Episode 152: Team Room Confidential with Navy SEAL Liam Cogan

When the disciplined precision of a Navy SEAL collides with the free-spirited nature of entrepreneurship, the result is an episode brimming with raw insights and hard-earned wisdom. Join us as retired SEAL, Liam Cogan, takes us through his transformative journey from the ranks of the military to the open-ended adventure of building his own business. He peels back the curtain on the realizations and fears that come with such a stark transition and shares how he swapped the pursuit of high-paying, unfulfilling jobs for a life that truly echoes his values.
 
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:26

I mean seriously. If we were to have our own episode of the unexplained, that's what we should tell you. What's really up with this dude sneaking into your house in the middle of the fucking night, In my case, giving me COVID? Yeah right, Giving you COVID. Which makes you ask the question what was he doing?

Speaker 2: 0:45

that night, probably kissing you while you slept. Dude, he's not there for the cookies. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 0:54

Well, not those types of cookies.

Speaker 2: 0:55

Not those cookies. He's here for some other cookie.

Speaker 1: 1:01

And that's a great way to start this show. Welcome back. This is always. I am your raspy voice to fucking host Danny Caballero, and today I have the honor of bringing you Liam Kogan, retired former Navy SEAL, now entrepreneur, veteran advocate. So today we're going to be talking about taking that bold step into being an entrepreneur. When we leave the military, there are so many organizations, so many people that are going to tell you that you should do X, y and Z, but really and truly, everybody should take a knee and figure out what the hell you really want to do in life before you find yourself working at a cheese stick factory, hating your life and realizing that you really, honestly, just wanted to fucking start your own farm or start your own fucking insurance business. Right, liam, take it away. How are you today? Man Dude, I'm good, I'm good.

Speaker 2: 1:56

Right now, me and my chick are in Key West, parked the RV over by the coastline and couldn't be better. I mean the weather could be better. But that's what Santa does, man he drops off some bad weather, breaks my phone. But no, dude, I'm good, I'm good yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:16

I would imagine at first that idea, that type of life could have probably seemed really scary.

Speaker 2: 2:24

Yeah, but you know it's daunting to consider living in your RV. I mean, I remember when I was in the teams and there was this offer like hey, who wants to go to Hawaii to go do SDV? And I was like fuck, dude, that sounds awesome. But I'm kind of scared to move. Like, what do I do with my house? Where do I put all my shit? Can I really get this going? And then fly out there and get another hat Like dude. I was like it blew my mind to even consider it.

Speaker 2: 2:52

So I stayed and the RV thing was really similar. Man, we got the RV and we're like, yeah, dude, we're going to go on a couple trips. You know, I can use this to go surf and in the outer banks and you know, stay there for a weekend if I have to. And then we just started spending like all our time in it. And then we got on the road and you know so when I was getting out to kind of go back to what you said really is I was getting out and I got an offer from, you know, a cousin of mine and he was like, dude, let's, let's do this gym thing, let's build some franchise crunches, it'll be fun.

Speaker 2: 3:30

And you know, I got out of the military, I took my military mindset and I got right into a franchise corporation and it was like, dude, this sucks balls. Yeah, like this is just like the military. Someone's telling me my good idea is a bad idea because they know better than me, but they're not backing it up. You know, you got people who are the top dogs, who are running gyms that aren't the best gyms, telling you that their way is the best and you're like, all right, man, I mean and nothing to say bad about crunch crunch gyms rule. Like everywhere you go. They're doing a good thing with how they're franchising the gyms, but at the end of the day, it's just like.

Speaker 2: 4:05

As a military person, I was like, yeah, dude, being a chief operating officer, fuck, yeah, dude, that sounds sick. Like that's, that's what I deserve. Okay, cool, that's a title, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you go and do it and you're like, okay, well, this isn't the freedom I was, I was looking for, you know. So we subliminally buy the RV and then it becomes our life. You know, we get out of the franchise business, send it out to a farm in Colorado to help a buddy in need. And then we were like dude, we kind of just live in this thing. Now. It's kind of sick, you know and we haven't gone back, man.

Speaker 2: 4:39

I mean, before we got out to Colorado we came down here to Key West and it was like you know. I mean I hope I'm not blowing up the spot, but it's 45 bucks a night for water side access in Key West. You can't, you can't get that kind of deal. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 4:57

So it's freedom. It's, at the end of the day, it's freedom, but that concept seems so fucking scary. When you are about to transitioning, you sit down and talk to these people that are telling you well, you really need to get into contracting or you really should be doing high stake sales. That's where you want to go, because you don't want to worry about money, and it's like, really, the main way to stop worrying about money is learn how to budget. Learning, learning how to cut away from things that you don't need, because you really don't need 90% of the shit you pay for, but nobody's willing to talk about that. They're not talking about trying to sell you something, but no one's selling being an entrepreneur. Why was that something that drew you? How did that journey begin?

