationship with God and Christ, because they realize, oh, this is what my actual calling is, and I've been missing, I've been letting the culture lie to me and manipulate my, my whole life and idea of who I'm supposed to be as a man, away from being that pillar, you know? So, anyway, that's a deeper conversation.

• 2:02:28Shawn Ryan?

  I've never heard it put together like that. That's fascinating. How did you put that together?

• 2:02:33Speaker 03

  Constant studies and research. I research Templars often. I look at theology often. I deep dive into documents of church fathers and, you know, the crusades and I read as much as I possibly can, you know? And when I gravitate towards anything, that's, that is what God's asking me to continue to learn more about. And I'm like fascinated by it. Because if we don't know, it's a Bob Marley quote, right? If we don't know where we're coming from, we can't know where we're going.

• 2:03:02Shawn Ryan?

  Great quote. I've actually not heard that one.

• 2:03:08Shawn Ryan?

  Let's move, we're going to continue this conversation intermittently, but let's move into, so you show up, you show up to the, to Gold Team. And how long are you there before your deployment?

• 2:03:24Speaker 03

  Oh, man, that's another great question. It couldn't have been any more than five or six months. So, you know, hard and fast. Training workup and doing all these, you know, specialty schools. Um, want to say it happened pretty quickly.

• 2:03:40Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of schools?

• 2:03:42Speaker 03

  Uh, just a lot more of the serpeticious type stuff that I really enjoy. Also, things just became more focused. Like I said, the magnet that happens of the people that are best in the world that kind of gravitate towards that lifestyle, you know? What's the precision level of combatives that I can get? What's the precision level of blade work? What's the precision level of surveillance? What is the precision level of serpeticious entry? Uh, what's the precision level of skydiving? You know, so it's like all these different elements of what we want to be really good at. And I gravitated towards three things really throughout my time there. And the beautiful part about that place is that when, like I said, if you want to fix the problem, if you see something that that's that's a gap and needs to be improved, you're the one.

• 2:04:25Speaker 03

  And so I leaned very heavily into research and development. You know, I was the R and D rep for my squadron for as as much as until I left. Uh, Heath Robinson, which is actually on the Hilo and Extortion seventeen. He actually handed that job to me. I remember when he did it, we were out in Morana. He was just like, hey, dude, I need you to take this job. Or do you want this? Cause he saw that I geeked out with gear. Um, that's a whole other story, but R and D rep, combatives and hand to hand and sniper. Like those are the three things that I were like, that's who I am. I gotta get really, really, really good at all three of those things.

• 2:04:57Shawn Ryan?

  So do you have the freedom to gravitate towards what you're, what's, what's pulling your interest?

• 2:05:02Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 2:05:02Shawn Ryan?

  They don't mandate it?

• 2:05:03Speaker 03

  No, because if you think about even a successful business today, the best thing that we can do as leaders is really allow the individual to flourish where they are best and what they love to do and what they will do with nobody paying them a cent. That's where we want everybody, right? That's the whole goal of our lives to get to that point. And the beautiful thing about being there was such high level thinkers and such tenacious guys that have so much drive is that they gravitate towards those things naturally. I think there's very rare instances where you're like, ah, man, we got a little bit of a gap here.

• 2:05:46Speaker 03

  I'll use breaching as example, which is one that never comes up, but I'm just using it so it's clear. You know, if you watched Eddie's interview and you know that, you know, breaching is something that, you know, he did really well, is that we had a gap there. Well, then, then we would have to have the hard conversation like, hey, guys, we need this amount of qualification going into this situation. We need a breacher, you know? But it doesn't happen like that because it naturally occurs. You know, you naturally feel out things that, you know, you know, you're supposed to be doing. And that's how the squadrons are built. That's how the things come together because you see all these guys have specialty skills. They're not going to put you over there if your skills are really going to be good over here. You know, good leaders are going to identify weaknesses. If the breaching is low over here, well, then the best breacher coming out is going

• 2:06:31Speaker 03

  to go there. You know, we're going to kind of put the teams together so they're all ready and stacked in a well-rounded manner. But individually, you know, you kind of have your, these are the things that are non-negotiable. Like what's non-negotiable at Vigilance Elite? Like you gotta be driven, you gotta love what you do, you gotta want to be here, right? Well, everybody knows that. And so that's kind of the start of like how the qualifications occur. Everybody needs to know how to skydive. Everybody needs to know how to shoot. We should all know how to fight, but that's a battle that, you know, I had and we understand. But all these kind of baseline things is like, there's your base. We're all going to do those things. We're all going to have a way of the way we think about those and we're going to apply them. Well, as you start to go to secondary and tertiary levels of training, then you can

• 2:07:16Speaker 03

  kind of start being more specific and specialized where we get to the end, everybody's covered. Well, what's left? Well, Dom's going to go pick a course that I can go do, you know, combatives and Thai boxing and blade work and, you know, room clearing and I'm going to pick what I really want to do. It doesn't always work that way, but it tends to fire the guys up in a way where it lets them get really good at what they do. See, they've been able to do it the whole time, but now they put the icing on the cake with like solidifying. You know, you were a really good jump master and you did really good with tandems, you know, jumping out with dogs, but now you're going to tweak that a little bit and you're going to become a really good skydiver because of these techniques that you're going to work on with dropping out

• 2:07:59Speaker 03

  of the air with all kinds of stuff strapped to you, you know, just as an example.

• 2:08:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah, let's, at the risk, I know this is probably, it could potentially be a very sensitive subject, but R and D, what all did that entail? How, how, as elaborate as you can?

• 2:08:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. The best way to describe the research and development aspect of what I did was from head to toe, you look at a guy from Stroblight to shoelaces, every piece of equipment and gear that somebody is using, we have to trust with our lives, weapon systems included, armor included into that. So the full combat system is what's really included in the idea of how do we stay on the most cutting edge of development of using the best gear in the world? And that

• 2:09:00Speaker 03

  takes a very, very, very large amount of effort in staying out ahead of the curve of what everybody's making. That's why for me, I geeked out. You know, I already had that entrepreneurial sense, but it wasn't just like government stuff that you're doing. You're literally the best R and D stuff that you're ever going to do are going to work with the guys that are so good at what they have going on from a commercial standpoint, you know? Here's a tent maker that makes this seam specifically the way they mold it and how something comes together from a frame portion. They do it better than anybody else in the world because they developed the process. Okay, well, how do we develop that process into a waterproof bag that we could utilize for something that we need in a specific mission set? You know, so like,

• 2:09:44Speaker 03

  It wasn't beholden to this kind of box. It was like, there is the funding and the resources that you need. Now go find the best thing in the world. And I love doing that. I mean, if I, the best comment I've ever seen on social media is like, that guy's like Batman. Give him, give him enough money to be like Batman and he'll go like make a bunch of stuff. And I would, I would like be locked in my basement, like making all kinds of stuff. But that's what it was for me, was utilizing the resources we had. Also, the biggest part of that job is listening to the guy's feedback. And as good as I got with knowing how guys were going to utilize the gear, what they really needed. And I did, I mean, I literally almost knew how they were going to use it better than they were. You know, because that's how intimate I was with the process.

• 2:10:29Speaker 03

  But I still had to shut my mouth because I would still learn things along the way. They're like, oh yeah, it's a good point. I didn't think of that. If we put the strobe here as opposed to like over here, it's going to do this because the bad guy's going to be over here. And he might see this or don't see that. This was, I've totally pulled that out of my butt, but you know what I'm saying? Is that I want to hear the feedback so I don't shut myself off from anything that I might miss. So that I collaborate all that, that input and I take it to what I'm going to build. Now I take it to what gear, weapon systems and things that we utilize. And then you're responsible for running that project to ground with the help of whatever resources that you need, you know?

• 2:11:07Shawn Ryan?

  Is there anything that you can talk about that you're, that you developed that you're, one of your favorite things?

• 2:11:18Speaker 03

  It's interesting to look at the guy from head to toe right now. Aside from the weapon system, everything that's still out there, I had a small part in giving feedback on even right now. Like the carriers that we're currently using, helmets that we're using. There's like little flares on the nods mount that I input and told them to move away to change the angle on.

• 2:11:40Speaker 03

  Comms systems, the in-ear comm systems that you could have ambient hearing. I was adamant about changing those. And I was the one that spearheaded a lot of that through all the different, like I worked with Silings.

• 2:11:54Speaker 03

  I worked with Atlantic Signal, I worked with Talus, all these other companies to be able to bring this stuff and really test it out and be like, that sucks, change this. Lots of money spent on trying to get that to be right. And that's one thing that I was passionate about is making sure that we had good hearing because I knew how important it was on target. It's like some guys were just shoving foam in their ears. And like, what are you doing? You can't hear anything. You know, now you're blocking yourself out. I know we're getting ready to go shoot, but at the same time, you still need that awareness. Because if you take that away, then we lack awareness. That was one thing that I really, really appreciated. Worked with Cry on a lot of the carrier systems, the evolutions over time. Ops Core, worked with them. A lot of the uniform stuff, worked with them.

• 2:12:38Shawn Ryan?

  Any tech type stuff?

• 2:12:40Speaker 03

  Not really, not really on the tech side. I would say comms is the most technical that I got. A lot of like the widgets, cameras, all that stuff like that was, that was more, I appreciated what it was, but I was more like gear centric, like hard goods, like, you know, EDC and the hard goods that you can use every day. You know, that was what I was passionate about.

• 2:12:59Shawn Ryan?

  Just curious. When it comes to the combatants, I mean, that's, from my perspective in your business today, that is the, that's the bread and butter of Dynamis and fuels all of your businesses. What was, what was the combatants process like when you showed up and how did you develop it? And is it still like that today?

• 2:13:26Speaker 03

  Well, it was the finding the gap that existed. And really, it frustrated me because we have a lot of this, and I'm not taking any away from these three disciplines, you know, but wrestling or judo, wrest, uh, Thai boxing and jiu jitsu, you know, those three are giving you really good leaps and bounds on what you can accomplish. The problem that I saw was that as good as those are, and those will actually make a good fighter better, and they'll actually make a combatants guy better at everything that he does and never stop doing them. But they weren't combining the reality of what we were having to face. Well, I was going on target and I'm like, this is, this is not useful.

• 2:14:10Speaker 03

  Like you're telling me how to do this takedown this way, but I'm not going to apply that in a reality situation. So when I started to seek guys that do combatives really well, my first real experience with like a true combatives instructor was Kelly McCann. And he is in Fredericksburg. And I always started to get open on like actually applying the combatives mindset where it's like, you have multiple opponents, we're in unknown environments, there's hard surfaces, there's weapons, there's all kinds of variables that you cannot control. You're not in a controlled environment, there's no referee and there's no consent. You know, there's all these things that change a martial arts environment to a combatives environment. And so with those elements missing, I knew that we were burning bad reps. And I also experienced this multiple times because you go into jujitsu classes and they

• 2:14:54Speaker 03

  always tell you, oh, relax, you're going too hard. You gotta calm down and close your eyes and feel this thing out. And while those are good, I'm not taking anything away from it. You can't tell a guy that's gotten ready to go in and fight for his life, that he should be closing his eyes and relaxing because he's going to get his butt kicked. And it was that type of stuff where in no situation in combatives where my life is on the line, am I gonna, you know, there's no absolutes here, but I'm not going to close my eyes and try to relax. It's an explosive, end the fight, it's me or you now movement through all of it until it's done in this area is secure. And so I wanted to develop something that was consistently burning good reps in their mind. Everything that you do matters.

• 2:15:39Speaker 03

  The second you walk onto the mat, this is real life. You have your blade on you, you have your firearm on you, you have everything as if you were going to fight. Now we're going to train these disciplines and these principles. So it was me developing that on my own of recognizing the reality of that and also going against a lot of the political nature that existed. You know, there was, there's still to this day, some really good relationships at that level and at the command. And I'm not taking anything away from those guys, but it's important that we apply it in the sense of we take what you're really good at, the jujitsu that you're good at, and apply it in a reality based scenario. And that's where I started to open my mind on what scenarios are we doing? How are we applying the combatives? You know, Tony Blauer, Kelly McCann, a lot of the guys that were really pioneering the

• 2:16:24Speaker 03

  scenario training. Sayak's great at it too. And so I recognized very quickly that we needed to improve. I was actually, the first time we improved our combatives facility, I was like so stoked to be a part of that. We were drawing up plans and I was drawing up mat areas and where to put the ring and we developed a really cool combatives area that really had never existed before. And so that was kind of the spark. And then today where they are is like light years from where it started, but in a good way. I still don't think that everybody takes it as seriously as they should, but they are getting the best training in the world.

• 2:17:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. When did, what else did you incorporate other than, I mean, hand to hand, obviously, obviously blade work. Is there any other kind of maybe non-traditional combatives that you brought to the table?

• 2:17:18Speaker 03

  Combative pistol. You know, like combative pistol is something that, again, you get all the YouTube junk out there. There's a lot of garbage on what you watch on YouTube. You gotta be careful about burning bad reps, but combative pistol, from a standpoint of using your pistol and your blade in a combative way, is unique in its own. You know, because the, one of the comments that like burns me a little bit is like, oh, well, you know, I see a guy that's tougher fights, that's why I carry a gun. I'm like, I'm telling you right now, you're not going to use that thing if I can grab you. You know, if I get a hold of you, you're not touching your gun. And people don't think like that. And so it's combining this whole spectrum of a warrior together at a holistic level that we must understand and apply. And that's why I wanted to be the best in the world of that. I wanted

• 2:18:02Speaker 03

  to build a team around understanding that, dissecting it, applying it, proving it, and acting that out on a daily basis. And so we could find new things, we could push limits and see those things. But it really is that spectrum of, you know, mind, hands, blade, pistol, rifle, sniper rifle, right? There's this.

• 2:18:24Speaker 03

  There's this continuum that we have to work in and out of. You know, I could be here to here, or I could be here to here, and I need to be able to go back. You know, and I think that anybody that calls themselves a first responder, or a warrior, or lives this lifestyle, should embrace their responsibility and duty to know how to do. And that's a lot of what we're dealing with with law enforcement, or anybody else for that matter, that has to go hands-on. You should be so confident in those skills that you're not thinking about that this might be an issue. You can have a blade or a gun in your hand right now, like, I don't care. Like, that really doesn't bother me. Like, as long as I'm in, within arms-length reach, we're gonna be able to work through that scenario. I'm gonna be able to mitigate the threat. Okay, so even like a kid, or somebody that's drunk, you know, it's like, okay, this, this,

• 2:19:08Speaker 03

  I'm not gonna get complacent, but there's ways around just pulling the trigger. You know, I can, I can work through that and de-escalate. Situational awareness, if we can't see it coming, then we're not gonna be able to avoid it. And then de-escalation and avoidance, right? We should be able to, we all have something to lose. We should be able to de-escalate and avoid at all costs. And so I'm saying these things on top of the combative mindset, because they are really important. If I just talk about combatives, people can get really lost in the sauce. I'm like, oh, that sounds really violent. I'm like, yeah, I, I understand the level of violence, so I can avoid it. I understand the level of violence, so I can de-escalate it. I understand the level of violence, so I can get to the hand-to-hand combat, and take the guy's gun and blade away from him, save his life and mine,

• 2:19:52Speaker 03

  and then have a conversation with him after. You know what I mean?

• 2:19:55Shawn Ryan?

  I do.

• 2:19:56Speaker 03

  You have to be able to understand that level. It's like, um, I think it's Jordan Peterson's quote, maybe? That's, uh, you know, a, a man that's capable of violence, you know, a good man is not, is not a peaceful man, but a good man is one that's capable of extreme violence. Something to that effect. But I, but I understand the nature of it, because there's a truth to it. It's that, how can we create peace if we don't have the level to understand the violence that's needed for the peace? Maybe we never use it, hopefully we don't. But bad things exist, threats are real, and evil is very real. And so it's like, if I avoid, and I don't confront that reality, well, now I'm just a bad, I'm a bad person.

• 2:20:38Speaker 03

  I'm actually lazy and wicked, because I don't do anything about the wrong in the world, you know, or prepare for it, anyway.

• 2:20:43Shawn Ryan?

  Have you ever, have you ever had to utilize any of the systems that you've developed as far as hand-to-hand in combat?

• 2:20:50Speaker 03

  A hundred percent, yeah, multiple times.

• 2:20:53Shawn Ryan?

  Can you give us a scenario?

• 2:20:55Speaker 03

  Uh, there was one on a rooftop where I had my gun out and I got wrapped up pretty tight, you know, from like, you know, coming around the corner and basically being like bear hugged. And being on the roof and not wanting to go tumble off because there's no ledge. I just put my blade to work and, uh, you know, that's one scenario. Um, there's one where

• 2:21:19Shawn Ryan?

  Just blade, no pistol?

• 2:21:21Speaker 03

  No pistol. Um, there was one where I was on a rooftop and I had my gun aside because I was trying to cuff the dude and he was fighting for his life, swinging at me and I had all my gear on. Um, so a lot of the cuffing techniques that I learned uh, through Gestapo actually came into fruition where, you know, I was able to cross arm him, roll him over, his wife sitting next to me, you know, smacking me in the head, yelling at me. I mean, she wasn't like being super aggressive, wasn't anything that concerned me, but, uh, was able to choke him out, put him to sleep very calmly, then put him in handcuffs. Um, I mean, I have a long list.

• 2:22:01Shawn Ryan?

  Let's go back to the first one that you mentioned. If that's the first one that came to mind, then obviously you have a, a good memory of what happened. Can you elaborate on it?

• 2:22:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, just, just the standpoint. And again, I don't want to be, you know, I don't know what the right word is, too graphic or whatever, but the one thing I'll say is that blades take longer to use than we think they do, you know? That's why we talk about timers and switches. Um, when I started to utilize my blade in those scenarios where

• 2:22:36Shawn Ryan?

  Can you explain timers and switches to the audience?

• 2:22:40Speaker 03

  So timers are anything that's going to bleed you out, anything that hits a major artery. You know, when your fight response is kicked in, you're going to have different things in your body that essentially, um, closed down or not. I mean, sometimes somebody can get a femoral cut and it won't even bleed because your adrenaline's pumping and it retracts. So it's always kind of an unknown. Um, but the loss of blood essentially is a timer, you know? And, and again, just emphasizing the, the scenarios of these of, of why I applied different things was the context of the situation. The accessibility of these things, you know, if I'm wrapped up here and I can't utilize my gun

• 2:23:22Speaker 03

  and the closest thing I have from falling off the roof is to be able to pull my blade out and get it to work, that's something that's going to mitigate me going off the roof or anybody else. And now at that point, I'm looking to end the fight, mitigate the fight, deescalate this and move on to another part. I mean, this is on the beginning of the assault. This is me right when I got on the roof. And so a switch, that's a timer where I'm looking for things that are going to slow you down and shut you down, but they take time. A switch is something that has an immediate effect. It's like a light switch. So a good example is a nerve bundle. Everybody can go like this right here to their shoulder and push in right there. There's a switch right there.

• 2:24:03Speaker 03

  So if I am able to attack that switch, I can literally shut your whole arm down and make it numb. And it does not take much pressure to do that. If your finger's right here, you just feel that? Like, you know what I'm talking about? That nerve bundle right there?

• 2:24:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:15Speaker 03

  Like, it does not take much to go click and then your whole arm's done. That's a switch. So you have switches like that all throughout your body and you have timers like that all throughout your body if you understand, you know, where your blood's running and everything else. So the context is really going to depend on how and when I use what, you know? So, yeah, I've got a lot of scenarios that I've been through. I just...

• 2:24:39Shawn Ryan?

  So you go up the rooftop?

• 2:24:40Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:24:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're on the roof. And that's it. I mean, I think Eddie was somewhere on the right side of me and just taking this guy down to the ground, because that's what it ended up turning into, is like a ground scuffle. You know, at that point, my main concern is, is this guy going to continue to be a threat and affect anybody else that's moving or moving past us? So ultimately, just making sure that doesn't happen, you know?

• 2:25:13Shawn Ryan?

  How precision, how much precision is involved in blade work? I mean, is it like shot placement?

• 2:25:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I equated exactly like that. Shot placement. When we're doing blade draws and if I have a target up, I'll put a head up, I'll put a two by four up. If I'm doing live blade training, it's the same thing. Aim small, miss small. So if I'm going for a ocular shot or I'm going for a body shot specifically, like I have to have precision in that. So there is a level of being dynamic. Same thing when we shoot and move, you need to be able to draw your blade and hit and move. I think precision is something that probably goes under talked about, but it was exactly like what you're aiming at. And so the thing that gets dynamic about blade work is you could be upside down and backwards because you got a dude that's on top here or you're in a jujitsu scenario.

