March 14, 2023 • 47 mins
In this episode, I'm joined by Cody Alford. Cody is a father, entrepreneur, motivational speaker, author, and retired MARSOC Raider who served 15 years in the military with a handful of tours overseas. He holds the title of the youngest leader to ever reach the enlisted rank, E8, in the Marines.
Since retirement he has expanded his endeavors including becoming a self-help coach, leading his mindset mastery community called Defy Tribe, motivational speaking, and growing his apparel brand called, We Defy The Norm.
Defy Conformity is the tagline behind his clothing brand, but serves as the ethos for his coaching group, Defy Tribe.
By challenging people to refuse mediocrity and refuse to settle for normal or a simple life, he empowers others to push through their limiting beliefs.
Inside Part 1:
- How to get promoted as quickly as possible
- Why leadership can't be taught but it can be learned
- How to reconstruct your mindset from the ground up
- Why most people don't achieve what they want in life
- How to ask for and get help even when people see you as bulletproof
Connect with Cody
Connect With Bradley
👇 SUBSCRIBE TO THE NOT MOST PEOPLE PODCAST & TURN ON NOTIFICATIONS 👇
🟣 APPLE PODCASTS
🟢 SPOTIFY
----
🚀 Want to connect with Exceptional People and Level up your Life?? 🚀
🤜 Check out THE NOT MOST PEOPLE ALLIANCE 🤛
----
→ CONNECT WITH NOT MOST PEOPLE ON SOCIAL MEDIA: ←
▶︎ YOUTUBE
▶︎ RUMBLE
▶︎ INSTAGRAM
▶︎ WEBSITE
▶︎ FACEBOOK
▶︎ LINKEDIN
▶︎ GETTR
▶︎ TWITTER
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Bradley Roth (00:32):
Hey everyone.
Welcome back to another episodeof the Not Most People podcast.
This is your host, Bradley, andthis is the show for those
allergic to mediocrity groupthink and following the status
quo.
And before we get into today'sepisode, I would just like to
share with you guys my one askthat I always mention at the
beginning of each episode, andthat is, if you get value out of
(00:53):
this show, whether it's thisepisode, whether it's other
episodes, if you learnsomething, if you have a
takeaway that helps you thinkdifferently, if you're
entertained, just that you helpme out and return that value by
sharing it with a friend orleaving a rating or review on
whatever platform you'relistening on.
This show is here purely to helpyou guys become not most people.
(01:15):
And that means being what?
People are not, which is happy,healthy, wealthy, growing, and
free.
That's the mission.
I don't do any ads as long asyou guys continue to help me
grow.
And I appreciate you right nowlistening.
You know, this show started fromscratch.
I didn't have a big following oranything like that, so I truly
appreciate every one of youlistening today.
(01:36):
And then for everything else,not most people, we got going on
beyond the podcast, make sureyou check out all the links in
the show notes where you canfind all that good stuff.
But that's it.
We're gonna get right intotoday's episode.
I have a special guest, CodyAlford.
Joining me today.
Cody, welcome to the show.
What's up man?
Yeah, I'm excited.
So, and you guys will see why.
(01:57):
So I'm gonna give you a littlebit of background on Cody.
He is a father entrepreneur,motivational speaker, author,
and retired Marsoc Raider, whoserved 15 years in the military
with a handful of toursoverseas.
He also holds the title of theyoungest Leader to ever reach
the enlisted rank of E eight inthe Marines.
And then since retirement, he'sexpanded into becoming a
(02:20):
self-help coach, leading hismindset mastery community called
Defy Tribe, which we're gonnaget into, as well as
motivational speaking andgrowing his apparel brand called
We Defy the Norm.
And Defy conformity is thetagline behind his clothing
brand and also serves as theethos for his coaching tribe
defied tribe.
(02:41):
So when you hear that, those ofyou listening sounds a lot like
not most people, and I remember.
I don't remember how or whenexactly, but came across, Cody
came across you on Instagram awhile back and I said, oh man, I
gotta get this guy on someday.
And then I, I might have reachedout or something and, and got
lost in the dms.
I can't remember.
(03:01):
But then we ended up having amutual friend who connected us,
and now you're here.
And I would say of any brand ormovement out there that I've
seen, like we're familiar withlines, not sheep, kind of a
similar idea, but defy tribe anddefy conformity defy the norm.
I was like, man, that's not,most people just said in a
different way.
So I want to ask you though,before that people hear what you
(03:25):
did in the, in the military.
For those of you who don't know,MARSOC is like Marine Special
Operations, right?
So you guys are the Marinebranch that works with, you
know, kind of these higher levelspecial operations from other
branches of the military.
And so people are probablylistening like, oh, okay.
He was this badass.
He rose through the ranks fastin the Marines and then came out
(03:46):
and just started defy the normand things took off from there.
But I'm guessing it wasn't quitethat simple or in that straight
of a line
Cody Alford (03:58):
that that's, that's an accurate statement.
It was definitely not as sexy asa transition as you made that
sound.
Yeah.
So, MARSOC basically was createdback in 2006 and we became the
special operations branch of theMarine Corps working alongside
Navy Sills, army Green Berets,and other other unit special
operations units across theplatforms.
(04:19):
What a great experience andopportunity to do all that
stuff.
It was definitely challengingand very fulfilling.
A lot of high caliber men andwomen, you know, working
alongside and really checkingthat box of like all the things
you wanted to do in the MarineCorps or the military, and.
You know, some people think theywere always a tribute war and
combat.
And that's, that's, none ofthose reasons are why I joined
(04:39):
in the first place.
I wanted to shoot the cool guns,do the cool training, get the
cool gear, be around the, thesebadass people that I was, you
know, always watching on tv.
And to be part of that one daywas just super epic.
And like you mentioned, I, Ipromoted very quickly through
the ranks.
There's actually two E eightranks.
There's a rank called a FirstSergeant and a master's
sergeant.
Mm-hmm I would say master'ssergeant.
(05:00):
There was a lot of firstsergeants that kind of promote
fast too, depending on kind ofwhat their background is.
But for the career field that Iwas in, it was extremely fast.
And not only did I promote fast,I was able to obtain these
leadership positions.
Marlo is full of a lot of seniorguys and and gals, so just
because you have the ringdoesn't necessarily mean you'll
be in the position.
So it's, it's very thickcompetition cuz there's just a
(05:21):
bunch of high caliber peoplethere.
And, I had a bunch of greatmentors and leaders that looked
out for me along the way thateducated me, taught me, held me
accountable, looked out for me,most importantly, cuz you know,
yours truly was not this likewater walker.
A lot of people think I was, butyou know, I made a lot of
mistakes.
Um mm-hmm I'm a very verbalperson and that has definitely
(05:41):
caused some ripples along mypath in life.
But that's just who I am.
And very fortunate enough tohave mentors and leaders who can
see bigger than a face valueresistance that they might be
observing and really took meunderneath their wing and, and
helped guide me and helped meaccountable through these years.
And, you know, I reallyattribute a lot of that to my
success because, you know, ifthey weren't looking out for me,
(06:04):
I could have easily gotsquashed.
That's one really negative slabof the military is like, there
are rules and regulations andmm-hmm.
it's very easy to it's very easyto have someone else literally
wreck your career.
Right?
So it's, it's, it's not like youcan just put your little
complaint ticket in the box andyour problems would be solved.
But, you know, I also, a lot ofpolitics.
A lot of politics, but I alsotell people too, like the rules
(06:25):
and regulations exist for bothsides and both parties.
So, I mean, there was plenty oftimes that I, I thought and
stood up for myself where, youknow, I get, I get calls or
messages from people that are inthe service today.
Like, well, how did you do that?
Or You, you would've got introuble.
I'm like, no, I wouldn't have, Iwasn't breaking any rules, bro.
Like, Hey, this, I can, youknow, go up the chain of command
if I want to.
And I did that multiple times,whether it's pay conflict with,
(06:46):
you know, or allegations.
I mean, the military is a veryinteresting system.
Indeed.
You know, it's a lot of.
It's a lot of opportunity, butnot a lot of freedom.
It's a lot of restriction, a lotof constraints lot of conforming
to the masses.
And at a young age in themilitary, I just never, that
wasn't really my thing.
(07:07):
I, I didn't really enjoy it.
Luckily for me, throughout mymilitary career, I was in these
small units that were like,go-getter guys that are like
finding a way and, you know,pushing the envelope, pushing
the boundaries.
So I was very fortunate withinthose regards, and a lot of
people did not have that sameopportunity for whatever
reasons.
But I definitely did not allowanything else, kind of keep me
(07:28):
from the path that I wanted totake.
And then, you know, you talkedabout transitioning from the
military to like creating my, mybusiness and my, my apparel
brand.
Really the, it's really a, in areflection of my own mindset of
the things that I, I believe inand I stand for more than a
peril brand.
My coaching group didn't come upuntil years later, but that time
(07:51):
at, I retired at 15 years.
I had all sorts of cognitivefunction issues.
I, I was basically being treatedfor all my traumatic brain
injuries.
I had all these sleeping issues.
I was having uncontrollableadrenaline spikes ba drooling on
myself, passing out all thetime.
I'd get lo I couldn't evennavigate with my iPhone.
Wow.
Yeah, I, I would be late to workall the time cause I would be
(08:12):
in, up down the street from myhouse crying, not knowing how I
got there.
Falling off my motorcycles in a,in a gas station parking lot.
Like my, my life was kind ofgoing downhill.
Well that's cause I was avoidingthe telltale signs that were
leading up to it cuz I had goalsand I had dreams.
And there's always that fear if,if I stop to get these things
checked, I'm going to miss outon these opportunities.
(08:32):
Well, lo and behold, lookingback at my life all the times
that I pushed aside my wellnessto go pursue something, those
pursuings never really workedout for me.
Whether I never got anopportunity or it just, it
wasn't the right timing, youknow, external for myself and my
desires.
And then when those flood gatesopened up for the opportune
time, I was just garbage.
(08:55):
I had a very negative attitude.
I was just, I was feelingbroken.
Had this victim mindset,basically went from like a, he a
hundred miles an hour to likezero from here to zero.
And I really lost a lot aboutmyself.
And when I was faced with thethe reality of like, Hey dude,
you can no longer be in, in themilitary or this job, it hit me
(09:16):
because my vision as a young kidto, to want to be a Marine, you
know, it ended, you know, themilitary career, was it?
Mm-hmm.
And from that military career, Ihad other, other visions to
like, I wanted to go contractwith the government agency and I
wanted to kind of pursue this,this career field and this path.
but everything stopped once Irealized that, dude, I, I can no
(09:37):
longer do this job, period.
And so that's when my lifereally took a change and a turn,
turn of events.
And it was about, so 2018 Iretired.
So earlier that year, my wife, Iwas in Florida doing some my
brain treatment before I getout, making sure I'm like, it
can be the best conditionspossible before I get out and
kind of kicked out into the realworld.
(09:59):
My wife asked me if I had likesix, you know, 4, 4, 6 weeks
left to live.
Like what would I want to do?
And I could not come up with ananswer.
And the only thing that waskinda like on my, on the tip of
my tongue was, I don't know,travel around and take pictures
cuz I had no idea what I wantedto do.
I had no idea who I wanted tobe.
I had no idea who I was.
Mm-hmm.
like, I was scared of my ownshadow at this point.
(10:19):
My, my level of confidence justin overall life was extremely
diminished.
I mean, when you, when youcouldn't even boil water
successfully, that really took abig chunk out of my ego and
chunk outta me and my, myindividuality and my power.
And so we really started on thatprocess.
So our main thing was gettingoutta the military was like,
(10:39):
okay, I'm not gonna have thepension that I thought I was.
Luckily through the timeframethat I was in, I was able to
retire early with my, with someof my pension coming from the
background that I had.
And so we're like, okay, this isnot a lot of money by any means.
So people who think thatmilitary pension is a lot, you
are absolutely delusional, yeah.
It's not a lot of money, but itwas enough for us to sell all of
(11:02):
our stuff, live well below ourmeans, and we invested that
money into a conversion van.
