¶ Start
The Team House with your hopes, Jack Murphy and David Bark.
Hi everyone, I'm Jack Murphy. This is the Team House. I'm here with our guest today, Joe England. Joe had a very interesting career, an unconventional career in several ways. He served as a SAUDA in Special Forces, and then he went on to be a second guy in the unit known as TFO or ISA, one of the Army Special mission units. And then he became a helicopter pilot, and today he runs a YouTube channel that talks about
health and wellness and mental health. And also he's recently retired and had a bit of an upset on the way out the door that we'll talk about a little later in this interview. But Joe, thank you so much for taking some time this evening to talk to us.
Absolutely appreciate it.
So look, man, we were talking a little bit before the show. I'd love to hear a little bit about your childhood and growing up. I mean, you told me you have a really extensive military history in your family.
¶ Born Into Service: Family Legacy + Germany Years
Yes, so yeah.
I come from a long line of pretty much officers, at least until May, dating back to the Civil War. My great grandfather was in Spanish American charge up San Juan Hill World War One, did a number of different things. And then he had three sons who were all officers of World War Two, including my grandfather who was one of Patent's company tank commanders. The other brother was in the eighty second, and I believe the other the third one was some sort of artillery officer. I'm not asware
of it. And then my father was a colonel who started in artillery and then he ended in military intelligence. And then my brother was a eighteen Alpha who ended up becoming He led a dive team out of first group.
That's awesome. And you guys, you know because you were in a military family, you guys grew up in Germany.
Right, Yes, So about six months after I was born, we moved to Germany.
So from about then until we.
Were there for ten years, but we did have a two year sit in between where we actually moved to Alaska. So the first time that I moved to the continental United States was when I was about thirteen years old, and we moved to Seattle, Washington, where where my father would end up retiring at Fort Lewis McCord Base.
And you and your brothers were very involved in soccer from growing up in Europe.
Yes, so we when we when we lived in Germany.
I think my father had which I would always thank him for, is that instead of living on the American basis, he chose to live on the German economy. And Germany is just like a collection of small towns and like over here you play for soccer clubs. Well, in Germany, you play for your town and a town that maybe had like a couple thousand people and maybe you it's like only you could drive through this town in like a few minutes. That town soccer stadium would have practice
fields everything, and you would play for your town. So by the time we came to the United States, we were probably at least a year or two ahead of all the Americans that we played with. And because of that, out of the five of us, four of us went to college on soccer scholarships.
And I mean it sounds like you were having a really good time too in college, you know, playing soccer, but uh, really you had this accident not your fault, of course, but got into this car accident that kind of like it did shape the rest of your life.
¶ Head-On Crash Survivor: TBI, Brain Recovery, and Comeback
I feel like, yeah, it definitely changed everything that I essentially had a plan for. I had delusions of grandeur that I was going to finish college become a professional soccer player. But so I was driving home, this was my freshman year of college, and was driving home. We were going he was like three thirty in the morning. We were going to my girlfriend's place, who was attending you dub which is on the north side of Seattle,
and we were on the south side of Seattle. I remember at one point in the drive and then I woke up in a hospital bed and I was like my I had believe it was a respirator or in so obviously I couldn't talk. I was basically couldn't move anything.
And you know, I.
Eventually when I come to my dad's there, I signaled for him because I realized I can't talk, and then I asked him if my girlfriend was okay because she was in the car. Because I don't remember anything, just remember waking up. I'm in a hospital bed, and I was just afraid that I'd killed her. And luckily when I wrote it was like, where's Karen, And he's like, She's fine, and then I was like similarly relieved, passed
out woke up like twelve hours later. And then that's when my dad would tell me that I was at a head on car accident, drunk gut driver going the wrong way down the freeway where we apparently I turned the car at the last second. We would headlight to headlight, and then this swung around and all the power hit the left side of my car, which piece of the car went through my elbow, cutting that in half. I have pieces of car that went into my arm, and
then it just kept traveling. Twenty nine stitches on this arm ruptured spleen, twenty nine stables to take that out. And then a brain hemorrhage, which was obviously the worst dangerous and actually I still have contusions on my shin bones and other parts of my bones that even twenty one years later are still visible. So and then yeah, and so the brain hemorrhage. I suffered a lot of
brain damorrhage. I was assessed to have degraded to a second grade math level, which math was actually my best subject. I attended AP calculus, took the Pea Calcus examine high school and had major speech problems, memory problems, and yeah, I was a mess. And then tried to go back to school less than a month later, and that did not end well.
I dropped out within a.
Week because of you know what we now know. I don't know if they were applying the term so much as if as much was understood, But I mean, veterans know a lot about traumatic brain injury now, and you had one before you went into the military, and it sounds like it really affected you.
It did, and I was I was little concerned. That was the hardest part of my recovery because physically, like most of all my injuries, with exception of the brain hemorrhage, they just kind of patched me up and send me on way and like everything would recover, like the elbow and bone grew back, my dominal wall obviously reconnected.
But you know, I was.
I was so frustrated because one I didn't even know if my cognitive abilities would ever return, and then secondly, like, what can I do about it. It's not like physical where I can you know, I can go to the gym, start working out, Like who knows what I can do? And then my family started blaming my girlfriend that it was her fault that we got hit by a drunk driver because if I wasn't dating her, I wouldn't have been on that road, and so just all together, then
I got frustrated and I was like, screw it. So six months after the car accident, I went to a recruiter and then nine months later, nine months I think it was nine months to the day or almost to the day, I shipped off her basic.
So it is the lovely year of two thousand and five,
¶ 2005 Surge Era: Why He Enlisted Anyway
during the surge, and you walk in there, your body's still a mess, and they're like, we got something for you, and no problem.
Yeah, So I tried to, you know, because obviously I saw the movie Green Berets when I was ten years old with John Wayne. I was like, this is this is the this is what she got to be. So
try to do the AT and X ray program. But obviously, you know, they they do the whole full medical thing, and obviously you cannot hide this giant scar which is like, you know, like twelve inches, and so obviously they learned I have a splein next to me, but I didn't know anything about the process, so I didn't think it was gonna be an issue.
I was already back to normal running and everything.
But it turned out that, and there's a list of things that disqualify you become Airborne Ranger and Special Forces, but one of the only things that to qualify you just from Special Forces is the absence of a spleen. And I, you know, I think I was told this was more of like an observation, but that this this medical doctrine was based back in the Vietnam era. You know, he's it's it's a part of immune system, but it helps fight fevers and that's really all that it does.
And so so when I got turned down with that, I tried to acquire with the recruiter, Hey, can I get a waiver?
Right?
And he was like, yeah, no, maps doctor is going to assume that risk. But randomly he knew that there was a back route to get to Special Forces and he told me is like, once you get there, you have a bunch better chance of getting a waiver, once you're within a group. And I was like, well, how do I do that? And he was like, well, you can go be a linguist And I was like linguist. I don't.
I'm trying to be a green right, Why wout I be a linguist?
Right?
And he was like, oh, well, you get to go to California for a year, learn a language, and you get your associates degree. And when I heard California, I was like, okay, I like what you're saying. And so
¶ Farsi Linguist Path: The Backdoor to 5th Group
that's that's what I end up going with. Got urgent FARSI did the course in a year, didn't roll back, actually passed. I actually almost maxed the test despite all my cognitive abilities.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then and that's when I submitted for my first airborne packet, which ended up becoming slide of an issue.
Yeah, tell us about that.
So at the end of DLI, so about a month or two before we abt to finish, that's when they're like, hey, if you want to go to group, you have to submit an airborne packet, and then you have to submit a part of that. You submit a packet that says I'm volunteering for group, which a lot. I was surprised to find out that most linguists don't want to go to group. And of course what I would learn later on in life or later on in my career that as a linguist, there's no better job than being a
sad absolutely no better job. So I do this Airborne packet. I volunteer for group, but I still have to be approved. So as I am going to outprocess after I passed my test and essentially graduated. On my final day, I go in there and I haven't received my airborne packet. So I go in to go see the doctor to get my final signature for my own processing and she's like, oh, and by the way, I have your airborne packet. I was like, okay, cool. She's like, you were rejected, and
I'm like I was rejected. She's like, yeah, because you had a brain hemorrhage, you are rejected from going to Airborne and I was admitted. Like at first, I was like devastating. I was like, I will, like what do I do? But then she puts the failed airboard packet on my medical records, which were not digital you know
¶ Rejected, Then Approved: The Airborne Packet Gamble
this is two thousand and six. And then I start walking outside and I'm thinking about like what am I going to do? And then I looked to my left and I see a trash can as walking out and just hits me and I just walk over just and I just turned the you know, the medical record, and I let the failed airport package just slide right into
the trash can. Yes, and then I PCs to San Angelo, Texas for the second part of our training, and I go in there to the medical facility and I'm like, I want to apply for airport backs and they give me airwor packet and they get to the part says have you ever applied for airborne this packing form? And I checked no, And then got to the part where have you ever had a brain injury or a TVI?
And I said nope, And I was approved two weeks later, and I was I learned that my first PCs, after all my training and airport training, I would be fifth Special Forces Group.
Your attempts at misconduct here clearly allude to your capacity to be an army spy. I think you pass the test.
Yeah, uh, that's actually yeah, well you can actually that now that they think about it. That's an interesting thing that I will actually discuss about the particular part of the packet because at this point, and I can get into that later, but you know, at this point you obviously don't want to tell the military like everything because the eliot's screwed. But when it came to the is a packet you were encouraged to actually tell them the truth.
And actually in the portion of the packet, I'll probably get any ahead of myself, but they actually tell you that whatever you say will not go back to the regular army.
I hope that's true.
Yeah, at least it wasn't the time.
So you move on to the next phase of your training. And before we move on, I think we should, I'd like to ask you for the viewers out there, the listeners, do you want to tell them what a SAD is and what a SAD does.
