Security Halt!
Welcome to Security Halt! Podcast, the show dedicated to Veterans, Active Duty Service Members, and First Responders. Hosted by retired Green Beret Deny Caballero, this podcast dives deep into the stories of resilience, triumph, and the unique challenges faced by those who serve.
Through powerful interviews and candid discussions, Security Halt! Podcast highlights vital resources, celebrates success stories, and offers actionable tools to navigate mental health, career transitions, and personal growth.
Join us as we stand shoulder-to-shoulder, proving that even after the mission changes, the call to serve and thrive never ends.
Security Halt!
Kevin Smith on Resilience, Fitness, and Life After the Military
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In this powerful episode of Security Halt!, host Deny Caballero welcomes Kevin Smith, a former Green Beret and endurance coach, for a candid conversation about what it takes to thrive both in uniform and in the civilian world.
Kevin opens up about his journey from an athletic upbringing to enduring the rigors of Special Forces selection and the Operator Training Course. He shares insights into the mental and physical challenges of military life, and the values that shaped his success: discipline, perseverance, and self-belief.
Now an entrepreneur and coach, Kevin discusses the transition from the military to building a business, how endurance events became a tool for personal development, and why community support is vital for lasting growth. This episode is packed with wisdom for veterans, athletes, and anyone looking to level up in life.
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Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Personal Updates
02:53 Education and Career Development
05:59 Fitness Journey and Alcohol Awareness
09:03 Overcoming Injuries and Physical Therapy
11:56 The Importance of Community and Support
15:09 Nutrition and Training Strategies
18:08 Mental Health and Self-Reflection
20:47 Navigating Transition Challenges
25:23 Building Community and Connection
30:30 The Importance of Humor and Support
35:14 Embracing the Journey of Fitness
41:51 Future Aspirations and Collaborations
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Produced by Security Halt Media
Security On Podcast. Let's go. The only podcast that's purpose-built from the ground up to support you Not just you, but the wider audience, everybody. Authentic, impactful and insightful conversations that serve a purpose to help you. And the quality has gone up. It's decent and it's hosted by me, denny Caballero. Kevin Smith welcome to Security Hall. How you doing, man?
Speaker 2:Doing great. Denny, Great to be on the show. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, dude. Thank you for coming on. I love seeing guys that get out and they forge their mission purely based on what they're passionate about and giving back to others. And one thing that I realized, just like many of our brothers find out, when they get out one of the most important things to focus on is your mental well-being and physical well-being, and the two go hand in hand, and I love your message. I love what you're doing with your platform, but I want to break down your journey, man, from start to finish how you came up with this idea of reaching for one of the hardest things to do in the military and when you decided to walk away from it. What led you to go out on your own?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So to rewind back to my early years where I decided to kind of take the route to try and test my mettle as becoming a Green Beret, I grew up very active, very into sports. I have two parents that both played not super high level sports, but my dad played division one, double A football at the university of Maine. My mom was a college basketball player division three. So, needless to say, I was the first born kid and I've got two younger sisters. I actually have five sisters, but two of them are real sisters, the other ones are stepsisters. I'm the only guy, so, as the firstborn, my dad of course was also a coach and a teacher, so he was very, very much into hopefully getting me to try in a bunch of different sports and test and see what I was good at. I grew up in Maine, so the competition up there is not great. So for me if I say I was a good player, I'm speaking relatively, not necessarily like nationally, compared to national good players, but anyway, I basically tried my hand at pretty much every single sport you could possibly imagine. So I had a very athletic upbringing. I never really got into the actual strength and conditioning part of it until I was like maybe a sophomore in high school. My dad really wanted me to do a lot more strength and conditioning and we would go out on runs and we would do some hill sprints, we'd do some calisthenics, but I never really got into the actual strength and conditioning portion. But essentially when I did so, high school I settled on football. Basketball and baseball were my main sports and I was kind of a little bit delusional, thinking like I might be able to. Basketball was kind of the one I focused on the most, so much so that I quit baseball later in my high school career to focus on, like spring, basketball as a six foot one, very not super athletic guy like white, like we're looking back. Of course I had no chance, but that's what I really enjoyed. But I got into strength and conditioning. Probably like sophomore year I got really serious about it. I say serious in quotation marks because there wasn't a lot of information back then. So most of my strength and conditioning work came from football bigger, faster, stronger, bfs A lot of people may be familiar with that back in the probably early to mid two thousands up to like 2010. That was like the high school football training modality, training method and then also a combination of that with bodybuilding magazines and Arnold Schwarzenegger's Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding.
Speaker 2:I was also really into running. I never really was big into learning a lot about conditioning. I just kind of went out and ran hard all the time and you know. Obviously we can talk about why that's not a great idea later. But I realized that I was starting to enjoy the strength and conditioning portion of it a little bit more than the actual sport. Like I would rather go to the gym and lift or go out for a run than actually show up and play my sports. Not not so much that it really detracted from my performance. Obviously, strength and conditioning will generally, unless you do dumb stuff, will make you a better performer on the field or on the court, whatever it was. But I just started to realize that I enjoy that more and flash forward to like my senior year no-transcript do. I was like no, I'm not going to play college sports, but I'm still going to go to college.
