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!
From Ranger to Storyteller: Finding Purpose Beyond the Uniform
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Former Army Ranger Marty Skovlund Jr. breaks down his transition from elite military service to storytelling and writing. This episode explores vulnerability, growth, mental health, and why process matters more than outcomes when redefining purpose after service.
Key Topics:
- Military transition
- Writing and storytelling
- Mental health and self-care
- Growth beyond the uniform
- Community and brotherhood
🎧 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts for weekly episodes.
Chapters:
00:00 Finding Motivation During Transition
03:01 Military to Civilian Transition Explained
06:02 Discovering New Purpose After Service
08:58 Storytelling as a Tool for Growth
11:47 Overcoming Challenges in Writing
14:58 Why Process Beats Outcome
18:04 Writing for Self-Discovery
20:53 Honoring Fallen Heroes Through Story
23:58 Sharing Veteran Experiences Authentically
26:50 Lessons from the Global War on Terror
31:29 Untold Stories of Military Life
36:39 Evolution of Combat Storytelling
41:07 Journalist vs Veteran Identity
48:30 Balancing Life, Work, and Purpose
55:10 Preparing for Life’s Next Challenge
01:00:48 The Security Halt 100 Challenge
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Website: https://martyskovlundjr.com/
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I think a lot of us that find our way into the military and specifically within the special operations community, your whole goal in life was to make it. I wanted to be an airborne ranger. That's all I wanted to do. It's so true, man.
SPEAKER_00:It's so true.
SPEAKER_02:I think a lot of guys, it's like all I want to be is a ranger or a green beret or a navy SEAL or a PJ. And then you achieve that and you do that job for a while and it's awesome, or it's not. Everybody has different experiences. But what you realize with this line of work is it is not the line of work that you do for the rest of your life. You don't ever realize before you get into it that you actually need a secondary thing that you really want to do.
SPEAKER_00:Finding that new purpose, that new mission are such a tricky, tricky thing, man. And I think one of the things that can help people, and it's been proven, if you're just willing to start writing a little bit of your journey. Yeah, awesome. I'm glad. Thank goodness. Uh one of the other shows that I produced, The Asset Mindset, uh, shout out to you, Daniel Fielding. You are not doing so good. I was like, I'm sitting there, I'm like, dude, you haven't posted anything about your your most recent episode. I'm sitting there watching it. I'm seeing, I'm lit waiting for the reels to drop, and I'm like, Wait a second.
SPEAKER_02:Daniel Fielding? Yeah. Yeah. Um I think I have his book in here somewhere.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that would be amazing. That'd be such a solid promo. Yes. I will wait. I'm not gonna edit this because that is it's quickly becoming one of my favorite. Oh, that's the other. That's Dave Fielding. Oh, not the same one? Different author. Both Green Berets.
SPEAKER_02:Well, Dave Fielding, you get and and I thought because we were bringing up snow and everything, Dave lives actually how I met him. He came to a book signing that I was doing. Turns out he went to the same high school my wife and her brother went to. And he was in this graduated with my brother-in-law. You know, that he he knows the family and all that sort of stuff. I've never met him. Oh man. And uh, and so he lives, you know, just down the road from me in Massachusetts. So that's where my I I immediately went to Fielding, like, wait a second, yeah, he's probably got the same snow that I do right now.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, Daniel Fielding is snowed in, no power in in uh near Nashville, Tennessee. And uh I finally got a hold of him and was like, hey man, you got to promote your episode. He's like, I haven't had power in like three days.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I got Nashville.
SPEAKER_02:I I used to have to go down there um on a very regular basis for work. And I was down there a few different times that they got, you know, I don't know, adusting, right? Like half inch, it shuts the city down. So when you have something like this come through, it really isn't an actual emergency. And it's not like some, you know, everybody that grows up up north are like, oh, what, they can't handle a little bit of snow. It's not that they can't handle it. It's one, they didn't grow up in that shit. They don't know how to drive in it or anything like we did growing up in in the north. Two, they don't have the infrastructure for it. They don't have the snow plows, they don't have the salt reserves, they don't have all these things that are just you know you need to have if you're anywhere north of the Mason Dixon line, basically, come October. And uh yeah, it's just a totally different thing. So yeah, my my heart definitely goes out to everybody. I mean, I've seen some gnarly pictures of down power lines and looks like some really dangerous situations down there.
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah. Yeah. I I told him immediately, I was like, dude, let me know. Send up the flare request. I'm like, I'm like two Lord of the Rings movies away from you. I'm that close. Like I will drive there. I got a generator in the back. But typical like Green Beret. No, no, no, we'll make it through. I'm like, dude, I am literally asking to have an adventure. Let me have an adventure. Let me get to you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that that that's the uh and it probably probably is on theme for this podcast. But yeah, you know, you always tell guys to, you know, reach out if they ever need anything, reach out if they need help or or anything like that. And really, all it is is a very selfish offer on your part because you're like, dude, I am bored out of my mind. Please give me a reason to come help you. Uh uh and really it's just an excuse to go hang out with a buddy and uh road trip, which is not a bad thing.
SPEAKER_00:No, that that that's honestly at its core. A lot of the things that that we talk about on this, on this show is um, you know, I always say that the the brotherhood, the team room is larger on the outside. It doesn't, you know, when you're an SF, when you're a Green Bray, yeah, your team room is just your team. When you get back in the civilian world, there are thousands of people that you can incorporate into your new team room. And they don't have to have a fancy, funny, fuzzy hat or a long tab. They can be free from all walks of life. But it's up to us to at least be willing to cross that first divide and embrace the term. I'm a civilian, I'm a veteran, but I'm a civilian, I'm an American. Wow, that's a crazy concept to wrap our heads around.
SPEAKER_02:Specifically as Green Berets, you guys, I mean, your bread and butter is working by through and with, leveraging foreign nationals, you know, doing things like that. And it's like if you have that skill set coming out of the military, then you understand the value of network. You understand the value of making friends in the right places and things like that. If you can teach some guy that doesn't know how to do jumping jacks, how to shoot an AK, how to shoot, move, and communicate, surely you can get Deborah in accounting to get your help you with your TPU reports.