So we bought this 20 20 18, 2017 Dodge ProMaster van and it
was decked out.
It wasn't like the finalproduct, but it was already
kinda like, had the, thebatteries and the solar and the
kitchenette and the, and themakeshift bed.
And we're like, we're gonna, andso we decided to continue to get
(11:26):
rid of all of our stuff, pay offour debt, and be able to live
within this like, very smallpaycheck.
And that gave me the space andmy wife, the space to really,
for her to support me, butreally for me to have no stress,
no responsibility, because I, Irealized that in the military,
I.
part of my cognitive issues wasfrom the constant amounts of
stress.
(11:46):
Mm-hmm.
I realized I could, I couldoperate at a high level of
stress, but low levels of stressor, or no traces of stress, I
just could not function.
And then having those ups anddowns and these cortisol issues
with these hormone imbalances,man, I was just a shipwreck man.
It was just episode sinkingship.
So I need a zero responsibility.
I need to no timelines.
I need to know anything to beresponsible of other than just
(12:09):
surviving every day.
And that van gave us thisopportunity to do that.
And we did that for about threeand a half years.
Well, along this process, youknow, I, I went to this device
that people hide from, you know,because it looks scary to talk
to yourself.
And I was just like, man, I'mreally going through a lot of
shit right now.
And then I went like this and Icreated YouTube videos, And then
(12:30):
I posted those and I went likethis and went on Instagram and
just told people how I wasfeeling.
And, you know, along the way indoing that, people will start to
resonate with like what I wassaying, they're like, oh shit,
this guy with this crazy, gnarlybackground, he's suffering right
now.
And you know, I was able toarticulate it in a way where I
was connecting with people and,and then I just kinda like kept
this momentum up and did exactlywhat I said I was gonna do in
(12:53):
the van taking pictures.
We're driving, we're travelingaround, checking out all these
places in the US and I, I havehad this like idea, I'm like,
you know, I'm gonna start this,this company brand.
And at the time I really didn'tknow the vision, right?
So my vision back in 2018definitely is not the vision I
have for myself, my brand, oranything I associate with today.
But it was a starting point andit wasn't perfect and I didn't
(13:14):
have it all figured out.
I just like, you know what, thisscares me.
I feel called to do this, so I'mgoing to just take a stab at it.
And.
Being a veteran and doinganything with a t-shirt is like,
oh my God.
It's like doing something withcoffee.
It's like, you know, at the timeit's like every veteran has
this, this, this shirt company,but I wanted more than a shirt
company.
I, I wanted to like a way toexpress myself, you know, it was
(13:35):
my own form of art and it wasmy, it was my ability to, to
share what I was feeling andwhat I stand for and believe in,
and people were.
And so I, I started my companyEdify the norm where I had no
money.
I had just an idea and I wasgoing to Instagram and basically
anyone who was doing what Iwanted to do, I was messing to
them.
And I get some responses here.
(13:57):
I get some guidance here.
I get some pricing here and I'mlike, oh my God, I'm trying to
process all this stuff.
And so I started doing a dropshipping, which really cost me
no money other than to my host,host my website.
Yeah.
And I started slinging thesedesigns from my van, you know,
online traveling realm.
You know, Hey guys, this is whatI'm doing.
Hey, check out my new shirt.
You know, this is kinda like thephase of my life cuz they've all
(14:19):
been a, a visual representationof like what I was going through
in my transition because man, itwas, it was lonely.
A lot of times.
I lost a lot of friends that Ithought I had, you know, and
when I started to share myemotions and feelings, God, I
might as, I mean, I might aswell like spit on like a, on, on
like a statue of like Jesus orsomething.
Dude.
It was like horrible.
(14:39):
People were like losing theirminds that I had these things
called feelings and emotions,and most importantly an opinion,
you know?
And, and I'm like, I can never,I, I cannot be doing something
more aligned to what I'msupposed to be doing than what
I'm doing now.
Because I realized that when youtry to stand out of the crowd,
not even try to, when you justdo your own thing, it triggers
(15:00):
so many people.
Oh, yeah.
And because they, they, they'relike, you, you shouldn't feel
that way in, in the militaryworld.
There's a lot of these hardchargers, right?
That they're like suffer insilence.
You know?
It's the pain you're goingthrough is your weakness leaving
your body like all these, likemental.
mind work being things that to aa, a program, program, mine,
(15:24):
which I was there before too.
Mm-hmm.
it makes sense.
But to someone who's, who'sbreaking away from that system
and finding this autonomy ofself, right.
This own self-power andempowerment.
You have to rewrite the playbookor you're just bringing that
world into your new world andcalling it your norm.
And that was the last thing Iwanted to do.
Mm-hmm.
And the more people pushed backon me and like, hated on me and
(15:46):
like talked shit about me on UYouTube, dude, I got called
Laura Sots of random stuff, youknow, I got called stolen Valor
once on my YouTube channel.
And dude, I literally cried forprobably like a week straight.
like I was just busted andbroken.
I'm like, I'm just being honestand truthful and these people
are just so, internet people areso mean.
And at the time I, I was not incontrol of my emotions.
(16:08):
I wasn't in control of myself.
I had no, no defense system thatguarded me through the level of
confidence I had.
None of that stuff.
And they were like soft people,special operations people talk
like this.
You're a liar.
You're so, I'm like, oh my God.
You can't have feelings, youknow?
And people are say, be genuineand you, and you become genuine
and you just get docked for it.
(16:29):
But that's the price that youbear and that's the price to
pay.
Mm-hmm.
you break free to defy the norm.
And I just continued on withthat.
And.
Our van life was honestly thebest thing we ever did for
ourselves.
Man, it, I rejected nature.
Cuz I, I, I was a reconnaissanceand as a sniper the majority of
my career.
(16:49):
So I was always out in the fieldin the bush and the elements
getting rained on in the cold,being miserable, watching shit
through glass for days.
And last thing I wanted to dowhen I got out was to be
miserable.
I wanted no discomfort in mylife.
Mm-hmm.
So that wasn't really payingoff, you know, that wasn't
advancing my life.
Even at the time, I reallydidn't even know what to
(17:09):
advance.
So I really felt called to dothis self-work, you know, work
in my mind, my body and myspirit.
All these things which I had noconnection to anymore.
And being out and exposed tonature that, that freedom to, I
mean, we could just park our.
You know, in the middle ofnowhere we would drive our van
into like b l m land and youknow, we would stay out there
for as many days as we had, youknow, water and most times we'd
(17:32):
bring extra water so we couldstay extra days.
And that's where I would go findmyself.
I would just sit out there inthis complete silence and allow
nature to just kinda like takeme in and like open me back up
and help expose what I wasfighting so much.
I was rejecting what wasactually my salvation and nature
was a huge part of that.
And it makes sense because mybody was fine being toxic and
(17:55):
negative and sad because it wascontrolling me.
Yeah.
But for me to want to change mylife, my body was putting up
such resistance.
Like no, we don't go to nature.
We hate that shit.
You know, like, let's just belittle, let's just get high all
day in the van and make music.
Which I did a Cuz that was mycoping mechanism.
And so, you know, nature andthat I, that being exposed there
(18:15):
and not being in one place, youknow, more than, you know, x
amount of days or weeks at atime, it's just constantly
changing things up.
So there was no comfort allowedin my life and I really needed
all that.
And got to the point where wereally doubled down on
everything with the, with thebrand.
We, we realized that hey, welove vanlife.
It's really freeing.
(18:37):
But I remember I was doing mytattoo apprenticeship in
Tennessee and we're lookingaround, our friends are about to
buy us a new property.
They lived in like about a five,a cabin home.
And we're like, we want someland.
I'm like, I'm not gonna get thismoney for this land tattoo
apprenticing for the rest of mylife.
Or being even a tattoo artistlike in the timeframe that I
wanted.
Right?
There's plenty of tattoo artiststhat make a lot of stuff, but I
(18:58):
wasn't looking to have anothercareer starting from ground
zero.
I was looking to take what Iknow already and just double
down on it and, and createsomething big from it.
Because I already hadexperience, and at the time I
was really having a hard timecomparing, you know, what
military experience can reallyhelp me push forward in my life.
No one gives a shit about thewar, the combat, the accolade,
(19:20):
accolades, the, the medals.
No one cares about that shit,but what rule of value did I
have that people did care about?
and being able to relate topeople and to articulate
feelings that brought themtogether and to boost them up
and help them change theirlives.
I'm like, well, shit, that's it.
And so we doubled down on, onthe weedy the norm, cuz we're
like, do we want to go?
We want to homestead.
And so that's when I reached outto my business mentor Tim.
(19:43):
And I'm like, Hey dude, I, I'mready to buy some inventory.
I'm ready to like, take thisthing to the next level.
And we just kind of kept ongoing with it.
And over the years, you know, wejust kept on pushing ourselves
out of our comfort zone evenmore and more and more to kind
of get to where we're at now.
And where we're at now, it'sliterally just a beginning
because we're in a whole newphase of life.
Because once we got here, we hadto become something different.
(20:03):
To even stay here, to to, to aafford where we live, to, to
afford the lifestyle we have tomake the impact we have, we had
to become different people.
And, you know, through thatjourney, I mean, I've done years
of plant medicine and, andself-work and self, you know,
all types of different personaldevelopment along the way.
Things I never did before.
But I was also in the militarydoing things a certain way.
(20:25):
Now I have this opportunity tofigure out who is Cody Alfred,
what do I wanna do with my life?
You know, what makes me happy?
What don't I like?
And nothing can stop me but me.
You know, I don't have tosubmit, Hey, I'm thinking about
going to do this plant medicinehealing journey here at Higher
Command.
Will you sign my approvalpaperwork?
No denied.
I don't, I don't have to worryabout that.
(20:45):
Hey, I think I'm gonna startthis business.
Will, will you prove off?
Will you bless off on it?
I didn't have to do thatanymore.
I just simply had to ask myself,is this worth it to you?
If it's a yes, then I'm going.
If it's no, then I'm not.
And that was a new experiencefor me.
You know, even being this likesuper resilient you know,
outside the box tanker and, andactioner in the military.
(21:06):
Being free now to do literallyanything and everything I wanted
to do, it was a whole new world.
And you know, along this way.
So we got the par, we got themindset brand reify the norm.
And then, you know, about a yearand a half ago, I started my co
online coaching group to FiveTribe where I've been taking
these lessons and principles andthese mindset shifts to go from
the top to, to hit rock bottomand to pull myself back up and
(21:28):
to keep on creating things I'mnot stopping, right?
Unlocking and unleashing mypower within.
And I, and I share that withpeople who are serious about
investing in themselves becausethat's it.
You have to invest in yourself.
And you know, part of ourtagline is the fight conformity,
invest in yourself becausepeople think it's like some
hokey pokey stuff, but you haveto ask yourself.
What's hokey Pokey doing?
(21:49):
Nothing with your life.
Not living the life you want to.
That sounds pretty hokey to me,especially when you know you
can, but who do you have to becalm to go do those things?
And over the past four years ofbeing outta military, I've been
coming this, like thissuperhero, my own personal
superhero, my own personallegend, building myself back up,
doing the work that I know Ineed to do in all aspects of my
(22:09):
life so I can get to warm outtoday.
So I can speak with confidenceand I can truly impact people
with my gift that I have andstop comparing my shit to anyone
else's out there and, and justdo what I know I'm called to do.
And that alone is like thissense of empowerment that I
haven't had in a very long time.
And so, but I never would've gotthere if I didn't do the shit
that scared me.
You know?
I had a, I went right, I wentagainst the grain.
(22:33):
I remember getting a call.
My friend worked at a, an oldworkmate of mine.
He worked for this agency, thisgovernment agency that I wanted
to go work for.
I remember him.
He called me, he's like, Heydude, I hear you're getting
ready to retire.
I would love to fast track yourpacket, you know, to get you in
selection, blah, blah, blah.
This type of stuff.
I'm like, wipe and draw off myface.
