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[MUSIC PLAYING]
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This is "Undaunted Life" a man's podcast.
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I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
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Let's get into it.
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All right, guys.
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We've got a special guest on the podcast today.
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His name is Mike Glover, so Mike is a retired green beret
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and CIA contractor.
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He was actually deployed 15 different times
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to fight the global war on terror.
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And so we talk about that quite a bit on this podcast,
0:40
but he's also the founder and CEO of Field Craft Survival.
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So they teach survival and disaster preparedness,
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training courses, and they provide equipment that aids
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with that training and everything.
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But also, he's the author of a new book called Prepared,
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a manual for surviving worst case scenarios.
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And so in this particular podcast, that's a long one.
0:58
We get into a lot of different subject matters.
1:00
Why did he go the military route?
1:02
Why did he go the army?
1:03
Why SF?
1:04
He gave us a bunch of detail, like a crazy amount of detail
1:07
on his transition from SF to the CIA,
1:10
but also a story that became famous from Tim Kennedy's book,
1:13
"Scars and Stripes," where he kind of attached himself
1:15
to Tim Kennedy to where if something went wrong,
1:17
they were both going to get kicked out of sniper school.
1:19
He gave a lot of detail that Tim didn't even get into his book.
1:22
We talk about the military industrial complex
1:24
and how a lot of guys that fought in the GWOT
1:27
are now kind of looking back on their time
1:29
and they kind of have some misgivings
1:30
about what's going on.
1:31
But we talk about the book.
1:33
We talk about why being resilient is a big deal,
1:36
what we can learn from different tragedies.
1:38
So like the Virginia Tech shooting,
1:39
what can we learn from that?
1:41
We talk about the Las Vegas shooting
1:42
'cause a lot of stuff, that mass shooting,
1:44
the biggest mass shooting in the history of our country,
1:46
there's a lot of stuff that doesn't really add up there.
1:48
But really in this podcast, we talk about decision making
1:52
and pre-deciding that we're gonna expose ourselves
1:54
to things that are gonna make us better,
1:56
that we're gonna have more situational awareness,
1:59
that we're not gonna be lazy or arrogant
2:01
in our planning for the worst case scenarios.
2:03
We talk about just overall being able to make the decisions.
2:06
Then we talk about stuff to have in your EDC,
2:09
your ideal bug out bag,
2:10
how you're gonna survive in a vehicle.
2:12
We talk about field craft survival
2:14
and some of the stuff that they're gonna be moving into.
2:15
And I even asked him about his personal faith
2:17
'cause there's a few times in the book
2:19
he mentions religion and he kind of accidentally quoted
2:22
scripture at one point.
2:23
And so we dig into that a little bit as well.
2:25
Guys, I've wanted to have him on the show for a very long time.
2:28
I was so glad that we were able to work it out.
2:29
We unfortunately had to move it around
2:31
because of my voice and all kinds of different things.
2:33
But we got it all squared away.
2:34
So guys, I'm not gonna keep him from you any longer.
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So without further ado, let's get into it.
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- Mike Glover, welcome to the Daunted Life of Man's podcast.
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- Thanks for having me, man.
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- Dude, I am so excited for this today,
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but not the least of which because you came prepared.
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Look how fancy that shirt is.
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Where did you get that shirt?
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Did you make that one?
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That's beautiful shirt.
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- It's a good shirt.
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- That's y'all's.
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- Okay, so we'll get into Philcraft here in a second, guys.
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But if you're not watching this on YouTube,
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you're missing out.
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He's flexing and everything.
3:00
It's just beautiful, but we got, yeah, exactly.
3:03
But we got to start kind of easy and simple.
3:06
We need a soft place to land.
3:08
Obviously a big part of your story
3:10
is that you spent a long time in the military.
3:13
And so for someone who didn't serve like myself,
3:15
but I grew up in Fort Sill, a lot in Fort Sill.
3:18
So I've kind of been around that community my whole life.
3:20
I kind of live this military type of discipline life,
3:24
but I've never served myself.
3:25
I always just kind of like to ask,
3:27
what drew you to the military?
3:29
Why specifically did you go the army route?
3:31
Why was the Spec Ops community SF Green Beret?
3:34
Like why'd you end up going that direction?
3:36
'Cause again, in our modern time,
3:38
we don't really have a whole lot of those people
3:39
that do that anymore.
3:41
So why'd you end up doing that?
3:43
- Yeah, I come from a military family.
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So my dad was in the army.
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I was born in Fort Ord, California.
3:49
He lived in Germany where he was stationed.
3:52
He actually met my mom when he stationed overseas in Korea.
3:55
And his uncle, or my uncle, his brother was Navy.
4:00
So there's always this rift between army and Navy.
4:03
And we come from a long line of lineage
4:06
in the military serving in the army
4:08
and the different services and branches.
4:12
And so at the time, my cousin, who were a few years apart,
4:16
he had just joined.
4:18
So I always knew that I was gonna join the military.
4:19
I grew up with Full Metal Jacket,
4:22
all the Vietnam error movies,
4:24
political or not, apocalypse now.
4:27
My dad, because he was post Vietnam
4:31
in that in between time between the late '70s
4:35
and the mid '80s, he was into that stuff.
4:39
So I grew up in that culture mainly because he was into it.
4:43
And then at a very young age, started playing army
4:46
and playing war and asking my dad,
4:49
my curiosity was like, who is the best?
4:54
And I remember my dad telling me,
4:56
greenberries are the best and my uncle telling me
4:58
Navy seals are the best.
5:00
And there was already this rift between the two.
5:03
I just was not a strong enough swimmer.
5:06
And I remember that my uncle said to me
5:08
who was in the Navy at my grandma's house,
5:10
hey, the only thing I'll tell you though,
5:12
is if you fail buds, you go needs in the Navy.
5:17
And so they'll make you anything they want.
5:19
And I didn't like that idea
5:20
'cause I liked the idea of being combat arms
5:23
and then serving the army.
5:24
And I didn't wanna let my dad down.
5:25
So ultimately, that's why I went to the army.
5:28
And he told me one day, driving to the car,
5:30
I was probably eight, nine, 10 years old.
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He said, greenberries are the best.
5:35
And at that moment, I remember deciding
5:38
that's what I was gonna do.
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- Well, you've talked a lot about what it means
5:42
to become a green berry and kind of those different things.
5:44
And so I don't wanna belabor the stories
5:45
that you've talked about a lot.
5:47
But I like talking about misconceptions
5:50
like regardless of what kind of thing people are in
5:52
'cause like if you're a celebrity
5:53
or if you're a, you know, multi-time, number one,
5:56
New York Times bestselling author,
5:57
there's always what the people think is going on
5:59
and then there's what's actually going on.
6:00
So let's talk about misconceptions
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just about the spec ops community in general,
6:04
but then we can specifically get into SF
6:06
about what it is that you guys do, what do you not do,
6:09
what do most people think you do,
6:10
but they just have no freaking idea.
6:12
Let's just go there.
6:14
- Yeah, you're spot on, man.
6:15
It's the best question I've ever got asked probably
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'cause certainly, I mean, I have kids on social media
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telling me about my career.
6:23
You know, they're like, he didn't do this or he didn't do that.
6:27
It's like, I was there, so I know I did this.
6:31
You know, like I can actually prove it to you,
6:33
but I won't 'cause I just don't feel the need to.
6:36
But the biggest misconception in special operations
6:41
is the idea that everybody does unilateral
6:45
or by themselves direct action raids and all the things
6:49
and that green berets just train people.
6:51
And that is, I'm actually glad
6:56
that is the idea for most people
6:59
because technically at one point it used to be classified
7:02
what green berets did and how they did it.
7:06
Now it's pretty open source.
7:08
The idea for an eternal defense is the access and placement
7:13
to do all the other things that you do.
7:16
That's the trade craft, the spy craft,
7:18
whatever you wanna call it.
7:19
And so now everybody used unilateral
7:24
to stay in the fight has done bilateral.
7:27
They've done for an eternal defense.
7:29
I mean, I've done for a SMU, a special mission unit,
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I've been the guy training the indigenous forces
7:38
'cause nobody else wanted to do it.
7:39
But I had a greenberry background
7:40
they're like, Mike, you do that crap.
7:41
I don't, we don't wanna do that.
7:43
And so that's the biggest misconception
7:45
is that greenberries just train people.
7:48
And certainly that's the case, but it's by with and through
7:51
which means you're there the entire process
7:53
and you get to kick in the doors and do the job.
7:56
And when the war is declared over,
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that job is still going,
8:00
which is why a lot of the unilateral elements
8:03
including reg arrangement, the SMU's have just said,
8:06
oh crap, to stay in the fight,
8:08
we actually need to learn how to do this.
8:10
Like, yes, certainly you do.
8:11
- When I think as well, you hear a lot
8:13
about the language component,
8:14
but the funny thing about the language component
8:16
is when you talk to greenberries,
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it's always a language that has nothing to do
8:19
with where they end up being deployed.
8:20
And so they're learning like Mandarin
8:22
and they're being deployed to like South America.
8:24
And so it's like, okay, great, this is fantastic.
8:26
But obviously, the United States government
8:29
has reasons why they do the things they do.
8:30
And we'll get more into the US government
8:32
and the military here in a second.
8:33
But as long as my research is not failing me,
8:37
it looks like you did 14 or 15 different deployments.
8:39
Is that correct between SF and the CIA?
8:42
- Yeah, I did 15 deployments between CIA
8:46
and the Army, I did nine combat rotations
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and the rest were CIA.
8:50
- Okay, let's talk a little bit about the transition
8:53
because I know we're basically skipping over a lot of stuff,
8:55
but we're gonna pop into an out of your career
8:57
throughout this conversation.
8:58
So most people don't understand
9:00
that there are guys from the spec ops community,
9:02
whether they were Delta SF, seals, whatever, Marine Recon.
9:06
And then the CIA basically recruits them
9:08
to become contract operators.
9:11
And so people don't understand the difference between that
9:14
and then the things that are completely separate,
9:16
the contracting groups that do stuff
9:19
that's outside of the United States government,
9:20
but they're still over where you guys are working.
9:23
So talk to me a little bit about that transition
9:25
because what some people would say, again,
9:27
you got keyboard warriors telling you about your career.
9:30
It's like, oh, you couldn't get enough blood
9:32
working for the US government that you had to move over
9:34
to the CIA side or you have to move over
9:36
to the private contractor side.
9:38
But talk to me a little bit about that transition.
9:41
- Yeah, a really good question 'cause a lot of people, again,
9:44
they just paint a broad brush.
9:46
I mean, when I was in Libya in the military,
9:50
I was recruited by the CIA and that's common,
9:53
especially when you're working with them.
9:55
I mean, if you're a CIA dude and it's mostly word of mouth
10:00
and that's how the building operates,
10:03
especially on the paramilitary side.
10:05
When I was in Libya, I was working with Ground Branch
10:07
and Ground Branch was like, I mean,
10:10
the guy was like, his name is Chris.
10:12
And Chris was like, hey Mike, what are you doing?
10:15
What are you doing now in the military?
10:16
When you're in return?
10:17
I'm like, man, I'm a young EA.
10:18
I'm like a 30-year-old EA.
10:20
I'm like, I'm not returning.
10:21
He goes, you got your degree?
10:23
I'm like, yeah, I just actually finished my bachelor's degree.
10:25
Why don't you come work for us?
10:26
I'm like, dude, I would love that.
10:28
And so I actually got back from that rotation
10:33
and was transitioning to go into Ground Branch
10:37
as a paramilitary operations officer,
10:38
which you can apply, by the way, online at CIA.gov.
10:42
It's not like it's a classified--
10:44
I mean, there's links in the Ground Branch, guys,
10:46
that have paramilitary operations.
10:48
So it's not like Jason Bourne style
10:50
where they like snatch you out because you're an orphan
10:52
or some crazy stuff like that?
10:54
Yeah, a lot of people think it's secretive.
10:57
It's not secretive, actually.
10:58
They're secretive components, but the job isn't.
11:01
And so when I got recruited, I went through multiple parts
11:06
of the process to fast-track.
11:08
So I told the guys, when I get back,
11:11
I'll drop my paperwork, we'll do the thing.
11:13
And as I was literally in Libya, the sequester happened,
11:18
which people remember back then--
11:21
I think this is 2011 to 12-time period.
11:23
It might have been 12 and 13, they stopped all hiring
11:28
across the government and stopped all spending in the government.
11:32
So they hired, they couldn't spend,
11:34
and they basically put all applications on freeze.
11:38
So in this interim, I'm waiting.
11:41
And I told the guys--
11:43
because Chris was gone to some other country--
11:46
I told the recruiter I was working with.
11:48
I'm like, man, I don't have a job.
11:51
I got out of the military to transition
11:53
into a full-time staff position with a central intelligence
11:56
agency, and you're telling me now, we're on hold.
11:59
So we said, hey, we have this opportunity, do this.
12:03
And it was GRS, Global Response Staff Office.
12:05
And there's two sides of contracting, independent and industrial.
12:10
Independent means you work directly for the government.