SPEAKER_00:Right? It's so true, man. It's so true we forget. And it's like you you're not losing any of the skill sets you gained along the way. You're taking them all with you. Um, it's just that that transition, that finding that new purpose, that new mission are such a tricky, tricky thing, man. And I think one of the things that can help people, and it's been proven, if you're just willing to start writing a little bit of your journey, being willing to explore, you know, we have a lot of great people championing that. I think you're one of them purely just for the fact of like everything that you've touched, everything you worked on, has a real authentic feel to it. Nothing feels like it's gross or weird to like who who is this guy to be writing this type of story or reporting of this stuff. Can you take us through like those early years, finding your voice as a writer, just finding the courage to be able to dive into this? Well, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And I think, you know, let me start with just a broad stroke here of I think the reason a lot of guys end up asking those sorts of questions is because uh not everybody, this doesn't apply to everybody, but I think a lot of us that find our way into the military, and specifically within the special operations community, your whole goal in life was to make it to like I want, you know, I wanted to be an airborne ranger. That's all I wanted to do. It was that or play for the Lakers. But by the time I was like a sophomore in high school, it was I I knew which direction I was going. You know what I mean? And I think a lot of guys, it's like, all I want to be is a ranger or a Green Bray or a Navy SEAL or a PJ. And and then you achieve that and and you do that job for a while, and it's awesome, or it's not. Everybody has different experiences, but you do that. But what you realize with this line of work is it is not the line of work that you do for the rest of your life. You don't ever realize before you get into it that you actually need a secondary thing that you really want to do. That that like I like it, it's hard when you, you know, as a 19-year-old, I'm putting a tan beret on. It's like, okay, I I guess I checked off the one thing that I knew I for sure wanted to do in life. Back then, Denny, I didn't know that I wanted to be a writer or do books or tell stories, or I didn't know I wanted to do any of that. All I wanted to do is be a ranger. And so by the time I'm leaving the regiment, it's like, I don't, I don't know. That's the only thing I ever wanted to do. And I can't do it anymore. Or I didn't at that point I didn't want to do it anymore. And, you know, I checked that box and it just, you know, that that's a tough thing to do to figure out like, well, what do I want to do as bad as I wanted to be a ranger or a green beret or whatever, right? Because you want, you have to want it really bad to make it into one of these places. And so, what's that other thing that you want that you want equally as bad? And so for me coming out, um, when I was leaving the military, it happened a little bit by accident. You know, the way we started off this conversation, um, I was only half joking. I took advantage of opportunities, I went the path of least resistance. I applied a lot of just military principles to my decision making uh along the way, and and as well as a little bit of that uh high tolerance for risk while also putting risk mitigation practices into place. Like I applied a lot of the stuff that we learned in the military. And for me, it was I I got out of the military because I'd started a business. I started a business because I'd wrote something that went like super viral, basically, about an experience that I had. And people are like, oh, can you put this on a shirt or a poster or something? Because it was a short thing. And yeah, sure I can. Well, I did that and it worked really well and well enough to where I was like, maybe I should get out and see this through. And and so I did. And through that process of running that business for those first couple of years that I was out, and those were some hard years. Um, I don't think I even realized at the time. I only realized in retrospect actually how hard that transition was. Uh despite how much I felt like I had planned it out, had my pace planned, like everything. You know, I blew through the E and pace that, you know, emergency by like month two, you know, like so that like have that. Also, no, um, it could things can go squirrely real quick.
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SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah. And um, and and and so through that process of running that business, I, you know, you start a business, you're like, well, well, you know, especially back then, probably not so much now. But back then it was like, well, you got to start a blog to like market the the business, you right? Like, and and so we started the Havoc Journal. And um, and before that, uh uh satire site called Hit the Woodline. And it was uh they they both did really well. The Havoc Journal, I'm so proud of it. It's still out there going well today under Charlie Faint's uh uh ownership, and and it's done amazing things since then. But those those first platforms that we started literally just to promote selling t-shirts and shit, like it was what exposed me to, oh, I think I actually like writing and telling stories more than I do running a business. And then I got exposed to, I think a lot of people associate me most with the written word, but I see that's why I call myself like kind of a storyteller first, a writer second, because I very quick just as quickly as I found writing, I found filmmaking. And we made a documentary and we won the GI Film Festival with that documentary. We made a short film that introduced me to narrative filmmaking with actors and sets and that sort of stuff. And I fell in love with that. And then I, you know, somewhere along the way, started watching Anthony Bourdain's show, uh Parts Unknown. And that kind of energized me in a way of like wanting to get out there and you put all these things together, like, man, I just I think I just want to go tell stories. And and that's kind of what my identity has been for uh I guess since then, even in the marketing roles that I've done. Like I just recently departed a uh position at Black Rifle Coffee um run as a VP in marketing over there. And even in that, I tried to introduce, I felt like I was a storyteller for the company, right? Like I it was still, you know, my approach to marketing was through three-act structure and trying to plan as I do a story. So everything that I've done since then has been all about that. And it really um it's been a really interesting ride along the way, but it took me a second to figure out that that was my path. Yeah. And um, yeah, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:No, it did there's so much to that. Let's go back, let's go back. We gotta hit it up. Because I find myself, and a lot of my friends are in the same space. We've figured and stumbled along the way um some of the same ideas and concepts that you just highlighted. You fall in love with podcasting, you fall in love with making your show, but then you realize, okay, like I really like the production. I like putting together different shows. Like, let's explore this. And I think that's a missing part a lot. I try to and every week I reach out or or talk to somebody that's starting a new show, getting out there, and they're heavily focused on the one metric downloads, I gotta get downloads, I gotta get downloads. I'm like, yes, it's true. You're you're gonna have to figure out a way to make money to continue doing this, but figure out how to do your your task, your thing really well. All aspects of it, including the parts that are ugly, including the parts that you just cannot fall in love with, find a way to fall in love with it because you never know what's gonna lead to additional revenue. You never know what's gonna inspire you to follow, because I never thought social media would be my thing. Never thought the marketing would be something that I would be involved, because we have all these pre-constructed notions of what you're good at. And what I realized, and what a lot of my friends realize, is within the thing that you love the most, there might be something else within that that you could fall in love with that could potentially lead to more success. You can still do the podcasting stuff, but maybe you're gonna be the marketing guy for a nonprofit. Maybe that's that's the one thing you can do that's gonna be like a home run. And and uh that's what I found. I was like, okay, I'll pull the strings on that. But the thing is, like you're still gonna always love the podcast, you're always gonna love whatever it is that you're doing. Just be willing to explore all aspects of it and be willing to see yourself as more than just you're gonna do just one little thing. And and that's been my experience. So be willing to fall in love with the ugly, be willing to fall in love with the hard parts, the scary parts. Because I can imagine at one point, like when that opportunity came to work with Black Rap for Coffee as a VP of marketing, you're like, well, I don't have I don't have a marketing degree. I can imagine there was a little bit maybe some trepidation where you're like, well, maybe. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, like I said, I'm pretty egotistical. So uh I could do this. No, I mean you bring up a good point though, that it it's you know, like especially when you talk about guys that are like obsessed with the downloads. What they're really talking about is they're obsessed with the outcome, not the process. And that's I I think uh any great business leader that I've ever read about or heard on a podcast or great athlete, uh, you know, I I think I I believe I'm for certain I've heard Tom Brady talk about this before. But being obsessed with the process, the outcomes will happen. But if you focus on the process and you enjoy the process and you make the process, like executing the process, whatever it is for whatever that process is for what you're doing, in some situations you have to invent the process. But whatever that is, become excellent at that. And then you, you know, you take that back to our time in the military. What is that? What is that? That that's that's focus on the foundations. The the the the best in the business are masters of the fundamentals, right? And and and I think to me, that just screams like focus on the process, don't worry about the outcome. And that could be said about anything that I've done in my career so far. You know, when I was first starting out writing, it was just make write one really good article, right? Every time I was doing it, I was trying to make this story the best I could make it. And after a certain amount of time, you start to stack good stories, maybe slip a few great ones in there if you're lucky. And then all of a sudden you're, you know, being considered for a book deal or something like that. And one thing leads to another. And it's like if you're not, you know, I I hear so many people that want to do um, I don't know, similar things to what I've done or or or better than what I've done. You know, I certainly haven't reached the pinnacle of writing books or making movies or anything like that. There I've got a lot of room to go uh to grow still. But when people are asking about like how to get into that, they actually journalism and doing embeds and things like that is a perfect example because so many guys that get out of the military, specifically special operations, are like, oh, well, I came from there. So I would be perfect to go in bed with the homies again and just now I'm carrying a camera, just like you did. I didn't jump straight into that right off the bat. And people don't realize I had to stack a bunch of things before I got those opportunities. And yes, once that opportunity came, did it help that I was in the army previously and that I came from a special? Sure, that helped, but you don't get to jump straight to that. And it's the same way with writing books or writing a bestseller or making a movie. You got to start with making content in general and learning how it works. You have to build your way up to these different things. And so many people want to jump straight to the outcome, the desired outcome, in fact.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, that's hard. Absolutely. It is hard. Um, especially when you've had an entire career of being told you're the absolute fucking best, to tip the spear. It's like, dude, beginner's mind, be willing to suck, be willing to accept that you gotta learn. And and it's it's not um, you know, it it doesn't mean that you're not gonna be good. It just means that right now you you gotta focus on the basics, building back up those skills.
