Col. (Ret) Seth Krummrich, Vice President of Client Risk Management at Global Guardian

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:16):
Mute from us. If it doesn't work, you're just not
using enough. You're listening to Software Radio, Special Operations, Military Nails.
I'm straight talk with the guys in the community.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Hey, what's going on? Welcome to another exciting episode of
soft Rep Radio. I am the one and only your
host rad That's right, you already know that because you
clicked on the title, you already know who my guest is.
But before I introduce you to my next guest for
this awesome episode, I just want to tell you that
we've really appreciated seeing the spike in the merch store. Okay, really,

(00:56):
the fireplace is natural gas that takes the money to
keep going, So thank you for buying the merch Okay.
I also want to say that if you go to
staff rep dot com Forward slash Book hyphen Club that's
book Hyphened Club, you can check out our book club
that has been designed by guys in the Special Forces
community that think that you should read a book because

(01:16):
they probably read books and maybe you should give one
a chance. So go check out our book club at
stoft rep dot com Forward Slash Book hyphen Club. Now
I'm gonna take a moment here to introduce my next guest.
I was gonna get my thoughts about me. You guys
know how I roll. And so today's guest is retired
Colonel step D. Crumbrick and he is the Chief of

(01:36):
Staff of Special Operations Command Central. I'm gonna read his
bio about him and then he can say hello. So
give me just a second, Dame. Colonel Seth Cumbrick graduated
from Tulane University in nineteen ninety four, where he received
a bachelor's degree in Latin America Studies. He was commissioned
as a second lieutenant through the ROT program in ninety four.
Colonel Cumbric was assigned to Germany, serving in the two
sixty seventh Armor Battalion and one first CALV Squadron as

(02:00):
a leader and staff officer prior to completing Special Forces training.
In nineteen ninety nine, after completion of Special Forces Detachment
Officers Qualification Course, Colonel Cromric was assigned to Alpha Company,
second Battalion, fifth Special Forces Group, Airborne Operational Detachment Alpha
ODA five four to six, where he served as attachment
Detachment commander and deployed in the initial invasion of Afghanistan

(02:21):
in two thousand and one following OEF, which stands for
Operation Enduring Freedom One. Colonel Kromrick served as the fifth
Special Forces Group, a regional Regional Survey Team commander, serving
throughout the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. In
two thousand and three, Colonel Cromrick served as an s
F Branch Assignment Officer as the U. S Army's Human

(02:42):
REFOCE Command. Then earned a master's degree in Defense Defense
and Analysts from the Naval post Graduate School. At two
thousand and seven, he returned to the Fifth Group and
deployed numerous times to Operation Iraqi Freedom. After his tours
in Fifth Group, he served in the National Capital Region,
serving on the Joint Staff and in the Chief of
Staff of the Army's Office. Colonel Cromrick commanded a battalion

(03:05):
to the Special Warfare Center and School had served as
the SWCSG three. He was a Senior Military Fellow at
Stafford University. Most recently he was the Garrison Commander at
for Irwin, which is the National Training Center. I'm going
to go over some of his awards here. Colonel Cromrick's
awards and decorations include the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star,

(03:25):
the Defense Notorious Service Medal with oak leaf clusters, the
Meritorious Service Medal, the Fifth Army Achievement Medal, the Joint
Meritorious Unit Award, the Army Superior Unit Award, National Defense
Service Medal, Second Award, the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal, the
Iraq Campaign Medal, the Afghanistan Campaign Medal, the Global War
on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, the Global Warfare on Terrorism Service Medal,

(03:48):
the Armed Service Ribbon, the Overseas Service Ribbon, the Combat
and Infantrymen's Badge, the CIB that everybody wants, the Ranger Tab,
the Special Forces Tab, the Military free Fall Parachuters Halo,
the Parachute's Badge, the Joint Staff Identification Badge, the man,
the myth, the legend. That is just what is a
little bit of what I've touched base with. You're probably

(04:09):
a whole lot of other things. So welcome to the show.
Seth Cromrick, Welcome.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
Hell Rad. Thank you. By the way, if I could
still write awards, I would give you an award for
reading all of that because that was impressive. It's a
pleasure to be here. Look forward to talking with you,
getting to know you, talking to your audience about my experiences.
I think there's some interesting stories to tell us. So
I'm really looking forward to this meeting.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
You know, prior to us going live, you know, Seth,
we were just mentioning that my dad sits on the
mantle just every show, and he's a Green Beret. But
something that I noticed that you being a Green Beret
Special Forces. He had a master's in Human resource and Business.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
Yeah, we used to say that in Special Operations, green
Berets get paid from the neck up. You're supposed to
be a commando from the neck down. But when we
go through our course, we teach not only do you
get all the commando training and all of special operations training,
but we also teach you a language. You learn about culture.
You are getting paid to problem solve and understand the

(05:08):
world through soft skills as well as hard skills, to
be able to be that guy that we can send
it the Forwardage of Freedom with a quarter inch of intent,
a bag of money, and a bunch of guns and
go make national security happen. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Really, you guys, you know, growing up in that family
and that culture, dad always deployed. We kind of stayed
in a foundation in my community. I kept going to
the same different schools in my area. You know, I
didn't have to go to different states, different bases. Well,
I mean, you were at a high level. You were
running a mops bro in and out. I was out.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
I moved fifteen times in my twenty eight year career,
so it was all over the place. And that doesn't
count all the deployment. So it's been a nomadic journey.
But look, I wouldn't change it out for anything. It
was so fascinating and interesting. And when you look at
your career and you look back in your life, you
wanted to be in an adventure. You wanted to be
like called the wild, something interesting, you know, something that

(06:01):
really had that Sisteine Chapel divine spark to it. And
that's nothing against people that don't choose this line of work,
but for young people that are looking for this really
interesting life, you were not going to do any better
than special operations.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Right, I mean, if you really want to go after that,
then you just got to put your foot forward, go
talk to your local career counselor at the Army and say.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
Hey, how can I be like Seth the SETH program,
which means you can make a lot of mistakes and
learn the hard way, which is most of the time.
But look, i had a phenomenal twenty eight year career,
an amazing transition, and now I'm working for a great
global security company, Global Guardian, which has been incredible. Or
I've able to take all of my experiences and then

(06:45):
be able to apply them to clients and corporations. Now
it's been magnificent. But the journey was a tough one,
and you know, look in our conversation, I'll get a
chance to kind of get in there and be really
honest about what worked for me and what some of
the tough points were and how I was able to
make that transition, because it's probably one of the toughest
things for anybody in uniform, is that step when you

(07:07):
leave uniform. You're leaving your identity, you're leaving your tribe,
and you're going into a brand new world. And it's
a really tough and scary experience. But if you get
the right team with you, you can absolutely knock it
out of the park.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
And thanks for kind of opening up a little vulnerable
question there, because you know, as a young man yourself
in college going through ROTC you've kind of been groomed
with you know, standing at attention, moving information. You know,
it's been indoctrinated into you, as the military does so
well into us to fight, okay, and to be in
the military.

Speaker 3 (07:39):
And then you've gone.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
Twenty eight years sure in that same kind of regiment,
you know, so you yourself have to transition into a
civilian life from like almost your whole life. You know,
as a young man, what were you How old were
you when you decided that, Hey, I'm going in the army.
How old was that?

Speaker 3 (07:53):
Sixteen? So I was in high school. And to put
things in perspective, which is a much longer story, I'd
and sent to a monastery in the mountains of Arkansas
to get my mind right and you know, correct perhaps
some things along the way. And there I was able
to learn about ROTC, and so I got ROTC to
pay for two in universities private school. It's expensive, so

(08:16):
I was able to go into it. And I'll be
the first to admit I was doing it to pay
for college, you know. And plus being in the mountains
of Arkansas and a monastery, I wanted to go to
college in New Orleans, you know, because the drinking age
was eighteen. I could play football there, which I did
for a few years and just have a blast. But
I'll tell you read some of the life skills I
learned from just banging around New Orleans ended up being

(08:39):
those life skills I needed in the Pakistani tribal area
in Iraq, talking to shiks, going out there like being
part of that. It wasn't necessarily the FM book. Hey,
this is how you set up your machine gun. You
need to know how to do all that, but that
eq those life skills what I learned in New Orleans
really were those skills that I took with me and

(09:00):
made a very successful career.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
And so when you say FM, you know, a lot
of my listeners might think radio radio. No. No, he's
talking field manually.

Speaker 3 (09:08):
Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
So see there's a little bit of that integrated regiment
in him where he's like acronyms, you know, and I'm
just saying the Field Manual. I read my dad's s F.
Field Manual from the eighties as an older man, and
it still seems to make sense.