Yes, So, a SAUDA is a It stands for Special Operations Team Alpha. And at the time only linguists were allowed to be special operator or sauda's if you were
¶ SAD-A Explained: How SIGINT Hunts Targets and Protects Teams
the signals, because a linguist is actually a cryptological linguist, right, so not only are you a language but you actually have a sigate parsh portion of your job, and that's the cryptological part. There's another MS that goes alongside it, and that's the cryptological analyst. And they at the time were only allowed to be special operations bravos or sought bees,
which are the analyst portions of that. So like thaught A's were the collectors and saw it and you would send your signals information that you collected back to the sought bees. But the interesting thing about because every other linguist would be in some sort of facility, the NSA or some sort of fob, but sauda's were the close access signals collectors, so all the devices and everything that you did were given and how you had to do stuff. You actually had to be on site with the teams.
So during deployments, instead of being deployed with either the battalion Element or the company element, all saudas were deployed with the teams and you were attached to an ODEA, which ended up being amazing because you spend your entire deployment as just an extension of essentially these odas, and you get to, you know, sort of live that life as much as closely as you can. Ever.
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Absolutely, So that's actually how the Sauda job started, because you know, before cell phones and everything like that, Sauda's were basically force protection because they go out with the teams and obviously they would get on you know, like the PRD thirteen and all these radio interception devices, and that's how they would detect if they were going to get in Wish or not, because usually there would be some sort of radio traffic like hey, they're coming up.
So that was the job of Sauda. But then rolling into two thousand, the early two thousands when sing really started to go into the cell phone stuff like that, and that type of signal is actually short range, Like radios have a much longer range, but cell phones the way they talk to towers have a much short range.
So what you ended up having to be is so you ended up becoming not more just for protection, you actually became offensive at least especially in the intelligence roles, and it was sort of like the heyday of when you know, we had the keys of the Kingdom. You know, there was less to no encryption and you know, uh, it was like the Wild Wall West when it came
to those things were easy. They would later become much much harder, and our job became luckily I had left at this point, but almost became later on like obsolete as the technology upgraded from two G to three G and then four G and by the time we got defied G there was there was no more job, at least in that.
Portion of it.
And you get sent to the SADA at fifth group and what is it like from there? I mean, now you're kind of integrating with the teams going through the premission training and deployments are coming up.
Yeah.
Yeah, So we got they they chose which ODA that we would attach with first. So on my first deployment, I technically we spent like half the deployment with one o DA and then we spent the second half of a different ODA, So the one that we were getting
attached to first. When we did our pre dimission premission deployment training, we were actually with them the entire time, so we could, you know, really start to integrate with them, you know, because you know, as you know, when you're when you're running around in like Humby's, because especially two thousand seven, we were I think everybody else wasn't allowed
to run around Humbi's except the SF guys. And usually because they still need guys back, sometimes they could only man two Humbies, but with the sad A team, we always could have three. So they definitely used this as extra guns. And you know, so we got a lot of premission deployment training and then I got we actually went on the deployment and there was the eighteen Zulu. His name is Boomer, and Boomer instantly took a liking to me.
He was impressed with me.
He learned that I being a saud Air being a linguist was not my original goal. I wanted to be an eighteen X ray and you know, and when the battalion commander the Italian CSM did their their visits to all the teamhouses during that deployment, he arranged for me to have a one on one meeting with both battalion commander and the battalion CSM about me potentially becoming an
eighteen series and that interview went really well. The battalion CSM took it upon himself to research my waiver because at this point between them Boomer, they all felt that I would make a very good Green Beret as a
good candidate for it. So they found out I needed a It needed to be signed by a general officer, which everybody knows or who doesn't know that the highest ranking officer in a group is a colonel, So they had to go above group, and you know, unfortunately that waiver would end up it would be approved by his deputy. But in between the week that the deputy needed to prove it and the general officer to prove it, somebody die in the Q course, if I remember correctly, from
a supposed snake bite which they then was told. Then I was then told that the commander did not want to assume the risk for somebody who had a weekend or compromised immune system, I believe is the correct verbiage that they used.
That might still have been kind of a kick in the knots, and that you went during kind of like during and as all that is transpiring, you're also rotating back overseas with.
This team, right, say that one more time.
That as as all of this, you know, this waiver submission is going through the process, you're also getting ready to deploy a second time with the team.
Yes, yes, So so we came back.
We went off for eight months, came back for six months because First Group replaced us, and then we we knew before we went on the first deployment we were doing back to back deployments, so we had six months in between and two months prior too. So one I did a second waiver, thinking that I, if I had stronger recommendations that that they would prove it. But that was a that was not to be the case. And
¶ Inside ISA Selection: The Most Psychological Pipeline?
then but during that training I went to what was called Permitteus Group at the time because it was it was done by the Permitteus Group company, but it was a pilot course which would later become the Advanced so Come Advance so COM's Advanced GSM second course. It was
the pilot course for it. And during that training, that training was run by both Green and Orange operators, some support personnel, and the course director was a former TFO command sergeant major of a squadron and at the end of those eight weeks, he pulled me aside on the last day where they're giving up the certifications, and he told me that he had heard about the issues of you know, my waivers, how I couldn't get to SFAs and he was like, hey, we we we've been really
impressed with you. We think that you have what it takes. And you know, he made the joke of why should skip Javi comes straight through VARs today, so and he was like, you know, would you want to be an operator?
Right?
And I was like, yes, that's exactly what I do. He's like, all right, here's the here's the recruiting information for at that time, the for the recruiters that were doing operators.
I believe they were separate at the time.
And so I went and on the second deployment, that's when I started filling out this ridiculous forty page application and submitted it, I think, right. I finished it like right towards the end of the deployment, and yeah, in that packet you're told, and you're actually told by the recruiter too, you can reveal everything and they won't have
any sort of ramifications. And at this time this end up being true for me because that's when I actually revealed that I had had some issues and the stuff that I had sort of hidden from the army and that I wasn't this saint. But apparently that worked because they approved my packet right, and I went to selection the following April or ISA operator selection.
Before we jump into that, I just want to ask you where was it that you deployed with this ODA, if there's any interesting stories from that time that you to tel Oh.
Absolutely, So both deployments were actually in the Diala province of Iraq, which is it's like it's like east of Baghdad, but it's along the Ranian border, so you're really kind of on the edge of the world because there were no teamhouses east of us. It was US and then
the Iranian border. But the second appointment was awesome for me because Boomer decided that he wanted to be on his team, to just be an extension as a team, and he told the battalion commander, I want Joe and only and if he's like if you send the entire sating team, I don't want any of them, right, And the battalion command was like, all right, cool, you get just Joe and I got to be the sole attachment
to that team, and Boomer was awesome. The team was awesome, and they they they never treated me like a support personnel, like I almost felt like I was like like eighteen OJT. You know, it was an amazing deployment. I was an extension of that team, and to be honest, Boomer even like certain times even treated me as like one of the seniors, which I absolutely love and I will be grateful love to this day because it's probably one of my favorite depployments.
I ever had my career.
That's awesome. And so moving forward, we get into selection. I know there's some parts of it that they try to keep on the down low. But what are you allowed to say about the selection course?
You know, it's it's very So let's just say I say selection was like in a lot of things, like when they were created, right, they caught, they cloned a lot of things from Delta, and they changed certain things. Right, Like I would say that CAG is probably slightly more physical. Ours is probably like more of a mental, you know thing, But like you probably heard, the difference between the walk and the law a very movement. But it's not the
quite the forty miles. It's slightly shorter than that, but it was so I think it was like it's usually between four and five weeks. And it was the hardest part about like that style of selection is it's you. You don't have any negative or positive reinforcement, Like nobody yells at you the entire time, and almost everything minus
like like a few days, everything is individual. So what I found was that, especially from a psychological standpoint of view, this was the hardest type of selection, the hardest type of selection you could go into, because when you're getting yelled at and people are telling you to quit, and you've got your buddies next to you, you kind of kind of sort of band on to each other and be like, you know what, f you, I'm not I'm not going to quit, right But in this environment one you're only
giving instructions once, and they do it completely stoic, right, like they just say, you know, they.
¶ Tactical Detachment: Freefall School + Blue vs Green Culture
Give you the instructions.
You're basically giving instructions once and then they tell you to go to to do the best as you can as fast as you can. They don't tell your times, they don't tell you if you've passed The only reason you even know if you fail is like every day when you muster for an event, they tell you to get in these individual trucks, and then you quickly learn as people start getting kicked out that if you ever get in a truck by yourself, it's not good.
Right.
So, but because you don't, you really have to have this level of mental fortitude because nobody's telling you if you're doing well, nobody's telling you if you're sucking. You just have to believe in yourself and you just concentrate on the event and then just put concert on the event in front of you. Don't think about like, oh, we're at week two, week through, because you have no
idea when this is going to stop. Like everything every portion of the selection, you have no idea when it's going to ad, and when it does, it's this huge surprise. And then you're onto the next portion, which is you had like it goes places that you never thought selections would go to, like it is probably one of I would say it's a more unique selection.
Than tags is because they sort of like test to you on some of the skills that they like operators in the unit to have right to see how you respond under stress.
Yes, yeah, I think the logical model, but they also want to implement that you in that unit, right, like that more kind of like operative type of you know job.
So there's like things within it that are more centered towards that, and we have a pretty like intimate knowledge because like of the difference between ours and CAGs because later in OTC we actually do our tactical portion of OTC at Camp Dawson, and we run the same lanes, but luckily not as selection like we're actually doing a training which later on I thought I was good at LANDAB until I went to that place.
So you make it through selection, I mean that must have been a big relief to get go through the board and all that other stuff and finally get picked up.
Yes, the board is the hardest part of selection in my personal opinion, because armatic, I would almost say.
