0:00
(upbeat music)
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- This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
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I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:23
Let's get into it.
0:24
All right guys, today we've got a special guest
0:25
on the podcast.
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His name is Jason McCarthy.
0:27
So Jason is a retired green beret
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and he's also the founder and CEO of Go Rock.
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They make the best rucks that you can find in the world.
0:37
And they're made right here
0:38
in the good old United States of America.
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Now guys, you might see from like the title,
0:42
the podcast and that little bit of the intro
0:43
that you got to hear that,
0:44
oh, we're just gonna sit here
0:45
and talk about backpacks the whole time.
0:47
Now we did talk about backpacks.
0:49
Oh, the guy was a green breyer.
0:50
You can talk about the Q course.
0:51
You can talk about all the service stuff.
0:52
Okay, we're gonna get into some of those things, right?
0:55
But this conversation was an incredible one.
0:59
Because whenever I build these conversations out,
1:01
I'm just like, okay, I wanna talk about these things.
1:02
And this is kind of the red meat for the audience
1:05
that you know, no of Jason McCarthy
1:06
or wanna hear this about Go Rock and that kind of thing.
1:08
And that stuff is in here.
1:10
But we got into a lot of other stuff.
1:11
We got into some ideas about what's going on in America
1:14
right now.
1:15
Some of the things that we're seeing as a people group
1:17
about our communities are roting
1:19
with what we're seeing with social media
1:20
and also what we're seeing with stuff that happened
1:22
during the C word that happened over the last couple of years
1:25
and the V word that people are supposed to jam into their arms.
1:28
We got into a lot of that stuff.
1:30
We also got into rights of passage.
1:32
We got into how there's a seeming lack of that.
1:35
We also got into his spiritual life.
1:37
And he admitted to this during the interview.
1:39
That's why you got to stick around to the very, very end.
1:40
'Cause I do my normal outro for my interview.
1:43
And he's like, yeah, you know, I was,
1:45
I've never really been asked about the faith based stuff
1:47
or I don't get asked about that very often.
1:49
And so then I did a couple more questions there at the end.
1:51
Guys, we really, really dug in here
1:53
because there's a lot of meat on the bone
1:54
when you talk to someone like this
1:55
that has done some incredible things
1:57
that's been a very, very resilient human being.
1:59
There's something in this interview for you,
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and I'm talking to you,
2:02
guy listening to this intro right now,
2:04
that is going to help you in your life.
2:06
That if you make an adjustment
2:07
based on something that you heard today,
2:08
it's going to improve your life
2:10
and help improve the lives of the people around you
2:12
that are in your immediate household
2:13
and in your immediate community.
2:15
So if I haven't done a great enough job
2:17
of selling this interview to you,
2:18
I just don't have the capability of saying anything else
2:20
about how much I enjoy this conversation with Jason McCarthy
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and I'm not gonna keep him from you any longer.
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So guys, without further ado,
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let's get into it.
2:28
Jason McCarthy, welcome to Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
2:32
- Thanks for having me, man.
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- Dude, I'm so excited to have you on here today.
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I think you and I are gonna get along
2:36
just swimmingly, just in the little bit
2:38
that I know about you,
2:39
and we're gonna get into everything today.
2:40
We're gonna get into your military career.
2:41
We're gonna get into
2:42
why you started the organization that you did,
2:44
and I know you guys can't see this on YouTube right now
2:46
'cause I had a little snafu with my video,
2:47
but I'm currently wearing the brand new Rucker 4.0
2:51
from GoRuck, and we're gonna get into
2:53
all the GoRuck stuff here in a second.
2:54
I got the 30-pound plate in here.
2:56
And it's a little heavy,
2:57
I'm gonna be a little honest right now.
2:58
I feel like you found a weak spot in my fitness,
3:01
but before we get too far into the interview,
3:03
how about you give me some pointers
3:04
on how to wear this thing properly
3:06
'cause I know a lot of people make mistakes,
3:07
and I don't wanna be one of those mistake-ridden people,
3:09
so tell me how to make this better.
3:11
- Yeah, I mean, the first thing is you put the ruck plate
3:13
in the specific pocket inside of the ruck,
3:15
which I think you got that covered.
3:16
- Okay, yep, got it.
3:17
- It feels heavy, don't worry, you'll get stronger.
3:21
- Okay, hopefully, hopefully.
3:23
- When you put it on your shoulders, right,
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you just wanna kind of bend over a little bit
3:27
and cinch it down, right, with the straps there.
3:30
So it should be high and tight on your back.
3:32
You gotta kind of push 'em back a little bit like that.
3:36
So it should be really stable,
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but it shouldn't cut off all the circulation or anything,
3:41
not that tight, but the more stable, the better.
3:44
And then you just kind of go for a walk, man.
3:46
It's pretty simple.
3:47
You got the sternum strap hooked up, that's cool.
3:51
You can use that, you can alternate with that.
3:54
You know, you can go, 'cause look,
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it's meant to be posture corrective
3:58
when it rucks back on, right?
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So the more that you compress that down,
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it does relieve some pressure off your shoulders,
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but it also constricts your kind of chest
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that makes you come forward a little bit.
4:09
But it's good to kind of mess around with both.
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So don't feel obligated to have it on or to never use it.
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I rarely use it, but that's just 'cause that's how I was,
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how I trained was we had other stuff on our chest
4:22
that didn't really allow for sternum strap.
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So it's kind of a luxury item in my world
4:27
and sometimes that's really nice.
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- Okay, cool, well, hey, I appreciate that very much.
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And guys, I'm just gonna go in and take this rucksack off
4:33
for the remainder of this chat here,
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'cause I don't wanna die.
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Don't worry, I will get stronger.
4:37
I will make sure that rucking is one of the bigger parts
4:40
of my fitness journey as I get older
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and go through everything.
4:42
But man, just as a generic way, I guess,
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to start off this interview,
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is anytime I have somebody on my podcast
4:48
that's served in the military,
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I'm always curious as to kind of how you got to that place
4:52
in your life to where you're like,
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"Hey, I wanna go ahead and serve,"
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because for me, myself and a lot of guys in my audience,
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we didn't serve, we did not sign on the dotted line
5:00
to protect this country potentially with our lives.
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And so, even though I grew up in Lawton, Fort Sill,
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and Oklahoma, and Artillery Base,
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so I was around a bunch of army guys,
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it was just not the path I went.
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Let's just start there.
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What made you decide that you wanted to join the military
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and how about you take us into how you decide
5:15
that you wanted to be a Green Beret?
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- Yeah, I mean, military service is a family business
5:20
in a lot of ways, it was not really the case for me.
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My grandfather coincidentally graduated
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from Artillery Officer School at Fort Sill.
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- There you go.
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- That leads to Korea, but he literally never talked about it.
5:35
And there's that kind of generation of predominantly men.
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There was a lot of women served in other capacities
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but in kind of the fight in the wars,
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it felt like it was the men that were doing that.
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And he never talked about it.
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It was not something that I envisioned myself doing
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throughout high school.
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It was not something I envisioned myself doing
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through college.
5:57
And I say that to say that so much of life is timing
6:00
about where you are and what you're doing with your life
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and what you would have to sacrifice in order to serve.
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And so, I graduated from college in 2001, May, right?
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And I kind of didn't know what I was gonna do
6:13
with the rest of my life.
6:14
And then the towers fell in September of that same year.
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So just a few months later.
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And then it was very clear that I needed to serve my country
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in that capacity.
6:24
Now, knowing that and doing it are different things.
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It was something that, you know, it's an honorable thing.
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I'm in every way to say, hey, my country's at war.
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I wanna go fight.
6:38
But the process of actually doing that, it took some time.
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And I applied to a lot of different places.
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I applied to the agency and the FBI
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and all those kinds of places first.
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And then, you know, also applied to officer candidate school
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and all of that stuff.
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And went through that process, which was, you know,
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at that time, a lot of people wanted to serve our country.
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And so it was harder to get in than you might think.
7:00
- Okay.
7:01
- You know, there's that line about go to war or go to jail.
7:04
Like, that's not what I found.
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I found really, really smart, really motivated Americans
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signing up in droves because they wanted
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to serve their country.
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And that was a great, great reaffirmation
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of my love of country was the people that I met doing that.
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But without 9/11, I wouldn't have done it.
7:25
Now, the thing is, is that it took,
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'cause I went through these other hiring processes.
7:29
And, you know, eventually the, I remember reading
7:34
the killer elite in the Rolling Stone,
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which became a generation kill, if you know that,
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about the recon reans that went into Afghanistan.
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Sorry, they went into Baghdad, I'm sorry,
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'cause the horse soldiers were Afghanistan, sorry.
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- Right, right.
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- And I was like, man, the wars are passing me by.
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I will regret this for the rest of my life
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if I don't join right now.
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And so I basically went down to a recruiter and enlisted,
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you know, very shortly thereafter and shipped off
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in October of 2003 to basic training.
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And I had a, so instead of going the officer route,
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which is levels mandated by Congress,
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it was hard to get a slot, they needed to expand
8:13
the enlisted rank.
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So I just went in with a guaranteed slot,
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so I'll call it an 18 X-ray contract,
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to the various phases of special forces.
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No, that doesn't mean that you're gonna pass, right?
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So I still had to pass those.
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And that was, you know, that took two and a half years
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to get through the whole pipeline between basic training
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to airborne school, to Fort Bragg,
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and you know, the special force qualification courses
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is many phases.
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And so got to my team at 10th Special Forces Group
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out at Fort Carson, Colorado in 2006,
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went basically straight to Iraq in early 2007,
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was there for the majority of that year,
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and then did some time in West Africa and in Europe.
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And then I got out in 2008.
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And again, kind of didn't know what I was gonna do
9:05
with my life, but was gonna kind of figure it out.
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- Hey, we all have to figure it out at some point.
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And I'm so glad you got into a lot of the detail there
9:13
with how you kind of got into all this
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and why you chose the path that you did.
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And how 9/11 was kind of a turning point for you,
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because for me, I was in 10th grade.
9:20
And I remember, buddy of mine that sat in front of me
9:22
in class, he came in from a dentist appointment,
9:24
and he said, "Hey, America's under attack."
9:26
And I thought he was pulling my leg.
9:27
So I like made him go up to the teacher's desk
9:29
and like ask her with me.
9:30
And so we could confirm that it was happening.
9:32
And I remember what that was like.
9:33
And I wonder what my life would have been like,
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if I had been a little bit older,
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and not been basically in high school at the time.
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But for you, I think to kind of fast forward,
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'cause you did sort of tee this up a little bit.
9:42
I wanna talk a little bit about the situation in Afghanistan,
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'cause I know for you in serving as a green braid,
9:47
you never served in a combat role in Afghanistan.
9:50
But I know that you know people that did,
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you know people that have been lost
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to the military community,
9:56
because they were killed over there in Afghanistan.
9:58
And then you see the United States,
9:59
what we did last year when we pulled out from Afghanistan.
10:02
And that creates a lot of issues for people,
10:04
creates a lot of emotions for a lot of different folks.
10:06
So I'm just curious for you,
10:07
knowing what you know having served the way that you served
10:10
and being around the people that you've been around,
10:12
what are your thoughts on how America acted during last year
10:14
when we pulled out of Afghanistan?
10:16
- Yeah, I can feel my stress levels going up.
10:18
And I think it's an important question to talk about.
10:22
So I wanna put this in a broader context
10:25
of the last two years,
10:27
there's been a lot of stress on people.
10:28
It's been hard.
10:30
And you know, part of me has been the virus
10:34
and the quarantining and all of that.
10:36
Like that stuff frankly did not stress me out, right?
10:39
It was like, oh, this is deployment life, good, right?
10:42
You know, cut your hair one less thing to worry about.