Speaker 3 (09:22):
I always say, and I believe this in my line
of work now with Global Guardian, that it's the outcomes
that matter. Whether you were with your Special Forces team
in Afghanistan or you're sitting down with a fortune one
hundred client. Now it's really the outcome that matters, right,
So it's being able to take that field manual what
they're teaching you, the blocking and tackling, but it applies

(09:42):
it to some really intense and frankly dynamic situations around
the world. It's one thing to see it on paper
like on the pool table. It's a whole other thing
to try to execute it in the Hindu kush or
in downtown Solder City, you know. So it's a really
interesting art. It's for science and art blend. And that's
when I said before that special forces guys get paid

(10:03):
from the neck up. Is being able to see that
from an artist's perspective and then apply it onto the
modern battlefield, which is why I love this profession. Is
calling so much.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
Yes right and again bringing up like how the human
resource element is in there. I mean, you guys, are
you know, kind of an interim politician per se moving
into you know, you have a satellite phone that can
reach mother goose. You know, it's like, oh, you need
you need something done. Let me I need five of
your guys to go sit in that foxhole, will face
that way, okay, with their guns. I'll call in the
ni quill for your sleeping for your cry baby.

Speaker 3 (10:33):
That's right, that's one. I mean, it's it's it's being
that ambassador and that warrior all the same time, and
usually on the lunatic fringe of what's going on. I mean,
you are out there, you don't have your next unit
sitting you know, to fox and he's over. It could
be a city, they could be a country away. And
then when we build. Really the core is our nc

(10:55):
our NCO teams. Our sergeants are incredible. They're selected over
two years and they're basically judged every day to make
sure they've got the cut. But if they wear that
green beret, we trust them to go to the other
side of the planet and to be able to operate
and make it happen very little adult supervision, and they
get it done all the time. They're frankly my spirit animals.

(11:16):
They're amazing guys. And when I look back, I'm like,
those guys are incredible. They're incredible then when I was
a younger guy. They're even better now. So I'm extremely
bullish on Special Forces in the way ahead.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
For sure, same same spirit animal. I love that, right.
I thought it was an Orca whale for me. But
I'm gonna have to say, you.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
Don't got to be green beret. I love that. Yeah,
an Orca whale with a green break. Can we have that?

Speaker 2 (11:38):
Just someone who's it is? I hope that makes sense
to you for sure? If that does, you know, it
totally does.

Speaker 3 (11:43):
And these guys go out and you know it's really
they'll spend an entire career, whether it's ten years, twenty
years or more than in my case, and they're exposed
and going out and doing all these incredible things, and
you know what we ol and on the backside is
then being able to take care of them transition when
they come through, to make sure that they're being taken
care of when they transition into their next identity, this

(12:06):
next opportunity in life once they're finished with their career.
And that's one of the toughest things, similar to.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
You, like like I love my dad, Okay, I love
him so much and I'm always going to reference him
so like him. You know, he got out of the
military with a forced medical wasn't his choice run the marathons.
Then all of a sudden he had a seizure and
the medics showed up to the house and it was
his medic in late in Utah. We're out of Utah,
so his medic was working the EMT shift.

Speaker 3 (12:32):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
So all of a sudden, here radal and he shows
up to my dad's house, like what's going on? And
my dad was white, had a seizure and that just
started his out process for sure. So the medics like, look, Jack,
I have to tell him, and he's like, no, I'm good.
I'm like, no, I have to tell him. What just
happened here today at your house? You have to report this.
But I was like I'm good, trying to stand in
the doorway like I'm good, you know, like, don't you know?

(12:55):
And what happened was he had a transition. And I
think there was a part of him that said that
can this keep going without me? Can the team that
I've been plotting on this whiteboard for the next three
to four years out? Can it move on without me
whiting on this right board? And what about my kids?
And he probably just had so many things being an
SF guy, just so smart, Like I said from the
head up and hear his body down has just like

(13:18):
put at forty yeah, forty one. And so he had
a transition and he started going back to his schooling
and he was working on his doctorate before he passed away.
I'm just saying he had to transition. You had to transition.
It did, yeah, and now you're working at Global Guardian
for sure.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
I mean, look, and the transition part is is arguably
one of the toughest things. Everything you just said about
your dad resonates and any person who's retired can absolutely
give you a version of it. And here's the toughest
part about it. You can get mentorship in almost anything
in the military from somebody who's higher ranking than you.
There's someone who's been there before. But when it comes
to transition in the military, your commander has not done

(13:59):
that yet, your command stars a major hasn't done that yet,
or their equivalent in the other services, so they don't
know about it. In fact, there's a lot of policies
that are in place with units that actually hurt the
transitioning shouldier. They'll put in something like, hey, you only
have six months to retire. I'm here to tell you
that's not the case like that, you can't do it
responsibly in six months. And while there's a lot of

(14:20):
organizations out out there that try to help and assist
you with it, it's still a very personal experience. You've
got to be able to do it. So if you've
picked up you know, all of the trauma and all
of your experiences are building up in you. I used
to call it like radiation poisoning. You go to Afghanistan,
you go through compo rotations, that stress builds up with you.

(14:42):
You can release some of it, but it's sitting in you.
You go to your next deployment, you're in Putland and Smallia,
the next one you're in Iraq, the next one you're
fighting isis in Syria. And it's building up and building
up and building up in you, and at some point,
if you don't take care of it, it's going to
have level of toxicity. And sometimes it's extremely pronounced. Sometimes

(15:04):
it's seeping into your dreams at night, and you've got
to be able to handle it when you go forward.
Look that level of toxicity. It could be extremely extremely
lethal if you're not careful, which is one of the
reasons why I think it's so important to talk about it.
You know, I was very lucky that when I retired,
I built out an eighteen month plan, and even though

(15:24):
I was the socks and chief of staff at the time,
so for my final three years, I was the chief
of staff for the headquarters that was commanding and controlling
special operations in the Middle East and Central Asia. So
you can think about all of the you know, bad
neighborhoods in that area. I just talked about all the problems,
whether it was Isis al kaieda counter Iranian influence throughout

(15:46):
the entire region. Then of course the fall and collapse
of Afghanistan, the thing that I had gone and done
as part of Task Force Dagger in the initial entry days,
to all of a sudden seeing it fall apart everything
we built and having to deal with the trom and
the drama of that. It was just another layer. In fact,
that for me was my trigger of saying, hey, look,
I've got to retire, because I knew physically I was

(16:08):
not in a good place. Even though I was working
out running a lot, I had put on weight. I
knew that psychologically I was struggling with some things and
I was not in a solid spot, and if I
was going to be asked then to transition and go
work in a corporate environment, something had to be addressed.
And that was where my journey really hit an incredible

(16:29):
inflection point in there when I got to my eighteen
month out point and I realized I needed a change
in Afghanistan and Fallen. I'd seen it firsthand. And the
good or the bad thing about being in that chiefest
staff spot was that I could see and talk to
the guys in the HKAI Airport Hamarkaizing International Airport as
everything was falling apart. So getting all that emotion coming

(16:52):
in while we were building the plan or we were
watching the plan fall fall apart that we had presented
to the administration of Hey, this is what you need
to do to be successful. They didn't follow it. And
you've had this incredible vantage point to the tactical level
and the strategic level. So all that's being loaded on
you in my eighteen month plan out because I tell

(17:13):
anyone that'll listen, whether you're going to hire a veteran
coming in, or you're a veteran, or you're an active
duty service member that's looking at retiring, look at that
eighteen month plan and start to build it up. And
I've done all the things that they tell you to do. Hey,
go join those transition organizations and they help for the
most part, like Honor Foundation's great commits, a great the soda.

(17:36):
You know, they're all good and they help you focus
on your job. But that's the problem. The issue you
have to solve is can I get a job and
you know, continue to pay for things for my family.
You're a special operations guy, You're gonna get a job.
But you actually have one good opportunity to fix yourself.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
Now.

Speaker 3 (17:55):
I don't mean they just get your VA rating and
turn in the paperwork, but to actually sit down down
and be really honest with yourself, self actualized, and go, hey,
I've got some issues I need to get recalibrated. It's
like going to the master gunner and getting everything recalibrated
on your system. I need to go sit down with professionals,
have them do a full workover on me, tell me

(18:16):
what's going on, and tell me how to fix it
so that when I go out to be a executive
or go back in the government service, or wherever your
path takes you, be a writer, whatever that path takes you,
that you're calibrated, You're ready. You're going to be an
awesome you know, employee, You're going to be an awesome executive.
You're going to be an awesome dad. And I've got
three kids and look, they're part of the bill payer

(18:37):
for a lot of the stress and a lot of
the toxicity that built up in me. And I was
extremely lucky.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
See, And that was a question I was going to ask,
is did you manage all this with a family?

Speaker 3 (18:46):
Right?

