Ralph R. “Rick” Steinke on Vital Mission and the Art of Military Thrillers

Award-winning author Ralph R. “Rick” Steinke has built a loyal following with his gripping Jake Fortina series—known for its razor-sharp realism, believable dialogue, and pulse-pounding plots. With three acclaimed novels already out and his fourth, Vital Mission, set to launch this August, Steinke is redefining the military thriller genre for today’s world.

In this conversation, Rick takes us inside his creative process—how he balances authenticity with drama, crafts morally complex characters, and brings global flashpoints to life with startling realism. We also explore why military thrillers matter now more than ever, and how fiction can illuminate truths in an age of uncertainty. If you’re a fan of high-stakes storytelling, unforgettable characters, and thrillers that keep you up at night, this episode is a must-listen.

👉 Learn more about Rick and his work at ricksteinke.com

Ralph r. “Rick” Steinke is the author of the Jake Fortna novel series, including Jake Fortina and the Roman Conspiracy, Grand Prize Winner, Global Thriller category, Chanticleer International Book Awards (2023), and Major Jake Fortina and the Tier One Threat, a semi-finalist in the 2022 Global Thriller category for the Chanticleer International Book Awards. His third book in the series, Change of Mission, also won several awards. Vital Mission releases this August.In 2019, he also published Next Mission: US Defense Attaché to France, a memoir (currently out of print, to be republished in 2025 or 2026).  Since Steinke's commissioning from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Steinke has served a lifetime of US national security roles, including 28 years in the US Army and 14 in the Department of Defense. Official duties have taken him to over thirty countries in Europe and Asia, including Afghanistan and Ukraine.  Personal awards and military badges bestowed upon him include: 

• US Legion of Merit
• Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Exceptional Civilian Service
• French National Order of Merit (Commander)
• US State Department Meritorious Service Award (Afghanistan)
• US Army Ranger Tab and Parachutist Badge; Italian Army Parachutist Badge; and other awards and badges.

 He holds Master’s degrees in West European studies and diplomacy from Indiana and Norwich Universities, respectively, as well as post-graduation certificates in national and international security affairs from Harvard and Stanford universities.  His passions include faith, family, fly fishing, and travel.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
You are listening to I Am Refocused Radio with your
host Shamaia read. This show is designed to inspire you
to live your purpose and regain your focus. And now
here's your host, Shamaia Reid.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Welcome back to Honor Refocused Radio. Once again. We have
another guests today, Ralph aka Rick. He has an amazing,
amazing bio. He is on you Serve. So I want
to say thank you for your service, thank you for
what you've done for this country, United States. But you
also have a ton of books, man, and these are

(00:39):
not just soon random books. You have our packed action
in these books and it's very authentic to what you
did in your previous career. And I can wait to
dive into some of the projects that you have been
able to do. First and foremost, I want to say
thank you for being able to clear your schedule who

(01:00):
talked to our views and listeners, because you have a
new recent project of IDOL Mission that is the fourth
Jake Fourteina. I hope I'm saying that right, perfect, perfect.
I want you to kind of just break down what
sparked that whole movement, because I know everything has a
humble beginning. So when you think about the first boot

(01:21):
project kind of take us back real quick and ensure
with us. What did that process look like for you.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Well, Shamaiah, first of all, thanks for having me man.
I'm truly honored to be here with you. I know
you've reached a lot of people. I know you're doing
some great things. So I'm quite humbled to, you know,
to be able to be able to have this opportunity
at the end of the day. So thank you very
much for that. Yeah. So, oh gosh, after about almost

(01:51):
forty two years of US Army and Department of Defense service,
I got to a place, SAMAI aware where I could
sort of see the hen writing on the wall, you know,
and I thought, at one point I might have one
more gig to do to go work for a four
star general to be his political military advisor. And as

(02:15):
it turns out, and the folks that hired me knew this,
but it was we were just in a tough spot.
My security clearance. I had a top sacred security clearance.
It had lapse, and then COVID hit and ID shik
my house so good. So I was going to go
work for this guy, you know, was leaning into it all.

