Speaker 1: A beautiful If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Soft Red Radio Special Operations, military news
Speaker 1: and straight talk with the guys in the community. Hey,
Speaker 1: what's up. Welcome back to another episode of Soft Rep Radio.
Speaker 1: Those that you are watching already see that I have
Speaker 1: my guest on and it is Mike laithe Seal team
Speaker 1: for operator United States Navy drifter in life. I like
Speaker 1: to see those bumper stickers out there on the road
Speaker 1: that say not all who wander our loss. Mike, Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show, Arad. I appreciate it. It's awesome to
Speaker 1: be on here. Yeah, it's we're happy to have you know.
Speaker 1: Brandon's like, YO, dial them up, let's get him, and
Speaker 1: I was like, let's get it. And what we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about is, really, what was it that drove you
Speaker 1: to join the seals? You know, how old were you
Speaker 1: and was it like a high school? Like, tell me
Speaker 1: a little bit about what took you from boom. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a funny story, so, I mean, everyone's story
Speaker 1: that gets to the seal teams or any special operations
Speaker 1: unit's pretty unique. But when I asked to go back
Speaker 1: to when I was in grade school. So I was
Speaker 1: in fifth grade, I got in trouble for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: I was always getting in trouble. I got grounded and
Speaker 1: I wasn't allowed to watch TV. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: before iPads and all that ship so it's like all
Speaker 1: I had was TV. So my mom was like, read
Speaker 1: a book, and I was like, I don't want to
Speaker 1: read a book, and she took me to It was
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble, and I walked in and I went
Speaker 1: over to the military section, and right away there was
Speaker 1: a there was a book there a guy all painting
Speaker 1: up in camouflage, hiding in the jungle, and there's a
Speaker 1: big gold trident on it. I had no idea what
Speaker 1: Navy Seals were at the time, but I just let
Speaker 1: the comfort looked cool as ship. So I was like,
Speaker 1: it was about Vietnam for dogs, you know Frogman in Vietnam.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of Seal Team one stories, if
Speaker 1: I remember right. And I was hooked. And then like
Speaker 1: within months the movie with Charlie Sheen came out in
Speaker 1: Navy Seals, and I was like, I was like done,
Speaker 1: I'm doing this. And so then in sixth grade in
Speaker 1: my school district where I grew up. You graduated sixth
Speaker 1: grade and went to middle school and they did like
Speaker 1: a graduation ceremony. We had a yearbook and in the
Speaker 1: yearbook it asked in twenty years, I will be dot
Speaker 1: dot dot, and like every kid in my class wrote,
Speaker 1: they're gonna be. I grew up in Philly, so everyone
Speaker 1: was gonna be like playing for the Sixers, the Eagles,
Speaker 1: the Phillies, and I wrote, I'm gonna be United States
Speaker 1: Navy Seal working on top secret missions. And I totally
Speaker 1: forgot that I did that. And when I graduated seal training,
Speaker 1: one of my buddies, his mom was like, they were
Speaker 1: moving and they cleaned out the house and she came
Speaker 1: across the yearbook and she was like reading the stories
Speaker 1: about all the kids we grew up with and she
Speaker 1: was laughing and she was like, holy shit, Mike's actually
Speaker 1: doing this. And they gave the yearbook to my dad,
Speaker 1: who gave it to me at graduation and I was like, damn,
Speaker 1: And I was like, that's pretty cool. Yeah, you're uplishing
Speaker 1: you know, your youthful goals, bro subconsciously right, that book
Speaker 1: just inspired you. Yeah. So it was like so high school,
Speaker 1: I was kind of a lost cause just ended up.
Speaker 1: I was total knucklehead, went to college and I wasn't
Speaker 1: some I wasn't doing awesome. Let's let's just say I
Speaker 1: was just worried, party and having a good time, trying
Speaker 1: to figure out life. So on some wild oats and
Speaker 1: then nine eleven happened, and like shortly after that, I
Speaker 1: was just like, this is what I gotta do. And
Speaker 1: uh about a year after nine eleven. It took me
Speaker 1: a little while to get through the recruiting process because
Speaker 1: I had some legal troubles growing up. But then I
Speaker 1: I finally got into the Navy and uh went to
Speaker 1: the Fleet for a little bit, then ended up at buds.
