#313 Eric Frohardt - DEVGRU Gold Squadron Sniper and Assaulter

Raised on a farm in Northwest Iowa, Eric Frohardt learned the value of hard work and personal responsibility at an early age. After one year of college, he joined the Navy and achieved his goal of becoming a Navy SEAL in 2000. Over nearly 12 years of service, he deployed around the world with SEAL Team Five and DEVGRU before being medically retired due to combat-related injuries. Since leaving the military, Eric has built and led teams across multiple industries, becoming a respected business leader, consultant, and speaker. Today, he is passionate about faith, family, leadership, and helping others reach their full potential while glorifying God through service. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: For problems worth solving — get started with Claude at — https://Claude.ai/srs. Get firearm security redesigned and save 10% off @StopBoxUSA with code SRS at https://stopboxusa.com/SRS #stopboxpod Get started with ShipStation today and get sixty days free at https://shipstation.com with code srs. Taxes and fees apply. Go to https://meetfabric.com/SHAWN and apply today, risk-free. Eric Frohardt Links: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ericfrohardt Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/eric.frohardt X - https://x.com/EricFrohardt Website - https://www.ericfrohardt.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:29Speaker 01

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• 0:32Speaker 02

  On October 2nd.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 0:38Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 0:46Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped going? You start, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 0:53Speaker 03

  I'm not the first then.

• 0:54Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 1:04Shawn Ryan?

  Eric Frohheart, welcome to the show, man.

• 1:07Speaker 05

  Thanks, man. Thanks for having me.

• 1:09Shawn Ryan?

  It's good to have you. So.

• 1:10Speaker 05

  It's good to be here.

• 1:11Shawn Ryan?

  Eddie Penny connected us.

• 1:13Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:14Shawn Ryan?

  I love Eddie.

• 1:15Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:16Shawn Ryan?

  He's a huge inspiration into my faith journey and wow.

• 1:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's awesome.

• 1:23Shawn Ryan?

  How long have you guys known each other?

• 1:25Speaker 05

  So Eddie and I were, we were together at Gold for a while. I've known, I didn't know him before he got there because I came from Team Five and he came from, I want to say Team Two.

• 1:38Shawn Ryan?

  Team Two, yeah.

• 1:39Speaker 05

  So I think I got to, I got to Gold a little bit before him and then he, you know, he got there and then, you know, I met him and we started working together.

• 1:49Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. So, right on. Good dude.

• 1:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:52Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I'm glad we connected.

• 1:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks, man.

• 1:56Shawn Ryan?

  Thrilled to have you. So let me start you off with a introduction here, if you don't mind.

• 2:02Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 2:03Shawn Ryan?

  Eric Frohheart. You spent nearly 12 years as a Navy SEAL, serving with both SEAL Team Five and Naval Special Warfare Development Group. You deployed around the world specialized as a sniper, point man, and lead climber, and, and completed climbs of El Capitan, Denali, and.

• 2:24Speaker 05

  Akankawa.

• 2:25Shawn Ryan?

  There it is. You are medically retired as a SEAL operator chief after combat injuries and a medical condition that cost you a kidney. Since leaving the military, you've built and led high performing teams across multiple industries and now serve as chief standards officer at Goldenrod Companies. You're a leadership speaker, board member, husband, father of four, and a committed follower of Christ. Welcome to the show.

• 2:53Speaker 05

  Thanks for having me, bro.

• 2:54Shawn Ryan?

  Got you a present. You want to see it?

• 2:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:57Shawn Ryan?

  All right.

• 2:58Speaker 05

  All right.

• 3:00Speaker 05

  Do I make it up or?

• 3:01Shawn Ryan?

  No, no, I got it.

• 3:07Shawn Ryan?

  Since you uh, since you don't have any truck guns.

• 3:10Speaker 05

  Dude.

• 3:11Shawn Ryan?

  Thought maybe uh, you might like one of these, so.

• 3:15Speaker 05

  That is the ultimate.

• 3:17Shawn Ryan?

  Do you know what that is?

• 3:18Speaker 05

  Oh my gosh, bro. That is sweet.

• 3:22Shawn Ryan?

  That's the Sig Sauer Rattler. So, SBR version with the collapse or the foldable stock, fixed iron sights. That's one of Sig's new red dot optics up there. It's got a Sig flashlight on there with the thumb activation switch. And then silencer shop.

• 3:43Speaker 05

  Oh my gosh.

• 3:44Shawn Ryan?

  They heard you were coming too. So, so the gun is from my friend Jason over at Sig's.

• 3:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:49Shawn Ryan?

  And then silencer shop heard you were coming, so they wanted to throw a can on there, suppressor. I love silencer shop because they do all this extra stuff for the second amendment.

• 3:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:59Shawn Ryan?

  Um, and uh, yeah, they were pumped that you were coming on the show, so they wanted to uh, they wanted to present you with a brand new 300 blackout truck gun.

• 4:12Speaker 05

  Bro, uh, I, well, first of all, thank you to you. Uh, thank you Sig and silencer shop. That is, that is fricking amazing. How does this work?

• 4:27Shawn Ryan?

  You got to uh, push the top, push the top thing down.

• 4:31Speaker 05

  This thing down?

• 4:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:33Speaker 05

  Oh, I see it. Dude.

• 4:38Shawn Ryan?

  Suppressors are legal in Nebraska, right?

• 4:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:40Shawn Ryan?

  Cool. I thought so.

• 4:45Shawn Ryan?

  Did you use 300 blackout a dev group at all?

• 4:48Speaker 05

  Uh, was they were starting to a little bit.

• 4:50Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 4:51Speaker 05

  But then I, I always ran a four 16.

• 4:56Speaker 05

  A P two, two, six before they were switching. And then some of the like, some of the dog handlers and maybe EOD guys were running the, uh, what was it? The MP seven, right? The little, uh,

• 5:11Speaker 05

  and then when I did recy work and sniper work, you know, once in a while, uh,

• 5:16Speaker 05

  what was it? The four 17, but that thing was just big and loud. So most of the time four 16.

• 5:22Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 5:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:23Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 5:24Speaker 05

  This is fricking amazing. Thank you.

• 5:27Shawn Ryan?

  Maybe you can use these on your, uh, next adventure.

• 5:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, for sure.

• 5:33Speaker 05

  These are awesome. Thank you.

• 5:34Shawn Ryan?

  So you're leaving at the end of the month.

• 5:35Speaker 05

  Legal in all 50 states.

• 5:36Shawn Ryan?

  Legal in all 50 states.

• 5:38Speaker 05

  I gotta take these back to Nebraska. Get them past the drug dogs.

• 5:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yep. You'll be good. You'll be, I've got them passed several times. But, um, yeah, maybe you can use those on your climb. You're getting ready to live on a climb, right?

• 5:51Speaker 05

  That's right. That's right. Getting ready to, uh, climb Kilimanjaro. Um, we're taking off in about almost 20 days. It's just 21 days. So we are climbing, my son and I, along with eight other climbers, are going to go climb Kilimanjaro, um, to help raise money and awareness for, um, Global Partners in Hope, which is a, uh, it's a nonprofit based in Omaha that does work in, uh, West Africa. Um, specifically they do, um, they build water wells and, uh, medical treatment facilities, um, kind of like

• 6:36Speaker 05

  treatment centers in, uh, kind of underserved, um, French, kind of this French speaking West African area.

• 6:44Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, man.

• 6:46Speaker 05

  Oddly, I had met the, so I met the CEO and founder of Global Partners and Hope. When I was moving to Nebraska, I emailed my former commanding officer at Dev Group. He was Captain Moore when I left and now he's retired Admiral Scott Moore. And I told him and I was telling a lot of my friends, like, I'm just, I'm leaving Colorado. I'm moving to Omaha, just giving people a heads up, right? And I had stayed in touch with my, I had stayed in touch with, at the time, Captain Moore. Anyway, he's like, you gotta go meet this guy Ian when you move to Omaha.

• 7:29Speaker 05

  He runs a nonprofit there. He's connected to everyone. So a few months after I lived there, I go and meet Ian Vickers. And he, who, he started Global Partners and Hope and is the CEO and Executive Director. I go and meet him and before he had started that, he was a pastor of a church. And built a big church in Omaha. And then before that, he, he mentioned to me that he preached at a, in a very small town in Northwest Iowa. And the town was same town as where one of my aunts and uncles lived.

• 8:09Speaker 05

  And I asked, I'm like, do you know my aunt and uncle, Joyce and Alvin? And he's like, oh my gosh, I pastored their church in Northwest Iowa. Not only that, he lived with them while his house, while he was trying to move into his house. Wow. So we just kind of, we kind of connected. He started to introduce me to some people in Omaha. Eventually he asked me to be on his board. So now I'm a board member, honored to be on the Board of Global Partners and Hope. And a couple of, I think it was the end of.

• 8:52Speaker 05

  Maybe the end of 2025, at one of our board meetings, we had heard about a similar nonprofit that was doing a climb in Africa, climbing Kilimanjaro, to raise money and awareness for their cause. And we just, one of us kind of posited the idea of doing it for what we're trying to support. And then, before I knew it, we had 10 of us signed up to go climb Kilimanjaro. So we are going to leave in 20 days, and the money we raise from this climb is going specifically to water wells

• 9:36Speaker 05

  and medical treatment facility there. And in that part of Africa,

• 9:46Speaker 05

  like, access to clean water is so limited, and just having clean water saves so many lives. And not only does it save lives, it gives women and kids more time, because kids during the day, they might be sent to fetch water from somewhere that has clean water. Yep. So now they're spending their day fetching water. They can't get educated. So just a, just a well makes a huge difference. And the wells that Ian builds and that Global Partners builds, they are self-sustained. So when we build these wells there, they,

• 10:26Speaker 05

  we train the locals how to operate them. So when, when money is raised, we don't go back to donors later and say, hey, we need to, that well we put in, it needs to be fixed over and over again, right? Like, they're self-sustained. And the treatment facilities we build are the same way. And we're, like, a little bit goes so far there, like, Ian teaches at a college in Omaha, Creighton. And I've seen him, like, ask the kids, like, hey, who in here was, you know, born from C-section, cesarean section? And generally, something like, I don't know what the percentage is now,

• 11:07Speaker 05

  but it could be 10, 20% or whatever it is. I have four kids all born by C-section, right? And he's like, now put your hands down because you wouldn't be here because in places like West Africa, if the mom needs a C-section, like the mom dies, the baby dies. Right? So in this little treatment facility there, um, couple hundred people and a couple hundred moms will be alive because of the, just a new little hospital.

• 11:38Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 11:38Speaker 05

  And the, the crazy thing is like the hospital that he's building there, that the treatment facility, it's something like, like a hundred and eighty thousand dollars.

• 11:50Shawn Ryan?

  I saw that.

• 11:51Speaker 05

  Which is, you know, even in Omaha, where it's very affordable, like you can't, you barely buy a house for that in our country. So, um, we're climbing Kilimanjaro to raise money to help with the well and a treatment facility. And, um, you know, we're going to go, whatever it's 44 miles and you start at like 12,000 feet and you finish at 19,400 ish. So it's 44 miles and whatever, you know, 7,000 foot of elevation gain and you're going to spend, we're going to spend seven nights sleeping in a tent, eating dehydrated

• 12:31Speaker 05

  food and hiking all day. And, you know, it's hard, but like we're choosing to do it. You know what I mean? And they're like, their, their days are that hard and they, they don't get to choose. You know what I mean?

• 12:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Man, that's cool. Is there a, uh, we'll put the link in the description for anybody that wants to.

• 12:50Speaker 05

  Yep. We have a, we have a, a landing page for all the different climbers and each, each separate climber has their own landing page and my son and I have our own, our own page and I'll give you the link. And I mean, 50 bucks goes a long way. So, um, yeah, very exciting.

• 13:12Shawn Ryan?

  Noble cause, man.

• 13:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, thank you.

• 13:14Shawn Ryan?

  So let's get into your story.

• 13:16Speaker 05

  Let's do it.

• 13:16Shawn Ryan?

  Where did you grow up?

• 13:19Speaker 05

  I grew up in a very small town in northwest Iowa called Sack City, Iowa. I was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, like forty minutes away from there. Um, and I was raised in a small town and grew up

• 13:39Speaker 05

  mostly working on the farm. So my mom was a nurse and my dad was a farmer. And, you know, I spent

• 13:51Speaker 05

  as much time as I can remember out on that farm. So, yeah, very small town. What are you guys farming? We raised, um, corn, soybeans and hogs. And for us, I like, I think at our highest, maybe we had eight hundred acres of like corn and soybeans. Right? Um, but most of the labor was hogs. Because with the corn, you plant it. Um, same thing with the beans, you know, you plant it and then it's in the field. And then, um, you don't really do much to it until harvest time.

• 14:32Speaker 05

  Right? But year round, there was hog work. Um, and we had,

• 14:39Speaker 05

  like back then it was farrow to finish. So we had like

• 14:44Speaker 05

  boy hogs and girl hogs and they had baby hogs. And the way it works now is people generally buy hogs that have been weaned from the moms and finished them out. Right? But we had, you know, we had hogs indoors and outdoors and pretty big operation. So, um, it was, uh, I, I tell people now, like,

• 15:09Speaker 05

  like the farm, I, I learned so much on that farm and it helped shape me and it like honestly, it forged me, like it helped me make it through buds. Um, but like hog farming is.

• 15:26Speaker 05

  Like it's not glamorous.

• 15:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I'll bet it's not.

• 15:30Speaker 05

  There's no, there's no hog farm version of Yellowstone, right? Uh, it's just, and like, I just remember like, I hated it.

• 15:40Shawn Ryan?

  Like, really?

• 15:41Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, I liked being on the farm and like, working, but then it was like, there were days when you're like, all right, I'm gonna hard work. Um, low pay and you know, and just sometimes dirty nasty work, you know what I mean?

• 15:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:56Speaker 05

  And, and I've told my dad since, you know, I wouldn't, wouldn't trade it for anything, you know? So.

• 16:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Do you have brothers and sisters?

• 16:05Speaker 05

  I do. Uh, I have two brothers and a sister. So, um, one of my brothers and my sister live in Omaha and then one of my brothers is in Orlando.

• 16:16Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 16:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, and we're all very, uh, we're all very close still, so.

• 16:21Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 16:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, I live about a mile and a half from one of my brothers.

• 16:25Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, that's awesome.

• 16:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:27Shawn Ryan?

  Were you, where do you fall in the birth order?

• 16:30Speaker 05

  What's that?

• 16:31Shawn Ryan?

  Where do you fall in the birth order?

• 16:32Speaker 05

  I'm the oldest.

• 16:33Shawn Ryan?

  You're the oldest?

• 16:34Speaker 05

  I am the oldest, yep.

• 16:36Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. What were you in, what else were you into as a kid?

• 16:39Speaker 05

  So grew up on the farm, um, you know? It was very work hard, play hard, right? Um, get the work done, but we had four wheelers, we had a dirt bike, we had a Honda Odyssey, like the old like single seat dune buggy.

• 16:58Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 16:58Speaker 05

  Before, before they renamed a minivan an Odyssey. And, uh, you know, fishing and hunting and just building, like when I was little, like building forts, just all that sort of thing on the farm. Um,

• 17:14Speaker 05

  tubing, you know, behind the four wheeler in the snow and just, you know, just you kind of made your own fun out on the farm.

• 17:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:22Speaker 05

  Um, but.

• 17:26Speaker 05

  Uh, then as I got into like middle school and then in high school, I was, you know, really loved football and lifting weights. So. Were you close with your parents? Very, very close. So I, um, like, I don't,

• 17:43Speaker 05

  I don't have like a sob story, like some people who, you know, joined the military. Like I grew up with very loving parents and, um, who, you know, we weren't spoiled by any means. We worked hard, but we had, you know, we had a nice home. Uh, we always had amazing meals and we always had, spent time together and like watched TV together like everyone did back then. Um, and close to my siblings and, you know, all of that. So, um, I learned a lot from,

• 18:20Speaker 05

  like, learned a lot from my parents, you know? Um, and my mom was just so, so calm and so caring and so loving and she worked so hard for us. Um, and she was, she was gone a lot because she was a, a nurse. Um, but she would always still like find time to make our favorite, favorite meals and that sort of thing. And she was, most of all I remember about my mom was just her calmness. And, um, that's something that helped me, like when I was in the teams, right? And I could always kind of just be relatively calm when things were getting like wild.

• 19:02Speaker 05

  And my dad, on the other hand, is not calm. Like he's just like this big ball of energy or, or was. And he, like when I graduated high school, my dad was like, I don't know, like almost six, five, but three, 40. And he, he could,

• 19:20Speaker 05

  like I was training for football and he could still beat me in a 40 yard dash. Holy shit. He's a monster. Are you serious? Yeah. And like he, he can't put his index finger through the trigger guard of a Glock 19. Like he's a beast. Whoa. Yeah. And so I'm like,

• 19:42Speaker 05

  I couldn't like, you know, if, if I like mouthed off to him, he could just pick me up with one hand or whatever. Um, but he, you know, I learned a lot from him too. Um, we worked hard, but he always played with us. He always did things with us, like kids from other, like my friends would come out because he would, like he could work all day and then pull us around on a, on, behind the four wheeler in the snow. Like he always, you know, he's very playful. Um, but then he also,

• 20:13Speaker 05

  you know, taught us like to be responsible. So like, if you had a job to do on the farm, like you were responsible for getting it done and then accountable for the results. Right? So if you left, if you left the pen open and the hogs got out, like you better take blame for it. You better go put them back in. Right? Um, and the thing most of all from him was probably just respect of women. So the, the cardinal offense in our house, like if mom got upset, like we were in trouble and you didn't want to make my dad angry. Like A, he had a temper, but he's also almost six, five, three, 50. Right?

• 20:56Speaker 05

  Like he could, he could be scary. So,

• 21:00Shawn Ryan?

  I'll bet.

• 21:00Speaker 05

  Um, if mom got angry, like we tried to, you know, butter her up before dad got mad. So anyway, yeah.

• 21:13Shawn Ryan?

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• 21:57Shawn Ryan?

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• 22:33Shawn Ryan?

  Were you good at sports?

• 22:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, I I thought I was. Like, so in a small town, you kind of get to do everything.

• 22:43Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 22:43Speaker 05

  And when I was really, when I was younger was T-ball and then Little League and then, you know, I made the All-Star team in Little League, but it's such a small town, right? And then there was a time where in the summer I would be doing like baseball and swimming. And I was like, I was on an All-Star baseball team and a all-district swimmer. But this is a town of whatever, 1,200 people, right? Um, I don't, I don't know how big it is now, but it's not huge. I graduated with right around 30.

• 23:16Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 23:18Speaker 05

  But I always loved, uh, like, for whatever reason, like, I just loved football. And, um, I worked,

• 23:31Speaker 05

  I worked so hard to play football. And I, so I had played all those sports and basketball. Like you kind of ran track, you just did it all, right? Uh, there was, and back then people didn't specialize either. And it was a small town, see, at small school, you kind of, kind of could do it all.

• 23:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:48Speaker 05

  Um,

• 23:51Speaker 05

  if I was in even Omaha now, I probably wouldn't make the team on half those sports.

• 23:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:57Speaker 05

  In any of those schools, right? So I, but I think it was my,

• 24:05Speaker 05

  by the time I got to high school, I was just so tired of not having a summer. Cause it was like.

• 24:13Speaker 05

  Like grade school and middle school. I would have swim team practice in the morning.

• 24:20Speaker 05

  Go to the farm all day and then have baseball practice at night. Wow. And then, once the practices were kind of over, there was game times. So there were, there were times where I would have two swim meets a week.

• 24:35Speaker 05

  And two baseball games a week, maybe a tournament on the weekend. And farming every day. Right? So my summers. They were a blink. Yeah, that busy kid. And then, so when I got into high school, like I just had this like epiphany. I'm like, I'm just gonna play football. And my summers were gonna be spent lifting weights and doing farm work. And fishing. Right? And then maybe some, you know. Running and conditioning stuff for football. And then all of a sudden, like I just had these awesome summers. Like I was just lifting weights in the morning. Um, or doing the football conditioning stuff, the sprints.

• 25:18Speaker 05

  Farm all day, work on the farm all day. And then, you know, maybe go fishing or go out or something at night. Um, and I, I like, that was a lot of fun. Right. But I was, uh, I was decent at football. Um. Think my senior year, I was. You know, pretty good. Thought I was, um, made all state as a linebacker. Um. Think it was like second team all state or whatever. But I'm like, ah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get like, and I wanted it really bad. Right? Um, so I went and tried to play. Football in college. And my, again, my dad's really big. And my uncles are.

• 26:01Speaker 05

  Anywhere from six, three to six, four. And big. Uh, I mean, my little brother. He graduated high school at six, five, two, seventy-five. And my cousins are. Six, three. I mean, my other little brother right now is six, three. I'm the, I'm, you know, kind of the runt. But I thought like, oh, I'm gonna go to college. And I'm just gonna go to junior college because. I'm just gonna hit my growth spurt later. Like I was planning a growth spurt. And I'll go to junior college and I'll get like two years of football, right? I'll get, I'll get on their strength and conditioning program and eat some more.

• 26:45Speaker 05

  And then I'll get better at football and like two years later, I'm going to get it like this was my plan. I'm going to get a division one scholarship to Iowa State and play, right? Like that's what I, that's what I wanted more than anything, right? So graduate high school, I go to a junior college, community college in Mason City, Iowa called NIAC. Um, uh, Northern Iowa area community college.

• 27:15Speaker 05

  And I get up there and I'm thinking like, it's just junior college. It's going to be like 13th grade, right? Like it ain't, it's not like I'm going to, like back then, like I live in Nebraska now and in the nineties, Nebraska was like the football. So it wasn't like I was going to play division one at Nebraska where I, you know, probably wasn't worthy of carrying water, right? And I show up, show up at NIAC and there were a few people like me kind of farm kids, but there was also like division one talent there from other states who were like,

• 27:54Speaker 05

  like Iowa and like parts of the Midwest, they have a good like junior college feeder program that like feed the main universities. And there's people there that maybe didn't have good enough GPAs or high enough ACTs. And they're getting their grades up to then go play elsewhere. So we had people on our team like, get picked up to go play division one later and it was a good junior college team. So I get there and

• 28:22Speaker 05

  wouldn't you know it, I'm like, not that good.

• 28:27Speaker 05

  Uh, like I, and I had, you know, I had like bulked up a bunch, right? I got above 200 by the time I, before I went there. But I was trying to play linebacker and like the linebackers were like 220. And they could run faster than me, like I had.

• 28:49Speaker 05

  The speed like of alignment and I was strong. I just couldn't like, like I couldn't play. Right? So I like to say I wasn't big enough, strong enough or fast enough, but like I just wasn't good enough. Right? And it was, uh, it was kind of eye opening when you just see that kind of talent, but like the cool thing like, like I don't have any regrets because like I like to say, like, you know, I never achieved my gridiron goals. Um, but I learned so much like I learned just like football is a hard sport.

• 29:28Speaker 05

  Right? The games are fun when you're good, but practices are hard. Right? Um, you're hitting, you're wearing pads. I remember in high school, we were doing two a days in Iowa and it's hot. Right? So we would have morning practice.

• 29:48Speaker 05

  And then a late afternoon practice and in between that, instead of going home and playing video games and drinking Gatorade like half my friends, I had to go work on the farm between the morning and the afternoon practice. Right? And I might be baling hay and drinking Pepsi. Right? Like instead of video games, but back to football, football is hard. Um, it can hurt, but you learn like so much about teamwork and commitment and preparation. Like every, the more, the more time you spend in the weight room or off season conditioning, the better you'll be. Like you just learn all these things and you learn kind of

• 30:33Speaker 05

  like a team sport, how to win and how to lose. Like some people that don't play those sports, like they just like, don't have that experience. Right? Um, so I learned a lot from football and I never achieved my goals, but like, like sometimes the person you become in pursuit of a goal is the actual, like you didn't know it at the time, but that's the reward. You know what I mean? Um, and we were. I don't know, we had finished a, finished a year of football. And of, I mean, Hugh will get a kick out of this, but we're watching a movie about

• 31:16Speaker 05

  SEALs in a dorm room and I've had like, maybe like

• 31:23Speaker 05

  three or four natural lights, like the cheap version of Bud Light.