I just woke up in my, my 98 FordRanger outside, cuz I sold my
(22:53):
dream truck to pay off billsbefore I got in the military.
I'm like, Hey dude, this is adream come true, but I have to
say no.
Mm-hmm.
you know, so like, so it's notlike it was just an easy
decision like, Hey, I, I'm gonnaput the gun down for the rest of
my life.
It was hard every day, every dayI felt like inadequate of a man.
Every day I felt like I was apussy because I wasn't going to
do these hard things and suitingup effort battle again with my
friends that were doing thisjob.
(23:13):
You know, I, I felt like, howare they there and why am I not
there?
You know, what all these otherthings to feel fulfilled in
life.
And so it was a big challengealong the way, but man,
everything I've done was for areason.
I'm extremely grateful for it.
Wow.
Bradley Roth (23:28):
what a story.
There's, there's like a dozenthings that I could kind of go
into from that.
But you mentioned you're outsidethe box thinking.
Do you think that is a bigfactor in why you promoted so
quickly?
Cody Alford (23:39):
We'll see in the military, at least in the Marine
Corps.
Go ahead.
Bradley Roth (23:43):
Because I was gonna say, like you said, you
had this outside the boxthinking and you promote it
fast, but obviously themilitary, like, you know, you
step too far outta line, they'regonna put you right back in it,
right?
Yeah.
Cody Alford (23:53):
So the military, at least the Marine Corps, it's not
like, I'm a great Cody.
Alfred's a great guy.
Let's, let's bump him ahead ofthe crowd.
How it works is at youngerranks, up until I think the rank
of like E five, which is asergeant, you basically are
waiting for a score.
So if you get enough awards oryou do enough of these like
online tests, you can build upthe score and then you're just
(24:15):
ready for, excuse me, you'renumber to hit.
And if you have enough points,you can get that ranked the next
time promotion's available.
Well, at a young rank in themilitary, while people are
outside, you know, on theweekend, Getting shit faced.
I was doing these online tests.
One of my instructors like, Heydude, if you wanna get
promoted,
if you wanna, if you don't want to like have a,
like a shitty career, like dothe stuff that no one's doing
(24:37):
and you always win.
I'm like, sick, I'm gonna dothat.
And so, you know, I was takingthese online tests, I was
setting myself up for successbefore I even got to my very
first unit.
I was doing it when I was inschool, the infantry school on
the weekends.
Mm-hmm.
you know, I was never a brownnose.
That's like, not who I am, butI'm also not a follower.
I'm also not a peasant mind.
You know, like I didn't join themilitary just to get told what
(24:58):
to fucking do 24 7, right?
That's just not who I am.
And people who didn't promotefast, I'm not saying they're,
they joined to get told what todo, but I just know that there's
leaders and followers andthere's a time and place for me
to follow, you know, these greatmentors and leaders.
But I didn't come here to be inthe shadows.
I came here to mm-hmm to achievethings in, in my life.
These were a goal of mine.
(25:19):
This wasn't a, a by chance, I'mgonna join the military.
And so those promoted me.
I wouldn't say faster thannormal.
I just had scores at the timethat people didn't have.
And what also helped me out toois I, I graduated bootcamp as an
E three, which is a lancecorporal because I graduated
number one from bootcamp.
So you automatically get thisrank if you graduate number one.
(25:39):
And I did.
Number one through scores andyou have to do like a series of
like educational and disciplineboards.
And I, I, I smoked those and,you know, proved that I was
number one and it worked out forme.
So that set me up.
But really how it happens onceyou hit that rank of E five, you
have to be in that rank untillike maybe a minimum of two
years.
(26:01):
You know, you might have to bein this rank a minimum of a
certain amount of time beforeyou're eligible to even get
looked at.
Well, and then how the rankgoes, let's just say I have to
wait two years and now that twoyears is here, they might only
be promoting people and that twoyear period that came in on this
date forward, well I'm most ofthe time to so young.
I never met that date cuzthey're promoting fucking guys
(26:22):
from like the eighties, youknow, I'm like, damn dog.
This is crazy.
Yeah.
But what happened was theoutside the box thinking was, I
was you.
success leaves clues, and I knoweveryone hears that, but
everyone just, mm-hmm.
just literally denies themselvesof any truth of that comment.
And I was told by these seniorguys that I looked up to, if I
(26:45):
looked up to them, I'm gonnatake what they say as gold.
And they're like, dude, you haveto have diversity.
Have diversity.
I'm like, what is diversity?
You know, it's not the MichaelScott training from the office.
right?
Yeah.
Diversity is diversifying yourportfolio of experience and
education.
So many guys, especially in thespecial operations community, at
least that I grew up in, they'relike, I just wanna stay in a
(27:06):
team and be a shooter.
I'm like, that's great dude.
But then you're gonna have somedouche bag and charge you one
day and you're gonna be takingorders from them.
Mm-hmm.
and not everyone is a leader.
No matter if you got the rankor, or the experience or not.
That's just simply not true.
Not everyone is a leader.
I was taking billets that werepushing me outta my comfort
zone.
And in the special operationsworld, working joint billets
(27:27):
really sets you apart cuz itdiversified your experience in
your portfolio.
So I'm working on, in aoperations center at a younger
age, I'm working at a jointoperations center over here in
this country.
At a younger age, I'm takingthese opportunities that guys
didn't wanna do.
They'd rather go to these othercool guys schools, but I'm like,
man, I'm gonna be in charge ofmy unit one day.
Like I ain't trying to be in theMarine Corps 30 years before I
(27:51):
pick up that rank.
A lot of, a lot of these olderguys and I'm like, I have a
chance to actually become that.
So what do I need to do to go dothat?
And so with, you know, obviouslyawards that I received or my
performance evaluations causeI'm matched up against my peers,
all those things help me getpromoted.
And when you look at stats,right, when you look at the
(28:11):
black and white stats, I hadmore shit.
And so when it comes downunemotional opinions, you know,
did I measure up more or less ina peer group?
And, and 10 outta 10 I measuredup more.
I, I was never passed over on apromotion and that pissed off a
lot of people.
But then I looked around, I'mlike, you won't even get your
fucking haircut for a promotionphoto because marine, weird
(28:34):
dude, they make you like cutyour hair in like these stupid
haircuts.
And even in special operations,like we don't get a pass maybe
in our units a little bitlighter, a little laxer.
Mm-hmm.
But the Marine Corps promotes usnot special operations, not
marsoc.
And a lot of guys were such onetrick ponies, they couldn't see
the bigger picture.
I'm like, but they, and, and itshowed, you know, it showed
(28:54):
their performance, it showed intheir, in their ability to get
promoted.
And a lot of guys did not wantto get promoted because they
would lose their opportunity tobe on a team.
But I didn't wanna just be incharge of a.
I wanted to be in charge of acompany.
I didn't wanna just be in chargeof a company.
I wanted to be in charge of abattalion, which is all these
teams.
And I wanted to be in charge ofmy unit.
Like I have these goals anddreams.
So I, I aligned myself to thatpath and you know, being that
(29:16):
level of outside the boxthinker, you know, treating
people with respect.
You know, reputation goes a longway in any organization, but the
military's massive.
Cause there's a lot of falseprophets.
False deities.
False idols that people look upto.
And there's also a lot of peoplethat have street cred because
they're just genuinely goodpeople and they give a fuck
about each other and they'relooking out for people.
(29:37):
Cuz it's super easy to smashpeople in the military.
Yeah, it's super easy to like,like they just call it, drop the
book on'em.
Like, Hey, according to thisrule of regulation, you're
fucked up and you're done.
Like that isn't, what a dickthat was.
Never me.
There's a time and place for allthis shit, but.
most of the times there's a guyor a gal in that situation that
needs to get fucked up.
There's probably a communicationgap where someone's not telling
(29:59):
them they're fucked up beforethey're super fucked up.
And I noticed that a lot, evenin my old organization.
I'm, I just made sure I treatedpeople the way that I wanted to
be treated, you know?
Mm-hmm.
because why, why wouldn't I whywouldn't I train these men and
women with respect?
You know, was I a dick at times?
Absolutely, bro.
I'm in an organization thatliterally his whole sole purpose
(30:21):
is war fighting.
You know, we don't have time to,to, to be soft and to, to
nurture everyone and bitch,there's a time and place and to
execute something and I need youto go execute.
If you can't do that, I willfind someone who can't, you
know, that's expected in thattype of environment, right?
But was also expected in thattype of environment, which isn't
generally spoken about, is like,Hey man, how are you doing?
(30:42):
I remember having this oneleader who had just, he was a
great guy, great guy, but he wasa, a huge product of a very
toxic environment in themilitary.
And the military especially theMarine Corps is real, especially
special operations in the MarineCorps.
It's kind of stupid in regardsto hey, you're this rank, so
therefore you must be in aleadership position, which
(31:02):
that's the worst thing ever.
There's younger guys that, or,and gals that are more equipped
to literally lead than thesepeople that have been in maybe
10 years longer than you.
And, and it's, and it's, it is areally sad system.
A lot of the other specialmissions units that you hear out
there that the guys that don'texist, they operate on a
completely different system fora reason because they're not,
(31:25):
they're not stuck in this like,chop, chop, chop, like
Bradley Roth (31:28):
corporate
Cody Alford (31:28):
structure.
Yeah.
Yeah, man.
And, and that part was alwaystoxic.
And, and that brought peopleinto positions that they had no
responsibility to be in.
And you know, I remember havinga lot of opportunity to like,
just really mentor and leadthese people and help them get
up to par and actually give thema chance to fail.
A lot of people just let themfail vice, giving them a chance
to fail, setting them up, armingthem with the tools they need to
(31:50):
be successful vice.
Just trying to find the ways toget them out of there.
And that shit never flew withme.
And so I made sure I always paythat aspect forward and, and
give everyone the best shot theycould do.
And I think those things reallyhelped me get promoted.
Just in general.
Just good energy, good energyout, good energy in.
Man.
I wasn't a two piece of shit, solike I wasn't screwing people
over.
And so I was putting out goodthings into the universe, into
(32:11):
the environment, and those goodthings were coming back to me
tenfold and I just kept oncompounding those good things.
Not to receive anything inreturn, but just to, just to do,
because.
One thing you'll learn about themilitary, you'll notice about
the military, at least I do.
There's a lot of hurt peoplethere.
Mm-hmm.
you know, in all sorts ofaspects of life.
Whether it was prior to themilitary or younger in the
military or in their process ofranking in the military.
(32:33):
And people just wanna be fuckingrespected.
People just really wanna bechallenged and give an
opportunity to go fail.
And if you give someone anopportunity to go fail, dude,
they'll fucking crush it.
They'll either crush it and besuccessful, they'll crush it and
they'll fucking suck and fail.
But either way, now the onus ison them.
And there's a lot of time in themilitary where people don't even
give others an opportunity tolead to, mm-hmm.
(32:55):
to rise to their fullestpotential.
And it never made sense to me.
once you give people a chance tofail, right.
You give them a chance tosucceed.
But most of the times I, what Isaw in the military was people
only set up others to fail.
They're not giving them thetools, the opportunities, the
positions to rise, the the levelof responsibility they need as
young leaders or whatever leaderthey are to, to,
(33:17):
to,
to do something positive and make a name for
themselves.
And anyways, so I just made surethat when I had those
opportunities, that I paid thatforward.
And, and I did that because itmade sense to me and didn't make
sense to a lot of other people,but I'm not like other people.
So there
Bradley Roth (33:31):
you go.
Not most people.
And it's interesting what yousaid too, cuz I mean, I was, I
was actually very close tojoining the Marines and trying
to go officer post-college.
Turns out things would work outotherwise, but you know, It's
funny, you hear all kinds ofstuff about promotions.
Like I never, and I've talked toa lot of ex-military and stuff
like that, and you never hearabout like, oh, you can go take
(33:52):
classes to like help yourpromotion.
Right.
It always, they make it soundlike it's, you know, who's just
in the best shape or who is thesmartest and like these kinds of
things.
But the opportunities are there.
