Rowing Through Risk w/ Tim Crockett

In this episode, John sits down with Tim Crockett — Chief Risk and Security Officer at Operation HOPE and former British Special Forces operator. From rowing 2,400 miles across the Pacific with his son, to recovering Osama bin Laden’s video library in Afghanistan, Tim’s life is a masterclass in resilience, risk management, and quiet strength. Together, they explore how protecting what you build — whether wealth, reputation, or family — is just as important as creating it. Discover the deep connections between security, mental health, financial stability, and the discipline required to not only survive, but thrive.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome the Money and Wealth with John Hobryant, a production
of the Black Effect podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey, Hey,
this is John Hope Bryant and this is Money and
Wealth on the Black Effect Network on iHeartRadio. The podcast

(00:23):
series season two are highly anticipated every week Ministry of Finance,
if you call it. And I want to thank everybody
for again making this so well received here and around
the world. As you know what I bring a guest on,
it's pretty special. I normally do these solo pretty much.

(00:48):
Today is one of those days I've been looking forward
to this. This is not only somebody who works with me.
I see my Operation Hope pan on today. So we're
in the operational corporate offices, Global Corporate, the global headquarters,
actually somebody who works with me at Operation Hope principally
even though he's embedded in all my life. And now
you get to know him. And I'm gonna take you

(01:09):
behind the curtains of how things work at a very
high level, introducing you to an extended member of my family,
both my organizational family and a friend. So my friend family,
friends of Bryant, Tim Crockett, and I don't have you

(01:30):
with us, so Tim Crockett is structurally organizationally, he is
the head of Corporate Risk and Security or risk Corporate
risk and corporate Security. I guess his way is.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Really is that the title chief risk Officer. Okay, there
you go, risk covers everything.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah, risk security. Tim Crockett is one of these guys
that you read about in the British spy novels. Who
can you know, like Jason Bourne movies or something we
Can Kill You would have pens right, and he's got a
pencil on them. You're gonna learn more about about Tim
as we go here. But you might be asking, Okay,

(02:11):
wait a minute, is this is the wrong podcast? Like
this is money and wealth, not you know, security and health? Right,
what's the deal? As we talked about when I brought
my wife Shasron, and we talked about how health is wealth,
that things are often connected and correlated. So one of

(02:32):
the things I like to do is to bring folks
behind the curtain of how things work, whether it's financial
systems or models in financial systems, financial structures, economic structures,
business structures. Here's brand structures and personality management structures and

(02:57):
corporate organizational structures and what no one talks about which
is you see the folks walking around with the little
earpieces on, and I mean there's a time where you
want physical security and you want folks with a uniform on,
and you want them walking, you know, with a clipboard on.
That's a deterrent. It's a process. It's really they're really

(03:18):
managing retail threats. Now you tell me, you're tell me
when I get this wrong. They're managing retail threats to
a security guard. Yeah, in the uniform.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Yeah, there's a number of things that fall into that category. Yeah,
you're providing safety for your customer, your employees, and then
to some degree, brand and reputation.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
But you want that person visible and obvious, yes, all right.
And a police officer there's another example of retail security.
By the way, high regard for police officers. But you
want that person obvious, invisible. It's a badge, there's uniform,
there's a police card, there's lights and sirens. You want
that to be a deterrent. You want bad people to say,

(03:59):
maybe I shouldn't do that. I see this bad guy
over there, right, all right? So what about the guys
with the little earpieces on, Like they got on sunglasses,
they got on a you know, non a script closed.
They don't want to draw any attention in themselves what
so ever. And and Tim's the next level above that.
He's just health right when he kills you, you think

(04:22):
you're still alive, but we're not. We're gonna we're gonna
have some fun with his background all that stuff, because
he was literally British Special Forces and it really is
quite fascinating. But but this whole level of why would
somebody like me you need a guy like him, but
the court organization like mine need a gut need an
organization like his or him? Uh? Why why might you

(04:45):
have specialized security firm associated with you? How is that
tied to wealth? And and is that tied to insurance
and risk management and all that kind of stuff. We're
gonna get in all of that. So as you road
and as you develop, you can also be thinking holistically
about how to protect and how to keep because it's

(05:08):
not about what you make, it's about what you keep
the wealth you create. Because I'm convinced all of you
are going to create wealth again. I keep people keep
telling me John, you keep giving his game in areas
that no one ever told us about our people as
somebody just last night told me, like all these wealthy
folks whatever, successful people don't tell us a gatekeeper. They
don't tell us how things really operate. You see it,

(05:29):
but you don't understand it. I'm trying to unpack this
or you understand it now. To understand it, you need
to understand him. So, if I had to give one
word for Tim Crockett, beyond kind, gracious, consistent, a good guy,
actually really do like of a good father is resilient,
like consistent, commited, credible character, good character, resilient resiliency runs

(05:58):
through the whole stream. He just doesn't give up. And
it isn't that I've never seen him flustered. Actually, and
he's sort of is the kind of power I like,
you can power. You know, you got real power. You
don't need to use it like you don't need to
like flex It's just it's just then is. And that
comes with a quiet confidence. You always know how you

(06:19):
know how. I love the power of quiet. Remove the noise.
So Tim Crockett tell the audience set this up a
little because we'rena talk about By the way, the reason
all this all came about was he just crossed the ocean.
The Pacific Ocean, right from San Francisco to Hawaii, where

(06:43):
he just got where me and my family just came
back from on a retreat. We got there in five
hours on a plane eight hours. It took him forty
five days because he was wrong a boat, a twenty
foot boat, no motor on it, with the sun across
the ocean, with storms, it was not and there was

(07:06):
a hurricane that came from it was an earthquake that
had come from Russia or something, and there was concern
that was gonna turn into a tsunami. You were, you
were on the on the ocean.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
We rode into the Big Island under a tsunami watch.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
So we're gonna get We're gonna get in all it.
Because he actually got two Guinness Book of World Record
entries because of this.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
Right once under contention being the first father son team
to rode the Pacific. But my son, yes, he's getting
credited with being the youngest to rot the Pacific.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
And this is the second time you've done this.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yes, I did the Atlantic back in twenty eighteen, but
I did that solo.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
I told you. It's like a like a living Jason board,
like like like John Wick or something. So we're gonna
get into the what and the how and the who.
You should be listening, Like, what did you just say, John,
we can't row across a lake? His brother. His brother
just just wrote I just went on a diving lesson
in uh in MAUI went down forty feet for forty

(08:02):
five minutes. I thought I deserved an award. This dude,
this did forty five days on a rowboat where one falls,
move and you're done. Like, if anything happens to you
out there, you're done. There's no one to call when
you're taken. A plane from Hawaii is the most remote
land mass in the world. One of the reasons I

(08:23):
go there. You take a plane from the West coast
Los Angeles to Maui or to Hawaii. You went into.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
Honolulu and then we went into the Big Island.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
Big Island, and there's seven islands. I think it takes
five hours of continuous flight at six hundred miles an hour,
whatever it is, and if anything happens to the plane,
no one wants to really think about this, but it's
a plane. There's no place to land, it's just water.
So can you imagine being in a rowboat? I mean
it's more than a rowboat, but I mean an unpowered

(08:56):
vehicle for forty five days. Okay, we're gonna get an
all of this. Let's now back up and tell the
audience a little bit about so we're gonna have resilience,
your backstory, talk about resilience really anchoring in this this
most recent endeavor of yours, and then talk about risk management,
how that relates to wealth protection, creation, growth, and to

(09:20):
the sent that. We can talk a little bit about
how we came together and and what does that mean
and all that stuff. Some stuff we can say, some
stuff we can't say, right, But you're smart, You're feel
in the blanks your background. How does someone get into
this field? And I believe I think I met you

(09:40):
through the FBI or something like that. I mean, I
mean somebody, I mean when direct the FBI recommends you, you
know you hot crap.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
Yeah, that's where the referral came from a little over
two years or so ago now, And it was around
the Hope Global Forum, obviously a very high profile event.
I call it kind of Davos for financial literacy. We've
got some big names, all of which bring a certain

