Green Beret Racing: How Nick Merrick Built Brotherhood, Purpose, and a Mission Beyond the Military

What happens when military service ends, but the mission continues?

In this powerful episode of Security Halt!, host Deny Caballero sits down with Nick Merrick, a veteran turned nonprofit founder, to explore the critical role of trust, teamwork, and purpose in life after the military. From combat camaraderie to building a new kind of community, this conversation dives deep into what it takes to transition from the battlefield to everyday life—and how brotherhood, adventure, and shared struggle can create powerful pathways to healing.

They discuss:

• The launch of a veteran-led nonprofit focused on mental health through adventure and physical activity
• How healthy competition and shared challenge can reignite purpose after service
• Why trust and communication are essential in building strong teams—both in combat and in civilian life
• The struggles of nonprofit work in the veteran space—and why unity matters now more than ever
• Tools for identity rebuilding, community support, and long-term mental wellness

Whether you're a veteran, first responder, or a civilian looking to understand the real challenges of transition, this episode offers raw insight, actionable hope, and a reminder that healing happens in community.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Trust Over Titles
• 3:20 Mission-First Mindset: Corey’s Truck Story
• 7:28 Why Green Beret Racing Exists
• 11:20 From Racing to Purpose: Evolving the Model
• 16:30 Identity After Service and Preemptive Support
• 22:20 Building Purpose Through Competition
• 28:00 Denali Team: Chat to Commitment
• 32:30 Movement, Fitness, and Getting Back on Track
• 38:10 Broadening Beyond SOF: Community and Inclusion
• 43:20 Battle of the Branches: Healthy Rivalry
• 49:20 Shoulder-to-Shoulder Conversations That Heal
• 54:00 Beyond Racing: Year-Round Purpose Loops
• 1:00:20 Nonprofits, Integrity, and Staying in Lane
• 1:06:10 Transition Truths: Skills, Schools, and Loss of Identity
• 1:12:30 Choose Hard Things: Masogi and Perspective

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:10

Probably three times a week. And I don't know if we've ever started a phone call with, hey, what's up, man? How are you? How's your wife? It always starts off with, Oh, what's up, you ugly bastard, man? You're aching more than I am, kind of stuff. And he's just a really solid dude. And I'll tell you that. It's very similar in this world now running a profit that it is in when you're on a team, right? Yeah, sure. We have guys that have tridents and eagles on their chest, and we have other dudes that were just pack clerks. But it doesn't matter if I can't trust you to do the thing. You know, we have two very simple rules. Tell me that do tell me if you're gonna do it. Like do what you say you're gonna do, and then tell me if you can't. And at the end of the day, your tab doesn't save you from shit if you suck, right? Absolutely. And that dude has shown up time and time again. And we did have a pretty solid conversation today. He's like, look, Nick, I'm I'm not a GB. And I was like, Yeah, I'm aware. Yeah. He goes, you know, you're you're putting me in charge of stuff where we got GBs doing things under me. And I was like, dude, I trust you. At the end of the day, like your your MOS, your number of deployments that that you have do not matter because I can trust you to do the things that you say you're gonna do. You know, I I've fired nine people in this organization for giving me the excuse, oh, you know what, I got busy. And I said this to one dude, and I was like, I'm in Ukraine right now. The Russians are building on the border, and and you're you're busy. I'm still organizing events going on here. I'm fundraising right now, and you couldn't send a three-page or three three-sentence text out while you were shitting, right? The algorithms of your videos got in the way that you were too busy. Like, dude, I don't got time for that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:55

Right? Yeah. I never thought in a million years I'd start an episode by praising uh Corey Popejoy publicly for how amazing he is, but I wasn't gonna say it. Like, you know, now now he deserves his day in the sun because you you you will be hard. I was hard-pressed to find anybody as mechanically inclined, as smart, and multifaceted as Corey when I was a young Green Beret on in that in that company. Um and it was it was true across the board. Every Green Beret, I I would bet money you couldn't find a Green Beret from that time period in that company that could say one bad fucking thing about Corey Pope Joy. Yeah, you can't, because he was that fucking versatile. And one thing you you would never get from him is like exactly what you were just talking about. No, I can't do it. No, he'd figure out how to do it. Might not be legal, but he'd figure out how to do it. We're not talking about that.

SPEAKER_00: 2:51

You know, you got Corey's story for you for anybody that's listening that that doesn't know him. He he runs my motorsports division, and our chase truck uh went down. And so we I had to borrow a truck from him, and he has this tuned-up Ford F-250. Yeah, you know, this thing spewed everything that everybody that's all about environmental change hates, it's all of their hatred going into the same time. And uh he's like, dude, just take this. We're hauling from Colorado down to Las Vegas. It's wintertime, uh, so we have to go across a mountain pass, and our truck's hauling, it's wonderful. We get towards Utah and third gear in the transmission goes out.

SPEAKER_01: 3:29

Oh shit.

SPEAKER_00: 3:29

Um, it has enough power that it'll go from second to fourth and you know, make a lot of really loud noises and do it. I call him up and I was like, Corey, dude, um I don't know, man. Like, I don't want to break your truck, like this and that. And he goes, Don't care. The the mission is to get the thing there. If you have to nuke my transmission to get it down there, we'll solve it when we get down there. And true, truck pulled, got down there, it died the day we were there. We actually had to rent another vehicle to pull the stuff around. But he and he never batted an eye at it. He was just like, nope, like this is the mission, this is what we have to do. We have people coming to do this event, yeah, the event. And he wasn't even going to be there for it. And just uh a heart of gold dudes willing to show up and do everything except return messages when you text him. But outside of that, everything else.

SPEAKER_01: 4:18

Everything he's not. Well, Nick, this is not just an episode lavishing and telling stories about Corey Pope Joy as much as we probably do that. This episode's to highlight you, man, and what the organization's doing. Um, Greenberg Racing has been out there on social media. I've been wanting to pin you guys down for a long time because there's something to be said about adrenaline, the soft community, and being able to like overcome some of the shit that we deal with when we get out of the service. Um, I think there's there's a lot of evidence to talk about um putting guys in in difficult situations with adrenaline that can be of help in a therapeutic nature. So today, man, I want to dive into your story as a nonprofit. How did this become a thing?

SPEAKER_00: 5:02

Oh, well, I'm glad we got time because it's evolved and become things that I didn't expect it to be. But in 2019, I got a call from a uh a nonprofit that supports SF, you know, multiple special operations. And they said, hey, we have an open seat in a uh a razor down in the desert. You want to race in the Mint 400? And in my mind, I was like, totally. I grew up ripping on snowmobiles and I raced dirt, all this kind of stuff. I was like, Yeah, that sounds like my cup of tea. They say, Cool, find a co-driver. Everything else is gonna be covered. We're gonna pay for your flight, your rental, we're gonna pay you your help, your entry fee, we're gonna give you the gear, somebody's gonna come and change belts and tires and stuff like that. You just have to drive. And I was like, dude, like, did I win the lottery? Like, what is going on here? This isn't great. Um, so weirdly, and you know this just as well as anybody, getting dudes to commit to things outside of their profession is difficult. Yeah. But I went down a list of probably a dozen guys that I know that are gear heads that like racing. And mind you, I don't know what this race is, right? No clue whatsoever what I'm walking into. But I was like, hey, do you want to, you know, go, you know, rip a dirt bite or a buggy down the desert with me? And everybody was either deploying and training cycles or something like that. So the guy I end up getting to say yes, was uh a former teammate of mine. We did a couple trips into Africa together, and he had retired about a year before. So I mean he's like, dude, totally, let's do it. So goes down there, uh, we get in the vehicle, and 12 hours later we finish the race in third place in the military challenge. And mind you, that is not because I'm a savant of racing or anything like that. Everybody else broke, literally. The fourth and ninth place were all broken, and we were just too stubborn to stop. Uh, so we took third, and it was a hell of an event for us. You know, we blew an axle uh 27 miles in, uh, we blew five fuses. Uh, fifth group actually pulled us into the pit because we couldn't get the vehicle actually to move, uh, which was completely allowed. They're out there in about once. Uh, we blew a belt, like it was just a thing, and we were laughing about it. And we come into the pits, and the way that it's set up is you come into the pit, the final pit, before you cross the finish line. So we actually pulled into the pit and it's like 11.28 p.m. And we look at the pit crew and they're like, Holy shit, you're still going? And we're like, Yeah. Like, we're getting out, like we're undoing the safety gear. And like, well, that was fun. They're like, you have to go finish. And we're like, what is that? What do we do? What do you mean? So we finished. This is a big hurrah for us. It was great. Well, we're sitting at breakfast the very next morning, and he looks at me and he goes, Dude, I didn't know that I needed that. And that kind of hit me because I I look at this man and I say, Okay, you you retired as a team sergeant, which is the pinnacle of anything. I don't care what any retired CSM out there says, what group commander or how many stars, or if you're a unicorn W5, the team sergeant's the dude. And he retired as the the team sergeant successful deployment setup. He was the the I believe he's the team sergeant on one of the first teams back into Ukraine in 2015 after the version of Crimea. So he built something, he did it.