10:45
Go outside, play with your kids, simpler life.
10:47
And I'm like, you know, trying to show people
10:51
that this is gonna be okay, right?
10:53
'Cause it is and it was and we're gonna fight through this.
10:57
It's gonna be okay.
10:59
The interesting thing was I'm not a huge health technology.
11:03
Like I don't have, I don't main vein technology
11:06
into everything I do from fitness or whatever.
11:09
But my watch actually records my stress levels.
11:12
And when I look at them over the course of the last two years,
11:16
basically the only bump in there
11:18
is with the pull out from Afghanistan.
11:20
- Wow, okay.
11:21
- And it was, you know, there was just a lot of chatter
11:24
in the groups that like my friends, brothers and arms.
11:28
And there was a lot, lot of just emotional stress reactions
11:33
that a lot of us had.
11:35
I mean, at some point I signed up to go fight in Afghanistan.
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I got my war on in Iraq.
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And, you know, at some point it kind of started to feel
11:44
like the global war on terror
11:46
because that's what it was always dubbed as.
11:49
So it felt like Iraq and Afghanistan
11:51
will always be interconnected.
11:54
For those of us who fought in one,
11:56
the emotional ties to the other are strong
11:58
just because that's the community we shed blood in both.
12:01
And it was the same community doing that.
12:04
And, and so, you know, it was really, really stressful.
12:08
And I'll tell you why it was stressful.
12:12
'Cause I've had a little bit of hindsight to look back on.
12:15
But there was no definition of success.
12:19
There was no kind of, from leadership.
12:21
I mean, as simple as do we want to have an embassy
12:26
in Afghanistan, yes or no?
12:28
- Right.
12:29
- If you want to have an embassy
12:30
you have to have some support structure.
12:31
We did not have to just give everything up
12:35
and look like clowns doing it.
12:37
And that's what we did.
12:37
We looked like amateurs.
12:39
You know, it's like how we view Russia
12:41
looking right now in the Ukraine.
12:44
You know, that's how we looked to ourselves
12:46
in the pull out of Afghanistan.
12:48
Like, hey, here's the keys, right?
12:50
I mean, we knew that the local Afghan military
12:55
was not going to be able to sustain this without us.
12:57
I mean, we had, we had Bagram.
12:59
We built it up.
13:00
It was this enormous logistical hub.
13:02
It's, you know, it's not the most strategic piece
13:06
of property on the whole globe, but we had it.
13:09
We had it all the infrastructure.
13:10
If you want to keep an embassy
13:11
you have to keep Bagram up and operational.
13:14
You know, you don't have to pull everybody out.
13:17
Like, why pull everybody out?
13:18
Special forces are designed to leave,
13:21
to be in certain places,
13:22
to work by with and through local partner forces.
13:24
You can achieve, if you're in state is,
13:28
let's maintain some degree of foothold,
13:31
aka stability, on this country.
13:34
You can't be a, we can't keep the peace forever,
13:38
but there just wasn't that.
13:40
It was just nobody, nobody made a case for it
13:44
that any of us understood.
13:46
And so it just looked like the politicians
13:51
were making very poor decisions.
13:53
And we have a history as replete
13:56
with all sorts of politicians doing this.
13:58
And this is just one in that long list
14:00
of those from Vietnam to this, you know?
14:04
And it just, that was really stressful
14:06
because, you know, I know what it's like
14:10
to work with the local Afghans that you train with
14:13
and you fight with and you go out on missions with.
14:15
And I did that in Iraq and you get close with them
14:18
and all of a sudden, you know, they're,
14:21
I mean, they're fighting, like they are fighting
14:23
for the same mission objectives that you are.
14:27
And it just felt like a betrayal to too many who were there.
14:30
And it felt unnecessary is really what it felt like.
14:34
And that's the part where it's just, it's illogical.
14:37
We did not need to go that specific route.
14:40
- No, we certainly didn't need to do that.
14:42
And here's the thing, when you talk to someone
14:43
that's like a real died in the wool, Biden supporter
14:47
and you ask them like, hey, can you give us a reason
14:49
for this pull out?
14:50
They can't give you a real reason.
14:51
They're just, they're very, very confused.
14:53
And the same thing is true for the people
14:55
that were on the ground.
14:56
I've talked to people that were on the ground
14:57
as the country was falling.
14:58
And everyone was just very confused.
15:00
They're like, what's the strategy here?
15:02
What exactly are we trying to do?
15:03
And here's the thing is you might be like,
15:04
oh, maybe someone's playing 40 chess in the White House
15:07
and they're really, this is gonna be a great thing
15:09
for us in the future and history's gonna look back
15:11
on this time and we're gonna look like the geniuses.
15:13
But the longer, or I guess a further and further,
15:15
we get away from last summer, the worst this looks.
15:19
It's bad for the Afghan people.
15:21
It's bad for us as Americans.
15:22
It's bad for us on the world stage.
15:24
And look like what's going on right now in the Ukraine.
15:27
And so, I mean, we're not gonna be spending
15:28
a whole lot of time talking about that,
15:30
but we have the same people in the White House
15:31
and the same people in the administration
15:32
that are trying to help deal with that situation,
15:34
which kind of gets into this whole concept
15:36
of the United States being the world's police, right?
15:38
Like Team America, like we're gonna go and defend
15:41
some other countries borders,
15:42
even though we don't even defend our own,
15:43
which, you know, that's a, I guess another question,
15:45
another discussion for another day.
15:46
But there is this perception out there
15:49
that the United States is always gonna be the one
15:51
that's sending over troops to deal with other conflicts
15:53
and maybe that we're gonna set up bases
15:55
and chill in that country for a long period of time.
15:57
And, you know, there's people that are like,
15:58
don't do that, don't play into the military
16:00
industrial complex and then you have other people
16:01
that are war hawks and they're like,
16:03
yeah, let's send people over there.
16:04
Let's have our 18, 19 and 20 year olds go over there
16:07
and die for somebody else's war.
16:08
It creates a lot of consternation for people.
16:10
So what's your perspective on that perception
16:12
that we are or need to be the world's police?
16:15
- So those are two different things.
16:17
Perception is part of it.
16:19
Look, I think, let's go back to my criticism on Afghanistan
16:24
and that poll, I was like, define success.
16:26
What is success?
16:27
And then you can back into the solution.
16:30
We did this in the early days of Afghanistan in 2001, right?
16:33
We said, you know, this cannot support
16:36
a major military operation sent in the Green Barays
16:39
because we need to have a first response
16:40
and it needs to happen fast because perception
16:42
mattered there, right?
16:44
So what happened was we worked with a very small footprint,
16:47
trust the guy on the ground and worked by with him
16:51
through the Northern Alliance to defeat the Taliban
16:54
with the Air Force, God bless him,
16:55
in the Boneyard of the Soviet Empire.
16:57
We did that in under two months, right?
16:59
In the Boneyard of the Soviet Empire, right?
17:01
And so are we willing to, what risk are we willing to assume
17:07
to achieve what desired in state?
17:09
Because once you start turning into,
17:12
hey, I've got to go house to house in urban combat
17:15
and then I've got to maintain that ground,
17:18
which means you've got to secure it
17:19
and then you move to another part of town
17:22
and you've got to go house to house and clear it,
17:24
you are getting into very murky, very messy,
17:28
very dirty warfare that will result in a lot of loss,
17:32
lot of death, lot of casualties.
17:34
It's just, that's the horrific part of the war.
17:37
When I start to say, when I look at the Ukraine,
17:41
like that is 10 Special Forces Group where I serve,
17:44
there is a foreign battalion in Stupe Guard, right?
17:48
That is there to combat communist,
17:53
like the first of the 10 Special Forces Group
17:56
has been working with and other National Guard units
17:59
and other have been working with Ukrainian soldiers
18:02
since Crimea was taken, especially in all of this,
18:05
like teaching them how to use certain weapons.
18:08
And so this is a classic Special Forces mission.
18:12
Like, now, when you start getting into
18:14
what should the big footprint be,
18:16
should we send ground troops into Ukraine?
18:19
I would say, no, like that's,
18:21
you're gonna get locked into a land war
18:23
in the Ukraine against Russia.
18:24
That's messy.
18:26
Now, if you start to say,
18:27
should we run a classic Special Forces mission in Ukraine?
18:31
Yeah, I think we should, right?
18:33
But that's because I understand the risk is,
18:36
the risk is minimal and the men taking the risk
18:39
are willing to assume those risks.
18:41
And, you know, one of the things that has been clear to me
18:46
with Putin is the clarity of,
18:48
you can't run around anymore and say,
18:50
oh, well, Putin's actually kind of a nice guy
18:52
and might be on our side.
18:54
Like, he's not on our side.
18:55
He's not, this is not the case.
18:58
- Right, and he's also not crazy.
18:59
Like, I can't stay with people like,
19:00
oh, the guy's crazy, he's clearly off his rocker.
19:02
The dude might be evil, but he's not crazy.
19:05
He doesn't seem like he's completely lost his sensibilities,
19:07
you know?
19:08
- Yeah, no, I mean, he's an autocrat though.
19:10
- Right, yeah.
19:11
- And what risks are we willing to assume
19:15
in order to thwart his influence?
19:18
And, oh, by the way, China's watching.
19:21
- That's right. - So how do we,
19:22
how do we kind of, we have to assume some risks.
19:25
So you have to define success, right?
19:28
And if you say, look, we're basically not willing
19:32
to launch a ground war into the Ukraine.
19:34
Like, we don't necessarily wanna say these things,
19:37
but we need to know them, right?
19:40
And, okay, no fly zones in all this.
19:43
Like, here is a, I was talking to a buddy
19:47
just yesterday afternoon, right?
19:49
And he was of the mindset, like,
19:50
we should absolutely establish a no fly zone over Ukraine.
19:54
Now, I'm going to remove some of the collateral damage
19:58
from this, because when you take a step back,
20:00
you have to look this almost dispassionately, almost, right?
20:04
Humanity, you weigh this, but you say, okay,
20:07
in terms of warfare, you say, okay,
20:10
should we take, should we stray 40 miles of tanks
20:15
and all of this stuff and like really say,
20:18
hey, the skies are ours, and that's the line in the sand
20:24
that we're drawing, or what is worse for Russia?
20:29
Is it worse that we send in Stinger missiles
20:32
to take out anything that flies?
20:34
Is it worse that we send in javelins to take out tanks?
20:37
Like, what, I mean, that is a terrible proposition
20:42
as a pilot or as a tank commander or as anything.
20:47
I mean, that is morale plummeting.
20:48
If you are arming the local population
20:52
with any tank, any aircraft weapons,
20:54
I mean, that will zap morale faster than anything,
20:57
and then you're what?
20:58
You're going to have to still send in ground troops
21:01
to take over cities and hold it
21:03
and against a population that will fight against you.
21:06
So look, I don't have any problem
21:10
with unconventional warfare in this case,
21:13
because I think that it is an acceptable risk
21:17
that we can take for maximum, maximum, you know,
21:23
outcomes that we would desire in this case.
21:25
I don't think we want to send in the 82nd
21:28
and fight a ground war there.
21:29
I just think there's so many better ways to do it
21:32
from a classic Army Special Forces green berry
21:36
by with and through unconventional warfare.
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22:09
- Yeah, absolutely.
22:10
I mean, I feel like we could spend the rest of our time
22:11
on this and maybe we can get into this
22:12
on a later on in the podcast
22:14
or maybe even later down the road on another podcast.
22:16
But I do find it interesting how a lot of people
22:19
went from being expert epidemiologists
22:21
when it comes to viruses to being experts
22:23
on the situation between Ukraine and Russia.
22:25
Because here's the deal.
22:26
I've watched hours and listened to hours worth of videos
22:29
and podcasts about the situation
22:32
about the history of everything going on in that area.
