November 5, 2025 • 35 mins
Handlon Tim "Bear" Handlon wanted to serve in the military after seeing the 9/11 terrorist attacks unfold on television. There was just one problem. He was only in eighth grade. After a football scholarship to Yale and a few years in the private sector, Handlon went to Navy Officer Candidate School with a goal of becoming a U.S. Navy SEAL.
In this edition of Veterans Chronicles, Handlon takes us through BUD/s training in great detail. He explains how 200 guys were whittled down to less than 20 within just a few weeks. He also reveals the toughest parts of Hell Week, the major challanges that came after Hell Week, and what he sees as the major difference between the guys who quit SEAL training and those who keep pushing on until the end.
Handlon also tells us about having to prove himself again after joining SEAL Team 2 and how he managed to run a business while fully immersed in his work as a SEAL. He also explains how his business looks to supports veterans both as employees and customers and how he uses some of his profits to retire the medical debt of service members.
In this edition of Veterans Chronicles, Handlon takes us through BUD/s training in great detail. He explains how 200 guys were whittled down to less than 20 within just a few weeks. He also reveals the toughest parts of Hell Week, the major challanges that came after Hell Week, and what he sees as the major difference between the guys who quit SEAL training and those who keep pushing on until the end.
Handlon also tells us about having to prove himself again after joining SEAL Team 2 and how he managed to run a business while fully immersed in his work as a SEAL. He also explains how his business looks to supports veterans both as employees and customers and how he uses some of his profits to retire the medical debt of service members.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. My guest in
this edition is Tim Bear Handling. He is a US
Navy veteran who served seven years as a US Navy
seal and served on two deployments as a seal. At
the same time, Handling was also running his own business,
a massively successful enterprise known as Born Primitive and Bear
(00:32):
thanks so much for being.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
With us today. We appreciate for having me on. Where
were you born and raised? Indiana? F Alparaiso, Indiana, Midwest? Guy?
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Was there a history of military service in your family?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Both my grandfathers were in World War Two. One was
a Marine major and the other one was an Army
He was a doc amputee medic. So they were at
both out in the Pacific theater. But that was about it.
So we kind of skipped a generation and then I,
you know, came came through and did the Navy thing.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Now, you went to Yale on a football scholarship. You
graduated from there in twenty ten and then worked for
a few years in the business world while also focusing
a lot on your fitness, and then you went to
Navy Officer Candidate School in twenty fourteen. Had you always
had the interest in the military that developed relatively late?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
No, Yeah, So when I was in eighth grade, nine
to eleven happened, and that's what immediately planted the seed
almost instantly, that hey, I eventually want to serve my country.
So the initial plan was actually do it out of
high school, and my parents convinced me, hey, go get
an education. You know, I was getting recruited for football
and you know, got to get a pretty good degree
out of it. So that was kind of the drug
deal I made with them, of hey, I as long
(01:40):
as I can keep playing football, I'll do four more
years and then you know, if you want to go
do that military thing, you can do that after. So
that's essentially what I did. But it was always in
the back of my mind. And then even when I
graduated from college, I took a job with Red Bull
and there was a lot of family pressure, you know,
I was married at the time, from kind of both
sides to not do it, and I just couldn't kick it.
(02:02):
So ultimately I said, hey, I got to go do this,
and I did it.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
So did you always want to be a seal?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
I think that started kind of taking root when I
was in like high school, when I started learning more
about it and just hearing about the training and what
the job entailed. You know, the challenge in what it
presented was definitely very appealing to me. And then you know,
once I was in college, that's all I was thinking about.
So it was it was kind of the the only
(02:27):
thing I wanted to do from that point forward.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
So you joined the Navy and you went to Navy
Officer Candidate School to pursue the goal of becoming a seat. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, So the way they do it is they'll give
you like a contract, so once you get your commission
at OCS, you know, you'll you know kind of where
you're going next. And so for me, that was that
was seal training right after.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
So tell me about first of all, qualifying for BUDDS.
Did you have to do anything meet me standards just
to get there?
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah, you do the PST, which you know for us
they add five hundred meter swim, and then you know,
mount and a half runt, push ups, pull up setups
pretty standard. But then you know, you have to submit
all kinds of other stuff and you know, you do
an academic test and then for the officers. You get
letters of recommendation and they do a pretty robust like psychanalysis,
and you know, you fly out to Cornado and do
(03:12):
all kinds of things for them to evalue you. At
you you do like a panel interview, which I remember
at the time was really scary because it was like
a bunch of Seal commanders and master chiefs. You're grilling
you with questions and it looked like really scary dudes
at the time. And then they whittle it down and
obviously there's a lot of academy guys that get NSW spots,
but then they open up some spots for you know,
(03:32):
the wild card picks for like officer cannon school officers.
So I feel like we're the uh, you know, we're
the we're the outliers and then all. But but I
think they you know, do ten to fifteen spots for
guys like that, and it was highly highly competitive.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
So so they're even trying to crack you during the
original evaluation process before you were actually even in.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
But yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember there were some really
interesting questions like hey, have you ever been in a
bar fight? And I'm like, well, do they want the
honest answer? Here, or like, you know, like how do
I how do I play this one? You know? So, yeah,
apparently I gave them the right answers because they d
have given me a spot.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
That's an interesting question though, because that could be an
indication of how you're able to be resourceful on the spot,
or it could be that your trouble. So I don't
know which one they were looking.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, well I do. I think they're looking for choir boys.
So I think I might have answered that one right,
but I'll never know.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
So when you actually went to Coronata for buds training,
what was it like right there on day one?
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Well, yeah, obviously really intense experience. I think one of
the interesting things is like, so the officers get there
separately from the enlisted guys and then we all class up,
and so I hadn't met any of the guys until
the very first day, and you have a few weeks
of like they call it indoctrination, where you have like,
you know, three weeks to kind of you know, just learn,
you know, the different evolutions and just how everything works.
(04:45):
It's still like pretty difficult, but it's it's you haven't
officially started yet. But I remember it was interesting in
getting there, and you know, I think we had about
two hundred and fifteen guys in saying okay, somewhere in here,
they're going to have to trim eighty percent. But like
when you're looking at all the guys, you're like, all right,
I don't see where that he percent is going to
come from because everyone looks pretty squared away, you know,
particularly the enlisted guys. They do like a prep course
(05:06):
after boot camp where they all they do is just
work out all day for I mean, I don't know
how long it lasts. I think it's six to eight weeks.
So they're all in like super good shape. And uh,
you know a lot of people have been training for
this and thinking about it for you know, five to
ten years of their life, you know, like this is
their dream. So that was a little unnerving when you
when you finally class up and you're like, man, I
don't I don't know where they're going to find eighty
(05:27):
percent of these guys to get to quit, you know
what I mean. But then you quickly learn the system
has been working really well for a really long time,
and uh, and the system works so uh, you know,
after first couple of days they're like, oh, okay, I
get it now, because it's definitely a fairly overwhelming experience
for most and right especially right in the beginning, to think,
(05:48):
all right, there's no way I can do this for
the next seven months, you know what I mean. And
I think that's what makes guys lose that initial resolve
pretty quick. And you know, as you might know, being
cold and at uh makes cowards of us. All right,
So when it's two o'clock in the morning and you're
laying in the Pacific Ocean and haven't gotten much sleep
in your hypothermic, that uh, that tends to eat away
(06:11):
at you and get a lot of guys to question
the real reasons for being there. And and it was
we were no exception to that.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
And so they're doing that right there on day one,
day two, getting you all wet, oh yeah, and then.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, I mean at night, oh yeah, oh yeah. And
then you're you know, you're not getting much sleep and
you know it's just high stress, and you know your
body's are of course getting beat up, and yeah, it's
just uh. And then you know, on the fourth week
you'll start hell week. So I think by the time
we started hell week, I think we had about one
hundred guys left that had already you know, slimmed us
down from you know, the low two hundreds. You know,
(06:41):
maybe we had one hundred and ten guys going into
Hell week and by you know that that starts on
a Sunday night. By I think by Tuesday afternoon, we
had nineteen guys left. So so in a four week
span to go from like two fifteen to nineteen, they
they thinned the herd pretty dang quick.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
What's the reaction of the guys that decided it's not
worth it? Did they do they say anything? Do they
just walk up and ring the bell? How does that work?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
It really varies. You know, most of the guys you
don't even know it. And then you hear the bell ring,
and then you kind of look over, and you know,
I remember the first couple of days hearing the bell
ring was a little bit more I don't want to
say unnerving, but a little bit more of a big deal.