Because they dig into every aspect of your life and pick it apart.
I would say.
What I would say is you are presented with no win situations, and it is how you deal with no win situations. It is a hostile board. Like when I finished, when I got out of the board and I went into the waiting room while they deliberated. I knew I'd failed. I knew I was done, Like there was no way. I went into this little this room with kind of like a boister room, and I banged my head against this brick wall, and I kept saying, like, you're an idiot, You're an idiot, Like how could.
You screw that up?
But I walked back in there and they're like, we'd like to invite you to the next phase of training. Wow, that came as a surprise.
And the next phase was the free fall course. The next phase was the free fall course.
So you know that actually happened after OTC. So our OTC is a little bit longer. It's just shy of a year. I think it's like ten of like eleven months. And once we finish OTC, then you're all the operators get get to eventually go to free fall and then as soon as you get there, it's an o'mount like obviously the people who've been there the longest. But the one exception is the tactical detachment, and and most people don't get to go to the tactool detachment until they've
been usually about the average like three years. Like you have to you already have to be basically senior operative status, and mainly I think maybe the size, maybe the way I look. You know, I don't quite fit in a lot of places. But I was made as an exception
and within less than a year. Well I knew coming out of OTC that they were going to put me sort of an express lane to go to the tactical attachment, and I ended up probably six to nine months after I finished OTZ, I was officially in there, and then I got put to the to the OML for free Fall School. So within a year I was in Freefall Basic course and within a year of that I did Freefall Jumpmaster down at depp Grew in Virginia Beach.
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Yeah.
And one other things that I really enjoyed about this particularly is just because a part of that job is you actually because I say, kind of does its own thing with his own operations and everything like that. But
the Tackle attachment actually supports Blue and Green. So we actually were like on the short cycle, and so I actually got to spend quite a bit of time with both Green and Blue, which you know, I felt like I had a unique perspective because I kind of got to see inside all three of these units, both the Orange, Blue, and Green, and you get to see the cultural differences,
which are you know, pretty pretty shocking. And I think, you know, especially with how the difference between how Blue and Green treats their support personnel, that's kind.
Of a huge difference.
I've heard that that Green loves their support guys and Blue hates them.
Yeah, it was explained to me in a very a very good way. Green these there sees their support people is that like they can't do their job without their support guys.
Blue sees their support.
Guys as they're in their way right and they have to tolerate them and it's so and one of the biggest I'll give you.
So, at some point they made a mandatory for all assaulters to go to their intelligence squadron over at Green Yes, and because of that, like when you showed up, because when I started going, they'd already been implementing this. So when I I, i'd show up and almost always we were we would be attached to the REKI teams. And but when we would be there and we would have like our various different equipment and stuff like that, we'd have assaulters who'd come over who just got back from
the intel squadron, like, oh, dude, I use that. Dude, it'd be super excited to talk to you about intel stuff. You know, here you've got these like badass assaulters who like want to get in with the intel and uh, let's just say.
That never happened a blue Yeah, yeah, I mean I maybe it was you that told me this actually, but someone pointed out to me that, you know, Delta makes a point of putting operators in those intel eligence positions and they take it really seriously, like this is part of your career field. You're going to be really good at it. And it's resulted in, you know, the increasing capabilities.
Of course, absolutely.
So what I have found is that you know, both assaulters at both Blue and Green, like they are some of the most impressive individuals that I've ever met, right, and especially with like with the mentality and the level of maturity that you find at Green. When you take these like, you know, I almost think of like cheerwoord assaulters is like almost equivalent like Olympic athletes. They are
the best. They have climbed that ladder. There is nobody better. Right, do you take someone who already has that mentality and then you're like, hey, here's a different job once you do this, right, And these guys, because they have that mentality,
they see how intelligence import intelligence. They go in there and they become some of the best and then they do their you know, I you know, this might be a hot say, but like I would actually say that the intel guys who are the assaulters at Green would probably be superior to any guy that you find in ISA.
Wow.
Yeah, I mean that's pretty incredible that you would even think that that. They must have come a far away as far as your job, you're in the tactical squadron, How does your job differ from what you were doing previously as a SAD.
So yeah, let's yeah, how much I can. So it's.
So even even within the tactical side of things, I still did stuff outside of the tactical side of things. And if you understand that, you know essentially that you know, because everybody has pretty much general knowledge that the ISA was sort of like started as like the army's version
of the CIA. So if you if you can kind of think about like what the CIA does and you know, especially when it comes to covers and clandestine work, so you have to do you do that type of stuff, and you know, learning how to you know, be somebody else for a deployment is that is definitely a skill that you have to learn. And I can just tell you it's not like in the movies. You know, you have to you know, you don't have this like team
who comes up with all this stuff for you. You kind of have to make it up on the fly and you have to do your own research and you know, so that's that is definitely an interesting thing a side of things. And then while I was there, you know, because they have traditionally they have two main operational squadrons.
You have the operation squadron, you have the SIGM squadron.
And but they quickly is that they wanted to start making full spectrum operatives, which you had human guys who could do sigant and you could have sigant guys doing human And because we deployed in such small teams, they wanted to be able to have maximum capability in an individual. So like there started to be uh oh, definitely a crossover. Like one of my really good friends was actually the first SI guy to go to the farm.
That's pretty interesting, And I mean, I think there's a couple of interesting topics around this, but one of them is, you know, you had already talked about how in Delta some of the operators had taken very well to the
intel side. I'm wondering when you tried to or not you personally, but when the unit tried to mix human and singant, how did those personalities work, you know, kind of on an individual level, Like there's about both the person the personality aspect and also just the sheer amount of information that you can hold in your head and skills that you can maintain proficiency on.
No, that's actually a great question, because I think not all second guys traditionally have the personality to do human right. I definitely think it's easier for a human guy to learn, you know, it's definitely different because it requires a certain type of personality to do human. So they were very selective on who they started to cross train, right, but the goal was to eventually cross training. And also because especially during certain times like the unit would be more
employed when it came to certain intelligence disciplines. And so when let's just say that OS didn't really the human guys weren't having much of a job, and they were jealous because maybe the second guys were more gainfully employed and had more mission.
They were like, well, let us, well, let's.
Write some of the second stuff and they'll get us to get us working again. And then they kind of went back and forth and vice versa. So it was an interesting It was interesting to see the transition within the unit. And then you know, also the unit trying to find its own identity, if you will, because they struggled with that for years and I probably still struggling with them.
Is that because their capabilities are duplicated in other parts of Jaysock.
Or so this is my understanding, and this is what I was told of what was going on we were there, So obviously I say it was originally created too, and obviously you read about the secular e leap and a couple other books, but was to be that element of intelligence for both Blue and Green, and because we had a horrible relationship with the CIA in the eighties, but eventually the CIA came around and they're like, you guys are doing good stuff and it's kind of like our
dey are when it was the analogy I used to the strange stepfather came home and it was like, hey, do you want to go around the world and in laden with us? And we were like hell yeah, dad.
And so there was a time where I think that and this happened like before I got there, So I hear about this, like because out there twenty ten and this already was like they were still doing it when I showed up, but it was being calmed down at this point they were transitioning away from Operations CIA, but for a good portion of the two thousands they were running around the world of the CIA but not supporting Blue and Green.
And that is my understanding. Was one of the main.
Catalysts of why Blue and Green end up developing their own organic squadrons. So by that time, the week kind of sort of ended our crusade with the agency when we came back and we're like, hey, we're back, and they're like, now.
We're good, bro, right right, we were good.
And then when you show up right and you see what they're doing, You're like, yeah, you guys are good.
You're really really not that much use for us.
How do you think that bodes for the future of the unit? Do you think they're going to find their identity or their niche in the community.
You know, they around the time that I left, they were definitely trying to find their specific niche, right, And I think that there were some good ideas, But I.
Think that I don't know.
This is my personal opinion. When it comes to intelligence centric organizations, there is especially when it comes to personalities.
I find that there is.
The personalities can be a little more toxic and probably eigence. Just in general, I feel like is a caddy can be a very caddy profession And I definitely of the three units, I definitely think that KAG is the most professional and the most mature and I think that there was some innate personality problems within ISA, which I think is still issues occasionally when I still talk to people who are still in the unit, they tell me all that I essentially I left it a very good time.
Yeah. Yeah.
I think the difference in a lot of ways is that the intelligence business is kind of people doing their own things, so to speak, whereas you know, you know from your experience being on an ODA or a ranger platoon or a seal platoon, it's very much a team, you know, a team event that you're doing.
Yeah, yeah, and yeah.
And then a lot of what they're doing is they're in like you know, occasionally there's like solo missions, but they're like two maybe three man teams, right, and you you have quite a lot of responsibility, and there's definitely like it is a level it is not an easy mission, like it's you know, it's very you know, you're out on your own, and especially whatever status that you might deploy in, you know, complicates things even further. And it
is definitely a very hard environment. It's definitely it's it is a Tier one intelligence organization, right, But there are what I found, there were some inherent problems with that. And then honestly, like you know, you look at almost every like for example, take INSCOM, right, you have all these intelligence over arching umbrella organizations who no longer have a job, Like INSCOM doesn't have a job because every operational unit in the military has its own organic intelligence, right.
And so I say, it's sort of like the INSCOM of Tier one if you want, right, And it's still luckily it still does its own thing, it has its own mission, right, but the portion of where it supported the other two has been greatly diminished.
And you did a whole bunch of deployments with the unit. What are you able to tell us about where they sent you and what they had you doing.