22:33
And I'm still mega confused as to kind of what's going on
22:37
and we don't really know exactly what's going on
22:38
on the ground.
22:39
And then you have these people over here
22:40
that are just no matter what.
22:42
We got to have a no-fly zone.
22:43
We got to send in troops and they're so sure of it.
22:44
I'm just like, how in the world can you
22:46
possibly be this sure of it?
22:48
And I got to say, I'm just less than enthused, I guess,
22:51
with the people in the White House
22:52
and people at the levers of power
22:54
that are going to be making the decisions
22:55
about how we as Americans can help figure out this situation.
22:58
But we'll kind of get off that subject
23:01
and move into something else.
23:02
But earlier in this conversation,
23:04
you mentioned the year 2008,
23:05
which was a watershed year for you because in 2008,
23:08
you're still in special forces
23:10
and your wife Emily was at the CIA.
23:12
So you're doing the Lord's work.
23:13
But you guys decided collectively
23:15
that you were going to start a backpack company.
23:20
So without really any experience in manufacturing
23:23
or making products or getting them to market anything like that,
23:25
you decide that's what you're going to do.
23:27
So I guess just take me through that.
23:30
Where in the world did you guys come up with the idea
23:32
that, hey, you know what, we're going to get out of this work,
23:34
this line of work that we're doing right now,
23:36
and we're going to make the world's best rucksack.
23:38
I mean, dude, just take me through that, please.
23:41
- Yeah, like worst idea ever, right?
23:43
- It could be, yeah.
23:45
So I was visiting Emily in West Africa.
23:48
She was posted there as a diplomatic cover,
23:51
but she was a case officer for the CIA.
23:54
And they love a good coup in Africa, right?
23:57
It just sort of, you go to war in Iraq or Afghanistan,
24:01
you get all kitted up, you get your gun truck,
24:04
you know you're at war, it's kind of a switch
24:06
that you flip inside of your head.
24:08
Over there, man, it can just sort of come out of nowhere
24:12
and it's chaos in a different way.
24:15
It almost feels riskier, if that makes sense, right?
24:19
- Yeah, yeah.
24:20
- But I was there for a month, 30 days leave, right?
24:23
In between over Christmas break, 2007 into 2008.
24:28
And I just made her a couple go bags, right?
24:31
And a go bag was, hey, put some extra stuff in this,
24:34
keep it in your car with you, keep this one at the house,
24:37
just so that you know where certain stuff is,
24:39
whether it's medical supplies or radios
24:44
or a pair of running shoes in case you're out
24:46
and you need shoes that you can move in, stuff like that,
24:50
right?
24:51
And you know, I was getting out of the army
24:54
not because I wanted to get out,
24:55
but because I wanted to finally,
24:59
after five years of marriage, live with my wife
25:01
and it just, we couldn't make that work,
25:02
army and the agency.
25:03
So the big plan was to transition over
25:06
and work at the company, at the agency I should say,
25:09
and so I was like, all right, what should I do
25:12
when I move here, because she had her posting,
25:15
what should I do when I move here?
25:16
And we were just thinking about it and, you know,
25:19
house husband thing is not really a great,
25:21
like I have something else to do now.
25:24
I mean, God bless the people they can,
25:26
it's just, that's not me.
25:27
And she's like, oh, you should do the go rock thing.
25:29
And what it basically meant was, you know,
25:31
you should teach people, train them on what go bags are
25:35
and kind of up people's security or, you know,
25:38
mindset training or whatever.
25:39
And like do that for a year in West Africa
25:42
and then we would come back to DC and whatever.
25:44
And, you know, it just kind of one thing led to another,
25:48
because I was using old packs, right,
25:50
that I had had and I made them for her.
25:52
It's like, oh, I don't really like these packs that much.
25:55
Maybe like, can't be that hard.
25:57
How about we just do our own, right?
25:59
Right. And so that whole process, man,
26:02
it's like, it just, then it just kind of kept,
26:06
it wasn't what I immediately wanted to do with my life,
26:10
just 'cause we had this idea.
26:11
It was more like a hobby to keep me busy
26:13
because I have to be kept busy, you know?
26:16
Right, yeah.
26:17
And so one thing led to another and it's like, all right,
26:20
well, I guess I need to find a backpack designer
26:22
'cause I have a couple of ideas, right?
26:24
It's like, this, this, this rock should thrive in war,
26:27
but it should also thrive in New York City, you know?
26:30
And, and so, it's like, okay, backpack designer.
26:33
So I put an ad in Craigslist, New York City
26:36
for a backpack designer and eventually found this crew
26:39
in Montana that helped me design them.
26:41
And, you know, that took two and a half years
26:44
'cause there was nobody breathing down my neck
26:45
about, you know, what's the target deadline?
26:48
And it just, it was, came out when it was ready.
26:51
And so it took a long time and then, you know,
26:54
it took so long that the original application
26:56
was not holding true anymore.
26:58
Like go to West Africa and fill this with stuff.
27:00
And it's really expensive.
27:02
So kind of figuring out the business model.
27:04
It's like putting the, building the aircraft in flight, you know?
27:08
- Right, and the cool thing about it is
27:10
you actually wrote an entire book detailing the failures
27:13
that you went through early on in the business,
27:15
which I just got to say, I love that you've done that.
27:17
That shows that you have some humility there.
27:18
You can cut, you don't take yourself too seriously.
27:20
You can have a little humor about your situation.
27:22
And guys, we'll make sure that book is in the show note
27:23
so you can go and check it out for yourself.
27:25
But 2010 really was a turning point for you and the business
27:29
because you ran into some resistance immediately
27:32
when you got into the space.
27:33
You know, there were a lot of competitors, you know,
27:35
hey, you know, nobody rocks outside the military.
27:38
No one's gonna do rucking for exercise.
27:40
You know, you were just this small fish
27:41
in this enormous pond seemingly.
27:43
But the thing about it was, is at this time,
27:46
nobody was really buying the rocks.
27:47
And all of your personal capital was taken up an inventory.
27:51
And that is a horrible place to be
27:53
when you've got all this inventory
27:54
that doesn't want to move and nobody wants it.
27:56
So Jason, to be honest,
27:58
that seemed like a really good place for you to maybe try
28:01
and cut your losses, you know, maybe pivot away
28:04
and do something different, make another career move.
28:07
But you didn't do that.
28:09
You stuck with the plan in from the outside looking in,
28:12
it looked like you took a faith step to be like,
28:14
you know what, I know it doesn't seem
28:15
like it's working right now.
28:16
But I feel like we're on the cusp of something.
28:18
So take me through that.
28:19
- Yeah, so it was still kind of a hobby for me.
28:22
I mean, the hardest thing to fight against is just apathy.
28:26
But nobody cares about your little project, man.
28:31
Nobody cares, right?
28:33
And inertia of the universe is a really powerful thing.
28:36
Trying to fight that, good luck, right?
28:38
You better come up with something
28:40
and you better keep after it,
28:42
you better chase the energy in the room
28:43
or the energy in the universe
28:45
because it's not gonna just,
28:47
they don't just give away, you know,
28:51
conquering the world for free, you know?
28:54
So I was fortunate because thanks to the US Taxpayer,
28:58
I had the post-9/11 GI bill
29:00
and the veteran transition is a hard thing.
29:02
And I was grateful for that opportunity
29:04
because the US Taxpayer paid for me
29:07
to go back to business school.
29:08
And you know, I had to apply
29:10
and go through all of that stuff.
29:11
And I got in and I was in DC going to business school.
29:14
So I had this kind of,
29:16
hey, I'm in business school from 2009
29:19
until the summer of 2011.
29:21
May is when I was gonna graduate.
29:22
And there in the middle is when I finally started
29:25
to get the product in towards the end of my first year.
29:28
And I thought people were gonna buy it
29:30
because I had this idea in my head
29:33
that these are really great things
29:34
and I knew we had done everything to make them great
29:36
but the inertia of the universe, nobody had heard of us.
29:39
Nobody's like, wait, what?
29:41
It costs $300 for a bag?
29:44
You know, I can go buy that at Walmart for 20 bucks.
29:47
It's like, yeah, you'll get what you pay for
29:50
but I had to learn how to say that, right?
29:52
And how to cut through the noise of the universe.
29:56
And basically, I didn't know anything about Google AdWords.
29:59
I didn't know anything about Facebook ads.
30:00
I don't know anything about any of that stuff, right?
30:02
My only training was in as a green beret
30:05
in my professional career.
30:07
And so I start, what I did know was how to train others,
30:09
how to whoop it on.
30:10
I knew how to rock.
30:11
I knew how to encourage and get people to embrace the suck.
30:15
I knew how to push people past their limits
30:17
and I knew how to build teams, right?
30:19
I'm like, great, I'll do that.
30:21
And so I started this thing called the Go Rock Challenge.
30:23
And it was basically led by me,
30:25
current and former special forces.
30:26
And before you know it, I had my bodies running them as well.
30:29
But let's show up on a street corner.
30:32
Your rucksack's gonna have,
30:34
we're gonna stuff it with bricks.
30:36
And we're gonna go on this team building challenge together.
30:41
And that was, you know, there was no published route.
30:44
There was no details, not forthcoming.
30:46
It's done when it's done.
30:48
I'm not gonna promise you where you're gonna end
30:50
or what's, how long this is gonna take.
30:52
Clear your schedule, you know?
30:54
And it was just some pipe hitter fight club [inaudible], man.
30:58
And that was just the total energy in the room.
31:02
And the numbers were small.
31:03
I mean, my first class, like 12 people.
31:05
My second class was six people, you know?
31:08
And, but it started to kind of like, wait, what is this?
31:11
I mean, you're meeting at a street corner,
31:14
you know, a street corner in DC or New York
31:17
or San Francisco at one in the morning
31:19
and like 12, 14 hours later,
31:22
you're done with this awesome challenge.
31:24
And it's, you know, it's nothing that you can't do
31:28
because you're part of the team.
31:30
And nobody could do that by themselves.
31:32
And so, you know, it's just me kind of posing challenges.
31:35
Hurry up, slow down, carry this, carry them.
31:37
You got casualties, you know, carry your rucks
31:39
without the straps.
31:41
Do, you know, pick that up, you know, drag this thing.
31:43
Let me talk about why.
31:45
Hey, you're the team leader.
31:46
You're in charge of your team, right?
31:47
Communicate, you gotta do that.
31:49
You gotta learn how to lead, you gotta learn how to follow.
31:51
Like, if you, if you bicker, one of my big rules
31:54
is if you bicker against yourselves,
31:55
we're gonna stop here and we're gonna do PT for an hour.
31:58
And that's just tacked onto this.
31:59
Like there's no shortening of the event.
32:01
It's just gonna cost you an hour, right?
32:03
So don't bicker, that doesn't help teams, right?
32:06
You gotta learn how to communicate together
32:08
in times of stress.
32:09
And basically, it's pretty rare in the universe now
32:14
when someone's willing to come out
32:16
with these kind of rites of passage for people
32:20
and hold that line where, you know,
32:24
everybody wants to, wants you to just buy something.
32:28
Hey, buy this and then you'll feel like you did something.
32:32
Like, no, that's not how the world works.
32:33
Let me show you what it feels like
32:35
when you actually earn something.
32:36
So anyway, I'm going down this 'cause I get motivated,
32:39
thinking about it.
32:40
- No, that's good, get it.
32:41
- But you've got, you know, so then we had this manufacturing
32:44
side of the rucks and we had this energy side of the events
32:48
and it was just kind of combining those
32:51
and that became Go-Ruck.
