Liquidity & Liquor - Kaj Larsen | From Navy Seal to Entrepreneur

Welcome to success story. I'm your host Scott D. Cleary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network The HubSpot podcast network has incredible podcasts like entrepreneurs on fire hosted by John Lee Dumas Entrepreneurs on fire stokes inspiration and share strategies to fire up your entrepreneurial journey and create the life You've always dreamed of listen to entrepreneurs on fire or success story wherever you listen to your podcasts today You're going to hear an episode of my new podcast liquidity and liquor. I co-host liquidity and liquor with Joseph Martin a serial entrepreneur who sold his last company Boxy charm for over five hundred million dollars on liquidity and liquor we have conversations about business Money and life with some of the most interesting people in the world you can download and subscribe to liquidity and liquor on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts Catch Larsen Navy SEALs were corresponded entrepreneur founder. So we're gonna go into all of this you can't mass produce special forces So my class started with 246 people we graduated 26 originals and we spent the next two decades Becoming one of the more lethal military units on the planet like a parachuted at an airplane at 30,000 feet In a nuclear submarine slept next to a weapon of mass destruction if you had told me prior to becoming a Navy SEAL that the hardest part of seal training would be I would have been like you're crazy all of the success that I have had in life is due to these formative Experiences I had both in training and then as an operational seal. They made me who I Was the why did you go into media work in media is is God's work I had a very successful career in media and journalism Walk through kind of what you're working on now trying to use all my seal skills and apply them to entrepreneurialism The coach and so I was named after a Danish poet my mom's favorite poet named Caj munk and he was a Resistance fighter who was killed in the Holocaust Caj what munk and what was it in Europe it was someone Yeah, he was Danish this one so they would say kai munk or whatever, but it's spelled k a j Oh, wow, so my parents always said Caj interesting Yeah, and my mom liked his poetry and wanted to kind of honor our heritage. That's awesome. That's awesome The other siblings. I have a little sister baby sister nice is awesome. Yeah, she's a she's a doctor She's an emergency room doctor. Okay, she she got all the brains in the family and I got the brawn So and we like to say like Yeah, like basically her job is saving lives and my job is taking lives. Oh my god That's funny. Yeah, we're we're a hell of a calm. Yeah, I showed this guy can you please take care of him? Yeah You want healer you want whiskey? What do you want let's do this? Let's let's first enter you right? Okay, and then we're gonna go and decide We're gonna show you all or a beautiful selection notice or similar those two are okay. We're gonna give you a selection in a second. So Greets in I have something in my I'm sorry. I have I'm trying. I'm I hope it's not gonna mess up the whole thing I don't know for it looks like I'm gonna find don't worry about it No, I have something I got it All right, um, well, I mean I want to let you into yourself But even before we were talking downstairs, I'd say like Catch Larsen your life is sort of three different chapters, right? So you have navy seal you have war correspondent and then you have entrepreneur founder So we're gonna go into all of it, but I think Obviously it's interesting to hear the origin story So what is a what is a meaningful event in your life in your past and it could be at any point It could be thrown up in your five states could be when you're in college. They sort of set you on the path that you were on Yeah, that's it's an interesting question. I think probably one of the things that had this seminal influence on me Is that when I was little my parents Did this this wild thing where they adopted a Cambodian family during the Cameroos genocide? I was maybe like, you know, five years old or four years old or something and we had this Cambodian family that came and lived with us for like, you know two years basically They spoke no English. They had like escaped the the genocide and they had this Family makeup. That was the same as as our family a little nuclear family like a son my age and a daughter my sister's age And so I watched my parents like take care of these total strangers early on in my life This story goes on to become extraordinary, but I think what that did is it really like inculcated me into this culture of service and like living a life of serving others And I think that was really seminal and then I think that coupled with my grandfather A lot of my grandfather's family was Was killed in the Holocaust, right? So I have this sort of like early on strong tradition of Of thinking about how to be of service to others But also this idea that you don't want to be the good man who does nothing It's burned me into action at a very young age So I think those those kind of two things really formed who I am my Cambodian family pretty extraordinary They ended up opening a bunch of donut shops in southern California now my Cambodian dad's like the Don Corleone The donut industry in southern California. Yeah, yeah Before all my combat deployments he used to be a monk before the war in Cambodia. He would actually He would bless me with like these chants and these rituals that helped protect me and ward off bullets when I'd go overseas into combat That's amazing. How so they stayed as a as a part of your as your family for forever forever forever forever I mean from from their perspective, you know, they we literally you're from where some San Diego region I'm actually from northern California from Santa Cruz, which is a sleepy little surfer town. Okay, about a hundred miles south of San Francisco And yeah, so they lived with us for a couple years And then they head on down to San Bernardino to to start their you know classic immigrant story one donut shop Now they have like 13 donut shops and they dominate the don't know where McDonald's started to It's a number in the mean was it? Yes, that's where they are in San Bernardino. Yeah, yeah, I know that And I guess so like you fast forward why why navy why seal because You went into that directly from college. So that was a conscious choice. I mean there's all these different places where you could have served with all the different Brans of the military. So what was that the why was that the one why the navy? Uh, so I think the I think the short answer is too much top gun as a kid All right You see the the latest op gun. All right. I am in the latest top gun. Are you for real? Oh, yeah. Yeah, so the director top gun Is I mean you can't really see me, but like I got myself like a little Cambio in there You know what I joined the navy because that movie. I originally wanted to fly So I started flying when I was young just you know what all are playing sesame 152s and 172s my dad got me flying lessons Um, so I've always been a private pilot. I went to the naval academy Having watched top gun and thinking I would fly um, and so anyways fast forward I go through my whole naval career and everything and then top gun two is getting made and I sort of I'm living in LA at the time I catch wind of it and The this is like the most mafia move I've ever pulled in my whole life like the director is a guy named Joe Kaczynski and Great guy or whatever and I had helped him out with with some stuff like some consulting about military stuff in the past And I and I had done it all you know sort of gratis on goodwill And so I called up Joe and I like you know I was like Joe you remember that thing I did for you Yeah, you're gonna do a thing for me And I was like put me in this movie right and I did I got to be in like this bar scene. Oh Yeah, that's the which one the first one or the second one the second one in the hard deck if you're the bar is called the hard deck They should built the bar on the beach in San Diego And if you remember this scene where like Tom Cruise like strolls through the barn is white And there's all these people partying, you know drinking in the bar or whatever And I'm sort of sitting at the bar in between and we can't really see it because it's kind of blurry But like I'm wearing there. I'm wearing a flight jacket at a flight suit and the best part was Credit to the producers of the movie they actually used real navy people because it was on the base So they invited the squadrons to come. Yeah, and so I knew a lot of those guys Because I had served with them and that's right to school with them And at one point the director called me up and he's like gosh, gosh come come sit here Right right in the front here and all the pilots the real pilots not like the fake pilot wearing, you know the costume All the real pilots are like gosh, what what the fuck like this is our movie I have so many movies Yeah, which one which one you name one Yeah, so yeah I went originally to fly one to the naval academy when I went I had never even heard of seals Yeah, you know at that time, you know everybody talked about Chuck Norris and Delta Ford does a force Who was it seeing that was he made it purple or be the 80s, right? That's right. Yeah, that's right And like but I went and I was I was playing water polo at the time I played D1 water polo and You know all these guys from my team were talking about this other community of seals And the more I learned about it the more I said this is this is who I am and this is where I belong Interesting, you know It's it's funny said about going in from being a pilot and from being a seal for example to being a pilot or so on So when you go to military in Israel, there was a story that one particular Pilot it was it was already I think a captain and he was saying that before he was going to be a pilot He was already in Seattle, but God, which it's kind of like the Delta for sure, right? And when we're all your prime ministers come at exact BB and all these We're gonna talk we're gonna talk to that we're gonna talk about that okay But he was saying that he wanted to be a pilot and he when you do that you have to go through bootcamp all over again And some of you instructors can be female instructors that are 19 years old now. He's already 27 years old or so on He had he's an officer, but they don't know his past So he was doing a regular basic training and they teach you how to crawl now. He's their calling with 18-year-olds and one of the instructor tells him One of the female instructor tell him you're not calling right So he looked at her and he said it worked in Libya. Yeah, that was it's like a classic thing. They do yeah, it's one of those things Yeah, yeah, it seemed to be fine. I mean that is that is always a dynamic, right? We actually had a we had a seal go through training with me who had done like heat platoons back-to-back in South America He'd actually saved the lives of some of our instructors. Yeah, wild guy. He's just finished. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, he's he's a hardcore guy So in this in the in the Navy seal. Yeah, obviously have teams right and I feel like there's a the question ask myself right away when After they and they get or some have been ladden Barack Obama went and he announced he was team six and first thing I said Why would you actually announce anything like just say it's us and that's it at most like why would you say it's Navy Seal why would you say it's team six? Doesn't that come in and then I noticed that the actual operators that killed them went out and public and said that was me And it's just so Against everything I'm coming from so why would anyone say anything just keep it quiet this it's us We don't need to know who lot nothing. Yeah, I think the information I needed information. What do you think it was necessary? I think what you're saying is kind of was the prevailing attitude in my community people like a lot for us We lived in the shadows for so long like people didn't know what we did or who we were You know, I mean even through most of my like combat deployments and stuff like we didn't take photos, right? Like you know even you know for out at bars in San Diego You know when we were you know training back home or whatever. We all had you know fake professions that we'd tell girls Yeah, we really embodied this I'm a plumber. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I said I was the guy That would drive this machine that changed the lanes on the Coronado bridge from like three lanes in the morning to two lanes That was like just weird enough that nobody pursued it or asked They want to imagine you said oh, it's exactly what they do for a living. Tell me more what you do. Yeah, that's great So I think there used to be this ethos of being the quiet professional and that was really important to our community My personal opinion though is that there was an inflection point Because of bin Laden and the idea that the American public would not want to know Or even didn't deserve to know some not all of the operational details about arguably the most important mission since World War 2 Was basically untenable. They were going to find out somehow some way and I work with our community with the command a lot on this idea that listen either you And I think this is true whether you're an entrepreneur whether you're an individual or whatever If you don't tell your story somebody else will tell it for you and I think you have to yeah, so I've been Not critical, but I've done some like analytical thinking on this for the command and I think that was a watershed moment For the seal community because no longer could we exist in the shadows without was that was that when The the concept of a Navy seal was more popular totally that was that was it totally that was the moment That was there was never there was no turning back. I know you I know Jaco was your jujitsu trainer, right? Yeah, he was I just saw Jaco and Arby Davey on So Jaco is built a huge personal brand extreme ownership the book and then There's like a million other now personalities that have come out. So was that a after that is that's post, you know and look I think in the aggregate some people in our community really like despise what's happened that we are now so much in the spotlight and so much public facing But like I said my personal opinion is that was inevitable after that moment and I think there's a lot of value and wisdom that you can take From the kind of training that we did from like special operations community special operations philosophy Then you can apply that wisdom in the civilian world So I think things like what Jaco is doing is actually really great like another example is you guys might know My friend David Goggins. Yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So like you know Goggins There is there is some kid who gets up in like a shitty urban area like gang-infested area of the country every day Who might like go down a stray path? If it were not for Goggins book, but because he read Goggins book right about mental toughness about fortitude He gets up and goes for a run instead of getting up and But when you when you're going you're actually announced. Okay, this is team six. I don't think it was broken down like this might be Okay, okay, looker. Okay, looker. You're gonna forget. Let's let's talk about it. Wait a minute Do you want let me let me switch my question? Let me interrupt you with your questions. You're gonna go for it. I'm gonna get it. So wait a minute. No So if you go and you ask, okay, why would someone announce and I think If I was to be behind the scenes and so okay, why wouldn't one announce the team seeks or the Navy seal Probably there's something about the fact that if you do so you Yeah, you want them to be under the radar But you also want to have input of more people coming in so you can screen more people and you can better the The sea of right and if you don't talk about this, it's like you've never done this and it's like okay You can do the best operations But you want the people to idolize your soldiers, especially the special forces So more of them would inspire to be there and if you don't talk about this It's a risk because then you can compromise them and they can go after the families in it's bad But you know, that's what they're doing every day So maybe and I'm thinking that's probably the the outer coin, right? Mm-hmm. I think you're right I think you're right and look I you