Speaker 1: If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough. You're
Speaker 1: listening to Software Radio Special Operations, military news and straight
Speaker 1: talk with the guys in the community. All right, hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: welcome back to Software Brito. Today. I have a special guest,
Speaker 1: Colonel bomb Adams, m D n B, a Navy seal.
Speaker 1: Eighteen years in the Navy, twelve as a seal. Actually
Speaker 1: eighteen years in the military, I believe, is that correct?
Speaker 1: Bombs eighteen and the naview had it right, and then
Speaker 1: eighteen four and the Army as an Army doctor. Okay,
Speaker 1: got it. Also an author of Six Days of Impossible
Speaker 1: and a website you can check out. I encourage you
Speaker 1: to seal hell week dot com dot steal hell week
Speaker 1: dot com and uh, six Days of It Possible. It's
Speaker 1: it's on Amazon. Please go pick up the copy. And yeah,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show, Bob Oh, thank you very much, sir.
Speaker 1: I always like to kick it off with just kind
Speaker 1: of having you give us a background, kind of origin story.
Speaker 1: Where'd you go up, Why did you go in the military,
Speaker 1: why the seals, and just catch us up to date
Speaker 1: what you're up to know. As I say, just before
Speaker 1: we started this here in my background are very similar,
Speaker 1: and that I grew up in an alcoholic, dysfunctional father
Speaker 1: family left at seventeen to join the Navy. I chose
Speaker 1: the Naval Academy because three of four of my previous
Speaker 1: generations of males had been Academy grads, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to be a seal. I said, well, I might as
Speaker 1: well be an officer if I'm going to be a seal,
Speaker 1: and off I went. But it was as much to
Speaker 1: get away it was anything else. And interestingly, this was
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three that I would graduate at the Naval Academy,
Speaker 1: when seals were really a brand new entity, and the
Speaker 1: academy viewed viewed my career choices quite negatively. Dude, there's
Speaker 1: no way you're gonna make admiral. And they were right,
Speaker 1: but I just kept quiet, didn't be four years, got
Speaker 1: my commission, went to Underwater Swimmer School in Key West,
Speaker 1: Florida as a vacation thing on route to my destroyer.
Speaker 1: Because only three men from our class got seal slots,
Speaker 1: one of whom was Admiral Eric Ols in our first
Speaker 1: store and it first forced our navy seal, as you know,
Speaker 1: Off they went, and off I went, and wiled down
Speaker 1: and seal school, similar to what happened to you on
Speaker 1: your dive boat us the Navy seal there was my
Speaker 1: instructor and said, hey, you're having a lot of fun
Speaker 1: down here. We're trying to hurt you. Don't you think
Speaker 1: you'd like to be a seal? And that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's what sort of retriggered my direction and I ended
Speaker 1: up a year on that destroyer out of San Francisco
Speaker 1: and Lieutenant Scotty lawn Ends and my future instructor, Steve
Speaker 1: Frisk came through San Francisco recruiting. I got off the ship,
Speaker 1: went to the tryouts, and six months later found myself
Speaker 1: in Bud's training. So it was, you know, just a
Speaker 1: combination of hopes and dreams come into reality and the
Speaker 1: Navy let it happen. From six months later, I found
Speaker 1: myself and Budd's training, and you know, there's hopes and
Speaker 1: dreams just led to where I was, class of eighty
Speaker 1: one and a matter of fact, we started my Our
Speaker 1: statistics are just like your classes. Statistics we started with
Speaker 1: seventy graduated eleven. We had eight officers in our class
Speaker 1: and only three of us graduated. Two of us from
Speaker 1: the Naval Academy. And you know, anything you do in
Speaker 1: life that is a little harder, as as you've pointed
Speaker 1: out before, gives you a better chance of moving on.
