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Security Halt!
#206 Bryan Ray: From Green Beret to Photographer.
What happens when a seasoned warrant officer from the 10th Special Forces Group transitions to civilian life and takes up photography? Join us as our guest shares his incredible journey, starting from his enlistment in 2003 through his remarkable military career, which includes assignments at Fort Polk, recruiting duties, and rising to the ranks of Special Forces. From serving a mountain team and multiple deployments to Afghanistan. This episode gives you a front-row seat to the ups and downs of military life and the profound challenges and rewards of forging a new path after service.
Imagine documenting your life through the lens of a camera amidst the chaos of military deployments. Bryan Ray did just that, and it turned into a passion that guided his transition from military to civilian life. You'll hear about how he faced initial resistance for carrying a camera but ultimately captured cherished memories and created meaningful souvenirs. Now, as he pursues photography professionally, we explore the hurdles of standing out in a crowded field and the art of storytelling. This episode highlights the importance of preserving moments not just for personal reflection but also to share invaluable experiences with family and friends.
Building a specialized media team for high-adventure clients is no small feat. Our guest walks us through his hopes and future dreams of selecting the right personnel for an ambitious project, managing the balance between passion and practicality, and navigating the social media landscape for business growth. From hiring independent contractors to the ultimate goal of providing salaried positions, you'll discover the intricacies of growing a small business. We also delve into the importance of humor and relatable content in engaging specific audiences, particularly the military community. This episode provides a roadmap for anyone looking to balance work and family life while transitioning from a structured military career to the entrepreneurial world.
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LinkedIn: Bryan Ray
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Business Instagram: rayality_media
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Speaker 2:Let's go, you're dealing with an expert in guerrilla warfare with a man who's the best with guns, with knives, with his bare hands, a man who's been trained to ignore, ignore weather to live off the land job was disposed of enemy personnel to kill period, with my attrition so you're a retired warrant at a 10th group.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, awesome, nice. Finally another warrant officer. Yeah, boy, do you love excel as much as I do?
Speaker 2:I guarantee it, oh dude, that was one of the. That was one of the programs that I was good enough to make it work, yeah, but that's kind of. That's kind of where I ended. I don't think I was ever fully an excel ninja yeah, no, no.
Speaker 1:I got good enough from youtube and freaking, just tutorials. I'm like fuck, yeah, this is awesome you get good enough to where people are like, oh man, that's pretty impressive, and it's always other fucking nerds. It's like god damn it, this is my life now yeah, it's a.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm pretty good at finding a template that somebody else made the I drive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh well, brian, welcome to securepodcast. Man, I'm excited to have you on. I found you and I found somebody that's uh like a lot of our other soft brothers are getting out willing to go the path that's uh uncharted and build something new, uh, so I'm excited to have you on the show to like dissect your journey, my man, yeah thanks, man.
Speaker 2:I appreciate being able to come on and kind of share the journey. Uh, getting on podcast wasn't something I ever would have thought I would want to do getting out, but it is cool to kind of share knowledge and reconnect with the community and even pass on some of the lessons learned of what it's like short term, after you get out, and what those feelings are like, what work looks like and just what life is like after spending your entire career in the military and like all of a sudden being in the next chapter you know.
Speaker 1:So, dude, absolutely we all tend to think that this is going to be the thing that we do forever. Um, being warrant officers. We're like, hey, how can I fucking stay on the team just a little longer? And, before you know it, something happens. Either life gets in the way or, you know, physical issues get in the way. Something happens and you have to pivot and, uh, I want, I want to dissect your journey, my man. So please tell us all about yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man. So I'll just uh go the kind of OPI blanket overview. Um, so, yeah, so I'm, I'm uh married, I got, I got four kids and you know my wife's been with me through the entire soft journey. Uh, I joined in 2003,. Right out of high school, um, as soon as you finished basic and airborne, I was down in uh fort polk with the 509th uh infantry down there, the geronimo op4 guys and um, that was that was actually such a cool assignment. Um, you know, for one we actually got to deploy and and do oif and everything. But also, just being being a professional bad guy, I mean it can make you a really good, uh good guy. So, um, definitely a great duty station. So, yeah, I spent, uh, I spent five years, um you know, in a regular infantry. I got pulled to do a short recruiting stint, so I was a regular army recruiter for two years. Um, probably probably one of my worst army experiences, like as far as you know just what that whole ecosystem looked like and everything.
Speaker 2:But again, every experience you get, good or bad, just it helps you somewhere else. So I got to see what it was like to be on the receiving end of just an extreme micromanagement environment, and you know I could use that to develop my own leadership style later on. So from there, um, I went to assessment and, uh, that's where the soft journey started. So, um, I was a Arabic speaker and a guy who are all signs pointed towards us going to fifth group. That's where all the air they even said, hey, get your, get your fifth group flashes on, cause you guys are going to fifth group. And then, like a week before graduation, they're like, hey, these 10 guys or whatever you know one 10 and and, uh, and 10th group.
Speaker 2:So, uh, I was one of the small handful of Arabic guys that went to 10th group. So, um, yeah, it started. It started there. I went to third battalion, 10th group. Uh, as a combo guy, I was on a mountain team. From there I did my swick tour, which, again, I got extremely fortunate, and I will admit that, uh is that my swick tour was at the mountain school right across the street from third battalion at 10th group.
Speaker 1:So that is the hidden gem. Everybody hears about this legendary mountain school. At 10th group, scott, it's.
Speaker 2:It's like, yeah, the stories we've heard, it's like that, uh, you know, a fantasy land yeah, and it is and and it will, and we'll get into that part of it too, especially as that's where my, my career culminated. Um, but yeah, very, very closely, uh, I don't know very the the whole mountain program was such a huge part of my life and my career. Um, but yeah, we'll get into that stuff. But so so I went there, uh, while it was under SWCC, which was just extremely short enough time for me to get a SWCC NCOER. Um, when I, when I left there, uh, I went straight to the warrant course, uh, after I commissioned uh to second battalion and then from there, um, multiple Afghanistan back-to-back deployments, and then I moved on to the mountain school, and that was it. That was the end of the ride.