(02:36):
We had to shift the dog, and we were going
to fly in two days and they said, we can't
on board you. And I started having heard issues, and
I started having blood pressure issues, you know, and my
wife looks at me and she goes, Rick, I think
the universe is screaming at you to retire. And so
I was at a place where I knew that I

(02:57):
wanted to do something else. I had already in a
memoir about my time as the US Defense out of
shade of France, the senior US Defense representative to France
in the embassy in Paris for four years. It was
pretty well received, but I wanted to tell more of
the story, and I kind of decided I wanted to

(03:18):
go down a fiction road because it would allow me
to also add a little bit of a plot, if
you will, a little bit of Hollywood, and it would
be a little bit less onerous of having to have
everything vetted by the Department of Defense and everybody else
and their brother. Because my first book had to be
checked out by eight departments and agencies, and even my

(03:39):
first two novels had to be checked out by four,
you know. So there was that. But I said, I'm
going to try this fiction thing, and I wrote Major
Jake FOURTEENA and the two to one Threat, and one
of the reasons I wrote it, TAMAI was I wanted
to be able to tell people about all the behind
the scenes work that goes on between our armed forces,

(04:02):
between our law enforcement, between our intelligence people, between our
diplomats out there and the embassies, everybody that's deployed out front,
and there are all these people in our embassies that
are working together to take care of quelling national security
threats every day. So I wanted to get that story
out there. I also wanted to talk about one of

(04:23):
my passionate subjects, one of our great of our great
non commissioned officers, our sergeants that are in our military.
We have some of the best frontline leaders in the world,
and we would not be the armed forces today without
our sergeants. I also wanted to talk about our family members,
you know, and what they had to go through, what

(04:45):
they have to go through being married to a service member.
That was very important to me as well. And then
finally I wanted to add a little bit of culture
from places that I've lived in, you know, Germany, France, Italy,
I've deployed the Afghanistan I've deployed the Kosovo, I did
some of that other stuff, but I wanted to talk

(05:05):
about some of those aspects of living in other places
and maybe you know, like like I like to tell people,
it was kind of my mantra to want to First
of all, entertain books have to be entertaining, you know,
you got to have a plot, You've got to make
it exciting, you got to make it interesting. But I
also wanted to educate and hopefully maybe on some level

(05:26):
even inspire people, maybe even enlightened people a little bit.
So those are the big things that that kind of
got me going down the path. And my first book
was very My first novel was very well received. You
just don't know how a book's going to be right
when you put it out there. You don't know. You
may think you you've written something decent. You may think
you've written something, but you don't know until you start

(05:48):
getting those reviews and da gone it. You know, I had,
you know, four point eight, four point nine stars for
a long time. I'm hanging right around there now with
all my books. So people will have really liked it,
and one of them liked them and one of the
things they've liked is the authenticity aspect. I try to

(06:08):
keep it real. My guy, Jake, you know, he's he's
he's a regular. He's a regular dude, if you will, uh.
And he finds himself an irregular challenging circumstances and he's
got to overcome those and he's got to use his
wits and he's got to use his dedication. But he's
also a person who he's got family issues he's got

(06:30):
to deal with. He's a faithful guy, you know, so
that keeps him going, you know, gets him through all
this stuff. But he's not going to face any less
challenges than anybody else on this planet at the end
of the day. So my guy, Jake is not a
guy Jake FOURTEENA is not a guy who's gonna walk
into a room, you know, with fifteen bad dudes in

(06:50):
front of him and and take care of business in
forty seconds. That's not him, Okay, And you know what,
there have been some great genres out there that have
made tons of money in Hollywood, but that's not my guy.
My guy's more of an authentic guy who's really got
to deal with everyday's life challenges. And I tried to
put as much of my pass into the book. But

(07:11):
even that said, one third one third roughly is still
the plot, and that's still Hollywood, and that's kind of
how I get to write some exciting stories. So that's
kind of what you know. And it's been fun. It's
been challenging, as you can well imagine, especially getting the
word out about the books. But creating books is a

(07:32):
wonderful journey. I remember in my first book, would I
would wake up sometimes when I thought it was done
with the book, every morning about four thirty, and I
would get what I would call spiritual downloads. You know,
it's like the Almighty's talking to me and saying, hey,
you need to change this particular chapter, or you need

(07:53):
to write this a different way. And this went on
for like almost six weeks. I used to, you know,
I tell people, I used to try to remember it
when it would happen at four in the morning, and
then I always forget it. Two hours later, I completely
forget what was said, you know, or what I thought about.
And then I tried to record it on my phone,
but then I was afraid of waking up my wife,
and so I just started get up early in the morning,