Speaker 1: And the reason I wrote the book Six Days of
Speaker 1: Impossible about Navy Seal Hell Week, I did it as
Speaker 1: a doctor looking back, because it's you know, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: a physician now and I've spent eighteen years and special
Speaker 1: operations and combat operations, and you know, I've always looked
Speaker 1: back with my eleven classmates to try to figure out
Speaker 1: why we made it when everybody else didn't. And you'll
Speaker 1: appreciate this. The one common theme that I write about
Speaker 1: in the autobiography of those eleven men in this book
Speaker 1: is that we had all been kicked to the curb
Speaker 1: by life multiple times, and then we went to seal training,
Speaker 1: so that helped a lot, all right, So high attrition rate,
Speaker 1: just like my class. And then your you had shared
Speaker 1: something interesting which I kind of arrobbed in my own
Speaker 1: conclusion that basically most of the people that graduate buds
Speaker 1: have already been kind of kicked in the teeth. Like
Speaker 1: live they learned how to deal with adversity. All those
Speaker 1: fancy questionnaires that they asked us, you know when you finish,
Speaker 1: like what sports did you play? Who do you hang
Speaker 1: out with? I think if they just asked us, have
Speaker 1: you had your ass kicked before in showing up here,
Speaker 1: you know, that would be a pretty good indicator. You're
Speaker 1: gonna make it absolutely. I mean I went back as
Speaker 1: a physician and interviewed all my other classmates and that
Speaker 1: was what I discovered is the one thing we all
Speaker 1: knew had happened to us is that life had tested us.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just because we wrestled or played lacrosse,
Speaker 1: although when New York State Golden Golden Gloves boxer, but
Speaker 1: you know, we've had real life crises that messed with us,
Speaker 1: and it made it a whole lot easier to deal
Speaker 1: with the hardest that most people can even imagine You
Speaker 1: and I have had to go through when it gets
Speaker 1: that hard and you've got options because life has been
Speaker 1: really good to you, it's just too easy to walk away. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: So after after Buns, So that was kind of fun.
Speaker 1: I like telling this story because, uh, my instructors were
Speaker 1: right out of Vietnam. The Vietnamar had just ended. Mike
Speaker 1: Thornton Medal of Honor. Winner has a whole chapter in
Speaker 1: my book when he tried to run me out of
Speaker 1: training and almost succeeded. So just some really great men,
Speaker 1: you and I in the company of heroes. But the
Speaker 1: war was winding down and the money was going away
Speaker 1: in the military was drawing down. So five years later,
Speaker 1: I said, you know, I'm gonna go be an m
Speaker 1: b A and and teach my fortune on the outside.
Speaker 1: Transferred to the reserve seal teams, came out to the
Speaker 1: East coast with Seal Team four, went back to school
Speaker 1: to get my MBA, got a job as an MBA,
Speaker 1: hated it immediately. UH called the Navy up and said,
Speaker 1: take me back. I made a terrible mistake. Turns out
Speaker 1: they don't give you thirty days of paid vacation in
Speaker 1: this building world. Well, they said, well, lieutenant, thanks for
Speaker 1: your time, but you know we're still drawn down. We
Speaker 1: don't need more fraud men. You know, call me, so
Speaker 1: you know we we'll call you if there's another war. Now,
Speaker 1: war didn't happen til seven when my seal team got activated.
Speaker 1: About two months after I got sworn into the army
Speaker 1: as a second lieutenant medical school student. So I just
Speaker 1: skipped over a series of years to get to that
Speaker 1: exciting ending, But after being told by the Navy that
Speaker 1: they couldn't bring me back on active duty, I went
Speaker 1: home to my wife and said, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: like this NBA thing. It's not as much fun as
Speaker 1: I thought. I think I want to go go to
Speaker 1: medical school and be a doctor. And I was thirty
Speaker 1: at the time, and she's, well, go ahead and try
Speaker 1: it too. Oh, they won't take anyway. And we had
Speaker 1: one kid and one kid on the way, and I
Speaker 1: pulled her aside one more time and I said, you know, sweetheart,
Speaker 1: if we do this, I'm looking at seven years of
Speaker 1: abject poverty for us, you know, and we're making a
Speaker 1: good living now. You're you know, will you really let
Speaker 1: me do this? And you know, stay the love of
Speaker 1: my life? And she just were very simple in her answer.
Speaker 1: She goes, we were poor and happy when we got married.
Speaker 1: We can be poor and happy again. And for seven
Speaker 1: years we were poor and happy, raising two children and
Speaker 1: at school in residency. But then that that popped me
Speaker 1: out at Fort Bragg, North Carolina for my first duty assignment,
Speaker 1: where two months after I got there, I got activated
Speaker 1: to invade Haitias on parachute Aircraft number one with the
Speaker 1: division commander because he saw a NBCO patch on my
Speaker 1: Army uniform. So I said, oh, boy, wasn't quite ready
Speaker 1: for this transition to the combat doctor world. I got
Speaker 1: ahead of myself because I wanted to tell you why
Speaker 1: I ended up as an Army doctor. When I got
Speaker 1: permissioned for my wife to go to medical school, I
Speaker 1: fired off a scholarship application to the Army and the
Speaker 1: Navy after being accepted, and they both wrote back and
Speaker 1: media and said we've got a scholarship. The Navy said
Speaker 1: I'll give you three years, and the Army said I'll
Speaker 1: give you four. And med school is real expensive, you know.
