Speaker 1: H ah bot force. If it doesn't work, you're just
Speaker 1: not using enough. You're listening to Software Radio Special Operations,
Speaker 1: military news and straight talk with the guys and the
Speaker 1: community softwarep Radio on Time on Target episode four oh one.
Speaker 1: It's pretty crazy, man. I'm very excited to have you
Speaker 1: in studio. You know, it's funny. I should have asked
Speaker 1: you this before we actually started recording. How do I
Speaker 1: pronounce your last deposi okay, chef even though there's no
Speaker 1: it's because I thought it was de paid or Depatti
Speaker 1: because of I don't see a S there, so I
Speaker 1: guess I'm just it is a French name, it's de Petsy,
Speaker 1: but got you an English fellars butchered a little and
Speaker 1: that works. Man. So in studio with Jeff Depozzi, retired
Speaker 1: Canadian spec Ops that Joint Task Force to assaulter Um.
Speaker 1: And I was originally going to say before we met
Speaker 1: with Jeff, I was like, oh, this is the first
Speaker 1: time we're having a Canadian Spec Ops guy on but
Speaker 1: you reminded me we've had Wes Kennedy on UM, but
Speaker 1: first from his background. Yeah, So, I mean, of course
Speaker 1: we'll let Jeff get into the details of it. It
Speaker 1: knows much better than I do. But just like US,
Speaker 1: Canada has a couple of different special operations units. But
Speaker 1: we're really excited to have you on because you are
Speaker 1: only the second Canadian we've had on the show from
Speaker 1: the Canadian soft community. And UM, you know I was
Speaker 1: telling you before the podcast is I think most Americans
Speaker 1: don't realize the significant contribution that Canada has made. UM.
Speaker 1: I remember reading somewhere that Canada has participated in like
Speaker 1: every single piece keeping operation that we've been involved in. UM.
Speaker 1: And of course you guys been deploying overseas in the
Speaker 1: war on Terror. UM. We did a story on this
Speaker 1: website about a Yeah, it was the longest, the longest
Speaker 1: sniper kill in history. Was that rob for a long no? No? No?
Speaker 1: It was broken again in Iraq like last year. UM,
Speaker 1: so we did a story on that. UM. But now
Speaker 1: I'm excited to have you on. Thanks for coming in studio.
Speaker 1: I know it's a long haul for you. Yeah, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me guys, it's a real pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1: For sure, I was wondering if you could. I know,
Speaker 1: you know, there are certain details you know, you know,
Speaker 1: you're probably not gonna be able to share but I
Speaker 1: was wondering if you could talk to the audience a
Speaker 1: little bit about your unit, um about you know, their
Speaker 1: mission and what they do and just information only wise
Speaker 1: there is informing people of you know, what you guys
Speaker 1: do and you know what their units contribution has been
Speaker 1: to the war on Terror. Okay, So I would think
Speaker 1: just to get them more into the broad brush. We
Speaker 1: like to liken ourselves to Deltair keg. That's who we
Speaker 1: kind of run with as much as we can, just
Speaker 1: to get the conversation going. But yeah, we're the National
Speaker 1: Interest uh unit for Canada. Anything foreign or domestic we
Speaker 1: take care of. That is above and beyond. And yeah,
Speaker 1: the War on Terror, we've been there since two thousand
Speaker 1: and one, slugging it out with you guys. Been a
Speaker 1: good long fight. And uh we're in Iraq right now
Speaker 1: doing some stuff off and on, and yeah that's where
Speaker 1: we're at. So, I mean, you guys are definitely a
Speaker 1: part of the coalition and have been since the beginning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in different forms, you know, it shows up a little
Speaker 1: different alright. Yeah, it's uh, you know, different names, different whatever.
Speaker 1: But we try to work with the Americans as much
Speaker 1: as we can. That's that's our boys, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. We're a lot more intertwined than people think.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit then about the the
Speaker 1: history of the unit, like how did JTF to come about? Um?
Speaker 1: Why was it created? Um? Was it created around the
Speaker 1: same time as our counter terrorism units? No, we're definitely
Speaker 1: young comparatively. You guys have already been established for fifty
Speaker 1: and twenty years in different capacities, you know, developing into
Speaker 1: where you are now. Our start around ninety three really
Speaker 1: got traction with the handover from the r c MP,
Speaker 1: which is a real Canadian Mounted Police. They it started
Speaker 1: to go beyond their capability, and really it was about
Speaker 1: the pool of people to choose from their symps small
Speaker 1: organization where the military had a much bigger pool to
Speaker 1: draw and select people from. So we took over from them,
Speaker 1: which kind of leads into an interesting culture soft culture. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you guys are very familiar with the words soft culture,
Speaker 1: but I don't think people really fully grasp how that
Speaker 1: helps define these units and defines the men inside of it.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the huge portions that keeps it
Speaker 1: different from other units. Because we're allowed to have our culture,
Speaker 1: We're given that flexibility and for us, a little bit
Speaker 1: of that came from their SIMP, which are cops. So
Speaker 1: it kind of led into an interesting transition from cop culture.
Speaker 1: Even though it was emergency response unit and the terrorist
Speaker 1: unit for Canada at the time, sird H, there was
Speaker 1: some growing pains move and over towards the military side,
Speaker 1: which also allowed us to exist in a silo for
Speaker 1: a bit and really get our legs. Um. For us,
Speaker 1: it's really good because we've got great partners. We work
Speaker 1: with the Five Eyes, you know, the States, Britain, Australia
Speaker 1: who had already established you know sas is are very
Speaker 1: old units. Delton dev not as old, but still had
Speaker 1: years of kicking it before we got there, so that
Speaker 1: really helped grow quickly. You referenced the pool of people
Speaker 1: that the units able to draw from. And I don't
Speaker 1: want to rely on Canadian stereotypes, but I have to
Speaker 1: imagine that in Canada there are young people who grow
Speaker 1: up shooting uh in the outdoors. Um certain parts of
Speaker 1: the country. I mean, it's very austere living and those
Speaker 1: the types of people who are drawn towards a unit
Speaker 1: like this. Yes, and know of course right, Uh, you
Speaker 1: get lots of people who love that and thrive in
Speaker 1: those environments. But it doesn't necessarily mean that they're not
Speaker 1: from cities. We do have folks from cities. It does
Speaker 1: happen they find their way in. As far as like
Speaker 1: training and everything is concerned, I mean, Canada must have
Speaker 1: a lot to offer for the unit. Also very rugged,
Speaker 1: difficult training. But yeah, pretty much everything we need other
Speaker 1: than desert is there. We do lots of our desert
Speaker 1: stuff down here in the States and southern California and
Speaker 1: places like Texas and things like that. But we have, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have our mountainous terrain, all our marie maritime counter terrorism.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've got tons of coastline, we got the Arctic,
Speaker 1: we got temperate forest, we got snow, you name it.
Speaker 1: We got it other than desert really and even that
Speaker 1: we have a little patch if we desperately need to
Speaker 1: train on a you know, in a hurry. The I
Speaker 1: was wondering also if you could explain a little bit
Speaker 1: about the difference between your your unit. You're you know,
Speaker 1: describing it as you know, that's the go to counter
Speaker 1: terrorism unit for the Canadian government. Um, what's the difference
Speaker 1: between them and the other? Uh sesar the big because
Speaker 1: they do if I recall correctly, they do fit and
Speaker 1: direct action or maybe they have different acronyms, but I
Speaker 1: was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 1: So se sare Canadian Special Operations Regiment. They they came
Speaker 1: about in the mid two thousands there, like I think
Speaker 1: two thousands six. Apologize, I don't know the exact day.
Speaker 1: They started up as part of starting up cans Off Calm,
Speaker 1: which was our own commands start up. And they're very young,
Speaker 1: so there their scope is. They're still finding their legs,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, They're plugging a hole wherever
Speaker 1: they can, because we take care of d as if
Speaker 1: we need to take care of all the similar things.
Speaker 1: But then we go above and beyond. So normally a
Speaker 1: mission file will come through us and then we'll figure out, okay,
Speaker 1: do we want this as this fit our TIRA, and
Speaker 1: then we'll move it on down to them. Ah. But
Speaker 1: you know, Ken bra Brush, counter terrorism things that really
Speaker 1: affect foreign policy, those those are the things that go
Speaker 1: to us more like technical operations. Yeah, any intelligence gathering
Speaker 1: stuff and that things of that nature. Not that they
Speaker 1: don't gather intelligence, it's just it's just just a different level,
Speaker 1: that's all. Do you see it evolving as sort of
Speaker 1: like a relationship between the range of regiment and delta
Speaker 1: force here in the States. I would personally liken them
Speaker 1: a little bit more to the od as that That's
Speaker 1: what I would like from my experience, That's where I
Speaker 1: had put them. There was a time when you know,
Speaker 1: when the whole cans off common see so and everything
Speaker 1: was conceived. Yes, they would be more like the Ranger Battalion,
Speaker 1: which one I'm not sure which one's attached to, Jay Sak.
