Shawn Ryan Show - #9 Tu Lam Former - Green Beret / Call of Duty / CEO Rōnin Tactics

Episode Date: May 28, 2021

Retired Green Beret Tu Lam, CEO of Rōnin Tactics and Call of Duty Character has a conversation with Shawn Ryan to discuss how he was smuggled out of Vietnam, his 23 year military career (20 of which as a Green Beret), his dark transition into civilian life living with PTSD from a long career of war fighting in Special Operations, Lam opened up about his childhood, how he overcame Asian racism at a young age, his military career and success in the entertainment industry. He recounts a visit to the principal's office when he was in third grade where he was belittled by the mother of his bully and the administration did nothing. "She told me that my kind don't belong here and that I need to go back home to my country," said Tu Lam. "I made a promise to myself that day that I was stronger than hate." Lam fulfilled his promise, joined the Army and became a Green Beret. He served in the military for 23 years, 20 of those years in special operations. After retiring from the service he founded Ronin Tactics, became the inspiration behind Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's Daniel "Ronin" Shinoda and Co-Host of Forged In Fire: Knife or Death on History Channel. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Being the astro-servant, you want to be a fucking commando tonight. I had to go through eight months of training with the CIA. And the reason why we had to cross-train with them is because we forward deployed later on Into these countries where we had to work underneath the chief of station You know it was it was really funny because you and I After talking last night we were in the same country on the same project on the same hunting down the same person. Yeah There was this fight promoter named Santo Yeah. Yeah. There was this fight promoter named Santo.

He was a Japanese guy and he took underneath him. Obviously he wanted to make money out of the end. He said, would you want to fight? You know, at Japanese dojos, at matches. He was talking about the underground matches. And the technology was used against the enemy and how we would find, fix, and locate and kill them. He got killed, was that 2006?

Yeah. I tracked down a tiger. Get the... Are you shitting me? Yeah. A tiger? I tracked down a wild tiger. I tracked down a wild tiger. Welcome back to the Sean Ryan Show.

This is episode 009, and we've brought you our most requested guest to date. I want to kick things off by saying thank you to all the patrons on Patreon. Because of you guys, we're getting an entire new studio, which will be done by the end of next month. I want to say thank you to everybody who's left us a review on iTunes. If you haven't done that yet, please go to iTunes. Leave us a review, even if it's just one word. That's all we ask. Just one word on iTunes. And lastly, please go to vigilanceelite.com. Subscribe to the newsletter for all of the other content that we release on all the other platforms. There are hundreds of other videos to include behind the scenes footage of the Sean Ryan show.

Let's get on with it. Number 009. He was smuggled out of Vietnam at an extremely young age and later found himself in the United States where he would serve a 23-year military career, 20 of which as a Green Beret in special operations. of which as a Green Beret in Special Operations. After retirement, he went on to become Call of Duty's character, Ronin. He co-hosted History Channel's Forged in Fire, Knife, or Death. He founded Ronin Tactics. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome 009, Mr. Tulam. Tulam, welcome to Tennessee, man. Thank you. It's great being here. It's great having you.

Thank you. You are the number one most requested guest for the Sean Ryan show. And so I'm just ecstatic to have you here. We ever since episode one, it's been, can you get two lamb on the show? Can you get two lamb on the show? And now you're here. And, you know, we had some talks before today on the phone and then meeting at dinner last night. And, dude, we got a lot to dive into. Absolutely. Looking forward to this. Me too, man. But just, I mean, so many accomplishments, 23 years military service, 20 years special operations, if I'm not mistaken, you have beat the game Call of Duty more than anyone I know because you're a character in it.

Forged in fire, you had an extremely successful transition out of the military and overcoming the dreaded transition. the dreaded transition and, uh, you know, something that I think a lot of people leave out that is, uh, extremely commendable is you've been with your wife for 20 years and it sounds like she was with you the whole time, um, through all those deployments. And, and, uh, that is no easy task for task for any spouse. And coming from an occupation that has one of the highest divorce rates in the world, that's pretty amazing. Thank you. So, yeah. And Meadner, what an amazing woman you've got there.

Appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. But, all right, so every show, I always start out with a gift. So because your name's Two, we got you two gifts. Hey, I like that. Yeah, right? So here we go.

You ready? Ready? One. And here's the other one Wow I have me some elite candy this is awesome thank you so much you're welcome Wow those s'more bites have been compared to crack they're so good yeah yeah I can't wait to try to crack careful with those awesome man I appreciate this looks so great right huh thank you so that hoodie we had modified you you know, so you're a pretty fit guy. So it's a large torso with double X arms.

So, but yeah, man. I appreciate it. Thank you. You're welcome. But just diving into it, your story starts at birth, and you were born into war. So I kind of want to cover some of that. But in 1973, Nixon signed a peace agreement with North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the U.S., which unfortunately nobody followed.

And then the U.S. started pulling troops out in 1973. You were born in 1974 in Saigon. The hospital was getting mortared. Yeah. And so I'd like to start right there. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, let's put us back in that timeframe, you know. Huge, unpopular American war.

You know, it was a war of a body count, you know. The Americans that came in and fought against the communist regime, the North Vietnamese. Well, during that time when the Americans withdrew, you know, I'm South Vietnamese. I was born on the losing side of the war. On the morning of my birth, you know, my mother, I was born on the basement floor of the Saigon Hospital. My mother shielded my body from incoming artillery fire on the morning of my birth. At three months old, I lost my freedoms to the communist regime. You know, like any occupying force, you know, they're going to take the leadership out of that government.

So Saigon was a capital of Vietnam, you know, South Vietnam, you know, the country was divided in North-South. The North Vietnamese surrounded the country, the city of Saigon, mortared us, artillery fire, eventually the troops came in. artillery fire, eventually the troops came in and that's when the post-war genocide started happening. Our family, the North Vietnamese will go through the homes, they'll look for valuables, good belongings, they'll push out the civilians out in the streets and if you serve with the South Vietnamese army, then you are immediately executed. All right.

If my uncle who served with the South Vietnamese along with the Americans, they were immediately executed. My other uncles were in prison in what they call re-education camps. Let me explain this, Sean. You know, when I, these re-education camps are torture camps you know by the time i received my uncle after 15 years of imprisonment he had no skin on the bottom of his foot damn all right so they torture him beat him broke him as a human being. So at three months old, you know, we endured that. My mother held on to me as they killed our family. We were facing genocide. We lived underneath a communist occupation until I was three years old. During that time, there was a flux of refugees leaving

Vietnam. Was the violence happening the entire three years leading up to? No, that initial violence, and this is history, me studying history, that initial violence of occupying, taking out the current regime, the power in that government system, imprisoning people. Once that was established, then the oppression started, you know, social ideology. You know, you're going to pay the government system this. The oppression, we started starving, you know. So we're facing, you know, them oppressing us as a human race.

And then eventually we started facing genocide. You can read the history on it. You know, they looked at our lives as in we're not even worth a bullet. They would take us out in rice patties and they would murder people by putting a plastic bag over their heads. Damn. Suffocating them to death, you know. So at three years old, my parents, my biological father, and my mother and my brother, we escaped on a wooden fishing boat

with hundreds, hundreds of other, hundreds of thousands of other fleeing refugees. You know, I want to put you in this scenario. Imagine, like, escaping in this country, right? Hundreds of thousands of refugees escaping on wooden boats. Well, that brought in the piety that was going on around other countries, neighboring countries like Thailand, Philippines, you know, the pirates, the bandits that came in. And basically they would stop our boats when we were escaping. They'll board the boats.

They'll murder the men rape the women and torture the children were you just backing up for just a second on these boats who was orchestrating uh this kind of uh migration out of south people they just they're trying to leave so think about like syria or any country that's war-torn they're just trying to escape that area right so after the fall of South Vietnam you know we are facing the communist regime so a lot of people are just they're walking out of the country they were getting on these wooden boats smuggling themselves out it was it was not like the the communist regime let us leave yeah we had to escape you know and the people that um own these boats they're like fishermen's and they're just trying to make a living too so these are like

can you describe the boat a normal wooden fishing boat just a motor no motor yeah a motorboat now this normally fits about maybe 20 people my mother said on our boat it was a hundred plus people holy shit we couldn't sleep um we had to um basically we we're in the basement area of the boat the bottom deck of the boat and we had to sleep sitting up right because they were jam-packed in there so think about the smell think about uh the desperate you know how desperate these people were the rich were in the same boat as the poor wow you know so we are truly trying to survive and truly you know trying to escape So the piety was going on. My mother told me the captain of the boat, he used to have been ex-Navy for the South Vietnamese military. So he employed the tactics that you needed to navigate past these piety.

And basically all he did was we escaped at night. navigate past these piety and basically all he did was we escaped at night he shut off the lights and we just kind of so uh sailed past the piety by cutting off the motors right and then once we got out at sea then he cut on the motors and we went our first destination was malaysia right so you think about it man like we're escaping and all these neighboring countries they don't want they don't want to deal with you. Yeah. They don't want your issues. They don't want escaping refugees in their country where now they have to house and feed you. They're third world countries themselves.

So we went into Malaysia and the Malaysian Coast Guard stopped us at gunpoint. They shot at us and then they told us that we will not enter their country. They anchored us in, and then they pulled us back out into the ocean. They shot our motor, cut the lines, and left us drifting out of the oceans to die. So my mother said we drifted. We were out there for nearly a month at sea. A month? Nearly a month at sea.

And she said people started dying, you know, due to the lack of food and water, people were dying. And they're stealing, they're fighting from each other. They threw the dead bodies over the sea, you know. So we, my mother said we were in a very desperate survival situation she she actually told me she lost hope do you remember any of this no nothing no there's flashes of like the refugee camps growing up there was a a flash of like in my dreams where i see a light going through like the crevice of a boat. And I'll explain that, that light.

But those like little flashes, I wouldn't say I remembered the whole big picture. I was so young. How about your brother? My brother remembers. How old was he? He's four years older than me. Okay. So he was seven at the time.

Wow. So, you know, people started dying. My mother said they were throwing people off the boat, lack of food, water. And then, you know, my mother carried poison in her belongings. You know, it was a common practice for fleeing refugees to poison their children. When the journey ends, that means they know they're going to die. Or if the pirates enter the boat, then they'll give the poison to their children so they won't die being tortured, that they have the peaceful death. So my mother contemplating on this poison because she knew that we're not going to make it. So she said a huge storm hit us. You know, imagine a fishing boat, man, out in the middle of the South China Sea, right?

And she said this huge storm, she thought the boat was going to tip over. With no motor. No motor. And we drifted and drifted. But the rain, she said, saved us because it allowed us, you know, the water source we needed in order to survive a few more days, you know. She said that we drifted out, that the storm took us further out into the ocean. They didn't know where, the captain didn't know where we were at. You know, we were just out at sea, had no motor.

We're just drifting. And a miracle happens, man, you know we're just out at sea had no motor we're just drifting and um a miracle happens man you know there was a russian supply boat that was exiting out of china i mean out of vietnam they were leaving vietnam and they saw refugees now i want to paint the story. These are Russians. The government, the system, the ideology that took me out of my country, that took away my freedoms, you know, to murder my family, you know. And these Russians were coming out of Vietnam and they saw fleeing refugees and they saved us. They brought us on board and, well, they brought us on board one at a time, is what my mother said. And they, basically, they provide medical aid to us, you know. We were drifting out of sea for nearly a month. And they anchored us on, and then they told the captain, and my mother said it to the T, they told the captain that you're lucky because if we were going into Vietnam, we would have drug you back into Vietnam.

Oh, man. But because we're going out of Vietnam, we have no other choice but to take you with us. Right. So they were at destination with Singapore. Right. So they were at destination with Singapore, right? So they basically tug us along, you know, on their line. And they dropped us off at a refugee camp in Indonesia. You know, I want to explain this, you know, this situation to you. It's that these refugee camps are very dangerous, man.

They're a plot of land in the middle of the jungle. And there's maybe a control post in the middle where people go there and check their mails and that's their communications, sponsorships to get into other countries. So we lived on this plot of land in the middle of the jungle in a grass hut in a tropical island you know no food no water is given to you so you have to survive off the land how long were you there for a year and a half so up into four and a half or five and a half? Yeah, four and a half. Four and a half years old. Yeah.

So we were living off the land. And, you know, my brother growing up, he would tell me, you know, I used to gather firewood around the camp, you know, and I would see dead bodies all around the camp because people were getting murdered for supplies. You know, women were drug into the woods and getting raped. Is this, you said Indonesia, correct? Is this Indonesians? This is refugees on refugees. This is South Vietnamese on South Vietnamese, not taking care of each other. It's about survival, you know, at that point.

not caring not taking care of each other it's about survival yeah you know at that point and um you know then you have you know bandits in these in these jungles as well you know i asked my mother i said okay so how do we survive well my mother is she's hard right she's badass and um what she told me was you know there were rich refugees and they had these, you know, jewelry and stuff that they would tape to them. And she will go and basically bid because they need to sell their jewelry to eat. Right. So my mother would take this jewelry from him, be the middle person, make the trek through the jungle where people are murdered and raped and killed daily, go to the northern portion of the island and deal with these bandits. Wow. And sell them these valuables for money, and she'll track back and take her earnings,

and that's what kept us alive. Did she have to hide that from pretty much everybody, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I just think like, you know, a young Asian lady tracking through the jungles. Yeah. You know what I mean? So her children can survive. Damn.

So who was watching you guys? You know, I don't hear too much stories on my biological father. You know, it's just they divorced when I was very young. But I'm sure he had a helping hand on, you know, how we survived in the refugee camps as well. So we lived off this, in this plot of land. Now, what's really unique was my aunt married an American Special Forces Green Beret, and he was an officer. His G base got overran during one of the battles, right? And he got stabbed by SKS Bayonet in the back of his rib cage area.

He ended up killing the Vidcon. He'll make sure he'll let you know I killed him too, you know. But he was evacuated out of Vietnam, you know. And my aunt went with him after the fall of South Vietnam. And she moved over to the United States, to Fayetteville, North Carolina. So him being an officer in the United States, to Fayetteville, North Carolina. So him being an officer in United States military, he was able to sponsor us to come over to America. Now, what I wanna explain to you is my mother waited

a year and a half for the sponsorship. We got accepted to New Zealand. We got accepted to Canada. We could have been, you know what I mean? We could have been in all these different, Australia. We could have been in all these different, Australia. We could have been in all these different countries that accepted us as refugees. America at that time, it took a little longer, unpopular Vietnam War. But because of the sponsorship, we were able to get to America.

And I asked my mother later on in life, I said, why? Why in America? She said, before I left, you know, your grandfather who funded the escape, who funded the escape, made me promise that if I can, if I survive this journey, then you must do what you can to become an American. Because you need to reunite with your sister in America. And that's the land of the free. So my mother waited, you know, literally for a year and a half. And then eventually we got accepted to come to America. And we made our way to Fayetteville, North Carolina, where that was the,

if you know Fayetteville, North Carolina, anybody who's ever been there, it's a town right outside of the biggest military base, biggest army base in America, you know, for special operations. The home of special operations, which was Fort Bragg, North Carolina. And that was where I was raised. And that was where I was raised. Before we go into Vietnam, how many of your family members made it to the U.S.? Was it your mom, your brother and you? Was there more? Yeah, yeah. Eventually, because my mother made it.

My mother has a giving heart, so she never forgot where she came from. So we were able to free my uncle from the prison camp. So she brought him and her family over. We brought my grandmother over, you know. So our uncle, you know, that survived the camps eventually came over. How many family members did not make it over? She told me like more than five. Damn.

On the boat, you spoke about bodies being thrown overboard and people dying of starvation, thirst. I'm sure probably sickness was in there too, being out there for, you know, over a month. was in there too being out there for you know over a month how many uh how many and you said there was um maybe over a hundred uh people on that boat do you have any idea i don't man you know i did ask my mother one time i said out of you know the people that came on the boat can you tell me like roughly how many people die she goes a lot damn obviously she doesn't you know keep track of that but she told me like when they slept um she had to sleep with all her valuables uh clothes pinned to her clothes right so we had layers of clothes we're escaping we didn't have luggages or anything you know we had to travel very light so she would layer us with, you know, two outfits.

And then she would take our valuables as our birth certificates, photos that she had reminding her her childhood. It's amazing. So some of these photos that she showed me later on in life, like you could tell that's that's been through an escape, you know. So she would stuff it into a Ziploc bag and she'll tape it and then she'll clothespin it to her body. Any jewelry that she have, any money that she had, she'll put it into a Ziploc bag and basically clothespin it to her body. And when she slept, you know, she had to sleep sitting up. So she would sleep with this stuff underneath her so nobody could steal because everybody was stealing from each other, you know. Yeah.

Survival situation. Do you talk with your mom a lot about kind of what led up to, like, were there any early signs before the war actually kicked off of, you know, certain freedoms being taken away? I don't know. Maybe, like, we have the Second Amendment here. Were there any freedoms that just started disappearing slowly but surely? You read the history on the Vietnam War, Ho Chi Minh.

He first came to America to ask for help because the French were trying to colonize. He was fighting against that regime, and Americans didn't want to get involved. So then he switched over to the Russians and the Russian started helping Ho Chi Minh. So that's why he took on more of that socialist ideology. Ho Chi Minh's goal was to unify all of Vietnam under one rule, which was because he took on the socialist ideology, the communist ideology.

He wanted to press that into the South, which was more democracy. You know, I think what's really unique was there was a North and South divided, you know. The South Vietnamese, which the country I was born on, was sided with Americans. They fought for democracy and freedom. The South Vietnamese, which the country I was born on, was sided with Americans. They fought for democracy and freedom. The North Vietnamese fought for more of a communist ideology.

Obviously, the communists won in that country. And I think what's unique was the crimes that happened after that. There was no humanity. There was no compassion. You know, they were trying to wipe out a whole race of people because we thought differently. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's, you don't hear a whole hell of a lot of stories

where the Russians are showing anybody compassion. If there's one thing they're kind of known for it's being pretty ruthless and so the fact that you know they showed you uh that fishing boat you know at least a little bit of compassion and fed you and gave you water and and actually brought you you know to, to a refugee camp where you'd eventually, you know, get out. That's, I've never heard of the Russians doing anything like that. No, no. But, you know, I think what's unique is, you know, now that I'm older in life and, you know, you kind of study how the human being develops and, you know, the mind develops

and, you know, from two to four, that's where you develop a lot of your, your code, your values, your ethics, whatever you live by. Right. So a lot of kids at that age that you get abused, they're going to have a really hard time in life. You know, I mean, two to four, man, I was, yeah, I was ENR and, you know, yeah, I was trying to ENR, we were trying to survive. So I think with that energy, you know, kind of, that enr we were trying to survive so i think with that energy you know kind of that's what i grew up with you know i just couldn't pinpoint what that energy was i was off

growing up it's just you know how you feel like you were meant for something you don't know what it is or there's an emptiness inside you just don't know what it is there was a rage definitely you know but i didn't know why you know and it wasn't into later on as when you mature you realize that man you're escaping for your life during that age when when a normal human being's developing his code his his way you know who he is in this world you know two to four yeah i mean that's uh about as traumatic as it gets and uh i'm kind of curious you know you said you have flashes here and there but what what is if you can remember what is your first childhood memory your first childhood memory is there are states yeah it was america um i mean traumatically you know we came in america and you know it wasn't uh a popular war vietnam was not a popular war and and i want to bring us back into history and the reason why Vietnam was not a popular war was because up until then,

right, you think about like World War I, World War II, you know, Korean War, everything was censored through the military. Reporters will come in, you had your military reporters, and it was censored through, and then that's what the public saw, you know. Vietnam was the first time that they allowed unprecedented covering of story. So all these reporters were coming in and obviously they didn't want to capture war, right? The image of war and war is not beautiful. soldiers were killing you know innocent people you know and they had this on video and they're sending it back well that's why it became a non-popular war you know so the Americans didn't have the support you know and that reciprocated into the South Vietnamese and we didn't have the support once the Americans left, you know? So when we came over to America, I am the image of a hateful war to them, you know?