• 31:29Speaker 05

  And I'm sitting there. Like, and it's a shame to say it was G I Jane. We're literally watching and my, one of my friends in college had like rented G I Jane from Blockbuster.

• 31:41Shawn Ryan?

  I got hooked on it.

• 31:43Speaker 05

  And I watch it, I'm like three or four beers deep. And I just, I don't know, a light bulb goes off, literally. And I go, I'm going to join the Navy and be a SEAL. I'm so, I'm not going to play football.

• 31:56Shawn Ryan?

  Moment?

• 31:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:58Shawn Ryan?

  Like right there.

• 31:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, I stood up, I said this in the dorm room and we had one dorm room that was like no beds in it, it kind of was converted into it had like two couches and a TV, like a party room.

• 32:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:12Speaker 05

  And I just said, I

• 32:15Speaker 05

  this light bulb went off. I'm like, I'm going to join the Navy and become a SEAL. And, and someone in the room was like, yeah, whatever, you'll never do it. You can't do it. Like you're not big enough, like it wasn't big enough, but like I know a guy who was a Marine and he's much tougher. You'll never make it. Right? And like in that, like, I just needed someone to say I couldn't do it and I enlisted in the Navy the next day.

• 32:42Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 32:43Speaker 05

  On a bet. On a bet.

• 32:45Shawn Ryan?

  Still hungover from Addy Light.

• 32:48Speaker 05

  Literally from G I Jane.

• 32:51Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 32:51Speaker 05

  Right? Now I didn't leave the next day. I, I joined on delayed entry. Right? The D E, it was called.

• 32:58Shawn Ryan?

  Were you just hoping that all your teammates look like Demi Moore?

• 33:05Speaker 05

  I just thought like, so I, there was something like,

• 33:11Speaker 05

  you know, like we all have a chip on our shoulder that go and do that. We're like going to prove something. Yeah. Right. And I'm like, I'm sitting there in college. I'm like, well, I'm not proving anything here sitting as a third string outside linebacker, right? I need to go do something different, right? And I will be the first to say it was a, like, we can get into this later, but it was a selfish pursuit. After nine 11, that all changes. Like, cause now I'm like, oh, I'm serving my country, but I joined the Navy to go prove that I could go do something, which that's fine, right? Like it's, it is what it is. I wanted to prove that I could do it. And then I had someone tell me I couldn't do it. I enlisted in the Navy the next day on a bet.

• 33:57Speaker 05

  And then I was in the delayed entry program. So I finished out my, uh,

• 34:05Speaker 05

  finished out my one year of college. Cause I'm like, I might as well finish this year in case I go back or whatever. And then that time, I think college got over that year of college gets over in what? Like May, something? So from May to October, I'm on delayed entry. And then I go back, I go back to Sac City. And, um, I literally have this like period of my life that is like one of the most purposeful moment, like seasons that I've ever had because I was, you know, I was young,

• 34:44Speaker 05

  like 19. Um,

• 34:48Speaker 05

  but I knew what I wanted to do with my life. Like there was, I was singularly focused, right? I was gonna be a Navy SEAL. I had so much clarity, like about that and so much purpose. So I would, and I had gotten this dumb little, like printed PDF from the recruiter. It was called the warning order back then. And it's this old school, like, It's like 15 pages of eight and a half by 11 paper that's stapled in the corner. That it has the, the running program, the swimming program, and then the calisthenics program,

• 35:31Speaker 05

  pushups, the pullups, the situps, and the dips. And to me, like, I took that home. And, you know, I had finished my junior year of college, or I'm sorry, my one year of college.

• 35:48Speaker 05

  And I was like 215 pounds, like I had bulked up for, for ball, but I, I wasn't getting any faster and I wasn't still gonna play.

• 35:58Speaker 05

  And I show up back and, back at home and I got this, now I got this path, right? And I literally like, I'm gonna spend the whole summer just working on the farm and working out. So I'll like, that whole time, basically June through October. Like every morning I would do, um, I would work up, it worked you up to a two mile swim, right? So it had a, it sequentially got longer. So towards the end of that, like five, like three to five days a week, I'm doing a two mile swim in fins in a pool. Like it's in a rec center indoors. And I remember it was like. How many laps is that? Forty-four. Oh my gosh.

• 36:42Speaker 05

  It was 88 lengths. Damn. It was 88 lengths or 44 laps and I would like sometimes lose count. So I was like, you know, I'm trying to figure out how to keep my count.

• 36:56Speaker 05

  And I would do that every morning, right? Like anywhere from three to five days a week. And then the running program, well, I'll go sequentially. Then there was the pushups, the pullups and the situps, and they had these pyramids. And it was anywhere from three to four days a week, right? And like they have so much better shit now from like the human performance side like and they have P like they have these programs that the SEAL recruiters give you. This is just an old printed off thing that I got from a Navy recruiter in Basin City, Iowa.

• 37:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:33Speaker 05

  But I'll never forget like I didn't even have pull up bars. So I like I build a pull up bar from a rafter in the barn. And then, you know, I had this piece of carpet on the floor in a shop, like a machine shop. For pushups and situps, just a piece of old like kind of like this, right? That was my PT pad.

• 37:57Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 37:58Speaker 05

  And then I even like built a dip bar in the shop. So it was kind of like Rocky IV, right?

• 38:05Shawn Ryan?

  Odd, man.

• 38:05Speaker 05

  So I'd do my swim in the morning. I'd go to the farm all day and I'd do chores and do do the work or whatever, whatever I was doing. And throughout the day I would take a break and grab a set of pull ups, set of pushups, situps dips, whatever the program called for. And then when

• 38:24Speaker 05

  sometime late afternoon, you know, and maybe when the chores were almost done, or even like we had a, we had a farm site that was like three miles away. Right? From this one farm site. So if that day called for a six mile run, like I would just put on shorts and run in my boots from this farm to that farm, do chores and then run back. So I'm like farming all day. I do like two mile swim every day, farming all day. And then work up to like five or six mile runs every day. And I'm like super in shape, right?

• 39:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:01Speaker 05

  Uh, and then I'm sure you experienced the same thing. You getting like, you get in this great shape and then you go to bootcamp and get out of shape, at least Navy bootcamp.

• 39:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:11Speaker 05

  But I'd, you know, a, a big part of the story that I'm leaving out was my dad's, um, support.

• 39:18Shawn Ryan?

  I was gonna ask, what did your parents think?

• 39:21Speaker 05

  So on the one hand, it was like so helpful when someone said I couldn't do it. Like I needed someone to say you couldn't do that. I was going to prove them wrong. And then I came home from college. I think it was around Christmas and New Year's, you know, the break and I told my, I told my folks. Like we were at my grandpa's house and have getting ready to have Christmas dinner and I was like, I had, I'd been meaning to tell him sooner, but I just didn't have the courage because I thought he was gonna like whap me.

• 39:52Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 39:53Speaker 05

  Like, I mean, just jokingly, like,

• 39:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:56Speaker 05

  You dumb ass, don't.

• 39:57Shawn Ryan?

  Want you to be a farmer or something?

• 39:58Speaker 05

  No, but I mean, he wanted us to go to college. He didn't, he didn't, actually, he didn't want us to be farmer. He's like, he doesn't want us to take over the farm. It's,

• 40:09Speaker 05

  our experience with farming was like, long work, hard hours. We didn't, you know, we didn't make a ton doing it. We didn't have land. You know, he didn't inherit land. We couldn't buy land at the time. Like it was, it was just a lot of work and it wasn't for us not. Anyway, he never like pushed us. He never pushed us to be farmers. I mean, we worked on the farm because that was, uh, that paid for room and board, right? Um, but in, in a moment, and he was just, you know, he's so awesome, but I, I just go, all right, dad, well, I'm not going back to college next year. I'm going to be a Navy SEAL. I said all that in like one breath. And he just looks at me,

• 40:54Speaker 05

  you know, looks down on me and he's just like,

• 40:59Speaker 05

  okay, well, like I forget the words exactly, but something like, like, I really think you'll be one of the few that makes it through and you'll be good at that. I'm excited for you, son. Right? And, and, and to have that, like, that encouragement, you know, from your dad was just like, you know, so powerful.

• 41:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:23Speaker 05

  And just a reminder, like, you know, hopefully someday, like, I'll be aware enough for someone, if they need that encouragement from me, like I can

• 41:36Speaker 05

  mimic that, if that makes sense.

• 41:40Shawn Ryan?

  What did you tell them you were gonna be before that? Was it when you went to school?

• 41:46Speaker 05

  I was taking ag business and criminal science classes. So I was either gonna be

• 41:54Speaker 05

  a farmer or in the FBI. But I honestly didn't know.

• 42:00Speaker 05

  And part of it was you go to junior college, a lot of it's general ed. And you might change later anyway. Yeah. You can get your general ed done at Ju- junior college, community college, and then go to university and you might change your mind by then. You know what I mean? So I was not

• 42:19Speaker 05

  wasn't really sure.

• 42:20Shawn Ryan?

  What about your mom?

• 42:21Speaker 05

  My mom, so yeah, she's, uh, she was a nurse.

• 42:25Shawn Ryan?

  No, I mean, what did she think?

• 42:27Speaker 05

  Um, well, she was concerned, right?

• 42:33Speaker 05

  She didn't really she didn't know what that was. Like what a SEAL was, right? My dad knew because you know, he'd read even like Rogue Warrior and like when I grew up on like as a little kid, every Friday dad would get a, a tape. We didn't have a Blockbuster, but we had a corner store with VCR. Like we would have to rent a VCR and he would bring an action movie home. Could be Rambo or Commando or Die Hard or like some eighties action movie.

• 43:06Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah, man.

• 43:07Speaker 05

  And so like Friday night was always like movie night and like that like really shaped. You know? He was aware of what SEALs were and one time we did, you know? I think it was like the certainly in the nineties, but he brought home the Charlie Sheen SEALs movie and like my brother and I watched that and like the next day at the farm, we had this swing set and we turned it into our obstacle course. Yeah. I was one of those like for a while I was one of those like every time I watched a movie. My career path changed.

• 43:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:43Speaker 05

  Like if it was backdraft, I was gonna be a fireman. If it was G I Jane, I was

• 43:53Speaker 05

  so yeah, anyway, my mom was not.

• 43:58Speaker 05

  She's supportive of it, but like also like back then, like this is 98, like it wasn't like she, she didn't know what I was signing up for.

• 44:06Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 44:07Speaker 05

  You know what I mean?

• 44:07Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 44:08Speaker 05

  Uh, but mom, yeah, she,

• 44:12Speaker 05

  I would say, you know, fast forward to 2001 and now I'm on deployment like they're,

• 44:21Speaker 05

  you know, they're turning into prayer warriors just because of the way things changed. So I made it, um,

• 44:30Speaker 05

  I don't know, uh, finished my year of college. I had that summer of purpose and trained and I shipped off and went to boot camp in October.

• 44:39Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 44:40Speaker 05

  Um, and then boot camp, you know, it's, uh, I'm sure you experienced the same thing, like you get in really good shape and then you go there and you're just folding clothes and

• 44:54Speaker 05

  doing dishes and I mean, it was awful. I mean, was yours the same?

• 44:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:59Speaker 05

  I mean,

• 45:00Shawn Ryan?

  Shining.

• 45:01Speaker 05

  Shine in your boots.

• 45:02Shawn Ryan?

  Shine in your boots. Sweeping the floor. Lot of cleaning.

• 45:08Speaker 05

  Swabbing the deck.

• 45:10Shawn Ryan?

  Swabbing the deck.

• 45:11Speaker 05

  Yeah. No, boot camp, boot camp for me.

• 45:14Shawn Ryan?

  Basically all the extra motivation you need not to quit bugs.

• 45:18Speaker 05

  A hundred percent. That, that's absolutely right.

• 45:21Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, this is what I'll be doing if I don't make it.

• 45:23Speaker 05

  Right.

• 45:24Shawn Ryan?

  This is fucking horrible.

• 45:26Speaker 05

  No, thanks, bro.

• 45:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:28Speaker 05

  Yeah. No, so I go to boot camp in, um,

• 45:33Speaker 05

  October of 98 and it's mostly uneventful. There's two things that stand out about boot camp. A, I, I met, Matt Bissonette and I were in sister divisions in boot camp.

• 45:47Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, no shit?

• 45:49Speaker 05

  So, um, I meet him in boot camp. We end up going to Bud's one class apart. Um, I go a class before him because he had a longer A school, but then we show up at team five together. We're in the same STT class at SEAL Team Five and we do.

• 46:10Speaker 05

  For two rotations at Team Five, we are in sister platoons, right? So we're kind of going through all this together. I would have gone to Dev Group the same time he did, were it not for my kidney thing, which we'll get into. Uh, so I've known no one longer in the military than him. Wow. So met Matt in, uh, in boot camp and then it was towards, so towards the end of boot camp. Um,

• 46:42Speaker 05

  the, and boot camp again, it's so, it's pretty easy. A, I was in really, really good shape and B, like the work, like the work ethic you learn on a farm, right? Which just carried me through, has carried me for, through so many things made like boot camp was simple. But at the end of boot camp, um, I, I had this like extreme pain in my side, right? And like my parents come to be there for graduation and like you get to go spend like, I don't think we got to stay in the hotel with them, but like they could pick you up during the day and like,

• 47:24Speaker 05

  take you out to eat or whatever. And so I've been at boot camp and I had missed my folks and missed my siblings and my brothers and sister. And they're all younger and I'm like, like as boot camp approaches, you're just so excited to see your family. It's been like three months. Yeah. And you're so excited to get out on town and eat real food, not this crap from this chow hall.

• 47:50Speaker 05

  They finally get there and boot camp's finally over and I can't do it because I'm in this, like I just go back to their hotel room and I'm curled up in a ball on the bed, right? And I just want to be in a fetal position and I get like, so I find, I get like, I see the doctors, the boot camp doctors and they're just like, well, It's probably IBS, Irritable Bowel Syndrome. And eventually it kind of goes away, right? Uh, or whatever. And I, this, this is a pain that would plague me. Like in bootcamp, at the end of bootcamp, and then once in BUDs during Hell Week.

• 48:32Speaker 05

  And then, once in Sniper School, and then once in Land Warfare for, when I was at Team Five. And I would

• 48:44Speaker 05

  later find out, like, it's a kidney stone. So I had this pain. Been in there that fucking long? Well, I would, I would, they would pass, right? And they would, like, they would, like, somehow, the way the doctor explained it to me, like, it would get stuck in the my, the ureter is the tube between your kidney and your bladder. And mine was like, had like scar tissue in it. So there would be times where my kidney wouldn't drain all the way. And then, if it would get backed up, it would form a stone.

• 49:23Speaker 05

  Right? So I find out, never diagnosed, like, I'm diagnosed in bootcamp with IBS and constipation. And it's a blocked kidney. So, and I'll go through that sequentially, but like, so I finished bootcamp, and then I go to

• 49:42Speaker 05

  whatever, back then, um, SEAL wasn't a rate. Uh huh. So I went to A-School. I went to Sonar Tech, Sonar Tech A-School in Point Loma. So, anyway, uh, that was like,

• 50:00Speaker 05

  I think that's like five weeks. So in our tech, but they don't, and they don't send a five-week A-School graduate into the fleet. They have to go through other training before their actual sonar texts.

• 50:19Speaker 05

  And I was the, I was the honor man of my sonar tech A school and they were going to give me my choice of orders. I'm, I'm like, well, I'm going to BUDs.

• 50:31Shawn Ryan?

  And somebody else the first choice.

• 50:33Speaker 05

  Yeah. And you had to, as you probably, I don't know, when did you join?

• 50:37Shawn Ryan?

  What? 2001.

• 50:38Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 50:39Shawn Ryan?

  July 2001.

• 50:40Speaker 05

  Got it. Right before nine 11.

• 50:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:42Speaker 05

  So like back then you had, uh, like I, this was called the SEAL Challenge Program.

• 50:48Shawn Ryan?

  Same.

• 50:49Speaker 05

  And you were going to get E4 out of BUDs if you made it, but you had to pass these, you had to pass the test in boot camp and then in A school, right? And then, and then the first day of BUDs, as long as you pass those PRTs, you're in it, right? So you know the drill.

• 51:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:05Speaker 05

  That's what I was doing.

• 51:07Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 51:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 51:09Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's take a quick break and then when we come back, we'll see if, uh, all of the BUDs candidates, when you showed up, looked like Demi Moore.

• 51:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 51:20Shawn Ryan?

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• 52:04Shawn Ryan?

  and they've got a new StopBox UCAN, which uses the same mechanical locking system, but gives you more room for your firearm, ammo, and other gear. For a limited time, our listeners get 10% off at StopBox when you use code SRS at checkout. Head to StopBoxUSA.com and use code SRS for 10% off your entire order. After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them our show sent you.

• 52:38Shawn Ryan?

  Welcome to Hollywood vs. Reality. They do it, right?

• 52:46Shawn Ryan?

  What does he do in the movies? Tell me if I'm doing this wrong, because I don't watch any of this [BLEEP]. A little flick like that, right? Seems pretty cool. It is pretty [BLEEP] cool.

• 52:57Shawn Ryan?

  Gotta silence it.

• 53:04Shawn Ryan?

  In another lifetime, I did gun reviews for a living. Proprietary [BLEEP] magazines, supposedly the best engineering in the [BLEEP] world. When that breaks, you're [BLEEP].

• 53:15Shawn Ryan?

  And now we're bringing him back.

• 53:22Shawn Ryan?

  It does look pretty [BLEEP] cool. I gotta, I gotta admit that.

• 53:28Shawn Ryan?

  Alright Eric, we're back from the break.

• 53:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:31Shawn Ryan?

  Getting ready to show up to Bud's.

• 53:33Speaker 05

  So yeah.

• 53:34Shawn Ryan?

  What's your first impression? What's it like walking in there?

• 53:37Speaker 05

  Well, I was...

• 53:40Speaker 05

  You know, my time in the military and in the teen, like all of it, is marked by steep learning curves. You know, they like...

• 53:50Speaker 05

  Take people off the street, turn them into SEALs, or in my case, take them off the farm, right? And...

• 53:59Speaker 05

  First of all, I'm one of the guys dumb enough, like naive enough, like when they're like, "Who's never been in the ocean before?" And I'm like...

• 54:09Speaker 05

  Right? Like, thinking it's a badge of honor.

• 54:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:12Speaker 05

  And then, you know, whatever the proctor, whoever the instructor was at the time, he's like, "Get over here, we gotta go catch up."

• 54:22Speaker 05

  Takes me to the ocean, like, and we're, I'm in, at the time, PTRR or something, you know, before you're phased, phased up. And, uh, he just proceeds to surf torture me until I'm stop shivering, right? And I'm like...

• 54:40Speaker 05

  I don't, you know, I had seen the ocean, I guess technically, because I was in Point Loma for a school, but I'd never been in it, and like, I didn't realize how cold it was, how cold the Pacific Ocean, like...

• 54:55Speaker 05

  I watched Baywatch. That's what I thought.

• 54:59Shawn Ryan?

  Watched Bay. That was my fucking Baywatch.

• 55:02Speaker 05

  Well, everyone's running around in swim trunks and, you know,

• 55:08Shawn Ryan?

  Bikinis.

• 55:09Speaker 05

  Suits.

• 55:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:10Speaker 05

  And I'm like, it can't be that bad.

• 55:14Speaker 05

  So, long story short, I wasn't expecting the water to be that cold. Or taste that gross, you know, that salt.

• 55:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:22Speaker 05

  Uh, but my first impression.

• 55:25Shawn Ryan?

  That salt and shit coming up from Tijuana?

• 55:29Speaker 05

  My first impression, it's, I don't know, it was kind of interesting. You kind of look around and, you know, you're all kind of like measuring each other, like, you know, is that guy gonna be here at the end?

• 55:45Shawn Ryan?

  Measuring each other up?

• 55:47Speaker 05

  Yeah. And I've done it, you know, I've done it recently in a college football or whatever. You're kind of looking around and trying to see where you might fit. And for me, I don't know.

• 56:02Speaker 05

  I'm sure you had the same experience, but

• 56:07Speaker 05

  I'm not sure how many people we started with. I have seen and heard it was somewhere around 180.

• 56:15Speaker 05

  Or 160 or whatever.

• 56:19Speaker 05

  And we graduated

• 56:22Speaker 05

  six months later with 19.

• 56:24Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. Damn.

• 56:26Speaker 05

  21 total, 19 originals. And if you, if you-

• 56:31Shawn Ryan?

  21 total, 19. Holy shit, you only had two rollbacks?

• 56:38Speaker 05

  Three. So it's 22. Sorry.

• 56:40Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 56:42Speaker 05

  And we had-

• 56:49Speaker 05

  If you took like, just, just say it's 150 or 190, or whatever it was we started with. I wish I could find this out. And you just took this long, like this big panoramic photo. And I gave you a Sharpie. And I said, now circle, or not you, but if I just gave it to some random person. Circle the 19 people that are going to make it through based on appearances. Like you wouldn't have circled me. Like, let's say all of our shirts are off or whatever. You wouldn't have circled me and you wouldn't have circled half the people that made it through. Cause you can't really judge someone by their appearance, like in that role.

• 57:30Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 57:32Speaker 05

  Better example, a better example would be Excel. Take all 190 or whatever, however many candidates there were. And every name is on a row. So it's 190 rows or again, however many it was. And then every column was a measurable runtime, swim time, obstacle course, pushups, pullups, situps, like tested. And then I just said, all right, now highlight the 19 people who are going to make it. Well, you wouldn't have, I wasn't in the top. You wouldn't have chosen me.

• 58:15Speaker 05

  And you wouldn't have chosen half the people that made it. Or even, even looking at pedigree. Like if you just looked at people's like resume. And there was a, there was like some really good, you know, college athletes or Olympic alternate, decathlete, or whomever that were the best runner swimmer.

• 58:39Speaker 05

  Pushups, pullups, fastest O course times, like all of those.

• 58:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:44Speaker 05

  And those people didn't make it. Like, it's so strange. And then you have like the failed junior college football players and the washed out wrestlers and the whatever. Like, it what now? For sure, there were plenty of there were plenty of guys that looked like they were gonna make it through and had the measurables and had the pedigree. Like, there were a few of those, but that was more of the exception than the rule. So it kind of taught me, like, you can't judge by appearances. You can't judge by measurables and you can't judge by pedigree, at least in that context.

• 59:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:25Speaker 05

  Because like, there's no quick way to measure, like, a guy's heart. Or, or what they're, what they're willing and able to do. Their drive, their determination, their, their resilience. And that's just revealed over a period of time, which is six months and they call it buds. Right? So, to me, like, I think

• 59:54Speaker 05

  like, what makes someone make it through that? I don't know. Obviously, there's some grit, there's some determination. There's some stubbornness, all these things, but I think

• 1:00:05Shawn Ryan?

  Something to prove.

• 1:00:06Speaker 05

  There's a, there is that, like, oh, I have something to prove, right? Or a chip on my shoulder. And I'm, I'm from such a small town that, like, when I was going through Hell Week, there were signs in my town. Like, I had friends that were from these big, big towns in New Jersey and California and everywhere in between, and they're anonymous. Like, I'm not, I'm not anonymous.