SPEAKER_02: 8:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 8:11

And yeah, he was a I want to say maybe I get this wrong. He was a Midwest Glock representative, right? So he's working for Glock, he has his own company, he's been married for 23 years, kids are in the military or they're in college. Like you look at him and you go, that dude has success. Yep, like that's it, that's the recipe. And he's for him to say that to me, I was like, Whoa, what do you mean? And he was like, I I need I need something like this. I need I don't have a team. I'm not getting up anymore to to prep for the range or to go to uh do a sat B because we have a trip coming up. I need a thing. And it really got us spinning. And I I'd just been in Phoenix with a friend of mine I was deployed with in the adventure, and he said something similar to me. Uh he said he went to the VFW, and I was like, fuck what you go with the VFW for, right? Like, you're gonna go talk to dudes that are gonna tell you that all of them were you know our retired metal of modern recipient, Navy SEALs, right? You know, none of them are any of that. And he uh he was like, no, like we don't get it. Like I don't work with veterans, I don't live near veterans, I don't have anybody that I can talk to you and say, man, this story was like this, or connect just to like on our you know, our dark humor or just the camaraderie that we have. So he says that to me, and my co-driver says it to me, and I was like, Well, I think we need to do something about this, and maybe this is it. Let's desert race, right? This sounds like a lot of fun. And then we checked in how much desert racing costs. I'm like, okay, look, so maybe soapbox derby might be the better thing, but desert racing is expensive. So I went back, COVID hits just after that. And I was like, Oh man, if we can't afford desert racing, what can we actually do? And I ended up getting dirt bikes and getting a couple guys to go out and race with me there. And we started to find it, and then I I got a call about jujitsu, right? I was like, hey, ow some jujitsu, and I was trying to think about it. I was like, well, you're not really racing. I guess you're racing to get submission or something like that. And I agreed, like, yeah, we'll pay for it. Like, and I'm I'm not a nonprofit at the time. I didn't even have an LLC, I was just calling people and being like, yo, you've got a guy that wants to do a thing. Can you can you help? Ah, sure, man. And you know, I was getting you know ghee donated, and I was getting fuel and tires and entry fees, you know, taken care of. And then it it kind of set on me. I was like, I'm not after racing here. I I'm not even after a team necessarily, I'm after a purpose.

SPEAKER_02: 10:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 10:29

And and I I then started to form my nonprofit, and I had this thought, I was like, you know, I'm 6'4, I'm 240 pounds, right? I've been carrying heavy shit my whole life. My knees don't necessarily like me. And if you if I were to come to you and say, hey, I need to excise my demons, how do you think I could do it? And you say, marathon running. Well, cool, my demons aren't getting excised because I am not a marathon runner, right? It's just not gonna happen. And I saw so many of these other programs that are out there that that go, hey, look, we got a thing. You need to do this, and then you'll you'll figure it out. Yeah, that's wrong. You know, that that can't be correct. So we switched the model and we said, well, how do we help you find purpose? What is it that you want to do that we can take away the monetary and material type stuff? And slowly we started forming really different teams. And I had guys calling me about the most random shit. I had uh, this dude calls me up. We'd been in Afghanistan in uh 11 and 12 together. Calls me up and he's like, Look, I'm broken, I'm retired, I'm old, and I'm not running. I'm sure it's I'm not getting on a dirt bike. I can't afford to get in a buggy, but I need something. Right? And he he goes really quiet and I could hear it. I was like, this is gonna be a fun ask. I don't know what he's about to tell me, but it's gonna be a really fun ask. And he goes, Would you sponsor me to be in a bowling league? And I was like, fuck yeah. How how could we say no to bowling? Right. Yeah. And through the the course of it, we really kind of changed how we looked at mental health and what it is that we're going after. And we, I think we as a society are kind of flawed in how we look at success, right? We look at take alcoholics anonymous. Hey, you're an alcoholic, you can't control yourself around alcohol. And the only way that we can say, well, that is success is if the person becomes completely sober, right? Oh, that's a success. If he had one beer, he just, oh, he's back down the track. And I think that that's wrong in many, many aspects. You know, if I tell you, you know, say you're a you're an alcoholic and I remove alcohol from your house, it doesn't mean that you're not an alcoholic. It just means you don't have access to the thing that you're you're showing void. And that void is what we're after. You know, I retired about a month and a half ago, and I was going through a little bit of an identity crisis. You know, here I am, tons of different deployments. You know, I've I've had success at many different places. I have a nonprofit that I'm running that I get to come on talk shows and talk to people about, you know, random ideas that I have. I'm employed by a corporation that pays me way more money than they need to to do the things that I'm doing. And here I was going, Holy shit, like I'm I I don't think I should be having a crisis, but I do because I we hold our identity in the tabges, you know, and you walk in and you can see the merits as somebody walks in, and now you're walking out, and you can look at an employer and be like, Yeah, well, I'm a Sephardi grad. And they're like, What does that mean? Like, hold on, I'm a free fall jump master. Cool. We don't we don't do that here. Yeah. This is Cisco. Exactly. So we we naturally go through that that crisis. And I thought to myself, you know, there's there's a dozen nonprofits that you can hit if you throw a stone that want to help you write your resume and get employed. You know, you could, if you need marital advice, you know, they're out there. If you need to to figure out school or trade skills, they're there. You know, if you need to redo your your house, they're they're out there. If you need to overcome addiction, they're out there. But there's nobody that's looking at this from the preemptive standpoint that says, well, before the guy gets to the place where the gun is sitting on the table and he goes, this might be the best solution, why don't we try to find something for him to look away from that gun?

SPEAKER_01: 14:01

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 14:02

And I think it's competitive nature, right? We we didn't become green brays on accident. We went to it, and then every day you wake up and you know there's a limited number of slots. You know, there are set times, and you're immediately looking at the guy in front of you at selection, going, I need to catch him. I I have to beat him, while also looking behind you and going, they're not catching me. And it drives. And then you get to a team, you're going to the range, and every single one of us gets on a flat range, and the 25-meter bowl comes out, and you're immediately looking at the guy to the right and your left, and you're like, oh shit. Okay. Yeah. On it. He's on it. He's doing it. We do this in the gym, we do this on the we do it everywhere, and we compete because your job's not secure and your place on the team is only as good as you continuing to perform. We'll overlook some shit here and there. But if you're not performing, you're not playing ball with us. So when we lose that, when we go out, when life is in a cubicle, when it is the number of hours you do, you lose that right and left, and it's not really widely accepted in much of our culture to have that same mentality. So I thought to myself, instead of taking these other nonprofits' places, why don't I get you to figure out what you want to do, something that's going to change your literature, that's going to change your sleep patterns, that's going to make you change your diet. And then instead of saying, well, you're no longer an alcoholic, if you drink a 12 pack a night and then you get into our program and now you're drinking 10 because you're seeing progress, dude, that's success.

SPEAKER_01: 15:26

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SPEAKER_00: 15:40

You purposely chose not to go down the next two beers because you're seeing success in something you want to do. And that is far more impactful than it is in any other way. I'm not taking it away. You're choosing to do something that is worthwhile for you.

SPEAKER_01: 15:55

I think that speaks to the guy exactly what you're saying, but maybe he's not addicted. He's not truly an addict. It's the boredom, it's the lack of drive and purpose. And dude, if you're listening to this, whether you're soft or not, you're gonna have the crisis. I'm telling you. I've I've I've told so many dudes right before they're getting out, it's like, nah, me, it's not gonna fuck with me. I got my thing. I'm gonna do X, Y, and Z. A few fucking months later, it's like, I fucking hate sales. I fucking hate not being around the fucking team. And they're they're spiraling. And it's like, but the moment you give them, because you have to remember, for a vast majority of us, we had a timeline on a whiteboard that said, this week on this day, we're leaving for this grand adventure. And you take that away when you don't have nothing to look forward to, and it's not not knocking on your family, your wife, your your civilian friends, you're built different. You've spent an entire career having adventure constantly in your doorstep, constantly like something like, oh, you know, and we took advantage of it. We for a long, for a long time, a lot of us like, oh yeah, just going right back to South America, gonna be in the jungles of Peru. Oh well. Then you get on the outside, you're like, fuck, I was in the Amazon. I used to do all this great stuff. Now I'm selling fucking software. Dude, you gotta find it. You gotta find that next thing, man.