And it was so fresh when we came over because it was right after the Vietnam War. So when we came over, man, my first memory, it was my mother took me to a grocery store, you know, and I remember what I saw was endless food. You know, that doesn't mean anything to anybody, but when you starved, right, when you had nothing, you know, when you come from nothing, you see endless rolls of food, you know, and I remember I'm like, wow, you know, this is amazing. And I saw the joy in my mother's eyes because we're not starving, you know. She grabbed her groceries and we came out and this older gentleman came up to us and he spit on my face. And he flicked his fingers at my mother.

And he called us all sorts of racist name. So that was my first memory, you know? So growing up in the States, you know, obviously after the war, it was a very difficult time. It was very racist, very racist times in America. It was a very difficult time. It was very racist, very racist times in America. I mean, that has not only coming back to, or coming not back to for you, but coming to the U.S. from Vietnam, but you moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina, which is probably the biggest special operations base out of all branches in the U.S.

And special operations, and a lot of times are, you know, the backbone of the war. They generally see the most action. And to have you move there, you know, and what they were doing can, you know, as you know, as well as I do can create a lot of hate. And, uh, so I'm sure that was, uh, extremely tough to deal with. And, uh, but before we get into that, let's just take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll pick up with your journey in Vietnam. Absolutely. nutrient survivor feed your freedom alright two

we're back from the break and you're in Fayetteville, North Carolina you've just immigrated into the United States, and you, your mother, and your brother are in a town that holds more special operations commandos than any other town in the United States who are all fresh out of the Vietnam War.

And so what was that like growing up with that hatred? Yeah, you know, when we first moved to the States, we lived with my uncle and my aunt, you know. And my uncle's an officer. aunt you know and they're my uncle's officer so you know that was the best life i ever seen like you know coming from the oppressed you know escaping vietnam i never lived in such a huge house you know um so it was a huge eye-opener so we lived with my uncle for a few months until we got on our feet it was my my biological father my brother, and myself, you know. And, you know, just during that time frame, I was trying to get climatized to this environment, you know, I was in.

It was so much going on there. And like you say, it was a home with special operations. My uncle was Special Forces Green Beret. So when I walked down, I saw all his awards, you know, all all his war stuff i thought it was really cool really unique um eventually my my biological father and my mother we moved out and we went to um it was a very low income part of town we had nothing you know when we left vietnam we have absolutely nothing we have no country has no freedom we have nothing you know um so my father and mother would they would work odd jobs because my mother always felt education was the answer to freedom you know she said if you have education you can never be oppressed so it means a lot to me if you concentrate on school you know, she said, if you have an education, you can never be oppressed.

So it means a lot to me if you concentrate on school, you know? Yeah. So we lived in a, gosh, man, a really small apartment in a really poor part of town. The only furniture that we had in this apartment was one full-size mattress, The only furniture that we had in this apartment was one full-size mattress, one used full-size mattress that we all would sleep on. We had no other furniture. You know? We were very poor. And how old were you at this time?

About six. Six? So you had a six-year-old, a ten-year-old, and then two adults, mom and dad. Right. On a full size, which is just a little bit bigger than a twin size bed. So my mother, you know, she would, we have other refugees, so they would donate clothes to us. And so we had like really like four hand-me-downs of clothes, you know, holes all over, you know, holes in our shoes. But my mother appreciated them, thanked them for, you know, their donations.

And she would stay up at night and sew up the holes on my clothes. She would fix the shoes so we can attend school. Do you remember your parents' demeanor? Did you, did they have a positive demeanor i mean it's a shitty situation my mother was born a year to tiger so she has that aggressive aggressive attitude you know like you step out of line she'll whoop your ass kind of attitude you know my father my stepfather was very, he's a quiet professional. Did you know how poor you were at the time or did you just think? No, I just thought this was it.

This was just life. I mean, we did go, I would tell you, days without eating a few times. My mother would obviously give us the food before she would eat herself, you know. So they went more days starving than we did. But we did go, you know, days starving growing up. Along with that, you know, we started attending school, you know. And that's when you really see the hate in our culture, you you know the hate to the Vietnamese people the um you know one of my first teachers openly discussed that she does not support the flux of refugees coming into her hometown

you know and she expressed it numerous times and obviously the kids um they would pick on us because we're poor and we look different how many vietnamese kids went to this school we were the only one that was in besides my brother that i knew you know it wasn't like that much vietnamese refugees coming in number getting to to America was very difficult. And a lot of the refugees, they settled in more of California area. We settle in North Carolina because my uncle. Yeah. Right.

So you think about like the biggest military base, right? You have all these veterans that are fresh out of war. Okay. Then you have, they, some of them marry foreign women, you know, so you have all these people right within this small town, different cultures and everything. But it was a very racist time. When I say that is, you know, I don't throw out that word lightly, you know, but it was because of the post-Vietnam War hatred. You know, I was told I was called by many names growing up. Yeah, I can see that being, you know, extreme racism, you know, and I'm really curious, you know, that's a hot topic for today. Even, you know, there are Asian racism that's going on and in all the other communities and,

but somehow you've gotten through it. And I kind of, you know, I want to talk about how you, how you did get through that. And I think a lot of times, you know, people that either feel they're being oppressed or are being oppressed, they tend to go down that victim road. And, you know, And, you know, unfortunately, it is going to take effort on your part to to to turn yourself other turn yourself into something other than a victim. And. There's not a whole lot of people doing that these days, so I really want to pick your brain on on how you kind of got over that and, and, and how you became, you know, the success story, the success story that you've become today with, with Ronan tactics and an impeccable military career and, and everything that goes with that. You know, there's, there's evils all over the world, Sean, you know, that, you know, traveling around as a Navy SEAL, there's evils all over the world, Sean. You know that. You know, traveling around is a Navy SEAL. There's evils everywhere, man. So we can dwell on what we can't change or we can work on what we can.

And that lesson was taught to me at a very young age by my mother. You know, let me explain this. You know, my mother, we were very poor. let me explain this you know my mother would we were very poor but she would cook and she would deliver food to the other refugees that were in town you know there was not that much but she would go to these communities and she'll give and I remember I asked her I said you know why why are you doing this they They don't really appreciate it. It's being kind of defiant at that age. And she pulled the car over.

And she grabbed my hand and she said, look at me. And I looked over at her and she goes, no matter how bad off we are in life, if we can, we must help others. Somehow those words kind of resonated. Obviously, I can talk about that day even to today. So that day had a lot of impact. But I want to talk about this day. You know, I want to explain this to you. So substitute teacher days, man, they were the worst for me. Let me explain this to you. Teacher days, man, they were the worst for me. Let me explain this to you.

My Vietnamese name is pronounced Thu Thanh Lam. Imagine trying to pronounce that, right? Thu Thanh Lam. I pronounce my name Thu Lam, so you guys don't butcher my Vietnamese name, you know? So on substitute teacher's day, they'll try to pronounce my names. All right. And they'll butcher my name. And then that allowed for all the other, you know, students to mock me and make fun of me and throw paper at me or whatever. Right. Because my name sounds weird and I'm different.

Well, on this specific substitute teacher day, I had this bully, you know, in third grade that really hated me. He hated who I was, that really hated me. He hated who I was, the way I looked. He hated that I was poor. And he wouldn't make it a daily routine to pick on me, you know. But on this substitute teacher day, he started in on me pretty early, you know. It was really loud and the substitute teacher didn't want to deal with it, so he told me and the bully to go down to the principal's office. I don't even know how I got in trouble. I was the victim, right? So we walked down to the principal's office, and, you know, it was very racist times, you know.

So the principal said, sit here until your parents come. Well, my mother don't have a car, So I knew I was going to be sitting here for a while, you know? So the principal was sitting right here and the bully was, you know, across the room in the chair. And I was sitting here in the chair and I was really, I don't know, man, I was just really defeated, you know? And the mother comes in and she demanded to know what happened. Right. And the principal stood up. He goes, that boy right there. He looked at me. He called him a chink. Sat back down and continue on his day like it didn't even affect him.

She went over and grabbed her son, and she walked up to me, and she stood there. So he forced me to kind of look up at her. And she had this look of hate, you know, and she's told me that my kind don't belong here and I need to go back home to my country. You know, I swear, man, at that point, I was probably at the lowest point of my life. Wow.

Third grade. Third grade, I was really defeated. You have an adult telling you that. Yeah, I was really defeated that day. I was having a bad day. And I came home and I made a promise to myself that day that I'm stronger than hate. And what's that mean? What's that even look like? I got tired of being this weak child.

The mindset of being defeated. I hated that. So what was really unique about this was that, you know, eventually my biological mother and father were divorced and my mother remarried to American Special Forces Green Beret. He was a ex-drill sergeant Green Beret, He was a ex-drill sergeant in Green Beret. Very strict military discipline. So imagine going from no discipline to a life of getting up at 430 in the morning, saluting the flag, raising the flag, hands over your heart, saying the national anthem, making your bed, where he can bounce a quarter off if it's not good enough, he'll rip everything back out. Going from zero discipline to that and then working in, so he had a company,

a family company, and we would work in the family company in between going to school. And we didn't have days off. It was seven days a week, 4.30 in the morning, up in the morning. Ballad to Green Beret. I can still sing it to this day. National Anthem, Hand Over Your Heart. We had a dress code to go to school. I couldn't wear jeans. I had to wear slacks, right? Button down shirt. It was that discipline. Going from zero to 100, right?

So it was a very difficult time, you know, even though I love my stepfather. He gave me the discipline I needed in life. But man, it was a hard pill to swallow at eight difficult time, you know, even though I love my stepfather and he gave me the discipline I needed in life. But man, it was a hard pill to swallow at eight years old, you know? Yeah. So, you know, I knew he was a Green Beret. I knew he was special forces and stuff like this. And, you know, people always ask me now that I'm Ronan, you know, they said, you know, you know, you follow a path of Bushido, the way you say it. What's that mean?

And why? You're Vietnamese, so why are you following a Japanese code of honor samurai? So I want to bring this story to you. So when my father left us, I didn't have any communications with him. It was a very difficult time for me because I do love my father. I love my stepfather, but I did love my father as well. You know, we had history. He escaped us from Vietnam, gave us our freedoms.

So, you know, I didn't hear from him. And my mother brought in a box one day. And my mother said, this is from your father you know I tell you I didn't know how to take it man you know so I put that box across the room and I remember sitting in my room and I had the doors closed I was sitting in my room looking at this cardboard box and I thought about my my father so finally had the courage you know to go up to the box and I opened up the box and it was these there was four VHS tapes remember the VHS yeah okay so it was for VHS tapes and um and it was obviously dub tapes right and had Vietnamese writing on these

tapes so I didn't know I know. I don't read Vietnamese. So I remember just randomly picking one of the tapes out. Pop it in a VHS player. And the first tape was The Art of Budo. If you don't know what Budo is, it's a combat skill that the Samurais use, the martial arts they use in war-stating periods of Japan. And they break it down, the martial arts they use in war-stating periods of Japan, right? And they're breaking down the different martial arts. But it was the combat side of being samurai.

It was the martial arts, right? And it's the way, the path. And I swear, that was the first tape that I saw at eight years old, and it intrigued me. To live a life like that, wow. You know, you got to understand i was defeated yeah at that point i wanted strength how old are you at this point eight yeah i wanted strength i wanted a change in my life and i didn't know how to get there you know even though my father was a great man but he wasn't the warrior right so

the other three tapes were like Fist of Fury you know Bruce Lee stuff so that's why I'm a big fan of Bruce Lee you know but throughout my childhood years I grew up to revisiting the art of Budo over

and over and over and over. And I romanticized about being this path, this way. What is it? Right? So, you know, during the 80s, special forces were deployed by Ronald Reagan to go fight in the drug wars. Remember those days? Mm-hmm. Or the drug war days. They would go down.

My stepfather would go down to Central America and South America, and he would train fit ops, and they would do the counter-drug missions. You know? And, you know, he had his teammates over, and they would talk over their team room talks in this house, and I would be in the next room, like trying to listen in. Like, what do you mean you free to oppress? What's that mean? Right. And, you know, eventually I put it all together.

The way, the path, you know, what is the way? The way is to, to better humanity, to better yourself. And the warrior's path is extremely hard, right? So I was able to take that tape that I was viewing and tie it into a higher purpose, which was, you know, because I was indoctrinated more into a Green Beret lifestyle growing up, I chose the Green Berets. I knew their mission. And their mission was to free the oppressed.

It was to fight for the people that were like my mother and myself and my brother and my my father it was to fight for their freedoms man if i could be a force to go around the world freeing the oppressed and enslaved in modern day world that's the way for me that's what i want to do so this weak, little, frail eight-year-old with this concept of the way. Right? So, you know, we, you know, we, my father was an enlisted man. You know, he worked in his job. We're not rich.

You know, we're not poor like I used to have been. We ate every day. He made sure that we were taken care of. But we did work. We worked very hard you know um my stepfather loved this like his own he he raised us very stricto you know but that's just the way it was when i was researching you and i don't know if i read this or heard it um but you'd talked about so it sounds like sounds like the Bushido tapes were a major turning point for your childhood and to overcome some of the racism and everything else that you had been through as well.

Also, we're talking about, and forgive me, I can't remember if it was your uncle or your father, but you were driving and they were saying, you know, to sometimes you're going to feel down. Commando. Yep. My uncle would pick me up. Do you want to be a fucking commando? That's right. fucking commando and that that resonated with me you know and and i thought about that and the impact that could have on anybody let alone uh i believe you said you're 11 at the time did that have a major impact you know i love my uncle man what a great american you know to this day he would uh pick us up he would pick me up up on a Sunday and he would drive me to Dairy Queen.

You know, it was just uncle and nephew time, you know, and my uncle, he's very blunt. He don't hold the punches back. He's driving his little Volkswagen dune buggy that he reconstructs for hobbies, you know. And he goes, too, I want to tell you something. You know, the days that you're feeling bad, the days that you want to quit, you need to ask yourself. Just out of the blue, he just told me. You need to ask yourself, do you want to be a fucking commando tonight?

You know, when the bones hurt and you're aching from your injuries, do you want to be a fucking commando today, you know, when the bones hurt and you're aching from your injuries, do you want to be a fucking commando? When it's raining and it's wet outside and it's five o'clock in the morning, you know you have to go for a run because that's the thing to do. And you're feeling sorry for yourself. Do you want to be a commando today? 11 years old, can you imagine that impact? Can you imagine the discipline of being a commando? You know, it takes so much discipline, right? To be there.

Commitment, discipline, day in, day out. It's not just a way of a weapon in war. It's the whole encompass of life, right? To look at life differently as a warrior, you know? So he truly taught me to never quit, to never give up, no matter what. And, you know, it drives home what my mother did, you know, no matter what, no matter the circumstances, doesn't matter, you know? So I was taught at a young age that the conditions and circumstances doesn't define us as a human being we define ourselves by the actions we take daily

do you want to be a commando today you know so i 11 i realized that you know and and i tell you sean you know getting back to the racism, I didn't get over it. You don't get over, uh, uh, hate like that. You know, I was bullied through my junior high years, my, my high school years. I was called by racist names during training, during my military career, all the way to the end. You know, I'm not saying everybody, I'm saying there's bad apples everywhere you go. And there's racism and hate wherever you go.

And racism is a mean to control a human being. Right? You think about like some of the countries you went into. The people that are oppressed and enslaved, that's a mean of controlling a human being. To degrade a human being, to spit on him. Right? You're oppressing the person. That's the meaning of controlling a human being. To degrade a human being, to spit on him, right? You're oppressing the person.

So that's why it was so strong for me to live this life, you know, as a Green Beret. Because the model is the free to oppressed. You know, and I knew that that was my ticket. That was my ticket. Maybe you didn't get over it, but you definitely got through it. And so after watching the VHS tapes and the words of encouragement from your uncle, what was kind of the next encounter like and how did you, I mean, I know you carry a lot of that, but you did get through it. And so I guess kind of what I'm asking is, well, what was the next encounter like? How did you, how did you roll with the punches?

You know, at 11 years old, I knew I wanted to be a Green Beret. At 16, it was already programmed in my training, my timeline, right, that I needed to start training at 16 to start developing the cardiovascular strength I needed in order to pass through this rigorous training that I needed to go to. You know, at 16, I started reading. I read since I was 13, so I read a lot of the warrior philosophies, a lot of the book. I read the book of five rings when I was 13 years old. Wow. I read the art of war and I did a thesis on the art of war in high school. So these were

the subjects of interest throughout my life. I knew I wanted to live a warrior's life. And at 16, I started the training. It just intensified closer to, I wanted to live a warrior's life, you know? And at 16, I started the training. It just intensified closer to, I got to the timeline, which at 18 was when I enlisted in the military. Now I want to, I want to tell you this story, right? My mother wanted me to be a doctor, wanted me to be a lawyer, engineer, anything but a soldier because, gosh, man, right? She escaped Vietnam. She lost her freedom.

She knows what war smells, looks, and feels like. And she don't want her son to do that. Yeah. But because I was indoctrinated into the Special Forces life. And you know, my uncle never pressured me, man. He never said, hey, when you're going to be a Green Beret, you should be a Green Beret. My stepfather has never uttered those words, you should be a Green Beret one day. Never.

I felt no pressure from them. But I felt a draw to that world, right? So at 17, I went down to the MEP Center and I enlisted into the military. There was no special forces contracts coming in. You can't just enlist out of the street. You have to be E5 in the Army, right? Or you have to have this amount of time in the Army. So either rank or a certain time in the Army.

And one of them is waivable, you know? So I'm like, oh, I can't go green beret, but I can be an infantryman. I can learn all these basic skills, right? So I enlisted in the army and I went through infantry basic training and I chose to be an 82nd paratrooper. And the reason why is because that would put me back

to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where I can be around my parents. Right. So when I came there to the 82nd, it was a real funny story. They line all the new recruits up, the privates. Right. So I came there, I'm spit-shined boots, you know, starched with tigs. I was so proud of being a soldier. And the 1st Sergeant lined us all up, and there was at least eight of us privates in this office, right? And you had the 1st Sergeant out there, and the 1st Sergeant yelling at us and calling us a piece of shit and whatever, right? And the commander then comes in. We slap to attention, and he asked one question. He asked one question.

He goes, who wants to go to ranger school? We're all privates. You know, with less than, I think I had, oh gosh, less than a year in the Army. Right? So I raised my hand and I said, I want to be ranger qualified. Right? So I raised my hand and I said, I want to be ranger qualified. And he looked at the first sergeant and then he looked at me and then he walked back in his office and closed the door.

First sergeant kicked everybody else out of the room. He goes, private Lamb, stay here. So I stayed there, slapped him, you know, I was at parade rest. And he said, so you want to be ranger qualified, huh? Huh. So there was, you know, the tile floors, you know, the square tile floors. So he smoked me. So smoking me means physical training.

So in star uniform, spit shine boots, you know, I'm doing burpees, I'm i'm you know push-ups into that tile floor one of those tile floor is full of my sweat he tried to make me quit i was dehydrated and it went on for hours the hazing the yelling and and finally he you, he got me back up. He said, how do you feel now? I said, I still want to go. So within, you know, I swear within four days, I was at the recondo training site in outskirts of North Carolina where they run the pre-ranger course. I graduated with honors, you know, because I didn't have any bad habits. I listened to what the instructor said and I did it to the T. Yeah.

You know, all these other senior guys, they would hear what the instructor said and they would try to war game and they would do it their own way. I didn't know anything else, so I listened to what they had to say and I did it to the T, you know. And I graduated that and went to ranger training and graduated ranger school. And I was – now I found out it was this E4,4 right there's ranger qualified and if tree in it and you know it was great but I wanted to do more so I tried out for the long range reconnaissance team now it's really hard to leave the 82nd when you get in right because they lock you in they invest money into you and they need you they're you know want to grow you into a leadership position but i wanted something else you know so i tried off with a long-range reconnaissance team which is a descendant

of the lerp teams in vietnam long-range patrol teams so their mission is to forward deploy i was on the amphibious team so we will forward deploy on the amphibious team we'll insert in by helicast and zodiacs and i will lay on and report what i see you know and uh we learned the uh advanced communication at the time which vhf um jungle and tano so i learned all that you know at a very young age and my time came up i I made E5. Year and a half in the Army, I was E5. I'm like, that's a criteria to go Special Forces. Yeah, that's definitely fast track.