And like you said, noteveryone's a leader and, but
that doesn't mean everyone can'tbecome a leader.
It just means not everyone wantsto be a leader.
(34:14):
Like Right.
Big difference there.
Like, most people want to beled.
They don't want theresponsibility, they don't want
put in that extra work, but it'sthere if you want to become one.
Right?
Like we're not just, some peopleare kind of born as, you know,
have the characteristics ofnatural leaders, but for I think
most of the, the best ones it's,it's learned.
(34:36):
Agree with that.
Yeah,
Cody Alford (34:37):
yeah, for sure.
Cuz my leadership traits as ayoung man in the Marine Corps
was definitely not my leadershiptraits.
Towards the end of my career.
It was almost like a day.
And I thought I was good backthen.
But you don't know what youdon't know, and you'll never
know what you don't know.
And so through the process oftrial and error, you know,
getting your, getting your handsslapped or you know, or, or
making some type of advancement,you start to figure out, okay,
(35:00):
what does right look like?
And not necessarily to a book atextbook, but what does right
look like inside here?
What does right look like insidehere?
Right?
Because it's all common sense,it's all human interaction.
So if you can, if you can removethis like structure, this is how
you be a leader.
These are principles andguidelines.
They're not the finale, they'renot it, they're not everything.
That's what I never said aboutlike military, they call it pme,
(35:23):
professional military education.
You know, they all theseleadership courses and they
suck.
If they were, if they werereally good, if they were really
good, they'd be better leadersin the military.
But that's simply not true.
I get, I get messages all thetime on Instagram from like
young, young enlisted marines,even young officers that have
horrible, toxic leadership, andthey're asking me for guidance
(35:43):
and input.
And it's just so sad.
And this just tells me, you, youcan't teach leadership.
You can only lead leadership,you know, and that's big
difference.
Like you, there's 10 principlesand and characteristics to, to
plant seeds inside of people.
But you have to go a stepfurther.
You have to execute and you haveto show, you have to lead by
(36:04):
example.
And there's not a lot of peoplethat lead by example.
And there's a lot of ego tripsin these leadership positions,
and I'm sure that's anywhere inthe, in the world, but
especially in the military,there's a lot of these, I'm
better than you peasant becauseI'm this rank or I'm in this
position and you know, that's areal big tragedy.
But what do you do?
(36:26):
Yeah.
You know exactly what you do.
You make sure you're not thatperson if you don't wanna be
that person.
Mm-hmm.
yeah.
Bradley Roth (36:32):
You or you find a way to work within the system
and put yourself in thatposition, you know, like you
did.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
And I wanna talk about somethingelse that I found really
interesting when you were goingover your story about how when
you were getting out, you ha youwere having all, like, some of
the symptoms you described,people listening are probably
(36:53):
like, that's bizarre.
You know, like drooling or, youknow, freaking out from nothing
and ending up, you know, likeall these things that you said.
And it's interesting because itsounds like to me that like when
people are addicted to like adrug, they're addicted to that
chemical, right?
(37:13):
And that chemical response, it'sthe same thing.
Like when you experience stress,that's a chemical reaction
that's happening that's linkedto that, right?
And so when you experience thatover and over and over, you
become dependent on it.
And then you essentially soundslike you were just, you were
withdrawing from.
that chemical stress that youhad experienced for so many
(37:36):
years, do you feel like that'skind of what was going on and
then to kind of work throughthat?
You mentioned a little bit aboutthat, but was it more of like
medical kind of solutions tothat or like a mental spiritual
solution?
Cody Alford (37:52):
So the first part is before my body completely
started to shut down, there wasa lot of telltale signs.
I was taking all these likepower, we call'em ranger naps
for like I just need 20 secondsand I just like go pass out for
like body convulsing 20 seconds.
And I felt like I got enoughsleep to, to operate in like
another seven hours and I wastaking all these naps so my body
(38:13):
was shutting down along the way.
I just didn't put it alltogether until it just crumbled.
Was I addicted to stress?
I definitely didn't seek it out.
But when shit hit the fan, forlack of a better term, I was
laser focused and knew exactlywhat to do and if I didn't know
what to do, right?
I'm not saying I have to solveall the problems, but I knew
exactly what needed to happen.
And great thing about militaryis we have standard operating
(38:35):
procedures.
So when this happens, I knewexactly what to do and so does
my people.
That's what we train and that'swhat makes it such a powerful
force.
But I was, my body was shuttingdown with all this stress.
Like I was constantly tired.
I was constantly in like a fightor flight type of mentality.
I actually remember my lastdeployment to Iraq.
I'm in our operations center andlike watching, like all the war
(38:58):
happening on these like massivewall of TVs and my stress food
at the time, you know, was Oreosand frosting, bro.
I was like scooping, frostingthese Oreos just shoving them in
my mouth and wondering why I amlike shutting down, you know,
like It was like, it was likethe one thing that I was doing
to kind of keep my sanity.
(39:18):
And it was like almost a funnything because military is even
more funny cuz you we're like,oh, okay, okay friend, here's a
beer, have a dip.
You know, let's eat this shittyfood.
Like we, we think we'recomforting people.
We think we're doing the rightthing, but we're just poisoning
ourselves even more and more andmore.
Right?
It's, it's comical.
(39:39):
And I say that in a very weirdass way cuz it's exactly that.
It's weird, man.
Like, what we think we're doingto help ourselves, we're just
destroying ourselves.
But when the populist iseducated that way, well what do
you expect?
Right?
That's just how we deal withthis part of the job.
It's how it is.
And that became the norm, right?
And it's not how it is, butthat's how what we accepted
(40:01):
mm-hmm.
And so when I went from acompletely stressless to, to a
Stressless environment,Managing, you know, I went from
like, I needed like focus, laserfocus to like my A D H D kicked
in massively.
You know, I would say there's alarge majority of, of special
operations veterans that areactive duty, special operations
members that are diagnosed withA D H D.
(40:22):
You know, they expect us to beconstantly in a state of fight
or flight for six plus months.
Then we come home and we'redealing with stupidity like
formations or I'm getting introuble that I, I don't have a
fucking haircut properly.
Like, bitch, you just sent meoff the war.
Fuck six months, have me do allsorts of crazy shit, which I
didn't really complain about,but you're, you're bitching at
me cuz my, my hair is notretardedly haircut cutted.
(40:43):
Like the, I'm getting in troublefor this.
You're asking me why didso-and-so get a D U I on the
weekend?
I don't know.
Did you call him?
Like, what stupidity world do Ilive in?
And that's really thefrustrating thing about that.
That's like, you take thiswarrior.
you know, and you don't shovthem in the garden.
You show'em in a fucking loonybin and you're like, Hey, paint.
(41:05):
And you're like, what?
What about all the other veryimportant things I need to do?
And it was just crazy.
But once again, that could justbe my perception.
You know?
I, I get it.
I have my own viewpoints and Iverbalize them.
But I definitely did not seekthe stress.
I didn't want to, but I did seekthe feeling of being alive.
Mm-hmm.
And so at a time when I startedto crash, I thought I needed to
(41:27):
go do like, I, like, like Ineeded to steal a car, you know,
rob a bank.
Just something crazy.
Something outland.
Yeah.
Something intense.
Something intense because Ididn't, I felt dead inside.
I felt so numb, mainly cuz I, Ihated myself and low on my own
self.
And I was hooked up in all theseuppers.
I remember going to my doctoronce, I'm like, bro, gimme
(41:48):
something.
I'm gonna go do fucking meth.
You know?
I was like, so serious.
And some people might laugh.
He'd be like, Hey, that's alittle intense.
I was desperate.
I was desperate to survive and Icould not even function on my
day-to-day basis, and it wasaffecting the people that I was
responsible for.
I couldn't even do my job, norwas I even interested in my job
anymore.
I went from a, this tacticalleadership position to this like
(42:10):
made up desk job.
That was a promotion, but it wasjust like this completely
different environment and Iwasn't above that.
Clearly.
I've had multiple of these jobsthroughout my career, but I went
from a hundred mile an hour toliterally zero.
I mean, I'm working 18 plushours a day.
I barely saw sunlight ondeployment.
I'm watching my guys get inharm's way.
I'm dealing with, you know, nextlevel bureaucracy on the phone,
(42:33):
trying to get support for rewardthat they sent us to that I
can't get you.
Trying to get assets, trying toget equipment, trying to get
supplies.
And all I'm getting isresistance because it's fucking
ice cream time at their childfacility.
You know, all these stupid shitthat we do, right?
They want to make these policiesand these procedures, but they
put the men and women on theobjective to go accomplish the
(42:55):
mission, but then they don'tfucking support them.
And that alone is frustrating.
Cause why am I there?
Why did you gimme live ammo?
Why did you gimme access to allthis training to do this if
you're not gonna support me?
And that level of psychologicalstress also kind of big, played
a big role in this because Ijust kept like peeking behind
the curtain and realized howstupid all this shit is in the
first place.
And getting back, getting on allthese uppers I was on.
(43:20):
Adderall, like large doses ofadderalls and large doses of
provigil, which provigil theygive you for like high.
Basically you're doing like athree day patrol so you don't
sleep and get killed.
They give you that shit.
It's like a molecule away frommeth.
And Dextrin, which is the way Iwas explained, dexo.
Dextrin is 30% of Adderall goesto your brain, where Dexedrine
(43:40):
70% goes to your brain.
Dexo was really huge with pilotsback in the eighties, eighties,
early nineties with, with, andthey like banded because like,
it was like the cocaine of theworld.
They were just like losing theirminds, all this shit and mm-hmm.
I'm on all this stuff and I'mstill passing out.
I'm still slurring my words.
You know, I was sounderstimulated with life, my
(44:01):
eye.
I had to go to eye therapy cuzmy eyes, if you were talking to
me, my eyes would just cross.
You know, everything about mybody was just shutting down and
I was beyond desperate for anyform of help, assistance.
And, you know, coming from thatplace, being a super senior guy,
I've been there from day one,you know, I got pictures on the
wall.
Like I'm a plank owner for everyaspect of that organization.
(44:23):
And I'm asking for help andpeople are looking at me like I
have a unicorn spike.
Spike outta my head.
Mm-hmm.
Tell me it's not that bad.
You know?
And I'm like, you think I wouldbe crying to you any this
setting if it wasn't desperate?
And I think all that played init too, cuz I just felt like I,
I wasn't.
(44:44):
and throughout the wholeprocess, you know, I, I felt
alone for the most part.
Granted, I had a really goodcommand climate towards the end
when I was able to like,communicate and articulate the
stuff.
I had some senior leaders thatlooked out for me and made sure
that I got what I needed, maybewith some resistance, but they,
to me, they did the right thing.
I was extremely grateful for it.
Very supportive.
But in the beginning it was notthat case, and that just added
(45:06):
to that level of stress, whichis what I did not need in my
life.
So it's kinda this like a bigspitball steam ball thing.
So, you know, a lot of it wasjust from like system overload.
So much stress in my lifecausing all these other issues.
And once you start working onone, you realize there's 20
other things.
And I remember going to ourtraumatic brain injury clinic
(45:26):
after that deployment,specifically for Adderall, and
to get my sleep fixed.
That was it.
I just wanted Adderall and Iwanted my sleep fix.
Then I found out that, oh, hey,I had X, Y, and Z, all these
other issues.
Then as I started to addressthose issues, My body just began
to shut down more and more andmore as I started to actually be
aware that, oh shit, I can'tcontinue to act like a robot.
(45:49):
I'm a human and I'm just likedestroying my mind, my body, and
whatever left is of my spirit.
Bradley Roth (45:56):
Wow.
Yeah, I feel like a lot ofpeople can relate to that, but
on like a much lower level, youknow, like burnout and stress
and coping mechanisms and notfeeling like you have anyone
there to kind of help youthrough it and that sort of
thing.
Especially high achievers,people who are put a lot of
pressure on their themselves,quote unquote hard chargers and
(46:18):
people building businesses andstuff.
And so I think it's, you know,obviously you got to a point
that was kind of, I think, waybeyond, but a lot of people
experience, but I think a lot ofpeople experience burnout.