SPEAKER_00: 17:20

You know, I I I put together a team to to climb Denali. Oh no shit. Yeah, I got all of their gear together, and and we had our rough patches. You know, we're not a big nonprofit by any means, but made a lot of calls, talked to a lot of people, ended up getting almost everything covered for them. And I put them all together and I they had this group chat, and it's the typical group chat that people, you know, a couple of them knew each other, but they had never, for the most part, done anything like this. And some of them hadn't even approached a 20,000 uh foot mountain, much less something above 14 being in Colorado. And uh I put them together and said, Hey, go. You tell me when you're gonna climb the mountain, you tell me what your plan is for it, and I'm gonna go try to find everything else for you. I need your help on some other things, like text grandma and say, Hey, grandma, can you kick in 20 bucks here? But at the most, for the most part, I got all of their skis, all of the actual mountain gear, their bags, like all of it donated. We took care of their flights to get out there, all that kind of stuff. And and we had some gaps that we we definitely messed up in. But their their group chat, I think, is a great illustration of this. They were in there doing the natural, you know, sharing the memes and links to BS and whatnot. And then one day, I remember looking at this at Ping, and it was uh an article about a smart wall that Mountain Hardware was coming out with. And they said, Hey, you know, this looks like it might be something that we would use on the mountain given temperatures, and they went into the whole mountaineering nerd stuff, and they they switched at that moment from sending, you know, quote unquote cat memes, if you will, to all of a sudden now they're sending book recommendations back and forth. They're talking about water consumption levels at elevation, how dehydration affects you differently when you're above 18,000 feet versus being at you know 14 and so on. And they're talking about sleeping arrangements and they're talking about going to work out, and this thing all of a sudden turned into a business chat, if you will. Exactly. And they hit the mountain. And they that's what we're trying to highlight is that if you don't have a reason to wake up, why am I going to bed? Yeah, right? What's the point? I'm gonna stay up playing, you know, the the read you know, redone version of Halo 3 because I don't have anything to look forward to tomorrow and sure I'll be tired, sure, things suck, but I I lose touch with my community and I lose touch with me. So if I can give you something to wake up for, dude, everything else changes. You're gonna you can work on your marriage, you can work on your resume, right? You can figure all the other stuff out, but if I don't have that thing that drives me to get up, life is dark, and I'm gonna find something to fill that void. And it's gonna be alcohol, it's gonna be drugs, it's gonna be women or porn, and it all leads down the same place of despair, right?

SPEAKER_01: 20:05

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think there's something to be said for the way that you approach it. When you solve every problem for somebody and you make it super simple, where like, we're gonna take care of the entire planning process, canticles will show up at your door. You take away the motivation and the drive to tap into that flow state of like creative problem solving. What those guys were doing in the chat group is you inspired them, you motivate them, you took away the monetary problems of getting a lot of the equipment, but they still had to figure things out for themselves. And that's where the brilliance in this whole thing comes on. It's like, dude, like you're gonna have to tap into who you were, who you've always been, but you kind of forgot. The capable Green Beret is still in there. Yeah, you just forgot that that's a whole part of you that's still gonna be there with you. And like what like in the text threads, all those guys developed and they they they re-introduced themselves to that person that they they thought was lost. And that's one of the most important things that we have to remember. Everything you had with you as you were leaving the military is still there with you. You don't have to budget, you can't go in the arms room and take away your weapon system and shit. But everything that you learn at all the schools, all that's still with you. You're still that capable guy. Don't forget. Uh, but it's easy, it's easier. So much easier than people think.

SPEAKER_00: 21:24

Oh, man, and when we do this on a on a team, even where you kind of get that lull and and you need to be kicked between the balls every now and then just to be like, yep, I still got it. You know, I I I made an argument for my my team to go to Hawaii, which is not our AOR, to do this 50 mile movement with Chad Conley and 50 for the fallen. Oh, hell yeah. Love Chad. Chad's a great dude, good friend of mine. And he we do stuff together, we collaborate on things, and he called me up, he's like, Nick, do you want to come and do this? And I was like, dude, I'm in, right? Like, I'll wear GBR stuff, we'll come out, I'll I'll I'll represent who we are. Yeah. And I walked in, you know, I was a warrant officer, so we get a little bit more leniency on stuff, walked in the room.

SPEAKER_01: 22:04

Another warrant, hell yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 22:07

So I looked at the team sergeant and I looked at the uh the team leader and I was like, hey, uh, and we were getting ready to uh to head to Norway. And I said, hey, uh I'm gonna take leave a little bit early when we get back. Uh I'm gonna be gone during Pearl Harbor week. I'm gonna go do a 50-mile hike uh with Chad Conley down there, and then I'll come back. I don't care, I'll pull staff duty during it, but I'm kind of putting the team out of switch. And uh the whole team's in there, and everybody stops and they look at me and they're like, What's this 50 mile thing? And I was like, Okay, it's like 50 for the fallen, like it's a 50-mile movement. This is gonna start on the north side, we're gonna end at Pearl Harbor, win the first planes, uh, right around the time that they were gonna come. You keep pace. It's not super heavy, but it's it's a good movement. It's for a reason, uh, etc. And all of them are like, well, hey, hey, Team Star, like I want to do this. And the the Teamstar was like, you guys understand, we're getting back from Norway like a week and a half before this, right? And we're leaving right after Christmas leave to head to Montana. Uh whole team was like, yeah, cool. Um and I was like, I mean, that changes everything because I might be able to get the army to pay for this. And the whole team's like, okay. And I was like, all right, I need to know for sure who's going, who's not. And we drew up a con plan. I called up Sorb and uh said, Hey, Tropical Thunder Week is happening right around that time. We'll do recruiting for you, this and that. And they had this open statement that they'll they'll pay for teams to do things if the teams go and do recruiting on their behalf, right? So I got most of the the contracting or most of the financial side done. We had to pitch the battalion commander. And I kept harping on what we need to pitch and what we don't, and the the team leader didn't listen, as all captains never want to listen. Damn it, sir. He's setting metal taskings and you know, this is our CV2 pathway, and this and that, and the BCI just sitting there, just arms crossed, just going. So he's like, So you want me to spend money to send you to a different AOR to Pike? Like, couldn't I do that here? Yeah, and uh he's just sitting there and I was like, sir, do you mind if I step in for a sec? And he goes, Schnernek, what do you got, man? And I was like, You're you're worried that this is a boondoggle. Uh and he goes, and I was like, because it says Hawaii on it, and he's like, Yeah, and I was like, it is. It's a hundred percent a boom dongle. And you saw everybody, like the whole staff stopped and looked at. I was like, but let me ask you a question. When was the last time you bragged to your friends that you stayed in because you went to the flat range or you went to JRTC? You tell them about that J set you did to Latvia and Estonia where your partner force is awesome, and that night you spin out, you know, on the seat, you know, drinking with them and trash talking and doing that stuff. That's the memories that you keep. You talk about the ski resort you went to Incrested View, where most of it was stupid and we're we're learning how to downhill ski, but you're at the lodge that night. That's the stuff you stayed in. I have six E6s on my team that are coming up for re-enlistment. They don't have that. I'm trying to take them on an event that keeps them in the regimen for things that are not easy to push them forward. And he stops and he goes, What the fuck didn't you lead with that, dude? Like and it's stuff like that that that I like I look at our event here, and I I had a guy call me up, he goes, Hey man, I wanna I wanna do a burrow race up Mount Rosa. And I was like, What the fuck is a burrow race? Like a donkey? And he goes, Yeah, uh a donkey. Uh you lead it by a leash and you run three miles up the mountain and then you go three miles down the other side. And I was like, Oh man, I mean, what this is a thing. ESBN8, the Ocho. On the back of the barrel with the camera watching you. Um, I was like, how do we how do we say no to that? And that that sparks stuff within this organization when 20, I'm not kidding you, 20 minutes before we got on this call, I had two guys call me out of 50, wanting to go a uh do a 500 on a dirt bike, a race, right? 500 minutes, a little over eight hours endurance race on a dirt bike. I'm like, absolutely, dude. Like, I don't know what we can provide to you, but send me what you want and I will reach out to our sponsors because that's the passion that we want. We want guys to go, man, I'm gonna go do something hard. I'm gonna do something that challenges me because that's what changes everything in your mindset. When you're when you're a grown man and you have the tab, the trident, the eagle, the whatever it is that your service connected soft thing says that you are awesome, and then you're starting to doubt going to do something, you're you're not in a solid place because we're told for our entire career, oh, there's no mission I can't send a green beret. We're, you know, stewards of culture. We can be in a foxhole one day, you know, or behind in a hide site the next day, you're briefing the ambassador. Sure shit. Yeah, totally. Yeah. But when you get out, nobody's blowing that, you know, that that horn for you anymore. And it's up to you to come up with it. And instead of saying, well, you know, let me help you get a better resume together and go stand in front of a CEO and tell them that, yes, I can manage a firefight at night in a foreign language in a different country against overwhelming odds and be successful, of course I can manage your timeline for your sales.

SPEAKER_02: 27:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 27:10

Um, it's that if precinct would do that, they'll figure that part out. There's people that do it. You want to you want to go do a you know a 200-mile or a 400-mile ultra marathon? Cool. Like we'll come support you, we'll give you all the lickies and chewies and we'll get your pace runners and we'll pay for you to do it. Right? But there's a stipulation that comes on the other side because I try to hold them accountable.

