Justen Keating - Episode 869

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As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show veteran, former contractor and close protection expert, Justin Keating. Now in this conversation we discuss a host of topics from his journey into the military, his unique 9-11 story, his deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, the world of contracting, working for the CIA, close protection, jujitsu, writing and so much more.

Now before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment, go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating. Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for others to find. And this is a free library of almost 900 episodes now.

So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them. So with that being said, I introduce to you, Justin Keating. Enjoy. Well, Justin, I want to start by saying firstly, thank you to Isabel Ramirez from CrossFit Iron Legion for introducing us and secondly, I want to welcome you onto the Behind the Shield podcast today. Thank you. What a pleasure to be here.

So where on planet earth are we finding you this afternoon? So I am in a little town called Pea Ridge, Arkansas. It's up in the northwest corner of the state. We call it Walmart country. The Walmart headquarters is here. Now is that I heard you talking about doing working with them, we'll get to that later. But I mean, that must have been quite jarring the role that you had during COVID. But we'll save that story for a minute. But is that where Walmart was founded then in Arkansas? Yes, it was.

And what impact did the creation of that absolute, you know, monster of a corporation have on your little area in Arkansas? It is nothing moves around here without their say so. I will say that. But in a positive manner, they do a lot for their communities around here. They have really like built up a lot of just undeveloped areas that have now developed and they've brought in I mean, there's restaurants, we have big malls now.

I mean, I want to say there's an estimated around like 500 people every three weeks or a month we're moving here to North West Arkansas. And the some of the Walton grandkids have built hands down the world's best mountain bike trails in basically everywhere. They call this the Aspen of mountain biking essentially. I mean, people from all over the world are coming here to ride. So I mean, they've done a lot for this community here.

Now just playing devil's advocate, for example, Disney when they first went to Orlando, the philosophy that was everyone's kind of love of the films and now creating, you know, these parks where people can be immersed at their inception, I think was a beautiful thing and it drew a lot of people. So Orlando is what it is now because of that and ultimately other theme parks coming in.

But there's now and I'm just specifically talking about Disney, there's a point where there was a lot of overreach and maybe it's morphed from the original concept. You know, if you have all these job creation people are coming towards, is there any downside of maybe, you know, of a part of Arkansas that was one way? Oh, for sure. I mean, just alone with the traffic, traffic has gone through the roof, you know, for a little small area. Housing prices have gone up.

We have a housing shortage here actually and not a lot of public land for these guys or land to buy up to build on. So they're impeding into a lot of the farmers communities that used to be around here and stuff. And then to be expected with growth the way it is, I would say we do have a lot of people from other states that are a little more oppressive than conservative politics are moving here and they slowly kind of change the atmosphere a little bit, you know.

And so I mean, there's a give and take, there's pros and cons of it all. I'd say my biggest complaint is the damn traffic. It's funny as I sit here now, there's a truck across the street from my house where my neighbors has a sticker on the back that says, don't New York my Florida. So I think that's, I think they agree with you on that. Yeah. All right. Well, I would have to start at the very beginning of your timeline.

So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings? Yeah. So grew up in Kansas city, Missouri. I lived there most of my childhood, throughout the eighties. I have two half brothers. I never met my real biological father. My stepdad had adopted me when I was real young. So I had his last name and then I, that's where real quick. I changed it later on to go back to my birth name, which is the current name I have.

I sense a childhood trauma story coming. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a, that's a long, that's a whole podcast for like a psych podcast, but, but no group in Kansas city. And then we briefly moved to St. Louis for a bit. And then the bag got transferred down here to Arkansas. We've been here since I want to say roughly 1991. So I'm pretty much from Arkansas at this point. Grew up here, just playing sports. Soccer is my big sport, grown up. And then kind of what's weird is I got jumped in seventh grade.

I got beat up real bad and then bullied all through junior high and most of high school. And my mom wanted me to basically learn how to defend myself. So the only thing we had around here was a Taekwondo. So she put me in Taekwondo and about three years of that, after, you know, getting to my black belt level, I was like, okay, yeah, man, I'm good. I can, I can fight back, you know? And so, but never actually had to use it, but that's a story for another time.

But now I graduated high school and then just kind of work some odd jobs here and there. But right after high school, I decided to join the US Army. I had always had this idea of military in my life. I mean, I even have a picture of me when I was probably about seven years old, literally holding a toy AK-47. So it's kind of like ingrained in my mind for my whole life. Like everything I did as a child compared me for the military. So 18 comes around.

The only thing I really knew about that time was Green Berets and Navy Seals. That's the only thing I really knew about. And I was like, man, I don't know if I want to go to the Navy, sound all that cool. I was like, oh, let's go to the Army. So I get to Fort Benning, Georgia, and I get stuck at their, what they call the reception station, which is called the 30th AG. They're like admin processing place. And I literally was stuck there for almost two months.

I didn't get picked up by a training company. And I'm like, man, you know what? This is the military. I'm like, screw this. I'm out. I want to go home. Send me home. I quit basically. And so they sent me home with like an uncharacterized discharge. And then about two years after, it just kind of fell off my record. But that when I quit on the military, it just kind of ate at me and ate at me internally. What the hell? Like, why did I do that? You know, like that was like my shot.

And I was like, man, I may never get another shot to go back and fix that, you know, or serve. And then 9-11 happened. And I watched the second plane hit the tower and I literally got in my car. I drive straight to the recruiting office and I had full plans on going back into the Army and fixing that issue of quitting on them. But the only office that was open happened to be the Marine Corps office. And so I walk in and I see a friend of mine from high school. He's a recruiter there.

And I was like, hey, man, what's up? And he goes, oh, nothing. Can you believe all this stuff? I know it's crazy. He goes, what are you doing here? I said, man, I was going to go in the Army. And he goes, oh, hell no. Come over here and talk to us. He got me signed up. Literally I swore in later on that afternoon and then about two and a half, I want to say three weeks later, I was in boot camp in San Diego. So I want to go back firstly to the bullying.

I mean, obviously we're going to talk a long time about your career, but pulling out some of these and we will kind of visit other areas too. What was it in seventh grade that you were being picked on about? It wasn't anything in particular. Honestly, how it all started was over a girl. The girl that I had a crush on or had been my brief girlfriend for a bit broke up with me to be with this guy. And this guy was kind of a high school failure. He got kicked back in the system constantly.

He was a ninth grader, but was supposed to be a sophomore in high school. And so he just really roughed around the edges, kind of a product of society almost. Parents were kind of criminals, been in and out of jail with their wives. It was kind of a real sad story. But he decided, yeah, I don't want competition or anything.

And so he got me after I was walking out of the geometry class and what's wild is that my teacher at the time, this is Murphy, she was a former Marine herself, ended up pushing me down and getting the guy away from me. But he beat me up pretty bad. And then the bullying and the tormenting kind of just came from him just messing with me mentally, saying dumb things like, oh, I'm going to, I hope you burn alive. You know, just weird shit.

And it just kind of got into my skin and I just never wanted to go back to school. And my mom was like, now we got to do something. You know, we've got to give him confidence. I had no confidence at the time, you know, and size wise, I was always smaller than the rest of my classmates. I kind of hit my growth spurt a little bit later. But yeah, it was just more of a mental torture.

The guy put on me and just kind of, it just messed with me kind of weird psychological warfare on the way, which technically helped me prepare for combat. So I was like, when I was in combat, I was like, oh, this is nothing. Essentially speaking, at least. But not kind of busted, busted my chops all the time, you know, and I was like, man, I can't, what am I, am I going to go to school and live in fear the rest of my life or what am I going to do?

But well, the reason I asked that is I was very small. I had my growth spurt when I was 18 and my son now is 16 and he's almost the same height as me. And I've told him, you know, be prepared. And then he shot up and I'm like, okay, well, nevermind then. He's much taller than I was, but I never really got picked on. I was a bit of a smart ass, but when I got to God, it was probably 18 ish. I was dating a girl and she had this super jealous ex boyfriend.

When I go clubbing, he would come on over and try and start a fight and he'd literally always have, you know, three or four blokes with him as well. And I'd always be like, oh my God, no, I don't want to fight you. You're so tough. I'm so weak. And then he just walk away. And I was like, wow, that was fucking easy. But I did martial arts, but it was Taekwondo as you and I both know, you know, it looks great on film.

It's great to watch, but in the reality of life, tip tap kicks to the face that we're, we're taught because we're doing the sports Taekwondo. You're not even taught to hit hard really, you know, is not that effective on the street. But I won a tournament, a local tournament and it made the paper and I was in the paper and I swear overnight, these guys went from in my face to just leaving me alone, even being nice. So I'm like, how pathetic is that? I am no, I'm not that tough.

And it's purely this facade of, you know, whether you are weak, therefore a coward, you know, a bully can pick on you because they think you're not going to be able to fight back. Now you add some perceived resistance and all of a sudden they don't want to know about him. Yeah, there's a, what's that movie? Remember the movie, the substitute of Paul Barrett, you ever saw that the one where he's got a baseball bat in his hand on the front cover? Yeah, yeah. And he's at the school.

There's a quote in that movie from the principal that says, power perceived is power achieved. And I've always let that quote stuck in my head. And that's what Taekwondo always like. I felt like it was, you know, it's like it achieved this. It was perceived as this powerful thing, which I don't get me wrong. It's great discipline for kids. You know, I think, I think it's helped a lot of people, but definitely not a fighting art by any means.

You know, so yeah, I literally won national titles in Taekwondo at my weight, at my belt, you know, not, you know, of the entire continent, you know, anything like that. But then I had this journey. I think I went to, was it boxing next and got murdered and then started learning boxing. Then went to Muay Thai with my picking my leg up and just got swept and kicked and leg kicked and, you know, and then it was again, then Jiu-Jitsu and it's, it's this constant journey of humility.

But yeah, as you said, you know, it absolutely has its place. But I think with any martial arts is what Bruce Lee was so good at is you've got to understand the limitations as well. Like where does this work and where, you know, where is this not going to work? For sure. And you know, it's funny, like when I got out of the Marine Corps, I've been, I've done, you know, Marine Corps martial arts and stuff of that nature.