(10:07):
amount of risk to the event. Not alone, not elect
to mention sort of the risk that surrounds yourself and
so forth. And that's why I got to ask to
sort of come in and help manage that risk not
only for yourself, John, but also the event a lot
of moving parts. So I think that I was very

(10:27):
experienced in I've run some events where there's seventeen thousand
people in attendance and the executive team have a certain
exposure that needs to be managed. So that's how we met.
We spent three days together during the Whope Global Forum.
We hit it off, and I think it was about

(10:48):
three months after that we decided that we wanted to
look at the institutional the organizational risk that operation carried
at the time of the last seven years has been
a lot of rapid growth, so we figured out how
best we could approach that at a strategic enterprise level.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
The enterprise means the mothership company.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yeah, all of the big things that any established organizational
business or family office need to sort of address.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
Family offices and another podcast episode, but there's a whole
other conversation with.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
Family in order to kind of protect that upside. Again,
often gets forgotten about when when people become and start
to experience success. With success comes elevated risk, and that's
really where become a target. You can become an individual,

(11:46):
an individual as a target as in the person, but
also the role, the institution and everything else that goes
along with it.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
So when you're around the King with the King's on
TV right now in the UK, or you're around the
Cornference of Norway and the friend of mine around Quincy
Jones got Ress of Soul, or you're around President Clinton,
former president, you're around the current president, or you're around
I mean, any high profile person you're gonna see hopefully

(12:13):
you won't see, but you're gonna notice a presence. We're
calling it a bubble, and they have a body man.
Uh and Tim would be in this example, my body man.
If you see me at the forum flowing, Tim won't
be very far from me. And Tim sees everything around here.
He's got eyes in the back of his heads. When
I wake up in the morning, I don't know when
he sleeps. When we have in the morning, he's at

(12:34):
the front door. Go to bedt height, he's leaving me
at the door and he's there, but he's invisible. And
it's something I never thought i'd need, but you it
becomes a time where you become it becomes obvious. Again,
things don't make any sense until they do. And a

(12:56):
certain point, you need a banker. Then you need a
private banker. Then you need uh uh financial planners, and
you need accountants on top of that, then you need auditors. Uh.
It's a big lead. But at a certain point, you
need a family It's just somewhere between the auditors all
and and accountants all the stuff, lawyers, at some point

(13:16):
private bankers. You'll need a family office if you keep
building wealth. But that's that's a big lead. By the way,
if you're in a family office, we'll again, I'm do
a podcast just on family offices. That's that's a lot
of wealth you're managing. Typically you talk about liquid assets
of you know, give or take fifty million dollars. Then
you need a family office. Let's back up and talk

(13:39):
about why, you like, why would the why would the
Federal Bureau of Investigation or we only say it, you know,
the CIA or whoever recommend a guy like you? What
does it take to be recommended? Where does that credentials
come from? You were in what we call the effectively
the British Special Forces, Is that right? Yeah? The current

(14:02):
of your seals, the equivalent of the of the of
the Baby Seals.

Speaker 2 (14:05):
In the UK is called the Special Boat Service, So
was a UK being a smaller entity. Obviously our special
forces are smaller as well. And I initially joined the
Royal Marines and then from there transitioned at a very
young age into special forces, specifically the Special Boat Service.

(14:27):
So I spent most of my adult life either in
on or under the water in some fashion.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
Ah, that's why you're so comfortable in the water, right,
What attracted you to that?

Speaker 2 (14:38):
Again? I think it comes back down to sort of
personal attributes or traits. My start major back in forty Commando,
which is where I came from, was in the Special
Boat Service and he recognized, I know, whether it's my character,
my aptitude or attitude. And he's the one that actually
said you should consider a career in special forces, and

(15:02):
he was the one encouraged me then to go forward.
And you need to be recommended for that, No anyone
can put in the recommendation. You have to do a
minimum sort of two years within a fighting unit, commander unit,
and then once you've reached that sort of level of maturity.
You can apply yourself, but it's a it's a closed branch.

(15:23):
It's a volunteer branch. So just like the Navy Seals
in the US, you go through a selection process and
if you wish to leave, you can voluntary withal ring
the bell.

Speaker 1 (15:36):
What he's really saying is, if you're a punk and
you can't make it, you wash out, so they don't
need to they don't need to select you. You sort of
yourself selected because you made it toward through an impossible
rigorous situations. Okay, that was very elegant way for you
to say that. Okay, so we're going to fast force.
We can get to the need of this. So you

(15:57):
come up through the ranks, you select yourself, you get selected.
You're in British Special Forces and at some point you say,
it's been real, it's been nice, and I'm out.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
Is that right?

Speaker 2 (16:07):
Yeah? Like I said, I was very fortunate. I think
I was the third youngest person to pass selection back then,
and I had a very full career. And because it
was such a small unit, you kind of hit that ceiling.
Because there's no opportunity for promotion. You'd have to sort
of wait your turn right, and I'd sort of hit

(16:29):
that ceiling and I was still young enough to pursue
your second career. I've done all the work, all the
jobs that I wanted to do, so.

Speaker 1 (16:35):
Wait, wait, back up. So you hit a ceiling where
you thought you couldn't go any further, in effectively the
special Forces of Britain, even though you're very good at
what you did, You're like, okay, I can wait around
for twenty more years.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
But yeah, it was on my timeline. Like I said,
I'm not one disort to sit there and wait.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
So what I want the audience to hear is you
can be upstanding, successful, so highly intelligent, brilliantly talented, gifted,
obviously well connected, white male, proper British white male and
still hit a wall, hit a ceiling like okay, I

(17:14):
need to pivot. So you pivoted, like I'm not going
to wait here twenty years and go do something else.
And what was it something else?

Speaker 2 (17:21):
Well, when I first came out, I didn't quite know
what it was going to be. At the time, there
were very few transferable skills other than the experience that
you had. We didn't have that piece of paper.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
When you kill somebody with a pencil. It doesn't work
very well in the corporate suite.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
So there was there was very little call for underwater
knife fighting guru. Right, So it was trying to figure
out where I would naturally fit, and so I gave
myself twelve months to experience what we call the circuit,
that security realm of work. I knew I wasn't.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
Sorry, sorry for audience. What the heck's the circuit?

Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yeah, it's just it's what's called the those that work
in security, but not very special.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
This specialized area. This is not the security guard.

Speaker 2 (18:07):
And globally you could probably back then this is pre
nine to eleven, you could measure that group globally is
less than three hundred people. You hear that experience.

Speaker 1 (18:17):
And by the way, no disrespect to the security guard
at Alberson or wherever. My mother was a security guard
at my elementary school, So no disrespect attended. This. This
is a whole nother This is this is a whole
other situation. I'm trying to He said, there's about three
hundred individuals in this community globally unbelievable. Okay, so all right, so, uh,
I mean everybody's getting a little bit of a behind

(18:39):
the scenes of the movies. You all watch right, you
just picked the movie. I just watched one of them
last night. Well, Special Forces CI Securities, you know, Elite Services, seals,
and you're getting a backstorea A three hundred or so.
You work, you spend your time doing that. You go, okay,
that's not really my drill. You got you end up
You end up with this with CNN embedded in Afghanistan

(19:01):
or some crazy thing dodging bullets.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
Well, so one of the first jobs I had was
actually for the BBC, and I was looking after investigative
journalists doing a story on the illegal logging trade in Brazil.
It was ten day job, thoroughly enjoyed it and running
around the Amazon jungle like on this nice yacht making TV.
And then that came to an end, and fast forward

(19:26):
probably six and.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
You're doing security for Higatt Security again.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
It was kind of providing that that safe platform from
which then the TV crew could do their job.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
Bubble.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
The last thing they want to be doing is worrying
about safety, security, logistics.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
Pirates, pirates on the ocean. Yeah, right, so he's created
a bubble, a secure environment which is both physical, which
is physical electronic, electrical, electronic, digital, physical material weapon weapon. Okay,
let me just tell you what is that telling you? Okay,
so now you pivot to.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
So it kind of was when then I was gravitating
more towards project management. And then six months later nine
to eleven happened and the world literally got and my
world literally got turned upside down. I was working on
a project in Indonesia for oil company and because of
the the coalition going into Afghanistan, kind of the the

(20:31):
Muslim world erupted in protests, and obviously Indonesia was a
majority Muslim country, so they started to go after and
look for America. Is that No, this is this is
way before, the way before it. And the project got canceled.
So I'm now sat back in the UK wondering what
am I going to do next? And I was actually

(20:53):
looking after Pat Cash at a at a Classic tennis
tournament in London and somebody asked, oh, this is your client.
Someone had asked me, like, you've worked with the journalist
with journalists before, are you interested in going to Afghanistan?
So I was like, yeah, sign me up.