Speaker 1: Any of the three could be any of the three. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's always similar to that, that that augmenting force for
Speaker 1: all the really to grow the force, right, blocking forces
Speaker 1: cut off things of that nature, and it was it
Speaker 1: was that. But we're so small relative to say the
Speaker 1: Americans are SF. Our entire SF, including the entire command
Speaker 1: and the air assets that are attached to it, are
Speaker 1: smaller than any one of your Tier one units alone,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So what ended up happening
Speaker 1: was there's just way more work for them, so they
Speaker 1: got to diversify. Yeah, I'm sure everybody knows. Everybody the
Speaker 1: our our Special Operations Command. I like the officially published numbers,
Speaker 1: it's like close to eight thou. I mean, that's like
Speaker 1: the size of the British military, but that's bigger than ours,
Speaker 1: including our reserve elements. So like just that that we're
Speaker 1: talking about the pool to draw from. You know, even
Speaker 1: at that it's it's still small pools. I know there's
Speaker 1: again some things we probably won't be able to discuss.
Speaker 1: But as far as this selection process to get into
Speaker 1: JTF two fairly similar to probably what we have in
Speaker 1: the United States. Are there some key differences? I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people, we we pride ourselves, we say
Speaker 1: it's a scientifically created one, where some of the other
Speaker 1: ones stem from the older says models, you know, long
Speaker 1: rucks and things of that nature. I do believe when
Speaker 1: it's all said and done, it picks a very similar product.
Speaker 1: It's just how you go about it, how you look
Speaker 1: at ours is much shorter. It's seven days for the
Speaker 1: the meat of it. The selection portion. Our assaulter courses
Speaker 1: up over ten months now though, And just because you
Speaker 1: go through selection doesn't mean you're in the stalls a shoeing,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? You still got ten months
Speaker 1: every day under the microscope to prove yourself and when
Speaker 1: did you actually go through selection? Two thousand I went
Speaker 1: through selection and then did my year. My uh we
Speaker 1: call it to special operations, a salter course, and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I was kicking it for about eight years. Are very cool.
Speaker 1: After you went through selection? Where did uh? Where did
Speaker 1: it take you? You ended up in Afghanistan, I take it, uh, yep, Iraq,
Speaker 1: many other little places around. We called it the Global
Speaker 1: Engagement strategy, working with other soft units all over. There
Speaker 1: was that period where the West started to slow there
Speaker 1: efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq kind of almost the same time,
Speaker 1: ish and a lot of the soft of the world
Speaker 1: had to figure out, Okay, well what do we do?
Speaker 1: And you know what I mean, like where are we going? Where?
Speaker 1: How how's this looking? You know, let's let's get something,
Speaker 1: you know. So there was a little bit of a
Speaker 1: quiet period. Uh something else we do. We do cpp
Speaker 1: for the Prime Minister and our governor general in really
Speaker 1: hot countries where there they're they're close protection just can't
Speaker 1: help out. Yeah, they don't have the scope like it.
Speaker 1: We never like to think of our selves as the
Speaker 1: augmenting force, but we you know, we make sure that
Speaker 1: they can do their job there, So there was some
Speaker 1: of that kind of stuff and dabbling all, you know,
Speaker 1: finding work, that's what you do. Yeah, I have to
Speaker 1: imagine it's kind of uh, at least like on the
Speaker 1: American side, it's like the commanders kind of want to
Speaker 1: get their hands and know a little bit of everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the beauty of a soft operator. You know, he's
Speaker 1: looking for work. That's there were results driven organizations and
Speaker 1: then we pick those people so they don't you know,
Speaker 1: they don't want to sit stagnant at any level, any
Speaker 1: level at all. We're just in a position where we can,
Speaker 1: from the ground up start to look for that as well.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, obviously the commanders are doing their things
Speaker 1: all the way up to the political level. Everybody's looking
Speaker 1: for that work. But what really ends up happening is
Speaker 1: at the political level they don't none of them understand
Speaker 1: the full scope of the work that tier one or
Speaker 1: Tier two unit can actually do. You know, they don't
Speaker 1: know that. Yeah, I can plug and play that guy
Speaker 1: there and there and there. It's only from the ground
Speaker 1: up do you get that kind of knowledge. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys stayed pretty busy in Iraq also, right, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna go too deep into our Iraq time there,
Speaker 1: but Can's off comm has been there since the uh
Speaker 1: the beginning, working side by side with the Allies and
Speaker 1: the passion all those characters. That's cool. Yeah, I'm surprised
Speaker 1: I never crossed paths with Canadians while I was over
Speaker 1: there a bunch of other people, but uh no, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: And you know, we were talking a little bit before
Speaker 1: about how one of these CSAR guys was unfortunately killed
Speaker 1: in a accident going through the checkpoint, and a lot
Speaker 1: of times, unfortunately that's how you know, we find out
Speaker 1: or the public finds out that you know, these people
Speaker 1: are over there, and uh it's sad in that regard.
Speaker 1: You know, you wish that our public had a little
Speaker 1: bit more engagement, a little bit more commitment and knowing
Speaker 1: where our troops are and what they're doing. It's that
Speaker 1: balance of what they yeah, what they need to know.
Speaker 1: It's not that any official or any member of the
Speaker 1: military doesn't want the public to know. You know, there's
Speaker 1: military bulls eye on it. You don't want to put
Speaker 1: a bulls eye, you just can't. The nature of the missions.
Speaker 1: You need that secrecy in order to engage the the
Speaker 1: bad guys properly, and now you know, Isis is kind
Speaker 1: of starting to see their final days and all that.
Speaker 1: But the next guys that will pop up will be
Speaker 1: even harder to find. And if someone knows you're coming,
Speaker 1: you lose it all. You lose a surprise, you know,
Speaker 1: very basic element of soft surprise. Well, I suppose it
Speaker 1: goes back to what you were saying that you know,
Speaker 1: it's a small community in Canada, Um, but I get
Speaker 1: the impression that the Canadian government in the Canadian military
Speaker 1: really keeps you guys on the download like it's really
Speaker 1: under fly, under the radar. Yeah, I would say relative
Speaker 1: to other units, the Tier one of the units, we
Speaker 1: definitely do. I think it something to do with our
Speaker 1: domestic mandate. Um, but I think it's just a Canadian
Speaker 1: way in a couple of ways, the kind of just
Speaker 1: I'm not saying out there that everyone else is white professionals,
Speaker 1: but that's really like our our motto is fact a
Speaker 1: non verba, so right from our Canadian culture into our
Speaker 1: military's culture, and you add in like the layers of
Speaker 1: secrecy needed up to the Tier one level, then you
Speaker 1: get a pretty quiet unit. Really, I would say, I'm
Speaker 1: the first person that's kind of as a X assault
Speaker 1: or civilian starting to talk about the unit. I think
Speaker 1: we should sell the brand in some way, as you know,
Speaker 1: balancing what again, what I can say versus I can't,
Speaker 1: But I think people should hear it. It's funny you
Speaker 1: say that, though, because I feel like every branch of
Speaker 1: the military, every branch of special operations, has this secrecy
Speaker 1: um slogan is the deed, not the glories that the
Speaker 1: seals or that general. I've heard it many times, but
Speaker 1: you know, you hear it from guys who do put
Speaker 1: out books, who are very public with their life story.
Speaker 1: And you know, I wouldn't say are secretive in the
Speaker 1: same capacity that you're talking about. Yeah, well, say take
Speaker 1: a book. Say if I did write a book, which
Speaker 1: I won't, I'm not a great writer, so I'll just avoid.
Speaker 1: To be fair, though, neither are a lot of these guys.
Speaker 1: A lot of these guys hire. A lot of these
Speaker 1: guys hire a ghost writer. It's there. I mean, some
Speaker 1: of them are open and we'll say it. Some aren't.