• 1:00:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:33Speaker 05

  Like, there's a

• 1:00:34Shawn Ryan?

  Big deal. Just to get out, I'm from a similar town. Actually, about eight times the size of your town, at 8,000 people, but

• 1:00:41Speaker 05

  Still small.

• 1:00:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, but, uh, but, yeah, I'd be just getting out of the, just getting out of a small town is a big fucking deal, right?

• 1:00:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:49Shawn Ryan?

  You know?

• 1:00:50Speaker 05

  And I, I mean, I love

• 1:00:51Shawn Ryan?

  Go back there today, it's like walking back in time. It's like, holy shit, everybody's still here, which is awesome.

• 1:00:56Speaker 05

  I know, I have nothing against that. Um, I love my small town. And I, I literally, the, you know, the bank signs that have the ticker, like, the digital

• 1:01:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:06Speaker 05

  My parents are like, there's your name's on the ticker because you're going through hell week. Holy shit. In this little town. And so for me, there's also this pressure. Like, I'm not gonna quit. A, I don't want to let my parents down. And B, I don't want to go back to my hometown with my tail between my legs. Most of all, I had something to prove. You know, I wanted to go do something hard. And I think just having so many factors, but just being very clear on what you want to do and being willing to do it. Like every time, and I've thought about this a lot.

• 1:01:49Speaker 05

  But when I failed at something, it's either I wasn't like crystal clear on what, not just what I wanted to do, but what it would take. Like, I wasn't 100% clear on what I'm doing and what it will take to succeed. Or I wasn't willing. Like, and there are, there's, it's great to know, like, if there's something like to succeed, let's say to succeed as a whatever. Stockbroker, name, name the thing. A race car driver, two very weird, weirdly different roles. But like, you have to know what it takes, and then you have to be willing to do what it takes to succeed.

• 1:02:35Speaker 05

  And if you don't, if you're not willing, that's fine. Don't do that. So for me, when I, as I look back and I look at different things since, with the benefit of hindsight, like clarity and willingness are like very important, right? Yeah. And I think in buds too, I mean, there's so many different character traits, but like just resilience, like the ability to bounce back up. Because no matter how good of an athlete you are,

• 1:03:10Speaker 05

  you will fall and you will fail, right? Or you will, you will be brought low. And just the ability to return to baseline, I think, like, kinda.

• 1:03:23Shawn Ryan?

  I think that's a huge part of making it through.

• 1:03:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:26Shawn Ryan?

  That not enough people talk. I mean, when you're bringing up washed up wrestlers and all that kind of shit. These are all people, these are all kids. That have learned how to lose, you know what I mean? And, and have gotten back up and tried it again and again and again and again. You know what I mean? And, and I think, you know, when you, when you're talking about the best athletes. Cause it's a big, it's the big mystery, right? Like, how the fuck do we learn who the hell is gonna make it through these programs? It's been like the question since. At least since I came along, which.

• 1:04:00Shawn Ryan?

  What was that 20 something years ago? You know, and, uh, but yeah, I, I, that's what I think that's a big component is people that did. It's resiliency, right? It's learning how to lose, pick your shit up and get back after it.

• 1:04:14Speaker 05

  How to get, how to get, just get back up.

• 1:04:16Shawn Ryan?

  Some people learn that through broken homes. So I think that's why there's a lot of people that come from a broken home that make it in there and, and, uh, you, you, you just really. It's a mixed bag of nuts when you get out, you know? You got rich kids, poor kids, abused kids, like. It, it's, but they all, I think that's, that seems to be. A common denominator.

• 1:04:39Speaker 05

  Well, that's why, like I said, like I, I've heard, you know, the Navy. The Navy spent millions of dollars to try to figure this out because they want. A higher attrition rate. So they're trying to get better, more qualified people into it, but they can't. They still can't figure it out. The Army has done the same thing with. Their special programs. And the answer is like, there is no quick test. It's revealed over the. Selection.

• 1:05:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 1:05:10Speaker 05

  Right? Um, and. The recipe is different. Like the recipe that made me get through that. My resilience came from.

• 1:05:20Speaker 05

  The farm, right? And the toughness that I learned from my parents and playing some football. And, you know, I didn't have the, the classic sob story, but I mean, I, I had days in BUDs that were easier than days on the farm. Like I had farm days that were harder than SEAL training.

• 1:05:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:41Speaker 05

  And that's where I learned that, right? So I think you're right. I mean, there is like, you just look at a picture of like a BUDs graduation photo and you know them all so well. And you think about their stories like New Jersey, California, Florida, my swim buddy from Washington State, right? I mean, I was, he was my swim buddy the entire time, like first, second and third phase.

• 1:06:07Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:06:07Speaker 05

  We both made it through together. And like, you just hear their stories and then they hear about the kid from the middle of the country on a small farm in Iowa. And like, there is, yeah, there is no one, there's no one story, but there's common denominators, like people who knew how to, I guess, get back up.

• 1:06:26Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:06:27Speaker 05

  Right? From falling and failing.

• 1:06:30Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:06:35Speaker 05

  About BUDs? So, hm.

• 1:06:42Speaker 05

  I was oddly, so I was oddly one of the, there's two of us in our class that never failed one thing. The first time, every time. So I never won the timed run, but I was always in the top five. I never won a swim, but I was always towards the beginning.

• 1:07:01Shawn Ryan?

  No shit? Somebody that had never been in the ocean before?

• 1:07:05Speaker 05

  My swim buddy was, my swim buddy was really good at guiding and I literally just like followed his.

• 1:07:11Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, man.

• 1:07:12Speaker 05

  You know, um, and I was good at sw, like I could fin all day, right? Cause of my two miles in the pool, five days a week, right? Um, I.

• 1:07:28Speaker 05

  So nothing was, I mean, it was all, I should say, it's all hard, right? But nothing stood out. I, I wasn't the most, I wasn't the strongest on pushups and pullups and situps, but I was in the top 10%. Yep. And I was actually quite good at the O course, just like I have long arms, big hands, and I had grip from the farm. Like so, because so much of the O course was like, kind of grip stuff, you know what I mean? Um, and I somehow like passed dive physics and pool comp and weapons practical, all those things like the first time, right? Like I just, whatever.

• 1:08:10Speaker 05

  Uh, but the hardest part about BUDs was, for me was Hell Week. And

• 1:08:19Speaker 05

  that same side pain that I had had in bootcamp revisited me, right? And it was Wednesday or whatever the Steel Pier night was. So then, you know, the, the Steel Pier where, which I think is like the hardest part of Hell Week. And that's my, my recollection of it is the water temperature determines how long you can be in the water. And then when you get out of the, like, they have to take you out of the water so that you don't get past hypothermia or whatever. And it's based on the water temp. And that's based on average weight. So there's a lot of fluctuation and, you know, we all know, we don't all have the same body fat.

• 1:09:03Speaker 05

  So they, the BUDs instructors have a timetable where they're allowed to keep you in the water and it's based on the water temp. But on Steel Pier, they make the whole thing miserable by when you get out of the water, you're laying on a pier about this wide and it's metal and then they hose you off with a garden hose. Right? So it's colder than the water. And like, that's the night I had another like side pain attack. So I'm sitting there just wanting to curl up into a ball. And, but I'm laying on that pier and just getting like, you know, kind of jackhammering. And again, like at the time, I wasn't diagnosed with anything other than IBS.

• 1:09:48Speaker 05

  With const- they're like, oh, it's IBS with constipation. So now they give me a laxative. Well, now I have, now I have diarrhea. And essentially, and it's hell week, right? And you don't get to stop and go to the bathroom. Um, I don't know. That's not a very glamorous, uh, story, but I, I, um, at the time I'm not, so I wasn't. What's wrong with them? I don't know. Give them some lax. Like, cause I'm like curled up in the, in a ball. And I went to, and I didn't even get to stop then. I went to sick call the next morning and they're like, well, what's the matter with you? I'm like, I got this terrible pain in my side.

• 1:10:32Speaker 05

  I can't stop curling up in a ball and it really, really hurts. And they're just like, probably constipation, IBS, give them some laxative. Oh shit. And you're just like. Oh my God. Hell week, bro. So. So you went through hell week with a fucking kidney stone that they were giving you. And I have to stipulate because I know a lot of people will see this. That was not diagnosed, right? I only know this with 99% certainty because a few years later, and I had this pain revisited me. A few years later, I had the pain again and I was finally properly diagnosed with a kidney stone.

• 1:11:17Speaker 05

  Same exact pain, right? Uh, and that happened when I was going through land warfare at SEAL Team Five, which I'll get into later. I'm trying to stay chronological here. Um, so long story long, 99% sure that not only was, you know, hell week, hell, like I, it was full benefit for me, like having this. Not only having what I'm 99% sure is a kidney stone, but also having diarrhea.

• 1:11:51Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:11:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:11:52Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:11:53Speaker 05

  So that was the, I mean, that's my answer to your question. What was the hardest part about buds?

• 1:11:57Shawn Ryan?

  Probably, I mean, how the fuck are you going through like around the world, like all this, like the, the longest mile with laxatives?

• 1:12:06Speaker 05

  What's that? That's Thursday morning.

• 1:12:08Shawn Ryan?

  Literally just shitting yourself.

• 1:12:09Speaker 05

  They just give you that. They gave me that Thursday morning and then I just, I, it ran its course in about

• 1:12:15Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck, man.

• 1:12:15Speaker 05

  12 hours and I'm just like, oh, but like thankfully you're wet all the time. So you're always in the ocean to rinse off.

• 1:12:25Shawn Ryan?

  It still hurts. Here's some more laxatives.

• 1:12:28Speaker 05

  Yeah. Drink water. Talk about your

• 1:12:31Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck, man.

• 1:12:32Speaker 05

  All time misdiagnosis.

• 1:12:37Shawn Ryan?

  Oh man, that's fucked up, dude. Wow.

• 1:12:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:12:41Shawn Ryan?

  Same.

• 1:12:43Shawn Ryan?

  So it was a shitty time for you.

• 1:12:45Speaker 05

  For your, for your audience, the term full benefit.

• 1:12:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:50Speaker 05

  That's just, that just means like when it sucks extra hard, like I had full benefit. And then like to make like, the funny thing is like, so here I, I graduated hell week. They secure hell week on Friday afternoon. And then right after that, you all go in, they see you at the, at the medical thing before you walk back to your barracks. And I go into medical, I'm like, well, my toes kind of hurt. Well, both my big toenails were ingrown and they yanked out my big toenails.

• 1:13:22Shawn Ryan?

  Oh my God.

• 1:13:24Speaker 05

  Here I have this like

• 1:13:28Speaker 05

  Kidney

• 1:13:28Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, your toe hurts?

• 1:13:30Speaker 05

  Kidney stone, diarrhea, and it's finally over and like, oh, as a parting gift, we're just going to take out your big toe.

• 1:13:37Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit, dude. Damn.

• 1:13:40Speaker 05

  And you get like, You know, you get like a week off the next week, walking week, but there's not much of a break. Like after that, you're back into it and like, and I, you know, I still don't have my big toenails like.

• 1:13:54Speaker 05

  So.

• 1:13:54Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:13:55Speaker 05

  Full benefit.

• 1:13:56Shawn Ryan?

  That's definitely full benefit. Holy shit.

• 1:13:59Speaker 05

  And somehow I'm like, and I, as I tell people that I'm like, and I even like in my mind, I'm like, how would you not quit? Like that is too, but like, I don't know if I didn't know any better. Or I was just dumb or I wanted it that much. I, I don't, you know, if that happens to me now, I'm quitting. Like.

• 1:14:21Shawn Ryan?

  That sounds like a major lawsuit nowadays.

• 1:14:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:14:24Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 1:14:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:14:26Shawn Ryan?

  What the fuck? Damn. Holy shit. So you made it through hell week.

• 1:14:32Speaker 05

  Made it through hell week. I graduated. Bud's class two, two, five. Um.

• 1:14:41Shawn Ryan?

  How did that feel? How did it feel to tell your parents, your siblings, your friends back home? You get, you've made it.

• 1:14:50Speaker 05

  You, well, as you know, like A, I made it through training, but then they're like, oh, so you're a SEAL? Well, then you have that period of time because you can't even like it, it's kind of anticlimactic. Right? Because you're not a SEAL yet, but like you graduated Bud's. I was beyond, you know,

• 1:15:13Speaker 05

  I'm very proud, right? Of my accomplishment. I'd done something that I'd set out to do, right? I worked hard and I achieved it and I had gone through a little bit of, you know, had an obstacle, right? So it, I felt amazing, right? But then

• 1:15:32Speaker 05

  and, and it's very short-lived because then you check into a, you know, back then we went to, uh, we went to jump school in Benning, right? And then you show up at a team and then it's kind of like

• 1:15:47Speaker 05

  pretty humbling, right? Cause now you're a new guy and not only are you a new guy, but you're a new guy at a team without a trident. Right? And.

• 1:15:58Speaker 05

  So, uh, checked into Team Five and yeah, kind of you feel like you start all over.

• 1:16:04Shawn Ryan?

  Did you want to go to the West Coast?

• 1:16:06Speaker 05

  No, it's so funny like, and I'm like ended up loving it, right? I mean, I loved.

• 1:16:14Speaker 05

  Kind of pre nine 11, every team had its own kind of like personality, right? And

• 1:16:21Speaker 05

  Team Five was kind of like known as Surf Surf Team Five and like everyone thought I would like, I didn't, you know, I look like a surfer now. I've never surfed. I don't surf, right? But, um, I chose like literally two, four and eight. When you do the dream sheet.

• 1:16:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:42Speaker 05

  Like I wanted to go to the East Coast. Like I wanted to go to the East Coast and I wanted to go to Dev Group. Like that was.

• 1:16:50Shawn Ryan?

  You already knew about Dev Group?

• 1:16:52Speaker 05

  I got in trouble in third phase because we had Bud's instructors talking to us about the different teams. And I literally, and so I'm not even graduated yet. I'm like, and I go, well, what does it take to go to Dev Group? None of them had gone there. Well, then like two of them beat me because like you haven't even made it through this yet, dumbass. You know what I mean? Right? So it was always on my radar. Um, but I wanted to go to the, I wanted to go to the East Coast. Um, so I went to, uh, SEAL Team Five and I had, had the best time. So like it was just, uh,

• 1:17:35Speaker 05

  so different than the East Coast and it was so different than just growing up on a farm in Iowa, you know? Um, but I met, um,

• 1:17:47Speaker 05

  I met some, you know, awesome, awesome people, had some awesome teammates there, some awesome experiences.

• 1:17:54Shawn Ryan?

  Any good hazing stories?

• 1:17:58Speaker 05

  We, you know, the hazing was, and it didn't happen. These are not my stories. These are things I've witnessed. Like we had guys that would get.

• 1:18:10Speaker 05

  Um, you know, taped up naked to a spineboard.

• 1:18:14Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 1:18:14Speaker 05

  You know, with basically, we would call it riggers tape, but for people that don't know, it's basically duct tape. Um, or just get covered in spray glue. Um, I think one of the, one of the worst ones I heard about was a friend of mine got like, hey, he got like taped up to a spineboard, like head to toe with duct tape to a plastic spineboard.

• 1:18:43Speaker 05

  And they taped a funnel into his mouth.

• 1:18:45Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 1:18:46Speaker 05

  And poured vodka down it. And then they put him in a closet and they taped an alarm clock to his head. And it was just ringing the whole, so he couldn't pass out. And then they left him there for like eight hours to chew his way out or whatever.

• 1:19:04Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 1:19:04Speaker 05

  And he had like pissed and shit himself in the tape.

• 1:19:07Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man. I've not heard the alarm clock one. We did the happy hat.

• 1:19:12Speaker 05

  The happy hat was common.

• 1:19:14Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, fuck.

• 1:19:16Speaker 05

  That's the.

• 1:19:17Shawn Ryan?

  The happy hats where they, for the audience, it's where they tape a handle on the top of your head. Wrap your whole head in duct tape and then they tape a handle on the top of your head. So anybody that wants to walk by and grab the, grab the handle and.

• 1:19:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:19:33Shawn Ryan?

  Shake your head around and there's not a damn thing you're gonna do about it.

• 1:19:36Speaker 05

  So these were always like horror stories. So when you're a new guy, like showing up at a team back then, you kind of walked around like just waiting for your number to get called. Right? Um, and I've heard other kind of, you know, I've heard, I've heard wild ones like this, like someone they threw, they put them in a cruise box and threw them in the. San Diego Bay with a can of spare, a can of spare air.

• 1:20:09Shawn Ryan?

  I haven't heard that.

• 1:20:09Speaker 05

  And then they had him on like, uh, you know, he's like 30, 50 feet down and they had him on like one inch nylon and pulled him back up.

• 1:20:17Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:20:19Speaker 05

  You're pretty lucky that didn't go badly.

• 1:20:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, no kidding.

• 1:20:23Speaker 05

  So I didn't witness that. That's a secondhand one that I've heard, but yeah, it was pretty epic back then.

• 1:20:28Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, wow, wow.

• 1:20:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, but the alarm clock one is pretty sinister, like not only to just get taped to a spineboard and then to get your stomach filled with vodka. But then to tape an alarm.

• 1:20:42Shawn Ryan?

  That's a good one.

• 1:20:42Speaker 05

  Like dude, it's just awful.

• 1:20:45Shawn Ryan?

  I kinda wanna do that to somebody now.

• 1:20:49Speaker 05

  You got any new guys on staff?

• 1:20:50Shawn Ryan?

  We do. We do. Wow. So what, how was it? Uh, I mean, what was your impression of team five when you showed up?

• 1:21:00Speaker 05

  So team five, it was so, I loved it like, and

• 1:21:07Speaker 05

  so we're going, I'm, I am there for a couple of weeks before I went through STT. Back then it was SEAL tactical training. And that's all the recent budget, the recent BUDs graduates that show up at teams. One, three, and five. There was no seven. Okay. So teams, all of us that were out of BUDs and jump school. And we were not yet SEALs and not yet in a platoon. We went through a, a, a class called STT. And

• 1:21:45Speaker 05

  among that class, like, and that's three months. It's like 90 days. And in that class, there's people that are gonna go to one and then three and then five, right? And at the time, like, one was the hardcore, like no fun one.

• 1:22:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:04Speaker 05

  Right? And three was kind of in the middle. Um, and team five was like totally the more relaxed, like surf team five.

• 1:22:20Speaker 05

  And then midway, like, early on in STT, we had a, a new commanding officer at SEAL Team Five, Tom Dietz, and he had, he had come out with a policy, and at the time, this was like, groundbreaking. He said, "No more mandatory PT. Your adults work out on your own. We'll have one group PT a week on Fridays, and we'll chase it." It was kind of a Monster Mash PT. So for the audience, that's like a run, swim, oh course, ruck, kind of combo adventure.

• 1:23:03Speaker 05

  And, like, back then, every Friday at SEAL Team Five, you had a, a long PT, and it could, it could be running, or swimming, or a combo, and rucking, or obstacle course, or combine all of those. But it was always over at noon. You showered and changed, and there were two kegs on the grinder. Nice. And it was kegs on the grinder, by grinder is like a asphalt, like, blacktop area. And, maybe some hot dogs, and some burgers, and two kegs, and that was like, the kickoff to the weekend. And Team Five, it was like, it was very interesting, because

• 1:23:46Speaker 05

  there was also a volleyball net there, so people are like- You guys had a volleyball net? Oh dude, they're playing volleyball for, for like, training, or, everyone had like, like skateboards. So they're moving around the weapons containers in like, longboard skateboards. Nice. It definitely was this kind of surf-like team. And we finished STT, showed up at Team Five, and-

• 1:24:15Speaker 05

  I could just train how I wanted to. And then every Friday, we had to do a workout together. It was awesome, right? Versus like having this reg- regimented like run day, swim day, gym day, or whatever. They kind of let you do what you wanted, which was pretty cool. Yeah. I think, you know, eventually they all got more like that, right? But my impression of Team Five was like, I didn't want to go there and I ended up being glad I did. Right on. Yeah, right on. When, how long was it before you platooned up? So, finished,

• 1:24:56Speaker 05

  finished STT and I was supposed to go into

• 1:25:06Speaker 05

  a platoon a few months after that. Sorry, I'll rewind. I finished STT, then I finished my total of six months probation. Oh, okay. Took the Trident board, earned my Trident.

• 1:25:22Speaker 05

  Every team had their own Trident board. That one, Team Five, for as lax as it was, as a, as a culture, we had a very hard Trident board. So it was like an eight or 10 hour day. And you went from diving to mar ops to land war and you had to do all these different things and have written tests and then like a performance test and like it was a long day. All in one day? Yeah, it was like almost 10 hours. Holy shit. And, and you had, like you were in your camis, they made you put on face paint and you were carrying a ruck between stations, taking apart weapons, writing out a dive chart, right?

• 1:26:07Speaker 05

  Uh, putting on a static line rig and getting inspected, fixing a Zodiac, like all these things you had, you had like a 90 minutes or whatever per session. Gotcha. So it was like both a, a practical and written thing. Okay. Earned my Trident finally. And now I'm like, now I was like a SEAL. Uh, and I was supposed to platoon up, I forget the time, but it was going to be in like Echo or Foxtrot platoon. But then Charlie and Delta.

• 1:26:43Speaker 05

  Platoons did a, they did a nighttime combat equipment, static line. And like, three people got hurt. And two of them were gonna be out of the platoon. So they grabbed two new guys.

• 1:27:03Speaker 05

  And I got to be one of them. So I platooned up early. Oh, right on. So, yeah. I forget the exact time, you know, that's so long ago, but, so I ended up getting into a platoon at Team Five. And then they had already done more than half their workup, though.

• 1:27:24Speaker 05

  So now, and they had done like MAROPS and some of the suck, like,

• 1:27:31Speaker 05

  back then, like, um, special reconnaissance, some of the sucky blocks of training. So now I'm a new guy in a platoon that's already done half the hard stuff. Well, they didn't all really love that, you know what I mean?

• 1:27:50Speaker 05

  But I had an awesome time in that, in that platoon. I think

• 1:27:55Speaker 05

  we had like,

• 1:28:00Speaker 05

  right into, they had finished MAROPS, so we went right into, uh, combat swimmer, right? And that's like, whatever, three weeks back then. And then finished that and pretty soon we were doing CQB and a Shaw's trip. So it was great. Right? Right on. Where are you guys heading to? We ended up going to Guam. Guam? Yep. Pre 9/11 Guam deployment. And

• 1:28:32Speaker 05

  so we're there.

• 1:28:36Speaker 05

  We deployed like mid to late August oh one.

• 1:28:40Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit. So right before.

• 1:28:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, right before nine 11 and.

• 1:28:48Speaker 05

  My, so my birthday is September 7th and I call my mom on my birthday from Guam.

• 1:28:57Speaker 05

  And she's like, well, what do you want for your birthday? And I'm like, you know, I'm some dumb, whatever.

• 1:29:04Speaker 05

  21 or 22, 22. And I'm just like, Mom, I just want a war to fight.

• 1:29:11Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 1:29:12Speaker 05

  Right. And you know.

• 1:29:15Speaker 05

  Dumb, the, the stuff that, uh, dumb young warriors want.

• 1:29:23Speaker 05

  Anyway, we started in Guam and then we got sent to the Middle East.

• 1:29:26Shawn Ryan?

  You went to the Middle East from there.

• 1:29:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:29:28Shawn Ryan?

  What was, uh, what was September 11th like for you?

• 1:29:34Speaker 05

  Well, I will. You know, obviously I like it's so memorable just because. So I remember not long before that, having a big birthday party out in town, you know? I mean, I'm turning 22 on deployment, right? I think it was that and.

• 1:29:59Speaker 05

  Then I don't know, like my.