Speaker 2:One of my best buddies and I were going to be roommates at the University of New Hampshire, which is about an hour from my house. It's not a state school I grew up in Maine so more expensive but closer anyway. I lasted about. I had no idea what I wanted to do and also I lasted about a month there before I dropped out. I pretty much showed up. I pretty much showed up and I was just.
Speaker 2:I knew for pretty much the day, the first day, that I was in the wrong place. I just did not fit in with people. I had very, very bad anxiety. It was almost like I just decided to do something that I was not prepared for at all. And then I showed up and I realized I was even less prepared for it than I thought I was. So, although my parents were not happy about this, I decided to drop out and not try and drag it on any longer than it should have been dragged on, dropped out, worked a bunch of odd jobs Meanwhile this entire time. I'm still very into fitness, so I'm doing a bunch of learning about fitness, strength and conditioning on the side, doing a bunch of training. One thing that's basically never really fallen off for me is being consistent with my training to varying different degrees and with varying different goals.
Speaker 2:But throughout this time I really had to determine what the hell I wanted to do with myself and worked a bunch of odd jobs, kind of just spun my wheels, lived in my parents' house. You know one of those old cliche sayings like living in your parents' basement just trying to figure out what the hell you're meant for in this world. And so finally although this didn't work out either, but I decided I'm going to go back to college, this time to University of Maine. My sister's going there, a lot more of my friends go there. I feel like I've gained the ability to go and really put my best foot forward and put the work in and be successful in college. And, needless to say, that did not occur either.
Speaker 2:This time. I made it a little bit longer. I made it till I was about halfway through the year, give or take, and that was on paper. I had really quit on it like silent quit well before that and I just didn't want, I didn't have it in me to like tell my parents, but eventually I had to, so they didn't keep wasting money on me not showing up to class and me basically flunking out. So I dropped out again and again, still maintaining my fitness.
Speaker 2:Still, I was very, very much into after high school I was very much into running. That was my main modality of training and I genetically kind of have decent ability to run more so than get strong jacked, have decent ability to run more so than get strong jacked, be super fast and quick and explosive. I am more of a slow twitch guy and so naturally I enjoy doing things that I'm pretty good at, and running was one of them. So that was a pretty good, I guess, baseline thing to do a lot of before joining the military. But either way, this time is probably six months or so between when I dropped out for that second time, working random jobs, running into people from my hometown that are like what the hell are you doing with your life, and I was just kind of sick of just being there and try to explain to people. I cared a lot more about what other people thought about me back then than I do now and I also. It was kind of the time of your life where being different and being kind of not normal and not doing what everyone else does is thought of as like a bad thing. Now I think it's a great thing, but I just didn't really know that at the time.
Speaker 2:But anyway, I finally started to consider the military and I was reading all about it. I'm not really that big into swimming or boats although I was on a dive team that we can talk about that later. But I kind of ruled out the SEALs, even though Stu Smith, who's like one of the OG fitness guys in this space, was making a lot of content about SEALs. He was also making content about various other soft and I kind of had my sights on Ranger, dropping an option 40 contract, which, for those who don't know, that's when you basically sign your contract and you get a shot at going to Ranger Regiment. You go through RASP and all that jazz Went to the recruiter. They did not have a RASP contract, or at least that's what they told me and they said we do have an 18 x-ray contract. If you do want to go in RBSOF, that is another option. I had not heard of that before because, like the internet was not that prominent back then, like all this information wasn't available like it is today. So anyway, it was available enough and with some good research and a little bit of Googling, I read all about it.
Speaker 2:I was like kind of obsessive I get very, very obsessive about things, especially when they really spark my interest and so I spent like a few days, maybe up to a week or so, just reading about it, watching videos. That was back when, like the two weeks in hell video I don't know if you've seen that yeah, it was out. So that's the friends that were in that video. Yeah, yep, back when it was hard.
Speaker 2:But anyway, last hard class, exactly, but that a lot of people watch that and be like, uh, you know, that looks terrible, I have no interest. And I thought the exact opposite. I'm like wow, that looks freaking amazing and that's you know most, most of us know that's not exactly what selection looks like. It's not what it looks like today, but it also wasn't. They put on a little bit of a show for TV. But anyway, I was very motivated. I was like that looks amazing. So I went and signed my contract and probably about four or five months after signing that contract I went and entered the army as a 21 year old, soon to be 22 year old, green Beret, hopeful, and then kind of went from there. I don't know if you want me to get into the rest of that yeah.
Speaker 2:And so yeah, so so went to OSIT again. This was back during there. There was no Reddit back then, there was no YouTube, there was no Instagram about all this stuff, so I had no idea how my. Of course I knew I had to be fit, especially endurance, but I had no idea how my fitness levels matched up compared to like high school runners. In my high school I was pretty slow, but I wasn't that much slower than them because I didn't really do any competitive running, I just ran. So I thought I was like pretty good at running, pretty decent at rucking.
Speaker 2:I did some rucks to train up before I actually left with my JanSport backpack and a 50 pound dumbbell just hanging out in the bottom of it, because I didn't know any better. I'm like man. I hope rucking does not feel like this forever. Sure enough, once you put a ruck on and you pack it properly. Yeah, I remember just my traps were just destroyed after every single session, needless to say.