Speaker 1: What was your need of the Navy at first? When
Speaker 1: you before you got two buds, Like, you know, we
Speaker 1: always hear about the romance of buds. What was it
Speaker 1: that you did prior to that? So at the time this,
Speaker 1: you know, it's going back to like two thousand to
Speaker 1: two thousand three, the Navy, you could get a Seal
Speaker 1: Challenge contract, but the seal Navy seals didn't have their
Speaker 1: own rating, Like eventually they had their own rating or
Speaker 1: called like special s o S Special Operators, But at
Speaker 1: the time, you had to pick a specific rating in
Speaker 1: the Navy to get a billet to buds, and so
Speaker 1: I was like, what's the fastest thing to get me
Speaker 1: to boot camp? And they're like, we have an opening
Speaker 1: for parachute riggers, air crew survival equipment and so um.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't give me a Seal challenge contract of course
Speaker 1: to my police record. So I had to get a
Speaker 1: waiver just to get into the regular Navy, got into
Speaker 1: the regular Navy and then had to go to my
Speaker 1: first command and try out to go through like a
Speaker 1: regular fleet sail or applying the buds. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: I did. That's awesome. I mean you just kept at it.
Speaker 1: You just wanted to serve the country. You know. There
Speaker 1: was a huge you know, rally around the campfire so
Speaker 1: to speak, during nine eleven. I remember it very much,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, there was not so much divisiveness.
Speaker 1: It was like you're either with us or against us.
Speaker 1: You know, It's not like the melting pot that we
Speaker 1: see today. And I have to say that, you know,
Speaker 1: social media helps perpetuate a lot of the narrative out there,
Speaker 1: and I just would like to see, you know, us
Speaker 1: have that same mindse like what you wanted to do
Speaker 1: for the heart of it all be in place right
Speaker 1: now with kind of everyone in the world right like
Speaker 1: to say, like, I don't know how to say it. Man,
Speaker 1: I guess I just want peace in a redwood tree
Speaker 1: with an a king. All right, let's just live there.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't get like social media just perpetuates
Speaker 1: like the people that are on the fringes and they
Speaker 1: get the loudest voice because the garners like the most attention.
Speaker 1: But that's not like I think how you know of
Speaker 1: America really wants to be like we get the two
Speaker 1: and a half percent fringe on on each side, which
Speaker 1: unfortunately just like dominates any kind of news and media,
Speaker 1: and so people think everything is in a shiitter. But
Speaker 1: I still believe in the American people on the American
Speaker 1: dream and are red, white and blue. So that's what's
Speaker 1: I'm the same. Yeah, I just hun and I'm glad
Speaker 1: to hear that from you. Now, Um, you enlisted in
Speaker 1: the military, which is um, did you go through your
Speaker 1: college career or did you just enlist? You said, I
Speaker 1: dropped out to enlist. My dad was a construction worker
Speaker 1: doing water pipe stuff. My mom was a hairdresser. They
Speaker 1: never went to college, so they were pretty excited for
Speaker 1: me to like graduate college, and I was like going
Speaker 1: in my senior year and I was like come out
Speaker 1: and when they were like what, and I was like,
Speaker 1: don't worry, I'll finish my degree on them in And
Speaker 1: I did. I finished my degree on active duty all
Speaker 1: nights and weekends. When I graduate, I sent the certificate
Speaker 1: to my mom, make her all happy. And then uh,
Speaker 1: that's now I unlisted. I like being an eed dog.
Speaker 1: You get the best jobs. Stayment listed then the whole time,
Speaker 1: even with your degree. Yeah. So I hit my tenure
Speaker 1: mark and it was kind of like do I stay
Speaker 1: in for another ten or do I get out? At
Speaker 1: the time, I had three kids. I have four kids now,
Speaker 1: and I was like, dude, I was never home. I
Speaker 1: need to do something different. I saw the Wars winding down.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to be stuck in like a training
Speaker 1: cell all the time, and I was like do I
Speaker 1: do I stay in and go office? Like I don't know.
Speaker 1: I was going through a bunch of stuff. And then
Speaker 1: I applied to business school. I never thought I would
Speaker 1: get into a school like war in business school, and
Speaker 1: I did, and it was in Philly where I grew up.