Speaker 2: 5:51

Man, I mean just like everything for me really, it just comes organically. You know, like when something happens I bite. That's kind of how I got into the military in the first place. But you know it's like I'm doing all these things. I don't like. I'm like shit. There's all these benefits out there, there's all this, all of these awesome things that nobody told me.

Speaker 2: 6:13

I mean, I have a buddy who's in the Marines, right, and he got out, did what he thought were just like medical checks that you have to do when you get out, and then ended up getting this VA disability pay. He's like, fuck cool, Like I'm getting some money. And you know, come down the line, he didn't get service connected to the things he should have because he just thought he was going to a med check that he wanted to get done with, right, like if you're going to a med check, you're like, get me out of here, I do not want to have the haircut and shave that I have to to be in this facility right now. And you know he got in, he got out and then come down the line and he's got some serious emotional issues, some anxiety issues, some shit. That's like really bothering him and you know we're really close, so we talk about it very openly and I'm very open about everything and I hope that helps people out.

Speaker 2: 7:02

But you know, and then he has to push to get seen for anything. He has to push to get an MRI of his brain and lo and behold, there's a fucking tumor there. You know what I mean? Oh fuck. And so not only do you have this tumor that you know about on your brain which is never like a good thing, it is inherently the worst thing in the world but you're also having emotional issues, anxiety issues, and then you have to go through you know all these different avenues to find someone who's willing to say like, oh yeah, you could probably change your diet and do some balance exercises and it may change the way your brain composition is.

Speaker 2: 7:35

It's like what you know. So certain things like that are huge life changing, right. But then it all it goes all the way down to the minute which is like, hey, man, there's this retail benefit that you didn't know about in that scope you just bought, or that thing you really wanted, or you know the outdoor gear you really needed, whatever you need to kind of pursue your post-military dreams or during the military. You know your leave dreams you could have done it for cheaper, and we don't get paid a ton of money too. But if you can get it for cheaper, you need to get it for cheaper, fuck yeah, and you learn that when you get out man.

Speaker 1: 8:09

Pro deals, bro, pro deals, oh my.

Speaker 2: 8:11

God, it's a reserve. It's a reserve that we're all missing out on because it's not easy enough to understand. I mean, we've all been there, we've all gotten something and been like, fuck, I know there's like a deal, and then someone comes in with the same shit. You know, you get like some new Merals, and then you show up into the team space and some other bros got the Merals and I was like bro, I got this.

Speaker 1: 8:30

You're like, yeah, dude, me too, me too bro, I swear I almost cried when Patagonia shut off the pro deal for soft guys. That was how many emails did you send?

Speaker 2: 8:43

Did you send like 11 emails? Because I did. I was like no dude, but I've been to like this school and this school, so I'm kind of like a professional climber, If you get.

Speaker 1: 8:53

If you thought about it they're like not really, I found one loophole. I found one loophole that gave me one extra year, my last year before I. Before I got out and retired, I was working at S3, running the S3X and personnel recovery was a category that they had that was available. I'm like well, this is within my purview. I do manage personnel recovery. I just wrote up that memo as fast as I could, sent that shit to them and that last year I was like I need workout shorts.

Speaker 2: 9:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you just, you just eat your way in there. Dude, I'll tell you right now. Maybe it's something you don't know, but did you ever use expert voice or experticity? No, oh, okay. So this is like kind of what we're doing. So we're putting together this PDF of like hey, here's your state funded benefits, here are your federal benefits, and you can find this shit. Like, if you wanted to find it, you could. It's just not easy enough between deployments depression, anxiety, overwork caffeine, sugar and nicotine.

Speaker 2: 10:00

It's not easy enough to do it, especially when no one in the fucking military knows how to use a modern computer. So we're putting it all together and putting it in a PDF and it's taking some time. But it goes through everything from federal to retail, and the expert voice thing is to check it out. You go on vet rewards, which is another kind of just like you know GovEx type website if you've ever been on one of those and they just flow out your deals for you and they're like hey, here are the deals that you can get, here are the deals that you need to pay for. If you pay for theirs, you can get a membership to expert voice, which, in comparison to the Patagonia deal, expert voice, is like a factor of 10 better. Oh yeah, I'm talking like scopes, I'm talking silencers, I'm talking guns, I'm talking everything.

Speaker 1: 10:51

Yeah, Dude, the. The pro deal with Vortex was chef's case. Yeah, I was.

Speaker 2: 11:00

I actually I just put in a huge order. I have, I haven't. I haven't sent the yet, but I'm just looking at it like, dude, 800 bucks for that, I'm saving 800 bucks. I'm losing money on this deal. Dude, I've got to buy this, I have to. But when you don't have a mortgage it's huge dude.

Speaker 1: 11:19

Well, you know, I have my house in.