Yeah, yeah. Because nobody wanted rangers training, right? They didn't want to go through all this hard school. And for me, it was just, I had something to prove to myself. I didn't want to be this weak human being anymore. Nutrient survival, loaded with 40 essential nutrients. So you were chasing it from the get-go. Since 11 years old, you were chasing that lifestyle. What conflicts were going on that early in your career, if any? What conflicts were going on that early in your career, if any?

You know, my first phase of my career, it was just smooth sailing, man. It was education, military education after military education. I was young. I was fit. I trained since I was 16. So I was able to pass through to really physically demanding schools at a very young age. You know? So when I made E5, I realized that that's waivable now.

I can apply for the Special Forces. So I submitted my packet. I applied for Special Forces selection and training out of Fort Bragg, 21-day select. And then I went through the pipeline for weapons training for the Q course. So then I went through the weapons training phase of course, and then we went into unconventional warfare phase, you know, and I got orders to go to Seventh Group, which is at the time located in North Carolina. What I found out was my stepfather was talking to the guy who worked at Brian Hall, who runs orders, and said, yeah, he needs to be here.

And I found this out because after unconventional warfare phase, I was in the mess hall and I saw Mr. Joe Lupiak, which he's a legend in special forces. He was part of the Sante raid, you know. And now he's this retired civilian who runs orders where they're going to put these new students, you know, when you graduate. And he always talks like this. Hey, my man, come over here. Hey, my man. Right.

So I came out. I was like, Mr. Lupiak. You'm he I knew him since I was a child you know and I'm coming out unconventional warfare phase and I say mr. Loupiak how's it going he goes hey my man come over here he sat me down he goes hey I got you in seven group you know I know that you want to stay here with your parents. And, you know, I love my parents. I still do to this day, but I had a journey, you know, I wanted to go to Asia. I wanted to go back to affect the country that, you know, I was born in, if I can possibly do. You know, it was a long shot.

So I said, Mr. Lupiak, I really want to go out to first group. He goes, your dad ain't going to like that, you know. But he changed my orders. And he rerouted me to first special forces group out of Okinawa, Japan. Okinawa, Japan, that's where all the seniors are at. You know, like the guys that did their team time. Okinawa, Japan is a forward deployed battalion that affects Asia. You know, you're in that continent.

So it was very hard to get out there. It's the first assignment, but that was my first assignment. Okinawa, Japan. So here I am, 21 years old, went out to Okinawa, Japan, and I was assigned to a combat search and rescue team, CSAR team. So during that time, it was really heavy reconnaissance of North Korea. You know, they had the no-dong missiles that could strike, you know, U.S. soil. So that was a really concern for us.

And then the unstable country, the dictator. So we were doing a lot of reconnaissance around South Korea, working with the commando force. I was the CSAR team. So when the pilots are flying over there, they were to get shot down. And we were the teams that come in with a two-man PJ packet, heavy guns, and we would come in and do offsets to try to rescue these pilots. So that was my first assignment. It was cool.

I went through a lot of training, but not my thing. Yeah. You just know that that's not what you're destined to do. Going back to training, you know, people are always dying to know kind of what got you through it. And, you know, I guess every once in a while you meet the guys that say that, you know, they just breeze right through it. But I would say for 99% of us, that is definitely not the case.

So did you have any hiccups? Did you have any, for 99% of us, that is definitely not the case. So did you have any hiccups? Did you have any, is there any particular point in training where you were ready to call it, you know, it was, you know, I'm done. During selection and training, during the special forces assessment selection process, I was, so we stayed in these barracks, right? The Special Forces assessment selection process. So we stayed in these barracks, right?

So everybody stayed in these confined barracks. And I went in February. It was very cold in North Carolina during that time. And if one person gets sick in the bay, everybody else gets sick in the bay. It's just, that's the way it is. Well, we had one guy get sick, and I caught a flu. And we were doing land navigation that night. So we're doing the map and compass, they're teaching us how to dead reckon,

they're teaching us terrain, orientation. So advanced land navigation training, it's not like a basic land navigation training because we had to pass through what's called a STAR exam, which is one of the hardest land navigation course in the united states army so during that time man i was coming down with the flu right i had gosh man i my i had a high temperature over 100 and you know i was cold i was breaking out of sweat. And I really wanted to quit. I really wanted to quit that night. Well, I tell you, my uncle is Special Forces, you know.

And he was the commander of the SWCC assessment selection during that time frame that I went through. It was his last class before he took over Just Mag Thai. So this was his last class before he takes over a different command he was in charge of the whole thing before i went through i said hey look i don't i don't want any you know i know that we're family members and you know i don't want any hammy else you know don't don't look after me he goes oh you don't have to worry he goes you don't have it you don't have it yeah so i wanted have it. Yeah. So I wanted to quit. So at night, I wanted to quit so bad, man.

Right? And I remember it was thundering out, lightning outside. It was raining really hard. I was feeling sorry for myself. It was 2 o'clock in the morning after 10, you know, just after I got ran down to the ground during that day of, you know, assessment and selection. And at night is when we go into our academics, you know, so we're just messed up. And I wanted to quit. And I remember the NCOIC said, on your feet, and the lights shut oh god you know so i got up and my uncle walked across to the stage it was wasn't planned because we talked about it later he goes oh it was just paying a visit

right but he he walked up to the stage and the lights turned back on everybody's on their feet you know you're full bird colonel standing there. And he said a speech that I'll never forget, man. Walk or die was the speech. And he talked about Cabanatuan, about when, you know, when we were engaged in combat against the Japanese and islands of the Philippines, we were engaged in the, uh, in combat against the Japanese and islands of the Philippines, how the Americans and the Filipino soldiers were captured and forced to

march the baton death march. And if one of the soldiers would fall back past hand touching distance, then the Japanese soldiers will pull them, rip their ID tag and shoot them where they, you know, where they're taking a knee the baton death march so he was talking about the baton death march and he said to the general yeah there was gosh man i would say there was at least 400 candidates out there we graduated with 70. so 400 candidates he's looking across he didn't even see me he's

looking across and he said march or die when you want to quit you walk until you die right this is it's not if you want it or not if you want it you're willing to die for it you know and he talked about the baton death march and i I'm like, I'm going to die here tonight. I'm going to die here because I'm not going to quit now. I'm not. But that moment came. Let me tell you how toxic that is. I'm talking to the viewers because you understand.

If you want to quit and you actually go through with quitting, you establish that. Yeah. You can never, ever go back from that again. You quit once, you're going to quit again. You quit again, it becomes a norm, right? So I knew at that moment, if I quit, I would never go through this training. I would never make it. So I was willing to die that night.

You know, so I was willing to die that night. So that night, you know, after land navigation, we went to go eat our breakfast, right, after all the training. And there was one guy who smuggled a Motrin, 800 milligram. He had the smoke going in, right? Yeah. And I was part of his team, and he said, hey, too, what's going on? And I said, can I have that Motrinch and please and he gave it to me right that's like ranger candy oh yeah it is that mulch right and it broke my flu man it broke the flu and then i was able to continue on with

training and and graduate you know did you ever feel any uh i mean do you think that the fact that your stepdad was a green beret your uncle was a green beret sounds like he uh had a lot of inspiration and uh and uh you know do you want to be a fucking commando um was there any fear of letting them down oh yeah and uh even to this day Oh, yeah. Even to this day. Even to this day. Even to this day. I think about them all the time, both of them, even to this day. That's part of what, you know, that is what got me through training is it got to the point where I just didn't care about myself anymore.

It was just the fact that I didn't want to, I just didn't want to let my old band down. And that's kind of, I did not want to make that call saying, hey, Dad, I fucking quit. And so I was just curious, you know. Yeah, it was one time in Ranger School. We had to airborne infiltration to Fort Benning, Georgia. And it was an 18 mile force march.

When I say force march, they're running at that running pace and you have, you know, combat load and weapons on you. So we had to airborne infiltrate in Fort Benning. We form a road, a force road march, basic formation, and we start humping it for 18 miles very fast, you know? And, you know, during that time, man, I was, I was 19 years old. I don't know how to be a soldier. Right. So I'm like, what is a better way to break in a new pair of boots than to road march it in? Right. Didn't think yeah right so we we airborne dropped in that that morning and we we set up for um their forced road marsh and they started running

guys were dropping like flies right guys were quitting and you know sometimes you know somehow i held on man you know i I basically light trot behind people. And we made this turn into Darby, right? So Darby was a long dirt trail road. It went into Darby phase of training, which is small unit tactics, raids, ambushes. And man, I'll tell you, Sean, I had no skin on the back of my foot, right? Yeah. In fact, I had blisters throughout all of Ranger School,

all the way down to Florida phase, you know, from that road march. I was suffering from heat exhaustion. Like I could feel my body shutting down where I'm falling asleep walking. Like you know like you're about to die. And I was falling behind on the road march as soon as we turn man i only had a thousand meters left on this road march yeah and i was contemplating on quitting that's how painful it was but somehow i just put one foot in front of the other and then instructor came up up behind me. He said, if you fall one more step behind the pack, I'm going to pull you from training. And this is not a lie.

This is what I did. I punched myself in the face. And I continued to punch myself in the face because I was falling asleep walking. And so that was the only way that I could stay awake. So I punched myself in the face. My nose bleeding. I kept on punching myself in the face. And this is what the Reindeer structure said.

Drive on. Yeah, man. So obviously, you know, if the training is hard, that mindset is normal to want to quit. It's just, you know, what do you do? What do you do in that moment of struggle? Do you want to be a commando? Yeah. I mean, that's, you know know that's what they're looking for they want to see who who's going to switch it on when the going gets tough and

and the going gets tough real fast in those outfits and uh which is why you know there's such a high attrition rate but uh another question that i'm curious about is when you do feel pain Another question that I'm curious about is when you do feel pain, and I'll give you just one example of mine, do you have a certain thing that you pinpoint all your attention on? So as an example, for me personally going through buds, I was about $1.19 soaking wet. Yeah. And the water's, you know know it's fucking cold there one of the one of their tools that they like to use is to uh they utilize that cold and get guys to hype out well guess what um 18 19 years old a buck 20 soaking wet and uh so i'm one of the first ones to hype out and cold affects me a lot

faster than anyone else so you know what i would do is believe it or not i would try to accelerate the hypothermia kicking in and the only thing i would concentrate on and when we were getting surf tortured or, um, or whatever it is out in the, out in the ocean, you know, constantly going back and forth is I would concentrate only on making my body stop shaking to rewarm myself. Cause I knew I was going to hype out anyways. And then in the initial stages, you feel no pain anymore. And so I'm wondering if you had any particular thing that you focused on, whether that be, you know, your stepdad and your uncle

or the Bushido code or is there anything? You know, you always hear me say, know sean smile and be brave you always hear that you know when i'm scared when i'm facing it when i'm suffering my mother told me at a young age smile and be brave right what's that mean you know it goes into a science because the mind is connected to the body if your mind is telling you if you're smiling you're telling your mind everything's okay and your body's going to feel that you know so when i'm suffering i want to quit or i'm afraid i'm smile man i'm brave right because i'm tying in that neurological pathway from my mind recognizes a smile, the muscles, the exercising the muscles of a smile is connected to the brain. And that's telling my brain through my body, everything's okay.

Right? So when the suffering is there, you know, I smile. Interesting. Well, too, let's take a quick break again. And when we come back, I want to talk about how, you know, what it's like being 21 years old on an SF team back then and talking about how it came full circle from being the oppressed to freeing the oppressed. nutrient survival feed your freedom alright we're back from the break again.

And you're now in an SF team. You're 21 years old. It's your time to free the oppressed. So where are you going to take us? So, you know, after graduating the Q course in unconventional warfare phase, you have to go through language training, and then you have to go through survival escape resistance training. And then I made it to the A team. So as you're a pipeline in the Navy, I mean, it takes a long time to train one of us to even get out the door.

Right. Yeah. So I got on the teams and, you know, we got some cool stuff on the teams, you know? So that was my first exposure to the toys of SOCOM. Oh, nice. The dirt bikes, the ATVs, you know, the M4s with the mod kit. So I was like really, really in that world, right? And I got assigned to a CSAR team.

really in that world, right? And I got assigned to a CSAR team. And one of my first cross, so as Green Berets, we cross train with different countries all the time. So the tactics that we learn, you know, just from the Q course is not just it. We're learning from the Malaysian commandos. We're learning from the British commandos. We're learning all around the world, you know, you're extracting information. So truly, like, your tactics is very unconventional you know so one of the first uh training that

i went through was a malaysian uh tracking school so they drop us in pulau malaysia where we have these malaysian commandos right? So you think about the Malaysians, they fought the wars in the jungles, you know, against the British, Rhodesians. So they have years and years of combat experience working in this type of jungle vegetation. So the course was roughly about six weeks, and I went through Malaysian tracking school. I want to tell you the story. So we were tracking, I was the lead tracker, right? So lead tracker is you have a team of trackers behind you, but you're the lead tracker. So you have a tracking stick, right? And what a tracking stick is, you know, the human body can only step so much. So if you lose a track, then you take the tracking stick and they can only pivot their body so much.

Then you take the normal step from one step to the next and you have this tracking stick. And somewhere within that range of that tracking stick, you should be able to pick up the signs again and tracking, right? I couldn't pick up anything, right? So I lost a lot to track and I couldn't pick up anything, right? So I lost a lot to track and I couldn't pick up anything. And I, you know, I was pretty good at tracking. My team started, I just got these teams. I definitely don't want to let my teams down, right? So I couldn't pick up anything. And I saw in the distance, there was a broken twig. That's it. That's the scent, right? So I ran up to it and I of seen vegetation break and you know, I started tracking again

You know, it was really weird cuz you know I had my backpack combat equipment and it required me to like get on all fours and start crawling around and to Defines this tracking I Tried down a tiger get this. Are you shitting me? Yeah a Tiger I tracked down a tiger. Get this. Are you shitting me? Yeah. A tiger? I tracked down a wild tiger. Oh, shit.

Yeah, it was in the distance. I saw the track. Apparently that thing must have ate something, right? Because it didn't attack me. It just ignored me, actually, and just walked off. You know, and what I want to explain is, like, a lot of the training, man, we die in training more than we die in combat. You know, you push training to that edge.

Yeah. After that, I went into Malaysian survival school. Hold on. Hold on. Rewind. You just tracked a fucking tiger down. Did it see you? Yeah, it saw me.

Were you armed or were you running around with a rubber duck? No, M4. No, I was actually using an M16A1 rifle. Nice. Because when we went through the training, the Malaysians were still running, you know, M16A1s. So I had an M16A1, Vietnam Air AR, and, yeah, that's what we're rolling with. How close did you get to it? Oh, man, it was probably about 20 yards away.

Oh, shit. Yeah, and you see wild boars. I mean, you see wildlife out there. It's just you're in their habitat. Did it see you? Yeah. It saw me and it just kind of just walked off into the jungle. What did you do?

Oh, okay. I shit my pants. I'll bet you did. I mean, a wild tiger is just bigger in real life in its natural habitat than what you see in a zoo. Like in a zoo, it's like, yeah, that's a tiger. Yeah. You got a huge glass cage. No, it's there in the wild, right? So we would sleep high on vegetation because at night, that's when we get

snatched, you know, the jungle comes alive at night. Yeah. I thought I had run into some encounters in the jungle, but I didn't run into any tigers. That's for damn sure. Yeah. In fact, in Africa, we had lions track us, you know, we had to surround these vehicles and put, you know, snipers up on the top of the roofs of these Land Rovers. And we would look through our thermals and we'll see the lions, you know?

So what I'm saying is just because we're out there doing military ops, I mean, you can die from, you know, wildlife. Yeah. So went through that and then graduated that. i had maybe two days off on the weekends i went into kuala lumpur and hung out down there and then we went back reported back to camp and i went into malaysian survival training malaysian survival training man was just miserable it was a miserable time i just realized how horrible i am at surviving in that environment. And one of the trainings that they had us do is we just had jungle fatigues. They gave us a machete and a chicken and they drop us off at a point in the

jungle and you live in that point. There's leeches, you're in the rain jungles, there's leeches, there's wildlife and everything else and all you have is machete and this chicken right so during this this portion of training somehow i just develop a friendship with this chicken right so um i would walk the chicken it was on the news and uh he's really lonely in the jungle so i had this companion it would remind me of that movie um cassoway yeah with wilson tom hangs and he he made a friend with that uh volleyball right that was what it was you know i was in the middle of jungle and nothing was around me and i had this chicken right that um that kept me alive and when i say that it, it would make noises when things come around, you know?

So I had a noose on him like, you know, you put on a dog and that thing just hung around me. So I survived through that without killing the chicken. You would think I'll kill the chicken to eat the chicken, right? Was it laying eggs? No. No? No.

No joy with the eggs? No, this chicken looked like it was on crack or you know it was a mountain nurse oh third world country malaysian chicken you know nice so um i survived through that and then um they they drove a deuce and a half remember the old old tack vehicles a deuce and a half drove down and there was a malaysian commando jumped out and i had the chicken in my hand, and he was helping me onto the back of the deuce and have. Now, imagine how deprived your body is at that point, right?

So here I am trying to climb on the back of this deuce, and I handed the Malaysian my chicken. He grabbed the chicken, broke the neck. You know, I'm like, you know, here I am, you know, crying on the back of a deuce and a half all the way back to camp because he killed my chicken. So that was my survival training. Then you eat, you know, bugs and grubs and, you know, just learn how to live off and navigate off that terrain. How long were you out there? In Malaysia training? For the survival training.

Survival training is three weeks long. You were out there for three weeks? The survival portion with the machete was 10 days long. That's a long time. That was a long time. And, you know, when I say leeches are everywhere, man, they're everywhere. Yeah. Everywhere.

There was no dry spot, you know. You got to build a jungle hammock because you got to get off that ground you know you have to get off the ground there's monkeys everywhere yeah cating their hands and throwing at you it was just horrible horrible horrible experience what was uh what was your favorite dish you prepared we were um in malaysia or my career and survival for those 10 days is there anything that you were yeah we we ate uh there was these banana trees all through the jungle and you peel the bark away you'll see these uh maggots looking uh worms right and they're really thick they're really thick. They're really thick. But if you eat it, you got to pop the head and, you know,

got to pop the head out. And then when you eat it, you eat the grub, it tastes like a banana. So that was my favorite. So I had a sack of that. I would throw it into this, like a dump bag, right? Yeah. And, you know, a sack of grubs, you know, that I would eat. But, yeah, it was, it makes you respect things a little bit more.

Yeah. You know, when you're suffering that much out there and you're cold and you're wet and you're hungry, it makes you respect things more. You know, what I want to say is, so a few months later, so I graduated a few months later, I came back for jungle warfare training. So now I know how to track, I know how to survive. And now it's raids, ambushes, hit and run tactics, patrol bases. You know, you're doing that Vietnam era jungle, you know, stuff, you know, reconnaissance, all of that. Man, you know, it was long days, man. You know, hit and run, jungle, you know, long,

long distance moving through triple canopy jungle. And I started feeling sorry for myself. You know how you're just wet, you're hungry, you're cold, and you're just miserable and you just kind of give in to, man, this sucks. And I really, I couldn't quit, but I wanted to, but I couldn't, right? So I remember this story, man. We found this village and the command was to move past through the village because it was a friendly village, right?

You still have bandits out there. You're training in these jungles, but there's still bandits, terrorists, so you can actually get killed out there. So we moved through this village, and they had snipes on Overwatch, and these kids came running up to me because I was the first Westerner they saw, a soldier they'd seen. And, man, they started singing it was raining and they were singing and this lady came out of her termite infested hooch that was getting eaten away by

termites and she gave me some food some guy came up to me you, asked to help me carry my equipment. I'm like, no. But this is where it blows down to. I looked over. They had nothing. They were living in the mud. Nothing. Their grass hut was getting eaten away by termites.

And this little girl smiled. And the parents held her and loved her. And they were happy. parents held her and loved her and they were happy. You see where this comes full circle, Sean, is that we over complicate our lives. Happiness is found anywhere. It doesn't have to be success. And I have to have the best car, the best, the best house, the more money, you know, that's what we, those are the stresses we place on ourselves. You know, the reason why I felt sorry for myself, because I wanted to be warm and not hungry anymore. But there was the answer. You know, it's as simple as in that it's the mind, it's the mindset. Well, talking about full circle, did it occur to you that that was you?