32:53
And Go-Ruck was before, you know,
32:55
we're putting on a thousand events a year like this
32:58
all over the country and the world
32:59
led by current and former Special Forces guys,
33:01
Special Operations guys actually
33:03
'cause it's all the services, all the branches
33:05
and even some international guys.
33:07
And, you know, the thing that we like to say we were doing
33:10
is building better Americans, right?
33:12
It's about, you know, your team.
33:15
It's about pushing through your limits.
33:17
It's about all these things, you know,
33:19
that we all need more of in our lives.
33:21
Do hard stuff.
33:23
And that was a mission that I could really get behind
33:25
'cause there's community and there's, you know,
33:28
the idea of starting a backpack company
33:31
and pedaling backpacks for the rest of my life.
33:34
Like, I just, that's just not my calling in life, right?
33:39
Build a better business and this, my widget's better
33:41
than your widget and, you know, all this stuff.
33:43
Like I, I'm just not built for that.
33:45
Especially after the way that I served our country
33:48
after 9/11 and I just wanted it to all mean more.
33:51
And I felt like because of the service that I'd had
33:56
and because of the people that I met
33:59
and I owe them, I still owe them and I will always owe them.
34:04
It's the guys that taught me what I was capable of.
34:07
They taught me what we could do together.
34:09
They taught me how to stay alive, you know?
34:11
They gave me these great gifts
34:13
of how to be a better person.
34:16
And I don't want to waste those gifts.
34:18
I want to give those back to others
34:20
and stand for something that's really important to me.
34:24
And I think is vital to our country and our way of life.
34:27
So that's what we, that's what we wrap in
34:30
and bake in the everything that we do at GoRuck.
34:33
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35:01
- Dude, that's so awesome.
35:02
It actually reminds me of a quote from your bio page
35:05
on the GoRuck website that I just jotted down here
35:07
just a while ago, and it's this.
35:09
When you survive the things that we have
35:10
and your inspiration in life
35:12
becomes normal people doing extraordinary things,
35:14
what you realize is that you don't owe less, you owe more.
35:19
And that really goes into these GoRuck challenges
35:21
that you brought up, these events that people train for.
35:24
They base their entire training regimen
35:26
and parts of their life and their diet and everything around
35:28
being able to go out and do these things.
35:29
But I got some breaking news for you, Jason.
35:31
I don't know if you know this,
35:33
but America and Americans in general
35:35
are really, really fat.
35:37
That they're just not terribly motivated.
35:39
They don't wanna be in shape.
35:40
It's like you're constantly surrounded
35:43
'cause I know I certainly am by these people
35:45
that are just waiting on the inspiration
35:47
and motivation bug to sting 'em.
35:49
And then they'll get in shape
35:51
and then they'll clean up their diet
35:52
and then they'll get out and do exercise.
35:54
So I guess whenever I look out
35:55
and I survey what's going on in America and in the world,
35:59
I get pretty sad about it.
36:00
I don't really have this optimism
36:02
that we're gonna be able to get out of that.
36:03
And in the environment that you live in,
36:05
you're constantly surrounded by people
36:07
that are getting after it,
36:08
but it's still kind of a sad state of affairs in the country.
36:11
I guess I don't really have a question,
36:12
just go with that wherever you want to.
36:14
- Okay, so we need to take this up a notch, right?
36:17
- Okay.
36:18
- And when you look back at the last two years,
36:21
this is the greatest assault on community
36:24
and social fitness that has ever existed
36:26
in the history of civilization.
36:28
Never before has it been even possible to tell people
36:32
to just distance themselves
36:33
or to hide behind Zoom all the time
36:35
or to do everything in an impersonal way.
36:38
And the problem is,
36:40
is that you actually desensitize yourself
36:42
to other human beings when all you do is see them
36:44
on a screen, right?
36:46
So even people that you know
36:47
or you used to work with or whatever,
36:49
over time when you don't live in the real world
36:51
with other people, you stop behaving like a human being.
36:55
And so I can tell you,
36:57
we can get to why rocking is great and all that stuff,
36:59
but ultimately what I believe in is community
37:03
and I believe in social fitness.
37:05
And I believe that that's the greatest accountability
37:07
that we can have.
37:08
This is not from a position of weakness.
37:11
Like I need other people and that makes me weak.
37:13
This is from a position of strength.
37:15
Like we are stronger together
37:17
because every weekend in my driveway,
37:21
I have guys in gels from just the hood, you know?
37:25
At 3.30 both days, we toss some sandbags or go for a rock
37:29
or do something together.
37:30
We talk about our lot, we get strong, you know?
37:33
It's good for our hearts, it's good for our souls,
37:35
it's good for our minds, all that stuff.
37:37
And when we're done, we sort of shoot the [inaudible],
37:39
we drink some beers, we talk about the world,
37:42
talk about whatever the case may be.
37:44
And when we start to look at health, right,
37:47
people will try to isolate it
37:48
because marketers are really good at this.
37:50
The marketers have never been better, right?
37:52
They're selling easy all day long by this thing
37:55
because we have so much money.
37:58
Right?
37:58
And the problem is, is that,
38:02
and I'll get to, I'm not,
38:03
I'm a glass, all 99% full kind of guy.
38:07
But it's important to kind of diagnose
38:09
the problems here, right?
38:11
And we have so much money
38:14
and it is so easy to buy stuff.
38:17
And yet we have to lead examined lives.
38:20
And when we do this, if you look at that,
38:22
there is no correlation between more money
38:25
and more happiness.
38:26
Once you get to a certain threshold,
38:28
right, take care of basic Maslow's hierarchy of needs,
38:32
it doesn't happen.
38:33
And so I have to remind myself this all the time, right?
38:35
Like, you know, go around to double
38:37
or it's triple in size
38:39
or how do we get there faster and all this stuff?
38:41
Like, I enjoy the process
38:42
because I enjoy the mission
38:43
and I enjoy the people I work with.
38:45
And at some point the outcomes come what may,
38:47
but what I love is the people that I get to do this with.
38:52
And so I need the accountability on,
38:55
you know, the social fitness side of if they didn't show up
39:00
in my driveway or we didn't have that planned,
39:02
I would not do it as often.
39:04
I don't love to wake up so early in the morning,
39:08
eat nails and toss sandbags by myself.
39:10
I don't want to do that by myself on Saturday afternoons.
39:13
I lose the motivation.
39:14
I do other stuff, I'm an active guy, right?
39:18
Because I know how it makes me feel better.
39:20
By the way, it makes everybody feel better.
39:22
So get your steps in and all these.
39:24
We know them to be true, right?
39:26
The accountability that we're missing is
39:29
it comes from the most basic behaviors
39:34
that are not for sale.
39:36
Like, this is the problem, we're inundated all day long
39:39
with everything that's for sale.
39:41
But you don't need any of that to be healthier, right?
39:45
I mean, you can't choose your parents, I get this.
39:48
So there's some genetic stuff
39:49
and everybody always wants to focus on the exceptions.
39:51
But I think that we're right to focus on the overwhelming
39:55
majority in America, which is, look,
39:57
we need to be more active.
39:59
And to do that, what works for me
40:01
is to be more active with other people.
40:04
And it's better to do this outside.
40:06
It's better to do this in a place
40:08
that with the type of activity that I enjoy, that's fun,
40:13
that I can do with other people.
40:15
And then build that into our routines.
40:17
Build that into our habits and build that into our lives, right?
40:21
If you've got to walk the dog, you can rock the dog.
40:23
You can invite somebody else to come with you.
40:26
Fitness and exercise does not have to be.
40:29
I get in my car, I drive to the big global gym.
40:32
I drive around for 15 minutes looking for a closer spot, right?
40:37
I walk in, I do a 20-minute class,
40:39
and then I get in my car and drive home.
40:41
Like, it's the lifestyle choices that we make.
40:46
The activity begets activity.
40:49
Once you start to feel like you're doing better
40:51
because you're more active, do more stuff, not on your phone.
40:55
Go do more stuff with other people in the real world.
40:58
How about start there?
41:00
And there's lots of different ways that you can do that,
41:02
but we need each other.
41:03
It's ultimately the part that we need to start behaving
41:06
like we need each other because we do.
41:08
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41:37
- Right, I mean, you brought up so many great things there,
41:39
so I wanna try to unpack them and ask them follow-ups,
41:41
but with the pandemic, there were a lot of guys
41:44
that worked out at the global gyms
41:46
and did that kind of thing that as soon as their gym closed down,
41:48
they didn't know how to be in shape anymore, seemingly.
41:51
It's like they're like, how do I work out now?
41:53
And I told a lot of people that
41:54
because I've had a home gym at my house,
41:56
basically ever since we built it,
41:57
but for the first three, four weeks that we lived here,
42:00
I didn't have my gym set up,
42:01
and so I didn't wanna lose kind of all the progress I had made,
42:04
especially with things like pull-ups,
42:06
which are not the easiest thing in the world for me
42:08
that I had to really develop and get better at.
42:10
And so for the first three or four weeks,
42:11
I was living at our new house.
42:13
I was doing pull-ups on a tree in the neighbor's yard
42:16
because there was this big thick branch
42:18
that came out, horizontal to the ground,
42:20
and so I was like, yeah, I'm just gonna do pull-ups on that.
42:22
So with the human body and mother earth,
42:24
you can really, really get after it,
42:26
but a lot of people just don't really think that way,
42:28
and it really gets into this whole lost sense of community,
42:31
'cause you bought up from this community there.
42:33
Yeah, it goes back to the book Bowling Alone,
42:35
which was written about 20 years ago.
42:36
And for my wife and I, we're pretty concerned about this
42:39
because we have two kids now
42:40
that are below the age of two, two boys.
42:42
And I see, as I look out on everything,
42:44
I see this devolving of America.
42:46
I see the entire generations of entitled kids
42:51
that have no idea where their rights come from
42:53
and anyone had to sacrifice before them.
42:56
They think history started the day that they were born.
42:58
I see the weakening of the military
43:00
with the changing of standards
43:02
so more people can get in
43:03
and this overwhelming focus on diversity, equity,
43:05
and inclusion and not necessarily on lethality.
43:08
We can't seemingly talk about the great American experiment
43:11
or the American spirit or the American way.
43:14
We have to always look at our own country
43:15
as like it's this negative thing
43:17
that we can't really talk about or if we do,
43:18
we have to talk in these hushed tones
43:20
because we're so ashamed.
43:22
So I guess what I'm asking you, Jason,
43:23
is do you see what you're doing day in and day out
43:27
helping with that?
43:28
Helping with this idea that, look,
43:30
when you have a strong community,
43:32
the way everyone votes and what everybody thinks about
43:34
this issue or that issue, it doesn't really matter as much.
43:37
It matters about us all being collectively healthy
43:39
and healthy as this greater community.
43:42
- I think the solution for more of us is do what we can
43:46
with what we have where we are
43:47
and start leading from the damn front.
43:49
Like live the life that you wanna lead
43:51
instead of just spreading all the toxicity
43:55
all over Facebook and all of this stuff, right?
43:57
It's like just lead the life and show people the way
44:01
and when we do that, it gives them permission
44:03
to also lead that life, right?
44:05
'Cause to a lot of people, man,
44:07
you have to have a degree of self-confidence
44:11
to go do things that other people are not doing.
44:14
And if it looks weird, oh man,
44:16
I don't wanna go get dirty in the park
44:19
or I don't wanna, I need to have my pull up bar perfect.
44:21
I can't go do it here.
44:23
It's like, but when we show people
44:25
that this can be simpler, right?
44:27
It gives them license and permission to do that.
44:28
And so at Go Rock, I mean, this is why I'm here, right?
44:32
This is, I've found my calling in life, you know?
44:35
And it goes back to what I was taught as a green beret.
44:40
You live together, you eat together,
44:42
you get to know the people, you fight together,
44:44
you bleed together, you die together,
44:46
you treat others around you well.