Speaker 2:But anyway, flash forward, went to OSIT not really all that remarkable. There went to airborne school and then we had pretty much between airborne and when I started, sopsi. Sopsi, for those who are not aware, is the 18 x-ray prep course that they send you to to make sure that you're actually prepared to go to selection, because you're not coming from the regular army, you're coming from airborne school pretty much and you have no experience. So they want to make sure you're ready to go. So I went to SOPSI in. This was after Christmas of 2012. So we went to the January SOPSI class. My SOPSI class, believe it or not, had a higher dropout rate than my selection class.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I believe it. I believe it. What timeframe were you in? It was January of 2012.
Speaker 2:It was the very first class of the new year, not the fiscal year, but the new year officially.
Speaker 1:It was still like cadre there. They still have Fight Club. They still have Fight Club in the pit. No, we didn't do Fight Club. We're still like I don't. They still have fight club. They still have fight club in the pit.
Speaker 2:No, we didn't do fight club. We didn't do fight club. It was basically just three weeks of very similar to selection, except you get more food and more sleep and they, they smoke you a lot more. So you selection is more of a gentleman's course where you don't really know if you're doing well or bad, which is part of the difficulty of it, of it. But sopsy you know, at least as a class. At least as a class you know whether you're doing well or not well and you know when you're not doing well you do extra shit and basically just build a lot of fatigue going into selection. But if you can get through sopsy, they get, you get. You had like 10 days off back then and, by the way, sopsy is not like that anymore. For those who have not gone gone and are considering it, it's not quite as bad anymore. It's actually probably I haven't been or seen it, but it's probably a lot better.
Speaker 1:But back then it was yeah, it's more professional. It used to be the wild wild west and some of the things it's like. When I went through I was I was already an nco going through the q course but I had a good friend of mine that had just pinned I and they're like, no, you're going to sopsy. And the stories that I would hear. It's like they got us fighting in pits man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So anyway, after passing SOPSI and after going to SOPSI and I kind of started realizing this at BASIC as well I realized I was one of the higher performers as far as calisthenics, running, rucking which, coincidentally, are very important parts of being successful at SOPSI, selection and all that, and so I was kind of gaining confidence. I made it through SOPSI. I didn't really think it was like all that terrible. There were some bad times and they almost like fed on the fact that we had like 10 guys just in the layout quit that day because every time someone didn't have an item the entire class would get smoked. This is like before the PT test on day one of SOPSI, literally coming back from Christmas break. So everyone's head was still on Christmas leave and I think that was a big factor. But anyway, they kind of fed off it and they were just trying to drop guys that couldn't belong. So I think it was like 34% pass rate in my SOPSI class. Needless to say, the guys who passed SOPSI with me and went to selection, most, if not all, of us crushed. So I mean that's kind of common. Usually guys who passed SOPSI do well at selection, but not always. But anyway, finished SOPSI had that 10 day break and then went to selection and my selection class. Nothing crazy remarkable.
Speaker 2:I don't know how much you guys talk about selection on this podcast, but essentially the first week is gate week, where you do all of your physical events. You do your timed rucks, you do your timed runs, you do your time drugs, you do your time runs, you do your PT test, of course you do an obstacle course and now they do a CFA. Back when I went it was logging rifle PT AKA washout Wednesday. They kind of went away with that just because guys who typically guys who got dropped from that, got dropped because they were getting hurt instead of like, not really it wasn't a big like quit or attrition rate thing. So they kind of went away with that.
Speaker 2:And then the second week you get into purely land nav and I was pretty confident going to land nav because, although I didn't have any experience prior to the army in land nav or really anything other than like going out and camping, quote, unquote, I had done well at Topsy during land nav. I found all my points and I kind of felt like I picked it up pretty well and, sure enough, went out, did the star course, star courses back to back nights where you start at around midnight, give or take. You do basically half of your star course at nighttime, you do half once the sun comes up and your goal is to find four points each day or an eight, eight point total. So I found all four of my first day with quite a bit to spare. And then we thought at this time this was right between where they're going like back and forth, between if you find all your points the first day, you don't have to go out the second day, versus no matter what, you have to go out the second day. So we were all pretty excited because the class before us got to not go out if they found all four. Anyway, we did not go, we did not get that privilege, so we had to go out for the second day. Anyway, found my four points.
Speaker 2:Team week was the. Basically it's four days. You're on one team for the first two days, you're on another team for the second two days. My first team was a little bit rough. We were not doing all that well, I did not really do anything remarkable there. I didn't get any pink slips, but I also didn't really get any blue slips, maybe one or two. By the way, pink slips are negative your team gives you kind of a negative spot report. Blue slips your team gives you a positive spot report. This could be for any number of things. It could be physical, it could be just leadership capabilities, it could be just taking shitty volunteer positions, taking one for the team, any number of different things, just being a good dude being a good team player. So my first team very unremarkable. Second team I was on a much stronger team.