Speaker 1: So I moved back to Philly with my family kind
Speaker 1: of figure out life. Get a cheese steak with Whiz
Speaker 1: from either one side of the street or the other
Speaker 1: side of the street. Just it's neither of them and
Speaker 1: still Sandro's, And oh, there we go. We're gonna put
Speaker 1: that in the comments. Desandros, We're gonna put that in
Speaker 1: the comments. Gino is saying, I think that's more like
Speaker 1: a tourist. I don't get me wrong, They're good, right, No,
Speaker 1: I get you. There's how many other good places in
Speaker 1: Philly for cheese steaks. Oh, you gotta be stoked at
Speaker 1: the Eagles are going to them? Yeah, a Super Bowl?
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, right, Chiefs and the Eagles, Andy
Speaker 1: Reid coming back. It's funny. It's like Andy Reid coming
Speaker 1: back after he you know, he took the Eagles to
Speaker 1: Super Bowl loss, but he's coming back. And then you've
Speaker 1: got the Kelsey Brothers against you. There's just so many
Speaker 1: cool tidbits with this Super Bowl. Well here in Utah,
Speaker 1: those two bros are the two players from Grantsville High
Speaker 1: School are going to be playing against each other in
Speaker 1: the Super Bowl. So there's the two brothers, and then
Speaker 1: there's Kelsey. I didn't realize from you if that's the
Speaker 1: same two. Actually they both played at Grantsville High School
Speaker 1: here just about twenty minutes west of where I'm at,
Speaker 1: and now, like the news here is never Grantsville, but
Speaker 1: now Grantsville is like, yeah, everybody Grantsville, you know. So
Speaker 1: all right, so, you know, go for both of those athletes.
Speaker 1: Good luck to both teams. It's a sports, a proper sport,
Speaker 1: you know, and let's let's just listen to the refs
Speaker 1: and let your coaches do the talking. Brothers too that
Speaker 1: they run an awesome podcast. It might just be called
Speaker 1: the Kelsey Broller Podcast or something. They're hilarious, they're good.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we'll put that in that. We'll plug it. Dude.
Speaker 1: That's great, and it's cool because it's you know, I'm
Speaker 1: sure that when this goes up, I think the Super
Speaker 1: Bowl is like the eighteen or nineteenth, isn't it. I
Speaker 1: think of this month. I think it's next Sunday, so this, yeah,
Speaker 1: so this will probably go up after So let's make
Speaker 1: a prediction. All right. You're calling it for who oh
Speaker 1: the Eagles? Yeah? By ten? Yeah, I think I'll say
Speaker 1: eagles by a field goal. Okay. I think that's okay, spread,
Speaker 1: so we're good it. Yeah, that's that's like a mail
Speaker 1: by director laces out. Okay, so we'll go back to
Speaker 1: this and listen to say Okay, let's go, let's go,
Speaker 1: let's do it now. The thing you talked about was
Speaker 1: the college that you got into work college after you
Speaker 1: got out of the the sea or you applied, You're like,
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna do ten more years and you're like, entrepreneur. Huh,
Speaker 1: that's what's in your mind. You're just like, go after it.
Speaker 1: You always gravitated towards the entrepreneur thing. I was always
Speaker 1: doing crazy ship when I was a kid, like kids
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood to help me figure out alcohol soul
Speaker 1: and make money with like sid Like I made comic
Speaker 1: books when I was in elementary school and we would
Speaker 1: sell them in school. This is like when the Marvel
Speaker 1: cards were getting real big, before Marvel is what it
Speaker 1: is today. Side landscape and businesses, shovel and snow, all
Speaker 1: that stuff. I got suspended from school because I used
Speaker 1: to buy air heads at wholesale and then I would
Speaker 1: sling them out of my backpack at school for like,
Speaker 1: I get them for like a nickel of piece, and
Speaker 1: I'd sell them for twenty five cents a piece. I
Speaker 1: was making like a hundred bucks a week and change
Speaker 1: getting to the bank in like seventh and eighte oh yeah,
Speaker 1: And then I got suspended if we're doing it? And
Speaker 1: I was like, wait, isn't what I'm learning more from
Speaker 1: this than any fucking bullshit math class were giving me.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're really selling air heads, dude, that's great.