SPEAKER_02:Well, trust me when I say nobody was telling me that I was the best. Uh it was there were some other endearing terms though.
SPEAKER_00:Well, that's a that's a beauty of, you know, we're talking about enjoy the process. Yeah. You know, I I got humbled going back to school. I thought, certainly, I'm I'm in my late 30s. I'm gonna fucking, I'm gonna be able to pass all this, and my papers are gonna be amazing. Grammar's important. Like I it was I'm glad I learned it on early on, and and I can sit here and say, like, hey, you know, I I'm proud of graduating with my my undergraduate's program with 4.0. Like, I'm very proud. It was a lot of hard work. But I allowed myself to to embrace the idea of like, all right, just because I can write really good military like wise and and use the military writing format doesn't mean it's going to translate to a psychological.
SPEAKER_02:I can just imagine you walking into like an English class, be like, don't worry. Just take a look at this NCOER that I wrote one time, and uh you will see that I can just test out of this one.
SPEAKER_00:I'm good. Here's a caught-up I did in 2019, man. Steinbeck, never heard of her.
SPEAKER_02:Uh grades of Let me tell you about Abram's Charter, okay?
SPEAKER_00:I've been to the Warren Officer course that taught me how to write.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. You know, I will say on that note, though, uh, you know, there's been more than a few guys I've worked with over the years. Um I'll I'll pick on Joe Kent specifically because he's another uh fellow Green Beret. And, you know, when we were working on the book about his late wife Shannon Kent, um, he we the actually the way that we originally were putting that book together is he was gonna have these what we called memoir chapters spread throughout, where they were letters to his sons about who their mom was. And those are gonna be spread out that ended up not that briefed well, but in actuality didn't work all that well. So we ended up just making it all one cohesive story. But when he was putting those together and he was turning them in, and uh I was really shocked at how good they were. And like I've seen worse stuff from actual professional writers. And I um I remember, you know, when we first started working on the project, he told me, and I asked him, I was like, Do you have any writing experience? He's like, Well, you know, as a warrant officer and Intel guys tried to write a lot of reports and things like that. And so I just kind of immediately dismissed that. No, man, like he actually was really, really good. And I I talked to him about that one time. He's like, Yeah, you know, it's writing an Intel report isn't all that different than some of the stuff that I've done, in that you want your Intel product to be used. You want it to be to contribute to the mission. And the best way to do that is to make it a good read so that the the decision makers actually enjoy reading it. They don't just breeze over it because it's crap and and go on to something more exciting. He he was like, it's it's actually, you know, the better you can write your reports and the you know, what better well spoken you are, like the further your hard work is gonna go. And I was like, I never thought of it that way. That's really, really interesting. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know, speaking on that, I I gotta I gotta ask, man, what was it like diving into that story? Um we we know and we've lived the experience of losing a friend or a brother and and seeing it play the other way around. It it's I mean, it's not easy, but we know it. It's it's a comfortable story. It's something w we can all experience, but I I have never had it the other way where it's a it's a teammate lost you know has lost his wife in combat. That is a story that to me is like, holy cow, how do you approach it, honor it, and and when you were going through it with Joe, how was it for you guys?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so I think there was a couple of different challenges there. One, Joe told me very early on, you know, so he and Shannon's sons, Colt and Josh, they were one and three years old when Shannon was killed in action. So another way of saying, too young to remember their mom as they get older, right? And Joe told me very early on that this book was going to be the thing that he handed his boys when they got older so that they could get to know their mom. No pressure, right? Like, holy cow. Um so there was that pressure to, you know, not just do right by Shannon, but make sure that that it did an adequate job in telling her story that it did an adequate job in portraying who she really was, not just being some Wikipedia re recitation of, you know, all of her awards and exploits, but like a real story that that showed her personality and who she truly was, not just at work, but at home and and and things like that. And and so there was a lot of pressure there. And then you mix in a few other things, right? She came from the NSW world. She was killed in January 2019. We started working on the book early 2020, right as the pandemic kicked off. One, I planned to go do a bunch of in-person interviews with a bunch of guys that don't exactly like talking about this stuff over the phone or things like that. Well, pandemic travel restrictions come in, so now I can't go. And that cuts off a whole swath of people that uh otherwise would have potentially talked to me about what they did with Shannon, how they knew her, that sort of stuff. A lot of these guys are still active duty in some capacity or another. And um, and then from there, it became even more difficult talking to other people because that was right around the time that all the Eddie Gallagher stuff came to a head. And so everybody in NSW would just completely shut down to the media. It was the the risk was not worth the reward. I had multiple guys tell me, like, I would, dude, I would love to help you. I loved Shannon. She was amazing at what she did. I cannot be involved with this right now. Like, the smoke it's too smoky in here right now. And so that was challenging.