12:13
Industrial, you're working for a cutout.
12:15
And there's nothing clandestine on the cutout.
12:17
It just means a subcontract to the company
12:20
that's filling the gap.
12:21
So Blackwater, Triple Canopy, Sock,
12:24
all these different companies.
12:26
As an independent, I could do more and have--
12:30
I reported the language, and I worked in the building,
12:33
and I got to do all the things, and outside the warzone
12:35
type stuff.
12:37
That part of it is more unique, because you just
12:40
need a little bit more qualification.
12:42
I think at the time from my position,
12:45
you need a minimum of six years in sauce.
12:48
And so versus, I think, for the industrial side,
12:51
it was three years, something like that.
12:53
And most of the time, I was a Sergeant Major at the time,
12:56
in the reserve component.
12:58
I think at the time, most all guys that I worked for
13:03
and the independent side were senior guys.
13:05
We were all E8s, E9s, and Dev, SMU, KAG, Green Barrese seals.
13:11
You name it.
13:12
So having that side of it, dude,
13:17
that was the best job I've ever had.
13:20
And then I realized, after they said, hey,
13:22
you can now come staff, I think I was in Yemen at the time.
13:25
I was like, dude, I don't want to be in Ground Branch.
13:28
And the entire GWOT, I wanted to be in Ground Branch,
13:32
because Ground Branch was killing bad guys.
13:35
And then after this experience of combat and war,
13:39
when everything died down, they
13:41
were in the same position I was in the military.
13:43
They couldn't do anything.
13:44
And so I was like, well, at least in GRS,
13:46
I get paid, I get to do all the schools.
13:49
And I get to do missions every single day.
13:51
Versus those guys, we're waking up at 0.5,
13:54
training the 0.6 the entire day,
13:57
and then getting told to stand down for any ops.
13:59
So I was like, man, I just like it here right now.
14:02
If anything changes, I'll jump on that side,
14:04
but right now I'll stay GRS.
14:05
- That's really interesting with the ops tempo
14:07
that you were on, because certain people
14:10
in certain teams, their ops tempo was kind of crazy,
14:12
but there were times of inconsistency.
14:15
So you've heard different seals,
14:16
like depending upon where they were stationed
14:18
or what team they were with,
14:19
they didn't know this city was gonna pop off
14:21
versus that city.
14:22
You talk about different snipers
14:25
and different things like that.
14:26
Chris Kyle, it's like, well, he was a great sniper,
14:28
but he also kind of got lucky with where the action was.
14:30
But speaking of snipers, I didn't,
14:33
I was just thought of this while you were talking
14:34
a second ago, I remember you being mentioned
14:37
in our mutual buddy, Tim Kennedy's book,
14:39
Scars and Strides Fantastic book.
14:41
I named it our book of the year last year.
14:43
But there's a story in that book
14:44
that is so crazy to me that I was like,
14:47
I don't know if he churched it up a little bit
14:48
or if it really went down.
14:49
I'm just trying to remember off top my head,
14:51
but essentially, Tim Kennedy was about to get bounced
14:54
out of sniper school, but he had kind of like
14:56
a last chance type thing.
14:58
But obviously with most of these missions,
14:59
even in the training, you have to have a spotter.
15:01
Like the shooter is, you know, needs a spotter,
15:03
a spotter needs a shooter, you know,
15:05
it's this tandem thing.
15:06
But basically the spotter that he picked
15:09
or that volunteered was going to get the same fate
15:12
that Tim Kennedy did if he failed or something like that.
15:14
And so he says, yeah, this guy just kind of calmly
15:16
raised his hand and that guy was you.
15:18
You basically volunteered to be his spotter,
15:21
knowing that if something went wrong,
15:23
you were out of there as well.
15:24
So if I got any part of the story in correct place,
15:27
correct me, but talk to me a little bit about that story.
15:29
Did that really fricking happen?
15:30
Like, and if so, what the hell were you thinking?
15:34
- Yeah, it was, it happened and it was real,
15:36
it was actually more dramatic.
15:38
I hate to say that because I don't like the idea
15:41
of that being dramatic and then the book painting.
15:44
But it was actually more dramatic
15:45
than the book actually talked about.
15:47
Because my personal experience in that was one,
15:52
me and Tim Kennedy were both from SIF companies.
15:55
So a lot of people, again,
15:58
telling me what we know about our careers
16:00
don't know what the SIF is.
16:01
The SIF, which does no longer exist,
16:03
is a gap fill for SMUs overseas.
16:07
I'll put it that way.
16:08
I won't let you tell us about that, but I'll put it that way.
16:11
So with that component,
16:13
the SIFs are also controlled,
16:16
command and coordinated through JSOC, right?
16:20
A lot of people think U.S. Special Forces,
16:22
we're like an SF, an upgraded SF company.
16:26
We're more than that, we actually belong to JSOC,
16:29
and that's the reason SF Command never liked this,
16:31
because they didn't have operational control of us.
16:34
And that dates back to the SOT time period
16:36
of actually the competition between
16:38
BECWIS Delta and the SOT component of SF, a blue light.
16:45
Those two components competing against each other,
16:48
when BECWIS got the approval, that became Delta.
16:51
When the SF Command didn't get the approval,
16:54
that became the CRISF, and that worked out that way.
16:56
And the first recognition of that is in Panama
16:59
when C37 deployed with JSOC.
17:01
I mean, they supported the unit in Panama
17:05
during the invasion in 1989.
17:09
So when we look at, oh, as early as Grenada in '83,
17:13
when we look at all the things that happened
17:18
with the CRISF companies,
17:20
we were senior E7 snipers in the CRISF.
17:24
So if you're a sniper qualified 18 Bravo,
17:27
weapons guy on a regular ODA,
17:30
you just have a skill set.
17:31
You could teach your guys, and it's just a skill set.
17:35
The only designated snipers in SF Command
17:38
on your OER, on your job description,
17:41
are SIF snipers in the group.
17:44
So there's only 24 snipers.
17:46
Technically, there's only 20,
17:47
because the team leader in the warrant
17:51
typically don't do any of the stuff on the ground.
17:54
But technically, there's 24 snipers per group
17:58
that do the job.
18:00
So as a B23 sniper, a third group sniper,
18:03
and as Tim Kennedy, a subgroup sniper,
18:07
I took that very seriously.
18:08
The week after sniper school,
18:10
I was deploying to combat as a sniper.
18:13
And this would have been my, at the time,
18:14
fourth or fifth rotation in combat.
18:18
So I saw the instructors at the time,
18:22
and they didn't like Tim Kennedy.
18:24
They didn't like him because he was an MMA guy.
18:27
He was popular, he was capable.
18:30
And what I saw was them intentionally tried to fail him.
18:33
So I was there, him and his partner failed the field shoot,
18:38
which is a big gate in sniper school.
18:40
Me and my partner passed.
18:42
So when you fail as a team,
18:45
you get to pick any spotter you want.
18:48
So Tim and his partner picked my team.
18:52
We actually, we ended up getting a top shooting team
18:55
in the entire course when it was all said and done,
18:57
which just stated that we had the aptitude, right?
18:59
We had the aptitude to do well.
19:02
Tim picked me, my partner had to pick by default,
19:05
my partner Joe, we shot together.
19:10
Here's where it gets more dramatic.
19:12
Joe and his partner failed.
19:14
So they were already out, right?
19:16
They're gone.
19:17
Tim Kennedy, I think this was his second time in sniper school.
19:20
If he failed, not only would he have failed the school.
19:24
So for an 18 Bravo, they would be like,
19:25
"Yes, sorry, I don't get the qualification.
19:27
"I can come back next year."
19:28
Well, he wouldn't be able to come back
19:30
and he would no longer be a sniper in the Sith.
19:33
I mean, they would send him back to the assault side.
19:35
So for me, it was a big deal.
19:37
So we go to shoot and the instructor that I have,
19:41
his name is, I'll just call him Ricky.
19:43
That's his first name.
19:46
So we're shooting and he missed calls
19:52
the number of shots that he has.
19:54
So I give Tim a spot, he shoots, he misses.
19:58
The instructor stands up and goes,
20:00
"All right, you're done."
20:01
And I said, "No, sir, and this guy was a civilian.
20:05
"He's not done.
20:06
"He's got one more shot."
20:07
And he goes, "No, he doesn't."
20:08
And Tim turned around off the gun
20:09
and said, "He goes, "I have one more shot."
20:12
And I argued with him.
20:14
Well, if you likely know or people who know me,
20:17
I weigh right over [inaudible] being criticized
20:22
for speaking my best.
20:24
So I'm like, "He's not [inaudible] wrong."
20:27
And I stand up and I'm like, "Listen, go get the NCOAC,
20:30
"go get the non-commission officer in charge,
20:31
"and let's hash this out."
20:32
So this dude comes in and here's what I'll say
20:34
that he did right.
20:36
His name was Eric.
20:37
He shows up and he goes, "What's the situation?"
20:40
And he goes, "Hey, the benefit of doubt
20:44
"always goes to the student."
20:46
And which is the right answer, always.
20:47
Especially when he's talking about kicking him out
20:49
or keeping him in.
20:50
He literally gives a box of ammo to this dude, Ricky.
20:55
The Ricky comes up, picks around,
20:57
and literally hands around in front of the whole class
20:59
'cause the whole class is waiting on us.
21:01
And he says, "Mike, you got one round.
21:04
"If he hits it, he passes.
21:06
"If he doesn't, he fails.
21:08
"Are you good?
21:08
"Are you good to do this?"
21:10
And I look around and I'm like, "I don't have a choice."
21:11
So I'm like, "I'm doing this."
21:13
And so everybody's watching this
21:16
and I get chills to think about it
21:18
'cause it was pretty impactful.
21:20
He gets down and the instructor
21:23
could pick any target on the range.
21:25
And this is, you have to range the target
21:29
by milling it with a freaking [inaudible] reticle
21:32
inside your scope, like an M3 alpha, a little pulled.
21:34
And then you range it, you calculate it,
21:38
and then you have to shoot it and you get two shots.
21:41
We do all the thing.
21:43
And then at that time of day, because it was late,
21:46
there was heavy wind calls.
21:47
I think I gave him a 1.2 or 1.5 mill wind call,
21:51
which is heavy.
21:52
I think it was like 0.5 mill.
21:53
Said we didn't have 2.2 mill calls.
21:55
I called left 1.5.
21:57
He actually stops and turns around off the gun and says,
22:01
"Are you sure?"
22:02
And I said, "Tim, never question me on the gun.
22:07
"Get back on the gun."
22:08
And we have like, it's a time, it's like a minute.
22:11
You get a minute to do all this whole process.
22:12
So I calmly say, "Get back on the gun."
22:14
We get back in glass.
22:15
You never call a wind call that's a pass wind call.
22:19
So I track a current wind call, left 1.5.
22:22
Boosh, he sends it.
22:23
The target that he gave us was the furthest target
22:26
on the range that had never been touched.
22:28
And I remember this, because it was perfect white,
22:31
contrasted.
22:33
Left 1.5 is a heavy wind call.
22:35
It smacks the target right in the middle of the thing.
22:38
We knew it was good before we heard the shot or the sound.
22:40
And you know, it wasn't as far.
22:42
It was like 700, 800 meters.
22:43
But for free away, that's a far shot.
22:46
He hits it.
22:47
I remember Timmy standing up and he says he was like,
22:50
nearly did the MC Hammer dance or something like that?
22:53
He likely did the MC Hammer dance.
22:55
I didn't say a word to anybody.
22:57
Tim shook my hand.
22:58
I just walked off.
22:59
I didn't want to be that guy.
23:00
I never said anything.
23:02
But here's what [inaudible], the rest of the course,
23:05
because I helped him Kennedy, past sniper school,
23:08
they tried to get me kicked out.
23:11
And they put me in the hardest shots.
23:14
They made me take two shots on the Collex.
23:17
They put me in charge of the culmination.
23:20
I succeeded.
23:22
But as a final FU on graduation day,
23:25
they said, hey, Mike, this is the day before.
23:28
Hey, Mike, you and your partner, tip top team,
23:31
have a little thing prepared, blah, blah.
23:32
I was like, I'm not going to graduation.
23:34
And he said, and the NCIC was like, the hell you are.
23:36
You're going to graduation.
23:38
I'm like, no, I'm not.
23:39
I already cleared it with a certain major.
23:41
I have to do all the in-processing for war.
23:44
This is Friday because I deploy on Monday.
23:46
I said, I don't need--
23:47
I'm not going to graduation.
23:49
And they were so but hurt.
23:51
Then guys from the unit who were budget buddies of mine
23:54
told me they didn't even mention our names that we got
23:56
top shot at the very end, because they were so but hurt.
23:58
But I was like, [inaudible]--
23:59
I was like, there's a priority here, and it's going to war.
24:02
Well, that's a certain level of pettiness
24:03
that guys on that side can kind of easily fall into.
24:07
But yeah, you're right.
24:08
That was way more dramatic than how
24:10
Tim described it.
24:11
He was already dramatic in his book.
24:12
But there's even subtleties in your story there, Mike.