Speaker 2:I ran the mountain school for a couple of years and that's where I retired out of. So, yeah, now I'm here in Colorado. Still, I entered the workforce as soon as I got out with a job that seemed like a pretty cool opportunity, was there for, yeah, just about a year, and at that point things didn't quite work out. And then I decided to go back to school. Well, not back to school, I never went to school. I decided to go to school and soak up some GI Bill, and then I ended up starting a business and all that stuff. So now here I am in the grind of starting a brand new company, while going to school and just figuring out what it's like to be just a dirty, rotten leg.
Speaker 1:Dude, that is a path that so many of us find ourselves in and we stumble onto it, and now I am trying to encourage people to just go into it naturally, rather than because, like you said it, like went right into work, like check that block, then I left that job, check that block, and then I found myself betting on myself and going to school yeah well, we're so no go ahead our whole career path.
Speaker 2:There's no stagnancy. You're not allowed to be stagnant. We wish we could be stagnant Like ask a ask a guy on a team. Hey, if you could, if you could be at E7 or E8 and stay on your team your entire career, would you rather do that? Or do you want to push to be a Sergeant, major Dude, like 90% of dudes would be like hey, man, I, I joined SF cause I wanted to be a team guy and if you could tell me I could just be a team guy, that's what I'll be. But the Army doesn't allow that.
Speaker 2:There's no such thing as being stagnant. It's up or it's out, which is unfortunate, especially in a place where experience rules. You know we want guys with more team time. Yes, and Op Tempo has disallowed that, and reduction in guys means guys are moving on to staff earlier, you know, to staff earlier. You know there's vacant positions that need to be filled and guys are getting pulled off the teams early because of it.
Speaker 2:But you know, getting back to where where this stemmed from, yeah, like as soon as you get out, what am I supposed to do? Just sit and relax for a while and then, you know, you get antsy. If you have to contribute, you have to work, you have to be doing something or you feel like you're failing. So, yeah, I just jumped right into the workforce, right, and I can't I can't say that it was a mistake. There was a lot of lessons learned from that and it was a good experience and I built a pretty cool network because of it. But, yeah, like I don't know, I'm not sure what I would do differently. But yeah, there's definitely this thing that says I can't just get out and not do something. I've got to keep rolling. Yeah, and what? Uh? What'd you transition into? Yeah, so, um, when I was at the mountain course, we were working with this company called hvmn and they had this ketone drink that that they were pushing with socom. They got a grant for it to do studies on it and basically what it does. Just a kind of short science lesson on it. Surface level science, don't worry. Like is that? Like?
Speaker 2:Ketones are something that your body will naturally produce and it does it when you're, when you don't have carbs on board. So when people do keto diet and things like that, um, after a couple days, eventually they'll get into ketosis and the benefit of that is a very efficient fuel that your body will run on. Um, it's like comparing diesel fuel to like nitromethane, you know, like if you want to go all day at a 70 or lower heart rate, um, if you want to think clear and all that stuff like ketones are just such an optimal fuel. That's completely natural. But when you start raising your heart rate and pushing and things like that like our job is, which is a very zero to hundred percent job job at the blink of an eye your body can't run on ketones at high heart rates like you'll bonk hard. So the idea was that this is something you can take and you can have ketones on board which will help you during the endurance portion of whatever you're doing. And then you still have glycogen available because you're still taking in carbs as well. So it really was an awesome dual fuel solution.
Speaker 2:And in running those studies because they used the mountain school, because it was up at altitude to run that, so you know we're running on garments and you know Oura rings, so they could take the metrics, they could look at sleep, they could look at heart rate, both for the placebo group and for the tested group, and that was the whole idea is to see, like, does this make enough of a difference? And I'd worked with this company enough, as as I was getting out, they were like, hey, we, we don't have anybody in this role. Like, we'd love to have you as part of the company. So, um yeah, I moved on with them and I moved on to run their what would be called like institutional sales. So basically, we're gonna, we're going to, sell wholesale to and this is going to be government, this is going to be major sports teams. Anybody that's going to buy in bulk, that's going to use it.
Speaker 2:And I guess what it kind of went from was. It went from me being in a position where I was going to be standing up a wing of this business and bringing other people on to just like things weren't working out. Not enough people really knew about it, the buyers weren't coming in at the rate that we all expected them to and you know, from a business standpoint, cost effectiveness, it costs more to keep me around than money that was coming in from my channel. So it was a decision you know it wasn't my decision Like, yeah, I mean I could. I could say it honestly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I lost the job. You know he mean I could say it honestly yeah, I lost the job. He said, hey, we're letting you go because of this. There was no bad blood there. My disappointments were only in I wasn't able to achieve what I wanted to achieve. But the job just started turning into more of a like now I'm cold calling, now I'm cold emailing, now I'm scrolling through LinkedIn and it's like dude, I felt like a recruiter again and so I wasn't happy anymore. Um, and things just weren't working out there. So, yeah, again, like I don't have any bad blood with the company or with anybody in it. I still keep in contact with like the whole crew. But, um, yeah, that was just kind of my first experience of dude. What's, what's life like on the outside? And hey, guess what? You can lose your job if things don't work out really easily. You don't lose your job in the army, you don't. You just get sent to S3.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can consistently fail your way up to a point. But yeah, like so you know, when I got a call, I was like hey, we're letting you go. I was like wait, it can just happen like that, yeah. And then all of a sudden I'm like I don't have a job. What am I, you know? So, yeah, that was my first attempt at post-military employment.
Speaker 1:But you're right though. Those are valuable lessons and it reinforces things like hey, wait a second. Yeah, this sucks, but at the same time, is this a silver lining, Because I don't like doing fucking cold calls. I don't like having to fucking scrub through endless LinkedIn posts and trying to find somebody that aligns with what I'm trying to sell. Like that is difficult.
