Life After the Trident: Kaj Larsen Talks War, Media, and Meaning

Kaj Larsen is a former U.S. Navy SEAL turned journalist, filmmaker, and podcast host. After serving with Naval Special Warfare, he transitioned into frontline reporting, covering conflict zones and global security issues for outlets including VICE News, HBO, and National Geographic. Known for his grounded, no-nonsense storytelling, Larsen brings an operator’s perspective to modern warfare, geopolitics, and leadership. He is the host of the Bravo Two Zero podcast, where he explores war, culture, and the human cost of conflict through candid conversations with veterans, journalists, and subject-matter experts.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Lute force. If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough.
You're listening to soft web Radio Special Operations, Military Nails
and straight talk with the guys in the community.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
What's going on? Welcome back to another awesome episode of
soft Rep Radio. I am your host, Rad. That's right,
like surfer dude from California, San Diego Rad. You heard it.
It's Rad and I am hosting this show yet again.
So thank you to the new listener and viewer who
are tuning in, and to you the veteran watcher and
you know, been around for years so much, Thanks so

(01:03):
much for supporting us at our merch store and in
our book club. And let me just touch base on that.
So we have the soft rep dot com forward slash
merch store, So go check that out. Just click the
link if you can. It'll be put up right about
here in the in the video or down below in
the comment section where all of the links and everything
for my next guest will be posted as well. We

(01:24):
also have the book club, which is the gym. Right
Reading a book is a gym. I'm just gonna keep
saying it. You go read a book, you get some knowledge,
it grows your mind. And then you grow. So keep
reading books by going to soft rep dot com Forward
slash Book hyphen Club and that has like branded Webb
and the guys behind the scenes have picked these books
out for you to read in the Special Operations community.

(01:46):
And it might be like you know, the natural about
Roy Hobbs, it may not just be so storming a ship.
Just go check out a book and read a book,
and then and then and enlighten yourself. Now, my guest
does need an introduction, but doesn't need an introduction at
the same time. Coj Larsen, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Rad I am stoked to be here. No cooks allowed.
Valleys go home. You're you're making v feel right at home.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Oh yeah, bro, you are probably a water child you okay.
First of all, college is a former Navy seal all right?
Serve like five seven years in the seals? Is that right?

Speaker 3 (02:24):
Thirteen years? Actually have total service between my active duty
and my reserve time.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Oh yeah right? And what was your retirement grade when
you got out? Tenant commander, lieutenant commander? Okay? Is that
like an five six four oh four?

Speaker 3 (02:38):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Okay, Sorry Air Force story.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
About making five that's not worth it.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
No, it probably is worth it. My listeners like I
made O four? Why didn't he make O five? What's
the question here? But again, coj, you're also a journalist, right,
and you've taken the military culture that has, you know,
shaped you through that course of your career, and you've
brought it to journalism and also documentaries and all sorts

(03:05):
of other things. And folks, please, he has such a bio.
I want to read a little bit about it real quick. Here.
That was sent over to me by Okay, so Kage
Larson is a former Navy Seal Lieutenant Commander, award winning
journalist and filmmaker. He's been is it nominated for an
Oscar or did you get an Oscar?

Speaker 3 (03:20):
Nope? Just nominated forever.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
It's okay, Yeah, that's okay. You gotta wear the bow tie,
I bet you. Okay, that's cool. You did win an Emmy, though,
didn't you for like Merrick? Is it for lock Up?

Speaker 3 (03:30):
No, I've won a couple. When I was at Vice HBO,
we want to Advice of Primetime Emmys, And that was
a really sort of innovative time in the media to
be at place.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah, you were because you were at the right time
at the right place, doing the right things, and it
all Rubik's cubed itself for you to be I mean
this was like twenty eleven, twenty ten timeframes, so really
today we're twenty twenty five. Like I hate to say,
it's like fifteen years ago, but or ten years ago,
but still, so let me keep reading this his career
operating in high stakes environments from the battle to the boardroom.

(04:01):
After years of leading special operations across the globe and
reporting on global crisises as a CNN correspondent, he set
his sights on a new mission, financial empowerment for the
military community. We love that. I was talking to my
wife about this and she's like, oh, this is a
great guest. And as the co founder of a Guild
of the Guild Financial, a fintech investing platform designed for
service members, Kash helped thousands of military members take control

(04:23):
of their financial futures. Now, as a part of the
Sebert Financial, he continues that mission, ensuring that those who
serve have the tools to build lasting wealth. Kash's remarkable
journey has captivated many, drawing. He has over one hundred
and fifteen thousand followers on Instagram, where he offers a
glimpse into his extraordinary experiences. His story one of service, resilience,
and reinvention, making him an unforgettable individual in our lives.

(04:48):
And we're going to crack this egg and talk to him.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
I mean, you can try, but it's it's elabyrinth racked
and an enigma, you know.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yes, yeah, I have a key to the enigma though
the cracking gave it to me from the bottom of
the seafloor one day. Yes, he just came up here.
Rad you can crack it. Well, caj Let's talk about
military personnel needing positive investment advice and something that you
seem to be passionate about. Let's just dive into the

(05:16):
financial aspect of what your company is here trying to help.
And while your Instagram has everybody coming to you for advice.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
Yeah, well, you know it's funny. This is really actually
the third act of my career. I like to say,
like my first decade of work was in the military
and in service. Obviously my second decade of work I
built a body of work in media, So I spent
ten years in media and now in this sort of
third phase of my life, there's been another inflection point
and I'm really focused on money and financial health and

(05:45):
literacy for the military community. It came about in a
haphazard way. You know, I wasn't in the early part
of my career. I really was not focused on financial
health and wealth. I was focused on gunslinging, on being
the best seal I could be. And then when I
transitioned out, I fell into journalism because I needed a
way to pay for graduate school, and I found I

(06:05):
was pretty good at it because I'd spent all this
time down range and I just translated those skills, traded
my gun for a camera and started doing that and
achieved some success in that. And then because of my
success in media, I was really focused a lot on
veterans philanthropy and helping fellow veterans like myself successfully transition.
And somewhere along the way, I realized that it's all