have Exposed our rift within the community. You know, I happen to be on one side of the line Which is that hey, we're better off controlling the narrative and let and then letting somebody else tell our story But there is I think it's almost like 50 50 usually made a different bill for you guys After like more people came in you have better personnel but most to select to kind of elevate the quality You know, I think it's hard to say I think there's a lot of downsides of being in the public I like nowadays that you know young guys who are aspirational seals they'll DM me on Instagram or text me or find my contact Somehow and they're going in and they're asking me these like crazy questions about special mission units and like All and should I go to an SDV team? I was like listen buddy Like make it through day one week one of buds before you start thinking about that They're going through with all of this knowledge that they've like gleaned from books, you know And their motivations are different, right? You know, they are They're in some ways they're going because you know seals are cool or special forces are cool And they've read about them in books and stuff and I think it's a different Characterization of motivation So that part I would call it a downside, but then again like my You know in country gonna have for every one person There's gonna be ten that are not supposed to make it and you you still have to go through a lot of copper for one Exactly what I would say. I mean look the instructors are really good about protecting the integrity of our community And when you look at the graduation rates and stuff it's still about a 90% failure rate So despite like all of the changes or whatever no matter how big they open the funnel up at top you still get the same number of hard dudes Through the through at the bottom and that seems to be pretty consistent, you know over time That's awesome. By the way, I'm gonna give you some alcohol because Scott is a Canadian and he likes liquor So we have obviously starved it So it's a brand new one. They call it Jack Daniels. I don't know if you ever heard of it This is one we have This tequila actually that I get from my neighbors as a gift because I allowed him to park their boat in my spot Yeah, and which one do you want this one of this one? Well my dad would pick whiskey. He's a marine You know peric island marine or whatever, but I think I'll I'll join in tequila. It's a killer Oh In keeping with the the Latin theme of of Southern Florida here. Let's do that Um You guys this is fantastic. I had no idea why You have to you have to get a place up in Fort Lauderdale. So I mean this is a good hard sell right here Yeah, you know what you when you said it's it's a good man I'm gonna pick on the word man. You didn't use pronouns by the way and you're from California So, oh did I not announce my my pronouns before the podcast? No, you did not Very easy. My pronouns are commander and sir So so actually I spoke one time I spoke to Jeff um Also seal member and ask him women because we saw also J.J. J. Joe right? Yeah, J.J. right with the dammy more. It's our favorite movie and the community. Really? No, right? I don't know, but it's not enough to kill it. So we can't make it through He told me both on the head they can't that that's what all women that try fail is that true? It's like why can we can't women make it into Navy SEALS? Well Right now they can't because it's prohibited. It's like one of the last communities. It's prohibit street. It's there no women in the SEAL teams Would they cannot try to have it and I can't try? I think that is probably on the precipice of changing Just as the rest of because every other domain of the military has been integrated So you had a women who went through ranger selection school I don't know if a woman's gone through the QCORSE yet, which is this the army special forces selection ODA There's no women in The the Air Force pair rescue or the Air Force special operations community But eventually I think all of these components will be integrated. I think that is inevitable It seems to be the trend line We will just probably be last because of like how tight the community is and look I I love Jeff He's one of my best friends But I do think that there are women who can make it through they have the You know like I'll show you some some women who competed at the CrossFit Games who will outperform a lot of men But I do think but I also at the same time think that there's something about unit cohesion right and there's something about Like having women in the unit can change the internal dynamics So that's that's something that has to be dealt with and mitigated like you're in the SEAL teams You are extraordinarily close knit and personality Conflicts and differences can be really really deadly not differences personality conflicts can be extremely deadly You know for example when you go in the killhouse, right? You're operating on these incredibly thin margins of the house Yeah, for like CQC for you know Killhouse so like imagine in close quarters combat you're entering a house like they did in the bin Laden raid and You you go through a door right and you're shooting targets as you as you go through the door right it's so That's the killhouse. So it's the training environment for that and we do live fire Killhouses because we try and approximate In training as close to combat as possible, right? So even like the weight of the gun and the ammunition and the recoil right you could shoot some munition You could shoot all these other stuff. It's not you have to do live right you have to do live, right? So look it's so competitive sometimes that you go in the house if you don't take that shot right away Somebody is shooting over your shoulder right to take the shot and you have to be able to understand like the movements of your Your fellow puttunemates, you know in the dark at night Would you think it would be any different if a woman is joining you guys? I don't think ultimately it will be any different But I think in the beginning in the early integration there's gonna be some growing pains associated with that, you know So choose guys Cheers Oh Wait, I missed it. That was the water. We got to redo it. I'm sorry Oh, all this crystal looks the same money. All right Did you finish? Yeah, I mean it took your shot. That's all I'm doing a shot. I was just taking a sip Okay, I'll do a sip now then all right. That's so funny Is usually that's time I was trying to prank them. I was not prank them. I was trying to actually because I didn't want to drink I was putting water. Yeah, like I was like there's what they do got me so you know what call this karma that's you sure Delicious. Thank you for having me. I love that So the story that I want you to tell what I think is really interesting is that when you were in training You were in the water and this is we're just now sort of speaking about Osama You were in the water when 9-11 happened Yep, so walk me through I walk me through your training, but that that moment because I'm pretty sure that was a pretty big moment for anybody in the seven-o-moment change change not just in a short community, but the the direction of the country Right. Yeah, so I was in buds first phase of what's buds buds is basic underwater demolition seal training Yeah Look at your acronym cheat So seal training is called buds based kind of water demolition seal training. It's the Every seal who has ever existed has gone through buds In fact, there's this there's a funny side note But there's this like rash epidemic of fake seals now that we're so public talking about stolen valor I'm so curious about huge stolen valor. There's an old crusty frogman stolen but what? stolen valor is somebody who purports to have been a seal or have combat medals or something when they didn't really have Happens all the time every country has and like yeah, and the number of times I meet a guy in a bar Like tell me he's a seal and then I'll like ask him a few like critical questions and you know, and then I'll either like, you know Threaten to snatch the life out of them, you know or have him recant you know happens all the time, right? and so Every seal who has ever existed went through buds it takes place in Coronado, California buds is about seven months long And it's divided into three phases first phase physical conditioning of which the most famous evolution is hell week Which is five days of no sleep and and intense extreme physical exertion second phase is dive phase where you learn to dive the re-breathers for combat diving and then third phases land warfare We start to really kind of lay around some some actual combat skills and what most people don't realize is when you graduate buds You then have another you know several months of what we call advanced warfare qualification training Plus jump school plus military free fall school. It is also hell hell week is not the last hell week is in the very beginning Oh, sometimes it's the fourth week of training sometimes it's the fifth sometimes even the third week of training But no because look the truth is most of those people are gonna quit anyways, so wash them out early White training them all those that's right. Yes, that's right. So hell week is like the third or fourth week of training gets right away You like cut the fat and get them good. So my class in buds started with a I think 246 people plus or minus like one or two And we graduated 26 originals. So our attrition rate was about 92 percent. That's pretty typical pretty fast That per year. So there's four to five classes a year that go through So you can imagine we produce about a hundred new seals a year And we've tried to increase that in a bunch of ways because seals were in high demand over the last two decades But it's it's a hard thing to do a hundred a year Yeah, and we have the same tenant You know in special operations that they they do in Israeli special forces Which is you can't mass produce special forces? Yeah, right? By definition by nature right if you try and scale it too much they will lose their specialists Yeah, and so there's always this tension between quantity and quality. So In September 11th of 2001. I was in first phase of training we every Once a week you do these time devolutions Well, you do a time devolution every day, but once a week one of the time devolutions is a two mile ocean swim You have to make a certain cutoff time in order to progress My swim buddy and I had just come in we were changing out getting ready to run over to the chow hall After finishing the two mile ocean swim and we started to hear like people chattering like oh an airplane Hit the world trade center the twin towers and stuff and we kind of didn't really think anything of it And we kind of thought it was like maybe like a ruse because the instructors are always playing these fuck fuck games with you And we're like ah whatever and so then we run over as a class you run over a mile to the To the chow hall to get breakfast the swim starts at like 5 a.m. And you're out by 7 a.m. And then you're headed over to breakfast And so you're running you're marching as a class running over to the chow hall and then we got to the chow hall and we saw that's after a week This is pre-how week for us. We're still pre-how week so We still have a big raging horde of the class and we looked in on the TVs And we could see the planes going into the tower because you know the 7 a.m West Coast time 10 a minute already happened on the east coast and we're like well These instructors are knuckle draggers. They're not sophisticated enough to put this ruse up This must be real and to their credit the instructors pulled us over post-class and they said like Two planes just hit the world trade center We're going to war and we're just gonna beat you guys And till enough people quit and we find out who doesn't want to be here So they spent the rest of the day just beating us down I think we had like 25 guys. They knew something was happening. They knew like I and sort of like So they felt like the student you feel like they wanted to speed up the process in case the deployment would be sooner And it's time to get rid of the week. I don't think it was that literal. I think it was more emotional They intuitively instinctively because the thing about the budget instructors is they're just rotating out of the seal team That's not their permanent job. They rotate out their active duty They're full active duty guys and quite often you end up serving with them back in the seal platoons It's a rotation like a post deployment rotation that these guys do to take a little bit of a break And to train the next generation of fragment and charter. They take very seriously So they knew that they would very soon likely be going back to war. They could just they could just feel it And they were right and we spent the next two decades as a community Really sharpening the knife and becoming one of the more lethal Military units on the planet and can you talk about like the the missions that you took on when you were active duty? Sure sure sure so you go through so just so so you you fast for the time on a little bit I wouldn't even ask that question but you were so comfortable asking you so uncomfortable answering I was thinking it's kind of like it to a boob and I'm glad. Yeah Actually, I do want to understand your how we experience I think that sort of What people know of seals training. Let's let's talk about that first And then we can go into your active duty. Yeah, so how was that what okay? So what let's let's describe it. What is it? So hell week is what they call the hardest week of the hardest military Training on the planet and it's essentially you start on a Sunday night-ish And then you continue to go for the next five days I think in total you get about two to three hours of sleep over the course of the week Of training and it's all physical evolutions. So that first night of hell week. We ran You know 25 miles most of that with boats and logs. I'd never run 25 miles before I'd never done a marathon or anything And much less carrying all this shit on you And you do that all through the night. You're wet and sandy basically the entire time and It's where the vast majority of people quit and one of the things that really really gets people to quit They say ring the bell because they carry this actual bell Around with you throughout the entire week of training Well through the whole class of training, but specifically in hell weekends right there. So guys can just go to the bell and ring out and quit and Yeah, most of those guys. Well, here's kind of an interesting thing Most of the people that quit in my class and I've corroborated this through other classes did not quit on that first night When we did all that work. They started off hell week with all these you know bombs going off and like machine guns firing And there's a adrenaline that kind of carries you through that first night And then in the morning while you're still running and doing all the stuff The sun comes up and people can kind of get through that first day But then what happens is that second night right they they sit you out on the berm in in Coronado And they wait and they do a shift change and so you're sitting there and they Instructors get on the mega funner alpha alpha shift is coming. It's gonna be a long cold night And now you've been wet for like 24 hours and you know people are shivering It's gonna be a long night. We're gonna beat you down all night and you know Guys like they just start running for the bell like you see the guy next to you He just takes off and you hear it like ding ding wow ding And it's funny if for me it was like an extraordinary lesson because If you had told me prior to becoming a navy seal that the hardest part of seal training would be sitting On the beach in Coronado watching the sunset. I would have been like you're crazy, right? And was that really all those years in the seal Being a seal was that really the hardest well, that was the hardest part of training. Oh being an actual seal being in combat Is a hundred x harder. I was colder. I was more scared. I was more tired overseas than I ever was in training But As far as training goes hell week is is the hardest moment But it's also the best moment and what I learned from watching those guys sit on the on the berm there and and quit Is that it's often not the act itself that causes people to fail. It's The fear of the act right because for the most part those of us who like if you just say like nope I'm not going to succumb to those fears and you just start something you quite often finish it But that's where they were mentally weak and that's where they broke down and and buds is essentially designed to find out Who's going to quit when things get hard when you're cold your wet your tired right because you know if you quit in that You know sitting on the beach in Coronado at sunset. What are you going to do in combat? Yeah, and and Is there because you had 246 you said plus minus yeah, so Do people not try and support each other and keep each other from quitting? Is there any of that camaraderie bill or is it too soon for that? There is it's an interesting thing. This is another you know now we're talking about like not the broad strokes But these like little micro like learning impressions that I kind of picked up I noticed that a lot of guys quit in twos right It's kind of a crazy thing, but it'd be like this guy They're cold. You're in the ocean. You're shivering. Yeah, right. It's it's night or you know You're under the boat and it's tired or you have the big log and and everything and Some guy will whisper to his buddy. Maybe I do it. I'm done man. I'm like like what let's go If you go kind of thing and they're like yeah, let's go. Let's get out of here man And so they like and so they they go and they ring the bell together right and that taught me that fear is contagious Right people who are scared like if you have solidarity and like so that's why it's important to kill those people away from you To push them away from you. That's right if you have negativity around you and you surround yourself Yeah, you might be near me all those quotes are exactly But you know what the flip side of that coin is also that courage is contagious So if you surround yourself with courageous people who are doing great things. Yeah quite often it will lead you I want you to see in real life business-wise. I mean, it is just so much to say about that in real life when you actually open a company And you see negativity just one person say guys. I'm gonna work and just get out of the room. I don't want to hear you Just don't don't be contagious. 