Speaker 1 (21:12):
Yeah sure. The Parliament bullets flying over your hair when.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
You lay ten days later, I found myself in Cobble
and yes, the news team that I was happening to
be looking after was cn.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
IT and you were embedded deep in Afghanistan.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah, and the correspondent I was working with was senior correspondent,
Very eager. Very had a great work ethic, and we
went all over the country news gathering, and through a
set of circumstances, I helped recover some material that provided
an opportunity then to come to Atlanta, and I was

(21:50):
supposed to come here and help set up all of CNN's.

Speaker 1 (21:55):
Way. Just that was just so smooth. That was just
so If I didn't know the backstory, we were just
kept all. I don't know how much of this he
can tell you, but I'm gonna try to tease this
out of him. I don't make my man uncomfortable. Can
you tell them what you can? You give them any
sense of what you discovered.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
I have to recover bin Laden's video library and then
hand carried almost two two hundred VHS tapes from Kandah
all the way back to Atlanta.

Speaker 1 (22:20):
Okay, talking about I mean talking about making smart sexy,
talking about what's like smooth's cool? My brother man is
completely smooth run that because it was this is if
this is anybody in my family, we have t shirts
like I I discovered ben Laden's tapes, we'd have we
market the heck out of this thing. All right, he's
back up. Serious thing. It's a very serious thing. And
by the way, thank you for your service. You stumbled

(22:51):
on or found somehow discovered in the midst of Europe
work in Afghanistan the video library for Asama bin Laden.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
Not quite. I was just responsible for verifying it and
then bring it to the.

Speaker 1 (23:04):
US, which was which was highly risky because people wanted this.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
Was probably when when this young Afghani Afghany photojournalist came
to us. It was probably three four weeks after the
murder of Daniel pil The concern was that this was.

Speaker 1 (23:23):
A was street journal reporter was murdered.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
Right, So this was a concern that it was a
ruse to grab another journalist, you.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
Meaning your client. Yes, so a setup to get the tapes,
but really the setup maybe to grab you and your journalists. Yeah,
so highly risky.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
And this is where it comes back into the principles
of risk management, not what you think of just financial risks,
physical risk off so the more you know on the
front end, you can plan accordingly and mitigate that risk.
And that was really my role in helping recover that.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
How long did it take it to get him back,
so it was.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
Kind of two parts. This gentleman came to us on
a Thursday. We went down there two days later. Within
ten hours we confirmed that they were the real deal.
Twenty four hours later we'd recovered them back to Carble
within two days, I think they were dubbed, and the
correspondent was heading back here with the original fifty seven tapes.

(24:24):
And then when they got back here, they scrolled through
This is kind of the humor spiece. When you scrolled
through some of the tapes, there were a lot of
Western b movies.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
Really, we thought that was watching he was watching just
old American.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
Movies, slack like Cowboy in Western movies. But one of
those tapes had actually made it back in that original
batch and someone had scrolled through it and halfway through,
spliced in the middle was essentially how to put together
a rocket launcher. So at that point the investigative team
here said we want the rest of the tapes. So

(25:00):
I didn't go to ask to go back a second time.

Speaker 1 (25:02):
And whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, back up, back up,
We'll slow down. You went back to Afghanistan? Are you
out your dang on mine?

Speaker 2 (25:10):
Well, I never left. I basically we were ripping cobble.

Speaker 1 (25:14):
So you which went back to Kandahart went went from
the frying pan to the fire to go back in
where you just escaped essentially with with with by the
skin of your teeth. Uh, where it might have been
set up to go back to get more tapes. So
this is where I tell you. This is like they
say when the when the when the the Titanic was

(25:35):
going down, that the band was playing, The band of
the Titanic was playing as the ship was sinking. And
I've always said that was not cooling the gang, because
cool the gang would have been wrapping up there their
cords as the ship was sinking and heading toward the
life rabs. So look, it takes a special kind of

(25:56):
dude to do what he just said. Okay, if I
hadn't pulled this out of him, what did he say?
Something happened and that caused me to be in in
back of the states. He would have missed. You would
have missed this entire thing because he has no need
to brag. The fact discretion is a key to his position.
He literally is a black box. He hears it, he

(26:18):
doesn't say it. I pulled it out of him and
he from security places that you know, perspective. Now he
can talk about it, but I wanted to respect his
ability to say or not say that. So you go. Now,
you go back into Cobble.

Speaker 4 (26:35):
And he went to Cobo to Kanda Heart, which again
frying frying frying pan to the fire where people eat
bullets for dessert or somebody's teeth, you know, grinding the.

Speaker 1 (26:49):
Bullets for dessert. So you go back in to get
some more tapes, and you return a second time with
a second stash.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
And actually we stayed a little bit longer than we
planned because.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
There was I was gone in twenty eight minutes.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
So their concern was that the the original tapes got
brought back and created a week long documentary series with
the correspondent and the and the team. It was called
Terror on Tapes.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
So you can watch this on TV. By the way,
put up spat on YouTube.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
The first episode was going to air on the Sunday night,
and their concern was that while it seen an international
wasn't streamed in Afghanistan at the time. It was in
Pakistan and just across the border from Kandahart's Queta, which
is a short two hour drive of that. So their

(27:44):
concern was if I were still in Candahart at that time,
that the risk would go through the h But there
was an opportunity when we recovered that second batch of tapes.
There was actually another set of tapes documented Bin Laden's
journey from Kandahart to Tora Bora as the sort of

(28:05):
coalition was tightening that noose on on getting hold of
it and the whole Anaconda battling in to Born. So
these eleven tapes, sorry, people who know what is very quick. Yeah,
it was an operation to sort of try and kind
of get the final remnants of the Taliban al Qaeda,

(28:25):
and obviously if you watch and the movies that document
that now as he slipped over into Pakistani where he
was fine.

Speaker 1 (28:35):
So what you did was on the road to capturing
Ben Laden. It helped to gather additional intail to ultimately
capture and kill Bin Laden. The terrorists are brought down.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
There well, I think from CNN's perspective, the material that
they got a hold of showed that you're dealing with
a very sophisticated adversary and not someone that was just
interested in fighting Americans or the coalition in Afghanistan. This
was a global concern. And essentially fast forward a little bit,

(29:10):
having brought those tapes back here and then when you
started to look at what the rest of the investigative
team had gotten hold of from other correspondents across the
space of maybe the last ten months or more, it's
actually we pieced it together and you almost had an
education system, a curriculum for al Kada Curriculu. We had,

(29:33):
we had instructors notes, we had instructors instructional videos, student notes,
and you could see that this was a very sophisticated
organization intent on obviously trying to damage and conquer the West.
So I think that then elevated the Western's understanding of

(29:54):
who we were really up against. Obviously, once seeing n
a extra act did the newsworthiness of the tapes. Yes,
they were then passed on to the government where they
could then have their analysts piece together with probably.

Speaker 1 (30:09):
Other so see, you guys don't need to watch action
adventure movies and just watch my podcast and then go
and see only go on YouTube and look at the
back look at the results of what this guy actually
helped to do, because it's all there on a documented
But by the way, as you're listening to all this,
you can think about a half dozen action movies that
you love that have bought you in the Middle East

(30:31):
or Africa or someplace Latin America, you know, with three
guys or ladies whoever, battling quietly behind closed doors forces
of evil. Thank you very much for your service. So
you come, you come to America, and I'm gonna do
this pretty quickly so we can get to the meat
of this. You know, when you're bored, things take all day.