Speaker 1: They'll say like, it's my stories, but it's not. It's
Speaker 1: not their book. They're hiring or hiring a ghost, right,
Speaker 1: they're hiring a guy like Jack Murphy. Sometimes I've never
Speaker 1: but you could, you know, we make something happen. Talk
Speaker 1: about movie rights, Well it uh, you know, as soon
Speaker 1: as I'm not sure what the what it's called. When
Speaker 1: you put out a book and then it's vetted by
Speaker 1: the like a public review the public review board. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where lots of our ops are still considered off the book,
Speaker 1: so most of it wouldn't really get out. And you know,
Speaker 1: my personal life is not that exciting, so well, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's it's interesting, and like you said, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a matter of maintaining that balance. Um. Of course,
Speaker 1: there's a deep need for military secrecy. You know, in
Speaker 1: special operations, say the key the key to special operations
Speaker 1: is surprise, speed, and violence of action. Well, if you
Speaker 1: take away surprise, you're kind of screwed. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: how how violent you are, how it's fast you are.
Speaker 1: If you don't have surprise, you guys can't really do
Speaker 1: your jobs. But um, at the same time, there has
Speaker 1: to be like some sort of public engagement. And when
Speaker 1: you say, you know, especially we live in a democracy,
Speaker 1: so you want public support behind these units, behind these missions.
Speaker 1: But I think that's where the importance of guys like me,
Speaker 1: ex members such as yourself can start selling that brand
Speaker 1: in a way that's not viewed as propaganda. You know,
Speaker 1: we always have to balance that too, right, governments are
Speaker 1: not allowed to even brag about all the good work.
Speaker 1: I remember and uh in Afghanistan when I showed up
Speaker 1: this is back my paratrooper days, I wasn't even aware
Speaker 1: of how big the impact was that the coalition had there.
Speaker 1: There was something like by the time I showed up
Speaker 1: and oh eight, there was like schools, women, women going
Speaker 1: to school in Afghanistan, Like that's unheard of the Afghani.
Speaker 1: The dollar rose, I think like forty cents American, which
Speaker 1: is huge because it was worth like nothing. And the
Speaker 1: news is more focused on the hot stuff, right, you know,
Speaker 1: people getting blown up and all that, and they're they're
Speaker 1: they're not pushing this stuff out saying hey, look at
Speaker 1: the good work, and the militaries of the world are
Speaker 1: not able to be like, hey, look at all the
Speaker 1: good work we're really really doing here because it bounces
Speaker 1: on that kind of propaganda side. You know. It's it's
Speaker 1: so unfortunate too that like good news just doesn't go viral.
Speaker 1: That's true. Like when I think of the big outrageous
Speaker 1: military stories that have gone viral, and I've mentioned on
Speaker 1: the shows, like that guy throwing the dog off a cliff,
Speaker 1: you don't see a viral story about these guys, you know,
Speaker 1: playing sports with these kids, educate them, that type of thing.
Speaker 1: Because just unfortunately, it's like the outrage culture we live
Speaker 1: in all of us in the Northeast. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's you know, I don't think it's just America. It's
Speaker 1: probably everybody in the Western you know, civilization. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: almost daily occurrence those of real heroics that go on
Speaker 1: that could to me are way more interesting personally than
Speaker 1: the few odd upsetting incidences you know, the dog off
Speaker 1: the cliff and all that. You know, those things happened
Speaker 1: there there. We're talking about organizations that are a million
Speaker 1: people moving around doing all these jobs, and like you
Speaker 1: get a couple of bad apples doing one bad thing,
Speaker 1: that's what they're gonna Yeah, because like I was saying,
Speaker 1: we just can't say every good thing we're doing, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. I got back to Afghanistan, we
Speaker 1: were the coalition US specifically, I can't remember what year
Speaker 1: it was, but we were planning our pull out as
Speaker 1: a country with real boots on the ground, and like
Speaker 1: the women were like holding onto you, like, don't go.
Speaker 1: They know what's coming. Right we leave, they're back to
Speaker 1: like iron the Stone Age, back to the Stone Age. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's it's it's a fine line there, and you know,
Speaker 1: you don't get the public's not here and that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff all the time. Yeah, it's absolutely true. And
Speaker 1: I've I've seen both sides of it, you know, working
Speaker 1: as a journalist and also having been in the military myself,
Speaker 1: and and it made me mad back then and it
Speaker 1: and it still does today. It still bothers me that
Speaker 1: the news media is often fixated on the negative things
Speaker 1: that happened. Um, are those, like I said, like a
Speaker 1: soldier getting killed Suddenly that's when you hear about the military.
Speaker 1: You don't hear about you know, Um, you know, Jeff
Speaker 1: starting a soccer league with kids in Afghanistan like that.
Speaker 1: Never that's never a headline, right. Um. As a journalist,
Speaker 1: you know, working on the other side of it, I
Speaker 1: always have these ideas and I have written positive stories
Speaker 1: about the military, for sure. But then you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: I just worked on this really dark story. I want
Speaker 1: to write something about the guys doing good work, and
Speaker 1: then like you get a phone call by like, you know,
Speaker 1: some girl crying unless she was like sexually assaulted or something,
Speaker 1: You're like fuck. Like not that I would not say
Speaker 1: that to her, but it's just you end up getting
Speaker 1: pulled into those kind of stories because it's like you
Speaker 1: can't really it would feel unethical to turn a blind
Speaker 1: eye to it. I'll put it that way for sure.
Speaker 1: That that's the thing you said. As a journalist, you
Speaker 1: got to do that. You know, I expect both sides
Speaker 1: to be reported, just maybe a little more equality on
Speaker 1: the two sides. Yeah, I agree. And by the way,
Speaker 1: Canada is very different in that respect with you know
Speaker 1: how we have the FCC here in America. I know,
Speaker 1: like in Canada, for example, you have to pay play
Speaker 1: a certain amount of Canadian artists, and I do think
Speaker 1: they might have something similar to what we had called
Speaker 1: the fairness doctrine where you do have to report two sides,
Speaker 1: right where in America you don't have that obligation. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is the world according to Jeff right now. But
Speaker 1: I think our media is way less partisan it they
Speaker 1: try you know, there is a left and a right
Speaker 1: and all that kind of it's a little more convoluted
Speaker 1: in Canada because we have many more parties. Of course,
Speaker 1: there's some you know, bias, but I think they do
Speaker 1: pretty good at trying to give both sides. But it
Speaker 1: can be tough, you know, I really can. I've even heard,
Speaker 1: for example, Canadian guys say, what is you? And I'm
Speaker 1: sorry this might be outside your world, but what is
Speaker 1: your version of NPR, which is like the public radio
Speaker 1: for Canada, public media for Canada, it would probably be CBC.
Speaker 1: CBC is exactly what I'm thinking of it. I've heard
Speaker 1: Canadians themselves say the CBC is way less biased than
Speaker 1: for example, we have like NPR here, which people you know,
Speaker 1: accused of being left a wayne, I men, I go
Speaker 1: have to go ahead and disagree CBC. I think CBC
Speaker 1: is more of a left side radio they do. You
Speaker 1: know how there's like segments throughout the day we'll say,
Speaker 1: just their radio, nothing to do a TV or anything.
Speaker 1: They do have the polar opposites in there a little bit,
Speaker 1: but I think they and to be more one side
Speaker 1: a little usually in the world of like you know,
Speaker 1: arts and media and not always, but you tend to
Speaker 1: kind of cater to those minds, uh, those natural tendencies
Speaker 1: of that side of the left values a little bit.
Speaker 1: I think it sounds like a little bit more of
Speaker 1: a saner medialy escape that here in the United States. Um, okay,
Speaker 1: So let's talk then a little bit about kind of
Speaker 1: after your military career. Uh, you were mentioned before you
Speaker 1: did a year in the reserves training guys kind of
Speaker 1: winding down on what was it just time for you
Speaker 1: to retire or did you make a decision to get out. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: like a lot of good stories, I met a girl.
Speaker 1: It happens. It happens, and of course it rocks your
Speaker 1: world when it's good. Right. So I was actually teaching
Speaker 1: on a free fall course down around San Diego and
Speaker 1: we got winded out. So we took the weekend off
Speaker 1: and we went and rented a beach house around Mission Beach,
Speaker 1: Pacific Beach, and uh, you know, we went out partying
Speaker 1: and the next day we're out for breakfast and we,
Speaker 1: uh we meet these girls and like literally fall in
Speaker 1: love with this woman, Jessica, this young lady here, that
Speaker 1: one there. Yeah, and uh, that day she told me
Speaker 1: she she couldn't handle a military lifestyle. So at least
Speaker 1: she knew that. She knew it. She was honest, you know,
Speaker 1: put it out there day one. Thank you. She comes
Speaker 1: from a military background though her dad was a Vietnam vete.