Speaker 2:We got done first on both days and that's kind of when I like fell into my own. I was like kind of having flashbacks to when I was in leadership positions in high school for sports. That really kind of helped me be a little bit more of a leader, especially considering the fact that I had like officers on my team. I had enlisted older guys and I was this 22 year old, 18 x-ray with zero experience. And during my exit interview you know one of the comments from the cadre that I actually got my exit interview from he was like yeah, I could have sworn you were probably like an officer or whatever. I'm like well, thanks, I guess I did pretty well. So I had a pretty strong performance across the board for selection and, like most guys, no matter what, you don't believe that you got selected until they actually tell you Like I still thought, even though I had done well during gate week, well during land nav and well during team week, I still was like I really hope I did well enough, like I'm not sure, sure enough, I made it. I got assigned 18 Delta and pretty much when you're an x-ray you go, you start the Q course pretty quickly.
Speaker 2:So the first, the actual, the first thing I did was SOCM, and SOCM, for those who are not aware, is the additional training that medics have to do. It's nine months long and it's probably the most difficult part of the Q course for really any MOS. Academically Not necessarily physically or mentally, but just academics are pretty intense, especially if you're not really super into that stuff, like I wasn't, and I of course had terrible study habits that I had, basically non-existent study habits that I had never developed before. So I was drinking from a fire hose, at least for the first bit. And then the second part of SACIM I started to do a little bit better.
Speaker 2:It's more hands-on stuff. So instead of sitting and taking tests and getting tested on the small details in clinical medicine, all that stuff. It's more hands-on trauma, which is more fun. Some guys struggle with the opposite. They're better at test taking, not great at hands-on. I was definitely the opposite.
Speaker 2:I was better at the hands-on stuff and I enjoyed it, more more confident with it, then went through the regular rest of the Q course. That is pretty similar to what everyone else is. That's kind of the reason that deltas take so long is just because there's there's such a delay. I don't know the exact order of the Q course these days but yeah, usually for 18 deltas it's about two and a half years if you don't recycle. So went through and then I got sent to 10th group at. My language was French and that was back when 10th group was doing more stuff in Africa at the time, before switching over to third group, which was a later group that I went to and from there went to 10th group and we can get into that if you want or yeah, man, it's your story, my man, we got all the time.
Speaker 2:All right. So I went to 10th group and did a few. So my first deployment was to Africa. I was a brand new 18 Delta and I showed up right before Christmas time and I was one of four guys that showed up to my company. The whole company was gone in Niger, africa, and they I was the only one who was a Delta and be not married. So what'd they do? They sent me new year's day. I flew over to Niger.
Speaker 2:The mountain team had a medic coming back from Africa to go to the mountain warfare school, like the highest level mountain warfare school, so they only had one medic. So I went over and took over from him. I did left seat, right seat for a bit. That was, you know, back before the Niger incident that a lot of people are probably aware of. But we were in the exact same place doing a very, very similar mission set and anyway, that was right before 10th group gave Africa to third group. So the rest of my trips with 10th group, unfortunately we're just to Europe, multiple different places in Europe and right when I so. So I got a little bit. I almost didn't get sick of it, but I wanted to just test my metal at something different and I'd always kind of had dreams of going to the big leagues AKA Delta force, cag and finally I said, screw it, I'm going to put a packet in. I went to ranger school during this time, mff, I was on a free fall team, all that jazz. But long story short, put a packet in in 2017 to go to the spring 2018 CAG selection, got picked up, made it through that fully, and so I PCS to Fort Bragg in the summer of 2018.
Speaker 2:And unfortunately, otc did not go as well. For me, otc is their operator training course. Yeah, it's a beast, it's an absolute beast. And when you fall behind the power curve just by a little bit, a everyone watches you like a hawk and B you better not mess up with everyone watching you again. And I went a long time between mess ups. There's a lot that I'm intentionally kind of leaving out here, but just for respect to the unit, I don't talk specific details, but I went a long time between mess ups. You basically get a drop warning and then they watch you a little bit more intensely. They put more guys, more instructors watching your every move, pretty much, and I got.
Speaker 2:I had another bad day with a couple of just really dumb decisions that you have to make very fast decisions. You're doing CQB and that's the part of that course that gets most guys and that is what got me, and so I got dropped in. That was probably one of the low points, if not the low point of my life, definitely something I am very grateful for today. But it was very hard to see the silver lining back then. I honestly probably wouldn't be here doing what I do right now. I'd probably still be in and maybe serving in the unit, who knows. But that was a big turning point and fortunately they are very accommodating. So my wife had just gotten a job at NC State, so about an hour way up in Raleigh, and we had already we hadn't bought a house yet, but we wanted to kind of stay there because she had just gotten the job. It took her a while and I had been making her move around in various parts of the country before and so they were very accommodating. They're like yeah, sure we can have you stay here.
Speaker 2:Do you want to go to SWCC or do you want to go to third group? And I had not gotten a combat deployment at that time yet. So I was like I really want to go to third group because I knew third group was about to go to Afghanistan. I did not know COVID was about to happen, but I did know third group was about to go and so I said, yeah, I went to third group. I ended up doing a little while on the B team and then I got sent to the dive team. Now, the way third group does dive teams, or all teams actually, there's like in in each battalion there's one company that has, like the, a dive team. The other five number teams are like backup dive teams.