(30:52):
But when you're when you like somebody, you're enjoying it,
things go really fast. And so things want to really
fast in our episode, and I want to get to
the meat of it before we're done. So you come back.
You're given this great opportunity. Am I going to tell
your business? You say no to it? As I recall, yes,
which was unheard of. This was I think CNN gave
you this opportunity or some broadcasting that gave you some

(31:15):
major opportunity and you're like, nah, I'm really I'm not
ready to push pencils. Well, I'll kill some with pencil,
but I gotta push a pencil. He doesn't kill anybody,
by the way. I'm just thinking he has a capacity to. Okay,
So now you you use a bunch of a series
of choices and changes that because we can talk about

(31:35):
Crockett just for the next hour and a half. That
leads you to us connecting.

Speaker 2 (31:39):
Yeah, and.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
Before we connected, though, you'd already done one of these
crazy ocean crossings. Would you do that twenty years ago now? Eighteen,
twenty eighteen, okay, seven years ago? Seven years ago? Okay?
And why did you do that?

Speaker 2 (31:56):
Because you could no, So the serious seriousness of it all.
So I'd reconnected with an old military body of mine
in late twenty seventeen. I think it was just over
social media, being spoken for probably over twenty years and
just reliving the good old days. We actually served together

(32:17):
in the same unit, first Golf War and then also
being on the Royal Boxing squad together. He was super heavyweight,
I was a heavyweight. So we used to spa together
quite a bit, so we got quite close hand spoken
to him for over twenty years we reconnected and then
it was about six weeks later that I come to
find that he had died by suicide and lost his life.

(32:40):
So that kind of sparked in me the need to
do something more, not just an honor of his memory,
but draw more attention and hopefully some resources for addressing
the mental health crisis within our veterans and obviously the
wider military community. I didn't quite know what that was
going to be. And then it was about six weeks

(33:01):
later another friend of mine that I had served with
was actually rowing from mainland Europe to mainland Latin America
as a team of six, and it was just disappeared
down that Google rabbit hole kind of and came across
ocean rowing, and I thought, that's what I want.

Speaker 1 (33:19):
To do, raising money, essentially resources and visibility for this
good cause of mental.

Speaker 2 (33:25):
Health, so that when I talk about resiliency and especially
ocean rowing, it's having that strong why. And that was
my why.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
Everything with you has a strong why, But I.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
Think that's so important for when tackling anything that is
a struggle, I enthusiasmal Enthusiasm will get you so far,
like discipline will get you so far. But again you
need something that's bigger than that to keep pulling you
through again those low points.

Speaker 1 (34:00):
And that's interesting. And we never talked about this, at
least I don't recall that we have. Is that why
you relate to me so well? Because of our strong why?
Around here?

Speaker 2 (34:11):
I think it's a strong factor. Yes, yeah, again I
hadn't really thought about it, but that's certainly I think
why you and I connected and why we get on
so much.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
Yeah, so the strong why, I once you explain to
the audience what the strong why is, we never talked
about this is very powerful and it's a great lesson
for for anybody listening.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
Yeah, so I when I started. When I started it,
it was because obviously he was reported twenty two veterans
were taking their own lives each and every day, and
across the months and years, obviously those numbers have gone
up and down, and they're probably very much underreport it.
The mental health crisis.

Speaker 1 (34:49):
Well, certainly, if you're by the way, if you're in
this group of three hundred, you really can't talk about
it so literally. And if you're a CIA officer, whether
you die in the field or somehow, and fortunate situations
come to you. Literally, it might other than a placement
of a marker at CIA headquarters, the world hears nothing
about it.

Speaker 3 (35:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
No, it's only just recently that kind of this stigma,
this concern around mental health is sort of broken past.
Like you said, there's dark corners of an institution. People
don't talk about it. Certainly the male community are much
more reluctant to talk about it.

Speaker 1 (35:27):
No, but I'm saying, on top of that, tem on
top of that, a lot of places where these folks
work because of confidentiality, because of secrecy. Literally, unlike a
soldier or a police officer or a security guard or whatever,
somebody in law enforcement, military service, if they get killed
in the line of duty or they die, there's a
news flash as something not there's a parade, the presentation

(35:49):
of the flag to the family, and there's a nobility
about it. There's metals, all kinds of things. But oftentimes,
in this group of three hundred around the world, they
live in silence, they serve in secrecy, and often they
die without recognition.

Speaker 2 (36:04):
Yeah. True, And to some degree when you're in that
community as well, and this is the important piece of
trying to break that stigma. It could be viewed as
a weakness.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
Yes, that's why you're saying that that there's also there's
there's is acknowledgement and recognition now so that the stigma
is now going away. So now it's not viewed as
a weakness so much anymore. Okay, got it?

Speaker 2 (36:26):
And if and and sometimes it's tied to what you've seen,
what you've experienced, like the loss of people close to you.
There's that aspect of it, but it's also a fear.
And this is where like they sort of tie it
more to again this podcast. And the word that Operation
Hope does is the financial piece, because often that's not

(36:47):
talked about. That is a stressor, like debt is a stressor.
So if you have things that you're trying to wrestle
with and then you have just life and life stress
adding to that, that's often while why so many people
will resort to taking their own life, giving up.

Speaker 1 (37:07):
You know, I had not put this together yet until
you said this, But the minute you said that, I'm reminded.
Because we have a Hope inside the workplace at Atlanta
Police Department, and they found that one of the highest
bankruptcy rates amongst professionals, sorry, financial stress rates which leads
to bankruptcy is with a law enforcement but they can't

(37:28):
talk about it. And and you often see a law
enforcement officer moonlighting in the evening at a club or whatever.
They're trying to make extra money because they got too
much month at the end of their money. By the way,
I think it's a huge security risk to have the
law enforcement officer essentially arresting somebody at two o'clock in
the afternoon and theoretically maybe protecting them at eight o'clock

(37:51):
at night at the club. I mean, it's not inconceivable.
It's the same guy, right, So I hadn't thought about
how extends everywhere. Of course it does, makes perfect sense.
So it's not so much the physical threat of the
job they're doing or their service, or maybe it is
what they saw. But on top of that, you've done
all this for your country or for the world. You're
traveling around the world, you're helping people. You come back

(38:13):
home stack of bills, your wife's screaming at you, or whoever,
your kids are like I need school fees or whatever,
and that wears on you on some of the people.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
And a lot of people don't realize if you've served
your whole career twenty twenty five years. You'll get someone
that is very experienced in that specialized role, whether it's
security risk or again flying planes, and yet they've not
learned the basics of financial ligacy. Wow, and they've come
from a world where they may have gotten free housing,

(38:47):
you've got free medical and dental, everything is.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
Clothing, transportation, everything.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
And then all of a sudden, in a very short
period of stacked they just put out literally in and
you've got to try and figure this out. That can
be depressed, and it can be depressing. It's a shock
to go and sort of transition. And ask any military
from in any part of the world that management of

(39:15):
that transition is not very well done. They may get
a sixty minute class on finances and just let loose
if that. Yeah, So it's very easy for individuals to
all of a sudden get themselves into trouble or have
no idea of how to get a mortgage, how to

(39:39):
manage their finances and everything else. And then you've got
to realize some of these people that have spent their
whole career in the military, they're be pretty beaten up
when they come out. So then healthcare costs, so that
will go through. Yes, you've got the VA and all
the rest of it, but there's some things that there's just
a matter of urgency where they've got to get work done.

(40:01):
They haven't planned for those costs. So in a very
short space of time they can go from being in
this tight knit unit where they're very well looked after
to life drowning in debt and stress.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
And if you can, and the audience you may not
know this, you cannot keep your security clearance in the
military if you have financial stresses that are now obvious
bankruptcies collections. It may risk your security clearance. You can't
be in the military in the United States if you
if you have these stresses, and so the if you

(40:39):
if you're around the military basis the mouth of the military.
Based the entrance, you'll often find check cashers, payday loan lenders,
rent to own stores, title lenders, liquor stores, all this
stuff because they're either trying to prey on somebody who
they know is gonna get a paycheck every two weeks yep,
and who cannot afford to get into financial trouble, so
they'll pay that here, it's an advance your paycheck or whatever,

(41:01):
but they know they're gonna get it repaid. It's the
federal government, or you got a liquor store or somebody
selling illicit good listed drugs or whatever trying to help
you medic medicaid if you will, your depression. And so
the same thing that happens in underserved neighborhoods, urban neighborhood,
poor neighborhoods happens at the mouth of the military base.