Speaker 2: 11:20

Virginia Beach because the VA loan is unbeatable. And then I rent it out and I make more than my, my, my, uh, my principal on it. So it's like, okay, I'm good to go.

Speaker 1: 11:31

That's a business.

Speaker 2: 11:32

Now I can just live in my RV. Yeah, you know what I mean? It's, it's our greatest benefit that people are afraid to use right now and it's like, at the end of the day, bro, the rates are what they are. Waiting isn't going to help you.

Speaker 1: 11:45

You know, use your VA loan, use your VA loan, and that's why it's important to have these conversations, because it's not the most sexy thing to talk about. People want to live in the past. People want to always, and it's great to talk about those awesome memories to make to generate great content online. People love that, but that's not what I'm here for. Like, I want to appeal to the listener, to the guys like us that made it through the worst shit. Like, look, we can shoot the shit and talk about the worst days in selection or in hell week, but that's not going to help us. Or the guys like us who are looking for some new insight on how to survive in today's world, cause we made it through that shit.

Speaker 1: 12:33

That's awesome, but, fuck, dude, like seeing other people succeed at things that I want to do, or hearing about new things. There are guys right now there aren't going to college because they've been told that, oh, you know, you're too old, you can't do it. It's like, fuck that VR and E go to school, so you've already conquered one amazing thing. Keep reaching for new goals, keep reaching for new things. It just takes guys like us talking about that shit, talking about what we're doing now, cause otherwise, people are just going to think that the best thing that they have to offer is what they did 10, 20 years before. That's bullshit, oh right.

Speaker 2: 13:11

I'm glad you mentioned VR and E, because people don't know Voc rehab is such like this bad ass tool. It's like, oh, I don't want to go to school, man, cause what the fuck is. You know what the fuck is financial management going to do for me? Well, first of all, you get a free degree. So it's like 45 grand and you get it for free, so it's a pretty valuable piece of paper. So if you don't want to do that, well, guess what, dude? What do you want to do? You want to dive professionally? You know, it's like you already got your now e-card, but do you want to be a pro diver? Do you want to do you want to fly planes? Do you want to do fucking anything? It's like you can use voc rehab for any course, essentially, I mean, you know, within certain limits, within certain levels of disability rating, it's a flexible benefit super flexible.

Speaker 1: 13:55

It is and it it's amazing for guys like us from the soft community, because if you want to be a doctor, if you want to be a lawyer, the barrier to entry has always been money. The personal barrier to entry has always been time and age. You always tell yourself I'm too old to do this or I don't have enough time because I'm a father, I'm a husband, we got all these other different requirements and things I have to do. But with VR and E and you're, if you have a high enough rating, you're going to get that doctorate. You're going to become that lawyer. That's written in the 38 CFR.

Speaker 1: 14:34

I sat down with a friend of mine the other day breaking that down because he's like I want to be a doctor, but no programs, you got to pay for it. It's like whoa, no, no, no, 38 CFR. You're on your own. You're 100% combat. You get paid CRSC, 100% disabled, you get additional time. You will get that doctorate. You were a former fucking Navy SEAL. You were a former Green Beret. That's your dream. If you really want to be a lawyer, you really want to be that doctor, they will pay for it. You just have to fucking show up, take the classes and fucking get the grades Like that's something we've all done before.

Speaker 2: 15:10

That's it. Yeah, all you got to do is put in the time and effort you approach anything like you approach being in the team to team guy. Think about it. You have no fucking phone. You're not hitting up chicks Like, yeah, maybe you're drinking on days off and you're meeting some chicks, but it's never what you're spending your day doing. You know what I mean Exactly. Yeah, if you focus on school, you know how fucking easy that will be for you, especially with your level of stress management.

Speaker 2: 15:37

The thing is, dudes think they're too old to start that path, just like you're talking about. Like, oh, I can't be a lawyer or doctor. I mean, these kids are starting when they're 18. That's what they've always wanted to do with their lives. It's like, well, first of all, you got your degree in work ethic.

Speaker 2: 15:52

That's the hardest part of getting that degree and then, second of all, the person that you you're a compatriot who went to that college program while you got in the military if you got out anywhere within 14 years, they're still paying off their fucking loans, dude. Yeah, I mean, they're working as an attending after six years of school. So you're looking at eight to. You're really realistically looking at about a decade before you start getting paid what you're supposed to, and the whole time you're barely paying off student loans, unless you have access to a trust fund or something like that. And that's you know, that's like that doesn't really count in the calculation. For a dude like you, it's paid for, you're good, you're starting in the same spot, except for you have insane world experience.