Speaker 2 (18:46):
Some guys can be lone wolves out there in the teams,
and some guys like my dad, full on family for sure.
You know.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
Well, the biggest delusion we tell ourselves in SF is
I can take it. Every single special operator. I've talked
to Greenbrays See you, PJ, you name it, anyone in
Jaysuk is I'm the king of compartmentalization. That's true up
to a certain point. We psychologically screen people for years
to make sure that they can compartmentalize. But here's what happens.
You just lock away all that trauma from the streets

(19:15):
of Soder City or Basra or Afghanistan. You lock it
in the box and you throw it in the back
of your mental cave and you're like, I got it,
Bring on the next one. What's my next rotation? I've
got this. But what happens is when you go to
sleep and then you're subconscious, that box leaks and it
starts to come out, and it starts to make you paranoid.
You know, wake up at night, Oh my gosh. You know,

(19:37):
when I lived on McDill Air Force Base, I lived
in the safest street in the United States, and I
would wake up at night and go, huh, I need
to go check all the doors to make sure that
everything's locked. Now you don't. You're on the safest street.
It's being patrolled right now. Then when you add the
physical aspect, just like with your father, Hey, I've been
ground down by endless freefall jumps or body armor or

(19:58):
just whatever it is. Every single special operator can tell
you of their aches and pains. In fact, at a
certain age that becomes one of the primary conversations what
are you doing for your back your hip? But when
you start to combine those things, you have a problem.
You have a real problem. Because it's like stormfront's coming together.
Tornadoes don't happen because of one stormy it's hot and cold.
They are coming together. When the physical, the psychological, in

(20:21):
some cases the cognitive all slam into each other, it
manifests itself in some very very very dangerous ways. And
so when I was going through my process, I was
lucky to be in Tampa. I was lucky that I've
got good medical leadership here. And they told me about
a program that I was not tracking with the VA
and it was called the Prep Program. And so what

(20:43):
the Prep program did was say, hey, look, if you've
had a mild traumatic brain injury, which most soft guys
who have been in combat operations have done it, they
come from over pressure. Over pressure injuries blows to your head,
and not just in downrange when you're breaching or there's
artillery going off, but all the training that you do before,

(21:04):
all the countless flash bangs that maybe you're a little
bit too quick into the room and you just learned
your lesson because you know you're getting rocked. All of
those things, those hard parachute landings. It's endless, it's thousands
of reps. I was a college football player, so I'd
had a lot of blows of the head already. So
when you start to add it all together, I went
and got a brain MRI and it was very clear

(21:26):
brain lesions from what they called shearing impact injuries. You know,
somewhere along the lines I was in Basra, I had
been knocked out by artillery at one point. You know,
these things pile up on you. But here's the kicker,
and it goes to your point earlier. The guys in
the teams or the guys in the units. Even if
you're a major or you're a lieutenant colonel, you're not
on the front lines. You want to be with the

(21:47):
tribe and the action being there that to you is
so personal. The last thing you want to do is
raise your hand and go, hey, I need help, And
unfortunately we all all into that trap, and it's a
horrible trap. If you really want to do a good
service for your seal platoon or your ODA or your battalion,

(22:09):
raise your hand, go get help, and then come right back,
because it's basically like rezeroing your weapons system. You're actually
much better if you take those three weeks or nine
weeks off, go get reset, and come back, you're going
to be so much better for the organization. I didn't
catch it until the end, but thank god I caught
it and there's a number of services like this. In Tampa.

(22:30):
We have the Prep program at the Haley VA Hospital.
There's Nico up in Virginia. There's Intrepid, there's Pacer down
in San Antonio. Any one of these will fit and
you can do them as a veteran, retired, or a
veteran if you've had a mild TBI. For example, in
my particular case, that was the price of admission to
get into prep. You know, it's everyone's like, oh man,

(22:50):
the prep program is great. I'm like, yeah, but the
buy in is really difficult because it's a lot of
road miles and a lot of damage that you've had.
And then when you're there, this program's amaze. They do
a three week screening, and think of it this way.
You're getting dog piled collectively by fifteen different doctors and specialists,
and they're looking at you like a board meeting. So

(23:10):
you've got your physical you know, think of the doctor.
They've got the best vestibular doctors in the world there
that look at you from a physical standpoint. Hey, how
is this TBI affecting his balance? Let's take a look
at all of his joints, look at everything, all of
his pain points. They're also sitting down talking to your psychologists,
which will lean in on in a second why it's
so important. You're cognitive specialists, which was a huge surprise

(23:33):
to me, and they're all sitting down and looking at
you at like one case study and coming up with
an organized solution. The converse is how most of us
do healthcare, which is, hey, my back hurts, I go
see my back specialists. But my back specialist isn't talking
to my psychologists, who's not talking to my cognitive therapist. Here,
they're all looking at you together. So you go through

(23:53):
this three week screening program and read I cannot stress
this enough. I've had a couple lectures in my life
that's with me, and there'll be the last things I
remember before I punch out. But there was a doctor there.
Doctor Gutum sat me down day two. He had pulled
all my labs, he'd weighed me in all these things,
and he goes, seth, I'm going to start this off
with an extremely serious point. You will be dead in

(24:16):
five to ten years if you don't make changes. Now
blew my hair back. I'm like, WHOA, Okay, you have
my full attention. I've got three younger kids because I
didn't get started, so I was in my mid thirties.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
Okay, you're still feeling young. Yeah, you're still feeling good.
You're like, what what right?

Speaker 3 (24:29):
You're like, this is crazy, right, And if you're being
honest with yourself, you're like, yeah, I know it hurts
when I get out of bed in the morning my
back and I hit my neck. I know I'm ignoring
all the psychological stuff, and you know, like I get it,
but now all of a sudden you're being forced to
deal with reality. This doctor talked to me for four
straight hours, no breaks, about what the plan was, what

(24:50):
we were going to do, and it was the physical,
the psychological, and the cognitive peace. And so I said, okay, hey,
let's do it. And for the physical stuff, every SPECE
operator is going to lean in on it because we
do it all the time. You go see the PT.
No one's ever afraid of going and seeing the PT
and getting your stretches or your needling or any of
the other things that they do. I will say that

(25:12):
I think the biggest stigma out there is on the
psychological side. I think, to include myself, I had probably
the best doctor and provider, one of the best people
I've met my life as my psychologist. But I was
a terrible patient my first two weeks. And for the
big picture, there's a three week in patient screening, so
I'm living at the hospital for three weeks. At the

(25:34):
end of the streaming, they invited me to come back
for six more weeks, so I spent a total of
nine weeks in patient. Now, remember, hey man, I'm the man, right,
I'm the cent chief of staff. I've done all the rats.
I'm a Green Beret.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
As at forter when I gave no less than like
fifty speeches to the entertainment industry to Vegas, the NASCAR,
like I was the guy man, I was switched on,
and all of a sudden, I've got these breaking it
down for me, and they're like, hey man, listen. And
so my psychologist, who was great, doctor Wilbanks. She's the
best and just as a cheap plug for she was

(26:10):
at Tampa the time. She actually supports veterans out of
Atlanta now. But her first two weeks, I didn't even
learn her name because I just came in. I'm like, ah, yeah, psychology, whatever, whatever.
And she's very she's great because she's running me through
all the screening. She's asking me questions, but she's also
not putting up with my bs. I'm deflecting and trying
to be funny and things, and she's like, okay, and

(26:32):
then would pin me down and get to it. But
through a bunch of trust falls, I finally learned her name.
I finally said, okay, look, I'll dip my toe in it.
But to be one hundred percent honest, I was scared.
I was scared because I knew the leaking boxes, I
knew the things I had to deal with, But I
also knew that I was in this big transition period.
If I didn't address it now, rad when was I
gonna address it when I was a corporate executive.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
There's no time when I was out of you in
the middle of a breakdown, and you just can't have it.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
Going to help my clients if I'm not completely spot
on and doing it. And that's exactly what we did.
We went through this prolonged exposure therapy and it was tough. Look,
I didn't quit in the Q course. I didn't quit
in Ranger School, even though I got the extended version
in the middle of winter in the mountains, which some
people can appreciate when I say that I turned a

(27:21):
seventy two day course into one hundred day course. You're welcome.
There was a point after my first or second week
that I packed up my bags and I'm like, this
is too hard. I got to go and to give
doctor Wilbine's credit. Now she's a senior resident right at
this point, like she's not even like over the hump yet.
She came in and said, dude, you got this, like

(27:41):
you can do this.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
Like we told you it.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
Was gonna be tough. You just got to trust me.
And I did. And I got to tell you from
a perspective of a guy who was the man until
I got seen the facts of going, hey man, I've
got some things I got to work through. I leaned
in on it and went all in and it was hard.
It was the equivalent of all the calm that I

(28:03):
had physically except in a psychological space of working through it.
But once you process it and you know how to
process that stress in those things, it didn't just change
my life, it saved my life. So I've become this
huge John the Baptist advocate for it. In fact, I
would say that, you know, to use the biblical terms,
though I probably don't get to church nearly as much

(28:23):
as I probably should have. But there's some great you know,
there's some great comparisons. This was my road to Damascus,
Saul to Paul, and she basically took me through the
dark forest and got me through it. And it was brutal,
it was awful. It would psychologically just spin me around
for days afterwards. But we did over one hundred hours

(28:47):
of eyeball to eyeball, just like this face to facing
room during COVID wearing masks. So we all looked like
bank robbers, I guess, right. So when I would break down,
as she would at least let me take off my mask.
And like I hadn't cried in thirty years before I
went in there, even at you know, plain side ceremonies
and those other things, I was just packing it all
down and then I finally got a chance to work

(29:08):
through it. And so she was so fundamental in being
able to get it done. So I tell any veteran
that's feeling that, like they feel disassociated from their lives,
from what's going on, like you've got to go find
you know, your version of doctor Wilbanks out there. It
doesn't have to be psychology, you know, it can be
a friend, it can be you know, whatever your outlet is.
Just you got to be able to just find that

(29:29):
one to do it. I was just very lucky to
find the world's best who really committed to help me,
even though I fought her tooth and nailed the entire way.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
And you seem like you're just ready to go right
back into war.