(06:27):
good for veterans to have purpose and it's important, but
perse also matters. You could do all the meditation, all
the saunas, all the cold plunges, all of the really
good pilanthropic stuff that I believe in so much, but
if you come home to a mountain of thirty thousand
dollars a credit card debt, the stress on your life
and on your health that's going to impact you. So,

(06:48):
along with a Navy intel officer who was my co founder,
we built this company to serve what I consider an
underserved population that's really been kind of left behind by
the private wealth community hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
And sometimes people come home and they see this over
mounting debt and it's really not so overwhelming such a debt.
It's just for them at that moment in their life,
there's bigger debt that can make you not want to
come out of your cold plunge. You're like, I'm just
gonna stay in here forever. I'm so over my head,
you know what I mean. And so sometimes people get
so distressed over some what I think may not be

(07:21):
such a burden of finance because you can still there's
always a path to bankruptcy. Okay, there's bankruptcy. You can
bankruptcy if you have to. So, no, there's nothing worse
than you know, the ultimate end. It's like, how am
I going to feed my family? And I'm no good
of a person. This money's over. You know, I spent
too much money on the credit cards. You know, the
annual percentage rate is just jacking me every single month,

(07:41):
you know, et cetera. I mean, those are real things,
but military personnel don't really make rock star money. Right.
You can go look up the grade of a lieutenant
commander who served twelve years in the Seals and see
exactly what you should be making unless you have like
airborne or hazarduced duty pay or deployment pay, you know.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
Yeah, and of course I had all those things, right, Sure,
sure pay dive pay, but you know, you know what twenty.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
Bucks now, but nobody knows the difference. It's like it's
like forty bucks a month.

Speaker 3 (08:10):
One hundred and fifty bucks a month to jump out
of a perfectly good airplane, you know, yeah, twelve parachute.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Yeah, you know, it's it's like, here's an extra forty
bucks on your paycheck. Kid, you're airborne qualified. You're like,
all right, fine, that's like my dad. One time I
heard him talking to my mom. They were laying in bed,
talk of finances, and she's like, Jack, so you're saying
that you make about two fourteen an hour twenty four
to seven. Right, So if we did my dad's paycheck
back in the nineties, break it down as a sergeant

(08:37):
for East seven Green Beret. He's making about two dollars
and fourteen cents an hour twenty four to seven active duty.

Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, yeah, and look, all of that is true, Yet
we can still hold two complex thoughts in our head
at the same time. At the same time, while on
a salary basis, military personnel tend to make less than
their socioeconomic peers. They have some incumbent advantages that the
civilian sector doesn't have. So where I've been focused in

(09:03):
terms of the active duty people is on maximizing those
competitive advantages, things like bah right or subsidized healthcare, which
is a real drain on private sector employees, but in
the military, like, let's be honest, we have socialized medicine.
It's pretty damn good and it works for us. And
that's an incumbent economic advantage. So there's some structural things
you can do to maximize your time while you're in service.

(09:25):
And then lately, my real postsy of effort has been
on what people do when they get out of service,
how to maximize their time in the military to lead
brog and springboard to a higher trajectory. And because of that,
I've been focused largely because I am one on veteran entrepreneurs,
people who have successfully gone from military to money. And
there's this incredible legacy in this country going back, you know,

(09:49):
even before my dad and your dad's era, of veterans
coming back from war and building the greatest economic engine
in the world's ever seen. Right, Fred Smith built FedEx.
You have the founder of Enterprise rent a car was
working at on the USS Enterprise and then founded Enterprise
and named it as such after the USS Enterprise.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
Broad That just dawned on me today. I was this
day old when I learned that Enterprise rental cars. Yeah,
that's cool.

Speaker 3 (10:17):
So you got veterans building these massive, big businesses, contributing
to the economy and really doing well. And so I've
been real focused on highlighting those and on giving back
to programs like programs that I went through that helped
create these entrepreneurs. And I'm not saying every veteran has
to be an entrepreneur, like I wouldn't wish that on anybody,
just like I wouldn't wish most people have to go

(10:38):
through buds. That is a unique and difficult road to hoe,
but there are in certain cases, it's an amazing opportunity
and there's lots of good things that veterans can do
when they transition out to not fall into these kind
of like dregs of society, lower socioeconomic traps that are
out there for you.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
Know, I'm fortunate to be in this position. I get
to meet a lot of folks like yourself and a
friend of mine. He uses that entrepreneur constantly with his company,
Warrior Rising, where they go and veterans submit to him,
and then he goes to this process of like, Okay,
we're going to bring you six finalists to this big, huge,
elaborate event, you know, with all these tuxedos, and everybody's

(11:19):
now going to win maybe one hundred thousand dollars towards
their entrepreneur job. And this one lady she stuck out.
She was a pharmac pharmaceutical tech in the army who
said this is annoying, and she created an app to
try to track all of the different prescriptions going out
back and forth. And then she wants to now put

(11:39):
that in the civilian life. And I was like, she
has created something that comes from like what you're saying,
from the military to the civilian light, you know, And
she went like a twenty five thousand dollars grant towards
her her app which can help whatever it is. If
it feeds her to keep continuing write and code, so
be it. But when veterans can have these beautiful See,

(12:01):
we're all the same. Everybody just goes and serves in
the military or serves their job, but everybody inside has
a beautiful thoughts that can just become maybe a successful
business if they just apply themselves, you know, in the
right lane.