100% all of the success that I have had in life is due to these formative Experiences I had both in training and then as an operational seal like they made me who I am I can't extrapolate out now like how I think about running a company from those experiences that I had I'm just like pop I I am what I am. Yeah Yeah, that's that's fascinating So I was gonna say um so that so that's really the summation of hell week. It's a lot of it's it's psychologically Basically weighing on you of physical conditions people are quitting in pairs because there's a psychological aspect So now you get so you get through hell week But after you get through hell week, you still have more training. Yeah, that's six more months of budge Yeah, so yeah, you're still a god damn bud student for six months your life is miserable for how many how many quid percentage On hell week compared to the rest, you know, it is mostly proficient It's the after that when people are getting kicked out of it's more yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, people usually if you've made it through hell week, you are tough enough not to quit Then there's different things that knock people out of training in second phase There's a thing called pool competency where the instructor is basically take you underwater and they like shark You beat you up underwater tire regulators and hoses and knots and stuff and you have to Unfuck yourself right and demonstrate that you are comfortable in any Common off to what to think through that problem to think through the problem set 100 percent A lot of guys fail out because that some guys fail out because it died physics They're real tough, but they don't have the cognitive horsepower to get through some of the thinking part of the job And so that's all second phase third phase Primarily the thing that knocks people out our safety violations, right? So if you don't have the situational awareness When we're like shooting moving and communicating if you sweep your body, right or if you do something stupid With demolition, right? We just say like okay, you don't have the technical competence, right? Or the situational awareness to be safe doing these extraordinarily dangerous things we do, you know Halo jumps heyho jumps at night on an unmarked DZ, right? These are the DZ drop zone, right? So like one of the things we do for as an insertion technique are these very advanced free fall parachuting insertions To do that at night on night vision, right in unknown conditions requires extreme competence And if you can't do kind of the basics during training, we demue unsafe And it's pretty easy to recognize that stuff in aggregate what buds the training pipeline does is it exposes all of your weaknesses In first phase if you're not mentally tough and if you're not physically tough That'll be exposed in second phase if you can't coolly and calmly think through a problem set, right? It exposes that in third phase If you're not situationally aware of both sort of safety while accomplishing a mission it exposes that You know what I find that fascinating This whole training region you came out of college and you went into this First tranche and then that six months after there's no training It's just like life learned experiences have hopefully prepped you for the exact amount of like psychological physical plus cognitive requirements that you need to make it through this training There's no practice. I lean towards what you were saying that this is an eight, right? So one of my I know we've talked about Buds a lot, but one of my favorite things is like pre hell week right before hell week starts Everybody's scared like there's no reason not to be scared You know most of the people with you are not gonna make it through you don't know what to expect And we have this instructor get up and and this speaks to your question about this sort of a neat like ability to do it He gets up. He's like look. I know you guys are all scared. We're in the classroom. Right. I know you guys are all scared But if you want to know what hell week is, it's really simple happy to tell you what it is You all are a bunch of Grecian earns Right, you know like the things you know like your Grecian earns and inside some of your earns is like cotton candy Inside some of your earns is sand inside a few of your earns is actually steel But inside a very very few amount of your earns is Damascus steel which is the hardest steel known to man because of the way it's layered and forged And he said if you want to know what hell week is it's real simple All we're gonna do is smash your earns and find out what's inside And so that's kind of I lean towards what you're into me. Yeah, is that in some ways like people I don't know if you're born into it But you're a product of your experiences to that point and and some people are either ready or they're not If you have to go again for Throw hell week just drop you with those people How are you gonna feel before you enter this it's gonna be like yeah no big deal or you can but uh yeah All right Yeah, bring it. I think the the first time's the worst right? I think I'm over the age waiver now Yeah, but I would still like bring it Yeah, it's nice. Um, so okay, so after training let's talk about active active service So what where where do you go? What did you what did you take on? How does that actually work for a steel team? What are you a steel team tasked with versus any other specialist branch of the military? Yeah, so after after my training, I went to advanced warfare training after I graduated buds I was an officer two of the four officers in my class Were assigned to seal team one which was the first seal team commissioned by president Kennedy in 1962 So I went to this this storied seal team And I did one seal team one. Yeah, we called it no fun one because they were like real serious the culture of each Seal team is different even though we all essentially what is the difference between old Seal team there's no real difference prior to 9-11 we were organized geographically that all went out the window after 9-11 And we all do the same stuff and what's different about seals In comparison to other special operations forces is that seals are generous every seal shoots every seal dives every Seal jumps, all right in a in the army special forces the green braze in in an ODA They have a specific it's an operational detachment alpha So we're organized into platoons they're organized into ODAs are there a little unit and group in a in a special forces green beret ODA they have like an ODA dive team and all those guys do is dive they're like specialists in that art Whereas seal platoons We're we're much more general in terms of of what we do and as officers we're even sort of more generalist because the idea is we have to Be able to lead a seal platoon of snipers and medics and Demo guys and breachers and and all of this stuff So I showed up as a young junior officer to seal team one was assigned to my first platoon And I did my first deployment actually to the pacific region to the paekom region. So Even though at the time there was a lot of focus On Afghanistan or rock hadn't kicked off yet, but there was a lot of focus on oh no, a rock had kicked off on a rock Afghanistan We forget that in the special operations community, you know, we're probably currently deployed to 76 countries around the world There was all these small low intensity conflicts that were happening around the world and those still all have to be serviced So I spent a good portion of that deployment in the southern Philippines And we were doing counterterrorism work against primarily two terrorist groups One was called ASG a Boussaif group and then yeah, and then my face out for the day And that we were in mint now. So there's an autonomous breakaway region of muslim mint and ow And and we were helping the filipino special forces prosecuting conduct missions against high-value targets in in this low intensity conflict that didn't get a lot of attention But was just as real as anything else and they The second terrorist group was actually my favorite terrorist group. It was the Moro Islamic Liberation Front known as the Milfe so So you get a fight to Milfe now Yeah, I mean listen, it's a hard job, but somebody's got into it right now Yeah, so what was that what what country was it? It was all Philippines Oh, so that was all southern Philippines and then Indonesia and there was these terrorists wrap were doing conflict with Absaif or would they they were they were So they're also fighting with each other No, the ASG and and and the Milfe like we're kind of two separate organizations But they had the same sort of aims and stuff ASG was a more nefarious organization because they were aligned with a group called Jai Jamaz Lamaya Which was probably most famous for doing those Bali bombings in Indonesia So there was this all of these networks where they were supplying training arms and people we called it the coconut triangle Between Indonesia and the southern Philippines and and and a couple different other areas and so we were And that was a really that was a really interesting problem set because it was It wasn't like a rock in Afghanistan where we had like robust infrastructure You had a vast number of islands like the tyranny of geography and we had to find these guys Like I remember we were hunting this guy I think his name was John Jolani or or something kind of one of the leaders of the terrorist organization And he had you know one arm and wrote a horse and we couldn't find him and we're you know We'd like constantly beat up the intel we need like yeah, you guys can't find this dude with one arm and a horse So we can go get him like come on Yeah, how does it how does the US decide because there's all these micro conflicts around the world that are not the headline conflict So a seal team is a is a valuable resource So how does the US government decide where to place you how how do we decide that in the Philippines that was worthy of a seal resource versus anywhere else well Certainly then and probably definitely still true today like that decision-making is above my pay grade Right, but it's I mean look it's it's geopolitical, but it's also internal So there's a competition for resources just if you think of DoD or special operations command as a giant corporation for a second There's always going to be internal competition for resources and there's going to be you know An admiral whose head of the pay com theater who you know thinks that this is important to prosecute what I would say So there's like the internal piece, but then there's the sort of external geopolitical piece And what I would say is that at that time the US government had created policy and had Believed in a policy that said Muslim extremism around the world needs to be Tamped down right and we will assist Countries in their fight against Islamic extremism now we didn't use that word and even that term became like Potically charged right, but that was the basic idea right as we saw Islamic extremism Festering around the world and it was pretty easy for ambassadors of countries and like the powers that be To decide that we would go take on those kind of conflicts No, that makes sense and then throughout the rest of my career I would end up I would end up following that narrative in path right so deployed to the Middle East obviously to do a bunch of stuff there and then I finished my career. I stood up the the seal component the naval special warfare component of special operations command Africa So in some ways my career came full circle because what I had been doing in the beginning of my career I ended up doing the same thing on the African continent largely working against like extreme Islamic militant organizations and all those first sure I spent a lot of time in northern Nigeria Looking for some Boko Haram guys. Yeah So I'm curious because you post post Active duty then you went into media, but I was watching a few other podcasts you were on So the New York Times wrote a hit piece on on seals. Oh, yeah So was that the impetus for you wanting to work in media or what was what can you walk through what yeah? Was about. Yeah, oh, yeah bring it. Yeah sure Infra-penny and for a pound. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know it was dangerous to come up here. Yeah They said this heavy Israeli poor that we have no no, no, no, there's more tequila than water for sure So if you don't think you drink the right one, it's just the more cold glass. Yeah, some point. It's all it's all going down So yeah, we were talking about my transition to media. So basically what happened is when I got off It wasn't related to that article although funny enough. There was another another another the tequila started to hit There was another article. I blame both of you. There was another some secrets That's it like TSSC. I cleared. Yeah There's gonna be like a Russian honeypot that comes in Yeah Canadian and it is rally Just this weekend there was another New York Times piece that came out From the same reporter and kind of like thinks of himself as like the seal whisperer was in the seal was he Oh, was he anything? No, no, no, he's like so you read books I guess right totally and we basically spent the weekend Making fun of him because the gist of this current article and like bad on the times right like you know, I like I had a very successful career in media and journalism like nominated for multiple Emmys I'm proud of the my body of work And I always grew up like respecting the reportage of the New York Times But like I read this piece of shit article both these pieces of shit article on the front page of the times And I was like my come on you guys You've lost your way that the gist of this article that this guy Dave Phillips wrote is that oh these poor maybe Souls who join up the the seal teams to do this incredible job and be commandos and all this stuff And now the and then they don't make it through training and now their talent is being wasted You know chipping paint on a on a ship right and basically like sympathetic to the Buds quitters Was the gist of this article and like I basically said like listen man You don't fundamentally understand the job one our community or two the job that we are tasked with dealing You're asking guys to do superhuman tasks right and your concern is with the guys who quit Not with the guys who have to go out and do one of the hardest things on the planet is that is that an isolated incident or do you feel that General public perception of the military is degraded Because that's a pretty one of the reason peace for such a like a yeah, I mean look I think this is an extreme example of an outsider looking in and not getting it right so we we carried around Side it's all weekend. Yeah, that said you know Dave Phillips with a quit Buds, you know I feel like I feel like globally every in a Western world right you can do it in Russia You can do any of that where they can when media is controlled where whereas as soon as you have a phone And a video is gonna leak and people are gonna seek the kind of like training Harassment those poor soldiers have to go through it They don't get a fact that more sweat during training less blood during fighting and then If you're gonna put those poor miserable souls that wanted to get in between and let them in you save them actually You save their life if you if you put and others, right? So they don't really realize that and it's been it's been out there everywhere I read another piece where they criticized some of the training where you shoot live ammunition Right next to the soldiers where it emulates the environment and they need to hear that so they can be more They can do better than you condition better than the enemy, right? And that's that's the only thing you can do And I think it was a teen Kennedy that who wrote against it later on he was X Green beret and he has a pretty interesting story and he was he was talking about what do you what do you want us to do We get them to war for so they can see it for the first time something like that So it's it's been always like that it's been when I when I was in the army I remember there was They said that one of the worst punishments is when you're in a bootcamp and I wasn't sealed But when you go in there's a part where you need to go During bootcamp and you have the weekend where you go off and if you if you fucked it up You did something wrong you have to stay what you did if not if they know and you didn't say you're gonna lose your vacation time, but This is back then they would go and if let's just say they really get pissed at you They would and you would hide and you would think well Maybe they haven't seen what I did my fuck up. They wouldn't mention that during the fuck up line up And they would let you get on a bus Hey, they would you would dress with the uniform where you go out with and then they would go and say hey, Johnny You never mentioned that blah blah blah get off put your uniform and so on and then eventually they removed it because Some parents complained and so on and they said it's in you man and all that they eventually reversed that But I remember that they got we got yelled at said because of all of you little woose those in the 90s You know you do our time. It wasn't like that, but you guys are and always it was thankfully was reverse after that But for little things like that that makes no sense. What the hell are you leading parents getting bold? That's not You know what's really inhumane is sending young men to war who aren't prepared for why that's the real in humanity Because war is terrible, right? So we owe it to like the parents to the Fathers and mothers right to do everything we can to send the right people and prepare for war We undertake the most dangerous missions. We have to do the hardest training Even in training people can get kill in training. It's unfortunate accidents happen But without those accidents more will die in battle It's just not that thoseness those accidents are necessary It's just like when you look at Elon Musk when he launched your rocket Unless he blew up he didn't push hard enough We have to push as hard as we can because we have to be better than the enemy is if the enemy wins They're gonna knock on our borders. Does that happen? Yes people dying of course It does because once you use live ammunition Eventually something is going to happen through millions of rounds And and thousands and thousands of millions of soldiers getting to end accidents happen But without that it's a necessary even and especially in the SEAL teams, right? Because even sometimes the training is so extraordinarily dangerous that like you said accidents It's a volume equation parachutes don't open. Yes, you know guys turn the wrong way in the kill house like Shit happens and it's because we're training right at that threshold. You're at the edge. You're always at the edge exactly So okay, so besides the the city and your times are oh, yeah, why did you so why did you go into media? That's a real radical yeah, so I went into media because some of the things that I had seen and overseas I thought the American public had a definitive right to know those things right I also felt that the military perspective wasn't being represented in the media ecosystem and the media environment You know, there were very few veterans who were telling story very very few people who had kind of walked a mile in the boots of the soldiers And kind of understood the community you had frankly a bunch of Dave Phillips Right looking from the outside in but nobody who really kind of understood the DNA of the military community And as we were debating really hard national security questions, right like what constitutes torture Like should we do a surge or should we withdraw from Iraq, right? I thought it was important for the American public to be as informed as possible to ultimately like Help influence those decisions, right? You know, obviously like the hierarchy and the the politicos make those decisions But at the end of the day, we're still a democracy and power flows from the people So it became it became like a personal quest of mine to To tell these stories of some of the things that I had seen overseas shine a light in dark places and help people understand Understand so so how did you okay? So you pivot into media now Maybe it's because I know that you were doing a whole bunch of war correspondence and reporting. This is actually Uh Where you well we're monitoring vocal around that was also and you were working with vice. Yeah. So okay, so Walk through it. It was really weird. Yeah, I was still serving in the reserve So I was off active duty But I was still serving in the reserves and I had to keep this funny church and state separation Yeah between you know, what I was doing for CNN or you know vice on HBO and what I was doing in the reserves Get out and there wasn't there's no playbook for this right like I would you know And for my commanding officer like hey, I'm going to northern Nigeria, you know, and like what you'll think when what happened in In Benghazi well, so What I The the first thing is that uh Gland already in Thai woods were super good friends of mine. So well and Glenn Glenn and I used to crossfit together. We were crossfitted structures. I briefly owned a crossfit gym and uh and so And Thai was my T triple C trauma combat casualty care instructor when I was going through advanced training Extraordinary guy great medic. So I knew those guys super well Beyond that, I don't really have a take nor have I even researched it. I'm not trying to dodge the question It's just like no shit. I didn't watch the movie because uh if I just couldn't watch another movie about my friends getting killed Yeah, you know, I went to loan survivor Which just on my peeper with Matt Axelsen who was in I Who was in my buds class and in my life the movie loan survivor. Yeah, so that was my uh Rendell Emmett Hmm peeper goes the director No, the producer. Oh, yeah him. I don't know, but yeah, like I went to the premiere. I saw that so I could be you know I'm close with I'm close with the Axelsen family You know, but after that experience I just yeah, I couldn't do another one It's like for me a holocaust movie. I just I can't watch it. I had a holocaust movie Um, when you were doing when you were doing um the war reporting like so what did you focus on like how did you decide which conference cover what was important for you? Um, I was like in prep for this watch in the pom podcast He is mentioning that one clip where you just seem chill as hell in the helicopter and you're filming and there's like there's guns going off And you're just like totally cool like nod phase at all, which is probably obviously Because of your sealed training in your background. Sure, but obviously you have an added edge if you're doing this type of reporting Because you can go into conflict zones that probably a lot of people would be very nervous about going into Yeah, and to be fair, there's a lot of courageous reporters, you know who are you know in places like Ukraine like and you know Different conflict zones around the world who you know are willing to put themselves in harm's way to to sort of tell a story And but yeah my virtue of the nature of my experience. I felt more comfortable than the average bear Being in these situations and the funny pre-story that I don't think I told Tony to that is that I had brought this camera man Over there and it was his first war. Yeah, and we were sleeping in these seventh division army 10s like basically these tents on the front line in the in the conflict with with Boko Haram and We're in Maduguri, which is in northern Nigeria and at one point we were sleeping in these like you know canvass tents And the the Boko Haram guys started mortaring the base that we were on and my cameraman like hey like wakes me up He's like oh my god like there's mortars going off and I sort of listen and you can like listen to like the timing of the detonation or whatever I said yeah, I think it's okay I just like took my body armor and rolled back over on top of me like a blanket and went back to sleep Why do you think it's okay? Yeah, I could just tell like by the proximity that way we weren't that it wasn't accurate It was indiscriminate fire or whatever and And he left the very next day Probably that's a crazy guy this guy doesn't even care And I you know, I don't fall to anybody like it's not a it's you know obviously from my time In the teams like I have a different risk tolerance, you know, I think I have a different situational awareness But I also have a different risk tolerance for this stuff I gotta ask I mean it's probably a question you've been asking me a million times but I got asked can you lie can you cheat a lie detector Got asked and how do you do it did they train you to do those I mean I've seen this in movies Yeah, so I wonder do they tell you to squeeze or what what is it? Yeah, I've heard all kinds of weird stuff like the thumbtack like I've heard you know the thumbtack in the police Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the like the g-force like the swing turn, you know like tied up. I've heard all that stuff The best advice that that I have gotten oh you guys didn't do it as a part of your training to Yeah, it's not part of seal training But the best advice I can get is Is that I've heard is that you have to have conviction in what you're saying and if you have true conviction and what you're saying um the poly Doesn't really working out. Well, so you know my family was on the intelligence side So my my dad was cecis my grandpa's RCMP Oh, yeah, sorry, so when I was a kid the Christmas party at see said quarters was hooking me up to a lie detector No way and just seeing if I was lying about he like he like did you clean your room? Yeah, yeah I just like this is a childhood that I had This is probably the best way to do it. It's like trade a barrel Yeah They had the lie detector whatever the guy was who operated the machine at every every cecis Christmas party I feel terrible Your parents all they did was teach you to obey that shit really on the kid mom look at me now Well, I do is a podcast. This is it. I could have been so much more Yeah, no trauma. So I mean, that's that's the that's the that's what my that's my dad did He was all he was all counter counter terrorism and whatnot But It's a wild thing Kids do for a Christmas party. It's kind of an awesome idea. I mean now I'm thinking you might want an Amazon I did put the fear of God. I remember I remember um, I didn't smoke for a long time because he told like like we He told me if you smoke it doesn't matter and like when when your dad's Intelligence like you don't really know what he's capable of he just seems like a badass and And he told me like it doesn't matter like when you smoke I can tell for up to a month after you do it Alphys rate bullshit like it's like lying on my face But I was scared shitless. I didn't smoke the longest time so oh my god. He's gonna find out. He's gonna so this is awesome Yeah, I don't think we expected this to be a parenting pilot. This is a parent thing. You should like guys This is what you did your children listen to scat advice on this one. Okay, so I think I turned it okay Okay Okay, so you went okay, so you transitioned military media um What is some like walk me like the craziest story that you reported on like what's the the wildest experience because obviously you had ton of um wild experiences while you were active duty, but what is like one memorable story that you reported on? You know one of the earliest stories that I did the one that got the most national attention My first time on national TV was I had myself waterboarded So I had been waterboarded in the seal teams Explain what what what what it is waterboarding is an interrogation technique. It actually This is right like long boring like it's like Wikipedia Britannica history But it actually goes back to like the 1600s to the Dutch East Indies company There's all these references throughout history to waterboarding which is Essentially using water as a technique for interrogation and there It's been kind of you know changed and defined throughout the centuries in terms of uh what they How they actually do it. There is a very old school like mark de sod reference to um waterboarding which was actually called pumping where they put so much water in somebody that the their belly gets Distended in all their organs put pressure on the ground It's more like they put like so much internal pressure on their kidneys Just imagine like drinking and drinking and drinking water, you know So that's like a very early primitive form of of waterboarding um the it was good waterboarding in its sort of current iteration was you know conducted by the the Nazis in World War II And they were actually some Nazis were prosecuted at Nuremberg for waterboarding So it has this kind of in least in modern history this this long history Or they's like to find a legal history as as a work crime um I was water-boarded in training when you go through this school that teaches you to resist interrogation called sear They water-boarded me that was the first time I was water-boarded and uh I remember you know you have all this information you're not supposed to tell them or whatever and they they put me on the The water-board and they put the hose in my mouth and and did the thing or whatever and then they You know pulled the hose out and I'm like I'm a seal seal team one. What do you want to know? You know Does it feel like you're drowning it does it really does yeah, it is it's not It's primal man like you know that fear of trying natural Yeah, what I always say it's like being shackled to the bottom of a pool like you just you know So that will be the US government getting troubled because of Guantanamo Not because of Guantanamo so as far as we know there's never any water-boarding okay There was something that happened there was yeah So and water-boarding became like kind of a throughline through my journalism career Because I had been the first person to do it on national TV and then later on I did a movie That was that was bought by Amazon Written by a good friend of mine written and directed by a good friend of mine named Scott Burns called the report And essentially what was happening is at the black sites the CIA black sites around the world a They had brought in a team of outside contractors to do the interrogations one of those contractors Also a good friend of mine CIA contractors a guy named Jim Mitchell And Jim was responsible for the a The that's really ventored that's part of the movie. This is a real event okay real world real life We had all these black sites around the world that we were taking suspects in the global war on territory And then interrogating them for information the primary guy who did that was my friend Jim Mitchell from The CIA and he was a contractor at the CIA former Air Force psychologist He personally water-boarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who was the architect of 9-11 