Speaker 3 (29:39):
You're like, you know.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
What, I think, I'm going to pack my bags up
here and go get shot at or maybe die over there,
because that's easier for me. You know, I could just
go through the mechanics of that. But mentally you have
to now become again I say vulnerable, right, and I.

Speaker 3 (29:53):
Like the vulnerable fragile. I mean again green Bray, colonel,
find her the badge of the school. I hadn't done right.
Like again. It was like, you know, put a quarter
in me, and I'll tell you a war story. Most
of it's true and right right self, guys will appreciate
there I was right, except unless it was an actual

(30:14):
combat experience, and then we don't talk about those, right,
And that was the the interesting or the funny or
the self deprecating ones. Man, you give me some beer
and bourbon all day long, twice and Sunday. But the
ones that were really holding me down were the ones
that I shared with her and her alone. I don't
think I'll tell nonother human being, but just being able
to process it was so important for me. And the

(30:35):
way I like to think of it is, for if
I was involved in hundreds of combat operations and there
were nails, They're all nailed into the board. There was
three or four nails that just stuck up, and they
were the ones that were sneaking into my subconscious, haunting
my dreams, making me, you know, feel very awkward or
scared in certain situations that I should have been with
my family out and about. So when you go through that,

(30:57):
it's really important to see it. And at the end
of it, and I go through the psychological piece, the
physical piece, because the docs in the physical side were
amazing when it came to getting my vestibular right, the
cognitive piece, which was incredible. Sharon Harre is one of
the great specials. She actually helped start the program. She
set me down once and goes, okay, look, I'm a
speech therapist like I give speeches all the time, like

(31:18):
I'll crush what do you want me to? And she
was cool about it. She goes, listen, I'm just going
to give you a couple tests and we'll see how
you do. I'm like, right on, bring it on. And
she gave me the first when she read me a
couple of paragraphs and said, hey, how many times you
hear the word the I said three times, and she
goes cool, there was twenty two, and I'm like whoa.
And so there was this mystery like I knew the

(31:39):
physical piece, I knew the psychological piece. Yeah, And then
I had another grinder with Sharon, and she was just
one of these other people. So the reason I bring
all this up and I share the story is at
the end of this nine weeks, I came out physically, psychologically,
cognitively recalibrated. So when people talk about transition, they're like, hey,

(32:00):
I'm leaving the service. I got to get a job.
So they're going in all these job interviews and things.
They're trying to get the retirement party set up. They're
trying to make sure they jump logs okay, and they're
all worried about the wrong things. What they need to
do is recognize the opportunity they have. Find that team.
What prep was for me, find it for them, get
right because when you come out and you're recalibrated, man,

(32:22):
you were going to be awesome. I'm such a better
you know, say, father, employee, human being, friend like because
of this program, and then when I went into work
for Global Guardian, which has been amazing. So Global Guardian
takes the Green Berey model where we have indigenous teams
over one hundred and forty countries and then they're in place.

(32:43):
Most of them are in the Ministry of Interior. They're
licensed to carry farms, drive armored vehicles. They speak the language,
know the culture because rad ninety nine percent of your
problems are local wherever you are in the world, and
if you don't speak the language and know the neighborhood culture,
you're going to get yourself in trouble. So that when
our executive or our families travel around the world, they've
got that you know, Lawrence of Arabia waiting for them

(33:06):
at the airport. That is a Pakistani, he's Indian, he's Brazilian.
There ready to greet them and to make sure everything's
going to go perfectly fine. So if you're there for
corporate work or you're there on vacation, we are all there.
We're watching them on tracking apps, and I always like
to tell people like everyone's got tracking apps. I tracked
my kids at Life three sixty all the time. But

(33:27):
we're one of the only companies around the world that
if you get in trouble and you hit the panic
button or you call the op center, I'm going to
have somebody there in minutes that's going to be able
to come solve your problem, which has been great. So
I was able to take all that Green Beret experience,
get right with myself in prep and then get that
job of my dreams, which I love it. I love

(33:48):
my clients because they joined because in a lot of
cases I convince them to join, think like business development
or sales, and now I manage them and it's been
absolutely phenomenal. They trusted me to come on and do it,
and so I've been able to get in there and
take all my hard lessons learned from the Pakistani travel
area and Solder City and all the places in between,

(34:08):
and help those executives now be able to excel wherever
they go. It's just been fantastic.

Speaker 2 (34:16):
You know, it just reminds me of having you said,
the guy just standing out there waiting for it Indian,
you know, blends in, speaks the language. It reminds me
of Indiana Jones. He's like, you'll never find him. He
speaks the founds of languages. He'll blend in with the environment.
He's like, hello, hello, littlebody know.

Speaker 3 (34:33):
Yeah, you're sitting yeah, right, you're right, you're sitting in
Cameroon going, why is that guy have a whip on him?
Nobody carries a woman Cameroon.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
Who is this guy?

Speaker 3 (34:41):
Like this is ridiculous? Yeah, And you realize it because
in green Berets, like we built the Iraqi Special Operation
Force between this Special Forces Group and tenth Group. You've
seen it from guys writing books and other things. And
while they were awesome while we were there. I tell
people all the time their greatest moment and it makes
emotion when I think about it too. We built this

(35:02):
exquisite commando, high end unit. And after we left in
twenty ten and the rise of Isis exploded there, that
unit would stood at the gates of Baghdad and kept
the barbarians out at a seventy five to eighty percent
casualty rate. That thing that we built. They were shopkeepers,
there were college students, there were just dudes on the street.

(35:22):
We built this incredible thing in green brids because we
understood the power of the indigenous guys and how you
empower them because outcomes matter, they will get you the
outcome that you need. And they were incredible. They were
incredible with us, they were incredible without us, and they
continue to get after it today. They just took out
a bunch of Isis guys not too long ago. And

(35:43):
you look at that legacy and then you take a
look at it and go, all right, I'm retiring from
the military. There's this incredible place, Global Guardian that was
built on that because our founder, Dale Buckner was a
green Bread and.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
His yeah exactly, I was going to bring him up.

Speaker 3 (35:58):
He's phenomenal and his operating officers CIA, so we're all
you know, that soft CIA mix that comes together is
empowering this network. And now you know, I'll just list
a couple of companies that allow us to talk about
I'm like, Hilton Hotels now has this network. For example,
hessel Oil has this thing. So you start to look
at this and you're like, man, who would not want

(36:20):
this Lamborghini. It's incredible and it's been great, and the
people I work with there are great. And I'm also
one of those guys, even though I'm an older guy.
At this point, I'm very bullish on the millennials in
on the GenZ. You guys, the twenty and thirty year
olds at work at our company are phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal, sharp, bright.

(36:41):
They manage crisises around the world. Rad we were pulling
dudes out a cartoon within a couple hours after the
exploded eleven months ago. We've pulled over eleven hundred dudes
out of it. Dudes, clients, I got you. No, no, dudes,
It's okay. No out of Israel. After October seventh, within

(37:02):
six hours when the Russians came across the Ukrainian border,
we were moving thousands of clients out of harms Way.
We moved over ten thousand clients out of Ukraine. Since then,
I'm passionate about it because I love my clients. They're
awesome folks, and I know it works. And the reason
I know it works is because I lived it for
twenty eight years. Is a green beret. So when I
talk to folks that are getting ready to retire or

(37:23):
looking at it, I'm like, listen, here's the good news.
Number One, you're going to get a job. Go to
those go to the Honor Foundations, they're great. Go to
commit and sort of get a framework. Number one thing
is take care of you. Go find that team to
fix you, because when you come out on the other side,
guys like me are going to guide you to that
place you want to be. But here's the flip side
of that coin. You don't fix yourself. You're carrying that baggage,

(37:47):
that toxicity we were talking about. Now you're trying to
help the clients. Now you're trying to deal with things.
It's tough, and look, sometimes the nation asks you to
do things after you retire. I'm working at Global Guardian
and things are great. I'm loving it. I'm bringing on clients,
I'm building out, you know, the network, I'm solving problems.
And I've got to go testify for in front of

(38:08):
Congress Foreign Affairs Committee on the Fall of Afghanistan because
I had mentioned before I had this exquisite seat to
talk to the guys in each guy at the airfield
and then also see the plan that General McKenzie, the
Sentcom commander, had presented to the Joint Chiefs to sect
death and the President, which you know they didn't go with.
So you know, we I got this incredible Which president

(38:31):
was that? Can you?