I can't really, especially based on certain missions that were in different statuses, but I would probably say that one of the things when I'm in fifth Group, you know, especially you think about this two thousand and seven, two thousand and nine, you know, Fifth Group was stuck in Iraq, right,
and this was I was. I did my first deployment before the change of the Soap agreement where you had unilateral operations, and then when we came back to the second appointment, we were doing bilateral operations, which we also needed warrants from Iraqi judges, which you know, it took us a few months to realize that we had to go out of the tribal region because you know, you'd submit a warrant through a judge and then suddenly you
hadn id waiting for you. Right, We quickly learned that we had to go out of the region, away from that tribe to submit warrants for judges. Actually, but it just completely slowed the tempo. And at that time, you know, we heard that like Afghanistan was still popping off. We're like, oh, can we go somewhere else? But we were fifth group, you know, that we owned Iraq, like we were stuck there.
So one of the things that I wanted to do because that second appointment well was amazing because I had that great team experience with Boomer and the team, the Soul Attachment. I luckily deployments minus a single deployment was in other continents and I actually probably spent majority of my time.
In Africa.
Doing the tactical singing side for other JSK elements.
To actually did both, I did.
I did both the.
The typical job that you would think of that an
isa guy does. And I also did the tactle thing because I was you know, I was saying, didn't have any kids, wasn't married, and so anytime that there was a slot that opened up another detachment, or somebody needed to be relieved for whatever American Red Cross or somebody needed to come home for whatever reason, I was usually the go to guy to fill in for those people, so which I'm looking back in hindsight, I really liked because I went on probably more deployments and more varying
different types of missions regardless of what I look like, which I don't think would have happened if they weren't desperate and needed somebody to replace. Then I was always available when I wasn't on certain aspects of the Jorge cycle.
When I was available.
From that time. Are there any like stories that you're able to tell. And I understand you need to be vague about where you were when it happened, et cetera, but if you could walk us through, if you have any stories you're able to tell things that were close called yes or got a little dicey.
You know, it's really it's really hard to go into like any of that without especially during that time, because without you know, it'd be really hard to really say I will I will tell you so at everything that I did at at the unit. My favorite thing probably still this day, is about four years after I have passed selection, I got to come back as cadre for selection.
And when you get to go behind the thing and you get to be the super stoic guy who because they do it all the time, Like candidates will come up and they'll be like, you know, they'll they'll they'll try to ask you for to reiterate the instructions and you just sit there, you know, with sunglasses on, you got your you know your shirt are you just go candidate, what were your instructions? And that's all you have to say.
And you get to see everything behind the scenes. And that was really cool because then because while you're there, you also you learn these to be You learn the history of our selection and how it related to tags, how they change things, and then you also see like they actually had the reasons why they chose this psychology versus like how they went different than SFAs and various different things like that. But no, I would definitely say
that the hardest part of deployments. I would actually say was being in alias, and I will say this, like if you're I would say that one of the transitions that I feel like kind of screwzing with you the most is that when you come back and you've essentially been somebody else for longer than you were yourself, it
kind of like messes with you a little bit. And you know all the times we always joke about it, like you'll come home and then you'll be with your buddies at work, and then you'll go to the local food truck and you'll be like, oh, you know quarter, and they'll be like for who, and then you'd give out the wrong name because you've been somebody else for so long.
Yeah, it's one of these situations where you wake up in the morning and you're not sure who you are, like what's my name?
Yeah, because they teach you early on, like the best way to do that type of stuff is you have to believe the lie.
Right, And this is in like every CIA like handbook out there, Like you know, this is no secret, but like that's definitely the most effective way. So when you go around it and you basically you believe the lie, and then when you come back, it's a little.
Bit of an adjustment.
Yeah, I mean I can see. I mean, thankfully, I think you know you were single at the time, but I mean it's especially hard on the families, and it definitely can do and I can see why living the type of life you describe can drive people towards alcoholism, womanizing. You're out there trying to find a connection.
Yeah, so yeah, and then also you have to remember also another part of that is you don't make that much money in the military. But I will tell you that TIERWOD operators do make money. Right, So like your SF guy, if I correct me if I'm wrong, Like, was it was it special Pro? Special Forces? Was Hazard's duty pay?
You get hazardous duty pay overseas and you get pro pay for being SF YEP.
Okay, so in the unit as in both Blue Green and Orange get this. All operators get this. So they get they get the SF pay at max out. I think it's like four fifty if I remember correctly, they get you get your all your everyone's pays, you get your demo pays and everything like that. But then you get AIP, which is my understanding. Only Blue Green and Orange operators get this, and it's one thousand dollars a
month on top of all your other special pays. And so I am a twenty seven year old, you know, staff sergeant at the time, living in you know, a metropolitan city and getting getting getting a decent amount of BAH on top of all these like because I probably had about two thousand dollars in special pays a month and on top of that my ridiculous BAH. I was a twenty seven year old staff sergeant making over six figures.
And you cannot get that type of money in my because even when I went to aviation, I took a huge pay cut and I was a warrant officer, you know. So there's the money, because you really can't you can't replicate at anywhere else in the military, not even like not even fighter pilots in the Air Force whatever, get that level of money.
And then you can't recreate this job in the civilian world. Like it's very hard.
Like you can go to ground branch, because that's where most of the guys go, is they eventually go to ground branch, Like especially the tacticle guys in our unit, they would eventually go to ground branch. And then that's when I had the fateful day. I was about I think I've been in the unit about six years. And our unit's CW five, who's this absolute legend who was a Green Beret ranger in the eighties, switched over and
became a helicopter pilot one sixtieth he was in Blackhawk Down. Anyways, this guy kind of being like the CW five of our unit and he liked me. Saw him in the gym one day and he comes up to me and he's like, you know, and he was like this fifty year old, like fifty five year old man, and it had a ten pack, Like it's just stupid, right, you know, Just like I was like, you know, I'm like, bro, just just put it away, like you Like, I felt
like it was one of the fittest dudes there. And he would just literally put me to shame all the time. And he used to come up and he'd like, fis pump you, but he'd like he'd hit you hard with the knuckles, right, and he'd do this every single day. So I'm in the gym, I'm about to work out, and he's like so he's like, Joe, what's a what's a you know, what's your plan? I'm like, oh, I'm probus to do legs and he was like, no, with life,
you idiot. And I'm like, oh, you know, I'm gonna do with everybody else because i'd been a a I'd reached senior senior operative status at that point. For I think it's been like a one or two years and my and what everybody did was they they did their like twenty twenty twenty five years whatever, and then they all went to ground branch, especially the guys I was in the detachment with, and that was that was that
was the life, that was the dream, right. And he comes up to me and he's like, he's like, do not do that. And I'm like why. He's like, look at all your seniors, look at your peers. All of them are divorced. I don't ever have, not barely any of them have any relationship with their children. He's like, he's like, you've done this like between group and here. He's like, you've done this, like what over a decade now. He's like, I can tell you. He's like, it doesn't
get any better. He's like, the seniority in these jobs doesn't get you any better. He's like the best part is the first five years. That's the sweetest part. It's new, it's everything, you can do everything. And then once you start getting senior status, you would think that you get more freedom. No, that's the exact opposite. So and then he, being a guy who was a former ranger Green Bray and now a pilot, he was like, if you ever want to go to flight school.
I was like, yeah, who doesn't.
He's like, dude, the army will pay, like they will, you know, you don't have to pay to get your private license. He's like, go do that. And then you know, probably within a year of that conversation, you know, I you know, due to some other like things that went on in the unit that I did that I saw
that I didn't like. I was like, I'm out. You know, I put in my like I was it the forty one eighty seven and I applied for flight school warrant, and then you know, I had to put in an age and time and service favor and to being the oldest person in flight school, which the first sergeant down there was really happy.
To tell me. You know, he's like, you're the old man now.
That was Yeah, that was some really sage advice that you got from your salty warrant there. But you know he wasn't wrong, No, he wasn't.
And actually his helicopter is actually if you usually go to the RVY Aviation Museum, is the is the actual helicopter in there and has his name on it.
Oly shit like this, this guy, this guy is a legend.
Yeah I did it all.
Yeah, this guy still a legend to this day.
Okay, So you go to flight school and sort of first off, like what's your objective in going to flight school? What what airframe do you want to be on? What are sort of your goals here going into it?
So at this time it was my understanding, so it was interesting.
So when you go there, when you go to flight school, and if you either come from Ranger BAT, you come from group, or you come for one of the Tier one units, are when you finish flight school you are going to be allowed the option to go straight to one sixtieth. They only give this option for frame former
ranger you know whatever, or the Tier one guys. Right, And I was told by the two CW fives, both of them who helped me write, who did my letters of recommendation, they were like, whatever you do when they give you this option, say no, do not go to one sixties.
Straight out of flight school.
And both of these guys were former one sixtieth guys, and they told me, They're like, hey, it's a doggy dog world. He's like you, when you go to flight school, they teach you enough to not crash. He's like all this other stuff like learning how to you know to launch guys, do airborne operations, fast roping, spies, fries. When you show up to one sixtieth, they expect you to know it already in gratuity. You know they're making an exception.
But that learning curve is so short, it's like it adds a level of stress to your scene that you don't know what you need.
And when I show up.
To find school, there's only one other soft guy there. There's another green there's a green beret there. And we actually instantly become friends, right and we're sitting there like one of the first days, and I tell him what my CW five told me. He's like, dude, my CW five told me the exact same thing. Who his CW five was also a one sixtieth guy. So it quickly
became this thing. But while I was there. You know, if if you're familiar, you know, like one sixtieth has sort of become like, you know, like the Tier two aviation unit sort of right, because like what does Green do?
Right?
They needed, they need a capability they there was a time when you know, I think one sixtieth was their operations were getting too slow because they still had this bureaucadech you know, they're still in the army, right, and you had officers who would come along and just their their their speed of doing operations were not fast enough.
So what did Green do?
They end up developing their own aviation wing, and that aviation wing got so successful that it became its own separate unit. And I believe the colloquial term is the uh uh the Northern Virginia Boys.
I believe is that, Yeah, the dev group one I've heard referred to as t W A t Weenie Airlines.