• 2:26:03Speaker 03

  And it's similar with a pistol too, but the pistol is one directional in a sense of like, there's only one way, one bullet can come at you in a straight line. And so that, that, just knowing that itself gives you a level of empowerment when you're actually in a fight. But a blade is very multi-directional in the sense of like, it can forward cut, it can back cut, the point's sharp. Is it going forward or backward? I mean, just doing this is going to cut you as opposed to like, if I point the gun at my head and just do this, well, nothing happens because I'm not pointing it at you. You know? That is the level of effect that you can have with the blade as opposed to the pistol. And so I think the dynamic there is really important, but precision is absolutely key. Knowing where timers are, knowing where switches are.

• 2:26:47Speaker 03

  And again, I, I say all this stuff and, and I know sometimes it's tough for me to articulate some of this because I always approach it from a standpoint of self-defense. I want everybody to know that, that it is all about de-escalating and avoiding these scenarios right from the very beginning. I don't want to have to use my blade if I don't have to. I don't want to have to use my pistol if I don't have to. If I'm using them, it's because my life is on the line or somebody else's life is on the line and I'm trying to get out of there. You know, I'm not doing it overtly to just get a rep in. I want to do it in a way and I want to understand that level of violence. So if I really need it, I can recall that in the moment that I need it most. You know, just wanted to say that because, you know, some people get wrapped up and they don't understand

• 2:27:29Speaker 03

  the, the full breadth of, you know, what combatives and what blade work really exists for, you know?

• 2:27:34Shawn Ryan?

  Well, thank you for elaborating. When it came to, when you've had to utilize hand-to-hand stuff, I mean, that's, that's obviously very up close, very personal.

• 2:27:47Shawn Ryan?

  How did, I mean, how would that, how does that affect you versus killing with your, with your firearm, with your rifle, with your sniper rifle, with your pistol versus a blade?

• 2:28:02Speaker 03

  Well, I think we're putting our hands on people more than we ever have before.

• 2:28:07Speaker 03

  Or maybe not traditionally, but I think from a warfare standpoint,

• 2:28:12Speaker 03

  they both are important to understand. And yes, is putting your hands on somebody more intimate in a sense than just pulling the trigger and not really seeing what's going on there? Um, I do think that there's a contrast.

• 2:28:27Speaker 03

  I think you have more to learn. This is my point. I think you have more to learn from the combative scenario

• 2:28:36Speaker 03

  than you do pulling the trigger necessarily. Cause in a vacuum, like if I have a target and it's, it's moving, I'm like, okay, now, and it's not a threat anymore. The hand-to-hand stuff is just much more dynamic. In the sense of your balance, your weight shifting, the right tool to use, how are you using it? The bullet will stop somebody in their tracks when combatives isn't necessarily that right away.

• 2:29:07Speaker 03

  If I choke somebody out, that's probably one of the easiest and fastest ways to get somebody to become compliant and have the, the result that I want. But that doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to be able to access that tool anyway. He may be fighting for his life, you know, backing up in a corner or trying to hit me with something else, or there might be multiple people. So it gets extremely dynamic. So when I say there's a lot to learn more from combatives is because there's just so many different variables.

• 2:29:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:32Speaker 03

  Did he move left or right? Did I grab him? Was it his wrist? Did I use my blade? Was it a pistol? You know, how did, how did that change? If I just slipped one way this way, could I have avoided, gotten clipped in the head? You know, his, his man jammies got hooked on my, my nods mount. You know, could I have avoided that if I just grabbed all of it and shoved it this way? You know, so there's a lot of thought that goes through my head after the fact of a hand-to-hand confrontation. Like I really played out my mind a lot, like, what could I have done better? Could I have moved this way or could I have done it differently, you know?

• 2:30:03Shawn Ryan?

  Any type of psychological effect? I mean, I would imagine, I've not done it, so, um, you know, I would imagine the psychological effect that it takes to, to utilize your blade in a combat scenario would be a lot different than shooting somebody at distance or even up close. I mean, the, the, even shooting somebody, you hear the sounds, you hear the moans, you, you know, it's, it's, it's very real. I can imagine utilizing your blade, I mean, feeling them

• 2:30:43Shawn Ryan?

  as they're dying, you know, maybe, maybe you felt blood, but you, you hear the gurgling, you're, you're there. I mean, is there, is there a certain psychological effect that, that

• 2:30:54Shawn Ryan?

  that hits you in the act or, or afterwards? That you don't get with?

• 2:31:02Speaker 03

  I think that they're both equal, you know, because ultimately what it comes down to is, is what you did just, right? And so that's where faith comes into play, that's where morals and your values come into play. Did I do everything justly? Did I do everything according to what I believe God would want me to do? And that's where we start talking about psychological and spiritual battles. Because if I'm, if I'm making just decisions based off of evil, that's presenting itself. I don't have an out, I can't do anything about it, and I need to act now.

• 2:31:48Speaker 03

  There's no thinking about that, it's presented to me in a way that is evil. And if I don't take care of the problem, he's gonna kill one of my buddies or kill that little baby that he's holding. So those do not really cause any issues with, you know, understanding it. I don't think anybody should. I think that's why developing ourselves pre-battle and knowing our values, knowing our morals, knowing our faith, gives us the armor we need to go make the best decision possible and never lose sleep over it again. Cause we had to step up. If evil presents itself right now when I'm driving home and I'm with my family and he doesn't give me an opportunity to love him, then I have to take action to protect what I love the most. You know?

• 2:32:32Speaker 03

  And so from a psychological standpoint, if somebody, anybody, me, is making an unjust choice in the moment of battle because they didn't think through it, and some things are the heat of battle, heat of battle hard to decipher. That's why we need to prepare. I think those are the things that will weigh on us. I think those are the things that will haunt us in a sense, right? And of course, until we reconcile with the fact that we, we did those things. So psychologically for me, I have no regrets. You know, I have no feelings of anything that I've done that either hasn't already been forgiven by God,

• 2:33:15Speaker 03

  or that I did right and I know that I was supposed to do to be put in that position, you know?

• 2:33:21Shawn Ryan?

  Was there any hesitation or apprehension to, to utilize your blade for the first time?

• 2:33:30Speaker 03

  Hmm. No. No, because, you know, when you get to the level that we were striving to be at, you're so in tune with what's the appropriate tool for this problem? That it's just instinctual. You know, it's not anything that I need to overthink or underthink. It's like this is the appropriate tool for the situation that's going on and I'm going to apply it to the best of my ability. And I think that that's the beauty about, the beautiful thing about understanding that spectrum of all these tools, is that we were put in a very unique situation to be able to go and actively head towards the target,

• 2:34:14Speaker 03

  head towards the bad guy, head towards the gunfire. So being able to rep that out night after night after night after night. I mean, I don't know if Eddie said anything very similar to this, but I forget. Half of what I've done. Like, I'll be sitting there, you know, staring at the wall, you know, sipping on tea or whatever. I'm like, oh, yeah, forgot I did that. And so there's this part of my brain that puts it in its place. And I don't really access it unless I need to go learn something there.

• 2:34:41Speaker 03

  Good, bad, or indifferent. But it, at the time, when we were exploring these different tactics, and you evolve as a warrior. You go in, you, you do something, we clear a room, like, man, we could have done that better. So it's the application again and again and again. That's why, right now, if we got into a, a house to house battle, or a on foot scenario, like, the skills that we have as a military, we would crush anybody. Cause we've been doing it for so long, and we understand the, the attitude and the, the knowledge of that. But you improve along the way, and that's what it was for me. If I had to use my blade, or my pistol, or my rifle, it was, it was a learning point. And it was, how do I do this better?

• 2:35:24Speaker 03

  What could I do next time to escalate or de-escalate, depending on the situation? Right? Is this a kid that's attacking me? Is this a full aged male that's attacking me? Is this guy coming at me with a sword? Does this guy have a gun? And where's my role in this to have a successful outcome of this mission? You know, are there ten guys on target? Are there five? Is there one? It all plays a factor in what you're, you, what you're utilizing. Are we still trying to be quiet? You know, are we still trying to keep the element of surprise? You know, all those things. And that's, you know, it's tough, cause I don't like going too much in the tactics. You know, I don't wanna.

• 2:35:59Shawn Ryan?

  I, I totally understand, and, and I'll respect that. The one thing that Eddie did say was,

• 2:36:07Shawn Ryan?

  don't quote me exact on this, but he had mentioned something along the lines of there, there was so much killing that went on over there that, that.

• 2:36:21Shawn Ryan?

  Pretty much any way you could think of to kill somebody had been done.

• 2:36:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:36:28Speaker 03

  And I think that goes along with the op tempo that we were at and what we were doing to improve on how we were approaching some of these things is that you talk about them. You talk about utilizing the specific tactic, but I think we got in a mode where we were looking for opportunities that would allow us to use that tactic. And that to me just means that we were operating every night, back to back to back to back in some cases. And so as we grew, and again, the threat is, not let anybody forget this, our lives are on the line.

• 2:37:11Speaker 03

  Every single night, we've lost guys in the midst of these battles. We were literally losing dudes, one after one after one of our brothers. So we're going into these targets, trying to figure out how to be the best that we can be to mitigate these things from happening. Not to mention we're going after bad dudes that are blowing people up and killing innocent people. So we were going in being like, how do we just reach the fullest version of ourselves in these scenarios in all ways possible? And when you do that, naturally you have to explore different things that are going to allow you to reach a different potential. You can't grow if you don't try to push a limit here or, you know, clear a smaller

• 2:37:55Speaker 03

  room with a pistol or get into a hand to hand confrontation when you're still trying to be quiet, you know? All of those different elements are, you know, yeah, they just become a part of what you're doing. And I think, what did Eddie say? He was like, uh, kill addicts? That what he said? He did. One of his chapters, I think. You know, which is a crazy thing. It's hard for me, man. It really is like I'll get emotional if I go into this, but like mine and Eddie's relationship and like what we did and how we experienced that. You know, I believe, looking back on it, like we were doing things from the right place. We were there for the right reasons. We wanted to be out there doing the right thing and ridding the world world of evil.

• 2:38:38Speaker 03

  But man, was it intense, you know? And night after night like that, you know, you just become kind of sharpened. And also you have to compartmentalize what's going on. You know what I mean? It just becomes a part of you, you know? So, yeah, I don't know how else to explain that, but.

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• 2:39:38Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Dom, so we're back from the break. And basically what I'm doing is I'm going over kind of the departments that you've stood up since you've shown up at Gold Team. So we went over R and D. We went over combatives. The last one that you are taking on is sniper, you know? And so what I'd like to do is just dig in a little bit on how you developed that skill coming from the. Regular SEAL teams into development group and where it went.

• 2:40:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, the coolest thing about the sniper, not only did I always want to do it and it was a passion of mine, but at Team Two, I was able to implement it quite a bit, you know, more than normal. You know, I had my, my recy gun set up. I had things that I was thinking about doing. I thought like that. I thought like a recy would, kind of looking at routes. That took a whole different shape on when I got to the command though. And the idea of being the first on the target, it really excited me. And also knowing where the route was, because you always hear the guys that, you know, they're trudging in the back. They don't know where they're going. They're sweating. They're like complaining and they're just, you know, aggravated.

• 2:40:50Speaker 03

  But the guy up front knows what's happening and I really wanted to get that right as far as taking guys down the right route. Going to push in and see if a route was good or not, and then coming back and letting everybody know. So I kind of really enjoyed the opportunity to be out front with recy. And I always really appreciated just knowing what was going on, you know, the innovation with the route planning, the innovation with how the technology works and helping us, you know, working with EOD up front. That was another piece. That was where I got to know Lewis really, really well, was working up front. You know, working with the bomb detection and, you know, things that we were looking for on routes. I mean, me and him did a lot of work there.

• 2:41:32Speaker 03

  So I think from the standpoint of the command, again, here are these basic things that you need. But now we're going to dive into very specific specialties of this is the type of long range shooting that we're going to do. This is the type of sustainment training we're going to do. Dudes took it seriously. Like, I mean, no joke. You're like, whoa, like Ratsloff, Thomas Ratsloff, Rat. He was on the Hilo in Extortion Seventeen, but I can't think of the word sniper and not think of him. He was immersed into that life and that way of thinking. Everything he did revolved around being a better precision shooter. He was up early, leaving later than everybody else, spending extra time on the range.

• 2:42:17Speaker 03

  He was down talking to guys about ammo types and gun types and platforms and he was just in it. He was the, he was the apex of what we all were like, wow, okay, like if you're going to get your act together in sniper stuff, you're going to follow this guy.

• 2:42:31Speaker 03

  So having really good mentors, which really is the culmination for anything that we do. We have somebody that we can emulate and somebody that we can look up to to say, "You're reaching a whole nother level of this that I didn't even know existed." And I think that that's what the command was for me as far as a recce standpoint, was that I grew and I really took to, I was the point man at team two as well, but we didn't really have like a recce element. But I always wanted to jump up front. If it was ever a volunteer, if there was an opportunity, I was the number one man. I was gonna lead, you know? So I was always thinking about, what does my gun need to be like if I'm gonna be up front? You know, you get the classic Vietnam era guys that always had the shotgun, you know, rolling through the brush really thick so that if he had something close, he could engage. And so I thought like that, well, I'm up front, what do I need? I'm up front, it's gonna be different.

• 2:43:16Speaker 03

  It's gonna be lighter, it's gonna be more nimble. I need to be able to climb, move, crawl, get into stuff. So I really just embraced that way of thinking. And then, of course, the last thing that I'll say is that with all the operating that we were doing and the reps that we were getting night after night after night, is that a lot of the times it benefited to be up front, getting on target first or climbing. So, you know, I knew that was a part of the recce job is that if you were gonna be the first one, you were probably gonna be the most, more than likely to get into an engagement. And again, you can't chase it. So there was elements of that, that like, you know, you miss here, you gain there.

• 2:43:57Speaker 03

  But the majority of the time, the recce crew is gonna run into people first. And I liked that about that position.

• 2:44:04Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. You know, I'm starting to see a commonality in the areas of the, the, the, the areas of operation that you chose to take part in. And at first, it didn't make a whole lot of sense. I'm thinking, all right, he's doing combatants, but he also is really into the sniper stuff. So you wanna be the farthest away and the closest. And what I'm picking up is you really, it seems to me, you really like to operate in very, very small teams. Snipers, very small teams, possibly two, you know, maybe even just one person. You know, combatants, you and another, and another combatant. The, the stuff that you did.

• 2:44:51Shawn Ryan?

  I don't want to name the location at SEAL Team Two that really interested you with the MI6 course, very, very individualized. You're talking about clearing, clearing homes, clearing buildings with two people. The R and D stuff seems like a very isolated position. Am I wrong on this?

• 2:45:07Speaker 03

  No, I don't think so. I, I think that there's a nature of, you know, even when you do anything, you only find a couple of people that really, you know, do it well with you or in that operating environment. I think it was more along the lines of just, again, the dynamic of a warrior of realizing, you know, I like putting precision shots where they belong. And it wasn't that I wanted to be far away as a sniper, but it was just the fact that I can shoot better. I have a different mission set. It was really about kind of that ability to hide and sneak and, and get in. And the combatives aspect is up front, close in your face. So really they're two opposite ends of the spectrum. So it's kind of like knowing both of those. I went to breacher school too.

• 2:45:51Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, did you?

• 2:45:52Speaker 03

  I just wasn't as good as Eddie was. But I knew how to breach. I mean, I, I would pick up a slide or do any of that stuff. It just, I took to the, the recce more.

• 2:46:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:02Speaker 03

  It just excited me and I wanted to be out front and, and leading, you know?

• 2:46:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Let's move into some of the deployments. And I know this is going to be tough on you, but, so we've gone through all the departments that you're involved in and, and your specialties. Let's talk about back to, let's rewind a little bit. You showed up to Gold Team. We talked about the culture a little bit. We talked about what it was like showing up. Let's talk about your first deployment at Gold Team.

• 2:46:32Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:46:33Shawn Ryan?

  How did that, what are some of the things that you saw that were different than your deployments at SEAL Team Two?

• 2:46:47Speaker 03

  Right away, just the intensity of it and the seriousness of of recognizing that you're with guys that have done this for a while and guys that have it pretty dialed in. There's a weight that pushes you, forces you to rise to the occasion where you cannot slack off. You cannot fall back. You cannot let one detail go missed. You know, like that's the level of precision that you're looking around at these guys that spend all night working on their gear, all night thinking about stuff. So it's a full immersion into this ability to be the best that we can be. And, you know, Eddie and I, we actually stayed, were we in the same room? I think maybe he was across from me.

• 2:47:32Speaker 03

  I think we probably would have killed each other if we were in the same room. But we almost threw blows too, a couple of times. But out of love, really, at the end of the day, it was just out of like silly stuff. But we grew together, but being on that first deployment, it just really opened my eyes on on what a warrior looked like. You know, and I had guys I looked up at the team too. Like being on deployment with some of these dudes, where I'm like, okay, this guy knows what he's doing. This guy, you know, a couple of guys had, you know, marks on their guns that were like, they were running out of space already, right? So I'm like looking at these things like, okay, this is, this is legit, you know? So I think it's just the level of intensity and seriousness that was that was put to it.

• 2:48:16Speaker 03

  Of course, we always find a way to make things lighthearted and relax a little bit on deployments. But I think that's the first thing that I remember. And just the op tempo where it felt like every night, every other night is what it was, you know? And when we would get shut down for a couple of days for whatever reason, you know, it would feel like an eternity, you know, three days felt like forever. You know, we're always kind of on edge of, on edge in a good way too, but when are we going, right? Because you're always on the call. You're always like waiting for that, that call to go off. And so knowing that every night was a possibility, it just puts you in a different level. I think that that's why it's good that we're out and back so quick.

• 2:48:57Speaker 03

  So that is just the intensity of the first deployment and, you know, growing in that situation.

• 2:49:05Speaker 03

  Hendo, which really, really great mentor of mine, one of the best fighters that I know. I jumped into the mat room right away on deployment and I got to spar with him and the first time I sparred with him, within about a week of being on deployment, popping right in the nose, like blood everywhere. Like as soon as I got in the ring, it was like bam, I'm like, okay, this is how fighting looks at this level. You know, these guys take this seriously. So it forced me to be accountable to be like, I gotta get my act together here. And that's kind of why I took combative so seriously is I had a great mentor. I had somebody that really cared about being the best they could be with hands on stuff. And every situation was kind of like that, you know, you walked into this environment and then you would get punched in the nose

• 2:49:50Speaker 03

  and start bleeding, realizing like, this is real, I gotta step up. But everything forces you to level up when you're around that type of precision and excellence. And I think that that's what the first deployment showed me. This is what you should expect, this and more of what guys are capable of.

• 2:50:06Shawn Ryan?

  How long was the deployment?

• 2:50:08Speaker 03

  I mean, they range from, you know, one to four months.

• 2:50:11Shawn Ryan?

  One to four months?

• 2:50:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, just depending on what it was, where it was. And literally sitting here thinking I'd have to like go back and look like I even forget like how many deployments, like short ones, long ones, back to back to back, they're just, they happened really, really quick, quick, quick turnarounds. I think the timelines have since changed a little bit, but again, that's stuff that I'm like, whatever, whatever it is now, it is.

• 2:50:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. What is, uh, what were some, what was the, what were some of the missions? You know, what was the objective?

• 2:50:44Speaker 03

  Well, we're good at direct actions. I mean, everything kind of surrounded that. There was some specialty stuff in between, but the majority of it was mounting up to go hit a target. Capture, kill.

• 2:51:00Speaker 03

  That was the name of the game. You know, I always said kill, capture in my brain because I'm thinking I might have to kill you. And then if you don't need me to, then I'm going to capture you. So that was the thread throughout the entire time. It was that that was always on the table and understanding, you know, what's the threat going to be? Scariest environment imaginable is always what we laughed and joked about. You know, about going out the door like it's going to be the scariest and worst thing possible. That's what you visualize. That way I'm up here ready for it. And then when I confront it or actually hit the reality, it's not as bad as I was making it out to be. And, you know, you do that intentionally.

• 2:51:44Speaker 03

  It's like swinging two bats before you go onto the plate, right? You're you're swinging heavy, heavy weight so that when you go up when the reality one is a lot lighter and you do it a lot faster. So I think that I carried that idea all the way through, but it was really just kicking indoors in in different ways again and again and again. Our our tactics and our ability to evolve was almost instantaneous. Like we would come up with stuff on the fly, you know, and me and Eddie, I always say me and Eddie because it's just really easy to relate to, but me and Eddie would just look at each other and nods and be like, that worked, but we're going to do that next time. We would talk about it afterwards and like, hey, that was awesome. Let's do that again.