Speaker 1: 16:36

Exactly, and it's being a leader within your community. That's the other thing that's really powerful, that I'm really trying to champion and get people to think about. When you are able to knock out such a and it is a hard thing to do, it will be, but the greatest things in life aren't supposed to be hard. Anything that's free, anything that's given merits little value, right, you go through this hard school. You finally get that, that doctorate, become that lawyer, become that doctor. Now you're a leader in your community and I would argue right now, when we need more of our guys like us women as well that were part of our G-WAT era, the guys and gals that went to war, they deserve the most fucking freedom to go after those hard degrees, go after those frigging professions of prestige to become leaders within the community to help inspire the next generation of good Americans. I still remember feeling like, if doctor meant something, I feel like that still means something today. Or if you are an engineer or somebody that has gone to a school to earn that piece of paper that says, hey, I'm a fucking scholar of this specific thing. Now I can help create something that's of value. We need more people to have that combat experience, that leadership experience, so you can kind of help that next generation.

Speaker 1: 18:09

I don't want to be self-serving in my next 20, 30, 40 years in life. I want to work my ass off because I know in reality is retirement is just the easy way to death. Like I'm about to be 40 in a couple months. Like just because I'm done in the military doesn't mean I'm going to sit back and like, oh, I'm retired, I'm done, I could, but that's going to guarantee one thing for sure I'll be dead by 50, 100%. Or I keep achieving, or I keep driving and trying to achieve more.

Speaker 1: 18:37

And like that has been proven and has shown that people that consistently engage with a profession that they're passionate about, that drives them to get up and compels them to do something for others, they live to be longer. And I want to be an old, burnt out, fucking old dude that's done enough for his community, that feels good about it, that has attained something. So I feel like our service is not just like the keynote, it's like just a great stepping stone. But so many of our guys have been told this lie that yeah, you're good, now go make some really good money for the next couple of years, stack more stress on your shoulders and then burn out and maybe deal with suicide and anxiety. Dealing with this shit too, and it's like dude, it doesn't have to be.

Speaker 2: 19:25

Yeah, bro, it's brutal. I mean, especially for guys like us, where you've had a couple of TVIs and you get out, you may not have, like your diet and your exercise plan kind of measured out to the level of success it should be, and you're transitioning into this new job and now everything's different. You gotta learn how to use fucking Excel and PowerPoint and all this shit and you feel all these barriers because you have these deadlines for this company. You're treating it like it's operationally, like relevant, and you're worrying the shit out of yourself and you're letting everything slip. And then you just think to yourself what the fuck am I even doing? Like, what's the pointy? What am I really doing to succeed here? Who am I influencing? How am I bettering my community? And I asked myself that a couple of times.

Speaker 2: 20:09

And doing the gym shit. It's like, yeah, okay, I can get behind getting people in shape. For me, getting people in shape makes a lot of sense. It's one of the. It is the leading killer in human beings in America for the past, I think, decade or so it's heart disease. So it's like, okay, I'm doing something good, maybe I can unite, engage myself behind that. But then I have this huge corporate structure behind me. That's basically like yeah, but and you know it kind of it kills you.

Speaker 2: 20:41

You know you get out of this service lifestyle where it's like, okay, me and the boys doing shit for everybody, and then you kind of lose that impetus. You lose a little bit of motivation in the gym, you lose a little bit of that motivation at home. You're like, fuck man, I really wish I could feel like I'm doing something again. It makes you wanna go fucking contract and go do shit like that, where you're like, okay, I didn't like being in, but maybe I'll like the contract world and that's where a lot of dudes go. Or maybe I'll go back into the, you know, into the federal world and I'll go to, you know, whatever you know.

Speaker 2: 21:14

There are so many different avenues for us to just kind of go back and and I don't have to say, use it as a crush, because lots of dudes just wanna do that and it's a valid option but to just kind of fall back on what you know and, instead of exploring who you want to be, you know, and the entrepreneur world is perfect for that Go find what you wanna be and if there isn't something doing it, just do it yourself. You know, if there's nothing in your community doing it the way you think it should be done, do it yourself. You know, fix what you think is broken. It's what we do fundamentally, you know.

Speaker 1: 21:47

Dude, so true, and you hit it on the nail on the head right there. Like we are mission driven individuals, like we love having that mission set right in front of our face, like that timeline, that deployment counter, like we know we're gonna do something that's gonna be a value to the greater organization and somebody at the other end of this is gonna benefit from our hard work. And every time some great calamity I can't fuck you up, dude, I'm with it.

Speaker 2: 22:21

Calamity. I do that all the time.

Speaker 1: 22:22

The curse In the world. You just sit back and look at your social media and you see the veterans in your own friends groups start screaming for calls of action, wanting to be part of it. And it's like dude, you don't have to constantly put yourself in this mindset where you have to jump in and be part of the next great war or the next cause. Like you can find a call to action and a mission in your own community. Like it doesn't have to be this thing where, if we see somebody the perfect example was, and just recently with the events that occurred in Gaza, in Israel Every single one of my social media channels is blowing up people saying get me, put me back in. I want to get back. It's like dude, your time's done, your time's done. There's no value for you to make these posts, to make this great call of how you Could make a difference, because, guess what, you're not making a difference. You're making a post on social media.