Yeah. Yeah.
So So obviously knowing this and actually getting to work with them while was at the unit, that was like became my goal because I but I knew that they weren't.
They were obviously not going to accept me right away, nor did I want to.
So the goal was to get there and do my go to my first unit, get my couple of years in and then go and then apply for the Virginia Boys. And while I was there, one of my well, so I did the basic course in the UH seventy two Lakota and one of my contracting instructors we quickly learned where I was from, and he let me know that he this was a side job for him, but he's actually from the Virginia Boys, and he told me and I was, so we had a good conversation and I
was like, Okay, what's the fastest way I can get there? Right, He's like.
Blackhawks.
He's like, if you do apaches, because there's such as short as apaches at least this is what he said at the time, was that you will have to do an additional year or two as an Apache pilot before they'll even allow you to take ADA. If you do Blackhawks, that's the quickest.
Way that you can get there. So that was the reason why.
So when I got to my wish list after graduating the basic course, that is why I put it on the top of my wish list.
Was black Hawks cool.
So, so then you had to go off to U
¶ Mental Health Rock Bottom: Suicide Plan, Dog, and Turning Point
age sixty school.
Yes, went after U age sixty school.
And it's funny because you hear there is like with any unit, you hear generalizations about like what the Apache instructors are like with the Blackhawk instructors, right, and you for whatever reason, you keep hearing these horror stories about the Apaches instructors, right, which end up being quite the opposite because you I find out when you get to the Blackhawk portion that the Blackhawk instructors are like the worst.
Like the Apache guys are actually the coolest. The Chinook guys are, if not as cool as a patch you guys.
Even cooler, right.
But I think one of the reasons why the Blackhawk guys are so bitter is because they don't do anything, Like their airframe doesn't do anything well, and they're like the jack of all trades. But since you've been in Afghanistan, as you know, in Afghanistan, they don't have the power to do successful operations.
That's why basically only Chinooks do anything.
So as a unit commander, what are you going to do? REQUI because at that at that altitude, you can get like maybe three four guys with equipment on your black Hawk, So what are you in a request, you know, a request like twenty black Hawks or like one or two Chinooks, like it doesn't make any sense. So I feel like there was a These guys had a a bit of a.
You know, some of them literally had a Napoleon complex.
But yeah, some of them had like this like, oh, we need to prove ourselves, and it's just this negative attitude. And we quickly learned that the instructors in the black Cart course were definitely the most difficult.
And as you're going through the course, it sounds like you started having some family tragedy.
Also, right, Yeah, So my father at this point was had cancer.
But then my.
Sister in law who helped raise me because my mother died when I was fifteen, she actually left college her and my brother came home and helped raise me. So like she's my sister in law, but I always considered
my sister because she helped raise me. And she died suddenly and unfortunately in the exact same way that my mother did when I was fifteen, and so I went home on emergency leave to be there for everything in the funeral, and then within a year my father died, so and I was already having issues with the current flight instructor who was the flight lead of my black Hawk flight, and so I used this as a time to roll out of that class and take care of
family stuff. And then when I got put back into course, I randomly got put back into his flight and within a week or two I got had some issues with being a huge partner, created other issues within flight school, and then in combination of my family and a financial situation that was going on with all my real estate investment properties because of COVID, that's probably when I hit rock bottom and hit a level been depressed in my first time in my life.
And we'll talk about this in a bit, but you know your YouTube channel, you talk a lot about overcoming some of these mental health issues. What was it you were experiencing at that time and how did you overcome it? Because, I mean, what you're describing it's not nothing. I mean, this is something that would take the wing, the air out of anyone's wings.
I think, yeah, no, that's a great question because this actually ends up being like one of the things that I tell people, especially when they're starting to lead the military.
Is what I didn't realize at the time, but I learned quickly is that I.
Had tied my identity to these aspects of my life, to my real estate investment, to my success within the military, because at this point I'd never failed anything obviously, you know, not passing waivers. I didn't really you know, consider that as failing. Right, every time that someone had given me the shot, I passed it.
Right.
In flight school, I had never at this point, never failed to test. Technically, I did get, I did get. I did fail one flight test in the Uge seventy two Lakota, but that's only because I fell asleep in the back. The instructor was not happy about it. So I failed that he failed me, even though I passed the flight portion. So I had to retake the assessment.
That's neither here nor there so. And then now so between my financial, my professional I all these things that I had tied my identity that I was successful were failing, and I had no idea how to deal with failure, and I shut down completely. I didn't talk to anybody because I was ashamed. I was these things. I projected all these things, this is who I was, and now always no longer this How could I talk to anybody?
And it wasn't until I finally, you know, because you know, I don't know if you want me to go into the details about the plan that.
I met and I hit rock bottom, but whatever you're comfortable with.
So, yeah, So I got a problemcause I've already talked about this on my YouTube channel. So I hit rock bottom, and I made a plan to commit suicide, right, And I made a plan. I planned to do it after my best friend's wedding, who I was. Strangely enough, I
was a bridesmaid for her wedding. And the main reason why I didn't do it was actually because of my dog, because later on I would obviously realize that, know, taking your own life is one of the selfish things you can do, because you know, you think you're fixing your problems, but you're causing trauma to anybody who's ever loved you, right, and that when that's just horrible. Right. But this dog, who I had rescue from the streets of Baltimore, she had nobody else in her life, you know, who was
I to like leave her in this world? And when she had nobody, who would she go to? Right? And so her was the main reason I didn't do it. And then every day I was just like I made a choice. I was like, I'm just going to do one thing. It's going to make my life better today. And then eventually I got out of it. And then you I think, what I didn't know, because I guess one of the reasons with this was so hard for me. I had never been depressed my life. I was at
a sunny disposition because I'd never experienced this. I didn't know what to do. And finally I.
Started reaching out to people. I started talking to people.
And realized that it was okay to have done this right obviously, you know, mainly because I didn't follow through with it. And so every day by day I did something to make my life better. And then which you quickly realize it eventually, you know, when you pull yourself out of this thing, it's sort of I feel like it rewires your brain chemically a little bit, and you it's it's like this shadow that's always behind you. You're
always going that depression is always lingering there. But it's how you perceive it, it's how you deal with it. You know, you understand that, like that's not an option and you're never going to allow yourself to do that, but like it's there you're lying if it's not like.
And then there's like these sadness that you go through.
And for me, I I frame it as this is the story that I one day will tell right if I was ever to write, if someone was ever writing a book or movie about life, which I don't think i'd ever do.
I'm not that cool.
But if they did, what would the viewers at the screen be yelling? What would the people in the movie theater be yelling at the screen right now for me to do right? And when you think about that, your
success is built on failures. That was just this giant failure that would become one of the greatest triumphs I believe in my life to get over that particular period of my life so to the point where I'm actually it is one of the best things that ever happened to me because it has turned me into the person that I am today, and I am so if later on, when we talk about an investigation, if that investigation had happened five years prior, I don't know how I would
dealt with it. But because this had already happened, my level of don't give a fuck factor was so high that I just didn't care. That to me, every day after that were bonus days, right, I'm just happy to be alive.
You you emerged stronger after the fact, absolutely, yeah, And
¶ CID Investigation Fallout
so you're kind of trying to beat this thing at the same time, how how are you kind of like wrapping up flight school and are you getting assigned to a unit.
Yeah. So basically I had to go through this whole process of you know, I had to write letters to Congress and all these different things, and you know, the whole thing was a shit show. But eventually I was able to get out of there, and then I got DCS to Washington, d or to Washington DC area.
And at this point I was.
Because of the things that happened at flight school, I was done with the military. So I was like, I'm just going to write out the rest of my career, like because like now the concept of like, you know, doing anything else after that, I was like, I'm done.
So and then about six months prior.
That's when I started the YouTube channel because I was like, this is my purpose, Like, this is the one of the things that I wanted to do.
And it was something outside of the military too, right, it was something you were doing on your own yes, yeah and so.
And because I guess one of the catalysts when I wanted to do this was because I've obviously experienced toxic leadership, especially which I never thought I would, especially in ISA, like there was some definitely some very toxic leaders It obviously doesn't happen as much, but I feel like when it does, it's very potent. Like it was. The few
individuals that were it was really bad. And I wanted to make videos about toxic leadership, but like to help teach people what real leadership actually looks like, because I feel like a lot of people actually don't know what real leadership looks like. So that became one of the reasons.
And then now that I had this where I was able to get past taking my own life and I was on this like journey of like, you know, I got into Buddhism, Stoicism and all these different things, and I really kind of like went on this like spiritual journey to like find, you know, to understand my place in this universe.
And what I eventually got.
To I was like, I think that I had this innate ability to be able to break things down to retard level because I'm you know, kind of a retard myself because I have to break everything's down to the layman in stores. I got stories from Freefall School when I came to learning how to do Poe's exits, they literally had to break it down.
A retard level for me.
And then I'm not afraid to talk about the things that you know, guys don't want to talk about, especially in these hyper masculine communities. So I felt like that was my thing. So I started this channel, and that's what I started originally talking about, was the was the mental health stuff. I was talking about fitness stoicism, you know, That's why I called it the Stowing Viking.
And then but people were then asking me because I.
Had pictures of of like my time at fifth Group, a time at flight school, and then like time like ISA or whatever, or like the few photos that I did because I don't really have the many photos from that time for obvious reasons.
And people started asking questions like why did you leave?
Right, so, and I never said which unit I was from, and so I was like, Okay, I see this as a teaching lesson, right because so I phrased it. So I told the story of why I left and the reason why I left is because you know, I saw that there was no there was no future down that route, at least not for twenty thirty years, right. And the moral of the story was you can do anything amazing, right, but you don't need to sacrifice your entire personal life
for the rest of your life life because of it. Right, And if you really think about it. And this is the advice that I tell everybody. Know, what you want in the military, go get it, do it for five years, and then lead and take that experience to the civilian world, because they will reward you, you know, for in many different ways. And you also have the freedom to like quit, like that's that's an amazing power, which you don't get in the military. Right.