24:15
At multiple times, at least twice you mentioned,
24:18
he had to release his cheek weld.
24:21
He's on the gun.
24:22
And if you come off the gun, you've got to do a whole lot
24:27
of extra things.
24:28
And I'm speaking from, oh, I did one weekend sniper course.
24:31
But for guys that are out there that are serious shooters,
24:34
that's not an insignificant thing.
24:36
That you come off the gun to basically ask a question
24:39
or something like that.
24:39
So I appreciate you giving us a detail on that story.
24:42
But I'd be remiss before we get into your book.
24:45
I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about this,
24:47
because I have a lot of friends from the spec ops community.
24:50
I've had these kind of deeper level conversations with them.
24:53
And it started with the pull out from Afghanistan,
24:55
the absolute travesty that that was.
24:57
And then you start looking at all these different generals
24:59
that continue to fail upwards.
25:01
You have this discussion of the military, industrial complex,
25:04
whatever in the world that means.
25:06
But then you have these guys that were forward operators.
25:09
So they weren't hanging out on base.
25:10
And I'm not saying those guys aren't important,
25:12
but these were guys that were constantly outside the wire,
25:15
constantly putting their life on the line,
25:17
guys that lost buddies, guys that lost arms,
25:19
guys that lost blood.
25:20
And if you were to nail them down to a discussion point,
25:26
they would say that there is some regret there.
25:29
Not that they killed bad guys that needed to be killed,
25:31
but it's like, look at what I gave up
25:33
and look at what the country gained.
25:35
How much ground did the country gain?
25:37
And it's like, it's not like World War I, World War II,
25:41
where you just kind of threw everybody into a meat grinder
25:43
because we didn't have the technology
25:44
to fight any other way.
25:46
But what I guess are your thoughts,
25:48
'cause you spent almost two decades of your life
25:50
fighting the GWOT and trying to kill bad guys
25:53
and do all those things.
25:53
And now that you've had a few years to just kind of rest
25:56
and relax and look at the canvas that was painted,
26:00
it's not always the best picture.
26:01
So I've just wondered what your thoughts are there.
26:03
- Yeah, it's a difficult one.
26:05
I mean, I didn't have many rotations.
26:06
I had two rotations to Afghanistan.
26:09
And they were very significant as an experience for me.
26:11
But they, I mean, there's guys who spent their whole
26:15
entire careers there.
26:17
I mean, there's guys who did five, six, seven, eight rips.
26:20
And it's unfortunate because I've lost a lot of friends there
26:24
and I lost friends there when I was there in Afghanistan
26:27
for both those rotations.
26:29
And ultimately what I would say is the job is the job.
26:33
The job is always going to be the job.
26:35
A lot of the things that are outside of our control
26:38
that ended up being this circumstance in the first place,
26:41
we had nothing to do with.
26:45
If guys did their job and they did it morally
26:48
and ethically and legally and they, they're good with that,
26:51
they fought the fight, they should be proud of that.
26:54
And I'm proud of my experiences there doing the thing.
26:57
Outside of that, also the political components
27:02
that affect war have always been an issue.
27:05
Beer cracks affecting conflict and war
27:08
have always been an issue.
27:10
This, this especially was the case in Vietnam
27:13
where when we decided to pull out.
27:15
I mean, as noted in Jack Carr's book Only The Dead,
27:18
he talks about some of the highlights of that.
27:19
We left behind thousands of missing in action.
27:23
- Yeah.
27:24
- Can you imagine right now like Tim Kennedy and Chad,
27:27
they go do Saver Allies and they do all this stuff.
27:30
I was on backside support helping them did nothing
27:32
compared to what those guys did.
27:34
But can you imagine that we pull out of the GWOT
27:37
and we left thousands of Americans behind,
27:41
that were trapped behind enemy lines, MIA.
27:43
I mean, that's literally kind of what we did
27:46
in a different form factor.
27:48
- Right.
27:49
- And again, as we looked at Vietnam
27:52
because we don't have the appetizing country,
27:53
we forget about it.
27:54
And that's what's sad.
27:56
Always keep those memories, always remember what you fought for
28:00
and be proud of those experiences, which I am again.
28:04
But a lot of that stuff, you don't have control.
28:06
What we can do, like Tim, like Chad, like Nick,
28:10
like these guys have done, we can help in different ways
28:14
when the official war is over with.
28:18
Whether that's nonprofit work or helping people
28:21
who are disaffected or helping veterans
28:23
who are having a hard time dealing with that,
28:25
there are ways to help each other.
28:28
I'm bummed out by the whole experience, by the whole thing,
28:30
but I'm proud of my service and my guys' service
28:33
all the people that I serve with service on the ground
28:36
because that is where I spent most of my time on the ground.
28:40
Who cares about the [inaudible] that you can't control?
28:43
- Well, yeah, control the controllables.
28:44
It's an easy thing to say, hard thing to do,
28:48
but yeah, like Nick Palmashano, Chad Robashaw,
28:51
Tim Kennedy, a lot of those guys like,
28:53
the service didn't end, those types of things.
28:55
And whether they're in or out or reserves
28:57
or something like that doesn't change,
28:58
but that would be my encouragement to guys listening.
29:00
We do have a lot of active duty military
29:02
and retired military that listen to this is like,
29:04
you don't always understand,
29:06
but again, control the controllables.
29:08
Like if you were sent to a forward operating base
29:12
and you were there to do work and you did the work
29:15
that you did, you honored your position.
29:17
And for those Christians out there,
29:19
it's like you're honoring the work that was set before you
29:21
and you were working as unto the Lord,
29:23
regardless of the outcome.
29:24
So I do want to transition now into a book that you wrote
29:27
that just released this year.
29:28
So congratulations, this is a book called Prepared.
29:31
And now normally, Mike, I'm able to grab the book
29:34
of the author and like show it on screen
29:37
because I got it beforehand.
29:38
But dad, I didn't get a book.
29:40
I didn't get the fancy bag it came in.
29:41
I didn't get a PDF version that's like paper clipped
29:44
at the top.
29:45
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to show Jack's book
29:47
on screen and because apparently Jack's got his crap
29:50
together.
29:51
So this is Jack Carr's latest book, Only the Dead.
29:53
But I do want to say that because Jack actually wrote
29:55
the forward of your book.
29:57
It's a fantastic forward, but there's a quote in there
30:00
that I think kind of encapsulates why you wrote the book.
30:03
So let me read the quote here.
30:04
"In the million dialogue of his history
30:06
of the Peloponnesian War, the Athenian historian
30:09
Thucydides characterized hope as a dangerous comforter.
30:14
In modern military and intelligence parlance,
30:16
the ancient Greek generals text translates as quote,
30:20
"Hope is not a course of action," unquote.
30:23
The lesson is one as old as time, be prepared.
30:27
So why'd you write the book?
30:29
Yeah, I wanted to write the book to change the conversation
30:34
in the dialogue of preparedness or the idea of prepping
30:38
in modern civilization, in modern society.
30:41
A lot of us are still hung up on this tin full hat idea.
30:45
And we think preparedness is a paranoid philosophy.
30:50
And that bothers me because coming from a community that
30:54
lived a prepared lifestyle of planning, paying attention
30:59
to detail, contingencies, communication,
31:04
being physically fit, being mentally resilient,
31:07
all these things that we took for granted
31:09
because we kind of live that life allowed us to have
31:12
mission success, allowed us to statistically come out on top.
31:16
So I look at civilians and institutions and organizations.
31:21
There's nothing that prepares us outside of the church,
31:24
preparing your mind for conflict.
31:28
Nothing that prepares us for the worst case scenario.
31:32
And I say, it's a manual for surviving worst case scenarios.
31:35
But I'll preface this by saying worst case scenarios
31:38
is your worst day.
31:40
You getting by that your mom has terminal cancer
31:43
is a worst day.
31:44
You getting in an accident in your backyard
31:48
is your worst day.
31:49
So being prepared for that moment,
31:53
that eventuality, by the way, because it's
31:54
going to happen to you and everybody that you love
31:57
is how I wanted to kind of write this book
32:00
and make it digestible for people who, again,
32:03
think it's a radical idea.
32:05
Well, so I would like to give you kudos on the book
32:08
because the book checks several boxes.
32:10
So if you're the person that loves military stories,
32:13
military narrative, that's in this book.
32:15
If you're someone that like, oh, I
32:16
could deal without all the poetic stuff,
32:18
just give me the stuff I need to know.
32:20
What's the stuff I need to buy?
32:21
What's the stuff I need my bug out bag?
32:23
Like all that's in this book, and it's not a tome.
32:25
It's not 800 pages.
32:27
It's still a brief and cogent, which I really appreciate.
32:30
But in chapter one, that chapter is called
32:32
The Resilient Mindset.
32:34
Now I keyed in on the word resilient
32:36
because I've daunted life since 2016 when we launched.
32:39
We're here to equipment to push back darkness.
32:42
And we do that by providing content
32:44
that forges spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.
32:48
And I always like to draw a big line
32:50
between strength and resilience
32:52
because strength always wanes with time.
32:54
If you're the world's strongest man today
32:55
and you compete by tomorrow, your body's busted up
32:58
and broken down.
32:59
You're not the world's strongest man that day.
33:01
You need time to recover.
33:02
That's what resilience is.
33:04
And so that's how we use the term resilience here
33:06
at Undaunted Life.
33:07
But for you, why choose that word?
33:09
Because strength is an easier word for people
33:12
to just kind of like accept and absorb
33:14
into their everyday life.
33:15
Resilience is a little bit different though.
33:18
- Yeah, I think resilience is like what you said.
33:20
It's the idea of bouncing back,
33:21
but it's a constant cycle.
33:23
And what I've discovered in really being part
33:27
of this experience and prepared us myself
33:29
and teaching it and mentoring people.
33:31
And then my own military experiences
33:34
is a lot of us focused on resilience in that worst case.
33:37
Like, you get hit with a baseball bat
33:40
and that could be figurative.
33:41
It could be literal.
33:42
And how do you manage that?
33:44
Or you're in the gun fight, and you're trying
33:47
to get through the moments.
33:49
But I take that and set it aside.
33:51
And I think resilience in low grade stress,
33:54
especially is built in day-to-day interactions
33:58
and behaviors.
33:58
And when I see people who are so focused on, again,
34:03
the worst case, and they do these epic exposures
34:08
to work from workouts of a day to a base jumping,
34:12
all of these things are certainly gonna build resilience
34:15
and build all these mechanisms inside of you.
34:17
But I think back to Ranger School as a private
34:20
and trying to survive moment to moment.
34:22
Like, I'm so hungry.
34:23
I can't take this anymore.
34:26
I'm tired.
34:26
I wanna sleep.
34:28
And then how that helped me build
34:31
all these benefactors from resilience in the nuance.
34:35
Like the nuances are everyday lives where you get up
34:38
and you're a single mom
34:40
and you gotta pack the kids out for the day
34:42
and take them to childcare, take them to school,
34:45
and then go work your nine to five and come back
34:47
and do it all over again five days a week.
34:49
That's building resilience every single day.
34:52
And that's just as important as the sexy worst case scenario
34:55
that's very dynamic.
34:57
And so I think that focus is why I chose the word
35:01
and ultimately resilience out of all the things
35:04
leads to adaptability.
35:06
And adaptability is the number one characteristic
35:08
of surviving any scenario.
35:12
It's not where you come from.
35:13
It's not your wealth bracket.
35:15
It's not any of those things.
35:16
It's your ability to adapt.
35:19
And some of the most adaptable people
35:21
are often the most not talked about people.
35:25
- Well, the key there, Mike, is exposure.
35:27
And so that's a quote from earlier in your book.
35:28
I wanna read it here.
35:29
The one thing that stabilizes every curve
35:32
that neutralizes or equalizes the impact
35:35
of complexity, familiarity, and confidence is experience.
35:39
Exposure, the less stress and discomfort
35:41
you've experienced in your life,
35:42
the greater the likelihood that you may shut down
35:45
in a crisis.
35:46
That's called fragility.
35:48
And so for a lot of guys,
35:49
and you talk about this in the book,
35:50
it's the easiest time to be alive, right?
35:52
We don't have to go out and kill our food.
35:55
We can go to a store and our food has been killed for us
35:58
and wrapped in cellophane and a price tag
36:00
has been put on it, right?
36:01
But we have these times where the way I describe it to people
36:05
is you need to make deposits
36:06
and that resilience bank account every day
36:09
'cause you never know when you're gonna need
36:11
to make a withdrawal.
36:12
Maybe you get sick and your body isn't very resilient
36:15
to fight something off.
36:16
Maybe you get injured and you're not very resilient.
36:18
Maybe just something befalls you mentally
36:20
and you're so weak because your entire world
36:23
has been bubble wrapped.
36:24
So talk to me a little bit about this
36:26
'cause I've talked about Talon Blue in the face, Mike,
36:29
trying to do something hard.
36:31
Go rock when it's hot outside.
36:33
Go do jujitsu.
36:34
Go do something that you've never done before
36:36
to just try to shake yourself out
36:38
because why do I go run with no shirt on
36:41
when it's really, really, really cold outside?