44:49
You try to, I mean, green brace build,
44:51
we build the best armies.
44:52
We aren't the best army, we're too small, right?
44:55
But we lead through influence and actions
44:57
and supporting others.
44:59
And so look, we have 500 Go Rock clubs
45:03
around the country and around the world.
45:05
There's people getting together
45:06
for social fitness and community.
45:07
And like, when you hear the word community,
45:10
here's like, Facebook has stolen these words,
45:14
friends, community, these are not friends,
45:17
these are not communities, these are forums
45:19
and these are avatars with listed names on them.
45:23
And that's why people behave so horribly
45:25
to each other on these forums.
45:26
You could never behave like that
45:28
when we were in sort of the tribal societies,
45:32
which are not that far back, right?
45:34
You had to share the fence,
45:35
you had to share food.
45:36
Now everything is just, I'm four individual rights.
45:39
I'm for freedom, right?
45:41
I'm for these things.
45:42
The thing is, is that we're confusing that too often
45:46
with just because you can lead a private life.
45:49
You can box yourself up and hold yourself away.
45:52
Doesn't mean that it's good for you.
45:54
And each of us needs to take these choices
45:58
to be with our families, our tribes, our neighborhoods,
46:01
our communities and strengthen them
46:04
by meeting up with them and getting to know them.
46:06
And when we run our events or have our events in the field
46:09
or whatever the case it may be,
46:11
like I don't care if you're black,
46:12
white, young, old, male, female, gay, straight,
46:15
purple, polka-dotted, pink, whatever, right?
46:18
If you're here, then you're part of the team.
46:21
And that's what we do and what I find is that,
46:23
I mean, there are people that show up to these events
46:26
who are to the right of Genghis Khan
46:28
and to the left of Michael Moore.
46:29
And before you know it, they're actually talking
46:31
to each other like rational human beings and it's great.
46:36
And this reaffirms all those human values
46:39
that are just inside of us that we forget
46:42
when we just live on the metaverse, AKA the devil.
46:46
- Absolutely.
46:47
And really it comes from doing hard stuff together
46:50
because that's what forges you personally,
46:52
but also as a community.
46:53
I mean, for the last five years or so,
46:55
I've been doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and here's the deal.
46:57
I've gone through some horrifically tough training sessions
47:00
with a lot of my brothers that I train with.
47:02
And here's the thing, I know a lot about who these men are.
47:06
But I don't know as much about the stuff
47:08
that maybe isn't as important.
47:09
I don't know about their opinions
47:10
on obscure political topics or their favorite book
47:13
they've ever read or any stuff like that.
47:15
But I know who they are when the chips are down.
47:17
I know who they are on the inside
47:19
because I've seen them in these horrible situations
47:22
be able to operate and do really, really good things.
47:24
It goes back to a concept we talk about here
47:26
at Dr. Life called the Foxhole.
47:28
It's having people in your life
47:29
that are constantly pushing you
47:30
to be spiritually, mentally and physically resilient
47:33
on a daily basis.
47:34
And you do that by getting together
47:37
to do these hard things.
47:38
But here we are 45 minutes into the podcast.
47:40
I guess we should talk about rucking at some point
47:42
because that's really one of the main reasons
47:43
why you're here.
47:44
I guess let's just kind of get real generic with rucking
47:46
because rucking is something that some people do.
47:49
A lot of people kind of forget it.
47:50
They don't really think about it.
47:51
What are the benefits of rucking?
47:53
Let's talk about anything you want to talk about.
47:55
So let's just talk rucking.
47:56
Yeah, I mean, look, humans are built to carry weight.
47:59
This is, you know, you read about, you know,
48:02
oh, we were jogging or running after game
48:04
and we hunt them and do all this stuff,
48:06
like hunter-gatherer phase.
48:08
Well, at some point you have to carry stuff, right?
48:11
You have to put it on your back.
48:13
And then when the military's evolved,
48:15
you definitely want it on your back
48:17
because you need your hands free to fight.
48:19
You have to carry weapons.
48:20
You have to carry whatever, right?
48:21
I mean, this has been an evolution of man
48:25
to carry weight on our back and to move.
48:27
And so fast forward to today.
48:32
I mean, the virtues of walking are basically endless.
48:35
We all know this, right?
48:37
The problem with walking is that it's kind of boring
48:41
or it's not sexy or it's, you know,
48:44
it takes a lot of time or there's a million excuses.
48:47
The society's not built for walkers,
48:50
like it's built for cars and all of it.
48:52
Like, there's a million different excuses, right?
48:54
But if you take walking and say,
48:57
okay, going outside, getting some steps in,
49:00
that's a good thing, right?
49:02
There's nobody on planet earth
49:03
that's gonna say, don't do that.
49:05
No?
49:06
And so the thing about rucking is all of these things,
49:09
all of these things that are so good about walking,
49:12
rucking you also get posture correction
49:14
because, you know, you put the ruck on,
49:16
your text neck comes back, your shoulders go back, right?
49:20
You get strength gains.
49:22
So it's resist, active resistance training.
49:25
It's, all these things are heart healthy, right?
49:27
I mean, all these kinds of forms of exercise
49:30
are very heart healthy.
49:31
I mean, running is heart healthy.
49:33
Walking is heart healthy.
49:34
Rucking is heart healthy.
49:35
Jujitsu, all these forms of exercise
49:37
are all really good for our hearts.
49:39
The question is, it's like, how do we not get injured?
49:42
How do we become more durable?
49:43
How do we do those kinds of things
49:45
so that we can stay in the fight
49:48
of doing the, you know, being more active?
49:50
And the injury rate on rucking is,
49:52
is basically fractional to anything else.
49:55
I mean, and you'll hear some people in the military, right?
49:59
'Cause I can feel it right now.
50:01
They're like, man, I got kidnapped up from rucking.
50:03
Like, okay, in the military,
50:04
you put 125 pounds on your back.
50:06
You jump out of an airplane.
50:08
You land with said rucksack.
50:09
Then you hump that for days on end.
50:12
You're digging, fighting positions and all,
50:13
it's like the whole lifestyle there,
50:15
which is getting smarter, but not super fast.
50:19
It's getting smarter in some ways.
50:22
I'm talking about go outside with 20 or 30 or 45 pounds
50:26
on your back and go for a walk for an hour.
50:28
You can take a conference call.
50:30
You can ruck the dog.
50:31
You can ruck with your kids.
50:33
You can ruck with people who are completely
50:35
different ability levels.
50:36
If you're new to rucking and you've got 30 pounds
50:39
and I've been doing this forever and 45 is my sweet spot,
50:43
maybe we go out and we're at the same pace.
50:45
And, you know, like we can still talk when we do it.
50:48
There's a social element to this that you just
50:51
don't find with jogging or, you know,
50:54
a lot of these other solitary ways to stay heart healthy.
50:59
And we were talking about earlier, right?
51:01
Mental health, physical health, social health.
51:03
Like I don't, I only have 24 hours in a day, you know?
51:08
Like same with all of us, by the way.
51:09
- Right.
51:10
- So I try to get as much, cram as much as I can into that,
51:14
that sort of serves these three.
51:16
And I'm gonna put spiritual health in with mental health,
51:19
right?
51:19
Like those are, those are connected to me.
51:21
And, but they're all connected, you know?
51:24
And so if I can go out with a friend
51:26
and get some exercise, sometimes it's my dog monster
51:29
and get some exercise and heart healthy.
51:32
And it's functionally, I can do this all of the time.
51:37
They're, they're no kind of, this isn't complicated.
51:42
I don't have to drive places.
51:43
I don't have to take a class.
51:45
I don't have to do this.
51:46
And the easy button that's being sold now
51:49
is, you know, sign up for this fitness subscription
51:53
and do it on your phone and stare at your phone.
51:55
And I'm just like, come on, man.
51:57
Like it's, it's heart healthy, it is.
52:00
So people will sell it as this is healthy for you, right?
52:03
But mental health depends upon both social
52:06
and spiritual health.
52:07
And if you're only focused on the physical health,
52:10
when are you getting that social health?
52:12
When are you going outside?
52:14
When are you doing those kinds of things?
52:15
If you're just going to stare at your phone all the time.
52:18
Like we're staring at our phones on Zoom
52:20
and hangouts all day.
52:21
And then we're, so that we're getting our money's worth out
52:24
of our fitness subscription apps.
52:26
We're, you know, Mr. Spandex is, is,
52:29
is encouraging us to pedal faster.
52:31
Come on, do it, do it, guys.
52:32
Like it's lame, man.
52:34
Like ditch the spandex, put a rock on your back,
52:37
go outside in the free air that we have in this country
52:41
and like see how that works for you.
52:44
It's, it's great.
52:45
Yeah. I mean, it really is an amazing value proposition.
52:48
And here's the deal.
52:48
Because of advancements in technology, Jason,
52:51
that's how you and I are talking right now.
52:53
But, but, but the thing about it is,
52:54
is if this was all you and I had in terms of connection,
52:57
that would be a problem.
52:58
And guys, if you're just connecting
52:59
with people via technology,
53:01
that's not really a great thing.
53:03
And here's the thing.
53:04
I want to key in on something that you,
53:05
you said earlier because, you know,
53:06
we can spend all day talking about technology,
53:08
but let's move on to some more important topics.
53:10
But you talked about spiritual health overall, right?
53:14
And here's the thing in our current society,
53:16
that there's a lot of talk about spiritual stuff,
53:19
but people really don't like to get specific, right?
53:21
So they're like, oh, this is a faith-based program.
53:23
And then it's like, okay, well, which faith?
53:26
Because, I mean, a lot of people think
53:27
that these faiths are all fundamentally the same
53:29
and, you know, just, you know, different in small ways,
53:32
but it's the exact opposite.
53:33
They're, you know, fundamentally different
53:35
in some of these massive, massive ways.
53:37
And so for you personally, you know, Jason McCarthy,
53:39
if you had to put your flag in the ground and say,
53:41
hey, this is my spiritual worldview.
53:43
When I think about my spiritual life and what I believe in,
53:45
and, you know, kind of where you go when you die
53:47
and all those different things,
53:48
this is what I believe.
53:49
What would you say?
53:50
- You know, I was not as,
53:54
I couldn't be as specific before I joined the army.
54:00
And, you know, before you've been on that,
54:05
that kind of airfield,
54:07
you're about to get on a plane to go somewhere.
54:10
And, you know, you're praying to God
54:13
to let me carry out this mission
54:14
and not let the guys to my left and the guys to my right,
54:18
let me not let them downward, you know?
54:20
And when you felt that on your life and in your heart,
54:25
like that changes you forever.
54:27
So I believe, I mean, really feeling it, you know?
54:31
And it was an opportunity and a blessing that I had
54:34
that at, you know, 25 or 26, you know,
54:37
that I grew up going to church and some of the time,
54:41
not all the time.
54:42
And, you know, my mom worked later in life,
54:45
worked at the church for,
54:46
she just retired after 25 years or something there, right?
54:50
It's been around, right?
54:52
But I think that the best thing that,
54:57
the best thing that I did was answer the call
54:59
when it was asked of me.
55:00
And whether I want to say like,
55:03
I don't necessarily think the big guy upstairs was like,
55:06
you write this second, do this or else.
55:08
It's just sometimes the hardest thing to do is to do
55:12
the right thing that you know you need to do with your life.
55:15
Whatever, whatever else the noise is going on,
55:19
it's like walk your own path, man, walk your own path.
55:23
And the trick is to find that path.
55:26
And it doesn't mean it's going to be easy.
55:28
In fact, anybody that's walking the path, man, it's hard.
55:32
It's really hard.
55:33
And so in that path, you know, this way presented to me,
55:38
like this is not about me,
55:41
like I'm a small little speck
55:42
trying to do God's work here.