Speaker 2:Um, it is man and you have to ask yourself, from a business perspective, every single decision you make is this making the company money? Yeah, and that's a hard mindset for me to have because, like I don't want to say, I don't care about money, but I really don't. I don't care about being wealthy, I don't care about any. I care about having enough to support my family to where they can have good experiences and grow to be, you know, good, good people, but I don't, I don't care about having a ton of money. So I never really had that mindset of, like you know, how much is this going to make us, how much is this deal, you know, and like really crunching numbers. It's just not something that I carry and it's something I'm going to have to work with, even with my own business as well.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, so what are you going back to school for now?
Speaker 2:so I went, uh, for the first semester, or at first year, I went for professional photography. Um, I, throughout my my career, I almost always had a camera with me. Um, it's just something I always enjoyed doing, I, always I love capturing all these different experiences around the world. And, um, it's funny because, even in the soft community, just like I mean, I think things have changed now, especially as a younger generation that was grown on social media is around and being out there is is more normal.
Speaker 2:But you know, I'm sure in your, your generation, in my time too, it was very weird to put anything online it was very weird dude oh my god, even dude, my wife hated it because she was on, you know, she had facebook and she had no pictures of me online on Facebook. In fact, if there was a picture, I'd be like blurred out or like cut out the face or something like that, to the point to where people thought she was a single mom. You know, like that, no idea, but that's just how it was.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember being a younger guy and wanting to take pictures and post them younger guy and wanting to take pictures and post them and it was the the hardest lesson learned, because you see other guys that are you're coming up with and they're sharing pictures and the first time your team sergeant or senior see that shit, it is just like fucking public lashings.
Speaker 2:oh yeah, take that shit off, especially if it's something that in some way could embarrass or discredit the unit. You know, which was just such a big thing, and but but where I headed with that was funny is, you know, you take all these pictures and you're the one team guy who always carries a camera and nobody really cares. And then at the end of deployment, what do you get? Hey, bro, do you have any of those pictures of me? Yep, hey bro, can we put those pictures on the drive?
Speaker 1:you know, like everybody wants them, but like nobody wants to be the guy to do it so fucking lutely, the biggest, one of the biggest critics and most fucking, just like straight up, like don't take any fucking cool guy pictures out of nowhere in a dm. Hey, do you got any pictures from that? Uh, 2015 deployment I'm like, oh yeah, all the ones that I got a lot of shit for trying to take and capture, but now all of a sudden you want some. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's something I implore guys to do. When guys want to come home, they want to do an entire career and they want to be sterile when they do it. And on the opposite side of my wall here I've got stuff from around the world from Africa, stuff from Iraq, from my whole career and I wish I had more, because I look at that and I can remember it and stuff that I'll never have an opportunity to go to these places again. So, like I tell guys, look, you might think you're too cool to collect souvenirs or too cool to take pictures, but someday you're going to be happy that you have them and your family is going to be happy and you're going to be able to tell stories about where this weird thing come from or what is this, and it's way more important than people realize.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, man. You're going around the world doing amazing shit, whether it's a J-set, whether it's a Finmission, whatever you're doing with your bros, with the people that you love and care for the most, stop, just reflect for a few moments.
Speaker 2:it doesn't have to be something completely stupid and reckless, but capture the moment, capture the adventure, exactly like it's okay, man, like, yeah, like you know, it doesn't mean, that doesn't mean take and do a facebook live or an instagram live on your freaking deployments you know.
Speaker 2:But what it does mean is like, hey, take that stuff, keep those memories, you know, and I guess that whole thing of like storytelling and capturing parts of history, it was always just more of a passion that I never really considered making it as something else. So when I lost that job and I was like, well, I need some money Like my retirement's not enough to keep the ship afloat here. So I was like, well, I'm going to use GI Bill, so I'm just going to go to school and I'm going to go to school for something I enjoy. So, yeah, I went for photography and I just started looking more and more to the business side of it and if it's something that I could create in a extremely overpopulated niche of photography you know there's tons of photographers, in fact I think it's like one of like the top like millennials all want to be photographers and Gen Zs all want to be content creators, you know. So how do you find a niche? How do you even, like, decide that you could start a business that could be successful? You know shooting with a camera, and a big part of that is just not every photo or media team is going to be the appropriate one for what you're doing.
Speaker 2:And there's only so many PAOs I'm sure you ran into it too as a team warrant. You've got PAO or you've got, you know, your camera people that you want to have attached to you for whatever you're doing, whether it's training or whether it's operational. And there's you, out of a squad of like who knows, maybe 10 guys that they, that PAO has, there's probably two that are like legit, you know you're like hey, this is the one camera person we always request, because this person is in shape, they know the skillset, they're safe, they're not a weirdo set. They're safe, they're not a weirdo. I mean, we're all a little bit weird, but you know what I mean. Like they're not going to embarrass you in a foreign country. You know they're a normal person. Um, and you run out. You don't have enough to do that and there's nothing like. You can't go on a mission, have a liability. You can't go on a mission to have somebody that can't hang.
Speaker 2:So when I started the business, the whole point was always going to be I want to set up a media team that is small, adventurous clients. So you know people who are doing high adventure things like maybe they're doing like multi-day expedition through the mountains, or maybe they're doing, maybe they're sailing in a freaking viking ship across the atlantic. You know, whatever it is, they need a media team that's not a liability that already understands planning, that can handle all that stuff. So, like my clientele, I've done weddings and things like that. You know, for experience and because I will do freelance work, but you know, my heart and soul on it is how do I share people's stories who want their stories shared but they don't just want to bring a camera nerd who's going to potentially sink the ship?