Speaker 1: I mean, not to steal that. But my dad had
Speaker 1: vending machines in the school I went to because it
Speaker 1: was attached to the armory, and he was a Green
Speaker 1: Beret that his unit was attached to there. So there's
Speaker 1: an army attached to the to the Junior High. And
Speaker 1: he put a key around my neck and he's like,
Speaker 1: anytime you see these vending machines turned off in the gym,
Speaker 1: you just turn them right on, okay. So so I
Speaker 1: would be the kid that everybody roll with. We go
Speaker 1: over to the vending machines, just turn them right on
Speaker 1: my dad's coke machine and they'd all just get cokes
Speaker 1: right there. Yeah, hundred percent, dude, and hustling as well.
Speaker 1: I used to sell grilled cheeses for a dollar or
Speaker 1: or a hole for two because I didn't have a
Speaker 1: job at thirteen. Who's gonna hire me? You know? So
Speaker 1: I was everybody's selling lemonade, and I was like, I
Speaker 1: got you something different than Cody. So I'm gonna sell
Speaker 1: grilled cheese with Velvita bro And I sold him all
Speaker 1: thirteen bucks. But I was like, what are you doing
Speaker 1: selling all your diet cokes from the vending machine. He's like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's good times, Bro. Like I just always had that
Speaker 1: entrepreneurial bug. And then when I got out active duty
Speaker 1: and I was at school, I was at you know,
Speaker 1: I was at this fancy business school, and I was
Speaker 1: just like I didn't even know what half the stuff was.
Speaker 1: I was looking at like the difference between investment banking,
Speaker 1: private equity, hedge funds, and I was just trying to
Speaker 1: figure it out. The problem was going entrepreneurial at that
Speaker 1: time is like I have kids. I needed support. And
Speaker 1: when you're an entrepreneur and go to a startup, like
Speaker 1: you're in a hurt locker for quite some time until
Speaker 1: it starts becoming successful, if it becomes successful at all,
Speaker 1: so I took jobs that paid for a bit, but
Speaker 1: I was doing a side like I started off doing
Speaker 1: a real state side hustle. I was about to start
Speaker 1: off flipping properties, and then from there I rolled in
Speaker 1: and getting like multifamily real estate investment so I could
Speaker 1: get like monthly cash flow off the rents. And then
Speaker 1: when we started zero wise and eighteen, I sold all
Speaker 1: of that to dump it into the company so we
Speaker 1: could get ourselves going. And then he had a course
Speaker 1: to focus on now with zero eyes. And yeah, if
Speaker 1: I read a little bit about like the docier that
Speaker 1: came through on it was like right after the Parkland shootings,
Speaker 1: you know, and of course other shootings. I'm sure you
Speaker 1: know at the schools or at soft targets that we
Speaker 1: all you know, frequent, whether it's the mall or the walmarts.
Speaker 1: It kind of impacts you, like it impacts me, but
Speaker 1: you're doing something about it. Yeah, tell me about that. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: So me and another co found when we get around
Speaker 1: and kick around business ideas all the time or like beers, coffee, whatever,
Speaker 1: even on the phone text, and then the start of business,
Speaker 1: you have to be solving a problem for someone, right,
Speaker 1: and every time we turned on the news. I mean,
Speaker 1: nothing's changed since Columbine. It's it's only gotten worse. But
Speaker 1: this is going back to two thousand seventeen, and it
Speaker 1: was like every time you turn on news, it was
Speaker 1: another shooting, another shooting, another shooting. And then the Parkland
Speaker 1: school shooting happened. And my daughter's school, my oldest daughter,
Speaker 1: she was in middle school at the time that school.