And then I like, I had a friend of mine get me into MMA, which we'll go into the backstory on that here a little bit. But when I got there, I was like, oh man, this is, this is awesome. I could ball these guys up because you know, I've done taekwondo, I'm like a Marine Corps, you know, like I can do this. And then I had some little 125 pound Brazilian black belt just ball me up in a pretzel and completely humiliate me. And I'm just like, okay, this is different.

You know, this is, this is a much different world than just trying to kick someone and jump back as fast as possible. So yeah, I definitely opened up my eyes and I was like, okay, this is something I got to, I got to explore this a lot more. So I think this is more street applicable. So. Absolutely. Well, we said that we were going to talk about, you know, your mental health story as we progress through the military.

One really important part of anyone's mental health journey when they're talking about as an adult is what happened before we put the uniform on.

I don't think it gets the, I think the sleep deprivation, the organizational stress or betrayal and childhood trauma, the three things that are kind of left out of the, you know, whether it's post-traumatic stress disorder, whatever it is in first responders, in veterans, you know, and we're like, oh, well, you were in Ramadi, for example, that must be why you're struggling. Well, you had 18 years before you ever put the uniform on.

So you kind of said it was for another podcast, but if you want, let's, let's visit that as you are growing up, you know, you, you had a father, you didn't know. So there's obviously an element of abandonment there. This other person has put in your life with this mature lens that you have now looking back, what were the compounding elements to some of the mental health struggles you had later in life? I mean, it was the narcissism I had to deal with with from this individual.

You know, like I will say, like, I mean, he, he put a roof over our heads. He put food on our table, clothes on our backs. You know, I do appreciate some of the things that the man did for my mom and I, and then my brothers later on, but it's, it was the constant gaslighting that I had to deal with growing up. One minute screaming at me or telling me I'm a bad person, you know, and then the next minute like, Oh, let's, Hey, let's love and hug.

And you know, it's just this whiplash back and forth, you know, for like, let's say a good 19, 20 years of that. Just constantly never seeing eye to eye, never getting along. You know, and then it lasted all of, I mean, God, it lasted all of, it's about a year ago or almost a year ago when my mom passed. Just, just the constant every now and then it was a little dick here and there, you know, I had to deal with.

And then, then I get in the military, you know, and then they just completely rewire the brain to fit their mold, you know, and then, you know, I see my, I do my combat tours and come out and I think it's all about the war stress. You know, when then I completely didn't even think like, Oh, maybe it's some of the stuff that's from childhood, you know, and, you know, I'm going to my mom and, you know, my mom loved her to death, but she grew up poor.

They grew up, you know, not knowing when their next meal is going to be, when their next, where their next home is, et cetera. So there was a lot of depression, childhood depression from her that I think, you know, carried over to me, generationally speaking. And, you know, and that happens a lot. And you know, it's funny, I find a good friend of mine the other day, he's, he'd be a good guest to have on here, the combat coach, my buddy Casey.

And he does a lot of psychological or psychology and then coaching for vets. But him and I were talking one day and we're talking about the subject about how the majority of us that joined the military, if you look at them, a lot of them have had mommy and daddy issues prior, some sort of broken childhood or they were in trouble with the law or something, you know, it's always, there's that common denominator of all of us.

We're lost children looking for a father, looking for a mother, et cetera. So, you know, I think dealing with a lot of that actually helped me be more prepared for the military because I was like, when I'm being gaslighted by a drill instructor, I'm just like, Oh, this is, this is easy. I've been down this road before. I know this game. Yeah. I was like, okay, I'll play your game.

But yeah, no, I think if I, I try to, now I try to look at it as like, it's a positive, it's shaped kind of like who I don't want to be and who I actually want to be as a person. So, Well, you hit on an interesting topic that a lot of people don't identify, which is that multi-generational trauma. I'd love to see what your stepdad's upbringing was like, because it sounds like there was an element of basically bipolar, you know, highs and lows, right?

Yeah, very, very similar, they grew up fairly wealthy. My Nana was very strict, very stern, very, not very loving and caring, not very nurturing. So I think that's where a lot of that stems from with him. And you know, his dad got her at the store, my poppy was at war too, that he had his own trauma that he had dealt with and stuff. I mean, he was deployed from a four year straight in Europe, never, you know, wrote home, but never really got to go home.

And so, you know, dealing with that kind of trauma, I'm sure wasn't the greatest either. So, and then like my Nana grew up in during the Great Depression. And so she had that trauma in her, and so, you know, that carries over and over and over and over and so on and so on. So I think that's where a lot of his stems from, maybe insecurities as well. So I think a lot of people's anxiety stems from, well, let me take that back. I think a lot of narcissism stems from insecurity. Absolutely.

I just interviewed two Iwo Jima vets in Dallas last week. And I kind of presented, like I was talking to them before we actually went up there and started recording. And I was saying, you know, that we call them the greatest generation because that's what they were. However, we also tell this fairy tale that they just came back and they were all fine. They rolled their sleeves up and off they went.

And yet so many people, when I talk to them that are our age, you know, roughly our age, granddad was not all right. Granddad was a drunk. Granddad was abusive. Granddad, you know, and I was saying everyone's, but there were a lot of people that struggled and they didn't have that outlet. And even these two men, you know, the inability to really revisit for one of them and didn't just didn't want to talk about it.

And by no means pressure on him, but it was just it was still fricking locked down tight. Another one, Don, who was on Sean Ryan show as well, was very open about alcoholism for the first 11, 12 years. So we know we almost do that. Well, it's almost too late now because we've only got a few of them left. But we did a big disservice because we were like, well, we're all struggling, but you guys are okay. Why are you okay? Rather than going, are you okay?

You know, and I've had another amazing guy, Frank Wright, who was also on Iwo Jima, he was wounded and he wrote a book on PTSD and he's 98 now, 99. I mean, that's the voice that we need. The voice of the greatest generation saying, you're fucking right. It messed us up. Did you see what we had to do? Those are the voices that we need to hear, I think, to reframe that fairy tale. For sure.

And I think it was just so taboo of a subject to talk about back then, because I think it was more along the lines of, hey, don't feel sorry for yourself, just get back to work. You know, I think that's essentially where that came from. And then everybody thought, oh, well, they made it through war, they're fine, you know, like, well, no, they just suppressed it because that was the way they were raised. They were raised not to be, not to feel sorry for themselves.

They were raised to just get back to work. Nobody cares. Work hard. Work hard. Yeah, exactly. Now, the other thing that you hit on was about so many of us have issues. And it's true. I think the ACEs score, which is acute childhood experiences, I think it stands for, all of us in uniform are off the charts, most, you know, overall in general.

And it makes perfect sense because if you've had that and hopefully you've even been able to process it, because to me, that then becomes a strength that becomes resilience. If you've been through suffering and trauma and you've navigated it, if we haven't, obviously it can cause problems later. And if you have, well, even better. But it's funny when you look at the hiring standards, especially in my profession, where you've got to be a fucking altar boy on paper.

And it's like, well, wait a second, you know, you, you, you want me to run into burning buildings and cut dead children out of cars, but never have a speeding ticket or tried any illicit drugs whatsoever. There's a bit of a disconnect here. Maybe we need to revisit. Oh, it's like everybody I ever worked with in the government as a contractor or worked around that were staff officers and stuff or federal employees.

It's like they all have some sort of like hidden layer that never came out until later on. You know, it's like they had that perfect resume, that perfect fairytale position that they were looking for. And then later on the truth comes out. I mean, you wouldn't believe how many sociopaths I've ever been around. You know, they were probably, probably never diagnosed, but they're there, you know, but they're great people. You know, they're great at their job. They do what they do.

But yeah, we all have this underlying issue that nobody really cares to get down to the root problem, root cause of why we have trouble, why we have all this stuff. You know, a lot of it stems from our childhood. Absolutely. Well, you talked about going into the army, you know, being stuck in limbo, coming out and then 9-11 happens. Talk to me about that day through your eyes as a young man.

Yeah, so I was at home asleep and a friend of mine from high school, he was a young lieutenant in the army, but he was stationed over in Europe. And I got a phone call from him and he said, hey man, turn on the TV. He goes, I think America is under attack. And I said, what? I turned it on and it's all over the news everywhere. And all I see was possible bombing World Trade Center.

I was just like, oh man, that's something about the anniversary from the previous one when they tried to bomb the basement. And then that's when I saw the second plane hit and literally watched it live on TV. And I was just like, oh shit, this is different. And I'd already known about terrorism from reading books and stuff about Vietnam and things of that nature. And so I was like, okay, this is different. This ain't no accident. This is no bombing.

This is no special on previous incidents that have happened there. I'm like, oh shit, this is real. And it just became clear to me in my mind. It was like spoke to me loud, like, go, you gotta go. This is your fight. This is your time. Go. And so that's what I was like, I just delined it straight to the recruiting office and saw the Marine Corps. Like, okay, here we go. Let's do this.

You know, I was like, what better way to fix my problem of waiting than to go try to be the hardest at the time where I thought it was the hardest bootcamp known to man, you know, the hardest training I could get. So I think it was fate more than anything. And I funny, I don't really believe in fate, but at times I think the weird spiritual world speaks to us and says, Hey, wake up. This is your chance. Come, come look at this. Come try this. So. Absolutely.

Yeah. Well, watching the top empty, I was like, man, this is how this is happening to this. Why? Why? How is this not prevented? You know? And then, um, like, man, I need to fully understand this. Let's go, let's go do the military. Let's get in fight. Um, that was my goal was just fight, fight, fight, fight. I'd scored real high on the as bad. And they're like, you sure you don't want to go do something else? I was like, nah, put me in it. Let's go. Um, I just.

I just had this like internal drive, just telling me like, if you don't do this, you're probably going to end up killing yourself later on because you regret. Um, and so I'm just like, man, I gotta go do this. And what's that? A lot of pride in the country. I love that. I love the United States, you know, and greatest nation on earth, you know, and, um, still kind of feel that way in a way. Uh, but it's just. I don't know, man. I just felt very patriotic that day.

They're very like, I needed to go do this. I needed to go fight. I needed to put my part in. So kind of like, I like our, you know, the greatest generation we're talking about, you know, they, they stepped up and they did their part. Absolutely. It was interesting. You just made the comment. I still feel that way today.