You know, you'd look to see, oh my god, who
just quit? But like, by the mean, after a hundred
guys have quit, you hear it, you don't even react,
you know what I mean. It's just like another statistic
(07:23):
but you know, there were a couple of guys in
my bro crew that right before they quit where it
got super upset and we're like crying and like, you know,
we're trying to like support them, like, hey, man, just
don't do it, like this sucks for all of us.
Just stay one more day, man, and then you know
they fall out of the formation and they're gone. You
never see him again. So but yea, all across the board,
(07:43):
you know, you get different reactions, and you know it's
not for everyone, that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
So with all these guys dropping out, then that does
that shuffle the different crews that you're part of?
Speaker 2 (07:53):
It must oh yeah, it's it's constant. I didn't have
a single roommate, make it. I think I went through
like twenty roommates. So every couple of days they'd reshuffle,
you know, I'd have three more roommates and you know,
wait a couple of days and they're gone. And then
I remember I thought we had a crew going into
hell week. You know, it was like the weekend. We're like,
all right, we're all gonna be here on Friday. Next Friday,
(08:14):
like no one's quitting, and not a single one of
them made it so, Yeah, they had to send another
guy to sleep in my room because you know, they
got to make sure people have like, you know, a
swim buddy, so, you know, because you're super banged up
after that whole experience. But yeah, they're shuffling you around constantly,
So don't get too comfortable in your boat, crew because
wait a couple hours, it's going to change.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
You may have just answered this a second ago, but
what was the toughest part of Hell Week or any
other part of BUDS training for you?
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Yeah, obviously Hell Week is kind of what everyone talks about.
It definitely lived up to the hype. What was difficult
for our class? You know, we went through Hell Week
in November. It was really cold, and so a lot
of guys were getting what's called SIPE, which is fairly
common in Hell Week stands for a swimming induced pulmonary edema.
But as it was explained to me, like the extreme
temperature fluctuations of you being like, you know, in the
(09:02):
Pacific doing surf torture and getting like borderline hypothermic to
then like getting out of the water and going running
twenty miles with a boat on your head, and you
know that extreme exertion puts a lot of stress on
your lungs, and it leads to the alveoli sacks, and
your lungs actually start to burst and they start to bleed,
so you start coughing a blood pretty bad, and then
your oxygen levels drop. So a lot of our guys
(09:23):
had that. I had it really bad. I think by
the last day, my oxygen was down to seventy one
because they'd come over and put the little thing on
your finger and read it. So that's obviously difficult because
then it's like you're breathing from a coffee straw. And
some guys got you know, had to get medically rolled
for that. A lot of guys get pneumonia in their lungs,
and so you know, you definitely have to get a
(09:45):
little lucky to make it. I'll definitely say that. Now
a lot of guys would get rolled and would eventually
make it, but to go through unscathed, without an injury,
without an illness something like that, like, you gotta have
a little bit of luck on your side. But so
for me, there wasn't one specific thing that week that
really did it. It was just it's just it just
never ends, you know, what I mean, Like, you get
(10:05):
your first nap on Wednesday night, and you start on
Sunday night, so imagine, you know, basically three straight days
of constant physical exertion and then they give you like an
hour and a half and then they wake you up
with bullhorns and make you get in the ocean again.
So it's not not the best nap you've ever got,
even though I think it was the deepest sleep you've
ever been in in your life, you know. And then
(10:27):
you get one more nap on Thursday night, and it
ends on Friday afternoon, so it's it's you know, you
get about three hours and you know, about five and
a half days, so not not the most pleasant experience.
And your body's all shaped and you're freezing and you're
wet the whole time. So yeah, it thends the herd
real quick. It does its job.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
That's Tim Bear Handling. He's a US Navy veteran who
served seven years as a US Navy seal. In a moment,
Handlin explains the mental strength required to survive and complete
BUDS training despite your body and sometimes your mind screaming
at you to quit. He will also explain why he
thinks so many seal candidates ultimately choose to quit and
(11:09):
what those who persevere have in common. He will also
tell us about the toughest challenges he faced in seal
training after the completion of Hell Week, and later we'll
learn about Handlin joining Seal Team two and Special Boat
Team twenty. Handler will also share how seals are constantly
being reevaluated and why they must always be operating at
peak physical and mental levels. I'm Greg Corumbus and this
(11:34):
is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus.
Our guest in this edition is Tim Bear Handlin. He's
a US Navy veteran and served as a US Navy
seal for seven years. We've heard all about his dream
of being a Navy Seal, how he qualified for Bud's training,
and how quickly the seal training class shrunk from a
(11:55):
couple hundred to less than two dozen. So why did
Bear make it through so many others didn't. The answer,
he says, is in the mindset needed to survive BUD straining.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Well, I think it all comes down to not allowing
yourself to have an off ramp, and I think that
requires you to go into the training with the with
the right reasons. Whether guys knew it or not, my
belief is that a lot of them that didn't make
it thought they wanted to be seals, but they really
(12:26):
wanted to tell people they were seals. Right the idea
of the title and the prestige and you know, being
seen as dangerous by other men or whatever they had
come up with in their head as a young man,
of what you know would happen if they obtained that title.
A lot of those are surface level reasons, you know,
Like I said, at two o'clock in the morning, when
you're hypothermic in the Pacific and you haven't slept in
(12:48):
a couple days, those aren't going to hold up in
the surf, you know what I mean. And I think
going in there just saying all right, I know this
is really going to suck, but this is the only option,
and really repping that, I mean, I remember I repped
that ahead of time of like, all right, I'm going
to I'm going to be mentally compromised and when that
moment comes and and you to have rehearse this in
my head of but there is no off ramp because
(13:09):
if there's even the slightest off ramp. Everyone will justify
it in their head to take it when you're that uncomfortable.
It's human nature. And I think the guys that made
it were the ones that actually wanted to do what
the job entailed once the training was complete. And I
think that's a huge difference the idea of you know,
(13:29):
fighting on behalf of your country and doing the dangerous
things that hopefully you'll have the ability and the right
to execute. I think those are deeper reasons to to
want to make it through, you know, the initial you know, kicking,
the you know what that that we all had to do.
So but I think it comes back to just that
that off ramp theory is is if you go in
and say, you know, it's you, maybe you're three days
(13:50):
in and you say, oh, man, you know, I want
to do this for my dad. But man if I quit, like,
I'm sure my dad will still be proud of me,
and like I could, oh, I could go back and
join the family business, and yeah, that's okay. You know,
that argument in your mind gets stronger and stronger and stronger.
And then and as soon as that seat is planted,
your toast right and It's not like it sucked for
us any less. We just didn't have that little voice
(14:10):
saying like, well, hey, you know, you could go do this,
or you could go back to school, or you know
whatever those things are, they just can't have any place
in your mind.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
I love that you programmed the counterpoint in your head,
knowing that those thoughts would creep in due to how
uncomfortable things would get for you. So you were you
were planning well ahead, which is which is very very
smart after hell week and before graduation, any particular challenges.
I know some seals have struggled with swimming or diving
or some of those things.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Was it was it.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Fairly smooth after hell we or were They're a major hurdles.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Diving's a whole different beast. You know, it's pretty uncomfortable.
So you're diving a closed circuit rig which for those
that aren't like familiar with diving, like most people, you
do open circuits, and when you exhale, the bubbles go
to the surface, and that's more recreational. It's really enjoyable.
You can do a nice, easy exhale where a closed
circuit rig it keeps everything in a closed loop to
(15:03):
prevent you know, there being any bubbles to the surface.
You don't get detected as a combat diver, So you're
breathing one hundred percent oxygen as opposed to compressed air,
which you know is mostly nitrogen and about nineteen percent oxygen.
So the whole diving experience, just from the rig you're
diving is way less comfortable. And then you know, on
top of that, you know, these aren't exactly leisurely dives
(15:25):
that you're doing, you know what I mean, And you
practice during the day, but all the real dives are
at night, so if you're in the San Diego Bay,
you can't see anything. I mean you can barely see
the hand in front of your face, and the water's cold,
and you know you have to pass you know, different
dives that you require you to navigate underwater using a
kick count all these things, so it's it's pretty high stress.
(15:46):
And then of course in between there's all kinds of
shenanigans that they continue to do to you. So yeah,
dive I think is a little underrated. You know, we
do our pool comp tests before the dive evolutions, where
they basically harass you in the pool for you know,
twenty to thirty minutes and tie up your you know,
tie knots into your hoses and all kinds of things
(16:06):
that cause distress to see if you can follow SOPs
and you know, specific procedures under extreme duress, and obviously
when you can't breathe that that can create an absolute
panic because it's human nature, right if you're running out oxygen,
like it's to remember to go check your ear and
follow the exact procedures they taught you can be difficult,
(16:27):
but it's really just to weed out the people that
you know aren't able to maintain that composure in an
extremely stressful scenario. So that's kind of the test gate.