Speaker 2:So, um, ideally, if I could snap my fingers five years from now, I would have, you know, a cadre of 10 fricking prior shooters that I've taught how to run equipment. And now it's just this. You know awesome asset that could be used. Either you know something that SOCOM could use or even something that you know again, high venture YouTube clients are like, hey, I'm doing this thing and I want a freaking pipe hitter media team. That's what it is. So it's an opportunity for me to help share people's stories, which is what I'm passionate about, but also potentially line up jobs for guys as they get out if they want to trade in their guns for cameras. So that's kind of the direction that that it's pushing and and why I thought maybe I could make this work.
Speaker 1:So, no, no, the the concept is absolutely on point. Um, there's tons of and I would say there's individuals out there that do a lot of, um, awesome backpacking and guided hunts, but they don't have anybody with them, with the camera, equipment and the fitness to actually go with them and capture those events and like that's a market, like you're, you're on the something. And yeah, the scary part that I've I've inevitably run into is when you have a big enough dream and you're looking for a team and it's like, fuck, dude, like it's a lot of work, it's a lot of work on, uh, on one person. How do you, um, how do you go through that Working on it day in trying to build it as it's in flight?
Speaker 2:Uh, I think the the hardest part about it is you've got to plan. You've got to really plan your own things. And when there's nothing on the table, especially like when you don't have clients lined up back to back to back and you're working on your own time, you're like dude, what do I do with all this time? Like, because there's, I can do whatever I want to do. I can go out and freaking I've got a ranch, I got screw the animals all day. I can do whatever. But to actually like structure, what am I going to do throughout the day? As the business is building, you know, as I'm looking for clients, as I'm creating things, um, I treat it kind of the same way that you know you, you manage an ODA with training plans is what do I want to get better at, what do I need to be able to do and how do I train that? So I shoot and edit a lot of content that no one will ever see, because I want to try new things, I want to run new programs, I want to, you know, create a capability, um, that's going to work later. So I consider those. These are training days. So I plan in training days and then I plan in client meetings and then I just kind of let that stuff fall into place.
Speaker 2:So the biggest thing is just again, it's it's not being stagnant. Um, and I don't like, I don't advertise, you know I do. It's everything's word of mouth. Every client I've had has been a referral and that's the way I want it to be. Um, I, I don't make a ton of money on my pension but I make enough to where I can kind of start the business the way I want, like it's not do or die, like my kids are still going to eat if I don't go out and shoot fricking. It sounds weird when you say shoot kids birthday parties, but like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:Like so uh this is going to get like from YouTube. Yeah, oh, what Shit Okay.
Speaker 2:Uh, shoot with a camera camera shooting for the duration of this.
Speaker 2:Anytime I say shooting, I'm probably talking about a camera, um, but yeah, so I I can be a little bit more deliberate in what I want to do and really just shoot what I think is going to lead to more clientele that I want to work with, or that's going to highlight what I'm doing, because I'll pass off business to people who are better than me, like I'm okay with that, saying, hey, this is what you want, you with this photo. I know a great photographer, he can do that perfectly. And then, if, if he knows a client that needs, you know, video work or whatever you know, they'll send stuff my way. So, um, I'm slow rolling the business purposefully, because I'd rather build a stronger core clientele than just, you know, bouncing off the wall of all different types of projects, you know.
Speaker 1:So so true, man, like scaling is one of the hardest things to like. I think, intuitively, when we dive into us and into this endeavor, we all kind of figure out the like okay, I need to progress a certain rate. But when you get outside influences and it's all friends or family members that mean well, they see your talents, they see what you're doing. They want to say like, hey, you need to grab this person and you need to onboard this person and you should hire this person. It's like whoa dude, like dude, if you scale too much, too fast, you're going to die. Like, how do you manage that? The good intentions from friends and family members and sort of your own wisdom and your own voice?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think I think honestly I've been. I've been at least fortunate enough to where I haven't had a lot of that sort of thing. You know anybody that I've reached out to cause I've. I've reached out to a couple of people and say, hey, just, I'm watching you, just so you know how many years you got left, when are you getting out? Because I know that they share a similar passion and I was like, okay, you're getting out in three years, okay, if I'm at the point here, I'll bring you on.
Speaker 2:But anybody I've talked to knows that, hey, right off the bat, everything's going to be. It's going to be independent contractor job. You know you're going to be paid per job. Until I had the predictability to be able to salary somebody, and I would love to get to that point where, hey, I have a crew of this many salary and this many shooters around the country that I can put on contracts. So, yeah, I guess I haven't really had the point to where I've had people reach out. Hey, whatever I can do, hey, when's the next project? Hey, here's something I want to work on which is awesome stuff, talents that they've kept hidden away from the teams.
Speaker 2:Like you got a guy who I worked with for years and I had no idea he was a closet dj like a good one like no, no, like, oh yeah, like techno trance old school stuff like he's not this guy. He's not a guy with an ipad and a freaking headphone. He's got his turntables. It's like he's been doing like underground electronica techno for years no idea and he's very skilled.
Speaker 2:I'm like, dude, this is great. Like, this sounds like somebody who would be really good for sound design and things like, yes, so, yeah, so I'm always assessing talents for when I can bring those guys on board. So, um, I can't say I've had a lot of pressure for saying you should hire this guy. You should hire this guy because I'm I'm early enough in a company where I just don't think I have the workload to where people, like are going to start throwing people my way like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's good to be able to have that understanding that good work is going to get you reference to somebody else that will want to see your, your talents, but to get used on their projects like that's, that's the easiest thing. The hardest thing is having to do what you were doing before. Having to go out there and try to do the cold calls. Trying to do like the paid promotions and advertising as a small entrepreneur, like that's where things get hectic and things fall apart real fucking fast.