36:43
'Cause what if I get in a car accident
36:45
and I tear my clothes and I'm in the middle of nowhere
36:47
and it's snowing and I've never been in that position before?
36:50
Here I am trying to survive while trying
36:52
to work through the mental handicaps of,
36:54
oh, I've never been here before.
36:55
As opposed to, yeah, I know what cold is,
36:57
this really, really sucks but I need to live
37:00
or I need to live so someone else can live.
37:01
So talk a little bit about that exposure element
37:04
that so many people just avoid.
37:06
- Yeah, it's, you know, comfort leads to complacency
37:10
which is why we're in the crisis
37:12
that we're in the first place.
37:13
And that's a good problem to have ultimately
37:17
'cause, you know, freedom, which is a huge benefit
37:20
in this country leads to that complacency
37:23
but if we're aware, for self-aware,
37:25
if we're aware as a society,
37:27
then that lends us to doing things deliberately
37:30
to keep us more resilient in that comfort.
37:33
I mean, there's, it's definitely not a negative thing
37:36
but it can lead to negative outcomes,
37:38
especially when impacted.
37:40
And you look at, you know, the US Army's goals
37:43
in recruiting this year were 65,000.
37:46
They missed that by 25%.
37:48
And a lot of people are like, oh, nobody wants to serve.
37:51
It's like, no, that's not ultimately the issue.
37:53
The ultimate issue is the number of recruits
37:57
the Army is having to turn away
37:59
because they're out of shape.
38:00
- Yep.
38:01
- Their body mass index, their body fat is too much.
38:05
Their aptitude isn't good enough.
38:08
I mean, we have one of the worst education
38:10
across the board than anybody in the entire world.
38:15
When you look at top, you know, 5% of the countries
38:18
that are crushing it economically.
38:20
And so South Korea, Japan, all the Asian countries,
38:25
mostly are kicking our butts.
38:26
And so when we look at the idea of exposure,
38:30
when I grew up in the military,
38:33
I remember being in the Q course
38:35
and the qualification course is a part of the special forces
38:39
pipeline, the Green Brave Pipeline.
38:42
And I can't remember what I was in.
38:43
I was mainly maybe in small unit tactics or something.
38:45
And we had the opportunity to do PT on our own.
38:48
And there was an operator from KAG who is very well known.
38:52
At the time, there wasn't really a lot of war going on
38:55
because this is O203.
38:57
So at the time, there wasn't many guys
39:00
who had combat patches on their shoulder.
39:02
This guy had a combat patch from Delta.
39:06
He was also a former team leader in Delta.
39:10
And he was also somebody who was well known.
39:12
I mean, he had all the badges,
39:14
Freefall, Jumpmaster, all the stuff, SF, Ranger.
39:17
I mean, he was getting his SF tab,
39:18
but Ranger, all the things.
39:19
And he would go out, his name was Doug Taylor.
39:22
He's retired now, but many guys in the community
39:25
know this guy's name.
39:26
So he was an enlisted guy, became an officer,
39:29
and now he's an officer.
39:30
And so everybody's like, oh, look at that officer.
39:32
And then they're like, oh, that's Doug Taylor.
39:34
He's like, oh, crap.
39:35
And the big thing with him is he used to go out
39:37
in the middle of the afternoon, about three or four
39:40
in the afternoon and would run at the peak heat of the day.
39:44
And everybody was everybody around me thought he was crazy.
39:48
And not understanding the science or how exposure works.
39:51
Everybody's like, why is he doing that?
39:53
So we started doing it.
39:54
And it's like, well, why is he doing that?
39:56
Who the hell knows, but he's better than us.
39:58
Let's do that together.
40:00
And so when you look at exposure now, 20 years ago,
40:06
it was philosophy.
40:07
It was like that guy's doing it.
40:09
Maybe we could do it.
40:10
Now there are protocols.
40:12
I mean, you look at the popularity of hot sun
40:15
and cold plunge.
40:17
These things don't just have a psychological benefit.
40:20
They have a physiological benefit at making us better.
40:24
So I like guys, when I associate exposure to experience,
40:28
I get a lot of guys who say, Mike, I'm going to be like you.
40:32
And I say, well, here's some steps
40:33
that you could do to be like me.
40:35
And then a month later, they're checked out.
40:39
They start the technical company.
40:40
And then six months later, a year down the road, they're out.
40:43
I was like, guys, I had 20 years before I showed up on day one.
40:48
So if you look at Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outlier,
40:52
the key takeaway from that book is people don't have gifts.
40:57
They have work and commitment.
41:00
And they're willing to be consistent in that work ethic
41:03
and commit what he quotes as 10,000 hours, which, by the way,
41:07
is a decade to the craft.
41:09
Then you potentially could be the person who's
41:12
at the top or whatever.
41:13
So I just spent some time with Cameron Haynes closing this out.
41:17
Cameron Haynes is a stud.
41:19
Why is Cameron Haynes a stud?
41:20
Well, because of his work ethic.
41:22
But also, even at the level that he's at,
41:25
which is elite athlete, elite archery and bow hunter,
41:29
he is willing to still commit himself
41:32
to expose himself to weakness and challenges,
41:35
which makes him better.
41:36
I certainly was exposed to my weakness,
41:37
carrying that 80 pound sand bag up that hill.
41:41
But I was also like, oh, shooting a boat, easy.
41:45
I do that, lifting weights, easy, I do that.
41:48
But how many of us are willing to go into the gym
41:50
and set down the chest and tries and try something different
41:54
because it's going to make us better.
41:56
Most people aren't, and I encourage you to be that guy.
41:59
Well, and that's what I tell people all the time is,
42:01
okay, so you're a golfer.
42:02
You should try to do jujitsu.
42:04
Okay, if you're a jujitsu guy, you need to go,
42:06
because jujitsu cardio is different than triathlete cardio,
42:09
because when a triathlete comes in and rolls,
42:11
they die when a jujitsu guy goes out
42:13
and tries to run bike and swim, he dies.
42:15
But the whole idea is, I'm not sure there's something
42:19
that has more diminishing returns on a daily basis
42:22
than exercise.
42:23
What I mean by that is if you work out
42:25
on January 1st, right, you work out for four hours.
42:28
You just, you just really light it up.
42:30
That doesn't last you the rest of the year.
42:32
It doesn't last you the rest of the week.
42:34
You have to make a daily commitment to it.
42:36
And so like a guy like Cam Haines,
42:38
he did that for decades for anyone who knew his name
42:40
before Joe Rogan discovered him.
42:41
And before he became this big name
42:43
and best-selling author and all the different things,
42:45
it's just who he was.
42:46
Like the other day, I was outside carrying 100 pound sandbag
42:50
when it was close to 100 degrees here in Oklahoma.
42:53
It's not the number one thing I wanted to do with my time,
42:56
but it's like, look, hopefully later on this year,
42:59
I'm carrying a quarter section of an elk on my back
43:02
trying to get it out so I can feed myself
43:04
and my family for a year.
43:05
And if that's the first time I'm carrying weight like that,
43:08
it could be a problem for me.
43:10
But what that leads to is a discussion
43:11
that you talk about in the book.
43:13
There's this kind of witch's brew of like laziness
43:17
and arrogance when it comes to overall planning.
43:19
So like on the laziness side,
43:21
you have guys that if they shoot at the range,
43:23
they will only shoot during perfect conditions.
43:26
So 75 degrees, a little bit of wind,
43:28
so it's a nice breeze, heart rate is normal.
43:32
They don't ever jack their heart rate up
43:33
and then try to shoot.
43:35
Guys that only camp when it's beautiful out, not raining.
43:38
Guys that just avoid complicating factors
43:40
to what they're doing.
43:41
But in your chapter called planning,
43:43
you actually have a section header that I loved.
43:46
It's arrogance and willful ignorance are your enemy.
43:49
And so that laziness comes from an area of arrogance
43:52
or like, yeah, I'm just not really gonna pay attention
43:55
to what would happen if I had to run 100 meters
43:58
before shooting.
43:59
You see these police officer cam videos
44:03
where they're trying to run to a threat
44:05
and they can run for about 70 or 80 yards before they,
44:08
and you can just hear them breathing and it's like, man,
44:12
there's no way this shot's gonna be on target
44:14
and the shots are far away.
44:16
They don't have the AR,
44:17
so they're trying to stabilize their duty weapon,
44:20
their pistol, and it's like, man,
44:22
it comes from an area of laziness, arrogance,
44:24
and willful ignorance.
44:25
So talk to me a little bit about that,
44:27
not only for the civilian world,
44:29
but also for the operator world
44:31
or the first responder world to where it's just like,
44:32
look, your level of unpreparedness
44:36
can not only lead to the ending of your life,
44:37
but for the people you purportedly raised your hand
44:39
and swore that you would protect.
44:42
- Yeah, it goes hand in hand with exposure
44:45
because that's the first component
44:48
is kind of getting off your butt and not being lazy.
44:52
I think the biggest issue that I see
44:55
across every single industry,
44:57
including in the civilian space and civilian world,
45:00
is the idea is it's never going to happen to me, right?
45:04
And we train for best case scenarios, not worst case scenarios.
45:09
I've always used a term or the phraseology worst case scenario.
45:14
And the reason I do is because when you train
45:16
for the worst case, it kind of handles everything in between.
45:20
You know, it's like, it's a scaled down version of it,
45:22
handled, best case of it, handled.
45:25
And so most people train and cater to the best case scenario
45:28
because they want to be comfortable all the time.
45:32
So like when I tell, when I teach active shooting protocol
45:37
to police officers, they'll follow the protocol
45:41
of what normally happens in routine.
45:44
And I said, you know, this happens to SWAT teams, especially.
45:48
I'll say, guys, why do you do it this way?
45:51
And they go, well, why, it's sound tactically.
45:55
And I said, well, let me give you one scenario.
45:57
Let me put the bad guy in this position with this gun
46:00
and they would immediately default to,
46:02
well, that's never happened.
46:04
And I said, well, that you do realize
46:07
that's what you're training for.
46:08
You're not training for the things that,
46:11
I mean, if everything happened in routine and complacency
46:16
and comfort, then you would just walk in the room.
46:19
You don't even need to go.
46:20
Yeah.
46:20
Because 99% of the rooms that you go in don't have guns.
46:24
And then if you put a gun in a guy's hand
46:26
and then you've experienced that 10 times a year
46:29
and that guy never shoots, you're not training for that.
46:33
You're training for the one guy that does shoot.
46:35
So if I set this guy up this way
46:38
and then you do it this way to negate that one guy
46:41
who's holding the gun in this position,
46:43
don't you think you're covering down
46:45
in everything in between?
46:45
They're like, well, yeah, that makes sense.
46:47
I'm like, OK, well, then let's not do this
46:50
and let's do this instead.
46:52
I have guys all the time who in active shooting protocol
46:55
training, they go down the hallway
46:57
and they clear inside the room with their eyes.
46:59
And I say, why are you looking in that room?
47:01
Like, well, I'm clearing it.
47:03
I'm like, so what are you clearing it for?
47:06
Well, I'm clearing it for a threat.
47:07
Of course, you're clearing it for threats
47:08
because you're looking for the eye to shoot her.
47:10
What if the threat is holding a gun pointing at you?
47:12
Well, then I just turn the gun and I'm like, no, no, no.
47:14
Then you're dead.
47:15
You just witnessed something killed because it's too late.
47:18
So why don't you look in the room
47:19
and then move your gun to where the potential threat would be
47:23
so you have a shooting solution
47:25
as soon as you identify the threat?
47:26
They're like, oh, crap.
47:27
So a lot of the things I fear that we do is unintentional.
47:35
And I say fear because it's worse.
47:37
Because unintentional just means we're not paying attention.
47:40
And we're not paying attention.
47:43
And we're living this comfortable place at life.
47:45
That's when the worst case scenario happens.
47:47
And that's when disaster strikes, right?
47:50
The one shooting in the department
47:53
that now the guy writes a book, if he survives,
47:55
and it changed the entire protocol for the department
47:57
for the next century.
48:00
We are thinking ahead in preparedness and saying,
48:02
hey, you could proactively be engaged,
48:07
take some preventative measures to be better.
48:10
And that way, if it does happen,
48:12
because likely it will happen, by the way,
48:15
then you'll be prepared.
48:16
And that's just the protocol.
48:17
Because I think a lot of people,
48:19
because they live a comfortable, complacent life,
48:21
it's like, well, nothing's happening to me
48:23
until it does, and then we're not prepared.
48:26
- Well, I think a lot of what you discussed there, Mike,
48:28
really can be wrapped up in a discussion
48:29
about situational awareness,
48:31
which you do talk about in the book, and guys,
48:32
this is probably a good time for me to mention,
48:34
we're barely scraping the surface of the contents
48:36
of the book prepared.
48:37
So it is in the show notes, you should get it.
48:39
There's a lot of stuff in there,
48:40
but get your highlighter ready,
48:41
'cause there's a bunch of crap you thought you knew
48:42
that you just don't know.