Speaker 2: 23:33

It's fine a way to make a difference at home.

Speaker 1: 23:35

It is it for a lot of guys it's. It's hard to be able to look at the world and say, man, like it, stop chasing that idea as being like the end all be all of how you can measure your success in life. We've been at war, we've done that. Now look at your own backyard, your own city, your own town and realize, like shit, there's things I could do, there's some people I can help right here. There's tons of homeless people. There's tons of people that need mentoring and coaching. Like that to me seems like one of the greatest things that we can do within our own community To help inspire hope and change is being able to mentor, a coach, our own brothers.

Speaker 1: 24:17

It's like once we get out, once we are out like and start learning and succeeding and, yes, failing, we have fucking data points. We have metrics. We don't have to let other people do the same mistakes. We can be like a wait, wait. Everybody rally around me. I got lessons learned. I just lost out on three grand with a really bad fucking Mission. I really bad personal project. Everybody gather around let's, let's go through this. But it's things like that that we don't see as being important or vital when in reality, like that's the shit we need to get behind, being able to talk and share about this experience, a transition, the learning and getting back to being successful in the civilian world, because it is definitely not intuitive to the warfighter.

Speaker 2: 25:01

Yeah, dude, it's way easier to deploy. I mean, you know, if you could, if you could find out and really it's not, it's not a big secret, but if you could channel the energy in the drive and the dudes getting out of you know, the special operations, special forces community, you could channel them into something productive instead of like the Confusion and fuck, like just fucked up fest that it it really is. You know, hey, channel these dudes, let people know in an easy, digestible way. Here are things you can do immediately to really step up your game, to transition, seem you seamlessly to, to feel good about yourself. Okay, you know, you could move out of your house, rent it out, move into a space that fits you and your family for the time being, generates some income. Figure out what you're doing with yourself. Start your business nine months before you get out, just so you have the name. Start thinking of ideas. Here are some tax benefits that you can access by getting your fucking your your business credit card rolling already, because you need to start building that credit so you can actually access some more credit on that card. Here are a thousand things you should probably do.

Speaker 2: 26:10

As you know, the the creative, innovator individuals. We are in the military. As far as the military is concerned, right, we're all listening to orders. Now, doing the same thing and showing up at the same place weren't the same beautiful? But as far as we're concerned, we're the innovators. Were the? You know, we're the special, the special warfare specialist. So Go out there and start doing your own thing. Get that business started. Start the credit card.

Speaker 2: 26:32

Just start knocking out some of the confusion in the beginning, because even though Thinking of the name of your business is easy and linking a business account and a credit card is easy and keeping track of those numbers is easy, that's baseline. You know, you've just made a name, that's it. You do all those things. You make all the contacts, you do all that shit. You save all the things in one spot. You make a little PDF, a budget worksheet. That's step one. I don't want it to sound daunting, but you have to understand it. That's step one. You just did step one. Now you have a public name, that's it. Now you can go into the website. Building a website's expensive. Building an app is expensive. My idea is expensive. Talking to investors is confusing and I don't know where to find them.

Speaker 2: 27:14

You know Collaborating like this and podcasts like this and in different forums. You know, that's how we kind of can keep each other and check, but unfortunately, all these forums, you know LinkedIn is the only social media platform that I think is Still credible in a way in which it actually wants to help people. Like, everyone likes to tell me, yeah, when I say Instagram is a little bit of garbage, you know, they're like, yeah, but I mean I never would have learned how to slice a banana the right way if I hadn't watched. It's like, okay, yeah, fair enough, all right, I see the validity there. Moving on though, you know, and then tick tock, they're like, yeah, dude, but I would have never understood how to strain spaghetti that way if I'd never watched tick tock. It's like, okay, fair enough, but LinkedIn is still trying and making an effort.

Speaker 2: 27:56

But you have so many people posting things that are so self-serving that Shape themselves in a way to be like you know, help for the community. You know, talk to me, I work for first financial, financial brothers or whatever. It's like, well, I don't really need you right now because it's a small business and I don't have any capital to spend on financial understanding. But you know, could you post a free video on what you do for the first step employees, it's like no, they're not gonna do that because they're a business and that's the first stage of locking you in, whereas guys like us it's like hell, yeah, bro, I'll tell you how to start your business and in what order you should do it, and where you could get some extra funding and what courses you could take for free and what courses aren't free, but they'll get you in there.

Speaker 2: 28:39

Like, there's so many things that we have access to that guys are like holding on to jealously. It's like no dude, spread that as fast as you can. You find a good deal and you get it to everybody else. We need it. Dude, we'll flip the economy on our own. There's so many dudes out there who could be incredible entrepreneurs, but that first step in the right direction is the hardest. It's like, okay, I'm gonna be independent. That's this, this little mental commitment, I'm gonna do it on my own. It's tough.