No, man, you know, what's weird it's like during my uh growth you know as a green beret i never really thought back to my suffering as a child never really did never once never even tied it together that's crazy man i mean to be in the you know the same region in the world and, and, and, and see a small child, you know, living in that, knowing that that's where you came from, maybe subconsciously, you know. I would tell you the story to kind of tie it into what my mother said. You know, I told you earlier, my mother said, education is freedom. So we were doing a demining mission in Laos. And back during the Vietnam War, you know, we dropped hundreds of thousands of landmines

through the rice paddies, the jungle floors, right? So that's from the Vietnam War. Hundreds of thousands of landmines. You know, kids are playing, you know, in 1997, kids were playing in the jungles and they're getting their legs blown off, you know, kids are playing, you know, in 1997, kids were playing in the jungles and they're getting their legs blown off, you know, by these landmines that we as Americans dropped. So our mission, one of my first mission was to forward deploy it into Laos and do a demining mission. So we were going to train the local villagers how to isolate these landmines and how to demine, disarm the landmine and clear these landmines so the kids can go and play.

You know, that was the mission. So being a young Green Beret at 21 years old, I came in initially and I had a linguist come running up to the helicopter. Right. So helicopter spinning. I'm coming off the LZ. I'm moving towards the village. My linguist came running up. We're talking. He's giving me a, you know, introducing himself. We're walking, and this little girl from the village came running up to me. And, you know, I read about it, you know, villagers, you know, give them candy. Give kids candy. Build that rapport. So I was prepared. So I dug out my candy and I gave it to the little girl.

And she said no. She handed it back to me. And she said something in Laos. And the linguist looked at me and he goes, she wants a pencil or pen. Do you have that? And I'm like, yeah. So I pulled my pen and I gave it to her. She grabbed my hand, pulled me down, kissed my cheek and ran off.

And I didn't think too much of it. I was more worried about the defense plan, where's the mines, how to do the mining missions, the phase lines that we need to train them up. And during lunch, you know, I was looking at the security infrastructure at a camp, and then the language stopped me. And he said, sir, do you realize what you did this morning? I said, what do you mean? When that little girl came running up to you, do you realize what you did? And I said, I'm sorry if I done something wrong, but I don't know what I did. What did I do?

He goes, sir, you gave that girl education. You see, we don't have pens or pencils or paper we don't have a school here this is what they have wow and you know it was really weird man it was my mother's voice came in and said education is the key to freedom so we had operational funds and stuff like that. And I wrote back to my command and asked for more operational funds so we can build a school and reroute the running water from the rivers to give them running water. my memories of my first, my 21 year old days of being a Green Beret was that what was the demining mission now turned out into giving this village an education so they could have a better life for themselves. Wow.

You know? And I think about that to this day. You know, when I was doing it, I didn't think about it. Didn't even think about it, to tell you the truth, I didn't think about it. Didn't even think about it. Tell you the truth. I didn't. The only thing was my mother's voice, you know, but as I got older and, you know, you start realizing that, you know, in like in Southern Philippines,

the reason why they turned to terrorism because they have nothing else. Yeah. Right. Just think about the impact that you've had on just by making that call, you know, and now that school, you know, it's probably still there, you know, they definitely didn't mother, I told you, she cried all night. She did not want me to join the Army. And I was walking across the stage. So literally, high school graduation, right? I got my diploma, walked across the stage.

And at the end of the ceremony, my mom had this special ceremony. She said she'd been cooking all day. And I handed her the diploma. I picked up my sister and kissed her, my little sister. And I hugged my mom and I said, I have to go. And she said, why? What do you mean? You know? And I pointed towards the recruiter who was going to drive me to the bus station because I was leaving that night for basic training. See, I knew what I wanted. I knew what I wanted. You know, in 18, when I walked across that stage,

I knew I needed to take that journey. You know, since I was 16, you know, I've been training for it. So she cried and, man, and I remember I thought about the sacrifices she made for me, for me to have an education, for me to be free. So I looked at my mother on the day of my graduation and I told my mother, I promise you that I will graduate from college. I know that means a lot to you. So imagine being a Green Beret on a team, right, that traveled all through the world, right, throughout my whole career, traveled all through the world. But at that time, it was Asia.

And, you know, you're going in third world countries, man. You know, there's no Internet infrastructure. There's no technology like that, you know. So back in the old days, we had dial-up Internet. So I started college that way. We had dial-up internet. So I started college that way. So I would drive to local internet cafes so I can log on and get my assignments so I can burst out a thesis, so I can take a final exam. So I would drive to internet cafes in these countries that some of the countries are not so nice.

In these countries that, you know, some of the countries are not so nice. Yeah. You know? So I'm driving to local internet cafes on the weekends when the team does their thing, and I would go to college. It's that drive, man. You have a real powerful drive. Thank you. You know, a little off subject here, but I've always wondered, when you're part of the mission of being a Green Beret is to, you know, take an indigenous force, lift it up, train it and turn it into an effective warfighting, you know, asset or capability. to an effective warfighting asset or capability. And throughout the last 20 years,

all the other units started kind of doing that too, to include the SEAL teams, which we get no formal training at all on what the hell we're doing. And when it comes to training indigenous forces, I mean, i can train somebody but i'm not i'm not going to be that's not our mission right you know we are we're assaulters and uh

so when we did kind of take part in that the commandos or the jundies or whoever we're getting they were just handed to us, you know, whether, whether they have any skill, whether they have a lot of skills, it was always different. And that moved into even when I moved into the agency. But one thing that I never got to see is from the ground up, actually, you know, day one in country, in a village, third world, you don't speak the language. What in the hell are you guys, how do you do it? What are you looking for? How do you identify somebody that you think would be an effective commando that you're going to work side by side with?

Yeah. work side by side with. Yeah. So a lot of times when we go into country, they're usually vetted, you know, depending on the mission, the operation, it can be vetted at the CIA level, you know, depending on the targeting that we're going to use with this fit force. So day one, ground zero, it starts off with the human being, right? The individual. So we put them through the tests, like assessment selection. We put them through the hardships. And through the hardship, if you have the commandos that are able to rise past all the misery, the suffering, then they actually become who I work with. Because now you can't teach a guy leadership. I guess you could teach him leadership, but you can't teach him the non-quitting attitude, the mindset, strong mind.

Right? You either got it or you don't. So once I assess that, hey, he has this code that he lives by, then I can mature that code. Obviously's it's heavy intelligence for a green beret you know green berets are uh very intelligent driven intelligence driven that means if i go into country x i study that country i study history i study infrastructure i study the people the culture the religion i study the demographics i study the terrain i study the environment the weather i study everything so i know when i go in there, how can I, you know, it's a rainy season, you know, that changes tactics, you know. It changes your night vision capabilities if you're running night vision. So it changes a lot of that.

So we study, study, study. And then when we get in, we link up with that indigenous force. I already have a general intelligence of this group, right? And then you realize, you know, you break it down into the tribes, right? Certain tribes, because they can put certain different regions of tribes into this moshposh group of rebels. And they're fighting amongst each other. Because they've been at war for, I don't know, hundreds of years. You know, now you got to separate that, you know, and work as a cohesive unit.

And they're probably educated at a third grade education. Note, some of them have discipline, some of them have no discipline. Some countries I go to, they have zero discipline. Some of them have great discipline, you know? So it's about understanding the human being, understanding their history, their motives, the enemy on the ground, you know? And in training that vid force to combat whatever tactic

that the enemy is deploying based off of intelligence, terrain, environment, whatever. How are they attacking that locals? What are they using? You know, and we talked about the effectiveness of unconventional warfare. You know, unconventional warfare is, that's the most effective means of warfare. You agree? Oh, yeah.

Being a man of war? Absolutely. Yeah, right? We got our independence. We became Americans because unconventional warfare, you know. Sanju, art of war, talks talks about unconventional united all of China so it's a very effective means it and this unconventional warfare is has been going on all around the world in fact the Navy SEALs and the Green Berets were

developed in Vietnam by John FK to., they counter guerrilla tactics. That's our birth. That's our existence. And to understand that at that level, you know, obviously the more I matured as a Green Beret, the more operational environments I went through, so the jungle, the desert, you know, urban to Africa, villages, you know what I mean? So all that has to change because the terrain's changed, the people has changed, the culture's changed, the environment's changed, you know?

So you have to quickly understand that. And these rebels can turn on you anytime. Yeah. I mean, we saw that multiple times in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yeah. So what happens if you have a six-man team training guerrilla tactics in a jungle, and then you have your command group at, you know, when I say the command group is the captain, the team sergeant, and the warrant, right? And they're maybe at the G base. What happens if something happened at the G base where they have the ENR? Because this rebel group is turning on you. So how are you going to link up your friendly forces

that are training out in the jungle with the command force and ENR out of the country? All that's planned. No cons plan. If the FID force turns against you, if the government turns against you, how are you going to get out of country yeah you know when when when they throw us in these countries sometimes you have an exit plan with a plane coming in you load up and sometimes you don't you know you got to figure it out on the ground can i this lz is about this why this is a survey

can i get a helicopter in and evac me out or do i need to put a jungle penetrator in it because i don't have that you know so it gets really complex and but every phase of the operation is carefully planned you know with contingencies you were talking about you, different countries and different units that you've worked with have more discipline. Is there any nation in particular that you've stood a force up that stands out as having more drive, more discipline, better performance than anyone else? Who is your favorite to work with? You know, the Korean 7-7 is pretty badass. Really?

Yeah, they were pretty cool. You know, their effectiveness, their speed, they were repel masters. They could repel into windows. They'd run down walls. So they're truly like the martial arts commandos. You know, they run around jungle, tiger stripe fatigues in snow, barefooted, no shirt on. Tiger stripe camouflage on their face.

You know what I mean? Like, how badass is that? You know, so I really enjoy working with those guys. I thought they were really cool. Obviously, the British 22 they were they're really cool um obviously the british 22 sas they're amazing um i mean we work with so many so many commando forces you know yeah The Nutrient survival. For when you're a survival expert and you don't catch a damn thing.

But I truly feel like we have one of the best, you know, SEALs, Green Berets. I truly feel like our country is one of the best countries because we have intelligent warriors, very smart warriors. Yeah. You know, obviously we have our meathead warriors, right? But overall, I mean, our selection process to weave out, you know, and look for the intelligent soldier and then make him into an athlete, you know? So yeah, man, I mean, I,

there are some forces that I don't want to work with anymore, but overall, like 90, I would say about 90 90 of the forces that i work with i'll fight alongside him and i have what is the what do you think the fastest you could stand up from from from from day one to you're comfortable enough to to take him on an op with you. What do you think the fastest? You know, it really depends on the op, but like in the Philippines, it took us six months. Six months? For a tier one capability. When I say that is the SIF guys, which is the green berets that focus on direct action

fit operations. So in the Philippines, right? So we had to stand up this national level counter-terrorist capability. So the normal team guys, the Green Berets, come in, they'll teach them unconventional warfare, right? So the basic, land navigation, physical training, you know, raids, ambushes. And then from there, they take us, they hand off the packet to us, which then we take them into urban phase, which is, you know, FID, direct action, counter-terrorists, hostage rescue. So it took us a good six months to get them to a good baseline, you know.

No, I mean, it just really depends, man, you know. Like Libya, you know, these were rebels from the Gaddafi, you know, countering the Gaddafi regime. So they had war experience. They're just really undisciplined. So we had to teach them discipline and leadership. You know what I mean? So it goes more than just pulling the trigger. You have to teach people how to be a cohesive unit.

And when they're coming from different tribes and they hate each other, how can you have them work together? That's got to be tough. Until they start dying. Right? If you hit a Tari and they start dying and they're dragging their dead buddy out of the house, then they realize we all bleed the same. Yeah. And just because you're in different tribes doesn't mean anything. You need to work together if you're willing to survive.

So, you know, it's just really cultural awareness. Yeah. You know, all that. All of it. It plays. Let's go back to Malaysia because uh at dinner last night you kind of opened up about some of your extracurricular activities uh that you were doing over there yes and uh and I found that which actually wound up leading you into a an entirely new unit and new career path.

So I'd like to dig into that. I think that is extremely interesting, and I know the audience would love to hear that. Oh, okay. So let me paint you the picture of my status on the team. I was an E-5 on a Special Forces A team, the youngest. I was 21 years old. Everybody else is senior to me.

They're in their 30s right with combat experience world experience and i'm this new guy so i remember my first day showing the team i show up in my starch uniform my spit shine boots i was a soldier and i came in they kicked my boots just scratched it up. They call me all sorts of names, right? And then they told me that they're not going to give me the combo to the team room because they don't trust Charlie. And at the time, I'm like, I'm not a Charlie, I'm a Bravo. And they were like, no, Charlie. I'm like, oh, okay, that was a racist thing. So my thing was I'd take out the garbage and i had to clean

the floors every day i had to police up after a team i didn't even have a job i didn't have a desk so um man i was really good at cleaning those floors and taking out the garbage i buffed the floors during the weekends i would come in and it's glass floor. Yeah. And my team sergeant was giving me all these assignments and he was like, he don't get it. We're harassing him, but he's taking it to the next level. And I was just very humble. I was grateful to be there.

But I was a student of the martial arts all right since i was eight i'm in training in martial arts the way the path you know um okinawa was a huge experience because man that was the birthplace of okinawan karate japanese jiu-jitsu you you know, very spiritual, very. So I participated in training in submission wrestling, and I got into Muay Thai when I deployed to Thailand. I went to Jumpmaster in Takli, Thailand, which is an Air Force base in Thailand. And on the weekends, my buddies would go to Bangkok and, you know, they'll hang out. And I went to a movie Thai camp, right? And I would train with the local fighters.

And literally, there was a ring, there was the mat that I slept on, and there was bowls of rice that we would eat. You know, like you're sleeping on a dirt floor next to a ring. You know, I had a mosquito net around me and it was miserable, right? Yeah. And I would kick this pole with a rope wrapped around, you know, so I got into really heavy fighting.

And UFC was starting to get more popular at that time. You know, when UFC first came out, they had the divides between all of the styles, right? You could truly say, that's a karate guy. That's a judo guy. That's a jiu-jitsu guy, right? You could see it. Now it's just a mixture, right?

But back then, I thought it was really fascinating that jiu-jitsu was dominating that fight world. And that Muay Thai was doing really well in the striking world, you know? So, man, you know, I started fighting. So it started off at tough man contests on the weekends. There was a tough man contest at a Marine base called Camp Foster. And you can go there, you can sign in your name, you fight a bunch of Marines. So I did.

I did, and I did very well, you know. So then there was this fight promoter named Santo. He was a Japanese guy, and he took underneath me. Obviously, he wanted to make money out of me, and he said, would you want to fight you know at japanese dojos at matches he was talking about the underground matches so i'm like yeah right so i went there and i fought in parking lots i fought in dojos and then uh i i became really good so i got invited to this match called the Budokan. The Budokan match is kind of like a big deal in Okinawa, Japan.

It's like a no-holds bar, like a UFC. But it's not as popular as UFC. I don't know if you've heard of Pride? Oh, yeah, I've heard of Pride. Okay, so Pride fighting was developed in mainland Japan, but the Budokan came down to Okinawa, and I was selected as the main fight. The main fight? I was selected as the main fight.

So then I started training up for it, right? And then they hand me down this policy letter from Yusufzog from a two-star general because UFC started becoming popular and the team guys were getting hurt trying to fight in these no-hold-barred matches. So there was a policy letter saying that team guys would not participate in no-hold-barred matches. And I was on the final card, right, to fight. So I'm like, oh, I don't know what I'm going to do with this, right? So I gave it to you. I remember talking to my team sergeant and my captain. I was like, hey, I'm training for this fight.

I really want to fight this. And my captain said, absolutely not. This is a policy for a two-star general you will not fight but i'm going to go to the match down in the buddha con and you happen to be there and i don't know so i'm like wow right i could fight so i started training up i started um i was that guy who runs with a stone underneath the beach, right? I was, you know, depriving my body of oxygen. I was really getting into fighting shape.

And then our pagers went off. I was part of a counterterrorist team. And our pagers went off. And it was a training op, so we got pushed out into Malaysia. We rotted our bodies in a hangar for a month because uh the snipers employed it was a hostage rescue situation they were building up the scenario it was just training up but i was uh in this malaysian hangar and i had a fight due in less than a month right yeah so my body's rotting away and um man i got sick, you know, the whole troop got sick.

And we did our training out there and redeployed. And I had four days right before I fought. And I had, oh, man, I had diarrhea. You know, just really bad, you know. And I was really in a bad way because when I did the striking, dude, I was out of breath, like within the first 30 seconds because my body was just that weak coming out of the jungles. And I had a fight in four days. Yeah. And my medic told me, drop out.

He goes, don't do it, dude. Drop out. They're seeing a guy from mainland Japan to fight you. from mainland Japan to fight you. So the fight card was this pan-crazed champion coming from mainland Japan to whoop my ass because I was doing good in these little small fights. I was an up-and-comer. And he came in from mainland Japan.

He's a big Japanese fighter. I was fighting at a weight of 190, and he was 210 in that Budokan open match. So I remember the fight night, man. My team shows up, right? So I poke my head out from the back dressing room when I'm doing my strikes. My team is there. The band is there.

I'm like, oh. So I poke my head back in. I'm like, oh, so I poked my head back in. I'm like, oh God, I got to win this fight. But I'm really sick. You know, I'm thrown up in the bathroom literally right before the fight. And then Santo comes in, he goes, you can't fight like this. And then that walk or die speech came in through my uncle. Do you want to be a commando today? Yeah. And I said, yes, I want to be a commando.

So I put on my fighting clothes and I walk out. Right. I wasn't a champ, so he walked out last. So I came on the ring, you know, the music's playing. I'm all amped up. This is my first, first like semi-professional fight right and then this japanese guy comes in and he was like one of the biggest japanese dudes i ever seen long story short he whipped my ass like bad bad um but uh yeah, I fought in those matches. And so fast forward it, I was in Thailand.

And I was suiting up for a movie tie fight, right? So these tie fighters, man, they can kick. They're like lightning fast, you know? And I went into the ring. And while I was in the dressing room, I was prepping to go to the ring. And one of my friends come back. He goes, hey, man. Hey, there's a guy here. into the ring and while I was in the dressing room, I was prepping to go to the ring and one of my friends come back. He goes, hey man, hey, there's a guy here and I want to say his name because he still does classified stuff. But he was the command sergeant major

of a tier one unit. He was going to go back and take that command and he wanted, just they wanted to let me know that he's there. So I'm freaking out. I'm like, what's that mean? Yeah. Should I be fighting? And they're like, hey, dude, I don't know. You do what you do.

So I'm like, oh, I'll go fight, right? So I went down there, and the fight didn't last long. The Muay Thai fighters, they can kick, but they can't take a punch, right? So that cross, man, you know, he got hit. I took the kick, and I came in, and I exploded with my hands. And he went down, and I won the fight, and I went back in the dressing room. And my medic friend comes in. He goes, did you know that he was here, that guy?

And I'm like, yeah, I heard. And then my buddy came, and he dropped a business card. And he said, hey, just letting you know came he dropped a business card and he said hey just letting you know he uh he saw the fight and he wants you to call him I was like for what you know I thought I was in trouble he goes you know where he's going he wants to talk to you about something I don't know so I called him right and um he he he said it straight. He goes, I want to hire you on in CAG as the combatants. You're going to work in selection and training. That's insane, dude.

Right. So, you know, at that time, I was gearing up to go to the Philippines. So I was doing that op in Thailand. I was closed off and went back to Okinawa, Japan. I compensated on it. You know, I thought about what his offer was, you know, and I knew like the timeline when he was going to go back and take the unit. And, um, I deployed with my team into the Philippines. Um, let me tell you something about a tier one unit, man. They can do whatever they want. There was a dirt trail road in Zamboanga. And I had to go through the direct support selection process,

which was road mars, physical PT, psychological evaluation, academics, you know, so you have to pass all that and then you get accepted into that role. So it's a three-day process, an interview and physical fitness. So I had to fly to North Carolina to do that. I'm in Zamboanga, Philippines right now. They had a dirt trail road where I had to put these little lights up and they landed this plane and they flew me to North Carolina to go through, you know, I was CAG's direct support, you know, selection. And I made it. Got hired on as a combatist guy.