48:43
But when you talk about situational awareness,
48:46
I've seen videos of people that are getting mugged
48:48
that don't even know they're getting mugged yet,
48:50
because their face is in their phone.
48:52
They've got a gun or a knife pointed at them,
48:54
and they're looking at their phone,
48:55
and then they're like, oh, oh my gosh.
48:57
And then so they're not prepared for that situation.
48:59
I think another point in the book he talked about,
49:02
even how you carry yourself as a deterrent.
49:04
So yeah, if you're six foot five, 400 pounds,
49:06
and yoked out of your mind,
49:08
no one's probably gonna try and steal from you.
49:10
But also, if you're always demure or navel gazing,
49:13
or you're not looking around paying attention,
49:15
you're also making yourself a target as well.
49:18
But this goes back to something you said earlier
49:20
in the interview.
49:21
People think that if you're prepared,
49:22
that you're paranoid, you're constantly looking around,
49:24
that if you carry a firearm on you,
49:26
that you're constantly looking around the parking lot,
49:28
see if you need to shoot.
49:29
But it's really more so about situational awareness,
49:31
because it's like, look, if you know where the exits are,
49:34
if someone starts shooting,
49:36
you know where you can get your family out quickly.
49:37
If there's a fire, you can get them out quickly.
49:40
If you just survey the environment around you,
49:43
it's just what you just said, Mike,
49:45
about someone's clearing a room with their eyes
49:46
and not with their firearm pointed in that direction.
49:49
That split second decision is enough
49:51
for them to lose their top not.
49:52
And so in this type of scenario,
49:54
you just looking around and getting a survey
49:56
of the land being situationally aware,
49:58
could be the difference between you saving yourself
50:00
and not saving yourself,
50:01
but also for the people that are around you.
50:03
So talk to me a little bit about what we can do
50:05
to make ourselves more situationally aware,
50:07
because you talk about the best way to learn to look
50:11
is to hunt.
50:12
And I know that when I get back from a hunting trip,
50:14
there could be a squirrel that moves a quarter mile away
50:17
from me while I'm walking my dog.
50:19
It's like my eyes are trained for that,
50:21
'cause you're looking for the slightest movement
50:23
in the landscape.
50:24
So just talk to me in general about situational awareness.
50:28
- Yeah, a lot of people, the term situational awareness,
50:31
some people turned off by it because they're like,
50:32
oh, this is some military stuff.
50:34
And what I really mean is paying attention.
50:37
And most of us, because the convenience
50:40
that the cell phone or the comfort that the cell phone
50:43
has given us has pulled us away from our environments
50:48
that make us more likely to not pay attention
50:52
and more likely become a victim of crime of circumstance.
50:56
You know, the statistic now is 40,000 plus Americans
51:00
dying in vehicle accidents every single year,
51:03
what's even more alarming than that is 6 million accidents,
51:06
vehicle accidents happen every single year,
51:09
two million of which people are injured.
51:11
And you look at that and you go,
51:13
man, that's a lot of people, that's a lot of accidents,
51:16
a lot of death every single day.
51:18
Most of that's associated with not paying attention.
51:20
And so when we talk about paying attention,
51:25
the reason it's so important to pay attention
51:27
is because the world around us requires
51:30
that we pay attention so we don't get killed
51:33
or so we don't become a victim.
51:35
And when you take it from the other side,
51:38
bad guys look at the exact circumstance
51:41
that you're in for exploitable opportunities.
51:45
So if you're at a gas station, it's routine.
51:47
If you're walking on your cell phone,
51:49
if you're at an ATM staring into the screen,
51:52
you're exploitable because you're not paying attention.
51:55
And so bad guys take advantage of that.
51:57
What I generally say is paying attention
52:00
just requires you, one, put the cell phone away.
52:03
That cell phone is a complete distraction
52:05
from the world around you.
52:07
Two, I am not paranoid and looking at every single thing
52:11
that's going on in my environment as a potential threat.
52:14
All we're looking for is spikes in the pattern.
52:17
I'm looking for anomalies.
52:18
Like you said with the squirrel.
52:21
If you're a hunter and you're staring into an ocular lens
52:25
of a 40 power spotting scope and looking at the ridge line,
52:30
you're not assessing and analyzing every single bit
52:34
of that information as you scan across.
52:37
What you're looking for is things that spike the pattern,
52:40
things outside of the pattern.
52:41
And when you see those, that means you just pay more attention.
52:45
You just refine your focus.
52:47
So I give the example, it's a December 4th.
52:52
And you hear what sounds like fireworks.
52:54
And it sounds like fire crackers going off.
52:58
And you're like, well, wait, it's not July 4th,
53:00
it's December 4th.
53:02
Well, that could be a spike in the pattern
53:04
that needs more attention.
53:07
That could mean get off the X,
53:08
create as much distance and time.
53:10
There has to be an action.
53:12
And most of our protocol,
53:14
this is, by the way, a primal protocol in nature.
53:17
Something startles you.
53:19
You immediately pay attention.
53:21
You have a flinch response typically.
53:24
You pay attention, then you make a decision,
53:27
and that might be fighting or fleeing.
53:30
Now we do it, we get a flinch response, we pay attention,
53:34
and then we want to get our cell phone out
53:36
and record what's going on.
53:37
So what I say is like, you go into an establishment
53:41
and you enter the front door,
53:43
you scan from right to left to right,
53:45
that doesn't have to be a long time.
53:47
When you see a spike, you pay more attention to the spike,
53:50
and then you make a decision to do whatever you're going to do.
53:53
Hey, I need to sit away from this,
53:55
or hey, honey, let's go to a different restaurant,
53:57
or hey, honey, let's go to a different gas station,
53:59
or hey, honey, let's not use the ATM at two in the morning.
54:02
These are, this is like real basic stuff that we used to do
54:06
when we didn't have the distraction in our hand,
54:08
but now because we do, we're not paying attention at all.
54:11
- Well, Mike, you're bringing up a lot of good things there,
54:14
but you're also talking about making decisions,
54:16
but a lot of it is about pre-decision.
54:18
So I've mentioned this on my show before,
54:20
I'll give the truncated version,
54:21
but there was a situation last year where I thought
54:23
I was going to have to pull my pistol and use it
54:25
in a restaurant because a man was walking,
54:28
I could, you know, I positioned myself towards the front door,
54:30
it's a small kind of cramped restaurant,
54:31
middle of the day for lunch,
54:33
and he's kind of walking back and forth on the windows outside,
54:37
and something's just off about him, right?
54:39
So just spike in the pattern.
54:40
He's wearing like a car heart coveralls,
54:43
but he had a really, really nice jacket over it.
54:46
And it was just, in really nice sunglasses, it was just odd.
54:49
And then he came up to the window, looking through the window,
54:51
and he makes like a gun out of his fingers,
54:54
and he starts shooting people through the window,
54:57
like with his fingers.
54:58
Then my buddy's talking to me and I go, "Shut up, shut up, shut up."
55:01
"Shut up, I think something's about to go down."
55:03
Guy walks in, he grabs a menu,
55:06
and he's, I can see through his glasses,
55:08
he's not looking at the menu, he's looking around,
55:10
but he's pretending like he's looking at the menu.
55:12
No one's paying attention to this guy.
55:14
And he's got a bag, he's got about seven pockets on him,
55:17
'cause you know, car heart coveralls.
55:18
And I'm like, at this point, I've got my hand on my pistol,
55:22
and it's like, if he reaches in, I gotta be ready.
55:25
And I gotta make sure I know what's behind him,
55:28
just in case I miss, like, I'm running these scenarios
55:30
all through my head.
55:31
But you know what I wasn't deciding at that point, Mike?
55:34
Whether or not I could take a life.
55:36
Because I had spent time and prayer and contemplation
55:40
in pre-deciding that in order to protect
55:43
image bearers of God from the wolf,
55:46
I would act as a sheepdog to try and stop someone
55:50
from taking innocent life, or hurting innocent life.
55:53
The problem that I see, Mike,
55:55
and you're way more into this,
55:56
so I'm really, really anxious to hear your answer to this.
56:00
You have a lot of people that buy guns.
56:03
They've got all kinds of firearms.
56:04
You've got guys that like to go to the range.
56:06
They like to shoot.
56:07
You got guys that like to carry.
56:08
You got guys that like to tell you they're carrying.
56:10
They got guys that are wearing outside the waistband,
56:13
the whole nine.
56:14
And these are people that have not pre-decided
56:16
whether or not they can take a life.
56:18
And in that moment, when seconds count,
56:21
split seconds count even,
56:23
they're having to have that spiritual conversation
56:26
with themselves about whether or not they can do this.
56:29
And so that pistol that's on their waistband,
56:32
it might as well be a rock,
56:34
or a pencil or something like that.
56:37
So talk to me a little bit in your chapter
56:39
called decision point is great.
56:42
You get into a lot of these types of things
56:43
and you know, going through mental blocks
56:45
and being good at decision making
56:47
and reminding yourself of all that.
56:48
But talk to me a little bit about how pre-decision
56:51
works into making decisions just in general.
56:54
- Yeah, pre-decision I break down into
56:58
what's called mental modeling.
56:59
I mean, that's basically a free rehearsal.
57:02
It's really how our brain works when we're trying
57:05
to get ahead of something specifically
57:08
that's gonna be dangerous.
57:09
I mean, you think about when we actually do it
57:13
or when we actually use it in modern society,
57:17
it typically is associated with something dangerous,
57:20
but we do it every single day
57:22
in all the things that we do and all the actions we do.
57:25
I'll break it down into two things, scripts and models.
57:27
The script is the action specifically that you train
57:30
that you apply.
57:32
And the model was the environment
57:34
that that script is being acted in.
57:36
So when somebody trains on a flat range shooting paper
57:39
and still what they don't understand
57:41
is what's missing in that is the cognitive component,
57:44
which by the way features characteristics
57:48
of moral, ethical and legal justification.
57:53
So when you're not thinking about something
57:55
and you're just acting,
57:57
you don't think about those things,
57:59
but a gunfight would include both of those things,
58:02
especially in the decision point and the lead up
58:05
to using the script or the action
58:07
where you're not really thinking about anything.
58:09
You're just implementing or executing an action.
58:11
Like when you're brushing your teeth,
58:13
you brush your teeth in the background
58:15
and now you have the ability to think
58:17
while you're brushing your teeth.
58:19
You're watching the news, taking in information,
58:21
brushing your teeth.
58:22
And so it's similar to that
58:23
where you might be in a situation where you have a lead up
58:27
and you have time because there's a potential
58:29
in your case, imminent threat
58:31
where he likely can become a threat,
58:33
but he's not immediate or a threat becomes immediate
58:37
and then you have to react immediately.
58:40
So when we look at this, it's contemplation
58:43
and it has everything to do with your ability
58:46
to make a decision.
58:47
What's crazy about making decisions
58:51
is it's just not about weighing decision
58:53
versus indecision, it's weighing decision too soon
58:58
or too extreme or no decision at all.
59:03
Because what I'll get is I'll get guys
59:05
who have trained on a flat range executing the script.
59:08
I put them into a decision to use deadly force
59:11
and they immediately react except it's a bad shoot.
59:15
And I'm like, you know, the classic scenario is
59:18
the spouse and the husband, they're walking together,
59:21
the person's trying to get into her space.
59:24
He's acting as the protector or the defender
59:27
and he gets in between them.
59:28
He go, the other guy goes to reach for a spouse
59:31
and he guns them down.
59:32
And the guy typically who guns them down who reacts
59:35
is like, yeah, I did what I had to do.
59:37
Like you realize maybe morally and ethically
59:41
in your own head, you thought that was good,
59:42
but you do realize you're going to prison
59:44
for the rest of your life.
59:45
Like what do you mean?
59:46
And then you look back at all the students,
59:47
you say, hey, buy a show of hands,
59:49
who would hear as a juror would convict him of murder
59:52
and send him to prison for the rest of life.
59:54
And everybody raises their hands.
59:56
You're like, oh, well, what did I do wrong?
59:59
Well, you weren't thinking at all.
1:00:02
You literally were defaulting to the script
1:00:04
that you practice again and again
1:00:06
because you fall in love with this virtue persona
1:00:10
of shooting paper and still of killing bad guys,
1:00:12
except you never actually thought about
1:00:14
if you were put in that situation preemptively
1:00:17
what you would actually think about
1:00:20
and what you would actually do at the moment that was required.
1:00:24
And that is a big issue across the board
1:00:28
and the tactical space because everybody wants
1:00:30
to virtue signal the thing, the tool,
1:00:33
and then their ability to use the tool.
1:00:35
But that would be like the difference between,
1:00:38
you know, being the logger and being somebody who cuts,
1:00:42
you know, sticks in my backyard
1:00:45
and takes pictures with a chainsaw.
1:00:47
There's a massive difference.
1:00:48
One, there's no stress.
1:00:50
Two, there's no danger.
1:00:52
And three, it's pretty easy to use the tool
1:00:56
under comfortable circumstances,
1:00:57
but it's very difficult to use the tool
1:00:59
under difficult circumstances.
1:01:01
So there's so much there because I think about,
1:01:04
I was thinking about Jiu Jitsu as you were talking
1:01:06
and you kind of know this.