Once you pass that, then you're able to start learning
on the closed circuit rig and you start to feel
a little bit more like a frog man once that
starts happening. And then third phase, you're out at the island,
(16:48):
and that is totally underrated. I think you're out there
for thirty five days. You know, you don't have your phone,
and you're just working from like five am until midnight
one am every day for thirty five days straight, not
a single off day. You take a rifle call, pistol call,
kinds of other things, So that was highly underrated. I
remember when we left that island, we were like, wow,
that was way worse than we thought. But by then
(17:10):
you have a super lean crew, and you know, by
then you're with a crew of guys that like you
can make it five years long. No one's quitting at
that point. You know what I mean, You're gonna have
to kill us. We will do whatever you say to
let us get through this. But that was definitely a
difficult phase for its own reasons.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
That's Bear Handlin. He's a US Navy veteran who served
seven years as a US Navy seal. In a moment,
we'll find out why becoming a Navy seal was far
more unfulfilling than he expected. We'll also hear about having
to prove himself all over again when he joined Seal
Team two, and we'll discuss what Special Boat Team training
involves and what he thinks about never experiencing combat. And
(17:51):
later we'll hear how he ran a very successful business
while serving as a seal and how veterans are still
an important part of that work. I'm Greg Corumbus, and
this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus.
Our guest in this edition is Tim Bear Handling. He's
a US Navy veteran who served seven years as a
(18:13):
US Navy seal. In a few minutes, Handlin explains how
he ran a growing business while serving as a Navy
seal and how he is committed to serving those who served.
But first Handlin explains how the euphoria of becoming a
Navy seal was short lived and that proving yourself started
all over again.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Obviously, you know, really cool day you get your family
come out and you know, to look down and see
the trident on your chest and seeing your classmates all
have I mean, it's kind of crazy, a little surreal,
but like anything, like you know, I think this is
a blessing and a curse. It's kind of the false
Summit's thing, right. You think that as soon as you
do this one thing, you've made it and it's going
to unlock all this happiness. And all it does is
(18:54):
you get to that summit and realize there's another one,
you know, even higher, and it was a false summit
the whole time. Because you get sobered up real quick,
because they give you a couple of weeks to get
to your coast check in with your seal team, and
then you're a new guy all over again, and they'll
symbolically pull your trident and make you earn it back
from your platoon, which I love that idea. I mean,
(19:16):
I thought that was really cool. I remember my platoon chief.
We had like a little ceremony and he was like, hey,
you guys have earned the right to be called Navy Seals,
but you're not team guys yet, and so we're going
to take your trident and we think you're worthy of
wearing it. We're going to give it back to you.
But you know, this is day one. You got to
earn your keep with guys that actually do the job,
not in a schoolhouse environment, and I love that. So
(19:38):
they locked ours and I think it was in a
bird cage in our platoon space, and we did the
whole work up and the end up getting them back
on our first deployment, and that was a pretty proud
moment because that was like, all right, the boys have
validated us, and in a way that meant more than
like okay, I was able to follow the procedures and
show proficiency in a schoolhouse environment, which was still really intense,
(19:59):
but that was more like, all right, I'm now being
validated by my peers as one of them, a lot
more meaningful moment.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Where were you assigned after you graduates?
Speaker 2 (20:06):
I went out to the East Coast. I was a
Seal Team two, and then my second assignment was with
Special Boat Team twenty. I was a troop commander for
the Swick guys.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
And so you just talked about how they kind of
made you prove you really did belong in the seals.
Was there any sort of initiation mild hazing that went
along with well, the entry.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
To it varies, and I don't even want to call
it like it definitely wasn't hazing. But as a new guy,
there definitely is the acknowledgment that, hey, you haven't done
anything to contribute to this community yet, and you have
to do just a lot of the little stuff that
they all did when they were new guys, and I
mean silly stuff like make sure the coffees, you know,
(20:48):
the pot coffee pots full at all times, and getting
to the evolutions early and making sure there's like hydration
and stuff there, and you know, making sure all the
you know, the weapons are put away, like just little
stuff that I don't really want to call it hate,
but definitely makes it way more stressful. And you're also
way more scrutinized with your performance. So like when you're
in the kill house, like there's pink tape on your helmet.
(21:09):
So all the guys in the rafters know who the
new guys are, you know what I mean, So they're
going to watch them extra and if a new guy
makes a mistake, he's gonna get hammered a lot worse
than like a guy who's done four platoons and maybe
like shoots the wrong target. You're not out of the
woods yet, just because you have your trident, and they
want to make sure they put you through that that
filter one more time. And that really never ends. I
mean there's guys that you have done, you know, a
(21:29):
couple platoons that ultimately, you know, get complacent and end
up losing their tridents too, So it really never the
selection process really never ends.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Seal Team two is the only Seal team that has
full fledged Arctic warfare capabilities. So what does that consist.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Well, it's it's changed a little bit and I'll be
a little careful in what I say here, but you know,
an Arctic capability is something that that like the seal
teams should have and do have. So essentially there's opportunity
to get additional training beyond the baseline in the event
that you know, we truly had an operational need in
(22:07):
those environments that were prepared for it, and that has
changed since I've gotten out, and I kind of want
to leave it at that, but you know, that is
something you know on our platoon, and this is open
source stuff. You know, we would we would teleski, you
know what I mean, And we we would you know,
tour in the back country and you'd have a three
day pack and you know, do you know, camp out
(22:28):
overnight like we did all that stuff. So we we
had some basic Arctic warfare capabilities, but I think to
really be proficient in that environment, you got to you
got to do even more training. And I think that
is likely the direction it went once I got out.
I'll leave it at that.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
And then you were a Special Boat Team twenty as
part of a Scentcom deployment, which is definitely closer to
some more action. Tell me a little bit about that
deployment whatever youre.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Yeah, a really similar you know contingency response, right, and
uh so, since I was an officer, they do with
something called it's called a diversity tour where you typically
will leave a seal team and go get a leadership
assignment somewhere else as a way to kind of like,
you know, be more well rounded as a leader, which
I actually completely disagree with, but that's how they did it.
So I was lucky. I got attached to a Swich team,
(23:17):
so I was their troop commander. So what I liked
about that is, you know, I was still operational with
with you know, guys that are very similar to us,
although slightly different job. And then we were attached to
a seal team, so I was I was with my
my knucklehead friends again by the time we got on deployment,
which which was fun but same idea, you know, is
in the same com part of the world. And it
(23:38):
was just purely contingency response. And there were some cool
opportunities that were getting kicked around but never had the
opportunity to execute on those. So it was a lot
of lifting weights and training and it's about it.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
I mean, obviously you don't want to be you know,
staring down at an enemy barrel but you're also very
well trained for that, and it's kind of what you're
there for. So was there any sense of disappointment or
are you more relieved that you didn't have to.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Do Yeah, you know, I want to be careful when
I say this, because I think people that never had
the opportunity to do that shouldn't be pounding their chest
and saying, oh, like I wanted combat. But at the
same time, you know, you do sign up to do
the job, and if I'm being totally honest, I truly
don't feel like I was fully validated because I was
(24:25):
never able to have that experience. Now, it has nothing
to do with me choosing that again, it's all timing.
It's when you know what I mean, luck of the draw,
when you join the service. What's happening in Corona events?
I mean, you never know when it's September tenth, right,
and in September eleventh the very next day. So yes,
does part of me wish that that had happened, of course,
(24:48):
But I say that with a lot of humility, acknowledging that, hey,
be careful what you wish for, because a lot of
guys probably had that thought process and either lost their
own life, or lost their friends' lives or lost limbs
and maybe saw some things that change them forever. So
I just think when we approach that topic, it needs
to be done in the right way. But I do
(25:09):
think about that a lot of like, all right, there's
I feel like there's still some meat on the bone,
and I don't put myself in the same sentence as
guys that saw real combat and did the actual job.
To me, they're on a different level and they deserve that.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
One more question about your deployment there again with the
Special Boat Team, what exactly does that mean? What are
you capable of doing? What are you ready to do
when you're part of that unit?
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Well, I mean one of their core capabilities is basically
a really sophisticated and capable mobility platform for the seal teams. However,
I mean that would not be doing them justice because
the Swick guys have a lot of their own unique capabilities.