And I think this is, I don't know if I'm alone in this conversation with this kind of perspective, but I feel like at least the last eight years we've been just kind of cringing because we're going to have to choose from the lesser of two evils again, every four years, knowing the incredible leaders that, you know, we've all served alongside. It's it breaks my heart because this is a beautiful, incredible country.

But I feel like the way that we're presented, some of these people that are going to represent the entire nation domestically and internationally, that's really what we struggle with. I think we're, we're an amazing country. And I think that most people love each other, you know, all colors, creeds, religions, you know, genders, sexes, et cetera. But yeah, this is why it's January. We're one month away from the fucking circus again. And it's like, no, no one I'm excited about.

I mean, Robert Kennedy, I'm curious to see where that goes. But I mean, aside from that, we got, we got people we've already had that were shit. Like 330 million people for fuck's sake. Can we get some good people, please? Yeah. And what's sad is like when you look at it, I don't think America is alone in that struggle. I mean, look what's going on in Ireland. Look what's going on in the UK, too, you know, in other countries and Europe and stuff.

You know, they're dealing with the same kind of issue with the political elite, just, you know, going along with their party and their party only. And it's usually a one or two party system. And it's sad because we do have extremely great leaders in this world. And yet they don't want to. They don't want to step up because they know what kind of shit show it is to deal with it. You know, I love or hate them.

But you know, Trump actually kind of made this quote about the and I'm like screwing it up. But he's like, you know, I didn't need to do this because I had a happy life. You know, he's like, but I wanted to do this to help fix things. You know, and I think he tried his best. I think his problem was he's like surrounded himself with idiots. You know, and he didn't realize how deep that really is. They're in D.C. So but yeah, I kind of agree. Same thing. You know, we're a great country.

But yeah, we're kind of stuck in this weird limbo of like, oh, we either vote for this person or that person is the same shit over. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Exactly. Different color tie. I say that all the time. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, back to real leadership. Yeah. Am I right in understanding it was Iraq that you first found yourself deployed to? Yeah. For combat wise, I only did two tours in Iraq. I never know nowhere else with the military, at least.

Yeah, 2003. You know, we had thought we were going to go to Afghanistan. But then they're like, hey, we're switching gears. They called us home early for Christmas. Then that was 2002 Christmas. And they called us home early or called us back early from home and said, hey, we're preparing for this. This is a war like, OK, we're going to Afghanistan, you know, like southern Afghanistan, kind of a desert. And we're like, no, no, no, no, we're going somewhere else.

Well, it's a tactic, you know, like, and so like, hey, we're going to Iraq. And I was like, oh, shit. OK, we're going to Iraq. All right. So we did our work up for Iraq. And next thing I know, I'm sitting in a bivouac site in northern Kuwait for about a month or two. And then I just preparing to go into Iraq. And then they gave us March 17, 2003. They gave us the green light. We're literally sitting there with an IR buzzsaw.

For your fans who don't know what an IR buzzsaw is, it's basically a piece of 550 cord with infrared chem light, like a chem stick on it. And you just swing it to show them where the breach point is so they can enter the breach point into Iraq. So I'm literally sitting there spinning this thing. I'm in full chemical gear with a mask on and everything. And I'm like, this is a weird Charlie Sheen wasn't doing this shit. Exactly.

I'm like, you know, it's like in that movie, he's there with Navy Seals and they have a quote in that where he's like, oh, man, boys were on the dark side of the moon. I was like, no, shit, I was on the dark side. But yeah, going to Iraq 2003 is my unit. You know, our first objective, we took down the kind of the Ramallah oilfield area. The Iraqi public garden set them on fire, just very similar to like they did in the early 90s.

And I can tell you that heat coming off the things, we're a couple miles away, but you can still feel the heat like you were standing right next to the damn thing. It's unreal, just a surreal feeling being there. And we didn't really have a whole lot of contact up to that point. And then it wasn't so about, I want to say two weeks in, we moved into this area and we got hit with artillery. We're getting hit with tank fire. I mean, it was like straight combat.

It was the real real time where we faced the enemy. And that was the first time I ever got shot at. I heard it with right past my head. And I just like anybody, you don't know what you're going to do until it happens. And I froze up and it felt like an eternity for me. And then my sergeant like kicked me real hard in the legs and he's like, fucking shoot. And I was like, okay, here, we're getting it on now. So from that point on, it was just kind of back to the training mode of my mind.

We did about six months, I'm going to say in Iraq, just we moved all the way up north to Chakrit, which is Saddam's birth home. We took out to Chakrit and then we moved back towards the south in Dillaniya and just ran some operations out of there. Then we deployed back home, did a workup, another workup, more training, more, more schools and courses, and then got ready to deploy again. I want to say it was May 2004 when we got back over there for our second deployment.

And we were out in the western area of Iraq out in the city triangle. And we were actually running, they called it what we called at the time the rat lines. We were keeping insurgents trying to come over from the border in Syria and Jordan in that area. And so we would just go out and pick fights with them and get them to come out, come out of hiding. They would eventually. And then our gear was like, hey, guys are getting spun up to go to Fallujah. Okay, what the hell Fallujah?

You know, whatever, let's go. Let's go get some more. And so my unit goes to Fallujah. I think we were there, I'll say four months in Fallujah in the area. And then we pushed into Ramadi and a couple other little shitholes and then deployed home. And then by that time I left my unit, went out to become a mountain instructor, like a CQB instructor at the base, and then just did training after that.

So that time for the time last six, seven months I was there and I think, and then deployed home, came home, got out. I was actually going to reenlist and I wanted out of the infantry. I was going to go like the intel side because I had ran into these intel dudes in Fallujah. Oh shit, they're interrogating you. This is cool. Let's go do that. Didn't get the chance to, so got out, came home and kind of just went back to working odd jobs here and there.

When you say Ramadi, it sounds like it was end of 04 or 05. It immediately makes me think of Joko. I've had him, Leif, all the Echelon people on the show. And they always give a huge amount of credit to, I think it was the Army and the Marines that they worked alongside during that time. But it sounds like that was an extremely high up tempo. Oh, extremely. So were you interacting with possibly his groups when you were out there? I think we ran into a few of them. I know we did some operations.

I know we had a ranger element that was near us and they were doing some operations. We were doing a lot of stuff with force recon guys. They were coming out with us. We would infiltrate with them and then we set them in place and let them do their thing. Then we'd pull out. But we saw a few of the seals, but we never really had a whole lot of interaction with Joko's guys. But we were in the same area at the same time. So I want to put a question.

We'll talk about Iraq now because I know we're going to get into Afghanistan a little bit later. But the way that we, the citizens, are presented war through our media stations is very polarizing. Either kill them all, let God sort them out, stack bodies, or they're all baby killers. And in the middle are the men and women that we send over, arguably almost children, that we send over to fight for our country.

So firstly, regardless of the politics, and as you just made a little comment on, we're attacked by someone who's hiding in Afghanistan and you're sent to Iraq, a completely different country. Regardless of the politics, was there a moment where you got to Iraq and you witnessed some of the atrocities and you realized there were some bad people that need to be taken care of in that country? Oh, a thousand percent. I mean, that's all I looked at it as.

I didn't really, I didn't give too shifts about the political side of it at the time. I was there to do a job. I was there to rid bad people and take them off this world. And so, yeah, I mean, that was, there was a lot of things.

What really changed my mind was in Fallujah, we had this guy, this villager brought his little five-year-old girl up to us and basically like dumped her into my hands and she was lifeless, dead from, she had picked up, she was playing with some toys of dirt on the ground, whatever, and the IED went off prematurely, killed her, just mangled her up. And that really, to this day, I still see that little girl's face in my mind. But it motivates me to be a better human than the people who killed her.

And so I just had this change. I was like, okay, we're here for something good. We're here to take these people out. I don't care what it's going to take. I'm going to fight until I die, essentially, to find these people that killed this little girl. And we actually eventually ended up finding that bomb maker that was in that little region that we were working on.

And so it just, that's, I think that's when that gear shift in my head, like, oh shit, there's actually bad people over here doing some bad stuff to others, regardless of who attacked us on 9-11. We're doing the right thing, essentially. I think a lot of the truth to the wrong ground, they didn't look at it as a political issue or is it about oil? Is it about this? Or is it about Bush hating on Saddam or anything like that?

I don't think any of us thought that, I think we thought as this is our duty, we've got to come out here and kill these bad guys and then hopefully go home. Yeah. And this is why it's so important because when, for example, we talk about the withdrawal, there's that feeling of shame. And I'm sure it's the same in Iraq. When I say there's that feeling, there's one voice in a veteran's head that was like, what was it all for?

But then when you hear stories that you just told, these men and women have made a huge difference, whether it's, and I talk about this, the veterinary surgeons, the military veterinary surgeons that help local animals or whether it was the physicians or building schools or wells. So it's important that we hear the good and the bad, I think. Oh, for sure.

And I don't think, I think all we hear about is the bad because that's what the media stems in because they love bad news because it gives them ratings. So all we hear is the political divide. All we hear is that stuff. When they say in 2003, when they're like, oh, there was no weapons of mass destruction, I'm like, that's bullshit. We found rockets with mustard gas. We found rockets with nerve gas in them at times.

Yeah, it wasn't to the effect of nuclear weapons or the way the media portrayed it as, but yeah, we found stuff that was there, but it wasn't maybe in the quantity. Did it warrant invading a country? Maybe not, but there was other reasons why we went there. The people don't understand why we went there. I see it now. I see it on both sides, but I try to look at it as like, I wasn't there to fulfill some asshole political agenda.

I was there to rid this world of very evil human beings that I don't even consider human beings. I just consider them just evil spirits, evil demons, whatever you want to call them. That was my job to do. I proudly did it and I'd do it again.

When you're talking about there still being mustard gas and some of these other weapons, it reminds me, I just interviewed a photographer from New York and she's an artist, but she's done an amazing job of chronicling the homelessness and addiction in, I think it's Philly as well, but in New York and LA. One of the things that she's been finding so often is tranc and you've got these poor addicts that are just literally rotting from the outside in.