Speaker 1: So I had I had the scholarship, I knew it
Speaker 1: was going. Put on my dress, blue uniform, put on
Speaker 1: all my bangles and beans, walked into the O six
Speaker 1: office that ran the scholarship program and said, uh, you
Speaker 1: know it's or I'm a third generation Naval academy. I'm
Speaker 1: a career oriented officer, and I'm gonna go to school
Speaker 1: on a four year scholarship because the Army has offered
Speaker 1: me one match it and I'll be a Navy doctor,
Speaker 1: which I fully expected him to do, and he said, no,
Speaker 1: he didn't really qualify. Bob. You know, thanks for coming by,
Speaker 1: but you know we're gonna take these Yale and Harvard
Speaker 1: guys are way smarter than you. And I went, okay,
Speaker 1: but you know they're not gonna stay beyond their obligated service.
Speaker 1: And I think you're making a mistake. Told the same story,
Speaker 1: by the way, to the two star Navy admiral who
Speaker 1: swore me in to the Army as a second lieutenant
Speaker 1: because he let me goes Bob, that just really couldn't
Speaker 1: have happened. And he made a couple of phone calls
Speaker 1: to d C and came back and said, I'll be danged,
Speaker 1: it really did happen. So raise your hand. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: turn you in an Army second lieutenant. When I'm done.
Speaker 1: I just can't bring myself to congratulate you because I
Speaker 1: had just made commander in the Seal Teams, because I
Speaker 1: just turned a Navy commander into an and the second lieutenant.
Speaker 1: So but now now you didn't ask this, but fast
Speaker 1: forward to the invasion of eighties story. I just started
Speaker 1: to tell you when I grat When doctors graduate from
Speaker 1: medical school, we graduate as captains or lieutenants in the Navy,
Speaker 1: and so oh threes. But even though I had been
Speaker 1: demoded to go to medical school, which ensign or or
Speaker 1: army would have done, they recalculate your rank for and
Speaker 1: give you half credit for prior commission service. So instead
Speaker 1: of graduating as a captain, I graduated as a major,
Speaker 1: which is nice from a pay standpoint, but it also
Speaker 1: is unpleasant because it puts you in command and leadership
Speaker 1: jobs right off the bat, and you're just right out
Speaker 1: of residency. So I took command of a clinic of
Speaker 1: special operations clinic and for Bragg, and hadn't been there
Speaker 1: two months before I got invited to parachute into Haiti
Speaker 1: with the a second Airborne and sitting on the tarmact
Speaker 1: with the commanding the commander of that eighty second Division
Speaker 1: ipsed to go in with and I go, you know there,
Speaker 1: I've only been a doctor all by myself for about
Speaker 1: two months now. I'm not trying to know what to do.
Speaker 1: And I when I hit the ground, and I haven't
Speaker 1: been an army doctor for long at all. So he goes,
Speaker 1: he goes, don't worry about it. Your only job is
Speaker 1: to keep me alive. Okay, I can do that. So
Speaker 1: oh gosh. Only months after that adventure, the Delta Force
Speaker 1: Command group came by and asked me if I'd like
Speaker 1: to come to Delta Force as their command surgeon. And
Speaker 1: I don't him. No, you know, I've been there, done
Speaker 1: that special ops thing. I'm a new doctor. I gotta
Speaker 1: get to deliver some babies and see some more patients
Speaker 1: and you know, develop my skill set. But check back
Speaker 1: with me in two years and almost two years of
Speaker 1: the day I got how about now? Well? Now works?
Speaker 1: And I ended up being the command surgeon for Delta
Speaker 1: Force for four years, doing their rapid deployment you know,
Speaker 1: Tier one activity stuff. And you know I had mentioned
Speaker 1: Eric Olsen early, our first forestnd in Navy c O.
Speaker 1: I was a lieutenant colonel then and Eric was Captain
Speaker 1: of six. And we both walked into the Delta Force
Speaker 1: area briefing room, bumped into each other, and we're classmates.
Speaker 1: We we know, we chased women together, drank beer together,
Speaker 1: and Bob here we here we are going to our briefing. Eric,
Speaker 1: what are you doing here? He goes, Wob, what are
Speaker 1: you doing here? I said, I work here on the
Speaker 1: new command surgeon. He goes, well, I'm the new commanding
Speaker 1: officers Seal Team six. I said, all be damned, and
Speaker 1: we we had a lot of fun over those years
Speaker 1: watching each other's teams worked together in our you know,
Speaker 1: in the joint world that we all live in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: great story. Well I medicine, though I missed that part, like,
Speaker 1: what was the kind of what got you interested in medicine? Now?