I mean, these are the best. I don't even want
to call them boat drivers because they're more than that,
(25:54):
but you know, they're they're experts and heavy weapons. Obviously,
the ocean is an extremely unfre giving environment, so for
them to be operating these high powered craft on rough seas,
navigating and doing all the things that they do is
a very difficult job, you know. And I got a
ton of new respect for those guys because you know,
I spent two years with them. Whereas when you're in
(26:16):
a platoon, you'll join up with them to do certain
blocks of training where you're using their boats as a
mobility platform, and they're integrated into your mission planning and
in the overall you know ten of what you're doing.
But then you don't see them again for three months, right,
and you don't see the training that they're doing, especially
in the winter in Virginia Beach. You know, when you
got six to eight foot seas and you've got to
(26:38):
go do it an evolution out on the ocean and
it's thirty degrees out and you're in the wind, you
know what I mean. I mean, it's not a comfortable experience,
and your your body's getting banged up because you're you know,
you're you're just getting you're hitting these huge waves just
every two seconds, it seems. So, you know, the mad
respect for those guys. I feel like they they probably
lose two or three inches of height in their career
(26:58):
just from getting so much compression on that spine from
standing up in those damn boats. But you know, awesome dudes.
Very similar to Team guys, I think, you know, I
would say we're not like brothers, but we're like first cousins,
you know what I mean, same mentality, we look similar,
we kind of have the same fashion, same stupid tattoos
on our arms, and nothing but respect for those guys.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Somehow, you were also running a business all that time,
Born Primitive, while you were a seal. Explain what Born
Primitive is and how did it get started.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Yes, we're an apparel brand. We started as mainly a
workout apparel brand, but we've expanded, you know, so we're
coming up on twelve years. You know. We have workout apparel,
a leisure apparel, jeans, flannels, we have our hunting line,
our tactical line, we have footwear. I mean, we have
pretty much everything, basically every activity of my life. I
eventually created clothes for it because selfishly, I wanted to
(27:50):
have it for myself. And you know, it's grown quite
a bit, but it started just as a fluke thing
right before the military. I came up with a pair
of compression shorts that was specific to Olympic weightlifters and
ended up getting a design patent on it and making
a couple hundred units and that then you know, went
into screenprinting T shirts and you know, creating more of
a brand, and then it's just little by little grew.
(28:11):
We started get into performance activewear, so sports brass leggings,
you know, men's workout shorts, and then from that point
on it just kind of took off. And I was
married at the time. Some mallories ore co founder. It
was just her and I for like the first four
and a half years, just it was. It took over
the whole house. It was a side hustle. Every hour
I wasn't doing my military job was dedicated to that.
(28:32):
It's been a wild ride. I don't recommend starting a
business three months fre you joining the military, but fortunately
I was dumb enough to not know any better, and
I did it, and we we figured it out. Bear.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
I've also read that veterans are a big part of
your business in two different ways. One as a result
of your products, they're a big part of your customer base,
but also you employ a lot of them, So talk
about that priority.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Yeah, and honestly, it hasn't really been in you know.
I we hire based on merit. If you come in
the door and we think, you know, you could be
an asset to the organization and you're fired up and
you're a hard worker, like, we'll take anyone. I don't
care what your background is, or what you look like
or anything like that. But since we're in a military town,
and I think because as a brand, we've positioned ourselves
as a brand that really supports our military and law
(29:18):
and first responder communities, we tend to attract people that say, hey,
I like what they're doing. I want to be a
part of that. But yeah, so as it stands right now,
I think well over half of our employees are either veterans,
former first responders, or spouses of those individuals. So that's
that's pretty cool. I mean, we have a ton of
active duty spouses, a lot of actually active duty seal spouses,
(29:40):
which is really cool because I know what they go
through as a spouse, right when their husband's gone three
hundred days out of the year and they got three
kids at home and daycares calling because one of the
kids as a fever and they got to go pick
them up, and then the other one gets an earache
and the loshing machine broke, you know, and the lawn
is a foot high. I mean, these are the challenges
the these women, their saints. I really have so much
(30:02):
respect for them, and I think as a society we
don't give enough credit to the military spouses. But yeah,
so that's how it's you know, our in our walls.
I mean, we live it every day. We're proud of that.
We've always try to leverage our platform to do good
for the veteran community, and we've always tried to do
something big around Veterans Day. So the last couple of
years we've done a big give back campaign in this
(30:22):
last year was our most unique and you know, kind
of largest impact for the community yet. But essentially, for
four days last year, we donated one hundred percent of
our profits to pay off a bunch of veteran medical bills.
It was kind of a wild idea we wanted to try,
you know, slightly different than just donating to a charity,
but I loved like the one to one impact of
like an actual veteran getting their bill paid off. The
(30:43):
goal was to pay off five million in medical bills
and because of an overwhelming amount of support from customers
that shopped the site. We end up paying off eleven
million dollars in medical bills last year, and so it
was over fifty eight hundred veterans by Christmas were debt
free from their medical debt, which was great. So we're
going to run it again this year, so from the
eleventh to the eleventh. The eleventh is Veterans Day, that's
a Tuesday. This year, we're going to do the same thing.
(31:04):
We're going to pledge one hundred percent of profits for
that five day window and we're going to try to
do up to twenty five million this year, so we're
going to try to more than double it. And we've
actually brought in Black Rifle Coffee who we're going to
go fifty to fifty on it with. So if people
are looking for a cool cause to support, this is
going to help people from all walks of life. I
was just out in Denver notifying one of the recipients
(31:27):
that we paid off for bill. It was three hundred
and forty one grand and she was a gold Star
spouse husband was killed in Iraq and she was an
Army veteran and gotten a really bad car accident. So
the reason we picked medical bills is because you don't
choose to incur medical debt, right it happens because of
an event outside of your control that can cause a
major impact on your life and what you're doing. So
hopefully this gives people the opportunity to be a part of,
(31:48):
you know, a cool cause and I'm hoping, you know,
when the dust settles at midnight on Veterans Day, we'll
be able to announce mission complete. The customers give us
the ability to do things like this. I'm really grateful
for the support. What do you most out of from
your military service? I probably am just most proud that
I that I had the American flag, you know, my
sleeve and got to be, you know, amongst a community
(32:10):
of people that were serving our country. And I don't
even say that specific to the sealed Teams. I think
obviously that was something I was proud of more because
I was able to conquer a personal challenge. But to
be able to say you served in the armed forces
and you raise your right hand and took an oath
to defend the constitution, you know, that means a lot
to me. And I'll always kind of cherish the honor
(32:31):
that we had to wear the uniform with the flag
on our sleeve.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
And lastly, what does it mean to you to have
us record your story and have current and future generations
know your story.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Well, I'm you know, humbled. You guys would have me
on you know, I'm sorry I couldn't get up there
in DC. I know we were playing phone tag, but hopefully,
you know, for anyone listening, especially the you know, the
veteran community, you got something out of this. And you know,
I think now talk with a lot of guys that
are transitioning out in one thing, and I just want
to bring this up up, even though it's not really
(33:00):
part of the question is I think there's a lot
of pressure for transitioning veterans when they find civilian employment,
and with you know, having talked with guys for now
three plus years on this exact thing, I think a
lot of people are a little lost on what their
next chapter is going to be, and they put so
much pressure on themselves for making sure that first job
is like the right pick. And I actually look at
(33:22):
it completely different and I tell people, hey, take the
pressure off. Your first job is probably not going to
be what you're doing in five years anyway, So you know,
don't be all will and illy in the process, but
at the same time, show yourself some grace and knowing
that hey, maybe you go try to do that finance
thing in New York, it's a completely different path. You
might validate in three months that that's not for you
(33:43):
and you have to get a new job. Well guess what,
although that's you know something, now you have to regroup. Well,
you least have eliminated at least a path that you
don't have to take anymore, and you're going to start
narrowing down that error box on what you're ultimately going
to actually do. So you know, if there's anyone listening
that's in that phase. You know, I only say it
because I see it a lot with guys that seem lost.
(34:04):
But hey, you are capable. You know, you have proven
yourself in a different capacity in the military and people
will want to employ you. So you know, be resourceful,
but also just get a direction of travel and go
and you're going to figure it out. But thank you
so much for having me on and I'm very grateful
to be able to speak to you. Bear.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Thank you so much for your time today, and thank
you very much for your service. Thanks Tim Bear Handlin
as a US Navy veteran who served seven years as
a US Navy seal and served on two deployments as
a seal. At the same time, Handlan was also running
his own business, a massively successful enterprise known as Born Primitive.