Her point was when she's trying to get some of these pictures out there, the media are like, well, we can't show this, but they'll show graphic scenes from Gaza. It's funny because if you think about it, the message is, well, that's happening to other people. We don't want to see what's happening to our own people. It's the same with the mustard gas. Nuclear bombs can't be brought to America, so all they found was mustard gas.

They were poisoning Chemical Elite and all these other shit bags, poisoning thousands of their own people. I think that disconnect is probably the same thing. Just don't make it scary to our own people. You can talk about human trafficking in Colombia, but don't talk about human trafficking in America and how it can actually be done through a cell phone to your own child. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I work on some of those issues.

We're the number one supplier and buyer of that crap when it comes to the human trafficking side. But yeah, the people don't want to see that. They don't want to understand. They don't want to, oh my gosh. We don't mind if it's happening to other people, but as long as it's not, we don't want to see it here at home. We want to have our little utopian bubble that we live in. And we're already like that. It can be a very beautiful place, but it's also a very dark, scary place at the same time.

Well, I think that complacency allows that to fester, to grow. If we're aware of it and it's prominent, we're not doom and gloom like you said, but we're thinking about the safety of our kids in schools and if someone's preying upon them through social media and all these other things. If we're acknowledging that and vigilant about it, I think it would be a lot less likely to happen.

But if we shove it under the carpet and ignore it, we're creating a more and more dangerous place for our children. Oh, for sure. And it goes back to that same mentality of like that it's too taboo to talk about, just like with our grandfathers and grandmothers where they didn't talk about their problems, they just kind of swept it under the rug and moved on. We live in that same mentality. Absolutely. Well, on the positive side, like you said, we don't get a lot of good news stories either.

And I've heard so many beautiful stories either from what our own military have done or also all the indigenous people, because again, we taught everyone with the same brush. We're at war with Iraq, with Afghanistan, and we're not. There's shitbags in those countries that are terrorizing their own people and we're there trying to help. So through the time in Iraq, what about kindness and compassion moments that you remember? Oh, man. I mean, we had, you know, it's crazy.

So we were right outside of Fallujah. One of our supply trucks got hit with a border one day. I think it was a rocket actually that hit it, but it blew up. So we had no food, no ammo for like almost a week. We had enough to survive for the week, but we just didn't have a whole lot. Well, we were posted right next to this guy, cattle farm. And I think that the farmer saw what happened to us from his house. He literally brought over sheep to us to just give to us.

And he's like, here's here here and he tells our interpreter, this is for you guys getting rid of the terrorists in my city. And I was just like, hey, these people, they're they're so inviting. They're loving, caring. The guy would bring us tea every day. And then eventually we had to get him to stop because he was giving away our positions a whole lot. So where all the sheep are?

Yeah, basically, you know, then we started realizing, oh, man, he keeps they keep hitting that area, you know, so maybe we should move. But no, I just saw a lot of kindness, a lot of compassion from people in that area. You know, you know, one of my doc that was served with me, I mean, people don't realize how kind and compassionate medics are. That dude saved my life multiple times in Iraq.

Wouldn't be here today if it weren't for him pushing me down into ditches and whatnot when we're getting hit. You know, but I see him once one second try to, you know, defend our position, kill him some more or trying to shoot somebody. And, you know, he just wanted the guy. But then we get close enough to the guy and he slaps advantage on that dude. You know, and just like, where does that come from? You know, you know, amongst all this chaos, there's still some good, good out there.

Absolutely. One of the two Iwo Jima vets was that was a Navy corpsman. Yeah, I saw that all over the world. You know, people think Afghanistan is such a war torn country. I mean, those are some of the greatest people I've ever met in my entire life. So, you know, a lot of them I call friends, some of them I call family, you know, so that close to me.

But yeah, I think we don't we don't see enough of that kindness and compassion in our media, in our world, you know, that's not displayed enough because it doesn't get doesn't get ratings, it doesn't get the wow factor that, you know, chaos and trauma do. I think there's a paradigm shift. I really hope so. I'm a kind of incurable optimist, an angry optimist. Like if when people are unkind, I want to choke them to death. But you know, overall, I'm a kind of person.

But I just shared a beautiful video of a police officer. I don't know exactly where it was actually from. But there was an army vet, young army vet, and he was sitting on a bridge. The deputy pulled him up. Yeah, I saw that. Yeah. And it was, you know, it was humanity. That was it. And I saw that get shared a lot. So I think there is a yearning to see that. But it's that nastiness divisive thing that is the low hanging fruit, as they say. But it comes at a cost.

The more you pump out that horrible, you know, just just toxic content that you're literally tearing down the fabric of society, but you could literally post, you know, matter of fact when things are bad and post that because that's the news, but then post these beautiful stories of humanity that I see everywhere. Because if you follow them, then that's what your feed starts to become.

And I think that these news agencies will probably have a lot of success because I know they got to sell advertising space. But if you're going to do that, draw people in with something positive, not negative. Exactly. And you know, there's another prime example that I saw the other day on Instagram where a guy with cops were in a shootout with a criminal suspect on the highway. And one of them got hit. And this bystander ran over there, grabbed the police officer and dragged him behind a car.

And lo and behold, that guy was a multiple time felon, you know, and on paper, he's supposed to hate the police. But yeah, he's like, wait a minute, this guy's dying. I got to get him back to cover. You know, and so he had no training, nothing like that. He just knew like, OK, I got to get this guy to safety. And he dragged the guy out of kind of his heart. You know, I was like, we need to see more of that. Yeah, I know exactly what you're meaning. And it was a super effective drag, too.

I mean, he had to buy his best. And it's as good a drag that I've seen of any any evacuation, military or first responder. Yeah, I seriously I'm like, OK, this dude got some sort of training. I'm like, there's no way but then come to find out he had nothing. You know, he was he had been a clear criminal for a while. So absolutely. But that's the perfect example, though.

So you talked about transitioning out this first transition that you had when people go into the military, especially I think I think it's more powerful if you've had a kind of disruptive early life and then you go into a place where you're challenged, the share suffering, you become part of a tribe, you've got purpose. It's so healing, but then, you know, for eight years, maybe even longer, you come out the other end and it can be really, really jarring for first responder or military.

What was that first time you said you went to a quote unquote normal job? What was your first transition like? Yeah. So when I got out, I didn't really have a plan. You know, 26 at the time, I didn't really know what I was going to do. I got out. I started doing some balancing at night clubs on the weekends and nights. And then I need more than that. So I started working at the mall, local mall that we had here.

And I was actually a soccer and boy and Abercrombie clean shave, you know, a lot different than now. But you have to start the shelves with the shirt off. Are they allowed to leave the shirt on back there? Yeah. You know, it's funny because they made the guy in the store at the floor associate. If they were guys, if they were fit, they had no shirts on sometimes. And I thought, I was like, this is the dumbest thing ever. I was like, just put a shirt on.

But now you've worked in a stock room and then maybe I need a real job. And so I applied at a trucking company here, JB Hunt, and you know, they're big, big multinational company transportation. And so I was like, yeah, let's see what they have. So I got a corporate security job with them working night doing theft investigation of like my value truck. And I was like, man, this is boring as shit.

Like, man, you know, I went from running a gun at gun lines, you know, and mortar teams and all this stuff and doing offer fire missions and shooting and whatnot. And I was just like, I'm just typing on the computer. I'm like, this is boring. You know, I'm like, I can't do it. So it's been about 10 months in that. Nine, 10 months and just set up. And I essentially got myself fired in a way, kind of before I was fired, I quit, you know, that kind of thing.

And I was like, man, I want to go back into the military. And so at that point, I had wanted to fulfill a dream that wasn't really my dream. It was a dream for my native foreman buddy that passed away in a training exercise. You know, he was two weeks from going to bed before he got killed in a vehicle accident when they were doing one last training off with our unit in the Marine.

And so maybe I'll go fulfill this dream that he always had, you know, will be a field and literally on my way to the recruiting office that day. And I forgot that I'd put an application in with Blackwater right after I got out January 26th, and this is roughly like mid late 07, 2007. And so she calls me and says, hey, recruiter called me from Blackwater. Hey, we got a spot open for you. You know, George, if you want to come to training. I was like, yes, let me go take care of some.

I got to go finish that tie up some loose ends. I went into the third told them, hey, I go and got a chance to go overseas as contractor. And they're like, OK, don't have fun. You know, so two weeks later, I was out and training and on the East Coast. But with that, let me backtrack just slightly. So right after I got out, just like all that, you know, struggling to find my tribe, find my sense of purpose, didn't really have one, essentially kind of lost it getting out.

A lot of built up anger, a lot of tension, a lot of that stem from my childhood. Didn't realize it at the time. But late March of 2006, I was like, yeah, fuck it, man, I'm out. I'm done with this life, you know, for all this shitload of pills that I had from VA and just kind of laid there in my bathroom waiting on it to take its effect.

And a good friend of mine that I bounced with, I guess I wasn't answering my phone and he came and busted down my door, got inside the house and shoved the stator down my throat, made me start throwing up, kept flooding me with water and whatnot. Basically got me to throw all this crap up and, you know, kind of saved me from my suicide attempt, you know, and it's, yeah, I'm a little more open about it now than I have been.

Really kept that quiet for a long time, but didn't really want it to come up on psyche voucher, you know, work and whatnot. But like at this point, I'm like, I don't give a fuck anymore. You know, I can't feel like I'm stronger talking about it than I am fighting it. 100%. So yeah, so he was in the MMA and some no-gi jujitsu and about two months later, you know, two months over, he's like, hey man, why don't you come join me at my garage gym that we go to?

I was like, okay, so we'll go see what this is about. And that's where I got balled up by that Brazilian dude. And I was like, oh man, I gotta look into this. Let's do this, you know? And so I basically replaced a bad habit with a very healthy habit. And I found that sort of tribe almost that drive like, oh, I can let this anger out on the mat. So I can let this anger out in the cage when I'm biting somebody. And so it kind of turned my life around.

When I tell people jujitsu and like combat sports saved my life, I literally mean it. It saved my life. And my story is not unique. I mean, there's thousands of guys that have done that same thing with combat sports. And so I kind of owe that point in my life to what I'm doing now and like how I can survive now. Like I owe it to that moment. When I think back, I'm like, okay, I wasn't very strong during that moment. I'm kind of weak, but I had a friend of mine who was strong.