• 1:30:05Speaker 05

  So my wife was going to college classes and she would wake up early in the morning. At the time, sorry, girlfriend. And.

• 1:30:18Speaker 05

  I call her and she. She just says. I think, I think someone. Bombed the World Trade Center. Or, and then she's like, no, maybe a plane hit it. And I go, what? Like, and I, I remember this.

• 1:30:43Speaker 05

  Like, we didn't have laptops in our rooms and stuff like that. There was in this, we stayed in a, not even a barracks. In Guam, it was a kind of a BAH, kind of like hotel, right? So there's a hall, it's almost like a college dorm. There's a hallway, everyone gets their own little dorm room. Um, we each had our own room and that's where we were staging, cause we originally went to Guam in August and we were supposed to travel to like, go and do joint training with like Australia and then go to the Philippines and maybe Thailand and Malay, oh, whatever, all the Paycom stuff.

• 1:31:27Speaker 05

  But you have these rooms in Guam, or they did, and we didn't even have a TV. I didn't have a TV in my room, but at the end of the hallway, they had one of those old like

• 1:31:38Speaker 05

  three foot thick big screens. Remember those? And

• 1:31:45Speaker 05

  I just remember her saying something about the World Trade Center, you should get in front of a TV. And I like, just kind of like, she doesn't know what she's talking about. And I walked to the end of the end of the hallway and there's already people around the TV and I'm just like,

• 1:32:03Speaker 05

  like, I get there in time to watch the second plane hit it, you know? And it's like, oh. And from that moment, like pagers started to go off. No one knew right away who did it. And

• 1:32:23Speaker 05

  but that night, you know, we were getting different intel briefs. And then pretty soon we're getting more and more briefs and

• 1:32:32Speaker 05

  you know, we're, instead of worrying about like, where are we gonna go out tonight? It was, hey, we need to, we brought all these guns with us from Coronado. Not only do we need to make sure they're sighted in, but like, let's get a few more yard lines or whatever. It got very serious. Like that, that, that switch from

• 1:32:57Speaker 05

  You know, pre nine eleven and just kind of SEAL Platoon was a, a rock band. It was like, hey, we, you know, we had all this fun. We were ready to do this stuff, but mostly it was like deployed a party, you know what I mean? Uh, but it got real serious. So.

• 1:33:18Shawn Ryan?

  When did you guys figure, when did you guys hear you're going to the Middle East?

• 1:33:22Speaker 05

  So we originally, we thought we were going to go to Afghanistan. And obviously we didn't. Um, we ended up, and we're constantly getting these briefs, but it probably was. I think it ended up being like three weeks later that we got shipped to the middle, flew to the Middle East. And

• 1:33:50Speaker 05

  we ended up, we ended up replacing a team three platoon that was doing underways or VBSS in Kuwait and they got to go to Afghanistan.

• 1:34:01Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 1:34:02Speaker 05

  Uh, but along the way, I want to say we stopped in like Oman or something like to refuel. I forget exactly where, but there were, there was like dev group guys there and Delta guys there getting all ramped up for Afghanistan. And we were just like, whoa. Uh, and we thought that's like, oh, we're in the right spot. We're going to Afghanistan. Then we land in Kuwait.

• 1:34:30Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:35:56Speaker 05

  And by the way, like, so my first, my first rotation, my first deployment, end up doing it in Kuwait, right? Post nine, like, right when 9/11 happens.

• 1:36:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:08Speaker 05

  But in hindsight, I think I got to do, you know, 20 plus real world non-compliant shipboardings, a few of which I was the lead climber on. And, you know, it was kind of like, obviously, in post 9/11, that doesn't seem like that big a deal, but I'm like, hey, that was, you know, was better than what they were doing before, right? And we were ostensibly, A, there was the, you know, the Iranian oil embargo, the Iraqi oil embargo, but then there was also this, you know, this idea that Al Qaeda terrorists

• 1:36:53Speaker 05

  were going to be like funneling out on these ships. And that's how they, you know, that's how they motivated us to do it. But, you know, it, the gravity was still real and people were still drowning doing that. So it was as real as it gets. Not a lot of bullets flying, but, you know, still pretty, uh, could be scary, you know? Underway shipboarding is like dicey, especially at night, especially in, you know, in these waters and with stuff like that.

• 1:37:23Shawn Ryan?

  You want to describe the first one?

• 1:37:24Speaker 05

  Huh?

• 1:37:25Shawn Ryan?

  Do you want to describe the first one? Or any one that's of significance?

• 1:37:29Speaker 05

  So there's two that are very memorable. And I was like, so I was a new guy. I was a jack of all trades. One night I'm a lead climber, one night I'm a breacher. Go figure. And there was one.

• 1:37:44Speaker 05

  And it is pitch black. We have nods on and we have like back then we're still running MP5s, you know, and so the pole man had put the pole up and then the ladder man was unrolling the ladder, you know, on the bottle and the original lead climber went to climb and his handgun, the handle on his SIG got stuck in the run and he was climbing against it and he didn't like realize and it was partially the fault of the ladder man because it was all unspooled and he was sitting there and like just couldn't go, right? And then after like maybe a minute or

• 1:38:29Speaker 05

  less, he like lets go and he tapped me because I was the second lead climber. He's like, bro, you're up, go. And I'm just like, oh, and now I'm gonna be the lead climber up this underway ship that's like steaming into Iranian waters. And it's a, it's a 20 foot, 20 plus foot climb on a caving ladder that doesn't have a runner on top. I'm the one that's gonna climb it and set the runner. So I shimmy up that thing like, like it's like so quickly and, and by the way, it's, it's like oddly like climbing the, a small ladder on the side of a grain bin or a

• 1:39:12Speaker 05

  grain silo in Iowa. And so I shimmy up this thing and I get to the top, you know, and the hook, the grappling hook is just, it's not on anything bomber. It's just on the lip. And I just climbed this thing on a hook that's just weighted on a lip. You know what I mean?

• 1:39:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 1:39:34Speaker 05

  And I get up there, I clear the thing with my pistol. I look at that. I'm like, oh crap, I gotta get off this ladder, right? And there wasn't anything there immediately to like hook it to safer. So I pop up over the, over the thing, over the lifeline. And then the first thing I do is, you know, I'm, everything is clear around me and I'm up there alone. And I take that, I take that grappling hook, I hook it on something more solid. And then I take my safety runner out and I run that around something more solid. So now it's hooked on something solid.

• 1:40:17Speaker 05

  And it's on a, and the runner is on something solid. And then back then we were using like that little, uh, like the Kim light, right? That with the tape on it. And I put the Kim light over like, okay, the ladder is now on something more bomber, sorry, more solid. And then there's a runner on it. And then the rest of the team came up. Um, and like, that was, you know, a lead climb on a, a non-compliant ship boarding on my first, you know, my first deployment. So it was, it was memorable. And then there were, there was another night where

• 1:40:59Speaker 05

  we'd, this ship boarding was like a step over freeboard. So that ship had been so laden that you didn't have to climb. The rib could pull up next to it and you could step over onto it. Oh, wow. It was that full of oil.

• 1:41:16Speaker 05

  And it was steaming. It knew we couldn't go into Iranian waters. So as soon as they saw us, they were like steaming into Iranian waters. And, and that night I was, I was carrying, remember the torch? Yeah. The like oxygen torch or whatever it was. And I have a torch on my back. And I step over the, so I step off the rib over, over onto this tanker, straddle over the lifeline, right? And we're like, we're standing, there's like water ankle deep. It's like that laden, right? And I'm standing there and they had put

• 1:42:02Speaker 05

  They had put like heavy steel up going into the superstructure. Uh, and some of it had angle iron behind it. And so we have to try to, you know, you have to either take down like whatever the engine room or the bridge. Right. To stop the ship. Uh, and they had protected the bridge so well with the extra steel and the angle iron. And I bust out that like that torch, you know, had that rod. And I start it. And I used in the entire tank on half of the diamond cut. Because the, the steel was so thick and it was reinforced behind it.

• 1:42:46Speaker 05

  So I didn't run out of rods. I didn't run out of battery. We ran out of oxygen, just trying to get like, uh, you know, obviously I'm a new guy. I'm probably not as proficient as I should be on this. I, I've tried. Uh, but at some point, like it didn't matter. I get halfway, a half diamond cut. And we get a call like, hey, you guys are almost in Iranian waters. You get off in the next five minutes or you have to jump. Right. Uh, uh, off a boat that's moving with huge screws and all that. Right? So the ribs are pulling back up to pick us up. And

• 1:43:24Speaker 05

  and like all of a sudden, like we're standing in more water. It's almost like the ship we were on like was, is either taking on water or whatever. But like we started and it was like this deep and now all of a sudden, just on the deck. Right. It's like knee deep water. And there's like a big battery on this, uh, torch that you use to start it. And I am sitting there as when I, when I grabbed the lifeline to straddle it and go back onto the rib. I'm just starting to get, I'm, I'm getting some voltage. And I'm like, and like pretty soon I'm like halfway stuck there. I'm like, I can't like,

• 1:44:05Speaker 05

  and my buddy's like, I think it's the battery. He's trying to unhook me and like, I'm standing in water. I got this big battery on. I grabbed the metal lifeline and it's like, oh, I think I'm just catching a little voltage here. Right? Um, and then like that very same night. Um, that very same night.

• 1:44:28Speaker 05

  We had to get off this ship that was like going into Iranian waters. I had half cut this diamond and I, you know, was getting like, not electrocuted, that would be an exaggeration, but I'm feeling something like, I grew up on a hog farm and we used to have fights with cattle prods. It felt like that, like where you're getting hit by a cattle prod. And, uh, like to top it all off, a teammate of mine, as we ended up, so we, back then, we had ribs and Mark Fives. You probably remember Mark Fives. And we would do longer

• 1:45:08Speaker 05

  transits in the Mark Fives. And then when it was time to do the climb, get on the rib. So the rib picks us up off this boat, this ship. And then we're going to transit back onto the Mark Five. And like, I don't know how, but for like, even with all these climbs and stuff, no one ever fell overboard. Right? Um, one time we had a, a guy fall upside down on the ladder and have to get pulled up from the ladder, which is scary. But no one really fell overboard until

• 1:45:45Speaker 05

  one night, we're like the night of that, when I was getting shocked by this torch. We're stepping from the ribs back onto the Mark Fives. And teammate of mine, who's the radio man, so he's got a big radio. And it's pitch black and the boats are, they're kind of moving. He steps, slips and hits the drink in the Northern Arabian Gulf, turns on his strobe and he's got this big radio on and where it's like, man, overboard, right? Like, and we could, you know, we had nods, we could see his strobe and everything, but, uh, he's, uh, and that's, that's Jack Carr.

• 1:46:27Speaker 05

  The, the guy, you know, the author, right? Who still, still close with, uh, but he's written those books and one of them is the Amazon show Terminalist, so.

• 1:46:39Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, man.

• 1:46:40Speaker 05

  It's memorable to me for that.

• 1:46:42Shawn Ryan?

  I'll bet, I'll bet. Wow.

• 1:46:46Shawn Ryan?

  So then you guys come home?

• 1:46:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, we finished that deployment and um come home.

• 1:46:56Speaker 05

  And I was, I had met my now wife Leah right before, not long before that deployment. And then, so the first year of us dating, I had, I did a six month deployment. So really only six months dating, right? And back then, it's like,

• 1:47:17Speaker 05

  you know, now you can FaceTime from deployment like, but back then it's like calling cards.

• 1:47:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:22Speaker 05

  And you know, these phone banks and

• 1:47:26Shawn Ryan?

  A little bit tougher.

• 1:47:27Speaker 05

  Dial up emails and that sort of thing. So I come home from that deployment and

• 1:47:35Speaker 05

  my post deployment leave, I get like three days off and my post deployment leave is sniper school, which is not in any way stretch, any way, shape or form that relaxing, right? And at the time, like there was an East Coast and a West Coast sniper school. It wasn't all centralized under the, whatever it is now, the center. And I, so I go through my, I show up at sniper school instead of getting a, you know, a nice, long post deployment vacation.

• 1:48:09Speaker 05

  And

• 1:48:12Speaker 05

  I, I forget all the details, but at the time they, they said one NSW sniper school, one, which, which starts with like 30 people,

• 1:48:24Speaker 05

  expends more ammunition than the Marine Corps sniper school does in a year.

• 1:48:29Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:48:30Speaker 05

  The amount of, and that's just the, and I'm not saying they're better or whatever. I'm just saying we had that much more money to spend on ammo. So you are spending, and sniper has evolved so much with reticles and ballistic coefficients and all that, but like back then, hours and hours and hours were spent on yard lines, right? So

• 1:48:55Speaker 05

  there was a marksmanship portion, which was a couple of weeks at Camp Pendleton.

• 1:49:01Speaker 05

  And you had to qualify, you know, expert with irons before you could move on. Right. And then it was, then we got shipped to not ship, but we went up to Colinga, Northern California. And that's where we spent most of the, most of the marksmanship part of sniper skill, school was spent in Colinga. And we would, um, basically you're living in a tent there. There wasn't even birthing. It's something like six weeks and something like that.

• 1:49:40Speaker 05

  And there's a couple of weeks where you, you know, it's M14 and then you move to your, like your 308 and then your 300. And then at the end you do the 50 cal, right? Like it's a couple of weeks with each one. I think 50 cal is just one week or whatever it is. Like I forget exactly, but it's, it's five or six weeks and you're in a tent. And then all day long, you're just, you're either prone on yard lines or you're in the, behind the berm. We call it the butts, right? Those target butts going up and down and you're marking targets, right? And these are like long, hot days. Well,

• 1:50:26Speaker 05

  back to kind of like full benefit. I have another side pain. Oh shit. In sniper school and I end up going, I think it's Lenore, you know, where we did, do you remember HAPS, high altitude? Where they put you in a chamber before you can go to parachute stuff? So they had a chamber there where we did HAPS. But then I had to go there back because, you know, because I had this side pain. And they're like, well, we don't know what it is, but we can tell you're in a lot of pain. They gave me Vicodin. Right? So I spent, I spent the night in this. Better than laxatives.

• 1:51:09Speaker 05

  Way better. It's way better. And so I spend the.

• 1:51:15Speaker 05

  Again, at this, I should be clear. I'm not at this point diagnosed with a kidney stone. I know in my heart it was because I got that same pain later that did get diagnosed. And I end up losing a kidney, right? So I know what it's like.

• 1:51:31Speaker 05

  So I spend the night in this hospital. I think it's Lenora. I might, I might not be pronouncing that right. But I'm all hopped up on Vicodin because it's painful.

• 1:51:43Speaker 05

  They drive me back to the, my tent where sniper school is the next morning. And the next day we have our UKD test, unknown distance test. And on a UKD test, you're kind of, you're like here. And then they have like four targets at this yard line and maybe four targets here and four targets here, whatever, right? Like unknown. It's not like an even yard line. It's not like a hundred or 200. But they're, and they're not on the yard lines. You have to guess how far they are. You have to mill them. Um, the height with your mill dot.

• 1:52:28Speaker 05

  And then dial and then you get four, you get one shot per target. And there's either five targets per, per spot or four. But there's a total of

• 1:52:42Speaker 05

  a hundred points on the test.

• 1:52:46Speaker 05

  And you either, you have to like hit the thing. It's like a miss or a hit, right? Um, and I am still on like high from Vicodin. And I asked the, so I asked the instructor. I'm like, man, I just spent the night in the hospital. Do you think I could retake this test some other time? And like back then, like they, they treated sniper school as they wanted attrition. Like it was a badge of honor. If like more than half of our, well, I would say half of my sniper school did not make it. And they didn't, like, they didn't feel like it was their job to make more snipers.

• 1:53:29Speaker 05

  They felt it was their job to protect. Like how hard sniper school was, right? And so he tells me, he says, take the test or go home. You can always come back next year.

• 1:53:45Speaker 05

  I mean, I'm a SEAL. I've just done a deployment. I am here on post deployment. This is my post deployment leave. You should want to make more snipers, right? The, the, the, the teams need them, right?

• 1:54:00Speaker 05

  So I'm like, I, I get what, what do I have to lose? I'm going to take the test and the only problem is, so I'm sitting there.

• 1:54:12Speaker 05

  I'm high. I'm confused by my reticle, or I'm sorry, by my, my elevation turret. So they did let my spotter help me dial. I had to squeeze the trigger. But I was so relaxed that I got the top score.

• 1:54:31Speaker 05

  Now, he was dialing my scope.

• 1:54:35Speaker 05

  He was, and so I'm sitting there, Sean, like,

• 1:54:41Speaker 05

  you know what I mean? Like,

• 1:54:42Shawn Ryan?

  wake up 30 minutes later.

• 1:54:44Speaker 05

  And I would just, dude, I was like, man, my trigger squeeze is so smooth. Like, because I was still on this, like, I mean, again, someone might get in trouble if you're like, taking a sniper test on Vicodin nowadays. But, uh, so again, uh, past that, I finished, finished sniper school and not, not, I finished the, uh, marksmanship part of it. And then we had to go do the stalking. That's where more people fail out is stalking. And, um, I made it through stalking, but I got,

• 1:55:21Speaker 05

  like, all of a sudden, I started losing a lot of weight. And

• 1:55:28Speaker 05

  like, I got down to like, below 170. And I'm, I'm like, and there was a couple of us that were like, getting really, really sick. Well, unbeknownst to us, like, a few of us got valley fever.

• 1:55:44Speaker 05

  Which is,

• 1:55:47Speaker 05

  Mike Rittland got it. He was not in my sniper school, but he got, he got medically retired from it. Oh shit. He lost a lung from this, or portion of a lung. I forgot about that. So that is the reason that the SEAL teams no longer go to Colinga. Apparently, there is like, a fungus in the dust. That's like prehistoric or whatever. And if you're like in that dust all day and the wind's blowing and you breathe it. The spores can like form in your lungs. Holy shit.

• 1:56:26Speaker 05

  And I was one of, like, I was fortunate enough to be one of the people who got it, but I never.

• 1:56:36Speaker 05

  I got it and beat it and never lost any lung function, right? So I actually have, like, they say you have it forever, but you've beat it or whatever. Like you, you have the antibody or whatever it is. Someone would, is probably watching this now and correcting me on that. But I got valley fever, not to the point where I lost lung function, but I got really, really sick. Lost a ton of weight. My face started to like, just my eyes sunk in.

• 1:57:07Speaker 05

  But one person from my sniper school, like, like he got medically retired from it. Shit. And then Mike. Yeah. You know, ended up getting, getting it really bad. He lost part of a lung. So like, kind of back to the full benefit theme, like finished.

• 1:57:26Speaker 05

  Finished sniper school with a kidney stone and valley fever. Been a rough go for you. Been a rough go, yeah. Um, but no, it was good. I, I actually finished sniper school. And at that point, my, my second platoon, right, had already started. I joined them. How did you meet your wife in Guam? I met her before deployment. Are you guys still together? We are still together. Wow, that's an anomaly. We, we met in San Diego.

• 1:58:00Speaker 05

  Before my first deployment.

• 1:58:01Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:58:02Speaker 05

  Um.

• 1:58:05Speaker 05

  Her being from Omaha and me being from Iowa, like we. We connected like closely right away just because of the kind of shared midwestern background and.

• 1:58:18Speaker 05

  And like she's, I mean, my wife's the greatest. She, we dated through the first deployment. We got married right before the second. And then all the other ones that, you know, at dev group that she went through and the stuff she's gone through and we are. You know, 24 years married, 14, 14, 16, 18 and 20 year old kid.

• 1:58:43Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, congratulations, man.

• 1:58:46Speaker 05

  Um.

• 1:58:46Shawn Ryan?

  How many years married? 24?

• 1:58:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:58:49Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:58:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, people say I don't look old enough to be. Married that long and have a 20 year old kid, but I'm like, my MRI looks old. Right?

• 1:59:00Speaker 05

  All, well, actually my med record's pretty thick.

• 1:59:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:03Speaker 05

  Right?

• 1:59:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:04Speaker 05

  So, long story short, um. Like I can't, you know, anyone who tries to give me credit, I always like, don't give me much credit. I had so much fun, but. Like whatever Leah put up is 10 time put up with is much harder.

• 1:59:19Shawn Ryan?

  So how did you guys meet?

• 1:59:21Speaker 05

  So we meet at a bar in downtown San Diego. And we had just finished, so I'm in my first platoon and we had just finished, um.

• 1:59:32Speaker 05

  We finished a month, the month of January in Kodiak, Alaska. Which is as cold as it sounds.

• 1:59:40Shawn Ryan?

  Good times.

• 1:59:41Speaker 05

  Um, doing over the beach with dry suits.

• 1:59:49Speaker 05

  And land nav in the snow, right? Now I, I should say. Like, remember how I said the farm made things a little easier? Like. That Christmas break, I went to Iowa for Christmas and.

• 2:00:09Speaker 05

  I was there for like a week around Christmas and New Years. And it got to like 60, maybe 65 below. With the wind chill. Like the, at one point, I remember getting to 20 below and it was like, man, I was, didn't even need gloves now. Right? Cause it had been so cold. And I'm spending my entire Christmas leave. Helping my dad keep the hogs alive outside. So you're outside for a little bit, you're melting the waters. They had these outdoor waters. You're feeding them or you're running straw and hay to their sheds. Right? Just to try to keep these. Poor pigs alive and like when it gets to like.

• 2:00:53Speaker 05

  50 below, like you're, the amount of time you can spend outside is limited. So you'd go out for a little bit and come in, warm up. I'm doing this for like a week. And then we go to, uh, I get back to San Diego. I'm like.

• 2:01:07Speaker 05

  It's so nice. And now we fly to. We fly to Anchorage, Florida. Sorry. We fly to Kodiak and we're going to spend the entire month of January on Kodiak Island. And we get up there and it's like 20 degrees. I'm like, it's warm.

• 2:01:24Speaker 05

  After Iowa, right? It was warm. So. Back to Leah, I spent a month. Training on Kodiak Island. We get back and.

• 2:01:37Speaker 05

  I had just spent a month with these guys. Like if we weren't out in the field, we were at a little bar in Kodiak, right? Or we were in the barracks.

• 2:01:48Speaker 05

  And we're all going out that night to Maloney's downtown. I'm like, I don't want to go out. I just spent a month with you guys. I want to, I want to stay in my apartment and relax. Right? And it was, you know, I'm a new guy, so it's mandatory, right? It wasn't like I could say no, right? I just didn't want to. I'm like, shoot. So I go out and that's the night I meet my wife. Right? And she was supposed to go watch her dad play in the Pebble Beach Pro-Am up in, uh. Whatever by. Pebble Beach, at Pebble Beach. And she didn't want to do that. So she wasn't supposed to be there either. And we meet at a bar in. Downtown San Diego.

• 2:02:34Speaker 05

  And she walks up to me and she's like.

• 2:02:38Speaker 05

  Do you have a girlfriend? Like, I'm like, sitting there at, I'm like, I'm sitting at a bar. I have like a Coors Light and a Jäger. Like, cause back then it was like, you always get like a light beer and a Jäger shot. And I'm getting ready to take my shot of Jäger and, you know, chase it with a Coors Light. And she's like, this girl just elbows me and is like, do you have a girlfriend? I'm like,

• 2:03:03Speaker 05

  no. Like, and so we talked for a while and

• 2:03:09Speaker 05

  oddly, you know, Matt is there. He was there the night I, I met her.

• 2:03:16Speaker 05

  We talked for a while and she finds out I'm in the Navy. She didn't even know what a SEAL was, which I thought was a bonus. And

• 2:03:26Speaker 05

  so she kind of like, well, I don't really like, I don't want to marry someone who's in the military. Bye. Like she goes away. Well, she comes back later and we sit there talking for another half hour. And then she looks at me and she's like, I'm gonna marry you. And I'm just like, dang. Like, that's a little forward, right? Well, like, we ended up,

• 2:03:50Speaker 05

  we date for whatever.