Speaker 1: Good pick up. I didn't explain that, and it's worth
Speaker 1: revisiting because when the Navy would not take me back
Speaker 1: and I discovered myself not enjoying the job I was
Speaker 1: doing as an NBA and Washington d C Naval c
Speaker 1: Systems Command stuff, you know, I came home to my
Speaker 1: wife and I said, I've been really thinking hard about
Speaker 1: what I want what I want to be as a
Speaker 1: platoon commander in the seal teams again, but they won't
Speaker 1: let me play that game. So I've got to find
Speaker 1: something that I can enjoy as much as I enjoyed
Speaker 1: that job, which to this day is the best job
Speaker 1: I've ever had. But when I looked back at my
Speaker 1: college years, there was one course, the only course that
Speaker 1: I got an A plus one, and that was biology.
Speaker 1: So then I started thinking, well, who does biology things?
Speaker 1: And I go wait, doctors do biology things? So then
Speaker 1: I started looking into the doctor world. I didn't have
Speaker 1: any role models to fall back on, and I just
Speaker 1: thought about it and thought about him. One day, I
Speaker 1: came home to my wife and I said, I think
Speaker 1: I want to go to medical school. And I get
Speaker 1: two things from going to medical school. One is I
Speaker 1: get to be a doctor, which I think I'm really
Speaker 1: going to enjoy. And the second, I'm going to get
Speaker 1: my Green I D Card because I wanted to be
Speaker 1: back on active duty. So from day one, my plan
Speaker 1: was not just to be a doctor, but to be
Speaker 1: a military doctor to be able to do the things
Speaker 1: that I love. And it's it's turned out to, by
Speaker 1: the way, to be a brilliant choice. My second book,
Speaker 1: which was just published, if you forgive this obvious plug,
Speaker 1: Swords and Saints, A Doctor's Journey, just came out this
Speaker 1: month and it's looking back on thirty five years of
Speaker 1: medicine and peace time and wartime, you know, Iraq with
Speaker 1: the Second Airborne which if we have time we can
Speaker 1: talk about, and it's again making the point that you know,
Speaker 1: you can do anything for thirty five years and still
Speaker 1: be excited if you love what you do. And I
Speaker 1: think you said that in one of your interviews also,
Speaker 1: you need to love what you do. There no amount
Speaker 1: of money in the world is worth doing a job
Speaker 1: you hate. Yeah, I mean I agree with that. Then
Speaker 1: what I found myself wasn't the early part of the
Speaker 1: war two thousand three, doctors were doing six month rotations
Speaker 1: in Iraq and coming back, and that was an ugly
Speaker 1: time for the war, lots of casualties. And the military
Speaker 1: Medical course said, you know, we're going to change these
Speaker 1: doctor rotations to one year. And I had just made
Speaker 1: full bird colonel and i'd left the Delta Force by
Speaker 1: now when I was back in command of the eighty
Speaker 1: second Udborne Division Clinic, and I saw the handwriting on
Speaker 1: the wall, called up the bosses and said, I think
Speaker 1: I would like to go to Iraq now because it
Speaker 1: will be the last of the six month deployments. They said, okay,
Speaker 1: we don't really have a place for a colonel, but
Speaker 1: we got a job for a doctor, and I said,
Speaker 1: we'll do it. Give me the doctor's job because that's
Speaker 1: what I like best anyway, And I found myself deployed
Speaker 1: to Habania, Iraq, Middle bad guy country in two thousand
Speaker 1: and three with the seven eight second Charlie Medical Company
Speaker 1: of the eighty second Uirborne Division, and we we took
Speaker 1: over a bombed out air field and turned it into
Speaker 1: an emergency room, a full clinic, five bed hospital, and
Speaker 1: all we had to work with was bombed out stone
Speaker 1: buildings with a doors, windows of electricity. So that was
Speaker 1: that was a challenge in a hundred and thirty degree heat,
Speaker 1: and I learned a lot about desert medicine and the
Speaker 1: challenge has come with it. And I look back on
Speaker 1: it and I say, it was, without question the most
Speaker 1: amazing experience I've ever had as a doctor, and one
Speaker 1: that I'd really rather never do again. I mean, things
Speaker 1: that you see with explosive injuries and gunshot wounds, they're
Speaker 1: not things that you get to train for very much
Speaker 1: in residency. So it's like, thank you very much for
Speaker 1: your time serves, but you know, don't call me again.