Speaker 1: Her grandfather was a member of OSS, you know, so
Speaker 1: she had a kind of an idea of what to
Speaker 1: expect and that kind of was the catalyst for the
Speaker 1: transition out into you know, the civilian world, like where
Speaker 1: to put your purpose? Now, Oh, that's great, it's great. Now,
Speaker 1: it's great that both of you knew that and like
Speaker 1: had a cognizant understanding it, a deliberate plan going forward. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was for me. It was interesting because I didn't
Speaker 1: I didn't see it coming. I thought I was to
Speaker 1: be a gunfighter for the rest of my life. I didn't.
Speaker 1: I loved what I did, you know, And so put
Speaker 1: the plans in motion. That's cool. So you got out
Speaker 1: and U and now you're starting to go into, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the private sector and what are you trying
Speaker 1: to keep Describe a little bit about this company that
Speaker 1: you started up. We're talking about a little so the
Speaker 1: Special Forces Experience dot Com we're putting on ah, the
Speaker 1: ultimate male experience. It's it's for men um. It's been
Speaker 1: a slow burn. It's been a couple of years of
Speaker 1: developing exactly what it is. So a tricky part for
Speaker 1: guys like me who put you know, their bloodstine tears
Speaker 1: into the military, as you know, when you come out
Speaker 1: as like, hey, how do I repurpose? Have all these skills,
Speaker 1: but they only really look good to governments and private
Speaker 1: contractors and security usually right uh, yourself, you took a
Speaker 1: different route, um, But it's it's about the traits of
Speaker 1: the person, you know, and vectoring those properly. So we
Speaker 1: started talking about, Okay, what am I gonna do? What
Speaker 1: am I gonna do? You know, I have a couple
Speaker 1: of small businesses. I owned some real estate in a
Speaker 1: coworking place, and we dabbled with that, but always on
Speaker 1: the back burner was this project that originally actually it
Speaker 1: was from Jess. She called it a man camp, and
Speaker 1: I laughed out loud because I had this vision of
Speaker 1: dudes cooking smores and throwing axes. You know, yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. I was like, God, no, I
Speaker 1: can't do that. It was like I literally laughed out loud.
Speaker 1: It just wasn't me. And but that started developing into okay,
Speaker 1: what can we do? You know, we started asking men,
Speaker 1: We asked women, what what are men missing in this world?
Speaker 1: You know, we have all this ancient technology and us.
Speaker 1: You know, our limbic system are all our senses in
Speaker 1: a man, there's a lot of it there, like designed
Speaker 1: for certain purposes that are really male. And in the
Speaker 1: modern world it's hard to doing physical things with your hands.
Speaker 1: Doing physical things with your hands, uh real, like that
Speaker 1: sense of protecting, you know, just just literally what our
Speaker 1: hormones and our DNA was designed to do for the
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of years that got us to here.
Speaker 1: And now, you know, after the kind of big feminist
Speaker 1: push and all that, I think it's rubber banding back.
Speaker 1: And men are like, okay, well, I don't want to
Speaker 1: be a stay at home dad, and where do I
Speaker 1: fit in? And where do I fit in? And not
Speaker 1: that there's anything wrong with the stay at home dad,
Speaker 1: it's just it's about nurturing those male qualities. And that's
Speaker 1: where we started developing the process. I was watching the
Speaker 1: video that you have with the chessboard, which I'm gonna
Speaker 1: link to here in the article, and I mean it's awesome.
Speaker 1: People are really gonna dig this. And I do think
Speaker 1: that there is such a demand for what you're doing. Uh,
Speaker 1: you don't know how many times that we've gone to
Speaker 1: events in Vegas where a lot of guys in our
Speaker 1: audience will say to me, my one regret and wife
Speaker 1: is not joining the military, you know, because they just
Speaker 1: had something that in the way of them doing that,
Speaker 1: and they kind of relive it through this, But I
Speaker 1: think they would love to relive it in the or
Speaker 1: live it in the experience that you're talking about. And
Speaker 1: I think some of these guys aren't stay at home dad's.
Speaker 1: They're also guys who work in the corporate world. And
Speaker 1: I think working in the corporate world in some ways
Speaker 1: is like the antithesis of what you guys have done
Speaker 1: in special operations. Um, what I mean by that is
Speaker 1: in special operations, from what I see from you guys,
Speaker 1: you do get rewarded for being a you know, the
Speaker 1: strongest guy, the alpha male, as they say. And in
Speaker 1: the corporate world, unfortunately, it's a lot of like who's
Speaker 1: the best at kissing the boss's ass, you know? And
Speaker 1: I think these guys want to actually have that primal
Speaker 1: thing that you're talking about in their life. Well, I
Speaker 1: think what you're talking about is very natural male tendency,
Speaker 1: which is to seek hierarchy to see where you can
Speaker 1: really fit into it. I don't mean like come in
Speaker 1: as the mail boy and move up to manager and
Speaker 1: up to CEO. That that's kind of a representation of it,
Speaker 1: but it's not truly seeing where you fit in the
Speaker 1: pecking order. And yeah, this is something the process is
Speaker 1: designed to give men that answer to that question where
Speaker 1: do I fit in? It's many things. Um, it's a
Speaker 1: psychological assessment, it's a physical challenge like no other, but
Speaker 1: it definitely can answer that question of okay, could I
Speaker 1: have gotten anywhere close to it? You know? And as
Speaker 1: you know I mentioned earlier, you know that even with
Speaker 1: the Joint Test Force two, it's a seven day selection,
Speaker 1: but you still have ten months on course. And then
Speaker 1: as you know yourself, Jack, you know, you don't just
Speaker 1: show up and not produce every single day. So it's
Speaker 1: just a little nug of it, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like the boys hold you accountable every day when you're
Speaker 1: besides someone who depends on you, and like their life
Speaker 1: depends on you, even if it's in training. Or prepping.
Speaker 1: They're holding you accountable all the time. So yes, it's
Speaker 1: a really good nug um, But I wouldn't ever want
Speaker 1: to say that. In the eight days, you'll discover that
Speaker 1: you could have made it as it were. I think
Speaker 1: it's a really interesting question. I think it's easy to
Speaker 1: dismiss or make fun of, like the the concept of
Speaker 1: like what does it mean to be a man in
Speaker 1: the modern world? Um, you know it. I think there's
Speaker 1: some people who say, well, you know, men need to
Speaker 1: stop being snowflakes or whatever. But I mean there's a
Speaker 1: there's a real question there about you know, in a
Speaker 1: modern world where labor has largely been feminized, where do
Speaker 1: you fit in? As you said, we we we've evolved
Speaker 1: over hundreds of thousands, millions of years to do certain things.
Speaker 1: And I think that's sitting behind a computer all day,
Speaker 1: which is a big part of my job. Um, you
Speaker 1: become like very like overly introverted because you're not like
Speaker 1: learning new skills, you're not doing things with your hands. Um,
Speaker 1: you're not being physical and I think like psychologically emotionally, um,
Speaker 1: and even it's uh, you know physically your body, like
Speaker 1: you you just missed those things um, So, I don't
Speaker 1: think it's something that I would dismiss out of hand.
Speaker 1: I think I think there is like some sort of
Speaker 1: role or or some sort of conversation that needs to
Speaker 1: happen in the modern world, like because we can't. We're
Speaker 1: not all going to become like male feminists, you know,
Speaker 1: wearing loafers without socks on and reading Fuco under a
Speaker 1: tree like that is not the future of men writ large, right.
Speaker 1: You gotta you've got to find some sort of like
Speaker 1: balance or something in between the extremes exactly. I will
Speaker 1: say I do believe in my heart, and I may
Speaker 1: get pushed back for this, that the s F as
Speaker 1: it is in the West is really the last like
Speaker 1: it's the last safehold of where a man can nurture
Speaker 1: everything that from his cells up makes him a man,
Speaker 1: and he can be there and it's nurtured. So not
Speaker 1: everyone wants to take that road, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with stay at
Speaker 1: home dad or loafer guy. You know, there's if it
Speaker 1: works for him. If it works for him, I I
Speaker 1: just I feel and I was along along with my cadre.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a there's a few things that are missing,
Speaker 1: a few checks in the box, if you will. That
Speaker 1: guys are just not able to experience. And it's tough,
Speaker 1: you know, you live in a city or something, it's
Speaker 1: hard to find these things. So uh, yeah, it's obviously
Speaker 1: a big debate, a big talk, you know. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a culture wars. Well, I had a I had
Speaker 1: a professor when I went to college. Um, she was
Speaker 1: a self described Marxist. But she had this great comment
Speaker 1: about the military, because what you're saying is it's like
Speaker 1: the last like bastion of of masculinity. She said, the
Speaker 1: military is a heterotopia. It's like a utopia for like
Speaker 1: the heterosexual male tore like go and do man stuff.