Now I need to pay that forward and start helping other people get out of that situation. Absolutely. Well, I want to jump in for a second. Two things. Firstly, I mean, underlining what you just said there. If you think about the body system, I think the Israeli military, the way they operate is they literally partner you up with someone and your mission isn't so much to survive or it's just literally to protect your partner and vice versa. And I love that philosophy.

And this is the thing with the mental health conversation. It's not about having a nonprofit or a phone number. To me, it's ultimately having that group, that little tribe that you've got with two, three, four, five people and making sure that you're just checking on those. So the fact that your friend recognized that and acted is phenomenal.

The other thing I want to ask you though, because again, talking about elements that are not in front and center of this conversation, a lot of the old school discussions on mental health were suicide is cowardly. He's been a pussy. It's selfish. How could you? And then you listen to hundreds of people that were there, yourself included.

And ultimately there's a miswiring of the brain because every one of us is put on this earth to thrive, to reproduce and stay alive and protect our kids and pass on our lineage. And so through the compounding elements of childhood trauma, organizational stress, sleep deprivation, combat trauma, all these things, TBIs, some people get to the point where the brain is miswired, no different than a femur being broken.

And so the one thing that I've heard people say over and over and over again, of course there's like, I want the suffering to end, but there's another thing and it'd be interesting to get your take. Almost all of them said, I felt like a burden. So there was guilt and shame, which is behind why some of these parents, for example, leave very young kids behind because it doesn't make any sense to a healthy brain.

But to them, their entire reality was I'm a burden to family X or friend group Y. So with that being said, was there any element of that when you were prior to taking the pills? Oh yeah, a hundred percent. And I had been addicted to those pills since like late 03, the Naval Hospital stuff would give them to us to sleep, whether it was Ambien or whatever it may be. So yeah, I definitely felt like I wasn't an asset. I wasn't bringing something to the table like I was when I was in.

I knew the guy above me, I knew his job and I knew the person below me, I knew their job and vice versa. And so I didn't feel that when I got out. I felt like the typical, oh, everybody owes me something because of my service. They owe me thank yous and I'm just like, nobody owes me shit. I volunteered to go. I wasn't pushed to go. But yeah, I didn't feel like I was contributing to my community, my society. Okay, I'm out. Why am I going to be a burden?

Why am I going to be sad, mopey, dopey, dipshit to my family? And all they wanted to do was help, but I didn't want their help because it was help that I needed a long time ago, but I never had it prior to that. And so now that I'm very thankful I had that friend of mine that did step in. He recognized that he had no military background, nothing of that nature, but he had the combat sports background. And he realized like, okay, this is different.

This is a tribe, this guy, I need to bring him in, like make him feel a part of it. That's amazing. Even when you think about the context of when that was to have that kind of insight when we really weren't talking about it yet is phenomenal. Yeah. Yeah. And I asked him one time, years later, I said, man, what were you thinking when you busted in my door to come find me? And he's like, dude, I knew you were messed up. He goes, I just didn't know the level.

And he goes, man, someone helped me a long time ago with some stuff that I struggled with when I was a kid. He goes, I wanted to help you. He's like a seed in your eyes. I saw it every time he got in a fight at the bar at night, trying to throw somebody out of the club. He always says, you had this like glaze over your face most of the time where you just didn't, you didn't feel like you fit in. I was like, dude, you're damn right I didn't fit in. I didn't feel it.

I love it because he's out doing great things to himself now. He's a police officer. He's been a police officer for a long time now after college. And so he's serving back in his community. And so, yeah, I just didn't feel like an asset. I didn't feel like the burden, just like a lot of my friends have taken their lives. They all felt like they're burdens upon their children or whatever.

And so they just decided their family would be better off without them when in all reality we're actually, they're better with us being here. Yeah, I think that needs to be on the posters and needs to be in the discussion. The red flag to me is if you start believing that you're a burden to your family, that's when you need to pick up.

And if we say, think about your kids, think about your wife to someone who's in crisis, we're doing it thinking it's the right reason, but actually we're inadvertently pushing them towards it because they are. I'm a burden. Okay, I love my wife. I love my kids. All right, well, let me remove myself so they can live happily ever after because that distorted reality again.

So I think by trying to get that out there, anyone who's listening, if you start believing that understand that there's some mis-wiring going on and that is, if you haven't already, that is a time to really pick up the phone. Whoever's closest to you that will be that shoulder to start moving towards getting some help.

Yeah. And I tell people all the time, I don't care where you get help from, I'll even put posts out every now and then on social media like on Instagram or whatever, I'm like, Hey, I don't care who you are. I may not know you, but if you're, if you're struggling with something hit me up, you know, I don't care if you're a stranger.

I don't care if you weren't military, if you were just a police officer, if you're just a regular everyday person who had some trauma in their life, like, dude, come talk to me. You know, maybe, maybe we can just sit there and listen and talk to each other and see what we can do. There's not enough of that. You know, I think we're starting to see a little shift with a lot of veterans are changing.

A lot of the GWOT veterans are starting to change that mentality, but we still got a long ways to go. You know, and I just, yeah, I took it all with a grain of salt and then like, okay, let's just keep pushing. You know, like that, that was just a chapter of my life. We need to keep pushing. Let's go. Absolutely.

Well, you talked about transitioning into contracting then when you look back now, what are the commonalities and the differences between, you know, regular Marines and now working in Blackwater as a contractor? I would say the camaraderie is the same. The working in a small unit was similar. It wasn't direct line combat and more protection, the defensive position versus offensive positions, but that camaraderie was there. That tribe was there.

That sense of, oh, I'm bringing something to the table there. Like I brought all that military experience, being able to, you know, speak on radio properly, being able to have proper discipline and etiquette around, you know, high profile people. You know, I didn't realize the discipline I had learned from boot camp actually was helping me out how to deal with politicians and diplomats, you know, when I just had to bite my tongue, you know, and just stay disciplined, you know.

And so much different worlds. There are definitely two different worlds, but at the same time, they're the same concept. You know, we, it gave, I'm thankful as bad as 9-11 was, I'm thankful for that because it's far a whole different job section for veterans, even veterans previous to 9-11 that were already in, that had gotten out or whatever. They got out and they were able to come back and still do find a sense of purpose.

Guys from other wars, from the Gulf War, even, they had even worked with guys from Vietnam, veterans. They came back as contractors. Now they found that sense of purpose. And so I think it helped a lot of guys get over a lot of war stress. I know it helped me get over a lot of war stress because it kind of subsided eventually to the fact of, it didn't affect me in a negative manner because I'm like, oh dude, I'm learning a skill, but I'm also contributing to my tribe. This is, this is my group.

This is the people I want to be around the rest of my life, you know. You know, I found similarities with them, good and bad. And then I found major differences like I'm no longer having to sleep in a dirt hole. You know, I got a nice cushy room that I'm sleeping in, you know, I can, I don't have to sit there and freeze outside. I put gloves on.

I have the money to do it, you know, instead of just kind of wasting, not wasting away, but like, you know, living paycheck to paycheck, essentially when you're in the military, you know what I mean, because you don't get paid very much. You know, it's a huge, huge bump for me because I get out, you know, barely making $19,000 a year. If that, uh, go into making $14 an hour as a security guy. And I'm like, oh, okay, this isn't bad.

And then leaving that and now making six figures in less than six months. I'm like, dude, I'm doing something good. You know, here we go. But now I love to do, uh, it had the same camaraderie. I got to talking about same similarities, but, uh, definitely drastically different, uh, no more frontline fighting. You know, that's, that's the big difference. A lot of people don't realize about contractors. We're not out there on the front line.

Like the infantry guys are and stuff like some military, uh, we're more defensive positions than anything. And we have a lot, I think we have a lot more strict, uh, SOPs and rules that we have to go abide by versus, uh, you know, military does. I just had two guys on the show that, um, protected kind of logistical truck deliveries. And then they ended up being even the, the mail that was delivered to our, of our, uh, military and they were absolutely in the thick of it.

They were con so they were initially in and they ended up coming out and then going in, in this role as contractors, but I mean, they, they lost so many people and what they were talking about was, you know, the, um, uh, quick reaction forces, you know, their, their priority is still the military groups. So they would get hit by IEDs and then just be kind of out on their own.

So it was kind of interesting hearing some of these contracts and stories, you know, on one side, like you hear, there's, there's, there's money to be made and someone who's transitioned out can now do pretty much the same role, but actually under better conditions with good pay, but then you hear other elements of contracting where, you know, some of these men and women are kind of left to their own devices in a very hostile environment. Oh, for sure. And that, and that happened a lot.

We saw that a lot in, you know, my, what, close to 15 years of contracting, you know, I could see all that.

Um, there were, there was other companies out there that did just kind of leave their people hanging, you know, didn't really care about them, you know, and we, we didn't notice it until I think back and I noticed it in 2004 in Iraq, but I didn't really give much attention to it because that wasn't my focus, but there was a few companies that were just kind of like cowboy companies, like here today, gone tomorrow guys, you know, they're just

jumped on some sort of like logistics contract or whatever. And then their dudes got right in the thick of, you know, the Sunni triangle or whatever they read or Southern Afghanistan and they got hit and they, they had no help. They had to get out of there themselves. You know, so there, there was that element and I think the media took a lot of that element and like highlighted it even more and made us all out to be like, Oh, we're bad people.

We're just over here killing innocent people for money. And it's the total opposite. We need mercenaries, you know, like people think we are. Absolutely. Well, so you had that contracting side. You mentioned about thinking that the, the intelligence side was cool earlier in your career. How did you find yourself transitioning into the CIA? Yeah. So we've taken the ambassador over to one of their facilities in Afghanistan and I ended up seeing a guy that I knew from, from my hometown here.

And I was like, man, this guy looks familiar. Like, I know, I know this guy from somewhere. And I went up to him and I was like, Hey man, are you from, you know, Arkansas? And he's like, yeah. I go, where'd you go to high school? And he told me, and I was like, Oh, dude, I think we went to high school together briefly. And he was like a year or two older than me. But I remember this dude. And so we started chatting and we ended up knowing a lot of the same people.