1:01:07
I was talking to some guys yesterday,
1:01:08
they had never trained and they're like,
1:01:09
yeah, I think I would want to like maybe watch some videos
1:01:11
first before I went and it's like, look,
1:01:13
you can't teach a kid to ride a bike at a seminar
1:01:15
and you're not going to get good at Jiu Jitsu
1:01:17
by watching YouTube videos.
1:01:18
It's just not going to work out for you.
1:01:20
But the more you train Jiu Jitsu,
1:01:22
'cause I'm about six years in, I'm a purple belt,
1:01:25
Jiu Jitsu slows down.
1:01:26
And so when you roll with these white belts
1:01:28
and they're freaking out and they're tense
1:01:29
and they're all that, it's because everything's so fast.
1:01:31
The decisions that they need to make
1:01:33
are coming at them so fast that they can't even process them,
1:01:36
put them in the right categories
1:01:37
and then much less make a move.
1:01:39
And I've got a good buddy that was,
1:01:42
he was a development group, Eddie Penny.
1:01:44
He was really good at CQB
1:01:46
because he was able to slow everything down
1:01:49
to where it was kind of flow state.
1:01:51
When he was moving through the kill house
1:01:52
or something like that, everything was flow state.
1:01:55
But most of us that we don't expose ourselves
1:01:57
to those things to where we even have to make those decisions.
1:01:59
But yeah, we're really, really good at pinging steel,
1:02:02
but you're right, we're not putting a scenario to where,
1:02:04
okay, it's not steel now.
1:02:06
It's basically a human water balloon with organs and bones.
1:02:09
And if you shoot them, there are literal real world consequences.
1:02:12
Even if it's a justified shoot,
1:02:14
depending upon the state that you're in,
1:02:16
you could have a justified shoot
1:02:17
and you're gonna be under litigation and stuff for two years
1:02:20
just trying to basically get yourself out of trouble.
1:02:23
So we don't have time to really get into all of that.
1:02:25
I do wanna transition into something
1:02:28
that was interesting about your book.
1:02:29
You really describe the Virginia Tech shooting
1:02:32
that happened on campus in a lot of detail.
1:02:34
And for a lot of us, we've kind of forgotten that
1:02:36
because there's been a lot more shootings,
1:02:38
there's been Donald Trump's been president since then,
1:02:40
so there's stuff that people are distracted by.
1:02:42
But what I've noticed, Mike, and I'm sure you have as well,
1:02:44
with many tragedies, especially mass shootings,
1:02:47
we're all of us, too busy running to our sides
1:02:50
of the gun debate, to absorb or take any lessons
1:02:53
from what exactly happened.
1:02:55
So it's just guns are fine, second amendment,
1:02:58
or guns are the devil, they're literally killing people.
1:03:01
But you spent time in the book detailing
1:03:03
what exactly happened, the different players involved
1:03:06
in what was happening and some takeaways.
1:03:09
So just in general, I don't wanna spoil it
1:03:10
for anyone that hasn't read the book yet.
1:03:12
What are some of the takeaways for us from that incident
1:03:15
that could help us just in general
1:03:16
with other similar incidences?
1:03:19
- Yeah, I think the biggest one is we have the ability
1:03:23
in us to quit and not just quit like freeze.
1:03:29
That's typically associated with a fight or flight
1:03:32
or freeze response, which is very much so sympathetic,
1:03:36
meaning it's a part of our nervous system protocol
1:03:40
for the mobilization tactic in survival.
1:03:42
But on the other side of that, the flip side of that coin,
1:03:45
there's a mechanism in us which is hypo arousal to quit,
1:03:50
to stop, to play possum.
1:03:53
And when somebody, like when a possum plays possum,
1:03:57
it just doesn't say I'm gonna play possum
1:04:00
and then it pretends to be dead.
1:04:04
What it does is physiologically and biological
1:04:07
is a mechanism in survival.
1:04:10
It does a whole bunch of things,
1:04:11
including putting opiates in its body to numb it
1:04:16
so it doesn't move to secrete foul stinches
1:04:21
so it smells like a dead animal,
1:04:25
all in the benefit of surviving.
1:04:28
You as a human being have that same protocol
1:04:31
in a way inside of you, which means if you do that
1:04:35
because of the trauma, most scientists believe
1:04:38
that has to do with the disassociation of the memory
1:04:41
and the trauma that you're exposed to,
1:04:43
one, you're not thinking clearly,
1:04:46
two, the opiates that are in your body numb you
1:04:50
and they numb you to make something even the transition
1:04:53
from life to death easier,
1:04:55
but also to immobilize the physical body.
1:04:59
I've seen that in real life, in combat.
1:05:03
I've also seen it in study
1:05:06
and I've never seen anybody talk about it,
1:05:09
especially tactical guys who teach
1:05:12
all these different protocols.
1:05:13
Why would that be important?
1:05:14
Well, if you meet a trigger in your psyche,
1:05:19
this could be your physical state
1:05:22
and you can't fight anymore
1:05:24
and you do hide under a desk
1:05:26
and then you do line up to be potentially killed
1:05:29
because you are not going to be in a fight or flight response
1:05:33
to fight at all.
1:05:35
So I think systemically in our society,
1:05:38
we are breeding people, one, not to understand this,
1:05:40
but two, not to be fighters,
1:05:43
even as a protocol of run, hide and fight,
1:05:45
which I absolutely think is the worst protocol
1:05:48
we could ever teach anybody,
1:05:50
especially children who are depending
1:05:52
and leaning on specific instruction, which is run,
1:05:55
where you run it, hide, how are you hiding?
1:05:58
'Cause I know as a kid, I know kids
1:06:01
and hide and seek, hide into positions
1:06:02
where you can't see them and they get small.
1:06:05
Is that setting them up for fight?
1:06:06
No, it's not at all.
1:06:08
So I think all the active shootings that I've seen,
1:06:13
especially Virginia Tech,
1:06:14
lead me to believe that as a society without the tool,
1:06:18
without the gun, we are not prepared for conflict at all.
1:06:22
And if all the students would have done what a few did
1:06:28
and fighting that active shooter who had one pistol,
1:06:31
despite him killing 33 innocent people,
1:06:33
31 in that building specifically,
1:06:36
90% of which he shot in the head, which is tragic,
1:06:39
then we would have had a different outcome.
1:06:42
When you see, I tragically have track
1:06:47
and study active shootings as part of what I do for a living.
1:06:51
When I see kids running that are 18 to 22 years old in college,
1:06:56
in droves, running out of the buildings,
1:06:59
I think, man, if somebody somewhere could have had
1:07:02
the wherewithal or the leadership or the will
1:07:08
to take all those people and fight against the one person
1:07:11
who's destroying human life, they don't need a tool.
1:07:14
They just need the will.
1:07:15
They could have been fighting and stopping that shooter.
1:07:18
Lastly, I think the active shooter Virginia Tech
1:07:21
ultimately took his own life because police arrived,
1:07:24
but also because a very few selective students
1:07:28
who had the will, who had the understanding
1:07:30
of how dire their circumstance was fought.
1:07:34
And that led him to kill himself, which ended the onslaught,
1:07:37
which he had a lot more ammunition to go
1:07:41
before he finished himself off.
1:07:44
- And I think you're exactly right.
1:07:46
Again, it's about pre-decision,
1:07:47
putting yourself in that scenario.
1:07:48
Imagine if someone goes into the food court of a mall
1:07:52
and just starts shooting.
1:07:53
It's like there's a few hundred people
1:07:55
in that concentrated area and the shooter
1:07:57
can only point in one direction at one time.
1:07:59
And it just takes a few people.
1:08:01
And really that one person that charges the shooter
1:08:05
or does something that is like defensively offensive,
1:08:07
if I can say such a thing,
1:08:10
that could really shake something loose.
1:08:13
But then there's those situations where seemingly
1:08:14
there was nothing anyone could do.
1:08:16
And I don't wanna get too far off in a conspiracy theory land,
1:08:19
but you brought it up in the book.
1:08:20
So if we go there, it's your fault.
1:08:22
But in the book, you discuss the Las Vegas mass shooting,
1:08:25
which as far as we're told, a single gunman opened fire
1:08:29
from a hotel adjacent to a country music concert,
1:08:32
killing 60 people and wounding over 400 more.
1:08:35
And I've never seen a tragic story less talked about
1:08:40
after the first few days post the thing than this story.
1:08:44
Tucker Carlson's brought it up a few times,
1:08:46
like, hey, why don't we know anything about this shooter?
1:08:48
Why, like, oh, he just died.
1:08:50
And there are people that were kind of breaking down
1:08:51
the videos like, wait a minute,
1:08:53
this doesn't sound like one firearm that sounds like multiple,
1:08:56
like none of this makes sense.
1:08:57
There's so much about this story, Mike, that stinks.
1:09:01
It stinks to high heaven,
1:09:02
but I don't have the experience or the time
1:09:04
to figure out why it stinks to high heaven.
1:09:06
And collectively, as a populist,
1:09:08
the United States has moved on
1:09:10
from the largest mass shooting in the history of our country.
1:09:15
And to people that think we have a mass shooting problem,
1:09:17
this is your gold medal mass shooting.
1:09:19
And yet we've done nothing to figure out
1:09:22
exactly what the hell happened.
1:09:24
What are your thoughts on it?
1:09:26
- Yeah, so I know very intimately about that situation.
1:09:29
I actually was sent pictures within a day
1:09:33
of the inside of that room by guys that were entered the room.
1:09:38
I mean, one of my good friends with Las Vegas Metro
1:09:42
entered the room on the initial breach with the SWAT guys.
1:09:47
I mean, he was just a patrol officer.
1:09:49
At the time.
1:09:50
And look, that situation was a prime example
1:09:55
of what we're getting wrong in this society,
1:09:58
which is we're not analyzing and assessing the motives.
1:10:03
The motive is the most important part of the story
1:10:07
that helps us understand why these are tethered
1:10:11
to psychological mental health dilemmas.
1:10:15
And when we start understanding that in the education,
1:10:19
we start to understand it's not a gun problem.
1:10:21
It's not a tool problem.
1:10:23
It's a psychological human being problem.
1:10:25
Because this same person, by the way,
1:10:27
the motive that was established was he was angry
1:10:31
at the gambling facility.
1:10:35
He was angry at the...
1:10:36
It's like, I don't know, when you're angry at something,
1:10:39
you make a complaint.
1:10:41
You don't do the biggest mass shooting in our history.
1:10:45
You don't try to deliberately shoot into the crowd
1:10:48
to get them to move to the jet fuel tanks
1:10:51
to hit the tanks, explode as a secondary attack,
1:10:54
and do that as a protocol with no experience, by the way.
1:10:58
Like, how do we not know who the hell the guy is?
1:11:01
His backstory, where he got his training.
1:11:03
Like, the firearms he used at the distance
1:11:07
in which he used him was not just a prey
1:11:10
and spray type protocol.
1:11:12
It was he knew exactly what he was doing.
1:11:15
And so there's a whole bunch of holes in that story.
1:11:17
But if you take all the active shootings,
1:11:19
I mean, Allen, Texas, we know,
1:11:22
based on the body footage cameras that was just released,
1:11:25
that one single officer who was a officer
1:11:28
in the parking lot responded in a short period of time
1:11:30
took off the shooter.
1:11:31
But we don't know anything about the shooter.
1:11:33
This Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee,
1:11:36
shot up by a trans person,
1:11:39
goes into the school, picks the softer target
1:11:42
over the hard target, again, no motive.
1:11:45
Helping establish the motive and understanding the backdrop
1:11:49
and background of these persons
1:11:51
would help us understand the complexity of the mindset,
1:11:54
but also the awareness of what we need to look for
1:11:58
in psychology and human beings around us as learning signs,
1:12:02
not just established by the CDC, like depressed and anxious.
1:12:06
Yeah, welcome to the country because everybody's depressed.
1:12:09
Let's focus more on the motives to psychology
1:12:13
and have the conversation in depth
1:12:15
instead of what we're doing is firing in forgetting,
1:12:18
and then it's just a piece of evidence for the narrative
1:12:21
for whatever political party is pushing their agendas.
1:12:24
That's the travesty.
1:12:25
What I would say is one part of my responsibility,
1:12:29
I do prep life on YouTube, is doing that breakdown,
1:12:33
but also talking about it constantly
1:12:35
to get people educated and then doing things like this book,
1:12:38
but also you could do it on your own.
1:12:40
Do the research, dig in the weeds,
1:12:43
and start establishing why these things are happening.
1:12:46
Like I'm curious why people live
1:12:48
and why people die in catastrophe.
1:12:50
And so should you if you're interested
1:12:52
in this idea of being prepared?
1:12:54
Well, I think as well, I opened up the can of worms,
1:12:57
you fully dove in it, you went full sinned,
1:12:59
but I'm gonna slam the top back on this
1:13:01
because there's a lot more that could be said there,
1:13:04
but we're just gonna have to kind of leave that there
1:13:06
because yes, there are a lot of things here
1:13:07
that stink to high heaven.