Speaker 3 (12:15):
And your examples like the quintessential example. Now that I'm
on the other side of the equation having exit ins
sold my business, I do a lot of investing, in
a lot of mentoring for new businesses and new startups,
a lot in the in the better in space and
in the military space. And one of the things that
I always say is, like you start with a pain point, right,

(12:35):
you find something that's annoying, that's a problem that maybe
technology can help solve or a new system can help solve.
But then the thing that I really do is I
encourage all my mentees and all the startups that I
advise to really think of this process as like the
scientific method, Like go back to what we learned in
elementary school about the scientific method. You identify a problem, right,

(12:59):
it's annoying to track all these prescriptions. You develop hypotheses
that if I create a good piece of technology that
coates all these prescriptions, it will make life easier, right,
And I'll be able to monetize that if I get
enough users on board. But then here's the key that
most entrepreneurs miss, because everybody's got a great idea until
you release it out into the wild, right, Right, Then

(13:22):
You've got to go out and rigorously test your data,
and you have to test for the You got to
ask the right questions because people often ask questions that
validate their own hypothesies. So you got to ask the
hard questions. And ultimately, the market's going to decide. And
at those early stages testing is really key because you haven't, like,
you know, codified everything and written it in stone. Right,

(13:44):
you can still pivot, you can still iterate, you can
still flex based on the data coming back in. And
then ultimately that's how you build your your your MVP.
You're going a viable product, and that's how you build
your company MVP.

Speaker 2 (13:56):
There, viable product, MVP. I'm right, I'm taking no and
my listener take notes. Hey, yeah, okay, I said it
at the beginning, like you know knowledge, right, So I'm
just sitting here listening to what you're saying. Now, let's
say you're getting out of you're just transitioning out of
the military, and you're kind of idle right now, right,

(14:17):
there's not a job. You're like, do I go work
in a restaurant and just start to pick up some ins meat.
I just got out of the military, you know, Do
I put my GI bill into action and start going
to school? And so then I feel that that's kind
of when the entrepreneur spirit starts to really rear its
head up is when you have to hustle for yourself, right.
So I find that being out of a job unemployment

(14:38):
equals entrepreneur. You're like, oh, I am not finding something
that fits me. I've learned how to throw grenades and
tie nots, So who needs this job? Right? It's like, okay, well,
maybe you can create your own path that you can
use some of those abilities as an entrepreneur your own business.
So you start up a training company, or you go

(14:59):
and meet with you know, business to businesses to work
on you know, their management systems and team trainings, and
there's all these different things that I've talked to different
veterans who have gone on to do you know, or
you become the Ayahuasca Captain bro and you could take
a whole crew of guys to Chili every two weeks
because that's what you are passionate about to help with PTSD.
These entrepreneurs are out there. So what do you have

(15:20):
as advice for someone who's just listening to this saying
rad tell us just how to be successful? Cash? Where
do we put our money? Why should we put it here?

Speaker 3 (15:31):
Yeah? Yeah, well, I mean the thing that's interesting about
entrepreneurialism is that there is no direct path right right
really is incredibly hyper individualistick and again you know, the
caveat is it's not for everybody because it is hard.
Grinding it out in company is hard. You sort of
indicated you intimated what I think is actually like one

(15:52):
of the most important criteria for the early stage starting
of building any entity, which is you got to be hungry,
you got we got to have desire, and I think
you can get a long way, especially in the beginning
on on hustle and drive, which interestingly enough, are are
two of the characteristics that we select for in special operations.

(16:14):
You know, we're constantly looking for people who have that
you know, never quit, drive to execution kind of attitude
and uh, and that's what Buds selects for. And it's
also what the wilds of entrepreneurialism select for. And so
I guess. But to answer your question more directly, I

(16:36):
think what happens when you transition out of the military
is that you know, when I transition out, they hand
me this book in TAPS class, like from maybe blue
to corporate gray. The only idea that you can do
when you get out of uniform was go take some
corporate job somewhere. And you know, for a guy like
me who is like jumping out of airplanes and scuba

(16:56):
divan and doing swimmer walkout out of a submarine, the
idea that I was know like sit in a cubicle
and crunch numbers like it's just you know, I'm a
servic to that. It's not how I live my life,
and it doesn't work for me, and I think it
doesn't work for a lot of military people who are
attracted to the military in the first place. So the
first thing you know is you're going to go through
this crazy period of ideation. The best thing I got

(17:19):
out of TAPS class is like the first day they
tell you, like, listen, you're going to go home and
tell your wife to like just be patient with you
over the next month because you're gonna have eighteen thousand
crazy ideas. I'm going to go be a military technical
advisor on sets, you know, I'm start an ammunition company. Like,
You're gonna have all of these wild ideas. But that

(17:40):
is part of the process of ideation, right, You've got
to forage around in my like in a meeting, in
a corporate meeting or whatever. I often will start off
a meeting with a defined period of what I call
radical brainstorm What are the wildest ideas you can throw
out there? Put them on the whiteboard, and just think.
The key though to that kind of radical brainstorming is

(18:01):
that it has a truncated period of time. You don't
want to be spinning off in fantasy land in like
the Lulu land forever, right. You want to get out
some really good ideas and not censor yourself, right, not
self censor because you might stumble upon some gold there.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
Right.

Speaker 3 (18:17):
Think of it like primordial soup. All these atoms are
flying around together and sometimes they smash into each other
and create genius. So that's important, But you have to
end that period of time, and you can only do
it for so long before you start to sort of
walk rounds onto target, onto an executable idea. That executable
idea could be to take a job, It could be
to start a company, it could be to do consulting,

(18:38):
could it could be anything. The other thing that I'll
say that that is an evolution in entrepreneur in the
thinking of entrepreneurialism, is that we have this idea in
our mind of like the loan entrepreneur coding in his parents' basement,
like creating these software companies. Mark Zuckerberg leaving Facebook and
going all in, and that is a model, But I

(19:01):
would say it's not the model and the way that
most companies are built in these days, most entrepreneurs. The
best example of this is Warby Parker if you're familiar
the eyeglass company. The guys who started Warby Parker were
at Wharton Business School. They came up with this plan
to start it to revolutionize and disrupt the eyeglass industry
with you know, cheaper ready made frames, but high concept

(19:24):
and high design. They take it to their well known
business school professor, this guy Adam Grant, who writes all
these great books on business and entrepreneurialism. They present the plan,
who loves everything about the plan, but he declines to
invest in his students because all of them were taking
jobs elsewhere McKinsey, you know, Goldman Sachs, Like they're all

(19:47):
going from Warton to take like, you know, relatively good
paying finance jobs, and then they were going to build
their company on the side. And what he said, Adam
Grant at the beginning, He's like, well, these guys are
obviously not dedicated to their company. I'm going to decline
to invest in. Fast forward to today, Warby Parker is
like a multi billion dollar company, Like it's one of
those stories that he tells at dinner parties that like, oh,