Speaker 1: Her school started doing a lockdown drills, also known as
Speaker 1: active shooter drills, and she came home really upset, like
Speaker 1: that we had to do this drill or they're gonna
Speaker 1: shoot our school like these other schools. And I was like,
Speaker 1: this is fucking nuts. Like and I knew some folks
Speaker 1: that were doing facial recognition technology and that was always
Speaker 1: in the back of my head and all the stuff
Speaker 1: that was happening with AI and computer vision, just trying
Speaker 1: to learn more about it. And then fast forward a
Speaker 1: couple of days. I was just sitting in our school
Speaker 1: waiting for an indoor lacrosse practice to be over, and
Speaker 1: as I was sitting, I was just looking around as
Speaker 1: a camera like every twenty feet in a school, and
Speaker 1: he could do some quick math, you know, like there
Speaker 1: has to be two cameras in this building and they
Speaker 1: have security guards, security guards walking around there like, and
Speaker 1: I was like, Hey, who's looking at the cameras and
Speaker 1: he was like he like laughed, He was like, no,
Speaker 1: one's looking at the cameras. We only look at them
Speaker 1: after something happens. I was like, why don't we use
Speaker 1: him instead of like doing facial recognition where everyone has
Speaker 1: all these privacy concerns, why don't we just focus on
Speaker 1: detecting a gun. If someone has a gun out in
Speaker 1: the open, like particularly out of school, I think everyone
Speaker 1: wants to know. So now we could give that information
Speaker 1: of like what that person looks like, what type of
Speaker 1: weapon are carrying, how many shooters are and GEO locate
Speaker 1: them on a map for first responders and local staff
Speaker 1: and securities, so they could get people to safety as
Speaker 1: fast as possible, but also decrease the response time and
Speaker 1: stop the threat, stop the bleeding, you know, save time,
Speaker 1: save lives. And had that I called up my my buddies,
Speaker 1: my co founders, and I was like, yeah, I got
Speaker 1: this idea. And I was like, you guys in we
Speaker 1: all quit our jobs and moved into my couple of
Speaker 1: them moved into my basement, living on Hammocks for a
Speaker 1: couple of months and we sell funded the business to
Speaker 1: go for like the first year, I was just trying
Speaker 1: to figure it out. And here we are five years
Speaker 1: later and we have almost thirty employees, were in thirty
Speaker 1: five states, growing in schools, commercial places, and military installations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're finding it a need to say, hey, if this
Speaker 1: does happen here, it's not to stop the situation. It's
Speaker 1: too zero in on my pencil. If you will freeze
Speaker 1: frame it freeze frame meat holding said pencils, send that immediately,
Speaker 1: Like this is what we're looking for, this this situation,
Speaker 1: and it's going to alert the authorities and those that
Speaker 1: need to know that this is happening and so they
Speaker 1: can respond before anybody can even get to the phone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just real time actionable intelligence in a perfect world,
Speaker 1: like we detect that weapon, shots or even far and
Speaker 1: we can stop it before anyone gets hurt. And it's
Speaker 1: like that's to win everyone wants. I mean, you're coming
Speaker 1: up with something though, there's it's better than you know,
Speaker 1: sending my kid with I mean, I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: dog it, but like a kevil Ark backpack, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to say if you said your kid
Speaker 1: with the kevil Aar backpack to school, there's I'm just saying, like,
Speaker 1: we just that's that's great. Yeah. All the security cameras
Speaker 1: are already there, so like, why don't we make them
Speaker 1: active to detect the gun? Like everywhere you go to
Speaker 1: security camera were monitored walking down the streets. Yeah, trying
Speaker 1: to give away my medical information, hippa. Yeah, let's go on,
Speaker 1: hippo hippa. Come on, man, if you tell me it's
Speaker 1: not hippa, it's you, come on. I'm sorry. I just
Speaker 1: you know, I just want to this facial recognition man,
Speaker 1: it is everywhere I was in London, you know, and
Speaker 1: they say when you're walking through London for ten minutes,
Speaker 1: you're like filmed times. It was the most most video
Speaker 1: in the world. Yeah, I just walk. I'm just like
Speaker 1: I feel safe in London. I'm like la la la,
Speaker 1: because I just feel like, do you like what you see?
Speaker 1: Are you enjoying your show? You know? That's really that's
Speaker 1: like Truman, here we are, you know, and when you
Speaker 1: referenced AI, it's an acronym that we're using more and more.
Speaker 1: That's artificial intelligence. And that's where we're getting these types
Speaker 1: of facial recognition platforms or gun recognition platforms. That's pretty
Speaker 1: cool now it's it's can it only be pulled out
Speaker 1: so you have to actually pull out the device to
Speaker 1: be scanned, or can it be like can you see yea,
Speaker 1: so we we we don't do concealed weapons. It could
Speaker 1: be partially so it's all based on off the camera feed.