Speaker 1: 29:09

Yeah, it is tough and but at the same time, when you finally commit to it, it is one of the most rewarding feelings on earth. Like it's not. We're not built for the easy path. We're not. If we wanted to do the easy thing, I Would argue that none of us would have ever made it through our selection processes and none of us would have been successful within the communities that we are a part of. We don't want the easy thing, so a good litmus test is when you're getting out and you find yourself going towards something that seems very frivolous, very easy and cookie cutter. Run the fuck away from it because it's not made for you.

Speaker 1: 29:55

There's a reason why you went through selection. There's a reason why you chose to go become a Marsock Raider. There's a reason why you chose to be a Navy SEAL, green Beret or Ranger because you wanted to be amongst the very best. So if you find yourself running towards something that is so simple and doesn't challenge you, run the fuck away from you or run away from it. It's not going to make you happy. Now, when you were going through your transition journey, when you had the idea like, okay, I'm going to separate, I'm going to get out what were some of the things that you started working on.

Speaker 2: 30:33

Well, the first thing is I just started reaching out to guys and it all ties into where I'm at now. I was reaching out to dudes and I'm like there's got to be some sweet deals out there. If you're in the teams in any regard, or in the military in general, you're like there are sweet deals out there and other people are getting them and I don't want to miss out on my very last one. So what should I do? Looking at Skill Bridge and looking at a few other things and maybe, oh, should I sell back my fucking leave or should I take it all before I go? These are all huge things for dudes and you're talking about like I mean really, what should be blips on your radar? Is you're exiting?

Speaker 2: 31:12

You should be, first and foremost, taking care of your medical. So I knew that was number one. Let's start getting the ball rolling here, because I know guys who have been hung up and had to stay in to finish some kind of medical because they find something that's mortally wrong with you and they're deciding whether to medically retire you or for you to get out, like you fucking ask. So that's what I wanted to get the ball rolling with. First was like okay, first and foremost, when can I start the medical shit and how is that going to go? And you kind of have to learn it on your own.

Speaker 2: 31:43

I mean, that's really step one for anyone, or should be. It's six months before you get out. You should start getting seen for everything and anything that has ever happened to you. Mris, X-rays on every joint yes, those are bad for you to do all in a row, but this should be the only time you have to do that. And, honestly, an MRI costs an insane amount of money if you don't get it covered by insurance. So get this insanely sophisticated technology working for you for the very last time that you can. So that's kind of what I started doing. Everything takes for fucking effort doing the hearing, getting fitted for hearing aids.

Speaker 2: 32:17

Everything takes a fucking century. So getting it rolling six months early is always good, but then you're like okay, so what am I going to do next? Everybody's going to look into contracting. Don't blame yourself for doing it. Go ahead and look. Go see what's out there.

Speaker 2: 32:31

Do you want to get paid to be on a ship for six months at a time? Do you want to pull in security for five minutes when you're going through Somalia for the five mile stretch that you're relevant for six months at a time? Do you want to get paid to do that? Do you want to go stand up watch at some fob in Afghanistan that sees no action? Are those things you want to spend your time doing? Maybe, like you get paid. You do get paid good money and there is a chance of something to pop off. You could potentially work your way up to finding some fucking lucrative, sneaky, peaky contracts guarding or standing up a diamond mine in Sierra Leone would be one but there's like four dudes doing it and they're hogging that. If you're getting into contracting, trust me, there are a fuckload of dudes who are in contracting and they've been contracting longer than you. It doesn't matter if you were a skilled team, six for a decade.

Speaker 2: 33:25

They don't fucking care.

Speaker 1: 33:26

Yeah, yeah, I am. I'm just going to that. Just to me, that would be in my fucking.

Speaker 2: 33:33

Believe it or not. When I was getting out, I was like if there was that, that's what I'd be doing.

Speaker 1: 33:38

I've seen blood. Yeah, yeah, all right, you're not going to take out the.

Speaker 2: 33:43

You know, I don't think we'd be as covert about it. You just be, instead of like in a suit, looking all professional and smart, running through the middle of Sierra Leone, you would just be like you know, fucking kid it out, like pointing your gun at everyone's face, like I need to get the fuck out of here. I cannot think about this right now.

Speaker 1: 34:02

But yeah, I don't want to have to put diamonds in my wallet to make it across the board.

Speaker 2: 34:07

I'm going to make it back to him. I'm rich. It's like dude, you sacrificed your literal asshole, but um yeah dude like those are.

Speaker 2: 34:15

Those are the things that I was looking for because, you know, like my generation of dudes, you know, there's like some good deployments and some terrible deployments and that's kind of like the end of the GWAT era is like, yeah, you can get some cool ones or some shitty ones, and yeah, it all depends on your perspective and what you want to do with your career and why you got in or whatever. But if you want to really get after it, you get out and you're like I haven't done enough, I haven't done enough. And so, yeah, maybe contracting is something you need to look into for your peace of mind. And I have a buddy who went from seals, went to go do the Delta screener, to go go and get into CAG and screen positive, and then from his interview was like I mean, I asked him, you know, I asked him we're really close friends and I was like how did it go? And he was like it was cool.