SPEAKER_01: 27:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 27:31

This isn't. There's no longer I'm not we in the beginning started off paying entry fees and I stopped doing that because there's no skin in the game. If I pay for it and you back out, I just lost money. But if you pay for it, it's usually contingent upon you going to the event. You start sending me media, we'll reimburse you for this. And we'll work with people that don't have the means to it, but you need to have some skin, you need to have drive, a reasonable. 100%. I don't need sodium, I don't need your trophy, I need you to go, and I need you to do. And we've had some resounding success. I had a gentleman roughly my size get on his fourth sport. Uh, and he's like, I just need something. And he ended up road biking and has competed in tons of races. And he called me up and he goes, dude, if you'd have told me months ago that I would be into road biking, I would have laughed at you. I wanted to do CrossFit and I wanted to do jujitsu, but I got hurt and I couldn't do combat sports. And here I am on a bike with people half my size having a blast. Yeah. And they dive in and they do.

SPEAKER_01: 28:34

Yeah, dude, people don't realize the importance of like you've you've been active your entire career. You've been somebody that looked at fitness as being, and even if you were that guy on the team that was just like a half-ass fitness guy, it was still part of your life, and you get out, and then the amount of guys that quit working out, that quit doing things, and then they wonder why, like, fuck, I'm always in my back hurts, everything sucks. I'm like, dude, you gotta a body in motion stays in motion. Has to. Like, you have to continue pushing the envelope. And I get it. One of the hardest things is looking yourself in the mirror and saying, you know what? I cannot bro lift anymore. I have to start taking the functional fitness course at my local Y. Like, whatever you have to do to stay functional, stay moving, do it. You you might be able to get back in and do the the cool CrossFit workouts of doctor pending and you know, figuring things out that you probably because you're broke. The vast majority of you guys have pretty high percentage ratings on your disability.

SPEAKER_00: 29:34

But for those listening, Vinny is not advocating uh taking over CrossFit or exertion your body without medical guidance.

SPEAKER_01: 29:44

But you gotta get active, man. You gotta move. Like I never realized that that was something that I had to start talking about till I started talking with a lot of my friends that did fall out of that journey of being fit and be like, all right, man, we're gonna get you a whoop. Like, I bought more whoops in the last year. Absolutely. Than ever. Because, dude, if you just walk, if you just get up and you go walk, if you go do your row machine, if you go ride the bike, you knocked it out early in the morning, you're good. I get it. You got kids, you got wives, but there's nothing more empowering than getting back in your journey, man. Like I'm seeing so many of our guys that are bouncing back from horrible injuries and doing those endurance events, man. This episode is brought to you by Pure Liberty Labs. Quality supplements designed to elevate your health and performance. Check out their full line of quality supplements, whether you're looking for whey protein, pre-workout, creatine, or super greens drink, Pure Liberty Labs has you covered. Use my code SecurityHall10 at checkout today.

unknown: 30:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 30:43

What if you don't compare yourself to, oh, you know, I was 22 when I went to the the Q course. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, I played hockey six days a week before that, right? I ran an 1138 two mile, right? I'd probably run an 1138 one mile right now.

SPEAKER_01: 30:58

I was gonna say, you don't want to see my one mile. But you know, it's like one of those things like we evolve, man. We evolve, we grow, we get, we get older, you gotta adapt. And um a good Green Beret friend that's out there, if you're if you're looking for a fitness coach, 18 Alpha Fitness just got done talking about solid. And he's like, dude, like one of his posts is like, man, my my two-mile runtime used to be fucking 10 something. I'm in my 50s now. Like, if my my runtime is uh in the 20s, I'm good.

SPEAKER_00: 31:31

You know, I actually uh I came home, I was stoked the other day. Um I I was working up with uh I worked linked up with uh the Operation One Voice guys. Uh they're out here in Georgia, they did a 400-mile ride uh on Memoriano. It was a couple weekends ago. Yeah. Um might have been September 11th weekend, something like that. But they they took off, did 400 miles down to Tampa, honoring a couple Marines that had fallen. It's a a rainbow coalition of soft guys that do it. And they're like, hey, do you want to come out and do this next year? I was like, absolutely. But it kind of like reinvigorated like a workout spark for me. And I went out and I I pushed myself. It hurt. And I I did a five mile, there's a wee wonderful lake here to try to run around. And I came in, I crossed, and it was I was at 38 minutes, and I was like, holy shit, like I'm I'm actually really happy with that. I heard like hell the next day, but it you know, you don't you don't bounce back. But that that goal of being like I have something next on the list to do is for working out, for eating, for a reason to do it, and we can be the dead horse about it. But if you don't have a reason for, you have no will. And man, it's so easy in the society to I can order DoorDash and I can get anything to live in, then we we idolize just drinking. Right? I drink, I have a great whiskey collection, love it, but I drink for reason, not just because, right? I go work out with a plan. I get up and I I write my day out. I I've had to become extremely meticulous in in how I do it, and I have it scheduled and I have my to-dos list and my these are nice to get done and my have-to's and whatnot. And without that, dude, I I would be lost in so many things I do. And GDR drives so much of it. It it truly does. I'm up and I'm on calls and I'm getting people interested, or at least checking as supporters and donors and people that are doing things. And I and kind of pivoting the organization, I've always thought like, hey, I I need to branch out and do more. I need not just green berets. Because when I started this, I didn't know how to run a nonprofit, and I didn't know much communities outside of the infantry where I started, and then the 18 series world. I know what we go through. I I've seen it and I can surmise what raiders go through, right? And what SEALs go through, and with PJs and CCTs and 160. We're all together, and and we're for the most part cut from a different crop uh cloth, just wearing a different uniform. And I thought to myself, like, I can deal with them. I I know that. I know what the quick turnarounds. I had a deployment come up three days after I got home from one, right? Just, hey, you're out the door again. Go. Yeah. And we know the tempo, and we know the lifestyle, and we know the workout and the the people that are to our left and right, but I don't I didn't know the rest of the military that way. I don't know what a sub-mariner goes through, right? Vitamin D deficiency, probably because you're underwater and probably concussions from hitting your head. But past that, I don't know what it's like to be stuck in a can at the bottom of the ocean for six months or however long to go on. So I focused on just green berets. Yeah. Um, and then I started, I I have one of my supporters. I walked into a gym one day, uh, go to work out, and he's wearing a Marine Corps uh sniper shirt, uh some terminology on it, right? And I looked up and I said, Hey, are you a pig or a hog? Uh and he goes, I'm I'm just a pig. And I was like, I'm I'm a hog. Uh and he goes, kind of looked at me really weird, and I was like, Hey, you're trying to get out of here. This is what we do, right? We get dudes into doing shit and try to have some fun. I handed him my card. Um, knowing that he was a Marine. Just fuck it, man. Let's let's make things happen. Yeah. Um, he later tells me that he was in a terrible spot uh in his life. He had just moved to Colorado, he had no friends, uh, got down to service. He had quite a few other things that I won't talk about on here going, but he was not looking at a very positive outlook on life. And he said the card had a weight sitting in his pocket. And he always says he goes out there and he goes, I had a different look at things. I was like, I need to call this dude. Sent me like a two-paragraph long text. Mind you, I had just gotten back from deployment. Uh, we're getting ready to open up a headquarters. We have the largest race of the season coming on, and all of it is happening all in one. I'm designing liveries and getting merchandise made. I'm, you know, getting the inside of the headquarters taken care of, pushing the media for it, all that. And he texts me. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna get back to this guy. And I completely forgot. But um, two weeks goes by and he texts me again. Hey man, I'm just letting you know. And I was like, oh shit, right, yeah. Uh so I text it back and I was like, hey man, if you catch your tools, come by the headquarters. Uh, we could use a little hand. And we really didn't have anything left to do. Like the paint was dry. Um, shows up, full bed, full of trucks, ready to go, walks in, Bob the Builder, tool belt and everything, ready to go. He's excited. Um, so we we find a couple things to do, and then we go out to lunch with him. And uh we sit down, it's me and two other Green Berets, and him and you know, we go to uh Above Us 33, and on the table, somebody had left crayons, and we immediately slide them across the table for him. Immediately, right? And this dude, maybe my memory's failing me, but I'm pretty sure he took it and just took a bite out of it, which is like red ones, and he just fit in. And at the end of it, he gets a little teary. I go, he goes, you know, I I really I need this. Like I need guys to do stuff with. I don't have this. And he comes out and he dirt races dirt bikes with us now. And you know, he's actually in charge of my marine team for the next venture. But I I wanted to bring this feeling, this camaraderie, into a bigger scale in two different ways. So the the first one is instead of that singular event, right, the Denali team, they had Denali, they had the seven-month lead and they and they did it. But once you come off the mountain, now what? Right? It's now kind of on you. So I wanted to create a multi-series uh of events that they have the next one to look forward to after we're done with this one that says, hey, in a phrase that I use with them when I talk to them, I say, you know, if you're thinking about killing yourself, just wait until after the next race, right? It's our dark humor. Yeah, but if they're going, hey, it's on brand moving anywhere without me, like they're counting on me, yeah, I'll do this after, right? It's that that thought, like you can quit tomorrow. Yeah, but just get through today. So we're we're designing uh right now it's only three races in the desert, uh Doom Buggy style and Ford Crown Victoria's. Oh Mad Max style, we've gotten people coming out of the woodwork to help with this, but they're gonna be lifted, they're gonna be on 31, so we don't have to do a ton of modifications to them. Damn, caged out, lights, absolutely crazy. And then the second part of the mission is I have a Marine, an Air Force, an Army, and a Navy car. And we're being piloted by members of those branch, either current or former. And we're doing this over three races. So now when you're showing up, it's not showing up to be like, hey, this is gonna be a lot of fun. Let's have fun, guys. It is, I don't know how the Air Force beat us last time. I'm waking up tomorrow and I'm gonna I'm gonna change what my YouTube route my YouTube algorithm is. You know, hey, our shocks didn't work out as well as we'd like to because these bumps. I'm gonna look at how do how do I revalve these? Can we change departure angles or or what like how do I do this? And now I'm spark, I'm taking that same way that we talk trash to each other and everything that we do, right? Oh, the chair force is coming in, right? Yeah, you know, hey, you know, hey Navy guys, you know, you got uh any any movies coming up? Like what's going on? Natural like trash talk that we do, and then putting it into vehicles on display for us to have a season-long let's do this against each other, yeah, while also supporting each other. And we're we're calling it Battle of the Branches. Um ton of different support for it. We got a couple vehicles. Actually, that that Marine, he has a uh he has a car now uh sitting in his driveway, and he's like, it's really weird to walk out. It's white and black, it's a 2011 Ford Crown Victoria police interceptor. Um, the Air Force guys, they have their vehicle and it's down in Yuma. And dude, he called me on the way home from work and he's like, my wife's probably gonna be a little mad at me, but I I can't help it. I need to tear into this car. And he's sending me pictures of the inside being completely gutted out, and he's sending me sketches of well, this is how I think the cage should go. And well, what if we put the tires like this in here? And you know, I was under here, and we'll get on calls and talk, you know, technical specs of this. But it's this excitement leading up to the competition. The race is a byproduct, yes, right. Absolutely about the opportunity to just do something against each other and for fun. And the the chats light up, they talk trash all day to each other, which is is no which is you know really humorous for me. Yeah. So the the thought process behind this expanded thing is to take this this purpose-built passion we have to do something at a higher level, higher than we currently stand at, and now market it as something where we're doing it against each other, but the same mission is in is in place. You know, I've I've been wrenching on vehicles next to guys, and and I don't know if many of your listeners know the psychology of it, but if you address a problem that you have with somebody with another man face to face, we psychologically get to the point where we get defensive and we brace for contact, right? We go into fight. You were you were face to face, you're looking me in the eye, you say you have a problem. Well, right, this is what we do. And we tend to put guys shoulder to shoulder working on things. And the conversations that we've had in our garage where guys are pulling rotors off of our razor and talking about things are completely different when somebody can look at you and go, hey man, you didn't show up, right? Like I needed you for this. And seeing them just go, You're fucking right. I do. If you face them and you put a finger in their face and go, hey, you fucked this up for us, it takes a very special person to be like, You're right. Many, many of us get caught up in that ego and be like, no, fuck you, and they'll blame it on something else. But when putting them next to each other, we can have that conversation and be like, hey, I needed you here for this, and you weren't while we're doing things. So we take a little bit of that out of there and then it branches into different conversations. Hey, man, you're you're off. What's going on? Is something something going wrong at home? This and that. And we've had dudes, you know, they don't want to admit it, but been working on a vehicle just in tears talking about things. You know, and they go and they grab beer out of the fridge and they're having a conversation and be like, dude, this sucks, man. I don't know what I'm gonna do right here. I'm cool. Like, what do you need? You know, yeah. I I can't, you know, for for some of the guys, like, I can't give you money, like I can't offer you any jobs, but dude, I can sure as hell go rip on a dirt bike with you, right? Hey, you can crash at my place if you need to. And it's that brotherhood that we're we're accustomed to, where you have, you know, everybody's coming by the team room, the kids are in there, you know, somebody's car breaks down at 10 o'clock at night. Who are you gonna call? You're gonna call your team. Yeah, right? Somebody on the team, you're gonna call them. You don't reach out to anywhere else. And we're trying to to imbue that spirit within this for all of the branches to come in and be like, you know, you're pretty good for a fucking squid, right? In our language, but knowing very well that if something went wrong, I can call that guy. Yeah. Right. And that's that's really where we're trying to go with this whole thing. I want to expand it beyond that into marathon running. I want to get the three-gun team going again. I want skydiving, right? I don't care, but I want the guys to show up and then find that purpose beyond profession to do something that they are passionate about, regardless of what it is. We we don't care.