Speaker 1: It could be partially concealed, but then like multiple variables
Speaker 1: come to play like lighting distance, etcetera, so that the
Speaker 1: simplest way we tell people is like if a human
Speaker 1: is sitting down looking at that video feed and they
Speaker 1: could tell like, hey, that's a gun. Are zero eyes
Speaker 1: platform will also detected it took gun. I see. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's amazing because it's just gonna get more refined, you know.
Speaker 1: We're yeah, it's crazy how much it improves. It's like
Speaker 1: a snake eating its own tail, like the feedback loop
Speaker 1: of it improving. But the really interesting thing about it
Speaker 1: is like the detections, Like we see detections that are
Speaker 1: so far away we're like holy shit, or like weird
Speaker 1: lighting conditions, and it's like it just works really well
Speaker 1: and you can get that information to people as soon
Speaker 1: as possible with your testing you've been doing with range
Speaker 1: and whatnot, sure, and just trying to see what you
Speaker 1: can pick up, how it can pick up with that algorithm.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you guys keep that close to your chest
Speaker 1: that no one can you know, Yeah, go after that.
Speaker 1: Like all the data we use for it. We sure
Speaker 1: in house. All of our developers are in house. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's our coke recipe. And you have a knack
Speaker 1: for looking for veterans that are qualified to come and
Speaker 1: work with you if they apply themselves. Is that right now? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we love higher and vets. It's um. So. Out of
Speaker 1: the hundred and thirty employees that we have, roughly probably
Speaker 1: about seventy five might even be like our veterans a branch. Actually,
Speaker 1: we don't have anyone from Space Force. We did get
Speaker 1: our first coast. We have a lot of Marines. You
Speaker 1: have Coast Guard. You got Coast Guard, you got a
Speaker 1: count coast guards. They listened to I don't care Department
Speaker 1: of Department of Homeland Security. Man the negative who's going
Speaker 1: to fight for America on the shores first his coast,
Speaker 1: the coast. Yeah, Yeah, we got people from all brands.
Speaker 1: I mean, we love hiring vets, right, it's like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, they're trainable. They got all those soft skills
Speaker 1: that are really important teamwork, communication skills. They could be
Speaker 1: a leader, they could be a follower. They'll grind it out,
Speaker 1: they'll figure it out. But being trainable it's like the
Speaker 1: most important aspect of that because they could come in
Speaker 1: and know anything about computer vision AI, how its sales,
Speaker 1: any of that stuff, like, and we just we just
Speaker 1: train them on it and we show up, just go up. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll get you up to speed pretty quickly. I tell
Speaker 1: my staff every day, thank you for coming to work. Yes,
Speaker 1: and they look at me like, wow, why you're here?
Speaker 1: Don never only get one thing done today? It's at
Speaker 1: least at least you're moving in the right direction exactly
Speaker 1: you came to work. He's committed to coming to work
Speaker 1: and uh, that's awesome. So do you find that using
Speaker 1: your seal background has helped you and your military background
Speaker 1: in this endeavor? You know, yeah, it definitely does. It
Speaker 1: really helped because because we're working in a security space,
Speaker 1: we're we're dealing with in our process with our clients
Speaker 1: or potentially going to be our clients. In our sales process,
Speaker 1: we're always dealing with like security director, security minded folks,
Speaker 1: and it really helps coming from like a military and
Speaker 1: then we have law enforcement backgrounds on our team too.
Speaker 1: We could speak the language outside of like the I
Speaker 1: T tech realm. We could speak the language of like
Speaker 1: what to do about certain threats and timing and movement
Speaker 1: and how it can help and what's the really at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, if you're paying for this,
Speaker 1: what's the what's the value they were getting out of it?
Speaker 1: And we could easily show it. But once people have
Speaker 1: like zero eyes on our platform and we see it
Speaker 1: over and over and over again with with clients, what
Speaker 1: they do is like they'll go put on like a
Speaker 1: small subset of their cameras and then they have the
Speaker 1: local police run drills with their security team, like an
Speaker 1: active shooter drill, etcetera. And they do it without the
Speaker 1: software running, and they do it with the software running
Speaker 1: because they want to test that. They want to like
Speaker 1: punch holes in it and they want to kick the tires,
Speaker 1: and we're like, yeah, go for it. Do it everyone.