Speaker 2 (38:31):
Just because I know Trump signed the accord in twenty
twenty or December twenty second, he signed it saying pull
out sure, right after he had sold like eighty five
billion in assets. Of course, so are we talking about
him or Biden with a small amount of time.

Speaker 3 (38:46):
It's a great question, rad because I think context really matters.
You can get caught up and dis like the debates
the other night, like it's really easy to try to
pin the tail on a donkey. The reality is the
tail fits on every single one of the presidents and
every single one of us, and you've got to own
and take responsibility for it. Here's what I mean by it.
Every administration that touched Afghanistan is a stakeholder and its

(39:07):
failure period I get to stop everybody is you can
go back and take a look at any single one
of them and go okay, I see And part of
it too, is you see the vacillation between the different
takes that the that the administrations took. Some people focused
on it, some it became a backwater, you know, and
they let it go over time. There wasn't a consistent
strategy that was there. Now, I will say it, and

(39:29):
I stand by my testimony that was there. That the
final administration, the Biden administration, which has done a lot
of good things out there. So I don't want to
make a painted like it's you know, I'm on one
side of the other, because I'm not. I'm truly as
centrist when it comes to it. But that's a whole
different conversation, which means short sides hate me.

Speaker 2 (39:45):
Yeah. Same, I'm like, just like I'm picking, I'm poking
the bear.

Speaker 3 (39:48):
That's me, right, But I will be very upfront and
honest with the truth because and what I told him
was the truth. It was Hey, the stakeholder that chose
the when and how we left, which was the Biden administration,
and owns the responsibility. There's no reason that we should
have left in the beginning, in the middle of the
fighting season. That's crazy. We've been in Afghanistan way too

(40:09):
long to know that a pull out when the Taliban
ra at their astray that's nuts, right like that, that's
a bad idea. Hey, you spent all this time there,
this whole concept of well, we don't want to lose
any more people or spending more money there. Number One,
the casualty rate had dropped to it just about zero.
If you compared Afghanistan to training accidents that were going
on in the United States, to include at the National
Training Center when I was there as a commander, Afghanistan

(40:32):
was extremely low. But you trade off what we lost,
which we warned everybody. We warned the Trumpet administration, we
warned the Biden administration, and we being the military side,
was hey, if.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
You don't leave sut s on your name tape correct.

Speaker 3 (40:47):
And what we said was, look, if you don't leave
that special Operations picket line, the same thing that was
there in two thousand and one and two that I
was a part of. If you don't leave that picket
line there, just buy more time and space so that
the institutions in afghan and I say, can just get
a little bit more time. And oh, by the way,
so they're not immediately pressured after we left that just
do it. I'm not saying the outcome would have changed,

(41:09):
but the way it was done was horrible because here
was the problem. We had given the Afghani people hope,
specifically the Afghani women hope, and when VIC got thrown away,
the reality is this Afghan women pay the bill for
our feckless decision making. Every minute of the day we've
been talking for forty two minutes, there's been every single

(41:31):
minute of those an Afghan woman's been abused in this
oppressive system that we let happen. I mean, it looks
like September tenth, two thousand and one, you know, So
it's really hard to say that to really justify our
time there when we basically, you know, threw it away.
There were warnings in places we told them, and there
were decisions to go the other direction, and it was
really unfortunate. There's a great documentary called Retrograde. It's on

(41:54):
I think National Geographic. It's phenomenal. There was this team
that was there was this National Geographic team that was
embedded with an ODA in Afghanistan. When the news came down, Hey,
you're pulling out, and you're pulling out like now, so
you have to tell this commando unit you're with that
we'd been with for decade plus. Oh, we're leaving. And
by the way, we're leaving and not coming back. You're

(42:15):
on your own out here at the lunatic fringe of
Taliman Land. We're not coming back. And by the way,
we're leaving in like two weeks, like, we're not bringing
the printer back or the fridge back. We're going to
either destroy it or we're going to leave it for you.
And you watched the look on the Afghan commando space.
It was that shock of capture that we call in
survival school, and you first get grabbed and you're going
to the prison situation. You got to survive. They were

(42:37):
so shocked that there was no time and space to
let them sort of recover pull themselves together, because the
second we started going, it's the fighting season. Here comes
the swarm, here comes the What I had described to
my testimony is the big red blob, because as I
would watch this map in Afghanistan or the Afghan map
from the operations center in Tampa every day, it was

(43:00):
like this giant, big red blob was just eating and
gobbling up more terrain as it moved its way towards
Cobbo and Kandahar, and it was so clear early on
that hey man, that's not going to stop. I'd seen
this for way too long for us to see that
this is going It was like if you ever see
the movie Aliens. Yeah, and they're looking down at the thing.
They're trying to find the Aliens, and they're like, hey,

(43:21):
they're ten meters away, they're six meters away, Like where
I can't like, where is it? Right? It's there. It's
like it's on you. And once you're on you, there's
nothing that you're going to be able to do. There
was a there basically was a tipping point where it
is unrecoverable. Then the panic started. And you know, the
testimony stands alone, and I won't go through all the
details of it, but I will tell you this, it
was extremely powerful and painful for me to have to

(43:42):
go do it. I'm proud of it because I took
the oath to the Constitution and Congress is the embodiment
of it. So I did my duty after I was retired,
told them the truth as I saw it. Witnesses and
experience did and the only reason I was able to
do that really powerful, painful experience then turn around, hop
in an uber and go back to my headquarters and

(44:04):
go on client calls. We was because of prep, because
of folks like doctor Wilbanks. Because of that team had
built the resiliency and given me the tools to be
able to handle it afterwards. That's why I've had such
great success at this wonderful company was because of that transition.
Why it's so important to understand why you've got to
invest in yourself during that transition piece. Stop worrying about

(44:27):
being a consultant or sales or going back to the government.
Take this opportunity to fix yourself. I'm obviously huge advocate.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
Or becoming a cop, I see a lot, you know.
I mean like it's like I got out of the military.

Speaker 3 (44:37):
What do I do?

Speaker 2 (44:38):
Oh, you go become a cop? And then what happens
is they get back into the multicam. They get back
into a decommissioned M wrap that's been painted black with
a tan soul. Okay, right, and all of a sudden
they're like, oh, I know how to work a forty millimeters?
How can you guys have this in the police department?
And next thing you know, you have this blended Are
they cops or not?

Speaker 3 (44:58):
You know?

Speaker 2 (44:58):
On network TV because you know the multicam doesn't help,
right because in the beginning of the Army picking the pattern,
they just discarded it in with ACU gray square digital
and said, no, we'll let multicam become a civilian pattern.
And so the law enforcement's like, we'll use it. So
now you got law enforcement where multicam, you got Army,
National Guard ward multicam, and then you have you know,

(45:19):
a lot of commotion let's just say during the end
of like Trump's presidency, where they were all over the
nation and you're like, who's the cop, who's the military.
It's just such a blended environment with this multicam, and
you know, like trying to like, I don't know, I mean,
you get, like I said, you get an old salty
veteran who hasn't gone through deprogramming or how to re
reconparnimentalize what he's going through all that gear right back.

Speaker 3 (45:41):
Yeah, it can. It can end really poorly. You know.
You reminded me of the fact that we always joked
that when you had the gray pattern uniform, it was
perfect camouflage for a gravel parking lot. It was fantastic.
The motor pools in I racket was fantastic.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
All the tarmac right, once you were in the whole,
what's the point They're like, you have to go against
the wall and get dirt on it to make it
blend in. That was like the analogy of it.