• 2:03:54Speaker 05

  We date for like, less than a year and a half. And then we get married before my second deployment.

• 2:04:01Speaker 05

  And she, and that was at Team Five. And then she went through all the stuff at Dove Group. And then, yeah, so she's been,

• 2:04:12Speaker 05

  she's been through the wringer, been my rock.

• 2:04:14Shawn Ryan?

  Man. So what's the secret to a successful marriage?

• 2:04:18Speaker 05

  Man, I mean, it definitely takes two.

• 2:04:26Speaker 05

  You know, I think,

• 2:04:30Speaker 05

  like, we've been, been very, you know, fortunate. I, I think there's obviously you have to love each other. You have, and there's, you know, selflessness that goes into it.

• 2:04:44Speaker 05

  And honestly,

• 2:04:48Speaker 05

  our faith has helped us a lot, you know? We, we didn't start like when we were early married and in San Diego, certainly we didn't go to church all the time. But we got like, we got into church big time in Virginia Beach. Um, especially as, you know, things started to get scarier. And then, um, we've always gone to church together since. That's a big part of it. And I would, I would also say like,

• 2:05:23Speaker 05

  I think people think of marriage as a, it's a 50 50. Like if there's this much to do, I'm gonna, you know, it's a 50 50 split. Like we're gonna, you know, I'm gonna clean half the kitchen, you're gonna clean half the kitchen, right? Like a zero sum game. But I've heard this, I've heard it said this way, and I wish I could remember who said it. Uh, so I could attribute it properly, but that's the problem. It's not 50 50, it's 100 100. Like you both give all of yourself, right? Um, and I think that's good advice. Great way to put it. So, and it,

• 2:06:07Speaker 05

  you know, doesn't, doesn't hurt to pick the right wife the first time. So, I mean, obviously there's, you know, there's some luck, there's some whatever, right? Uh, I just feel very blessed. So. That's cool, man. Yeah. Thank you. She's,

• 2:06:25Speaker 05

  yeah, we beat the odds for sure. I'll say. We look at, I look at photos now from, we used to have parties in Virginia Beach. Like we would have like a Thanksgiving party or just a summer pool party with like teammates. And like, we could have a Thanksgiving party there because a lot of people didn't have family there, right? So you'd have a Friendsgiving kind of thing.

• 2:06:53Speaker 05

  Uh, and I look at, my wife was good about, let's get a photo, let's get a photo and.

• 2:07:00Speaker 05

  Like we would take a, there might be like

• 2:07:04Speaker 05

  four to six couples in a photo and like now, I mean, I look back on them and there's some of those photos where either all the husbands are dead or they're divorced. You know what I mean? Yeah. So anyway, I feel very blessed, very fortunate. And we got, let's see, we got engaged. We got engaged in October of

• 2:07:35Speaker 05

  oh two and we thought, we thought that

• 2:07:42Speaker 05

  we thought we'd get married next summer. Like so summer of oh three, but then I found out about the, that we were going to deploy early because of the Iraq invasion.

• 2:07:55Speaker 05

  And we were going to be deploying in like January. So we're engaged in October. I'm gonna be deploying in, in January and I just, we just decided to get married before I deployed. Right. So we had like a six week engagement. And we didn't have, so some people thought she was pregnant. Cause it was like, that seems a little rushed. Um, but I was like, babe, don't you want to be able to shop at the, you know, the, the PX?

• 2:08:28Speaker 05

  Or don't you want that insurance? Right? And it just made sense. So we just, we got married in Vail on Pearl Harbor day. I was in my Navy uniform. Right. Oh man. Beautiful. So, and, and

• 2:08:44Speaker 05

  to, to, I guess, take a quick rewind, get a sip of water a second.

• 2:08:51Speaker 05

  Right before that, I lost my kidney. Oh shit. Okay. Right. Right after sniper school. It was right after sniper school and during.

• 2:09:07Speaker 05

  Excuse me.

• 2:09:10Speaker 05

  Land warfare, we went to Fort Chaffee.

• 2:09:14Speaker 05

  And we had, you know, at Team Five, the first platoon, we went to Nylund for land warfare like everyone does. For some reason, we went to Fort Chaffee for land warfare in my second platoon. And we were just starting our week of IADS.

• 2:09:40Speaker 05

  And that's for your audience, like these moving and shooting drills.

• 2:09:45Speaker 05

  And like the first night, like I got the pain, it came. And it, it had a tendency of just going away within one or two days. But this time it was like, I had this pain for four days straight. Like it wasn't that whatever stone was in there was not passing. And

• 2:10:09Speaker 05

  I was like, doing like IADS during the day and sometimes at night. And I'm just curled up in a ball and getting super dehydrated. And, you know, I'm like, I'm just kind of sucking it up because I'm usually like these episodes would go away within a day, maybe day and a half. But this time it's like, three days, then four days. It's not, it's not stopping. And

• 2:10:36Speaker 05

  and I'm telling my OIC and the corpsmen and finally, like my OIC guy named Clint Bruce, he's like, man, you can't keep doing this. And his dad is a, or sorry, his, guess it'd be his stepfather was a urologist in town. And he takes me to see a urologist in town, his stepfather. I get an X-ray with contrast. That's different, right? Like, the first time I had gotten this contrast, and he happens to be a urologist, he's like, You're there scar tissue in your ureter and you have a giant kidney stone stuck in your ureter.

• 2:11:20Speaker 05

  That's the two, again, the two between the kidney and the bladder. And so they give me this like, I guess it's a sound wave surgery. You know, and they They blast it. Yeah, they put you under, they blast you with these sound waves. And they also put a stint in there, which is like a tube.

• 2:11:45Speaker 05

  Between the, and I was out, I was out during that, but like I woke up and I had.

• 2:11:51Speaker 05

  I was kind of black and blue here. Like it does feel like you're getting like punched a bit, like just from the sound waves. And I had, you know, gotten rid of the pieces of the stone and I had a tube between my bladder and here. And they're like, well, maybe you shouldn't finish land warfare. Let's go back to Balboa. So I flew back to Balboa.

• 2:12:18Speaker 05

  And under the premise that they were gonna like fix my ureter, like get rid of the scar tissue. And then they went in to go do that.

• 2:12:32Speaker 05

  Like a week or whatever later. And then when they got in there, they just looked at my, my kidney at that point was just a water balloon. Like it was not working. So. Like it was like an eight hour surgery because it was so full. They didn't want it to break. Cause it's, you know, it would go septic, sepsis.

• 2:12:56Speaker 05

  And normally you can take a kidney out, like if they, someone donates or what, with like a small whatever. And I have a scar from like, almost from like 12 o'clock to nine o'clock. Wow. Cause it was this, and the doctor's like, yeah, we almost had to take a rib out. Like, cause it was just this distended, this distended like water balloon, right? So.

• 2:13:22Speaker 05

  I wake up, you know, eight hours later.

• 2:13:28Speaker 05

  My poor fiance at the time had just spent eight hours in Balboa, thinking I was gonna have a 90 minute surgery.

• 2:13:36Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 2:13:37Speaker 05

  And she's like engaged to me and I just remember like, all of a sudden,

• 2:13:45Speaker 05

  I wake up and

• 2:13:50Speaker 05

  they explained to me what happened, like, well, you lost a kidney. And I'm like, well, what does that mean? Basically, it means you're out of the military. Like, you, everything's waivable, but like, in the, in SOF, like, that's kind of one they don't like to waive, right? And

• 2:14:12Speaker 05

  the corpsman, uh, one of the corpsmen from like the med department at Team Five, like, did some research, shows up at the hospital and gives me a waiver. They find a waiver I can sign to stay in the military. And I am like, high on morphine, but I, I don't even read this thing. He's like, if you sign this, you can stay in the military. If you don't, you're gonna get like medically discharged. And I had done one deployment, and I had done all this work and finished, basically finished my second workup, and I wanted to deploy again. I didn't want to get out, right? I didn't care that I would get a medical retire. I wanted to, wanted to deploy, right?

• 2:14:56Speaker 05

  So I signed my waiver and

• 2:15:01Speaker 05

  never had one of those attacks again, right? Cause that kidney was gone, that ureter was gone, and, uh,

• 2:15:12Speaker 05

  I was engaged when the surgery happened. I healed.

• 2:15:18Speaker 05

  We had our wedding in December, and then, uh, I think I deployed at, like, um, a couple of weeks later, either in the middle of January or the end of January.

• 2:15:30Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 2:15:31Speaker 05

  For nine and a half months.

• 2:15:33Shawn Ryan?

  Shit, where did you deploy to?

• 2:15:35Speaker 05

  So for that one, we went to Okinawa, which I was so upset, like, I wanted to go to Iraq or Afghanistan.

• 2:15:46Speaker 05

  We ended up going like, we ended up going to Oki and we were gonna, so we were gonna split, like, we were gonna start there and then swap someone out in Iraq because of the op tempo and then

• 2:16:01Speaker 05

  something to do with, you know, airfare and not airfare, but like airflow, getting people in and out and like, nah, just stay. But on that deployment, I had a lot of, I mean, we had a, it was a great group of guys and we had a lot of fun.

• 2:16:20Speaker 05

  Got to finally, you know, I went to, I would, I would get my share of Iraq and Afghanistan later. So it was nice to, I went to,

• 2:16:30Speaker 05

  like, we went to Thailand, the Philippines and Australia and got to do, you know, some of that stuff.

• 2:16:36Shawn Ryan?

  Were you, were you, honest question, were you actually able to enjoy that knowing what was going on in Afghanistan and Iraq?

• 2:16:45Speaker 05

  Not as much as I otherwise would have.

• 2:16:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:47Speaker 05

  Because I had that FOMO, right? And I, I didn't know that I would get my fill of that later, right? I was just like, this,

• 2:16:57Speaker 05

  I'm not here for that. I'm here for that. Um, so no, no, to answer your question, no.

• 2:17:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:03Speaker 05

  But I mean,

• 2:17:06Speaker 05

  in hindsight, you know, Australia was awesome. I, I, I don't need to go back to Thailand, but I would go to Australia, right?

• 2:17:15Speaker 05

  It was, it was, it was, it was great. And I had good time with the guys.

• 2:17:22Speaker 05

  And I stayed late on that deployment. Reason I got home late was the, the platoon that was relieving us was down a sniper. And one of us needed to stay and I volunteered to stay. So I ended up doing about a month extra with.

• 2:17:47Speaker 05

  Um, I think it was Hotel Platoon. And, you know, I got, I became close with like Bill Mulder and Scotty Wertz and JMo and some other guys. So, um, anyway.

• 2:18:04Speaker 05

  Wasn't, uh, wasn't quite as cool as I was hoping, but you know, it happened for a reason.

• 2:18:11Shawn Ryan?

  And so what happened? Do you come back and screen for the development group?

• 2:18:15Speaker 05

  So.

• 2:18:20Speaker 05

  I.

• 2:18:23Speaker 05

  I had missed screening for the, what would have been oh, four. Because I, I could have gone, I would have had time to go to oh, four. But screening was, that screening was during my surgery.

• 2:18:38Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 2:18:39Speaker 05

  It was like a week after my surgery. And I was cut from here to here.

• 2:18:45Speaker 05

  I couldn't do anything, let alone the sit-ups. You know, my abs are still growing back together. So, yes, I ended up coming home from my second. Second platoon. I did the, you know, the screening. Um, there wasn't going to be enough time to do another full workup and deployment. So I went to Trade Ed.

• 2:19:08Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 2:19:09Speaker 05

  And.

• 2:19:11Shawn Ryan?

  Trade Ed is the training cell for Naval Special Warfare, for those listening.

• 2:19:16Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm. And it was awesome. Like, it really was cool. Like, I had.

• 2:19:23Speaker 05

  So I actually did not yet have my orders. But I, they gave me a. They let me go to Trade Ed of Salts, which was great. Like, I'm getting to help teach CQB. And, you know, getting to go on trips where we are meeting with the, the East Coast Trade Ed and some Dev Group guys to de-conflict the, how, how CQB is being taught. And then, um.

• 2:19:56Speaker 05

  I got like in a year and a half, I went to Shaw's like seven times.

• 2:19:59Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 2:20:00Speaker 05

  So that didn't hurt for when I did go to.

• 2:20:04Shawn Ryan?

  I'll bet.

• 2:20:05Speaker 05

  You know.

• 2:20:06Shawn Ryan?

  I'll bet.

• 2:20:06Speaker 05

  Selection. So, um, I

• 2:20:13Speaker 05

  would have, I mean, I would have loved to have gone sooner, but like I had a great time. I had a great time going to, going to trade it. And doing like the Shaw's trips and then a mount trip to Fort Knox. And then we were doing back then even go Platts, gas and oil platforms. Um, you know, oil rigs, taking those down. We were teaching, we would teach the West Coast platoons how to take down an oil rig. And I had spent weeks living in the Gulf of Thailand, like taking down oil rigs on my previous deployment. And then we were teaching, um, uh, VBSS still, right? Or like underway ship boarding. And like, I was one of the two people in the whole trade it that had ever climbed a ship on a real ship boarding.

• 2:20:58Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 2:20:59Speaker 05

  So it was cool, right? I enjoyed it. Um,

• 2:21:04Speaker 05

  no, no regrets about that. It was fun. And the travel, you know, and

• 2:21:10Speaker 05

  like my wife and I, like, it was kind of good for me to go to a, like, get like some technically some shore duty before going to dev group, um, and getting on all, you know, getting on that up tempo.

• 2:21:25Speaker 05

  And it was hard, like our first year of marriage, like I was deployed nine and a half months. I set up.

• 2:21:30Shawn Ryan?

  That's crazy.

• 2:21:32Speaker 05

  I set a pretty low bar. That's the secret. That's the secret. Set a low bar the first year.

• 2:21:39Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. On that note, let's take a break.

• 2:21:42Speaker 05

  Let's do it.

• 2:21:43Shawn Ryan?

  When we come back, we'll pick up with development group.

• 2:21:48Shawn Ryan?

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• 2:23:20Shawn Ryan?

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• 2:24:02Shawn Ryan?

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• 2:24:17Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Eric, we're back from the break. We're gonna get into development group now. How many deployments do you have with them?

• 2:24:25Speaker 05

  Um.

• 2:24:31Shawn Ryan?

  Lost count.

• 2:24:32Speaker 05

  No, it wasn't like that many. I'm just trying to make sure I'm counting them correctly. Four.

• 2:24:39Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 2:24:40Speaker 05

  Um.

• 2:24:43Speaker 05

  Yep. And I had so two at Team Five, one of which was like nine and a half months.

• 2:24:52Speaker 05

  And I went through my training. I

• 2:24:57Speaker 05

  finished, you know, after, after Trade-Ed. Went to the East Coast, went to Dev Group.

• 2:25:08Speaker 05

  Went to Gold Squadron. They had just renamed it from Gold Team to Squadron.

• 2:25:14Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, that was an official thing?

• 2:25:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:25:16Shawn Ryan?

  Didn't realize that.

• 2:25:17Speaker 05

  Used to be Teams, then they became Official Navy Commands, and they renamed them Squadrons.

• 2:25:24Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 2:25:24Speaker 05

  Um. And that's when that happened, when I got there. And which is the funny, so now I have a I am by no means a

• 2:25:37Speaker 05

  plank owner, but I have a big

• 2:25:41Speaker 05

  big, huge, um

• 2:25:44Speaker 05

  certificate and plaque, framed plaque with the coins as a Gold Squadron plank owner.

• 2:25:51Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, right on.

• 2:25:51Speaker 05

  Cause I was, I was there when they became, went from Teams to Squadrons.

• 2:25:56Shawn Ryan?

  That's cool.

• 2:25:56Speaker 05

  So.

• 2:25:57Shawn Ryan?

  That's cool.

• 2:25:58Speaker 05

  Um, obviously it, you know, it was long, it was around well before me and will be around long after, but, uh, yeah. And I, um, let's see.

• 2:26:11Speaker 05

  Moved out there technically.

• 2:26:16Shawn Ryan?

  What were some of the first, first things you noticed that were different between Dev Group and SEAL Team Five?

• 2:26:25Speaker 05

  You know, there was a

• 2:26:32Speaker 05

  Well, for starters, I mean, you're starting all over again, right? You you show up at a team like you show up at SEAL Team Five. I showed up at SEAL Team Five. You're a brand new guy.

• 2:26:42Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:26:43Speaker 05

  And now I've done two platoons. You know, I'm a department head, right? And now I'm gonna leave all that to go start all over.

• 2:26:56Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:26:56Speaker 05

  You know what I mean? So there's a lot of, yeah, there's a lot of similarities. There was, but there was definitely something very different about it.

• 2:27:05Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, fuck, man, I've been there. I'm just walking in the damn compound. It's like, holy shit.

• 2:27:11Speaker 05

  Well, it's much bigger.

• 2:27:11Shawn Ryan?

  Got your own fucking shooting range. You got a gym that takes you up to altitude. It's like everything you could possibly fucking imagine. Whereas everybody else is traveling all over the country, and I know you guys are too, but it's appeared to me, it's like, well, I don't know why the fuck these guys are traveling all the damn time. It's all, literally everything is right here.

• 2:27:31Speaker 05

  They have a climbing wall, they have altitude simulator, they have all, you know, you know, I, it was very interesting, like, once, you know, once you're there and you're kind of through training and whatever, I could just

• 2:27:46Speaker 05

  keep my guns in my cage.

• 2:27:50Speaker 05

  Like, I didn't have to go

• 2:27:54Speaker 05

  sign, like, get the ordinance rep to sign them out of the armory to go train with them and turn them right away in. I could keep my guns in my cage. I could take them. I could go to the range anytime I wanted. I could shoot. I cleaned my own guns.

• 2:28:12Speaker 05

  Once a month or whatever, when they did, they had to do an official weapons inventory, then it had to go back in the cage. They would get eyes on. Then you could take it back and just go, like, keep all your gear in your cage and go train with it.

• 2:28:25Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 2:28:25Speaker 05

  Um, it was interesting, though, like, when I first got there.

• 2:28:29Shawn Ryan?

  Probably doesn't mean shit to anybody else, but it's

• 2:28:32Speaker 05

  It's a big deal.

• 2:28:33Shawn Ryan?

  But it is a fucking big deal.

• 2:28:34Speaker 05

  It's a big deal. Like, it was, like, when I was at SEAL Team Five, it was so hard to go train. Like, if you got to go to a range, it was, it was on a trip.

• 2:28:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:44Speaker 05

  You weren't doing it there, right? Um.

• 2:28:51Speaker 05

  So for starters, the

• 2:28:56Speaker 05

  like, the first thing that stood out to me, and this was like, like, when I got there and like, I moved there in oh, four and started to like, hang out and I was gonna go through training in oh, five and

• 2:29:10Speaker 05

  like, oh, like, guys are a little older because they've done at least two rotations.

• 2:29:18Speaker 05

  Obviously, there was the grooming standards. You know, back then, like, back then, it was a significant difference, like, long hair, beards, everything. And you couldn't have that at, you know, Team Five or other teams.

• 2:29:36Speaker 05

  And just, yeah, the, the command itself, like, was this kind of Death Star type

• 2:29:44Speaker 05

  area, like, with all these buildings and all these training facilities and like, these, like, just the the meeting rooms, just everything was, you just had more, right? And you had

• 2:30:00Speaker 05

  like, way more gear. The amount of gear that you get, it

• 2:30:07Speaker 05

  even as a, even, even when you get your gear for, like, Green Team, it, it's just like, whoa, this is way nicer than the stuff I had at Team Five, and this is what they're giving me for training, you know? And then you just kept getting more. You kept getting more. It's just insane, right? The amount of just the gear. And the other thing, I, and I didn't, I don't know, I haven't really rehearsed what to say about this, but

• 2:30:39Speaker 05

  you gotta be there at Dev Group, like, you're gonna have to be there five plus years. More, probably more than that. And have done multiple, you know, five plus deployments.

• 2:30:55Speaker 05

  Probably more before you're in charge of a sixth man team.

• 2:30:59Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 2:31:00Speaker 05

  That's generally how it works.

• 2:31:03Shawn Ryan?

  I've never heard anybody say.

• 2:31:04Speaker 05

  So you like it is so like, and when you go through your selection, most people are E5s or E6s. And then all of a sudden you're on a six man assault team of one E6 with a bunch of E7s. Like it's just more senior, right? And it's just more mature, um, just been around longer.

• 2:31:26Speaker 05

  So yeah, it's, it's just, and there's just this different kind of attitude, you know, you can just, I don't know, more certainly in some ways more mature, you know, because obviously they're just older. Right? Um, I would say

• 2:31:43Speaker 05

  a couple of things that really stood out to me. So when I was new at a team, SEAL Team Five, like I knew that, well, I felt like

• 2:31:55Speaker 05

  if I wanted to, I wanted to be the best teammate I could be. And so part of that meant being as good at my craft as possible. Like how good can, just being a good shooter, you know, being able to shoot, move, communicate, doing all the,

• 2:32:11Speaker 05

  all the component skills of being an operator, right? But then also

• 2:32:18Speaker 05

  being a good teammate, right? And helping people out and, you know, helping other departments out like it, I've always believed it's, it's not good enough to be good at your job. Like, do you make other people better? And I, I learned that in,

• 2:32:39Speaker 05

  I learned that in football. I, it got emphasized at Team Five, right? And it, you know, something I watched other people do at, at Dev Group, right? So as good as, as good as you can be at your, at your craft, that is how you make the team better, but it's also not good enough just to be really good. You have to like help other people. And that's being a teammate, being selfless, being humble. And then.

• 2:33:10Speaker 05

  Being a better leader, right? And that starts by like being a really good follower. Cause you can't expect other people to follow you someday if you haven't. If you weren't willing to like follow what your boss told you to do, right? Um, and I found that the skills were all very similar. You just had to do them like sharper, maybe a little faster, a little better. Like you had to do everything a little bit better, right? As it came to shooting or parachuting or whatever, higher, higher expectation. And

• 2:33:44Speaker 05

  I would also say that at the command, at, at dev group.

• 2:33:55Speaker 05

  Like you don't buy a spot there, you rent it. And that rent is due daily. If that makes sense. Makes sense. So it's kind of like, we've all heard, I will earn my try in every day. Like true to an extent, but there specifically, like they are having, they're having a new group come up every year with a draft essentially. And there's people that want your spot. And

• 2:34:28Speaker 05

  people that make it there, they get kicked out every year. Just, you know, shooting a hostage in training or whatever, like not, I don't know. Like there's a like safety violations or kill house violations or whatever. People that make it there are regularly booted for performance. Or usually it's safety, if that makes sense. So, and I found that honestly, like the,

• 2:35:02Speaker 05

  like the really, the best of the best were

• 2:35:07Speaker 05

  both like they're obviously competent at their, at their job, but they're humble.

• 2:35:18Speaker 05

  And obsessed. So humble enough to not rely on my, on the fact that I just shot this six plate drill faster than anyone else. Like humble enough to realize like I need to still get better. Right. Or humble enough to know that no matter how good I am at this, like, like,

• 2:35:43Speaker 05

  even though the bad guy doesn't train as hard as me, he could still get lucky. Like one RPG hits a helicopter.

• 2:35:49Shawn Ryan?

  When you're saying the best of the best, I mean, you are the best of the best. When you get over there, are you saying the best of the best at that particular command?

• 2:35:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, like you, like I would look around and like, you know, you would just see like,

• 2:36:04Speaker 05

  the people that I looked up the most to as operators, like they were humble and obsessed at the same time. Like we had a strong belief that you don't rise to the occasion, you fall to your level of preparation. And I feel like humility precedes that level of preparation. Like you have to be humble to realize you still need to keep training. The person who's not humble thinks they've made it. They don't need to train or another way to think about it.