(41:23):
By the way, this goes back to the Freedman's Bank
of why Abraham Lincoln and Frederic Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln,
General Sherman, Secretary of War Stanton try to create a
bank for formerly enslaved people, trying to teach free slaves
about money because in the camps, yes this happened back
then in the eighteen hundreds. In the camps, you have
financial predators on payday, yes they got paid, would show up,

(41:48):
even though the blacks are paid less than the white soldiers,
would show up at the camp trying to separate the
soldier who just got paid, who's financially illiterate, from their dollar.
And so the bank was created as a way to
domicile the savings, to protect the savings. To put it, Tim,
thank you so much. I hadn't even thought about all
this stuff trigger all. And so that's how the Freeman's

(42:11):
Bank got originally created, was a protector, a protection of
the savings of these soldiers. In these case, the black soldiers,
formally enslaved people who are not finicially literate, never taught
about money. They're out in the middle of nowhere being
preyed upon. I don't know how the predators find them
way out there dodging the Confederate bullets. People do anything
over money to try to separate these guys from their

(42:33):
wallet and befriending them as if they're a friend. That's
even worse. Now get somebody acting like they like you,
but they really they're trying to take your money. Okay,
So you're doing this to help raise money for this

(42:55):
good cause of mental health depression, anxiety, financial stress. What
was the name of the nonprofit.

Speaker 2 (43:04):
At the moment, it was tamed the Kracking. So my
analogy that the kracking is a giant Norse mythical beast
that would drag ships and sailors down to the bottom
of the ocean. And that was my analogy for PTSD, stress,
mental health conditions and so forth.

Speaker 1 (43:22):
Tame the kracking, Tame the cracking. Heigh spelled cracking for
my US audience k R A K E N. Is
it available now? Can they go on the website? Their
website is still there dot us. But the nonprofit that
got the benef from this the first time, the mental.

Speaker 2 (43:39):
Health the twenty eighteen nineteen row I had a charity
on each side of the the Atlantic. In the UK
it was called Compact Stress, which is one of the
first organizations to help address mental health issues set up
in the UK after the First World War. And here
in the US it was called Given Hour. Whether you're

(43:59):
getting clinicians psychiatrists donate their time to help veterans get
into some sort of program as quickly as possible. So
those are the two organizations I was supporting.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
So anybody watching this that you have a skill, you
have a talent, you've got mental health abilities. You're a nurse,
you're a doctor, your clinician, your psychologist, you're a financial advisor,
your financial leader. You can volunteer. You volunteer and Operation
Hope for the financial side. You can also volunteer for
these organizations to help these military veterans and Special Office

(44:32):
Special Operations officers to manage through the civilian parts of
their lives, which nobody prepared them for. All Right, in
the last fifteen minutes we have left. Everybody wants to
hear like, Okay, blah blah blah, tell me about going
across the dang on Ocean in forty five days. So
let's get to that. You you announced to me one
day you maybe need a little time off. You a

(44:56):
little boat ride from San Francisco. As I recall, you
had an Operation Hope sticker on the boat.

Speaker 2 (45:03):
Yeah, was on several parts of the boat and the
website and everything out. So yes, after doing the Atlantic,
the plan was always to do more, but then we
had this little thing called a global pandemic that go
in the way, so that need to continue to scratch
that itch has been there for the last six years

(45:23):
or so. I thought Pacific is the next. I thought
it would be easier. It's sort of I can be
in the US and just actually finishing the US as well,
so I didn't have to go to another country.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
Because the Atlantic going to Europe. Yeah, We're just do
the Pacific.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
So the planning and the logistics were going to be
a lot easier, so I thought, and yes, we we
left out of South Solito on the north side of
San Francisco Bay, rode out underneath the Golden gate Bridge,
and then actually it was forty eight days or forty
seven days and change when we arrived then in Hilo
on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
And I would text you every now and then, Hey man,
let me know you're alive. Shark gets you, I mean,
what's ready to send somebody if something happened to you.
Of course wouldn't know for days, right.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
Yes, So anyone who's roaded both oceans will say that
it's harder. The first half of the row is harder
than the Atlantic, but the second half is a lot easier.
And this is all relative to sea states, how big
the waves are, how much sun you've got, and everything else.
So as you're pointing out, we're on a little twenty
four foot boat, completely self sufficient. We have to take

(46:38):
our own food. We have marine batteries and solar panels
that provide power that will run a water maker which
kind of desalinates the sea water, because you wouldn't be
able to carry that much water with you. But that
second half of more favorable weather and sun and all
the sort of things that we were waiting for never happened.
So when you go out of the forty eight days,

(47:01):
we had three days of sun. Wow, we probably had
a couple of few days of kind of mixed sun.
So we had to be very conscious of our power
because if we couldn't run the water maker, we didn't
have water, and without water, we couldn't rehydrate, our food couldn't.
So there's that whole Maslov law in terms of you

(47:25):
can go three minutes without air, three days without water,
and go three weeks without food. So when it came
to power management and how we were can.

Speaker 1 (47:33):
They have a person go three weeks without food? Is
that true?

Speaker 2 (47:35):
That's what they say?

Speaker 1 (47:36):
Yes, I was told the people, most people, most societies
were seven days from anarchy, seven meals, I'm sorry, from anarchy.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
Well that's the difference between the body what you need
actually physiologically versus the psyche people go three hours without
a snack of some sort, and that started to go
a little bit antsy and get angry. So, yeah, we
had a lot going on managing all of that, and

(48:03):
sometimes communications and sometimes we had this little satellite dish
it's called a began the newer versions of these, like
what we see with starlic so, but to get up
on the satellite you need a stable platform. But when
the boat is rocking and rolling on big seas as.

(48:27):
Some of the biggest seas we had were forty fifty
foot waves coming out of San Francisco because, like you said,
we had two hurricanes on the nowhere near us, but
even one hundred and fifty miles away, it can have
an effect on the weather systems that you're in, and
we had a big weather system to the northwest of US,
so we were stuck in all of that. So we

(48:47):
were like a washing machine for forty five days or
so during the crossing. So there are times that we
literally could not get up on the satellite to connect
and send messages back and forth.

Speaker 1 (49:01):
And a thirty forty foot wave unless you ride it,
it's going to crash over you. Yeah, it can flip you.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
It can do I think within the first two days
we almost capsize three times, which slows down. When you
get to those sort of conditions, it's not safe to row.
It's certainly not safe to row with My nineteen year
old son so we would deploy this piece of equipment
called a power anchor, which is like a giant parachute
that would grab the water and turn the boat into

(49:31):
the waves. So, yes, you still got the waves crashing
over you, but they're not side on, where the risk
of side sized and rolled with big waves.

Speaker 1 (49:39):
So this piece of technology, this anchor or water anchor essentially, yeah,
which literally points you into the waveh yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
So you run it off the bow, off the front
of the boat, so that's the narrowest part of the
boat itself, and that just then holds you. So the
wind is always going to push you further, so you
literally hold you in the water and the waves will
just crash over you, but in a in a safer fashion.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
So okay, and you had a little place that you
could retreat to the sleep.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
Yeah, we had to do little sort of cabins which
were water tight, which is part of the kind of
the safety that's built into the boat. So if you
were happened to be sized, you've got these two bubbles
of air that would then kind of pop you back
out on top of the.

Speaker 1 (50:26):
Water and uh, heat exhaustion.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
Heat exhaustion, salt saws. Again, you're in a wet, humid
environment and occasionally it would dry out, whether you're in
a cabin or hot so you're always damp. But salt
water is not that particularly not all that clean. But
obviously as this as the water dries, at least behind

(50:53):
it the salt crystals, so it's almost like sandpaper. Anything
that would chafe, from your toe in your shoes to
you crouch your sat so it's your feet, hands and
backside always wet and in contact with the boat. So
you'll get saws and those souls will get infected. So
again there's a certain manager.

Speaker 1 (51:13):
There's no pharmacy out there.