I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
This is Greg Corumbus and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles,
a presentation of the American Veterans Center. For more information,
please visit American Veteranscenter dot org. You can also follow
the American Veterans Center on Facebook and on Twitter We're
at AVC update. Subscribe to the American Veterans Center YouTube
(35:14):
channel for full oral histories and special features, and of course,
please subscribe to the Veterans Chronicles podcast wherever you get
your podcasts. Thanks again for listening, and please join us
next time for Veterans Chronicles.
Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. My guest in
this edition is Tim Bear Handling. He is a US
Navy veteran who served seven years as a US Navy
seal and served on two deployments as a seal. At
the same time, Handling was also running his own business,
a massively successful enterprise known as Born Primitive and Bear
(00:32):
thanks so much for being.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
With us today. We appreciate for having me on. Where
were you born and raised? Indiana? F Alparaiso, Indiana, Midwest? Guy?
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Was there a history of military service in your family?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Both my grandfathers were in World War Two. One was
a Marine major and the other one was an Army
He was a doc amputee medic. So they were at
both out in the Pacific theater. But that was about it.
So we kind of skipped a generation and then I,
you know, came came through and did the Navy thing.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Now, you went to Yale on a football scholarship. You
graduated from there in twenty ten and then worked for
a few years in the business world while also focusing
a lot on your fitness, and then you went to
Navy Officer Candidate School in twenty fourteen. Had you always
had the interest in the military that developed relatively late?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
No, Yeah, So when I was in eighth grade, nine
to eleven happened, and that's what immediately planted the seed
almost instantly, that hey, I eventually want to serve my country.
So the initial plan was actually do it out of
high school, and my parents convinced me, hey, go get
an education. You know, I was getting recruited for football
and you know, got to get a pretty good degree
out of it. So that was kind of the drug
deal I made with them, of hey, I as long
(01:40):
as I can keep playing football, I'll do four more
years and then you know, if you want to go
do that military thing, you can do that after. So
that's essentially what I did. But it was always in
the back of my mind. And then even when I
graduated from college, I took a job with Red Bull
and there was a lot of family pressure, you know,
I was married at the time, from kind of both
sides to not do it, and I just couldn't kick it.
(02:02):
So ultimately I said, hey, I got to go do this,
and I did it.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
So did you always want to be a seal?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
I think that started kind of taking root when I
was in like high school, when I started learning more
about it and just hearing about the training and what
the job entailed. You know, the challenge in what it
presented was definitely very appealing to me. And then you know,
once I was in college, that's all I was thinking about.
So it was it was kind of the the only
(02:27):
thing I wanted to do from that point forward.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
So you joined the Navy and you went to Navy
Officer Candidate School to pursue the goal of becoming a seat. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, So the way they do it is they'll give
you like a contract, so once you get your commission
at OCS, you know, you'll you know kind of where
you're going next. And so for me, that was that
was seal training right after.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
So tell me about first of all, qualifying for BUDDS.
Did you have to do anything meet me standards just
to get there?
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah, you do the PST, which you know for us
they add five hundred meter swim, and then you know,
mount and a half runt, push ups, pull up setups
pretty standard. But then you know, you have to submit
all kinds of other stuff and you know, you do
an academic test and then for the officers. You get
letters of recommendation and they do a pretty robust like psychanalysis,
and you know, you fly out to Cornado and do
(03:12):
all kinds of things for them to evalue you. At
you you do like a panel interview, which I remember
at the time was really scary because it was like
a bunch of Seal commanders and master chiefs. You're grilling
you with questions and it looked like really scary dudes
at the time. And then they whittle it down and
obviously there's a lot of academy guys that get NSW spots,
but then they open up some spots for you know,
(03:32):
the wild card picks for like officer cannon school officers.
So I feel like we're the uh, you know, we're
the we're the outliers and then all. But but I
think they you know, do ten to fifteen spots for
guys like that, and it was highly highly competitive.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
So so they're even trying to crack you during the
original evaluation process before you were actually even in.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
But yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember there were some really
interesting questions like hey, have you ever been in a
bar fight? And I'm like, well, do they want the
honest answer? Here, or like, you know, like how do
I how do I play this one? You know? So, yeah,
apparently I gave them the right answers because they d
have given me a spot.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
That's an interesting question though, because that could be an
indication of how you're able to be resourceful on the spot,
or it could be that your trouble. So I don't
know which one they were looking.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, well I do. I think they're looking for choir boys.
So I think I might have answered that one right,
but I'll never know.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
So when you actually went to Coronata for buds training,
what was it like right there on day one?
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Well, yeah, obviously really intense experience. I think one of
the interesting things is like, so the officers get there
separately from the enlisted guys and then we all class up,
and so I hadn't met any of the guys until
the very first day, and you have a few weeks
of like they call it indoctrination, where you have like,
you know, three weeks to kind of you know, just learn,
you know, the different evolutions and just how everything works.
(04:45):
It's still like pretty difficult, but it's it's you haven't
officially started yet. But I remember it was interesting in
getting there, and you know, I think we had about
two hundred and fifteen guys in saying okay, somewhere in here,
they're going to have to trim eighty percent. But like
when you're looking at all the guys, you're like, all right,
I don't see where that he percent is going to
come from because everyone looks pretty squared away, you know,
particularly the enlisted guys. They do like a prep course
(05:06):
after boot camp where they all they do is just
work out all day for I mean, I don't know
how long it lasts. I think it's six to eight weeks.
So they're all in like super good shape. And uh,
you know a lot of people have been training for
this and thinking about it for you know, five to
ten years of their life, you know, like this is
their dream. So that was a little unnerving when you
when you finally class up and you're like, man, I
don't I don't know where they're going to find eighty
(05:27):
percent of these guys to get to quit, you know
what I mean. But then you quickly learn the system
has been working really well for a really long time,
and uh, and the system works so uh, you know,
after first couple of days they're like, oh, okay, I
get it now, because it's definitely a fairly overwhelming experience
for most and right especially right in the beginning, to think,
(05:48):
all right, there's no way I can do this for
the next seven months, you know what I mean. And
I think that's what makes guys lose that initial resolve
pretty quick. And you know, as you might know, being
cold and at uh makes cowards of us. All right,
So when it's two o'clock in the morning and you're
laying in the Pacific Ocean and haven't gotten much sleep
in your hypothermic, that uh, that tends to eat away
(06:11):
at you and get a lot of guys to question
the real reasons for being there. And and it was
we were no exception to that.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
And so they're doing that right there on day one,
day two, getting you all wet, oh yeah, and then.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, I mean at night, oh yeah, oh yeah. And
then you're you know, you're not getting much sleep and
you know it's just high stress, and you know your
body's are of course getting beat up, and yeah, it's
just uh. And then you know, on the fourth week
you'll start hell week. So I think by the time
we started hell week, I think we had about one
hundred guys left that had already you know, slimmed us
down from you know, the low two hundreds. You know,
(06:41):
maybe we had one hundred and ten guys going into
Hell week and by you know that that starts on
a Sunday night. By I think by Tuesday afternoon, we
had nineteen guys left. So so in a four week
span to go from like two fifteen to nineteen, they
they thinned the herd pretty dang quick.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
What's the reaction of the guys that decided it's not
worth it? Did they do they say anything? Do they
just walk up and ring the bell? How does that work?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
It really varies. You know, most of the guys you
don't even know it. And then you hear the bell ring,
and then you kind of look over, and you know,
I remember the first couple of days hearing the bell
ring was a little bit more I don't want to
say unnerving, but a little bit more of a big deal.
You know, you'd look to see, oh my god, who
just quit? But like, by the mean, after a hundred
guys have quit, you hear it, you don't even react,
you know what I mean. It's just like another statistic
(07:23):
but you know, there were a couple of guys in
my bro crew that right before they quit where it
got super upset and we're like crying and like, you know,
we're trying to like support them, like, hey, man, just
don't do it, like this sucks for all of us.
Just stay one more day, man, and then you know
they fall out of the formation and they're gone. You
never see him again. So but yea, all across the board,
(07:43):
you know, you get different reactions, and you know it's
not for everyone, that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
So with all these guys dropping out, then that does
that shuffle the different crews that you're part of?