SPEAKER_00:And then you go into this episode of Security Hall is brought to you by Dr. Mark Gordon and Millennium Health Store. If you've listened to this show, you know how seriously we take brain health, recovery, and long-term performance, especially for veterans and high performers. Dr. Mark Gordon is one of the leading experts in neuroendocrinology and traumatic brain injury. He's just released his new book, Peptides for Health, both the Medical Edition, Volume 1, and the Consumer Edition, Volume 1, are available right now. The book breaks down how peptide therapy supports brain health, hormonal balance, recovery, and resilience in a way that's practical and evidence-based. You can get 25% off the book by using code PTH25 at checkout, valid through March 15th. And for Dr. Gordon's proprietary health products, Security Health listeners can receive 10% off if they use the code PHE2P. Click the link in the episode description to find out more and visit Millennium Health Store today.
SPEAKER_02:Not so much her NSW time, but her SMU time. Most of her professional exploits were and are still classified. Just because you're writing a book on somebody doesn't mean they're going to declassify a bunch of things for you. There were things that she was working on that are still in progress in one form or fashion. And so that made it difficult to like, well, well, what can I talk about here? And I have a little bit of experience with that. I've done not just my first book, which was about the Ranger Regiment, and there might not be a more OPSEC paranoid organization on Earth than the Ranger Regiment. Absolutely. And um all the embed that I've done with SF and things like that. I understand what the military is okay with you talking about and what it's not. When it comes to telling her story, though, it was uh how do I get enough of what I can talk about to fill a book? And again, that original commander's intent of two little boys need to find out who their mom was. Right. And so that was really difficult. And and I think through all that, and like I said, we had kind of an early idea for the book about how to be structured from a structure perspective, and then that kind of shifted. And and um, you know, like I said, we started working on it in 2020 and and it didn't get published till 2024. Some of that time was because of it went through all the proper and appropriate pre-publication reviews. Joe and I are both big believers in that process. And in Shannon's case, because she touched so many different organizations, it was like every three-letter agency you can think of and every component of soft had to have their people sign off on it. That takes some time. That takes some time for them to get through it. And um, and so we did that. And you can actually see if you look in the book now, we left the redactions in. Um, you know, you and I, you a guy like you, you could read it and kind of figure out what was redacted. And a lot of it is like, really? You want to redact that? Because we did a pretty good job of between Joe and I, of self-editing in that respect, of both having a pretty good idea. So some of the redactions were kind of funny. One of them, in fact, was a direct quote from the Department of State's website, and they wanted us to redact Department of State. Uh because I said, according to the Department of State quote, and it was like literally off of their public-facing website. And I was like, all right, you know, make it make sense. Yeah. Um, so so there was a couple of different challenges there. And then just for me, you know, personally, I go through, I'm in a similar period right now, to be completely honest with you, where I have sort of a crisis of I don't know what I'm doing. This is hard. I don't the like I know what good is, and this is not good. The shit that I am putting down on the page right now is garbage. I hate it. I don't like it, and it's you can spiral real quickly, especially like author, authoring is a very lonely job. You know, you it is not a team sort of thing, even when you're working with another person. It is a lot of time spent down here in my basement at my desk, um, wrestling with my own insecurities, even when I'm writing about somebody else. And that can be hard, you know? And at the same time that I was writing that book too, I was still running coffee or die at that point. I was going out and doing embeds around the world, going to Ukraine, going to Iraq. I mean, all over the place, you know? And uh so kind of balancing that. You can tell you can talk to a lot of the people that I worked with back then. Like, yeah, anytime we were driving somewhere, Marty was in the backseat with his laptop open, working on his book because he had to take every any 10, 15, 20 minutes he could grab to work on this thing because it was busy. So I just I say that all of that just to lay out. There was myriad challenges in putting that together. All that being said, I'm actually really happy with how it turned out. Um I think that there's a more complete book that could be written about her in say 25 plus years. Um, but with what I had to work with, I think I accomplished Joe's intent in that I think his boys could read this book and get a sense of who their mom was. You know? So mission success as far as I'm concerned.
SPEAKER_00:I think that's the the most important thing. Like having something you can pass off to your kids to learn about who their mom was. Like that's that's the important thing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And by the way, a great reason for anybody out there, write your stories down. You don't have to publish them. You don't have to do just do do a little bit of journaling, you know, lock it away somewhere. The only one, your kids, or at least your grandkids will appreciate that. They're all gonna know, and especially, you know, anybody that worked in special operations, like, oh, it's so secret, and everything. Well, guess what? It's not gonna be all that fucking secret in 70 years when your grandkids just want to know who their grandpa was.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. You know, and the the thing, like, and and I'm not this is not calling anybody out, and I'm not gonna highlight any friggin' sensational area, like, dude, your stories matter. Yep.
SPEAKER_02:All of it is quiet professional, not silent professional. Yes. We be humble about it. Don't say anything that's not true, be humble, but tell your story, even if your story is boring. You might be you might say, I have nothing to write, I had a very boring experience. Maybe so. That was kind of 98% of us. Even in special operations, it was a lot of boring stuff. Write down the boring stuff, write about your teammates, write about the good times, write about the sad times, write about that layout that you had to do. And there's like one fucking set of nods that is actually off getting repaired somewhere, but we think we lost a set of nods, and so now the whole battalion's getting locked down. Write about that. That's fine, right? You can write about all the things.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. That's the stories, those are the real stories people want to hear. I I look at the the stories that our next generation of you know young service members are gonna get inspiration from. There's there's not that many stories of cool midnight extractions. No, write write your story from the GWAT, write your funny story. There's so many insane stories that I hear in the comment sections and I get from the DMs. Write them, share them with your family, share them with your kids. The the reality is we lived through an insane period of time. An insane war that encompassed, I mean, for the first the first deployments for conventional forces were fifth 12, 15 month longs. 18 for some of those guys. Yeah. Insane. Those stories need to be told. Not only are they great, they're probably going to be highly entertaining, but to learn from them so we don't make the same mistakes. There is an important that there is an important lesson to be learned from those early years of GWAT if we are just willing to be vulnerable enough to put our stories down on paper.