Speaker 2 (51:15):
Pharmacy we had to take our own medical equipment. You'll
get infect infected blisters that you have to deal with.
So your body is just fighting this as you kind
of have to deal with the environment that you're in
as well.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
And now you're worried about your son, because you know,
that was.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
The one thing that I probably didn't fully appreciate. So
when I did the Atlantic our solos, I knew myself,
I knew how far I could push myself. I was
also a medic in the military, so I could attend
to any of these issues. My son again, he's not
had any of these big life experiences. He's never been

(51:52):
in that situation before. We did some training. We did
obviously our own preparations, so I knew comfortable with him
coming out on the water with me. He was confident,
and he was fairly confident in in tackling what we had,
but again still a big unknown for him. What I
didn't fully appreciate is that parental need to look after

(52:18):
your offspring. Yes, I was going to look after him,
but that being hardwired into you. It's different when there's
another team member, a crew member, and you're sharing the
work light back and forth. You're rowing for two hours,
I'm resting for two hours, and vice versa. But when
you're in big c's and the prospect of this other
stuff going on when it's your son, now just different.

(52:42):
I'm going to worry more. Any little noise I hear
out on deck, I'm going to open the hatch and
make sure he's okay. So that was much more wearing
on me emotionally than kind of than if it was
just someone that was a crew crew.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
Member, and psychologically, I mean, it might change some of
your decision making I did.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
I was much more measured and risk averse than I
than I was when I was a solo. So the
sea conditions were on the Atlantic forced me to go
on paraancho a couple of times. That's literally because the
wind was blowing me in the wrong direction. I chose,
or we chose to go on para aancho probably three

(53:24):
or four more times than we perhaps needed to, because
it was just I didn't want my son to be
out in the darkness with the prospect of getting capsized.

Speaker 1 (53:35):
Yes, and so, audience, I need you to listen. This
relates to health insurance, It relates to life insurance. It
relates to the choices you make when you're thirty forty
versus with a family and when you're twenty and you're
on your own. And I was talking to a friend
of mine yesterday who made a couple ony thousand dollars
when he was twenty and he was about to get married,

(53:55):
and his wife was like, well, what did you do
with the money? You made a couple of hundred thousands
a year. He's like, I spent it right. I was
enjoying myself. I had no responsibilities. I had an apartment,
I had a nice car, and I made it and
I spent it. That's the whole point of being twenty
years old two hundred thousand dollars a year, is to
enjoy yourself. By the time he got married, he had
to look think about getting a house and getting and

(54:16):
getting insurance. And now he's more measured. He he is
a guy who's got add and tissu deficits or disorder,
and he's not a party animal, but he loves life.
And up until very recently he would just go and
go on these elaborate vacations, and recently he said he's
gotten more measured. He still goes and has fun still,

(54:37):
but he's not trying. He's like he's trying to I'm
trying to save money. Now he's at a different point
of his life and now he's concerned about his children,
concerned about his wife and making sure they've got what
they need. It's not just about his immediate gratification. So
it's similar analogy that when you're on your own, you
took more risk than when you had somebody you had
to care for and be concerned about your protection.

Speaker 2 (54:59):
And there it's the same philosophy, yeah, no, the same principles. Yeah,
And that was one of the things that it wasn't
planned when we went into this. When he agreed to
row with me, it was less about the actual row. Yes,
we still had our mission about raising awareness for veteran's
mental health. We hadn't even considered the prospect of world

(55:23):
records and everything else. It was having that shared experience
in his at his age in a nineteen like I
said that, I think the previous youngest was someone like
twenty four to twenty five. Has a lot of life
between those five years, and on the opportunities now that

(55:44):
will be allowed or afforded him having done this re number,
when he knows he can he can attempt anything.

Speaker 1 (55:52):
Yes, he's got cool points out.

Speaker 2 (55:54):
He's got the cool points.

Speaker 1 (55:55):
Every date works for him now, every date, every day.
Tell her what you do? Ask me, why is the
most exciting thing you've done? When I went to a
concert for this rock band, what did you do? Well?
I went rod across How many miles is it?

Speaker 2 (56:09):
And it's about twenty four hundred nautical miles so it's
about twenty six twenty seven normal miles.

Speaker 1 (56:14):
Yeah, his confidence goes up.

Speaker 2 (56:16):
Confidence again, his confidence in himself and the ability to
now tackle anything. He couldn't do or apply himself. There's
a flip side to that. He can't come up with
the excuse saying I can't.

Speaker 1 (56:27):
Do that exactly.

Speaker 2 (56:28):
Course you can exactly, and you'd be amazed that whatever
you struggle well at again it can be very life
affirming and so forth. So yes, that was kind of
a secondary aim for me, was to instill that in him.
I knew he had the confidence and the confidence to
do this, but he had to learn that himself. So

(56:53):
I think coming out of this now, literally the world
is his oyster. And all those other sort of things
that like being able to plan, manage risk, like have
project management, project management again, we budgets, yeah, budgeting, Like
I said, all of that now translates from ocean rowing into.

Speaker 1 (57:17):
Time management, time management, risk management, environmentals and management.

Speaker 2 (57:24):
And like building for the future. Like I said, having
that resiliency, knowing that you can't control everything, but you
control you can control and that's yourself, your mindset. All
those things will translate into like I said, building generational wealth.
Start planning now and you can just tackle so much more.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
Yeah, we're running out of time, but I want it. There's
so much I want to cover. But we're trying to
do this in five minutes or so. It's been fantastic
and some pleasant surprises. You're in the middle of the ocean.
About mindset. Now you're trying to help people with their
mental health. That's mental heugment. But what about your own
in the middle of the dang on ocean. You're half pregnant.
You can't turn around. Was there any time when you

(58:07):
said to yourself, what in the heyo am I doing? No?

Speaker 2 (58:12):
That didn't That didn't didn't cross my mind.

Speaker 1 (58:15):
Across your Sun's money, It didn't.

Speaker 2 (58:16):
Cross my mind on the Atlantic runs by myself. But
I think we're about day three and because of the
conditions we were in and again we're exhaust we're both exhausted.
My son said, I'm not sure if I can do this.

Speaker 1 (58:32):
Wow about thirty.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
And like you said, three days in, three days.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
In, so not three days of forty seven.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
But we'd already So it's around about one hundred miles
off the coast. Is that point of no return because
that's the limit of the Coast Guard helicopters coming out
to it to rescue.

Speaker 1 (58:51):
One hundred miles off the coast, there's the limit of
a rescue from the coast Guard.

Speaker 2 (58:57):
Now you can pull a beacon and then maritime law
dictates that any ship close by we'll come to your rescue.
But then that could still be days away. Now I
knew that he was just going through a little bit
of a wobble because he'd never experienced this. Day one
at five point thirty in the morning's still sleeping in

(59:20):
a comfortable hotel bed. Basically, fifteen hours later, we're tackling
fifty foot waves. And that was relentless for those first
few days. And he came to me and thought, I
don't think I can do this. And I said to him, well,
if you want to give up now, you've got to
come to that conclusion. I'm not going to make that
decision for you, because you will then go for the
rest of your life thinking well, could I have done it?

(59:43):
Spoke to his mom, he spoke to his sister, and
then I also told him, I said, phone yes. But
I also told him, I said that if you decide
that you want to get off the ride now, it's
still seven to ten days of rowing to row back
to the coast. And I told him, as if you
do that, I said, we're going to be through the
worst of it anyway. Yeah, and then he sort of went, Okay,

(01:00:08):
I'll carry on.

Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
You know, by the way, let's give your son some credit.
What's his name, Harrison, Harrison Crockett, Crockett. Okay, And people
can go to your website and see some of this
stuff that you guys did.

Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
Yeah, you can go to the website, go to any
of our social media if you have to Instagram, kind
of the whole stories. It's tame the cracker, Tame the cracking.

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
Okay, So I goes, it's so much here, And I
mean I talked to you a couple of times, didn't
they don't I talked to you as a text.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
Messaging text messaging back and forth.

Speaker 1 (01:00:51):
Was it physical call talk that talked you physically one time?
Voice the voice?