So I made this video and it it.
At that point, I think my videos had maybe five hundred thousand views. This thing within like two days was like one hundred thousand views. And I started making more videos and people liked it, and people were asking about selections. So I kind of made a video selection about you know how the differences between Tier two and Tier one selections. Advice of how to pass Tier two and Tier one never gave any operational details never gave way any secrets,
never still named, never named the unit. But people in the comments were starting to guess, you know, to hear Tier one unit and right, and I'm like, look, bro, like I wish, but uh no, that's not the that's not the one I went. So I started to imply through the comments that I was from a different one. Right, So everything's fine. The channels starting to get big, you know. I get Barbell Apparel reaching out to me, wanting to be a sponsor, you know, which was cool because I've
already been wearing these guys's clothes. And and right around that time, I get this ominous phone call from my command and they're like, hey, we need you to come into work immediately and come see the commander. And anybody who's been in the military knows that is not a good sign. They that never results in anything good. Uh,
that's always bad. So I show up and they whisked me directly into this conference room and uh, you know, my company commander, she's you know, she's only been an army for a couple of years, and she's obviously really worried. And I've only ever to smile on this one's face. I'm like, man, you okay, She's like, you know, like I don't. She couldn't tell me what was going on.
So they slide this piece of paper in front of me, and it says that I'm investigated by the Army Criminal Investigation Division or the Post for the possible disc.
Unclassified or of classified information.
And I think you've probably you're probably aware of this, Joe. But there's sort of a larger context happening in the Special Operations community, going after all kinds of veterans who have spoken on podcasts or spoken in interviews or whatever the case may be. About a year and a half ago,
DELTA sent out a letter to all of their members. Yeah, and the letter, you know, it's kind of starts off where it's like, you know, warning people, you know, be careful about not dischools and classified information, which I think that's within their wheelhouse, right, nothing saying that, But then they ask veterans of the unit to socially shame other veterans of the unit that speak out in ways that they find inappropriate and that is completely beyond the purview
of some command or at some unit at Fort Bragg, to try to suppress the First Amendment rights of private citizens out there in America. And I just had another friend he worked for one of the JASOX support units, and they came after him this last week because of an interview he did with us about a year ago. And there's nothing they can do, as we'll talk about with your case, there's nothing they can really do to him because he didn't say anything wrong, he did not
divulge classified information. But what they will do is try to socially shame you within the community.
Yeah.
So yeah, And I already started to see this even prior, because I think I saw Sean Ryan talking about it, you know, doing these interviews and suddenly you know, they're like, oh, you have to take our videos down, and you know, and as Sean Ryan said, is like, you know, you can't, like you're allowed to talk about your lives obviously, don't
give them any operational details. So and one of the reasons that I chose the path of my channel anyways, which was one not to be about operational details, and I wanted to be about stoicism, philosophy, life lessons, talking about the hard truths and these you know, the suicide mental health because especially when I was when I was in the unit. Even when I was in aviation, if you went to mental health, that was the end of
your career, right, you couldn't go. It wasn't until like a couple of years later, like towards the end of my career, that it was okay to go to mental health. So that's what I want to talk about. And I never wanted to be about the unit because like, one, I don't think I'm that cool anyways, and two, like what am I going to talk about anyways? No, I
was like, no, we're good. So yeah, So the the the intent of the channel was, you know, not to be about the operational details, you know, because one I don't think I'm that cool anyways, and then two like what are you actually going to talk about? Like it just it's such a murky road. Didn't want to do
any of that type of stuff. And so the focus of the channel was, you know, obviously on the philosophy, the stoicism, you know, making the mental health especially because you know, when I was in the unit and aviation, if you went to mental health, that was a death sentence, like your career is over. And luckily, in the last couple of years, right before retired, it definitely shifted that that be okay, but it definitely like we had a guy in while I was in flight school who went
to mental health. He was he was kicked out within a week, and obviously in the unit you definitely couldn't go to mental health like that was that was a death sentence on the death sentence. So but you know, I did my due diligence and I researched all this stuff. And whether Vieweditt likes it or not, there's plenty of books which I also have a funny story because I actually showed up the ISA select because at this time in twenty ten, I think the only book at that
time was Killer Lee. Yeah, and you have to remember this is two thousand and two, that two thousand and nine, twenty ten, right, and what there was very little known about the unit, right, so I'll quickly go into this real quickly.
I think it's a little it might be a little pertinent.
Is at that time it was like whispers of what orange and green were, Like everybody knew what green was, but they're like, what is orange? And the thing that I was told by a green beret in the company that was in and because he was interested to go to like Orange. Actually he was like, if you want to be John Rambo, you go agree. If you want to be James Bond, you go to Orange, right, And obviously that could not be farther like that was such
a disappointment. But you know this is to a truth, there is some truth to it that type of job. But when I but when you're applying right that, nowhere did they actually say the name of the unit, right, So you're applying, so you think you're applying for this job. So I show up to this selection and I'm still not one hundred percent sure, Dodd, I'm trying out for
So I bring two books. I bring the book Killer Elite and I bring the book The Mission and a Menemy by People Labor, which was always one of my favorite books. I like how he taught life lessons in that book, which is sort of one of the things that modeled how I did my channel. So the first week that you do everything, it's a selection before you go off to the actual real selection, is all like PT tests interview CI and you're sitting down, you're doing
polygraphs a stuff. I get called into one of my CI interviews one day and he's like, hey, you know you like to read and I was like, yeah, I like to read. He's like, did you bring any books with you? I was like yeah, I bought some books. He's like cool, Cool, what books did you bring. I was like, ah, you know, like you know, Mission and Mename and some other books.
And he's like what other book?
And I'm like, I remember having a conversation like an hour prior with some other dude who was in there talking about how like Killer Elite was like, you know, possibly about this unit, and so he's like, you know, I was like, oh, I'm just reading this book, Killer Elite and he's like, what is that book about. I was like, well, supposedly it's about this unit, right, And he's like do you think that's a good idea to read this? And then that immediately piqued my interest. Is
like why does he not want me to know? So I leaned it and I was like.
Should I not be reading this book? Like is there a reason?
And he just like looks at me coldly and he's like, you should not be reading that book while you're here. So I get out of that interview. Oh no. The last thing I say is like, well, wouldn't you want to know what as much doubt, but you didn't to cheer your supposedly, and he looks at me coldly again, he goes, just don't read that book while you're here.
So I immediately went straight.
To my book and I was like halfway through it, and I've never read a book so fast in my entire life. And when I was done, I slammed it down and I was like, I've never been so disappointed in my life. There was nothing about selection. It was like the driest book that I've ever fucking read and there's nothing in there, right, But they made this whole thing.
So going back to I did all this research. I made sure that everything that I would possibly talk about was already publicly available information, and I made very careful that I didn't imply any names. I used the most outed names within the unit, which was Isa and TFO. But you know, apparently they're not on the same page of believing that that's okay.
To talk about.
So how did this investigation against you shake out? That they're saying that your use of these terms is classified information that you can't reveal publicly.
Yeah, So so what ended up happening? Is you know, through.
Unofficial, unofficial avenues. I was informed that one my former unit was chain of UH leadership, was in contact with my current Champion command and it was implied to me that that me posting any sort of information even even remotely relating to the unit was a bad precedent and that I they should maybe you know, made example of that, they should pursue as much as they can within their their legal capabilities.
And then I.
Learned about a week later from this similar unofficial source that that the shift went from they realized that nothing I had talked about was actually directly classified. They were now trying to see if they could put sort of an aggregate of me placing unclassed sources together and then like infirming things that that would actually be could be they could find some sort of you know, charge within there.
But that luckily, that line of thinking did not work out for them, and ultimately, you know, I was not charged with anything.
I was given.
At the end of two months, I was called in and you obviously there's four options that could have had.
One, I could have been charged.
Criminally, Two I could have been charged under UCMJ, and then three is a gomar which is a general officer memorandom of reprimand I believe is the correct full term. And everybody who knows a gomar that is essentially a strong worded the letter that goes into your permanent profile, and of course nothing at all Scotch free. Everybody agrees, Hey,
everyone's good. Unfortunately I'm not that lucky. So I show up and I receive a GOMAR, and it's a very vaguely worded letter, just basically saying that they were disappointed and I used poor judgment when posting on social media, and that's basically all it said. So you're allowed to do a rebuttal. You have seven days to do a rebuttal. But the good thing is is when you're allowed to do rebuttal, you are legally allowed to have all the
investigative documents. So they handed me the documents and I have to word this very carefully. When I was given the documents by a member of the staff of the brigade.
Team, I was cautioned.
On of how severe my response should be or lack thereof, and if I was to resist that there would be consequences.
Retaliation is the word they're avoiding saying, yeah, so yeah, there was a lot of implications within this conversation, but I knew from my unofficial source that I already knew that they were they were if they could grow whatever that they were trying to find, they were digging, and so I knew at this point.
Like, what a what a bluff? Right?
And I told the guy who told me this right, who was a member of the staff, and I told him very politely. I was like, if they could have, they would have. So I went home and I googled, because so one majority of the stuff on this document was redacted, but you've been in the unit long enough,
you know the terms. You can you can tell what's under the redacted portions, and I could tell that the two things that they were upset about was the use of one that acknowledging that I was even in the unit, which didn't make any sort of sense because I won't go too much in it. But when you leave the unit, you're actually on your erb. They finally put the existing acronym of the unit.
Right, and you come out of the DASA er and everything else exactly, so you're you're allowed to acknowledge that you were at an SMU, right, Obviously you don't only go any of the details, and you avoid using its current.