Speaker 1:So we were more of a maritime team than an underwater team. That's weird.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So I had like, on my dive team I had like three combat divers, maybe four, so not a full dive team and I ended up going to DMT to be a combat or dive medic, which is nowhere near as difficult as actual dive school. I'm not a combat diver. That would have been a struggle for me, but anyway did my time there Ended up going to Afghanistan in 2020, pretty much it was July of 2020. So four or five months after COVID really kicked off. So, needless to say, that trip was, although it was a combat deployment and it was enjoyable, we got to do some fun stuff. I wouldn't really even consider it necessarily a serious combat deployment just because there were so many restrictions and we were winding down. I was the last team on the ground, we were like the last people Americans on the ground at Camp Dahlke, formerly known as Fobshank, and so we kind of retrograded that, closed it out, came back, and then I did one more trip to Africa and then towards the later stages of my career.
Speaker 2:That I didn't know was going to be the later stages of my career until a little bit after this. But I went to the Fox course, the 18 Fox course, to be an Intel sergeant with about a year left on what my career was, but I thought I was going to potentially stay in. Anyway, I had started this business on the side, this Terminator training business on the side, and I was not talking to the same audience that I am now. I was not making content about the job I was being. I never even mentioned like what I did. I was just making regular fitness content. That was really it. I was writing articles. I started an Instagram page. I started a podcast. If you go back and listen to some of my first episodes, pretty terrible, but we all have to get better somehow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude, reps man Just like anything else.
Speaker 2:Yep. And then I started to think, like, do I really want to do? I pretty much had to decide between I was coming up on my 12th year and my enlistment was going to be up. I had to decide between going in-depth and retiring, or getting out or going National Guard. That was not really one of my potential options, just my choice. I was either going to get out or stay in and I had just become a Fox. Didn't really get to do much as a Fox, but as I was nearing the end of what my enlistment period was, I kind of made a last minute decision, which I don't recommend, by the way. If you make a last minute decision, it's a really a nightmare to get out of the army in like two, three months. But that's what I did and I got out and here I am today.
Speaker 2:I got out and started to really focus my attention. I had a business coach at the time. He's like dude, you'd be crazy not to start talking to the guys who want to basically do what you did. You've been there and you have the knowledge. Throughout that entire time I was like obsessively studying strength and conditioning nutrition. I was helping guys prep for various different selections. I was helping support guys prep for our selection. I was writing programs for buddies as well as like in charge of my team's PT programs. I was helping guys prep for dive school. Even as a non-diver, I was just kind of giving them programming to get better.
Speaker 2:And yeah, so I I just kind of slowly over time realized that I had a more of a passion for that and more of a drive to that. I was more excited to wake up even on a work day where I had to go in and do my job. On an ODA, I would wake up super early, work on like, write an article, work on the business, whatever it was. I wasn't really making any money. I had some PDF programs that I would sell, maybe like one or two a week, so it was a. It was definitely a risk to get out because I literally had no income coming from that, like almost literally, and so I said you know what, screw it, I'm going to get out and put my all into it. And I did, and then flash forward. It's been about two years since I've been out and flash forward. I've been doing that ever since.
Speaker 1:Hell yeah, dude, you gotta take it. It's a gamble, man. It's a gamble like anything else in your. But your career has shown you, man Like it's a big fucking gamble to go in and choose 18 Delta. That's a big fucking gamble. It's a big fucking gamble to say I'm going to go punch the ticket and go to CAG selection. It's a big fucking gamble to say, okay, fuck, I made it through that. I'm going to sit here and fight through the operator course. And then it's a fucking even bigger gamble when you don't make it and decide to still say you know what I'm going to gamble? I'm going to move here to a brand new fucking group.
Speaker 1:People, if you've never been in soft, it's not like moving to like from back into 173rd, it is not the same. There is some prejudice whether we want to say there isn't there. There is when you get a new guy from a different group, because immediately you're like whoa, what this? Because if you're not a SAR major and you're not an officer, you're just a fucking dude in a line company. Motherfuckers are always going to say like, yeah, what'd you do? Well, what would you fuck up? How'd you get all the way over here?
Speaker 2:yeah, like that's a big. You still gotta prove yourself yeah, exactly, dude.
Speaker 1:but like, yeah, and that that's exactly the same thing. When you start putting together your business plan and decide you're going to be an entrepreneur, it's another big, scary gamble. But if you look back at your history and this to every, every soft guy out there, everybody that's thinking of doing this like dude proof is in your fucking LES and your DD214. Like, you've maintained this drive to go into the unknown. You've constantly gone into the unknown. Bet on yourself.
Speaker 1:Be willing to say I don't know how it's going to pan out, but I know I'm going to work hard every single fucking day. I'm going to get up and I'm going to put the same focus and attention that I did when I was on a detachment into this business. And I can do it. Bro, you're crushing it and that's what I want people from our background, and even anybody any veteran out there that's thinking about doing this, to realize that all it takes is everything you got, and you've already been doing it. You're in military career. So why not bet on yourself, dude, and to think that you did it in two to three months, yeah, that's not the best approach.
Speaker 2:No, not recommended at all. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure you probably signed out the way I did. I just filled out everybody else's signature on that sheet. That wasn't available. There was a lot of that going on yeah there was a lot of that going on.
Speaker 2:I thought I was going to have to go in. I basically outed on a. My last out was on a friday afternoon and I thought I was gonna have to go in on monday as a civilian and do the last of it, but luckily got it done just like 4 pm on friday yeah, same here.