And I was like, Holy shit, I know this guy. This is awesome. You know, it's kind of weird seeing someone from your same town you're from, you know, in this, the middle of a, nowhere's real Afghanistan. And so like, what do you do here? And there he explained kind of briefly what he did, you know, which funny is he actually gave me his whole backstory, his cover story versus, you know, what he was really doing. But I kind of figured out what he was doing.

I'd been there, been around that field long enough to realize, you know, okay, he's bullshitting me for a good reason. And I was like, man, you know, you know, years ago, I tried to get into the infield field, I never could. And he goes, Hey, man, I know all the guys on this security programs over here. He goes, shoot me a resume, you know, he's like, I shot my resume to him. And this kind of later 2009 ish, like the fall of 2009. And I came home on emergency leave to go to a family funeral.

And then when I tried to get back overseas on my saying, ambassador's detail, I got a random number call and I was like, okay, said unknown, okay, answer it, see who it is. I answer it and they tell me who they are. They were part of the same company I was in at the time, but it was a different, different side of the house. And so they said, Hey, you're, you're interim players came through, you know, we got a slot for you to come train with the vetting process. Do you want to come?

And I was like, yeah, sure. So called my detail leaders overseas and I said, Hey guys, I'm resigning from this position. I'm going on the other side of the house. And so get through my training. And then next thing I know, I think I'm going to be posted in Iraq or wherever. And they send me right back to Afghanistan. And then I've seen that buddy of mine and I was like, dude, man, I want to thank you, you know, for getting me over here. I appreciate it. You know, kind of put in a good word.

And he's like, yeah, man, no worries. You know, it was awesome. And so, yeah, I kind of just, I kind of fell into it, kind of knew somebody that was right place, right time, essentially. Now obviously you can't divulge much, but in general, what did your role shift to under that umbrella? Kind of same thing, protective roles, protective security. And within those roles, you have different various things that we do or tasked out to do, but overall protective security.

So you've spent, as you said, you've gone from combat to starting to push more and more towards close protection. What made you decide to transition out and then ultimately get into that under your own banner? Yeah. So I had briefly done a little bit of that right after I got out. I had gotten in with a little private family here locally that I had, they asked me to come be essentially like a house sitter nanny during the day for one of their children that had some threats against them.

And so I was essentially doing unarmed security for these people, but I didn't realize it at the time. And then got into the protective security and the agency. And then November 2019, I counted up every single deployment that I had done in that 21 years plus, and that's plus with my military career. And it was 43 overseas deployments in war zone. And granted our deployments were 60, 70 days at a time, but I was just like, that's still deployment. I'm like, dude, I'm done.

I can't do this anymore. I'm pushing into my forties, like getting close to it. I'm like, dude, I can't do this. I want a family, you know, I want to settle down some day. It's not conducive to, you know, home life, a good home life, at least some guys can pull it off. I think the majority can't, you know. And so I got out and then COVID came and everything shut down. No more guys going overseas, nothing. I was like, okay, maybe I made the right decision. So I needed a job.

So I started working for Walmart corporate and I knew they had a close protection team for their VIPs and their CEO and stuff. And I was like, okay, that's the, I'm going to push into that because that's my background. I know that. But at the time they didn't have anything really open. So I was doing, I was patrolling empty parking lots, wearing a mall comp uniform in a car that said Walmart security draped all across it, you know, and I was like, oh, this sucks. You know, it was horrible.

I was going to say, cause I heard you talking about that on the GSPG podcast and I wanted to ask you when we sat down, we talked about jarring, loss of purpose, sensor tribe. Now you're patrolling an empty car park in a Walmart car. Did you have another jarring moment having just left a high up tempo that you were working in before?

Yeah, a hundred percent, you know, and it was, I was around guys and some of them had military backgrounds, some of them had law enforcement, but they'd been out, they had been conditioned to a different style of work at that point, more so than I had. And so, yeah, super jarring. I was like, no, my God, my life, this sucks. I know it's a job. I got to do it. You know, so I fucked it up and did it, you know, paid the bills. I was like, man, this is horrible. What am I going to do?

You know, I kept trying to get over to their executive protection team because I knew they had an open slot, but unfortunately they weren't hiring anybody for that slot because of COVID. And I was like, okay, man, so about five months in, like, what am I going to do? So a friend reached out to me and he's like, hey, I have a client or a possible client that needs protection work. I don't know how to do the executive side of it, you know, what kind of questions did I ask?

So I kind of briefed this friend of mine through it, what to do, how to build the program. And about a week or so into it, he calls me, he's like, hey, dude, can you just come run it? And I was like, okay, yeah, sure, but this is the pay that I want. And so the client was like, yeah, let's bring them on. He liked the background, so he met the client. And kind of just started doing the protection work for a very ultra high-net-worth family. And then as a solo protector, literally by myself.

And so started that and then the client wanted me to come on directly as an embedded employee for him. And so we worked out some legal issues and just went to work directly for them instead of being third party contracted out. And through that, I kind of developed my own company, eating a little risk and doing some consulting work on the side for other clients outside of the protection side of things.

And just kind of built this, trying to build a legacy through that, you know, and I found my purpose again. You know, I found like, okay, this is what I'm great at. I'm great at the low-profile protection. I can provide this for the family. I can give them a sense of normalcy again, so they can go back to living a normal life. And that's essentially what I've done for them. Well, a couple of things jump out.

Firstly, you talked about being assigned to someone because their kid was getting threats. And immediately I thought if you'd had a close protection guard when you were in seventh grade, you would have kicked the shit out of that older kid. And that young you would never have entered the military. So probably so. Yeah, probably. Yeah, probably not. I mean, I don't know. I may have because I, you know, growing up, I'd always wanted military.

I was always out digging black holes, building forts, doing all kinds of playing war, having BB gun wars with my friends in neighborhoods. So yeah, I probably would have eventually gone there, but you never know. Well, another thing I heard in the other podcast that they were talking about was there was an organization where they were teaching nannies close protection skills.

And I was like, that is phenomenal because I mean, ultimately all of us, you know, be your own bodyguard kind of philosophy. But you know, when I get you to kind of unpack what that actually looks like as far as the role of someone in close protection. But yeah, when there are teachers, nannies, you know, all these kind of groups, I'm looking at it from a medical point of view. They should know CPR. They should know actions for choking. They should know all that.

And then also, you know, that that kind of threat recognition, you know, some of the de-escalation techniques, you know, making sure that they're not introducing children into a higher risk environment in the first place. So talk to me about that. I thought that was a fascinating concept. Oh, yeah. So those are the friends I call them friends.

I don't really know them partially, but I know them through LinkedIn and other, you know, in our community, the protection industry for as big as it is, it's super small. But yeah, so they so a friend of mine, the Grove family, Chris and Danita Grove, they run this company called Nanny Guards and they literally train everyday nannies how to be bodyguards, essentially, on top of the regular nanny duty. I think it's an amazing concept, especially for ultra high network people that they serve.

And, you know, I never went through any of their courses, but thinking back, I'm like, wow, I was doing that essentially for that small, that small private family initially. And now I do it every day for the family that I work for currently. And so they have, you know, young children. And so you have this.

It's a very hard job as a solo protector, especially if you're just a nanny or even if you got like a one or two man team, it's a tough job to deal with that because kids have different threats than the parents do. Parents have different threats than say the house has threats or whatever it may be. So you got to take someone very mature, I think, and someone that I don't think you could take like there's guys that are great at being a machine gunner, but there's not very good.

There's not guys that are great at that person may not be great at leading or doing a soft a soft skill job, essentially. You know, they have their special, I think in the protection world, you have guys that literally can just stand holes in walls and do what they're told to do. And then there's guys that can jump between both worlds. They can be can melt into a group and be one of their assistants or a friend, essentially look like a friend, but yet you're there to serve a security role.

And so I learned through doing close protection overseas, I kind of took that mentality. Yes, it's a different threat. But I took that same mentality of customer service, like I'm here to do a job for these people. I'm here to make them feel safe so they can do their job and be feel like a normal, productive member of society instead of living in fear and threat.

But I also looked back and like, maybe I, I didn't have that when I was in seventh grade, you know, or junior high, like I didn't have that someone there by my side protecting me and telling me everything is going to be okay. We'll take care of the threats, you go live your life. You know, I look back and I'm like, okay, maybe I can do that for other people now. And I truly enjoy it. I love it. Well, I want to pose a question to you.

I'm sure you've probably been asked, you know, talk to the parents out there and how we can be, you know, take some of your principles and apply it. But the first responding professions, a lot of them that listen, you've obviously got law enforcement, you know, they are trained for in a good department for de-escalation, for you know, dealing with a threat if need be.

But you've got firefighters and paramedics and EMTs where we respond to the exact same place as law enforcement with no body armor, with no side arm. And so our words and then sometimes our narcotics are our only weapons really.

So speaking to that subset of the first responders, what would be some of the principles that you would take from all your years experience when it comes to identifying threat, de-escalation, et cetera, that you could apply as a firefighter or a paramedic to the men and women that we interact with? I would say look at that, maybe not necessarily look at that person as a threat, especially for first responders side of it, more so not so much the security guys.

You guys are trained to look at people with medical threats. If someone's agitated, maybe they were honestly, they don't have a medical problem, they're just having a bad day. I've had threats like that, working close protection where I just know this person is having a bad day and they just happen to run into me or the people that I'm with, I'm going to take their aggression out on them.

So I think that comes with time of learning people's behavior patterns, learning how not everything is a dire situation. Sometimes you can just de-escalate things with a simple handshake, simple misdirection. We do it with children all the time when they're upset, we misdirect them so they don't feel their pain anymore.

I do it with my kids all the time, every time my kids get hurt or they feel like they got hurt, I do this whole thing where I'm like, you run through the forest, watch out for the tree and they're back to normal. I think misdirection is a big tool to use, kind of spear in this, bringing them this way, letting the people go away and let them live their life, continue on with their business instead of allowing them to get into that bubble and become an actual real threat.

I think misdirection is the biggest caveat or the biggest, not caveat, but the biggest tool you could use to de-escalate a situation. It's funny when you talk about someone having a bad day, I literally took my dog to the beach, my favorite beach up on the East Coast here. I go usually off season early, like today was Sunday, so early Sunday morning, early Sunday morning and the beach is all but deserted.