Name or any of the last like five or whatever. You know, so you know, but you know, people know enough, right, like they know what's in that area, they know like you know what unit used to be. You know, they generally know what you're talking about. So I go. And then the other thing was using the term ISA, which surprised me the most because of if you look at how much literature there are is out using the term ISA, which is.
Obviously the unit's official original name.
So I went home and I got on Google, and within two minutes I googled members of the BIAS and the plethora of profiles that came up one surprive me and with the most interesting.
The top of all these profiles not only was actually a guy who is my unit commander while I was there, and actually I was I did lead one missions as a team leader, and he was actually the un commander while I was leading that team, So I actually had to do video chats with this guy every single week. So for that to be the guy that popped up. And then when I opened his Army profile like on an Army official website, of all the things, they could
have said right. It said not only was did he attend ISA selection of all the names that could use, it also said that he was the commander of ISA. And actually right before this interview, I actually looked up and verified that it's still up and it not only did it verify that he went to isa's election and he was the commander of ICE, it gave the exact dates that he was.
He did it right.
So I put this all in my rebuttal, why is it classified when you say it, but not classified when exactly?
So?
I have a personal theory about that.
So if you notice in certain units there is sort of a double standard, oh yeah, and you know there's various different reasons why certain people, and you know, I think it goes back to like you know, and for anybody who's been the military long enough, especially in soft there is definitely like for example, when it comes to awards, right, everybody knows that the higher rank.
You are usually the higher rewards you get.
You know, like if if like an E six was to do something that could merit a bronze Star, he may not get it. He might get an r com of the V device, But that major who was sitting back at the FOB. Oh he's getting it. He's getting
a bronze star for sure. Right, And so I feel like there is one there's like this good old boys club, which there always has been, and then it's a combination keeps a certain level of rank that certain people get away with these things, like you know, there's been I think it's like, at least is my account, there's at least four books just specifically about the unit. And I actually know personally like two of them who wrote them.
And uh, you know one of them is now the director of counter terrorism or was you mean, I don't know if he's still.
Yeah.
So, so definitely there was like us. And I also knew in the way that I left the units, I was not there. There was definitely not the biggest Some people were not the biggest fan of me, like and I had this innate ability where we talked about earlier. Uh you know, I have a face that people want to punch, apparently, and uh so, and I've come to terms of this, right like people I rub people the wrong way for whatever reason.
There's multiple different reasons.
It doesn't matter. So so I finished this rebuttal and I sent it to my company commander, and I'm proud because not only did I find this documentation I had, I had all the other u ur als and resources that that I had done my duejillises before even started the channel. So I gave all the books, all the references, everything, put it all on a rebuttal, and I sent it to my company commander, and I was really proud of this, Like in my mind, there was no way they would
keep this going on. I my company commander, like, hey, did you get the reut and she was like, yes, but we need to talk about it because I was like really happy to hear what she thought of it. So I went in the next day. She takes me and she tells me. I was like, ma'am, did you like their buddle?
She's like, I did.
I thought it was awesome. You did a great job. But the brigade commander is furious. I'm like, what do you mean. She's like, they're claiming it's spillage. Like, what do you mean it's spillage? She's like, because you used his name in ISA in the same email. Not only did they pissed off about it, they have confiscated mine and first Sergeant's computers because and she she was at this point, she was completely on my side, and she's
just like, this whole thing is so ridiculous. And basically it was a knee jerk reaction because they were frustrated with their inability to charge me. And obviously if it had been spillage, they would have charged me immediately and obviously after other than me coming again.
¶ Unfiltered Q&A: TFO Myths, OPE Changes, RRC Interfacing
Anything about that.
It's very hard to charge somebody for spillage. You know, if you want to explain that term to folks, I mean that means like inadvertent disclosures.
Right exactly.
Yeah, And because obviously you can't call it spillage when it's on an Army official website. Yes, exactly, it would have been one thing if they had not then and then I took this information putting together, and that's that's spillage, because then I put two things together which other people wouldn't. But it was on an Army official website, So that's
why it wasn't spillage. But they were just so upset and they may not have known and like may have like to them, they're like, oh my god, you haven't this guy's naming a commander. And even though it's said where I found it. They may you know, I'll give them the benefit of doubt because this particular company, this brigade commander was not he's not from an SMU.
He may not know, but that was their knee jerk reaction.
They literally confiscated, as far as I know, it destroyed those computers just because they opened the email on those computers. And yeah, so I left, and you know, I never heard anything else about behind that and then but that was not quite the end of that. So I was given permission to start posting again. And this happened around
October first. So prior to the investigation, I actually had a good relationship with the senior command at the unit, and I knew that there was a pending family financial issue that was going to come probably around November December, and my original retirement date was November first, So I reached out to them and I was like, hey, can I extend it four months just to get on the backside of the holidays?
Can I go to February first?
And they're like, absolutely, no problem because all it does is requires your brigade commander's decision. And everybody told me, we're cool. So this happened about two weeks prior to the investigation, and then when the investigation and when they you know, they hand me the sheet. I was actually very confident. I actually originally laughed when they gave me the document. And my company C was like, aren't you
worried about this? I was like no, man, I was like, like, I knew that there was a possibility this might happen, but I did my due diligence.
I know, I haven't talke about anying.
Classic We're good, and they tell me at that meaning that they're going to sit on my extension until the investigation. Once the investigation's done, they're cool, they'll send it up. Everything's great. So the investigation that finishes around around October first, and they, through multiple different people, they lead me to believe that like it's going up, it's going to get signed.
It wasn't until about a week prior. Because anybody who retires know that usually between your terminal leave, usually get at least a month of like free time away from work right when you retire, and I find out a week and I'm not ready to retire. I think I'm retiring March or February first, because I've been told multiple ocasions and they're like, oh, by the way, we're not signing your thing.
You retire in a week.
It's totally nuts.
And I was like, oh my god, like, you've got to be kidding they And then I tried. And even the civilian who was actually who did my final out processing, he tried until the day of like he actually told them on the day I was supposed to my final out, he actually told me. He's like, and he's told he told my command. He's like, if you sign this this morning, He's like, I have even though it was the government checked out. He's like, I know the guy who proves this.
I'll have that approved by lunch and you'll and you'll he'll be extended at February first they refused.
Wow.
And then my company commander, to her credit, she did. She's like, she told me. She's like, she called me right after I did my final at She's like, we failed you. Well, what happened here was not right. We failed you as an organization. And she's like, it's going in my AAR or whatever her or her command climate survey that she's gonna do that year she was a reporter.
Whether she did or not, you know, I don't actually know. It doesn't matter anymore.
I was big of her to at least call you and tell.
You that, yeah, which I appreciated.
Yeah, yeah, definitely, Joe. I think we got a couple of questions from the Patreon folks for you t those up. I thought, you know, when I called you up about doing this interview, I mean I think I said something like, you know, Joe, if you're not incarcerated right now, I'd love to do this interview. And if you if you are, we can do it from prison. You know, there's a possibility.
Yeah, it would probably get better views.
To be honest, it's.
It's it's kind of a shame you in the hamburglar outfit with the black and white stripes.
Yeah, so yeah, go ahead.
What do we got d all right, we got one from j J. What do people get wrong about TFO?
So I would say that one of the things that people is that the because obviously their original job was to support green and blue right, but and obviously they started as you know, the army's version of the CIA, because mostly it was a human organization, and granted it was I think it was eighties when Colonel Jerry King created it thing. It was like eighty or eighty one when he created it. Yes, and at that time, sing it wasn't really much of a thing like singing. It
was just ringing heeos. Right, and then when and then when the unit really started to like make its business, like make money like they were the pioneers, especially like they the SIGT crushed and so they became this like full intelligence spectrum organization and they became so successful, which is one of the reasons that they started doing their own operations and now they're more of a The niche that they have tried to find is one because Green
and Blue really doesn't don't need them any that they are this like this multi theater like world level intelligence organization. That that's what they try to be as like their own they run their own independent operations.
Uh.
You know, if they can give intel back to the Greater Jaysa community, they can, but they are a lot they're very independent.
Uh nowadays, and I think we got one more yep.
How have you seen the operation operational preparation of the environment change over time?
Think I lost you? I'm sorry.
How have you seen operational preparation of the environment change over time?
Okay, operational prep.
So it has definitely changed, and it has definitely changed with technology. So and I can go for this for
a couple of different ways. So from a tactical side of things, right obviously implementing drones and other things like that, and also from a force protection as our abilities to conduct force protection, like just on the singate side of things became very limited as technology increased and our ability like for example, I eventually in the unit, I went back to Iraq like later on during the ISIS invasion, and it was one of the first Americans back in
and what we were doing six years prior, we couldn't even do a fraction of what we were doing there, and so we had to come up. Literally one of the things that I did is I actuallyt up getting awarth this. I actually helped create a new piece of equipment that the NSA ended up manufacturing.
For that particular mission.
So and then and the combination of us doing SIGAN and also combining clan skills in the human side of things, which then technology from an ALIAS standpoint of view, you know, biometrics started to change things. And you had ancestry dot Com, you had twenty three to meter which are obviously explicitly told not.
To do for obvious reasons.
And so it changed the way that we looked at the world and the way that we could do operations because it just it wasn't the old school like eighties
and nineties. We had to incorporate the technology and then everything was becoming so digital but also in such small form factors that you couldn't even detect when people were using particular technology and you had like R five days sniffers and then you know, everybody's heard of a Faraday cage, right, we basically started in cases we were like iron men, like completely encased in Faraday cages of like everything that you could protect, and you know, we literally had to
create SOPs, which I think was one of the cool things because we were on the cutting edge of like these intelligent operations and we did have especially when I was there, we had such a good relationship with the agency, And one of the things that we ended up doing and why we had such a close relationship with the agency is if anybody understands the different types of authorities like Title ten, Title forty, one of the reasons we started running and gunning with them was because we fall
in our DoD they don't, and in certain situations there were loopholes where we could do things that they couldn't and vice versa. So we found that there was this scandem relationship that we could find loopholes between the two organizations, and so we actually built a really good so I actually spent a lot of time in CISAA spaces and a lot of different embassies throughout the world, which, to be honest, those were some of outside of the tactle stuff, some of my favorite missions.