(08:14):
which I think is the best time of day for me. H.
You know, it's without getting off the tangent too much,
it's my quiet time. It's my time to get into
the good book, you know, and that sort of thing
and and start my day that way. But yeah, so
I love the creation part of writing. It's challenging and
along the way I learned a thing or two as well.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
So now I think everything you said ties together because
when you talk about having those those moments where you
wake up and you feel like you're just being spoke to, h,
it's fun you said that because I actually experienced those
situations where I'll randomly wake up and I feel like

(08:59):
someone has been trying to reach me or communicate to
me to having to do something. It always goes to
like it's trying to nudge you to do something. And
that's a perfect point in your whole interview because I
feel like that's why your books are doing so well,
because there is always something in the background that's if

(09:24):
you will, like your north Star, that's right when the
show is growing back in the day, because twenty seventeen
is kind of like, oh to some people, now it's
a time moves, but we have to see if we're
making progress, because there are times where, even though the

(09:46):
years are going by, if we're not careful, we are
not growing in those years. Man up to you with
your military background.

Speaker 3 (09:57):
It's a learning journey. It's a learning journey. I'm still learning,
you know, And I think just from a learning perspective,
I humbly believe that it's important for people to stay
curious at the end of the day, because it's just
part of the journey, right And try to be aware,
prayerfully aware, even of the signals out there that are

(10:18):
telling you that are there, the voices, the voice is
saying this is the path you need to be on,
you know, and keep walking. Try to keep walking in
that light if you will too. So. But it's a
constantly evolved you know. I don't think you're the same
person you were twenty years ago, and I certainly would
hope I'm not at the end of the day, you know.
So it's definite journey, no doubt about it.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
When you think about how you develop your characters and
looks over time, how much did the research and your
personal experience being a military help you navigate those plots
twists when they plan over they surprise. How did you

(11:02):
map that out?

Speaker 3 (11:04):
Oh wow, that's a that's a that's like three questions
inside of one question, mapping out. Let's just start with that.
What I you know, in the in the writing business,
there are what are called panthers and planners. And you
can imagine what a pants as somebody who flies by

(11:25):
the seat of their pants. Right. They got an idea,
a rough idea, and they start writing right. And some
people can do that. James Patterson's of the world. He
can do that, but now he's also doing outlines. There
are other folks that can. Stephen King I understand his
complete pants and the guy can just have an idea,
have a general concept, have a general vector, and start

(11:45):
and going after. I can't do that. So what I
end up doing Tamaia is I will write like fifty
scenes I have. I also have a general idea of
a story. I've got a good idea of kind of
a beginning, kind of rough idea of an ending. But
the hardest part is getting between the two along your journey.

(12:06):
So what I do, what works for me, is I
will write out like fifty scenes. These aren't involved scenes.
These are scenes with maybe three or four sentences in
each one. You know, terrorists are digging a grave at
a US cemetery, heads ball of terrorists in Paris, opening scene,

(12:32):
and this is what they're after, and maybe another sentence done.
Then I'll sit down and I'll crank out three to
five pages based off of that. And that's kind of
kind of how I flash things out at the end
of the day, and then I just try to try
to put general think of what my general theme might be, right,

(12:54):
Like the first book was really much about saying faithful.
Jake goes through some really rough tough stuff, committing to duty,
stay in that course, standing in that north star of
you know, supporting and defending the Constitution. You use that term,
and I would say for a military guy, that's probably it.

(13:16):
Supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States against
all enemies foreign and domestic. And so that was a
general theme my last book, SMI, I should say, my
next book, hopefully not my last, my fourth book that's
coming on in a couple weeks. That's a love story
of a different kind. It's got a love story within
a love story, so it's between two people, but it's
also about a family member's love for other family members,

(13:41):
and I don't want to get too much in the
detail on that, but like like, for example, an uncle's
love for his nephews or his nieces, So that's a
more familiar, different kind of a thing. And then once
I have those general themes, I'll do my best to
map out in you know, sometimes I'll you know, I'll

(14:04):
get on uneasy, but to make sure I'm going in
to write direction, you know what I mean that I
that I'm that I'm aligned with how I need to
be aligned with my faith and everything else at the
end of the day. And they're not They're not prudish story.
So I have some salty language in some of them
to be frank. I had my first book checked out

(14:27):
by a dear friend, former commander of the one seventy
third Airborne Brigade. He'd been in combat in Afghanistan and everything,
and he read it and he goes, you know, Rick,
soldiers don't talk like that. And I knew he was right.
I knew he was right, and so I adapted some
of the language and there admitted a little saltier in
places because I know that some situations that stuff comes out.