Speaker 2:Like, yeah it's, it's wild man and that's one of the benefits of when I, when I worked with the other company is I worked very close with their partnership teams. So, um, I got to see how that exactly that works and a lot of his influencer marketing. That's a huge part of how a lot of small businesses, especially cpg companies, go. It's influencer marketing. So I got to see, um, who they're talking to I'm in on the interviews how much they get paid, how many reels and stories. So I got to see that whole side of what it looks like to do the marketing through social media and everything, and I guess it was pretty eye-opening. And now, as I use social media and I can see just how many, anytime I see somebody's product back on the corner, it's like paid. You put that there like no, nobody on nobody with a platform is advertising for free maybe they will fucking, and if they, are.
Speaker 2:They're doing it because they're hoping to get a call from that company to be like hey, I saw you had our sing, whatever. So yeah, um yeah, it's definitely an eye-opening world of just how much stuff is being fed to you. You know they're being paid to do it you know.
Speaker 1:So if you, if you're watching a vodka podcast on youtube and you see something on a desk, it's on there. For a reason. My man like that shit. That's real estate and that's not a bad. Yeah, and it's not a bad thing, you know, it's just.
Speaker 2:But you do need to understand that. Hey, if your favorite youtuber keeps drinking this drink, yeah, uh, bro, he's not doing it because it's the only option. He's doing it because he has 500 of them in his fridge and he's probably required to put at least, you know, two reels out, or whatever it is.
Speaker 1:Um, so, yeah, I mean, that's just kind of the way it is, uh, yeah social media marketing is insane, and that's something that a lot of us, as entrepreneurs, need to understand and really dive into, because you did that?
Speaker 2:the attention economy. That that's where it's at. That's. That's where people spend majority of their time. Not a lot of people sit down and watch commercials on tv. You're on youtube or you're on instagram um, like that, that's. That's where the majority of people are going to see your product. Um, so it's. It just happens to be the environment we're in. Whether you like it or not, whether you're completely against social media, that's where content is consumed and, from a business standpoint, you know, it's an important thing to recognize, whether you want to be in that arena or not, that that exists.
Speaker 1:That's where the eyeballs are yeah, and how do you navigate that space, being somebody that puts amazing content out there, puts great, gets enough referrals to continue moving the ball forward? How do you navigate social media to try to get awareness and grow?
Speaker 2:haven't used it a lot for growing the business, to be honest. Um, you know, even my own page, which is even weird to even have my own social media, because I started it like pretty much right before I got out, because I had never even used instagram. I didn't really know what the whole point of it was. I thought it's just a place where people shared pictures. Um, I didn't realize the monstrosity that it had become, you know, as I just kind of ignored it over the years. Uh, and when I started doing a couple podcasts as part of this other company and meeting with people, it just started kind of growing on its own and I, the couple times I thought, okay, maybe I will try to make social media thing, maybe I will try to grow my own page, just for the sake of networking. It just felt so inauthentic and I hated it. Um, yeah, I hate doing content for the sake of content and having that thought is this going to go viral? Is this going to crack the algorithm? Is this going to be the thing that brings attention to the page? Um, and I dislike that so much that I just completely stopped doing it. Um, I still put content out there, but it's just, it's just me. It's just something. If I see I think something's funny or I think something's cool that my kids are doing, that's what I do with it now. The business page there will be more stuff on there at some point, but I'm not aggressively pushing on it again. Like to me.
Speaker 2:The core having a strong core of believers and clients outside of instagram to me is way more important. It might be a slower roll, it might take longer for business to pick up and it might not be as well known in the internet stratosphere, which is okay with me, um, but I'm going to have a much stronger base and that's another thing I learned, too, about looking at social media and I look at the guys we're working with. Hey, here's a guy that has you know I'm not going to put names on them, but you know, here's a guy that has 15 million followers across platforms and here's how much. Here's how many people buy a product that he's endorsing based off of that and it doesn't always scale as far as this guy's got 10 million, so 100,000 people will buy the product. Or this guy has 10,000. So 100 people, people, it's not.
Speaker 2:It doesn't work that way. You really have to look at who they are, what kind of person they are, what their follow, how strong their core followers are, and all that. So, um, numbers, numbers don't always mean everything. Um, you know, it's the quality of those people and I like to treat every single person I come in contact with as the real person, who they are, not a number or a follower or a view. Uh, and that's why, to me, it's more important to be deliberate in what I'm doing than to just blast tons of content out there to try to get followers, cause followers are followers. Man, like there's AI chicks that aren't even real to have a million followers. So, like you know, like you can't use those numbers to validate whether people like what you're doing or whatever. It's just, it's just numbers. So, yeah, um, I'm deliberately slow rolling it because everything I do is very deliberate and every client that I work with, I'm working with them for a reason.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I think the other thing that's important to understand too is um, a lot of guys get intimidated. They see the follower numbers and they're like oh man, I'll never be able to get like this guy. And it's like dude, there's a lot of people that buy followers. There's a lot of services out there where you pay a couple hundred bucks and you're instantly throttled up to 10k, 12k and it's like look, find out what you want to promote and share, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:More people do it than you realize. That's another thing to realize. Like even like there's a ton of people that would talk shit about it or whatever, but there are a lot of people who buy followers because it's cheap. So, yeah, and most, like most influencers who you see that are like this guy looks like he's famous just for being famous whatever, dude, there's so much fake stuff out there, like flexing with cars they don't own, in houses they don't own, and it all revolves around easy money.
Speaker 2:It all revolves around, you know, I'm sure you've seen them too. If you're your perpetual internet troll at this point, like I am, unfortunately like how often you see ads for people that, like I'm 20 years old and I just retired my family because I steal clips and then I do this program that adds captions I've got set, dude, they're all over the place and it's like the amount of people who are creating original content and doing amazing, incredible things is shrinking and the amount of people that are just regurgitating other people's work without credit is growing. So, yeah, if you just go into the mindset that everything you're looking at is fake until it's been validated, that's probably a pretty safe mindset for social media.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I stick to the old format of memes and podcast clips. I'm going to get you to laugh twice a day, every day, and then I'm going to slide in my content. I know what the team room humor. I know it's funny for our demographic. I know what people enjoy laughing at and I like to inspire a little bit of goodness in the world. And I think when you lay out your mission, lay out what you want to bring to the world, especially when it coincides with marketing your podcast or YouTube channel, find what fits in. Like I'm not going to blast the internet with how-to tutorials in making the next frigging best reel. I'm not, that's not my thing but I will make you laugh with some funny memes about being a warrant on a team or an 18 Echo in his cage and it directly relates to what I'm doing here and that works for me.