When we're around other people or someone's got a dog on the beach as well, I'll keep her on the leash and as soon as we're clear, meaning literally like quarter of a mile either way, I'll take her off leash and throw the ball and she's phenomenal. She's not going to hurt anyone, but she's a German shepherd and I know that scares some people.

No one's anywhere near me and all of a sudden from the dunes or all the houses are, I see this woman full Karen mode just fucking speed striding towards me and I'm like, this is kind of weird. Anyway, I just carry on and I look over my shoulder after and she's got her cell phone and she's recording me.

And again, it's like that was, you know, you said you woke up and chose violence where you woke up and chose misery basically like this an empty beach, one dude running his dog and you felt compelled to speed towards them to get it on your camera. And you know, that we ended up going to the end and then it's funny when I came back, I was passing her again, I put her on the leash because I'm obviously this woman doesn't like the dog being off the leash.

So I put her on the leash and then smiled and said, how are you doing today? And she just glared at me and I was like, oh good, have a good day. And then walked off, killed her with kindness. But again, secluded beach, someone interjected them into my life. Now that was a 60 year old pissed off, you know, white woman, but that could have been someone with a completely different background that could have been a threat.

So just to go, like you said, whether it's the New York paramedic that got stabbed a few months ago, I just saw a London or British paramedic get pushed out of an ambulance and really mess up her arm. So we do have to be aware of that and if it's an eight year old kid that's having a bad day, it's not probably going to be a huge threat. But if it's someone who's messed out and they're 200 pounds, that could be a very credible threat for us.

Yeah. And the area I work in or for a good while had a big homeless population right around our corporate office. And so I was constantly out there dealing with homeless people trying to get into the building or just trying to find some shade, you know, during the summer or whatever. And I honestly had to be the one to go down and tell them, hey, I'm sorry, you can't be here. We're running a business. But I learned a lot about humans, about how they interact with people.

Not everybody's a threat, but we do have to look at them sort of, if you're in a security role, you've got to do look at them as a threat to a certain extent. You got to be prepared for that if they do decide, oh, I'm going to fight this first or I'm going to escalate this even higher. But I try to de-escalate that fire. And a lot of times I give people options. For example, I had a guy come up, he's trying to get near the client I was with.

And this is not the current client I work for, but this is a different time. He came up to us and was trying to say, oh, hey, I know that guy, I know that guy. And I was like, okay, we don't know you. I was like, how much you come talk to me over here? And so he's like, well, I want to, how do I talk to him? Like I know him from high school or whatever. And they were around the same age. So I mean, it's possible. Maybe they did know each other. My client just didn't remember who the guy was.

And I was like, well, here's my business card, man. You owe me, talk to me, maybe we can set something up. We'll go from there. Obviously the guy never reached out or anything. But I de-escalate by misdirection. Again, and so thankfully the guy did it. But come to find out that guy was a known felon, a known fugitive, didn't know it. He was a crazy person, drug abuse and whatnot. Didn't even know my client. I had no idea who he was.

But I looked at him like he was a serious threat, but I also kind of like, okay, this guy's obviously got some mental screws loose. Let's kind of take it a different direction. And I've always felt like misdirection is the best thing, you know, or killing with kindness, you know, just smile. Oh yeah, man, you know, and so a lot of times it brings people out of their rage for a second because they think that you're going to react to them the same way that they're reacting to you.

But then when you don't react to them, it's either one, going to piss them off and make them more reactive or two, they're going to just let it go. Like that lady there, she kind of looked at you like all weird and then walked away. So yeah, I think just going into the situation with what General Mattis says, you know, kill people with kindness, but have a plan to actually kill them if you need to. Well that being said, we talked about that.

Well, you know, the couple of videos of kindness, one from a civilian, but the other one from this law enforcement officer that was phenomenal and was everything, everything that I think the uniform is about, you know, aside from obviously, God forbid we have to go hands on or they have to go hands on. Yeah, I know I've heard you talking about interacting with, you know, doing some training with law enforcement with this perspective, not only of combat overseas, but also the protection side.

Are there any kind of common errors that you see on some, and I'm saying some because we have so many great police officers out there, but some of these videos, sadly, make the news go viral. That maybe we should be doing a better job of teaching in law enforcement academies when it comes to the lessons you've learned over the last 20 years. Yeah, I think it's a lack of training. I think that's the biggest thing. They do their baseline, get them past, shove them out the door.

They leave while they're on their respective departments to train them up to advanced levels. I think if we started from the baseline, like teaching de-escalation big time, more so in their academies versus having to teach it on the street, I think it'd be a better off. I also believe if all these academies had the longer session of non-combatants training, so like jujitsu specifically, learning how to deal with people in a safe manner.

Yeah, it looks violent, but it's a lot safer than maybe tasing somebody or having to pull a gun and shoot someone. In granted, those guys, man, they got a tough job. I have thoughts of those dudes that work their streets every day, especially in the very violent neighborhoods that we have in this country. I think teaching that stuff from a baseline perspective in the academy, I think they need to change their whole mentality on it.

They focus so much on the principles, the hard skills of being a police officer and don't teach the soft skills of interacting with human beings, interacting within the society.

Sadly, a lot of these cities have gotten rid of their crime suppression units and they say crime suppression units aren't exactly cops going out and knocking down doors and arresting bad guys, but they're out there in the community talking to locals and making friends with them and helping them to learn how to police their own people within their neighborhood.

We have a city here locally that they got rid of their crime suppression unit because they felt it didn't fit their liberal ideological take that they were taking or the political stance they were taking at the time. Then when they see crime, went straight up in those neighborhoods. There's a give and take with that. I think they learned that kind of stuff from the basics. They hammered in them and then they hammer a very good non-lethal combatant training program like Jujitsu.

Even Krav Maga has a lot of training, non-lethal stuff in it. I think if they did a good mix of that within the academies, guys would be a lot better prepared because we see a lot of that. We see guys all the time. If you follow that BJJCops on Instagram, there's tons, thousands of videos of those guys getting manhandled by the criminal where all they could have done is a simple judo talk and brought the guy down safely and then being able to restrain that person properly.

Yeah. I mean, that's the problem. There's so many. It's sad because our community is not laughing at them. They're just like, look, this is like fat firefighters. This is an issue. They are not going to survive their entire career. Their family are going to be widowed or widower and then the people that they're supposed to protect, they might die. That might be the Ovalde or the Parkland or some of these things where there has been an epic failure and children fucking died because of it.

It's an important conversation. I think a lot of it goes into the physical health of officers as well. Unfortunately, we see a lot of officers that are very, I'll just bluntly say it, overweight. They don't fit the uniform properly. It's like having a doctor who is 400 pounds obese and trying to tell you about how to live a healthy lifestyle. It just doesn't work like that. I think that most departments could demand more of a physical training fitness or fitness program out of their officers.

I think they should start instilling that early on in the academy. States need to start changing the way they look at stuff. Cities need to start changing the way they look at things. They're treating their officers more like a well-oiled machine versus, oh, they're just serving their role. They're a number. Absolutely. Well, the other thing that I've noticed and I've lived it, I worked for Anaheim in California for a few years and their bar was set so high.

They would lose 25% of every new hire class by the end of the probationary year. It was just like, I'm sure you'll be successful in another department. You're just not right for us. I fucking love that. It was a line of a thousand people. What's happened is the opposite. A lot of these cities, I think, are deluded into the fact that if you lower standards, then you're going to fill seats. It's completely converse.

You will fill seats with very large asses, but if you really want good first responders, you put the fucking bar back where it's supposed to be. You also, though, include high levels of training and a work week that fosters recovery so that these men and women don't get murdered by their job, which is what happens in the fire service. They work so much that they get fat and get sick because they don't sleep. They never fucking sleep.

There's some of us that stay in shape, but that's despite the work week, not because of it. You put those back and you actually fund, not defund, you'll have phenomenal police officers, phenomenal firefighters, but you can't lower the standard and expect things to get better. It's completely backward thinking. Oh, got it. I mean, complacency kills. It goes back to that. That's all it is. It's complacency.

It's one person that gets into an admin position and then they get lazy and then that cycles down the train and just keeps going and going and going and going and going. Thankfully, there are departments out there like you were saying about Anaheim and some of these other areas that they do hold their people to higher standards. That's great. They need to.

When you got a behemoth of a city like LA area and all the little sub-sites lying out of community, God, you better have the best of the best. We demand it by our military. Why don't we demand it by our local police, our national police, our federal police, or whoever? Look at the guys that go to the FBI. The FBI is hard to get into. It's hard to get in there. You got to be that poster child on paper, but then look how much harder it is to get on their HRT team.

Those guys have to be free, motherfucking crop. We should demand that of all of our officers, of all of our firefighters, of all of our paramedics, everybody. You should have this program in there. People that go, oh, well, we don't have time. We don't have time to do this bullshit. There's time in the day. I'm raising two kids and a full-time job and I still manage to eat and work out and go to Jiu-Jitsu five days a week. Don't tell me there's no time. Absolutely.

Well, speaking of which, our paths cross because I think you did a seminar here in our gym. Is that right? Yeah, we were down there traveling. My fiance is from Ocala area. Shout out to Iron Legion. They asked me to come in and help teach, do a guest coach for the kids and then try to teach a little similar to the adult class. Yeah, I was down there now. They want me to come down every so often whenever we're in town and help teach. Brilliant. Well, next time, let me know.

I'm a blue belt finally. I've had a blue belt around my waist for a while, but I walked into a new school I go to, which is not Iron Legion just because of the hours. But now I feel like I'm a blue belt. So I've been doing it for a while. Absolutely love it. But yeah, I'd love to come and take when your class has been you're in town. Yeah, for sure, man. I love spreading Jiu-Jitsu because I know how much it's helped me in life and going back to fighting the tribe.

Like outside the military, this is the most scribe like place I've found that where I fit in the most. I've done all the other sports, nothing to get frostbite or anything, but I just never fit into those kind of gyms, those kind of lifestyles. Jiu-Jitsu was more my world because it's that controlled violence that I trained in for so long in a different capacity. But now it's something beautiful thing.