Speaker 3 (46:06):
It would be a lot funnier if it wasn't such
an issue, But it really comes to like everybody's different
and what you can take. You know, everyone can absorb
a different amount of stress and pressure. We recruit in
special operations people that can take that, and but we
fill that bottle over time to use the old analogy

(46:27):
on it. And once your bottle's full, if you don't
have somebody to help you, you know, process everything that's
in there, it can become very dangerous, whether it's in
your next profession or just for you personally. Though. The
one topic that's very near and dear to me that
I've man I'm more confused now than I was thirty
years ago is suicides. The more I touched it, the

(46:47):
more I saw it, the less I realized I understood,
and more empathetic I was for everyone that was touched
by it. And that's why I try to really advocate
for self actualization self care because when I came out
of that prep program, I had lost seventy pounds. I had,
but it was nothing compared to my psychological piece of

(47:10):
being able to truly process things and be clean and
clear and then be able to operate brand new like
I was born again in a new world environment, pick
up corporate ease and everything that comes with it. And
it's been wonderful. But that's the opportunity of that transition
time because if you don't, things can happen. And sometimes

(47:32):
it's just minor and your families to build pair for it.
Sometimes it can be much more impactful, and it can
lend it, you know, end really poorly. So you know,
it's one of those things I encourage anyone listening, whether
you're a veteran, whether you're going to be a veteran,
or whether you're just there and your interest and you
want to help reach out, find those places, help people
connect up, because if you send them and invest in

(47:54):
them that way, you're going to get one hell of
an employee coming out in the back end. I mean
one hell of an employee, and you're crazy if you
don't hire them, absolutely true, absolutely bit at Global Guardian.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
Let me just put this out there if somebody is
out listening to our show right now, like, hey, you know,
Colonel made a lot of points, Rad made a lot
of points. I think I might hit up Global Guardian.
You guys are always looking for somebody that might fit
that resume on your website.

Speaker 3 (48:19):
ND percent look absolutely go to our website. We are
always looking for talent. Like I said, that talent in
those twenty to thirty year old ranks is incredible. But
then you get some guys like myself, and where I
become really important for the clients when I sit down,
when I sign a client, I stay with the client
as their security expert. So if you're that big corporation,
you get all of my experience, and I'm usually talking

(48:41):
to somebody that looks just like me, another guy you know,
and that has a full you know, FBI, Secret Service,
military background. So we've chewed a lot of the same dirt.
So we've got peers talking about how we're going to
problem solve, how we're going to take our model of
having all those teams that worldwide global metav I can
get your person out of harm's way or from a

(49:03):
hospital in Sri Lanka, I can pick them up in
a couple hours, they're ready to go, grab them and
have them back in Houston ready to go in under
a day or two, right, just depending on flight time. Like,
that's really cool to come in that because you leave
that value proposition of I'm serving my country and doing
this to hey, I've got these clients I really like

(49:24):
because they signed on because they liked me enough to
do it. Now I get to solve problems for them
all the time, regardless of what they are medical, security wise,
cyber digital, they're getting stocked online. I can do all
those things.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
So to just like kind of pitch you a little
bit here because I'm not trying to make this a commercial,
but who is your client for Global Guardian? What's that
client look like? Who would want to reach out to you?
Who are you looking for? You said, Hilton Hotel. You
kind of let that out there.

Speaker 3 (49:53):
It's a great question. So I've got this entire portfolio
of you know, whether it's Fortune five hundred four two
one thousand. Companies also have NGOs and this is a
big one too. If you're an NGO that travels to Somalia, Libya,
some of these tough places South Sudan, Like you need
a Global Guardian because we've got the tracking platform where

(50:14):
we can track you in real time, send you alerts,
and if you get into trouble, I can have somebody
there for you minutes or if you're rural, like in
rural Cameroon, in hours, depending on a long it takes
to get there. But we're one of the frankly the
only company that operates in level four conflict and war
zones and that can come help you right now. Ukraine, Man,
we are postured everywhere. We do incredible work Gaza West Bank,

(50:38):
you know, anywhere else in Israel. We've got Palestinian teams,
We've got Israeli teams, We've got Lebanese teams. In Lebanon,
for example, we have the biggest security force outside of
their armed forces. That's where our clients that are there
are able to get so we can come get you,
evacuate you, get you out of the country, whether it's
medical or just an emergency. And that's why this job's awesome,
right you take all those skills and then you're able

(51:00):
to do it for your clients around the world. So cool,
it's cool.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
I'm just going to say that's so cool, even though
the situation might be a nightmare at the time, right, like.

Speaker 3 (51:10):
For sure, well in all fifty states too. Right, So
if you're if you have a hostile termination that's going
on in Minneapolis or Salt Lake City or wherever. Hey, Seth,
I got a problem, Harry, can you get somebody over here?
Armguardles show up. But it's not just some big burly dude.
It's like, all right, what do you want him to
look like? Hey, I want him to wear this because
it's going to look just like our HR team. He's

(51:31):
going to blend He'll be you know, he'll blend in.
It's non contentious. He's there to help, he's there to
de escalate and be able to get you know, take
care of the company. They're feeling confident. The head of
HR is feeling confident. The person who's being terminated who's
you know, showed a pattern of aggressive behavior is not
feeling you know, aggravated now because there's some big guy
there and it's really a great way to do it.

(51:53):
And then for corporate leaders that fly around the world
or you know, families, you want to have that executive
protection age meets you at the airport or the expeditor
that gets you through customs, meets our agent right there,
who is like, hey, I am Zamir in Pakistan. It's
great to meet you. Hey, we're heading out. This is
what we're going to go do. We're tracking you back
from Tyson's corner, making sure that everything's going well. We're

(52:16):
talking on WhatsApp signal and if anything happens, there's a protest,
there's a natural disaster, there's a terrorist attack, you immediately
get the alert on your phone and we're immediately sending
security teams into help, and it happens like that. I'm
a seven day of the week guy. I'll be the
first to admit that. I it's my Jews right. One
of the things I figured out in my prep program was, Okay,

(52:38):
what I need to be successful is a job that's dynamic,
it's always changing. I need to be switched on like that.

Speaker 2 (52:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:46):
I love it. I do. And I think there's a
lot of soft guys that that's it. And conversely, I
think there's some guys that hit retirement and they need that,
but they don't have that in their job, like they're
missing it in some way and that's where it can
turn into something else.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
So for Global retirement's changed, colonel, because now you can
run for president at seventy eight years old. It's like
you may have retired at sixty sounds awful, eighteen years
to rerun again, you know, it's like, I just say it,
man like. And also, these twenties and thirty year olds
that you're praising, they're also the twenty and thirty year
olds who are fending in Ukraine right now, Oh right,

(53:22):
because amazing, that's who's in these trenches. And you're sitting
there dotted all over that map. You have to know
it's a twenty year old who comes up with certain Wow,
that's a good idea.

Speaker 3 (53:31):
Let me tell you, in my experience I have seen
in the dawn of social media, I learned more from
listening as a forty year old commander or your chief
of staff or whatever. I learned more from turning around
and asking a twenty seven year old staff sergeant how
he would solve a problem than I did trying to,
you know, get guys that were my age to come
up with it, because he would say, hey, listen, why

(53:53):
don't we just send him a signal? Note? What? Okay,
he's in raka, All right, Well, let's figure out, like
it's just things like that. You're like, that's a great idea. Actually,
and you look at Ukraine now, the dirt laboratory of Ukraine.
You see World War One trench warfare meets science fiction
Philip kasik A, you know, a borderline AI drone warfare,

(54:14):
all of these things happening in real time. And write
to your point, right, it's all being driven by those
young creative minds that grew up in this creative incubator
of social media. The same things that people beat up
these generations on are.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
All of duty. You know, the value of what.

Speaker 3 (54:32):
They're able to do and problem solved is phenomenal. That's why,
as long as we don't screw up the future with
a nuclear war or any of these other things, I
am so optimistic about where we're going because of the talent.
And look, they have a lot of roadblocks in their way.
You know, the economy was not good to the millennials.
They all the things are housing all these other challenges. Right,

(54:54):
despite all of those horrible things that have been thrown
at them that they've been able to overcome or are
still fighting through now, I am still wildly optimistic on
what the future looks like and what we're going to
be able to do. You know, as long as you know,
government doesn't overstep and creative minds are allowed to run well.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
As long as it doesn't show up here on our shores,
it'll be too late if if the war comes here,
you know, if we don't try to feed this.

Speaker 3 (55:20):
I'm I'm in Tampa, Florida. God rest the soul of
any poor foreign country that tries to land in bro
I don't come, don't come. There's a bunch of people
in Florida that are praying for that day.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
Property bring it, Let's do it, right said, do you
know it?

Speaker 3 (55:39):
You know it? It's well, look, it's part of that
American spirit, right that separates us. It's true we're saying
right now, Well, it's this idea of not necessarily manifest destiny,
like we're definitely designed to go do this, but it's this, Hey,
I'm not constrained by a cast system. I'm not constrained
by you know, family dynamic. Necessarily, I can't expand and grow.

(56:03):
And that evolution is going to be messy. It's going
to piss people off. It's going to be fits and
starts and not everyone's going to get along. Democracy is
really messy. We see it the debates and how divided
people are. All that said, that's not necessarily unhealthy. Here's
what unhealthy looks like. You go to country X in
the middle least, and you say something against the king

(56:27):
or the crown prince or whatever. You get yourself thrown
in jail or worse killed because you had an alternate opinion. Look,
that's not what you want. It's okay to do it.
It should not manifest itself in violence. That's never that's
this is not French revolution time.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
You know.