Speaker 2:You got to get the word out. Somebody has to see it. You know, even look at this, like I saw. You know, I commented on something that you post. I thought it was funny, warrant humor, yeah, and you know, and we're at this point. So, yeah, you could see the strategy working in real time here on how to find people and how to get your name. So, yeah, it is a strategy and I think, in the business world, if you completely ignore social media marketing, you're just setting yourself up for an additional challenge. Boy, was I doing?
Speaker 1:that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, we fight it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we fight it, you know, because it's not in our nature to do that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:But you know, I think the longer you retire, especially with GWAT you know being done and all that. I guess you just start to not care as much anymore. Um, yeah, and you have to divorce that idea that you're just one aspect. You're just just one. I'm just a warrant officer. I'm in a green beret, like no, you're more than that. Like it's, it's. Yeah, tiktok's not the healthiest or greatest thing out there, but some of the other social media apps are okay. Like you don't have to make it your life, you don't have to stay married to it, but find out how to use these tools to promote your business as you were exactly.
Speaker 1:Oh sorry, keep stepping on you. No, go ahead as you were transitioning out what were some of the other things that you were kind of having to come to terms with or deal with.
Speaker 2:One of the biggest struggles that I still deal with is balancing the work and family, and that's always been. I mean, that's always been the case for the military. But when it comes to the military, you don't really have a choice, it's just, it is what it is when you get out, especially for me, like I am finally home, I am finally around, which means every time I make a decision to not be around, I'm choosing to do something as opposed to being with my family. So I have to be very, very deliberate about the time that I'm choosing to be away. If it's like for something, for work or whatever. Because, yeah, like for the first time, I'm going to be around. I'm going to be at the graduations, I'm going to be at the soccer games, I'm going to be everywhere my kids are going to be. I'm going to be there for the first time. And especially like running your own business, where you run your own calendar and things like that. It's it's tough to decide. It's like I don't want to be that guy that goes on work trips again all the time. Like I want to give back from to the family that sacrificed so much for me to be gone. Um, that, yeah, like I really struggled to like find my right place, like just jumping into another career. Because I'm going to tell you guys now, like for you guys that are watching, if you're worried about getting a job when you get out, especially if your thing is like, hey, I just want to keep the money flowing in, you can find a job. A team guy can get out and find a job very easily. It doesn't even have to be in something you're good at, but your soft skills and your conceptual thought process, everything that made you a successful special operations guy is so valuable in the outside world. And the network is strong too. It's not hard to get a job, finding one that you're passionate about. You know that's on you or whatever it is, but you're not going to starve when you get out, whatever it is. But, um, you're not gonna. You're not gonna starve if you get out. So, like, there's work out there. Uh, whether it be contracting, like even usagov, whatever, they got tons of veteran jobs, dude, go on there. There's remote jobs, there's stuff. Yeah, there's, there's work out there. But the hardest part is now you're in charge of deciding how much you're going to be home. You're in charge of saying do. I want to work a nine to five, so that's just.
Speaker 2:Personally, the biggest thing I struggled with was like how do I balance giving back to my family but also still being a provider? And have I done the most impactful thing in my life? And is everything else, you know, downhill from here, like is everything else going to suck? Am I ever really going to reach that level of happiness that I had on the team? And the answer is no. You're not ever going to feel that same thing, but that doesn't mean that's the only thing you know. You can find something you're passionate about. You can do something different. You can still be happy. You know, being a team guy doesn't have to be the coolest thing I've ever done. You maybe it will be, I don't know.
Speaker 2:But that doesn't mean it's the end. So even dealing with that sort of depression as well, it's like. You know, I retired. I joined really early, I retired at 37 and for me to say that my life is over at 37 and I'm just going to be freaking, pulling in a paycheck and living out life for who knows how many years, it's super depressing thought. You know um many of many of successful business. You know um business person started in their 40s, their 50s, their 60s, and so, you know, as long as you can maintain your physical health, um, then you can try all sorts of different things.
Speaker 2:Like we, we just don't do time. Well, you know, in the army, everything's. You're always getting ready for the next thing, you're always getting ready for the next deployment, for the next pcs, whatever that's. When you see a civilian that's worked for 10 years in a certain job and whatever, you're like god, it's a long time, it's like it's really not anymore. Time is really different on the outside than it is on the inside. Uh, so, yeah, like so I guess I don't know was a lot of. There was a lot on your question there, but yeah, I would say multiple, to bring it down short multiple struggles getting out, um, as far as finding purpose, what do you want to do? How do I, how do I balance work life when I'm the one making the decisions? Um, and then, how do you get past, um, that feeling that the cool, that the most impactful thing you've ever done, is already over? Yeah, those are things that come at you.
Speaker 1:And that's again that's the thing I try to harp on that it's all of us. All of us are going to go through this and we all have those same hurdles. And there's still that hard cadre out, cadre out there. That's like no, I'm not gonna go through that. I'm gonna go through my transition super easy. I'm gonna be freaking working at this super high stress sales job and I'm gonna fucking crush life. It's like look man, like do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if that's what, if that's what makes you happy, do it, man. You know, and I think a lot of it too had to do with um, you know. You know at least timing wise when I got out is I was extremely fortunate in my timeline for my career. I came in, I went to OIF one, I got out at the end of Afghanistan, so I had the whole GWAT and I really wasn't interested in any of the other stuff going on um in the world. And if gwatt was still going on, if I still had boys going down range or if there was some potential me to go range, I wouldn't have got out. You know, even looking back now at where, where that all went, um still like you know, if there was a fight going on, I'd have still been part of it. But you know, being a company warrant and looking at training concepts for eastern european j sets and things like that for the next however many years, I wasn't super pumped on it.