okay personally water-boarded him 183 times and so Maybe get something out of it It's unclear depends who you believe and in fact some people believe that that interrogation Was the key intelligence linchpin to get us on a bin Laden and some people think it was total bullshit And that we didn't get anything out of those times and that we got all that information from other places The agency will tell you that it was a necessary part of the interrogation program and that we got actionable intelligence critics Because I was thinking someone breaks like you're stopping you stop torturing them So why would if you do it 183 times? It's probably not effective That's the critique of it. Yeah, and I don't like you know after having covered water-boarding bin water-boarded multiple times Like I still just don't know Right, I think there are some ways in which it can be effective but My understanding you know correct me if I'm wrong is that you know Is that Israel has closed the door on a lot of those kind of hard interrogations Because it's not about who they are. It's not about the information that you can get the ticking time bomb theory is kind of a bullshit Theory has very rarely about all of the circumstances aligned where this person has the piece of intel that you need to do the other thing And it opens up this problem of moral corruption, right? So Look, this is a complicated subject about you know what techniques are appropriate in the global war on terror and the reason that I The reason that I it like did this as an event was for exactly this reason right we're having this weird debate In the annals of national security about like should we water-board should we not water-board right? But no, we knew what the fuck it was so I said okay. I'll have myself water-boarded I'll put on national TV and like let's air this debate out for the public. So Those kind of pieces right and that was you know nominated for you know awards like Emmys and all this all this stuff um and then later on I did an interview with with my buddy Jim Mitchell who had actually conducted this water-boarding at At these black sites around the world and I revealed him to the world. He wanted he wanted to tell his story So I actually interviewed him here in Florida where he has a vacation home and we were on his canoe The camera woman yeah on the front filming Jim while we were sort of paddling around this lake Surrounded by thousands of alligators because I thought it was a good metaphor for how he saw the world And I went Jim tell his side of story But look I'm proud of that one because there's like nothing clean about it Right, but nobody else could do it the reason that I could do it was because I knew water-boarding I knew what was going on I knew what was happening Then I could bring this this debate to the public and I could add some value to it So I was the first very big thing I did and then throughout my career I continued to do stuff around this this subject and for me like this is the real value of journalism Right is to ask like really hard questions About about complicated and thorny ethical issues Yeah, so that's I think that's what I'm like kind of and what is the like let's fast forward to 2022 What's this consensus on water-boarding now? So water-boarding has now been under the Obama administration Um, and remember there's this huge debate johnman nobody remembers But there's this huge debate john McCain took like a stance against water-boarding because he had been tortured at the Hannah Hilton when he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam the the current consensus Well, pretty much the international consensus prior to the US using it is that it was a war crime and there was a historical and legal precedent for it being considered a war crime the US under the global war on terror kind of used like an interesting legal interpretation That said that it wasn't and that it was a legitimate interrogation technique lots of people agreed with that Lots of people disagreed with that the current status is that water-boarding is now currently illegal. It's been enshrined into US code Congressional action that happened after This very long senate congressional inquiry and called the torture report which essentially about what the movies about Current state, you know snapshot in time is that water-boarding is illegal Is there is under us law under us law and and is there uh like if Based on what you're allowed to speak about if we were going to try and get information out of terrorists in 2022 What's the what's the defacto what most professional interrogators will tell you is that Soft interrogation beats hard interrogation every time you might get some information from a hard interrogation Like the rough them up kind of stuff But none of that can be corroborated without what is the gold standard of interrogation which is report building Right building rapport with your prisoner And then getting them to trust you and tell you what you want to know That's what most professional interrogators will say is is the only the only kind of intelligence that you can really be sure of Because if not then it's under duress Is when i when i consider that i mean you take A hundred people that you interrogate only a few of them are going to be true professionals that hold real secrets And then when you say well overall, you know, you build report which makes sense because they talk most people will talk most people eventually with Cross-reference and you know kid that's a lie that's not But that's the majority the one that really hold the information are Most likely a bit trained and they might be better than that So just because it works for i mean you you want the The ones that are 2% right yeah, so that probably were doing a still ask like what else can we do other than just building reports Yeah, and this and like this is where the debate begins right and Khalid shake Muhammad right all of those waterboarding things You know, they are not sure if they ever actually Got real actionable intelligence off of him. He's sitting at Guantanamo right now by the way interesting Yeah, yeah, my other buddy From the agency John Kiryaku like ran the op to get To get him in Pakistan, so yeah, he's he's sitting in an orange dumpster to do around paintings Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll have a who's who in the see what spookville. Yeah, we'll need more of this For those guys you definitely well Probably So do you want to you want to walk through kind of what you're working on now? I think that that sort of summarized like like that media that media portion of your life was gonna He also wanted to sort of touch on with that Because I know these like you did a couple the point like not deployments you you were still active serving You were doing all these wartime correspondence Jobs you want some awards amazing work then you start to transition out of both of those right yeah Yeah, and look I do think the work in media is God's work I'm I think it's critically important But part of the reason I transitioned at a media was both a pushpull kind of thing the the pull is that I found another mission That was really important to me but the push is that I think media is fragmented and fucked right and like this While I am no longer actively working in media because I'm you know heads down front site focused On on building this other company. Uh, I do think the kind of work that I was doing sort of Objective truth telling right boots on the ground is really really critical to our democracy before we move on It's a question. Who does it right in your opinion? Moved that I mean like we could do a whole nother podcast so why the media ecosystem is fucked and what I will say is not very many people I think there are some interesting people who are like who will still speak truth to power Like but they're mostly doing it independently like the Matt Taibis of the world who have moved over to like a sub stack and stuff you long files You know, that's right. He did the Twitter files. Yeah, it's right files. Yeah, and my cook full disclosure like Matt's a friend I think he's like an extraordinarily thoughtful smart guy. He he told he coined the term Uh Like what is it vampire squid when talking about like venture capitalism Oh, that's fine. Yeah, Volta. He calls him, you know, sometimes it's not wrong Right. Yeah, so it's really powerful like tumwolf style writer But really independent because I do think that it's very hard to be in an institution Even like an institution that takes itself very seriously the New York Times, which my grandfather read every Sunday morning I can still put like a piece of shit article like that date Phillips thing You feel like the New York Times today is not the New York Times when it times from the 70s I do I do I feel like the whole media environment and part of the reason is you know, we know all the reasons right like the internet There's a medium that just does their job, you know faster and better and in this fractured ecosystem It's it's hard to know what's truth. So while I am not actively working in media I recognize like how critical it is to our our national discourse, you know, but look I really don't have a great answer because Most of it's pretty bad. That's why everyone. So that's why everyone Seeks truth everywhere they can that's why social media is new media, right? But so people try and find these independent journalists like Matt and all these other Very independent Because understandably so true trust in institutions has broken down. Yeah, you know Well, I guess I guess the question should be how do you know they're not good, right? It comes from all right if I watch CNN and they're consistently saying absolutely and only negative information about Trump And then if you look at facts only negative about Obama, then you know that both of them are buyers It could be that 100% is negative. It's impossible that everything Take the worst person in the world. He might say good morning one day and be nice to his butler So just it's impossible to be absolutely and only negative unless you're biased Okay, now when they're biased assume everything is wrong start from there and then just try to analyze Yeah, and I think the problem is bigger than individual journalists I think the problem is systemic right media organizations like everything he responds to its incentive systems right They're incentive systems are to make money and yeah right so the whole system is incentivized first salaciousness So I'll give 10 seconds on this because it's one of my pet topics in every Journalism room and every newsroom There's a giant board. I'm talking specifically about digital media And it's called chartbeat No, I'm too to kill a drunk. I think it's called chartbeat But anyways, there's this big TV right up there and they all use this same software and it racks and cracks and leaderboard ranks every article In that has been put out that day and you see number of views they have all this good data and metrics on it Right and journalists are frankly compensated often by how well their articles perform And we all know human nature that like you put trump or you put covet or you put sex in the title of an article You have a leaderboard. You have a you have a full on a clickbait leaderboard 100% so what I would say is that the institution of media in the current digital space Is incentivized for salaciousness not for truth and that's been a disservice to our democracy But can we blame them? I mean can we actually blame an organization that is a for-profit organization But they were trying to report the news But sometimes the regular news is just not interesting enough Compared to a linkbait and in order for them to stay In business and turn the lights on they must compete with any Fony news article like a business insider or whatever else comes up and they have to just jump into that You're 100% right and which is why I'm not blaming the individual institutions They respond to their incentives What I'm I'm blaming is like the current incentive structure that we have created in digital media if you think about How the nightly news hour which used to be the gold standard of news How the nightly news 60 minutes how those things started they started because the FCC the government gave all of this valuable bandwidth to The big three ABC NBC CBS right and we're gonna give you this FCC airwaves Right and you're gonna like make all this programming that makes all this money because we're giving you this valuable real estate Right, but like there's a There's a cost there's a catch and the catch is that for one hour a day You have to do programming that informs the American public and that was the genesis of the nightly news That's how it started it was never it was always meant to be a loss leader It was never meant to keep the lights on or make the money right But the government said like this is the price you pay to make all of that money the other 23 hours a day right I didn't know that yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, so you transition to the military and you succeed it and you are succeeding How did you do that when so many people transition out and So the best way don't this this is an issue and it led me to my my current endeavor But for me what was so good about transitioning out of the military is that I went to graduate school And that provided a soft landing that a lot of people it's good that Harvard I know what did you study I studied public policy and I are in the international relations So and it was so good for me because one of the things that happens to folks when they're transitioning out of the military is You know the military kind of isolated you don't know a ton of people or other who are not in the military Right, so you miss all of these social networks that have developed from guys who say like went to college and then you know In turn to golden and and did all of these other pathways and stuff So I was lucky that I was able to you know to go to this like prestigious university and meet all of these people Who are very different than the people I had been interacting with You know in during my time in the service. I think about it you went to the best unit in the world And you went to the best school in the world It's like a superman. I see when people try to inspire like well, I mean, that's kind of hard You know, but it's all been downhill since there There reminds me that there was this meme. I don't even know this truth Is this guy who was like a navy seal then an astronaut and then a doctor an MD or something. Oh Johnny Kim. Yeah Yeah, you know what they call it you know what they call yeah He is a real person. They call him the most eligible Asian bachelor in America Like they're Asian moms over there who are like specifically grooming you know, Mrs. Kim Yeah, so you're almost there. Yeah Yeah, I mean how you can substitute MD for highly successful entrepreneur and then you have to do a third thing I actually journalist is there, but journals is an astronaut. That is journalist is not astronaut That is that is the Roger Like my dad keep it reliable. Yeah, well actually astronaut those days is not that hard You just to go and for origin or we deal in and if you have like 30 grand you go with their blurring for 90 seconds You go up and they come down. I'm an astronaut you guys. I just did zero G. Oh, how was it? Yeah The jet that go. Yeah, they do you were telling you about that when we met yeah, that was light before or something The day before yeah, yeah, we saw each other at the pool. Yeah, I had gone so good friend of mine If he wants to be mentioned, we'll just call him DM good friend of mine really like philanthropic guy had like donated to this cause And when one of the things that he had gotten out of the cause was that a one of these parabolic fights for like him and his friends So it's like me my buddy Dave right like 10 Bond girls 10 hot bond girls a few other accessory friends like all went on this parabolic flight and you know like I don't a lot of cool stuff like I parachute it at an airplane at 30,000 feet right like I You know been in a nuclear submarine slept next to a weapon of mass destruction But that 90 seconds of like being an astronaut weightless was so cool Yeah, it was awesome. So what did you doing it out of so the guy who runs the company is really interesting CEO guy named Matt Goad He just took over the company about six months ago. They're doing most of it here in Florida And they spend I think they do a half I'll have this the ratios off, but they do about like half their flights for the public