Speaker 1: I thought that was hilarious. I use that all the time,
Speaker 1: the heterotopia. Well, first, she can thank them for doing
Speaker 1: their job and giving her the platform and the safety
Speaker 1: to be able to say it, right, But yeah, I
Speaker 1: I don't know what if I would argue like the
Speaker 1: higher of the military, obviously it's a big beach, you know, like,
Speaker 1: but definitely I would say, once you kind of get
Speaker 1: up in those tier one, tier two areas, you know,
Speaker 1: specialized units like you airborne units, and stuff like that
Speaker 1: where there's not a lot of female presence, they're definitely
Speaker 1: safe havens for a lot of that male tendencies. And
Speaker 1: there's a part of our society that I think really
Speaker 1: like um admires those units because of that. But then
Speaker 1: there's another part of our society, and this goes back
Speaker 1: to frankly, a lot of people work in the media.
Speaker 1: They hate it because they see that as that's the
Speaker 1: last part of society that needs to be domesticated, Like
Speaker 1: they need to grab these guys and get the collar
Speaker 1: on them. What do you think you're doing, cowboy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they kind of view like a dog on a leash almost,
Speaker 1: And at best. The thing is is, you guys know this,
Speaker 1: The world's just not there yet. The world there is.
Speaker 1: There is very truly bad people, evil people wanting to
Speaker 1: do evil, Snakes in the grass, they're they're just they're there.
Speaker 1: The world is not a utopia yet. You know, it's
Speaker 1: better and it's getting better. It's just not there yet. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's when we had Dale Comstock on the
Speaker 1: other day, who's served in Delta and uh, and he
Speaker 1: made this comment that it sounds very boisterous on one hand,
Speaker 1: but he said, Look, America needs people like me. I
Speaker 1: can't disagree. I mean, America and Canada need the kind
Speaker 1: of guy who will run into gunfire. Hopefully we don't
Speaker 1: need that person every single day to do that, but
Speaker 1: there are gonna be times where we're facing extremely difficult
Speaker 1: situations and you know you are gonna need men like that. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know. The most obvious example, of course, it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, the guys who stormed the beaches in World
Speaker 1: War Two. I mean, if that hadn't happened, I shudder
Speaker 1: to think what the world would look like today. Exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, just be thankful that these men are able
Speaker 1: to be rooted out and then given a funnel to
Speaker 1: go down where their their energies and efforts and abilities
Speaker 1: are vectored for good. You know, yeah, absolutely. Uh. And
Speaker 1: rather than have like some sort of like out of control,
Speaker 1: um you know, like apocalypse now type crap going on,
Speaker 1: but instead you have a selection process, You have a
Speaker 1: military unit that exists within a democracy with congressional oversight
Speaker 1: or parliament oversight in your guy's case, um, with ethos
Speaker 1: and code right where you honor something and then it
Speaker 1: can be used for good. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, how
Speaker 1: is this how is this thing progressing? I mean leaving
Speaker 1: the culture wars behind for a second. How how is
Speaker 1: this company, the special Forces experience evolving? What do you
Speaker 1: have planned for people who enroll in this? Well, I uh,
Speaker 1: it's hands down the ultimate experience for a male who's
Speaker 1: not going to go through that, who's not going to
Speaker 1: join the middle of not going to join the military.
Speaker 1: So for those who don't know, like, hunting another human
Speaker 1: being gives you like a real feeling of power and
Speaker 1: it is a rush. So you're probably not going to
Speaker 1: get that legitimately outside of the military, would you know,
Speaker 1: they like the guy up at five in the morning
Speaker 1: holding a crossbow you start counting down. No, don't do
Speaker 1: that people. Yeah, so we want to give them a
Speaker 1: little bit of a nug of that. And it's like
Speaker 1: I was saying, eight days gives them that feeling. It's
Speaker 1: a monumental challenge. You know. Most endurance races and things
Speaker 1: of that nature are usually a day, four hours, A
Speaker 1: few of the longer ones out there, but most aren't.
Speaker 1: Eight days. They step into a world totally it's all
Speaker 1: designed to be unknown, so it just kind of happens
Speaker 1: to them. You know, drinking from that fire hose. We
Speaker 1: give them skills, home defense skills, hand hand skills. Those
Speaker 1: are just a by product though, sorry, are a byproduct
Speaker 1: of us evaluating them. So the whole time, from flash
Speaker 1: to bang, once they hit the apply button, they go
Speaker 1: through an interview process and they're picked or not to
Speaker 1: come out because some guys I just know I won't
Speaker 1: take their money because I know they won't make it,
Speaker 1: and I don't. I only expect about five out of
Speaker 1: the thirty to make it through. But I really don't
Speaker 1: want everyone to show up on day one and be gone,
Speaker 1: like guys whose hearts isn't in it. Yeah, their hearts
Speaker 1: just aren't in it. There. They won't show up physically
Speaker 1: ready or mentally ready. They haven't faced any adversity in
Speaker 1: their life, you know what I mean. And once the
Speaker 1: screws really get put to people, the test really begins,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And so, like I was saying,
Speaker 1: we evaluate them. All the evolutions are evaluated, uh, personality traits,
Speaker 1: things of that nature, leadership, followership, anything we can put
Speaker 1: down on paper. We got all the open source tests
Speaker 1: and a bunch of proprietary stuff for ourselves and then
Speaker 1: they're finished the eight days, and then we do just
Speaker 1: like in the military, we're calling a decompression where for
Speaker 1: those who know when you're in like those really stressful
Speaker 1: events and you come back out and you've got to
Speaker 1: be reintegrated into the real Yeah, so with you know,
Speaker 1: counseling coaching. The thing is, though, this is the kind
Speaker 1: of another bolted on portion of the processes. It's about growth.
Speaker 1: So we talked specifically about post traumatic growth on our website.
Speaker 1: This is their their time to reflect, do some uh
Speaker 1: introspective looking and figure out, Okay, well what do I
Speaker 1: want to change. We're not saying everyone who shows up
Speaker 1: is gonna want to change a lot of stuff, but
Speaker 1: we all you know, well some people, growth minded people
Speaker 1: want to do little tweaks every now and then, and
Speaker 1: this is the time to do it. Once that difficulty
Speaker 1: that trauma comes off, and then we hand over like
Speaker 1: a package. Is basically we're calling like post post post
Speaker 1: process profile, which is basically a book of you and
Speaker 1: you can go through that and be like, okay, well
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit weak here, I'm strong here. I
Speaker 1: like this about myself. Like we question everything for them,
Speaker 1: and they question everything, so they can start thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: I want to go on this road, or I want
Speaker 1: to go on this road. What do I want to
Speaker 1: do with my life? What do I want to change?
Speaker 1: Do I? Or they just made it through something insanely
Speaker 1: difficult and that's all it is for them, going back
Speaker 1: to turning people down. That's it's just such an unorthodox
Speaker 1: business model that you have these dozens of people willing
Speaker 1: to give you money to push them to the limit,
Speaker 1: and you're going to turn them down and say, can't
Speaker 1: do it. So right from the website on is designed
Speaker 1: to be imposing. The websites black and white. We don't
Speaker 1: use I know all about psychology. I know about the
Speaker 1: psychology of words and how to lure people into you know,
Speaker 1: giving me their money. I'm not worried about that exactly.