Yeah, I SA is an interesting unit in the sense that you guys can conduct covert operations, clandestine operations or just normal overt military operations. Yeah, I don't. I don't think there are too many people that.
Can do that.
No, there's not. And I think that's, uh, you know, one of the things that people confuse, like they think r RC and ISA are very similar organizations, and then that's like the big difference is one you know, I don't think RC is nearly close to the size as ISA is and has the reach, but also the clan side of things and the covert side of things is like where we separate and we do that. RRC doesn't really do that much of And actually, I will say
this we did. I never operationally worked for the RC, but I did a number of training exercises with RRC from the Tackle Attachment, and I want to say they are some of the most professional guys outside of CAG. I would say that r RC is probably one of the most professional organizations I've ever worked with.
Yeah, they're wired type.
Yeah, there's just something about Rangers in general that I just think, like my advice to anybody, you want to go to Delta, don't.
I would say, go to Ranger and then go to Delta.
Like if you want to go to a staff, cool, But like I think you learn the greatest skills that you need to go to Delta from.
The range of bed.
Yeah, man, no, range of Battalion's awesome. We got one more. It's funny.
It was a question about ISA and r RC interfacing and you literally just answered it, just answered it.
Okay, Yeah, Yeah, So we definitely interfaced on the tactical side of things, which you know we did. We did a number of free fall jumps together, We did a couple of different they were all training exercises, but yeah, they are definitely a very perfect national organization. You know, when you operate with Blue and Green look and I don't want to throw any of it out of the bus, but especially when you deal with Blue, right, I will
put it this way. I went to so I got to Obviously I worked with them and I was on their jort cycle, but the most the first time I worked with them was actually in free fall dumb Master course and in Freefall jumb Master there one so they actually don't so both Green and Blue don't send their so they're singing and guys are support guys, right, So they don't go to free like like our sing and guys are actual like operatives, like they're not support side, right,
So that's one of the biggest differences. And when you when you show up there.
When I went to.
Freefall jumb Master, obviously there's there's singing guys never get to go to free fall. So I'm there, and the free fall course is you got the frogmen are your psalters, right, and then you got your boat guys. And I have never seen like two groups of people who hate each other more than frogmen and boat guys. Literally, I went there. I was the only ISA student during this course, and we brought one of my mentors who was actually he was an instructor, so we actually helped instruct the course.
We literally just sat there and we watched these two just basically rip each other in half like we're doing like jmpis and these guys are calling each other like almost going to blows on a daily basis, and dude, and the boat guys just hate the frogmen like that was my experience. And then the support guys there were
just like they lived in fear from their assaulters. And then you go to Green and you're like, these dudes are my best friends, Like they love these guys, right, So yeah, it was a very interesting.
And then how did the bros compare to that?
They were very similar to CAG, Like they definitely were like, these guys are enablers, right, and especially when they started going to especially a CAG when they started going to the intelligence squadron. Because you will hear this a lot, especially from a singin, right, and it's like parful the course,
especially from eighteen alpha's. You'll have an eighteen alpha will come up to you and be like, hey, can you do this wizardry right and be like, sir, that's not how RF energy works, right, you have to explained it to them, like that's not how any of this works. Right. And then when you started having the cag assaulters go and they start learning, you know, they learn human they learned singing, they learn everything, ohcent, you know, computer stuff.
And then when they start going and they go back to the teams and now they're working along their sick guys and they're like, oh, I understand how the machine works,
and they understand its limitations. So their true commanders, we're no longer giving these ridiculous requests like hey, could you hit the satellites beam it down and then get you know, all this stuff and his wife's stuff, and then you know, get me some you know, all these different things like no, sir, I can't do that, and then you know, and so just they just developed this really good professional relationship and they really they really started to appreciate their support guys.
And they they appreciate all their support guys. They treat them so well, like as far as any organization I've ever seen.
So you had a pretty wild ride there in the military, especially on the exit out. Now you're recently retired. Tell us a little bit about where you're at today, what you're doing, what you'd like to do in the near future.
So I have a couple of different things that I'm doing so right now, I really think that my purpose is to help other people, Like my goal of my YouTube channel is to add value to people's lives. For example, when I released this video about this investigation, the whole final third of it is what good leadership looks like? Right?
Because I can sit here and complain all day about what, you know, what they did whatever, I don't care, like, if anything, another life lessons, another story that I get to tell, like these guys made me a stronger person because of it, right, and makes good content.
You know, video is not doing too shabby.
So but I would be remiss if I didn't show people what good leadership is, right, because why do we have talk to leadership because those people were never showed, were never demonstrated by their leaders what good leadership looks like.
Right.
So every video that I make is did I add value? That is the thing that I ask myself in every single video, Am I adding values to my life? Right? And then I also from the mental I stay away from how many views like vide I don't care if someone comes back. It was single comment like, hey, this helped me. That video is worth it, Like that's all that matters to me, right, And I feel like it's like my calling because you know, I'm able to break
these things down. I'm a critical thinker and I have an ability to, especially when it comes to things that are geopolitical, to look at them from a strict history point of view without going into the political. Like I just released the videobout Understanding Somalia, and I was able to do it explain why their culture has sort of embraced anarchy, yes, and fraud and scamp without going into
sort of a political thing, right. And I'm a subject matter expert when actually specially when it comes to Iran and I speak Farsi. So my next video that I'm actually doing is Understanding Iran, but in the same format. And almost all the comments that I got from that video was like, hey, you really broke this down. I really appreciate. So I'm putting my full Orkit focus right now into this. I am also at the same time, I am randomly I am actually studying to become a
private wealth advisor. If essentially, if this doesn't work out. That's all I'm in the process of studying for my series sixty.
Six right now.
Is that like you manage like a wealth fund for a wealthy family.
Yes.
So the difference and I obviously I didn't know this until one of my friends got me into this is there's when people think of like wealth advisors.
Right.
Most people fall under what's called known as core wealth and then private wealth depending on the area. There's a minimum amount in an account in most places in the United States, at a minimum five million dollars, but if you go to like New York, it could be like twenty thirty three has to be in that account to be considered private wealth. So, but the interesting thing about it is it's because almost everybody who is in private wealth,
their money has been in private wealth. Like they'd have brokers, right, so you make money off of oh, like essentially annuities, like you manage their money, you get one percent, right, But these people private wealth, These people already have wealth advisors, right, So what ends up becoming which is the difference with core wealth.
It's a sales job.
So the first couple of years you join a team, and then your first job is just to go get accounts, and you have to go get them from other people who already have wealth advisors. So it's a sales job.
And they structure it like if you do if you end up getting a job through let's just say you're a broker through like Morgan Stanley, they structure it that the first year they pay you a salary, but then after the second year, your salary goes away and because they want is like so it's like a doggy dog world. I almost think of it as like it's like the tier one of private wealth management because if you don't make it, like you, if you don't have those sales skills,
you're not going to make it. And so they design it to weed people out, which I find fascinating. So it's like it's definitely the hardest of all, but if you are able to make it. Every private wealth advisor that I know, and I know a bunch in loud in the county, which is of course country out here in Virginia, which is randomly the richest country in the richest county in the United States, all the guys who are private wealth advisors have the best work life balance ratio.
These guys make money they work like two hours a day and then all they do is whatever they want.
It's awesome.
So tell folks out there listening where they can find you on YouTube, where they can find you on social media.
Yeah, so my YouTube channel is the Stoic Viking. The Instagram like it's also the Stoic Viking. I think it's the Stoic Viking twenty twenty five. And so basically that's where I pushed majority of content YouTube is, Like, my main goal is long form content because they I'm allowed to.
I have the ability to talk about things in the long form, which I feel like those are the issues that need to be talked about, whether it's mental health, fitness, health, nutrition, just overall philosophy going into life, how to deal with the hardships of life, grief, all these different things. I want to talk about the things that nobody wants to talk about and give a guys at avenue and also
create a community where people are positive. Like one thing that you're never going to see me do, I'm never going to get involved in vento drama. Even if someone calls me out for claiming I did or did not something, I'm not responding. I don't care you do, you bro, we're over here. I and honestly, in any of my lives, if I hear anybody start talking about about somebody else, I give them one warning. If not, they're kicked out. Because that's weird about positivity. If we call out a problem,
we're creating a solution. We're talking about it, right, because the only way you get a rid of a problem like toxic leadership is we ourselves have to promote what good leadership it looks like. Because that's the only way this ever is gonna change. It's gonna change overnight. No, but all we can do is do the right thing, be the better person, and all together that's how we make this this life a better world and how we found it.
Joe, before we get going tonight, is there anything else you'd like to say? Is there any other topics we haven't covered that you'd like to hash out?
Ah, yeah, that's a good question. I'll probably think of something like two minutes after we we hang up.
It's okay, we can. We can do it again sometime if you want. And well, also for our listeners, we'll have links down the description to all of Joe's social media and YouTube and all that other stuff. You'll be able to find it down there.
Absolutely, and once again I appreciate it.
It's been an honor and you are officially my first podcast since I started this whole thing. So we can't think of anybody better than the investigative Green Beret Ranger turn investigative journalists and.
SOLF well, thank you for that. I mean, likewise, we try to avoid all out of the vet bro drama, keep it relatively positive about people's careers and relatively apolitical, and yeah, it's just not worth anyone's time really to get into all that. But again, thank you, appreciate your time. Joe and everyone else out there. We will see you again next time.
Absolutely, thank you again, sir.
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