As kind of an interesting experience and then yeah, they use the same plane to help NASA astronauts get acclimated to weightlessness Yeah, I feel like it became more of a thing when When they're shooting a polo of 14 or 13 with And with the Tom Hanks yeah, and they had to actually shoot with your gravity And I think that was the first time when they introduced it to the public outside of NASA where they say well, yes, that was a while That was 90s. I want to say or early 2000s and it was it was back then because ultimately you just have to go down at the particular speed And in the particular I guess Yeah, and then you're going to be at zero gravity and they can talk you we can do it for like I don't know 15 seconds and then we Or less like we're like 10 seconds and then you go back on So we did 15 but each one and said it depends on like the actual flight profile that they fly but each one ends up being somewhere between like 45 and 90 Oh, okay, so each one okay, but they did 15 They shot a whole new I mean not a whole movie but a big piece of the movie this way where you see you see him sitting down And they they go and they go to zero gravity. He's been already in space and he takes off the gloves and you see the gloves and at first Just how are they doing this it was that first time it was no seat that's yeah, yeah Yeah, it was that a while and we did some cool stuff like the girls brought skittles and stuff so that's oh my god That's so fun and then when they like threw the water in the air But the only criteria for anybody who ever is lucky enough to get to do it or or have a friend like Dave The only criteria is like definitely don't party the night before Because like you know what anybody throw it off in that way it just gets weird and it's your gravity But did anyone get not everybody was great. Oh, you know how much it cost five grand I think it's a little more. I think it's a little inflation. Yeah, yeah, I think it's a little north of that Yeah, I don't know the other time it was five grand. Oh five. I don't know if you I thought it was gonna be like a hundred grand or so They like this not well the rent the whole planet is okay. I got you. Yeah, okay. Yeah, but I think you go up as an individual And it's I think it's definitely worth it Yeah, those that this is an interesting time in America were were people That that were kind of like the echo chamber that you meant you keep bringing out social media social media echo chamber People just don't see the other side because the the platform shows you what you want to see and then people Believe that this is the reality and you can shape reality and it's dangerous I mean if you go back to Joseph Gebels how they shaped reality for good people Making them believe that other people are bad and it's okay to go and gas them It's just this is literally what we're doing to each other just for the name of profit not even as a as an evil Reason just made is what it is to drive engagement Yeah, so while it's insane like I think well, I think we even understated it when we're talking about it Stangerous right now very dangerous. Yeah, um, what we're talking about oh, so we never so we should go back into um Your life. Yeah, we never really got into that. So you transitioned out yeah No, we were talking about oh, yeah, take a piss take a piss. Yeah, yeah You know in in buds like the nicest thing you can do for like one of your buddies is like take a piss on him right So cold No, so you're still you're still allowed to say in who you didn't didn't tap out or you know whatever you're good Yeah, um, okay, so you got your masters and and then what what's that yeah I got my masters and then I worked in media for a decade Concurrently with that I did a lot of work in the veteran service space. So I was to it Yeah, exactly trying to give veterans a renewed sense of mission and purpose And that's really important because a lot of veterans we've found have struggled when they've come out You know, and even in the special operations community. This is a pretty serious issue, right? You go from being this rock star with a really like important sense of self-imission And then sometimes you hit this civilian world and and you don't know how to define who you are much less what to do So I found for for many years that helping Give people a new mission in public surface was really important So we've had veterans doing amazing things to help out in their their local communities When I came to believe in the last several years though is that while purpose is important So is purse right and that a lot of veterans and military folks have been struggling economically in large part the private wealth community has really left the military community behind Both from like an actual numbers perspective. That means I don't understand So what do you mean by they decide it well left them behind? There's there's there's not a company that's serving the military for personal wealth Okay, right There's you know, there's civilian socioeconomic peers are outpacing our our military Community folks by ours margin partially because they're underpaid but also because they're there's a lack of financial literacy in the military community And I got like a bazillion see stories about like dumb shit, you know Military folks have done with their money that sort of underscore the point But there is a bunch of kind of trade winds blowing one was a change in the military retirement system Another was what you mean what happened with that they went from a Define benefit system the pension basically you put in your 20 and then you get a portion of your pay for the rest of your life To a contribution based system essentially a 401k you don't have a defined benefit anymore No, it's now it's a it's called the TSP right that's why thrift savings plans essentially a foreign government still has to find benefit Right as as did I mean no private has it anymore, but most government from what I know still has to find benefit Which is like the de facto standard pension like our grandparents have that's right that's right But yeah, and look I'm not actually judging that model right in some ways there were some advantages to it It before you had to do your 20 if you did 19 years and 364 days and got out you didn't get anything You got jack right so there is a world in which it makes more sense you do four years You get that 401k ish things started we call it the TSP and then you can transfer it over to your civilian career There pros and cons like you know the one thing I learned at Harvard was that there's pros and cons to all policy right But with that change what they really needed to do is now you're asking 18 year olds to make complex Financial decisions about their future and they on ill prepare them and under equip them to do so and the military has started to recognize this They've actually recognized financial literacy as a critical national security issue It's affecting readiness because guys have financial problems and they're not ready to deploy guys and gals The caveat I know you guys aren't super easy. I come from a community of all men So like when I say military my like de facto We're not gonna judge you okay There's also women who are serving at the same problem right and especially like coming from the Israeli military like serve Side by side right women of compulsory Yeah, women women serve almost in anything There are some I mean, I don't think they do seals, but today there can be pilots and yeah, yeah, and it's compulsory service So so anyways So I started to recognize that this problem existed in the military community where Military folks were were sort of Underrepresented in financial services and you would think um Like USAAA especially when it comes to personal investing and stuff would kind of own the market because you see the football commercials and all this stuff But USAA Exited the investing side of the business a couple of years ago. They sold it off to Charles. So what's USA? USAAA is kind of the preferred banking institution for the military You have to be military affiliated most service members Use USAAA to some degree. It's a big bank that only serves the military don't they don't do investing You literally go on the USAAA website and if you watch any football game you'll see like big military Money on I've seen them before they spend money on advertising. I'm a USA, but they don't but they don't go and I don't do investing They don't do everything every other bank in the world So you literally go on the USAAA website and you click investing and it redirects you to Charles Schwab so as Has both an entrepreneur and a mission-oriented founder who cares about the health and wealth of the military community I saw this market of people that was being underserved So I started this company called guild And with the idea that we could kind of take draw circle around this community Get them on board and then pull up the ladder behind us And that's what I've been doing for the last year and a half like trying to use all my my seal skills Right and apply them to entrepreneurialism To help. So what does it do exactly? So if say I'm a veteran I come down to you and they said all right How do you help me do I put money with you and you kind of like a fund and you can manage them put money If it's a little bit, but you can say you come up with a couple hundred thousands You know as a Cornell or something like that We're gonna go and put that money to work for you. Yeah, I mean if a couple hundred thousand you mean by a couple hundred thousand pennies Like yeah, I mean whatever it is. I mean I'm just doing a number. Yeah, of course. No, no, no, I'm joking So what it is it's a self-directed investing platform. So think about Robin Hood but oriented towards the military community So In large part we did that because that's where the market is right a lot of young Sailors Airman Marines they don't trust traditional financial institutions and they want to have control of their own finances So we don't even think of it as veterans. We think of it as like the full service members journey So like day one week one you're in the military Yes, you're making less amounts of money, but you have lots of things covered So you have more discretionary income than you think And we want military folks to start investing early because I think of the kind of like I think of wellness, right? We're all fit guys. We all like working out, right? It's Just like working out. It's really hard to get in shape overnight in one workout But it's pretty easy to get fit over like a long period of time if you're consistent and you're disciplined The same is true with being wealthy, right? It's really hard to get rich in a day, right? You might hit the crypto lottery or whatever less likely now Right Right or whatever, but if you but over time it's actually easy to accumulate wealth right the genius the miracle of compound interest and all of this stuff So that's what we want to do. We want to get people like investing early With a financial institution that they trust because we share their military DNA Using this like discretionary income that they have and how many so to put in perspective how many active and and and retired service members could you serve? Yeah, so USA is something like 17 million members. So that's a huge user base huge user base, but I To put a wrinkle on it. I don't actually think that's the market, right? That's an important market, right? Let's say you can capture some percentage of that market I had this thesis early on and I've had some data to prove it that yes We need to serve the military community and a huge portion of our platform is financial literacy So and we believe in it so much that like literally you watch the knowledge video that's oriented towards military guys And we'll put five dollars in your brokerage account to invest So with fractional shares, you know, you could buy you know five dollars worth apple or a dollar worth apple and a dollar worth Amazon, right? So financial education, right? But we also think that there's this large community That exists to support the military And with this lack of trust in financial institutions But we said like hey, we want to be the most trusted financial institution and investing platform And our thesis was that people would migrate over Just not who are military affiliated, but who are what I called the I made this term up the patriot market People who want to support the military also so like why not like why invest with robin hood? Right, they you know probably shouldn't call them out directly, but whatever You know, they're comparing three to kill us in you know like Like why invest with with robin hood right especially after like there's still this kind of hangover From the game stop the asco and all this stuff and there's this lack of trust and even post 2008 There's a lack of trust in financial institutions, right? So we want to position ourselves and we think we live our values as the most trusted financial institution in the game And so why not is because I was thinking the natural one a right next to military are a service people If it's firefighters if it's going to be cops and then bring it to the big group That's exactly right. That's exactly right and people and I I knew this happened because I went on This is a this is a funny story, but I went on newsmax like I'm a Sunday morning in August because my friend is an anchor on newsmax Newsmax right wing. Yes, like leaning they they sort of became popular drink of it exactly right and like I don't know how many people are watching newsmax on like a Sunday morning at you know 7 a.m. West Coast time probably not that many right in mid August right everybody's on vacation or whatever But after I talked to my friend Carl Higby who's the answer about this we had like 100 people sign up, but more important we had a bunch of people who wrote us who said like hey I'm not a veteran, but I like what you guys are doing with the military and I want to move my account from Robin Hood or marriage trade over to you guys because I want to invest with people who are aligned with my bad So we do what's called an AKS transfer people just transfer their 100% people are 100% comfortable with that That I think that there's going to be a lot of shift if you're going to start introducing solutions Because if if I watch right now anything that's in institution or I can get out of it Okay, but I have to listen to the brainwash okay, it's like and I know that Robin Hood is not a political organization Right, but in that case I understand that because you said I am going to be a patriot It's it's by far or some but I am a patriot first or let's go and People would move into it. Yes, that's right. So we just did this And so that was kind of like the first like proof positive data point that I got you know And then you know, we're just coming off Army Navy weekend We did this big tailgate with this company nine line that does apparel black rifle coffee company my friend jocke They're getting big now two black rifle. I've heard of them everywhere. Yeah, and they just they just went public And yeah, those guys are friends of ours right and black rifle. They kind of opened the kimono and showed us some of their their data 84% of black rifle Customers and there's no more market that's more saturated than coffee, right? Yeah, but that's modesty now That's it's it's crazy, right? So how are these guys doing so well these upstart veteran guys Yeah, they put out some cool videos and all this stuff But the truth is that according to their own internal data 84% of their customers buy black rifle coffee because they want to support the military So and we're kind of the same way right there's this What I call the Patriot affinity market this Patriot group that wants to be aligned with you know companies that support the military and when you start to look at The market there now you're not just talking about 17 million people for USA a you know, you're talking a hundred million people Yeah, well, I just think it's a while that there aren't more companies that are aligned with the military The fear to go out and stem I am a U.S. Patriot and get you know It's disgusting. That is a fear of being patriotic Yeah, and like that's the problem that DC's horrible and DC's reality That's right and the problem is that it's been politicized right yes They think that saying like I am a patriot means that I am a Republican or I am a conservative and they are minorities right and they're wrong Right, they're wrong. I think of of our company and I think about the Patriot market in general the same