(20:08):
I could have been the first investor, right, Like we
all have those on the investing side. And what Adam
realized is that some of the best companies are built
by people who have nine to fives and then they
build their company five to nine. So especially those two
those two ideas are not in opposition to each other,

(20:29):
and even like you know, one of the current one
of the current companies I'm advising right now, this company
AMO based. The two young founders just graduated from University
of Alabama, right They have their day jobs, one in
commercial real estate, one in technology technology, and they're building
this company on their off hours. And that's okay, correct,
because one, it keeps you from taking money out of

(20:52):
the business in the early stages when it's mission critical,
that all your go towards the business. And it also
keeps you from you know, being like impoverished and making
decisions out of desperation. And you see that in early
stage companies. Some of those early decisions are really mission critical,

(21:13):
like oh, I'm going to take this investment even though
or I'm going to do this partnership even though it's
not quite right, but like i need money for groceries
or rent, so I'm going to take the fast, easy
solution as opposed to the thing that's going to benefit
the company long run. So back to your original question,
I know I've been like kind of all over the map.
Original question. There's lots of ways to attack this. One

(21:34):
way might be to get a job that has purpose
and that you care about and that pays the bills
with an eye towards entrepreneurialism. And people who can do
that tend to be pretty successful entrepreneurs because they have
this other ingredient, you know, this hustle and this drive
that we were talking about before.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
You know, it's funny I hear you talking like about me.
Would you say just say it? You know, went through
a couple of jobs, you know, finally found a good
footing in a corporate America. But in the meantime, I
had started a business with my buddy, and he was
able to travel around and do his job but still
focus on the business. And I was able to leave

(22:13):
at three point thirty in the afternoon and then get
to the shop by four and then was there until
eight nine o'clock at night. And so maybe I'd stop
by between four and five thirty to say hi to
the family and say, hey, I'm off to the shop.
I gotta go take care of this. And my wife
was always like, Okay, Dad's off to work. But today,
now I've got multiple retail locations along the Wassatz Front
here in Utah. I have a very large wargame community.

(22:35):
We just had three hundred players this last Saturday at
a huge op huge that's three hundred people who all
just drove out to the desert to come fight, all
based off of the thought of I believe that wargames
have a niche that needed to be filled in two
thousand and three. Yeah, you see, And here we are
twenty twenty five. So I've been at this for twenty

(22:56):
two years and I was able to pull from the
food for my family from corporate was the that was
my paycheck today. Now I'm self employed. I can actually
say that for like the last ten twelve years, I
have cut my own check to myself.

Speaker 3 (23:12):
But it wouldn't have worked in two thousand and three
if you were trying to support your family and start
this business.

Speaker 2 (23:18):
No, no, no, it wouldn't. And that's what I'm driving
at is you're saying, hey, you know a lot of folks,
like you know, the eyeglass professor. He's just like, are
they working another job? Well, they're not serious enough. And
I was like, geez, I'm not going to say anything.
And then you start talking about nine to five, five
to nine. I'm like, now I'm going to say something.

Speaker 3 (23:35):
Yeah, yeah, And in some ways it can be an
indicator that you're more successful because your time management skills
have to be more on point, your dedication has to
be more on point, you know, And it's not easy,
like you building this business on the side. My first
real small business that I built was a fitness facility

(23:57):
with another seal opened it in twenty thirteen. It opened
on the very first day that I started as the
senior correspondent and producer at Vice HBO at this big
giant TV show. So I would literally go to the
gym and I would teach. We didn't even have instructors
back then. I would teach the six am, the seven am,
the eight am. Then I would go to my job

(24:19):
at Vice and like work on global affairs, and then
at noon at lunchtime, I would run over and teach
the dude class. Yes, go back to my job Advice, right,
And my business partner was doing the same thing in
the opposite but in the evenings, and like that's how
I built my first business.

Speaker 2 (24:35):
And that's what I had to do as well with
my business partner and my family. I mentioned that part
was in the middle, I of like trying to come
home to have dinner around the table, touch base with
the kids, house school and then off to the shop,
you know, and maybe dragging the wife and the kids
with me, the families at the shop, you know. So
it started as a small, little, six hundred square foot
facility and we've just grown into a ten thousand square

(24:57):
foot shoot house with a pro shop and another shop,
and I'm looking for a third. But it's it's ridiculous
pricing in real estate out here in Salt Lake City.
So it's like, how do I do this successfully?

Speaker 3 (25:07):
Awesome to hear. I cannot tell you, like how much
this like just warms my heart, for lack of a
better term, right, Like I just I love to hear
about like veterans succeeding and building businesses and contributing back
to our like you know, this incredible economic engine that
helps keep America strong. It really and you did it

(25:30):
in a space that you know and that you're familiar with,
which I think also mission critical. Right, Start with something you.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
Know, right, It was skateboards in the beginning. I had
a skate shop when I was thirteen, and I started
with skateboards and snowboards and had an arcade and I
built that up till about nineteen and then I got broke.
Into and everything got stolen and I didn't have insurance
and I learned a very valuable lesson with my dad
at that time. He really made me feel like it
was my shop. He really like said, this is your shop, Aaron,
You're running this place. You know, I'm just dad backing you.

(26:01):
But he had a master's in business human resource management
and he was an s F guy, so little did
I know, yeah that he was. You know, he was
watching me sell lemonade and grilled cheese out front.