And what was that in title? I was working in selection and training, and I was training under these guys called Team Rock who were a qualifier in Hoist Gracie. I was trained with Hoist Gracie. I would travel around america and train with all these prize fighters i would bring that knowledge back i would fight all day long and work out all day long what a life right then there was a sergeant major from a c squadron he came in and he was a big jiu-jitsu guy and he he asked me to go with him on a combat op.

So the squadron was fixing to rotate him for their rotation of Iraq, and we were hunting down, you know, Sarkawi at that time. So, you know, a combatives guy, right? So I got together my team gear. I got the intel brief from the intel guys, got attached to C-squadron, came in and, you know, I was, I did a lot of stuff that they need me to do. Like, you know, I was a gunner on, I was a attack vehicle driver. So I infilled the teams in and then eventually I was containment for the assault, you know, so near term containment. But, you know so near-term containment but you know during that time frame man i saw some

capabilities in that unit i'll bet you did and uh for for those listening that don't know who zarkawi is i believe he was the number two most wanted uh high value target and uh in the war yeah he got killed uh was that 2006 yeah yeah so you know obviously he was and you were after him well was one of the the unit was after him yeah and i worked within that organization i wouldn't say that i was you know besides the intel gathering and everything else that everybody was trying it was. It was a unit effort. I didn't mean, I meant, yeah. Yes, absolutely. You were part of the effort.

Yes. So during that time, you know, we were hitting, gosh, man, that was the height of the war. You know, think about Iraq back in that era. So it was the height of the war. You know, gunfights happened on a daily, every day, you know. So I saw some special capabilities within that organization that set it apart from anything else, you know, anything else is their intelligence gathering capabilities working with the CIA, you know.

And I gave them that lethality, like that piece where you can find fix and strategically hit a target, man, that's it, right? So, you know, during that time, we were doing a lot of the infrastructure exploitation. I don't want to get into it too much, that's how we would find somebody you know and the technology was used against the enemy and how we would find, fix and locate and kill them so I started seeing the birth of that

working with NSA you know starting to see the special reconnaissance piece rise up and I saw the capability I wasn't part of it but I saw it you know so being in gunfights it, you know? So, um, being in gunfights every day, you know, I, I came back, uh, I was put in for a valid award and I was really

happy, you know, about a unit. And, uh, I went to back to selection and training and the, the, the sergeant major of selection and training say, Hey, you got put in for a valid award. Good job. You know, you did great, heard great things about you, but you're fired. And I'm like, whoa, what? What's that mean? They're like, look, look, nothing personal. You did a great job, but you're fired from the combatants program because, he goes, son, you're taking up a sergeant major position in selection and training.

We just got to, you know, have that career progression for the operators to take that position so they can get promoted and you're e7 right and i'm like okay god he goes look i you know we have a lot of other positions that i think you're going to be good at like dog handlers or breachers were brought up um go down to ops and, you know, find that assignment, apply for that assignment, and then, you know, put your fire from here because you're taking up a sergeant major position. You know, I'll tell you, man, I didn't know what to do. I'm like, okay. So I walked down to ops and I was walking down

and there's a very classified wing within that organization. I don't want to get into it, but there was a very classified area, and it had reconnaissance on there, right? Special reconnaissance. So I'm like, those are the guys that I saw that special capabilities from when I was a combatants guy, right? And I really liked that. So I knocked on their door.

I banged on their door, and then this camera turns on i was looking at them and they're like who are you the door started speaking who are you oh my name is two lamb and i i want to i want i want to come inside talk to uh the troop commander you know and they're, we don't know you. What's your business here? I'm like, I need to talk to him because I want to apply for a possible job. I'm talking to this door, right? And the door unlatches, and I came in. I saw the troop sergeant major.

I sat down. He said, who are you? You know, when I was out in 1st Special Forces Group, I did a lot of the low-vis stuff. I was part of a project called Trojan Lancer, which they recruit from native warriors, the guys that can blend in into the indigenous areas. And we would do black dacks. You know, I don't want to get into the black dacks, but we would do that stuff, working with the handlers up in the embassy, you know, the low-vis handlers.

So, you know, I told them about my background. I did a little bit of that. And, you know, I tried out for their interview process. I got hired on and I started learning. And, man, I tell you, you're talking about, Sean, you're talking about a fish out of water, right? Because up until then, I kicked in doors. I was a commando. I tracked down human beings in the jungle.

So mine was very direct action commando stuff, right? And the first day of reconnaissance training was this is how a cell phone works. And this is how the towers work. And this is how a iridium phone works and this is how a global star satellite and this is where it orbits around the world and this is where the direction you need to point towards if you need to latch onto this satellite and this satellite so they're really teaching me covert means of communication you really think about it yeah i just didn't see it at that time i'm like it was really long hours man it was you know long

training long training, long training. I didn't think I was going to make it through so many training because it's really technical, very technical. So then I started deploying, started doing the special reconnaissance piece and they stood up another capability within the unit to work with the CIA. I was part of the technical reconnaissance piece for that and i had to go through eight months of training with the cia now it's not all cia certain certain portions of it were especially the trade crowd the street crap portion and the reason why we had to cross train window is because we four deployed later on

into these countries where we had to work underneath the chief of station you know it was it was really funny because you and i after talking last night we were in the same country on the same project on the same hunting down the same person yeah yeah It never ceases to amaze me on how small the special operations community actually is. And, you know, it won't be the first time that's happened. It won't be the last time that's happened. But, yeah, when you, you know, unfortunately can't really go into any details, but when you started, when we started kind of shooting the shit, and I was like, wait a second, hold on. What year was that?

And you heard about what we did there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What made me, yeah, we were in both locations, too, on the north and the south. And, yeah, that's, I had no idea that i was uh you know working with two lambs The Nutrient survival Spec Ops Greg Nutrition

Sean you know what's funny is I was going to college at that time, too. Like, you know, we had our CIA safe houses out in town. And, you know, when the ops were low, I would log on and do my college. So it was a continuous process, you know. But getting back to when I was fired, you know. And then I got accepted onto that. But, you know, sometimes what we think is a curse is a blessing, right? There's no way I would have saw that capability unless I was invited to go to that combat rotation.

And there was no way that I could have gone there unless I was fired from selection and training. I wouldn't say I was fired. I just took a sergeant major position, you know. But I did eight years there. You know, I traveled all around the world. How did you like that kind of, that change of pace when you went into kind of an advanced surveillance and all of that stuff we did we did a course similar to that not at that level uh when i was in when i was on the seal teams and

uh at that time we were i was jumping into a team that was going to go to bosnia uh long story short we were running down uh war, you know, from back in the day. And then I wound up going to Afghanistan and said, but we did a course with the MI6 that we had contracted out to the MI6 to come to Virginia Beach and put us through that course. And we didn't fire one shot. We didn't blow anything up. We didn't jump out jump out any planes we didn't do any of that shit uh totally new change of pace and instead what we were doing is running around on the 20th floor of the bank of american building in richmond virginia and nobody knows who the hell we are what we're doing doing. And it was all about to blend in. And the, uh, the area of operation started in, you know, Virginia beach and, uh, in an, in a mall. And then it was downtown Norfolk. And then it was,

you know, the whole Eastern seaboard in virginia and it just kept it it's some of the coolest training i've ever done uh today and i and and definitely some of the most practical and uh and i loved it you know even though i wasn't blowing shit up all the time and shooting things and did how was your experience with that you know like with the certain reports you know that we had to write after surveillance the casing reports right it was just man brutal because um you know you had to write like six pages of this describing in detail. You know, you had to be able to map out certain areas, you know, so it was very, very outside my realm. Very, I mean, you're flying on non-commercial aircrafts, you know, civilian aircrafts, trying to pinpoint a, we call it a dumb beacon, which just pulses, you know, how do you find just a dumb

beacon? You know, it's something that just pulse a frequency, you know, how can you triangulate it down to a pinpoint location where I could put the kill capability there? You know what I mean? So flying in commercial aircrafts, hell, so it was totally out of my realm. I would tell you it took me a good year to kind of really get over that hump because, dude, I was just treading water. Yeah. I mean, I felt like I was totally out of my realm. Totally out of my realm. But once I got that training and I graduated from that training, I got some real world ops behind me. It was really cool. Because people think like a commando, right? right and I graduate from that training I got some real world ops behind me it

was really cool because people think like a commando right tell me what's more dangerous a SEAL team coming in and hitting a pinpoint target where you know what the bad guys are in that house you know the exact location right and you're coming in with a wholesale team or a singleton driving around country X doing reconnaissance where you shouldn't be doing that. If you get caught, you don't know if your head's going to get lobbed off, you're going to be on the news. You have no exfil plan. Your weaponry is only a pistol. If even that, if you can diplomatic pouch that in, you know. For me, well, that's, I would say that's more dangerous.

Or at least has the potential to be. But for me, in that environment, when it's only you, I mean, that's like the best and the worst feeling in the world and uh and then and then to fast forward and we were talking about this last night too when you fast forward 10 years and you're like holy shit i was one guy you know and i'm a white guy you know and uh one guy running around, you know, Yemen by myself or with one other dude and then, you know, doing these sort of things. And then you fast forward and it's like, holy shit, like that really is some Jason Moore shit, you know.

You know, what's really unique is, you know, you asked me last night, you're like, when you're doing it, did you know like this is some dangerous shit you're doing and i told you like i never knew well i knew it's dangerous obviously right you you know you go to the funerals of your friends you know how real this war is you know but when i was doing it i wasn't nervous it was a thing you know it was a thing and i knew surveillance was on me i I knew they were on me. Yeah. But you have to go about your daily routine, even though you're being followed, right,

and they're trying to draw intelligence from you, you know. Yeah. You know, your training kicks in. But what's really unique is when you're doing it, it was, I'm not saying I'm brave. You know, it was just a thing. It was just work. It doesn't feel the same because the bullets aren't flying.

That's right. Explosions aren't happening. You don't have A-10s over top, Apaches. You know, you don't have any of that. It means you're doing it right because none of that is happening. And in the middle of it, it can almost get to the point where it seems boring, but you make one wrong move, you know. And you know what I want to say too is like, you know, in war we have layers and layers and layers and layers and layers of support, right?

The pred, the imagery, the intelligence packet, you know, you have your half, your g gaff you have all these packets man those are war assets you go into like you said yemen it's not a declared war zone yeah so you're not going to have everything from the war you're not going to have pred fees you're not going to have certain sigint platforms you're not going to have any of that because they can't even fly into the location you can't get resupplies in because it's not a part of the the country agreement yeah so you can't get weapons in you know so when i think about that man when when people think like oh you know spec ops is about door kicking and all that's yeah we do that but there's a lot of guys like you that are out there as singletons that's living in it.

You're living in it. I mean, how many stories have we heard about guys like us get their heads lopped off? They end up on the news. They get kidnapped. They go up missing. You know, it happens. So it gets really real when you think about it. And when I think back to now, sometimes I get anxieties, right?

I think back, I'm like, Oh my God, I did that. Like, that's really crazy. You know, and now it's hitting me more than when I was actually doing it. Yeah. The same, same here, you know, but it really rounds, it really, it, it, it turns you into an extremely well-rounded and talk about learning how to adapt. Yeah. That you have no choice, you know, so. But, you know, during that, you know, special missions unit assignment, I mean, I cross trained with 22sas i was able to get their um their tactics when they're fighting you know uh ireland you know i mean they're

fighting the terrorists out there i was able to cross train with the israelis i got to cross train with all these high level units in the art of surveillance and reconnaissance. And intelligence, you know, the Israelis, man, they're one of the leading companies in their intelligence gathering capabilities. Yeah. You know what I mean? They have to be based off their geographic location. I never got to work with them. Oh, yeah.

They're amazing. Their technology and the way to do stuff, their intelligence gathering is amazing. So what I'm saying is, you know, that assignment allowed me to cross-train all these different entities. And even within our country, you know, the NSA and, you know, the CIA. I got to work with the marshals, you know, because the marshals are great at tracking human beings down. You know, we just had to change it to how we do that overseas. You know, and you know, working in countries like Yemen, it's a non-permissive environment. Semi non-permissive environment. So, you know, you being a white guy, you're not going to get killed driving down the street, but you're going to get looked at.

And if you go into the wrong part of town, you're going to get killed. Yeah. Right? And if you're looking for bad guys in that part of town, then that country can either snag you up because you shouldn't be doing that, or is a terrorist that snags you up. And some of these fake checkpoints that we have to go through, whether there can be a terrorist trap or it can be the government, you know, trying to see what you're doing.

So what I'm saying, it was very complex in that arena. And they're tracking your cell phones and everything else. They triangulate where you're at. So you have to understand that level. There's so much to think about when you're operating in that kind of an environment and in that capacity, because it's it's it's the bad guys that we're tracking. But not only that, it's also all the other spy games that are happening over there with the Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians, the Israelis, you know, and, and, and running into them, you know, and they know who you are, you know, who they are. And it's, it just gets real weird. Yeah. And, uh, and, uh, yeah. You know, being a 210 pound Asian guy walking around in some of these mid Eastern

countries. I mean, you stand out man yeah you know even though i'm asian i look like a westerner yeah you know i stand out i am a prime target for kidnapping prime yeah you know and some of the ops that we go out and man you're a singleton one up in a car you're sitting out in you know a bumper position somewhere, you know, that somebody can roll up on you and take you out, you know, they know where your safe house is at, you know? And, and like you said, it's not just the bad guys. It's not just the terrorists. It's the host nation. They want to know what you're doing in their country. And then it's the Chinese. They want to know what you're doing in their country or in that area. Right.

And then, you know, you got all these different embassies. Right. And you got to work. You got to work in that silent mode throughout all of them. And you got to find, fix, and locate whoever you're there to find, you know. It takes a lot of work. But I found out, like, you know, we can't do that physical reconnaissance, right? Physical surveillance. That's, you can't do it because I'm a 210-pound Asian guy.

I don't blend in. Yeah. So that's where, you know, the agency training came in, the infrastructure. You know, I can track a human being without even being in country. Yeah. Right. So, and that's what I learned from that, that journey. You know what I mean?

It was so funny because like you said, it started off as combatives, right? And then it went to me getting fired in that position, but it was a blessing because it made me, like you said, well-rounded. And it was a blessing because it made me, like you said, well-rounded. So when I came out of working in that organization for roughly eight years, Libya fell during that time. When I say Libya, remember the attacks on Libya, the annex, the CIA headquarters, you know, the Americans were drug out in the street, killed, you know. And we didn't respond it right away. You remember that incident?

I remember that. We didn't respond it right away. And so that was the need for a special operations Africa command. Right. They needed a strike capability withinrica in case something like that happens so um you know i i requested from jsoc to to go there and take that apply for that assignment you know it was the uh the sif teams you know the commander stream is or CRISF, Crisis Response Forces, what they changed it to. And it was a continent in Africa.

So we became the action arm of Africa. You know, and the thing about what people tell me is like, what makes Green Berets so unique, right? It's, yeah, we got that FID capability and force multiplying, but we're there. That means that I have a capability to go in and train indigenous force. My presence there because the country team allows it, but I can quickly react to a hostage situation. I can go border crossing so I need to recover a human being. You know what I mean? So being in that continent, I knew I needed to be in that continent

because that's where all the heavy fighting was. And the unit was kind of pushing me that way anyways. But I wanted more of, instead of doing the surveillance piece now, I wanted to go back to direct action. So that's what made me switch over again. So doing the low-vis piece, I mean, gosh, man, I did it for so long. And then I'm like, okay, I want to go back to kicking in the door again right i want that direct action piece again so i left um the unit and um i got offered a troop sergeant major position in that unit to stay

um during that time i picked up e8 as in the special forces and we had to go back to special forces uh group and do our team sergeant time and then that's when i'll go back to to the unit and take my troop sergeant major time so that was the agreement um i decided that um i fell in love with Colorado. It's beautiful out there. You should come visit me out there. I will. It's so beautiful. And I found somewhat of my peace when I was off work, but I deployed into Africa.

I did the Libya piece. That was long. We were training a FID force. We were finding a strike capability within that unit. It was a very hard assignment because a lot of these guys were, some of them were crooked. You know, they were vetted by the CIA, but some of them were bad guys, you know. Our area operation didn't allow us you know the freedom of movement of a war zone well we couldn't just strike yeah we had it was more

intelligence gathering no lie 100% they're here and then we do a truly strategic strike because if you ruin report that country then you get kicked out of country you lose your footing within that continent. Right? So that's what people don't understand. You strike the wrong target, you're going to get kicked out of country and you lost your mission. So it was really heavy, heavy, heavy intelligence and standing up a fighting force. So, you know, I was part of a rotation.

We stood up to fire force. We started doing some confidence targets. And my rotation was over, and then I got pulled out, and I got sent into South Africa where I protected our former president, Obama, you know, Barack Obama. And he was there to attend Mandela's funeral. So that was one of my last missions, you know, with that organization. But this is where it came to head with me.

You know, roughly around that time, I was at 14 and a half years of war and combat. war and combat seven years of that was heavy heavy war and in combat and conflict areas within a tier one organization you know so you're thrown out there so after seven years of that and then before that was the first group you know I mean so I was it was compounding on me and i didn't see it you know um you know you hear about uh post-traumatic stress you hear about ptsd you hear about all of it it can't happen to me yeah i'm breaded to do this but it was and um i started getting numb to the world. I started losing focus at work. I just didn't care. And that's dangerous in a dangerous man game, right?

That's a dangerous mindset when you don't care in that world. So I just realized that, you know, I just need to move on with my life. How long do you think you were just kind of going through the motions before it finally clicked? It's time to hang it up. Two years. Two years. Did it gradually get worse? Yeah.

Did you start getting complacent? Yes. Yeah. Didn't care. Get complacent. You know? And I'm, hey, man, everybody makes their mistakes, right? Right. So I, I just, I'm just letting you know that it was a hard time in my life

and I had to reflect back on my life and, and I realized that maybe I'm just not made for this anymore. You know, even though I was, I had all this experience, I was top of my game. I was just, I wasn't feeling anymore. You know, it bothers me seeing women and children get killed, you know, and you're in that environment and it bothers me. It bothered me that I couldn't affect certain areas and people and free those people. So it bothered me.

So at that time I had a lot of time, I had a lot of guilt. I had a lot of pain. So I started hiding that pain, right? I was hurt. I've been shot. I've been blown up, you know. So they give us, obviously, painkillers, you know, to keep you. You're an NFL team, right? So they're going to give you whatever you need to stay on the battlefield.

And I self-medicated myself a lot during that time to hide that pain. What were you self-medicating with? Opiates. Opiates? Oxy? And you know as well as I do, that's a normal thing on the team, like a normal issue. Yeah. Team guys hide their uh

their pain through that you know so i i started um just losing my way and um i was out in africa one day and um i was drinking some chai tea and we're ready to go out and do our patrols and the counter-pulsion wars in Africa. And the sun was coming up. You ever found your peace, man? You ever like had a moment where you're like, wow, that's beautiful. And you're there in that present moment well that was that present moment i was there in africa right so at that time i was at uh 19 years in the military you know majority of it was special operations so i was really messed up you know and i found my piece there and i i said to my i wrote I carry a notebook everywhere I go, like a samurai, I write stuff down and, um, I wrote the word peace

because that was my new journey, you know, so born in war, fought racism, fought, you know, the oppressed and freed enslaved. now is you know i'm really messed up and i needed to find my my peace in life myself again you've got to do you yeah you know they allows you was a uh the founder of thousands of me he said the journey of a thousand miles began with a single step and i read that when I was 12 years old, you know, that saying, and I wrote down the piece and I, I started my first steps towards peace. And that means to, um, so I got off the teams, I put in my retirement, um, packet and I was off on my new journey to find myself again.

Well, that's pretty huge of you, you know, and, you know, a lot of guys, it's just, it's just, you know, one more deployment, one more, one more, one more. And, you know, just like a drug, it's just never going to be enough. You're just going to have to cut it eventually, you know. I mean, we're all addicts. If you're on a team, you're an addict. You're addicted to adrenaline. Yeah. You're addicted to that fast-paced life.