Speaker 1:I I'm sorry, I'm sorry group, but uh, that definitely it. Yeah, nobody. If you weren't in your office when I stopped by, it was, I remember, asking guy, the fucking E4 sitting there. I'm like, who's in charge of this section? That's our first class Smith, okay.
Speaker 2:Got it All right. That's an easy one.
Speaker 1:Oh man, being on this side of it, man, like how has it been trying to scale, trying to grow?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. I originally was doing pretty much everything myself, and I think that's a very common thing, depending on what kind of business you're starting. My business is very solopreneur friendly. If I I could really start or not even try to scale from where I am right now and kind of just maintain what I have and I'd be comfortable, I'd be happy with it. But at the same time, just I'm not wired that way, so I want to continue growing and so a lot of stuff DIY at first, learning a lot of things have always been, like I said, obsessed with strength and conditioning.
Speaker 2:I've always been what I consider like a capable coach and a capable presenter of information in that field. However, I know well I do now, but I knew absolutely nothing about running a business whatsoever, especially a virtual business, but just a business in general. So a lot of my early education was, you know, hiring people that I thought could help me with the business development aspect of it, creating systems and all that jazz and maybe video editing, all that. After a little while of doing that I'm like, okay, well, I need a little bit of help. Luckily, my wife is very, very good at everything that involves technology, computers, marketing, making things look pretty. So if you go to my website, I will take zero credit for the aesthetics of my website. That is purely my wife and she does have a full-time job. She has a different job now but she works full-time for a different company. She works virtually, so we both work from home, but she helps me with a lot behind the scenes. Right now. I would consider her like my personal assistant and also, luckily, here soon. She has not told her employers this, but her employers aren't going to listen to this. She's actually going to stop doing what her current job is and join TTM Terminator Training, which is my company, full-time, so that I'm really looking forward to that's going to be in a couple of weeks or a couple of months and that's going to take a lot off my plate, especially the things that I just suck at and or don't like, which usually coincide.
Speaker 2:I really like to create. I really like to help people. I like to talk to my clients. I like to create programs. I like to make YouTube videos, podcasts, write. I do not like to do all the stuff that occurs behind the scenes to make that stuff like presentable and good to go, all the admin stuff. I never liked this in my career too, like I absolutely despised sitting on my computer and checking emails, like I just couldn't do it and I suck at it now too. It gives me anxiety to open my inbox, generally speaking, super excited for that. And then also I'm kind of doing some behind the scenes stuff where I have certain ideas. In the future I'm going to try and really launch my YouTube a little bit more. I started to put podcasts on YouTube a while ago. I have a lot of exercise demos from all my programs on YouTube, but probably three, four months ago I actually started making organic YouTube videos and, needless to say, there's a lot of behind the scenes stuff not just sitting down and creating your video and actually filming it.
Speaker 2:That's like the easy part, that's the quick part. I can do that in an hour or less. It's all the stuff behind the scenes and these days anyone who's been on YouTube there's a big difference between if you go watch my videos right now, you can tell that no one really is doing much editing behind the scenes. I'm kind of cutting parts out, but I'm not making them very visually aesthetic. I really pride myself on being informative and explaining things well, not necessarily the aesthetics and the production quality of the videos.
Speaker 2:However, in order to continue growing that, I know I need to do that and instead of DIYing that and just pretty much running myself insane and trying to figure out that stuff because I eventually could but do I really want to spend my time on that and energy on that, or can I hire someone virtually to work on that for me? Who literally just wants to do that? And so I'm kind of in the process of vetting a couple of different people to help with some behind the scenes stuff for editing my podcasts, creating Instagram reels and stuff like that, just making them a little bit more presentable, a little bit less like a third grader did it like they currently are. But again, I think the most valuable part of at least the way I try to be most valuable is to give people the information, not necessarily entertain Although you know, some some of the things I do are entertaining to some but I'm definitely more on the information side and cutting, helping people cut through the bullshit, helping people take the guesswork out and helping people not to make the mistakes that I made and guys are still continuing to make, either because they just don't know any better or they just know too many things.
Speaker 2:There's too much information out there and they can't determine which one it is. I'm trying to like kind of beat the voice of reason. So that's kind of where I'm at right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're. You're on to something that a lot of people don't understand, and see the amount of time and effort that goes into post-production for a YouTube channel. It's insane.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like everything else, like there's. I've been able to find a lot of parallels and a lot of the tools and assets that you build over your time in the military. There's a lot of things that translate attention to detail. All all the systems and operations like dude, dude, even one of the worst things, and I will I'm throwing this out there right now do not get a pmp certification or scrum certification if you don't know what the fuck you you want to do. That seems to be like the easy thing. A lot of people sell you and I haven't used it in any any of the jobs or any of the things I did like as soon as I got out. But I find myself using some of those tools in my whole like post-production thing now and I'm just like fuck, like yes, this was by and large, worthless to me, but damn it if I'm not using it right now exactly it's like god damn it.
Speaker 2:But but at the same time. At the same time, you can today. The great thing about today is you can either a teach yourself, even if it's kind of painful, or, b you can hire someone virtually from wherever the Philippines to do it for relatively cheap and do a way better job than what you can do, and it would take them way less time and they actually enjoy doing it. That's like what their. Their main goal is is to help people with their or their stuff and get paid for it and for them.