Speaker 2 (07:53):
It must oh yeah, it's it's constant. I didn't have
a single roommate, make it. I think I went through
like twenty roommates. So every couple of days they'd reshuffle,
you know, I'd have three more roommates and you know,
wait a couple of days and they're gone. And then
I remember I thought we had a crew going into
hell week. You know, it was like the weekend. We're like,
all right, we're all gonna be here on Friday. Next Friday,
(08:14):
like no one's quitting, and not a single one of
them made it so, Yeah, they had to send another
guy to sleep in my room because you know, they
got to make sure people have like, you know, a
swim buddy, so, you know, because you're super banged up
after that whole experience. But yeah, they're shuffling you around constantly,
So don't get too comfortable in your boat, crew because
wait a couple hours, it's going to change.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
You may have just answered this a second ago, but
what was the toughest part of Hell Week or any
other part of BUDS training for you?
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Yeah, obviously Hell Week is kind of what everyone talks about.
It definitely lived up to the hype. What was difficult
for our class? You know, we went through Hell Week
in November. It was really cold, and so a lot
of guys were getting what's called SIPE, which is fairly
common in Hell Week stands for a swimming induced pulmonary edema.
But as it was explained to me, like the extreme
temperature fluctuations of you being like, you know, in the
(09:02):
Pacific doing surf torture and getting like borderline hypothermic to
then like getting out of the water and going running
twenty miles with a boat on your head, and you
know that extreme exertion puts a lot of stress on
your lungs, and it leads to the alveoli sacks, and
your lungs actually start to burst and they start to bleed,
so you start coughing a blood pretty bad, and then
your oxygen levels drop. So a lot of our guys
(09:23):
had that. I had it really bad. I think by
the last day, my oxygen was down to seventy one
because they'd come over and put the little thing on
your finger and read it. So that's obviously difficult because
then it's like you're breathing from a coffee straw. And
some guys got you know, had to get medically rolled
for that. A lot of guys get pneumonia in their lungs,
and so you know, you definitely have to get a
(09:45):
little lucky to make it. I'll definitely say that. Now
a lot of guys would get rolled and would eventually
make it, but to go through unscathed, without an injury,
without an illness something like that, like, you gotta have
a little bit of luck on your side. But so
for me, there wasn't one specific thing that week that
really did it. It was just it's just it just
never ends, you know, what I mean, Like, you get
(10:05):
your first nap on Wednesday night, and you start on
Sunday night, so imagine, you know, basically three straight days
of constant physical exertion and then they give you like an
hour and a half and then they wake you up
with bullhorns and make you get in the ocean again.
So it's not not the best nap you've ever got,
even though I think it was the deepest sleep you've
ever been in in your life, you know. And then
(10:27):
you get one more nap on Thursday night, and it
ends on Friday afternoon, so it's it's you know, you
get about three hours and you know, about five and
a half days, so not not the most pleasant experience.
And your body's all shaped and you're freezing and you're
wet the whole time. So yeah, it thends the herd
real quick. It does its job.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
That's Tim Bear Handling. He's a US Navy veteran who
served seven years as a US Navy seal. In a moment,
Handlin explains the mental strength required to survive and complete
BUDS training despite your body and sometimes your mind screaming
at you to quit. He will also explain why he
thinks so many seal candidates ultimately choose to quit and
(11:09):
what those who persevere have in common. He will also
tell us about the toughest challenges he faced in seal
training after the completion of Hell Week, and later we'll
learn about Handlin joining Seal Team two and Special Boat
Team twenty. Handler will also share how seals are constantly
being reevaluated and why they must always be operating at
peak physical and mental levels. I'm Greg Corumbus and this
(11:34):
is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus.
Our guest in this edition is Tim Bear Handlin. He's
a US Navy veteran and served as a US Navy
seal for seven years. We've heard all about his dream
of being a Navy Seal, how he qualified for Bud's training,
and how quickly the seal training class shrunk from a
(11:55):
couple hundred to less than two dozen. So why did
Bear make it through so many others didn't. The answer,
he says, is in the mindset needed to survive BUD straining.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Well, I think it all comes down to not allowing
yourself to have an off ramp, and I think that
requires you to go into the training with the with
the right reasons. Whether guys knew it or not, my
belief is that a lot of them that didn't make
it thought they wanted to be seals, but they really
(12:26):
wanted to tell people they were seals. Right the idea
of the title and the prestige and you know, being
seen as dangerous by other men or whatever they had
come up with in their head as a young man,
of what you know would happen if they obtained that title.
A lot of those are surface level reasons, you know,
Like I said, at two o'clock in the morning, when
you're hypothermic in the Pacific and you haven't slept in
(12:48):
a couple days, those aren't going to hold up in
the surf, you know what I mean. And I think
going in there just saying all right, I know this
is really going to suck, but this is the only option,
and really repping that, I mean, I remember I repped
that ahead of time of like, all right, I'm going
to I'm going to be mentally compromised and when that
moment comes and and you to have rehearse this in
my head of but there is no off ramp because
(13:09):
if there's even the slightest off ramp. Everyone will justify
it in their head to take it when you're that uncomfortable.
It's human nature. And I think the guys that made
it were the ones that actually wanted to do what
the job entailed once the training was complete. And I
think that's a huge difference the idea of you know,
(13:29):
fighting on behalf of your country and doing the dangerous
things that hopefully you'll have the ability and the right
to execute. I think those are deeper reasons to to
want to make it through, you know, the initial you know, kicking,
the you know what that that we all had to do.
So but I think it comes back to just that
that off ramp theory is is if you go in
and say, you know, it's you, maybe you're three days
(13:50):
in and you say, oh, man, you know, I want
to do this for my dad. But man if I quit, like,
I'm sure my dad will still be proud of me,
and like I could, oh, I could go back and
join the family business, and yeah, that's okay. You know,
that argument in your mind gets stronger and stronger and stronger.
And then and as soon as that seat is planted,
your toast right and It's not like it sucked for
us any less. We just didn't have that little voice
(14:10):
saying like, well, hey, you know, you could go do this,
or you could go back to school, or you know
whatever those things are, they just can't have any place
in your mind.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
I love that you programmed the counterpoint in your head,
knowing that those thoughts would creep in due to how
uncomfortable things would get for you. So you were you
were planning well ahead, which is which is very very
smart after hell week and before graduation, any particular challenges.
I know some seals have struggled with swimming or diving
or some of those things.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Was it was it.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Fairly smooth after hell we or were They're a major hurdles.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Diving's a whole different beast. You know, it's pretty uncomfortable.
So you're diving a closed circuit rig which for those
that aren't like familiar with diving, like most people, you
do open circuits, and when you exhale, the bubbles go
to the surface, and that's more recreational. It's really enjoyable.
You can do a nice, easy exhale where a closed
circuit rig it keeps everything in a closed loop to
(15:03):
prevent you know, there being any bubbles to the surface.
You don't get detected as a combat diver, So you're
breathing one hundred percent oxygen as opposed to compressed air,
which you know is mostly nitrogen and about nineteen percent oxygen.
So the whole diving experience, just from the rig you're
diving is way less comfortable. And then you know, on
top of that, you know, these aren't exactly leisurely dives
(15:25):
that you're doing, you know what I mean, And you
practice during the day, but all the real dives are
at night, so if you're in the San Diego Bay,
you can't see anything. I mean you can barely see
the hand in front of your face, and the water's cold,
and you know you have to pass you know, different
dives that you require you to navigate underwater using a
kick count all these things, so it's it's pretty high stress.
(15:46):
And then of course in between there's all kinds of
shenanigans that they continue to do to you. So yeah,
dive I think is a little underrated. You know, we
do our pool comp tests before the dive evolutions, where
they basically harass you in the pool for you know,
twenty to thirty minutes and tie up your you know,
tie knots into your hoses and all kinds of things
(16:06):
that cause distress to see if you can follow SOPs
and you know, specific procedures under extreme duress, and obviously
when you can't breathe that that can create an absolute
panic because it's human nature, right if you're running out oxygen,
like it's to remember to go check your ear and
follow the exact procedures they taught you can be difficult,
(16:27):
but it's really just to weed out the people that
you know aren't able to maintain that composure in an
extremely stressful scenario. So that's kind of the test gate.
Once you pass that, then you're able to start learning
on the closed circuit rig and you start to feel
a little bit more like a frog man once that
starts happening. And then third phase, you're out at the island,
(16:48):
and that is totally underrated. I think you're out there
for thirty five days. You know, you don't have your phone,
and you're just working from like five am until midnight
one am every day for thirty five days straight, not
a single off day. You take a rifle call, pistol call,
kinds of other things, So that was highly underrated. I
remember when we left that island, we were like, wow,
that was way worse than we thought. But by then
(17:10):
you have a super lean crew, and you know, by
then you're with a crew of guys that like you
can make it five years long. No one's quitting at
that point. You know what I mean, You're gonna have
to kill us. We will do whatever you say to
let us get through this. But that was definitely a
difficult phase for its own reasons.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
That's Bear Handlin. He's a US Navy veteran who served
seven years as a US Navy seal. In a moment,
we'll find out why becoming a Navy seal was far
more unfulfilling than he expected. We'll also hear about having
to prove himself all over again when he joined Seal
Team two, and we'll discuss what Special Boat Team training
involves and what he thinks about never experiencing combat. And
(17:51):
later we'll hear how he ran a very successful business
while serving as a seal and how veterans are still
an important part of that work. I'm Greg Corumbus, and
this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus.