Speaker 3 (56:43):
I've been in revolutions, in civil wars. I've seen them
happen firsthand. I've had to be wild in them. America
is not at that point. People are out of their
minds saying that, oh, we're gonna have a revolution. Okay, really,
so walk out on your street and tell me who's
the Democrat and the Republican? Who tell me? Yeah? Exactly.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
I say the type of stuff to folks, I'm like.

Speaker 3 (57:01):
Peter, don't lose their mind on it. They get confused
in it, like and they have to just stop, take
a step back and go, Okay, let me process what
I'm feeling right now, work through what's real and what's nonsense. Right,
learn this again, shout out doctor Wilbanks, and then be
able to come up with something that resonates with me
in my value systems. Hey, look, I retired. When I

(57:22):
retired from military. I had a couple more years I
could have served. I retired because I realized that my
values had just fallen out of line with where the
rest of the military was going with Afghanistan administration. That
was okay, Like, there was nothing personal about that. When
I really sat down and deconstructed it. It was just, Hey,
if that's the case and I'm out of congruence, I'm
the guy who has to leave, Okay, no problem. And

(57:44):
I championed the military to this day. I'm their number
one fan and advocate and I believe in them. But
at a personal level, it's okay to step away if
it's not If it's just not in line with you anymore.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
That's that. Just did it for that exact reason. Matter, Hey,
you're gonna pull us out of Syria, You're gonna leave
me with my pasture and all the right you know,
ypg just what in the breeze? In the breeze, But
He's like.

Speaker 3 (58:05):
You know what, we don't align. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:09):
Yeah, So he did that and a lot of people
I give him credit for stepping up and saying, you
know this, I'm just not this guy.

Speaker 3 (58:15):
There was a powerful moment for me when I was testifying,
and I'll remember it to my dying day because I
didn't know they were going to be there, but sitting
right behind me were gold Star family members from Abbey Gate.
So I'm testifying on how everything fell, and I remember
and thank god I had gone through this processing process
so I was able to handle sort of negative things visualization. Yeah.
Somebody asked me, hey, certain people had said they have

(58:37):
no regrets about how Afghanistan ended, And I got to
tell you it was everything I could do to be
like process, process, process, all right, I need to be
very responsible about how I answer this. But how do
you not have regrets? Right? Hey? Because there's two main billpairers,
there's really three. There's the gold Star families who have
to live with this loss for the rest of their life,
which is correct. I can't wrap my mind around it.

(58:57):
Do anything for him. There's the wounded in action that
have a lifetime of care that we owe them, and
it has to be high quality care, and I saw
high quality care in the VIA. I know they get
maligned in certain circles, and sometimes absolutely they should, but
my experience has been very positive. But we owe them that.
And then there's, frankly, in my opinion, the women of Afghanistan,

(59:19):
which haunts me to this day. They can't be forgotten.
You can't tell me you know that you care about
women's rights and things when you unless they happen to
be in the borders of this country where they can't
walk outside without anything completely covering them. Seriously, if they're
not allowed to talk outside, they can't go to school
after fifth grade. Saddest thing in the world that you'll
see second set. It's the word.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
And the thing is is like they'll take the teacher
that might be female teaching them and then shoot her
in front of the students. Of course they because I
saw that. I saw swooters of that, and it was
just the worst thing that these young women. You know,
my favorite don't tread on Me flag has the fallopian
tubes on it.

Speaker 3 (59:54):
Yeah right, no, one hundred percent. Okay have you seen that?

Speaker 2 (59:57):
Looks like the rattlesnake all treadov.

Speaker 3 (01:00:00):
And The worst part is I understand the financial thing.
And look, there is a logic if you were to
look at this from a cold logic perspective that absolutely resonates.
When we were in Afghanistan. It was great for everybody
in the region except for US because we had to fight.
And when I say we, I mean the coalition NATO
was awesome with the representation. It was us, it was
all of our allies. All the Jihadis came to fight us.

(01:00:23):
It was their super Bowl. That's where they were coming. Now,
before we showed up, they were blowing up theaters in Moscow,
they were fighting in Chechs here, they were doing all
these things. They were just fantastasizing outside the borders. We
show up for twenty years, we pull in. All of
the fighting is happening with us. So, I you know,
the one thing when I saw the Ayatola looking very

(01:00:44):
smug after we left and we had the disaster at
h Kay, We're leaving and I heard China and Russia
all sitting back and chuckling. I'm like, I don't know
what you're laughing at, man, because you just ate a
huge problem that's come in your way. And since we've
left that terrorist incubator of Afghanistan, which my kids are
now going to have to go fight at some point.

(01:01:05):
That is now, guess what, attacking theaters in Moscow, blowing
up synagogues. They have come out multiple times and said
they look forward to marching down the streets of Tehran
with the ICEIS flag.

Speaker 2 (01:01:15):
Like, guys like you were missing odds of China and
Russia trying to come back together to attack Afghanistan. And
now that Afghanistan's fully loaded.

Speaker 3 (01:01:23):
Hey, and they share borders with them, and guess what,
it's a lot easier to drive across the border and
do nonsense and nefarious activities in China and Russia the
way try you treated the youngers. Don't think that was
lost on anyone in Afghanistan, like you are going to
pay for this now, So I understand that logic. But
this is about moral responsibility, and this is me personally right.

(01:01:46):
I'm not speaking for the government, I'm not speaking for
anybody else, just me. I just couldn't get past the
fact that we abandoned We created this, this bubble of
hope in a place that was the most hopeless place
on the planet. He bless than Haiti. I mean, it
was hopeless. We gave him hope for twenty years and
then one day, flip the lights off and he's gone.

Speaker 2 (01:02:07):
And why did he why did he sign that agreement?
Why did he make that happen? And I'm blaming Trump
on this, all of them. He even said though he
even said I want to leave a mess.

Speaker 3 (01:02:17):
Well, look, all I can say is I can't.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
He did say that, he said I want to leave
a disaster for the incoming guy. And he and why
did he want to have the Taliban at the White
House and at Camp David?

Speaker 3 (01:02:28):
Like sure, what was that about?

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
You know? And so again he sold eighty five billion
dollars in equipment to them and then pulled out on
a summer twenty second before Christmas when a new president
who he was still saying he was the president fighting
over this, like you know, the ballots and everything. Who's
the real president? And Biden obviously has come in and
taken over. So it's like, how does he get to

(01:02:51):
just like not get the fault for that? Plus I
learned that Bogram was a Russian base anyways.

Speaker 3 (01:02:57):
So all of those here's what I tell you. It's yeah, please,
all the every administration that touched it. The lack of strategy,
the lack of lack of coherent campaign.

Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
Specifically pulled us out set specifically sind it.

Speaker 3 (01:03:09):
Yeah. Yeah, so so just to answer the question on him,
So the DOVA agreements absolutely put into place. Now there
were seven main tenants with him, of which the Taliban
was not holding up there into the bargain. So we
got to December and he was like the President Trump
said hey, let's get to zero. And again I'm not
defending prison Trump. I'm just telling you what happened. Yeah, No,
I just want to know. The military went in there
and said, Joe Milly, who had worked with before, is

(01:03:31):
a one star, stand up guy put in an ampossible situation. Yeah. Absolutely,
he went in there and said, hey, if this happens,
the entire thing collapses, and this is what's going to happen,
You've got to leave a certain you know what I
call the special Operations picket line looks a lot like
two thousand and one. We've got Green Brays and seals
out there assisting combat advisor work with those units that

(01:03:52):
we built just by and the idea there is not
that you're going to crush the Taliban, which keeps regenerating
in Pakistan, but it's to really just buy space and
time to get government services and get government support structures
and institutions, try to get them codified, which by the way,
this is like dodgeball. If you can do it in Afghanistan,
can do it anywhere. But the thing is it was

(01:04:13):
not coming together because of the corruption things. So I'm
not saying it would have changed over time, but we
didn't get a chance to try it because we didn't.
What happened was the President Trump said, okay, look, we're
not going to pull down a zero. Then I'm going
to leave it for the next administration to fill out
or to figure it out. And there was a lot
of pollyannish thinking that happened in the next six months,

(01:04:34):
which was things like, hey, well we're going to be
able to just fall back and hold Hki Airfield in
the US embassy called the island. Afghanistan can do the
rest of it, and we're going to stop right out
of there. Everyone on on our side of the fence
was like, no, that's not going to work. General McKenzie
went in there and told them, hey, look you need
to have this, and they didn't do They didn't take
that piece of advice. So to your point before, there's

(01:04:57):
multiple people that own this. I agree, so the majority stakeholder,
and we can agree to disagree on it, but it's
not going to change anything, you know what I mean?
Like at this point, well.