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
No, I think it was you sent me a voice
voice notes, voice note.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
And you sent me a voice No, that's right. And
somebody sent me photos. That's where I saw. What was
the worst moment and the best moment or moments in
this forty seven days?

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
Well, the best moment's easy when you finish, when you
get off the boat and you're reunited with family, friends
and so forth. That that experience is just you other
than our own company. We hadn't seen another human being
for nearly forty eight days, so that is just a
great experience. And it wasn't too far before that. The

(01:01:40):
only literally a matter of hours, which was probably our
worst for me. For Houson, it was probably that time
when he thought he was going to give up. We're
coming into two Helo, the big island, and there was
a patch of water that is the currents, the weather systems,

(01:02:01):
the wind, the waves are all messed up and it's
not something that you can pull off a chart or
pull off.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
Now we're going between the Hawaiian islands.

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
Very different. This is sort of the suze of kind
of Heilo Bay, and it's because you've got the currents
sort of whipping around that part of the island, but
also the weather systems that are coming off the mountain
of the volcano. And we were the day of literally
the twenty four hours prior to that was our biggest day.

(01:02:31):
I think we did sixty some odd miles miles and
then we kind of just rolling. You're rolling, yeah, and
we just ran into what felt like a brick wall.
We thought we were going to get to this this
booby that sort of marks when we would like literally
turn in because we have to manage the currents because
Helo Bay to the south of Hilo Bay, Rocky Shoreline

(01:02:53):
to the north of Hilo Bay Rocky Shoreline. So if
you don't get the approach right for the last ten
to fifteen miles, you're gonna end up on the rocks
unless you get rescued by a safety boat. So the
approach is very sort of critical. And I'm talking with
my weather out and planning over By the.

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
Way, everybody, you know, seventy percent of the world is water.
Just to be clear, seventy percent of the world's water,
and human beings have only explored five percent of the
seventy percent. Yeah, most of that is unexplored. Completely different world,
separate podcast idea for another time, go ahead.

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
So a very intense period where we have to write
up and again we're still taking turns because I'd rode
so hard the twenty four hours period we both had.
We were exhausted and we're coming up and I think I
must have been suffering a little bit from heat, exhausted,

(01:03:48):
and we should have been rowing kind of southwest, and
I was rowing off northwest, and all of a sudden,
my messager app on our kind of side like beacon
was pinging away and it was the weather right saying everything, Okay,
you're going in the wrong direction. You need to get
back within the next thirty minutes otherwise you're not going

(01:04:11):
to make it. So that was I think a difficult
time because I'm a little bit loopy. Yeah, I had
to pull myself out of his rest period. We basically
had to go two ups. We're both rowing at the
same time for about an hour to bring us back
on course. Wow, while also managing like literally I would

(01:04:32):
row for like fifteen minutes, have to retreat to the cabin,
try and hydrate just to stop myself from collapsing.

Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
You could have missed the island, well.

Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
We would have essentially ended up on the rocks.

Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
The rocks, which is worse.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
Because it was that critical for about a two hour period.
But then we got back on once we crossed that,
then we were home and dry.

Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
By the way, if he had missed the island, there's
nothing else out there Australia. It's Australia. Just how far
away that would have.

Speaker 2 (01:05:04):
Been another five thousand miles, So.

Speaker 1 (01:05:06):
They had rowed twenty five hundred miles, so it'd been
another two and a half months before the next lefe
more than that. Okay, so the worst was reaching your
physical and psychological and mental limits, and I'm sure that

(01:05:28):
was tough, given how tough you are, and also protecting
your son and seeing him go through that. And the best,
of course, was finally getting there again. It was an earthquake,
and there was an earthquake in Russia. It triggered a
tsunami warning. I know because we were monitoring that. You
were minoring that for us, even though you're rowing as
we're going into to Hawaii ourselves. And luckily that didn't

(01:05:51):
create any drama.

Speaker 2 (01:05:52):
For it didn't and there was nothing we could do
about it anyway, I worry about it. It was like, Okay,
we're probably perhaps in it in a safer position than
those that were on the shore, because he know that
area had obviously been devastated several times throughout history through Tsnoymious.

Speaker 1 (01:06:09):
Only you would say that out in the middle of nowhere,
a little peak cups caught a boat with no sails
and no motor. I'm like, yeah, we're safer than the
people on shore. So here's some lessons that that I
just heard. Never ever, ever, ever, ever give up. Success
is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
Take no for vitamins. Keep your mindset straight, tight right,

(01:06:33):
otherwise all will be lost. Faith is what you do
when you don't have all the facts. Even the strong
get insecure and lose it temporarily. Jesus Christ, there's a
story of Jesus when he was being crucified. He said,
even though he knew what was gonna happen, he knew
this is preordained. He said, basically, Father, why have you

(01:06:55):
forsaken me? I mean, he was in so much pain
that even this man of almost complete faith, well complete faith,
had an insecurity get dad, yo, pops, look like, why
are you doing this to me? Lord? Why have you
forsaken me?

Speaker 2 (01:07:07):
Father?

Speaker 1 (01:07:07):
Why are you forsaking me? And then before he passed away,
he said, forgive them the Lord. They know not what
they do. He snapped back, But there's that moment. We
all have that moment, rainbows after storms. They never let
a crisis go to waste. You only grow through legitimate suffering.
So you pushing through that, your son pushing through that
just makes that resiliency. Never ever ever give up, makes

(01:07:28):
you stronger. Okay, let's now pivot. We're out of time,
but let's spend a couple of minutes on Let's go
back to why this is important for me and operation
hope to do. Ten years ago, I didn't need this.
Ten years ago, I'm just trying to make some money.
Or twenty years ago, just trying to make some money.

(01:07:50):
Ten years ago, I'm trying to build some wealth. Now
you got a brand, Maybe I'm answering the question. Now, now
you have a brand to protect if a reputation. Folks
don't kill you now with bullets, but they sometimes they do.
But they can kill you with your reputation. They can
kill you digitally. They can hack your devices. They can
hold your organization ransom, literally take over all your servers,

(01:08:12):
your mainframe servers, and hold your organization ransom and won't
release it until you give them cryptocurrency or something. There
a whole new world out here, most of us. You
sent me an email today it showed that there were
twenty five impostures running around on tiktoks and they're me.
That was just earlier today.

Speaker 2 (01:08:29):
And that's almost on a week on a monthly basis.

Speaker 1 (01:08:31):
Yeah, yeah, and people creating a posture accounts for me
saying that they're me. Somebody told me that somebody a
friend of mine told me, you know why they didn't
reach out to me, said that somebody thought it was
me and said twenty five thousand dollars to somebody because
they were soliciting them. If you hear anybody saying that
they're me and they're asking you for money, it's not me.
That's not what I do. That's crazy. Why is it?

(01:08:52):
Maybe I just answered your part. Why is it important
for an organization at this level, you know, meet a
guy like me at this level or a woman to
have Why why it is risk management cheap insurance for
brand equity?

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
Well, there's two sides of that. Like risk is often
associated with all the bad stuff that you just sort
of alluded to, And that's important because yes, when you
have a again some notoriety, your wealth, obviously somebody wants
to take that. Yeah, you have people out there that
they feel that they've been dealt a bad hand, right,

(01:09:34):
and they want to take away what you have built
or what the organization is built.

Speaker 1 (01:09:39):
Because they feel they they mean or they feel like
they're desperate or they feel like they need they deserve
it or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:09:44):
Yeah, so we've got to protect all of that across
all those different domains, like I said, digitally, cyber reputationally, physically,
and not just through you obviously, but also the organization,
my family. But then also there's the positive side of risk,
because if you can manage all of the downside, you

(01:10:06):
create opportunities. And that's often something that people don't realize.
If you know where the pungee pits are and the
swamps and the deep border and the bad weather and
all that sort of stuff, you can navigate a path
some people will fear to tread, so you can you
can create You can create opportunity by knowing I know

(01:10:28):
what the risks are. You can when you understand risk,
you can then start to think, okay, if I do this,
the upside.

Speaker 1 (01:10:37):
Could be that they can go faster and the safe
area you can go. You can go for the predetermined
and you can.

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
Take you can exploit new territories if you know how
to manage, like risk in a in a foreign country
which is now being developed, like being in there first,
that often will provide you with greater returns because you're.