55:44
And so that's the, those are the lessons that I,
55:48
my wife and I, both, you know, impart on our kids
55:52
and we think that that's an important,
55:55
that's an important thing in our lives.
55:57
- It really is an important thing for people to realize
55:59
and you really have to kind of get to bedrock
56:01
because for me, I'm an Evangelical Christian,
56:03
which is going to be a shock to nobody
56:04
that's been listening to the show for longer than seven seconds.
56:07
But the thing about it is,
56:08
is you shouldn't refer to God in such small terms.
56:10
Like when people are like, oh yeah, you know,
56:11
God's my homeboy or, you know, the man upstairs.
56:13
It's like, no, no, like he's the creator God of the universe.
56:17
He created everything, including you.
56:18
Let's have some respect.
56:19
Like let's put some respect on that guy's name
56:21
even though I hate that quote.
56:22
But the thing is, I do think that all this goes
56:24
into the intensity conversation.
56:27
Because the GoRuck challenges that happen all year round,
56:29
they are super intense
56:30
and there's that one main one that you do every year
56:32
that's crazy intense and almost nobody finishes.
56:34
And the thing that's so interesting
56:36
is for a lot of these people,
56:37
you have to get beyond exhausted mentally
56:40
and physically with a lot of people
56:42
before you can ever address spiritual matters.
56:44
That really happens for a lot of people.
56:46
And I like whenever I watch the videos
56:48
or see the pictures of guys doing the long walk
56:49
and it's like, it seems like they're connecting spiritually
56:53
at that moment because they're alone, but they're not alone.
56:55
And there's kind of this extra layer to everything there.
56:57
And it really made me think of what Michael Easter talked about
57:00
in his book, The Comfort Crisis.
57:01
He's the one that actually connected us.
57:02
He talked about the Masogi.
57:04
And these are these really, really hard things
57:05
that you have like a 50, 50 chance
57:07
of actually completing them.
57:08
And you know, with the stuff that you've got,
57:11
you guys have done at GoRuck,
57:12
you've put a lot of people on the Masogi track
57:15
of doing these things that they never even fathom
57:17
that they could do.
57:18
But it's just something that y'all like, no,
57:19
like we're gonna make sure that we're pushing people
57:21
and pushing them in the right direction
57:23
because it's gonna end up being a net positive.
57:25
It's going to improve them no matter what.
57:27
So for you, Jason, do you feel like that is an extra layer
57:31
of importance to the stuff that you guys are doing overall?
57:34
Because there are people that are making
57:35
not only physical and mental breakthroughs,
57:37
but these spiritual breakthroughs
57:39
with the stuff that they're doing
57:40
because you guys have helped put them on a path
57:42
to where they're really gonna get after it.
57:44
And this is really an entire new lifestyle,
57:47
a new way of thinking, a new way of operating, you know?
57:49
- I think it's a pity and a shame
57:54
that so few people are exposed
57:58
to failing something that they care about.
58:02
And that's, if you wanna succeed more, fail more.
58:06
- Right, yeah.
58:07
- It's like, how do you find your path?
58:09
Where are the rights of passage in life anymore, you know?
58:12
I mean, this example from our generation's youth was,
58:17
man, there were high dives at public pools when I grew up.
58:21
You would go to the high dive and you're scared.
58:23
- Yep.
58:24
- You're climbing up it.
58:25
And the girl, the cute girl that you like is over there.
58:29
You know, she's probably not watching, but she might.
58:32
- No, but you think she is.
58:33
You really think she is.
58:34
- She will definitely be watching
58:36
if you climb back down that ladder, right?
58:39
- Yeah, that's right.
58:39
- And you feel the weight of the universe laughing at you,
58:42
right?
58:43
I mean, but now, you know, where are we willing
58:47
to assume some risk?
58:48
Risk implies that you might fail.
58:50
Where are we willing to assume this for ourselves?
58:53
Are we so potentially like just paralyzed
58:58
by this fear of failure, you know?
59:02
And you cannot find your path,
59:05
the path that you're meant to walk on for your life.
59:09
You cannot find it if you're just going along
59:12
with the inertia of the universe,
59:14
trying to avoid everything that comes in your way.
59:17
You just become immune to your path, your calling.
59:22
You gotta kind of push it.
59:24
And so I think that when you do get people
59:28
outside of their comfort zone,
59:30
I mean, I was way outside of my comfort zone
59:32
when I went to war, like just straight up.
59:34
I was afraid to die.
59:36
It made me question my mortality.
59:40
It made, I mean, growing up going to church
59:43
was exposure really for me, right?
59:47
I learned about God from the preachers and the pastors
59:52
and the folks that were at church,
59:59
but it took finding my path for me
1:00:02
to really feel the hand of God in my life.
1:00:06
And I'm grateful for that opportunity.
1:00:09
Other people find it many different ways, you know?
1:00:12
My wife was a Christian volunteer in Ecuador right out of it.
1:00:17
It just came to her.
1:00:18
She did that right out of college, you know?
1:00:20
And that was something that, you know,
1:00:23
that just came naturally to her.
1:00:24
That didn't come as naturally to me,
1:00:25
but joining the army and going and fighting, right?
1:00:30
I mean, that was, our team shirt said fist of God
1:00:35
on the, and it had like a crusaders cross on the back.
1:00:40
I mean, that's some mediator stuff, you know?
1:00:43
And that's kind of not allowed to talk about that really.
1:00:48
You know, I mean, but like, look, it was not,
1:00:51
I mean, we worked with, we worked with Muslims who were great.
1:00:54
Like we, we fought, we fought with them.
1:00:58
Like we, we trusted them, you know?
1:01:00
Not as much as we trusted each other, but we trusted them.
1:01:02
But we viewed ourselves with kind of a higher purpose
1:01:06
and a higher calling.
1:01:07
And that was necessary for us to be able
1:01:08
to do our jobs effectively.
1:01:10
- Yeah. And I've talked to some guys
1:01:12
in the spec ops community that have really no biblical worldview
1:01:15
or any faith of any kind.
1:01:16
And the thing is, is when you talk about a higher calling,
1:01:20
I would ask that person like, what do you mean by higher?
1:01:22
Because the thing is, is if we're just highly evolved chimps
1:01:25
that learned how to talk and, you know,
1:01:26
wear pants and all those different things,
1:01:28
then there is no higher calling.
1:01:30
I mean, there's no such thing as good or evil
1:01:32
because we're just monkeys, right?
1:01:33
We can't differentiate between good or evil.
1:01:35
And this kind of gets into something that,
1:01:37
you mentioned this twice now in this podcast, so I love it.
1:01:40
You mentioned writes a passage.
1:01:41
And I am literally obsessed with that concept
1:01:44
because I have two sons now,
1:01:46
so I wanna make sure that they know what it means to be a man.
1:01:48
But as Americans, we don't really do this.
1:01:50
You know, with the exception of some religious sex
1:01:53
and, you know, some small groups of people,
1:01:54
we don't really usher young men into manhood.
1:01:57
And so what it's created is this vacuum
1:02:00
that these young men fill with self-actualization.
1:02:03
So they get to decide when they become a man.
1:02:05
And so maybe it's, you know, when they move out of the house
1:02:08
or the first time they have sex
1:02:09
or the first time they buy their own vehicle
1:02:12
or something like that,
1:02:13
they get to just kind of self-actualize and be like,
1:02:15
oh, I guess I'm a man now.
1:02:16
And they just make it up as opposed to a group of men
1:02:20
or society telling them, this is now what's expected of you.
1:02:24
You are a man now because of these things.
1:02:26
Here are these great qualities in you that we need
1:02:28
in this community for our men to have.
1:02:30
And so this really is like a very hard nut to crack
1:02:33
for fathers and it's just terrible for our young men
1:02:36
because they have no idea.
1:02:38
They don't know what it's like to be a man.
1:02:39
They don't know what's expected of them.
1:02:41
And so it creates these issues for them.
1:02:43
And, you know, it's created a masculinity problem.
1:02:45
So I want you to talk about masculinity in general
1:02:47
in our society and, you know, how this goes into being a father
1:02:50
and I don't really know what your relationship is like
1:02:51
with your dad.
1:02:52
I don't really know how you do the dad thing
1:02:54
with your kids or anything like that.
1:02:55
But masculinity is certainly under attack
1:02:57
in the culture that we're in right now.
1:02:59
There's a lot of confusion over what it is,
1:03:01
what it should be and kind of the direction that we should go.
1:03:03
So just flow in whatever direction you want to
1:03:05
on masculinity right now.
1:03:07
- Yeah, I mean, my relationship with my dad is great.
1:03:10
And my stepdad, both great, right?
1:03:12
But I still view drill sardin Hester as a father figure.
1:03:16
I mean, like it was just when we can't fake it
1:03:21
is basically what this boils down to.
1:03:24
Like you might tell yourself you're a man
1:03:27
'cause you're turned 16 and you've got a car
1:03:29
and you're gonna drive 120 on the interstate
1:03:32
and take these kind of reckless risks, right?
1:03:36
But that's because you're trying to prove something
1:03:39
and you don't have an outlet to do it.
1:03:41
And you're just chasing ghosts, man.
1:03:44
You're chasing ghosts.
1:03:45
And so mentorship and setting people up to do hard.
1:03:50
I mean, the disaffected white Caucasian male in America
1:03:56
is a big problem.
1:03:58
I mean, the book Fight Club, the movie Fight Club talks all,
1:04:02
it's like condemning this, you know,
1:04:05
or American psycho.
1:04:06
All we wanna obsess over is how much our clothes costs
1:04:09
and what our Instagram feed looks like.
1:04:11
And meanwhile, deep down inside all of us, right?
1:04:16
There is this need to prove ourselves
1:04:18
and to do hard things.
1:04:19
It just, it is primordial and it is fundamental.
1:04:22
And we are ignoring that to our peril.
1:04:25
And so, you know, how do we,
1:04:28
how do we do this without being angry though?
1:04:31
You know, like how do we do this in a way
1:04:33
where we can inspire people
1:04:36
to take on these hard challenges, these masogi.
1:04:39
And it's, we kind of guide them in that process.
1:04:44
And it's, we don't just send them out.
1:04:49
Like, hey, you're 16, here you go.
1:04:51
Keys to the car, you know, go figure out your life.
1:04:53
Like, you've got to pro things to yourself, right?
1:04:57
That's the dirty little secret about all the posturing
1:05:01
that happens and all the peacocking
1:05:03
that happens all over the place.
1:05:04
Look at me, right?
1:05:06
The people that are saying look at me,
1:05:08
they just, they're missing something.
1:05:11
They're just missing it.
1:05:13
And they're chasing those ghosts
1:05:15
and they will continue to chase those ghosts
1:05:17
until they figure out what their path is supposed to be.
1:05:20
And they start walking down that path
1:05:21
because that path is hard.
1:05:23
And when you keep doing that
1:05:25
and you're sustaining that path
1:05:28
and there are checkpoints along the way
1:05:31
and you're forced to do hard things
1:05:32
like you got to remember what it's like to fail,
1:05:37
what it's like to take on a big challenge
1:05:40
and prepare yourself mentally, physically, spiritually,
1:05:43
emotionally, all those things.
1:05:45
And, you know, it's like it doesn't matter.
1:05:49
And this is why I love being a part of the community
1:05:53
and I love still being in touch with a lot of the guys
1:05:56
that I served with is because like man,
1:05:59
the most boring thing
1:06:00
and the most detrimental thing I could do to myself
1:06:03
would be to just focus on the fact that, you know,
1:06:06
I earned this green hat however many years ago
1:06:08
and look at me and I'm cool.