On some level and it's like thefurther you deplete that tank,
the harder it's gonna be to getback to normal.
Right.
To get back to baseline if, ifyou even can.
(46:38):
Right.
And so you kind of switchedgears hardcore.
You went to this van life out inthe wilderness and started
spending a lot of time withyourself.
And that concludes part one ofthe special two part episode
with Cody offered.
If you guys enjoyed this one,you are really going to like
part two.
(46:59):
For Cody talks about how thingsreally turned around.
Plant medicine.
Uh, all kinds of stuff.
And he goes on one of the mostepic, inspiring monologues that
I have ever had on the, not mostpeople podcasts.
So make sure you tune in for thenext one.
You're not going to want to missit.
As always, if you got value outof this, please share it with
someone who you think willreally get something out of it
(47:22):
as well.
And always remember, don't bemost people.
Hey everyone.
Welcome back to another episodeof the Not Most People podcast.
This is your host, Bradley, andthis is the show for those
allergic to mediocrity groupthink and following the status
quo.
And before we get into today'sepisode, I would just like to
share with you guys my one askthat I always mention at the
beginning of each episode, andthat is, if you get value out of
(00:53):
this show, whether it's thisepisode, whether it's other
episodes, if you learnsomething, if you have a
takeaway that helps you thinkdifferently, if you're
entertained, just that you helpme out and return that value by
sharing it with a friend orleaving a rating or review on
whatever platform you'relistening on.
This show is here purely to helpyou guys become not most people.
(01:15):
And that means being what?
People are not, which is happy,healthy, wealthy, growing, and
free.
That's the mission.
I don't do any ads as long asyou guys continue to help me
grow.
And I appreciate you right nowlistening.
You know, this show started fromscratch.
I didn't have a big following oranything like that, so I truly
appreciate every one of youlistening today.
(01:36):
And then for everything else,not most people, we got going on
beyond the podcast, make sureyou check out all the links in
the show notes where you canfind all that good stuff.
But that's it.
We're gonna get right intotoday's episode.
I have a special guest, CodyAlford.
Joining me today.
Cody, welcome to the show.
What's up man?
Yeah, I'm excited.
So, and you guys will see why.
(01:57):
So I'm gonna give you a littlebit of background on Cody.
He is a father entrepreneur,motivational speaker, author,
and retired Marsoc Raider, whoserved 15 years in the military
with a handful of toursoverseas.
He also holds the title of theyoungest Leader to ever reach
the enlisted rank of E eight inthe Marines.
And then since retirement, he'sexpanded into becoming a
(02:20):
self-help coach, leading hismindset mastery community called
Defy Tribe, which we're gonnaget into, as well as
motivational speaking andgrowing his apparel brand called
We Defy the Norm.
And Defy conformity is thetagline behind his clothing
brand and also serves as theethos for his coaching tribe
defied tribe.
(02:41):
So when you hear that, those ofyou listening sounds a lot like
not most people, and I remember.
I don't remember how or whenexactly, but came across, Cody
came across you on Instagram awhile back and I said, oh man, I
gotta get this guy on someday.
And then I, I might have reachedout or something and, and got
lost in the dms.
I can't remember.
(03:01):
But then we ended up having amutual friend who connected us,
and now you're here.
And I would say of any brand ormovement out there that I've
seen, like we're familiar withlines, not sheep, kind of a
similar idea, but defy tribe anddefy conformity defy the norm.
I was like, man, that's not,most people just said in a
different way.
So I want to ask you though,before that people hear what you
(03:25):
did in the, in the military.
For those of you who don't know,MARSOC is like Marine Special
Operations, right?
So you guys are the Marinebranch that works with, you
know, kind of these higher levelspecial operations from other
branches of the military.
And so people are probablylistening like, oh, okay.
He was this badass.
He rose through the ranks fastin the Marines and then came out
(03:46):
and just started defy the normand things took off from there.
But I'm guessing it wasn't quitethat simple or in that straight
of a line
Cody Alford (03:58):
that that's, that's an accurate statement.
It was definitely not as sexy asa transition as you made that
sound.
Yeah.
So, MARSOC basically was createdback in 2006 and we became the
special operations branch of theMarine Corps working alongside
Navy Sills, army Green Berets,and other other unit special
operations units across theplatforms.
(04:19):
What a great experience andopportunity to do all that
stuff.
It was definitely challengingand very fulfilling.
A lot of high caliber men andwomen, you know, working
alongside and really checkingthat box of like all the things
you wanted to do in the MarineCorps or the military, and.
You know, some people think theywere always a tribute war and
combat.
And that's, that's, none ofthose reasons are why I joined
(04:39):
in the first place.
I wanted to shoot the cool guns,do the cool training, get the
cool gear, be around the, thesebadass people that I was, you
know, always watching on tv.
And to be part of that one daywas just super epic.
And like you mentioned, I, Ipromoted very quickly through
the ranks.
There's actually two E eightranks.
There's a rank called a FirstSergeant and a master's
sergeant.
Mm-hmm I would say master'ssergeant.
(05:00):
There was a lot of firstsergeants that kind of promote
fast too, depending on kind ofwhat their background is.
But for the career field that Iwas in, it was extremely fast.
And not only did I promote fast,I was able to obtain these
leadership positions.
Marlo is full of a lot of seniorguys and and gals, so just
because you have the ringdoesn't necessarily mean you'll
be in the position.
So it's, it's very thickcompetition cuz there's just a
(05:21):
bunch of high caliber peoplethere.
And, I had a bunch of greatmentors and leaders that looked
out for me along the way thateducated me, taught me, held me
accountable, looked out for me,most importantly, cuz you know,
yours truly was not this likewater walker.
A lot of people think I was, butyou know, I made a lot of
mistakes.
Um mm-hmm I'm a very verbalperson and that has definitely
(05:41):
caused some ripples along mypath in life.
But that's just who I am.
And very fortunate enough tohave mentors and leaders who can
see bigger than a face valueresistance that they might be
observing and really took meunderneath their wing and, and
helped guide me and helped meaccountable through these years.
And, you know, I reallyattribute a lot of that to my
success because, you know, ifthey weren't looking out for me,
(06:04):
I could have easily gotsquashed.
That's one really negative slabof the military is like, there
are rules and regulations andmm-hmm.
it's very easy to it's very easyto have someone else literally
wreck your career.
Right?
So it's, it's, it's not like youcan just put your little
complaint ticket in the box andyour problems would be solved.
But, you know, I also, a lot ofpolitics.
A lot of politics, but I alsotell people too, like the rules
(06:25):
and regulations exist for bothsides and both parties.
So, I mean, there was plenty oftimes that I, I thought and
stood up for myself where, youknow, I get, I get calls or
messages from people that are inthe service today.
Like, well, how did you do that?
Or You, you would've got introuble.
I'm like, no, I wouldn't have, Iwasn't breaking any rules, bro.
Like, Hey, this, I can, youknow, go up the chain of command
if I want to.
And I did that multiple times,whether it's pay conflict with,
(06:46):
you know, or allegations.
I mean, the military is a veryinteresting system.
Indeed.
You know, it's a lot of.
It's a lot of opportunity, butnot a lot of freedom.
It's a lot of restriction, a lotof constraints lot of conforming
to the masses.
And at a young age in themilitary, I just never, that
wasn't really my thing.
(07:07):
I, I didn't really enjoy it.
Luckily for me, throughout mymilitary career, I was in these
small units that were like,go-getter guys that are like
finding a way and, you know,pushing the envelope, pushing
the boundaries.
So I was very fortunate withinthose regards, and a lot of
people did not have that sameopportunity for whatever
reasons.
But I definitely did not allowanything else, kind of keep me
(07:28):
from the path that I wanted totake.
And then, you know, you talkedabout transitioning from the
military to like creating my, mybusiness and my, my apparel
brand.
Really the, it's really a, in areflection of my own mindset of
the things that I, I believe inand I stand for more than a
peril brand.
My coaching group didn't come upuntil years later, but that time
(07:51):
at, I retired at 15 years.
I had all sorts of cognitivefunction issues.
I, I was basically being treatedfor all my traumatic brain
injuries.
I had all these sleeping issues.
I was having uncontrollableadrenaline spikes ba drooling on
myself, passing out all thetime.
I'd get lo I couldn't evennavigate with my iPhone.
Wow.
Yeah, I, I would be late to workall the time cause I would be
(08:12):
in, up down the street from myhouse crying, not knowing how I
got there.
Falling off my motorcycles in a,in a gas station parking lot.
Like my, my life was kind ofgoing downhill.
Well that's cause I was avoidingthe telltale signs that were
leading up to it cuz I had goalsand I had dreams.
And there's always that fear if,if I stop to get these things
checked, I'm going to miss outon these opportunities.
(08:32):
Well, lo and behold, lookingback at my life all the times
that I pushed aside my wellnessto go pursue something, those
pursuings never really workedout for me.
Whether I never got anopportunity or it just, it
wasn't the right timing, youknow, external for myself and my
desires.
And then when those flood gatesopened up for the opportune
time, I was just garbage.
(08:55):
I had a very negative attitude.
I was just, I was feelingbroken.
Had this victim mindset,basically went from like a, he a
hundred miles an hour to likezero from here to zero.
And I really lost a lot aboutmyself.
And when I was faced with thethe reality of like, Hey dude,
you can no longer be in, in themilitary or this job, it hit me
(09:16):
because my vision as a young kidto, to want to be a Marine, you
know, it ended, you know, themilitary career, was it?
Mm-hmm.
And from that military career, Ihad other, other visions to
like, I wanted to go contractwith the government agency and I
wanted to kind of pursue this,this career field and this path.
but everything stopped once Irealized that, dude, I, I can no
(09:37):
longer do this job, period.
And so that's when my lifereally took a change and a turn,
turn of events.
And it was about, so 2018 Iretired.
So earlier that year, my wife, Iwas in Florida doing some my
brain treatment before I getout, making sure I'm like, it
can be the best conditionspossible before I get out and
kind of kicked out into the realworld.
(09:59):
My wife asked me if I had likesix, you know, 4, 4, 6 weeks
left to live.
Like what would I want to do?
And I could not come up with ananswer.
And the only thing that waskinda like on my, on the tip of
my tongue was, I don't know,travel around and take pictures
cuz I had no idea what I wantedto do.
I had no idea who I wanted tobe.
I had no idea who I was.
Mm-hmm.
like, I was scared of my ownshadow at this point.
(10:19):
My, my level of confidence justin overall life was extremely
diminished.
I mean, when you, when youcouldn't even boil water
successfully, that really took abig chunk out of my ego and
chunk outta me and my, myindividuality and my power.
And so we really started on thatprocess.
So our main thing was gettingoutta the military was like,
(10:39):
okay, I'm not gonna have thepension that I thought I was.
Luckily through the timeframethat I was in, I was able to
retire early with my, with someof my pension coming from the
background that I had.
And so we're like, okay, this isnot a lot of money by any means.
So people who think thatmilitary pension is a lot, you
are absolutely delusional, yeah.
It's not a lot of money, but itwas enough for us to sell all of
(11:02):
our stuff, live well below ourmeans, and we invested that
money into a conversion van.
So we bought this 20 20 18, 2017 Dodge ProMaster van and it
was decked out.
It wasn't like the finalproduct, but it was already
kinda like, had the, thebatteries and the solar and the
kitchenette and the, and themakeshift bed.
And we're like, we're gonna, andso we decided to continue to get
(11:26):
rid of all of our stuff, pay offour debt, and be able to live
within this like, very smallpaycheck.
And that gave me the space andmy wife, the space to really,
for her to support me, butreally for me to have no stress,
no responsibility, because I, Irealized that in the military,
I.
part of my cognitive issues wasfrom the constant amounts of
stress.
(11:46):
Mm-hmm.
I realized I could, I couldoperate at a high level of
stress, but low levels of stressor, or no traces of stress, I
just could not function.
And then having those ups anddowns and these cortisol issues
with these hormone imbalances,man, I was just a shipwreck man.