Our guest in this edition is Tim Bear Handling. He's
a US Navy veteran who served seven years as a
(18:13):
US Navy seal. In a few minutes, Handlin explains how
he ran a growing business while serving as a Navy
seal and how he is committed to serving those who served.
But first Handlin explains how the euphoria of becoming a
Navy seal was short lived and that proving yourself started
all over again.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Obviously, you know, really cool day you get your family
come out and you know, to look down and see
the trident on your chest and seeing your classmates all
have I mean, it's kind of crazy, a little surreal,
but like anything, like you know, I think this is
a blessing and a curse. It's kind of the false
Summit's thing, right. You think that as soon as you
do this one thing, you've made it and it's going
to unlock all this happiness. And all it does is
(18:54):
you get to that summit and realize there's another one,
you know, even higher, and it was a false summit
the whole time. Because you get sobered up real quick,
because they give you a couple of weeks to get
to your coast check in with your seal team, and
then you're a new guy all over again, and they'll
symbolically pull your trident and make you earn it back
from your platoon, which I love that idea. I mean,
(19:16):
I thought that was really cool. I remember my platoon chief.
We had like a little ceremony and he was like, hey,
you guys have earned the right to be called Navy Seals,
but you're not team guys yet, and so we're going
to take your trident and we think you're worthy of
wearing it. We're going to give it back to you.
But you know, this is day one. You got to
earn your keep with guys that actually do the job,
not in a schoolhouse environment, and I love that. So
(19:38):
they locked ours and I think it was in a
bird cage in our platoon space, and we did the
whole work up and the end up getting them back
on our first deployment, and that was a pretty proud
moment because that was like, all right, the boys have
validated us, and in a way that meant more than
like okay, I was able to follow the procedures and
show proficiency in a schoolhouse environment, which was still really intense,
(19:59):
but that was more like, all right, I'm now being
validated by my peers as one of them, a lot
more meaningful moment.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Where were you assigned after you graduates?
Speaker 2 (20:06):
I went out to the East Coast. I was a
Seal Team two, and then my second assignment was with
Special Boat Team twenty. I was a troop commander for
the Swick guys.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
And so you just talked about how they kind of
made you prove you really did belong in the seals.
Was there any sort of initiation mild hazing that went
along with well, the entry.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
To it varies, and I don't even want to call
it like it definitely wasn't hazing. But as a new guy,
there definitely is the acknowledgment that, hey, you haven't done
anything to contribute to this community yet, and you have
to do just a lot of the little stuff that
they all did when they were new guys, and I
mean silly stuff like make sure the coffees, you know,
(20:48):
the pot coffee pots full at all times, and getting
to the evolutions early and making sure there's like hydration
and stuff there, and you know, making sure all the
you know, the weapons are put away, like just little
stuff that I don't really want to call it hate,
but definitely makes it way more stressful. And you're also
way more scrutinized with your performance. So like when you're
in the kill house, like there's pink tape on your helmet.
(21:09):
So all the guys in the rafters know who the
new guys are, you know what I mean, So they're
going to watch them extra and if a new guy
makes a mistake, he's gonna get hammered a lot worse
than like a guy who's done four platoons and maybe
like shoots the wrong target. You're not out of the
woods yet, just because you have your trident, and they
want to make sure they put you through that that
filter one more time. And that really never ends. I
mean there's guys that you have done, you know, a
(21:29):
couple platoons that ultimately, you know, get complacent and end
up losing their tridents too, So it really never the
selection process really never ends.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Seal Team two is the only Seal team that has
full fledged Arctic warfare capabilities. So what does that consist.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Well, it's it's changed a little bit and I'll be
a little careful in what I say here, but you know,
an Arctic capability is something that that like the seal
teams should have and do have. So essentially there's opportunity
to get additional training beyond the baseline in the event
that you know, we truly had an operational need in
(22:07):
those environments that were prepared for it, and that has
changed since I've gotten out, and I kind of want
to leave it at that, but you know, that is
something you know on our platoon, and this is open
source stuff. You know, we would we would teleski, you
know what I mean, And we we would you know,
tour in the back country and you'd have a three
day pack and you know, do you know, camp out
(22:28):
overnight like we did all that stuff. So we we
had some basic Arctic warfare capabilities, but I think to
really be proficient in that environment, you got to you
got to do even more training. And I think that
is likely the direction it went once I got out.
I'll leave it at that.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
And then you were a Special Boat Team twenty as
part of a Scentcom deployment, which is definitely closer to
some more action. Tell me a little bit about that
deployment whatever youre.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Yeah, a really similar you know contingency response, right, and
uh so, since I was an officer, they do with
something called it's called a diversity tour where you typically
will leave a seal team and go get a leadership
assignment somewhere else as a way to kind of like,
you know, be more well rounded as a leader, which
I actually completely disagree with, but that's how they did it.
So I was lucky. I got attached to a Swich team,
(23:17):
so I was their troop commander. So what I liked
about that is, you know, I was still operational with
with you know, guys that are very similar to us,
although slightly different job. And then we were attached to
a seal team, so I was I was with my
my knucklehead friends again by the time we got on deployment,
which which was fun but same idea, you know, is
in the same com part of the world. And it
(23:38):
was just purely contingency response. And there were some cool
opportunities that were getting kicked around but never had the
opportunity to execute on those. So it was a lot
of lifting weights and training and it's about it.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
I mean, obviously you don't want to be you know,
staring down at an enemy barrel but you're also very
well trained for that, and it's kind of what you're
there for. So was there any sense of disappointment or
are you more relieved that you didn't have to.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Do Yeah, you know, I want to be careful when
I say this, because I think people that never had
the opportunity to do that shouldn't be pounding their chest
and saying, oh, like I wanted combat. But at the
same time, you know, you do sign up to do
the job, and if I'm being totally honest, I truly
don't feel like I was fully validated because I was
(24:25):
never able to have that experience. Now, it has nothing
to do with me choosing that again, it's all timing.
It's when you know what I mean, luck of the draw,
when you join the service. What's happening in Corona events?
I mean, you never know when it's September tenth, right,
and in September eleventh the very next day. So yes,
does part of me wish that that had happened, of course,
(24:48):
But I say that with a lot of humility, acknowledging that, hey,
be careful what you wish for, because a lot of
guys probably had that thought process and either lost their
own life, or lost their friends' lives or lost limbs
and maybe saw some things that change them forever. So
I just think when we approach that topic, it needs
to be done in the right way. But I do
(25:09):
think about that a lot of like, all right, there's
I feel like there's still some meat on the bone,
and I don't put myself in the same sentence as
guys that saw real combat and did the actual job.
To me, they're on a different level and they deserve that.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
One more question about your deployment there again with the
Special Boat Team, what exactly does that mean? What are
you capable of doing? What are you ready to do
when you're part of that unit?
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Well, I mean one of their core capabilities is basically
a really sophisticated and capable mobility platform for the seal teams. However,
I mean that would not be doing them justice because
the Swick guys have a lot of their own unique capabilities.
I mean, these are the best. I don't even want
to call them boat drivers because they're more than that,
(25:54):
but you know, they're they're experts and heavy weapons. Obviously,
the ocean is an extremely unfre giving environment, so for
them to be operating these high powered craft on rough seas,
navigating and doing all the things that they do is
a very difficult job, you know. And I got a
ton of new respect for those guys because you know,
I spent two years with them. Whereas when you're in
(26:16):
a platoon, you'll join up with them to do certain
blocks of training where you're using their boats as a
mobility platform, and they're integrated into your mission planning and
in the overall you know ten of what you're doing.
But then you don't see them again for three months, right,
and you don't see the training that they're doing, especially
in the winter in Virginia Beach. You know, when you
got six to eight foot seas and you've got to
(26:38):
go do it an evolution out on the ocean and
it's thirty degrees out and you're in the wind, you
know what I mean. I mean, it's not a comfortable experience,
and your your body's getting banged up because you're you know,
you're you're just getting you're hitting these huge waves just
every two seconds, it seems. So, you know, the mad
respect for those guys. I feel like they they probably
lose two or three inches of height in their career
(26:58):
just from getting so much compression on that spine from
standing up in those damn boats. But you know, awesome dudes.