1:06:10
Like, regardless of the fact that, you know,
1:06:14
I guess it's cool, I'm proud of my service.
1:06:19
But for me, I've got to reinvent myself
1:06:22
so that I do something with that for the rest of my life.
1:06:24
Not what I did, but what I'm doing
1:06:26
in the pursuit of where I feel my path
1:06:30
is going and that's hard.
1:06:33
A lot of challenges.
1:06:33
I've got to continually have rights of passage.
1:06:36
I've got to reinvent myself
1:06:37
or I've got to, you know, make things hard and challenging.
1:06:40
And that's the call that I feel.
1:06:42
So that's the one that I'm answering.
1:06:44
- Yeah. And I really think that's an important point
1:06:46
because you don't want to be the green beret
1:06:49
that's constantly talking about the Q course.
1:06:51
And, you know, how tough it was and how I got through it.
1:06:53
You don't want to be the Navy SEAL.
1:06:54
That's always talking about buds
1:06:56
and, you know, talking about the missions you've been on.
1:06:57
It's the Uncle Rico syndrome, right?
1:06:59
It's like, I can throw football over the mountains
1:07:01
and it's just like, okay, have you done anything lately,
1:07:03
Uncle Rico?
1:07:04
Like what have you done lately to develop yourself?
1:07:06
Like you're a bad dude back in the day.
1:07:08
Are you still a bad dude?
1:07:09
So that's an important thing because past experiences
1:07:11
they forge you into who you are today,
1:07:13
but they don't define you for your entire life.
1:07:17
They may be kind of like a hinge point,
1:07:19
a cornerstone experience in your life,
1:07:21
but it doesn't define you going forward.
1:07:22
You have to continue to put in the work,
1:07:24
which I guess is a really interesting through point
1:07:26
for this entire conversation, which is to do hard things.
1:07:30
And you did something really hard that was unexpected.
1:07:33
I found this out about you as I was kind of just searching
1:07:35
through the internet.
1:07:37
And you did this really hard thing back in 2018
1:07:40
and you did it in the form of a blog.
1:07:41
So it's kind of give a little bit of the backstory.
1:07:43
Go Ruck, your company announced that it would be
1:07:46
raising its prices for the first time in history.
1:07:48
Okay, so your audience and your buyers had been very, very,
1:07:52
getting, they had gotten very used to your pricing structure
1:07:55
and how things were priced and you were going to be
1:07:56
increasing the prices on them.
1:07:58
So you write this blog post to kind of explain that.
1:08:00
And so the thing is, is in, I can attest to this personally
1:08:02
now, obviously, because you guys hooked me up over here,
1:08:05
but the quality of your product is absolutely top notch,
1:08:07
but that's by design.
1:08:09
I mean, you set out to make rucks that would withstand,
1:08:11
you know, a deployment as a green beret,
1:08:13
but also be fashionable enough for somebody, you know,
1:08:16
just walking through the city.
1:08:17
But at that moment, why not just compete on, you know,
1:08:22
just trying to make the most generically beneficial pack
1:08:24
possible?
1:08:25
Why specifically compete on quality?
1:08:27
Why not just avoid all the angry emails and the PR hit
1:08:30
and just make the world's most accessible pack and, you know,
1:08:34
to make it cheaper, to make sure everybody can kind of be
1:08:37
a part of the Go Ruck family and the Go Ruck team.
1:08:39
Why did you go through all that?
1:08:40
Why did you put yourself through the headache?
1:08:42
Yeah, I mean, like, just when you have non-negotiables in life,
1:08:46
it gets pretty easy to back into the right answer, right?
1:08:50
I mean, the hard right over the easy wrong.
1:08:52
And basically, just, you know, my name is attached to Go Ruck
1:08:57
and the guys that I served with, like, they're--
1:09:02
When I think about some decisions,
1:09:04
I think to get really specific.
1:09:06
It's, hey, when the guys that I served with hear about this,
1:09:11
is this something that's going they'll be proud of,
1:09:14
or that it will be like, oh, man, you know?
1:09:19
And there have been several of those throughout the last--
1:09:23
since 2010, really, where it's been like,
1:09:25
nope, not going to do that, right?
1:09:27
Like, I'm not going to, you know, run around
1:09:30
and sing special forces cadences wearing Ranger panties
1:09:35
and some big flag like this company wanted me.
1:09:37
I'm like, you've got to be kidding, man, right?
1:09:40
You've got to be kidding.
1:09:41
So I just find that, you know, communities thrive on communication.
1:09:47
They thrive on explanation and why.
1:09:49
And the analogy in the military is bravo right rifle.
1:09:53
When you're patrolling any of alpha and bravo teams,
1:09:56
like bravo right rifle is the guy that's way far away
1:10:00
from the center kind of the team leader, right?
1:10:05
And he's just kind of out there flapping, OTF, right?
1:10:09
And it's really frustrating if you don't know anything
1:10:12
that's going on ever and you're just kind of out there like,
1:10:15
all right, I guess we're doing this.
1:10:17
But people are more motivated and are more supportive
1:10:20
if they at least understand the why.
1:10:22
They might not agree with the decision.
1:10:24
They might not agree with all of the things.
1:10:26
I also might not have all the information.
1:10:28
So it's kind of like, hey, this is the information
1:10:30
that we have right now.
1:10:31
I mean, the manufacturing world is, by the way, a complete nest.
1:10:36
But it's not a problem we can't solve.
1:10:38
It's just these things take more time, effort, energy.
1:10:41
And the number one ingredient in all of our stuff is cash.
1:10:44
I mean, it's just like, just eats it.
1:10:46
And that's just, you know, those are our business problems
1:10:49
to solve, but I just always thought it was better
1:10:52
to kind of take the high ground.
1:10:54
And once you take the high ground,
1:10:56
man, they're coming for you.
1:10:59
So if you kind of give up on that high ground,
1:11:02
then you're letting someone come in and just scoop it up.
1:11:07
And that's just not something I wanted to do.
1:11:11
- Yeah, I really do appreciate that sentiment
1:11:13
because here's the thing,
1:11:15
is there are people even with this show
1:11:17
that they don't want me to do certain things.
1:11:20
So maybe they don't want me to have a certain guest on.
1:11:22
They don't want me to ask certain questions
1:11:24
in the way that I ask them.
1:11:25
Or maybe they don't like the advertisements
1:11:27
or something like that.
1:11:28
But here's the thing is I'm never gonna beg anyone
1:11:32
to be a fan of my show, right?
1:11:34
I'm not gonna do that.
1:11:35
And GoRuck should not beg anybody to buy their stuff.
1:11:38
Like, hey, buy our rucks, buy our whatever.
1:11:40
The thing is, is you're gonna make whatever you make.
1:11:42
And then the marketplace gets to opt in
1:11:44
or opt out of that, right?
1:11:46
So it's not up to you to beg them.
1:11:48
It's up to you to make the best product possible
1:11:50
and put it out there to them.
1:11:51
So that's just basically how it goes.
1:11:53
But as we wind towards the end here, Jason,
1:11:55
I do a segment towards the end of my shows.
1:11:56
It's called, what would you say to someone that said?
1:11:59
And so this is meeting potatoes round, okay?
1:12:02
So these are our lightning round questions
1:12:03
where I'm gonna basically say,
1:12:05
what would you say to someone that said?
1:12:07
And then I'm gonna fill in the blank with something random.
1:12:09
And you've got 30 seconds maximum lightning round
1:12:12
to give me your answer.
1:12:13
So what would you say to someone that said?
1:12:14
You up for it?
1:12:15
- I'm a good Irishman.
1:12:17
Irishman man like, yeah, like that's my wheelhouse.
1:12:21
- Okay, good.
1:12:22
Well, we need to get your red beard going
1:12:23
because then people will actually believe you
1:12:25
that you're a good Irishman.
1:12:26
But let's go and get into the first one here.
1:12:28
What would you say to someone that said,
1:12:29
I'm too old to work out?
1:12:31
- That's ridiculous.
1:12:33
Stop making excuses.
1:12:35
- I would absolutely agree with that.
1:12:36
Let's get into the next one here.
1:12:37
I think you're doing fine.
1:12:38
What would you say to someone that said,
1:12:40
"Rucking isn't a hard enough workout for me."
1:12:44
- Add more weight.
1:12:46
Like, "Rucking is a foundation of special forces training.
1:12:48
"You can make it damn near impossible.
1:12:51
"Just don't go up to that line."
1:12:52
- Yeah, don't absolutely kill yourself.
1:12:54
All right, so here's the next one here.
1:12:56
What would you say to someone that said,
1:12:57
"The United States military should prioritize
1:13:00
"diversity and inclusion over lethality?"
1:13:07
- The military's job is to defeat the enemy.
1:13:12
Like, define success and build around that.
1:13:15
And that's what I would say.
1:13:18
Like, you have to prioritize
1:13:19
and the priority is to defeat the enemy.
1:13:22
- Yeah, well, it should be at least.
1:13:24
All right, next one here.
1:13:25
What would you say to someone that said,
1:13:27
"Why do you guys drink but heavy after hard rucks?"
1:13:30
- Why are you such a pinky out beer snob?
1:13:33
(laughs)
1:13:34
- Hey, hey, you know what's funny about that?
1:13:36
Is, whenever I look at y'all's comments,
1:13:38
you know, on some of your posts or something like that,
1:13:40
it's all these guys that are like,
1:13:41
"Why are you doing that?"
1:13:42
'Cause here's the deal, when I see Bud Heavy,
1:13:43
I always think about how that's my dad's favorite beer
1:13:46
and, you know, he likes drinking that.
1:13:47
And so, I get it, you know, if you like beer
1:13:49
and all those different things, you might,
1:13:50
"Hey, here's this IPA, here's this whatever thing."
1:13:52
But I think people spend too much time thinking about that.
1:13:54
- Yeah, I mean, it's great.
1:13:56
You can find it everywhere.
1:13:56
I grew up watching my dad work on Harley-Davidson's
1:13:59
drinking Bud Heavy in his garage in Ohio.
1:14:02
So, you know, there's some nostalgia there too,
1:14:04
but it's also delicious.
1:14:06
There you go, that's all you need to say.
1:14:07
All right, next one here.
1:14:08
What would you say to someone that said,
1:14:10
"SF guys wish they were seals."
1:14:13
- Who?
1:14:14
- Oh, come on, you gotta give me a little bit more than that.
1:14:18
Come on, man.
1:14:19
I got, dude, there's a lot of guys in the seal community
1:14:22
that wanted a better reaction.
1:14:23
- Not for one day.
1:14:25
- Okay, well, hey, here's the deal.
1:14:26
I know you guys are on the same team,
1:14:28
so there's a little bit of a sibling rivalry there,
1:14:30
but we'll go ahead and continue on.
1:14:32
We got a few more.
1:14:33
What would you say to someone that said,
1:14:34
"America's leadership in the world will soon be at an end?"
1:14:38
- Man, people gotta be more positive, right?
1:14:44
Like, if go find some Americans
1:14:47
and do something hard with them,
1:14:48
and you'll see what makes America tick, right?
1:14:51
Waiting for Washington to solve all your problems
1:14:53
and basing, you know, the next hundreds of years
1:14:56
off of one current president or won this or won that.
1:15:00
Like, that's just not where the ultimate strength
1:15:02
in America lies.
1:15:03
And these things come in waves.
1:15:06
Like, we can't view everything is so catastrophic, right?
1:15:10
This one second.
1:15:11
Like, America is strong because our people are strong.
1:15:15
We're strong in will and we're strong in many other ways.
1:15:20
And, you know, we just, we gotta find a new way
1:15:24
to reinvent ourselves to express that better.
1:15:27
- Right, I absolutely agree.
1:15:28
All right, we got a couple more left here.