(14:51):
So it's not going to be, you know, some vanilla
prudish story. And I had another friend, he's a retired
two star general accident. He read the book and he goes,
you know, Rick, I think I think the book reads
about a g right now, you need to crank it
up to PG. Thirteen. I go, okay, I hear you.

(15:12):
You're right. And so I did put a mild, mild,
mild sex scene in the first book. And I had
a lady locally come up to me. He says, you know,
did you have to put that scene in there? It's mild,
I know, and all this stuff. She goes, I know,
I know it sells books, you know, all that stuff.
And she's very gracious about it. But you know, I
basically explained to her that I just had to meet

(15:33):
meet that part, make that part a little bit, you know, realistic.
We'reout crossing some lines at the end of the day,
you know, and you know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
So, yeah, well it's funny you say all that because
I've literally been talking about this all year. In twenty
twenty five, Rowan has been on this show. I mean
obviously since beginning, but I'm just saying I've been noticing
the pattern is people want realness. We live in a

(16:01):
time where I mean, please don't say each mind, but
I'm gonna say anyway, everyone's talking about AI. You just
cannot get away from AI right now. But we live
in time where people are craving what's real. AI is
a great tool, but there's a lot of people out
there who use it too much to where they depend

(16:24):
on it to actually think and move for them, versus
use answer tool to enhanswer their own risk idea. So
what I'm saying is everything you're saying is people are
craving for that realness. Being authentic is never played out.
I mean, look at your character, Jake. When you think
about how that character is being developed, I mean it

(16:48):
has to be authentic because the reader is going to
understand in two seconds if they don't like this guy
Jake or not. So that tease up this perfectly. For
the next question is when you reflect on the progress
of Jake, how do you see them evolving in future

(17:08):
possible books. Is he going to be something that reflects
current leaders of today military or will he be like
a timeless type figure soul In your opinion.

Speaker 3 (17:20):
I would hope he'd be the ladder, you know, I
would hope he would be the latter Tramaiah, the timeless Soul,
if you will, because he's, you know, he's a very
faithful guy, and he knows that this is this planet
thing is a short term thing in the big scheme
of things, you know what I mean. He's he's uh yeah,
and I think that kind of integrity I want him

(17:43):
to keep that as he goes down the path. And
I also tell folks, this is not the next George
patterner Us Grant, or George Marshall or God bless him,
Cole and see Powell. He's not. He's not going to
be one of those four stars great Americans, Okay, but
he is going to do what he needs to do

(18:05):
from a duty perspective, from who he authentically is, and
with integrity at the end of the day. That's the
kind of character that I want to have out there.
So yeah, and you know, at some point, Jake's gonna
run out of AMMO, if you will. Down the road, I'm
not sure when I'm hoping there's you know, I think

(18:26):
there's at least two or three more books out there
I could write which could still be realistic. I will
tell you my second book won a Grand prize Jake
Fotina and the Roman Conspiracy, because I do take on
some current day stuff politically, I try to I try

(18:50):
to rip stuff almost from the headlines and then create
a story within that story. So, for example, Vital Mission,
which is coming out. That story I don't know if
you're aware of this, a lot of Americans aren't, is
about the more than twenty thousand children that have been
taken from the cities of Ukraine back into Russia by

(19:14):
the Russians since the beginning of the war. And that
number is not disputed. It was thought to be much
higher than that initially, but that twenty thousand is not disputed.
And so that's something that I find I can't even
believe it's going on in the twenty first century, but
it is. And so that's the story I'm going to
write about. But I'm going to write about it in

(19:35):
the context of two young boys. And that's who's not
my cover of the book actually at the end of
the day. So yeah, that's going to be Jake's next challenge.
But yeah, to your original question, I'm going to try
to keep make sure that he's again, he's not going
to be perfect. He may make some mistakes, but he's

(19:55):
not going to compromise his values. He's not going to
compromise what's right here at the end of the day.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
Speaking of challenges that characters do face, good movies and
good yeah, it's something that it grabs people's attention and
kind of pulls them closer to the as of there.
See like, oh man, what's gonna happen next to these guys?
You gonna make it, you know?