Speaker 3 (26:13):
Yeah. Hey, actually that brings up another good thing that
I feel like I'd be neglectful if I didn't mention
it and it you know, I'll just tell my own
personal story, like when I got out of the service,
I didn't know what I was going to do either.
I was like fumbling around thinking I would be a
military technical advisor as well, you know, which ironically I
did end up becoming and doing that during my state

(26:33):
in the Hollywood. But you know, it's it's uh, you know,
everybody says they're going to do it, very few actually
do it. But one of the things that was extremely
helpful to me, and that I think the easiest soft
landing when you're transitioning out of the military, is I
went to graduate school, or if you know, if you
didn't have an undergraduate degree, go to go to undergrad

(26:54):
use that gi bill, utilize those resources, because I think
the main thing that graduate school does besides sort of
buy you time to marinate in your thoughts and think
about it, is it really acclimates you to the civilian
world in a way that we're kind of isolated from
when we're in the military. We're surrounded in the military,
mostly with other people who are in the military, mostly

(27:15):
with our colleagues, sometimes on bases. People are living on base,
and we don't You don't even know what you don't
know in terms of understanding the civilian world. And while
you were in the military serving downrange right for five
years or ten years or whatever, most of your peers,
your civilian peers, we're building these like really robust social

(27:37):
networks through college and then through their first jobs, and
those are how they end up getting jobs and kind
of stare stepping leveling up. Right, the military, you're not
really doing that unless you stay in for your twenty
year career and your cedaddies and all that stuff. But
you get out into the wild west of the civilian world,
and you don't have those same social networks. So the
other thing that education does, and it's free for all

(27:58):
of those of us who serve, is it helps you
like expand your social networks, which in in turn determined
helps determine your sort of trajectory and your as a
myth when you get out of the military. You know,
the only clich is about you know, want to know
like what your like your net worth is your network
or whatever. Right, Well, in the military, your network is

(28:20):
not that high because everybody's making the same salary and
they're all doing the same.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
Thing, right, And that's you. That's your social influence though,
and so that's the ladders that you're climbing. Is like, hey,
six more months and hopefully Bill gets out of grade
and I could take his spot. You know, it's not
like I can try to like you sert Bill's spot.
It's just like he's in grade and he's not screwing up,
so he gets to stay there. And the rate, you're
just making an extra hundred bucks every year that goes

(28:46):
by on if you're in, if you're just a private
and you stayed a private for twenty years, you just
make like an extra every year. You just get a
little bit more and more and more.

Speaker 3 (28:54):
You know, it's not the hardest thing for me. And look,
I'll give a plug. My friend Pete Haigs at the
Secretary of the Secretary of War.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
Now, he is the sewer of secretary. He's the sewer
of destruction, sow bro.

Speaker 3 (29:12):
He is. He is attempting to shift his culture a
little bit, but it's deeply, deeply ingrained at it. For
the pay structure and the incentive structure of the military
is designed not so that it's a meritocracy. Right. The
truth is, if I am the best O two of
all time, or if I am the worst you know,

(29:32):
O two tenant JG of all time, I am going
to make three at the identical amount of time, no
matter what my rep says, no matter how good I am.
I could be the most badass coal ever or the
worst ship bag seal ever, and I am going to
get promoted on essentially the same schedule, right, and then
my pay is commensurate with that rank. Obviously, So in

(29:55):
that very macro sense, the military is not really designed
to as a meritocracy. I will say there are efforts
underway within the new Department of War to shift that, right,
and so it's it's a broad general statement, but it
is vastly different than the civilian world. There are, of course,
corporations that are bureaucratized and stuff that don't operate as

(30:18):
a meritocracy, but in general, in the civilian world, like
the cream of the crop rises to the top, and
your pay is commensurate.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
With that, right, And that's quoting Stipress Hill. Yeah, the
cream rises to the top or no house of pain. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
right to the top there too, right, Yeah, that's what's up.
That's what's up. So with that said, talking about the
pay structure, I would hope that if your friends listening
to this episode for some reason, which he should be

(30:46):
focused on the real world, yeah, that you know, I
don't want any face Paul moments. You know what I'm saying. Oh,
you know, like you got an opportunity to give a
fifty percent increase to the military, but nobody struck that,
you know, that nail into the wood like path you know,
or like you like these two ten percent increases for

(31:07):
military personnel is just kind of like frivolous when you
hear it being talked about like, oh, well, our military
needs a raise. Well, here's two percent, here's ten percent. Man,
we just made like a big beautiful bill for like
a trillion dollars to go build a border wall. Take
a couple half of that, give it to the military personnelity.

Speaker 3 (31:29):
Just I hear you, man, it is well above my
pay grade. And what I will tell you is that Pete,
I think this is true both in rhetoric and in action,
is more focused on the war fighter themselves than any
Secretary of Defense in that war. You know, in modern history.
He is truly a guy's guy, and you can see

(31:50):
even in terms of his service, I think reflects that.
That being said, right, like budgets are set by Congress,
pay increases are set by Congress. It's political animal and football.
So what I encourage military folks to do is to
maximize the opportunities that they have in front of them.
You know, for example, the the TSP or the old

(32:14):
retirement system is transformed to the TSP. Right, the TSP
is essentially glorified for a one K, but it has
this like incredible five percent matching contribution. If you're not
dedicating the five percent of your pay to go towards
the TSP and towards your retirement system, you are just
leaving money on the table. So we encourage every military

(32:36):
member to maximize that first five percent of the TSP
because that is just free money. And then what's changed
in the military retirement system is those accounts are completely portable.
So when you get out of the service, that is
a qualified retirement account, you can bring that over, you know,
to any private entity, and you can actually even manage

(32:59):
that yourself, like the actual to get a portfolio that's
more appropriate for you. So that's a big change in
the military retirement system, right, is that you actually now
have agency over your retirement. So I encourage people like
first to max it out and to really start to
learn about the process of investing. A lot of my

(33:20):
work has been focused on that. The company I built
was about getting military members involved in investing in public equities,
investing in the stock market. Because the truth is even
now today from page of the World Street Journal, they
call it the two race car economies. Right, there's two
different race cars. Those who don't and this was true
during COVID and it has been true throughout history. Is

(33:42):
the gap the v graph between between incomes and between
wealth in this country, the people who are invested in
the equities market continue to grow and grow and increase
their percentage wealth in the economy, and people are not
invested in the market tend to be on the losing
side of that equation. So that is like one of

(34:05):
the single most important things I can do is get
people at least to understand the process of first savings
and then investing.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
That's like saying, if you have your own business and
you are self employed, and you do cut your own
paycheck and you're proud of yourself, you should look into
having a rough ira through your business because you could
put I believe up to like seven thousand dollars through
your business into it tax free, and then that goes
into the stock market to grow only tax once and

(34:32):
once it cashes it out, it doesn't. That's you know, now, Hey.