Speaker 1: Is there any I mean I can from being an
Speaker 1: Afghanstan and in Iraq, I've seen some of those field
Speaker 1: hospitals and it's it's obviously challenging environment. Was there any
Speaker 1: particular incident that stands out in your mind is like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is like this is pretty heavy stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there is, there is, there's there. There's two. Actually, I'll
Speaker 1: give you the really short one. First. We had an
Speaker 1: I I Key working on building our clinic when a
Speaker 1: stone wall fell on him, busted his leg and he
Speaker 1: shows up in my brand new, barely have gauze pad
Speaker 1: clinic with bones sticking out of his leg and find
Speaker 1: morphine given, and through the translator we tell them, under
Speaker 1: current rules, we can't treat Iraqis and our surgical facilities,
Speaker 1: so we're just gonna package you and send you to
Speaker 1: your doctors, you know, downtown. And the dad eyes got wide,
Speaker 1: and the kid's eyes got wide, and they go, you
Speaker 1: don't understand that they're gonna cut my leg off? H what?
Speaker 1: And sure enough that you know, racky medicine back then
Speaker 1: was twenty five years behind the times, and they didn't
Speaker 1: have external fixitters and the kind of things that I
Speaker 1: anticipated would be needed. So I was Colonel ashcrambled a
Speaker 1: helicompterment of accent him to the surgeons, and the next
Speaker 1: day I get a call from the general and charge going,
Speaker 1: do you know we have a policy against not treating
Speaker 1: iraqis with the US US Surgical Aacilities. I said, we do, sir,
Speaker 1: and if I can quote your policy to it says
Speaker 1: unless life or limb is threatened. Then I told him
Speaker 1: the story goes up. Sorry to bother you, doctor, Thank
Speaker 1: you very much. That was that was kind of throwing
Speaker 1: my colonel weight around. But the one that I loved
Speaker 1: to tell was I was on a call this night.
Speaker 1: I had three doctors in how many of with me,
Speaker 1: a family doc, pedutrician and myself, and I got a
Speaker 1: two am wake up call saying there's a casualtly inbound.
Speaker 1: He's a bad guy. It's an ambulance transfer. He tried
Speaker 1: to attack our headquarters two hours away and we need
Speaker 1: to get him to the surgeons because he's still alive
Speaker 1: with multiple duncha wounds. Stand by to receive casuald It okay,
Speaker 1: Roger that grabbed my medic and said go run back
Speaker 1: to the biv wack area and get me a doctor
Speaker 1: in to to medics. And because we got a casually abound, well,
Speaker 1: the entire staff showed up. As you might imagine, I
Speaker 1: had all my doctors, all my medics, and bad guy
Speaker 1: number one rolls in the door with his right arm ampitated,
Speaker 1: held on by a turning at and a piece of skin.
Speaker 1: Three bullet wounds with only one exit wound, and he's
Speaker 1: talking to us, you know, and his i V s
Speaker 1: had failed in his in his neck and in his leg,
Speaker 1: and we had to get another I V. Started giving
Speaker 1: meds and fluids, and nobody could get an IVY because
Speaker 1: he bled out so much. The advans were flat. So
Speaker 1: I called my pediatrician and I go, hey, you can
Speaker 1: put a IVY in a baby scalp. Put one in
Speaker 1: this kid. He couldn't do it. So I pulled out
Speaker 1: my Advanced Trauma Life Support book, laid it on his
Speaker 1: legs and did what's called a venus cutdown, which I
Speaker 1: had done on animals before but never on people. Found
Speaker 1: in his ankle vein, threaded on ivy and tied it
Speaker 1: off and went, wow, first time I've ever done that,
Speaker 1: and it worked. He's kind of cool, but you know,
Speaker 1: and and everybody in the room knew we were treating
Speaker 1: a bad guy. I gotta throw this coming in because
Speaker 1: your listeners will wonder, how did we feel. Well? We
Speaker 1: didn't care as much about his pain as we would
Speaker 1: have cared about one of our own pain. But as
Speaker 1: medical professionals, our job was to say the life, and
Speaker 1: we've been given that task and we performed it well.