SPEAKER_02:I'll bring up one guy that I went to high school with. He was a year or two older than me. Um, he was there during the initial invasion, I I believe, or shortly thereafter. And then again for another tour. This is a guy, he's a great high school wrestler, fantastic dude, all that sort of stuff. Was one of those guys, he he did not, despite the fact that he had all the physical tools and was definitely smart enough to go be a Green Beret or a Ranger or any of that sort of stuff, he did not want any of that. He wanted to join the army just to get the college money and go to college. He did not want to go do dangerous stuff. He joined the army as a cook. You know how supply guy or I mean support guys got used in Iraq? Well, you're gonna go drive trucks or you're gonna go do convoy operations or things like some of the most dangerous things that you could do. They take him, he's a 92 golf culinary specialist, and they take and ship him to Iraq and put him in charge of one of those big vehicles that you would drive that would go drive down. They were like a street sweeper for uh IEDs. They they intentionally blew up IEDs by running over them because it was specifically armored as such. I talked to him, and at one point, after I think we were both out or both home on leave on like Thanksgiving or something like that, you know, the two army guys find each other, like because you both went to high school and it's like, oh, let's compare notes, you know. And he told me that first tour, I don't remember the specific number, but it was something insane, like 156 IEDs that he'd endured as a cook. Right? And I guarantee, just knowing this guy's personality, he's doing some job right now, and people probably are vaguely aware that he was in the army when they say, What'd you do? I was a cook. And I bet he leaves it at that. And and it's just one of those things that doesn't even tell half the story, and you know, what an insane experience, you know. And that's what you said, like some of these conventional, like I look at a documentary like Restrepo, amazing documentary, and it really shows like those were uh 173rd airborne paratroopers, and man, the stuff that they were in, I wasn't experiencing things like that. You know, we were doing these raids every night, and we usually had the element of surprise. We usually were in complete control. We always had the high ground, just about, you know, and and these guys, totally different experience. I think, I think the conventional experience in uh Iraq and Afghanistan is some of the most compelling stuff out there. Because again, you can only read so many, guess what? A raid by Rangers, a raid by SF, and a raid by SEALs, they all pretty much look the exact same, you know? Like yeah, that's the thing. There's only so many different ways to to cut that onion.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and it's not as exciting and it's not as uh as like I had Kyle Steiner um on the podcast a while back ago. He was a kid in the restrepo that got shot in the head, and then later, right after that deployment, uh went and got his Green Beret, and we were talking. The both of us served in the you know the the historic paratrooper divisions. You know, I was 82nd, he was 173rd, and and we look back in that episode we were talking like I I love being a Green Beret. I I look fondly upon my team plaques, I look fondly back on my teammates, my the people that are giants, in my opinion. I still see my senior in the same light as when I first met him. The dude still looks like he's you know, snake doctor from uh the unit, like just the the coolest dude you can ever imagine. That was my senior when I got to a team, and they they will always live like that, legends in my mind. But when I think back to my time as a young paratrooper, that's when I feel I was part of a football team. That's when I feel like I was part of this this all-star team of young dudes that were, you know, we we didn't have the kit. We didn't have, but we had the the fucking bravada to go out there and and and and do the impossible. And we look fondly upon that. And I think those are the stories that we need to champion. I am not taking anything away from a tier one operator that did insane wonderful things. They have some great stories too. They do, but I I know what motivated me to finally to join and serve. And there were very, varied stories of guys in Vietnam, stories of for like you you talk about motivating and inspiring. Watch Band of Brothers, and there's not a single green beret in that.
SPEAKER_02:It's just Man, I I loved yeah, that I I loved uh reading those old Lurk books from Vietnam and like Navy SEAL memoirs and things like that from back then, the Rekondo guys, and I I mean, I I ate those up like crazy, and and that's another reason. I mean, look, hey, that was a big part of my push to go into the military and to go into the part of the military that I did. And again, it it's it's hey, that all was there because somebody took the time and had the guts to sit down and write about their experiences, you know?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you know, it's it's funny we tend to focus on the storytelling part as just being one one way of writing or one way of telling your stories through writing. And I champion that journaling, just get out there, put something out there, publish a book, you can do it on Amazon. Like it's I get inspired when I see new guys come out with their books, but there's there's something that's just a little intimidating when it comes to film and camera and and getting to that next level. As you're moving into this, this next role, this next thing, like how did storytelling through you know video and and putting together these, you know, another you're diving into a whole different part of storytelling. How did that come about?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, uh part of it was just trying to make myself as hireable as possible for gigs or jobs or whatever. And I just figured, you know, I could be a one-trick pony and only write. And a lot of these journalists that go out there, they got to have like a photographer or a video guy attached to them to be able to get that visual component to go with the story. And so I was like, well, why don't I just learn this, you know, how to take still photos at a high level and how to do video at a not a high level, but at a level that is at a high level for photojournalism, I'll say. Right. Like I'm not a DP for a Hollywood production, but I yeah. But like, how do I get good footage out of these different experiences? And then I can come back and say, hey, not only do you got a uh feature story or a package of written stories, a lot of times it'd be like a feature and then multiple like dispatches and things like that. Plus, you've got original photos to go with all of them, so you don't have to pay Getty or some of these other places for photos. And you've got a video package that'll help your presence on YouTube and social media and all these other places. And I can, and you know, and it's like, wait, so you can do all of that just yourself? Yes, I will have to work my ass off while I'm on these assignments doing that. And I did, you know, I would come back from 12, 13, 14 hour days in the field and then have to download footage from the SD cards onto external hard drives, write my notes, pump out store entire stories sometimes that needed to be filed uh next day, that sort of stuff, and uh and edit photos, you know, because when you're taking photos out of a camera, it you get a raw image. You have to do at least light editing on it to give it full color and and all of that. And uh, and so I learned how to do all of that and I just started started billing myself as this like one-man band, and um and it worked, you know, and I did that for a long time and it was a hectic way to do it, but I'm really proud of uh some of the stuff I was doing out there. I mean, specifically a lot of people that listen to this maybe saw the uh story that I did called The Valley Boys. I embedded with a first group dive team in Afghanistan, and they were kind of one of the last like truly kinetic ODAs uh in Afghanistan at that time. And um, you know, I'm out there and they're in the middle of a firefight, and I'm sitting there having to switch back and forth in modes on my camera between video, slow motion video, and still photos, because I need all three of them, going back and forth uh while trying to stay low and out of the way and all that sort of stuff, making sure the audio is good because I need the audio component to this, and uh at the same time furiously writing down notes about what was happening during all of this. And certainly in situations like that, I would depend on a, you know, I had a very much a pee for plenty approach when it came to video because I could also use that for quotes and things like that. I wouldn't have to write quotes down from the guys because I had them on video and I could just then, and quotes are more accurate that way anyway. Um, but it was a lot, you know.
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SPEAKER_02:And um, and that was a lot of that was a lot of projects like that. I remember I came back from that trip, and um and the only reason I got out in time to go do this next thing was because the combat controller that was attached to them worked a drug deal with the Army, conventional army aviation unit to come up outside of schedule to pick me up from this. It was a very remote base that they were at, a little, a little cop uh up in the mountains. And um, and so he got me out of there because I had to turn around and get to the 74th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, no way.
SPEAKER_02:Man, you want to talk about like a wild turnaround going from the middle of combat operations out on the Afghan-Pakistan border up in the Spingar Mountains, shitting in a wag bag, eating MREs twice a day, you know, terrain denial missions going 24-7, and then days later, you know, with a couple of international long-haul flights mixed in, and now you're sitting in St. Mariglee with a beer in one hand and your camera in the other, trying to dude, what a wild contrast.