Speaker 1:I did my team time.
Speaker 2:I made the list for three and that's when I put my paperwork in to retire. So I can at least say, hey, I was a CW2P, yeah, I was almost field grade, but I did the time.
Speaker 1:And the place I wanted to be. So yeah, no, and I'm probably sure going to get a lot of pushback, but I think CW2 is the perfect fucking place to hang your hat and walk the fuck away.
Speaker 2:It is, but it freaking screws everyone else, which sucks. And the way that that happens is there is the abundance of cw4s and fives. Oh yeah, it's always like 200 strength. Yeah, there's like no cw3s, and then there's twos, yeah, and because of that and here's what happens with the slate, and here's the which I hope they can really take a good look at is that you have the slate. Here's all the jobs that have to be filled.
Speaker 2:Well, this is a cw4 position. We don't have any cw3s or fours that are going to do it. So let's not, let's, let's nab those twos off the team early. Yeah, and it sucks because, like, you really have to look at how important is that job that you're going to pull this guy to go do Like G5 planning at Fort Bragg for future plans to work under a CW5. Is that more important than pulling a warrant off a team for a company that only has three warrants? Whatever, and a lot of times it wasn't.
Speaker 2:So guys are getting nabbed cw2s that want to be on the team for another eight years or whatever it is. Um, they get pulled off to go do these other assignments and then they get disenfranchised and they're just like dude. This is, this is crap, man. Um, so that's why a lot of guys are getting out. Um, you know they, they can. They can say, hey, I've done all the cool things I wanted to do and you pulled me off early because you're supposed to like, especially like, especially teams, like free fall teams, stuff, like dude, it's written in like you'd be a cw3 and run those teams.
Speaker 2:Cw3s should be on teams there's, but we've already decided that that's not the case anymore. But no, like, why are we pulling guys off so freaking early? You know like our greatest asset is our like. Why are we pulling guys off so freaking early? You know like our greatest asset is our experience. So why are we pulling guys over? Like, there's teams right now where nobody has a combat patch Nobody, even team sergeants. We're at that point already. It didn't take long, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:We're already at that point to where we have Still going on.
Speaker 2:Yep, you have entire companies where maybe the op sergeant the warrant, like maybe those guys might have some combat experience, but almost entire companies of guys that don't. So why are we in such a hurry to put those guys in staff positions instead of leading, you know? Yeah, staying on teams it's crazy.
Speaker 1:It's crazy how fast it happened. It's just talking to a buddy of mine that's still in. It's like dude, it is a ghost town. There's just nothing but E7s running teams. You can't find enough E8s anywhere. But I have faith. I have faith that we'll course correct. Hopefully there's still good men out there. They're still great. It's funny to think how fast it goes to that. I have friends that are now post team sergeant time and are looking like. It's like holy shit, like we were. We were all just wet behind the ears, brand new green brace, what. What felt like just a few weeks ago. Now everybody's just old, broken and on their way out.
Speaker 2:That's how it goes. You get to a team and you see a guy that's been on the team for two years. You just get there and you're like man, that guy's been here for two years already, he knows the stuff. And then you get to be that guy who's at two years. You're like man, that guy's been on five years, he knows his stuff. And then you get to that point and now it's like wow, this guy's been in the community for 12 years. And the point I'm making is no matter how long you're there, you never feel like you've got all the experience. You always feel like a new guy. Everywhere you go, you always feel like there's still more to learn and there's always somebody that knows more. And it goes that way until you're out. And then, all of a sudden, you're like man. I wish I could start over with the knowledge that I have now, and every single job you get to you're like man. If I had known this when I did my last job, it would have been so much better.
Speaker 1:And I mean I would hope that that would highlight the necessity for keep guys on the teams, for goodness sakes, keep guys on the teams if a guy doesn't want to be an e9, don't force them to freaking be an e9, you know like, let these guys stay on teams, let them retain that experience. So I think we're gonna need it now more than ever. Um, yeah, the next, the next few years, are going to be spicy, to say the least.
Speaker 2:Yeah, dude, it's. It's a very uncertain world and, yeah, I think one of the biggest mistakes we made and again like this is just for my lens looking at it is we tried so hard to make everybody everything yes and that's not how we were designed.
Speaker 2:Like, you have to go into the special operations with the mindset that your results may vary. Okay, there's guys look at, look at, uh, like triple nickel, when they went into iraq, you know the team that got freaking, basically blown out of their hide site and shit. Like there's probably a guy on that team that went to swick the month before. You know, there's probably like a guy that hurt his wrist or whatever doing some shit and couldn't make the deployment. Yeah, or there's probably a guy that hurt his wrist or whatever doing some shit and couldn't make the deployment. Or there's probably another team that didn't get the call to do that mission because of whatever. So, dude, you don't know what it's going to be like when you get in. You might have a freaking crazy ass gunslinging. Good time, dude, you might do J-sets and KLEs. And the fact is you have to understand your role. You are a tool for the government. You are a tool for the government. You are a tool for SOCOM, and you're supposed to be, because they're not supposed to say, hey, we got 15 ODAs that can all do the same thing. No, you're supposed to say I've got one ODA that is exceptional in this area and if a mission set comes down to support that, that's the team and these guys aren't. You have to know your role, you have to be an expert in what you're supposed to be an expert in, and then if the world dictates, it's your time. It's your time.
Speaker 2:And it's like we wanted to market ourselves like, hey, free fall for all. Everybody knew that that wasn't viable. Every Halo guy knew that there's no way you're going to have an entire company of guys who are proficient enough to do the actual mission yep, like, sure you can jump out, sure you can get your freaking you know wings and say that, hey, our whole company is halo qualified. But to actually have the proficiency to jump in in a combat situation at night with all your gear, you have to be an expert, you have to train, you have to be like these freaking super flyer teams to to be able to do that sort of thing. Um, so it was always like it was always marketing, in my opinion, to do free fall for all. Um, and then it's the same thing for like, look when this, look when, uh, you know seals start doing language training or start doing uw training, things like that.