1:15:30
What would you say to someone that said,
1:15:32
"I don't need a go, Ruck, Ruck.
1:15:33
"I already have a backpack."
1:15:35
- Put some weight in it and go for a walk.
1:15:37
If you want the best, that's what we built.
1:15:39
- All right, Roger that.
1:15:40
Last question of the day here, here we go.
1:15:42
What would you say to someone that said,
1:15:43
"Working out makes me uncomfortable."
1:15:46
- Good, right, but really do it smart, right?
1:15:50
Do it smart and the best thing to do,
1:15:52
literally, is to do it with somebody else.
1:15:55
You don't need to start at zero.
1:15:57
You're not a Porsche.
1:15:58
You don't need to go from zero to 102 seconds.
1:16:02
Working out can be walking or rucking
1:16:07
or taking, biking to work once a week.
1:16:10
I don't know, we all have the freedom
1:16:14
and the opportunity to choose to be more active.
1:16:17
So just be more active and stop calling it,
1:16:20
working out or fitness or all these things
1:16:22
that are buzzwords for you.
1:16:23
Find something and go do that.
1:16:25
- Yeah, enough of the buzzwords.
1:16:26
The guys, these are personal decisions
1:16:28
that you're blessed enough to make on your own.
1:16:29
Figure out something that you're gonna like to do
1:16:31
and make it a lifestyle choice.
1:16:33
But Jason, we went everywhere in this conversation.
1:16:35
I'm really pleased with how it turned out.
1:16:36
But as of now, that's all for me.
1:16:38
Is there anything else you wanna get off your chest?
1:16:40
- I just wanna say, thanks for having me on.
1:16:41
I enjoy the talk.
1:16:43
It's been, I don't get a lot of questions about spirituality
1:16:48
and so it was something that I can remember
1:16:51
the feeling on the air feel.
1:16:53
I can remember these kind of before going into battle
1:16:58
and all of that stuff, right?
1:17:00
And just the way that those are really good
1:17:04
and powerful memories for me.
1:17:06
And so, thanks for letting me dig this up a little bit.
1:17:09
- Well, yeah, if you don't mind me
1:17:10
blowing up the end of my own interview here,
1:17:11
I mean, if you'll indulge me with a follow-up on that,
1:17:14
help me understand as a civilian.
1:17:16
So as a civvy, I've never had to face down a hot LZ.
1:17:21
I've never had to fast rope out of the helicopter
1:17:24
while bulls were flying and I thought my life was on the line.
1:17:27
Like, I've never had to really stare down something like that.
1:17:30
I've never been in a situation where I had to potentially
1:17:33
sacrifice my life for the lives of the guys I was serving with
1:17:35
or for innocent people that I didn't even know
1:17:37
that were just perfect strangers.
1:17:39
And here's the thing is, I guess I understand the fear
1:17:41
that you might have not directly obviously,
1:17:44
but I understand at least the concept of the fear.
1:17:47
But I want you to go into that a little bit more
1:17:48
because you literally feel like God put you
1:17:52
in a situation where you might die,
1:17:54
where you may no longer be able to experience His blessings
1:17:57
here on this planet,
1:17:58
but He's putting you in this crazy situation
1:18:00
where that's exactly where you're supposed to be
1:18:03
in that moment.
1:18:04
So just really help me understand kind of your mindset there
1:18:07
and kind of how you got to that point of thinking.
1:18:10
- So it's an evolution, right?
1:18:14
And I'll start out by saying, you know,
1:18:17
people talk about this huge military civilian divide
1:18:20
like it can't be combined ever.
1:18:24
And, you know, anytime I ask people about this,
1:18:27
like, man, you would die for the person you're left
1:18:29
and the person you're right.
1:18:30
I just don't know what that feels like.
1:18:31
I'm like, well, do you have kids?
1:18:33
And they're like, yep, I'm like...
1:18:35
- Yeah, is there anything that you wouldn't do
1:18:37
to protect them, you know?
1:18:39
- Yeah, it's like, would you jump in front of a bus
1:18:40
if you had to?
1:18:41
Would you do that for your kids?
1:18:42
- Yeah, absolutely, everybody would.
1:18:44
That's listening to this.
1:18:45
- Right, okay, so we have more in common
1:18:48
than what all of the naysayers are gonna say, right?
1:18:51
So, but it is an unnatural mental process
1:18:55
to prepare to go to war, like for me it was.
1:18:59
And so what happens though is in the kind of contemplation
1:19:04
of our own mortality, of my own mortality,
1:19:09
like that weighed on me throughout the course
1:19:11
of the years of my training.
1:19:13
And it's a build, right?
1:19:15
I had the time to think about this
1:19:18
and I got over to Iraq and I was with my team
1:19:22
and I was definitely scared to die, right?
1:19:25
And that was the beginning of the deployment.
1:19:28
There were other guys who had been on deployments before.
1:19:31
They'd done this many times, right?
1:19:32
And so I was leaning on their confidence
1:19:36
that we could do this to the best of our abilities
1:19:40
and life has risk.
1:19:41
This is a contact sport, and you know what you signed up for.
1:19:44
But those, I'm kind of like glossing it over
1:19:47
at a real kind of foundational level was the journey was,
1:19:52
I had to make peace with the fact that I might die.
1:19:55
And that is when I learned how to live, right?
1:19:58
I learned how to do it better so that I wouldn't die.
1:20:02
Or that I would have a lower risk of dying, I should say,
1:20:05
because bad things happen to good people, you know?
1:20:08
But it's that process of, okay,
1:20:10
so there are worse things than dying.
1:20:13
I believe in this cause, I believe in our country.
1:20:16
I was chosen or I chose to do this, to serve our country.
1:20:20
And this is where our country sent me.
1:20:22
Here I am, I'm gonna do the best job that I possibly can.
1:20:25
And when I do it, not even really for like God
1:20:29
in country at that point.
1:20:30
It's the guy to my left, my guy to my right.
1:20:32
And so you don't wanna let them down.
1:20:34
And that becomes super granular at that level, right?
1:20:38
In the cosmos.
1:20:40
But there are worse things than dying.
1:20:43
And you take a couple deep breaths
1:20:45
and you say, you feel better, it calms you.
1:20:50
I just gotta go do my job.
1:20:52
And we were trained well, we believed in the cause,
1:20:55
we believed in each other.
1:20:56
And that got us through.
1:20:58
- So I wonder if in a way, as you're talking about,
1:21:01
the guy to your left or the guy to your right
1:21:04
and protecting them and all that,
1:21:05
I wonder if it is elevated to a degree,
1:21:08
because here's the thing, as humans,
1:21:10
we're not fully developed.
1:21:12
We don't fully use our brains
1:21:13
and our brains aren't fully developed
1:21:14
until we're 25 years old.
1:21:15
And yet we do all these risky things
1:21:17
before the age of 25, obviously.
1:21:19
But the way that God helps us understand his love for us
1:21:23
is the fact that he sent his son to die for us,
1:21:27
to die to basically pay the debt for sin
1:21:30
so that we could be close to the Father,
1:21:32
that we could be in the Father's presence without sin
1:21:34
because sin can't be in the presence of the Father
1:21:37
in the presence of a just and right God.
1:21:40
And the easiest way to kind of look at this
1:21:42
is the concept of the Amago Day.
1:21:44
And that's every single person that's ever been created
1:21:47
by God has the image of God written on them.
1:21:50
And so the reason why guys like you and guys like me
1:21:53
get so fired up when some injustice is being done
1:21:56
to an actual person is because somewhere deep down,
1:21:59
somewhere instinctively, we see that the Amago Day
1:22:02
is being violated and we will not stand for it.
1:22:06
That there is something that needs to be fought for
1:22:08
in that moment and it is real justice,
1:22:10
not social justice or any of this other stuff,
1:22:12
but real justice and we will protect people,
1:22:15
we will be the sheepdog, you know what I mean?
1:22:17
And so does that thought process make sense to you?
1:22:21
Because here you are and here you've described situations
1:22:24
where you're kind of in this,
1:22:26
I don't know, this modern phalanx of sorts
1:22:28
and that kind of leads you to have this deeper level
1:22:31
of thinking in terms of what your job is
1:22:33
and what you're doing on a day in day out basis.
1:22:35
- I mean, that's exactly what Special Forces is all about.
1:22:38
I mean, we glorify the individual, right?
1:22:41
The Rambo's, the Jason Bourne's, the whatever the case may be.
1:22:45
Like they're glorified as individuals,
1:22:47
but that is just not the most fulfilling way
1:22:51
in any measure to lead a life.
1:22:54
And so operating on a team, you know, it's absolutely,
1:22:59
it's absolutely fulfilling exactly as you describe is,
1:23:03
it's not about me.
1:23:04
And so, you know, the team is the closest thing to you
1:23:08
and you also have then your place in the universe,
1:23:11
it's not about you, you know, walk your path, come what may.
1:23:16
- Yeah, man, I seriously feel like we just opened up
1:23:20
another can of worms and we can talk
1:23:21
for another couple of hours, but you know,
1:23:22
at some point I got to put a bow on this damn thing,
1:23:24
but I really do appreciate you letting us, you know,
1:23:26
go into all that detail and you kind of helping me work
1:23:29
my way through that.
1:23:30
So I'll ask my last question of the day again,
1:23:31
is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
1:23:34
- And I think we got it.
1:23:36
- Okay, yeah, we definitely did not nail it the first time,
1:23:38
we had to kind of go back in and see if we can re-nail it.
1:23:40
So I feel like we've done that.
1:23:41
But man, thank you so much, Jason McCarthy.
1:23:43
Thank you for coming on Daunton Life of Man's podcast.
1:23:45
- Thanks, it's been great chatting with you.
1:23:47
- There you go, guys.
1:23:49
I hope you enjoyed my time with Jason McCarthy.
1:23:51
I told you it was going to be a good one,
1:23:52
but before we let you go,
1:23:53
we are going to do a quick resilience boost.
1:23:54
Add on Daunton Life, our mission is equipping men
1:23:56
to push back darkness with content
1:23:58
that for just spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.
1:24:00
So I've got a couple of links for you,
1:24:01
I've got a link to the GoRuck website.
1:24:03
Guys, you should go and check out their materials,
1:24:04
check out all their swag,
1:24:05
they've got some amazing stuff.
1:24:07
These rucks are absolutely incredible,
1:24:09
but they've got a lot of other stuff on there as well.
1:24:10
And I also have the link to the blog that I talked about
1:24:13
earlier, the one that I asked them about later on
1:24:14
in the interview.
1:24:15
It's called Prices Are Increasing,
1:24:17
a note from our founder.
1:24:18
All right, guys, thanks so much for listening.
1:24:19
We do appreciate it wherever you're listening to this.
1:24:21
Please subscribe, rate, and leave us a positive five-star
1:24:24
review.
1:24:25
If you want me to come speak live at your event
1:24:26
or on your podcast, just shoot me an email to info
1:24:28
at undontodotlife.
1:24:29
That's I-N-F-O at undontodotlife.
1:24:32
Follow us on Instagram and Facebook
1:24:33
and check out our website for everything else,
1:24:34
including how to donate to keep more content like this
1:24:37
coming your way, just go to www.undontodotlife.com.
1:24:40
We also want to thank the band August Burns Red
1:24:41
for allowing us to use their music for our content.
1:24:44
The music on this podcast is our song Cutting the Ties,
1:24:46
which is off their 10th anniversary
1:24:48
re-recording of their album Leveler.
1:24:50
The links are in the description.
1:24:52
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
1:24:53
Remember, keep pushing back darkness,
1:24:56
keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.
1:25:00
Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
1:25:05
I love thy land, and I'll hide at night.
1:25:09
I know you want, it's a side-based act, and I'll find you.
1:25:17
You will be revived.