Speaker 1: It's exactly that it's designed to make it almost difficult
Speaker 1: to get in. But that's part of that challenge, you know,
Speaker 1: facing fear, pushing people out of their comfort zone. So
Speaker 1: right from the get go we start that. Then we
Speaker 1: put them through an interview, stressful interview, and then they
Speaker 1: can be chosen or not chosen based on this, and
Speaker 1: you know they could maybe reapply. Some guys no, I'm
Speaker 1: just not going to do it. You know, we we
Speaker 1: we want to interview does another thing too, We don't
Speaker 1: we don't want anyone with hostile intent showing up, any
Speaker 1: kind of malicious mindset or anything like that. So we
Speaker 1: were doing some filtering, you know what I mean. We
Speaker 1: do police checks and things of that nature. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well can you talk about like what kind of events
Speaker 1: or what kind of experience what are you plan on
Speaker 1: putting these porcels through. So there'll be things like phobia testing,
Speaker 1: you know, environmental ones, water heights, confined spaces, public speaking,
Speaker 1: those uh, kind of the bigger ones done in kind
Speaker 1: of fundament until approach where we look at you inside,
Speaker 1: what makes the brain tick outside, how does the senses
Speaker 1: absorb their world and stuff? And then we design these
Speaker 1: challenges for them to go through. I unfortunately, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to give you specifics because we want to want
Speaker 1: to maintain the integrity of the program. But there's then
Speaker 1: there's different portions some of it. We want them to
Speaker 1: feel a little bit like a like a secret agent
Speaker 1: would kind of feel, or a soldier or an a
Speaker 1: SF soldier or a kidnapping victim of a terrorists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's scenarios and there there. It's a heuristic approach
Speaker 1: to most of it. So they're kind of thrown into
Speaker 1: the scenario and you know, sink or swim, they're observed personality,
Speaker 1: their behavior. Plus when you leave that scenario that environment
Speaker 1: at the time, they won't be able to learn anything
Speaker 1: really in terms of what they just went through and
Speaker 1: why they went through, but they'll have changed a little bit.
Speaker 1: And that's the idea of it's a progressive linear eight days.
Speaker 1: You know what. I'm curious, As I said, I watched
Speaker 1: the video and a link to it. There is some
Speaker 1: weaponry going on in the video. Um, gun laws in
Speaker 1: Canada are very different from gun laws in the US.
Speaker 1: Is that something you have to work around? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: people might find this a surprise. There are portions of
Speaker 1: our gun laws that are much stricter, but there's a
Speaker 1: lot that's not. Canada has a lot more area to
Speaker 1: shoot people are I believe. I'm pretty sure I've read
Speaker 1: this per capita Canada has more guns per person, like
Speaker 1: I believe. Yeah, it's just people don't think of it
Speaker 1: that way. You know, we we don't have knock on
Speaker 1: wood as many gun incidents. You know, again, I feel
Speaker 1: bad for that. You know, obviously it's not the gun.
Speaker 1: I don't get the debate, but that's for another time.
Speaker 1: But yes, we have to work around that. Uh, but
Speaker 1: there's all the checks and balances in place for that
Speaker 1: to make sure it's all legit and good to go. Well,
Speaker 1: you know the guy that said one of their skills,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll do some home defense style stuff similar
Speaker 1: to s QUB. It's all tailored too for the civilian experience,
Speaker 1: you know, those things that man might run into. You know,
Speaker 1: it's more like zombie apocalypse levels, but it could be.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean, breaking and entering is not
Speaker 1: an unlikely scenario. It's not impossible. Awesome, So how much
Speaker 1: how long do you think before you have this off
Speaker 1: the ground and ready to start receiving people. Oh well,
Speaker 1: we already got a good chunk filled up, so you
Speaker 1: have like like dates scheduled out. Yeah, so may tent
Speaker 1: is a serial one. Uh yeah, we're it's it's tracking
Speaker 1: along really well. When I when I said slow burn earlier,
Speaker 1: I meant more like the vision of what it was
Speaker 1: going to bright, like the metamorphosis. Yeah, and after serial one,
Speaker 1: like we do you know, in a R take a
Speaker 1: look at it and fix it and make it better
Speaker 1: if need be. That's super cool. UM and the website
Speaker 1: once again, the Special Forces Experience dot Com, especially if
Speaker 1: you know, we have a lot of Canadian listeners. So
Speaker 1: those guys up north who want to do this, who
Speaker 1: want to see if they, you know, could have gone
Speaker 1: through what you've gone through an inkling of it, I guess,
Speaker 1: let's say, because as you said, you you'll never know
Speaker 1: if you really could have become a Special Operations a
Speaker 1: special operator, I should say, if I could just touch
Speaker 1: on one thing, sure, this is for right now. It's
Speaker 1: open to North America, so we have Americans signed up
Speaker 1: as well, and it is being displayed around the world.
Speaker 1: We do have a lot of interest, but we're just
Speaker 1: kind of treading carefully right there right now, UM, but
Speaker 1: for now, Yeah, we have Americans already signed up in Canadians.
Speaker 1: And this also seems unlike any other program I I've
Speaker 1: heard of, you know, operators who open their own type
Speaker 1: of things. We've had some guys on the on the
Speaker 1: show who have done that, but this is this is
Speaker 1: definitely different. It's unique. Yeah, there's um, you know Travis,
Speaker 1: he runs the UM. What's it called Adventure Combat opts
Speaker 1: out in Las Vegas. Well, what he does, it's different.
Speaker 1: It's more like like a zombie apocalypse kind of scenario
Speaker 1: with air soft guns. Former operator himself, and I've been
Speaker 1: out to his facility he has and it's super cool.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's not what you're doing. It's different. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We again, we bolted on a lot of pieces here,
Speaker 1: and we wanted to give that uh you know, that
Speaker 1: seal fit experience, something like that nature, you know where
Speaker 1: guys want to go slug it out on that difficult side.
Speaker 1: So we got that, but then we started throwing in
Speaker 1: the psychology and the growth portion of it, and it
Speaker 1: just started expanding, expanding, Uh what it became. And you're
Speaker 1: running this out in Northern Canada. I shudder to think
Speaker 1: what kind of torture you're gonna expose expose these people too.
Speaker 1: I just got to bring him into the bush and
Speaker 1: have him sit there and it's gonna suck. So exactly,
Speaker 1: it's it's before mosquito season, I am mind. So yeah, there,
Speaker 1: it's austine to say the least. Um, it's supposed to
Speaker 1: be difficult. It's it's not equivalent to what we had
Speaker 1: to go through our barriers of entry, and it's different, right,
Speaker 1: Like SF selection is picking a man to do a
Speaker 1: certain role. This this isn't a selection. It's it's an experience,
Speaker 1: but with a quick function in it, which I think
Speaker 1: just turns a lot of guys away right away, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Yeah, SF selection for us is
Speaker 1: uh four weeks, so you're there for a month. And
Speaker 1: I came right off of a deployment from to a rack,
Speaker 1: went rolled right into selection without like any train up
Speaker 1: for it or anything. I will lie it sucked. No,
Speaker 1: you may smile afterwards. I'll laugh at it now that
Speaker 1: years years later, but it sucked at the time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It definitely pushes you to the brink, you know. Uh
Speaker 1: even ours ours is seven days. Like I was saying earlier,
Speaker 1: it's a different design, but we get the same product
Speaker 1: at the end. It's just what can happen in seven days?
Speaker 1: It is pretty incredible. Let me ask you this too,
Speaker 1: and this is there's going to be another difference. I'm
Speaker 1: sure how many people started your selection course. Ah, roughly,
Speaker 1: it's just it works out to be about the same
Speaker 1: finish rate. About we just on the front end before
Speaker 1: paperwork even gets processed, there's a lot less people coming in,
Speaker 1: so we run usually three four cereals depending on the year,
Speaker 1: all within a month because they're only a week long, right,
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's about the same thing once it's all
Speaker 1: said and down about five to how many guys do
Speaker 1: you think show up the first stat on like JT
Speaker 1: F two. Uh, it's thirty Okay, my s F A
Speaker 1: S class we started off, I would estimate close to
Speaker 1: four hundred people. Yeah, and the attrition, I'd say we graduated, um,
Speaker 1: same thing when I went through the Range indoctrination program,
Speaker 1: I'd say we graduated maybe, and we started off with
Speaker 1: a couple hundred. So I think the psychologists do a
Speaker 1: really good job on the front end of ours when
Speaker 1: they're picking the dudes coming in. We're trying to you
Speaker 1: guys have the means. You guys are a big military
Speaker 1: to run industrial grade. Yeah, but you can look at
Speaker 1: people very closely individuals. Yeah, exactly, So we have that
Speaker 1: luxury right when you're smaller. Uh. Plus, you guys are
Speaker 1: running multiple serials a year, I believe. I think s
Speaker 1: F A S runs like eleven courses a year, I believe.
Speaker 1: So we front end load kind of a bit of
Speaker 1: work on the psycho the psychology side of the house.
Speaker 1: Do not waste in time. Well, you never know, right,
Speaker 1: you don't know where he is. Paper can only do
Speaker 1: so much. By that, I mean like the testing and
Speaker 1: all that looking and observing on that level. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the idea is kind of get it done a little quicker,
Speaker 1: a little less energy intensive. Plus we don't we run
Speaker 1: it in house. The operators have full control, kind of
Speaker 1: like quality control if you will. But then you don't
Speaker 1: want to be taken away from your operator pool to
Speaker 1: run these kinds of things, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: We've got a laundry list of things to do, so
Speaker 1: I like that. You know, it's a small professional force.