You're addicted to it. That's why we stay in so long. You just don't know when to call it. Well, at that moment, you know, peace was more important than anything in my life. Well, I think we're getting ready to start transition. So let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll get into how bad it got

and how you dug yourself out of that hole and yeah get into some ronin tactics nutrient survival feed your freedom. All right, so just covered some of your military career, went pretty in-depth with that, and we're wrapping it up, and now you're getting ready to go back into civilian life for the dreaded transition. Yeah, yeah. Well, first I want to off with, you know, my mission in Cameroon,

doing the counter-pulchering campaigns. I actually graduated from college then, so I fulfilled that promise to my mother. You know, I promised my mother when I graduated from high school that I would finish college. And throughout my whole military career, still fighting and employing, I was going to college college and i was on a cameroon commando camp and i took my final exam

and i graduated with honors while fighting counter-pulchering campaigns wow but i was facing depression during that time frame um but that was a promise i made to my mother, you know, and that I kept. So here I am, you know, I knew I was really messed up, you know, and I didn't want to admit it to anybody. It was a personal pride thing for me, but I knew I wasn't there anymore. Mentally, I wasn't there. I was just lost, man. You know what I mean? I was just lost.

And I wanted to find my path again, you know? So I decided that 23 years, 23 years was good enough. And I had a lot of unfinished business in the military, but it was at a point where I had to find my peace. You know, I had to find it. And that journey was, you know, as a veteran, that journey is very difficult. It's very difficult in a lot of ways.

And I don't know what the first thing that hit you was, but one of the major things that hit me before, or that I kind of came to the realization of before i realized everything else that was going on um you know in my head from you know being in combat that long is is one of the hardest things to do is leave the team and watch the team go on to the next stop and you're not there anymore and um what what was the first thing that kind of hit you you know i i wanted to retire so i moved over to more of the operations side of the house and i wasn't very well put together back then you know it's just really dealing with some internal issues so when um, when the

teams were deploying, you know, yeah, I felt the same thing, Sean, you know, just, you just don't know. You just feel like you can do more. You don't know when to quit. Yeah. My father told me once when I first joined the teams, um, I asked him, I said, when, when did you know, you know, when, when is it enough? He goes, you know, you don't know. He never even talked about it. He's, you don't know. And I did at that point, I, what was more important to me than anything, operations or being a commando was finding my peace, you know? And that was a long process, right? You don't just find your peace. You know, you don't just go from the teams

and then you, now you're in the civilian world and instantly you're safe and at peace. That's not how it works. You don't find your peace by, you know, reaching a level of money and success. You don't find it there. That's not where peace is at. You know, it took me a while to realize that.

Peace is found in what you do daily. Peace is found in growth and spirituality and stuff like that. So I want to explain this to you because this is the seed of how I healed myself. Okay? So when I was going through all my times, I honorably retired out of the military, 23 years. Now I'm at home. I'm this retired civilian, no direction.

Ronin isn't Ronin yet. Ronin Tactics isn't Ronin Tactics yet. My wife was working up in Denver, Colorado. She has a business degree, accounting degree, master's. You know, so she's a big deal in that world, you know. And here she is, you know, she's this big time manager managing all these people in a major, you know, corporation. And you got a commando with 23 years free, right, free from the military military and what i did all day was i slept i slept in a dark room shades down i was in bed all day were you still on

the drugs the oxys the benzos the sleeping pills yeah you know and that's what people you know people have judged me on it and You shouldn't have done that. You're right. You're right. But when you've been hurt, when you got hit by IED, when you have over a certain amount of free fall jumps, combat equipment, you know, you're just living that life, that team life. Man, your body takes a beating. Am I right, Sean? Oh, yeah.

Definitely takes a beating. Am I right, Sean? Oh, yeah. Definitely takes a beating. So, you know, the painkillers that they prescribed to us, I mean, that's a failed situation because what works in this treatment, the next treatment you're going to require too. And it just continues to grow until it spirals your world out of control, you know? control you know the other thing with those that got me was it started as as treating injuries physical injuries but then when you're taking those and especially the you know the oxy or the the the the opiates is you you immediately start to realize the it suppresses your thoughts it slows you down

you don't really give a shit about anything and uh just you know just like you were saying it you'd finally become numb that makes you even more numb and i think that's where the the addiction uh really comes in is you're suppressing all those thoughts. I wanted that numbness. Yeah. You know, I was in pain. You know, I lost friends, you know, and it really bothered me because, you know, some of these, man, some of my teammates I actually physically carried off the battlefield. They're dead bodies.

And some of them I laid down in their final resting place at funeral services. Some of my teammates I actually physically carried off the battlefield. They're dead bodies. And some of them I laid down in their final resting place at funeral services. So that pain is there. You know, you just, I don't care how much you mask it with, you know, but the medication, it allowed me to numb it. And I almost lived in this state of numbness. You know, and you're talking about, you know, the sleeping pills. It's not just opiates i was addicted to sleeping pills i was addicted to um uppers and and the reason why is that during the hyder war i mean we're on a pager right so you're going out and you're conducting these nightly rays or reconnaissance missions and everything and And in daytime, you know, you come back and you sleep.

But if there's a daytime HVI target, you're going to get your pagers going to go off and you're going to get and do what you need to do, even those days. So it's never a cycle. It can happen any time, the missions, right? So you never really rest, right? No. In these combat deployments. So, you know, the recce missions, I mean, we have to stay awake 72 hours sometimes, maybe seven days, 10 days, depending on the op. You know, I'm not saying stay awake, but you're sleep deprived.

You're, you know, you're not eating right. You're laying in some kind of old abandoned mall or somewhere across Baghdad in a hide site. And you're hypervigilant. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So, you know, they gave us uppers, you know, to stay awake for that long time. And then when you come off of that op or you can't sleep because your

mind is spinning on when does that page are going to go off again so you take downers which was you know ambien which is a sleeping pill and you know that can be addictive yep right so it caused you to change your mood right change your you know change your mood sometimes and and for us a person that's in that much pain you don't want to be in that painful state so you want to always constantly change your mood or you want to mask it so um that was my roller coaster man you know I was I was really addicted and you ever had a moment in your life where you look in the mirror and you're just not happy with who you are yeah i've had several of those so you know my wife was going up into denver she was working in these jobs

i was laying around in this um bed all day and i was just so tired man like just really run down, you know, fatigue, my body's aching. I just had enough. I had enough. And I wanted a moment of change. I really wanted that, but I didn't know how. I was sitting on my couch one day in a dark house, you know, I had a blanket wrapped around me. My wife was up working in Denver.

I was just really feeling down that day. It was just a bad day. You ever stared at an empty TV that's off? You're sitting there staring at a TV that's not even on. Yes, I have. So the house house was dark and i had a blanket wrapped around me and i i don't i was walking around the house and i can't tell you what drew me to the final location you know i walked around this dark house and somehow i ended up in my office you know i have a war room with all my war trophies.

I have a huge library because I'm a big reader. And they put me in front of my bookcase. Don't even know how I got there. Don't even know why I'm opening up my bookcase. And my hand reached in there without even looking. And I pulled out the book of five rings. Haven't read this book since I was 13. And the Book of Five Rings, if you don't know,

was written by a Ronin back in the late 1500s. He died after writing the Book of Five Rings in a Buddhist cave where he meditated. He was a warrior. He was a philosopher. He was a gardener. He was a warrior. He was a philosopher. He was a gardener. He was a renowned swords, master swords, swordsman, you know, undefeated as a warrior. And this Ronin fought in major wars and he killed a lot of people.

And he, the story is that, you know, he came to a point in his life that he needed peace. that he came to a point in his life that he needed peace. And he retreated to a Kuomoto, Japan, where it was a mountainous region in Japan and used to have been all covered in water, back in the prehistoric days, that whole area used to been, because Japan's an island.

And so it was a lot of coral reefs in this area. So imagine the terrain, rugged mountainous terrain, coral reefs. There was a Buddhist temple there. And Musashi went there and he meditated there and found his peace. For three years he meditated and reflected on his life. And at two o'clock in the morning

he said it on there on the book he finally after meditation for three years he picked up the ink and he wrote the book of five rings ten days later he died in the Buddhist cave you know when i picked up this book you know i opened up the book and i didn't know even what i was looking at you know and it was a passage that said all your strength all your all your love all your passion is within you everything exists within you don't look anywhere else the answer is within you nowhere else you know and you know what's really unique was at that time i was looking for the answers everywhere else i was looking for happiness and success and everything externally you know so i would call

my my stepfather and i'm like hey man how did you do it how did you do it how did you do it? How did you do it? How did you do a career and get over that war? You didn't have an answer. I'll call my teammates, you know, hey guys, how's it going? What you guys up to? You know, I was looking for the answers everywhere else. So Musashi, you know, that book, the book of five, reminded me that everything

is within. All of our love, all of our compassion, everything is within. I needed to fix this broken man, you know, spiritually. So I remember closing that book and... You ever had a moment of rage when you look in the mirror and you're just like, I really hate this person. It was rage. It wasn't anger. It was rage.

I was very upset at the path. I lost myself, you know. So I remember opening up my medicine cabinet and things started falling out from all the medication that was in this cabinet. I mean, guys, you know, how many veterans have died from overdosing drugs? I mean, that's a normal thing nowadays, right? It's sad. Yeah. So I saw this dropping down, and I don't know. I just had that rage, that fire.

So I took it and I dumped it all down the toilet. I flushed it, everything I had. Let me tell you what happens when you go quit cold turkey after, I don't know, five to eight years of being on these meds. You know, that wall, that numbness that you talk about, that wall that holds us from the realities of life without what was gone. And I felt it, man. I felt the weight of the world. It came, my whole life came crashing down.

Because I didn't have the chemicals, right, to block it. So I felt it. If you think about a stream of water, all that emotion hit me at once. And, you know, it was really hard. It was a really hard time in my life. And that's when I reflected, right? Like Masashi. So I basically took his concept and I closed myself off to the world, right?

And there was a, in my office, you know, I set up a meditation area, you know, and I made a promise to myself that I need to find my here and now, you know? So when I say that is when, when people say, what's that mean here and now, you know, what does it mean? What's that mean? You know, how many times have you gone throughout your day and subconscious years, just thinking about, man, you're thinking about more negative stuff. You know, how many times have you gone throughout your day and subconscious years just thinking about, man, you're thinking about more negative stuff. You know that a normal human being thinks about 75% of their life, like their day, 75% of their day is thinking about negative stuff. I did not know that. Monitor your thoughts.

75% of your day, a normal human being, 75% of their focus more on the negatives. They're focusing on the anxieties of the future. They're focused on mistakes of the past. So you're always living within those two time zones, the past or the future. Never in that present moment. You're never there in that present moment. in that present moment. And in all of time, in the past, future, present,

the present encompass all of time. What you do now reflects your future. What you do now is will either get you over your past or imprison you from your past, right? So I realized that and, you know reflected and man you know I made my share of mistakes I'm a human being and the first step was forgiving myself I wrote it all down you know I had this book and I wrote it all down and I remember getting into I wrote down mindfulness meditation was a practice I want to get into now when I was out mindfulness meditation was a practice I wanted to get into.

Now, when I was out in first group, you know, I travel all through Asia, you know. So I got to see the monks. Like I meditated with the Tibetan monks, the Thai monks, you know, the Philippine. I meditated. They were more Catholic. But there were certain countries that are very Buddhist. And I meditated. Not that I'm Buddhist, but I wanted to learn that are very Buddhist and I meditated and I,

not that I'm Buddhist, but I wanted to learn the practice of Zazen here and now. Now I wanted to bring you back. I was doing mountain operations in Leh, India, which is the border of Pakistan. So we're doing a mountain warfare training. So you're at 18,500 feet. Shit. Right. So you're at 18,500 feet. Shit. Right? So you're carrying oxygen tanks up there. We're doing cliff assaults. And on the weekends, you know, we have time off, and I would go to the temples.

And there was this Tibetan monk. And it was after my time in the Philippines, you know, the war in the Philippines. We lost some teammates in the Philippines. And the Philippines was, it was cruel, man. You know, the Abu Saif bandits would rape, murder, kill, you know, the Christians and the Catholics in that area because they wanted an independent Muslim state. So after my time there, there was pain there from that, you know? So I had a linguist with me

and I went to go visit to Tibetan monk and I asked the linguist to translate for me. And I asked the monk, you know, why is the world so cruel? You think about this, Sean, like, you know, I was born out of war, you know what I mean? So that's a legitimate question for me. Why is it so cruel?

And the monk shook my hand, took me out back of the temples, and there was a dirt courtyard. Right? And he, the monk took a stick and he drew a circle onto just dirt ground and he sat there and he had these two sacks that he threw outside of the circle and one sack was full of black rocks and the other sack was full of white rocks and he told the linguist he said um when he he would sit here for years you know four years is is what kind of is coming to my mind right now. But he sat there for a long time, every single day. And he said he would look at this circle on the ground.

And when he would think of a negative thought, he would take a black rock and cast it into this circle in the dirt. rock and cast it into this circle in the dirt. And he said, for many years, you know, he, he, he, he was casting black rocks into the circle. And eventually, um, he started casting white and now it's all white rocks. And I'm like, whoa, what changed? Why, negative to the positive? How has that changed? And he said, it's simple. The human being, we go through life focusing on the negatives. And unless you know what you're thinking about subconsciously, then you can't do anything about it. So because I'm totally aware of my thoughts, my negative thoughts, then I'm able to influence my negative thoughts. But I'm unaware of this, then I go through living life negative. And the world is so cruel because people are unaware of the negative in this world, the evils of this world.

And he said, if people are able to control their emotions, the world will be less cruel. Makes total sense. It does. Right? If we're able to control our emotions. So I thought about that, right? What was weird is fast forwarded to now, this dark room, depression. That image came back in my mind.

When I was war gaming, how am I going to get through this depression? Right? So I Googled the reasons for laying in bed all day in a dark room. And the word depression popped up. Oh, that can't be. That can't be. So I re-Googled causes for being fatigued post-war. Depression popped up.

PTSD. I'm like, oh, no. So it worried me enough where I went to go see, you know, a doctor. And the doctor's like, look, son, you know, this is normal. You've been through it. You have depression. Here's some antidepressants. Good luck.

depression. Here's some of the antidepressants. Good luck. You see, the army, the military practices Western style medication, right? Western style medicine is, I'm going to fill you up with meds to make that go away, but all of it's temporary. The Eastern side of medication is internal, right? You're not relying on the externals, you're relying on the internal to heal your body internally. So the monk said that it resonated with me and I wanted to walk the path of Eastern practice. So it started off with me carrying a notebook around and writing down my thoughts throughout the day. And my hard days, I would write the deepest notes.

And I would practice meditation every morning, every afternoon, and every night. The monk did say to me that I say, hey, monk, what's the best form of meditation? I asked him that. And the monk smiled and he said, the one that you do every day. monk smile and he said, the one that you do every day. So I Googled, right? Mindfulness meditation. So I got the, you know, the, the con op. I got that down. I'm like, okay, I can do this. I can do this. How hard is it to sit there and just concentrate on your breathing? It can't be that hard. I focus on my breathing. That's it. Nothing else. So I was so confident.

I bought a meditation seat, mattress, that you sit on the ground. I bought that on Amazon. I'm like, this is going to be an easy day. So I went down into my quiet office. I closed the door. Closing the door means I'm trapping my spirit in that room the spirit walks in that room if i'm talking to you right now you're thinking about your wife then your mind drifts over to wherever she's at if i talk about your past your mind and drifts back to your childhood

your mind is always floating how do you capture that so in my my con op, I was like, well, if I lock this door, then my spirit is locked in here with me. So then I sat down. I started into my meditation practice of breathing, you know, where you focus only on the breathing. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. I'll tell you what. I thought about Yemen, Libya. I thought about my wife up in Denver. I thought about everything else but breathing.

Yeah. The noise. The noise. I've been hearing this noise for so long, and you just can't turn off that noise because you've been doing this every single day for, I don't know, your whole life. So how can you reprogram a mind that's used to going to, your mind is free-floating like this. You're not controlling it. Man, I failed. I failed the first day, the second day, the first year, the second year.

Around the third year, I was sitting out in the deck right now when i say i failed i went down every morning and i did it every afternoon i did it every night time i did it even though i was failing i was sitting there over and over and over and doing it how long were you attempting like what was your daily did you have a time limit or? Yeah, yeah. So initially I was an overachiever. I was like, I'm going to go 30 minutes, right? And then it cracked down to two minutes. And then it went to five minutes. And now I'm back up to 45 minutes.

Wow. Right? So I had to go back down because I couldn't lock in at that long of a iteration. My mind started drifting. And at that long of the iteration, my mind started drifting. You know, so when I was failing all this, man, I was really depressed because I'm trying to make myself better and I'm failing and failing and failing every single day. It was around the third year I was sitting outside on the deck and I was just enjoying the day, you know, and heard the birds chirping.

Let me explain this to you. My mind was never there enough where I can hear birds. It was always somewhere else. I haven't heard birds since the beginning of the war. You can hear them, obviously, right? I can hear the noise, but I never really said, wow, how beautiful is that? You weren't present. And so those were the signs, and I wasn't really seeing it in the beginning.

But later on, it started catching on. Like, I have to be present to hear those birds. I have to be present to see the sun come up. Nutrient survival. Spec ops grade nutrition. You know, so now I was slowly indoctrinating myself to live in the present moment. I was still failing meditation. Also during that time of me finding my peace, I entrepreneur in a company, Ronin Tactics. Ronin tying it back in to the Book of Five Rings, Masashi, the words that gave me the courage I needed to take the first steps in finding my peace.

So that's why it's Ronin. That's why I call myself Ronin Tactics, because at the birth of my company, I was at the lowest point in my life. And Ronin, if you understand that word, means masterless, right? Wave man, wonder. But it also means during frugal periods, Japan, disgrace. It does. It means disgrace. Right? So at that point, I was really low. So that's why I named myself initially, I named myself Ronin,

because I was embarrassed to be my own skin. So when I was starting to practice the form of meditation, around three years, I started getting into it. But, you know, what's really funny is because I was starting my company, and I'm a really big martial artist, and I started just filming my training events. I started going around and teaching. That's part of my healing process.

That's why you see me traveling all through America. I can easily be in Colorado and just teaching Colorado and all that, but that's not the journey I wanted to take. The journey I wanted to take was take my wife and for us to experience our new journey together and our steps together in helping to reshape our Americans, right? And I could start doing that by the human beings that swore allegiance to God and their community to protect that community, so our police officers. If I want to affect a community, right, as a Green Beret, I trained the commando force that had sworn an allegiance to protect that community. So that's where I started.

I started with the police officers. Right? So it became a warrior in the garden. You know, people ask me, what's that look like, the warrior in the garden? I don't know what that looks like. But I am a warrior in the garden because I took my life experience and the combat combat experience I'm giving back to what I perceive as the good in this world. Right? And if I want to protect my communities and our country and make it better, then I train the people who swore allegiance to that community.

I also train savants, you know? So during that process of me traveling around the United States and I call it, my friend called it ninja camp, because I start off with combatants, right? And I go into the bushido and the way and the mind of a warrior and the responsibilities that we need in the proper way of living as a warrior. And then I go into the skills of lethality. Because how do you control violence, Sean? With violence. that's right so i give the good in this world the art of violence right at that level that i fought in i give them that with the way behind it which is compassion so now you have this this skill set with compassion, right?

And you control the hate and the violence and the evil in this world through violence, right? So I teach them that. And then through that process, I started filming. I started posting on social media. And I got an email from the History Channel, right? So the History Channel, they knew I'm a big knife guy, right? And they're like, hey, would you be interested in being on a TV show? And you know, this is what I want to talk to you about, man, because being a team guy, right, our world is so secret, right?

We walk and we hang out with each other during operations and after work because who else can we talk these stories about? Who else can we vent that off to? Who else is read on? There's nobody. So you're very alone during that. And the only peers that you have is your team guys, if they're even read on to that project. Right?

So I realized this and, you know, I wanted to change. Right? So I started promoting my training. The training side of the house of Ronin started picking up. All of our events, I can truly tell you, man, all of our events sell out, you know, even to this day. And it's very successful. Ninja Camp, you know.

So the History Channel contacted me. It was their talent team. And they're like, would you like to be a co-host on a show for this show called Forging Fire, Knife, or Death? Which is like Ninja Warrior where they run through an obstacle course with a blade. I'm like, oh, how cool is that, right? I'm like, what do you need me to do? And they're like, I just need you to bring your expertise in. So talk about the geometry of the blade.