Speaker 2: 34:58

These guys aren't really like me and I didn't feel like I would be friends with my instructors. So maybe this isn't like, maybe I don't want to do this at any means necessary, you know, with any kind of person, with any you know, and that kind of helped him dispel the myth of contracting, like, do I want to go over there with you know, some dude who was a CS, who bought a kit, maybe not, you know, I don't want to go over there with some fucking cook or some guy like that, and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, bro, but I am saying that there's a certain companionship that you're looking for, I think, more so than you are looking for like the hitter aspect, like you're looking to do it together as brothers, and there's a lot of shit that we do, exactly you know. So I looked into that world right, a long, long explanation to say I looked into that world and I was like, okay, if something happens, if one of my buddies gets into something or we can do something that makes an impact that I'm interested in, then okay, yeah, like I'll do it, I'll get my kit squared away, I'll go get it over the range and I'll get squared away to go do what I'm supposed to do. Otherwise, I need to explore other options, and what are the best options to me?

Speaker 2: 36:06

Entrepreneurship you know, there's an awesome program that started up from one of my Bud's instructors at UCLA where they're kind of pairing great entrepreneurs you know, powerful CEOs who have come from our community with a cohort of American Seals and Israeli Seals and just having like, oh wow, super cool program. The experience was really legitimate. You do a week in California, you do a week in Israel and you kind of just exchange ideas, meet new people, and that was really awesome and eye-opening. And unfortunately I couldn't flesh out my personal goals and my personal idea because I did link up with my cousin. You know, I was just sending my cousin's messages because I knew they're all way older than me, they're all in their 50s, 60s.

Speaker 2: 36:57

And so I was like, hey, you guys have been at the business for a long time, what should I be doing? Here's a couple of my ideas, here's some things I want to pursue. And then, you know, my cousin was like well, dude, just come work with me. I figured out firsthand from someone who's been doing it for a long time and so that's what I went for, and it just wasn't for me. But I did learn from that course and from being proactive about getting a job that is more along the breadth of being an entrepreneur. There are plenty of entrepreneurs. I'll look at people who do franchises like oh yeah, you're a total entrepreneur, but it is entrepreneurship. You build a business.

Speaker 1: 37:33

It is 100%, it's all your shit it is.

Speaker 2: 37:36

So I learned all the ins and outs from that side. I learned and I will say this I know 10 times out of 10, I'm going to tell someone look up the entrepreneurial route, look up doing your own thing while you're getting your legs under you. Yeah, if you want to go work for Salesforce, I know like 11 team guys who are working for Salesforce and that's all they want is to have an easy job where you do BD and do whatever and then go base, jump on weekends and ski, sure, that's fine. But while you're doing it, just build a business. Build a business that you're interested in. Do you like working with metal? But you don't think you're very good at it? So are a lot of fucking people Just try it out. They might like your shit better because of what you've done rather than the end state product.

Speaker 2: 38:22

A lot of people are buying the person that's building your shit as opposed to the idea of the shit itself. So that that was my experience is like it's easier to find a job when you got a job, and I'm gonna start learning that the things I need to know to be independent completely. You know, and that was it, man. I mean, it was really simple to me. It's like just let's learn how to be fucking independent, because you know you've been institutionalized for a decade. There may be some lingering effects of how you you know how you, how you Represent yourself in the day-to-day. So that was kind of my journey and I think a lot of people experience the same thing. It's like okay, I'm going for security first and Then individuality, and a lot of guys get caught up in the security and lose that individuality. I mean, if you go straight for a DEA job, you're fucking there, you know that's your new career. Yeah. So I'm always gonna advocate for just try your own thing while you're feeling safe and secure, and Then do that.

Speaker 2: 39:23

Like you said earlier, build a goddamn budget. Build a. You got your admit budget early, early, early early. All the things you pay for, how much you spend on groceries a month. That's one of the things we offer and I'm not trying to pump my business up at all here, because you can create your own budget If you feel like, using Excel or Google sheets or whatever, but we create budgets for people. It's like okay, here's this budget, pretty cookie cutter for someone like us. Put all your bills into it. Where are you making money? And then things that you know your spouse or your family is you know, just fill in your deficit deficits. You're pros and cons and you'll be so much better off when you try transition because you're not gonna be. You know, when you're in the military it's like at a certain point I'm gonna get a bonus so I may go into some debt, yeah, but I will get out of it because I'm gonna re-enlist and I'm gonna make like 40 grand, sweet yeah a lot of people depend on that.

Speaker 2: 40:22

When you're in the civilian world, nobody's gonna kind of dig you out of that hole.