Speaker 1 (01:10:58):
We do that underserved communities today.

Speaker 2 (01:11:00):
Yes, that's that's the upside of risk. So yes, you
want to manage the downside and protect against that across
all those different domains. But then having that understanding of
risk will allow you to approach things with more confidence
and take on more of that risk. It's just like debt.
There's good debt and bad debt about plenty of times.

(01:11:20):
There's good risk and there's bad risk, right, and we
want to mitigate the bad risk, and we want to
exploit and take educated risk. So if you do your
research on a new country and your piece of software,
and you whatever it is, invest in it, you're likely
to get greater returns.

Speaker 1 (01:11:38):
So when I go into an area, if I go
into a risky area, risky the community, or risky city
or risky country or whatever Tim's doing, Timinus team they
do a threat assessment, they do an analysis that they're
working with the embassy, they're working with law enforcement. Again,
this is all stuff you just don't see. And they'll
do a threat assessment and they'll say, you know, you
know this one's okay or this one is not okay.

(01:12:01):
We need to put a team with you, which you
won't never see, and that allows me to not worry
about it, and I think about it, I can move fast.
I know that this path in front of me is
being secured or been protected, or at least the path
that we're driving on is fine. So then I can
go really fast, going to spend my mind doing with

(01:12:24):
a part of my mind managing risk or being worried
about things exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:12:27):
We want to remove that burden of risk or security
or whatever it may be from you so you can
do what you do best.

Speaker 1 (01:12:34):
But also this relies to it applies to even me
sending an email. If I'm concerned that email can be
hacked or that I'm got some threat risk, maybe I
don't send the email or I send it. But if
I think, oh no, I'm in secure communication, I send
the notes, send the text whatever. So all this stuff
allows you. I hadn't thought about the positive side of
risk management before, You're.

Speaker 2 (01:12:55):
Right, yeah, And that's what I think small business is
need to pay attention to. Because if you because it's
very hard to differentiate yourself from your competitors, but if
you are good at risk management, you're more likely to
get investment from bankers and outside like VC firms and

(01:13:17):
everything else which will help you grow, will allow you
to get more resources to do more. If you're a
bit like blase about managing risk, then like banks investors,
they will do that. They'll be doing their risk assessment
on you. So if you're not secure in what you do,

(01:13:37):
if you're one way in your professional life, but your
cavalier in your personal life online, all the rest of it,
your risk, that creates risk and they're less likely to invite.
So it's an important business trait to have. And again
it's not just about business or small business in your
personal life as well.

Speaker 1 (01:13:56):
If if you're posting on social if.

Speaker 2 (01:13:58):
You're seen to be a certain way, like people like
trust in you because you've posted something online, again, it
can all come back to haunt you. So so and
again it's not about saying no to things. It's doing
things thoughtfully, thoughtfully, with intention and professionally.

Speaker 1 (01:14:16):
There's so many things we could talk about. I mean,
I thought it would do forty minutes, we can do
an hour and forty minutes. We're gonna stop now because
it's I mean, we can go on forever. But there's
just you're really smart and then induitioning a nice guy
and lethal that needs you. You're really really smart and
you're very I mean, the wisdoms just keep on coming.

(01:14:37):
And there's so many overlaps between effectively what I do
and what you do. And I hope you guys got
something of this. Look, if you're a small business owner
listening to this, you're somebody building a brand. Watch what
you're putting online. If don't post your home address, don't
take your GPS off of your your phone. If you're
posting stuff people, people are bad. Guys are paying attention. Uh,

(01:14:59):
And don't don't post when you're at not away, not
at home, and then say you're not at home. That's
how people that signal to go rob you because you're
not at home. Like, be thoughtful and don't post stuff
you're gonna regret later, like you know, get drunk in private,
just not literally. And there are cheap things you can do,
inexpensive things you can do. There's software you can get

(01:15:21):
off of the off the shelf that will give you
a layer of protection. Mostly you know, Apple iPhones have
encryption now. And if you're gonna use if you're gonna
text things that are confidential, don't just text it over
like literally, texting on phones was created as an afterthought
by mobile phone companies. This is another when I break
down the mobile phone industry, I'll i'll explain that, but

(01:15:42):
it was there's not a lot of protections around it.
You're gonna do that, use a protected app that has
encrypted I want to name one and I endorse them
that has encryption tied into it, so that there's some
sense that what you're communicating on a business basis is
protected and won't get grabbed by somebody, some bag out
of the sky. What are some other simple things that

(01:16:04):
people can do to protect themselves?

Speaker 2 (01:16:07):
Do you research? I know what the risks are like
everyone here in Atlanta. When I first came here, I
came from Afghanistan. Within the first three weeks here, I
almost got mode and I was in an area that
did not have outward signs that I was in a
bad neighborhood. Because I hadn't done my homework, I hadn't

(01:16:30):
done my research. I'd let my guard down and I
could have got myself into some trouble. So they know
the risks before you go there, like you could anyone
would go to their hometown and they'll say, oh yeah,
avoid these areas because you know your own area. You
go to a different city, different country, you don't know

(01:16:52):
those areas. So time spent on research will help going
to anything like a business, venture, vacation, just travel. So education,
especially today on your phone is the Internet. It's free,
it's free, and it's easy. With AI, you can literally
say I'm thinking of going in this location, what are

(01:17:13):
the top five top ten risks that I need to
be aware of? And AI will give you everything. Obviously,
don't take it for gospel. Do a little bit more research,
perhaps run it through another that will follow the links
through and find out what their sources are. But very
quickly and very easily you can know what the risks
are in different destinations, different country, business venture and so forth.

(01:17:37):
There's a lot of information out there.

Speaker 1 (01:17:39):
I think.

Speaker 2 (01:17:40):
I think the problem, and from my profession now, is
not the access to information. It's being able to filter it,
analyze it. Too much information to say that, oh I
didn't know. Again, that's not an excuse these days.

Speaker 1 (01:17:55):
You've got to be dumb, have failed these days. You
got to really work at it, because the information is
out there for everybody. If you take the time and
analyze your noses, like me, you'll come down to the
crux of it. And as an entrepreneur, somebody may say,
my god, you do nothing but take risk. No no, no,
no no no. By the time I do something, I
wrung all the risk out of it. It feels very
safe for me because I know what I'm doing the neighborhood,

(01:18:18):
so to speak. Exactly, Tim Crockett, I love you man.
Thanks for spending this hour with me and and enlightening
the audience. It's I didn't realize how much overlay with
financial literacy and wealth creation, this and money management and
just life management there was between what you do and
what we do. I have much compassion and empathy for well.
Thanks for first of all people in your profession, and

(01:18:39):
thank you for your service. Thank them for their service.
Uh and your friend who passed away, may he rest
in heaven. He's been remembered. And thank you for giving
yourself your life so we might remember his. And we
will make a We made a contribution, will make another one.
Now that you're back. We know you're going to survive
or not, so we didn't want to give you too
much money exact exactly, and so thanks for all you

(01:19:03):
do and thanks for all that we will do going forward.
We didn't cover a whole lot that we could have.
But let's just say when I say business is not
personal and capitalism is a gladiator sport. Like the stuff
that he and I have seen just together in the
last few years with gray your hair in twenty four hours,
most people like, it's just unbelievable. People are just unbelievably selfish, cruel, nasty, greedy,

(01:19:32):
lie I mean, and you can't take that personal. I mean,
it's unfortunately the nature of where we are in the
world today and probably the way the world's always been.
We're just seeing more of it. But focus on the light,
Focus on the good people, like, don't let the bad
things taint you. Always go to the light. Meet people
like Tim Crokett and your son. Thank you, and you.

(01:19:55):
I've met many, many and many me of you, and
I mean ninety nine point nine percent interactions are is
leave me inspired. So focus on the good people and
just manage the risk of the bad. Step over messing
that in it. Ladies and gentlemen. Tim Crockett, go change
the world has been money and wealth on the Black
Effect Network on iHeartRadio.

Speaker 3 (01:20:16):
Go change your life today.

Speaker 1 (01:20:33):
Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of
the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the
Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Speaker 3 (01:21:59):
The pat