Speaker 3 (20:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:21):
My next question is is that when you think about
not shying away from morale complexity, why is it important
for a writer to explore that with their characters, understanding
the difference between the hero stage and the chapters of
the flaws and our choices that have to be made.

Speaker 3 (20:42):
Because it comes back to your authenticity point. They're human,
We're all flawed human being. We're all flawed. Now, bajillions
of dollars have been made of characters that you know,
could do almost any thing right, and that's cool. And

(21:03):
I personally love watching James bondflicks. I mean, I think
they're fast moving, they're good. You know, we know he's
gonna have to go after some tough stuff. I like
the excitement, not everything about him, but I you know,
they're they're okay, but I think you're I think I
would hope people relate to people the characters who truly

(21:24):
are the human They're not hokey. There's not a lot
of melodrama in the scene. You just kind of, you know,
have to try to portray him as going through life
as best they can, meeting their challenges best they can.
They may have some own of their own internal dilemmas
they kind of work through. You know, it's not me

(21:45):
and not you would hope in most cases it's clear.
But like anybody else, we all face moral dilemmas in
our in our lives.

Speaker 1 (21:52):
In my.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
Gosh, second or third book, Jake's got it, he's got
a dilemma. He's he's he's he's something he doesn't like
and another officer it's look at and it's about it's
about someone who's very prejudicial, if you will, to other people.
And he's got to figure out, how do I deal

(22:15):
with this guy?

Speaker 2 (22:16):
Man?

Speaker 3 (22:16):
How do I What do I have to do to
take care of this problem? And he's going to have
to make some tough choices in terms of how he
does that. So yeah, so yeah, I want to keep
them authentic, and I want to keep them real. I
want to keep it real as much as I can,
because I think that's what most most readers and you
want to, you know, sometimes you want to see the

(22:38):
Marvel comic guys go out there and do their thing. Yeah,
and then again that's that's a very popular thing. But
you know, to your point, and you've been studying this
topic now for the last year, I'm really hoping you're
right about the author that what people are looking for
is the realness and the authenticity and not just the
you know, the quick TikTok thing, flashing buyer, whatever the

(22:59):
case might be. Really kind of in depth characters that
are not perfect, and I've got some hard challenges they
got to work through.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
I believe, not just the book, but in life in general.
I believe challenges they help you understand how high the
stakes are. And until you have something that is putting
you in a tough spot one, you don't get to

(23:32):
appreciate what it means to be alive, because I think
to be alive you have to have something pushing you
or something challenging you. In two, you don't truly reach
your highest potential anybody can be in la la land
and life is freezy and easy, but sometimes the best

(23:56):
things of life comes with the most challenging part. Supply.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
I think we learned most of the good things in
life from our failures, to be frank, from the things
that we do poorly if we're willing to learn from them.
But that's where most of the learning takes place. I
think to your point.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
When you think about your experience familitary to being publisher,
being able to have these different life experiences was something
that you kind of keep close to your chest, almost
like a north star. I'm gonna make that visual again.

(24:41):
That keeps you going because we didn't talk about this
stuff like you doing books and you have a great career,
but as a human, we all have our tough days
where it's like, man, I don't know if I can
keep going.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
I'll tell you this is really funny that you asked
this question, because just yesterday I was reflecting on this.
It was the people I served with for twenty eight years.
It was there were people who raised their hand said

(25:16):
here's a blank check, including my life, for what I've
sworn to do. And especially but even later, but really,
when I was a junior officer when I was a captain,
junior captain, twenty five, twenty six years old, and had

(25:38):
one hundred and twenty soldiers standing front me, every color,
every background, mostly middle class, so i'll say social and
lower middle class, socio economic. We had a few guys
that came from money. I remember one. I had one
guy who had a portion because his dad was super wealthy.
And officers, but they were just you know, that that

(26:04):
fabric of America. That's what it was to me. I mean,
I probably I had people with hyphenated you know backgrounds, Japanese, American,
African American, British American, even in my unit, and I
just took it as a huge, huge blessing to be
able to get up every morning, strive with those people. Train.