Very similar to Team guys, I think, you know, I
would say we're not like brothers, but we're like first cousins,
you know what I mean, same mentality, we look similar,
we kind of have the same fashion, same stupid tattoos
on our arms, and nothing but respect for those guys.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Somehow, you were also running a business all that time,
Born Primitive, while you were a seal. Explain what Born
Primitive is and how did it get started.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Yes, we're an apparel brand. We started as mainly a
workout apparel brand, but we've expanded, you know, so we're
coming up on twelve years. You know. We have workout apparel,
a leisure apparel, jeans, flannels, we have our hunting line,
our tactical line, we have footwear. I mean, we have
pretty much everything, basically every activity of my life. I
eventually created clothes for it because selfishly, I wanted to
(27:50):
have it for myself. And you know, it's grown quite
a bit, but it started just as a fluke thing
right before the military. I came up with a pair
of compression shorts that was specific to Olympic weightlifters and
ended up getting a design patent on it and making
a couple hundred units and that then you know, went
into screenprinting T shirts and you know, creating more of
a brand, and then it's just little by little grew.
(28:11):
We started get into performance activewear, so sports brass leggings,
you know, men's workout shorts, and then from that point
on it just kind of took off. And I was
married at the time. Some mallories ore co founder. It
was just her and I for like the first four
and a half years, just it was. It took over
the whole house. It was a side hustle. Every hour
I wasn't doing my military job was dedicated to that.
(28:32):
It's been a wild ride. I don't recommend starting a
business three months fre you joining the military, but fortunately
I was dumb enough to not know any better, and
I did it, and we we figured it out. Bear.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
I've also read that veterans are a big part of
your business in two different ways. One as a result
of your products, they're a big part of your customer base,
but also you employ a lot of them, So talk
about that priority.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Yeah, and honestly, it hasn't really been in you know.
I we hire based on merit. If you come in
the door and we think, you know, you could be
an asset to the organization and you're fired up and
you're a hard worker, like, we'll take anyone. I don't
care what your background is, or what you look like
or anything like that. But since we're in a military town,
and I think because as a brand, we've positioned ourselves
as a brand that really supports our military and law
(29:18):
and first responder communities, we tend to attract people that say, hey,
I like what they're doing. I want to be a
part of that. But yeah, so as it stands right now,
I think well over half of our employees are either veterans,
former first responders, or spouses of those individuals. So that's
that's pretty cool. I mean, we have a ton of
active duty spouses, a lot of actually active duty seal spouses,
(29:40):
which is really cool because I know what they go
through as a spouse, right when their husband's gone three
hundred days out of the year and they got three
kids at home and daycares calling because one of the
kids as a fever and they got to go pick
them up, and then the other one gets an earache
and the loshing machine broke, you know, and the lawn
is a foot high. I mean, these are the challenges
the these women, their saints. I really have so much
(30:02):
respect for them, and I think as a society we
don't give enough credit to the military spouses. But yeah,
so that's how it's you know, our in our walls.
I mean, we live it every day. We're proud of that.
We've always try to leverage our platform to do good
for the veteran community, and we've always tried to do
something big around Veterans Day. So the last couple of
years we've done a big give back campaign in this
(30:22):
last year was our most unique and you know, kind
of largest impact for the community yet. But essentially, for
four days last year, we donated one hundred percent of
our profits to pay off a bunch of veteran medical bills.
It was kind of a wild idea we wanted to try,
you know, slightly different than just donating to a charity,
but I loved like the one to one impact of
like an actual veteran getting their bill paid off. The
(30:43):
goal was to pay off five million in medical bills
and because of an overwhelming amount of support from customers
that shopped the site. We end up paying off eleven
million dollars in medical bills last year, and so it
was over fifty eight hundred veterans by Christmas were debt
free from their medical debt, which was great. So we're
going to run it again this year, so from the
eleventh to the eleventh. The eleventh is Veterans Day, that's
a Tuesday. This year, we're going to do the same thing.
(31:04):
We're going to pledge one hundred percent of profits for
that five day window and we're going to try to
do up to twenty five million this year, so we're
going to try to more than double it. And we've
actually brought in Black Rifle Coffee who we're going to
go fifty to fifty on it with. So if people
are looking for a cool cause to support, this is
going to help people from all walks of life. I
was just out in Denver notifying one of the recipients
(31:27):
that we paid off for bill. It was three hundred
and forty one grand and she was a gold Star
spouse husband was killed in Iraq and she was an
Army veteran and gotten a really bad car accident. So
the reason we picked medical bills is because you don't
choose to incur medical debt, right it happens because of
an event outside of your control that can cause a
major impact on your life and what you're doing. So
hopefully this gives people the opportunity to be a part of,
(31:48):
you know, a cool cause and I'm hoping, you know,
when the dust settles at midnight on Veterans Day, we'll
be able to announce mission complete. The customers give us
the ability to do things like this. I'm really grateful
for the support. What do you most out of from
your military service? I probably am just most proud that
I that I had the American flag, you know, my
sleeve and got to be, you know, amongst a community
(32:10):
of people that were serving our country. And I don't
even say that specific to the sealed Teams. I think
obviously that was something I was proud of more because
I was able to conquer a personal challenge. But to
be able to say you served in the armed forces
and you raise your right hand and took an oath
to defend the constitution, you know, that means a lot
to me. And I'll always kind of cherish the honor
(32:31):
that we had to wear the uniform with the flag
on our sleeve.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
And lastly, what does it mean to you to have
us record your story and have current and future generations
know your story.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Well, I'm you know, humbled. You guys would have me
on you know, I'm sorry I couldn't get up there
in DC. I know we were playing phone tag, but hopefully,
you know, for anyone listening, especially the you know, the
veteran community, you got something out of this. And you know,
I think now talk with a lot of guys that
are transitioning out in one thing, and I just want
to bring this up up, even though it's not really
(33:00):
part of the question is I think there's a lot
of pressure for transitioning veterans when they find civilian employment,
and with you know, having talked with guys for now
three plus years on this exact thing, I think a
lot of people are a little lost on what their
next chapter is going to be, and they put so
much pressure on themselves for making sure that first job
is like the right pick. And I actually look at
(33:22):
it completely different and I tell people, hey, take the
pressure off. Your first job is probably not going to
be what you're doing in five years anyway, So you know,
don't be all will and illy in the process, but
at the same time, show yourself some grace and knowing
that hey, maybe you go try to do that finance
thing in New York, it's a completely different path. You
might validate in three months that that's not for you
(33:43):
and you have to get a new job. Well guess what,
although that's you know something, now you have to regroup. Well,
you least have eliminated at least a path that you
don't have to take anymore, and you're going to start
narrowing down that error box on what you're ultimately going
to actually do. So you know, if there's anyone listening
that's in that phase. You know, I only say it
because I see it a lot with guys that seem lost.
(34:04):
But hey, you are capable. You know, you have proven
yourself in a different capacity in the military and people
will want to employ you. So you know, be resourceful,
but also just get a direction of travel and go
and you're going to figure it out. But thank you
so much for having me on and I'm very grateful
to be able to speak to you. Bear.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Thank you so much for your time today, and thank
you very much for your service. Thanks Tim Bear Handlin
as a US Navy veteran who served seven years as
a US Navy seal and served on two deployments as
a seal. At the same time, Handlan was also running
his own business, a massively successful enterprise known as Born Primitive.
I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
This is Greg Corumbus and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles,
a presentation of the American Veterans Center. For more information,
please visit American Veteranscenter dot org. You can also follow
the American Veterans Center on Facebook and on Twitter We're
at AVC update. Subscribe to the American Veterans Center YouTube
(35:14):
channel for full oral histories and special features, and of course,
please subscribe to the Veterans Chronicles podcast wherever you get
your podcasts. Thanks again for listening, and please join us
next time for Veterans Chronicles.
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by Audiochuck Media Company.
The Brothers Ortiz
The Brothers Ortiz is the story of two brothers–both successful, but in very different ways. Gabe Ortiz becomes a third-highest ranking officer in all of Texas while his younger brother Larry climbs the ranks in Puro Tango Blast, a notorious Texas Prison gang. Gabe doesn’t know all the details of his brother’s nefarious dealings, and he’s made a point not to ask, to protect their relationship. But when Larry is murdered during a home invasion in a rented beach house, Gabe has no choice but to look into what happened that night. To solve Larry’s murder, Gabe, and the whole Ortiz family, must ask each other tough questions.