Speaker 3 (34:36):
Yeah, And there's lots of ways to invest right right,
And there's no way I could teach you on a
forty five minute podcast all the ways you can invest
in yourself like I did.

Speaker 2 (34:45):
Like I actually got.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
It because I went to Naval Academy. I wasn't I
was under the old GI Bill, the Montgomery and I
already used it. I wasn't eligible for the new g
GI bill, so I had to pay for Harvard myself.
And that's okay because that was an investment in my
myself at that time. I would argue that investment paid
very big diffidence.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
So like sixty thousand a year, Can I ask how
much is a semester at Harvard? Were you in state
or out of state student?

Speaker 3 (35:09):
In state? I paid my dues like this California surfer
kid paid his dues walking across the snow in Cambridge.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
Yes it was miserable, yes, yes, yes, right, so you
were in state student, so that probably helped a big time.

Speaker 3 (35:24):
I'm sorry I was an out of state student. I
don't even know that Harvard makes a distinction because it's private,
whichween did in state nut of state Harvard. Anyways, like
my two year education costs somewhere around quarter million dollars,
I think, all being told, and that doesn't that doesn't
sort of calculate the opportunity cost of that you're not working.
I was working because I was doing like reporting on

(35:44):
my vacations, like war corresponding. But in general, there's like
a big loss because not only are you spending money
you're not earning income, So you got to calculate all
of that in But that being said, I think I
guess if I have like one like club that I
could beat all my fellow veterans over the head with
it's like it's time to turn on your financial awareness, right,

(36:06):
and that that means investing, it means saving. It just
means like I didn't. I didn't read the Wall Street
Journal until I was like forty years old. It just
wasn't in.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
My likee boring.

Speaker 3 (36:20):
Yeah, it's so boring, right, Well, I came. I came
to my financial literacy and awareness and understanding much later
in life. And of course I wish that I think,
just like you can do, my nine to five could
have been the Seal teams. I think in my five
to nine I could have been more focused on like
building financial well. And so you know, if somebody had

(36:43):
said that to me as like a young steel lieutenant
like and prepared to go overseas like, I may or
may not have listened. But I will say that there
are seal entrepreneurs like my one of my partners, one
of my business partners, he built his company, his swimwear
company while he was in the seal team. So guys
do it, you know? So anyways, I think the very

(37:06):
first step, if you take nothing else away, is just
kind of open the aperture on your thinking and start
to pay attention to how financial health and wealth can
can impact your life. And I would say it's as
important as like bullets and you're gone body armor when

(37:27):
you go into combat, Like your financial health is your
body armor in life. Something goes wrong, somebody gets hurt, right,
you got money to pay for that. Shit Like money
doesn't solve all your problems. But believe me, like that
help them to quote another song, more money, more problems. Yes, exactly,
that is true. That is true. But what it does,

(37:47):
the race is a baseline level of concern. If something
goes wrong in my life, I can write a check
in much of it, I can write a check to
solve that problem. And that provides you security and body
armor against all of the assault of life that everybody
should have. I don't care whether you're Rob O'Neil right
or you know an E one scraping paint on a

(38:09):
ship like that, It matters.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
It does, and I'll tell you right now, especially getting
hit with these tariffs. As a business owner, you know,
we're in the full thralls of like tariffs, and and
you know it's added an extra like five thousand dollars
a month to me on my business, which I have
to then like, you know, pay Yeah, that's what I'm
trying to say, dude. And I got payroll, and I'm like, well,

(38:33):
that five thousand dollars was like payroll. But now all
my guns that I sell, they're like an added let's say,
twenty dollars per on my wall. So every gun on
my wall at my shop's there's another twenty dollars added
to them for so I guess what I'm getting at
is there's no benefit to the twenty dollars. It just
like it doesn't make the gun better, it didn't make
it worse. It doesn't give me any advertising capabilities. I

(38:54):
don't get anything out of it except now I have
to charge the consumer this extra twenty dollars on top
of the gun that was the same one eighty nine
ninety nine. Now it's to twenty nine ninety nine ninety nine.
And I'm like, and so what I haven't done is
I haven't raised my prices. Right, I'm like, I feel
really bad trying not to. I'm holding fast on the
majority of everything to not try to. It's hard. Like

(39:16):
you said, you got to just kind of like go
with the blows that are dealt with you in business.

Speaker 3 (39:19):
And yeah, and like having a cushion to absorb events
that you cannot control, like tariffs, which is that is important? Yes,
that's the body armor for your business I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
And that's what I wanted to reference exactly, is so
you know, I have built myself with my business partner
with this body armor. But we're taking shots, bro.

Speaker 3 (39:41):
Yeah, and like look, even the best you know, level
four plates, they're designed to withstand.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
Two or three shots.

Speaker 3 (39:47):
Yeah, seven seven six seven, Yeah, I'm gonna start fracture.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
Yes, yes, one hundred percent. And so we got to
keep it together, kit, just got to keep it together,
keep it together. Got to keep it together. You know.
That's how I look at it. And you know, I've
really enjoyed the financial conversation with you, but you have
so many things that go on. Dude. You did Maricopa
County lock Up, and I watched that show when I
was reading who I'm talking to, I was like, really,

(40:18):
lock Up Maricopa County.

Speaker 3 (40:20):
Right, that was you right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
so that was that was actually for MSNBC. People don't realize, like,
you know, there's the news programming Monday through Friday, But
the truth is that series, that documentary series. It's a
news focused documentary series. At best, prison porn, I guess.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
At worst, Yeah, it really was. Yeah, prison ASMR. I
don't want to be there, but I'm.