Speaker 1: Um like some of the other countries I've looked at
Speaker 1: in the past. Denmark is one the yagger core small
Speaker 1: but highly professional counter terrorism unit some of the other
Speaker 1: Scandinavian forces. I mean, it's a different approach, but um
Speaker 1: it definitely has some advantages by comparison to the like
Speaker 1: industrial scale UH special operations, the units that we run
Speaker 1: here in the United States. It's just the manpower difference.
Speaker 1: I mean, you guys are a million plus strong. I
Speaker 1: assume at this point and the oh our military overall,
Speaker 1: it's pushing that. It's pushing that, you know. It's like,
Speaker 1: so you've got a huge pool. And if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: the seals still take from the civilian side. Uh, you
Speaker 1: can sign up specifically to go to BUDS. So I'm
Speaker 1: not sure exactly what the pipeline is right now. Maybe
Speaker 1: they go to Navy basic training, I'm not sure, but
Speaker 1: but basically, yeah, they're coming off this so you guys
Speaker 1: entice the guy off the street a little bit more.
Speaker 1: Special Forces does that too, with the X ray program
Speaker 1: or something like that. I'm not familiar with all that,
Speaker 1: but in rangers, what am I talking about? So, yeah,
Speaker 1: which I think should be done because what happens is
Speaker 1: people are going, I don't want to do the grunt
Speaker 1: side of the house, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 1: I get that if you think you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: be a cook for four years before you get to
Speaker 1: apply exactly when you know what the end results you
Speaker 1: want is. I mean, sometimes the experience on the front
Speaker 1: end doesn't hurt because what you're about to encounter is difficult.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it's it's different, but um,
Speaker 1: I don't know One of our soft truths that we
Speaker 1: have is that, you know, special operations can't be mass produced.
Speaker 1: But I think we've violated that so many times during
Speaker 1: the last seventeen years. Um. And I mean it's for
Speaker 1: you know, wartime expediency, but there are consequences for that. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: have an Afghanistan and rack spark up at the same
Speaker 1: time nearly two thousands really pushed those soft models to
Speaker 1: the test, right where though it was where the dude
Speaker 1: you that got the work done? Okay, we need more
Speaker 1: of those dudes that well okay, well it's supposed to
Speaker 1: be quality and not mass produced. Well no, no, we
Speaker 1: need we need to get going. You know, a policy
Speaker 1: decision has been made here folks like sure amount uh,
Speaker 1: and they're still dealing with that. Um. You know in
Speaker 1: the U. S. Military and uh down at the Special
Speaker 1: Forces qualification course, they're always trying to like jigger with
Speaker 1: things a little bit, tweak them and try to I
Speaker 1: don't know, I feel like they're trying to reinvent the
Speaker 1: wheel to some extent. But you know, I'm out of
Speaker 1: the military, so those guys have to feel. Like I
Speaker 1: was saying, I think the meat grinder usually turns out
Speaker 1: very similar product. It's just about time, you know. I
Speaker 1: think that would be the bigg assessment. Like you're saying,
Speaker 1: yours takes four weeks the selection this selection course four weeks.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of manpower, that's a lot of time.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of money, you know, divided dedicated to that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Special Warfare Center in school at four Bragg, I
Speaker 1: mean that is like a huge unit and institution. That's
Speaker 1: a big that's just a huge beast in of itself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where we're able to keep it a little bit later,
Speaker 1: a little more hands on it. It does eat away
Speaker 1: from other time, but yeah, it seems to be working
Speaker 1: for us. It's cool, keep it going. I had a
Speaker 1: question because of the fact that you're the first guy
Speaker 1: we've had on from your particular background. It's almost the
Speaker 1: most cliche question that we get at the website or
Speaker 1: the you know podcast, is the last jack you know,
Speaker 1: like I'm I'm sixteen years old. They want to be
Speaker 1: an army ranger. You know, what should I expect um?
Speaker 1: What quality should I have? Or they'll email Brandon, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to be a seal, so I guess for
Speaker 1: and there there definitely are the kids listening who are
Speaker 1: like fifteen sixteen, they want to do what you did.
Speaker 1: What what do you think that they need to have?
Speaker 1: Like physically mentally, I think you need to push out
Speaker 1: of your comfort zone a lot to be able to
Speaker 1: so that later on you can operate out of your
Speaker 1: comfort zone. Your body will adapt to that, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, the way your your cortisol levels spike
Speaker 1: and all that. You can start training that your your
Speaker 1: your genes hold a bit of your character in them.
Speaker 1: But you need to start, uh, like I said, ghet
Speaker 1: out of that comfort zone. Find adversity. Like when I
Speaker 1: say adversity, it can be a difficult runs obstacle cour say,
Speaker 1: you know, climbing the mountain, like the whatever you want
Speaker 1: to do that pushes you physically and mentally out of
Speaker 1: your comfort zone so that when the suck of selections starts,
Speaker 1: you're like, I'm out of my comfort zone all the time,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So maybe you didn't show
Speaker 1: up physically ready to go, that's on you, but at
Speaker 1: least you're not you know, hair on fire, like what's
Speaker 1: going on? You know, your your adrenaline systems just dumping
Speaker 1: and you just head spinning, you know, what I mean. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: put push outside your comfort zone whatever it is when
Speaker 1: you feel into that fear, you know, I mean that
Speaker 1: gut reaction you get where you're like that seems uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: you know. Instead of shying away from those experiences, go
Speaker 1: for it. The surprise element is is quite a bit
Speaker 1: different too, because these kids could read tons of books
Speaker 1: about what range of selection is, like, what buds is like.
Speaker 1: As you said, there's not really books about going through
Speaker 1: you know, and becoming an operator and JTF two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it is done for that exact reason, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. I could sit here and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's gonna have some shock and awe. You know, you
Speaker 1: could try to prep for that, but you when you
Speaker 1: don't know what's going on, it does something really profound
Speaker 1: to the mind, because the mind fills into its own gaps,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. When it doesn't know, we
Speaker 1: just start filling that void with our own thoughts and
Speaker 1: our own culture and well what what you're talking about?
Speaker 1: It sounds really stupid on one hand that the like
Speaker 1: using the unknown as a selection process, but I saw
Speaker 1: it when I was in selection myself, is that there
Speaker 1: are guys who cannot handle just sitting in the barracks
Speaker 1: and they don't know what the next event is and
Speaker 1: they'll quit. And that's exactly what I'm talking about, is
Speaker 1: that their heads racing. You know, they're thinking something, they're
Speaker 1: they're like self selecting. Yeah, exactly, and that's a big
Speaker 1: part of it, you know what I mean. There's one
Speaker 1: I don't know. I've told this story before too, but
Speaker 1: I mean, again, it sounds stupid, but you can understand
Speaker 1: why they use it as a election tool. They got
Speaker 1: us used to do in two events a day, but
Speaker 1: then one night they drug us out of bed it
Speaker 1: was like two in the morning for a third event.
Speaker 1: And we get out there and they say be out
Speaker 1: here this time, this uniform, this much in your ruck
Speaker 1: sack with your packing list. Blah blah blah. Uh. They
Speaker 1: come out just like every other time. They say, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's a rock march for an undetermined time, for an
Speaker 1: undetermined distance. Follow the cones, go okay, start walking. They
Speaker 1: all we did was walk around the compound camp McCall
Speaker 1: back over to where the little theater is. There's a
Speaker 1: field out front. Had so we walked a grand total
Speaker 1: of you know, eight d They had us ground our
Speaker 1: ruck sacks and they had us take one item out
Speaker 1: of our ruck sack that was on our packing list.
Speaker 1: Is there your running shoes? Hold them up and they
Speaker 1: see if you have them, it's gay. You have it. Okay,
Speaker 1: pack it back up. Okay, you're done for the night.
Speaker 1: Go back. Like a couple of people quit right there.
Speaker 1: This can't take it anymore. And that sounds ridiculous too.
Speaker 1: I think people on the outside because they think that
Speaker 1: selection is like the guy quitting during like log PT,
Speaker 1: like I can't take it anymore. It's just too physically strenuous.