It was just episode sinkingship.
So I need a zero responsibility.
I need to no timelines.
I need to know anything to beresponsible of other than just
(12:09):
surviving every day.
And that van gave us thisopportunity to do that.
And we did that for about threeand a half years.
Well, along this process, youknow, I, I went to this device
that people hide from, you know,because it looks scary to talk
to yourself.
And I was just like, man, I'mreally going through a lot of
shit right now.
And then I went like this and Icreated YouTube videos, And then
(12:30):
I posted those and I went likethis and went on Instagram and
just told people how I wasfeeling.
And, you know, along the way indoing that, people will start to
resonate with like what I wassaying, they're like, oh shit,
this guy with this crazy, gnarlybackground, he's suffering right
now.
And you know, I was able toarticulate it in a way where I
was connecting with people and,and then I just kinda like kept
this momentum up and did exactlywhat I said I was gonna do in
(12:53):
the van taking pictures.
We're driving, we're travelingaround, checking out all these
places in the US and I, I havehad this like idea, I'm like,
you know, I'm gonna start this,this company brand.
And at the time I really didn'tknow the vision, right?
So my vision back in 2018definitely is not the vision I
have for myself, my brand, oranything I associate with today.
But it was a starting point andit wasn't perfect and I didn't
(13:14):
have it all figured out.
I just like, you know what, thisscares me.
I feel called to do this, so I'mgoing to just take a stab at it.
And.
Being a veteran and doinganything with a t-shirt is like,
oh my God.
It's like doing something withcoffee.
It's like, you know, at the timeit's like every veteran has
this, this, this shirt company,but I wanted more than a shirt
company.
I, I wanted to like a way toexpress myself, you know, it was
(13:35):
my own form of art and it wasmy, it was my ability to, to
share what I was feeling andwhat I stand for and believe in,
and people were.
And so I, I started my companyEdify the norm where I had no
money.
I had just an idea and I wasgoing to Instagram and basically
anyone who was doing what Iwanted to do, I was messing to
them.
And I get some responses here.
(13:57):
I get some guidance here.
I get some pricing here and I'mlike, oh my God, I'm trying to
process all this stuff.
And so I started doing a dropshipping, which really cost me
no money other than to my host,host my website.
Yeah.
And I started slinging thesedesigns from my van, you know,
online traveling realm.
You know, Hey guys, this is whatI'm doing.
Hey, check out my new shirt.
You know, this is kinda like thephase of my life cuz they've all
(14:19):
been a, a visual representationof like what I was going through
in my transition because man, itwas, it was lonely.
A lot of times.
I lost a lot of friends that Ithought I had, you know, and
when I started to share myemotions and feelings, God, I
might as, I mean, I might aswell like spit on like a, on, on
like a statue of like Jesus orsomething.
Dude.
It was like horrible.
(14:39):
People were like losing theirminds that I had these things
called feelings and emotions,and most importantly an opinion,
you know?
And, and I'm like, I can never,I, I cannot be doing something
more aligned to what I'msupposed to be doing than what
I'm doing now.
Because I realized that when youtry to stand out of the crowd,
not even try to, when you justdo your own thing, it triggers
(15:00):
so many people.
Oh, yeah.
And because they, they, they'relike, you, you shouldn't feel
that way in, in the militaryworld.
There's a lot of these hardchargers, right?
That they're like suffer insilence.
You know?
It's the pain you're goingthrough is your weakness leaving
your body like all these, likemental.
mind work being things that to aa, a program, program, mine,
(15:24):
which I was there before too.
Mm-hmm.
it makes sense.
But to someone who's, who'sbreaking away from that system
and finding this autonomy ofself, right.
This own self-power andempowerment.
You have to rewrite the playbookor you're just bringing that
world into your new world andcalling it your norm.
And that was the last thing Iwanted to do.
Mm-hmm.
And the more people pushed backon me and like, hated on me and
(15:46):
like talked shit about me on UYouTube, dude, I got called
Laura Sots of random stuff, youknow, I got called stolen Valor
once on my YouTube channel.
And dude, I literally cried forprobably like a week straight.
like I was just busted andbroken.
I'm like, I'm just being honestand truthful and these people
are just so, internet people areso mean.
And at the time I, I was not incontrol of my emotions.
(16:08):
I wasn't in control of myself.
I had no, no defense system thatguarded me through the level of
confidence I had.
None of that stuff.
And they were like soft people,special operations people talk
like this.
You're a liar.
You're so, I'm like, oh my God.
You can't have feelings, youknow?
And people are say, be genuineand you, and you become genuine
and you just get docked for it.
(16:29):
But that's the price that youbear and that's the price to
pay.
Mm-hmm.
you break free to defy the norm.
And I just continued on withthat.
And.
Our van life was honestly thebest thing we ever did for
ourselves.
Man, it, I rejected nature.
Cuz I, I, I was a reconnaissanceand as a sniper the majority of
my career.
(16:49):
So I was always out in the fieldin the bush and the elements
getting rained on in the cold,being miserable, watching shit
through glass for days.
And last thing I wanted to dowhen I got out was to be
miserable.
I wanted no discomfort in mylife.
Mm-hmm.
So that wasn't really payingoff, you know, that wasn't
advancing my life.
Even at the time, I reallydidn't even know what to
(17:09):
advance.
So I really felt called to dothis self-work, you know, work
in my mind, my body and myspirit.
All these things which I had noconnection to anymore.
And being out and exposed tonature that, that freedom to, I
mean, we could just park our.
You know, in the middle ofnowhere we would drive our van
into like b l m land and youknow, we would stay out there
for as many days as we had, youknow, water and most times we'd
(17:32):
bring extra water so we couldstay extra days.
And that's where I would go findmyself.
I would just sit out there inthis complete silence and allow
nature to just kinda like takeme in and like open me back up
and help expose what I wasfighting so much.
I was rejecting what wasactually my salvation and nature
was a huge part of that.
And it makes sense because mybody was fine being toxic and
(17:55):
negative and sad because it wascontrolling me.
Yeah.
But for me to want to change mylife, my body was putting up
such resistance.
Like no, we don't go to nature.
We hate that shit.
You know, like, let's just belittle, let's just get high all
day in the van and make music.
Which I did a Cuz that was mycoping mechanism.
And so, you know, nature andthat I, that being exposed there
(18:15):
and not being in one place, youknow, more than, you know, x
amount of days or weeks at atime, it's just constantly
changing things up.
So there was no comfort allowedin my life and I really needed
all that.
And got to the point where wereally doubled down on
everything with the, with thebrand.
We, we realized that hey, welove vanlife.
It's really freeing.
(18:37):
But I remember I was doing mytattoo apprenticeship in
Tennessee and we're lookingaround, our friends are about to
buy us a new property.
They lived in like about a five,a cabin home.
And we're like, we want someland.
I'm like, I'm not gonna get thismoney for this land tattoo
apprenticing for the rest of mylife.
Or being even a tattoo artistlike in the timeframe that I
wanted.
Right?
There's plenty of tattoo artiststhat make a lot of stuff, but I
(18:58):
wasn't looking to have anothercareer starting from ground
zero.
I was looking to take what Iknow already and just double
down on it and, and createsomething big from it.
Because I already hadexperience, and at the time I
was really having a hard timecomparing, you know, what
military experience can reallyhelp me push forward in my life.
No one gives a shit about thewar, the combat, the accolade,
(19:20):
accolades, the, the medals.
No one cares about that shit,but what rule of value did I
have that people did care about?
and being able to relate topeople and to articulate
feelings that brought themtogether and to boost them up
and help them change theirlives.
I'm like, well, shit, that's it.
And so we doubled down on, onthe weedy the norm, cuz we're
like, do we want to go?
We want to homestead.
And so that's when I reached outto my business mentor Tim.
(19:43):
And I'm like, Hey dude, I, I'mready to buy some inventory.
I'm ready to like, take thisthing to the next level.
And we just kind of kept ongoing with it.
And over the years, you know, wejust kept on pushing ourselves
out of our comfort zone evenmore and more and more to kind
of get to where we're at now.
And where we're at now, it'sliterally just a beginning
because we're in a whole newphase of life.
Because once we got here, we hadto become something different.
(20:03):
To even stay here, to to, to aafford where we live, to, to
afford the lifestyle we have tomake the impact we have, we had
to become different people.
And, you know, through thatjourney, I mean, I've done years
of plant medicine and, andself-work and self, you know,
all types of different personaldevelopment along the way.
Things I never did before.
But I was also in the militarydoing things a certain way.
(20:25):
Now I have this opportunity tofigure out who is Cody Alfred,
what do I wanna do with my life?
You know, what makes me happy?
What don't I like?
And nothing can stop me but me.
You know, I don't have tosubmit, Hey, I'm thinking about
going to do this plant medicinehealing journey here at Higher
Command.
Will you sign my approvalpaperwork?
No denied.
I don't, I don't have to worryabout that.
(20:45):
Hey, I think I'm gonna startthis business.
Will, will you prove off?
Will you bless off on it?
I didn't have to do thatanymore.
I just simply had to ask myself,is this worth it to you?
If it's a yes, then I'm going.
If it's no, then I'm not.
And that was a new experiencefor me.
You know, even being this likesuper resilient you know,
outside the box tanker and, andactioner in the military.
(21:06):
Being free now to do literallyanything and everything I wanted
to do, it was a whole new world.
And you know, along this way.
So we got the par, we got themindset brand reify the norm.
And then, you know, about a yearand a half ago, I started my co
online coaching group to FiveTribe where I've been taking
these lessons and principles andthese mindset shifts to go from
the top to, to hit rock bottomand to pull myself back up and
(21:28):
to keep on creating things I'mnot stopping, right?
Unlocking and unleashing mypower within.
And I, and I share that withpeople who are serious about
investing in themselves becausethat's it.
You have to invest in yourself.
And you know, part of ourtagline is the fight conformity,
invest in yourself becausepeople think it's like some
hokey pokey stuff, but you haveto ask yourself.
What's hokey Pokey doing?
(21:49):
Nothing with your life.
Not living the life you want to.
That sounds pretty hokey to me,especially when you know you
can, but who do you have to becalm to go do those things?
And over the past four years ofbeing outta military, I've been
coming this, like thissuperhero, my own personal
superhero, my own personallegend, building myself back up,
doing the work that I know Ineed to do in all aspects of my
(22:09):
life so I can get to warm outtoday.
So I can speak with confidenceand I can truly impact people
with my gift that I have andstop comparing my shit to anyone
else's out there and, and justdo what I know I'm called to do.
And that alone is like thissense of empowerment that I
haven't had in a very long time.
And so, but I never would've gotthere if I didn't do the shit
that scared me.
You know?
I had a, I went right, I wentagainst the grain.
(22:33):
I remember getting a call.
My friend worked at a, an oldworkmate of mine.
He worked for this agency, thisgovernment agency that I wanted
to go work for.
I remember him.
He called me, he's like, Heydude, I hear you're getting
ready to retire.
I would love to fast track yourpacket, you know, to get you in
selection, blah, blah, blah.
This type of stuff.
I'm like, wipe and draw off myface.
I just woke up in my, my 98 FordRanger outside, cuz I sold my
(22:53):
dream truck to pay off billsbefore I got in the military.
I'm like, Hey dude, this is adream come true, but I have to
say no.
Mm-hmm.
you know, so like, so it's notlike it was just an easy
decision like, Hey, I, I'm gonnaput the gun down for the rest of
my life.
It was hard every day, every dayI felt like inadequate of a man.
Every day I felt like I was apussy because I wasn't going to
do these hard things and suitingup effort battle again with my
friends that were doing thisjob.
(23:13):
You know, I, I felt like, howare they there and why am I not
there?
You know, what all these otherthings to feel fulfilled in
life.
And so it was a big challengealong the way, but man,
everything I've done was for areason.
I'm extremely grateful for it.
Wow.
Bradley Roth (23:28):
what a story.
There's, there's like a dozenthings that I could kind of go
into from that.
But you mentioned you're outsidethe box thinking.