Speaker 3 (40:43):
Like, yeah, that was a wildly popular show. It did
seventeen seasons. I came to that at sort of the
peak of my media career when I was, you know,
both producing and doing correspondent work and I and I
produced several seasons a lot up really difficult job, by
the way, going into that prison for twelve hours a

(41:05):
day filming, listening to the stories, and it was it
gave me an incredible purview to this like part of
society that most people thankfully never never get to speak.
But you know, it was like it was sort of
an aside. You know, I specialized in the media world.
I've I've done everything there is to do. I've like

(41:27):
sold a film at Sundance, like that's a narrative film,
you know, with a net Benning and Adam Driver. I've
made like Emmy Award winning documentaries. I've even done like
stunt work, like I did the stunt work on Black Panther.
I was I was an actor on the Jack Ryans here.
So I've done like the full spectrum of media.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
And you embedded into Bocal Harams. Yeah, when they took
the two hundred and ninety girls hostage and yeah embedded.

Speaker 3 (41:55):
Yeah, that was a wild story. I can tell it now.
I couldn't. I couldn't tell it at the But I basically,
like knew a group of South African mercenaries. So I
had to like ed myself with these South African mercenaries
and then like you know, like sneak the journalism in
on the side, but I went in under my leg
seal merk credentials, not right journalism. I got to get

(42:19):
everybody comfortable with enough with me, you know, the boys
comfortable enough with me too, boys film, uh and do it.
But yeah, so I've done all of that stuff. Lock
Up was awesome. Most of my stuff has been focused
on Most of my media work has been focused on
like these issues in the world that I think are important,
largely national security focused because that's sort of my domain

(42:41):
of expertise. But you know, I think in all of
my endeavors, like one of the three lines is that
I took that foundation that I built in the Seal
Teams of being flexible, adaptable, having drive, being mission focused
and execution focused, and the leadership that comes with leading

(43:02):
special operations teams on operations. I took all of those
skills and then I applied them to my next endeavor,
which was media, and then ultimately I applied them to
finance and entrepreneurship and those like sort of immutable traits
that were forged in the in the Seal Teams, those

(43:22):
those really were my keys to success. And if my
story is like at all inspirational to anybody, it's I
think that that's what I would point to, right, Like,
that foundation and that base that you built from your
military service can incredibly serve you as you go through
like the rest of the parts of your life.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
No, I love it, No, I love it. No, You're great,
And I wish I just had like all day or
you just had your you know this, you're great. And again,
you know, financial literacy is important to us, which is
why I said, when you look at the Wall Street Journal.
Maybe there's like a bunch of numbers on the back
of like the stock market the page, you know, or
in the newspaper. And I was always like, well, where's

(44:04):
Beetle Bailey, you know, I want to read Beetle Bailey
or like Blondie Back of the day, not to date myself,
but the cartoons on the back of the newspaper. It's like,
you know, and you you just don't look at the
stocks and stuff like that. You know.

Speaker 3 (44:16):
It's like, and look, that shit can be complex, right, right,
the Feds making their announcements and understanding like the Fed
funds rate and like you know, the new interest rate
and how that affects the bombs market. It can be
infinitely complex, but it can also be very basically simple.
Right at the end of the day. I always tell

(44:36):
people to start investing in what they know and look,
I think self directed investing is a small portion of
your portfolio. Most self directed investors don't win, but self
directed investing can be like an incredible teaching tool to
help you optimize and balance the rest of your financial
battle space. Right, and so just starting to invest with

(44:57):
that first stock or even like your first it starts
to imbue you with a series of habits.

Speaker 2 (45:04):
Right.

Speaker 3 (45:04):
It's like taking a little jog around the block every
day or taking that hot girl walk right starts to
like set this flywheel of physical fitness going. The same
is true with buying a little bit of stuff. Right.
And you know when I say the company I built,
military guys, they can invest with as little as a dollar.
Everybody's got a dollar to invest. You could buy a

(45:25):
piece of Starbucks or Apple right with a dollar. So
rather than spending the five dollars on the wrap mok
rap exactly, you know, buy the stock own the company. Man.

Speaker 2 (45:36):
Yes, I did that. With Roadblocks, my son plays Roadblocks.
He's like, Dad, I need Roebucks. And I'm like, what
do you mean. He's like, well, I just need you
to buy me some roebucks. And so I go online,
I google Roadblocks, I start playing Roadblocks. I'm like, dude,
I need roebucks myself. And I was like, wait, everybody's
giving these guys like ten twenty thirty dollars a month
for these things. So I looked into them and they

(45:57):
were publicly traded. So I bought in on role roadblocks
right right, right, So that was this was COVID. So
I took COVID as a sign to start collecting my
stock market Pokemon cards. So I was like, hmm, so
I bought Spotify. Now today I bought Spotify like one
seventeen a share. It's seven hundred dollars a share.

Speaker 3 (46:17):
Today, exactly. You know what? You know what my greatest
performing stock of all time? Huh is Palenteer? Right? And
why did and why did I buy Palenteer years and
years ago? Because I used it in the teams and
I was like, these guys are incredible. So I bought
what I knew. Oh, there's really nobody who's doing big

(46:37):
data synthesis and like as integrated into the special operations
community from a tech perspective as these guys. Right, So
I bought that I knew, Like I didn't even understand
like price to earning ratios.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
Right right, You're like, I just know I need that.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
I used this exactly exactly. So that's how that actually
like started that process. And then, like anything else, you
watered the lawn and you get sad yer and shabbier
as time does. But there is just this giant gulf
of America divide between those who invest and those who
know just a time, which side is the Gulf of America.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
I'm laughing. I haven't heard that phrase at all, like
really used except for by like one guy. Okay, I
have to drink my water that I see it all
over all over Gulf of America. Bro, My whole life
just changed today, Bro as today years old when I
learned enterprise was enterprise, rent a car was enterprise, the

(47:41):
battleship or the carrier, and Gulf of America exists, I
forgot about that. Oh my goodness, gracious. Now listen, I
know you have something to go get to here just shortly,
and I've really taken up your time, and you've you've
given us some insight into your your mindset, which is
what I want my listener to and my viewer to have.

(48:04):
And I also want them to know that this is
really the first time you and I have ever talked
or met, and we can have a conversation and not
be at each other's throats, and you know, try to
come to us. I want to see what you're saying,
and maybe you want to see where I'm coming from,
and giving the other person a chance to talk.