1:13:09
You've obviously talked to some people on the inside,
1:13:10
none of it seems to make sense.
1:13:12
And unfortunately, it seems a little bit foolish
1:13:14
to even spend too much time thinking about it
1:13:16
because it's like what capacity do we have
1:13:18
to actually figure those things out?
1:13:20
But you do make the ultimate point,
1:13:22
which is the better we can understand these motives,
1:13:24
the better we can create formulas
1:13:27
that can not pre-criminalize people,
1:13:29
but like get an idea of like, okay,
1:13:31
here's the same pattern.
1:13:33
Depress kid, outcasts on SSRI's family access to firearms
1:13:38
and/or money, and then you have this mass shooting
1:13:41
where they kind of act out in that way.
1:13:43
There are ways to mitigate those things
1:13:45
and some of us kind of give them short shrift.
1:13:47
Speaking of short shrift,
1:13:48
I do want to transition to a part of the book
1:13:50
where you get into granular detail
1:13:53
and this is for all those people out there
1:13:55
that they love their spreadsheets
1:13:56
and they love setting everything out
1:13:58
and getting ready for their camping trip or whatever.
1:14:00
Let's talk about gear.
1:14:01
And so we're gonna mush a lot of this together
1:14:03
and you can talk about it,
1:14:04
however you'd like to talk about it
1:14:06
'cause in the book, you talk about your EDC,
1:14:08
your everyday carry, you talk about an ideal bug out bag,
1:14:11
you get into survival gear for your vehicle,
1:14:14
the type of vehicle, survival gear for your home
1:14:17
or your homestead, the use of tourniquets, all of that.
1:14:20
A lot of that is gonna be through
1:14:21
field craft survival as well,
1:14:22
which is a lot of stuff that you guys sell
1:14:24
and/or you basically refer them to other places.
1:14:27
But let's just talk about gear in general
1:14:29
while understanding guys,
1:14:30
you have to buy the book to really get those lists
1:14:32
and really dig into the reasons why.
1:14:34
But talk to us about some of the stuff
1:14:35
that is essential for us to have EDC bug out bags,
1:14:38
vehicles, the whole nine yards.
1:14:40
It just boils down to gear,
1:14:43
which equals capability via your capacity.
1:14:48
If you have more capacity,
1:14:49
then technically you could have more gear.
1:14:51
I mean, like on your person, you, you're limited.
1:14:55
If you have a fanny pack, a purse,
1:14:58
if you have a car, if you have a home,
1:15:00
you just have more space for more gear.
1:15:03
The important component about gear across the board
1:15:06
is often it is the enabler or the facilitator
1:15:11
to success and survival.
1:15:13
I mean, it's hard to stop the bleed with your belt,
1:15:16
but can you do it?
1:15:17
Yes, you can, but why would you want to
1:15:19
when you can just have the tool, right?
1:15:21
Have the equipment.
1:15:23
And often people forget that a lot of the gear
1:15:28
that especially in this world of preparedness that we need,
1:15:32
when we need it, we need it now.
1:15:34
We don't need it like, we don't need the aid bag
1:15:38
because it's in our trunk and we're flipped upside down,
1:15:43
hanging from our seat belt bleeding on our femoral.
1:15:45
We need it like in our lap, you know?
1:15:48
And a lot of people don't think about gear that way.
1:15:51
I always think about gear as readily accessible.
1:15:55
So if it's a tourniquet and you can't reach your hand out
1:15:58
in your vehicle from your steering wheel and grab it,
1:16:01
well, then what good is the gear?
1:16:03
Because we're planning for the worst case scenario,
1:16:05
which is again, you're flipped upside down in the ditch,
1:16:08
trying to stop the bleed.
1:16:09
So that's the perspective on gear.
1:16:13
We break it out into EDC mobility and homestead,
1:16:16
which is the scale of capacity.
1:16:19
And what I always tell people is,
1:16:20
if you have a tourniquet on your person,
1:16:22
you should have a ambulance in your vehicle
1:16:25
and your house should be a small hospital, right?
1:16:28
You should have higher upgraded equipment,
1:16:32
which means more capability to treat the wound.
1:16:34
If I could stop the bleed with a tourniquet,
1:16:36
well, then I could do sutures and antibiotics in my home.
1:16:40
That is how I thought about this side of gear
1:16:45
when the first time I went to a fire base
1:16:47
in the middle of Afghanistan and it was just us.
1:16:50
Like we had to have the fuel runs.
1:16:53
I mean, we had fuel runs that were dropped in blivots
1:16:55
of fuel to charge the generators.
1:16:58
We literally sourced the water off the Hindu Kush
1:17:02
off a waterfall into a water truck
1:17:05
to fill up our bladders and our containers
1:17:09
to provide water to our fire base.
1:17:11
We sanitize the water ourselves with chlorine dioxide.
1:17:15
So when you think about where we're at now,
1:17:18
everything we have is outsourced.
1:17:21
Like right now, this is actually true.
1:17:24
Yesterday, my water went out.
1:17:26
And I live off of a historical pump
1:17:30
that has been generationally handed down
1:17:32
that seven families use.
1:17:34
I have no water for three days.
1:17:38
Yesterday in a freak like twister
1:17:42
that never touched the ground.
1:17:43
So just twirling air, just high winds.
1:17:46
A oak tree that I estimate to be about 30 years old
1:17:50
fell on the back deck of my house.
1:17:53
So between in the last 48 hours,
1:17:57
like before I was on here, I was showering,
1:18:00
using a pre-charged, because I have electricity,
1:18:05
pre-charged pump, it's called a rinse kit.
1:18:09
And I had it in my tub and it charges
1:18:12
and it has a electric pump.
1:18:14
And I was using that shower thing.
1:18:16
I spray myself off, lathered up,
1:18:18
and then rinse myself off, and my shower was done.
1:18:21
And I was like, well, that sucks,
1:18:23
'cause I'm not used to taking my five-minute hot shower
1:18:26
and followed by three minutes of cold,
1:18:28
but I got the cold knocked out.
1:18:29
It's like, oh, I can't flush the [inaudible].
1:18:32
So now I gotta have, I go out to my pump
1:18:34
and I pump water, 'cause I still have water rights
1:18:37
on this property, and I fill up a jug,
1:18:39
and that's by the toilet.
1:18:40
And I'm like, oh, this kind of feels like Afghanistan.
1:18:42
It's kind of fun.
1:18:43
It's like, I'm back to the old ways.
1:18:45
But we have to adapt, and the equipment,
1:18:50
and its components, and its capability,
1:18:52
and you is the way that you adapt.
1:18:55
You have to have all the things.
1:18:58
The great thing about this journey of preparedness
1:19:01
is taking a skillset, like stopping the bleed,
1:19:04
and filling the gaps with equipment and training
1:19:07
is a wonderful process.
1:19:09
You look at homesteading, doing a greenhouse
1:19:13
and growing your own food, and doing that with your family.
1:19:15
That's an amazing experience.
1:19:17
It's not just about the equipment and the capability,
1:19:19
it's about the process, and bringing your family
1:19:22
along for the ride.
1:19:23
- I appreciate you getting into that detail,
1:19:24
'cause again, guys, for some of you
1:19:25
that were looking for him to just detail a list,
1:19:27
it's in the book, "Prepare It."
1:19:28
It's in the show notes, so you guys should get that,
1:19:30
'cause there were some things that I've never even thought
1:19:32
about that were so like, God, you idiot,
1:19:34
you definitely need that in your truck.
1:19:36
But one thing that you talked about in the book as well
1:19:39
is the vehicles and the types of vehicles and all that,
1:19:42
but there was one thing, and maybe it's 'cause I'm stupid
1:19:44
and didn't catch it as I was reading,
1:19:46
but I always wonder about gasoline.
1:19:48
And so you have these people that have these bug out vehicles
1:19:51
or maybe they're trying to decide do I have a bug out truck
1:19:53
or a bug out motorcycle or something like that,
1:19:55
but it's like in that real fall of civilization situation
1:19:59
where there's gas stations are shut down
1:20:01
or everybody may to run on gas, like,
1:20:03
where are you getting this gas?
1:20:04
And if you have to move from one homestead
1:20:07
to a secondary homesteader, you gotta move from here
1:20:09
or there or something like that,
1:20:10
like where's the gas coming from to run all this stuff?
1:20:13
- Yeah, that's an important question,
1:20:15
and it has to do a lot with supply chain breakdowns
1:20:19
that were done at sea.
1:20:20
And a lot of people right now have the rig,
1:20:23
but they don't have the gas, which feels--
1:20:25
- I think you mentioned having a $100,000 Ford Raptor,
1:20:29
but an eighth of a tank of gas,
1:20:31
it's like, that's not gonna do you very well.
1:20:33
- That's your capability, right?
1:20:35
I experienced this in several countries,
1:20:37
every third world country, by the way,
1:20:39
deals with this issue at the lack of gas.
1:20:42
So, state number one is have redundancy
1:20:45
built into your plan.
1:20:46
Like, if you have a bug out rig,
1:20:49
have a back bike attached to it, right?
1:20:52
Have a rucksack attached to it,
1:20:54
so you can, I mean, our mobility bag was designed
1:20:57
to take off the panel back off the back of your seat
1:20:59
and put it on your back.
1:21:00
Because if you displace from your vehicle,
1:21:02
'cause there's a likelihood in a bug out
1:21:04
that you would eventually run out of fuel,
1:21:06
you're gonna have to get out on foot
1:21:08
with the capability that you still have in equipment.
1:21:12
I have redundant seat built in in all the things.
1:21:14
I have the mountain bikes, I have the motorcycles,
1:21:16
I have all the stuff.
1:21:17
But even if you say, I mean, this is crazy,
1:21:20
'cause I did this, I said, hey,
1:21:22
look at electric vehicles as a potential option
1:21:25
and people lost their crap there 'cause there's a,
1:21:27
there's some very guns, right?
1:21:29
It's very political and I'm like,
1:21:32
guys, I don't mean buy an electric vehicle
1:21:34
and burn your gas vehicles to the ground.
1:21:37
I mean, have redundancy built into your pace plan.
1:21:40
Primary, ultimate contingency and emergency.
1:21:42
All my vehicles, I have a lot of vehicles,
1:21:46
but most of them are just basic vehicles.
1:21:50
Have an AMP-proof vehicle that's carb-rated,
1:21:53
that doesn't depend on any electric components
1:21:57
to basically get that thing to run down the road.
1:22:00
I stockpile fuel.
1:22:02
I also keep all my vehicles above half a tank,
1:22:06
but I stockpile fuel and I have storage containers
1:22:09
either in rotor packs and the old jerry cans
1:22:13
or in extended fuel tanks.
1:22:15
I mean, I can go 2,000 miles in my pickup truck
1:22:18
with a fuel that I have on board
1:22:19
'cause I have a 35-gallon standard tank
1:22:22
and a 75-gallon in bed tank.
1:22:24
So I have 100-plus gallons on,
1:22:27
which is very easy for me to be able to get
1:22:29
long, extended ranges if I need to be.
1:22:33
Think about these things because your vehicle is a dead weight
1:22:37
if you run out of gas and it offers absolutely nothing.
1:22:41
- Yeah, absolutely.
1:22:42
And that's another thing that people think about.
1:22:43
They're thinking about the next thing they can add
1:22:45
to their truck, the next attachment, the next this,
1:22:47
the next that, and it's just like,
1:22:49
there are practical things here.
1:22:50
Like, I read a survivalist book a while ago
1:22:53
is like this handbook and it was like,
1:22:54
what most people think survivalism is
1:22:56
and it was a bunch of firearms, a bunch of ammunition
1:22:58
and a little bit of medication, a little bit of food.
1:23:00
And it's like, no, bro, you need like the exact opposite
1:23:03
of that because yeah, if you don't wanna go Winchester
1:23:06
if you're fighting for your homestead,
1:23:07
like you definitely don't want that to happen.
1:23:08
But the odds of you starving to death first
1:23:10
or getting some sort of infection that you can't treat
1:23:13
is probably a little bit higher than some zombie army
1:23:15
coming over on the other side of the hill from you.
1:23:18
There was another thing that I found interesting
1:23:19
in the book that I was kind of reading
1:23:21
as I was trying to be more detailed in my research.
1:23:23
So you mentioned religion a few times,
1:23:25
you mentioned religious convictions in the book
1:23:27
and you even quote scripture, albeit probably accidentally,
1:23:30
you say, if iron sharpens iron, how do you get hardened
1:23:33
when you have, when you've been forged in cotton candy,
1:23:36
which is a hilarious quote, by the way,
1:23:38
but obviously iron sharpens iron, that's Proverbs 27, 17.
1:23:41
And as I was kind of making my highlights and getting ready,
1:23:43
I was like, I don't know that I've ever heard you
1:23:45
talk about religion in detail or talk about your faith
1:23:49
or any of those types of things.
1:23:50
So if you were to basically categorize
1:23:52
your religious conviction, what would you say you have?
1:23:55
- Yeah, I'm Christian non-denominational.
1:23:58
I've been that way since, I guess,
1:24:01
since the army asked me when I was 17, what's your religion?