Do you think that is a bigfactor in why you promoted so
quickly?
Cody Alford (23:39):
We'll see in the military, at least in the Marine
Corps.
Go ahead.
Bradley Roth (23:43):
Because I was gonna say, like you said, you
had this outside the boxthinking and you promote it
fast, but obviously themilitary, like, you know, you
step too far outta line, they'regonna put you right back in it,
right?
Yeah.
Cody Alford (23:53):
So the military, at least the Marine Corps, it's not
like, I'm a great Cody.
Alfred's a great guy.
Let's, let's bump him ahead ofthe crowd.
How it works is at youngerranks, up until I think the rank
of like E five, which is asergeant, you basically are
waiting for a score.
So if you get enough awards oryou do enough of these like
online tests, you can build upthe score and then you're just
(24:15):
ready for, excuse me, you'renumber to hit.
And if you have enough points,you can get that ranked the next
time promotion's available.
Well, at a young rank in themilitary, while people are
outside, you know, on theweekend, Getting shit faced.
I was doing these online tests.
One of my instructors like, Heydude, if you wanna get
promoted,
if you wanna, if you don't want to like have a,
like a shitty career, like dothe stuff that no one's doing
(24:37):
and you always win.
I'm like, sick, I'm gonna dothat.
And so, you know, I was takingthese online tests, I was
setting myself up for successbefore I even got to my very
first unit.
I was doing it when I was inschool, the infantry school on
the weekends.
Mm-hmm.
you know, I was never a brownnose.
That's like, not who I am, butI'm also not a follower.
I'm also not a peasant mind.
You know, like I didn't join themilitary just to get told what
(24:58):
to fucking do 24 7, right?
That's just not who I am.
And people who didn't promotefast, I'm not saying they're,
they joined to get told what todo, but I just know that there's
leaders and followers andthere's a time and place for me
to follow, you know, these greatmentors and leaders.
But I didn't come here to be inthe shadows.
I came here to mm-hmm to achievethings in, in my life.
These were a goal of mine.
(25:19):
This wasn't a, a by chance, I'mgonna join the military.
And so those promoted me.
I wouldn't say faster thannormal.
I just had scores at the timethat people didn't have.
And what also helped me out toois I, I graduated bootcamp as an
E three, which is a lancecorporal because I graduated
number one from bootcamp.
So you automatically get thisrank if you graduate number one.
(25:39):
And I did.
Number one through scores andyou have to do like a series of
like educational and disciplineboards.
And I, I, I smoked those and,you know, proved that I was
number one and it worked out forme.
So that set me up.
But really how it happens onceyou hit that rank of E five, you
have to be in that rank untillike maybe a minimum of two
years.
(26:01):
You know, you might have to bein this rank a minimum of a
certain amount of time beforeyou're eligible to even get
looked at.
Well, and then how the rankgoes, let's just say I have to
wait two years and now that twoyears is here, they might only
be promoting people and that twoyear period that came in on this
date forward, well I'm most ofthe time to so young.
I never met that date cuzthey're promoting fucking guys
(26:22):
from like the eighties, youknow, I'm like, damn dog.
This is crazy.
Yeah.
But what happened was theoutside the box thinking was, I
was you.
success leaves clues, and I knoweveryone hears that, but
everyone just, mm-hmm.
just literally denies themselvesof any truth of that comment.
And I was told by these seniorguys that I looked up to, if I
(26:45):
looked up to them, I'm gonnatake what they say as gold.
And they're like, dude, you haveto have diversity.
Have diversity.
I'm like, what is diversity?
You know, it's not the MichaelScott training from the office.
right?
Yeah.
Diversity is diversifying yourportfolio of experience and
education.
So many guys, especially in thespecial operations community, at
least that I grew up in, they'relike, I just wanna stay in a
(27:06):
team and be a shooter.
I'm like, that's great dude.
But then you're gonna have somedouche bag and charge you one
day and you're gonna be takingorders from them.
Mm-hmm.
and not everyone is a leader.
No matter if you got the rankor, or the experience or not.
That's just simply not true.
Not everyone is a leader.
I was taking billets that werepushing me outta my comfort
zone.
And in the special operationsworld, working joint billets
(27:27):
really sets you apart cuz itdiversified your experience in
your portfolio.
So I'm working on, in aoperations center at a younger
age, I'm working at a jointoperations center over here in
this country.
At a younger age, I'm takingthese opportunities that guys
didn't wanna do.
They'd rather go to these othercool guys schools, but I'm like,
man, I'm gonna be in charge ofmy unit one day.
Like I ain't trying to be in theMarine Corps 30 years before I
(27:51):
pick up that rank.
A lot of, a lot of these olderguys and I'm like, I have a
chance to actually become that.
So what do I need to do to go dothat?
And so with, you know, obviouslyawards that I received or my
performance evaluations causeI'm matched up against my peers,
all those things help me getpromoted.
And when you look at stats,right, when you look at the
(28:11):
black and white stats, I hadmore shit.
And so when it comes downunemotional opinions, you know,
did I measure up more or less ina peer group?
And, and 10 outta 10 I measuredup more.
I, I was never passed over on apromotion and that pissed off a
lot of people.
But then I looked around, I'mlike, you won't even get your
fucking haircut for a promotionphoto because marine, weird
(28:34):
dude, they make you like cutyour hair in like these stupid
haircuts.
And even in special operations,like we don't get a pass maybe
in our units a little bitlighter, a little laxer.
Mm-hmm.
But the Marine Corps promotes usnot special operations, not
marsoc.
And a lot of guys were such onetrick ponies, they couldn't see
the bigger picture.
I'm like, but they, and, and itshowed, you know, it showed
(28:54):
their performance, it showed intheir, in their ability to get
promoted.
And a lot of guys did not wantto get promoted because they
would lose their opportunity tobe on a team.
But I didn't wanna just be incharge of a.
I wanted to be in charge of acompany.
I didn't wanna just be in chargeof a company.
I wanted to be in charge of abattalion, which is all these
teams.
And I wanted to be in charge ofmy unit.
Like I have these goals anddreams.
So I, I aligned myself to thatpath and you know, being that
(29:16):
level of outside the boxthinker, you know, treating
people with respect.
You know, reputation goes a longway in any organization, but the
military's massive.
Cause there's a lot of falseprophets.
False deities.
False idols that people look upto.
And there's also a lot of peoplethat have street cred because
they're just genuinely goodpeople and they give a fuck
about each other and they'relooking out for people.
(29:37):
Cuz it's super easy to smashpeople in the military.
Yeah, it's super easy to like,like they just call it, drop the
book on'em.
Like, Hey, according to thisrule of regulation, you're
fucked up and you're done.
Like that isn't, what a dickthat was.
Never me.
There's a time and place for allthis shit, but.
most of the times there's a guyor a gal in that situation that
needs to get fucked up.
There's probably a communicationgap where someone's not telling
(29:59):
them they're fucked up beforethey're super fucked up.
And I noticed that a lot, evenin my old organization.
I'm, I just made sure I treatedpeople the way that I wanted to
be treated, you know?
Mm-hmm.
because why, why wouldn't I whywouldn't I train these men and
women with respect?
You know, was I a dick at times?
Absolutely, bro.
I'm in an organization thatliterally his whole sole purpose
(30:21):
is war fighting.
You know, we don't have time to,to, to be soft and to, to
nurture everyone and bitch,there's a time and place and to
execute something and I need youto go execute.
If you can't do that, I willfind someone who can't, you
know, that's expected in thattype of environment, right?
But was also expected in thattype of environment, which isn't
generally spoken about, is like,Hey man, how are you doing?
(30:42):
I remember having this oneleader who had just, he was a
great guy, great guy, but he wasa, a huge product of a very
toxic environment in themilitary.
And the military especially theMarine Corps is real, especially
special operations in the MarineCorps.
It's kind of stupid in regardsto hey, you're this rank, so
therefore you must be in aleadership position, which
(31:02):
that's the worst thing ever.
There's younger guys that, or,and gals that are more equipped
to literally lead than thesepeople that have been in maybe
10 years longer than you.
And, and it's, and it's, it is areally sad system.
A lot of the other specialmissions units that you hear out
there that the guys that don'texist, they operate on a
completely different system fora reason because they're not,
(31:25):
they're not stuck in this like,chop, chop, chop, like
Bradley Roth (31:28):
corporate
Cody Alford (31:28):
structure.
Yeah.
Yeah, man.
And, and that part was alwaystoxic.
And, and that brought peopleinto positions that they had no
responsibility to be in.
And you know, I remember havinga lot of opportunity to like,
just really mentor and leadthese people and help them get
up to par and actually give thema chance to fail.
A lot of people just let themfail vice, giving them a chance
to fail, setting them up, armingthem with the tools they need to
(31:50):
be successful vice.
Just trying to find the ways toget them out of there.
And that shit never flew withme.
And so I made sure I always paythat aspect forward and, and
give everyone the best shot theycould do.
And I think those things reallyhelped me get promoted.
Just in general.
Just good energy, good energyout, good energy in.
Man.
I wasn't a two piece of shit, solike I wasn't screwing people
over.
And so I was putting out goodthings into the universe, into
(32:11):
the environment, and those goodthings were coming back to me
tenfold and I just kept oncompounding those good things.
Not to receive anything inreturn, but just to, just to do,
because.
One thing you'll learn about themilitary, you'll notice about
the military, at least I do.
There's a lot of hurt peoplethere.
Mm-hmm.
you know, in all sorts ofaspects of life.
Whether it was prior to themilitary or younger in the
military or in their process ofranking in the military.
(32:33):
And people just wanna be fuckingrespected.
People just really wanna bechallenged and give an
opportunity to go fail.
And if you give someone anopportunity to go fail, dude,
they'll fucking crush it.
They'll either crush it and besuccessful, they'll crush it and
they'll fucking suck and fail.
But either way, now the onus ison them.
And there's a lot of time in themilitary where people don't even
give others an opportunity tolead to, mm-hmm.
(32:55):
to rise to their fullestpotential.
And it never made sense to me.
once you give people a chance tofail, right.
You give them a chance tosucceed.
But most of the times I, what Isaw in the military was people
only set up others to fail.
They're not giving them thetools, the opportunities, the
positions to rise, the the levelof responsibility they need as
young leaders or whatever leaderthey are to, to,
(33:17):
to,
to do something positive and make a name for
themselves.
And anyways, so I just made surethat when I had those
opportunities, that I paid thatforward.
And, and I did that because itmade sense to me and didn't make
sense to a lot of other people,but I'm not like other people.
So there
Bradley Roth (33:31):
you go.
Not most people.
And it's interesting what yousaid too, cuz I mean, I was, I
was actually very close tojoining the Marines and trying
to go officer post-college.
Turns out things would work outotherwise, but you know, It's
funny, you hear all kinds ofstuff about promotions.
Like I never, and I've talked toa lot of ex-military and stuff
like that, and you never hearabout like, oh, you can go take
(33:52):
classes to like help yourpromotion.
Right.
It always, they make it soundlike it's, you know, who's just
in the best shape or who is thesmartest and like these kinds of
things.
But the opportunities are there.
And like you said, noteveryone's a leader and, but
that doesn't mean everyone can'tbecome a leader.
It just means not everyone wantsto be a leader.
(34:14):
Like Right.
Big difference there.
Like, most people want to beled.
They don't want theresponsibility, they don't want
put in that extra work, but it'sthere if you want to become one.
Right?
Like we're not just, some peopleare kind of born as, you know,
have the characteristics ofnatural leaders, but for I think
most of the, the best ones it's,it's learned.
(34:36):
Agree with that.
Yeah,
Cody Alford (34:37):
yeah, for sure.
Cuz my leadership traits as ayoung man in the Marine Corps
was definitely not my leadershiptraits.
Towards the end of my career.
It was almost like a day.
And I thought I was good backthen.
But you don't know what youdon't know, and you'll never
know what you don't know.
And so through the process oftrial and error, you know,
getting your, getting your handsslapped or you know, or, or
making some type of advancement,you start to figure out, okay,
(35:00):
what does right look like?