Speaker 1: But no, it's the unknown and what the hell is
Speaker 1: going on? And that really fucks with people. But I
Speaker 1: think it's a valid selection tool because you know, you've
Speaker 1: been deployed. How many times have you been deployed, and
Speaker 1: like you're on standby permission then it just gets shut
Speaker 1: down or you're out on an operation and what you
Speaker 1: expected to happen, what you expected to see when you
Speaker 1: got off the helicopter was not what was there the
Speaker 1: old stand by to stand by and it's going to change,
Speaker 1: so yeah, hold on. Yeah, So if you psychologically can't
Speaker 1: handle that kind of thing, then you have really no
Speaker 1: business being in a special operation, and you've got to
Speaker 1: keep that sense of humor with you too, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, because everyone's going through that same ship,
Speaker 1: you know, and as you know this, this can go
Speaker 1: on for weeks. Okay, on the bus, off the bus,
Speaker 1: on the bosk Okay, we're moving over here, we're doing
Speaker 1: and there's no routine, there's no norm. There's you know,
Speaker 1: you and your voice. Uh, and you bring your skill,
Speaker 1: you know, your drills and skills, but everything else is
Speaker 1: almost out of your control. The enemy he has his
Speaker 1: say of what's going to happen. You know. We we
Speaker 1: do our best to get good in but it's just
Speaker 1: all about the unknown. You prep a little bit. That's
Speaker 1: why we always say working off principles and not drill
Speaker 1: so much because it's gonna it's gonna change. Or maybe
Speaker 1: it's just that a staging ground for a week, waiting
Speaker 1: for the green light for a mission to happen, Like
Speaker 1: you can't have an assaulter just stand up and quit,
Speaker 1: like I can't take this anymore. Yeah, and I quit
Speaker 1: like no, wait, it's like you're you're an important member
Speaker 1: of this team and it can't function with that out
Speaker 1: without you, you know, so I think that's why it's
Speaker 1: important to put those sorts of things into this selection process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree that, Like just when you even I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's something kind of normal and normal life where it
Speaker 1: just changes the routine a little bit in people's lives
Speaker 1: and they're like they become all disheveled, like if your kids,
Speaker 1: if your kid gets sick and you have to cancel
Speaker 1: your dinner plans because you've gotta go home take care
Speaker 1: of your yeah, something like that, you know, and a
Speaker 1: little spike of uh, you know, of anxiety and for
Speaker 1: people listening picture holding that anxiety for a week, two weeks,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Like you mentioned the guys
Speaker 1: on D Day, you know, and they're getting stop dropped,
Speaker 1: like the psychological toll that can have on on someone well,
Speaker 1: you know, and the soft that's that's what we're dealing
Speaker 1: with all the time. You you never know where your
Speaker 1: deployments really are. Every now and then you get the
Speaker 1: luxury of you know, you're watching something unfold and then okay, okay,
Speaker 1: I know I'm heading there, and you know you're doing
Speaker 1: all your workups dada, YadA, YadA. But that's not how
Speaker 1: it usually works I mean I don't know offhand, but
Speaker 1: I mean that the number of objectives that I was
Speaker 1: on where we knew the bad guy was there, I
Speaker 1: think that like never happened. I don't think we ever
Speaker 1: knew exactly. Sometimes there's a flip a coin. I think
Speaker 1: our int is gotten much better, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like we're talking about the two major theaters of war.
Speaker 1: Have just push the envelope on what we can do.
Speaker 1: So we're closer, but you just don't know. Well. Once again,
Speaker 1: the website is the Special Forces Experience dot com. Um,
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about what we're
Speaker 1: up to, and then I have an email. It's a
Speaker 1: little bit of a correction from a listener. Uh So
Speaker 1: I'll get to that. But be sure to check out
Speaker 1: Create Club. That long anticipated NFW watch, it's here. I
Speaker 1: know you have it, you're digging it. Uh So that's
Speaker 1: in the next premium tier creator the current premium tier creator.
Speaker 1: I should say. We have different tiers of membership as
Speaker 1: as I'm mentioning, depending on how prepared you want to be,
Speaker 1: and gift options are available as well. Scott Whitner and
Speaker 1: the guys from the load out Room are currently working
Speaker 1: on bringing you custom products for the Create Club, which
Speaker 1: is right around the corners. Pretty crazy, everything from sunglass
Speaker 1: cases to E d C bags and other manly products.
Speaker 1: This works in what he was saying, it's a club
Speaker 1: four men by men. Uh can check out check out
Speaker 1: all of that at Create Club dot us. Once again,
Speaker 1: that's Create Club dot Us. If you're a dog owner,
Speaker 1: check this out. You're gonna love this. We've partnered with Kuna.
Speaker 1: They have a team of trained canine handlers picking out
Speaker 1: a box for your dog each month of healthy treats
Speaker 1: and training aids. It's custom built through your dog's size
Speaker 1: end age as well. The products are US sourced and
Speaker 1: all natural, and they not only promote a healthy diet
Speaker 1: but also an active lifestyle with your dog. So it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter what type of dog you have. You could
Speaker 1: have a pit bull, you can have a chihuahua. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's just what you're looking for. You can see all
Speaker 1: of that at kuned dot Dog. That's Kuned dot Dog.
Speaker 1: It's efficient for you. Your dog is gonna love it
Speaker 1: as well, of course. And that's spelled ceu n A
Speaker 1: dot d o G s u n A dot d
Speaker 1: o G. Check it out. Um We also, of course,
Speaker 1: I want to mention, have the spec Ops Channel. That's
Speaker 1: our channel that offers the most exclusive shows, documentaries and
Speaker 1: interviews covering the most exciting military content today. A premier
Speaker 1: show Training Cell. If you're into what we've been talking
Speaker 1: about here, you're gonna dig training self. You haven't checked
Speaker 1: it out already. It's everything from shooting schools, defensive driving,
Speaker 1: end jungle and winter warfare, climbing and a lot more,
Speaker 1: all with operators. Um. And you can watch all that
Speaker 1: at spec ops channel dot com. Spec Ops channel dot
Speaker 1: com off your membership right now. That's only four a month.
Speaker 1: And of course we also have the software radio app
Speaker 1: now which is pretty cool, so you can check that
Speaker 1: out whether you're on an iPhone or an Android. UM.
Speaker 1: With that, I guess we'll wrap this up with this
Speaker 1: question and not really question correction really for something that
Speaker 1: you said that someone wanted to mention. Uh, this is
Speaker 1: from Greg. Hey, you guys, rock podcast as awesome as usual.
Speaker 1: Please tell Jack that Yankee White was a nickname for
Speaker 1: the background investigation process for people in the White House.
Speaker 1: Yankee White had nothing to do with communications. Jack might
Speaker 1: be thinking about the Mystic Star Network. Keep up the
Speaker 1: great work on the podcast. So I'm not actually not
Speaker 1: even sure when that was mentioned, but um yeah I
Speaker 1: do remember mentioning it. But um, I appreciate the email.
Speaker 1: I'll go back and take a look for myself. See, uh,
Speaker 1: maybe I need to tighten my shack group. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: here's the thing, because I've gotten plenty of corrections that
Speaker 1: I've read on the air. It's like, we just do
Speaker 1: this as you can see, like would have all this
Speaker 1: research in front of us, So you're bound to get
Speaker 1: something wrong. I know I have. So I'll go back
Speaker 1: and take a look at it for sure. And we're
Speaker 1: definitely not people who are like afraid to say, hey,
Speaker 1: we got something wrong, you know, And I like when
Speaker 1: the listeners point that stuff out. We like to stay
Speaker 1: as accurate as possible. Um, So I guess with that. Man,
Speaker 1: as they said, check out the website, the Special Forces
Speaker 1: Experience dot com. And as you said, you don't need
Speaker 1: to be UM in Canada, you could be in America
Speaker 1: as well. And you're accepting guys from America right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't have to show up with any previous knowledge, skills,
Speaker 1: anything like that. Just have to be a man. That's awesome, Jeff,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for coming by, and Uh, anytime you
Speaker 1: come through the city or even if you want to
Speaker 1: call in, let us know. Man, I appreciate you guys.
Speaker 1: It's been a pleasure. Awesome. We'll do this again. Uh,
Speaker 1: and we'll have a new episode up on Wednesday. I
Speaker 1: believe we have Wilcow coming in studio. I'm looking at
Speaker 1: the yeah, which should be great because he's got a
Speaker 1: he's got a Veterans Day event at EMMITL Looney's, which
Speaker 1: is almost like our flagship art at this point. You
Speaker 1: go there, see your book on the ball of Brandon's
Speaker 1: book and everybody, so good stuff. Thanks for coming in, Jef,
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Man. You've been listening to Self Rep Radio.
Speaker 1: New episodes of every Wednesday and Friday. Follow the show
Speaker 1: on Instagram and Twitter at self Rep Radio.