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
He did literally like did he have to even do that?
Couldn't he have just let the next administration? Because what
I find to be kind of the problem here, and
you can answer this or not, is sure the transfer
of the situation. Okay, So like access to the I've
interviewed people who transitioned to Obama from Bush and he said,
rad I created thirty eight things that were so important

(01:05:28):
that the president had a look at. And when I transitioned,
it was not anything about Republican or Democrat. It was
here's what's going on with the US, and this is
what you need to focus on. This binder. Why did
that binder never get to Biden to be able to
start to work on it? Because it was I lived
through it, I watched it, we saw it on TV.

Speaker 3 (01:05:45):
So if you've ever spent time in d C, and
one of the things I always say is I love
DC as a city, but everybody you went into there
is the most important person. Just ask him. They'll tell you.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
Sure.

Speaker 3 (01:05:54):
It is a wash with hubris arrogance. When you get
elected in the office. The sense of got it was
there was sort of this moral mandate. Have you elected
me in here on the things that I said I
was going to do, So I'm going to go do
them now without maybe just taking a beat and listening
and just going, hey, maybe the timing of this is all. Hey,
maybe we just pushed this six months to the right. Now,

(01:06:14):
realize we're talking about maybees right. So it doesn't really
matter because because.

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
It's done right.

Speaker 3 (01:06:19):
Yes, I wish it wouldn't have gone that way. And
really the real value of this conversation now is not
necessarily even the blame. It would be nice if somebody
from any of the administrations would take a little bit
of accountability. Besides, you know, active duty service members who
who've done a pretty good job of it. Somebody on
the political side, that'd be nice. I don't care which
just somebody do it somebody. But the real thing is

(01:06:41):
are we going to be able to distill any lessons learned?
You know, post Vietnam there was a lot of work
that was done to capture Hey, how did this fail?
General McMaster had written this in great book on exactly
dereliction of duty and exactly why that happened and how
we got there. If we can get past our political blinders,
if we can get past the vitual, the hubris of

(01:07:04):
our own position and truly self actualized and look at
this factually, which is my point, because I don't blame
at this point, is somewhat it's just not helpful. It's hey,
what can we take away so we don't do this again?
Is there any sort of guardrail we can put in
a place. What's the real value of this? Now? You know,
politics is politics? I mean the debate. You know, you'd

(01:07:26):
hope that they would just lay out what they were
planning on doing going forward, and all they did was
fight with each other. And presidents don't even do debates
for a job. So I've always been fascinated why we
do debates in the first place. But whatever, But show me, like,
show me what the path forward is, and let us
make Americans are extremely intelligent. Let us make the choice
that fits our value system. Right. Hey, when I was

(01:07:47):
out of congruence, I chose, because of my values to
step away some of my peers did. Some of my
peers kept going, and God bless them for doing it right,
because they are all on this step, right, thank God. Right,
it's we're all. This is to choose your own adventure
and you're on your own.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
Your volunteer army, Okay, it's volunteer.

Speaker 3 (01:08:02):
You can volunteer in, you can volunteer.

Speaker 2 (01:08:04):
Volunteer out. Okay, that's the thing. Right, We're not conscripted just.

Speaker 3 (01:08:07):
Yet, right, and it's okay. Right. So when I look
at something like Afghanistan, my takeaway is this, it's get
the truth out if you're asked, like I was asked
to come testify, so I did. I was able to
do it because in my transition, I was able to
get correct with you know, this great prep program and

(01:08:28):
wonderful doctors and then doctor will doctor Will Banks out
of Atlanta, Sharon Harrer out of Tampa, Doc Merritt.

Speaker 2 (01:08:36):
At Will Banks.

Speaker 3 (01:08:37):
Yeah, if you do that, then when you go to
Global Guardian man, you will not get out of the park.
For every single one of your customers, family, corporate, You're
on it. You're ready to go because if you can
handle that and you can go testify and you can
just be honest with the truth. Well, you're going to
be honest with the truth too with your clients. Say hey,
this is what I think you need to do, and

(01:08:58):
this is how I can help you do it. And
then that becomes such a valuable commodity for any corporation
or any family that's traveling because the world's only getting
more dynamic. You look at all the elections this year
and how many countries are flipping from democratic over to
something other. It's scary. You look at the rise of bricks.
It's equal to nation.

Speaker 2 (01:09:18):
Germany, right, Germany just went to back to like East Germany.

Speaker 3 (01:09:22):
But it's it's wild, right, So, and somewhere in there
the engine that runs America and the world our corporations are.
It's the economy. We have to protect that. So I
see that as an extension of what I did before
of making sure that my clients can have business continuity
around the world, that my clients can take care of

(01:09:42):
their families whenever they're traveling. And I love it, rad
I absolutely love it. I find tons of meaning and
value in it. I see myself as a you know,
I'm one of those guys that took bumps and made
a ton of mistakes along the way, but was very
lucky to find this that got me reset, enjoyed a wonderful, fun, adventurous,

(01:10:05):
amazing ups and downs career. Was able to get reset
and then find this amazing company that nothing against any
of our competitors, because they're awesome, awesome folks too.

Speaker 2 (01:10:15):
They all have the mind of what you want to
do too.

Speaker 3 (01:10:17):
But they just use a different model and our model
is just so wildly different when everybody else has. Because
they weren't green Berets, they were selling software before they
decided to sell security. They didn't understand that when you
live with Iraqi soldiers, how incredibly awesome they are at
their job and what they can do for your corporate clients,
you know, two decades later and it's great, and now

(01:10:41):
our clients get you enjoy that and they get to
drive the Lamborghini all the time and it's fantastic. That's awesome.
I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:49):
And look, I could probably keep talking to you all
day long, and as a friend, as as someone who's
in the know like this, and I just want to
extend my gratitude to you as the son of the
greenber as you know, someone who didn't know what it
took until he had to go in himself to realize
that that green beras is.

Speaker 3 (01:11:06):
Not on every head.

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):
Try living around an air Force base and going up
to it with your dad and like, how come he's
got a trucker hat on?

Speaker 3 (01:11:13):
Dad?

Speaker 2 (01:11:13):
He's like, just keep coming with me. He literally just
tore me in to make just keep going. Just don't
worry about it, don't worry about it. I was like, oh,
Dad's Army air Force base. But you know, I love
all of you out there that have seen it and
raised your hand in a ninety degree fashion to free
the oppressed, for freedom of choice and to have freedom
to be yourself. And if you want to get a tattoo,
that's your choice to get a tattoo, but don't put

(01:11:35):
your tattoo on me. Let me choose it.

Speaker 3 (01:11:38):
We're one hundred percent of line read. I got to
tell you it's one hundred percent. And look, thank you
for the opportunity to come in and tell my story today,
my great career transition in how you know the space
that Global guardians working in. And look, anytime you want
to deep dive something, it could be again, stand, it
can be Libya, it can be any one of the
things that I've touched out there, feel free to call

(01:11:59):
just you know. I feel Theistine Chapel divine spark in
talking to you, and I agree we could talk forever.

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
So I just want it to be like that, and
I want to show my listener out there who might
have trouble talking to other people. You and I just
met today. We just had this organic conversation about some
kind of touchy subjects which we could get touchier about,
but we kept it real. And I want you to
know that you can keep it real too. When you
talk to other people. You don't have to get upset,

(01:12:25):
just hear them out.

Speaker 3 (01:12:26):
If I can do it, anyone can do it. Seriously,
I'm staying all day on this podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
I tell you I got all sorts of different colorful people,
and so I just want my listener to know you
can live in this world that we live in today
and you can spread kindness because it's contagious.

Speaker 3 (01:12:41):
Amen.

Speaker 2 (01:12:42):
Hey, all right now on behalf of Seth and myself.
Excuse me former retired colonel.

Speaker 3 (01:12:49):
No, no, no, Seth.

Speaker 2 (01:12:49):
I always go Seth Now, Okay, I do Seth. I
just want to say thanks for being on Soft rep
and letting my listener listen and view us. And to
Ben who hooked all this up on the back end,
then I'll always reach out to you if I can
get the kernel back on to nytime.

Speaker 3 (01:13:04):
Yeah, have you talk some more with us?

Speaker 2 (01:13:05):
Okay, So with that said, on behalf of Brandon Webb,
who is my main man who runs this website, Navy
Seal Sniper instructor, explorance author, love love them, love them.
And to Anton who's going to edit this for us,
and to you know, uh, everybody on the back end,
Thank you so much Chris and Martin everybody out there
that's helping. I also want to shout out my new

(01:13:26):
website that I'm running with soft Rep, which is called
the Loadoutroom dot com. You can go check out all
the gear updates, all the reviews of me snowboarding and
people shooting the SIGs and all these different types of
cool things that are a load out in a lane
of like it could be bowling. What do you wear
when you go bowling? So the load out So go
check out load out Room. And again thanks to Seth
for being here. And I'm going to say this is

(01:13:47):
rad saying the piece

Speaker 1 (01:13:55):
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