(26:29):
We were standing off against the Soviet Union back then
in Germany. You know, we were training once a month
to go off like garrisons and take on the Russians.
That even back then and the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union,
we were all in there for a common cause and
we respected each other and even on some level we

(26:50):
loved each other. And that to me is priceless. It's
priceless and then along came my family and they were
part of the journey with me. You know, my kids,
my wife, uh they Yeah, when I was litter of
a Battalian commander and you have a little bit of
a broader view, and it was I was just so

(27:12):
grateful that I was put in that position to lead
Americans who had volunteered to do what they were going
to do. And then and and that that sort of
thing sustains me and it will until I take my
last breath. Quite frankly, remember.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
The guy I'm badly names by the way, so I
don't ask the name, but uh yeah, yeah, he was
a Air Force and I'm gaining more detail because I
don't wonder, Hey, you forgot me. He said something very powerful.
It was literally at the barbershop at their interview.

Speaker 3 (27:52):
A lot of good talking goes on there. My brother,
I'll tell you I talked to my guy quite a bit,
but go ahead.

Speaker 2 (27:57):
And he talked about up all the amazing things he's
doing in his career and records, he broke the history
he was able to make as African American. He said,
it was a dash. You know, that's the most important thing.
It's not the day you're born the day you died

(28:18):
wapping that dash, and I know he probably got that
great wisdom for someone else or some other Sure, that's
really I started think about that when you said all
he said, I said, that hit home because silly said,

(28:39):
what are you doing that dash? It's not where you
were born or where you grew up or what other
excuses you want to paint and get it.

Speaker 3 (28:51):
I love it. I love it, And you know this
is doing the dash. I love that. And this may
sound a little corny, but we all have the gift
of choice. The Almighty's given us that gift. Faith is
a gift too, but we've been given the gift of
choice to do every day, every minute, every hour, to

(29:15):
do what we want to do. Now there are limits.
There are, of course, certain limits. We can't fly, we
can't you know, I can't say that I'm going to
go be the ambassador at country X tomorrow or whatever.
You know that this is not ain't gonna happen. But
in terms of living our daily lives and trying to
figure out where we're trying to go, we have a

(29:36):
lot of choices to make every single day, and a
lot of it's about that dash. That you're talking about,
and how that dash ends up being, you know, made
completed at the end of our run, which is a
you know, that's another metaphor, almost a dashing run at
the end of the day.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
So last thing I was saying closes us out is
the older I get, the more I'm still young, I
don't have that much great hair right now. But the
more you start to realize you don't know how much

(30:14):
you miss something that's valuable until it's gone, and that
will hit you like a ton of bricks. And it's
always a good thing. I mean by that is, until
you know that pain of a ton of bricks hitting
you because you didn't appreciate something that was valuable and

(30:38):
now it's gone. You can't go back in time and say, now,
I wish I would have take as value. You now
have the gift and responsibility to help others be enlightened
so that they don't get hit with a ton of bricks.
Maybe they just give you a couple of bricks.

Speaker 3 (30:59):
You know what what you said is so profound, man,
it is so profound, and and I'm sure a lot
of parents end up this way. You know where my
older daughter, my first one walked, you know, was left,
left the roofs to go to go to school, left
the house. You think that I do enough? Was I

(31:25):
good enough as a father? Do we spend enough time together?
You know? And it really recalibrates and as you said,
as you you know it's the title of your podcast. Man,
it's refocused. It really refocuses you and say, okay, you know, now,
how can I be better at this? You know, I
still got I still got a long run to make here.

(31:46):
Now can we we do a better job every day? Uh?
But but that comes back to the lessons we were
talking about before that they sometimes teach you, you know,
for those that truly have open hearts and so forth
in minds and want to learn that I can teach
you so much.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
Life is a vapor. It's here one moment and it's
going the next. And that's why I do this show,
because when I think about archiving people's stories and maybe,
just maybe someone will listen to it and it changes

(32:24):
their life. I can care less about the popularity, I
can care less about any other accolades. But if one
person can say I want to be better because I
heard this person on your show, that's why I do this,
and I'm sure that's why you do your books. You

(32:44):
hope that one reader will say, oh my God, like this. Yeah, well,
you know how it's to you.