• 2:52:24Speaker 03

  Um, breaching, I mean, man, Eddie pioneered like several different tactics like right in front of my eyes. You know, that people weren't doing, weren't thinking about, weren't implementing. And Eddie was just like, I'm going to try this, you know? And then it would be an amazing thing that other guys would do throughout the time. And so it's almost like we were part of this this pioneering earlier on as well as these things evolving as the enemy kind of changed like an amoeba, so did we. And we were kind of just staying on their heels always trying to not let them get too far out ahead of whatever their tactics were. Houseborne IEDs, their direct action tactics, um, a lot of little weird nuances that would just pop up

• 2:53:07Speaker 03

  out of nowhere, then it would be a thing and then it would go away, you know? And one of those examples, uh, in fact, and again, I'm about, I'll bounce around from from deployment to deployment. I don't, I have a hard time keeping an idea like very systematically saying which ones were which, but. When Mike and Nate were killed, we knew that the guys at some point knew there was like a phase line, they knew we were there. And so what they would do is that they would, they would take AK, they would spray the AK, I think one mag and then flip it and then do another mag. And then they would run at us and blow themselves up. You know, so it was like this very violent, they would all do it together, they would burst the ammo

• 2:53:52Speaker 03

  and then run and try to take somebody with them. And it got to the point where that, that almost got sort of comical because we knew it was going to happen. We kind of predicted it like, oh, watch this, we'll back up a little bit. Okay, there goes the first one. And then, you know, so it, in a sense, right, that's kind of like the sentiment that happened a couple of times. But at the same time, you know, some of their tactics, we had to learn the hard way, you know, about what they did and what they implemented. But we would change very rapidly and stay above that. So a lot of learning was going on.

• 2:54:24Shawn Ryan?

  What would be an example of one of their tactics that you had to learn the hard way on?

• 2:54:29Speaker 03

  Uh, probably, okay, I always, always have a tough time because I don't want to navigate down a road that, that puts anybody at risk. But I think

• 2:54:48Speaker 03

  stuff they were doing inside of the building internally with houseborne IEDs.

• 2:54:53Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:54:55Speaker 03

  I think that's one that's pretty obvious to the world, you know, that these guys are cowards. And they are cowards. I mean, they don't want to come out and fight. And most of them will just find a way out of it. And I think the houseborne IED was one that we, you know, it's like, what do you do if the house is rigged and you go in and clear the structure? You know, you just have to continue to assault unless you see something. And that's why we spent so much time in that. But that's how we lost Lewis. You know, we lost Lewis in a houseborne IED. And that was one thing we're like, okay, well, obviously we have to take that into consideration, you know. So, yeah.

• 2:55:40Shawn Ryan?

  Was that your first loss that really hit you?

• 2:55:47Speaker 03

  I mean, it was definitely the closest loss ever for me. Um, in a lot of ways, because he was like my best friend, you know?

• 2:56:00Speaker 03

  But I would say, yeah, I was, it wasn't the first. There was multiple before, you know, we had lost Adam, we had lost, um, I'm sorry, Adam was after the fact. We lost Mike and Nate and Mike and Nate were like three days before. You know, so that was, uh, that was already like a punch to the gut. We're already kind of in that mode of like, okay, you know, what do we do to kind of pull ourselves forward and, and think about this and process it. And then it was like three days later, Louis was killed, you know?

• 2:56:36Shawn Ryan?

  Do you want to go into that at all? Or do you want to leave it?

• 2:56:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I mean, I will for sure. It definitely changed my life, you know, Louis specifically. And just getting that intimate with somebody and having them, you know, Eddie, obviously, I think, talked about this as well, because Eddie and me, Eddie and Louis were like the three man team that we just had so much fun together, so effective. It wasn't even like Louis was an EOD guy, you know? He was like another team guy to us, you know? He was just so intertwined with our abilities and in some cases he could outshoot us. But, uh, you know, that night where that tactic kind of, you know, bit us was that we were up,

• 2:57:24Speaker 03

  you know, on this, on the structure. And I was actually off outside, on the outside perimeter. And Eddie and him were, were up close. And it was funny because Eddie. You know, Louis was gonna flex where he needed to go, whether it was with Alpha or Bravo. And then Eddie got pulled in because he was a breacher. So I was on the outside perimeter with where typically Eddie would be. But he got pulled in there because he had something specific that he was up to. And then as they were on the edge, you know, there was a little bit of back and forth with what happened. With the guys inside and I think they knew the gig was up at that point. And I think somebody had tossed a frag in the door and it didn't even. Didn't even have a chance to go off. It was like they knew.

• 2:58:09Speaker 03

  And that's when the house came down. And when they pulled back, you know, Louis was right there on the corner. And you know, that I heard it. I heard the explosion. And immediately we were like right into action. We started moving towards the opening of the compound. And I just remember coming around the corner and just seeing just, I mean, it was like.

• 2:58:34Speaker 03

  It was like a building came down, you know, and people are mangled.

• 2:58:39Speaker 03

  There's dust everywhere. It was just like, I just saw this house and this structure and now it's all in. You know, a pile of concrete. And when the first thing I came up on was the dog. I came up on Digo and man, that little.

• 2:58:55Speaker 03

  He was like, I went to grab onto him and help him out and he tried to bite me. And of course he just got a building that fell on him. So I don't blame him for that. But it was like, as I was trying to help him, he's trying to bite me. I'm trying to pull his legs out. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna come back to you. I'm gonna try to see if any of the other guys need help. And so I helped up Benito. And you know, he lost both of his femurs, clean break, both femurs, done. You know, he couldn't even stand up. And as I'm kind of assessing all these guys, you know, they're just all pulling rocks off of them and trying to dust themselves off and figure out what the heck happened. And I'm kind of like looking into their eyes like, okay, is he all right? He looks a little banged up. He's moving. Benito was the worst in that scenario. He was screaming and.

• 2:59:43Speaker 03

  I'm trying to just assess, right? There's so much going on. And I was also thinking, okay, is there a secondary device that could go off? You know, that for whatever reason, the hair was standing up on the back of my neck like that could be an option. And I had seen these wires moving all the way through and I kind of like had stopped to back, is this possible that there's something else rigged up here that we're not seeing? And that kind of made me pause for like 15 seconds and that felt like an eternity. Cause I was trying to look, obviously this building just came down. And then, right after I kind of had that pause, I was like, where's Lewis? I was like, where is he? I'm like, I don't see him anywhere here. And I looked left and I looked right and I was just like, where's Lewis?

• 3:00:28Speaker 03

  And I started yelling, you know, like, where is he?

• 3:00:31Speaker 03

  And then I went to the corner and I think Eddie had like grabbed onto me and been like, he was right here. And then we both started to try to look, you know,

• 3:00:46Speaker 03

  in that area. But the

• 3:00:51Speaker 03

  everyone was just chaos, right? So everybody's trying to figure it out. And at that point, you know, because we didn't see him, we're like, well, is he underneath, you know, the rubble? And me and one of the newer guys, which was Augment, we were looking underneath and we both pretty much spotted him at the same time. And I'm just thinking, help my buddy, help my buddy, what can I do to help him?

• 3:01:21Speaker 03

  And we eventually, you know, tried to pull him out. There was like a little bit of a gap, you know, there. And you know, obviously it wasn't doing anything. So we had a guy that had equipment that was able to actually like lift up the entire first floor ceiling, which was like that thick. I mean, it was crazy thick. We even tried getting on it and like moving stuff around, which like we had to try, right? We had to at least try to do something. We were kind of shifting all the options as we were communicating with everybody with what was going on. And eventually we're able to get him out.

• 3:01:58Speaker 03

  And we were just doing the assessment on him, the doc was on him. And we were trying to just do everything we could to, you know, give him all the support we possibly could in that scenario, not knowing exactly what the extent of the damage was. And at that point, you know, we were like, all right, we got to get him on a Hilo. And we started calling all the life lights and everything. And it was almost like a blur after that, honestly. Um, I know we got him on, you know, a stretcher and we got him on the Hilo. And I'm, and I'm praying that something,

• 3:02:38Speaker 03

  that I got some type of feedback, you know?

• 3:02:46Speaker 03

  So he took off on the Hilo. And it was kind of like just continuous prayer there as we kind of uncloseted everybody else. Got everybody loaded up, uh, in the vehicles. And then it was just waiting

• 3:03:04Speaker 03

  for an update, you know, trying to get some type of clarity on what happened.

• 3:03:13Speaker 03

  And I'd say that probably the toughest moment was, you know, being in there after the fact. And it was kind of like a semi debrief, but not really, because, you know, we, we had understood the way, we're just trying to do everything we can to support all the guys that were, you know, having to be pushed to the hospital. And, but, you know, when we got word back

• 3:03:38Speaker 03

  that, uh, you know, he didn't make it.

• 3:03:42Speaker 03

  I want to say that I just went out and dropped my knees.

• 3:03:50Speaker 03

  I'm sorry, Dom. Yeah.

• 3:03:54Speaker 03

  But there's beauty that comes from all of it. I mean, every single bit of it is just going through that intimate battle, the friendship. You start to understand, you know, what brotherhood is.

• 3:04:16Speaker 03

  And, you know, that loss is just impacts you in a different way. And anybody that's experienced loss in any way, you know, knows the weight of that, especially for somebody that they care about. And it was a lot of weight on me just to think about that. You know, it crushed Eddie, it crushed all the guys. I mean, it didn't make it easy. I mean, it was a really tough few days after Mike and Nate just died and then we lost Louis. You know, there was a lot of moments where we leaned on each other heavily. A lot of tears shed, you know, around the fire and just trying to reconcile with what happened.

• 3:04:58Speaker 03

  But also building up in ourself, like, this is why we need to continue to do this. Because there's bad guys out there that want to do bad things to people. Then we've got to be that shield. We've got to be willing to stand in the breach. And we all knew that. Louis knew that, I knew that, we all do. Everybody that lost their life did. Everybody on Extortion Seventeen did. And it's that confrontation to it, but it's also supporting each other in that moment. And eventually I was, you know, they told us and gave us the notification, but I ended up taking him home. You know, I ended up getting on the angel flight back with him. So it was me and him the whole time.

• 3:05:43Speaker 03

  So tough to talk about this when you're, when you're in it, right? And these experiences. But the one thing that I told him,

• 3:05:53Speaker 03

  and that was important to me, was, because he loved freediving and spearfishing. That was like his one thing that I could tell you, like to the, to the grave, he would have done it. And he taught me a lot. He was actually using me as like his training dummy in, in Iraq when we were over there. And I would go retrieve the weight on the bottom of the pool for me. And he'd laugh at me because I'm trying to pull this 45 pound weight back up. But he did a lot of freediving and he taught me a lot about breath holding. And we talked about all the spearfishing we were gonna do.

• 3:06:25Speaker 03

  And when I was with him at that last moment before we left country, I made a vow to him. I was like, hey, man, I was like, I'm gonna take up spearfishing.

• 3:06:36Speaker 03

  And freediving. And it was something that was on his heart so heavily. So I kind of like pulled that into my life. And it kind of became a part of me, you know? And so today, like even if anybody ever hears me talk about spearfishing or freediving or any of that's because of him. And there's a lot of beauty that's, that's come from it. I've, I've met so many people along the way because of that journey. And it's like, okay, Louis, well, you obviously orchestrated this. But then, uh, took him back home, brought him back to Miami. And then went through that whole process. Um, that was really difficult, obviously, to be around his family. But the beautiful thing that happens now is we do a yearly dive out in Miami.

• 3:07:20Speaker 03

  And we go on our, every single year without fail. Uh, we hang out with his parents. We go to church. We go to a mass that's dedicated to him every year. And it's really cool to do. And, uh, you know, Jamie, that's near and dear to my heart.

• 3:07:39Speaker 03

  You know, she was with Louis when he passed away and we keep great comms and we always just, that's like the pinnacle of the year for us to go down there. It's coming up, by the way, so February, it's gonna be, you know, coming up here soon. But we get out there and honor him and it's just a beautiful moment. There's a lot of things like coming from that dive to get down there where we put his ashes and kind of honoring him. You know, that's why, again, honor is so important to me about living this life and doing right by him in the way that would be good. But that was definitely the toughest, you know, for me, was losing Louis because we were so close. We became such great friends so quickly. And we just, yeah, we were sparring partners, worked out together, but yeah.

• 3:08:21Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for sharing that.

• 3:08:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:08:23Shawn Ryan?

  You know,

• 3:08:26Shawn Ryan?

  I know his wife is a avid listener and viewer and um,

• 3:08:34Shawn Ryan?

  do you have anything you'd like to say to her?

• 3:08:37Speaker 03

  Just that

• 3:08:39Speaker 03

  I love her.

• 3:08:51Speaker 03

  I think anytime that we think we're tough, you know, or

• 3:08:58Speaker 03

  you know, we have something we're dealing with that's tough, I always, always use her

• 3:09:07Speaker 03

  to remind myself

• 3:09:12Speaker 03

  how tough

• 3:09:16Speaker 03

  they had to be in a lot of those moments.

• 3:09:22Speaker 03

  And even still to this day, not like it gets any easier, but just that I I probably look to her for more strength.

• 3:09:35Speaker 03

  Then I think she realizes, but you know, that's, that's the part of understanding, you know, brotherhood and the weight of it is that we gain so much even though they're gone. And God will work in that way. You know, even with Jamie and I and other relationships and other people. And if anybody listening has lost anybody, God brings other people together through that loss. And I think that that's what we all have to have faith in, and that's the beauty of it as well. As difficult as it is, it's there's for a reason. So, you know, she definitely has done that for me.

• 3:10:15Shawn Ryan?

  You, um,

• 3:10:18Shawn Ryan?

  you commemorate your comrades

• 3:10:24Shawn Ryan?

  in a very honorable way and continue to do so, you know, I don't.

• 3:10:32Shawn Ryan?

  Everybody coax in their own way and, and relives the memories, but I've been, you know, watching from a distance for a long time and the way you commemorate Adam and, and honor Lewis and extortion, I mean, it's, it's, um,

• 3:10:54Shawn Ryan?

  cumbersome, but, um, in a,

• 3:11:00Shawn Ryan?

  I like saying it is what I'm trying to say. You do a,

• 3:11:09Shawn Ryan?

  you do it with a lot of honor and a lot of respect and, and, um, it's just nice to see.

• 3:11:15Speaker 03

  I definitely try, you know, I really do because it's their life, you know, and, you know, when I was going through that process after the fact, you know, when you see so many different people that are left behind, you're like, man, where, what's, what needs to be filled in their lives or nothing will be, but ultimately.

• 3:11:38Speaker 03

  What are they missing and what do they need? And when you see young daughters and sons left behind and wives, you know, it hits you in a different way to be like, man, that's where a lot of like seeking all this of like, Lord, what is my why? Why are we here? You know, why, why this? Like, what's supposed to come of this? And I couldn't help but to hear that voice in my, in my head. And throughout the time of being at all those funerals to be like, you've got to step up and honor their life with everything that you've got. Willing, literally being willing to lay down your life to, to live in their shoes and honor them. And I did it as much as I possibly could.

• 3:12:22Speaker 03

  And I'll never forget, you know, when we were on a plane and we were coming back from one of the funerals of extortion 17. And one of the widows that had lost somebody,

• 3:12:42Speaker 03

  I, I looked at and I said, this was actually another widow that was previous to, uh, to extortion. So it happened before. And so we were like, hey, listen, you know, we're always going to be here for you. And she was like, yeah, that's what everybody on the Hilo told me. And so the weight of that comment was like, are we really doing a good enough job as a community and as a brotherhood to make sure that these families have what they need? And it will never be enough, you know, all the way through time and warriors and battle and war. And it will never be enough, ever. There's no, there's no way we could ever repay or give back

• 3:13:26Speaker 03

  what we should be doing for the children that don't have these fathers, that raised their hand at an early age.

• 3:13:35Speaker 03

  But I think we need to try. And I certainly think we need to recognize comments like that. How does our culture? And I think we've done a good job, you know? And it's a lot of it's starting to slip away with the generational, you know, growth here. But I think we've done a decent job at looking at our history and looking at our leadership over time, saying, hey, these were important moments in history. These are really important people that we need to recognize and memorialize because of their acts and their efforts. And we have to make sure that we have a duty and an accountability to that as citizens, as veterans, especially if you know somebody that has been lost.

• 3:14:19Speaker 03

  What are you doing on a yearly basis, a monthly basis, a daily basis to live out a life that is going to teach somebody else about what they stood for? That's really important. If we forget about how we got here, then you don't actually appreciate the freedom that you have. This has all been purposefully driven. I mean, I was with my boy in the gym this morning, Honor and Lewis. You know, we picked the Honor workout today. We were like, what are we gonna do? Like, well, we gotta do this. You know, it was literally this morning. So teaching my boy that too, like the whole way through the movements. I'm like, hey, bud, like, think about how awesome he was, you know? Think about his cinnamon skin and dark hair and big heart and huge smile and, you know,

• 3:15:02Speaker 03

  like, like, bring that to the present, because that's really what memorial is. It's bringing what was to the right now. And, you know, things like Halloween, which we just had, you know, All Hallows' Eve, All Souls' Day, All Saints' Day, right? The, the fact that we, as a church, memorialize the dead is so critically important that literally at the dinner table, you know, we are talking about our previous family that's not here, that they're, they're in.

• 3:15:37Speaker 03

  You know, they've been lifted up. And how are we memorializing them to remember our family, our veterans, our friends? We don't do that enough. We don't absolutely do that enough. I agree with that. So anyway, you know, just my point is, is that we got to do a great job of honoring. Honor is not a word I take lightly, you know, to be honorable, to live an honorable life, to really live out each day. Because you have to, your beliefs and everything that you're living for take root and they they culminate in who you are. So if honor is a part of that, the value of your life will go through the roof if you actually appreciate how you got there. And for me, that's the experiences I've had with Louis, Mike, Nate, all the guys on the

• 3:16:20Speaker 03

  Hilo, everybody from the time that I got in, they gave me something. They gave me a gift. They gave me a gift of recognizing how precious, how awesome, how beautiful this life is, you know, and how fast it can be taken away from you. You know, so it was like an awakening. You know, and a lot of senses like I don't, I don't expect, I didn't expect to be here. You know, I really didn't. You know, I think Eddie can probably say the same thing if he hasn't said it one way or another, because we were so close. It's hard not to talk about Eddie talking about this stuff because we went through so many of the same doors being like, you know, like didn't know if we're going to come out of that one. But it's almost like we shouldn't be here. So every day is a gift and what we do with that gift is critically important. And that's anybody listening.

• 3:17:03Speaker 03

  You know, if we're still breathing, there's a purpose for it and hopefully we're honoring those that are gone before us with our lives. Yeah, yeah. Did your son know him? My son did not know him, no. He didn't? No. Louis was supposed to be at my wedding with my wife on that, coming home from that deployment. And so we didn't even have children yet. We were, it was oh eight, so my son was born oh nine, year after. They know, they know him now as much as, you know, they didn't meet him in person, obviously, but. Yeah. We try to do our best. Well, God bless them. Yeah, for sure.

• 3:17:53Shawn Ryan?

  Let's talk about your relationship with Adam Brown.

• 3:17:57Shawn Ryan?

  And how that kind of started. Obviously, it started in sniper school back at SEAL Team 2, it sounds like. But how did it develop?

• 3:18:05Speaker 03

  Well, getting to go through green team with him, obviously, we started to work together more and more. And, you know, we were sparring together, fighting together, you know, one of the cool things that we really did was we did some R and D stuff together. So we actually went and developed, we worked with ArcTyrx, we worked with a couple of different companies to develop some layering systems. Me and Adam did a lot of waterproof bags together. So we actually worked on a few projects that still to this day I have relationships with. I'm like, oh, yeah, I remember us meeting with Adam and he liked that stuff, too. He was very much an R and D gear guy. And if I look at Adam, it wasn't so much from the standpoint that I think that he really wanted to tweak the gear as it was him wanting to

• 3:18:48Speaker 03

  take care of the guys. Like genuinely, I could probably say selfishly, I was more interested in doing the gear when he was like, I genuinely just want to pour my heart onto this because I know it's going to make the guys better, you know? And that was who Adam was, you know? And I learned a lot of that through him. And again, that that brotherly correction that Adam had no problem, you know, talking about. There's more situations and scenarios that I can count that we were walking through the hallway and he would bump into me. And I think this started in sniper school, but I would always give him a hard time. Like, what side am I on? Am I on your right, your good side or your bad side? You know, then I got to the point where I was going out in the hallway and actually nudging him on purpose. Like, dude, why are you running into me? And we were just laughing off. That

• 3:19:33Speaker 03

  was kind of like, you know, a thing between us. And he just poured his heart out. I've gone to, you know, a couple of dinners with his wife and him, and he talked about his children. That was something that marks him. And now, looking back at it, back, oh, well, of course, Christ was a part of your life. You had the love that you knew you needed to apply to your children. That's why they got brought up. Where even somebody that really doesn't mean much to, you could tell there was something different there about why he did it, what he talked about. You know, there was instances, I was like, hey, Adam, we're going to the bar. He's like, dude, I got a ball game with my son I gotta go to. You know, or he would be like, I'm doing something else with my children.