Speaker 1: And my pediatrician requested me, against regulations, to go on
Speaker 1: the ambulance transfer because my eighteen year old medic was
Speaker 1: so scared he couldn't figure out how to drop five
Speaker 1: milligrams out of a ten milligram violet of morphine. So
Speaker 1: we both broke the rules and let him go, you know,
Speaker 1: and he chose to do something equally heroic that you
Speaker 1: don't hear from from you know, doctors thinking of het
Speaker 1: grabbed the convoy commander and said, you know, it's four
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning. Everybody's asleep. If we have to
Speaker 1: go three hours to say this guy is going to die,
Speaker 1: because that's how long the ambulance was. But if you
Speaker 1: drive right through the center of bad guy Country, they
Speaker 1: won't even know we were there. And he got permission
Speaker 1: to do it, and they drove right through the center
Speaker 1: of bad guy country, got the casualty to the surgeons
Speaker 1: in forty five minutes, and he lived. And I hope, honestly,
Speaker 1: all of us hope that that man will grow up
Speaker 1: in a more peaceful world because we gave him that chance. Uh.
Speaker 1: Those are two great stories. So you were tired from
Speaker 1: the from the army and what he ups you now?
Speaker 1: So I'm it's kind of fun. Uh. I got thirteen
Speaker 1: years ago. I retired two thousand and six and went
Speaker 1: from Army's second lieutendant to Army Medical Corps colonel and
Speaker 1: put in my papers as soon as I hit hit
Speaker 1: twenty and the Surgeon General called me and said, hey, hey, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: we'd like you to stay. What can we do? And
Speaker 1: I said, you've got to let me see patients and
Speaker 1: he goes, Colonel, you know I can't do that. We
Speaker 1: needed to command hospitals. And I go, I know, and
Speaker 1: that's why I'm retiring. I want to see patients. I
Speaker 1: picked the profession that I loved and I was still
Speaker 1: young doing it as a doctor. So he gave me
Speaker 1: his blessing and I went to Raleigh, North Carolina area,
Speaker 1: a little town of Nightdale and opened a tiny little
Speaker 1: clinic there. It took. It took a chance, not a
Speaker 1: big chance, because I had a contract, but this town
Speaker 1: had no family doctors. His bedroom community Raleigh, and I
Speaker 1: drove up there and looked around and said it's just
Speaker 1: me and a p A. I can handle that, and
Speaker 1: I'm much for being in charge than working for other people.
Speaker 1: So I signed a contract to take over their clinic
Speaker 1: that desperately needed a doctor. They just gave it to
Speaker 1: me for free year ago. Take it. It's funny because
Speaker 1: I hadn't been there five days before. I called my
Speaker 1: wife in a panic, having just signed a three year contracts, saying,
Speaker 1: those places a disaster. Those are people are drug addicts
Speaker 1: wanting breakase sets and and and xanax. And you know
Speaker 1: that staff is not happy, and my wife goes, shut up,
Speaker 1: fix it. You've had five clinics in the army, and
Speaker 1: you are they were all broken when you took them over.
Speaker 1: Just fix it because I'm down here selling your house.
Speaker 1: And eleven months later we won best Clinic Eastern Waite
Speaker 1: County for all all the specialties in Raleigh. Basic leadership
Speaker 1: concepts apply in the military and civilian alike. If you
Speaker 1: if you work to make people happy, to take care
Speaker 1: of your customers, you know good things come of it.
Speaker 1: So fast forward three years now, and I had already
Speaker 1: decided that I couldn't keep practicing in this town, in
Speaker 1: this tiny, little building I was in. We were we
Speaker 1: had way out round our our success story. So I
Speaker 1: gathered up some physician partners, friends of mine, many of
Speaker 1: the military, past military friends, and we opened a new
Speaker 1: fourteen thousand square foot clinic right across the street from
Speaker 1: my old place. Bought a million dollar piece of land,
Speaker 1: put a three million dollar clinic on it, and the
Speaker 1: bank said, you're taking our money. You're the only doctor
Speaker 1: in town. Take it. Okay. Of course, we all had
Speaker 1: to sign away our future children, you know, is guaranteed.
Speaker 1: But I'm happy to say that last year, after thirteen years,
Speaker 1: I was able to walk away sell the clinic for
Speaker 1: a nice profit because it had been operating for thirteen
Speaker 1: years with our tenants paying paying the rent. And then
Speaker 1: through four months ago when the mill of medical system
Speaker 1: that I operate in as an employee got more stupid
Speaker 1: than it is now, I just said, you know, guys,
Speaker 1: it's been fun, but I'm going to go ahead and retire.