Speaker 2:Whatever you pay them even though it seems, at least for me, like I'm not paying this person very much for them it's, you know, a living, or at least partially a living. So you either learn it or you outsource it, and I struggled early on to try it, to really commit to outsourcing things just because, like you said, attention to detail and building. I want my reputation to be strong and not tarnished, and everyone thinks that if someone else helps them, it's potentially not going to be done to their standard they want. But at some point you just kind of got to bite the bullet and be like, hey, this just needs to happen. I need this time and energy back and also this person's way better at it. And also, you know, a really tiny little mistake. Even though I notice it, a lot of people probably don't notice it or they forget about it, and just kind of reminding yourself of those things is super important as you go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so fucking true, man, I do want to. You know, I want to take some time to focus on something that I've started to get a lot more interested in. That's ultra marathons, endurance events. And you were training for one but you got injured. Like, and you were training for one but you got injured. How did you approach your training? And you were trying to do a 50-miler right, 50k 31 miles.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how did that take us through that programming, take us through that mindset? And then, of course, how did it feel when you're like, because I had the same thing happen. I had an injury, so I went from training for the Savage Loop and like methodical with training to being like fuck, now I can't train at all.
Speaker 2:I still, I'm still gonna run this event and just having the raw dog yeah, hey, man, good on you for for toughing it out, because I did not tough it out, my ego wanted me really badly to do it, but I literally went for a. I was gonna go for a 10 minute run two days out just to see how it felt, and I got like 30 steps in and it was already six or seven out of 10 paid it. By the way, this is my lower leg. It's kind of where my soleus or lower calf connects to my gastroc slash, which is the upper calf, that area where they connect to the shin. So I'm not exactly sure what the injury was. It's getting much better over time because I haven't ran in almost three weeks. But anyway, first word of wisdom is to, even if you are a coach, and even if you're a really good coach to other people, being your own coach is especially for something that is performance driven and that really requires meticulousness and also requires unbiased opinions and unbiased viewpoints. I highly would recommend hiring a coach and that's what I'm going to do next time when I prepare for it instead of coaching myself, because the problem basically long story short of the reason I got injured, is a couple different things, but one is I did what I like doing and did what I was good at, which is running. I really enjoy running. I would much rather run than sit on a bike or sit on a rower or go on the Stairmaster, aka cross train, which is a really good idea to do when you're prepping for an ultra marathon, especially when you're a bigger individual. Every single other time I've trained for any sort of endurance event, mostly through the military, various selections, all that stuff. I've been 180, 175, 180 pounds and now I'm almost 200 pounds. So that didn't necessarily help.
Speaker 2:Looking back, I would have A hired a coach B lost some weight along the way. One of my goals was to maintain 190 plus. I started at like 197. Also to maintain a 500 plus pound deadlift. Both of those I did. But looking back, I should have allowed myself to drop close to those seven pounds and get closer to that 190.
Speaker 2:Just, it's less stressful. Running is easier when you're lighter to an extent, and that would have been a pretty good idea. Also, I I listen more to my ego than I listen to my body, so I probably should have dialed back the running way earlier than I did as soon as I started feeling a little bit of a hint of discomfort down there or pain, not necessarily just stopped running, but at least been more mindful of it. And I think if I had told the coach that, hey, man, like my, my legs bother me, whatever. What do you think I should do? He would have said hey, I would take a week off and just do cross training for a week. It's not going to affect you all that much, if at all. If anything, it's just going to help because you're going to allow that inflammation to go away and you're not going to make it any worse by continuing to run. But, needless to say, I continued to run.
Speaker 2:I got up to my last full week of running before I decided that I really need to take some time off, which unfortunately was not good timing. It was about two weeks before the actual race. The race was supposed to be this last weekend, but I got up to like 64 miles that week. I had worked up. I usually maintain a 20 to 25 mile per week year round. Just I enjoy running. That's nowhere near enough to prep for an ultra marathon, but I worked that up to 63, 64 miles.
Speaker 2:The last few weeks before I got injured, I was up in the high 50s, low 60s. The last few weeks before I got injured I was up in the high fifties, low sixties and I dropped because I wanted to maintain my deadlift. But I also knew that doing too much lifting would interfere and I spent a really long time building strength, size, muscle, and so I figured I'm going to dial this frequency back, I'm going to dial the volume back, I'm going to basically dial everything back other than the intensity. I still trained hard but I dropped it down to. I was pretty much lifting twice, twice a week to every eight days give or take, and one of those days was a heavily deadlift focused day, so I would hit like a top deadlift single and a couple of back offsets and then I'd hit kind of a full body lift. After that, the other one was just a full body lift with no deadlifts, and so I actually gained deadlift strength.
Speaker 2:A lot of people think you know, when you're doing all this running, you're going to get weak, you're going to get small, and my goal was to kind of prove that wrong, like actually, because I already knew it was the case. But I was actually like looking to create something that something tactile that people could say see and be like you know you didn't get skinny, he didn't lose a bunch of strength. I did lose some strength on some lifts just because I wasn't training those lifts as much on some lifts, just because I wasn't training those lifts as much and I was really focused on the deadlift as well as running. But I ended up gaining. Probably I didn't max out before, but I maxed out this weekend or on Friday at 555. And I was probably around 540, 535, 540 before I started.