• 3:20:17Speaker 03

  And at the time, you're like, yeah, but brotherhood, all these things, this is important. Like, let's go. And, and there was a sense of almost irritation. And I can't say that I like overtly got irritated with, with him. But that was the feeling with anybody, right? Oh, I got this other thing to do. It's like, but that's not what we're doing. Yeah. And we're a brotherhood and we're a gang and we stick together no matter what. And that, I think, to a fault. And because we don't stick to biblical principles, because we don't get in the word every day, because we don't recognize the love of Christ in our life, we, we veer away from, you know, the truth of what we're supposed to be doing. And it kind of creeps in, but he had it. It was already there, it was already a spark in him, that, that was already in him.

• 3:21:01Speaker 03

  And so now the beauty of that now, for me, looking back is like, oh, of course, that's why, you know, very strong. And he was even bringing guys to the faith, you know? Really? He was bringing guys, Kevin Houston was one of those dudes, you know, Juicy. You know, Juicy and I did a lot together on gear development and working together. And, you know, I was with all of those guys beforehand on the Hilo aspect, because I was actually there, I wasn't on the op with Adam, but I was on the same location that he was when, when Adam was killed. And I was actually going out with those guys every night or every other night that I could, because I was working in a different station.

• 3:21:45Speaker 03

  So I was working there next to them. I would get on when I could, developed a really good relationship with, with all of the guys. And I was actually supposed to go on that op that night. Really? Yep, I was supposed to go. I was, I was teeter tottering between two different, it was, it was the guys, it was the boys and this other thing. And, uh, That was a cool part of where I was at, but it was also difficult and challenging. So I was waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting. And then finally was told, we're not going. I had all my kit ready to go. My gun was ready to go. And I had been hitting the guys up saying, hey, are you still good? Yeah, we're still good. You can still come on. We've got space for you.

• 3:22:25Speaker 03

  And then I jumped in my truck and I went as fast as I possibly could to get to the airstrip. And I was hauling and I got to the gate and I turned around the corner and the Chinook was going, just lifting. And I'm like, ah, I want to go out with the guys, you know? And so I ended up watching that, you know, and listening to that op the whole night through the radio. That's why when I heard when the eagle was down, I didn't know exactly what was going on, but I was trying to figure out like, who was it? Who was it? Who was it? You know, you want to know? And then when they had gotten back in and I was already on the runway when they were getting ready to land, I was already there, you know? So I pulled the truck up to the helo and I remember getting out, talking to Craig Vickers

• 3:23:10Speaker 03

  right away, trying to figure out. So I pulled the truck up. I didn't actually back up to the heli yet. They all got out and I remember Craig Vickers came right up to me. He's like, dude, I got shot in the arm. And he like looked at me and he showed me the hole in his arm. And I like grabbed him like, you all right? He's like, I'm fine. You know, I was like, cool. All right. And it's like, because I knew somebody was down and it was Adam. And just trying to figure out, what are you doing in that scenario? That's what we're all trying to figure and do. I think the helo was powering down and I eventually pulled the truck up and helped, you know, get Adam out. And yeah, just, you know, another experience.

• 3:23:54Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I don't know if I'll get another opportunity to interview somebody that was close to him. And so.

• 3:24:02Shawn Ryan?

  Would you like to describe what you know about what happened that night?

• 3:24:06Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah. He was a go-getter. And I know you know that. He would always put himself in positions that were not always the best ones to protect and to help everybody else. And that was one of those nights. And the guys were above a room and they were above a structure that was getting shot through. And I think that that's when Craig got hit in the arm. And so Adam like jumped into

• 3:24:48Speaker 03

  action and tried to basically flank wherever that position was. And in pure Adam Brown fashion, I think he like shimmyed up a tree, like wedged himself between a tree and a wall and tried to get in the best position possible to get an angle in there. And right at the time that he was getting to the top of his position, somebody came out and just sprayed the wall. And he got hit right in the side. So, um, I wouldn't have expected anything less from him to try to find the one spot that you could shimmy up and try to get an angle on. Uh, but that was, you know,

• 3:25:32Speaker 03

  ultimately what happened. And again, there it's tough doing this and recording this because you know, there are a lot of nuances to what's going on. And I want to be very clear about that. Um, there's a lot that I'm not explaining. So don't just take that at face value, no matter who you are listening to this. Um, there, there's so much that goes along with these things. So I know that you were close to Adam, and I think it is important for people to understand that. But what I want people to leave with is the fact that he was like, I'm going to try to help my brothers. I'm going to try to get in the best position possible, and I'm going to go and do what I need to do. And that's exactly what he did. And he went out fighting. And, um, yeah,

• 3:26:13Speaker 03

  that's what he did with everything in his life. He's like, where can I ambush the bad guy? Where can I go out in front of everybody else and try to get in the best position possible?

• 3:26:28Shawn Ryan?

  How was he sent off?

• 3:26:31Speaker 03

  Um, as far as?

• 3:26:33Shawn Ryan?

  Letting him go.

• 3:26:36Speaker 03

  What do you mean?

• 3:26:37Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, did you, did you fly home with him?

• 3:26:39Speaker 03

  Oh, oh, yeah, so.

• 3:26:41Shawn Ryan?

  What does the team do?

• 3:26:42Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, it, it's kind of similar to what, you know, happened with Lewis is that there's always an angel flight, right? There's always, uh, somebody that does escort him back. And, you know, at that point where, you know, we got him off the helo, we were able to, you know, sit down and just as brothers, um, be present with what was going on. You know, what happens when you lose a warrior, um, right in your midst? And we all just went around, you know, talking about the good and, uh, and the righteous and, uh, impactful and the person that we knew Adam was.

• 3:27:26Speaker 03

  And so it was a very powerful moment for all of us to reflect on who we knew him to be.

• 3:27:34Speaker 03

  And it was, again, how do you honor a warrior in the highest degree at such a time? And this is why I always look back and, you know, I talk about my faith so much because I wish I had that level of faith then. Because what we can do to help each other faithfully, even guys that are lost or confused or not even understanding why this is happening, you know, we put our trust in what God's plan is. And I know wholeheartedly that's what he did. You know, he had that level of faith. And if I shared that with him or anybody else at that moment, we know that all of these things happened for a very important reason.

• 3:28:16Speaker 03

  And after we got done, you know, doing that as a brotherhood, you know, at that point, you know, they, they did what they needed to do and, and ultimately he was escorted home.

• 3:28:37Shawn Ryan?

  How fast after

• 3:28:42Shawn Ryan?

  you have a loss are you guys back out?

• 3:28:45Speaker 03

  I mean, it's immediate. I don't think that we, I don't think that that really, you know, a day,

• 3:28:53Speaker 03

  you know, maybe a couple of days. And again, things do get gray after that point, but Mike and Nate was a good example. You know, we lost Mike and Nate on the the fifth and we were right back out three days later. And so if something popped its head up, you know, you also have to understand like we're going after the same guys that are doing things bad. You know, they're the ones that that caused the issue.

• 3:29:21Speaker 03

  Because they're bad. And again, if people weren't bad, then we would go in there and we'd have a conversation with them and we'd say, you know, oh, we're at the wrong house. Have a good night. You know, but when they're bad, they're either we either catch them in the act and or they're planning on their next, you know, evil act. So I think it's just a a matter of what is necessary and what's needed. You know, as tough as it is, that's why it's important to be able to focus even in those moments. You know, it does suck, but once it's time to get up and go, it's like life. You know, are we going to spend time? Are we going to spend too long?

• 3:30:07Speaker 03

  You know, sitting here contemplating what happened without really living and without really getting up and keep moving forward. I think that's the key for anybody with any loss is that you've got to keep moving. Whoever died didn't want you sitting around doing nothing either, you know, and so we have to embrace that idea of like, how do we use their life to the best of our ability and get right back in the fight? Just like we did overseas, you know, it's, it's kind of easy to take stuff that's overseas and, and, and say that it is that. But I, I want to convey to everybody that it's the same right here, wherever they're at in their life now, you've got to keep moving forward. You've got to keep taking a step.

• 3:30:47Speaker 03

  Because that's when you start revealing, you know, the truth about how you're going to handle this situation, who you are through it, how you're going to make your life better because of it, and what beauty comes of that, you know, that's what we should all be seeking. We definitely can't sit around too long and stare at the wall and feel sorry for ourselves, you know?

• 3:31:08Shawn Ryan?

  Did loss motivate you even more to go do the job?

• 3:31:13Speaker 03

  I wouldn't say the loss motivated me more to do the job. I mean, it kind of was what it was. I didn't get any more vengeful or upset or anything like that because I lost buddies. It was a very matter of fact, like, we chose to do this, we're here, it sucks, we all know the risk, it can happen to any one of us. There are evil guys and bad guys out there we need to continue to go get, you know, and it didn't push me to a vengeful point, but it did, it did weigh on me at least of the weight of what we're doing more each time, you know, and how much the risk was. So every time I came home, I was like, man, that was a blessing to be here. It's a blessing to be home, you know?

• 3:32:00Shawn Ryan?

  Let's move on to extortion.

• 3:32:05Shawn Ryan?

  The big one. Biggest loss in SEAL Team history, ever.

• 3:32:10Speaker 03

  Biggest loss in the War on Terror, period.

• 3:32:15Speaker 03

  Which is crazy to think about, you know?

• 3:32:26Speaker 03

  There was a lot to be learned from that experience, and I, the one thing I will say is that it impacted their culture too, because...

• 3:32:40Speaker 03

  I recognized even in myself, I was like, what does it take to actually honor these men? What does it take for people to open their eyes to honor these men? And in this instance, in some cases, I would say a lot of scenarios where people popped up out of the woodwork and like, well, I had no idea like what went into this, like how many guys we lost. That changed me. That changed the way I thought about what you guys are doing. And I think it did that on a certain level for everybody involved and everybody that kind of knew about the experience. Is it kind of hit in a different way about what guys are doing and what they're really risking?

• 3:33:22Speaker 03

  And extortion seventeen was very unique for me because of the fact that I was supposed to be on that deployment. And I was supposed to be over there with our crew. Now, we were in different teams and that, you know, I was in troop one and I was troop two. So wherever we would have been, we would have been apart. But I would have been over there. I stayed home because my mother had just found out she had cancer. And so for me, and you know this, like not going on deployment makes no sense.

• 3:34:07Speaker 03

  It was like we would have done everything we possibly could to stay with the guys to go. Like everything else was foreign to me, no matter how bad it got. And so my mom initially told me that I'm like, oh, okay. Well, you're going to be good, right? Like going to get treatment or whatever and kind of like handling it in a way that was just trying to figure out, okay, how I'm going to deploy, but then I'm going to be back. And then when I'm back, obviously we'll do whatever we need to do to to help take care of you. And that was the mindset I was in initially. And this is important to explain just because of where I was personally. And maybe it helps somebody, you know, gain some perspective. That's why I talk about all this stuff, by the way, is just hopefully it gains some perspective for somebody and somebody gains strength out of it.

• 3:34:50Speaker 03

  When I found out about my mom, you know, I kind of had multiple conversations with her. She was a nurse and I was like, Mom, how serious is this? And she's like, yeah, it's the first couple of times. She's like, it's not that big of a deal. Like, we're going to work through it. Like, I don't know, we'll be okay. Ask her again. She's like, eh, you know, this seems like something that we need to at least keep an eye on. And so the conversations got more serious and more serious. And then I started to have to really make the decision like, am I going on deployment or not? Cause I want to be able to help my mother if she really needs me. Of course, I want to be able to help my mother. If I think that there's a possibility, I might never see her again. So there was one time I asked her, and I kept asking her in different ways. She was a nurse, she was trying to like, you know, dance around the issue.

• 3:35:36Speaker 03

  I was like, Mom, are you going to be okay? And she looked at me and she's like, I don't know. And I'm like, okay, I know now that I probably should be home with you, helping you and taking care of you. And you could kind of see she was starting to decline a little bit through that process. And it was fast and it was like, whoa, what is going on? I've never not deployed before. My mom's sick. So what do I do here? You know, what's the process that I do? And it was very, it was probably one of the most challenging things, at least professionally that I've had to do, is look the guys in the eye and say, hey, guys, like, I'm not going to deploy. Like, I think being home to take care of my mom is more important. I think, because when you're at that level, it's hard to understand.

• 3:36:20Speaker 03

  I think it's gotten better now, but even still, when you're in that type of brotherhood, it's kind of like, oh, you're not coming with us? Okay. And who knows really how my mom is? I'm still trying to figure it out, you know? I think there was one dude that came up to me and said, you're making a really good decision. You'll never forget the time that you took to go take care of your mother. And everybody else kind of, you know, turned a shoulder to me a little bit. And that's what happens sometimes in the teams is that, you know, guys tend to be very cold about some of those decisions that are made just because you're the one staying back. And so it was a tough choice. But as I started to help my mom, I started to realize very quickly that I made the right

• 3:37:02Speaker 03

  choice because she was starting to decline pretty fast. And so I was home, going back and forth between New England and Virginia, trying to spend as much time with her as I could. And then when she started to get really bad is when I started to be like, okay, I'm gonna spend the majority of my time up there, helping her, taking her visits, helping her at bedside, whatever I really needed to do to help my mom. And my brother stepped up too. My brother Brian was like huge, huge help in that as well, as young as he was. And I want to say he was like seventeen or eighteen or something. So he was just, you know, figuring things out and I was living with my mother. And so we were both trying to do our best to figure this out.

• 3:37:44Speaker 03

  First time this ever happening, really administering to her. And I knew in my heart that I should be doing everything that I can for her because I'll never regret that. You know, I'll never regret trying to be there for her and support her all the way up until the end. And so there was at some point realizing that this was not going to end well. But I had still been up there. And then I was up in New England, and I apologize if I ever get this wrong or it conflicts with other things that I've said, because sometimes it's hard for me to keep my stuff straight in this moment. It was a huge blur when I look back on it. And there is a part of me that does compartmentalize a lot of it.

• 3:38:29Speaker 03

  But I was up in New England and I had gone home for a visit. And I believe at that point, I was like, It was like a day that I wasn't even there for a half a day and found out that something had happened, you know, and it was like the longest drive of my life going into the command, not knowing what healer it was or who it was, you know, just hearing something happen, hoping that I'm going to get to the command and that they're going to tell me like it was a bad crash and everybody's fine and you know, it's all good. And so

• 3:39:13Speaker 03

  as soon as I got that information, I was literally, I believe it was probably like three or four o'clock at night, I don't know, it was early in the morning. And so I drove in like not even really like in my brain, like just wanting to turn around like, oh, this isn't real, like just this didn't really happen. And I was one of the only ones home from Gold. You know, I was one of the only guys. I think there was like one other dude there. And the other guy was back because, well, I'll try to remember that in a second. He had to come back because his, his child was being born. If I forget, let me remind

• 3:39:54Speaker 03

  me to bring that back up. But when I got there and it was chaos. It was absolute chaos. As organized as a tier one unit can be about handling a situation, it was chaos. And I felt like I was having an out of body experience because I see all these names on the board and everything going on and everybody moving around and talking about everything. Man, it's hard not to get emotional about this stuff. But, you know, I'm seeing all my brother's names pop up on the board, you know? And I'm just like walking through this time and

• 3:40:36Speaker 03

  space like in slow motion, you know, while everybody else is, and I get it, they're all stepping up, they want to help and they want to do something to make a difference, you know, but.

• 3:40:46Speaker 03

  Being so closely connected to those guys was like, what is happening right now? You know, and I remember walking in the room and literally coming down the aisle and then coming to the desk and sitting down at like the second seat over. And one of the first questions somebody asked me, because I believe they had a section that was kind of dedicated to the people that were close to them or knew them or something. You know, that's kind of why I went in there.

• 3:41:18Speaker 03

  And I remember the, one of the first questions that somebody asked me, I have no idea who it was. And they came up to me in like a very matter of fact way. They're like, hey, you just need, here, here's the, the list. You need to figure out who you're gonna go notify. And so like I had this whole list of seventeen of these dudes that I knew. That I'm like,

• 3:41:40Speaker 03

  I have to choose,

• 3:41:43Speaker 03

  you know, whose door to knock on.

• 3:41:47Speaker 03

  So that, that moment like crushed me. I, I probably stared at the paper for an hour. Felt like an hour anyway. Cause I'm sitting there thinking to myself, I'm like, what do I do? Like, how do I pick somebody? You know, like all these guys meant something to me. So in the moment, that was so heavy. And then it became a blur, you know, after that about, you know, the, the notifications and having to knock on the door and going through that process of, you know,

• 3:42:26Speaker 03

  just watching the impact. And then all that being said, like as I'm going through that process, because there's so much to unpack in here, you know, and I'm trying to just give you at least you know, general idea of the experience. Is I kind of figured right away, like, well, I need to get back overseas right now. You know, I was like, I gotta do this. And so. I believe that somewhere in the middle of there, dude, I'm, I'm serious. At some point, I probably should write all this stuff down and figure out where I was at in time and space, because it's really hard to keep it together. But at some point, I told my mom, and I believe I flew back up there to take care of her,

• 3:43:10Speaker 03

  like right as all this was kind of getting organized and let her know what's going on. And I looked at her and I said, Mom, I was like, I'm gonna go back overseas. I need to be there with the guys that we just lost a bunch of dudes. And she looked at me and she's like, okay, go ahead, you know? And so I kind of felt like I had got the blessing, even though it was a very odd thing to do. Like, I stayed back home for her. She's not doing great. I want to go overseas to help. And so I made a phone call overseas and said, hey, bros, I'm coming. And I remember some of the leadership was like, oh, thank goodness. We were hoping that you were going to be over here. And I'm not going to speculate with what the sentiment was there or whatever the case was.

• 3:43:50Speaker 03

  I tried my best not to speculate, but I made the phone call to go back. And so I had gone back to Virginia in a short amount of time. So I started packing my bags. I think I had my last bag packed. And then I got a phone call and basically said, you know, your mom's not doing so good. You gotta get back up here. So I jumped back on a plane and I went back home. And then, within about 48 hours of that, my mom passed away. But I got to be at least with her through that process. You know, my brother was there, the family was there by her side. And, uh, and then after that, and knowing that I had to be there for her, you know,

• 3:44:32Speaker 03

  I was going through funeral after funeral after funeral, you know, my mom, and then basically every single funeral that I could possibly make for the guys, you know? I don't know if I missed any. I think I might have missed one or two, but I was just on plane after plane after car drive. Like, it was so, like, it was so crazy to, like, even contemplate, like, how it was. But it was, I mean, I was just in a, I was an out of body, like, just very out of myself type of feeling.

• 3:45:04Speaker 03

  So that, that was difficult. And then even after that, I was still home to help with all of the logistical stuff of, you know, what was what back home, you know, even having to move their gear and do stuff with, with their equipment and understanding, you know, how to reconcile all the stuff that was going on and be there for the families and, and everything else. It was just a lot in a really, really short amount of time. And I think ultimately from all that, like why God has allowed me to experience those things is to understand that his, his graces and glory are abundant

• 3:45:48Speaker 03

  through all of the pain. All of it is used for the greater glory of his name, like all of it. And so that's really what's driven me back also in the midst of this, my faith, you know, me sitting there, you know, going to funerals, being in these churches, like asking myself like, why? Like, why now? And then what am I supposed to do with this? You know, what are you asking me to do now that I've experienced this highest level of engagement with these brothers? And now that they're not here, you know, again and again and again and again, more times I feel like I can count sometimes. And, and then being able to move past that. And after that, man, I was like, trying to just piece it

• 3:46:32Speaker 03

  all together. I told my brother, because he was living with my mom, you know, I care for my brother deeply. And I told him, I was like, dude, you're just gonna just move down with me, you know, to Virginia. So now I wanted to take care of my brother and make sure he was taken care of too, you know, and do everything I could to make sure he was squared away and set up because, you know, it was challenging growing up, up north, you know, it was like very, you're on, you're on edge all the time, you know, wondering if you're going to either end up in jail or run with the wrong crowd. So I wanted to pull him at least out of there. And I'm glad that that happened. And it's been very purposeful since then. But, you know, all those pieces kind of coming together towards the end of, that's ultimately what led me to have all those things compile and sitting down with my family and my wife to be like, you know, do we want to keep pushing forward

• 3:47:16Speaker 03

  here? You know, of course, politics changed and all that. So there was, that was a big push with kind of shifting gears. And, and that moment where I'm looking back at the door being like, I might not ever come back here again, you know? But, yeah, so, lot, a lot.