SPEAKER_01: 42:41

It's important and and not enough, like we have nonprofits for all of our soft community. And one of the things that really bothers me is like we don't have enough support for just to branch us for the everyday guy. Yeah. Um, you know, shit. Like before I was a green brand, I was a paratrooper. How many organizations are out there that are supporting our paratroopers? Two. Yeah, exactly. Like, and that's that's the thing. Like, we we can't forget that the GWAT was fought by a whole hell of a lot more people than just our soft guys.

SPEAKER_00: 43:14

Absolutely. We romanticize soft so hard. Hey, don't be wrong, I I've done a lot of really, really cool shit that I never could have done in the infantry.

SPEAKER_01: 43:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 43:24

You know, my my last trip, I was one of four dudes, I was the team leader for a team in Ukraine to travel and do stuff that we were the the nation was looking for. You know, I had a free star direct report. I the the I was on a first aid basis with uh the commander of UConn, right? He knew who the hell I was and called me, hey Nick, I'm looking for this. What's going on? Never in my life as a squad leader in the infantry would I ever get a call from a major, you know, a captain, it's gonna be somebody else calling me. But on the flip side, when I was in Iraq as an infantry man, we didn't have the support and the cool guy stuff, right? The 43 other dudes in that platoon that are showing up, and some of them are fucking idiots. Plain and simple, right? That's just it's how it is. I told my brother when he joined the Iptree, I said, You're gonna be some of the dumbest people you've ever met in your life. You're gonna love them though. Secondly, you're also gonna meet some of the greatest people you've ever met. Yes, and I'm still friends with a couple people that I was in the Ape Tree with. Um, one of them's helped me with the organization, just an absolute wonderful human. I've been in dozens of firefights with this guy, and the tab didn't matter. Right. He didn't have it, and he's not a ranger guy. I mean, I'm not a ranger either, but there was no there was nothing in that place. So those those guys that went out there and fought in all of these shitty places, when we in Soft would get into a firefight and not call a tick, because we know that they're up north going into the valley, and if we call a tick, we're sucking their air set, air assets up, and they need them more than we do. And looking at that way, then why the hell would we not want the the Ipatry kids to come in? And we'll see that the calf scouts. I don't know about that. But but you know, every everybody else that's that's done their job, you know, as we started this day off, it none of that matters, right? We are united by you know, by passion, by what we did, our patriotism. We're divided in this rivalry thing. But at the end of the day, we all raised our hand, we all signed up to go do a thing for our country, regardless of politics, regardless of background, your skin doesn't matter, your religion doesn't matter, who you sleep with doesn't matter. The only thing that matters when those bullets start fighting is flying is can I trust the dude on my right and left? Or the ladies on my right and left. And it that outside of that, why can't we do this as an organization? It says, hey, it doesn't matter. I don't need to highlight you that you're a you know a medal of honor recipient, you know, dude coming out of this unit, or you are a tango coming out of JSOC, or that you had a tribe, who cares? At the end of the day, the the statistics don't say, you know, we because we lose what, 22 veterans of data to suicide. I think the rate for oh is it 17 per 100,000 for for the military. That doesn't say, oh, well, this branch isn't really affected.

unknown: 46:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 46:02

No one digs into that. So we we look at it in a different sense, and yeah, we we got our shit kicked a whole lot more from 2012 to 2015. SF took you know, 50% of all casualties that happened in war happened to Greenberries, right? We lost an exponential more uh given how our population, our population size, we lost way more people, but it doesn't mean the 18-year-old that was in a foxhole that watched his buddy get you know destroyed by Adishka doesn't have things to come back to and deal with, right? It doesn't mean that they have some special training or that we're we're taking care of things differently. So why aren't we hanging out, wrenching together, running, you know, doing stuff? We we have a drive. And if people don't want to show up and do the thing, okay, well, there's other nonprofits out there that are that are going to. I'm not gonna take us into a lane where we are doing other nonprofits' jobs. Nobody gets them into what we are doing, the way that we do it. And I I'm glad they actually had a call with uh a nonprofit that does uh like IBAin and you know, ketamine treatments and all that kind of stuff. And I was like, hey, you know, man to man, if somebody calls me and says they want to donate money or or send somebody one of these treatments, I'm going to call you and I'm gonna send that donation your way. That's not ours. I'm not going to do that. And I would appreciate it if it's the same thing. If you have a guy that's trying to get out from under whatever rock he's in, call me. We'll we'll do what we can to get them into something. Yes. And I think this like stove pipe lanes that nonprofits should be in should be what they're doing. Non nonprofits. In 2014, the ones that were there, 2016, 18, 19, 21 before Afghanistan were all focused on gold stars and amputees. Yeah. Right. And now that they're not there anymore, we're not creating new gold stars. There's no more amputees being created in theaters, right? They're now going, oh uh, veterans, mental health, and awareness. Fuck you. Yeah. You don't care about that then. We have it changed. We are here solely to get you to come out and do something. What is it? It's up to you. When is it? We'll figure that part out. Where is it? Same thing, but call us. We want to do some stuff.