SPEAKER_00:Dude, I'm so glad you brought this up because I I wanted I wanted to touch in on that, the embeds. The I I can I can't imagine what that must be like because you you have the part of you that's a storyteller that wants to capture everything uh in great detail, but there's a warrior inside of you. There's a proven leader inside of you, somebody that's been the battle, somebody that's that's had the the training. Was there a fight at some point where you're just like, fuck this, let me a suit me up, put me in, coach?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. No, there was never any circumstance where we were like pinned down and down to the last guy. Um, I I will tell you multiple units that I embedded with offered to like, hey man, you want to just let me slide you my glock, you know, like just to be safe, you know. And and I tell guys, because there's like a journalism ethics thing there. It's not that I'm afraid of guns or anything like that. It's it's a it's an ethical thing. And um, and making sure that you're not you're drawing that line between non-combatant and combatant. And uh, so I would always deny that. And I remember specifically before that mission with those uh that first group dive team, their uh junior echo was like he was carrying a 320, the the grenade, you know, the new uh 203 for those not familiar. And he was like, You want to take this? He had it in like the shotgun mode, not attached to his rifle, you know, the the Standalone like M79 style. And I was like, man, I would love to do that, but like I really shouldn't. Um and uh and yeah, you know, so that you know, things like that. And I I I would always make the joke of, you know, I traded in my rifle for a camera, you know, it's as far as what the shooting that I do. And um, and you know, there were other circumstances like being in Ukraine, you know, a couple weeks after Russia invaded, and there's ballistic missiles coming down. And and, you know, one thing you find out is uh, you know, and I was never in like super close proximity to their explosion. The city I was in got hit, but and the sirens were going off day and night and all that sort of stuff. That was a different kind of stress, though, because you realize really quickly that ballistic missiles are a lot different than the rockets and RPGs and the sort of dink and dunk stuff in comparison that you experienced in the GWAP. Um, and so in cases like that, it doesn't matter if I'm carrying or or anything like that. It's it's neither here nor there because hey man, if it's my time to go via one of these ballistic missiles, like God's got a plan, you know? Um so yeah, so it was uh, but where I'll say that my experience played a big part though, was one building trust with the guys. And as you know, not every SF guy is super happy when they find out that some journalist is gonna be running around them in their intimate spaces with a camera and all this other stuff. And there's there's a lot of trust that has to be there. And even with the teams that kind of welcomed me with open arms, there would always be like one or two that were extremely standoffish and mean mugging me the whole time, just like trying to send the vibe that, like, dude, don't fucking come around me with that camera, you know? And and I I would leave those guys alone. I'm not trying to, you know, uh, you know, upset anybody, right? Um, but you know, I would build trust with these guys, and some of it would be they would usually some PAO or somebody would be like, yeah, this is a former regiment guy and stuff like that. So they'd kind of know that going in. And uh, you know, a lot of times these guys would be like, oh, so what battalion were we in? There might be a former bat boy or two on the ODA that's like, oh, what battalion, what company, play that game. The that Valley Boys team that I was with, um, there, that junior echo I was talking about, he was from 275. Oh, nice. His former platoon sergeant at 275 was my tab spec four. And so, so you know, it's a small world, right? It is, absolutely small world and things like that. And you, you know, through all that stuff, you kind of build trust. And then when it comes to actually how you're conducting yourself, not just in a firefight in that situation, but how you're conducting yourself in a in an aircraft in flight, how you're conducting yourself while there's uh a free-fall operation or a static line operation going on, where even though it's training, it is, hey, a very serious thing that's going on. And if we're gonna trust somebody to be up there, again, running around with the camera and stuff like that, I think they slept a little bit better at night, knowing that, like, hey, not my first time in a C17, not my first time with the ramp down, not my first time with any of this. I know how to stay out of the way. I know what the jump master duties are, I know what the assistant jump master, all of that. I know how to stay out of the way and still do my job, you know, and and usually they were great about kind of meeting you halfway. And a lot of times I'd be put into positions that I would have never asked to be put in just out of respect for what was going on. But they'd say, Hey, you want to like, I bet you could get a fucking sweet shot right here. And I'm like, you're right, that would be awesome. If you're offering, I'm accepting. Let's go. Um, so yeah, but it was a lot of that where just they would uh trust you. And then there were circumstances too that I thought were really amazing, just from a um a I don't know, cultural perspective, I guess. I remember I took a whole crew out to go to the um the first ever Marine Corps class of recon snipers, new MOS for them. It was superseding like the Scout Snipers. It was somewhere kind of in between like a uh the old Scout Sniper course and Sodic, right? It was like a course in between the two. They were learning some advanced skills, well, all but it was still a MOS granting, like foundational sniper course at the same time, long one. Really cool. First ever class they did, though, they asked me to come out and I brought a crew with because I was like, we need a couple different cameras there. Well, um, I remember me and a guy, I don't know if you know him or not, but his name's Ethan Nagel. He runs the uh uh in Into the Breach podcast now. He's a guy I worked with at Black Rifle for a while there, and he came out. Well, Ethan is a Marine Corps veteran with a silver star. And so me and him are out there, and we're in this um uh, you know, hideout basically in a building with a couple of snipers and an instructor in there, you know, snipers to be and an instructor in there. And um, it was really interesting because we found out just through bullshitting, me and Ethan were the only two combat veterans in there, to include the senior NCO and everything like that. And so it turns into this really interesting dynamic of like before you know it, so what was Iraq like? What was what was this like? And and things like that. And then, you know, with Ethan being a Marine with a silver star, to them, I mean it might as well have been Chesty Puller walking in there. Like it was those guys, you know, the army guy, cool, whatever ranger. Yeah, tell me about the guy. And Ethan was also a scout sniper too. So he yeah he could ask like really great in-depth questions. And um, I think they did actually have him get behind the gun just to see if he still had it. And nice, he did. Uh so it there was some cool things like that, that because of our military background, because of my military background, he ended up having these like really cool conversations and and things like that. And and I think we got a little bit more access and placement in a lot of different situations because of the fact that, like, hey, oh, he's a former ranger. We we don't have to worry about it, you know? So um, again, not to sound like I'm some G.I. Joe baddist, but I do know how to at least just stay out of the way and be safe, right?
SPEAKER_00:I know how to look cool, which is the number one rule. Yeah. Yep. Well, man, it's it's um it's important to to also highlight that with all this great success and and forward mo motion, like there's there's still been, you know, some moments where you have to take a knee, sit back and and reflect and be like, okay, like I'm I'm running a little bit forward of my skis. I need to, like, I need to take a knee. I need to recharge myself because we don't talk about like when we see great success, we don't stop to think of what it does, what it what it takes to get that success. And we're only human beings. Like, in your journey, what have you developed and what have you worked on in order to remain balanced, like, or at least as my friend Lucas says, uh harmony to take care of the mind, body, and spirit, because you can burn it down. All that great success can bring about a lot of uh bad coping mechanisms.
unknown:Yep.