• 3:47:32Speaker 03

  Of details within that, but I think the overview of that experience changed me forever. It made me really understand the importance of honor. It really made me an importance, understand the importance of taking action in our daily lives. And how these men that stepped up and volunteered from such a young age. And we're at the pinnacle and apex of who they were as human beings. And they get ripped from us, right? Doesn't no different from any other war or any other family. I'm just explaining the, if anybody that doesn't know or hasn't experienced it. You get these, these larger than life impactful at everything they do beings. That just get ripped out and they're gone, you know?

• 3:48:17Speaker 03

  And I believe that it's faith that must carry us through these moments. And we're prepared to understand that we'll see these guys again. And our salvation is real and family is real. The bond of a family is real. You know, how we live out our lives, how we live our lives in every aspect, every detail matters. Because of what they did and sacrificed and because what we can do because of them. The fuel that basically keeps us going on a daily basis, you know? So.

• 3:48:52Shawn Ryan?

  Is that how, is that? And it's not even an incident. I mean, you lost your mother, you lost your team. And in an instant. Is that what reignited your faith?

• 3:49:10Speaker 03

  It was a huge catalyst. Because I was searching for something, you know, that I was like, what's the answer here? What's the gray area that I'm missing? You know, how do I utilize this? If I'm going to live the best life possible in its fullness and truth. To honor those guys, what does that actually mean? And that's really the question that kind of sparked my wife and I. And she was a big part of this too. But leading me back to the church and leading me back in to be like.

• 3:49:46Speaker 03

  I mean, there were, there's been moments all throughout that time. But that certainly was a push for me to be on my knees and saying, why? And don't think for a second that there's a ton of the detail here where I wasn't drinking a half a bottle of Jack Daniels every night, drinking myself to sleep every other night. You know, going from funeral to funeral, you know, down, down like a dark place, thinking about all the things that you think I would think about. And, you know, processing what that means and trying to, trying to come out of that with some type of clarity, trying to come out of that with how do I approach life now? How do I live for these guys? And in a way that is going to make a difference in their children's lives and in the lives

• 3:50:31Speaker 03

  of our country. And through that process, just kept pointing me back to God and God's absolute truth. And that's it. That's how I started and that's how I understood what was going on is like, if I'm going to fulfill this, I have to seek what the truth is of this life for myself as a father. Because ultimately, if you're going to honor them truly, that's, that means you're going to live the best life that you can possibly can. That's what it means. For anybody, any family member that wants to honor their family, for any warrior that wants to honor their brother, to truly say that you're honoring them is to live the best life that you can.

• 3:51:14Speaker 03

  And so that started to come into question, well, what does that actually mean? I want to be there for their children. And oh my goodness, you want to talk about overwhelming. I get overwhelmed right now thinking about how many kids that I know that I knew their fathers. It's, it's, I have to put it in its place because I don't have enough time in my life to help them all. I really wish I did. I really do. And maybe there's a way that will come to fruition about, you know, how I'm able to make an impact, but the weight of, of that is so deep that it causes you to say to yourself, like, I'm living for these kids too. I gotta be a good example. I have to set the standard. I have to bring some type of faith and peace to them. Well, what does that actually look like? And then you start to realize, oh, wait a minute.

• 3:51:59Speaker 03

  I have children. I have a family. In order for me to live the best life possible and find what the truth of that means is that in order to make this life better, to make an impact on the world in honor of their name, it starts with me. It starts with my family. It starts right in my heart. How am I talking about those guys? How am I living out a life that I can get the light to redirect towards them a little bit? You know, and if I'm hardened of heart and I don't allow that to happen through God's graces in whatever way it's happened in the past and whatever way anybody else does that, that you have to be open and receptive to growing and forging and being able to remove things that you thought were true that aren't and be able to have uncomfortable conversations

• 3:52:43Speaker 03

  with yourself and with the people around you. And so that's really, you know, you can't have those conversations and not be led to faith. You can't. I'm sorry. It doesn't work that way. That's not the way God intended this life. As soon as you start asking the deeper questions and confronting your own problems, challenges and sin, you end up confronting yourself in the face. Like, we have to change, don't we? It's like, yep, we do. So those guys definitely helped me recognize that in myself. And you cannot experience that type of loss without asking that question. And my hope for everybody and for myself is that we ask that question sooner and more frequently because there's something to gain

• 3:53:27Speaker 03

  out of, out of looking at life this way. You know, there's the classic, you know, you're supposed to be looking at yourself, you know, on your deathbed. What did you leave behind? What impact did you make? Whose life did you change? And, and that's great. And for some reason, that, that image has become less impactful to me because it's not really about me. You know, it's not really about what I did. You know, but what did I do to bring people closer to God's calling in their life? Like, that's where I want to, I want to shine the light on what God's asking of all of us to do. So Extortion 17 was a big push to understand my faith. My wife was, you know,

• 3:54:12Speaker 03

  again, I'll never be able to thank my wife.

• 3:54:24Shawn Ryan?

  Enough.

• 3:54:28Shawn Ryan?

  But she was a big part of that, too. You had mentioned, and you just talked about it, how do you honor them? I mean, you're also doing that right now.

• 3:54:40Shawn Ryan?

  Well, praise God, I hope so. You are.

• 3:54:44Shawn Ryan?

  I mean,

• 3:54:46Shawn Ryan?

  their memories are living through you

• 3:54:50Shawn Ryan?

  right now.

• 3:54:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. My hope.

• 3:54:59Shawn Ryan?

  Those of you that have been around SRS for a while know that we take mental health very seriously here. So seriously that in almost every episode, you'll find a segment where we discuss how to improve your mental health.

• 3:55:13Shawn Ryan?

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• 3:55:58Shawn Ryan?

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• 3:56:40Shawn Ryan?

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• 3:57:03Shawn Ryan?

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

• 3:57:24Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Dom, we're back from the break. And I just, I really appreciate you digging deep and going through that as tough as it may have been on that last segment. And, you know, as I mentioned in the beginning, a lot of loss. I've never,

• 3:57:45Shawn Ryan?

  to my knowledge, nobody's experienced more loss than than Gold Team. And, and people are going to get a lot out of that. That's going to help a lot of people, you know, move through their losses. And so I just want to say thank you, you know, for getting through that. I know that's tough.

• 3:58:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's challenging, but that's my hope and prayer is that somebody gains something from that. And that's always my motivation on talking about it. It's always a little bit different every time I bring it back up. You know, I don't talk about it often. You know, everybody that is around me and that I love, they know that's a part of my life. In some cases, it's a very surreal one. But at the same time, I know that it's necessary. And it's kind of like we've been talking about, about these things we've experienced. I want people to have something to go off of. Everybody's going to experience loss. Everybody, we all are. This life is too short. To not at least understand it, honor it, and know about it, and really confront it. Because we live in a world that's so contrived from beginning to end.

• 3:58:49Speaker 03

  You know, we were born in a lab and we basically leave in a lab. You know, so life and death has been put in a lab. And people today are having a hard time dealing with the process of loss. I think, again, faith is my anchor, so I'm gonna talk about it nonstop. But I believe that that's something that will carry a lot of people through this. So hopefully they do get something out of it. And yeah, man, I'm glad we were able to talk about it.

• 3:59:15Shawn Ryan?

  Me too. And just for the record, I got a lot out of that. So I took something from that. And thank you. So, moving on, I would like to, I would like to get to your separation from the Command and the Navy. And, but before then, because I don't want to forget, we had a, we had started a conversation downstairs on the break.

• 3:59:40Shawn Ryan?

  And I want to continue that, start it over, because it's another thing that I think people are gonna get a lot out of. So let's just pick it up right where you were talking about Socrates.

• 3:59:54Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 3:59:55Shawn Ryan?

  And his filtration system.

• 3:59:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the filtration system is about gossip, which is really something that I think a lot of people struggle with. And in today's world where everybody wants to point the finger and say something bad. One of the key things we need to recognize in ourselves is that the quickest way to connect with somebody is to talk bad about somebody else, which is not good. It's not, it's not virtuous. It's not gonna bring life to the world. And I think we need to recognize that in ourselves. So Socrates has this very cool way of filtering out what's gonna be said. And so the story goes that he had somebody approach him saying, hey, I got something about somebody or one of your friends I want to tell you about.

• 4:00:37Speaker 03

  And he's like, okay, so you're gonna come to me with a story of something that you are bringing to me about my friend. Is it true? Let's go through the three filters. The first one being, is it true? And he said, I don't know. He's like, okay, well, you're going to tell me something about my friend that you don't know is true. So right away already, we're having issues kind of reflecting on, is this something you should be doing? So let's go through the second filter. And the second filter is, is it good? And The guy said, no, it's not good. Okay, so you want to tell me something about my friend that's, you don't know if it's true and it's not good. And the third filter is, is it useful? And he was like, no.

• 4:01:20Speaker 03

  So he had a really good way of approaching the whole idea of what you're doing to talk about something or talk about somebody else. A lot of what we do in this life is speculate. Speculate brings death. It's really, really, really bad. I've worked very hard on that. But I love the idea of these three filters is, is what we're going to say true? Do we know for sure? Is what we're going to say good and bring life? And is what we're going to say useful? My wife and I talked about this actually a little bit and there are gray areas, a lot of gray areas we can get into, you know, about talking about other people.

• 4:02:00Speaker 03

  And very quickly we realized, okay, there are situations, especially as husband and wife in, in this marriage, that we could identify other people about bringing things up that might not be good, but it's true and useful.

• 4:02:14Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 4:02:15Speaker 03

  And so now we're learning about our relationships through the actual conversation, not with the intention of talking bad or trying to hurt somebody, but with the intention of trying to make it useful for our lives and be better. So I think there's a lot of different combinations you could use that filter for, but it's really, really, uh, it's really useful.

• 4:02:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, everything starts with a seed. And when you plant a seed in somebody's head that's negative about somebody else, I mean, that you are injecting poison.

• 4:02:50Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 4:02:50Shawn Ryan?

  You know, into, especially if you know, you don't know if it's true or not. And, you know, I've, I've done it, you know, I, I

• 4:02:59Speaker 03

  We all have.

• 4:03:00Shawn Ryan?

  Really try not to do it anymore. And I'm getting better and better and better as time goes on. Faith helps with that. And diving into scripture helps with that. But, but when you think about it, you know, the, the

• 4:03:16Shawn Ryan?

  The negative reaction that that causes, I mean, you don't know how far that seed's gonna grow, you know, and if you're out there and you're spreading misinformation about or planting seeds about people, that shit just gets very toxic and it always comes back around, you know?

• 4:03:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, what is it the saying of talking mad about somebody else is drinking poison, expecting them to die? You know, and it's just true. It doesn't breed life. It doesn't bring life to anybody. I've worked really, really hard. It's like I only want to focus on the things that are positive, that are fruitful, that are gonna bring encouragement to people. And ultimately, what it really comes down to, and this is even what I teach my children, is we're so quick to identify something somebody's doing wrong, right? And whether that makes us elevated for a moment to feel good, or to identify as a place that we can learn and improve, either the case, if we do see that in somebody else, I always tell my children, I was like,

• 4:04:25Speaker 03

  you're bringing this up to me, have you prayed for that person yet? Have you taken the time to reflect on praying for that person to actually improve their behavior? And oftentimes I get met with the answer, uh, no. Okay, well, you know what you need to do. And our trigger should be exactly that. If we're gonna love other people, if we're gonna treat them with dignity and respect, then anytime that we go to open our mouth about anybody, about something that we think they're doing or that they are doing, the first thing that we need to be doing is at least what I teach my family, and I believe brings virtue and life to families and men, is pray for that person. You know, just like we need to pray for those who persecute us, praying for our enemies. One of the hardest things I've ever had to contemplate to do after getting out of the military is like, what? Pray for my enemies? What do you mean, pray for my enemies?

• 4:05:08Speaker 03

  That makes no sense. So that took a lot of prayer to really understand. And I think that that's the same thing with the people that are persecuting us or we think are trying to do us harm, is that that gossip can kill and intoxicate and poison relationships, even unnecessarily. And there's a lot of people out there that don't deserve it, you know? And we live in a world where everybody's so quick to talk behind everybody's back. It's like, I am only interested in talking to you right here by face to face. Or pick up the phone and call me. You know, if there's any confusion about what I'm doing ever, right? And this goes for a lot of people that have known me, that I've met. Pick up the phone and call me. Find me, come to my home, knock on my door. I will have a conversation with you.

• 4:05:50Speaker 03

  You know, and it's like, people would rather speculate and, and talk because it's easier to do. And again, what's the biggest thing that bonds us together is talking bad about somebody else. We have to watch that in ourselves, you know?

• 4:06:01Shawn Ryan?

  Isn't it crazy? You know how bonding that can be?

• 4:06:04Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 4:06:06Shawn Ryan?

  It's, um, you know, it. I mean, it works. Common enemy, you know?

• 4:06:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:06:13Shawn Ryan?

  It's what happens in the teams. That's what creates a brotherhood, a common enemy, right? And, um, I'm not saying that that's, you know, exactly the same by any means, but people are always looking for a common enemy, you know? And, and, uh, just make sure it's real.

• 4:06:30Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 4:06:30Shawn Ryan?

  Before you start spreading that.

• 4:06:32Speaker 03

  Make sure it's true.

• 4:06:33Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, let's get into. I want to get into your separation from the command, separation from the Navy and, and, and, you know, we, you were brought up drinking. I want to talk about, you know, what, what 12 years of wartime did to you? And how you got out of that, you know? And so let's just pick it up there.

• 4:07:01Speaker 03

  Well, you know, you're trying to cope with a lot of what's going on in your life. You're, you're living this lifestyle that's hard and fast paced, you know? In a lot of different ways, you know, there is that sense of camaraderie too, which kind of breeds that, that nightlife lifestyle, you know? If you have a moment, it's like, if you're going to play hard, if you're going to work hard, you're going to play hard type thing. I think we kind of grew up with that in our culture. It's kind of like ingrained in us. Like, oh yeah, that's what I'm supposed to do. Work hard, play hard. Uh, so throughout the teams, you know, that is something that's like, oh, okay. This is what we do, you know? And, and none of it was fruitful, you know? Well, I shouldn't say none of it. There, there's some good bonding that happened, but just the lifestyle that we're living in general at this point in my life, I realize how flawed and how broken I was, not really

• 4:07:47Speaker 03

  doing things in a sense of, you know, a faithful manner. And all those experiences that I had, it gives you an excuse to drink. You know, whether you're going out on an op that was really difficult, whether you're losing your brothers. Like, the world won't look at you any differently if you have that excuse. They're just like, oh, well, that's what I expect you to do. I expect you to live this way because of the burden that you have on your shoulders or because of the challenges that you're dealing with. And I think for us, it's going deeper in a sense of what is actually helping guys. Is that, is that part of the problem after the fact is because you didn't cope with it right in the first place? You know, a lot of guys look at the lifestyle in the military.

• 4:08:31Speaker 03

  Most people had that attitude before they even came in. That's, that's most of the time. Even, um, I would, I would argue that suicide rates, you know, of people leaving. You know, a lot of the times people come in with that tendency already, already depressed, already not in the right state of mind and not, not coping with it well. I'm not saying or devaluing by any means that people aren't dealing with experiences that are causing trauma, that are getting them to see life differently. But I still think it's worth identifying that these habits are something that was brought with them, you know, or developed over a period of time. And it got really, really challenging for me because it was just a part of what I did towards the end, you know? And I had all that loss. Drinking just seemed like, oh, it's just what we do.

• 4:09:16Speaker 03

  This is our culture. We just drink, we toast, we honor the fallen. Um, and so as a cop out, by, by all means, you know, just to think of the feeling that we get when we drink or the drive or the pull to drink. I mean, essentially what you're doing, and everybody knows this already, so I'm kind of repeating the obvious here, but you're just drowning out everything that you've got going on instead of confronting it. You're not taking any accountability for what's actually happening. That's why I believe that we do get wrapped up in the military because they're like, oh, you can't sleep. Here's an Ambien. Oh, you've got this issue. Here's this pill. Oh, hey, you're feeling like this, let's go get a bottle of booze.

• 4:09:57Speaker 03

  You know, so nobody taught me that that was a really horrible idea. They just said, okay, it's fine. And so masked under this, this numb kind of complacency or.

• 4:10:12Speaker 03

  I'm missing the word here, but essentially just getting used to that and nobody really waking you up to it. It just became a part of what we did. And when I look at people now that want to change their lives or they want to improve things, I mean, how many people do you probably talk to? They're like, oh, I want to get better at this or I'm struggling in this area. And it's like, okay, well, let's talk about the very basic things. Are you getting a full night's sleep?

• 4:10:38Speaker 03

  Are you drinking alcohol? Are you smoking or taking tobacco? Are you working out every day? And are you eating right? Like, these are so basic, but we miss them. We expect to do one of those things not well, and then everything's going to change because I gotta do something else. And you're chasing your tail. You're like, literally chasing, I can't sleep, let me take an Ambien. You know, I chew tobacco, so I'm gonna go mask it with this. And it's crazy. It's like, just before you talk to me about doing anything, just get those basic things right, then let's have a conversation. If you're not actually getting sleep, people are like, oh, I have low testosterone. I'm like, well, because your sleep sucks. And you eat like crap, you know? Stop doing that. And then things will change. So I think that that for me is all that was masked

• 4:11:22Speaker 03

  throughout the military and then wanting to do better when I got out was like, oh, I can actually work out more the way I want. I can actually try to get sleep the way that I want. And then I'm talking about, this has been a journey over the last 10 years. This isn't something that happened overnight, you know? Like we were talking about last night, like, I don't drink anymore. Like, I'm never gonna drink again. I made that decision. It's gone. You know, I barely, the only thing that I will literally put in my body is maybe an Ibuprofen if I absolutely need it. And even then, I'm like, no, I stopped doing it for a long time. But I had to put all that in its place. And how are you gonna really find the full potential of who you are and what is actually going on that you're masking with other things unless you strip everything away? Which is why fasting is so beautiful. And we'll get into that at some point, too. But being in

• 4:12:07Speaker 03

  the military kind of gave me an excuse to live this vicious cycle of not sleeping and drinking and taking Ambien and doing this and going through these stressful situations and then coming back. And I really do think it does start to wear on you after a while. And I think you can live a healthy lifestyle in the military, but you have to be actively working on it. You have to be aware of it. And you have to have people around you that push you.

• 4:12:28Shawn Ryan?

  That would be extremely hard with what I experienced in the military. That would be extremely hard. I mean, it is.

• 4:12:40Shawn Ryan?

  It's just such a, I mean, when I look back, you know,

• 4:12:48Shawn Ryan?

  that lifestyle was just part of the culture and it was frowned upon.

• 4:12:53Shawn Ryan?

  If you took part in it, it was frowned upon if you don't take part in it. And, and I mean, even with,

• 4:13:03Shawn Ryan?

  you know, I'll probably get a lot of shit for saying this and I didn't screen, you know, to go to dev group or anything, but, you know, it was so, it just, it was odd to me and I was aware of it at, you know, I mean, I left at 24, you know, and, but to see, to come to the team and do a mandatory Monster Mash on a Friday, where you come back and there are kegs all over the grinder, you know what I mean? And it's frowned upon if you don't partake. And then you go, and then I'd have friends that would go screen and they wouldn't get in because they have a drinking problem. And then you look at the culture over there from my perspective,

• 4:13:48Shawn Ryan?

  it's no different, you know, and so it's, it's, it's like this confusing, like, well, what the fuck do you want me to do?

• 4:13:55Speaker 03

  Right.

• 4:13:56Shawn Ryan?

  Do you want me to drink or not drink? I don't understand. Like you just hammered this guy for, for getting a fucking DUI last night or getting into a bar fight or coming to work hungover or smelling like booze. And literally eight hours later, we're having kegs on the grinder. Okay. So, you know, your, your messaging isn't clear here.

• 4:14:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:14:22Shawn Ryan?

  On what you want us to do.

• 4:14:23Speaker 03

  Do as I say, not as I do.

• 4:14:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. And, uh, and in, in, in, I took that as, as things started getting political and they weren't making sense. And it, it, to be honest, it's part of the reason why I left, you know, and,

• 4:14:44Shawn Ryan?

  It's a tricky culture to navigate.

• 4:14:46Speaker 03

  It is. Yeah. And, you know, they, they do. And I was part of that, where I made people feel bad. You know, I'd had dudes that didn't drink. I'm like, you didn't drink? What's wrong with you?

• 4:14:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:14:56Speaker 03

  You know, I'm literally was like, what's the matter with you? I would treat people differently. And I grew up in that kind of like, you know, Italian kind of mafia culture where it's like, I can't trust you.

• 4:15:07Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 4:15:07Speaker 03

  You're not down here with me, so I can't trust you.