way I thought about we know when I was like kick indoors overseas right like I didn't care when I was going into like a house a Taliban house Whether the person behind me was like a Democrat or a Republican. I never stopped to ask all I cared about is that you're on the mission with me And if you're on the mission to support the military community like red-white or purple and doesn't mean shit Absolutely. Yeah, it's it should be by a person and by part person, but it's it's now like I felt like the brainwashing machine is okay. I watched this show on On the hulu and honestly just sign up just because someone told me to watch that show otherwise I never really thought of signing up for hulu because I have enough already I came for one show, but so it calls fleshman. I think it's fleshman of fresh man Some like that is in trouble. It's basically about a Jewish doctor in New York City that got divorced and he wasn't kind of like The spring chicken when he was young nobody really cared no girls ever cared for him But because he was kind of like a geek he stayed geek, but this time is a geek doctor and he's like 40 So he goes on dating apps and he gets leads every night with another girl like black Chinese white and whatever you can imagine because now is a doctor You watch it and it's it's an awesome show. It's an awesome show, right And his wife he that demonized his wife like you can't imagine they made her look worse than or some have been live and over She's horrible human being she just abandoned her kids and she just disappeared. I'm just not a good person Just a dislikable person and and then he goes and and but the thing is the way that so they give you this product that you're supposed to consume After hours where you want to be kind of have then brain dead and you watch it and in between they're showing you kind of those little snippets for you to hate people that are a publicum And they're showing you well he goes and he hang around his wife's Friends that he doesn't like because they're rich and as as a as a piece of the puzzle a rich or bad and they're just assholes and all the care of the day they throw this passive aggressive comments He's just a doctor making fiancee with that and he's basically saying yeah, this is Johnny and there's an narrator in a back that says This is Johnny and what you're gonna see is a picture of him and don't drop son a killing a black giraffe Just some just make them Like bad and you then they keep on moving and then eventually he goes and he has sex with this lady that tells him well I'm technically married to a person that is an anchor in a very Republican news Outlet rich one car songs like I can't say And then one day I caught him with he's assistant which is guy is a male Is male and he was going down on him and I'm not supposed to go and Tell this to anybody so I can't tell you but I leave my life he leaves his life and which one Carson Just the demonization of the other side is horrible Yeah, and it's a good show just check it off. I'll watch the show But now I wish there was something else that would give it to me without all these brainwash I have this hope or like this could be like total naivety and like rose colored lens optimism I have a hope that all that that Kind of programming is gonna be ultimately rejected by the consumers or that like people They know when they're being manipulated at the end of the day. I still have like faith um in like the American people or in the public to be discerning consumers of information now that hope is like you know Is this dashed every day right what I see something but look I get it I think the the issue there is like without like real like media understanding There's almost this like inception level of programming That happens in that word we're taught to hate 100% yeah, you subliminal exact very subliminal I felt like it's not gonna happen if you're gonna have Something like say I mean you really don't have any alternative for streaming services Like netflix But the other side ratings rating speak louder than anything and revenue speak louder and no, I mean Services yes, but I think that are I don't care about that a show includes maybe a little bit of negative about one of the other But like hyper woke is no longer in vote. I don't think it is anymore. I don't think that I don't think people appreciate it because Ultimately what that does hyper woke is actually very bad because then it creates hyper right wing Yes, and it creates these two Yeah, two polarities and I've never experienced this until I came down to the US the polarities here are what and the average person to be to is not And it's like that in Canada that not at all not at all But in Canada the narrative is that we're center right center left in the US the narrative is you do have these two Very divisive groups that are not willing to meet anywhere across the aisle So I think that I think that the average person is sick of that shit And the average person doesn't want to hate and the average person doesn't want to I don't give a shit if you're a public inter-democrat if you're a good person if you're a smart person I can vibe with you no matter what but the thing is The the world and COVID it it it basically kept everybody at home and everybody was online and online Basically made everyone else hate each other and I always speak what echo chambers Social media and echo chambers and when you post something on social media you have a view And then when you post that view the the social media platform doesn't matter what it is It slots you into the algorithm with like-minded people and then all you see a similar views And then it starts to show you Views that are slightly even more aggressive than yours and then you think that's the norm and you don't see the other side And then all the sudden you do see the other side once in a while, but it's just demonized and yeah and over to the window I shifted so much that like you forgot in what normal is also the they'll go into the sensor or what they want a sensor It's been it's been weird to see how they sensor Everything that's really not important to sensor and then there are some things I mean if you're gonna go and see someone Giving example there was a shootout in In Iran where the chapters were shooting into the crowds killing hundreds of people We're not showing it we're not talking about that There was a shootout in Israel where Palestinian came in with With an AR started shooting civilians A police officer which was also Muslim Arab came in they shot each other they both died When I'm gonna show that it was suppressed And then just let's not talk about that when Israel retaliate. Oh, let's talk about that Let's go and let's go and and kind of like a deceive Whenever there is a Palestinian shooting out Israel and he get shot the the Talud say a Palestinian Was shot was killed in a shootout in Israel After shooting three Israelis and it's it's just very very biased so then if you go and you read from the other side Of course you're gonna have animosity because you only read the title and you said the horrible people Right, but they're not showing you the whole picture now to say Israel is perfect No to say the Palestinian and no no one is perfect Just showed the news show what happened be well suggestive that's on the actual original point It is about why you actually were in media and why that's that's the work that people have to do 100% 100% and like look I do think We're at a extraordinarily challenging era where people don't know what truth is and that's really hard I will say we have had these periods in history before we have the yellow journalism, you know of the early part of the century Equally today drama channels. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but my hope is that it at some point is self-correcting right But not self-correcting like oh, it's just magically gonna happen It takes good people to do hard work right in order in order to do and there's people are working on interesting things You know, I'm invested in this company that you know is Essentially about puts filters on your news Diet right not filters like this is what you see. This is what you don't see about filters So you at least know what explicit context yeah context right like think about it Like everything we put in our body like the tequila. We're drinking right Sponsored pie. Yeah, you know like you know the the crackers we had downstairs it all has a nutrition label right We know whether it's like full of sugar or you know like what the what's inside it? What we're putting into our body well right, but there's no warning label There's no nutrition label for the news and information that we consume there's nothing that tells you that this has a right-wining bias or that this has a left Wining bias so you know, so like I'm you know, I'm invested with this company seeker like who knows if they will succeed all it's need It's but the idea the premise is that would be amazing if you finally said this this news outlet is Lining towards the lift and how yeah, and then you can choose you can choose if you want to eat cotton candy and you know that There's you know 120 grams sugar. You can choose that right, but at least like we got to start the process of understanding what we're Consuming. Yeah, I love it. I love it Yeah, this is it's okay to put in your opinion But when your news anchor and you said that you're reporting the news, but you actually manufacturing the news or your Money Yeah, absolutely And by the way, it goes both ways. I don't think they have really But like the facts news is not Objective right they're not so it it goes both ways on the other side not to say that there's yeah, but Yeah, and then you said you really need both sides So you just yeah, you can go all the way to the lift, but it would be nice to have one in the center that actually tells you what happens You don't have to read between the lines every time and yeah, but they're not as popular You're not as well no one's gonna read it yet. Yeah, and it's hard right even you know even on the On the company on the on the mission side right we're talking about like financial literacy right like it's still a product of knowledge Right at the end of the day if you're asking people to Invest you have to be able to do research you have to be able to like understand sources and primary sources And you have to make educated decisions. So it leads into all domains of life right It's not just about reading the news right? It's also it's it's the it's the it's the it's the symptom of just over information Like too much information the constant influx of information so much noise never know what's true And if you don't have a trusted source to go to to learn for financial Education or or anything. It's just massively overwhelming and you're just bound to make a bad decision at one point So you you actually guide them through this whole financial journey their entire life basically their entire professional life is what you're trying Yeah, from the start of a service member life. That's the that's the idea right and then what's the so what's the reality of a you know We spoke about some of the things they spend money on what do they spend money on Well, you know listen you grab Eddie you you pull any veteran into this podcast and they will like give you a story about like Stupid shit people spend their money on like I'll give you my my top one, which is one of my favorites. There was There was I'll give you a funny one and then I'll give you a more serious one The funny one is that there was a guy in in one of my platoons Like pipe hitter, right? He was this the 60 gunner meaning he carried the 60 machine gun Which is like a short barrel in the army. It's a crew served weapons three guys operate it And the seal teams we like chop off the barrel and one guy holds it. Yeah, we call him the pig gunner, right? There's 500 rounds ammunition on a belt around it. Is it is it 50 go? It's seven six two Okay, yeah, seven six two. Yeah, and it's got these these these big drums and it's a it's an open bolt, right? You slap that feed tray down. Yeah, and then big And then you just rock and roll on right? But you know, it's like carry in 20 pounds in your hand So the guys who who who are the pig gunners are usually the biggest strongest guys in the platoons And anyways, we have this this pig gunner and my platoon he comes in In the military you get paid twice a month And he get paid on Thursday night direct deposit So if I a scheduled a training on Saturday morning I would sort of do this as a leader to kind of moderate the guys going out and partying too hard So every two weeks I would do this So I'm scheduled training on Saturday mornings guy comes into the platoon. How to Saturday morning is like Hey, LT Can I talk to you for a second? So you know, I went out Uh, Thursday night when we got paid at midnight and uh, I went out and I met this this dancer stripper and We went to Vegas and we eloped and we got married and I was like, all right man So Monday morning like went down like we got it an old, you know, like all good right like Hey, man, understand happens, you know, and uh anyways fast forward with the next paper period That doesn't happen. First of all, it doesn't just happen. It still seems to happen Yeah, that happens Once you get out of the base, you probably want to just point. Oh, yeah Yeah, these guys go out anyways fast forward to the next pay period Saturday morning I scheduled training again seven a.m. You walk into the platoon hut guys have started IVs on themselves And they're you know sucking oxygen off the dragger which is pure oxygen trying to like get ready for training the day Same guy comes up to me. Hey, LT. I got to talk to you, you know Got paid went out met this girl. We went to Vegas this same guy same guy Two weeks in a row. No, I had to go get two marriages. I'm not like okay, you're dead man You're you're cut off like no more or whatever So that's the funny story the serious story is when I started The company guild One of the first things I did is seals on my generation went to jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia which is in Columbus, Georgia And I mapped from the front gate where people enter the gate to the first used car dealership Where you could buy that new Dodge challenger or Mustang at like 19 20 21 percent interest rate point three miles They literally have it so that guys could walk off the base right and get a Mustang because like look You got this steady government paycheck like we'll give you credit. Yeah, right? Doesn't matter and but like I don't know what 20 percent compounding Me but it's way more stars word way more right and so guys get under water right away So there's all of these institutions You know, I call them predatory, but there's all these institutions that are designed to take military service Memories money, right? And you know, so what we wanted to do is we wanted to be accountable to that right We wanted to help military guys Increase their money over their lifetime Yeah, interesting. So they their targets basically for predators here of course in their own backyard Exactly. That's that the first rule that you want to do is while they're in the service You have to wait for them to finish But today before because we spoke about this there is a the theory the show ballers were it's while their Players or after their players how to help them manage a money over here. It's before they just get the first paycheck someone has to Yeah, walk them through and look. I don't think it's ever really too late You know to start this but the earlier you can become cognizant of this This that that should be in my like so I have a 13-year-old girl and 80-year-old boy And my daughter told me why don't they teach us about money? Why don't they teach us about banks? Why don't they teach us anything? And you know, honestly, I never thought about teaching children about this, but I told them I'll teach you that But we're sending them to school where you know, I get the whole part where the first 12 years has to be very generalist parts Eventually when you go to school when you go to college you go zoom in into particular thing But they'll teach you everything except money They'll even take you they'll give you drama classes chorus like right out the window That's not important. It's just teach them how to manage money and then by the time they go to school You don't need to tell them that 20% interest rate on their car is a test. That's right. That's that's so basic to go and explain that I think I think some schools are getting better. They are I