Speaker 3 (32:57):
It shows a very very serving part on your part,
and it shows integrity, and I think it shows a
ton of wisdom too at the end of the day,
because you know, all the things we collect and all
that stuff, we're not taking that with us. But what
you just described that's enduring. That is definitely enduring. It's great.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
I don't talk about my older brother a whole lot
for some reasons, but one thing that he has taught
me is that you get to choose no matter what
cars are dealt, no matter what you are thinking outside

(33:47):
this moment. It's not them. That's I respect the heck
out of my older breath. And if he here's this show,
I might have to find a way to get it
to him so you can hear.

Speaker 3 (34:05):
Thank you so much. That's spot honest.

Speaker 2 (34:08):
Yeah, you you really, You really don't get to live
and experience a lot to the fullest until you actually choose.
Three times, we wait for that special moment, or we
wait for things to be better, or we wait for
the perfect opportunity but one thing I've been saying all year,

(34:33):
I'm gonna get let you out afford for your last thoughts.
One thing I've been saying all year in twenty twenty
five to people, especially after the show, is we have
a window in life. That's it, and once that window
close us we cannot go back in time and live again.

(34:57):
So when you have the moment of opportunity and see
the present moment, that's all you have be speaking of
the dash. That window is all you have. Assume as
it runs out, you can't say, oh, I wish I
can go back and make it right with somewn So
I wish I would have helped someone with this. I
wish I would have started that once it closes, that

(35:23):
is the hardest truth of life. So you have to
live now, not later, because it will never come later.

Speaker 3 (35:33):
You got it one. And the only thing I would
simply humbly add to what you said about being able
to choose is now, remember a man many years ago,
I think it was Robert Schuller who said that every
good deed and every major goal or objective is accomplished

(35:57):
in life by a positive thought. A positive thought I
can I used to have an old football coach. He
taught us this thing that basically was was was a
way of bridging that thought. Right, I can that's the
first thing you got. You can do this, I will

(36:17):
do this and no then at the end of the day,
I must do this. And that was so it was
a huge lesson for me, you know, as a high
school ballplayer, and just beyond the field or whatever it
just going off into you know, the United States Army
and beyond was if you just keep those good thoughts coming,

(36:38):
man and realize you're not fully charged all the time
by the way you're walking, you know, with a with
a with a loving God above you. Uh and uh,
you can you can do a lot of things and
you can. You can really make something out of that
dash that's been given to us, that gift of a dash.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
Un That's how we focused radio talking to Rick and
you can find him everywhere in the show knows where
it points and tells you y'all know the drill in
the show. Tell anyone to give us his website and
all that. But I want to do something different. The
way I want to close this episode. It's all live
in the moment, because this will never come in billion years.
What will you say to young men out there who

(37:19):
feel like they're loss but they have that nudge that
they know is greater for their life. They know they
can accomplish things, but maybe just maybe they're just are
ated in their own way. What would you say too.

Speaker 4 (37:36):
That's wonderful, man, that's wonderful. I would simply say, is
listen to that voice, listen to that urging and act
on that urging. You have the power within you, brother,
you have it, it's there. Take that first step. You know,

(38:02):
there's the old Chinese proverb. You know, a journey of
a thousand miles starts with that first step. Take it,
go on, step out in faith, you know, and believe
that we have a loving God who wants the best
for us.

Speaker 3 (38:20):
It's not to say we're not going to be challenged,
not to say we're going to get off that path.
We're not going to not to say we're going in
case I get slept up side the head, because we
deserve it. But I would still just say, man, listen
to that voice. And you know what, the people that
are around those young men, there's people that love you.
Talk to those people. They love you. They want you

(38:42):
to do well. And they know you have it within
you as well, so you know, step out in faith.
You may think, Okay, I don't know if I can
go do that. You can do it. You can do it.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
You must do it.

Speaker 3 (38:56):
You must do it. Amen, bam, Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:01):
If y'all got anything from his books and what we've
been talking about, whatever it is, you must do it,
make that phone call, make that dream happen. Rather, I'd
rather pass away trying versus sitting down and not even

(39:22):
have a clue. Right on with that, I want to
say to thank you for your telling man.

Speaker 3 (39:28):
Thank you sir. It was a great journey. It was
a great discussion. You're walking in the light, man, and
you just keep going because you're doing great things, and uh,
and greater things sort of come. I'm sure that