• 4:15:10Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 4:15:10Speaker 03

  Which really, in hindsight, it's the exact opposite of people trying to do the right thing. Um, I think I was telling you earlier, like on The Simpsons, like, you know, that the, they make it, they make the goody two shoe, uh, you know, family like out to be like the bad guys, like they're, they're doing something wrong. Um, when really we need to be emulating and trying our best to do that. And with a little bit of sobriety and a little bit of intentionality and a little bit of faith, like those seeds that are planted within the teams will go such a long way. Because there is cultural confusion. And, you know, I, I did believe at the time, like, hey, drinking is a part of what we do. You know, it's a part of what bonds us together and brings us closer together. And

• 4:15:50Speaker 03

  I can't sit here and say for sure that that's still not true. You know, I just, you know, made this decision not too long ago. And when I do something, I'm all in. I'm not like, I'm not going to weaver on that. There's nothing that's tempting me to go back to that lifestyle. But, uh, I do question, and I am now praying through, what does this mean if, for the truth of all of us in our culture? And actually now I'm going to, you know, liquor stores, not liquor stores, but, uh, you know, in Virginia, they got, you know, the liquor right there in the grocery store. But you walk by these things and it's like, man, this stuff is so readily available that you can just get alcohol whenever you want? I'm like, that's not good. I really don't think, I mean, granted, what I'm not

• 4:16:33Speaker 03

  saying is that don't be free and take our freedom away. But in the sense of how easy it is to get and how not fruitful it can be, I'm just, I'm toiling with the idea of like, why do we have all this? Like, why is this here?

• 4:16:49Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you think it's here?

• 4:16:52Speaker 03

  It's a great question. Like I said, it's something I'm praying about. I really feel like it's a huge distraction. I feel like alcohol is a really big distraction away from the beauty and fullness of what life has to offer. I feel like every time we do drink, it's taking us away from reality. You know, why do we drink? We drink to feel something. And the reality is, is that feeling is not the way you're feeling. You're masking it with something else when we should be really focused inwardly on like, how are we actually feeling? And bringing those out. You should be able to go to a party. You should be able to go to a celebration. You should be able to talk to people without drinking at all.

• 4:17:32Speaker 03

  That's something to work on. That's something that's, maybe it doesn't seem like it's obtainable, but I just think that I really don't know. It's kind of like one of those things in our culture. I'm like, how did this get so like out of hand and such a thing? You know, it's put in front of everybody. Obviously, it's a billion dollar industry, you know, that's making a lot of money. And I think that the world and our culture would be a lot better off without it. So again, goes along with everything else in freedom, but it's something I'm questioning. You know, it's like somebody told me the other day, well, you stopped drinking. So now you have all these bottles in your cabinet that you can give away for Christmas gifts. And I'm like, why am I going to perpetuate the thing that I stopped because I don't think it's good? You know, if I thought it was virtuous and good to drink, then I would still be doing it.

• 4:18:16Speaker 03

  So now I have all this liquor cabinet. I'm like, I think I'm just going to dump it in this trash all, you know, but anyway.

• 4:18:22Shawn Ryan?

  Hey, I mean, I have an entire bar right there and I haven't had a drop in almost two years now.

• 4:18:28Speaker 03

  It looks cool in the lighting.

• 4:18:29Shawn Ryan?

  That's why it's there. But I get so much shit about that, but you know, it is immersed in every part of our culture. Let's go watch a sports game. Let's drink. Let's, we did something we need to celebrate. Let's drink. We did something that we need to mourn. Let's drink. It's everywhere you look. I graduated. Let's get shitfaced. I didn't graduate. Let's get shitfaced. You know, and it's, it's, it's the answer for every emotion, every accomplishment, every loss, everything.

• 4:19:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, again, you know, I always, you have to point and understand spiritual warfare in the sense of like, you know, the fullness of our lives. Like, I want people to reach their full potential, and I certainly don't think you're gonna do it by drinking. I really don't. I think it's taking away. Again, I'm really serious about if I, anything, you know, whether I'm talking here, at home, or to my children, I want to find what's true in our lives. And what's true, and again, the whole idea of like, what's true for you and what's true for you, I don't believe in that. I think that there's truths as humans that are real, and we have very, very strong biblical principles that are, they affect every part of our lives, whether we abide them or not. And I think that drinking is just one of those things where I don't see any value in it whatsoever.

• 4:19:52Speaker 03

  I really don't. And, you know.

• 4:19:55Shawn Ryan?

  What was it, is there anything in particular that made you come to this conclusion? Since it was so recent?

• 4:20:03Speaker 03

  Me trying to live out a life for Christ. To say, you know, meeting with the brothers that I meet on a weekly basis, we're literally trying our best to live a life that is biblical. And in the brotherhood of even what St. Paul talks about, you know, of all the things that are stumbling blocks for us, is that, is this a stumbling block? And I would rather remove anything that could be a stumbling block for me or anybody else around me than to take a chance that it could be. I'd rather just get rid of it, not question.

• 4:20:44Speaker 03

  I don't want anybody to be able to look at me and question whether I'm not doing everything I can in my life. And I think drinking was such an easy one. That was staring me right in the face. That I was like, why do you need that? I can, I can reach my full potential. So I think that from a standpoint of wanting to do the best that I can, it was very easy to make that decision to say, I'm gonna do this. You know, and I think that there's fruit that will come from it. Yeah, that's, that's really the big spark.

• 4:21:12Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I'm happy you made that decision. Let's talk about why you left.

• 4:21:22Speaker 03

  Following up what we were talking about earlier, obviously, my mom passed away. My brother moved down, the HELO went down. There was kind of this big culminating feeling and especially being at war the whole time and knowing that we were going to kick down doors and then feeling that that start to shift a lot throughout the end of my EAOS, my time in whatever that four year stint was. You know, I started to see things slow down overseas. So it was like, whoa, politically, things are changing, you know, and I was kind of spoiled in the sense of like, we should be going to go every, every time, not being constrained with what we do. There's bad guys out there.

• 4:22:04Speaker 03

  It was like this, this full, you know, talk with my wife about, you know, what are we doing? What do we want for our future? How do we want to raise our kids? And when my mother had said, she had told me, she said, you know, I think she told my wife, my wife, she was like, I don't want him in anymore. And again, like, okay, mom, I got it. You don't want me to be in the military? That's cool. But then she passed away. And when I went for my re-enlistment, I went to do the paperwork. Like, there wasn't any other thought in my brain. I'm gonna stay in, this is what I do. But we had talked about, like, would this be an option? I don't know. Anyway, let's go get the paperwork. And so when I got the paperwork home, I looked at the paperwork and the day that I would

• 4:22:49Speaker 03

  have to re-enlist or get out is the same day my mom passed away the year before. And so it was just like, whoa, this can't be a coincidence. And so I, I literally called my entire family together, my sisters, my dad, my brother, my wife. And I was like, listen, I need everybody's advice here. You know, I got them all on the phone and I basically said, you know, these are the things that I've been through. This is what's going on. This is where I'm at in my life. You know, we have a growing family. We had two children at the time. I had just had, actually, my daughter was just about to be born and she was born, she was gonna be born in December. And When we had kind of looked at that and everything, I just really wanted to hear from what my family had to say, my wife especially.

• 4:23:35Speaker 03

  And it was this kind of unanimous decision of like where we were at in life and after everything happened that this was the right choice. Was to make a decision to get out. And we really had no idea what we were gonna do. And honestly, when we made the choice, because we hadn't thought we were gonna get out, it was like, I don't even know, it was like three or four weeks. That like we had when we made the decision. So I didn't get like any of the leave or anything. I worked all the way right up into the door. Uh, where now guys are planning that a little bit more and they should because it's better that way. Um, but because I hadn't really planned it and made, you know, a pretty quick decision, maybe it wasn't four weeks, it might've been two months, but. I gave guys at least a little bit of a heads up, kind of feeling out what was going on in there and letting them know. But that was really the biggest decision of why, um, growing my family, wanting to be home more, wanting to take care of them.

• 4:24:20Speaker 03

  Which I feel absolutely sure that I made the right choice. Especially when I hear all the my buddies call me and say, you made the right decision, dude, we're sitting on our butt doing nothing. Um, that made me feel good about it. But just what I've been able to do and, and the family we've been able to grow has been absolutely amazing. And so that was a big part of why we got out and how we got out. And then from there, I was just kind of like, okay, where do we go now? Like, what do we do? You know?

• 4:24:46Shawn Ryan?

  Did you have any plan when you left?

• 4:24:48Speaker 03

  Not really, not really. I had a lot of trust that I was gonna be able to figure it out. Like I had a lot of faith that like, look, we're gonna, we're gonna be able to work through this. And I actually had a really good friend of mine, uh, that knew we were making a very quick decision. And actually said, hey, listen, you know, I'm, I'm out of shape. I need a personal trainer. Like, why don't you come work with me? And, and I was up at five o'clock every day for like six months straight, working with him in the gym. And, uh, you know, he was paying me a small stipend, which kept me going. And I'm forever grateful for him, you know, and us. And that bond we had together, he provided for our family and, uh, we were able to put food on the table. And give him something too. So that's kind of where like the training started and it was good for both of us.

• 4:25:33Speaker 03

  And then I started to do things like work with the NRA, that came out of the blue, really. Um, I was saying that I wanted to do something after everything happened in Newtown. You know, like, what can I do? Like, where can I, where can I? You know, give a hand and how do I help in this fight? And somebody was like, oh, we might have something for you. And I was like, all right, well, what is it? You know, and then there's just those pieces all came together, working with them. And that was really the spark of like, okay, am I supposed to be doing this? I'm supposed to be on camera. I was like, you know, what do I do with my hands? So it's like, I have no idea what's going on. Uh, it was very green in a sense of, I'm not sure if this is what I'm supposed to be doing. But I gave it my best shot.

• 4:26:11Shawn Ryan?

  I remember seeing that. Yeah, I remember seeing that. I had, uh, that was around 2015, if I remember correctly. And, uh, I had just left the, just left the agency and I was sitting on my butt, not doing a damn thing. And then you pop up on the screen. I was like, no way. I haven't seen this guy in like 10 years and, um, it was cool. It was cool to see.

• 4:26:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:26:39Shawn Ryan?

  How was Dynamis born?

• 4:26:42Speaker 03

  Dynamis was born right around the same time that I started working with the NRA because I had had a passion of wanting to do something. And it was really born of me saying, I gotta do something, um, for my passion, which is building gear, combat, it's really training in gear together. That's the whole culmination of it. But my buddy Drew, it was really born when I was in the teams. My buddy Drew, I don't know if you know Drew Sheets?

• 4:27:09Shawn Ryan?

  I've not met him, but we've had some dialogue.

• 4:27:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, I love him like a brother and he was a huge influence to me. I don't know if you, you remember him, you know, just his nature and his, his attitude and his mindset was always like the highest of all the dudes. Like he would be the one pushing everybody out of the way, the first to the, to volunteer for something. Like I loved, he was, he's the warrior of warriors, right? He's the one that, you know, anybody would pick out of a hundred. And we were sitting at a bar one night after doing some. Off roading courses and we did a toast and he was like, literally, this is how it was born. We clinked glasses and he was like, dynamis. And I was like, totally dynamis. And you know, drank, I was like, what does that mean? He's like, the will to fight.

• 4:27:54Speaker 03

  And I was like, whoa, I want to know more about that. And he like, and we talked about that for like three hours. And he just went into it about how he knew that that Greek word meant the will to fight. And we kind of defined like, what is the will to fight? And I knew right away, because when a guy like that tells you something that meaningful, like that's the impact that it had on me, an everlasting effect of the will to fight. That is like what we fall back on. That's everything that we have inside of us that that is brought to bear when we go through our most difficult times, um, to fight nail and tooth for what we believe in, to, to be in battle and, and be with our brothers and literally go until we're our last breath. Like, that's what it means. And so to me, it was like, it, it meant everything in an instant.

• 4:28:39Speaker 03

  And so we were in the teams and it kind of sat with me for a while. And, uh, even having children, my wife laughs at me because I actually asked her, uh, can we name one of our children dynamis? And she was like, absolutely not. And she is amazing and I love her to death. And she doesn't typically tell me no, but that was one instance, she was like, hard no. So one of my children didn't get the name dynamis, but my company did. So, uh, when I started the company, I was like, there was no other choice for it, but to be dynamis. And the essence of dynamis and the why behind it was, you know, the will to fight. And Drew really gave me that spark. And I tell him to this day, I'm like, bro, you're the reason that I named it dynamis, because you know, of that nature and, uh, his ability to fight.

• 4:29:24Shawn Ryan?

  How did you develop it? I mean.

• 4:29:27Speaker 03

  You know, looking back, it was sitting in the garage with my brother, you know, right when I got out and kind of sitting there thinking about, what do we do? And that's where I started playing with the Play-Doh and, you know, molding the handle, being like, hey, uh, Daniel, I want to build. A combat blade that I can conceal. And Daniel and Karen, I love the Winklers with all my heart. They are some of the best Americans and patriots out there. A huge part of our success is our partnership with them. They have amazing, amazing tools that they've crafted. And Daniel and I had an awesome relationship to begin with.

• 4:30:09Speaker 03

  And Rat and I, actually Rat Slough and I went down to North Carolina to link up with them. And Rat was like all gung ho, you know, developing the blade for the command. And I got to be a part of that experience, which was pretty cool. So we went down to Winkler's shop when he still had a hand forge. And so there we are with Winkler, literally like hand forging stuff. He's got metal in the fire. We're just, we're just sitting there drooling like this is awesome, you know? And little did we know how beautiful the experience actually was. I actually have a picture of Rat in that moment. And when I decided to call Winkler, like Winkler didn't even think about it. He's like, yeah, absolutely. Let's do it. Like he's so good like that. So we developed our relationship off of exactly what we talked about, you know, developing a handle, developing the blade.

• 4:30:52Speaker 03

  I have all the wooden and paper prototypes that we went through, probably like 30 of them to get the blade that you have on you now. And ultimately, that's how it was created, out of a blade. You know, we made that blade. The will to fight was a part of it. I knew I loved combatives. I wanted to bring that to other people. I want to develop gear that people could utilize. This sheath that I have on me right now, my IWB sheath, I did not have the money to pay to get this thing developed, but I put every single cent I had into it and took a chance, almost to the fact that I was going to go broke. And everybody that I worked with told me that I was making a stupid choice. Don't do that. You're going to waste your money. And it's still to this day, it's one of our best selling products and one of the best best sheaths out there.

• 4:31:37Speaker 03

  But I did that to combine the nature and beauty of Winkler's craftsmanship. And history and tradition into what I designed is the best fighting blade and concealable blade in the world, and then build a modern, cutting-edge sheath system that put them all together. And that's kind of where Dynamis was born. Those were our first products that we really brought to fruition. And I can remember selling the first one, like, yes, we sold one. You know, here I am with whatever it was, 30 or 40 of them sitting on the table that were handboxing and hand putting together with my brother. And that's the spark that was in the garage. You know, we were in the garage selling blades and t-shirts.

• 4:32:19Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I mean, it appeared to develop pretty fast. I mean, we talked about it in your EDC dump. We didn't talk about much here, so I'd like to cover it again. But I mean, it developed into, into training, it developed into fitness, it developed into mindset. And now you have an entire gear line that you've designed, all of this stuff. If you haven't watched the EDC dump with Dom, you need to go watch that because it's all in there. But, but let's dive into some of it here on, on the actual, on the actual show.

• 4:32:55Speaker 03

  So the gear and the training aspect, and this is the methodology behind Dynamis, was that I knew from my training experience and also combat experience, was that training and gear are cohesive unit. They go together. And I didn't really see anybody out there. And in fact, I didn't see anybody. I think there's some guys doing it well now, Haley, Lucas, Bakken, you know, some of those guys that are actually combining the two together. But nobody did that well. And I saw the gap there where I was like, look, guys, if you have gear that you use, you learn, you have to learn to train with it. Same thing with your training, you have to be able to put the gear together. I remember being on a call with somebody that wanted to invest in us. And I said, yep, my business plan is gear and training. He's like, you're not going to, you're not going to do it because

• 4:33:38Speaker 03

  you have to, you can't do both. And I was like, don't tell me what to do.

• 4:33:43Speaker 03

  I'm gonna figure this out.

• 4:33:44Shawn Ryan?

  And uh. Thank you for telling me that, cuz now it's definitely happening.

• 4:33:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. It was just the motivation and push that I needed. And I didn't want to separate them. I still to this day don't. And right around the time that we were starting to develop blades, like we actually did do a couple of local training courses. And you know, it's always very like, what do we advertise? What do we do? Like, do we put a flyer up in the gym? We make a couple of phone calls, send a couple of emails. I mean, that's literally what it was. It was only grassroots and people that we knew. And the first course that we ever did, we had one person show up. You know, and it was one of those like, ah, one person, you know? We tried, uh, but it was beautiful because that was something we always remember because then the courses were packed. You know, we had to sell them out every time after that. And I've reduced the training a lot now, but where it's culminated still to this day is like we have online training modules,

• 4:34:32Speaker 03

  which I'm like, look, if you're gonna buy a blade, make sure you know the basics of how to use this thing. How do you take care of it? How do you carry it? How do we apply it? How do you use it in a fight? You know, what are the basic methodologies there? Don't, don't buy a firearm and don't buy a blade without knowing that. That's irresponsible and it's your duty to do so. So the culmination of the brand and the methodology is really that. You know, crush everything, which is because I've got so many brands that I had to kind of piece together. We were doing the fitness aspect, cuz that's important. We were doing the apparel aspect, cuz that's important. The gear and concealability aspect, cuz that's important. And the mindset training that goes along with it. So they all need to be a holistic perspective. It's a lifestyle. And I wasn't really willing to let that go. I didn't wanna ever say, well, there's another way to do this.

• 4:35:15Speaker 03

  Because then what it was for me, and I can't tell you how many people came along the way, is like, oh, just slap your name on a shirt. Just slap your name on a hoodie. You're gonna make money. You're gonna turn them over. Just, just do this. It's a, it's a way to make revenue. And I never wavered on doing that. I didn't want to do that. I was like, I'm not here just to turn over revenue. While that could help fuel other things, I still wanna say true to what I said I was gonna do. And that's build the guest best gear in the world, make it in the USA, and make it a tier one quality. And it has to be connected to reality. Those are our strategic anchors. I don't build anything that's not connected to the way we interact on a daily basis. There's no fantasy. There's no nice thinking. There's no, everything's real and it's purposeful. So that's what our band, our brand is built on, you know, those, those methodologies.

• 4:36:00Shawn Ryan?

  Where do you see it going in the future?

• 4:36:03Speaker 03

  Right now, that's something my wife and I are absolutely preying on. And we have a lot of success with what we're doing with inventory and our blades and our gear that we're selling. It's difficult to keep that stuff on the shelf. And we've gotten better about understanding, okay, supply chains, COVID. If anybody needed anything, it was difficult to get, you know, supply, like where's material coming from? How are we doing that? That challenged us a little bit. I believe in the future that Dynamis and Crush Everything itself will continue to grow as a brand that offers the best gear in the world, the best concealability, the best options for everyday carry. Like, I want what people carry to be useful.

• 4:36:48Speaker 03

  I want what people carry to be like, I can't be without this. So I see it growing in that sense. The training aspect and the online training is something that's been really effective. People know, like, they buy a blade and like, oh, okay, like, I can add the training to my cart, which is really seamless and it's a holistic package. But on the physical training side, I don't know. I tried to build a whole training instructor staff and that just didn't work out. There was a number of reasons for that, but mainly it came down to, one of the things was faith. That was actually a big catalyst for me even sparking my faiths too. But the ideas and the methods that were being used, it was really hard from a tactical sense to get on the same page with multiple guys that want to do it differently.

• 4:37:30Speaker 03

  And I had a vision of how it needed to go. And it would have been great if I had an instructor staff, I would say, okay, I could build you up, you can be an asset, and now you're going to be able to go out and teach what our methodologies are. That model, I think for any good combatives instructor, is extremely challenging.

• 4:37:50Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 4:37:50Speaker 03

  And it really takes you being there. I mean, you get the guys that run their dojos and they're there 24/7 and they have to be. You get guys that are traveling all over the world and they get a high turnover rate. I pretty much can think of all of them. And they only have like one or two dudes that they can really trust and rely on. They end up opening up their own gym. So it's a tough industry to understand unless you're really scaling it from like a fitness perspective. That was hard for me to figure out and I thought that I was going to be able to go make a mini command. I thought I was going to be able to leave the command and pop up a bunch of instructors that were just going to be like, hey, we're all in, let's do this. And that just didn't work the way I thought it was going to, so.

• 4:38:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean.

• 4:38:29Shawn Ryan?

  Were you, were you hiring, um, who was your instructor staff? Not, not names, just backgrounds.