Speaker 1: So I retired from active practice. No sooner did I
Speaker 1: step out going. I'm just gonna take six months off
Speaker 1: before I decide what to do. My new book got published,
Speaker 1: and that's creating some energy and a navy Seal Group
Speaker 1: company manager's company out of Florida contacted me and asked
Speaker 1: me if i'd be a consultant for them. They're called
Speaker 1: Victory Strategies and their leadership management consulting firm, and I
Speaker 1: signed on with them. Yakov Worksman is the CEO. He
Speaker 1: was a senior chief teams and not even I'm sorry
Speaker 1: he was not senior listed in the teams. I don't
Speaker 1: think he may achieve now he's got his own company
Speaker 1: of Seal consultants and business consultants. And I said, I'll
Speaker 1: sign on if you'll let me work to fix the
Speaker 1: broken medical systems. So that's my focus now is we're
Speaker 1: knocking on doors to say, who wants to know the
Speaker 1: Navy Seal method for proper leadership and management so we
Speaker 1: can fix our broken health maintenance systems, which are you know,
Speaker 1: becoming more broken by the minute with this COVID crisis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I talked to through Harvard Business School. We want one
Speaker 1: of the top. It's the doctor run hospital, like the
Speaker 1: man in all these senior management or former doctors. It's
Speaker 1: a doctor owned and operated hospital. But so what did
Speaker 1: he say, Because that's designed to be the success story
Speaker 1: of the future he had a kind of fascinating story
Speaker 1: about them turning around hospitals, but it was it was
Speaker 1: more the conversation was like, how do we fix the
Speaker 1: US healthcare system in America as as a whole? And
Speaker 1: he was just like that's a He's like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's a big problem. Doctor run hospital leadership teams are
Speaker 1: pluses and minuses. Most doctors are blittering idiots on anything
Speaker 1: related to management or finance because the training program is
Speaker 1: just too all inclusive. You don't have time to learn
Speaker 1: other stuff. Yeah, Bob, is there anything else you want
Speaker 1: to cover on this one? I really want to have
Speaker 1: you back. I got like, I got a ton of
Speaker 1: notes I took prior to this, but more than covered. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would love to have you back even next week,
Speaker 1: and I'll just make sure I got got my act
Speaker 1: together on this on the stable state. Yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to get into maybe some of the Delta Force stuff.
Speaker 1: So we'll just call this part one and uh, we'll
Speaker 1: have you back, And yeah, I would love to get
Speaker 1: into some of the Delta Force stuff and then talk
Speaker 1: about transition advice because I feel like, especially guys in
Speaker 1: our community are really struggling with the transition like they've
Speaker 1: done done well in the community, but transitioning back to
Speaker 1: civilian world, that's really hard challenge. Unfortunately, I don't think
Speaker 1: our Seal leadership is doing much to help. No, I
Speaker 1: totally agree with you. And in the civilian world is
Speaker 1: bad and getting worse. And you know, when you leave
Speaker 1: the womb, you've got problems. And I've I've treated pts
Speaker 1: see and dealt with, you know, my own combat related
Speaker 1: issues and over the years, and it's tough taking taking
Speaker 1: that step out. We have we can have a fun
Speaker 1: conversation on that. Yeah, I would, I would enjoy that.
Speaker 1: So we'll have you back. And meantime, Seel hell Week
Speaker 1: dot com booths your books are are on the website. Correct,
Speaker 1: two different websites for me. Cell week dot com is
Speaker 1: the Six Days of Impossible book and then Sorts and
Speaker 1: Saints dot com is the new book. Okay, great, well,
Speaker 1: well linked to both those. Hey, this has been a
Speaker 1: real honor talking with you. It really has. And I'm
Speaker 1: now I'm looking at my calendar. Next week is wide open,
Speaker 1: so Internet, get together and let me know. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: let's plan on next week and then uh yeah, it'll
Speaker 1: be a fun two part show and we'll get in
Speaker 1: some more stories and that deal. Sir. Well, thank you again.
Speaker 1: Enjoy the muggy weather of Puerto Rico. Go go catch
Speaker 1: and tarting it again. I will all right, bubake care
Speaker 1: go right now. Alright, guys, Yeah, short episode this week,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna have Bob back next week, so this
Speaker 1: will be a two part interview. Fascinating guy, I mean,
Speaker 1: talk about achievement, you know, Navy steal, Naval Academy, Fleet,
Speaker 1: Navy Seal doctor, Delta Force doctor surgeon, trauma surgeon in Iraq.
Speaker 1: I bought Bob has a amazing career, tons of stories.