Speaker 2:So gain deadlift strength, actually somehow gain weight. And that really just goes to show that running is not the best thing to do for weight loss unless you're also eating a lot less. And I clearly, because I gained weight, I ate in a calorie surplus. There's no other way to gain weight. Over that period of time I only gained a pound, but still like I thought I was just going to naturally lose weight, because that's usually what my body does when I do a lot of endurance training. But that just goes to show that the nutrition aspect is very important and I wasn't completely reckless with my nutrition, but I could have paid more attention to it and kind of allowed my body to naturally lose weight instead of just trying to eat everything back. So unfortunate.
Speaker 2:I definitely am going to pursue another one, I don't know exactly when. I don't think they have a lot here in North Carolina in the summertime, probably due to weather just a little bit dangerous, but maybe in the fall, or potentially the same race next spring and looking forward to it, looking forward to getting a coach and doing it right next time. But it was a really good learning experience because I can also teach. I can use it as even though it wasn't the way I wanted to go, I can use it as content and I am an open book. I don't try to hide things from people. I like to tell people my things that I do right, as well as the things I do wrong, things my clients do well, things my clients struggle with. That's pretty much the whole idea of the content that I create.
Speaker 1:It gave me some good pieces of content to make, even if it was a little bit humiliating and a little bit frustrating. Yeah, I don't think it was a humiliating at all, man, I think it. Um, it definitely connected with me, it resonated with me, it gave me like that uh connection from another soft guy. That's like okay, we're all stupid, we're all crazy, we're all one and one to do the same fucking shit. And it's great to have this.
Speaker 1:Even though we're just now connecting, it's great to see that we are so as individuals. We all have our things that we're after, but seeing the same passions align across so many of our members of our community, but seeing the same passions align across so many of our members of our community, it's fucking awesome. That's why I'm trying to get and build a security hall team to run the Savage Loop, because I feel like doing hard things with friends, with peers, people from our community, helps inspire and motivate others to do the same thing. Dude, we're not immune from the same things that affect the rest of our veteran community 100%.
Speaker 1:We can all fall into that lull. I certainly fucking did. You get out of the military. You're like oh, I've got some injuries, I can't do the same things. I guess I'll just sit on the couch.
Speaker 2:It's like no dude you can get up Dude, you can do something you can do something.
Speaker 1:Finishing and at least getting to the marathon point of the savage loop was huge for me. Like it sucked. I definitely was not healed and was not ready to run that that that injury was very still there. But I finished a marathon and for me that only galvanized my decision to come back and do it again the following year. So we're doing it. Uh, we got three guys. We're going to continue doing it, trying to bring in at least five more to do it because it's all. It's all SF people around that community and civilians and everybody that supports the military and it's a great cause.
Speaker 1:If you're listening and you're looking for a challenge, next year, check out Savage Loop. I'm trying to bring a robust crew of individuals to go run it together because there is something to doing hard things with individuals from the community together to inspire and bring fucking more people along to do it, because the last thing I want to see is more people fall by the wayside to suicide and addiction, and it's an easy thing to get into when you're static, when you're not moving. So guys like you that are out there championing this and showing individuals that, like A, you can become an entrepreneur doing something that you love and B. Being a mentor and a coach is something that's deeply, deeply rooted in being a Green Beret. So if you don't know where to go, think about this pathway.
Speaker 1:For a vast amount of your career, you have to stay in shape and you probably have a passion for it. And if you don't know where to start, reach out to Kevin man For sure. Like it's time for everybody to look at their strengths and what they're good at and be willing to bet on themselves. So, kevin, I can't thank you enough for being here today. If people want to get in touch with you and check out your program, where can they go?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you can find me on Instagram at Terminator underscore training. That's a pretty solid place to find me. I also have a podcast, the Terminator training show. That's can be found on Spotify, apple podcasts, as well as YouTube, and then I again have started to make some organic YouTube videos too. So Terminator training is my YouTube channel. You can check that out, or the website, terminator training doc. Any of those places. You'll see programs, you'll see content and there, of course, you can shoot me a DM on Instagram and I will do my very best to get back to you. They do get backlogged a little bit because I try not to spend as much time as I used to on Instagram, because it kind of just zaps me. But yeah, those are. Those are some good spots to find me.
Speaker 1:Heck, yeah, man. If you pause right now, head on over to the episode description, click on those links, connect with Kevin and if you're looking for a coach, hit him up. Man, especially if you're a young man thinking about going after that wild endeavor of becoming a Green Beret. We need more people in the force, we need more people in the regiment, and I couldn't think of a better coach to help you get there. Kevin, again, thank you for being here To everybody listening and tuning in. Thank you for checking us out and we'll see you all next time. Until then, take care.
Speaker 1:Thanks for tuning in and don't forget to like, follow, share, subscribe and review us on your favorite podcast platform. If you want to support us, head on over to buymeacoffeecom, forward slash SecHawk podcast and buy us a coffee. Connect with us on Instagram X or TikTok and share your thoughts or questions about today's episode. You can also visit securityhawkcom for exclusive content, resources and updates. And remember we get through this together. If you're still listening, the episode's over. Yeah, there's no more Tune in tomorrow or next week.