Talk about will this blade do good as a forging blade, as a chopping blade, based off of your survival skills. Because I know my knives, you know. I had to use those tools to fabricate living quarters in the jungle, you know. So I know my blades and um and uh we linked up with uh you know the host of the show which is bill gilbert wwe wrestler you know it was really cool because we hit it off you know so they flew me into atlanta which is um the new hollywood you know atlanta georgia and um when i say that it's a lot of the the shooting in hollywood is going on in london now just tax breaks and location so they had this old abandoned hangar you know

my first day on the set pull up limo pulls me into this compound right and um the security guard checks me in and then my assistant comes running out. She introduced herself, and she walked me to a movie star trailer. It was huge, man, this movie star trailer. And I want to say this is I'm not used to this. I'm used to living in the dirt, the mud, eating like crap, you know? So now I have two assistants. I had my name on, it said talent on the door, and it had this movie star trailer,

and next to me was Bill Goldberg, his movie star trailer. I'm like, what's going on here? So, you know, the producer comes in, introduces himself saying, you know, it's great to work with you. This is your lines. They sent me my scripts, and I comes in, introduce himself, saying, you know, it's great to work with you. This is your lines. They sent me my script, my scripts, and I had to recite the script, you know. And then I had a makeup artist come in and put makeup on my face.

And I had a tone coach come in and talk to me in tones. You know, it was really weird. And we would hang out in the trailer, right, basically, you know, all morning until they need you on the set. So then they call me, Tulane to the set, right? So my assistant bangs on the door. She goes, sir, I need you on the set. And I'm like, oh, okay. So I come out.

I walk 15 yards from my front entryway to a golf cart. And the assistant would drive me literally 50 yards down the street to set. I couldn't walk there. Yeah. So they drive me down there and I step off of the golf cart. And the makeup artist then looks at my makeup just in case it might have smeared from me riding 50 yards down there. The 15-second golf cart ride.

Yeah. And man, they had 15 cameras on us, you know, on tracks, you know, big time production, you know, they had 150 people on the set. Wow. You know, setting up the stage, the background. It was, it was really cool. Had these fire barrels burning. It was just, Whoa, this is Hollywood. You know, Bill Goldberg comes in really, really cool. Had these fire barrels burning. It was just, whoa, this is

Hollywood. Bill Goldberg comes in, really, really cool dude. He has a presence to him. And he was reading the script. Him and I hit it off. We're still friends to this day. But I want you to talk about this first day. So the producer's in my face talking about how I should act. I had a fiber optic earpiece in where the control room was talking to me and how I should, what conversation I should have about the blade. Like, two, go into that blade. All right, so talk to me about the geometry in that blade. So I'm like, oh, the geometry in that blade, you know. I'm hearing all these earpieces and makeup artists going and I had my assistant ask me what I want for lunch.

So it's really like, I was having a little bit of anxieties. It's out of my environment because you know what was going on in my environment? In my mind was about 30 yards to that front door. That door's a middle saw corridor. It swings open. That's my escape route. This is my exit route.

Why is this guy so close to me? I'm looking at threats. I'm looking, that's what we're trained to do, right? Yeah. So I had to like close off that mindset and go, okay, so you're in this present moment. You're in Hollywood, right? Somehow I made it through it, you know, and we filmed for three seasons.

It was a successful show. But during that time in filming, I was still traveling around the United States with my wife, and I would train. And we were developing our business in Ronin Tactics as in, you know, merchandise. So it was really taking off for us. I was still depressed. I was still fighting it, right? So every day I would meditate and I was going through all this. And then Infinity Ward, which is Call of Duty, contacts me and said, hey, we're really interested to have you capture your motions on the game,

your movements, right, your martial arts. So, you know, we had an initial conversation with them. They wanted to capture my movements. You know, it's just we were just so busy, you know. So I didn't think too much of it. We did talk to them, but I just didn't think too much of it. You know, he just wanted to capture my movements. And then we flew out to San Francisco when I was trained with their law enforcement teams on close quarters combat.

And then, you know, they follow me on social media. And they're like, hey, you're in San Francisco. We want to fly you from San Francisco to L.A. So here I am doing CQB training and in two days I got to fly to LA and interview with Infinity Ward, you know. So my wife and I, we flew into LA and they took us into their compound, basically. It's a more secure compound than a special forces compound. I mean, it's legit, you know, they know what they're doing. So, um, we signed them on, we met the president of Infinity Ward and we hit it off

and he asked me to be a part of the game. He wanted Ronan to be a part of the game. So that's how, um, I was entered into the game. We do motion capture for them. So a lot of the martial art moves, the gunfighting scenes, it's coming up with our new contract with them. So it was a huge journey. And then, but I think what's really unique about Infinity Ward, Call of Duty, Opportunities, and also the History Channel was my platform. You know, it got bigger, right? So along with that comes, well, you have your haters, obviously, but along with that comes I have a huge fan base.

So why not, I'm working on myself, why not give others like the tools they need to find their happiness? So, you know, my healing process became me just writing my thoughts on Instagram. And then I found out that it helps other people. And in that process, I started healing. Had you put together yet that all this good that you're injecting into the world is coming back around full circle to you? It is.

With these opportunities? Yeah. It the world is coming back around full circle to you? It is. With these opportunities? Yeah. It was starting to come back around. And, you know, at that time, I didn't see it. I didn't see it because I'm giving, I'm receiving. You know, I didn't see it like that. I just wanted to give because I'm healing that way. I was just healing that way, you know.

One step at a time, and I was like, man, I helped this person. I feel better about myself, and I heal that way. But I want to go back to this. So, you know, I started going and seeing a lot of professionals, like scientists. I would listen to lectures and how the human brain functions and all that, you know. Because as Special Forces soldier, we dive into intelligence. We don't just fight a war. We look at the intelligence of the situation, and we develop a course of action in order to combat that.

Well, my combat was within myself, right? I was fighting an internal war, so I needed to arm myself with intelligence. So I was going to these seminars, these doctors, these scientists. And you know why 75% of our day is focused on the negative? Do you know why? I don't. So, you know, everything goes back to the creation of a human being, right? So when we were created as cavemans, our mind and body is hardwired, right?

We're an animal. We're just an intelligent animal. But we're still an animal we're just an intelligent animal but we're we're still an animal right every animal is born with a survival instinct we see it right an animal uh that lives in the jungle he has a survival instinct that's what keeps him alive a human being since day one has a survival instinct and our mind is connected to our body. We're highly intelligent, so that means that we can think about something that's very stressful, and we'll feel that stress through our body, right?

Think about, like, anxieties. When you think about something, it forms anxieties. You think about a loss or a failure, you have anxieties or whatever. You can feel it. You can physically feel this. Okay, so the human being's neurological pathway is connected from the mind to the body. We're neurologically wired that way. Fast forward that, you know, fast forward that to modern times.

Well, we're not being chased by a saber-toothed tiger. We're not, you know, we're not trying to fight to survive for our next meal anymore. But what is today? What's today's saber-toothed tiger? What's today's threat? And I'll tell you, for a normal human being, today's threat is the opinions of other people. And acceptance. Acceptance, opinions of other people. On acceptance. Acceptance, opinions of other people.

On today's social world, it's social media, right? When somebody talks bad about you, right? Think about how many kids are killing themselves today because they're getting insulted on a social media platform. There's words, right? But they're so focused on that because their survival instinct is saying, focus on that because that's negative. And you need to look at that because that's a threat to you. So imagine you can have a thousand people that says, you know, Sean, you're the man.

Really respect you, man. Thank you for being such a great American. And you have one guy who said, no, do you focus on that? I do. You do. I do too. Because that's a natural instinct as an animal species. You're hardwired that way.

You're going to focus on that because now that's negative, right? Well, that's not a path to happiness. That might keep you alive, right? But that's not a path to happiness. That might keep you alive, right? But that's not a path to happiness. So what I realized was my training and everything that kicked in, I will never find happiness. If I continue to live with the same mindset that made me who I am in the military, I will never find happiness. So I went to Tony Robbins' seminar, right? It's about leadership and life. And Tony Robbins' claim to fame is he can change his physiology.

He has this exercise that he does to change his physiology. And if the body's connected to the mind, if you change your physiology, your physical state, then you can change your mind and how it reacts. Remember that smile I talked about, smile and be brave? Yeah. Well, the brain is connected neurologically to a smile registers to your brain that everything is good, everything's okay because you've been establishing

that neurological pathway since you're a child. Smiling, it's good, right? So now that your body is sending information to your brain, your brain is saying, hey, everything's good because you're smiling. Same thing. So Tony Robbins talked about if you have a bad day, you change your physiology, and then that can change your mind state. So what he does is he changes physiology it's like booting up a computer right and then now he's going to inject positive thoughts into that computer which is your brain and that's how you do it so i'm like oh that makes sense it makes

sense but how's how's that happen right so i went through his seminar because i wanted to learn it more and the guy took all these practices from around the world. He meditated with monks. He walked through fire. I mean, this guy is the real deal. So I realized that majority of us, if we walk around, we focus on the negative, and you're just going to be a negative guy. So if your survival instinct is to focus on the negative and that's a human thing, how do you break it? You ever had something that happened to you and you can't shake it?

You think about it all day subconsciously. You just can't, it doesn't matter. You can beat your head to a wall and it's just there. It's always there. You can go cut the grass and it's still there in the background talking to you. Yeah. That's because you can't cut the grass and it's still there in the background talking to you yeah that's because you can't shake it so tony robbins talked about changing the physiology so how do you do that right so you know in the mornings is when i practice it the most nowadays in the mornings and uh the reason why i say that is if i'm able to wake up at a peak stake in the morning, you ever had a good morning with a lot of energy and you feel like you can accomplish anything during the day? Yeah.

You ever had a bad morning where you don't feel like doing anything? Had those too. So if I can tell you, if I could put your mind and body at a peak stake every single day, you think you're going to accomplish anything as a human being? Yeah. Yeah. Right? So that's called living intelligently. So now I want it because now I understand how the mind and body connection works, right?

I understand the intelligence, the situation. Now I can develop a course of action to intercept that, right? So first is monitor my thoughts, going back to that monk. I start monitoring, I write down what I'm thinking. It was, man, it was so negative. Just negative. And then I started changing my practice in the morning. Just instead of meditating in the morning, right, I started throwing in other applications like gratitude. You know, if I can express gratitude in the morning, then how can you not be happy if

you're grateful for everything in your life? How are you expressing that? Okay. So you have a lot of things that's great in your life, Sean. You have a beautiful family, a beautiful house, a successful company, but yet you're focused on the negative. Why? Because of that animal instinct. It forces you to focus on.

But if I change your physiology and I inject, John, you have a great life. You have a beautiful family. You have a beautiful life and a beautiful company that you started yourself. Great job. And you inject that in every morning. You're grateful for that. How can you not have a great day? You're at a peak state now. Right? So I do. So my process now in the morning is I get up at four 30 in the morning. I changed my physiology is I take a shower and for the next, for the last minute, I turn it to ice cold water.

And basically I'm shocking my body. So I'm seeing all these blood cells to my muscles to keep it warm, right? So now I'm truly alive. I could feel my body alive because muscle is rushing. I mean, blood is rushing through all my muscles to keep it warm. So I get out and get dressed. And then I go out to my quiet meditation place. And there's a cross out there. And I pray to God. Right? So prayer.

So the thing is, I'm not here to talk about religion. Right? But I am here to talk about if you believe in a higher form of living. Right? If you believe in a higher purpose than yourself, a higher being, a creator, then you're going to live up to that creator. You're going to live up to that power, that higher power. If you don't believe in a higher power, you're going to live up to yourself, which is addictions, selfishness. which is addictions, selfishness.

You're going to drive your whole day around everything that's good for you and not everything that's good for that higher power. That makes sense. Okay. So if you believe in that, right, now you can live up to that higher power. So first it was God, right? And then I go into changing my physiology. So literally I sit down and I change my breath, my breathing patterns. You think about when you're a SEAL.

So when you hold your breath and you hold that breath and you exhale that breath, well, you have more oxygen in your brain. It changes your physiology, right? So basically I'm waking up my brain. I'm injecting more oxygen in your brain. It changes your physiology, right? So basically, I'm waking up my brain. I'm injecting more oxygen into my brain. So I take nine quick steps, like, and then I inhale my last breath at 10. 10 seconds inhale, hold for 10 seconds, 10 second exhale. And you're going to feel it. It changes your whole physiology.

Right. And then at that moment, when, when my brain's awake, I have a notebook and I physically, not thinking, I physically write down three to four things I'm grateful for in my life. You know, for me, it's, I'm grateful for my wife, her health and her love. I'm grateful for my parents, their health and support and love. I'm grateful for God and this day. I'm grateful for my health. And I promise to this higher power that I will do everything within this day to be my best self. So I inject those positive thoughts after I wake up the brain. And then after that, I go into meditation. So here and now.

So basically, I'm training my brain to be in the present moment. Okay, so I go into a form of meditation. It's called mindfulness meditation of Zazen where it's five seconds inhale five seconds exhale five seconds inhale five seconds exhale there's a posture a form of meditation you know um so i go into that and then i do about for now i do 45 minutes of that because i can lock in now back then i couldn't right and as soon as that man i feel um it's like drinking coffee right that you feel that adrenaline going through your body that that energy resonating through your body they actually did a uh a study on this this monk that was meditating and they had

um i don't know these spectrums of, and they found energy radiating from his body. No shit. Yeah. So I feel that's what's going on in my body. I feel incredible energy in the mornings. And after that, I burn it down, man. I go down to my gym, and I destroy my body, depending on whatever fitness plan I have going on.

And it changes. My goal changes, and that changes. So the Tony Robbins seminar, this is the keynote here, and you're going to take away so much from this, is there are moral needs of a human being. Tony talks about, he breaks it down into significance, certainty, uncertainty, love and connection. Love and connection being the same thing, right?

And then he has spiritual needs, which is growth and contribution. Okay? So a normal human being, man, you think about for us to be who we are, type A personality, to be who we were in the military, in the world and who we are in war, man, you have to place a higher level of standard on yourself, right? You have this higher level than a normal person because you pass through that rigorous training. You have to have a strong mind. So significance had to have been your number one priority that you put as number one importance in your life. Because you have such a high standard. Non-quit attitude.

Because you hold yourself at a higher standard than anybody else. So significance is your number one. And that's going to get you pretty far in life when it comes to business and career. Because you're placing the higher standard first. Makes sense. And then being a CEO or Green Beret, we work in the uncertainty. We're not scared to take risk. That's why you're successful in your business. We're not scared to take risk. That's why you're successful

in your business. You're not scared to take risk, right? And then you have certainty and then you have love and connection. Now, where I went wrong was what worked for me in the military. I was trying to take that, what made me so successful and replicate that into the next evolution of my life, which is now business, public exposure, fame, being in TV shows and video games. I was trying to take what worked for me and made me significant in the Army and trying to replicate that in a civilian sector, and it didn't work. I never found happiness, but my career and my success in business was growing. But I wasn't happy.

I placed too much emphasis on significance. And so after this Tony Robbins seminar, I realized that whatever you place value as first as a moral value would decide how you're going to live. Place the value as first as a moral value would decide how you're going to live. So you place significance first, Sean, because you're this badass Navy SEAL. And then now you go into a business world and you're just a huge successful person because your significance is first. A guy on social media who is jealous of your success badmouths you. Now you focus on that because you place significance first. You care about what that other person thinks because that's so important to you because significance is what's driving you in your life. I was that way.

I was never happy. So I would place significance with compassion, love. You know, I place that first now. And love is tied to gratitude. Gratitude is tied to happiness. Right? Significance is tied to, yes, it's a powerful energy that can get you there, but the negative is you're concentrating on what other people say about you. Yeah.

You care about living for somebody else's opinion because you value significance. I think that also ties into ego. Yes. Huge. Do you believe me when I say majority of the team guys have a huge ego? I more than believe it. I know it. Yeah, I was guilty for that.

Yeah. Because that's the culture. You just don't see it until you step away from that culture. And I'm not bad-mouthing the culture. You have to be who you have to be when you're there. And that's the fire and the drive that makes you who you are on the teams. But in this evolution, it's not going to work for you. It's not.

Yeah. You know, like I said, you're going to, like the brain is hardwired like a caveman, you know, since the beginning of time. So you're focused on, because you value significance, you're focused on the negative. You're focused on, because you value significance, you're focused on the negative. So easily if you just place significance, it's still there. Your higher standard is still there, but you just don't place it first anymore. So when somebody badmouths me, when somebody's jealous of my success, when somebody ridicules me because they don't... Man, I'm a human being, man.

And I have my own opinions on things. And not everybody's going to agree with you or like you, right? So how do you deal with that? You know, when somebody insults me online or in front of my face, or not really in front of my face, but when they do it online, you know, I just remind myself that I don't hold significance that important anymore. Would you say the first step to that is probably don't just don't engage? Yeah, because, you know, we agree this is a hateful world.

We saw the worst in humanity. In our old former jobs, we saw the worst. So in a hateful world, what are you going to do? Give more hate? Yeah. It takes a stronger person to show compassion. So I do. I show compassion. So when a hater hates on me, you know, I'm grateful. I am actually grateful. I look at that and I'm like, wow, so grateful that you fabricated a fake account and you're talking to me. You're putting me down. So you're spending your day and your energy on somebody you don't even like. Thank you. Thank you for thinking of me. And because you have no control over your emotions, which is the cause of majority of the hate in the world,

no control over your emotions, which is the cause of majority of the hate in the world, this is how you act out. So I'm grateful that first you took time to insult me like that, because you're thinking of me and you're viewing me at a distance. But second, I'm grateful because I don't want to be like you and I forgive you. So what I just did, think about what I just did. I changed something that was negative into something that's positive. So it doesn't stay in my mind anymore because it's not negative, so I'm not gonna think about it.

It's defeating that survival mindset. Yeah. Now I look at that as, wow, that's a win. I'm grateful that you did that. So now I i look at that as wow that's a win i'm grateful that you did that so now i just don't care Nutrient survival. Spec O ops grade nutrition you know um you'd mentioned before that uh you've written down all your flaws when you left uh the team, and I think the most significant flaw maybe was kindness. She said you did not have kindness, and you articulated that that was a weakness.

You know, most guys coming out, probably just about everybody I know, would not consider not having kindness a weakness. And so being around that for 23 years, you know, you don't know what you don't know. So how did you figure out that by not having kindness in your heart or in your daily life, that was a weakness. Because I think it's actually quite the opposite in the team where kindness would be considered weakness. So you got to think about like two different evolutions, right?

So what I drove as a weapon in this evolution, which is hate, you know, because in war you do use hate as a weapon. You know, you drive off of that because you're, I mean, you are fearful for your life in a gunfight. So you use that aggression, that hate. But how do you take hate and put it into a civilian world and business? It doesn't work. Right? And yeah, what the team guys, you know, and when I say this is, you know, when I left the teams, I left the teams, man.

You know, the team life, and you can back me up on this, is a very opinionated world. Yeah. You're a type A personality, you know? So guys, they're going to tell you what they think and their opinions on things, and it's just the way it is, you know? So when you step away from the teams, now you start hearing your own voice and what's truly important to you. And for me, it was happiness. So if I hold on to hate and my end state is to be happy and complete and successful in my life and be happily married with my wife, then that kind of goes against that. and successful in my life and be happily married with my wife then that kind of goes against that

so i had to kill off the energy that kept me alive it's like killing off your best friend yeah you know so kindness let's talk about that at one point you know in and after the war i realized I'm not a kind human being anymore. I'm not mean or rude or anything. I'm very respectful, but I was just, I wasn't where I wanted to be in kindness. So I would get dressed. I'll go out in town and hang out at Starbucks. And when somebody walks in the door, I'll open up the door for them. I'll be like, have a nice day. I'll go up to the counter. I'm like, thank you so much for making me this coffee. I swear, I go here because of you, and you make the best coffee.

Thank you so much. And I brighten up their day. You think that was hard? I do. That was very hard. It was very hard to even talk to a human being. But because I wanted to be kind, right, I needed to change who I am as a human being. So I went out and I was polite and kind.