And not necessarily to a book atextbook, but what does right
look like inside here?
What does right look like insidehere?
Right?
Because it's all common sense,it's all human interaction.
So if you can, if you can removethis like structure, this is how
you be a leader.
These are principles andguidelines.
They're not the finale, they'renot it, they're not everything.
That's what I never said aboutlike military, they call it pme,
(35:23):
professional military education.
You know, they all theseleadership courses and they
suck.
If they were, if they werereally good, if they were really
good, they'd be better leadersin the military.
But that's simply not true.
I get, I get messages all thetime on Instagram from like
young, young enlisted marines,even young officers that have
horrible, toxic leadership, andthey're asking me for guidance
(35:43):
and input.
And it's just so sad.
And this just tells me, you, youcan't teach leadership.
You can only lead leadership,you know, and that's big
difference.
Like you, there's 10 principlesand and characteristics to, to
plant seeds inside of people.
But you have to go a stepfurther.
You have to execute and you haveto show, you have to lead by
(36:04):
example.
And there's not a lot of peoplethat lead by example.
And there's a lot of ego tripsin these leadership positions,
and I'm sure that's anywhere inthe, in the world, but
especially in the military,there's a lot of these, I'm
better than you peasant becauseI'm this rank or I'm in this
position and you know, that's areal big tragedy.
But what do you do?
(36:26):
Yeah.
You know exactly what you do.
You make sure you're not thatperson if you don't wanna be
that person.
Mm-hmm.
yeah.
Bradley Roth (36:32):
You or you find a way to work within the system
and put yourself in thatposition, you know, like you
did.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
And I wanna talk about somethingelse that I found really
interesting when you were goingover your story about how when
you were getting out, you ha youwere having all, like, some of
the symptoms you described,people listening are probably
(36:53):
like, that's bizarre.
You know, like drooling or, youknow, freaking out from nothing
and ending up, you know, likeall these things that you said.
And it's interesting because itsounds like to me that like when
people are addicted to like adrug, they're addicted to that
chemical, right?
(37:13):
And that chemical response, it'sthe same thing.
Like when you experience stress,that's a chemical reaction
that's happening that's linkedto that, right?
And so when you experience thatover and over and over, you
become dependent on it.
And then you essentially soundslike you were just, you were
withdrawing from.
that chemical stress that youhad experienced for so many
(37:36):
years, do you feel like that'skind of what was going on and
then to kind of work throughthat?
You mentioned a little bit aboutthat, but was it more of like
medical kind of solutions tothat or like a mental spiritual
solution?
Cody Alford (37:52):
So the first part is before my body completely
started to shut down, there wasa lot of telltale signs.
I was taking all these likepower, we call'em ranger naps
for like I just need 20 secondsand I just like go pass out for
like body convulsing 20 seconds.
And I felt like I got enoughsleep to, to operate in like
another seven hours and I wastaking all these naps so my body
(38:13):
was shutting down along the way.
I just didn't put it alltogether until it just crumbled.
Was I addicted to stress?
I definitely didn't seek it out.
But when shit hit the fan, forlack of a better term, I was
laser focused and knew exactlywhat to do and if I didn't know
what to do, right?
I'm not saying I have to solveall the problems, but I knew
exactly what needed to happen.
And great thing about militaryis we have standard operating
(38:35):
procedures.
So when this happens, I knewexactly what to do and so does
my people.
That's what we train and that'swhat makes it such a powerful
force.
But I was, my body was shuttingdown with all this stress.
Like I was constantly tired.
I was constantly in like a fightor flight type of mentality.
I actually remember my lastdeployment to Iraq.
I'm in our operations center andlike watching, like all the war
(38:58):
happening on these like massivewall of TVs and my stress food
at the time, you know, was Oreosand frosting, bro.
I was like scooping, frostingthese Oreos just shoving them in
my mouth and wondering why I amlike shutting down, you know,
like It was like, it was likethe one thing that I was doing
to kind of keep my sanity.
(39:18):
And it was like almost a funnything because military is even
more funny cuz you we're like,oh, okay, okay friend, here's a
beer, have a dip.
You know, let's eat this shittyfood.
Like we, we think we'recomforting people.
We think we're doing the rightthing, but we're just poisoning
ourselves even more and more andmore.
Right?
It's, it's comical.
(39:39):
And I say that in a very weirdass way cuz it's exactly that.
It's weird, man.
Like, what we think we're doingto help ourselves, we're just
destroying ourselves.
But when the populist iseducated that way, well what do
you expect?
Right?
That's just how we deal withthis part of the job.
It's how it is.
And that became the norm, right?
And it's not how it is, butthat's how what we accepted
(40:01):
mm-hmm.
And so when I went from acompletely stressless to, to a
Stressless environment,Managing, you know, I went from
like, I needed like focus, laserfocus to like my A D H D kicked
in massively.
You know, I would say there's alarge majority of, of special
operations veterans that areactive duty, special operations
members that are diagnosed withA D H D.
(40:22):
You know, they expect us to beconstantly in a state of fight
or flight for six plus months.
Then we come home and we'redealing with stupidity like
formations or I'm getting introuble that I, I don't have a
fucking haircut properly.
Like, bitch, you just sent meoff the war.
Fuck six months, have me do allsorts of crazy shit, which I
didn't really complain about,but you're, you're bitching at
me cuz my, my hair is notretardedly haircut cutted.
(40:43):
Like the, I'm getting in troublefor this.
You're asking me why didso-and-so get a D U I on the
weekend?
I don't know.
Did you call him?
Like, what stupidity world do Ilive in?
And that's really thefrustrating thing about that.
That's like, you take thiswarrior.
you know, and you don't shovthem in the garden.
You show'em in a fucking loonybin and you're like, Hey, paint.
(41:05):
And you're like, what?
What about all the other veryimportant things I need to do?
And it was just crazy.
But once again, that could justbe my perception.
You know?
I, I get it.
I have my own viewpoints and Iverbalize them.
But I definitely did not seekthe stress.
I didn't want to, but I did seekthe feeling of being alive.
Mm-hmm.
And so at a time when I startedto crash, I thought I needed to
(41:27):
go do like, I, like, like Ineeded to steal a car, you know,
rob a bank.
Just something crazy.
Something outland.
Yeah.
Something intense.
Something intense because Ididn't, I felt dead inside.
I felt so numb, mainly cuz I, Ihated myself and low on my own
self.
And I was hooked up in all theseuppers.
I remember going to my doctoronce, I'm like, bro, gimme
(41:48):
something.
I'm gonna go do fucking meth.
You know?
I was like, so serious.
And some people might laugh.
He'd be like, Hey, that's alittle intense.
I was desperate.
I was desperate to survive and Icould not even function on my
day-to-day basis, and it wasaffecting the people that I was
responsible for.
I couldn't even do my job, norwas I even interested in my job
anymore.
I went from a, this tacticalleadership position to this like
(42:10):
made up desk job.
That was a promotion, but it wasjust like this completely
different environment and Iwasn't above that.
Clearly.
I've had multiple of these jobsthroughout my career, but I went
from a hundred mile an hour toliterally zero.
I mean, I'm working 18 plushours a day.
I barely saw sunlight ondeployment.
I'm watching my guys get inharm's way.
I'm dealing with, you know, nextlevel bureaucracy on the phone,
(42:33):
trying to get support for rewardthat they sent us to that I
can't get you.
Trying to get assets, trying toget equipment, trying to get
supplies.
And all I'm getting isresistance because it's fucking
ice cream time at their childfacility.
You know, all these stupid shitthat we do, right?
They want to make these policiesand these procedures, but they
put the men and women on theobjective to go accomplish the
(42:55):
mission, but then they don'tfucking support them.
And that alone is frustrating.
Cause why am I there?
Why did you gimme live ammo?
Why did you gimme access to allthis training to do this if
you're not gonna support me?
And that level of psychologicalstress also kind of big, played
a big role in this because Ijust kept like peeking behind
the curtain and realized howstupid all this shit is in the
first place.
And getting back, getting on allthese uppers I was on.
(43:20):
Adderall, like large doses ofadderalls and large doses of
provigil, which provigil theygive you for like high.
Basically you're doing like athree day patrol so you don't
sleep and get killed.
They give you that shit.
It's like a molecule away frommeth.
And Dextrin, which is the way Iwas explained, dexo.
Dextrin is 30% of Adderall goesto your brain, where Dexedrine
(43:40):
70% goes to your brain.
Dexo was really huge with pilotsback in the eighties, eighties,
early nineties with, with, andthey like banded because like,
it was like the cocaine of theworld.
They were just like losing theirminds, all this shit and mm-hmm.
I'm on all this stuff and I'mstill passing out.
I'm still slurring my words.
You know, I was sounderstimulated with life, my
(44:01):
eye.
I had to go to eye therapy cuzmy eyes, if you were talking to
me, my eyes would just cross.
You know, everything about mybody was just shutting down and
I was beyond desperate for anyform of help, assistance.
And, you know, coming from thatplace, being a super senior guy,
I've been there from day one,you know, I got pictures on the
wall.
Like I'm a plank owner for everyaspect of that organization.
(44:23):
And I'm asking for help andpeople are looking at me like I
have a unicorn spike.
Spike outta my head.
Mm-hmm.
Tell me it's not that bad.
You know?
And I'm like, you think I wouldbe crying to you any this
setting if it wasn't desperate?
And I think all that played init too, cuz I just felt like I,
I wasn't.
(44:44):
and throughout the wholeprocess, you know, I, I felt
alone for the most part.
Granted, I had a really goodcommand climate towards the end
when I was able to like,communicate and articulate the
stuff.
I had some senior leaders thatlooked out for me and made sure
that I got what I needed, maybewith some resistance, but they,
to me, they did the right thing.
I was extremely grateful for it.
Very supportive.
But in the beginning it was notthat case, and that just added
(45:06):
to that level of stress, whichis what I did not need in my
life.
So it's kinda this like a bigspitball steam ball thing.
So, you know, a lot of it wasjust from like system overload.
So much stress in my lifecausing all these other issues.
And once you start working onone, you realize there's 20
other things.
And I remember going to ourtraumatic brain injury clinic
(45:26):
after that deployment,specifically for Adderall, and
to get my sleep fixed.
That was it.
I just wanted Adderall and Iwanted my sleep fix.
Then I found out that, oh, hey,I had X, Y, and Z, all these
other issues.
Then as I started to addressthose issues, My body just began
to shut down more and more andmore as I started to actually be
aware that, oh shit, I can'tcontinue to act like a robot.
(45:49):
I'm a human and I'm just likedestroying my mind, my body, and
whatever left is of my spirit.
Bradley Roth (45:56):
Wow.
Yeah, I feel like a lot ofpeople can relate to that, but
on like a much lower level, youknow, like burnout and stress
and coping mechanisms and notfeeling like you have anyone
there to kind of help youthrough it and that sort of
thing.
Especially high achievers,people who are put a lot of
pressure on their themselves,quote unquote hard chargers and
(46:18):
people building businesses andstuff.
And so I think it's, you know,obviously you got to a point
that was kind of, I think, waybeyond, but a lot of people
experience, but I think a lot ofpeople experience burnout.
On some level and it's like thefurther you deplete that tank,
the harder it's gonna be to getback to normal.
Right.
To get back to baseline if, ifyou even can.
(46:38):
Right.
And so you kind of switchedgears hardcore.
You went to this van life out inthe wilderness and started
spending a lot of time withyourself.
And that concludes part one ofthe special two part episode
with Cody offered.
If you guys enjoyed this one,you are really going to like
part two.
(46:59):
For Cody talks about how thingsreally turned around.
Plant medicine.
Uh, all kinds of stuff.
And he goes on one of the mostepic, inspiring monologues that
I have ever had on the, not mostpeople podcasts.
So make sure you tune in for thenext one.
You're not going to want to missit.
As always, if you got value outof this, please share it with
someone who you think willreally get something out of it
(47:22):
as well.
And always remember, don't bemost people.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!