• 2:36:40Speaker 05

  The humble operator is more inclined, not only to not think like, oh, I'm not any better. So I need to train, but also I'm not any better than my teammate. So I'm going to go like, it's time to like, whatever, clean the high bay or take out the trash. Like that level of selflessness, like humility, the humility enough to like help each other out.

• 2:37:02Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 2:37:03Speaker 05

  And then obsessed with the, the craft, I guess you'd say.

• 2:37:08Shawn Ryan?

  Did you notice these things immediately?

• 2:37:11Speaker 05

  Um,

• 2:37:14Speaker 05

  I don't think I was mature enough to notice them immediately.

• 2:37:17Shawn Ryan?

  How old were you when you got over there?

• 2:37:21Shawn Ryan?

  When you got in at what 21? 20, 22 employment, 22nd birthday on your first deployment.

• 2:37:27Speaker 05

  So I would have been 25.

• 2:37:29Shawn Ryan?

  25.

• 2:37:30Speaker 05

  I mean, not. I think it was 26. So still pretty young.

• 2:37:39Speaker 05

  Is that right?

• 2:37:42Speaker 05

  Twenty-five. So, um,

• 2:37:48Speaker 05

  still pretty young, um,

• 2:37:53Speaker 05

  but like, you know, I didn't have the

• 2:37:57Speaker 05

  maturity now that I have now, you know? Um, and I would just look back and I can look back with the benefit of hindsight, like at the the good operators were humble and obsessed, right? Um, always prepared, always helping other people, right? And having like seasoned operators help you out as a new guy there or whatever the case may be. Um, so, I mean, it's the same job. It's just doing it to a different level, maybe? Um,

• 2:38:38Speaker 05

  so a level of humility and obsession with just being really, really good at it, you know what I mean? Did you have that obsession? I did. Uh, and it, you know, it gets, you have to, you have to really, obsession is a double edged sword. Like, if you obsess over everything, then pretty soon you will run out of bandwidth. Right? If you are as obsessed with, you know, how you make your morning coffee with as how you would, I don't know, clean your gun or sharpen your blade or whatever, like pretty soon you're going to run out of energy. So you had to be super careful. It's like beware of how much

• 2:39:21Speaker 05

  of the things you obsess over because it'll, you only have so much bandwidth, right? Um, and it was, it was very hard for, so we had a, we had a kid um, in

• 2:39:42Speaker 05

  Our first, first kid we had while I was going through training there and um my son. And then had him in September, then I'd finished training and deployed right away. Holy shit. Um, and my wife, I swear like, I think I was gone on average 300 days a year there. Something like 280 to 300. That's a lot of time. We met, my, my poor wife was pregnant or nursing the whole time we were there. We had three kids. Right? While I was there. Um, from essentially, we had moved there in the end of oh four.

• 2:40:27Speaker 05

  And left there at the end of oh nine, beginning of 2010. Uh, we had three kids. And

• 2:40:38Speaker 05

  it was.

• 2:40:41Speaker 05

  My kids were young enough to where they don't remember me being gone for birthdays. Like on deployments or work trips. So.

• 2:40:54Speaker 05

  And I've, you know, since had, you know, a lot of friends who've, you know, had kids at the same time that ended up staying there longer. And like their kids would for sure have

• 2:41:05Speaker 05

  memories of them being gone over Christmas and stuff like that. So, uh, it got, it definitely, I, I saw it getting harder and harder. To be a, you know, to be a good husband and father and a SEAL at the same time. Uh huh. Now, I, I think you can. And I think I did a pretty good job of balancing that at that time. Um, like when I was, when I was home from being on a trip. Like, work hard, get my work done, but like, I wasn't going out on weeknights in Virginia Beach. I was coming home. Um.

• 2:41:44Speaker 05

  And then when we'd go on the road, I would go out with guys, right? But I would not let that in any way like affect how hard I worked at at work or how hard I trained. Like I trained as hard as I trained as hard as anyone like we a friend of mine and I like we would we would do these like Friday morning workouts like where we had this rule like you had to be like completely fasted. And this was before people were really fasting for like longevity and stuff like that. But we would do like a really long ruck on the soft sand,

• 2:42:27Speaker 05

  followed by like some sort of body armor, like push up, pull up, sit up thing.

• 2:42:35Speaker 05

  Followed by

• 2:42:39Speaker 05

  like an operator standards handgun and rifle test.

• 2:42:42Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 2:42:43Speaker 05

  Followed literally by like chess. Just to like, you're so depleted after all that. The only thing you were allowed was like electrolytes. Right? And so we would like do stuff like that, maybe some grappling, you know, stuff like that. So.

• 2:42:59Shawn Ryan?

  Brought on.

• 2:43:00Speaker 05

  Um, but I, I can also say like my wife and I have now been married uh, 24 years and

• 2:43:11Speaker 05

  I also got medically retired from that command that, you know, a lot of people do get divorced from. So, you know, maybe that was God's plan like that I would get and that I would get hurt in combat and the kidney thing would come back to bite me and I would get kicked out of the Navy. So like, that's kind of the way I, I kind of think about it.

• 2:43:34Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 2:43:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:43:37Shawn Ryan?

  Let's get into some deployment stuff.

• 2:43:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:43:39Shawn Ryan?

  Where was your first deployment to?

• 2:43:43Speaker 05

  Iraq. There, when I was there. I would say mostly went to Iraq. I did go to Afghanistan.

• 2:43:55Speaker 05

  Two good, two good war stories for you. One, one takes place on Super Bowl Sunday, 2008. So I'd been there for a little while.

• 2:44:08Speaker 05

  And this is in Iraq.

• 2:44:11Speaker 05

  Um, we didn't think we'd have a mission that night.

• 2:44:15Speaker 05

  Because it was Super Bowl Sunday and our pilots TF160 said the helicopters were down for maintenance. They also wanted to watch the Super Bowl. Um, but then we found out there's an HVT in our AOR, sorry, High Value Target Area of Responsibility. And we had to go out and do a capture-kill mission. So we go out on this mission and we're going to... This guy is, he's in one of three buildings. So we split the troop into three, you know, small assault teams.

• 2:44:56Speaker 05

  To go

• 2:44:59Speaker 05

  assault three different buildings simultaneously. So we keep the element of surprise, right? Because they're all like 100 yards apart. And as

• 2:45:14Speaker 05

  Eddie and Dom's unit is getting close to their building. So I'm already, I'm already in front of the building that I will soon be leading a team through the door. Right? And I got my, I got my gun on that door, right? It's pitch black. We're going to be taking this building.

• 2:45:32Speaker 05

  Eddie and Dom's team goes past us and they're going to go set up on this building. And on their, I think they barely get there, they're almost there. And somehow they get made. And it was, it was a little moon out that night, but somehow someone saw them. And

• 2:45:52Speaker 05

  People started like running out of that building, trying to get close to them and blow themselves up. They had suicide vests. Now intel had told us there'd be suicide vests on this whole target set. But I mean, there ends up being like 15 people wearing suicide vests.

• 2:46:12Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit. They were legitimately, they were running at, were they detonating themselves?

• 2:46:16Speaker 05

  Yeah. So they were running at the other element, the other assault team.

• 2:46:22Speaker 05

  Cause they knew the gig was up. So they were just trying to get as close as possible to them. And they were all running, like back then, the, uh, the initiators were on the shoulders. So if they went like this, they could still blow themselves up. Right? They knew that, cause they knew that, that like we would have the interpreter would tell them to come out and put their hands up and put them like that. And then they could reach like, almost like a ripcord right there. Does that make sense?

• 2:46:51Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:46:51Speaker 05

  So they would run out of this building at Eddie and Dom's group. And I, something like three or four of them just blew up. Right? And so I'm, I'm sitting there holding this door. I'm holding this door and I just hear

• 2:47:10Speaker 05

  gunfire, boom, more gunfire, boom, more gunfire, like it's three or four times, right? And it's shaking the ground. Like these are like big S vests. And

• 2:47:26Speaker 05

  across, you know, the, that team leader comes across the radio and he's like, shots fired, shots fired, suicide vests, be careful.

• 2:47:36Speaker 05

  And like, I remember like, I literally, before that moment, I literally had thought.

• 2:47:43Speaker 05

  Like we had got into position early. Most of the time, the mission goes as planned. Like you go in, you capture, you kill the guy, whatever it is, you get home, I'm like, like, we're gonna be back for halftime.

• 2:47:57Speaker 05

  And obviously, we weren't. So they didn't. They end up, um, eventually taking that target down. And now, you know, I'm holding on a door. Like, maybe from here to, you know, that engine block. And then a guy comes out of that door. And he's, uh, he's got a suicide vest and he's got an AK. He can't see me, but I'm like this far away. Like, obviously, I have to engage him. Um, he's already too close. And there's another teammate of mine right there, like, that's even closer. Like, if he blows himself, like, we, we could just die right now. Especially if he had shrapnel on it.

• 2:48:42Speaker 05

  Um, even worse would be to let him go back in there. Cause we have to go in there and find, you know, the, the leader. Would, and that could be him, but like, as you know, like, a suicide vest inside is much worse than a suicide vest outside, just because of the reverberation. Uh, or the concussion factor. So I am- How could you tell he was wearing a suicide vest? Well,

• 2:49:11Speaker 05

  he had a big vest on and four people had just blown themselves up. So I assumed, I assumed it was an S vest and, and, and like, we were told, like, we were briefed. Like, we knew that the target line that we were chasing was like, mostly foreigners, like not, obviously not Iraqis at all. They're from all over. Um, like, but they'd come together under the Al Qaeda banner to fight and, um,

• 2:49:42Speaker 05

  fight Americans there in Iraq. Um, and this group in particular was known, like, they were not gonna surrender and they were not gonna get taken alive. So they wore suicide vests and they all had AKs, right? And so he had what, to me,

• 2:50:01Speaker 05

  And we found out after I shot him, it was a suicide vest. But I'm like, well, it is a vest and they just blew themselves up. It could be.

• 2:50:11Shawn Ryan?

  I was just trying to get you to describe what it looks like for the audience.

• 2:50:14Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. So he had.

• 2:50:16Shawn Ryan?

  Not questioning.

• 2:50:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. No, he had like his man jammies on and then uh, it didn't look like an assault vest. You know what I mean? It had like that. And it's not like you can see the wires on the thing from your, but it looks different than it's not like I'm, I'll date myself here like in a Black Hawk assault vest. Remember those?

• 2:50:38Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:50:38Speaker 05

  Right? Uh, which we bought with our own money.

• 2:50:43Speaker 05

  No, so I end up and we were, you know, at that time it was like, hey, if suicide vests are even on the menu, it's all headshots. Cause you don't want it to,

• 2:50:56Speaker 05

  you know, blow up just by, so I got him. And then at this point, you know, they've heard us in that building. They've heard me shoot this guy. There's still another target to prosecute. We still have to take my building down. And we're like, hey, like, as you know, we need speed, surprise, violence of action. So we needed some momentum. Let's, so I'm, I was standing over like behind a wall. I jumped that wall and I'm like, hey, we're assaulting this target. Run into that. And I, I kind of, and he's in the doorway, so I have to straddle him. Right? And he's wearing an unexploded suicide vest.

• 2:51:41Speaker 05

  And I'm straddling him and like plying the, it was a corner fed room. So I'm plying that room. And I don't see anyone in there. And I'm from the corner. I'm like, I'm good. I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get through this room. All the other bad guys are like probably like in the main room, right? And I had, I could clear most of that.

• 2:52:06Speaker 05

  I mean, you can clear most of this room from that door, right? Corner fed room. And I,

• 2:52:13Speaker 05

  clear it, but I couldn't see all the way down this wall, you know? And, and I didn't realize, so there was someone in there and he was barricaded.

• 2:52:25Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, shit.

• 2:52:26Speaker 05

  So.

• 2:52:30Speaker 05

  I sneak, I'm and I'm still like, they know we're around, but I wasn't gonna just take it dynamically. At this point, we're not doing a hostage rescue. So I kinda sneak through the doorway and my first step in that doorway. All hell breaks loose. And I am, you know, three yards away from four yards away from a guy who's behind a barricade and he's spraying me. And I'm like, I'm in the doorway. Right? Shit. And

• 2:53:05Speaker 05

  it felt like, you know, it felt like minutes. Obviously it wasn't, but I do remember

• 2:53:14Speaker 05

  having this feeling like, how did I like, how did I get here?

• 2:53:19Speaker 05

  Like, I'm gonna die in Iraq on Super Bowl Sunday. Like, I should be, I literally had this like, thought like, I should be at home watching Super Bowl with cold, hot pizza and cold beer. You know what I mean? And now I'm here in Iraq doing this. Uh, but then I also had this like moment where

• 2:53:44Speaker 05

  I heard the first three or four shots, but then I didn't hear anything. Like, it's like my hearing shut off. And all I saw was the muzzle flash. And like, I've later read about when people get put in those circumstances, like, they will lose one or two of their senses to like, focus all their energy on another sense, like maybe their sense of touch. Right? And I felt like I lost my sense of hearing. And my adrenaline was like,

• 2:54:18Speaker 05

  like, all of that was focused into my fine motor skill, like of running down my wall and shooting back. And like, that's all I did. Ran down my wall and shot back. And he missed me and I got him. Right?

• 2:54:36Speaker 05

  And, and I got, you know, I've said it before, we don't rise to the occasion, we fall to our level of training. And before,

• 2:54:47Speaker 05

  you know, we'd, before that point have, had been in gunfights, but nothing like that close and personal. And that consequential where it's, you know, it's almost me to you. And he's shoot, he's, he's got the first three or four shots with an AK, right? Um, and we found out later that

• 2:55:10Speaker 05

  before that happened, he tried blowing his suicide vest up, but it failed. His cap failed. So not only does his cap fail and that vest not blow up when I walked through the door.

• 2:55:24Speaker 05

  He misses me. I'm run, and I'm, I mean, I'm telling you, I'm running pretty fast down my wall. And I got him. So I ran down my wall, I shot him. While moving, you know, in this region, not here. To not blow up his vest and, you know, it's better to be lucky than good.

• 2:55:47Speaker 05

  And

• 2:55:49Speaker 05

  you know, that's a very hard shot to make. But that, that's like table stakes when you're at dev group. You know what I mean? Being able to move down a wall and quickly shoot someone in the head. While with nods, right? So that's what I did. And, um,

• 2:56:10Speaker 05

  I come out of that, like I come out of that room and, uh,

• 2:56:16Speaker 05

  I come out of that room and I just remember like, you know, you're always kind of patting yourself for a bullet hole because you might not feel it in the moment. So I come out of that room and I'm like this, and I'm crushing my legs. And I literally go like, and my buddy sees me do this on nods, I totally forget doing it. But I'm like this.

• 2:56:36Speaker 05

  Safe. And my, my buddy's sitting there. I'm not, cause you know, we have such a sick sense of humor. Right? And he's just like dying. He's like, bro, I can't believe you did that. And I didn't even, it didn't even dawn on me, right? Like, so that was like. I mean, I was elated. Obviously I was happy to still be alive, but like, oh, I got that guy. He didn't get me like you get that kind of adrenaline.

• 2:57:07Speaker 05

  And then probably, I don't know, less than five minutes later. Uh, Mike and Nate get shot. Well, four other guys get shot. Two of them die.

• 2:57:19Speaker 05

  Um, Mike Coke gets like shot through the ear hole. Nate under the armpit, right through the heart. And they were in a similar room with a sandbag shooter. But there were two of them. Uh, or more. And, um.

• 2:57:39Speaker 05

  You know, two guys got shot in the courtyard. Mike and Nate got shot going through the door. And now. Now we have, um. Whatever. Four guys shot.

• 2:57:54Speaker 05

  Sorry, I had a buzz. We have four guys shot and, um.

• 2:58:00Speaker 05

  You know, two are, we don't know they're dead right away, but I spent, um. You know, I like that night, I like, I shot all my, all the bullets I had remaining, just trying to help. You know, we were recovering bodies and Mike and Nate's and. I remember putting, like putting Mike into the bag and zipping it up and putting him on the helicopter. Um, and then.

• 2:58:27Speaker 05

  You know, we came back, we went back to our base. And.

• 2:58:33Speaker 05

  They were obviously dead and we were gonna have, um, had a little Irish wake that morning. And. That next night.

• 2:58:47Speaker 05

  I think Eddie may have mentioned this op like three nights later when the building blew up. Well, between, between when, when Mike and mate died and when Louis Safrant died.

• 2:59:02Speaker 05

  There was a point where Louis came up to me and Louis, he kind of knew.

• 2:59:10Speaker 05

  He knew I was a Christian. He knew I was a believer and.

• 2:59:17Speaker 05

  You know, I would say things like blessing and things like that. And I would, I would say that I went to church and things like that. But I wasn't like truly living out my faith, you know, like walking the walk as I should. And. And he was just asking me, he was kind of like beating around the bush, just asking me what I believed in, why? And.

• 2:59:43Shawn Ryan?

  Those are the best discussions.

• 2:59:45Speaker 05

  Huh?

• 2:59:45Shawn Ryan?

  I always think those are the best discussions.

• 2:59:48Speaker 05

  And I, and I like, I was not at that moment, it wasn't like, I wasn't ashamed. But I was, I was afraid. And I was afraid because.

• 3:00:01Speaker 05

  Like the Bible says to always be able to, you know, give a reason for the hope that you have, right? And what you believe in, why? But I was like so worried about sharing my faith because I didn't have all the answers. Right? I wanted to be an act like I was overthinking it. I wanted to be an expert. Well, what about this? And what about that? And what like know the Bible before I would share it? You know what I mean? Like overthinking it. Um, and I didn't, I kind of just changed the subject because I didn't have all the answers. And I've, you know, I've had a pastor since tell me.

• 3:00:36Speaker 05

  Like in those instances, we don't need to be lawyers. We need to be witnesses. Like, which is a really good way of thinking about it. We don't need to be experts. We are experts on our own lives. And if we are. If we have a relationship with Jesus and how things have changed because of that, we are experts on how that has helped us or whatever. And I didn't want to share it because I didn't like. You know, I didn't have, think I had the words. You know what I mean? I was thinking I needed to be an expert, not just a witness. And I didn't have the, like, the courage to just talk about my faith like I do now. And here he is, kind of searching, like beating around the bush.

• 3:01:21Speaker 05

  Really was gonna ask me is like, well, why do good people like Mike and Nate die? And like the bad people not, which I still don't have the answer for, right? But I'm sitting there and, you know, of all the, of all the regrets I have, I, like today, these, now, every morning, I spend time praying, reading the Bible and journaling. And I've been doing that for whatever, 10 years. It makes every day better. It doesn't, it doesn't make every day easier. There's still plenty of hard things. It just makes me handle hard things better. Uh, it makes me sharper at work, no matter what I'm doing.

• 3:02:05Speaker 05

  It, it, it helps my workouts. I, like, it helps every aspect of my life. I spend an hour a day in the morning, first thing, giving God the first hour of my day. Time in prayer, time in the word and time journaling and stillness and solitude and silence. Like from five to six or six to whatever it is. And I've literally found it helps every aspect of my life. In fact, if anyone is like, well, what would you do? Like, like the, do that for a month and get back to me. And you don't have to do a full hour, right? If, I swear, if I would have done that in the teams, and I've talked to my teammates about some teammates about this, like,

• 3:02:46Speaker 05

  man, if we would have done that, like, I swear I would have been a better SEAL, right? I would have been like, just because I feel like things are just more clear to me. I'm, I have more, I have more energy from it. You feel like you're losing an hour of sleep. But that period of time where you're just waiting on the Lord each morning, like, gives you this strength. Long story short, like, I-

• 3:03:15Speaker 05

  At that age of my life, I was, I wasn't afraid to run into a room full of Al Qaeda for the flag that I wore on my shoulder, but I was afraid to share my faith for that cross I wore underneath my body armor.

• 3:03:30Shawn Ryan?

  That's interesting. You know, I mean, I get it. I know what you mean, but

• 3:03:37Shawn Ryan?

  couple of things. First being,

• 3:03:41Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, now that you're deeper in your faith, isn't it weird that that's how we, you know, when the, when the discussion happens, and I still think about it and I still, I still, you know, my mind switches and goes back to this too, but because we don't know anything else, but you know, this world. But I mean, if you're a true believer, I mean, that's the ultimate goal, right? To cross over and we always, we always talk about it as if it's a

• 3:04:11Shawn Ryan?

  if it's a tragedy, if it's a tragedy, because, because that's what we see. We see fucking tragedy. We see fatherless kids.

• 3:04:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:04:19Shawn Ryan?

  You know, Gold Star wives.

• 3:04:23Shawn Ryan?

  And it's a mess, but you know, the reality of it is it's the

• 3:04:31Shawn Ryan?

  that's the reward. That's the ultimate goal. That's where we go. That's home.

• 3:04:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:04:36Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and, and it's, I mean, just looking around at people, you know, and everybody's got their shit. Everybody's suffering.

• 3:04:49Shawn Ryan?

  I think there's very few people that are genuinely happy.

• 3:04:56Shawn Ryan?

  Which is fucking, it's interesting, you know, how we perceive it and, and

• 3:05:04Shawn Ryan?

  you know, it's funny. I was just talking to our mutual friend who protects my family and I think we were talking about it this morning and

• 3:05:16Shawn Ryan?

  I don't even know why it came up, but I was just like, man, I just was like, it's so weird now, man. Like I, I never gave a shit about dying. It never, it never really, I mean, I didn't want to die. It's not like I had a death wish, but it just didn't really bother me that much. But I didn't have kids. I didn't have a wife.

• 3:05:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:05:34Shawn Ryan?

  And even when I did get married, I mean,

• 3:05:39Shawn Ryan?

  It wa- it wasn't until I ru- until I had kids that now I'm scared. I'm fucking scared to death to die.

• 3:05:50Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 3:05:50Shawn Ryan?

  And leave them here in this fucked up world.

• 3:05:53Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 3:05:53Shawn Ryan?

  You know what I mean? With no guidance.

• 3:05:55Speaker 05

  You're not afraid of death for your own sake. You're just afraid of leaving them behind.

• 3:05:58Shawn Ryan?

  That's it, man. That's it. That's the only.

• 3:06:01Speaker 05

  I get that.

• 3:06:01Shawn Ryan?

  That's my only tie.

• 3:06:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:06:05Shawn Ryan?

  What about you? I mean.

• 3:06:07Speaker 05

  You know.

• 3:06:08Shawn Ryan?

  But you had kids.

• 3:06:11Speaker 05

  And.

• 3:06:11Shawn Ryan?

  I didn't have kids.

• 3:06:12Speaker 05

  I did.

• 3:06:12Shawn Ryan?

  When I was doing this.

• 3:06:13Speaker 05

  I had kids, so the, the, the day that happened, I had two kids.

• 3:06:19Speaker 05

  Um. I had kids my whole time at Dev Group.

• 3:06:24Shawn Ryan?

  Man, dude, that is fucking crazy.

• 3:06:26Speaker 05

  I had.

• 3:06:30Speaker 05

  The, I called my wife. I mean, this was a few years before that. I was in Afghanistan. I called my wife on a sat phone. She was just going to get an ultrasound. With a friend, because I wasn't there to find out the sex of a baby that we were having.

• 3:06:47Speaker 05

  I get her on the sat phone. She's like, we're having a girl.

• 3:06:51Speaker 05

  We agree on the name over the sat phone right there.

• 3:06:56Speaker 05

  It's a girl. We're gonna name her Daisy, but she just graduated high school. Anyway. That night, we go on a, I go on a mission and I am between three different Taliban compounds and I had like, I had to help lead. A group into this area and. We get pinned down from three buildings and we're in the middle of this in, it's like the Helmand province. It's like a bowling alley. It's flat. And I cannot, I can't figure out, I'm towards the front. I'm like, well. Which one of these buildings is shooting at us? And I'm, it, you know, there's three of them and like we found out later, it's all of them.