mean, I think even though it is Florida, right? They mandated tiny interest rates. Yeah, so 2022 right. So I mean like it's a little bit late, but like fair fair point Yeah, no, but better than never. Yeah, I don't think other states do it. No, first state. So I mean give it to it It's really bad. Well, I think we're talking about active duty military members, but I mean Ballers football hockey NBA. I'm pretty sure now in and college university financial literacy courses are required For anyone who plays like semi or like college athletics. I think so some schools just because like the the bankruptcy rate post careers enormous enormous. Yeah, I mean like think about if you were 20 years old and you've got to check for 10 million or 20 million dollars And you've never worked a job or even understood taxes, you know There's people I've I've interviewed people. I interviewed Chris promgro is talking about any and she Wrote a threat about all the financials to do with professional athletes But he knows guys that they spent their first paycheck before they even got it And it was like a 10 million dollar paycheck and it was like then 5 million after tax and then it was House they go into a debt before they even started right house for parents Agent fees, which is like 10 or 20 percent There's all these different I can't like even if you look at entrepreneurs Most of them don't don't understand money. They just know how to sell and build something There was a part where I before I sold my business my partners my first partners told me a story and they said well We had this business to invest in and door three founders One was the main guy and their two that were sweat equity So the two guys that had the biggest piece after Right when we sold they made sure to move to Texas so they don't pay the The tax in California. They wanted to get the least amount and he was getting about five million He went and the first thing he did he went and he bought a house for six million Because they had a little leftover equity in it and he thought it's can be a hundred million dollar And he went and he told them those people move to Texas to save money and they get 20 30 million each He went the guy with the least amount of money For the more expensive house than what actually and so it can happen to very very smart successful people that are business people And they just lose it all after the exit. It's just how to imagine if you never had any education imagine and nothing and you were on people with money And it still happened so imagine So and I'm just super curious like how is how is bill doing now like bill? Okay, you're building is your first time as an entrepreneur technically right? First time as it certainly as a tech entrepreneur. I've had small businesses before But this is my first biggest building a tech company for the first time. Yeah, you're building highly regulated. I'm assuming yep Basically a comparable to a robin hood or any other 100% platform and the compliance piece is obviously like that's a bit in me. Yeah It is and it's super onerous and I'm super grateful for how onerous it is, right? Because ultimately like these industries should be regulated when you're talking about people's money But anyway, so in your case when you want to go and you have two parts for your platform right if I want to go and trade any stocks You have the interface and then you have the back end where every transaction has to be processed with lots of regulations Do you own that piece or do you did the back end or you own only most and then you license from someone to go and do the back end because that is Extremely hard to open. Yeah, so almost all of the businesses use like professional clearing houses Apex is kind of Just one so we clear through Apex okay like robin hood and and I think a merit trade a few businesses are self-clearing Robinhood may have gone self-clearing now But there's another regulatory compliance piece to the customer none of this is You don't see all those you go on the app you buy your your apple or your Tesla stock, right? And then you like you make smart business decisions and you watch your account grow But yeah right now we are not self-clearing although You know, not that it's important, but in our in our future we will be yeah, you know what I would Suggest I think it's a missing piece from a lot of those where if you can have an easy integration for all kind of Algobot trading where it can be a layer of that where you can sell I mean you can trade them in some people are day traders and if they are day traders They'll use of candlesticks and like resistant points and computer would always do it better based on the strategy So I don't know any platform that organized as to I'm just not known Which now nothing that made it yet at least where they can have an organized where we can say look You can have multiple strategies and you can play with and you can With certain algobot ratings and you can see historical chart. It's actually very very cool So it would be I would say Unique Outside of it because you want to build a better product a side of being a patriotic You also build a better product and I feel that this is where I don't see it and eat trade I don't see it and and there are so many small platforms, but in order for you to get On someone that has a good, but you have to know that person you don't know the platform the platform itself can be the marketplace For those bots as well. I completely agree and like I think there are there's a toolkit for the sophisticated investor That's not being really met by the current market In our sort of first like I'm an early stage entrepreneur, right? So in our first iteration. We're really focused on Kind of those neophyte investors although we have like a whole series of tools sets for the most fiscate investor And on that UI I actually like I'll put our little Our little platform our little engine that could up against The Ameritrade's and the Robin Hood's we've done a couple cool things like one of them I think you'll appreciate this is we've created a leaderboard so everybody comes on the platform and they're They have an anonymous name right and then every day at the closing market and then at the end of every week and actually at the end of every month We rack and stack them all the people on the platform in this leaderboard So you can see like who's number one today? Who's number one for the week and then you can actually click into that person's portfolio and you can see You know, why is this person up 17% when the S&P is down? Yeah, five percent. Why do they have a 22% relative? But do they have a choose a ability to choose if to show themselves or not they do can always click it on you can Private or not, okay, right and it's not by the way by dollar amount So you'll never know if this person is a million dollar account or a thousand dollar account But you can see that by percentage and you see what they've invested in that 100% and why that is so critical is if you think about one of the things That's missing from financial services overall is transparency. Yeah, right? And this is a roaded trust community. Yeah, how do most people get their their stock advice? Right these days, right? Especially most people are doing you know self-directed investing right wall street beds Read it all this stuff like oh, yeah, I have you know thousand percent gains, right? That's basically the equivalent of saying I can bench 450 Yeah, right like you don't really know yeah on our platform You can actually go in and see like who's doing well and why they're doing well And I think this is important because that's like real-time Conviction, right? Yeah, right and and what people are actually doing so it becomes this sort of tacit education You know what I would what I would say is that if someone that if you say if I want to go and go and like Follow the trade of someone else and that person is okay with that and he gets a particular fee for that and everyone is sharing that that particular feature would make sense a lot of people's I don't know what he's doing, but I'll just put them on you behind him and this is the stop lost This is the more they're like copy trading down the copy trading you get so I can do even one better I like the principal, but I think I've expanded it to like it scaled that idea and the way that I have scaled it is through a Collective intelligence portfolio also right there on the platform. We have a a guild portfolio And it's based on this James Sirwicky wisdom of crowns So we take the top 30 stocks on the guild portfolio. We sort of aggregate them We put a little special sauce on it some criteria filters So you can't have like a penny account that will throw off the algorithm or whatever and then we aggregate this into Dynamic portfolio that's changing every day, right? And this is the idea that None of us is smarter than all of us. Yeah, right? And if you think about the market itself yield ETF We haven't made it in ETF yet, but that is certainly You're getting there like yeah, yeah, it's certainly probably on the horizon. Okay somewhere But for now, it's just this a collective intelligence portfolio that you can go and follow and learn from and look This has been a rough year you asked me how guilders going right the name of the game this year is to survive Right and like when everybody else is shuttering their doors. We've been able to grow month over month Right, but I think part of the reason is that that guild collective intelligence portfolio And I love you guys because like we've gotten way more into the weeds than people normally would I can tell Like is is that's that's far out performing the S&P this year, right? In a volatile year, right? That's amazing. Yeah, so so we're really proud of it So we're trying to build just the interfaces I got I got I got I get a jump in not a one because Because yeah because this is this is something that I mean who doesn't like well I'm sure some don't like talking about finance, but anyway, I do so I would say adding another marketing component because most finance here is tunnel market marketing. So I think Robinhood made it because they had a better UI than most and they had a fractional Yeah, they started they were they were in the market with fragile chairs But the thing what's missing is kind of like when you look at tic-tac the way they blow up where they had an easy Shareable part anything you created on tic-tac shared on Instagram today. They don't need to do it But that's what made them a thing right? So if someone Get you want to look at the stack you go and you say you want to see your core and trade you look at all right today I'm 20% up or so on And you need to go and create a share button with API to Instagram And where it has a watermark for your platform That's gonna that's where you're gonna win You you make it's a user-generated content and every time when you have a win Oh, you just made five percent boom share it with your friends call to action Click it's it needs to be a one click just like they tic-tac did this To one click share share as a story share as as as uh as uh on the feed whatever it is go share like a portfolio This is what's gonna go and everyone's gonna go and look at this. Well, that's it Listen like right now. It's a screenshot like I will buy the next bottle of tequila If we could just excerpt this little piece of the conversation No founder. I think this is exactly right because look like we live in a shared economy Right people want to live in a community and this is how you create community around investing It's like you said like look. I know it's not the sexiest topic right like when I was in my 20s I was more focused on gunslinging than I was on public equities, right? But like it's real made money. It's like a casino. Yeah people made money and they show it off Would create awareness and everyone that made some money would like to show it off I'm not trying to put this on negative way because today people say hey show off is bad Make it money sounds bad casino sounds bad, but you know this isn't flexing your money. Yeah It's it's not flexing about being smart. Yeah making a smart investment And that's a different kind of flexing you just removing all the all the frictions Share it and you put a cult to action that little tactic can make all of it different If you're if you know the Because you want to create awareness better faster and cheaper than your competition So you use your people and then you need to give them a name So if a guilds then guilders or something like that give them a name for that because that would create a sense of community um Ultimately, if you look at um, it's a small growth hacking tactic I think the classic example would be where you look at uh, I think it was with Airbnb, you know how airbnb blew up, right? You know the case study what how they made it So when airbnb is the Craigslist? Yes So airbnb had they were not the only bed and breakfast online But what they did was the the funders were quarters and they They made sure that when you released anything on airbnb at the end It's considered you want to add it also on Craigslist geotargeted you would say yes automatically would create your entire listing on Craigslist So okay, nothing special about that What it was because you need a API for that and they were the only one doing it look well What do you mean? I mean? So what in the rest do the API well because there was no API for Craigslist they blueprint the code They created the only API they hacked their API and then what they would do is you would have It was a 90 something percent of the people that listed anything with automatically beyond Craigslist But guess what because Craigslist was the the factor for rental at the time they would rent and then from there People on that would sit on Craigslist automatically go on their site and they had a better flow to go and keep them for the next time and so on and then they became Airbnb And they just suck up and they all the demand from Craigslist and it was no longer available Craigslist change their code But it was already too late and now Airbnb is Airbnb and what's the name of the other ones who knows right so There it is that that little tactic Think military wise that little tactic right so if you think a bum a bum is a tactical weapon Well, a nuclear bomb is a tactical weapon that can win the war all the strategies all the flits in the world two bombs That's it end of the war right so it can one tactic that can be so powerful placed right You can win the war and you can from one day to another because it once it explodes it explodes And that's how tic-tac made it from that particular strategy if you put that that weapon Into the financial system You're gonna be the tic-tac of the financial system Oh, I'll take that I'll take that moniker. Yes. Yeah Well, let's say I thought I was coming here to dispense knowledge, but I'm very happy to absorb knowledge and Yeah, I think you'll see some integrations like that in the near future on the platform I think that it's also takeaways when you apply some really great marketing tactics to something like this like You know, it's gonna it's gonna take over the robin hoods of the world Because still financial to your point is a very boring industry and nobody's really really doing it well A boring industry, but more importantly with like a lack of trust right yeah And I think bridging the trust gap with especially when you're talking about people's money is is the first piece of the equation Very smart. Okay, where do people go to connect with you man? Where do people go to all? Yeah, yeah, yeah So where do you leave tell them yeah I mean, this is where we started I live nowhere Like killing monsters, right? Yeah, no place you can find me You'll find me on the factory floor for sure Look, so guilt guilt itself in the app store in google play you can just search guild financial Download it super easy And the for myself personally IG is kind of Instagram's kind of my primary platform And all those things are at casual arts and okay, I'm easy to find on social just like trigger warning It's mostly me like underwater spearfishing like in different parts of the world, you know by the occasionally dispensing Yeah, financial Instruments as well very good. I appreciate you a lot. Yeah, is there any else you want to drop before we close us out? No, I I'll just say should you know should all these should all media podcasts be done with such good tequila. Thank you It's been a pleasure for gummy. Yeah, thank you for coming. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate you a lot