SPEAKER_02:Um, I would say that I have not been the best that I'm still figuring that out, but what I have learned a few things over the years. Um one, I think that the earlier, especially as a as a veteran, the earlier you go and get that go get that full body MRI done through one of the various nonprofits that does it. I went through Hunter Seven, um, go get that full blood panel done. It will explain a lot about why you feel the certain way you do. Some of it is going to be burnout, some of it is going to be um stress induced and things like that. But there you're what I found um, particularly in the past two years, after a long time of just going as hard as I could, not really taking care of myself, it was always mission first. I put on weight over the years and things like that because I was constantly, you know, eating those like fucking biscoff cookies on the flight and things like that. And it's hard to have a workout routine when you're going. Literally, I would be gone almost every single week in in one fashion or another. And, you know, my circadian rhythm was just completely shot and all these different things. And you don't realize when it's one thing to do that for a month or even a couple months, it's another thing to stack years and years and years of that doing that. And so I got to a point about let's call it like a year and a half ago, where I just was like, I I don't know what is wrong, but I know stuff is wrong. I'm not happy with how I look. I'm not happy with how I perform. I feel like a bunch of different facets of my life are are suffering because of some of this stuff. So I need to go do investigate myself. I need to go figure out what's going on. And so I went and got the full body MRI done. I went and got the blood panel done. I got a new primary care provider to talk to on some of the stuff. I went and got a therapist to figure out, hey, am I good on the mental front? Um, you know, little things that I didn't that I thought were little things turned into kind of like it's it's a snowball that keeps growing the further you get away from some of these things that you think about from time to time. And um, and so I started doing all the things because I kind of like knew from uh just a logical, like I'm not a dumb guy. I knew logically how to take care of yourself, right? I went to the dentist because my um, you know, going through a period there, I I was not again taking my care of myself in a lot of different ways, to include regularly brushing my teeth, which sounds disgusting. But um yeah, I don't even want, I won't elaborate more, but like I wasn't doing a good job of taking care of myself. So as I started doing the MRI and the blood panel and going to therapy, doing all these different things, um, I, you know, go to the dentist, get some fillings done. I had to get a tooth extracted and and and replaced and and stuff like that. But I started working on myself and just like, hey, I'm coming up on, I turned 40 this year. Um, I know it doesn't get easier after 40, and I need to kind of make up for some, but I'm also not like a senior citizen yet. I should be, I should have more energy than I do. I should feel better about about myself than I do. I should be sleeping better than what I do and all these different things. And so over the past year and a half, I I do all this investigating, I come up with fixes for everything, and I start to implement the fixes, and I feel like I'm getting to a place now where some of those returns are starting to roll in. You know, the weight's coming down, the workouts are getting better, my sleep is getting better. There's there's a bunch of bunch of different things going on there that I still got, you know, things hurt and stuff like that, but I know why they hurt now, and I know how to do specific exercise. I've been able now that I know what's wrong, I can now go look up like the prehab guys or Kelly Starrett or somebody like that on YouTube and figure out how to make that hurt less, or maybe even potentially eliminate the problem for at least, you know, a while anyway. And so I started just being very proactive about all of that. And um, and you know, it it's it's one of those things I'll say that without going into specifics, like I had the second half of 25 for me. I I wrote about this publicly, so I'll share it here too. It was like Murphy's law on steroids. It was everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Um, my wife ended up having an emergency that landed her in the ER and then in the ICU for uh close to a week. Um, we'd gotten a new puppy that had chronic Giardia for months on end that completely disrupted my sleep because every two hours I was waking up to a barking puppy that had blasted diarrhea all over her crate and um and all that. And then to top it off towards the end of last year, she ate a ball of yarn and had to go in and get emergency surgery. Oh um, and and all, you know, those are just some of the highlights. It was like the the furnace that I'm staring at right now, the motor blew out in it. New furnace. Need, you know, the just it I could go down the list. And so despite it, it was tough, right? From a mental standpoint, it was tough um because and through that I I lost my job at Black Rifle. And and so I was dealing with that as well. And I, you know, all this stuff together. And it it's hard because you think like I'm doing all the things I know I'm supposed to do. I went and did the check-ins. I I I went to therapy. I did, I did all the things, I'm doing all the things. I'm I'm making positive changes in my life. And now everything else just starts kind of the foundation that was never a problem before starts crumbling beneath you. What I'll say about all that, and what I've learned through all that is, and and I'm still navigating a lot of this stuff to be completely transparent. It's like these are not things that just get solved overnight. It's a journey, man. What you what what you learn though is yeah, you're almost never going to be able to get your cake and eat it too. Um, but those positive changes that you're making are not for naught. You're actually better prepared now to deal with some of these stresses that you're dealing with, to deal with some of this just like shit that life throws at you. You're better prepared for that because you're taking care of yourself in these other areas. How much worse would it be right now if all that other stuff that you've been working on for a year or two had what if you hadn't done that? Okay, now you'd be in a now you'd be in a really tough situation, right? Um, and so I guess like the the message out there is uh, you know, one, start working on those improvements, start doing that sort of holistic assessment of yourself. Start reaching out to the different orgs that can help you with that assessment. Start working on yourself. Even if other things are not going right in your life, you're dealing with a divorce or you're dealing with, you know, you lost your job or any of these other things, your kid hates you, or you know, or uh, you know, your wife thinks you're dumb because you're an 18 Bravo and she prefers deltas and echoes. Um, you know, whatever it is that you're dealing with, uh that we, you know, hey, start working on the things that you know you can work on that are going to make you better prepared. And it's it's not too different of principle than it was in the military of, hey, why do you go stay in shape and do PT every day? That's so you're prepared for combat, right? You're better prepared for the rigors of what lie ahead. And I don't think it's any different now. It's just the combat of life is um, in many cases, more complicated than a firefight. Uh one. Absolutely. 