• 4:38:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, so they had, one of the kids was a real, real young, but I actually saw this kid when I started getting into combatives, he was super talented. I mean, this kid's like a savant with combatives. And I was like, we, we met, we got on the mat and he was a civilian. We got on the mat and right away when we did our first reps, I was like, oh, you actually know that you gotta hit somebody and what it's like to be hit. And so we gave each other that energy. It's almost like this mutual respect that happened. And I started to bring him under my wing, like, hey, you need to do this. You need to do more of this. You need to get out there. And I saw this kid as being like the best in the world. I was like, I want this kid to be who leads the instructor staff. So I poured a lot of time and energy into him and he

• 4:39:20Speaker 03

  was off on his, you know, own going to improve and go to schools and all that stuff. And ultimately, that was the person that full circle, like we had a falling out, mainly because I think of faith and which is crazy to think about, but ultimately that was the, that was the biggest wedge, I believe, that stopped us from really progressing in that manner. But again, that, that just wasn't God's plan for us, you know, the, the training in person wasn't our plan. And maybe it's good that it happened that way because I realize how much time it takes to leave your home, leave your family, go to another state, travel around the world. Right now with five children that need every second of my time that they can get is not a model that I want to continue to chase down, at least not on the, on, on, in the

• 4:40:02Speaker 03

  interim, you know, or the immediate future. I think there's absolutely a possibility of doing more training, but very strategically and only a couple of times a year, as opposed to like, I'm gone every month and my family never gets to see me, you know? So that's a big reason why, why I allowed to let that change and also wanted it to change. So.

• 4:40:21Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. Yeah, it's, um, one of the challenges I found in business is it's very,

• 4:40:31Shawn Ryan?

  in the training aspect, when I, you know, used to do training is, man, it is, it's.

• 4:40:41Shawn Ryan?

  It's hard to...

• 4:40:44Shawn Ryan?

  People think that they are the ones that built your business. And they've become very entitled. And that, especially when it comes to hiring former, you know, soft types, because we all have the skillset, but what they don't see is the backend, you know? Everything that it takes just to market one course, to get one person to show up. And, and, and, and then when it does start to take off, to keep that train running and all the backend expenses and... Yeah, it got tricky.

• 4:41:20Speaker 03

  It's a lot. It really is. There's, there's a lot of effort that goes into it. And, and I still had a vision of, of building a crew that was just on fire and we were communicating the same way. You know, the worst thing that I wanted, the worst thing that I thought it could have happened was, you know, when you went to a school and you had one instructor telling you one thing and somebody else was telling you something different on the other side of the line, you know, you're like, wait, who am I supposed to listen to? Like, who's right here? I wanted to get rid of all that. Like, look, what's the truth of it? If we thought a tactic was off, or if you had an issue, I mean, we would get in a, you know, back and forths right on the range and be like, okay, well, let's take that point and let's go isolate it in the gym. Let's go get it on the range and let's go figure out who's right here. Because there's a better way to do it, you know? And that, that was the beauty about anything, I think, like seeking the truth in all things.

• 4:42:05Speaker 03

  Is in the tactical world, you have to be willing to do that. And usually somebody's pride that stops that from happening, you know? That's like, I got a better answer and, okay, well, you think you got a better answer, so go figure it out, you know?

• 4:42:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:42:19Shawn Ryan?

  Excuse me. You know, one of, one of the things that, that I really respect about what you did is you, I mean, you put your business on the back burner to, to your family. And you, you don't see that very often. And so I'd like to talk about that, you know? You're, you're a family man and you're a father first. And I really appreciate that. So what? What is it that led you to that decision? Because you were going hard with the business stuff. I mean, like I said, it was Dynamis, Adaptive X, Armor Up. Am I missing anything?

• 4:43:04Speaker 03

  Neptune Blades.

• 4:43:05Shawn Ryan?

  Neptune Blades. You had also some kind of navigation thing at some point, I believe.

• 4:43:11Speaker 03

  No.

• 4:43:12Shawn Ryan?

  No, that wasn't you?

• 4:43:13Speaker 03

  Probably Damian.

• 4:43:14Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 4:43:14Speaker 03

  Lead nav.

• 4:43:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:43:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:43:16Shawn Ryan?

  I thought you were a part of that for some reason.

• 4:43:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:43:19Shawn Ryan?

  But anyways, four businesses.

• 4:43:23Speaker 03

  And real estate.

• 4:43:24Shawn Ryan?

  And five businesses.

• 4:43:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. For the most part, and that's where I realized I had to start consolidating all that stuff. But we.

• 4:43:36Shawn Ryan?

  That's tough to do. I mean,

• 4:43:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:43:38Shawn Ryan?

  That's your baby. You know, a lot of time and dedication went into that. It's very obvious, you know, and to,

• 4:43:46Shawn Ryan?

  to push it aside. I mean, that's, that's, that's a big move.

• 4:43:50Speaker 03

  Well, also just the mindset of getting out of the teams and wanting to keep going that hard. Right? Like I wasn't necessarily ready to get out from a mindset perspective, but I did. And I kept that attitude all the way through my business. So I was just grinding away exactly that. I thought I could do it all well, you know, and I was going a hundred percent of the time. Sometimes stay until midnight for five days straight in the week, coming home, sleeping a couple of hours, going back and doing it again. Matty Patricia from the Patriots. And one of the guys that I really look up to, one of the hardest working dudes I know. I get texts from him like, you know, he, he works for, he worked for Belichick directly. And he'd literally get an hour of sleep, two hours of sleep. And he does, that's what he does. He goes to bed at one o'clock and he's up at three o'clock, heading back to the stadium.

• 4:44:36Speaker 03

  I'm like, I don't know how you do it. So when I sit there and whine about getting a couple of hours of sleep, I just think of him. I'm like, all right, Matty's up getting after it. I gotta get after it. And it, it does start to catch up to you in some senses. But the easiest thing to do for men specifically is that we want to go chase something out in the world and make this impact. We want to go out there and we think we gotta go make an effect somewhere else. And in all actuality, the hardest thing to do is to confront what we're doing ourselves in our own hearts. And then allowing ourselves to be great fathers at home. It is the most challenging thing that I've ever done in my entire life, above anything,

• 4:45:21Speaker 03

  being a father, because I truly care about my children and I truly want them to be better. So if I'm gonna live the truth and I'm gonna really do that the way I say I'm going to, then I have to turn inward and say, am I doing that to the best of my ability? And I'm willing to give up everything for it, including me thinking that I need to go out and have this amazing company that scales and grows. Like, what is all that worth if I'm a bad dad and I'm not a good father? And realistically, all you're doing is just faking everybody else in the world while you're leaving them high and dry. Yeah.

• 4:46:03Speaker 03

  And that's the spark for me that caused me to say, what do I need to do at home to get this right? And I'm willing to make everybody think differently about me. I'm willing to give up revenue. I'm willing to give up everything that it takes to be home and truly want to do that right. I want all my kids to look me in the eye and be like, my dad is amazing. He's here for me always. I know he is and he loves me. Like, if my children say that to me, then I'm doing it at least a portion of it right. And I think the growing never, ever stops. I think that we have to lean into that in a big way. But I am willing to risk everything because without that peace, I'm just lying to myself. I'm lying to my family.

• 4:46:47Speaker 03

  I'm lying to the world. And inwardly focusing, how can I go out to tell somebody else to be a better father? How can I go out and tell somebody else they need to grow their faith if I myself am not trying to do everything I can to do it myself? So that's, that's a big push of why I decided to change everything and take this year to really like pull back from the world, stop listening to the noise, stop looking at social media, really focus on my faith and pray, Lord, let me be a better father. Let me be a better husband. How is it that you want me to show up for those moments, you know? And that's been the transformation of why I've been willing to do that. And I still, I stand by that right now.

• 4:47:29Speaker 03

  Um, I'm still seeking, uh, I think the one question I ask myself every day is what is the most impactful? An effective and efficient thing that I can do right now that will change what I have going on. And so I think about that at every moment, as soon as I get up, as soon as I move, as soon as I talk, as soon as I interact. Is this the most effective thing I can do? Sometimes that's just being present, which is difficult. Sometimes it's literally letting the world go, breathing through that moment and literally trusting in God's will for right where your feet are. And just breathing and watching your son or your daughter and saying, what do they need from me in this moment?

• 4:48:10Speaker 03

  Because it's so difficult with the things buzzing around in our mind to actually get that time and that intentionality. And I'm making sure that I can do that well. That's the sword that I'm sharpening right now. Like, hey, hand to hand's great, shooting's great, you know, going out in the world, do all this crazy stuff, great. But does my kid know that I'm the best at what I do? You know, or will he at least see that later on and look back and think, man, my dad was absolutely on it. You know, like, that's what I want. I want my kids to be able to say that, so.

• 4:48:44Shawn Ryan?

  This isn't something you can just

• 4:48:48Shawn Ryan?

  do. I mean, to, to, to, to, to be present, to, to, to leave. I mean, did you leave it a hundred percent or did you still dabble a little bit in business? Are you, are you just now picking it back up?

• 4:49:03Speaker 03

  Um, are you talking about the business?

• 4:49:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:49:05Speaker 03

  Uh, well, no, I, I definitely dabbled as far as like what's going on with the business, you know? And we've been praying through that all year about what that looks like for us and how we run it. You know, praise God that our, our business has done well without us really having to sit there and go out and, and do new things, you know? It's been able to, to live. We have a very, very amazing, uh, loyal customer base that believes in what we do. They, they believe in what I do and they've sustained us for, for a long time about, you know, continuing to buy our product.

• 4:49:39Shawn Ryan?

  I, I guess, let me rephrase this question.

• 4:49:44Shawn Ryan?

  When you put the business on the back burner and the family first, I mean, I'm obviously an entrepreneur too, and I know that entrepreneurship, business ideas, growth, what you think you should be doing, all the ideas that you haven't gotten to bring to fruition yet, I mean, how was the process of setting that aside and actually being present in the moment with your family? That's not a light switch, at least I wouldn't think it is. It's not for me. And I struggle with that balance. I still struggle with it, you know, and so I'm asking for me.

• 4:50:24Speaker 03

  Well, I really do believe that it's leaning into our faith to the point where we're asked to be present, we're asked to be fully trusting in what God's calling us to do right then and there. And it's our vocation as fathers. So when I started to realize the weight of being a father and all these other things that I had going on, like, what's more important? Is it more important to have a successful business? Is it more important to run down these ideas? Or is it more important to really be there for them? And that shift started to happen, I don't know, slowly or all at once, but I started to lean into, you know, one of the things that happened for me was like, I was having business meetings or weekly meetings.

• 4:51:06Speaker 03

  And this was like, probably five years ago. And I was sitting there doing the weekly meeting, and I left the room, and I'm like, I'm like, wait a minute, I'm having weekly meetings with my team at work? Why don't I have family meetings? Like, I put this much intentionality, but how much do I care about my family? Boom, sparked it. I think like, two months later, I came home in a cab, and the guy was like, yeah, we meet with our family every Sunday. We get together, we talk about what's going on, what's good, what's bad, whatever we need to help. But I'm like, my man, you just sparked me to do this? Like, the next day, I was doing a family meeting, and it's been a part of our life now. And so it's been a slow process of continually challenging what I have going on, but I'm willing to leave everything else. I'm willing to drop it all to let them know that they're the priority.

• 4:51:50Speaker 03

  And that's been the rebuilding of like, social media is like Joseph comes up to me and he lifts his arms up, daddy, daddy, and I'm on the phone, dude, I'll toss the phone away. Like, my trigger is to never let them feel like they're competing with the time for media, social, computer, anything. And I try to work from home as much as I possibly can and have that that balance. And as a man, as a guy that wants to go after and get after, it's tough. It can be very challenging when you want, when you want that 100% dedication. But it's something that we need to recognize because they're mirroring that behavior. They're watching what we're doing. And all I can say is that we have to be open to them as a priority. We have to learn to be present. We have to learn to show up.

• 4:52:35Speaker 03

  I'm willing to, you know, lay my life down for that idea. And I'm willing to give up whatever it takes for them to be happy and know that I love them.

• 4:52:46Shawn Ryan?

  You know? Did it's no, I don't really want to expound on this because I am, frankly, I'm tired of talking about it. But with the way the world is, you know, with, with, with everything we see today, attacks on families, attacks on masculinity, attacks on genders. I mean, you name it, every direction you look, everything is backwards and upside down. Nothing makes sense. Did that, did that also play a part in you pushing business aside and, and, and putting your family first?

• 4:53:29Speaker 03

  I think the short answer is no.

• 4:53:31Shawn Ryan?

  No, it didn't.

• 4:53:32Speaker 03

  And, and not because I don't think that it's important, but what, what's changed in me is that my, my absolute faith in what God's calling me to do is like, again, that's the world. The world is in chaos. Every time you step foot out the door, if you let it, it will completely consume you. So all these things that are confusing are going to continue to be confusing and they're going to continue to get worse. So it's like, I don't want to focus on any of that. What I focus on in my family is the truth and beauty of what God's asked us to do. Right? And that's why faith and that's why the church is absolutely critical in understanding a base foundation of who we're called to be. And so that transcends with our children. I mean, you should hear some of the things that my kids say, like, that beauty only

• 4:54:16Speaker 03

  comes from leaning into making sure that we know that we were created in the image of God, to respect and love yourself, to respect and love your neighbor. No matter how broken the world is, as opposed to focusing on that, I'd rather make sure that my children are praying for people that are dealing with those situations. And I think that that's really what we all need to be doing to make a difference. And then educating them as they see these things and they experience them, you know, and arming them to know clearly, that's right, and that's wrong. And I know it is because I've listened to my parents, I've listened to my faith, I've prayed, I've seen it play out, all of the things that God works and the beauty of us raising our children, because it is critically important. We are their first teachers. And what are we doing? Too many parents today are like, eh, well, whatever my kids want to do. Really? I'm like,

• 4:55:00Speaker 03

  what? I'm like, because that's a great idea to let an eight-year-old choose what he wants to do, or a 15-year-old choose what he wants to do. I'm going to tell you right now, if I was that young, and I was just like, oh, yeah, just go let me do whatever I want, it would have been a nightmare or destruction, right? Like, so that's not the way. We can't keep deferring our responsibility as parents. There's this extreme accountability that we need to take with raising our children. And I think that that's the nature of what's going on is that, as much as it's tempting to say, yes, I did it because of that, it's also really easy for me to say no, because I don't let them distract me to that level. In our home, we're very focused on the truth, we're very focused on faith, and that continues to build them up in a way that's

• 4:55:42Speaker 03

  like, oh, they know that that's wrong. You know, I had one instance recently, we went to a father and son event, and, you know, my seven-year-old Leo, you know, he's out there, and another boy came up to him, he's like, yeah, girls can marry girls, and boys can marry boys. And Leo's like, no, they can't. What are you talking about? That's not right. You know, and he knows right away, like instantly that that's not okay. And so he stood up for himself, and I had to talk to him about that conversation. And it's really challenging to get them to convey that in a way. But I talked to him, like, hey, listen, All we can do is make sure that we're loving them through that scenario. And honestly, if you're ending up at that point, like we clearly need to understand is that something's going on in their heart.

• 4:56:26Speaker 03

  There's something that's off. That doesn't mean love them less. It means love them more and pray for them more. That what they're going through is difficult and challenging. And it's like that with all those other things that are out there. I mean, it's sad and heartbreaking to think some of these things are happening. But I just encourage and challenge all of the parents that are listening to do everything they can and being willing to lay their life down for it, to give their children the right guidance and live by that action. There's so many people that know their faith is important, but they're not actually living it out. They're not actually disciplined about their faith. They're literally playing games. You know, I dropped my kids off to religious education, but I don't actually go to church myself. It's like, well, you're a hypocrite.

• 4:57:09Speaker 03

  You're absolutely a hypocrite. You're not living out the life that you said you're gonna live. And so what's real? We might as well just do whatever we all, whatever we want, you know, anyway. But it's, it's the challenge for all the parents to really, really take accountability for that and be their first teachers, to not waver from the truth and to stand firm, you know?

• 4:57:28Shawn Ryan?

  Just be an example.

• 4:57:29Speaker 03

  Be an example. Yep. We've been saying that a lot lately.

• 4:57:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yep, we have.

• 4:57:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like the theme.

• 4:57:37Shawn Ryan?

  How do you, do you homeschool your kids?

• 4:57:39Speaker 03

  All five of them, yes.

• 4:57:41Shawn Ryan?

  How's that experience?

• 4:57:42Speaker 03

  Beautiful.

• 4:57:43Shawn Ryan?

  Another one that I'm interested in because that's, that's a, I mean, it's gonna be here before I know it, whether they're gonna go to school or whether they're gonna stay home and do school there. And have you done both?

• 4:57:55Speaker 03

  No.

• 4:57:56Shawn Ryan?

  No, you've always homeschooled?

• 4:57:58Speaker 03

  Yes. My wife felt like God was, you know, hitting her in a way where she just felt like she was a nurse, she was a nurse. And she left that career to come home and teach our, our boy and raise our boy and be there for the family. And it has been so beautiful. Again, I will never really be able to thank my wife and tell her how much I appreciate her enough. But she is amazing when it comes to teaching the children. And again, we're the first teachers, we're the first guidance that they're gonna get. And so having that structure in the home is so awesome. There's a level of flexibility to it. I mean, we can literally up and go wherever we want, whenever we want.

• 4:58:40Speaker 03

  You know, if we're like, hey, let's go do a field trip to Williamsburg or go look at Fredericksburg, one of the battlefields, we can literally jump in the car and go, that's the field trip for the day. And we all learn and we're doing that more and more and more. We're evolving, we're getting better at the whole idea of this interaction too. But as far as the homeschooling goes, you know, we are sitting down with them every day and we're teaching them. You know, I'll come in at certain points for those challenges. I'll try to help them problem solve. So we both get a different view on how we're giving them the tools they need to solve these problems. They get basic education. I mean, my kids are to the point now where they're looking at the public school buses as like a prison bus. That's what they call it, the prison bus. Because they're done with their schoolwork before the bus even shows up.

• 4:59:24Speaker 03

  You know, so like literally they've crushed their schoolwork before it goes down the street. So they're starting to recognize like, oh, okay, we can get a lot done and be efficient. There's a lot of waste in public schools. There's a lot of wasted movements, there's a lot of wasted energy. You know, and one of the biggest things that I was telling you that hit me like a lightning bolt about the public school systems. A, that they're not properly giving our kids the fiscal responsibility and financial understanding and education that they need in order to be successful, to experience financial freedom. But the most important is that there is no structured way that our public school systems are teaching our kids how to love one another.

• 5:00:09Speaker 03

  And when my wife told me that, I was like, whoa, that is deep. Because all these kids are confused and lost and treating each other like garbage. And it's like, what are we doing for our, we owe that to these children. And again, for me, the first place I need to start is my home. And I hope that there's people inspired. I know there's a lot of people choosing to homeschool. I cannot imagine sending my kids to public school. I went to public school. And right now, because it's it's being used as a weapon, unfortunately,

• 5:00:48Speaker 03

  for a lot of people and a lot of teachers to to intoxicate our children with their ideologies and their ideas and their truths. And it's throwing our culture upside down. Because we're we're getting fragmented from the inside out. You know, I don't even think, and this is another spark for me. I'm looking at how much time I'm spending with my children and I'm trying so hard to know them and love them and care for them. And it's really tough. I highly, highly challenge and doubt that people that are sending their kids to public schools even really know their children. They're spending so much time away at work, separated from their kids.

• 5:01:32Speaker 03

  They come home, they do homework, they check out, they go on the computer, they're on their iPads, they go to bed and they do it again. And I'm like, I don't think that that's the way that we were supposed to do this.

• 5:01:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:01:42Speaker 03

  When did the public school systems get implemented? What was it, like seventy, eighty years ago?

• 5:01:48Shawn Ryan?

  I have, to be honest, I have no idea.

• 5:01:50Speaker 03

  So let's backtrack. I mean, that is just not that long ago. And so what happened and how we we grew and educated each other was to live. And education can be an amazing tool. I'm not saying that at all. Strategic education is very important. But the idea that we're kind of sending our kids off, expecting the world to raise them and then come back the right way, I think that we're just missing an extreme valuable opportunity to really take ownership in that process. Even us, our own lives, you know, we're going out of the house to go chase this dream, separated from our children. And one of the things that pains me the most, it's actually insulting at this point when I hear somebody say it.

• 5:02:32Speaker 03

  But people will say, oh yeah, you know, we're raising up to, to basically send our kids off to college so we can get our freedom back. And I'm like, if that's your attitude, you should be absolutely ashamed of yourself. Because what you're doing is you're, you're building it up in your head like you have this freedom. So what do they actually mean to you? Is this a vocation where you're going to see your children through to any challenge? And mostly that's our, our culture is like, well, I want my freedom back. You go do your thing and you figure it out. I'm like, again, this is not the way we were supposed to live. We were meant to be in community with each other, to live with each other, to grow in family and friendship. You know, and that's just been so lost and fragmented.