Speaker 3 (48:22):
Yeah, And the other thing is like you know here
we are we you know, we have all this like
shared common thread, your dad serving the Special Operations communes, right,
And we talked a lot of we like talked about
military and we talked about patriotism. I think it's inherent
in your dad's flag and you know, my little shadow
boxes back here, Yes, that is a given. And like

(48:44):
what I say to transitioning military guys is that like
that's what opens the door, right, But then you still
got to walk through that door. And here, what did
we really talk about? We really spent the preponderance of
our time talking about how to build your wealth or
how to think about building your wealth another So, even
though the military is in the backdrop of everything we do,
the forefront of our conversation was really about all of

(49:07):
this civilian sector stuff and how to go forward and
correct the real castle for your family and yourself a
hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (49:14):
You know, I didn't even dive into your combat action.
And I know you have all that stuff, and I
really appreciate you, know, your service to our dation. I
just want to let you know that. And you have
a great smile too. Bro. I just want you to
thank you.

Speaker 3 (49:27):
Thank you. It's been the best thing for me about
selling my company. So the company that I started with
the intel officer was called Guild that was the investing
in Education plastform right acquired by Sebert Financial, which is
a publicly traded company started by Muriel Sebert, first woman
on Wall Street. And the reason she bought my company,

(49:47):
other than the financials and the fundamentals, was she believed
in this mission to continuing to serve underserved populations and
underserved communities. And I was able to convince the Seabert
the company a Muriel unfortunately is no longer alive, but
I was able to convince that the new ownership and
leadership of the company that this mission was resonant with

(50:08):
the original mission of the company to serve underserved populations.
So so now now I've created this initiative called Valor,
which is Sibert dot com slash Valor, and that's where
we're continuing this mission of helping invest in helping build
financial awareness for the military community. And I'm proud to
have both sold my company yet to still be able

(50:31):
to continue to do like all the things that I
set out to do.

Speaker 2 (50:35):
So I love that and just a touch based on
Sibert dot com forward slash valor, would you say that,
you know, just go there and check it out and
see if it fits what you're thinking in your head
as the listener, like yeh Sibert, you know, these guys
are talking about they making money or they have a
living and they're self employed. Siebert dot com forard slash valor,
that's what they should be checking out.

Speaker 3 (50:56):
That's our Valor initiative. And I vote even bigger than
just military, also, like law enforcement, firefighters. Anybody can invest,
but it's really focused on the military, the first responder,
the law enforcement community, anybody who's kind of warned, the
cloth of the country. I feel like we're all of
like similar mindset and attitude and have similar values, similar experiences,

(51:17):
and so there's a whole investing world out there that
tried to kind of tailor for that community. The other
thing that I've done that you know, I'm proud of
is as I launched a podcast called Tactical Wealth, where
I interview other successful entrepreneurs and hear their stories. Because
every path is unique and there are as we started

(51:38):
at the beginning to you know, to put a button
on this thing, some extraordinary veteran entrepreneurs out there doing
the most interesting things. Some of it's in the national
security in the defense tech space. But you know, I
had a guy, a veteran on the other day who
is building a neuroscience company. I had another veteran who's
had a successful tech company, and so just all across

(52:02):
the spectrum of interesting things that guys.

Speaker 2 (52:04):
Are doing, that's very commendable. So I applaud you on
the conversation and your topics that you have on there.
And you know, you've got all the experience from your
military career and growing up as a kid and being
on Vice and doing all these shows that I'm sure
you know, we should just say. Tactical Wealth is the
podcast that is hosted by Kaj Larsen, and we'll have

(52:28):
that also linked up in the bottom of our you know,
our description. So if you want to click on that,
go ahead and click down below and just go straight
over to his podcast. Follow it. It's probably on where
every podcast is out there. You know, Spotify, who have
thought I had no idea. I just said, hey, babe,
we have memberships to Spotify. They're making our money. Let's

(52:52):
get in on that. And so it was like maybe
it was like seventy eight dollars at the time. And listen,
I didn't buy like a million dollars real quick, not
just this up. I bought like two shares at a time.
Because I'm still living on a budget. I'm fiscal responsible.
You know, I have business and everything. But I've just
been buying little bits of my portfolio. And that's what

(53:15):
it is. I just spend like sixty bucks instead of
going to get the frappuccino or going out to eat
at Texas Roadhouse, I'm just buying into Texas Roadhouse. And
I still enjoy their food, but every time I eat there,
I'm like, this is delicious. I know I'm going to
get a piece of this somewhere on a dividend.

Speaker 3 (53:30):
Yeah. And by the way, you know what we call
that in the biz, hu cost averaging. Right, you don't
have to buy all of your chunk on one day
because you don't know whether it's going to go up
or down the next thing, little small increments because it's
very hard, there's another you know, cliche and investing very
hard to time the market. What matters more is time
in the market, and so dollar cost average little bit

(53:52):
every day investment has been a tried and true strategy
for people to build.

Speaker 2 (53:58):
Well. Yeah, and I'm not looking to get rid of either.
I want the kids to have it, you see. I'm
trying to create something for the kids, like leave the
house to them, you know, and establish a foundation for
the generation to come.

Speaker 3 (54:09):
Yeah, well, lisn't. I'm still I'm still in it. I'm
still building businesses. I got a pitch meeting.

Speaker 2 (54:16):
Yes, No, I know you're great and we could talk
forever because we both do it for a living and
you've been great. So please go check out Codge Larson anywhere.
Google him. Tactical Wealth is his podcast on behalf of COJ,
myself and Brandon Webb and all the guys out there
that are pushing themselves to be the best ventrepreneurs they
can be in this life. And you, my listener, who
had asthma, who could never join you can still be

(54:38):
part of the entrepreneur life. Just get at it, Okay,
just get at it. Don't worry about it, just keep
listening to us. Hit us up. I'm available on Instagram.
If you've got any questions, reach out to me. Otherwise,
go check out the book club, Go check out the
merch Store and go check out Tactical Wealth by Coge Larson,
which is his podcast. And this is rad saying peace.

Speaker 1 (55:15):
You've been listening to Self Red Lady