100%. You know, these are there's not always a clear rule book or or a clear plan for how to deal with some of these things that get thrown at all of us and um are unique to your own situation. But I do know it's a little bit easier if you're already working on your mind and getting some of that stuff straight and you don't have this baggage hanging off of you, or at least you know how to deal with it now, that you're, you know, you're still you're keeping yourself in shape, you're you're getting that serotonin boost every time you step into the gym and and pick something up heavy or go for a run, whatever that is. You know, you're you're not dealing with, in my case, tooth pain because you were a fucking idiot. And you know, and and that's just grating at you underneath the surface and makes every now you're snapping at your kids and things like that when you don't need to. And um, and so it's like, hey, the way to navigate these things, the the way to navigate the downtimes is to prepare for them when you're in the good times. When I started looking into all this stuff, times were good. I was times were good on multiple fronts. And I sort of like, hey, I think I could be better. This is the time to start working on myself. And it's helped me endure. And I'm not saying I'm perfect and that I'm, you know, sticking every landing here as I go through this, but I definitely know that I'm in a better spot right now today as I talk to you than I would have been if I didn't start working on some of this stuff a year and a half, two years ago. And I wish I would have done it 10 years ago.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Man, that is so true. And that's a perfect segue to Security Halt 100. That's right. Every year you start the New Year saying to yourself, I've got a great New Year's resolution. And right about now, towards January, beginning of February, everything fizzes out. And I've taken some great insights from programs like 75 Hard, and they're certainly hard. They're they're very rewarding once you finish through, whether it takes you 75 or 98 days, or the last time 94, but who's counting? The thing that makes 100 days of security halt, uh, the 100-day challenge different is I'm not asking you to just work out twice a day, drink water, and eat a clean meal. I'm asking you to identify three things for three different pillars: your mind, body, and your spirit. Whatever you need to improve. If you've already crushed the body and you know you're good in the gym, okay. Maybe you just need to work on your recovery and you're gonna optimize your sleep and your nutrition for a hundred days. But the mind, you're gonna work on that by maybe signing up for a school. Maybe you're gonna go take on a new hobby. And then for the spirit domain, I I don't need you to be a Catholic like me. I don't even need you to go to church. I certainly wish you would. But if you don't, that's cool too. Maybe just meditate. Maybe read a book and explore something different about the spirit. Whatever domains you need to maximize and enhance, treat it like a video game. You've already maxed out the health attributes, max out the other ones so you can level up. And with a hundred days, it's a big enough thing that you can look at and say, I want to take that on. With one more added thing, at the end of the 100 days, I'm gonna challenge you to do something insane. Whether it's a Spartan race or rowing for 24 hours, whatever it is, it's gotta be big. It's gotta be a big goal that you can put on that end of that calendar and say, in 100 days, I'm gonna run five miles, 10 miles. It's up to you. Some of us get out of the military and we don't go to the gym for years. And some of us haven't run a five-mile run since the 90s, and that's okay. But the reality is this is linked to everything that our veteran community is dealing with and our first responder community too. We tend to think that suicide is one thing, one problem that's just singularly connected to one thing. But mental health is connected to so many different areas of our lives, whether it's us getting up and brushing our teeth and going to the gym and getting a big, actual, nutritious meal at least once a day, it's connected to so many different domains. At least that's been my experience. When I was at my worst, when I was suffering greatly, I wasn't thinking about going to the gym. I certainly wasn't thinking about going to college. And I didn't have the spirit domain to actually lean on. So in my journey, I realized that I'm much better off when I balance out those three pillars. So join me in the Security Hall at 100. 100 days to optimize our entire life. Not just the wellness of our body, but everything. Want to find out more? Head on over to securityhall.com. The PDF will be there when I get a chance to upload it. Procrastination is on the list for me. Don't trust, trust me, I gotta work on that. But if you want it right now, hit me up on sechoppodcast at gmail.com and I'll email it to you. Or hit me up on Instagram. You know I'm active on there, dog. Hit me up with a DM and I'll slide it to you. And we can both start off the new year working on ourselves. And if you're in the North Ray, in the Northwest Florida area, we can do a challenge together. It's gonna be in person. I want you to join my team. We're gonna do something stupid, something insane. It's not gonna be fun, but at the end, we're gonna enjoy it. It's fun. Details when you reach out and contact me. I'm Denny Caballero. This has been Marty Scoblin Jr. Marty, thank you for joining us today, man. Your insights, it's it uh have been something that I have been waiting to hear. I'm a big fan, a big follower from all the way back in the day, and uh certainly enjoyed your writing. And uh, you've been a motivation for not just me, but a lot of veterans, man. So thank you for what you've done and what you continue to do. And I cannot wait for your next incredible endeavor. I I certainly hope that a a show like uh Anthony Bourdain's is on the roster. I hope that's up there on the board because uh we need to bring that back. That guy, man, he's missing.
SPEAKER_02:Well, Denny, I got one question for you before we leave here. Yeah. Uh what group did you come from in the SF community?
SPEAKER_00:Bro, come on, Denny Caballero. Fucking septimal group, bro. I'm a seventh group boy.
SPEAKER_02:I was hoping you would say that. I did make, I did stereotype a little bit there. I was like, please tell me he's a seventh group guy. I just gotta say, like, as a seventh group guy, are you looking at like what's going on in the world right now? And so, man, what a time to be in seventh group.
SPEAKER_00:Like, dude, I made so many memes after the Maduro hit. So many memes.
SPEAKER_01:What a time to be speaking Spanish and in seventh group. Like, holy cow.
SPEAKER_00:Man, I was I was hoping uh there would be some seventh group love in that operation, but you know, they picked the right team for the right job.
SPEAKER_02:Um, some Maduro thing, that's one thing. I you can't I don't have any inside information here. You can't tell me seventh group points aren't having the time of their lives in South America right now. You can't tell me.
SPEAKER_00:I can I I can only imagine the team that's in Bogota just like what waking up the next day. What the fuck? What? Yeah, we shot a greatness. You're still amazing, you still have a mission, and we're proud of you boys. So you're you're your next your next big thing is right on the horizon. I can feel it. That's an important thing to go out on. I do want to say this, man. Like you we often only focus on the GWA and what Iraq and Afghanistan gave us. And you know, men and young men, no matter what, we're gonna romanticize war. Um, you know, it's up to us to to to tread that line and talk about the reality of it. But I'm never gonna be the guy that tells a young man not to dare greatly to enlist and join America's premier fighting force, whether it's Ranger Regiment, Special Forces, Navy SEALs, or become a PJ in an Air Force. Um it's it's part of us, it's deeply ingrained. And I will say this your time will come, your moment in history, I assure you, will come. And and don't stress the G Wat, that shit's lame, it's boring. The future. Is brighter, and we're grateful to have men like yourselves out there doing amazing work. So trust in yourself and your training and your mission's coming. Maybe it wasn't Maduro, but it there's a whole lot, there's a whole bunch of dictators down the line.
SPEAKER_02:Dictators and death pots and man, it's there's always somebody. Just ask our uh just ask, you know, guys like Saddam Hussein and uh Gaddafi and uh Solomini and there's always the getting's good.
SPEAKER_00:Like Major Payne once asked. It's just gotta be somebody out there for some killing. Yeah. Oh Marty again, thank you so much, brother. This has been awesome. This is uh I'm checking this one off the board. I'm so glad I finally got to make it happen. And uh to everybody tuning in, thank you all for what you're doing. Thank you for rallying around and supporting the show. And you know the deal. Check out the episode description, click all those links, and we'll see you all next time. Till then, take care. Thanks, Eddie.