Speaker 1: After they use it and they get the alerts and stuff,
Speaker 1: they're just like, damn this needs to be on every camera.
Speaker 1: This is so helpful because if you think about it, now,
Speaker 1: an active shooter event happens, the way the police are
Speaker 1: responding is from a nine one one call. So shots
Speaker 1: are fired at whatever building or whatever location. Everyone starts scattering,
Speaker 1: some people run, some people don't. They have tunnel vision,
Speaker 1: their hearts rights through the roof, they're sweating, they're scared,
Speaker 1: they're locking up. And then within a minute of that shooting,
Speaker 1: you're finally getting some NIE on one calls and a
Speaker 1: person is like, hey, there's there's a there's a shooter here,
Speaker 1: and they're where are you And they're like they just
Speaker 1: named a building or the campus, like oh, I'm at
Speaker 1: such and such school or such and such mall or whatever,
Speaker 1: such and such military base. Okay where and it could
Speaker 1: be like a hundred acre campus and they like, we'd
Speaker 1: dialing them into to the X to exactly where they
Speaker 1: need to go, not only that from one oh three,
Speaker 1: yeah right, And so once the police or first responders
Speaker 1: like use our sister, like damn, this is a game changer,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, yeah, it's gonna it's gonna help. Now.
Speaker 1: Is it like the cure all to this? No? Absolutely not.
Speaker 1: But it's like it's something moving us in a right
Speaker 1: there action to make a difference. Well, I completely agree
Speaker 1: with that, you know, and if it can help, you know,
Speaker 1: to just extinguish the situation. You know, no one wants
Speaker 1: it to be a loss of life, right, but still
Speaker 1: lock up your guns at home, parents, Yes, yes, put
Speaker 1: a lock on it. Yes, let's start there, Okay, because
Speaker 1: that's an accessible situation, right, let's just be aware of that.
Speaker 1: And I have that locked up. You should have yours
Speaker 1: locked up, have access to it. I have a thumb
Speaker 1: print style situations. So, you know, because they're coming out
Speaker 1: with these this tech that goes actually on gun grips
Speaker 1: where it's only your fingerprint will allow you to just
Speaker 1: a weapon or like whoever else you have in your
Speaker 1: environment for that thing. And I was like, so it's biometric. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was like that's interesting, Like, I mean, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: put it on like my hunting well, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I would have to. I would have to play with
Speaker 1: it the seeds. See how I feel about it, Because
Speaker 1: if you're wrapped in red the hot to trot, then
Speaker 1: you don't want to have to thumb print to like
Speaker 1: get access. I mean really right, but to get it
Speaker 1: out of the glass case. I think practicing safety is
Speaker 1: going to be the first thing at home talking to
Speaker 1: your kids. Let them know like, hey, this is in
Speaker 1: the house. This is the things that they're put away.
Speaker 1: They're locked up, you know, be open with your yeah, exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: unless you want to go and do something with mom
Speaker 1: or dad or I have kids and that they they
Speaker 1: go and stuff with me, and and you just teach
Speaker 1: common sense gun handling skills and you go through range
Speaker 1: safety requirements and everything like that, like, hey, this is
Speaker 1: the muzzle, this is when it's hot, this is like,
Speaker 1: this is the chamber, this is the safety. This is
Speaker 1: a trigger. Don't a trigger, Like, don't swing your muzzle
Speaker 1: around like it's this is why you cleaning stuff. My
Speaker 1: dad taught me stuff I learned in boy Scouts. It's
Speaker 1: it's stuff I teach. Did you have some time in
Speaker 1: the Scouts? Is that right? Yeah? Dude. I love the
Speaker 1: Scouts When I was growing up and my dad was
Speaker 1: involved with it with me and my brother, and then
Speaker 1: I got to I was actually about to make Eagle
Speaker 1: Scout and I was going in ninth grade, so I
Speaker 1: was gonna be like the youngest equal scout in our troop.
Speaker 1: I had like two more things to do. But then
Speaker 1: I was going to the high school, and uh, it
Speaker 1: wasn't cool anymore, and alls I want to go to
Speaker 1: dances and chase girls and hang out with my buddies.