• 3:07:42Speaker 05

  Uh, but I'm trying to, I'm trying to help coordinate an airstrike because they're like shooting here and here and there and. So I get up on my knee to like get a better view and.

• 3:07:59Speaker 05

  A bullet whizzes by my hair, my head and cuts off a chunk of hair. I had longer hair than

• 3:08:05Shawn Ryan?

  Get the fuck out of here. Are you serious?

• 3:08:06Speaker 05

  I had longer hair than this. It's sticking out of my helmet. Um, I lose a chunk of hair from like an AK round, right? And I had just like, not five hours before that I'd been on a sat phone with my wife and I were having a girl, like I almost didn't meet her, right? And I was like, that night on that helicopter ride home, I was a little bit like almost nauseous, like dry heaving a little bit like, cause I almost, I mean, that was close.

• 3:08:37Shawn Ryan?

  You weren't like, all right, motherfucker, not the hair.

• 3:08:41Speaker 05

  Don't mess with the hair. Um, but I almost like, you know, I'm like, I'm inches away from, you know, that or whatever. Um, and there were, there was, you know, other close calls I had like,

• 3:08:57Speaker 05

  there was also a time like I would sit there, I would sit there on a helicopter flight. Um, and I would,

• 3:09:05Speaker 05

  I would always say, if we had a 60 minute flight, I'd say a 40 minute prayer. And then I would, then I would rehearse the op in my head. Kind of like Michael Jordan rehearsing a game in his head. Like I did that on every helicopter flight. And I would, I would say, like, I did say, God, like if there's any, I know there's non believers on my team. And if there are like, I would happily die instead of them. I would just want them to, you know, live longer to find their faith. But I still wasn't always like sharing my faith with them. I mean, I had a, there were two nights, um, in, in Iraq where I volunteered to go into a,

• 3:09:49Speaker 05

  Instead of sending a full team in, like I went in with an, just an EOD guy to clear a building that we thought was rigged to explode.

• 3:09:58Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 3:09:58Speaker 05

  I had two kids, but I was comfortable with it because I knew where I was going if something would happen and I didn't know if other people did. Now, that's very selfish. Like, I don't, babe, if you're watching this, I'm sorry. Um, I, so that I did, I think I did that twice in Iraq. Um, but that was after, and that was after the building blew up when Louis died.

• 3:10:25Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 3:10:26Speaker 05

  So it was possible, um, but I didn't, I don't know. I don't know to answer your question. Now I'm kind of rambling. I, I do fear leaving them behind. Um, I just hope, you know, now they're old enough that, you know, I've like either taught them or showed them enough, you know what I mean? But there will never be enough time. You know what I mean?

• 3:10:54Shawn Ryan?

  I do. I think, uh, I know what struck up the conversation this morning. Um, my uncle just died a couple of days ago.

• 3:11:08Speaker 05

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 3:11:09Shawn Ryan?

  At my parents' 50th wedding anniversary.

• 3:11:11Speaker 05

  I'm sorry for that, man.

• 3:11:15Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you. But he, um, he died on a fishing trip with his son and, uh, and my brother and, yeah. And, uh, and he, he, he was, he was like on my brother's ass to get that fishing charter going. They hadn't seen each other in a long time. The whole family was there, except me, unfortunately.

• 3:11:45Speaker 05

  Oh, man.

• 3:11:46Shawn Ryan?

  And, um,

• 3:11:50Shawn Ryan?

  He

• 3:11:53Shawn Ryan?

  got in the water to cool off.

• 3:11:57Shawn Ryan?

  And died right there in the water, peaceful death. With his son, who had been struggling for a long time. Finally got it together. They're getting along and um.

• 3:12:10Shawn Ryan?

  Sad, but at the same time.

• 3:12:16Shawn Ryan?

  I fucking hope I go like that.

• 3:12:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:12:18Shawn Ryan?

  You know what I mean?

• 3:12:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:12:20Shawn Ryan?

  Uh.

• 3:12:23Speaker 05

  We just don't know how long we get.

• 3:12:26Shawn Ryan?

  You don't and but I think, you know.

• 3:12:33Shawn Ryan?

  I just hope I can see my kids flourishing and not worry and just know like.

• 3:12:37Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 3:12:37Shawn Ryan?

  They're gonna be alright. And if that happens. I'm good.

• 3:12:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:12:45Speaker 05

  Those are lofty goals, basic ones, simple ones. Um.

• 3:12:53Shawn Ryan?

  Died having a good time with his son on a fishing trip.

• 3:12:56Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 3:13:00Speaker 05

  You know, I I say like, I thank God every morning. Like, I thank God for everything I have, but I start by thanking him for the fact that I woke up. Like, God, I don't deserve a day you give me. Thank you for this one.

• 3:13:20Speaker 05

  Show me what to do and show me how to do it. And and or strengthen me for whatever BS is coming my way, because I can't do it alone. Um. And I think that, I mean, I believe that's so true. So. We just, you know, we don't know.

• 3:13:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:13:46Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I'll tell you another thing that kind of, um, it always catches my gold team. Like, I don't know, like, what, what the, what, what the,

• 3:14:00Shawn Ryan?

  the culture of each team is within development group.

• 3:14:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:14:04Shawn Ryan?

  But just something that I've picked up from the outside is, man, like, the gold team has

• 3:14:11Shawn Ryan?

  a lot of righteous warriors for Christ coming out of there. A lot more than any of the other teams that I've noticed. And what's really fucking odd is it's a cross.

• 3:14:23Speaker 05

  A crusader.

• 3:14:24Shawn Ryan?

  You know, it has the crusade. And I've talked about this. I, I, I've talked about, I think with Eddie, I don't know who all I've talked about it with. But every time I bring it up, they're like, I'd never thought of that. And I'm like, how the fuck did you not think of that, man? Like, and I, some strong faith coming out of that squadron.

• 3:14:43Speaker 05

  And I think there's, you know, I, I have friends from all of them and I have met friends in all of them that have as strong a faith.

• 3:14:54Speaker 05

  And all of us, though, from my vintage, we would all agree, like, we just wish we were all in that time, a little more open about it. Even to the point of having like Bible studies and stuff together versus like,

• 3:15:09Speaker 05

  and now we're, you know, now we're definitely more, now we're all, you know, more open about it. But, um, it's my only regret, that and, you know, I, back to Louis.

• 3:15:22Speaker 05

  I was, like, I didn't share my faith with him. Or just having like what I believed in, why, and like, why I have hope for the future, just because, like, no matter how bad all of this goes, like, even if I get a hundred years, right, get eternity in heaven, like, and it's gonna be as better than I can imagine.

• 3:15:44Speaker 05

  Even if I would say something like that, right, because I believe in Jesus. I didn't, and he like died two nights later. And two nights later, I was standing. Like I had just led our team up to a window, sorry, up to a building. And I was again, the lead, the point man. So I was gonna lead us through that door. And I stopped because there was a window here and I had to pan through that window. And then there were guys in there waiting for us. So I engaged him through the window. The rest of the team goes past. Or they were already passed.

• 3:16:28Speaker 05

  And they're setting up on the door and I'm like, you know, 10 feet from the door at this point. And then I just remember like, and Eddie wasn't even supposed to be there. He's supposed to be back over there getting ready to support. With EOD, but then at the last minute, he kind of bumped up.

• 3:16:45Speaker 05

  And not Eddie, I'm sorry, Louis.

• 3:16:50Speaker 05

  And then all of a sudden, the whole, when the building blew up, I literally thought.

• 3:16:57Speaker 05

  I literally thought our, our breacher threw like some top secret grenade in there. Cause the whole building blew up and I was like, what kind of grenade was that? Cause the last thing I remember before passing out, because I was by the window, which saved me.

• 3:17:13Speaker 05

  I, the overpressure of being next to the window blew me. You know, whatever, 30 feet away from the building or however far.

• 3:17:23Speaker 05

  But it blew me enough to where I bounced off the next building. Like, or the wall, right? So it blew me away from that window. I bounced off this compound wall over here. And then when I came to. All of that assault team, my assault team had been, you know, crushed.

• 3:17:45Speaker 05

  And that's when Louis died. Like, and he got basically where he was, there was a thick concrete roof. Like a carport, like they have over there. That whole thing fell on him.

• 3:18:03Speaker 05

  And then other people like our dog handler, he had like double compound femur fracture, two thigh bones sticking out. We had another guy who had like a full pelvic fracture and then a couple of broken arms and a broken leg like they were all and like I'm the only one who didn't get hurt, but I, I mean, I got a concussion. I got blown away from the building because of the, and I was the first guy. I like, I would be the first guy in, but I stopped and I was engaging other bad guys through a window and then I got blown away from the, the window.

• 3:18:44Speaker 05

  And that's, that's like two nights, three nights after, you know, the Super Bowl Sunday.

• 3:18:55Speaker 05

  And I'll, I'll just never like, so I get medevacced because I, I was so, my bell was rung so hard that I couldn't stand up. Like I had that much of a concussion. And I had played high school football and one year of college football. So I knew, I know concussions, right? But I was like, man, and I was nauseous. So I get medevacced. I have to get a CAT scan. They say I'm fine and I'm fine. I feel fine. But like now my entire assault team gets sent home. Like from one house born IED and then Eddie dies. Sorry, not Eddie. I keep saying

• 3:19:40Speaker 05

  that. Louis, um, forgive me, Eddie. I did not mean your name. Um, but Louis dies and,

• 3:19:51Speaker 05

  it was just nights after, you know, Mike and Nate. So.

• 3:19:55Shawn Ryan?

  How are you handling that?

• 3:19:57Speaker 05

  At the time, you know, I didn't.

• 3:20:03Speaker 05

  At the time, I just, you know, like. Compartmentalized it. Yeah. Predator. I don't got time to bleed. Type deal. And then, um, honestly, like I, that whole deployment was so busy, like it was. Like a couple nights later, we're operating again. They'd flown in guys to replace the rest of my team and we're out back. Back in the ground, you know, chasing bad guys. Didn't have. Time to deal with it, really.

• 3:20:36Speaker 05

  And.

• 3:20:39Speaker 05

  It wasn't until later when I just realized like the thing that I.

• 3:20:45Speaker 05

  And I, I will say, I don't have this.

• 3:20:50Speaker 05

  I mean, we all have whatever PTSD or whatever they call it now. I.

• 3:20:56Speaker 05

  I hear about people that struggle to fall asleep and. You know, have brain fog and all the operator syndrome stuff and I, I have none of it. Like, I don't even have nightmares about what I saw or what I did. And I attribute that to my faith. Like, I have none of that. I only have regrets of. Like not being willing to share my faith. Right?

• 3:21:25Speaker 05

  And certainly I, I know there, you know, I have my share of medical issues, right? And I probably have. You know, brain. Issues from not just that one. I mean, I was IED three times. That was the one big one. But then there's all the grenades and just, you know, shooting a little gun inside of a kill house. All of those things add up. Um, I found out later that even, um, you can get. Like brain issues from too many parachute jumps, just that. Opening shock, right? Oh shit. Especially like the.

• 3:22:03Speaker 05

  The parachutes we had, which were for like for higher altitude. So they have less porosity. So they can open quicker at altitude. Um, that means if you prep, when you train lower, they open harder. If that makes any sense. Um, so just. All those things can lead to different brain, whatever lesions or whatever they get now. Um, but I don't like, I saw really bad things. Um, I was put in situations where I had to, you know, it was me or them. Um,

• 3:22:39Speaker 05

  and I, I don't know, I sleep fine. I fall asleep like. The only time I don't sleep fine is when I have like stuff going on at work and I wake up at two in the morning, take a leak. And then my brain starts to roll, right? Like, I'm sure we all get that, but I am, uh, you know, when I got out of the military, I tried, you know, I never did a lot. I never did drugs or anything, but I, you know, I lost myself in work. I lost myself in, um, hobbies, uh, or working out or the outdoors. Um, even, you know, I drank quite a bit. Um, but never like.

• 3:23:22Speaker 05

  You know, I always, I could never drink more than two nights in a row. Gives me a headache. Um,

• 3:23:29Speaker 05

  but nothing ever like fills the, like fills the God sized hole or the God shaped hole that you have other than like it, like that time spent in prayer and in reading the Bible and journaling. And I, I attribute that to my relatively well, you know, adapt, being adapted from all the things I got to see and do. So, um, I don't know. And maybe that's not the case, but that's what I believe.

• 3:24:02Speaker 05

  So.

• 3:24:04Shawn Ryan?

  And then I had a, uh, whoever think about why you were spared those two times in a row? And I'm sure there's a lot of others.

• 3:24:13Shawn Ryan?

  I think you're doing the thing that you need to be doing.

• 3:24:16Speaker 05

  I think about that all the time.

• 3:24:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, me too.

• 3:24:19Speaker 05

  I wonder.

• 3:24:22Speaker 05

  I kind of wonder, like, was I spared to have the next kid? Like, so that, or was I spared to go, like, am I

• 3:24:33Speaker 05

  am I fulfilling my calling and purpose? That's always the, that's always the question.

• 3:24:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:24:38Speaker 05

  You know what I mean? And that's something I ask God every day. So I don't know the answer to that.

• 3:24:46Shawn Ryan?

  It's a good question to ask.

• 3:24:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think it's a good, like, it's a good question to ask all the time and keeps you kind of

• 3:24:54Speaker 05

  at least, like, having something to aim at. You know what I mean?

• 3:24:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:25:01Speaker 05

  And I had, like, I had a great, like, the Navy, as hard as the Navy is, and certainly the hard as it is to be at that team, like, that team has been described as like a burning Ferris wheel. Like, you get on it, you know it's on fire, and it's, you're gonna get burnt, and you're gonna get ground out and spit out the other end. But you, like, you still want on it, you know what I mean? Uh, but as hard as the Navy was, and like, all the things that happened to me in the Navy, like, it gave me more than it took. You know, like, so I don't have any, like, I don't regret doing that.

• 3:25:44Shawn Ryan?

  Why did you wind up leaving?

• 3:25:46Speaker 05

  So.

• 3:25:50Speaker 05

  I got medically retired because of my kidney. And so I had lost, if we can rewind back to oh two, when I lost my kidney, and I'm on a hospital bed, and I signed a waiver to stay in the military.

• 3:26:09Speaker 05

  I didn't know that that was a non-deployable waiver.

• 3:26:15Shawn Ryan?

  Are you fucking serious?

• 3:26:17Speaker 05

  I immediately deployed right after it.

• 3:26:20Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:26:21Speaker 05

  And then I did four more at dev group.

• 3:26:27Speaker 05

  Um, and it wasn't until I got hurt in combat that the Bureau of Navy Medicine found out.

• 3:26:35Speaker 05

  Because they had to sign off on my Purple Heart. And they showed up at the command.

• 3:26:43Speaker 05

  The Bureau of Navy Medicine shows up at

• 3:26:47Speaker 05

  dev group at the command and says, "Where is this Frohardt?" And my boss, it's like, "Well, what do you mean? Why?" Like, "It says here that he got injured in Iraq and he is being awarded a Purple Heart." "How is that possible?" He's like, "Well, what do you mean? He was over there and he got house, he got blown up in an IED." And the Bureau of Navy Medicine-

• 3:27:09Shawn Ryan?

  How's this possible? You're a fucking dev group dipshit.

• 3:27:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:27:12Shawn Ryan?

  How do you think it's possible?

• 3:27:15Speaker 05

  Bureau of Navy Med- Bureau of Navy Medicine goes, "Well, he signed a waiver to stay in the military back in 02 and he hasn't, he was not supposed to deploy since that."

• 3:27:29Speaker 05

  And it, that's how wires get crossed and bureaucracies have no idea. Like, can you imagine?

• 3:27:37Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:27:38Speaker 05

  So that I signed a waiver to stay in under the caveat that I couldn't deploy.

• 3:27:45Speaker 05

  And then I just, I didn't know that. I was also high on morphine when I signed this waiver.

• 3:27:51Speaker 05

  And no one, like, I never read it. I, like, never. And I just kept going.

• 3:27:57Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. Wow.

• 3:28:00Speaker 05

  It finally caught up with me, right?

• 3:28:01Shawn Ryan?

  Five deployments later, they tell you-

• 3:28:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:28:03Shawn Ryan?

  "No more, huh?"

• 3:28:04Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 3:28:08Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 3:28:10Speaker 05

  Wow. Were you pissed? So. I was upset. Like, I was like, I actually fought it for a little bit, and then I had to go get a med board.

• 3:28:22Speaker 05

  And the med board came back and said, yeah, you. Like, you can't keep going. They said you could have shore duty. You could, and they actually, they even offered to let me stay at the command. Like, I could work, you know, in a. Training role with the, like, the sniper guys or whatever. Um.

• 3:28:42Speaker 05

  I would have taken that offer if I had fifteen in. And I only needed like five more. But at this point, I am almost like to twelve years, and I didn't want to do. Ten years. Teaching people and not going. Like, if I can't go. And go at the highest level, then I want out. And. I got out. I had six months. They gave me six months, like, because that's, that was my EAOS. Six months? EAOS was six months. So I got out, like, I got catapulted, not only out of the Navy, but like, I was.

• 3:29:23Speaker 05

  Up to that point, like, by the time my med board finished, I was training with the squadron, getting ready to deploy. I found out. Holy shit. I found out weeks before a deployment, I was not going to be allowed to go.

• 3:29:40Speaker 05

  And then. I had. And I had planned on, you know how it works, I was gonna go on that deployment and reenlist. Because then I get. My reenlistment bonus, uh, tax-free. And. Instead of. Reenlisting in December of oh nine, like, that was my EAOS, and it just. It expired. So I found out in July of oh six. That. Like. I found out before that about that they weren't gonna let me, but that's when my med board finalized. And then by December, not July of oh six, but, um, sorry, oh nine.

• 3:30:20Speaker 05

  And then by December of oh nine, I was out of the Navy. So I had a no shore duty. No transition time. You know how you sometimes get a a shore duty job or a like you can go network and find your next thing. So now I'm just. But I knew I needed to like if I'm getting out, I needed to leave Virginia Beach. So we left Virginia Beach. Wow, you left that fast. And it was as hard as it was to join the Navy and become a SEAL, it was like harder than leave. No idea what you're gonna do.

• 3:30:59Speaker 05

  So it was the hardest period of my life, you know, and I've had kidney stones and hell week and I've been in hospitals from getting blown up and I've lost teammates and all like all those things. But that period of time, those first couple of years post Navy where

• 3:31:17Speaker 05

  like you get out and

• 3:31:23Speaker 05

  like I didn't know.

• 3:31:26Speaker 05

  Like I didn't know my purpose anymore. Um.

• 3:31:32Speaker 05

  I didn't have a way to make a living, like I couldn't find a job. So I had to like just start one like.

• 3:31:39Speaker 05

  Um.

• 3:31:42Speaker 05

  I didn't have my team around me. Um, the camaraderie with my teammates. And then most of all, like I've like incorrectly, my identity was wrapped up in that trident.

• 3:31:57Speaker 05

  Like all of ours, like my I was singularly focused on one thing and that was being a Navy SEAL. And that was taken from me. And that is how I defined myself. Like I was a SEAL first. Then a husband, a father and a Christian and all these other monikers, right? But like I was my self-worth came from my profession, you know what I mean? And then and I used to be able to say like, oh, what do you do for a living? I'm a Navy SEAL. And that meant something. And then all of a sudden I'm just.

• 3:32:36Speaker 05

  You know, another day at Target buying diapers. So I lost, I lost all those things and, and it was super, super hard. Um, but then I just kind of found like, you know, I got a, my purpose now is to be a good husband and father.

• 3:32:52Shawn Ryan?

  How long did that take you to find?

• 3:32:56Speaker 05

  Took a couple of years.

• 3:32:57Shawn Ryan?

  How did you find it? Most people never do.

• 3:33:01Speaker 05

  Back to my, uh,

• 3:33:04Speaker 05

  I met some guys in Denver and they,

• 3:33:08Speaker 05

  like, it was this faith-based business networking group, very similar to like YPO or YEO.

• 3:33:19Speaker 05

  And this group,

• 3:33:22Speaker 05

  we all, we had these forums of like six or whatever guys and, you know, there was this phrase called abiding, which is like remaining close. And we were always like, talking about like, well, how much time did you spend abiding today? And for us, that was like made tactical as in, reading the Bible, praying and like writing down some thoughts, right? And I, that was the way for me. So it was within, um,

• 3:34:00Speaker 05

  I want to say in like 11 or probably 2012 and I had gotten out at the beginning of 2010, right? And starting in 2012, I started to,

• 3:34:10Speaker 05

  like, read the Bible and well, pray and read the Bible and just write a few thoughts in my journal and like get shit out of my head and onto paper. And then

• 3:34:25Speaker 05

  just trying it for a month. I did it for a month. A month became two. Two months became a year.

• 3:34:35Speaker 05

  And I've been doing it ever since.

• 3:34:37Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:34:38Speaker 05

  And as I was telling the other guy earlier on, like I have, I want to say it was 2012 was the first year I read the Bible cover to cover. And now I've done it probably every year since just reading the Bible all the way through. Now there was a year, one year where I just did the Old Testament and one year where I just did the New Testament and went a little like deeper on it. But for the like, for the most part, that is the, that's what has helped me the most. That time that I spend in the word and spend praying and journaling. And then when I finish that, then I do my morning workout, part of which is a walk and I pray half of that walk. So.

• 3:35:22Shawn Ryan?

  How do you pray?

• 3:35:24Speaker 05

  Yep. What's that?

• 3:35:25Shawn Ryan?

  How do you pray?

• 3:35:28Speaker 05

  Oh, I have like a.

• 3:35:30Shawn Ryan?

  Like you're talking?

• 3:35:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, just in my.

• 3:35:32Shawn Ryan?

  Conversation.

• 3:35:33Speaker 05

  Quietly in my head like, you know, I, like I have a prayer that I do early, like, you know, about faith and hope and love and trusting God and, you know, thanking him for things and then asking for forgiveness and then embracing my weakness, my brokenness and my neediness. Like I do all that. And then when I go on a walking prayer, I call it, I just start by thanking him for all the things. So it starts. I'm like, God, thank you for my relationship with you. Please help make me a better Christian. Help me grow closer with you. Then I go, you know, in order, Leah,

• 3:36:13Speaker 05

  the kids, uh, my parents and siblings, my in-laws, my extended family, my friends, my coworkers, teammates, past and present. Um, I thank God for, you know, our country and I ask, you know, and I'm thanking and asking for help, right? And start with, start by thanking and then I ask for help.

• 3:36:37Speaker 05

  So that I will be better in all these, all these ways. Uh, and then.

• 3:36:45Speaker 05

  I even, you know, I, I thank him for the church and then asked me to like, help me to be, you know, better, better brother of my brothers and sisters in Christ. Thank him for my country. You know, I pray that more people would know and love you and have a relationship with you and then be with our leaders, give them wisdom and discernment. I have this whole, it would take a while. And then I thank him for my health and then for work. And then I ask him like, show me what you would have me do. Thank him for every dollar he's given me for our house. Just help me to be a better steward of that money and a better steward of our house. And then even like hobbies and fitness. And I just kind of go like while I'm

• 3:37:30Speaker 05

  walking or rucking or whatever. And I just like, I don't know, I, I leave those things and I'm like, I go to work and I have so much energy until like,

• 3:37:42Speaker 05

  2:00 or 3:00 PM, I stop and I have a snack. And then I like, I, I have energy all day until about, you know, 7 o'clock, have dinner and then I finally wind down. But it gives, I would say, like to anyone watching this, like it sounds like a lot, but it is, uh, if it takes an hour to do that, it's worth seven hours of energy. Right? It, the, whatever you think the sacrifice is, if I only can give them, let's say it's 10 minutes, I, I believe that the payoff is more than three times what I put towards it, if that makes sense. So.