• 5:03:12Speaker 03

  All these issues that you mentioned earlier that you're sick of talking about are because of our, our family units are broken down.

• 5:03:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:03:18Speaker 03

  You know, the, the relationship with our church, the relationship with our families, it's broken. It's starting to seep in every part of our society.

• 5:03:26Shawn Ryan?

  It, it, I think it's beyond starting to, I think it's, you know, but um, you know, I did.

• 5:03:35Shawn Ryan?

  I have a friend, uh, his name's Dean and he told me, gave me kind of an analogy, uh, a couple of weeks ago. And, uh, cause I was asking him about how he raised his daughters, uh, because they turned out to be, are turning out to be very successful at a, at a very young age. And, um, you know, so I asked him, you know, how he, and he did it as a single dad. And, um, he said, well, you have to

• 5:04:08Shawn Ryan?

  picture your kids like this, he said, if you put a billion dollars in a clear plastic bag,

• 5:04:16Shawn Ryan?

  where are you going to put that?

• 5:04:19Shawn Ryan?

  And when you think about that, you can't put it anywhere. Right next to you, that's where it goes. And that's where your kids should be, right next to you, all the time, visibility. And, um, it just, it, it, it stuck with me. It made a lot of sense, you know, and because what's the world going to do when they see a billion dollars sitting in a clear plastic bag? Are you going to trust anybody with that? Your most prized?

• 5:04:49Shawn Ryan?

  Valued the thing that means the most to you, you know, are you gonna stick it in the public school system nowadays? You're gonna stick it in daycare? I'm not.

• 5:05:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, no, I, I think we have a duty and responsibility to our children. And that's why I said I'm challenging everybody because it starts there, you know? And on top of that, we have to be the example. And too often, I always say, kids will push you if you let them. Because at every turn, they will hold you accountable. You're like, don't do that, you know, or next thing you know, I got my kids be like, Dad, you said not to do that. And what's our reaction? Don't tell me what to do, right? And what are we teaching them? Nothing, confusion. And so there's this beautiful accountability in our home where anything that I implement,

• 5:05:49Speaker 03

  I absolutely will take that correction for my children, you know, because I want them to know that they're right. They're implementing something that's true and virtuous and good and useful. And so when they say, hey, Dad, like, you swore you're supposed to do pushups. Like, you're, you're dang right. I'm gonna get down on the ground and I'm gonna do pushups. And anything that we implement like that and they hold me accountable for, I'm the first one to pop to it, you know? I'm the first one to go take out the garbage. I'm the first one to replace the paper towel roll, you know? I need to jump up as soon as my wife's like, hey, can somebody? I'm already up trying to beat my son, you know, to the punch, you know? Because it's like, I need to teach them that that's the movement. That's the behavior that you need to exude. And now they all fight each other to go do stuff, you know?

• 5:06:32Speaker 03

  They're constantly pushing each other over to go get the job done, you know? Because it's fun. And it, and it's really, it's really exciting to see that grow in our home. Because, you know, the, the other thing too is my daughter, she is just like an angel. She's increased my faith so much. It's amazing how much faith you can grow, um, watching your kids.

• 5:06:57Speaker 03

  But she, she has like a, and a connection and a very high respect for Mother Teresa. You know, there's a lot, for whatever reason, she just was boom attracted to, you know, her life and her charity and her order that she started. And, uh, Mother Teresa's got some amazing quotes, but one other quote she has is that, you know, "We don't wash the dishes because we're cleaning up after what just happened, but we're cleaning it because we love the person that's going to use it next." You know, and it's like, that is the attitude that I want my children to have in everything they do. And, uh, she always reminds me of that, like whether I'm getting frustrated, she'll be

• 5:07:38Speaker 03

  like, "Dad, like you're doing this because you care for, you know, us and what's going on around you." So there's this beautiful synergy that kind of takes place when you think about things like that and you watch your kids do it. But we have to be the example. Don't just tell our children to do something. Live it out at every step of the way, you know, especially again with our faith. You know, what are we doing to really lean into that that shows them that it's important? Or are we just going through the motions, you know?

• 5:08:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. Dom, I'd like to, I'd like to talk about spiritual warfare. I'm very green on this, so I just want to let you run. And then I'll have my own questions as you go. But when did you start looking into this?

• 5:08:28Speaker 03

  I think all of us, I think anybody listening, because it's a very real element of our lives, have felt something along the way. And maybe it's different for everybody and how we feel it and how it affects us. But the sense of evil being present and the sense of goodness being present. You know, it's hard to look out the window and see my kids playing in the yard and not feel the love of God. You know, heaven on earth is right there in front of us. We get a glimpse of that. But we also get a very raw glimpse of evil. You know, people being abused, abortion, child trafficking, um, terrorism, innocent

• 5:09:10Speaker 03

  lives being taken, like pure evil. Hard for the human heart to really explain why it's happening in the first place. And

• 5:09:22Speaker 03

  When you start diving into the nature of evil,

• 5:09:27Speaker 03

  you know, God, God's love is really where it starts to understand, like, God loves us unconditionally.

• 5:09:36Speaker 03

  But we have an opportunity to screw this up. We can get this wrong. We can do things that separate us from the love of God and reject the love of God in our hearts. And I think that that's where evil really starts to steer up and stir up. You know, it's the devil whispering us in our ear. We're not good enough. You shouldn't be this way. Don't worry about this. I mean, we all have very subtle things that we deal with on how spiritual warfare works. And it will seep into every aspect of our lives if we let it. That's why, you know, Ephesians 6 is so powerful. And when Paul talks about Ephesians 6,

• 5:10:20Speaker 03

  and I'm going to quote it here because it's important to understand that the the evaluation of like, from a warrior's heart, from a warrior's perspective of understanding spiritual warfare and understanding physical warfare on earth, our physical being. I've been grabbing people lately by the arm, being like, we're here. Like, you can actually feel me and interact with me. So we're engaging in this physical world, but there's this spiritual dimension that absolutely exists. All right, if we understand eternity and we understand heaven and hell, those start to become very real and very apparent. But Ephesians 6 starts with, "Children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment with a promise, for it is well with you and that you'll live a long life on earth.

• 5:11:05Speaker 03

  Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but raise them up in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord. Slaves, be obedient to your earthly masters, with fear and trembling as a singleness of heart as to Christ, not as eye service, not as men-pleasers."

• 5:11:24Speaker 03

  But as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service of a good will, not as to men, but for the Lord, that knowing any good anyone does will be also done to them, whether they're a slave or free. Masters do the same to them, forbearing threatening, knowing that he who is their masters and yours is in heaven, but knows no partiality. And then it goes into the armor of God. Finally, be strong and put on the full armor of God, that we can withstand the wiles of the devil.

• 5:12:06Speaker 03

  Because our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and the powers and the rulers of the present darkness of this world. And then he goes on to stand firm, so you can stand in the evil day. Put on the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the gospel of the shoes of peace, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, and the shield of faith. And so, from a spiritual sense, what I always find fascinating about Ephesians 6 is that every warrior knows that pretty well. Put on the full armor, God, we've all heard it before. And so, we're like, yeah, let's go, let's put on the armor.

• 5:12:49Speaker 03

  But in the spiritual dimension, that chapter actually starts with, "Children, obey your parents. Honor your father and mother. Don't provoke your children to anger." Whether you're a slave or free in this life, no matter where your circumstance is, no matter where you are, our calling is to have a singleness of heart to serve God out of love and to do a good will. And so, if we're not putting that groundwork and foundation in front of thinking that we're going to armor up and that we're actually going to walk out protected from anything, we're missing the key elements and key foundational things in our life. So, if we want to put the armor on, we've got to get the basics right.

• 5:13:33Speaker 03

  That's the beauty of chapter 6 and how I think it culminates together. So recognizing in our own lives, like where are we being stopped from doing those basic things really well? Like where is the devil whispering in our ear like, you don't need to do that, that's not important. Keep going after the shiny things, keep going after the money, keep going after the title, the empowerment, the status, you know, you're doing it for all the wrong reasons that keep us distracted from doing those things right. I think that if we lose ourselves in faith, we open ourselves up to a vulnerability in this world. Because I absolutely believe spiritual warfare is real. I can't say what it is for everybody else, but I know that there is evil and darkness in this world, and I've

• 5:14:16Speaker 03

  seen it firsthand, more times than I'd like to admit. And if we don't have the ability to anchor ourselves on something, that will overcome us. That will overcome our lives in deception and deceit. And again, the world will push us around all over the place. You know, my son said something very, very, very profound, and dang it, I can't remember the scripture, but I remember, oh, it was in Revelation, I was reading Revelation with him. And there was a, there was a verse in there that basically said that, "We're on earth with the rulers of the earth, which are the evil ones that are ruling the earth,

• 5:14:59Speaker 03

  that have been cast down from heaven." So my son read that, and that wasn't the exact verbatim quote, I don't know exactly where it is, but he said, "We're in the devil, we're in the arena with the devil," is what he said. And that was just his own like interpretation. "We're in the arena with the devil." And I was like, "You're absolutely right, we are. We're contending against that daily." So all of these things going around us give us an opportunity to get it wrong, to be tempted by these things that are keeping us enslaved in that battle, to separate us from the love of God. And ultimately, it's our working and our prayer and our constant faith that that binds

• 5:15:40Speaker 03

  us to the love of God. So while spiritual warfare is not something like I'm not an exorcist, I'm not an expert in a lot of these things, I'm still growing, just like you. I'm learning a lot of this stuff. And through a lot of prayer, I've recognized these things. But I know it's true. I know it's real. And I know the more we pray, and the more faithful we are, and the more we receive the grace of God and the sacraments, is that we do have a level of protection. You know, that's why when we prayed before we went on an op, or that's why we prayed before something is so critically important. That's why we pray when we lose somebody. That's why we pray for each other, because we know how important it is. And we need to implement that in all aspects of our life, especially protecting ourselves against the evil that exists, you know?

• 5:16:28Shawn Ryan?

  Man, this is a deep subject. I love talking about it. I love talking about it. But when you say, when you say another dimension, I mean, what exactly does that mean? I mean,

• 5:16:45Shawn Ryan?

  I hear that a lot, you know, that all these things are going on around us that we can't see. What, what do you envision that that looks like?

• 5:16:55Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, I can sit here and try to paint a picture, but there's a lot of mysteries to how we go through these things and how we understand them. And if, if, and I know we are made in the image and likeness of God, right? We're standing here, and this is what God's creation looks like. I think it plays that self, that that out in a lot of different ways, where heaven and hell are very real. And the idea that we have them, especially from the picture that Jesus continues to paint that picture of what that is, is ultimately, it's the separation. There's a lot of people that have explained this way better than I have. But ultimately, it's the separation of God's love. We can do that on our own.

• 5:17:40Speaker 03

  We deny and reject and turn away from and continue to live in our own temptation. I heard it said once where

• 5:17:51Speaker 03

  Like hell is not like this fiery burning place, but it's you actually giving into what you've already been doing. Like if you're enamored by money, or you want status, or you're like the guy that gossips about everything, it's like it's you're only gonna leave this earth being more of what you already are. And that like gets brought to a whole nother level and separates you even further. And there's a better way of explaining that, but there's, there's a lot of things that have been said about, you know, how that dimension, if you will, that's the word that I pick, you know, in my own human understanding. I always laugh at how little we actually know in this short life of like,

• 5:18:36Speaker 03

  we're taking all this information and trying to apply it. But they exist, they're real. And for us to really contemplate and pray on, what I always tell people is like, if there's something that you're questioning, pray on it. Pray and ask for wisdom, ask for guidance, like what is, what is God trying to show us in this? Because ultimately, we're not supposed to have all the answers. That's the beautiful thing about God. He gives us the chance to get it wrong, and he gives us a chance to get it right. And we're always given the option, we're always given the choice. Even like the people that say, oh, what about the people that are on like, the island that never got introduced to God? I'm like, well, I'm not God, and I don't understand his graces,

• 5:19:18Speaker 03

  but God works in a multiplicity of ways that I'll never even come close to understanding. And, and how that culminates and works and progresses through other people's lives is, is just a reality. And we see it transcended throughout time, you know, in the church and throughout our culture and throughout the entire world. You know, like there's a beautiful example of what God's already done here, you know?

• 5:19:41Shawn Ryan?

  I feel like there's a movement happening, you know, and, and we've spoken about it last night, I've spoken about it several times on here, but more and more and more people who you'd never would expect, me being one of them, are moving towards Christ.

• 5:20:02Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 5:20:02Shawn Ryan?

  And

• 5:20:05Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, have you noticed this?

• 5:20:07Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 5:20:07Shawn Ryan?

  Have you noticed this as well? When did you notice this start happening?

• 5:20:12Speaker 03

  You know, my dad, you know, all of a sudden, you know, we talked one day like, hey, Dad, I'm going to church. He's like, I'm going to church too. And this is years ago. And I'm like, you're going to church? I'm like, okay, that's awesome. And then the car ride with Eddie, talking about God. And then seeing other people that I never would have expected turn to Christ. And

• 5:20:37Speaker 03

  it it's something that I look at now and I'm like, okay, God, I know it's, I get it. Um, but it is a beautiful thing to see now in our culture. As bad as everything's getting out there, as difficult and challenging it is to understand, there's also this beautiful awakening that's happening and according to God. And it happens throughout time. It's all, it's history repeating itself. We turn away, we walk away from God, we separate ourselves from his love. And then he finds a beautiful way to redirect our hearts. And I just feel all of them getting goosebumps right now because all these warriors are starting to recognize the truth and the beauty. If the world is telling us anything's true, the person that's really seeking the truth is finding it.

• 5:21:22Speaker 03

  And that's in God's salvation and his love for us and his forgiveness for us. Like, there's a, I know this with my whole heart, like that I would stake my life on it right now without wavering, is that this is our call. I mean, and I can say that, looking you in the eye to be like, I've really wanted out of just a pure, genuine desire to find out what's real and true and beautiful and to do the right thing, that I have been led to this point, to be at the foot of the cross in church on my knees, looking up at God and saying, this beauty has been here the entire time. Now you're calling us and you're waking us up to what we're actually supposed to be doing together. And I don't know what's working. I've had some crazy phone calls lately. I've had people calling me up being like, hey, we're doing this thing.

• 5:22:07Speaker 03

  Um, men's ministry is starting. Men know they need God. You know, it's a, it's the age old thing of like, you know, we have this God sized hole in our heart, but you'll fill it up with anything else but that instead of turning, because it means we need to change.

• 5:22:25Speaker 03

  The average person would rather change their beliefs than change their behavior. And that is absolutely true, just from human nature in general. We'd rather go the easy path, not do the uncomfortable thing. Your friends that say they love you, that validate you for who you are, are not your friends. They are your enemies because they are not taking you away and keeping you from what's destroying your life. A true friend is going to look you right in the eye and say, hey, man, you're messed up. I love you, but it's time to change. And that's what true brotherhood is. That's what true family and friendship is. Anybody else that just tells you what you want to hear, run away from them as fast as you possibly can.

• 5:23:04Speaker 03

  And I think that that's just something that for us is, I'm recognizing it. I, it makes me very happy. And I just want to know where God's calling me in that fight. You know, where is God calling us together? And I, I think that there's something incredible happening. I always say that God's hard at work right now. He, His Spirit is moving, you know, all over the world. And we're seeing it in different ways. Like, I mean, we ask ourselves a question. We're sitting here as brothers, as friends, haven't seen each other in a while. But here we are talking about how important faith is. You know, and I think that there's a, a absolute reason for that. So, you know, here we are.

• 5:23:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, here we are. You know, um, I love talking about this stuff.

• 5:23:52Speaker 03

  It's my favorite subject.

• 5:23:52Shawn Ryan?

  I really, I, it's just, I'm a sponge on this subject. And, uh,

• 5:24:00Shawn Ryan?

  yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's really. What do you think start, sparked this movement? When, I mean, I noticed it probably about a year and a half ago. Is when I started picking up on

• 5:24:17Shawn Ryan?

  different things that were happening, different coincidences, putting finally actually, you know, and I don't know, you know, if this was always happening or if I was more present in the moment. But it just started seeing all these weird coincidences happening. And that kind of sparked a little bit. And then, and then what really got me was the, I mean, the world is just.

• 5:24:45Shawn Ryan?

  It's changing so fast and not in a good direction. And, and that's what really brought me to him.

• 5:24:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:24:56Speaker 03

  St. Augustine says that our hearts are restless until they rest in you. And I think that that's true for everybody on this earth. We're restless trying to figure this out. And while the world throws more and more confusion at us and all these different elements that are going on, it's exactly what's happening is that we're looking outwardly at the world being like, oh, my goodness, this feels like utter chaos. Well, God's beautifully bringing us back to the center of our true calling, which is where peace exists. It's, it's, it's knowing that God's peace is there right in the midst of the battle, right in the midst of the fray, all the way up until the day that we die. Like, God wants us to be peaceful. He's not asking us to be anxious. And, and I think that men are, are doing that whole like frantic, like, where do I go? Where's my mission? Where do I, where am I supposed to help out? Am I supposed to go here or there?

• 5:25:42Speaker 03

  The world's falling apart. I don't agree with anything that's going on. And ultimately, something happens where they recognize the beauty of God. And they say, wait a minute, I'm supposed to pay attention to that. And, and it's the spark of faith. It's, it's again, God's grace is working in a multiplicity of ways that he draws us near to him. You know, it's the prodigal son. The prodigal son goes out. He, he goes into debauchery and spends everything in inheritance. He's eating out of the trough with the pigs and ultimately recognizes in that tough moment of despair that he needs the Father's love. And so that's our journey in a small glimpse. We're out toiling around, seeking something in the world, squandering our inheritance,

• 5:26:25Speaker 03

  blowing it all away, turning away from the Father. And ultimately, we're led back to Him. And there He is with open arms, waiting for us, gazing out on the horizon, waiting to receive our life back so we can rebuild and reestablish what was meant to be. And that's the relationship. Between God and His children, you know, the love and the truth and beauty that He has for everybody here, you know, everybody listening to this, it's an undeniable truth. As soon as you start looking in, as soon as you open your heart and you say, okay, what is, what is going on here? Like, let me just, let me, let me close my eyes and pray for like 30 seconds, you know, I always say like, get a rep in, like you're moving closer,

• 5:27:08Speaker 03

  you're saying yes, you're not denying or rejecting, you know, what God's love is. You have nothing to lose to pray and ask for God's wisdom. Nobody has anything to lose. If nothing happens, you didn't lose anything, but God will still work His graces in an indirect way. But I, I, yeah, so.

• 5:27:27Shawn Ryan?

  Well, brother, I think this is a perfect time to start to wrap things up after that. And so, um, I know you want to end with, with a prayer.

• 5:27:39Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 5:27:40Shawn Ryan?

  Let's do that.

• 5:27:41Speaker 03

  All right, awesome.

• 5:27:46Speaker 03

  Heavenly Father, we just thank and praise you so much for allowing us to get together today, to be able to share stories, wisdom, and our experiences throughout this life. Lord, I pray that everyone listening that's going through any type of struggle is just lifted up and encouraged a little bit by what we spoke about today. Lord, I ask that you continue to look over Shawn, his family, especially his new daughter, that you lift them up, that you protect them, you guide them in faith and truth, and that you continue to use this platform to change lives, to draw people closer to the love that you are showing us, and to bless everybody here, especially those that are really going through adversity

• 5:28:31Speaker 03

  right now, to give them faith and hope and trust in you. Lord, I ask that you continue to build up a brotherhood, that you continue to build up men and women that are willing to step into the breach, to protect our children, to teach our children, to encourage each other, and not to continue to put people down, but to lift people up as much as we can, so we can live in the fullness of your graces and your glory. Heavenly Father, we love you, and I just thank you so much for this opportunity to be here today, and may God bless all of you. Amen.

• 5:29:08Shawn Ryan?

  Amen.

• 5:29:11Shawn Ryan?

  Dom, thank you.

• 5:29:13Speaker 03

  Thanks, brother.

• 5:29:13Shawn Ryan?

  And, um...

• 5:29:14Speaker 03

  It's been awesome.

• 5:29:15Shawn Ryan?

  I just wanna say, man, that you are a righteous dude. And, um, this is one of the most meaningful interviews that I've ever done. And, uh, it's just so good to reconnect with you.

• 5:29:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely, bro.

• 5:29:31Shawn Ryan?

  It was a real honor, man.

• 5:29:32Speaker 03

  It was, man.

• 5:29:33Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 5:29:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. Are we still recording?

• 5:29:36Shawn Ryan?

  We're still recording?

• 5:29:36Speaker 03

  Good. Give me a hug.

• 5:29:38Shawn Ryan?

  Love you too.