Speaker 1: I want to get him back on the show and
Speaker 1: talk about the Delta Force stuff. I think you guys
Speaker 1: would would be into. Uh well, schedule an evening block,
Speaker 1: get some whiskey going, and get Bob to start telling
Speaker 1: us some some crazy war stories. With this time at
Speaker 1: Delta Force. I'm sure, especially in South America, he's got
Speaker 1: some interesting stories to tell us there. But yeah, amazing
Speaker 1: and plus I want to get into the transition stuff
Speaker 1: because not you know, I know most of our audience
Speaker 1: hasn't served, but I think we can talk about a
Speaker 1: lot of issues and and and the audience does want
Speaker 1: to be helpful, So I think it'll be a kind
Speaker 1: of an eye opener to a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of listeners and who are always asking us and emailing
Speaker 1: us in like, how do we help my friend he's transitioning,
Speaker 1: you know, what can I do to help? So hopefully
Speaker 1: that'll that'll stimulate to my ideas because it is a
Speaker 1: problem right now. You know, we have one of the
Speaker 1: largest transitions in our lifetime of active duty to civilian
Speaker 1: and a lot of a lot of people just kind
Speaker 1: of suffering, especially now with the economy being affected by
Speaker 1: the whole COVID nineteen. But I hope you enjoyed kind
Speaker 1: of a little sneak peek Bob's story, which is quite amazing.
Speaker 1: His book Six Days of Impossible. It's about his seal
Speaker 1: Hell Week experience. You know, those of you that that
Speaker 1: don't know what hell week is. It's at the end
Speaker 1: of first phase of seal training, which is divided up
Speaker 1: into three phases. The first phases kind of kick you
Speaker 1: in the nuts phase, Um, they try and throw everything
Speaker 1: at you they can. And at the end of that
Speaker 1: kind of six weeks is Hell Week, which is where
Speaker 1: they keep you up with no sleep for five and
Speaker 1: a half days straight. And it's not just you know,
Speaker 1: stay awake, it's you know, swim two miles in the
Speaker 1: ocean at night, you know, run thirty miles handling firearms
Speaker 1: and another dangerous stuff. So, um, it is a pretty
Speaker 1: pretty amazing how far you can push yourself and how
Speaker 1: far the what the human body is it is capable of.
Speaker 1: So we'll have Bob back next week, so tune in
Speaker 1: for that. I would love to talk to him about,
Speaker 1: like I said, the Delta Force stuff. I also want
Speaker 1: to talk about a student of mine, Johnny Kim, who
Speaker 1: was a sniper student, went to Harvard Med School. As
Speaker 1: if that wasn't enough, applied to the astronaut program, and
Speaker 1: it's now the third Navy Seal astronaut behind my platoon
Speaker 1: Commander Chris Cassidy, who's in charge of the astronaut program.
Speaker 1: Navy CEL sniper, Harvard Med School, now astronaut. So Johnny
Speaker 1: Kim is pretty pretty amazing story. But I'm sure Bob
Speaker 1: as a few stories about Johnny he could share with us. Well,
Speaker 1: and that's it. I hope you guys enjoyed this show.
Speaker 1: We're really kind of ramping up the podcast, getting some
Speaker 1: really cool guests on kind of breathing some life back
Speaker 1: into it. You know, we got our asses kicked at
Speaker 1: the end of last year. I'll get into that maybe
Speaker 1: on one of the other episodes two as well. But
Speaker 1: excited that we have a partnership with i Heart Media
Speaker 1: and now the podcast Software Radio is on the i
Speaker 1: Heart platform. We're pretty excited about that and that opens
Speaker 1: up a ton of opportunities for us to get some
Speaker 1: really interesting guests on the show, from rocks rock musicians
Speaker 1: to UH actors and all sorts of a crazy guests.
Speaker 1: So appreciate you guys tuning in. Please check out all
Speaker 1: of our survival products in the load out room, which
Speaker 1: is the the SOFTWAREP survival store at softwarep dot com.
Speaker 1: We're also running a special right now twelve months of
Speaker 1: software for twelve bucks, so make sure you check that out.
Speaker 1: One of the other things I want to mention we
Speaker 1: are doing this year a fishing, diving, and hunting trip
Speaker 1: three septar trips, kind of sponsored by one of the
Speaker 1: one of the staff writers on SOFTWAREP, so be on
Speaker 1: the lookout for that. We're pretty excited to do that
Speaker 1: and it's kind of you know, just for our core subscribers,
Speaker 1: but it's a way to kind of build community and
Speaker 1: have some fun low offs esteem. Um, so look for that.
Speaker 1: That will be you know, over the next twelve months,
Speaker 1: we'll be putting that in place with Nick Kaufman, our
Speaker 1: editor in chief. And that's it. I hope you guys
Speaker 1: enjoyed the show and I'll see you next week with
Speaker 1: Bob Adams out here. Love them listening to self rep Radio.
Speaker 1: New episodes up every Wednesday and Friday. Follow the show
Speaker 1: on Instagram and Twitter at self rep Radio or