And I tell people all the time, like Jiu-Jitsu is like the weirdest place, but also like the greatest place you could ever be. In one moment, there could be like a billionaire rolling on the map with a dude that's damn you're homeless. And they have polar opposite political beliefs, but yet they're the best of friends when they're on those maps rolling.

And all the stress you have from outside the world, in the world doesn't matter when you're there and some dude's trying to choke you or break your arm. It's like the biggest stress relief also on top of all that. It's a great workout and I love spreading that knowledge as much as I can.

Absolutely. I've had days where I've seen, and don't get me wrong, I've had days where I've been low, but I've had days where I've just seen one of my friends and because we see them two, three times a week in my case, you know what they normally look like. So you go in one day and they're not themselves. And so I'm like, you know what? I'm not even going to roll today. You want to just go outside and talk? And that's what we do. We're in the whole hour.

And it turns out they've got some pretty significant shit going on in their life. So again, with that tribe back to your bouncer friend, you also get to see if we're all fucking hiding in our house because there's a pandemic and the government decides the best thing is to do everything that fucks you up mentally and physically. How the hell are we supposed to check on each other?

So refinding that tribe, whether it's a chess club or a knitting club or Jiu Jitsu or Spartan races, whatever it is, the more you're involved with other human beings, the more they might see when you're struggling and then vice versa. Yeah, we're not meant to be isolated people. It's just not how our genetics works. We're made to be in our little tribes, in our little communities. We're made to be, you know, amongst people.

Yeah. And then we have individuals that are kind of better at being alone. But in reality, they still need people, you know, even those people that are extremely introverted. One of my good friends, fellow Brown Belt, I did Jiu Jitsu with, very introverted, but on the mat, super extroverted. I mean, just outgoing, crazy. I was just talking about that with him today. I was like, dude, you ain't no introvert. I was like, you're an extrovert when you're on the mat.

He goes, oh yeah, but when I go home, I don't want to talk to anybody. I don't have social groups or anything I'm bored of. You know, he's like, I have this tribe and that tribe and that's it. I had a guy on the show a while ago who wrote a book called The Introvert's Edge, and he defined what it is to be an introvert and extrovert. And what he said is it's where you get your energy.

And so you, and I guess I'm an introvert, so I can go, you know, I just interviewed those veterans on there, you know, not with thousands of people, but with an audience and on stage with these two very, very important men. And it was brilliant, you know, but where I then recharged is when I went back in the hotel room and, you know, spent some time on my own, talked to my family. That's my recharge.

So if you get your energy from these large groups, if you kind of feel the need to be in a social setting all the time, then you're probably truly an extrovert. But if you either A, shy away or are okay with social gatherings, and I'm the guy that you just turn around one day and one moment and I'm gone, like I'll hit that limit. And I'm like, all right, this was awesome by that's also being an introvert, which I didn't realize. I'm the same way too.

Like I can go out in like a social setting, you know, bars and whatever, but I get to a point where I'm just like, yep, I'm gone. Let's go. Time to leave. I can't do this. It's overstimulation. Yeah. Especially fucking hell, like bars and restaurants these days with televisions everywhere. And then the live band comes and they turn their speakers up to 11, like back to the future. And I'm just like, all right, I got to, I got to get the fuck out. And it's not even hypervigilance.

Yeah. My hypervigilance, my threat awareness mind just goes through the roof. And I'm just like, okay, I can, that guy could possibly be a threat. That person's supposed to be a threat, you know, and it's just like, all right, I got to get out of here and recharge. Absolutely. Well, I know that you've written one book, the Shaprod Chronicles. So talk to me about that. And then in the podcast, I think you did, I listened to was about a year ago.

And now you talked about maybe writing one for the average person as well. So talk to me about the one that's already out there and if you're writing another one. Yeah. So I wrote the Shaprod Chronicles. It's basically a chronicle of all of my poetry that I wrote. I got into poetry just violently. I would journal a lot when I was in the military and then realized I was writing poems at the time. I just thought I was just writing my thoughts down. But apparently they flowed into a lot of poetry.

So I started breaking them up about a couple of years ago and started posting them on Instagram. And people were like, oh, man, you should put these into a book and push them out. And then I had a bunch of friends that were, I found a community within on Instagram that were all veterans, that were all war poets of sorts. And they had been putting out books. I was like, maybe I can do one too, you know?

So the Shraprod Chronicles, the reason why I call it Shrappod is because shrapnel can be wounds. It can be mental or physical wounds that we carry with ourselves. And then the pod being like a small unit or a tribe. And so I kind of just put the two together and thought, oh, that sounds cool. You know, at least it sounds cool to me, maybe. I don't know about that. Well, anybody else think it is what it is. But yeah, so I was like, okay, let's put out my poetry book.

I finally got around to it about six months ago and started putting it together and then did self-publish in August, launched it on Amazon. And then recently did a follow-up book to that. It's a lot less dark, depressive kind of raw emotions.

And now it's just kind of a lighter side to my poetry, you know, when I transitioned from like going really dark, depressive stuff that, you know, stuff that stemmed from childhood all the way into the war and whatnot and then relationships, you know, all interacting that too. But then now the, I call it mountains of peace is the second volume that's been out for a little bit now. And it shows that lighter side. It's a quick book. It's nothing crazy. It's not long.

I think it's actually even shorter than the first one. But yeah, so I launched those and, you know, they've been doing decent. But then I just tried it. I was like, oh man, you know, I love writing. I love being creative. So let's take some of my security practices and kind of put them into a book.

And so I looked through the markets and I realized there's books on cyber, there's books on home security, there's books on, you know, executive protection for corporate world and stuff of that nature. But there's not a ton of it. And I go, but there's also not a ton of books for guys that are on the solo side of one man team protecting, you know, one principal, two, three, however many. So I was like, man, this is my world. This is my niche.

So I started taking all the articles that I've written for LinkedIn and EP Wired, which is a security online security magazine and started taking all those and then just started putting them into chapters and realizing, okay, this is flowing pretty good, you know. So let's just take all the tips and tactics that I use every day with protecting ultra high network people, put it into this book form as kind of a guide. This is what I experienced.

Maybe this will help others do, who are already in the security industry, transition into being a solo protector. Or maybe they just adapt that to their regular EP team, you know, with the big corporate team they have. And so launched that in September. It's called the Protector Series. The first one is called a Guide to Solo Protection and Private Family Security.

And what's funny is a lot of people hit me up on social media and they're like, oh man, I'm going to buy your book, you know, I want to learn how to protect my family better. And I had to tell them like, well, the book's really not for the everyday person. It's more for guys that are already in the industry. But I'm finding out that the first book is being very relatable to people that are just every day. They're using some of these principles to protect their own families and whatnot.

And so I'm like, oh, well, heck, maybe it's hitting both industries or both sides of it. You know, and then I'm doing a three book series essentially. So the second book is more for the average everyday person to learn tips and tactics of what we use in the security world from the high threat to the low threat area on how to protect themselves, their families, how to hone in on their situational awareness training and listen to their intuition and things of that nature.

And then the third book is going to be kind of a caveat or like kind of like bring it all together, but also add in like the social media awareness, the cyber side of things. Learning how to see threats online for parents who don't know that their child is being attacked by a predator online or, you know, it's going to be a whole mix of things more for family, but it's going to kind of bring the two books together essentially. Brilliant. Now that sounds amazing.

And I'm working on that second draft right now. So I get writers block every damn day. Join the club. I was actually starting a cursor this morning. You said about the group that were doing poetry. Was that dead reckoning collective? Yes, it is. I had the lads on the show. Yeah, they're great dudes. I was on there. We did live ID with them. The main guy about a year or two ago. Great dude, man. I love all those guys and you know, I chat with all them every now and then. So. Brilliant. Beautiful.

All right. Well, then for people listening, where are the best places to find you on social media and also where can they find the books? So me on social media, you can I have a couple of different ones. I use the strap pod. That's where my poetry and stuff of that nature is that that's on Instagram. My other Instagram is the real Irish lad. That's my personal page. I'm more I'm more active on Instagram than I am anywhere else. Facebook is more personal. I don't really give that out to people.

It's just for me to keep after family and see what's going on with friends here and there. I'm not super active on it. LinkedIn, I'm really active on LinkedIn. They can just look up my name, Justin Keating. They post a lot of what I call EP tips of the day. And it's just like little helpful tips for security practices and things of that nature, which a lot of that's in my first book so they can get it there if they want to.

But the book, you can get them on Amazon or Barnes and Noble, the Protector Series, a guide to solo protection and the private family security and the strap pod books are on Instagram or on Amazon as well. I think you can get them on Barnes and Noble as well. There's a few other little online places. But yeah, Amazon is the biggest place to get it. Beautiful. Well, Justin, I want to say thank you. It's been such an incredible conversation.

You got such a storied lifeline, but you said you didn't speak about the, for example, the suicide attempt to somewhat recently. These are the conversations that we need to hear. These, and I'm going to use air quotes, alphas of the world, military swap, fire, whatever, UFC fighter, when those men and women are vulnerable, it totally debunks the myth that we are this two dimensional robot that has no feelings and can keep going.

As we talked about with the greatest generation that you hit on this, there's so much courage in vulnerability. It's far more brave to tell everyone about your struggles than it is to bury it down and pretend that you're RoboCop. So I want to thank you not only for leading us through your career journey, but also for your courageous vulnerability today. Well, I appreciate it. I love sharing my story with people in hopes of maybe to help somebody else out there.

When I write my poetry, I've had people reach out to me that had no combat experience, no military or anything. And they're like, oh my God, dude, that's what I'm feeling every day. That's how I feel. Those are the words. And so I'm like, well, my job is done. I helped somebody. So yeah, I mean, I just I love enjoying. I love to talk to people about it and just kind of pay it forward. Hopefully my story changes someone's life.

And not that that's my goal, you know, but and I don't want the recognition for it. I just want others to feel good about themselves. And if they find a struggle and they're like, oh, well, this guy can get over it. Maybe I can get over it, too. So, yeah, so I think, yeah, I think you're a lot tougher man if you can admit your vulnerabilities and your your your shortcoming versus sucking them all away and acting like a hard ass the whole time.