Speaker 1: 40:27

No, it's all on you and that's the thing that we have to understand. You can be more successful by taking those few steps before you get out to just Learn how to be fiscally responsible, which we aren't. Learn how to budget. Learn how to live without frivolous things that you don't need. Do that hard work up front and that takes away 90% of the stress, the financial burden.

Speaker 1: 40:56

Now you can focus on actually Dreaming and thinking of what you really want to do, rather than stressing about having to get that job, because if you stress and you're worried about getting that job, you're gonna go into something. The first thing that throws you know that comes your way. That throws you a reasonable salary and you're gonna be I'll take that right. Then you're gonna be miserable. We're gonna be hooked for it because it's you got outstanding credit card bills. That's what you're going for. They take some time. Learn how to do a budget. Yeah, before we wrap up, liam, what are some pro tips for our audience out there and what they can do today To start moving towards that entrepreneurial track? Dude?

Speaker 2: 41:42

the four biggest tips are Start your business today, so you don't have to have the final name, you don't have to have the final address, you don't have to have the credit card address. Not, everything isn't gonna fucking match up, dude. You're gonna move around a little bit, think you're gonna go wrong. Just start. You just have to start. You're gonna fuck up. Oh yeah, you're gonna fucking blow it. Your first company name is gonna be really fucking stupid. And I mean you're coming from someone who has bought in my company Vut, silent but deadly.

Speaker 2: 42:12

But we came to that. We found that. You know, the alliteration was what we wanted. We wanted all these different things. It came with our symbology. It were so, but that came over time. You know you, you just have to start.

Speaker 2: 42:25

So number one is always just fucking start, and if you think it's too early, it's, it's not. It isn't too early because you're gonna start learning by making mistakes. And then Number two is in the transition process, there are going to be so many questionable variables that everyone kind of looks at like hang-ups. Am I gonna have consistent income? Am I gonna be living here? Am I going to have you know this, this crazy lucrative job, or am I not gonna land it do I have, you know, a cushion of cash behind me? The most important thing is just to get proactive, like we've been talking about, build a budget, understand where you can and can't spend and then kind of start bringing your spending down. In that six month period you start going to the doctor, start bringing your spending down to see what you actually need, because it's insane how much money all of you I know are spending on fucking beer. Like you are going out to the bars every weekend and that's like $300 night, $300 night, $300 night, $300 night. Talking about like $1,000. We talk about four grand a month insane. You know it's like part of your, your, your whole budget is to spend money like that. And once you eliminate it, you're like oh shit, where did this disposable income that I've never had before end up coming from? So number two is really just like Understand how your, how your budget works. You know a lot of us get in more like 18, 20, 21, 22, absolutely no clue. You have more money than everyone. You know they're all in college, so you just spend it. And then number number three, and probably the most valuable tip, is when you're getting out, sit down and write down the things that you think you like to do.

Speaker 2: 44:10

You've lost a lot of time Developing your individual self outside of your military self. You know we all like shooting, we all like going out and getting after, we all like blowing shit up. We all like burning stuff and breaking things. We all like buying kid wearing kid, doing house runs. We all love that shit.

Speaker 2: 44:27

But Start finding out what it is you like absolutely the most. If you like shooting the most dude sick you could start a range, a really successful range, because private lessons with you know a bona fide Navy Seal or a green beret or whoever, are Really really really expensive, especially if you can prove yourself on the range man. So you know, look into investing in land, starting your own range. And what is that going to lead to? Well, you're gonna learn about city codes, area codes, developing real estate, and you're gonna learn, hey, can I actually Build a range in a non-commercial area? No, you can't. You have to get it rezoned.

Speaker 2: 45:04

So there's Now. You're an entrepreneur. You do your first gay thing that you're like, oh, this sucks, you're not sure. No, that's, that's, that's really it. And then, finally, talk to your family about what you're doing. Talk to your boys about what you're doing and don't stop communicating with the community, because you only lose your sense of community when you, when you, when you lose those friends, when you think you know we all go through training dude, you get rolled. You're not part of that class anymore, you're barely friends anymore. You don't know that dude anymore. You know you go on teams that have different deployment cycles. Don't even know those guys anymore. They could. I've had so many ridiculous opportunities, you know, from just doing cool podcast and me and cool dudes like yourself to fucking teaching billionaires how to fucking swim and private swimming lessons. Get out there and just talk to people you know like. Make yourself open, honest and available and you will meet more people awesome brother, liam.

Speaker 1: 46:01

Again, thank you so much for being here and Hope to have you again soon, man, to share some more insight, and I'm already listening. Take care, we'll see you next time you like what we're doing and you enjoying the show, don't forget to share us. Like us, subscribe and head on over to our patreon, where you can be part of our community and get access to all of our episodes as soon as they drop. Remember, we get through this together. Take care you.