• 3:38:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, makes sense. I've never thought of it like that. It feels like a sacrifice at the time, but it is,

• 3:38:32Speaker 05

  the energy you put forth is pales in comparison to, you know, the energy and the strength you get from it.

• 3:38:42Speaker 05

  That's interesting. I'm gonna have to try that. Yeah. Please do. I will. Give it a month. Tell me how it goes. I will. Let's take a quick break.

• 3:39:46Shawn Ryan?

  See you later.

• 3:39:49Shawn Ryan?

  I'm gonna install this building. What do you think, Sean? We're high.

• 3:40:07Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company informed me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 3:40:16Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 3:40:23Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped doing it? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.

• 3:40:28Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 3:40:31Speaker 03

  I'm not the first then.

• 3:40:32Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 3:40:38Shawn Ryan?

  So we're transitioning into your civilian life.

• 3:40:43Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 3:40:44Shawn Ryan?

  Coming from Dev Group. But one thing that we forgot to cover is Lead Climber.

• 3:40:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:40:50Shawn Ryan?

  And how you got into that.

• 3:40:53Speaker 05

  So I mentioned, like, in the middle, like, on a SEAL team, as you know, and for your audience's sake, everyone does a little bit of everything. We all cross train, we can shoot, you know, we all know how to navigate, we all know medicine, we all know how to use a radio, like, and then there's specialties. We all can breach a door, but there's breachers, right? And a couple of different things, like, there was a time I was a point man, which is like a lead navigator slash, you know, you had to be able to navigate the team to a thing, to a target, and then a sniper, which everyone knows what that is, and then a lead

• 3:41:36Speaker 05

  climber. And a lead climber would just be someone who would, you know, as I mentioned, on the boat, like, on those shipboardings, I would be the first guy up a ladder, I could set the ladder better and then get everyone else up it. In Iraq and Afghanistan, it might be a, a compound wall or something like that. Usually, it's not that, you know, it's not quite that epic. But I showed up at, when I got in to finish my training and I was at, you know, gold team squadron, and me and the other new guy in my little assault team, like, my team

• 3:42:17Speaker 05

  leader looked at us and the other guy was bigger and he said, you're gonna be a breacher, and then he looked at me and he said, how many pull-ups can you do? And I was like, I don't know, like, 30, or whatever it was. He's like, well, then you're gonna be a climber. And I had never climbed in my, like, besides the, the lead climbing I had done at SEAL Team Five on the side of the ship. And So, long story short, I get voluntold into being a lead climber. And we do a, we do a climbing trip to Red Rocks, which is outside of Las Vegas.

• 3:43:00Speaker 05

  So I get four days of climbing on real rock at Red Rocks. Followed by four days of climbing real rock somewhere else. So now I have, imagine this, I have eight days of rock climbing under my experience on, like in a harness on real rock, like not counting like a trip to a rock climbing wall, right? But like real rock. And

• 3:43:27Speaker 05

  like the group of lead climbers, the one guy decides we're gonna go climb LCAP. Right? Which is a

• 3:43:38Speaker 05

  2, 2,500 foot wall. Holy shit. And and I'm like, like what? And so, long story short, I end up, now I find myself in Yosemite National Park. And we're gonna climb LCAP. So the ninth time in my life that I've ever even worn a sit harness is a training day on LCAP. Holy shit. The 10th time in my life that I wear it on real, on real rock is day one on LCAP. Day one. Wow. And we climb it in three days, spending two nights on portal edges

• 3:44:23Speaker 05

  on the side of it. Um, the last night on the top.

• 3:44:31Speaker 05

  Finished the climb. Off the backside, you kind of walk, then rappel, walk. There's like a down climb with a couple, a couple of hundred foot rappels. And like LCAP, the way we did it, because we're not like able to climb it all in one day. So we have like haul bags with portal ledges, which are cots that you sleep on.

• 3:44:55Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 3:44:55Speaker 05

  Two gallons of water a day, all your ropes, all your food, your mountain house meals and like you're carrying each, each of us had a hundred pounds of gear to start. So you, and you're not climbing with all that, that's on a anchor, but you would climb. And then you build an anchor and you pulley that stuff up. And so you climb a few pitches each, each day, you make it as far as you can, then you, you get as far as you safely can get with the light still, you know, with the sun still out. And then you bust out this portal ledge, which is a cot that you put together and strap it to the side of the rock. And the first night on the LCAP.

• 3:45:41Speaker 05

  Think it was like eight hundred feet off the ground or something like that, but it was also six, it was steeper than vertical. So I was six foot away from the wall. So it was at, at a spot.

• 3:45:54Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 3:45:54Speaker 05

  Where there's an overhang and my, the rope hangs down. And my cot is like, so I'm like eight hundred feet off the ground and six feet away from the wall and it's just spinning. In the wind and I'm sleeping on this thing. And we finished that climb and come around the backside.

• 3:46:19Speaker 05

  And sure, like, and I didn't know who this guy was at the time, but in the meadow. I think it's called Toowalamie Meadows or whatever. There is a young Alex Honhold looking up at LCAP. And some of the guys were like climbing dorks, some of the guys at Gold were into, I was, I was not a climbing dork. Like I didn't have the rock climbing magazines and all the, you know, all that junk. And they're like, that's Alex Honhold, he's the next big deal, right? Like we would have never known he was going to climb LCAP without a rope. You know, a few years later, well, many years later, but.

• 3:47:02Speaker 05

  Anyway, I went from no rock climbing to a couple of rock, like.

• 3:47:09Speaker 05

  Rock climbing trips. This was like.

• 3:47:13Speaker 05

  So I like, I found out I was gonna be a rock climber in 2006 and we climbed El Cap in oh seven. So anyway, it was a pretty steep.

• 3:47:23Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit dude.

• 3:47:24Speaker 05

  That's a steep learning curve, but we finished that and you know, one of the lead climbers, guy named Heath, Heath Robinson, who died in extortion. Um, and I obviously knew all those guys really well. Um, Heath, uh, mentioned, like, he was the driving force behind El Cap and we finished that climb and he's like, I'm not gonna do, you know, we're not doing any more walls, we're gonna go do mountains. So then we went and did Denali, which no one said we would ever get it done. Uh, but he sold the trip and made it happen. So we did Denali, uh, and then like

• 3:48:04Speaker 05

  the next one, um, he handed it over to Rob, Rob Reeves, who also died in extortion. Uh, and he led the trip for Aconcagua. So Denali being the highest peak in North America, Aconcagua, the highest peak in South America. Um, and that just kind of brings it full circle to, you know, now climbing Kilimanjaro for a different reason, but one of the seven summits.

• 3:48:36Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, that is cool, man.

• 3:48:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was, uh, voluntold into being a lead climber.

• 3:48:43Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. Damn. That is cool.

• 3:48:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:48:48Shawn Ryan?

  I, uh, can't imagine sleeping on a cot that's fucking spinning around in the wind at, uh, whatever thousands of feet you are at.

• 3:48:58Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, I mean, the just, it's so not like, to me, like, climbing El Cap, a wall like that, like, that's scarier than jumping out of an airplane for me. Like, I don't know why, like, it just, you have the one rope.

• 3:49:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 3:49:13Speaker 05

  In your world is that one rope and everything you do is that like, bubble, like, it's so consequential, you know what I mean? Um.

• 3:49:25Speaker 05

  I'll, I'll happily go do another like mountain climbing thing, like mountaineering. I, I don't, I don't see myself climbing another 2,000 foot rock wall.

• 3:49:38Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, shit.

• 3:49:39Speaker 05

  Not after all the close calls.

• 3:49:42Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 3:49:43Speaker 05

  So.

• 3:49:44Shawn Ryan?

  How are you, back to kind of your transition, how are you integrating in with the family? After that pace?

• 3:49:54Speaker 05

  Well, it's so.

• 3:49:58Speaker 05

  I had gotten good at

• 3:50:03Speaker 05

  changing quickly from, you know, warrior to husband and father.

• 3:50:06Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 3:50:07Speaker 05

  Right? I could, I could reintegrate very quickly. And it was because like you had to, like at, at the command, I would go. There were no decompression stops back then. You would come home, like I, in oh six, I did a mission on the last night of a deployment. Finished that mission. We had gotten in a gunfight on that mission. Finished that mission, came back to the base. I didn't even have time to wash my cammies, threw everything in a bag, didn't have time to clean my gun or anything. Threw my, my clothes in a bag, my gun in a box.

• 3:50:46Speaker 05

  We flew out of that base, you know, without being too specific. Refueled in Ramstein and I was in Virginia Beach at a Panera. Holding my kid 36 hours later.

• 3:51:00Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:51:00Speaker 05

  After, literally after a gunfight.

• 3:51:05Speaker 05

  And it was just kind of like, it was kind of a trip, right? I was like. But the hardest part was when I never got to go back. Like when I never got to turn on warrior mode again. Um, and then it was like, as far as reintegrating into the family, I just, you know.

• 3:51:25Speaker 05

  Had to, you know, have my quiet time in the morning. Um, you know, my time in prayer, my time in the work, a little bit of journaling and.

• 3:51:34Shawn Ryan?

  You started that immediately?

• 3:51:36Speaker 05

  Probably, you know, one and a half to two years after I got out.

• 3:51:40Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:51:41Speaker 05

  Um, and then, but the other thing is when I immediately got out, like,

• 3:51:46Speaker 05

  I also went eighteen months without having a paycheck. So I just didn't have time to think. Like it was like this consulting or this doing that or like teaching this class or I briefly did like adjunct instructor with Mid-South or security consulting or whatever. Um, eventually we, you know, bought a gun range, but like, I just didn't have time to wallow.

• 3:52:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:52:18Speaker 05

  You know what I mean?

• 3:52:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 3:52:20Speaker 05

  And now I like, sometimes we have time to think and overthink and like, um,

• 3:52:29Speaker 05

  just kind of, I guess, wallow is the word, you know? Brewed on something and not just like go out there and do it. And I didn't have that luxury like I, like I got out, no college degree, didn't have a job lined up and

• 3:52:46Speaker 05

  you know, had three kids and groceries to buy. And then, you know, then we had a fourth kid.

• 3:52:53Speaker 05

  Cause we're smart.

• 3:52:54Shawn Ryan?

  But then you became an entrepreneur.

• 3:52:56Speaker 05

  Yep. Yep.

• 3:52:58Shawn Ryan?

  What was your first venture?

• 3:52:59Speaker 05

  So I first did, uh, just some security consulting. And that led us to doing some present corporate presentations. Um,

• 3:53:11Speaker 05

  and that kind of segued into, you know, we were teaching this guy how to shoot. And we took him to a gun range in Denver and they wouldn't let us rapid fire and they wouldn't let us draw from a holster. And as you and I know, like, if you're gonna, if you're gonna shoot a gun for self-defense, you need to know how to draw from a holster and you might need to shoot more than one shot every five seconds. So we were like, this is no way to train. And he was just like, he's very wealthy guy and awesome business mentor of ours from, from Denver, ended up being one of our investors. He just said, well, why don't you guys raise money and buy a gun range?

• 3:53:54Speaker 05

  Like if this, if you can't train correctly here, and at the time Denver had like two, maybe three gun ranges, they all sucked. Um, he's like, why don't you just either build one or make one? So, you know, the, there was a, there was a problem to solve and he helped us find an answer. So we actually found some people, we raised money, bought a gun range and owned and ran a, a gun range and it was, you know, firearms training and then, um, a gun store and then lanes for rent. Kind of a, a three-legged stool, right? Um, and I did that, we did that for a while together, um, me and my business partner and,

• 3:54:42Speaker 05

  after a few years, um,

• 3:54:48Speaker 05

  stepped down from the day-to-day and then I went and ran a, a fitness organization called Strong First. Um, most notably known for their like kettlebell training, uh, and this was Pavel's company.

• 3:55:08Speaker 05

  And he's the guy who brought, who introduced the kettlebell to the West.

• 3:55:14Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 3:55:14Speaker 05

  He's the reason there's a kettlebell in every gym now.

• 3:55:17Speaker 02

  Right on.

• 3:55:18Speaker 05

  So I had met him at Dev Group, because when you're at Dev Group, you bring in the experts for everything. And we brought him in to teach us how to kettlebell once. And I stayed in touch with him.

• 3:55:33Speaker 05

  And I had used, I had used the kettlebell like to help get me ready for like deployments and for Denali and Akankagwa and all like everything, right? I combined like kettlebell with a little bit of body weight and cardio. I still do it to this day, right? And so I'm a believer of it. And then he was asking me to help him find his next CEO and I was in that, at that point, I was in that like habit of, you know, reading the Bible, praying, and then taking up, then I had added a lunchtime walk with a little quick prayer. So I'm on my lunchtime walk with a prayer and like I just heard God say, well, you should apply for the job working for Pavel.

• 3:56:19Speaker 05

  And then I went and did that for about three years and I got to that was a great job. And I was, you know, really a blessing to work with and for Pavel and I had you know, the gun range I had, we had anywhere from 40 to 50 employees at the peak.

• 3:56:41Speaker 05

  But I was also like my business partner and I like we, you know, we just like it needed one captain, that that ship needed one captain. And then also I just felt like I'm always trapped to this facility. Like I can't, like if I go on vacation, I can't work from vacation. You know what I mean? And then I started working for Strong First and I was working remotely back in 2014 before that was a thing because our, our team, our US team was everywhere from Pittsburgh to Venice Beach and everywhere in between. And then our global team, we had instructors and

• 3:57:24Speaker 05

  Thirty some countries. We were doing events in, we had 4,000 instructors in thirty some countries, doing events on almost, almost every continent, not Antarctica.

• 3:57:37Speaker 05

  And basically, I worked at the, I led the headquarters group and like a senior group of instructors, and we were having licensing the material to be taught in other countries and continents and stuff like that. So, and I was, there was no Zoom back then. It was called GOTA meeting and there was, you know, obviously cell phones, but like very early, like, you know, very good experience for me, kind of leading a geographically distributed team. Did that for three years and then I went,

• 3:58:14Speaker 05

  I went to work for, I had helped the NRA rewrite some of its concealed carry curriculum,

• 3:58:23Speaker 05

  just as a, one of my side gigs and in so doing, I was talking to one of the leaders there and he basically hired me to run NRA's education and training. So I left the fitness organization and then went to work for NRA headquarters. And I was living in Denver, but like I had to commute to, you know, to Fairfax via Dulles. Oh shit. Yeah. So I was going, I did that for three years.

• 3:59:02Speaker 05

  It was going okay. I mean, it wasn't without its drama, right? Just the politics of it all. And I was working on the ops side, like it's training. It should be free from. Bureaucracy. Not free from bureaucracy, but free from politics. Yeah. But like, there is a lot of politics there just because it attracts politicians. You know what I mean? Also, I was like, never gonna, I was never gonna play the game the way it needed. I was only gonna do the job, not play the game. So I was kind of doomed.

• 3:59:38Speaker 05

  And if I was gonna like to do the job, the way it needed to be done. Like at some point I needed to move there. And we were living in Denver and I wasn't going to move my family to Virginia like. Yeah. I we've I didn't want to go back, right? And I loved Denver.

• 3:59:58Speaker 05

  Up until. Covid.

• 4:00:02Speaker 05

  But I I loved what I, you know, I loved that job. I enjoyed it, but. You know, it was time to move on. So I did that until 2020.

• 4:00:13Speaker 05

  And then in 2020, I just started to do consulting. And that kind of bounced me around a little bit. Again, like when you get out, you just find a way or you make one. And we're good at. You know, hustling and learning and problem solving and communicating and all those, all those skills.

• 4:00:36Speaker 05

  And I have since, you know, I worked at a beverage company for a while. I saw that. Uh, we had a CBD dummy. We had a CBD drink. We had a bottled water. We had an energy drink.

• 4:00:49Speaker 05

  Then I was a consultant. I worked at an energy company. That does like natural gas fired plants and like solar and even battery plants.

• 4:01:03Speaker 05

  Just helping with like culture and ops. And then I was even helping some of the developers there. Just as a like, not a lead developer, but I would help lead developers. It's like the resume. It's just, well, it's just like, you know, find a way or make one. Yeah, right. Uh, which is, you know, eventually I I had also always been doing a lot of speaking. It's always been a passion of mine.

• 4:01:34Speaker 05

  And I started doing that in 2012. And there have been years where I've done like 10 or 12 events and there's years when I've done like two or three. But I just enjoy

• 4:01:47Speaker 05

  just sharing my story and then like I have the 12 years in, but then now it's like 14 or more. Well now 15 now.

• 4:01:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:01:58Speaker 05

  And I kind of merge the, hey, this worked in the teams. Doesn't work out here. I've seen, I have seen how different they are and not everything is the same. Right? And I found ways to like, kind of tie in things that work in the teams, in the SEAL teams and work on the outside. And mostly that's what I, what I talk about when I speak.

• 4:02:23Speaker 05

  And it's typically like elite teams. Aspects of, of an elite team or how a small team or an outnumbered team can get big results. Or it's basic leadership or teamwork. And that's on the corporate side. And then once in a while I get an opportunity to go just speak with a, a sports team. Or a couple of weeks ago, uh, like a big, uh, men's ministry group. So that's kind of the, the side gig now.

• 4:02:55Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. It's men's ministry group. That's the side gig?

• 4:02:58Speaker 05

  No, speaking.

• 4:02:59Shawn Ryan?

  Speaking is a side gig.

• 4:03:01Speaker 05

  Day job. I have a, a great job working for, uh, it's called Goldenrod Companies and they're a real estate.

• 4:03:11Speaker 05

  I would say real estate development and investment organization company in Omaha. They have offices.

• 4:03:21Speaker 05

  Let's see, we have offices in Atlanta and Dallas and Omaha and then, um, I think some in Tulsa and opening new spots. But he, basically it's a founder-led organization. Um, he has a, a family office, which we would call it a headquarters group in, in our vernacular. So under his headquarters group, there are. Let's say six portfolio companies, separate companies, all doing different things, but they all fit within the real estate, you know, world, right?

• 4:03:58Speaker 05

  And I don't know much about real estate investment or development or legal or finance or insurance or like even has construction companies, those, all those things are happening. I'm just helping standardize operations and culture. So I don't do any of the things they do, right? I just help standardize the culture and the ops, you know? Think of that as a horizontal going across those verticals.

• 4:04:23Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 4:04:23Speaker 05

  So, which is a good fit when you have a side gig of also doing speaking gigs, because you're talking mostly about culture and teamwork and building, like building those things.

• 4:04:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:04:36Speaker 05

  So fits pretty nicely.

• 4:04:38Shawn Ryan?

  What, I mean,

• 4:04:42Shawn Ryan?

  as you know,

• 4:04:44Shawn Ryan?

  a lot of guys struggle with finding the next purpose, the next thing, you know? What, what, what kind of advice do you have for the next generation who's separating right now, getting out, looking for the next thing? Thinking that nothing's going to measure up to what they did before?

• 4:05:05Speaker 05

  The first thing I would say is,

• 4:05:11Speaker 05

  I think it's, if you have the, and I didn't have this, I didn't have this luxury. But if you have, like, it is, if you can take a beat, take a minute and just get that, could be a month, could be two months, like just have a little bit of time to like unwrap, right? I didn't get that.

• 4:05:36Speaker 05

  But then the next thing I would say is like, your first job getting out of the military might not be your ultimate thing. Like just take a base hit. You can't like,

• 4:05:46Shawn Ryan?

  It's a good point.

• 4:05:47Speaker 05

  Get the, get the base hit. And, you know, Jordan Peterson had this, had this thing about having an aim, right? Where you have an aim, you have something you're aiming at. And it might be on top of this hill and you're walking towards that. But as you, as you get higher towards it, like your aperture opens and like,

• 4:06:14Speaker 05

  You see more and you or you realize like, oh, I don't, that's not my goal anymore. But because you took a step for like, you're moving towards it.

• 4:06:24Speaker 05

  If you hadn't have moved towards it, you would have been down here still planning about it.

• 4:06:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:06:28Speaker 05

  Right. And I think like, too many people are stuck down here. Planning about like, what to do next. Like, find that like base hit. It it does not have to be like.

• 4:06:41Shawn Ryan?

  The end all be all.

• 4:06:42Speaker 05

  No, but you're on your way towards it. Like, A, you'll either get there and realize that's not what I want to do. Or B, like, something else, some opportunity will open in route. Right? Like the, like the, my job now, I went and met with the founder of this company and the CFO. And I was just going there to think I was interviewing to do another speaking gig.

• 4:07:11Shawn Ryan?

  Are you?

• 4:07:12Speaker 05

  And then he just asked, well, would you come help us with our, you know, our culture and our operations? You just don't know, right? And I enjoy doing that sort of thing. It fits well with. Like, it fits well for me with doing my, you know, the speaking that I do about teamwork and leadership and elite performance and all that. So, you know, you just, you just don't know. I would say like to keep it simple, like. Take a break, that's fine. Don't make it too long and then get a base hit.

• 4:07:48Shawn Ryan?

  Good advice.

• 4:07:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:07:50Shawn Ryan?

  Good advice. You know, at the beginning of the interview, you had mentioned something about.

• 4:08:01Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know a better way to say it, but you had mentioned something about that the service, the service. Your time in the SEAL teams, your time at development group was for selfish reasons.

• 4:08:14Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yep.

• 4:08:16Shawn Ryan?

  And that you wanted to circle back on that. I was curious where you were going with that. I think I know, but I'm curious.

• 4:08:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, it all changed. Like, so I joined, you know, chip on my shoulder. I'm going to prove people wrong. I can do it. You know, we all, and we all kind of had that. I'm assuming like. I want to go prove, you know, this is like, that's one of the reasons I did it. It's supposed to be the hardest training in the military. Right?

• 4:08:43Speaker 05

  And then, um, you know, nine 11 happened and I found myself, you know, in a position to, you know,

• 4:08:56Speaker 05

  do something about it, right? Uh, or just to be in a position to like, serve my country. So it changed from

• 4:09:05Speaker 05

  that selfish pursuit to that more like pursuit of service and sacrifice. Um, which I think happens a lot.

• 4:09:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:09:19Shawn Ryan?

  Well, Eric, we're wrapping up the interview.

• 4:09:22Speaker 05

  Cool.

• 4:09:24Shawn Ryan?

  You want to end this thing with a prayer?

• 4:09:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 4:09:26Shawn Ryan?

  Let's do it.

• 4:09:27Speaker 05

  Let's do it.

• 4:09:27Shawn Ryan?

  Want to lead it?

• 4:09:28Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 4:09:29Shawn Ryan?

  All right.

• 4:09:32Speaker 05

  God, I just thank you for, uh, this opportunity today. Uh, I pray that, uh, you would continue to watch over and bless Sean and his family and his team and all of the Sean Ryan Show. Continue to help make, help them make the impact they are. Um, not just for their guests, but for all of the people that get to watch this show, Lord. Uh, and I pray that,

• 4:10:00Speaker 05

  I pray that, um, the things said here in this building that you have blessed, uh, would be pleasing to you and would make an impact for your kingdom. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

• 4:10:11Shawn Ryan?

  Amen.

• 4:10:15Speaker 05

  Good.

• 4:10:16Shawn Ryan?

  It was an honor, man.

• 4:10:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, thank you, bro.

• 4:10:18Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 4:10:19Speaker 05

  Hopefully I wasn't rambling too long.

• 4:10:21Shawn Ryan?

  No, it was awesome. It was awesome. Let's go blow some shit up.

• 4:10:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:10:38Shawn Ryan?

  No matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.