SPEAKER_01: 48:12

This episode is brought to you by Titan SARMS. Head on over to TitansArms.com and buy a stack today. Use my code CDny10 to get your first stack. I recommend the lean stack too. Start living your best life. Titan SARMs. No junk, no bullshit, just results. Yeah, it can you you can quickly start finding out that some nonprofits are just gross. Um, because just like you said, man, it's all about pivoting and figuring out how they can get more of your money.

SPEAKER_00: 48:41

Um a nonprofit is created because there's a need to do something. When that something goes away, so should the nonprofit. But they don't. They pivot or they they slow walk how it is that things are being done, right? Or they choose ones like, oh, homelessness. Okay, we're not getting rid of that one.

SPEAKER_01: 49:00

Um seems to be a lot of them in California, and yet they're still fucked when it comes to that problem.

SPEAKER_00: 49:10

Make it make sense. Uh so I'm actually creating a t-shirt. It's gonna say, it makes sense if you don't think about it. Both of this shit goes. Like, yeah, like hold up, we're doing what? You're okay.

SPEAKER_01: 49:22

Yeah, I see, I don't see the math on that one, but yeah, I I work for a homeless think tank in um San Francisco.

SPEAKER_00: 49:28

Oh man.

SPEAKER_01: 49:29

Making 196k a year.

SPEAKER_00: 49:31

Housing one person. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 49:36

Oh man, I saw that interview and I was just like, the fuck? How?

SPEAKER_00: 49:42

None of it. And you know, I I was I was sitting around thinking about like when um USAID went away. And I know plenty of people in USAID, plenty of deployments where we're dealing with them in Africa and whatnot. And they're doing some great things, and not to make it political, but uh the politicians change so often that there is no clear intent. And when you have good willed individuals wanting to do something but without direction, they're gonna find what is personal to them and then go fix it. And that leads us to we're doing things in countries that we don't need to be doing. Nobody cares about three-legged toads in the Amazon. Sorry, we don't, nor shouldn't tax buyers, right? That's good public organization to do that. When we're dumping tons of money into something like that, well, it's not the direction that we need to be going in in anything, and it goes to that purpose, right? If you're doing the job and you care, but you don't have a direction to put it, you're gonna fill it with something that might not be the thing that needs to be filled with. Oh political.

SPEAKER_01: 50:41

It's okay, it's secure y'all. We can say what the fuck we want. Both sides are fucked and uh they don't care about fucking us. How dare you. Right over a barrel, just taking just who's next. No, we try to stay out of it.

SPEAKER_00: 50:59

I don't.

SPEAKER_01: 51:00

Yeah. It's important to understand, man, that um it you don't have to be scared. Like, I know a lot of guys get out and they want to get into the the nonprofit space. And I'm like, dude, like whether you want to create one or connect with one that's already out there, don't be scared, but do your homework. Connect with people, ask them questions. Um, I got fooled by one. It was, you know, it was one of those where it's like I thought they were making a big difference, helping a lot of people. Coming to find out, they're spending 90% of the money on um paying individuals in the organization and traveling. And that sucks. That sucks, man. Uh, but it's great to see guys from the community creating powerful and and and life-changing fucking organizations like yourself, man. Um, that's what we need. Need guys and gals from the organization from the world we come from creating these because that's you're gonna trust it. When you go online and you see this or you see your social media page, you immediately connect and you say, like, holy shit, that's somebody like me. Like, I can I can reach out to these people and connect with them. And like you said earlier, I don't need to know exactly what I what I'm gonna do. I just need to be vulnerable enough to ask for support and we can flush it out together.

SPEAKER_00: 52:14

And that is that is so tough. You know, if we took the same mindset that we tell the new kid coming out of the Q course, right? Yeah, don't put the case of beer, shut the fuck up. If you don't know something, don't act. Yeah, right. You know, there's one of my favorite things when a a guy would come in and and interview for the team, right? Your whole team would be sitting there, the first thing they would start off with is, oh, you know, so I I graduated the Q course. No shit. You would not be in this room if you so okay. Yeah, no kidding, dude. Okay. Anyways, you don't say, Jimmy. Prerequisite to come in the in the place. But you know, we we don't take that when it comes to the the other the mental side of the house, that the getting out of the army, right? We'll we'll listen to guys, you know, guys that have done some stuff. Like, oh shit, okay. And we only really ask in one true place that I I continuous to see, and that's the um uh the disability rating. I was like, how did I get that? Like, hold on. And and I absolutely helped some guys out. I have I have a wonderful VSL that was absolutely there, um, Matt Haley out of the Wounded Warrior um project. And he would call me and he would go, listen, man. Like, uh so I I I had foot surgery in 2021, something like that. And the doctor asked me, he was like, Hey, how's your back? And so I had surgery on my back. I blew a disc out uh on in 2015. And I was like, you know, it's there. Uh and he was like, How does it does it hurt? And I was like, well, yeah, but you know, I just pop some pills and we keep going. A common ailment that that all of us and uh he goes, let me explain to you how how you're you're gonna go when you retire. If you don't address this with the army again, they're going to assume that it's fixed. Which means when you go to that board, they're gonna go, okay, well, that's not an issue, even though it's messing with you. Meanwhile, you're fighting the four-year pack clerk that is not coordinated enough and fell out of an LMTB and complained about it every day for three years. He's gonna get 100% because they tried everything that they could. And we soft dudes, show me a team that you know doesn't have you know half of it, maybe three quarters of the dudes on the team with serious injuries. Oh, yeah. And if you show me that team, I I'm gonna tell you the problem, maybe in the National Guard, but it doesn't exist. It is well shit. You know, I did Sephardic and I had that blown back, right? My L4, my disc between my L4 and L5 was completely ruptured. I was on nine pills a day, and the opportunity came up to go to Sephardic was was there, and I was like, I can't miss this, I gotta go. And I'm going and I'm barely walking, you know, comes on, you do the event, and then it gets done. It was the mechanical breaching day. I was the number three shooter in the class at the time, and my helmet was laying on the ground, and I bent down to grab it, and one of the cadres walks up, he grabs it, he stuffs it in my chest, he goes, Well, you good? And I was like, Good enough, man. Uh so we get over to the battering ram stuff, and he goes, You're a big fuck. I know you can handle one of these. This isn't step off to the side. So they were kind of taking care of it because I was performing in the other areas, but that was stupid on my part to do that. I had two deployments during that time. I had four long TDYs that that involves some stuff, and it was just pop the pills, man. Take care of it. My oh yeah, the DPT at um uh that at 10th group, like when I my retirement ceremony, like I teared up because I was like, you've held me together because I was unwilling to take a take a knee and step back and take care of myself, and that's not a one-off. That is every guy that's looking at a deployment during a deployment, like man, I can't miss this. I I spent, you know, if you take your your average green bray, you know, we go to the Q course around 20, 21, maybe 22, finish it, get to a team, let's just say for something, math, you're 22, right? The first three years on a team, you don't know shit. Maybe you get a good deployment on you, but you're finally becoming a senior around the the third year, right? A good team, you'll be a senior third or fourth year into it. So now you're you're looking at you what 25, and now you're being asked for, hey, where do we want to go to dinner? Right? Not like anything like that seems like a small, like, you know, uh a trivial thing, but when a team is looking, you'd be like, hey, where are we going? What are we doing? Yeah, that's fun, great idea. Let's go. Like you, that's pretty important to us. Yeah. Hey, uh, we're going on this deployment. Where what are we doing at this? And asking those opinions. Well, if you're lucky, you spend another year, year and a half in that position before you get Swick monstered, right? You do three years at Swic, you're pushing 30, 31, right? So all of your 20s were there. Now you come back, you're in E7, you know, you got a look at the board, and probably two years, three years after that. So now you're what, 33, 34 years old? You make Team Sart. Client, you know, the timer starts, right? You got two years if you're lucky in that seat. Some guys get a little bit more, but now you're what, you're 36 and you're now coming off a team, and the only thing you've known for your entire adult life is this dream that you've chased, this passion that you have, and the thing you've dedicated, you've put birthdays off for anniversaries, relationships, your hobbies, everything is all on hold for the pursuit of this one thing, and now it's gone. Right? You're now a fag, a former action guy on staff. Um, or you go warrant, become a trader like myself just to get a little bit more time. People are jealous. That's fine.