Speaker 2:Why? Because everyone wants a piece of the pie. You know, everyone wants to, everyone wants to be the teams that gets to go. But that's that's not like. In my opinion, that's not. That's not the way, man. Like, every team has a role, every team has something they're supposed to be good at. Maximize those teams. That way they're ready when the mission set comes down. Dude, if you never get the call, you never get the call. You, you never get the call. You did great training, you, freaking, did everything your country asked of you. But it is what it is, and that's the difference between creating experts or creating. You can't even call them jacks of all trades.
Speaker 1:No, just mediocre mediocrity across the board.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can be you can be check the block, like there's not enough days in the year to be proficient in all the things you're supposed to be proficient in Yep Period. There's not. It's not even arguable, there's not. So how do you rack and stack what's most important? Well, it's, it's bfa's, it's battle focus analysis, it's commander's intent. What do I need, what does my team need to be good at so we can focus on that? We'll be good at, we'll be, we'll master the basics, and here's these specialties that we're going to excel at. But that's it.
Speaker 2:Like, anything else is fake, and especially, you know, for me, like I said, the is so near and dear to my heart A half-assed mountain team is a freaking dangerous mountain team. You know, yeah, if you're not proficient in it, if you're basic guys that haven't been to the course, haven't been training hard at it, dude, the mountains will kill you. The mountains try to kill you every time you go there. So, and it's up to you to mitigate that risk. So, yeah, I'm a huge proponent for train on the things that matter, and the things that don't matter as much, your commander has to be willing to acknowledge that that's not what you're focusing on, you know. So, yeah, it sounds like simple stuff that makes sense, but we've seen the reality of how that works out sometimes.
Speaker 1:Oh we have. It's a lesson that they never quite learn and continue to deal with and struggle through. But the beauty of it is it's on to the next generation, it's on to the next group of senior NCOs, warrants and officers to figure this out, and I know they will. I know they're capable, yeah for sure there's enough guys.
Speaker 2:I have confidence there's enough guys that have stayed in and then moved on to those staff positions, those higher level positions, that they felt the pain of mass producing soft guys. They've seen the result of check the block training and they understand, hey, like this really is, this really is a mission liability if we're not actually creating the strongest, most effective teams we can and we're just trying to like blanket train everybody. You know they've seen the result of that. So you know I hope those guys can take the reins and you know create. You know the most effective. You know generation of green berets to date, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Well, brian, real quick before I let you go. If people want to find out more about your business, where can they find you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so do you have links or do you have anything on wherever you post these things?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, It'll be right here on the YouTube description, and if you're listening to it on a podcast on Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your podcasts, just pause it, go to the episode description and you'll see all this information right there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'll, uh, I'll get with you for for, uh, you know, I my Instagram and my work email and stuff like that and guys can reach out. Um, dude, and across the board, man, um, you know, after work related, or even if it's like, hey, like we're about to go do this for admission, we get consistently told no for getting support. I mean, it will see what the possibility there lies as well. You know, if you bring, you know, hire the company on to run with your team. So, um, yeah, feel free to reach out and I would be I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I don't turns into a whole mental health thing, but it is super important and I just want guys to know, please, go talk to somebody at some point and like, really open that shit up.
Speaker 2:Um, because we're really bad in this community about comparing our own trauma with other people's. You know, if you've got your own issues but you know somebody that went through something worse and you think they're doing okay, we automatically disqualify ourselves because like, oh, I'm just being a punk, I'm just being weak, whatever. No, dude, you can't compare your trauma with somebody else's trauma. Like, take care of that stuff. Um, had I not. I would be a much worse place that I'm in right now. So if there's anything to leave after you know, know, all the all the business and fun talk here is that don't discount the importance of taking care of yourself. Um, you know, when it comes to mental health like it's, it's completely okay to do that, you know.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, man. So it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. We all go through it. Um, I talk about it all the time on the show and I share my experience, and you know as well as I know that if you've listened to the show for a while, you've heard it from every, every single guest. We all go through it. Transition is that heightened point of stress where things naturally fall apart. For us, it's okay to get help, whether it's with your local P3 or going through an independent therapist that is outside the military, so you feel a little more comfortable.
Speaker 2:Uh, don't be afraid of reaching out and when you, when you get out not like people know this like you don't like, if you, if you stay on with Tricare or whatever you don't have to, there's no copay for like it's like a certain number of network, dude, you can just do it and Tricare is going to cover it, Like they are. That is one thing that they are doing. A good job as far as the VEA goes is your access to mental health and counseling, like that. And, dude, even if there's nothing wrong, dude, just schedule one anyway. And if you're in there and you determine, hey, you're as healthy as a top when it comes out, dude, that's great.
Speaker 2:You know you burned an hour, but maybe you'll find out that you really are able to dive into something that might be holding you back or something that might be kind of crushing you on the inside. So, um, the business stuff's important, but, but the lives and well-being of our guys getting out is way more important. So if there was anything to end for me highlighting on that, it's freaking, take care of yourself, because we got too many guys hurting themselves on the outside. I'm not sure you're probably the same way, but I dread seeing a group message come through once or twice a year Cause as soon as I see a bunch of my old team guys on a group message, it's not good. There's a good chance. We know, we know why. So, um, take care of yourself, take care of your buddies.
Speaker 1:Well, Brian, thank you so much for being on today and I can't wait to have you back on the show, man, To everybody listening. Thank you for tuning in and we'll see you all next time. Until then, take care, please. Awesome Thanks, Danny. If you like what we're doing and you're enjoying the show, don't forget to share us, like us, subscribe and remember we get through this together, Take care.