1:24:04
And that was an option that was blocked out.
1:24:06
I grew up very religious.
1:24:08
I grew up in a Baptist home in North Carolina,
1:24:12
which is Southern Baptist is pretty religious
1:24:17
when it comes to conviction, when it comes to values,
1:24:20
when it comes to judgment.
1:24:22
And I saw a lot of that across the board.
1:24:24
And so, yeah, Christian non-denominational
1:24:27
with no direct affiliation to any,
1:24:29
I mean, my backyard is 61% LDS of Mormon.
1:24:34
And they have an amazing story of triumph
1:24:37
and overcoming adversity.
1:24:39
And a lot of my employees are also from LDS.
1:24:43
But I'll never be that, but I appreciate their values,
1:24:46
but I'm Christian non-denominational.
1:24:49
- Okay.
1:24:50
And so in terms of how particularly you live that out,
1:24:53
because, you know, I've been around Christian,
1:24:55
I was born in Oklahoma, Mike.
1:24:56
And so everyone's a Christian 'cause we were born here, right?
1:24:59
And so you just kind of go to church
1:25:01
and you can't like trip and fall and not elbow,
1:25:03
the wall of a church kind of a thing.
1:25:06
And so I'm curious how you live out your conviction
1:25:09
because what I've noticed with several people
1:25:12
that are kind of, you know, in the spec ops were world
1:25:15
or maybe their first responders
1:25:17
or maybe their fighters or construction workers,
1:25:19
these guys are pretty rough dudes and they go to churches.
1:25:22
And this is part of the reason why we started Undaunted Life
1:25:25
is they go to churches and they don't feel comfortable.
1:25:27
They feel like, okay, this is where the godly men hang out,
1:25:30
but I'm gonna go back and hang out
1:25:32
with all my manly men friends
1:25:33
because apparently those two things don't connect.
1:25:36
So for you, I guess, how do you live out your faith?
1:25:39
Would you say it's more just kind of like generic Christianity
1:25:42
or is it like true discipleship of Jesus?
1:25:44
How do you live it out in community?
1:25:45
I know there's a lot of questions there,
1:25:47
but I just wanted to tee you up to go wherever you wanted.
1:25:50
- Yeah, it's an interesting question.
1:25:52
I see this across the board and I've recently seen guys
1:25:56
like Sean Ryan discover Christ and Eddie Penny
1:26:01
say how same thing.
1:26:03
And I think full circle,
1:26:05
most people find their way back and that's a good thing.
1:26:10
I think a lot of the stuff that I do
1:26:13
and the way I live is based off of my experiences
1:26:16
where it was just shoved down my throat
1:26:18
and it was like, you know,
1:26:19
people were trying to push their religion on me
1:26:22
even being overseas in mostly Muslim countries.
1:26:26
I saw that.
1:26:28
And look, I live those values,
1:26:32
but also when I'm bringing community together,
1:26:35
I hate to say I preach,
1:26:36
but when I talk about preparedness,
1:26:38
every time I talk about preparedness,
1:26:40
there's hundreds of people that I'm talking to.
1:26:43
And that for me, I don't take lightly
1:26:47
because to be able to influence people in person
1:26:51
and then talk to them about preparedness is one aspect,
1:26:54
but I feel a responsibility.
1:26:55
I'd always do mention God,
1:26:57
but I do so in a very passive way
1:27:01
because I don't want to directly, you know,
1:27:04
force my values or my religion on other people.
1:27:08
So I'm respectful that way.
1:27:09
But I also think, you know,
1:27:11
part of the reason why guys don't go to church
1:27:14
that are from my background
1:27:15
is because we feel a little disaffected
1:27:17
and we know the evil of men.
1:27:20
And so when you see that side of people,
1:27:23
when you can see through the veil,
1:27:26
I've literally been in churches
1:27:28
where I'm like, I need to find a good church
1:27:30
and I've been to a few churches.
1:27:31
I'm like, this is not a place for me.
1:27:33
And now we talked about it earlier in the podcast.
1:27:35
I actually thought about starting my own church,
1:27:38
like a cowboy church.
1:27:39
And that whole idea is really amazing
1:27:42
'cause it's like, hey, we're not gonna do the glitz and glamour.
1:27:45
It's not about keeping up with Kardashians.
1:27:47
It's about keeping up with the community.
1:27:49
And you don't need all the fancy.
1:27:51
And it's something I thought about.
1:27:54
My grandma once had a dream that I ended the last days
1:27:59
of my life being a preacher.
1:28:03
And my mom's always wanting me to go down that route.
1:28:05
She knows I was very into religion.
1:28:07
So maybe that's something that I'll do later
1:28:10
because I feel like it's needed,
1:28:12
but just in a different way.
1:28:14
- Well, I appreciate you going into all that detail.
1:28:16
And I can't really talk about it right now,
1:28:19
but I'll talk to you off air about some stuff
1:28:21
that I have kind of in the works towards that end
1:28:23
because the problem that we see is most men's,
1:28:26
most churches either don't focus on men at all.
1:28:29
So that's category one.
1:28:30
Category two is they try to have a men's ministry,
1:28:34
but it devolves into, hey, once a year,
1:28:36
we'll bring in some guy from the nature channel
1:28:38
to come and talk and we'll have a chili cook off.
1:28:40
And then that's it for the next 364 days.
1:28:43
And then there's that third category,
1:28:45
which there are very, very few churches in it.
1:28:46
It's where their church from top to bottom
1:28:49
is man-friendly, right?
1:28:51
So from the key, the songs are sung in,
1:28:53
to the pastor on stage and the things he's talking about,
1:28:57
they're going after the hearts of men
1:28:59
as opposed to putting blinking neon signs outside to say,
1:29:02
"Hey, we're just here for the women and children
1:29:05
"and the men, the soft, effeminate men."
1:29:07
So I've got some stuff in the works there,
1:29:09
but we've made it all the way through this conversation.
1:29:12
We've talked about everything.
1:29:13
And we haven't really talked about fieldcraft, okay?
1:29:15
So that's what you found it and you're the CEO.
1:29:18
And so all this stuff we're talking about, guys,
1:29:20
the stuff in the prepared book, preparedness, the gear,
1:29:22
all of that, it basically comes as an outworking
1:29:26
of what you do with fieldcraft survival.
1:29:28
I think most people at this point know
1:29:29
what fieldcraft survival is.
1:29:31
But if you could encapsulate what you guys offer right now,
1:29:36
but then also, I know you're a forward thinking guy
1:29:38
and you mentioned something to me earlier,
1:29:40
off air where it's like,
1:29:41
okay, I think you'll have some really cool things
1:29:43
coming in the future.
1:29:44
So what do you all do?
1:29:45
What do you do right now?
1:29:46
And then what does the future look like for fieldcraft?
1:29:49
- Yeah, thanks for that.
1:29:50
Education training and equipment is primarily
1:29:53
what we're covering down on,
1:29:55
which is everything, by the way.
1:29:57
We're trying to provide that.
1:29:58
I mean, education as a category is like,
1:30:01
hey, we wanna provide value,
1:30:03
but not having to charge people money to provide that value.
1:30:07
I mean, that's one of our value propositions is
1:30:10
a lot of the education that we do,
1:30:11
the majority of the education we do is free.
1:30:14
That's podcasts, it's YouTube, that's all the things.
1:30:16
And the education category also segments
1:30:20
into something that we're launching very soon.
1:30:22
And in fact, by the time you hear this, it's likely out.
1:30:25
If not out, you can go to feelcrasservile.com
1:30:27
and link into it.
1:30:29
The hyperlink, the web version is available,
1:30:32
but it's our application.
1:30:33
I mean, I've been working on this app for really
1:30:35
since I started the company, it's been an idea,
1:30:38
but about three years working on it constantly,
1:30:43
where we even outboarded all of our education
1:30:47
to an LMS, like a learning management system,
1:30:50
that's a college based, but the platform failed to meet
1:30:54
the user interface that we needed for teaching everything
1:30:57
from family preparedness, how to prepare your family
1:31:01
for a house fire, all the way to self-defense,
1:31:04
all the way to permanent survival.
1:31:07
So we offloaded on that, it didn't work out,
1:31:10
then we decided to do it ourselves.
1:31:13
And that was a two year journey.
1:31:14
And so we're at the end of that two year journey.
1:31:16
It's actually already built.
1:31:17
We have about a hundred hours of content
1:31:20
from all the players, Amber, family preparedness,
1:31:22
Kevin Estella, permanent survival,
1:31:24
Mike Hernandez, mobility, and Casey Hildreth,
1:31:27
all the technical stuff.
1:31:29
And I'll be on there as well.
1:31:30
That launched should start the journey for people.
1:31:36
And then I encourage everybody who gets education,
1:31:38
because you can't learn all the things
1:31:41
unless you're interacting it with yourself.
1:31:43
Like if you're doing permanent survival
1:31:45
and you're not willing to actually get the bow drill out
1:31:47
and do the thing, well, they come out and train with us.
1:31:50
We have training every single weekend,
1:31:52
four to six different states throughout the country,
1:31:55
everything from permanent survival to stop the bleed
1:31:57
to training with me and self-defense.
1:32:00
And then the other category is equipment.
1:32:03
Now, the hardest component of my business,
1:32:07
which is the way that we grow is products.
1:32:10
It's hard to scale service,
1:32:12
especially because it leans and depends on people
1:32:15
and more people, more problems, generally speaking.
1:32:18
So products, everything from loadout gear
1:32:20
to the mobility stuff that we talked about,
1:32:23
first aid equipment, even primitives, survival stuff,
1:32:27
books, the list goes on.
1:32:29
I hope to be in Bass Pro, which is a goal of mine.
1:32:33
We've kind of been doing the dance with them for a while.
1:32:36
We hope to be in there by the end of the year.
1:32:39
If not signed off, ready to go into the next year
1:32:44
in Bass Pro, Cabela's.
1:32:45
So I want to be able to offer all this stuff country-wide.
1:32:49
We have a very small niche, very small group.
1:32:52
Most people kind of know who we are,
1:32:54
but we want to get into the households
1:32:56
of people who have no clue who we are.
1:32:59
- We'll make sure to have you on around this time, next year,
1:33:01
whenever you're doing that and you're spreading your new,
1:33:04
your good news all over the place.
1:33:06
And just to make sure is the name of the app,
1:33:08
field craft survival.
1:33:09
So by the time they go to their app stores
1:33:11
that way, where they can find it.
1:33:13
- It is, and it's like everywhere you can find an app,
1:33:15
like Roku, Samsung, Apple, iOS, all the things.
1:33:19
- Perfect.
1:33:20
So guys, again, you can route there through his website.
1:33:22
That will be there in the show notes as well.
1:33:24
But dude, we've covered a lot of ground.
1:33:26
There's more questions to be asked,
1:33:27
but we don't have enough time to get to everything.
1:33:29
That is all for me.
1:33:30
Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
1:33:33
- No, I'd just say thanks for the opportunity to have me on.
1:33:35
And I just hope this book and all the things that we talked about,
1:33:39
even if it's not us, somehow some way plants the seed
1:33:43
and people are like, "Yeah, I think I'm interested in this field,"
1:33:46
and that you make it a lifestyle and not a hobby.
1:33:48
I hope people do that.
1:33:50
- Absolutely, amen.
1:33:51
Mike Glover, thank you for coming
1:33:53
on "On Daunted Life" a man's podcast.
1:33:55
- Thanks for having me.
1:33:56
- There you go, guys.
1:33:57
I hope you enjoyed my time with Mike Glover.
1:33:59
But before we let you go,
1:34:00
we are going to do a quick resilience boost.
1:34:02
At "On Daunted Life," our mission is equipping men
1:34:04
to push back darkness with content that forges spiritual,
1:34:07
mental, and physical resilience.
1:34:08
So I've got two links for you today.
1:34:09
I've got a link to the Fieldcraft Survival website
1:34:12
so you can check out their courses and their gear,
1:34:13
and also a link to where you can buy his new book,
1:34:15
Prepared, a Manual for Surviving Worst Case Scenarios.
1:34:19
Thank you guys for listening to this episode.
1:34:21
Wherever you're listening to this,
1:34:22
please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five-star review.
1:34:25
If you want me to come speak live at your event
1:34:26
or on your podcast, you should be an email
1:34:28
to info@andontin.life.
1:34:30
That's i-n-f-o@andontin.life.
1:34:32
Follow us on Instagram and Like us on Facebook
1:34:34
and check out our website for everything else,
1:34:35
including how to donate to keep more content
1:34:37
like this coming your way.
1:34:38
Just go to www.andontin.life.
1:34:41
Also, we want to thank the band Holy Name
1:34:43
for allowing us to use their music for our content.
1:34:46
The music on this podcast is our song "Perpetua,"
1:34:48
which is off their self-titled debut album
1:34:50
on Face Down Records.
1:34:52
The links are in the description.
1:34:53
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
1:34:55
Remember, keep pushing back darkness,
1:34:58
keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience,
1:35:01
and keep seeking the Lion of Judah.
1:35:04
(upbeat music)