SPEAKER_01: 57:25

The infinity glitch right there. Go to warrant, of course.

SPEAKER_00: 57:28

And then you then what? You're 40? And now what? Now you're you're creating a relationship with kids that you don't necessarily have a lot of a lot of time with because you know the life of a soft guy, much as a green brain, is you're gone. Yeah. I trained you. You are worth something to the institution, and I'm gonna use every bit of that. And it's you don't turn down schools, right? Not a chance. The the first time I was in the the Crift were the first time I saw somebody turn down a school, and the schools were coming down so often for us. Uh Star Major walked in to say anybody want to go to SIPSIC uh to the sniper course. And I'd already been, there's two new guys on the team, not new guys every season, new words. Yeah. And uh they both go, when is it? September? No, no, I'm gonna hold off on this one, Star Major. And I was like, What? I had a begged for that when I was a Charlie on a team. Um so I I hadn't seen that before, but at the end of the day, we don't turn it down. You don't turn down a J set, you don't turn down a school, you don't turn down a deployment, right? Yeah, you don't turn down helping the team out. So when these guys leave, well, no shit, they're in a bad place, right? The skills that they have are good for two things traveling and shooting, right? Yeah, some of us can speak a language really good. Yeah, sure, some of us have an affinity for you know other sides of the house, but the vast majority of us are really good at those two things. And then you look at the outside, you go, well, I can stay in this. You know, I text a friend of mine, he sent me a video of him driving into Gaza just the other day, right? You have a contract, right? Contracting provides security for whatever company is doing over there. And and I thought to myself, I was like, that's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_01: 59:02

But also like that boat's gonna pass that ship's fucking yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 59:07

You're just delaying it at the end of the day. You're delaying what it is that you're you're gonna walk into. And so when these guys hit that wall and they don't know what to do, well, that won't happen to me, like you were saying. Nah, man, we're good.

SPEAKER_01: 59:18

Transition's gonna hit them just as hard on on uh when they get done contracting. I've seen it. I've seen it. You're just like you said, you're kicking that can a little further down the road, and uh you're you're not fully aware of what your capabilities are. You're not letting yourself dream. Like that's one thing I realized when I finally accepted and went through my nightmare and had to come out the other side. I realized like, oh, the positive side of this whole thing is walking away from this, I get to dream again. What the fuck do I want to do? No kidding. Like, where am I what I'm what is what am I actually passionate about? Because that Denny was great. Being a chief, being a warrant officer, that I've reached that. I was like, oh, that's fucking awesome. That's great. I can take all those attributes. Now I get to it's like leveling up on a video game. The second time around, you're gonna choose different attributes. All right, cool. I want to level up my my ability to smash shit, but maybe I'll put some more into intellect. Maybe I'll I'll I'll push that slider this way. Yeah. We got the power of the force. Speed, we're gonna dial that back a little bit.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:27

That's like that scene from Rocky when he uh the last one where they're like, You got no speed, your your joints are all calcified. You ain't gonna do that force. We've got to be powerful.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:36

We're just we gotta worry about brute force.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:40

You know, I I I think so I I read this wonderful book. Um, it's called The Comfort Crisis, and it talks about Dude, got it right here. Got it right here. And I I have this group of friends, and this is what we do. There's only two of us are in this group at Greenboro's. Everybody else got firefighters, cops, there's PhDs and Olympians and whatnot, and we settled on a thing that we want to do next year, where it is we want to be dropped off in the Bob Jones wild area, wildlife. In Montana. Yep, yep. Um, for a week, and we want to only be able to take backpacks that have three things in it. You're not only take one MRE as a just a hey, just in case, but nothing else, and we can't take the same items, and we want to survive for a week because that's gonna fucking suck. Right? Just absolutely suck. So why not go fake get kicked in the the junk for a little bit and figure out who you are? And in the way that I I kind of look at getting out and transitioning and and taking this new venture on and all that kind of stuff. The I had this conversation with a group sergeant major. Uh, the retention issues were coming up, and I sat in his office and was like, look, nobody wants to this is gonna openly tell you this, but I want to be on the ramp at 25,000 feet at night with all of the heaviest things you could possibly put on me. And I want to be sweating in the plane, and I want to be freezing in the air, and I want to land, and I want to put the stupidest heavy bag you give me on, and I want to walk for three days, and I want to sit in a hide sight and I want to do whatever it is you tell me to do. Take pictures, take shots, drop bombs, whatever it is, and I want to walk out of that hide sight and I want to be dehydrated, I want to be hungry, I want to be eaten up by bugs, I want to be pissed off that I ever made this decision in life, and I want to move three days out, and I want to get back to the team room, and I want you to give me 72 hours so I can go do it again because I didn't come in to go to the flat range. I came in to do shit that nobody else is willing to do and be able to look across the aisle and be like, yeah, man, you guys do cool stuff, you don't do what I do, right? I want to prove it, and I want to be kicked, you know, in that 50-mile race that that we went on out with Chad, every single one of the dudes, when they got done, were like, dude, this was awesome. Like, that kind of sucked. You know, your feet hurt, your back hurts, you're going through the night, you really haven't eaten a ton of stuff. He puts on a wonderful event. But at the end of the day, just that that book says, you need to be tested in who you are, otherwise you forget. And you forget it. I mean, not to keep coming back to it, but find the passion, the thing that you want to do, and fucking do it, man.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:08

Yes. There's something to be said about doing um a Masogi, uh, the concept of doing something hard at least once a year. I think the concept should be two times a year. You welcome in the new year with something difficult that gives you perspective of what you can fucking do. And then you end the year with something hard. Like you want, I'm telling that, like I know we're in a we're I talk about this all the time. We're still in the mental health crisis. And we have to understand not everybody's gonna react the same way. I know a lot of my friends will never sit in the couch with a therapist. So what can I give that guy? Maybe it's a gym, maybe it's a race, maybe it's telling them to dig deep and go back to the way he was when he was a paratrooper, when he was doing things that challenged him. Everybody in the military did something hard. Everybody went to basic training and they had to do a rock march that kicked their dick, kicked their dick in. Everybody. Uh, a girl's, you know, your your lady dick. Everybody was challenged. Everybody. And when you go through life and you forget that you can do hard things, you start to suck again and you have no perspective. You gotta challenge yourself. You gotta find things that are hard and do it. Run a marathon without training, it'll kick you in the dick. Be willing to do it and give you perspective. And it might light a fire in your ass to start training, to start going after something. Because it's setting those goals, man. Look, I I probably will not get 90% of you to read atomic habits. I wish you would. I wish you would. I wish you'd all set smart goals, but I know you won't. But maybe I can inspire you to do one thing. Sign up for that fucking 5K. Sign up for that race in your community. Do something. Push yourself. You'll maybe you're already, you'll prove yourself that you can do it, or maybe, just maybe, it'll show you that, oh fuck, I can't run like I used to. But it'll be fun. It'll suck for you a little bit. It'll get you back into thinking, like, man, I can't finish a 5K. Maybe I do need to start jogging. Maybe I need to guess I'm, you know what? Now I have that itch. Now I'm gonna come back. I'm gonna fucking finish this and kick it in the dick. Um, there's so many different races within our community, within special forces. Did the um the Betavitas Ultra just heard about it this year. Oh, yeah. Fifth group. Bro, build a fucking team. Let's go. Join our whoop team.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:23