And after a year, I was kind again. You see? And the kindness led me to happiness. So you have to pick your energies, right, in life. You have to pick your energies right in life you have to pick your battles your energy and for me i realized that i put too much emphasis on significance and that's why i failed in this evolution i still have it i mean you still see me getting up at 4 30 in the morning i still meditate i still so that's significance but I just don't put value on that. It's so high anymore.

It makes a whole lot of sense. Yeah, love and compassion is where I put it because I realize that's tied into gratitude and God and everything else. So if I put that as the most important thing, then how can I not live my life in beauty and peace? And how can I not live my life in beauty and peace? And if I realize that something's affecting me, I know the practice of changing my physiology and getting rid of that thought. So I always have great days. Took me a long time to come realize that, you know. And let's talk about the last two, right? So spirituality.

So you have your spiritual needs as in growth and contribution. You think about this, Sean, like if you, you know, you accomplish all this and then one day, let's say you retire and you don't want to work anymore. You don't want to educate yourself anymore or anything new. And you just want to relax and just chill out. There's no growth in your life anymore. Within six months, you're going to be depressed. The reason why I'm saying this is because, you know, I'm in a Hollywood world and I meet some very successful people and they're very depressed. You know, you would think like you're an actor.

You make this amount of money. You got all this stuff. That's not what's going to make you happy. Let's say, you know, one of the proud days in your life was probably graduating Bud's, right? Yeah. Okay, so you felt the top of your world. How long did that last?

Not very long. Exactly. So growth, right? You can be this successful businessman, millionaire, entrepreneur of your own, you know, be this role model and everything, but if you're not really growing on a daily basis, you're going to be depressed. Robin Williams. I mean, do you think that has to do with ego at all, though?

You know, constantly growing? Yeah. Remember what I told you last night? I said, you know, if you let go of the ego and realize that you're in a new phase of your life you just let that go who cares yeah you know who you are let go of that ego you don't need to you don't need to defend yourself against this person show them gratitude thank you for thinking of me and then continue on with your own ways, you know. But ego is a huge, it stops you from living a complete life. Yeah.

It stops you from learning, growing. And growth is spiritual, right? So growth, every day I educate myself on whatever, you know. I'm a huge science guy. I'm a huge history guy. So I read, educate myself. I learned new, uh, trade crafts, you know, cameras. I, I, I'm an artist. I'm a gardener, you know what I mean? So I get into all that and I find that that balanced me from a warrior, you know, and I'm growing as a human being. The gym is huge for me because I push myself to muscle failure and through muscle failure is growth.

And then I, contribution, right? So during COVID, my wife and I would go and pack groceries for elderly people that cannot go out and go shopping for their own food. So we pack foods for them to deliver to their homes. And that was contribution. Contribution being a Ronin to give, to teach, you know? So that's how I overcame the depression by changing what was important in my life,

restructuring the order of what's important in my life. How long did it take you to quit living in the past? That's something that most, I would say the majority of guys coming out, it's a major hurdle, and it's a hurdle that a lot of guys don't ever get over is living in the past and consistently comparing themselves to their peers or the guys that are coming in. It doesn't matter who. Anybody who's been in the community it's a lot of guys are consist are consistently comparing themselves their their service record to the next guy's service record and it's just this never-ending you know it just never

ends yeah absolutely so you look that's that's tied into ego right so let's say you're this It's tied into ego, right? So let's say you're this really successful career commando, and then you got this young guy who came in, and you're like, oh, back in my day, I did this, this, this. I had this. You know, you're nothing compared to what I went through. That's ego. Man, he's a great American just like you.

It's just this is error, right? So first I stop comparing myself, and, uh, I show gratitude to, to the team guys. Cause that's a hard life. Yeah, it is. Right. So I, first I show gratitude. Thank you for what you do. You're in the next generational warriors and they think they're better than me. Okay. You're better than me. Thank you. I don't, I don't place significance first in your work. So that's what I'm talking about. It ties into that. You know, when team guys can't let it go, that's because they're not living in the present moment.

They're not applying to practice to live in the present moment. You can't just, oh, I want to live in the present moment and that's it. No, you have to practice. You're going to have to fail. You're going to have to try, you know, every single day and whatever you do every day becomes who you are. Right. So for me, it was a practice of meditation every single day to live in the present moment. Like I told you, it took me five years.

Yeah. You know, all this leads to, you know, happiness. Right. And everybody says, you know, happiness. It takes, it takes a lot of work. It's a, lot of work. It is a decision you have to make every day to actually be happy. And that's the beautiful word you just said, decision. So individual as a human being, no matter your teams or your past or whatever, you have to make a decision as a human being right now

that I don't want to be like this anymore. You know, that's where that moment of me reflecting in the mirror and that rage that came across me, me dumping that medication down the toilet, that was the decision I made at that point that I would not take one more moment of this. take one more moment of this decisions right man i still have team guys coming me egotistical guys talking and all that bad mouthing other guys and you know what i do i separate myself from them yeah good for you yeah it's just for for what? Yeah. You know, you want to badmouth another American? Okay. You're who you are then. Yeah.

And I'm not going to judge you, man. I know you're going through it. So I don't judge them. You know, I wish them the best. But as for me, you know, I know I'm not perfect, and I'm just trying to right my wrongs, and I'm trying to live my life as a human being to be happy. So that's what led to a lot of my success, you know, is it's really the more you give, the more you receive, you know, I went to Japan, you know? So after five years, we filmed for the History Channel. It was right before I got asked to go into Anthony Ward Call of Duty.

I was at a moment of, I wouldn't say I was totally at peace, but I was controlling my emotions better, right? And I told my wife that I wanted to go to Japan. And I wanted to walk the path of Bushido, of a ronin. And she goes, what's that mean? I'm going to go visit the 47 ronins. I'm going to pay homage to them. And I'm going to go to Kyoto, Japan and visit Mus 47 Ronins. I'm going to pay homage to them. And I'm going to go to Kumamoto, Japan and visit Musashi's cave. And I want to have a talk with Musashi. And she was like, what?

What's that mean? Right? So we, we linked it with our Japanese friends. One's a journalist and he wanted to do a story of a modern day Ronin, you know? So when I went to Japan, they gave us the red carpet treatment, man. They really took care of us, you know? To be a foreigner, as in not Japanese, for them to treat me the way they did was a huge honor. When I say that is they took me to Osumotown where sumo wrestling was developed you know sumo wrestlers uh were wrestlers back in because there there were a farming uh society in Japan right so the sumo wrestlers will fight and then they'll uh it basically kicks off the harvest seasons for them so it's tied into that culture of farming and stuff like that.

So I went to old farming town in Japan where sumo wrestling was started, the birth. And they took me to this old dojo where they closed down the dojo. And they had this dirt floor and they had this huge log that was embedded into the ground where the sumos would slap, you know? And they literally, they put me in the center of the stage and they perform like they were practicing back in the eighth century.

And they bowed and they paid their respects to Ronan. And then we went to a four, so they shut down this four floors of, there was this sword collector, an armor collector. He had swords dating back 800 years. Wow. You know, and what I want to do is I want to put this history onto you. You know, the swords and the armor. After World War II, General MacArthur demanded, off a peace treaty, he demanded that the Japanese, on their surrender treaty, that they would turn in all their swords.

Because he was eliminating the Bushido code from the Japanese. Right? So the Japanese were turning in their swords, okay? And then the Americans, they banded swords, they destroy majority of the swords. These are war-stating periods Japan swords that fought in histories that were hammered down by generations. that were hand-me-down by generations. So when I sat there, these swords that were around me survived. The war, the bombings, right?

The war-stating periods, you know what I mean? This should have not been in existence. This all went underground, all this art. The art of Budo had to go underground after World War II because they couldn't even practice the art of combat anymore. So all of that was underground. So here I am. I'm sitting. I'm seeing all this armor, the swords and everything.

And the sword collector had this book, and he would talk about the history of this clan. It was really cool what they did. the history of this clan. It was really cool what they did. And eventually we came out to my bladesmith who is, he lives in the town where Oda Nabagata was a daimyo. So Oda Nabagata, if you look at my weapon on my M4, it's the Sakura symbol, the clan symbol. Well, that was his clan symbol. Oda rose up to be one of the most powerful daimyos in all of Japan. He almost united all of Japan during war-staying periods. And here I am in his hometown.

And that's where I received my swords, heaven and earth. Wow. Right. So it was a huge ceremony. They presented to me traditionally how they would, you know, the two swords. And what's really cool about these swords is they were scanned into the video game, Call of Duty, heaven and earth. So those are the swords that I slice up my guys with on Call of Duty, but that's where I received it.

That's amazing. And then the final culmination was we flew out to Kiyomoto, Japan. And I had a driver meet us at the airport, and Ruthie and I, and we had our friends, which was, they live in California, but they were there. And we drove about an hour and a half from the airport up in the mountains to where Musashi Miyamoto found his piece that numbered at the Buddhist grounds, the sacred grounds. So we drove into the sacred grounds and there was a huge statue of Musashi meditating. And there was this uh bell and then basically you got this line that comes down this rope and you pray and then um you supposedly what you do is you pray you ring the bell and that sends it to the buddhas right the god their god so um they had a lot of warrior like bushido stuff i was like like digging this monk grounds, right?

Because it's a very warrior base. So then you walk from the parking lot to the entrance of the temples. Remember, this is sacred grounds, right? So there was a monk out in the temples, and you had to walk through the monk temples. out in the temples and you had to walk through the monk temples. And when you walk through the monk temples, they had Musashi stuff laying in a zivit, his swords, his pen, where he wrote the Book of Fire Rings, his scrolls.

I mean, it was really cool. This was his original stuff. And then you walk through basically this core reef area and this trail and it leads you to the cave right where he wrote the book of five rings so we we went to the cave and um you know it was really weird that morning because you know it's an open ground. That's a tourist area. It's a highly popular area for tourists to come. That morning, it was only us. Nobody else was on that sacred ground. The driver even said, I never seen it this empty, basically. So he stopped at the entrance of the cave and and Ruthie asked me, you know, this is your moment.

So I climbed up the coral reefs to the entry of the cave, and that's where I saw the rock where Miyamoto wrote the Book of Five Rings. I don't know, man. It was so surreal, you know, that emotion. I can't describe it, you know that that emotion I can't I can't describe it you know so when I entered that cave you know I bow to Miyamoto about the massage and I took off my boots and I climbed up in that rock and I sat there the rock where he wrote the book of five rings I sat sat there and overlooked, you know, the sacred grounds, the Buddhist sacred grounds. And I meditated.

And I said my piece, you know, that closed off the chapter of the war for me. You know, and I thank Masashi for his words. And then I climbed back down the cave and then Ruthie went up there and they did their thing, but it was really spiritual for me. And I would say that it was so surreal because in my darkest moments,

when I was wrapped in that blanket, walking around the house defeated, it was Masashi's words from the Book of Five Rings written in 1645. And here I am in this cave, sitting at the very spot that he wrote that Book of Five Rings. And that's where I closed the book on war. Wow. And when I came out of the cave, I don't know, I just felt at peace.

Focused. The cave, I don't know, I just felt at peace. Focused. Did you feel a sense of relief? I felt hungry, as in hunger for life. And I knew my path now as a Ronin was, you need to come back and you need to influence as much people as you can. You need to utilize any platform to try to better this world. You need to walk the path of Bushido.

And you're in the dull phase of your life, which is to give back. And it resonated with me. I'm in dull. And this is it. So you need to live it. Live it up. So after I came out, I felt, you know, this urge of purpose again. And then we drove about 45 minutes to Masashi's final resting place where he was buried.

Masashi, in his final moments, felt death setting in in that cave. You know, he felt death setting in. So at that point, he was this master swordsman that, you know, he was well-respected as a warrior. And he asked his closest retainers to help him onto his knees. Now, death is setting in, right? It's the final moments of his life. And they got him to his knees, and he held his sword in a kneeling position,

the warrior position, and that's how he died. Because the path of Bushido is to not fear death, is to embrace death. So what Musashi did was death was setting in and he was going to walk into the afterlife as a warrior with a sword in hand. So after he died, he um to be buried right he wanted to be buried at this burial ground was a sacred burial ground that's where i was going to and it was entry to the uh a temple right and what misashi wanted was his spirits his spirit to wave at the future samurais as they walk past that road where his burial grounds are at. His spirit wanted to remain there so he could see the warriors of the samurais.

So we drove there and I went to Musashi's burial ground and it was really cool, man. It was very surreal. It was in a Zen garden. Musashi's statue was there. You know, I paid homage to that Ronin. I thanked him. And I closed off my chapter on war. and I closed off my chapter on war.

You know, so by the time I came back to America, I was running. I was ready. You know, when I say I was running is I had the courage, the purpose, and the energy now and the spirit to walk this path. And I've been walking ever since, you know. So that was the story of how I closed that chapter in the war, you know. But Ronin Tactics, we're just blessed, man.

You know, my wife, she has a master's degree, a business degree. So she spearheads the business side of the growth of Ronin. And I'm the face and I communicate with, you know, the people that are hurting in this world. And I try to heal them through my words, through my practice. I try to set the example on social media. Because you think about this, Sean, social media, man man it could be such a powerful tool right yeah like think about when we were growing up man right if you and i if there was no social media you and i would never met right you these these fans and followers they would never be able to access you or talk to you. But now, so basically I'm saying the world is a smaller place.

Yes, it is. Right? The world is a smaller place. What we do as a society is we take something that's so good, that can help so many people, and the people that can't control their emotions, they use that platform to put down other people to ridicule to make fun of them to create hate sites to make fun of other people right yeah

so i never wanted that and i wanted to use my presence my fame my exposure to better this world, because why not? I have the platform now. Yeah. You know, if I'm a Call of Duty character, I realize that, you know, the next generation, the younger generations are playing my character. Why not give them a word to better themselves? Why not show them the path? You know, if they want to live a full life, then they'll walk that path. It's up to them. But I will never ridicule somebody. Man, words can help so many people. Well, you're doing a hell of a job, man.

Thank you. Yeah, you really are. And that's an amazing journey, you know, that you just brought us through. And, you know, I mean, yeah, I'm pretty speechless. That's amazing. And you did it yourself, you know, so. You know, what people don't get is like, you know,

when I said I study how the mind works, I actually did. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's like you said last night. You taught yourself this? Yeah. I realized that I had an issue, and it was a wound that I can't see. If you were to shoot me in the arm right now, I got shot in the arm, I see that wound.

I could put a tourniquet on and stop that bleeding. But if I can't see the wound, where do I start? Right. So the five years of reflecting was healing my wounds since childhood. Yeah. You know, because, you know, like I told you, you know, when I was going through it and I was free, no press and doing all that, I didn't really think about it. I didn't tie in like I was a ref no press and doing all that, I didn't really think about it. I didn't tie in. Like I was a ref G now I'm giving back. Never. Now I knew that as a child,

I knew that was a path, but when I was doing it, I wasn't thinking about that. It wasn't until like when I shut off the world and I reflected back on my life was like, you did do that. shut off the world and I reflected back on my life was like, you did do that. You're a lot more, you know, in the moment than probably just about anybody I know. And, um, do you pick up on a lot of details in life coincidences and, and is your faith in a higher power stronger now that you're more in the moment because maybe you've seen, you know, you were able to connect some dots or certain things have happened that maybe you wouldn't have noticed if you weren't in the moment?

You know, I wasn't raised about religion. You know, my mother's Buddhist, and she's a great person, a great human being. That was the religion she was raised on. And I don't judge anybody on their religion. If you're a good human being, you're a good human being. I know if you respect a higher power. I got that.

It doesn't matter what God, as long as you're not extremists or hurting other people off of religion. But I never had religion, Sean. You know, I didn't go to church when I was a child. My stepfather, he wasn't a very religious. He's a great man, a beautiful guy, but I wasn't taught that. I wasn't taught that. And, you know, when I was going through growing up and as a young soldier in the military, you know, they have chapels and all that.

And I'm sorry to say this, but I have to tell you, you know, I was going to ranger training and I would go to church so I can just eat the bread because I was so fucking hungry. I was so hungry that course. And I knew like that would break me away. So it was all for the wrong reasons you know well i didn't necessarily mean uh religion yeah i just meant something greater than you know so it wasn't into when i faced depression was when i had to reflect on a higher power you know i mean the universe man so big yeah right so big we're we're but a grain of sand in this world we're nothing yeah our problems our issues is nothing but that higher power man that created all this beauty if you don't if you don't believe in that like

I said you're gonna live for who you think you are now right so when I believed in a higher power when I accepted that you know when I when I truly accepted it and I surrender myself to the higher power then that allowed me to have the energy to wake up in the morning and to live up to the higher power, then that allowed me to have the energy to wake up in the morning and to live up to the expectation of the higher power. Because when I want to lay in bed and I don't want to do anything, I say, no, I have to get up because I believe in this power. Yeah. And that drives me every single day. And when somebody's mean to me or they're cruel in their words or whatever, because

I believe in a higher power, I look at them with more compassion. Because you know what, man? If a veteran talks bad about me, you know why I say that now? Man, I used to go, oh, whatever, you know? But now I go, he's gone through it. Yeah. And I forgive him i believe in a man you know i do and i think you know i wouldn't say i was in doubt but

the final i've seen a lot of little signs or you know whatever kind of stuff that you tell somebody and they think you're full of shit but the last one was uh that flag behind you right there is all i have to remember my best friend by uh you know who's who's dead now and he died on september 4th and uh and uh i come up here and talk to him you know every once in a in a while. And my wife does, too. She got close with him towards the end of his days. And, you know, nobody really knows this, but, you know, we've been trying to have a baby, and she's pregnant now.

Congratulations. Thank you. And my son is going to be born on September 4th, the day my best friend died. That's powerful. Powerful. Or at least that's the due date. But that's not a coincidence. No.

So I'm all in. I believe in it too, man. But, but, um, you know, I kind of want to wrap this thing up too. And, uh, I just want to tell you, I mean, I really mean that, that the journey that you've been on is amazing, you know, from birth all the way until now. And, uh, and, uh, you are, you know, helping a ton of people and you are so full of wisdom, you know, that anybody that's willing to listen, um, they have a lot to benefit from, you know listening to you and uh so thank you thank you i appreciate you and like i say you know the power of the universe is what brought us together and with your platform you're doing some great things man and i and i really wanted to to utilize this platform to to send a message out you know to so many people that are in pain, so many

people that's lost in this world, you know, don't give into the hate. Yeah. Right. Give into the powers that are going to bring you to the higher level. Right. Don't give into the hate. It's so easy to, you know, in today's world, it seems like that's becoming a norm. And that's why you don't see me really talking too much

about the asian hate thing yeah because you know what man i faced with racism my whole life my whole life but that don't ever that would never decide the way i'm going to live and that's not the energy that i'll ever project to others yeah you know so it's through that pain you find a higher purpose so when people ask me you know what was erroneous like what's that mean is to be able to submerge yourself in pain and suffering right because you understand by going through pain and suffering in life that that will allow you to grow as a human being. The discomfort is through the growth, right? When we're discomfort, when we're uncomfortable about things, we change.

If I take a lighter and I put it underneath your hand, right, and the light is not on and I just put it there. You're not going to move. There's no pain. But if I light that thing and it burns your hand, you're going to move it. So you have to go where the pain is at. You have to go where the struggle is at because that's where the growth is at. That's the only way that you will have enough energy to change as a human being. And, you know, I think back to my path as a Ronin and where I am today. It was because I was eight years old and I was crying in my bedroom because I was tired of being weak and defeated and ridiculed, spit on. I wanted to be a stronger human being.

And I knew that I needed to go through the struggles and losses in order for me to arrive at being this person that I wish to be in life. You know, along with that comes a lot of pain, you know, but pain is needed. Yeah. Well, I just want to say thank you for coming on I really really appreciate your time and I cannot wait to get this out so

absolutely brother I appreciate you and thank you for everything you do you're welcome and best of luck to you thank you And best of luck to you. Thank you. Celebrate the Black Friday sales event at Woodhouse Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram in Blair. We'll be right back. technology, or comfort, delivering confidence and convenience for 29 years. Woodhouse Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram in Blair is your trusted auto partner. Visit us off Highway 30 in Blair or online at woodhousechryslerjeepdodge.com. Is 2024 bringing exciting or unexpected changes to your life? I know my life has seen a lot of changes since the start of the new year between my family and my growing business.

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