Just want to say that. What's that? It's actually a 10th grouper. Just want to throw that out there. You know, and on that, right? So I I I showed up to the War Course, and I was like, dude, I'm a Crift guy, right? I have all of these calls and these deployments, right? And I'd seen so many warrants, but I was just not impressed with that. I was like, I'm gonna be a fucking rock star. And I showed up in half the class had my qualifications, you know, there were types of MBAs and you know, yeah, fourth battalion guys and this and that. And I was like, hold on, like this is this is good. And my my little fact was Nick Lavery. And we're really good friends, we chat about business all the time. I've designed some stuff for him. He's consulted for stuff on us. I've gone out and I've spoken with him, like I've opened for him for uh for an event. Nice. And him and I were sitting around one day after we got done studying, his room was right across from mine. And I was like, dude, how the fuck, man? Like, you're smart as shit, dude. Like, why? Like, you know, you know, network design, right? And you like he's going down all these different routes and and adding things to us. And he goes, I used to care about my physicality. I was bigger than everybody, I was stronger than everybody, right? Like, that's what I showed up with, and then I lost my leg and I had to bring value to a team. He goes, and it wasn't in my presence anymore. So I had to become intellectually better. He said, So I sat there and I read about things that I fucking hated. I started studying things that I knew were going to be of value to the team. So when I show up, they don't look at me as a handicap, they look at me as an asset because I need to be an asset. And in going in, you know, on a the flip side, you know, going to run into 5k and you push yourself, you might not think that that is worth anything. Okay, so you just ran a 30-minute 5k, a 35-minute cool, slowest balls. Yeah. Yeah. But you showed up and you did something, and your value as a person that just went and did that and is pushing yourself will bring more to your life, to the people around you where you're now getting that call to go, hey, you're a dude that I can call up. You're a dude with substance. And the last thing that I want in my life is somebody that doesn't have substance. I'm not going to share my dreams, my victories, anything with you if I don't think you're going to do anything for yourself, right? Yeah. I'm not going to push that kind of energy into you. So when my my friends call me up and they share things with me, that gets a uh, I guess, uh a thing that like doubles down on what I'm doing. They see me as something that's doing thing, right? It's an asthma check for me. They want to share their victories. And I don't even tell them a thing that's going on with me. Lavishing their victories. Absolutely, you got that. Regardless if I've done it or I haven't or I care about it. Yeah. Right? Who cares? Right? Your friends are calling you to share something really positive with you, and you need to encourage that. And I want the same when I call, right? And you quickly find out, you know, if if you and I got on the phone, we called, you know, got on a call in two weeks after this. I'm like, hey man, Danny, we got all four vehicles, we're doing this, right? And you give me, oh, dude, that's really cool. We're going into this and we're talking about this. I'm going to be taken back a little bit. Hold on. I'm I'm calling to like tell you that I did a really fucking cool thing and you want to turn the attention to you. Hold on a second. Right. And and I think that comes from a place of either it can be misconstrued, it could be super excited about what you're doing as well, and it could be going that way. Yeah. It happens over and over. You're dealing with individuals that don't actually have your interest in mind. And that either means you're not bringing something to them or they don't have their eyes open as what you can bring to the table. And once you figure that out, you'll sort through your friends' groups, you'll figure out what it is that you're doing in this life, and you'll sign up for that 5K and run it in 28 next time. Right. And then 25. Right. You'll find your beer drinking friends. You'll find a different passion in life. You'll find things that are that are worthwhile to keep pursuing that make you better who you are, make you bring value to the people around you. And that's that's happiness. That's joy.

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:06

That's absolutely correct, man. Uh, you gotta show up for your friends and uh, dude, all the victories, man. Small victories, big victories, be the for your boys, dude. Let them fucking like it. It's it's I think nowadays, especially for our community, our our warrior tribe, we're so separated, but we're also more connected than ever. Like, call each other, text each other, celebrate your fucking wins, man. Be willing to share and open up, man, because that's gonna get funny, dude. Just like being on a fucking team, man. When you came back from fucking successfully passing a fucking school, how great to feel when the boys were there, especially if you're on a specialty team. Bro, when you come back from fucking free fall school or free fall JM and your team's in there fucking hyping you up, fuck, dude. Do the same fucking thing on the outside. Celebrate your wins, man.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:58

I had a call over Memorial Day weekend. Uh I'm driving. I'm going to a gig, and it's this dude that I talk to all the time. He's like, hey, you're free right now? And I was like, Yeah, he goes, Of course you're fucking free. You answered otherwise. He goes, hold on a second. And I hear a click, and all of a sudden, it's just nothing but this cacophony of shit talking going on. And I was like, what the fuck is going on? But I was driving in the car, she could have seen my face. It was like dogs hearing a weird signal or a weird sound. I know what's going on. Then I started picking out all the voices. It was my old infantry platoon. Like, oh shit, memorialized some of the guys that we had lost. And I was like, dude, this is wonderful, right? Then nobody had anything. We were all just talking trash. We took a second, each of us, to tell some stories about some of the guys and whatnot. And it was, I was like, this is this is what our culture is about, right? Is this beer drinking? We're just gonna kick indoors, only want to kill stuff, and all that kind of stuff. And sure, that has plates. Yeah. But what it really is is those long nights in a guard tower where you're sitting there from Aiken, Minnesota, and and talking about life, right? It's when you're you're getting shot at and you look over at a dude and you both smile at each other because you know that the A-10 is on a gun run coming in. You're like, this fucking dude doesn't know what's going on. Right? It's uh it's when the dudes get killed and those dudes are right there, and you're all this this prideful testosterone-ridden young man, and you're both in tears crying about somebody. It's it's those moments that tie us together in ways that so many don't understand that we do lose touch with. So yeah, fucking call them, text them, send them a stupid meme, and then one of the things I like to ask is, where are you? I don't I don't like to ask, How are you? How are you? We lie, we call, come back from deployments, you know, I get eight hours of sleep. Yep. Uh I have one to two drinks, uh, never more than uh you know, twice a week, never more than six at a time. You know, all of us know how to lie on all those, but if I'm asking you where you are, well, that's a different, that's a very different question. You could take it one of two ways, physically or emotionally. And you know your brothers well enough, the people that you serve with, and like, hey, where are you? I'm sitting at the bar. It's fucking two o'clock on a Tuesday, right? What the fuck? I'm gonna come and join you, but it leads to different places, and we don't have that that raw honesty on the outside that we did on a team where I can look at you and be like, what is wrong with you? Yeah, you know, you are not showing up, so we have to find a different way to do it. And if that is calling each other and fucking get on Zoom. I got in a Zoom call with a buddy of mine and just drank a beer. Over Zoom. Right? Like, who cares, right? There's this oath that, oh, that's not manly or or masculine, or I can't bring myself to do something like that. Who says says who? Yeah, right. Because I've seen you do amazing things in life, right? I've seen you go and succeed and achieve, and I've seen you beat me in this, and I've seen you get, you know, me beat you in that, right? And us go have beers after. I've seen you at your lowest points and your highest points. I know the name of your kids, right? Your wife has my phone number. I know who you are. Why the hell can't I call you from across the country and have a zoom and just sit there and drink whiskey and talk and catch up and hear about, oh, how was, you know, how was little Jimmy's baseball game? Oh shit, how's your boss doing, right? Who cares? Because it's not about the substance of the conversation. It's about the fact that it's happening and you're making time for the people in your life. And if you can't find that, you can't do it, you need to do it, right? You need to find that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:18

Absolutely. You do. We spend a vast majority of our time surrounded by individuals that are our family. Whether you're an infantry platoon or on a fucking ODA, like you you thrive in a team environment. Continue connecting. Every human being needs it. I don't care what your lone wolf fucking team sergeant says, even that grumpy bastard needs somebody to love. And and fucking PSA, take care of your fucking team sergeant. Check in on them too. Yep. Like they're human beings, even though they pretend like they're not. Nick, I can't thank you enough for being here today, brother.

SPEAKER_00: 1:13:54

Um thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:56

Absolutely. And I'm gonna freaking try to plug you in on one of the other shows that I produce because I think uh we we need to hear more from your perspective. But if people want to find out more about your amazing nonprofit, where can they go?

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:06

Uh, so then go to greenberry racing.org. You can find us the same thing on all the social media tags. Uh, if you want to shoot me an email, it's neck at greenberry racing.org. It's we try to make it pretty simple for people. Um and really, I I I can't thank you enough for us to to give the chance to push this kind of stuff out. We're I think we're really on a good path to to, I don't want to say inclusive, but um this is our we're doing the DEI version of race now. We'll we'll let the Marines in and we'll let the the Air Force come out and call call five. But uh at the end of the day, man, I really do appreciate it. This has been a good experience, man.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:43

Yeah, dude, it's uh once we get this on the docket, man, I'm gonna be tagging all the reels. But uh for you guys listening right now, do me a favor, pause the episode. Don't worry, it's almost over, so you're not missing much. Just go to the episode description, look at all those wonderful links I put there. Just go ahead and click them, fucking send a friend request, connect to this amazing nonprofit and support them. Because at the end of the day, when we support great nonprofits, we are helping our own community heal and recover. Look, like I said earlier, we're not gonna get every veteran to sit in a fucking couch and talk to therapists. That's just not gonna fucking happen. Some of our guys just don't want to fucking do it. But I can tell you right now, knowing my community, knowing a vast majority of your community, a lot of our guys are gonna get in the sea and they're gonna want to fucking race or get on a bike and race. This is a therapeutic modality. Whether you think so or not, this is helping heal veterans. So let's fucking back it. Um, again, Nick, thank you so much for being here. To everybody tuning in, thank you so much. Do me a favor, support our sponsors, go buy their products right now. I want you to check out Pure Liberty Labs. Just a quick shout out to somebody that makes great protein, great creatine in pre-workouts. Check them out. Pure Liberty Labs. Two amazing Ranger Regiment individuals came out and they said, you know what? We've conquered and been able to do things that few can do. Now we're gonna tackle the world of supplements. So check them out. I think that you'll like them. I like their creatine. Uh, I also tried their pre-workout the other day, and holy shit, is the closest thing to fucking Jack 3D. I'm not fucking lying. I'm still buzzed from it. It gave me the energy for this interview. So if you thought I was on something, you're right. Pure Liberty Labs. Nick, thank you so much for tuning in. I'm Danny Caballero. Thank you all for tuning in. We'll see all next time. Take care. SecureDob Podcast is proudly sponsored by Titan's Arms. Head up the episode description and check out Titan's Arms today.