Speaker 1: I don't want to go camping with a bunch of
Speaker 1: dudes anymore. Now I love camping with a bunch of dudes.
Speaker 1: But it was like it was like at the time,
Speaker 1: I was like, no, I'm not doing that. I'm not
Speaker 1: on no right and it's in the back me too, bro,
Speaker 1: don don't worry about it. I got to be uh,
Speaker 1: let's see. So I went from tenderfoot to the next one,
Speaker 1: and then I was pretty much done at about fifteen
Speaker 1: skateboarding and having a skate shop and all this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. I was like, what am I doing? You know,
Speaker 1: it's like I gotta go sell skateboards tomorrow. And then
Speaker 1: now my son, though, he's pushing towards a life, right,
Speaker 1: he needs to get a life as a scout, so
Speaker 1: he's working on that. You know, he's fourteen, and we
Speaker 1: find you know that as long as you can keep
Speaker 1: probably staying the course from fourteen right now to fifteen
Speaker 1: and accomplishing that. They're probably gonna get it once they
Speaker 1: hit fifteen sixteen, they're gonna be coming back into Scouts
Speaker 1: because they have found out they get a rank when
Speaker 1: they get that eagle, and they're coming back into the
Speaker 1: troop and they're like, hey, I just need to catch up.
Speaker 1: And one of my young men, he comes in, he's
Speaker 1: a sixteen year old and he's not even a star yet,
Speaker 1: and he's trying to catch up, you know, and it's like, bro,
Speaker 1: you gotta have at least six months between life and
Speaker 1: the eagle, you know, just even just to even get that,
Speaker 1: you have to have all these service projects. And he's
Speaker 1: so he's chasing it, right. It's just something that's always
Speaker 1: just like, oh, stick with him here if you're karate. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Every summer I was, we would go to like uh
Speaker 1: they would have camps out on the East coast, like
Speaker 1: big big boy Scout camps, like with no Camp Nobi Bosco,
Speaker 1: bush Kill Falls. I would stay there for like a
Speaker 1: week or two in the summer and just like working
Speaker 1: all my different marrow badges and make fires from run
Speaker 1: around in the woods and play Capture the Flag and
Speaker 1: go to the lake and it was awesome. You know
Speaker 1: that totally just goes right into what you went into
Speaker 1: in the navy. You know, yeah, who needs to start
Speaker 1: a fire? Who's cold? Let's shiver. Watch if we shiver.
Speaker 1: We'll stay alive until you're tired, and then you can't
Speaker 1: shiver anymore, but we'll try. You know here, you are right, simple,
Speaker 1: simple things. It's funny when you see a thirteen year
Speaker 1: old leading grown adults on a seven point five mile
Speaker 1: hike into the backwoods, but they're like, this is that plant,
Speaker 1: this is that plant, that's that animal, and this is
Speaker 1: that rocket. Don't step there. I mean, if there's something
Speaker 1: to be said about that. With all of this business
Speaker 1: that you're going after with the d D are they
Speaker 1: are they pretty heavily with your company, I would imagine.
Speaker 1: I mean it's tough doing government contracts, right, so you
Speaker 1: have to really walk the dog, and it takes it's
Speaker 1: a really long process and cycle. So we started off
Speaker 1: with like super small they're called s b i RS
Speaker 1: Small Business Innovative Research Grants or something along those lines.
Speaker 1: And we started off small, like really small ones where
Speaker 1: it was like a proof of concept and like a
Speaker 1: power point presentation, and then it went to like making
Speaker 1: it a reality. So the Air Force sponsored US for
Speaker 1: a couple of those grants to do stuff at different
Speaker 1: air bases, submarine bases have worked with US armies picking
Speaker 1: up and so now it's like we've done really well,
Speaker 1: and particularly in the d D space or like within
Speaker 1: the military basis, it's starting to spread to other things
Speaker 1: within like just a huge umbrella of the d O D.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, we see a world where we're going
Speaker 1: to be on many more military bases with their security count. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could see that shooters across military bases like oh yeah,
Speaker 1: like Pentecle, Hawaii. Yeah, come on, I mean really, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: it's just yeah, that's crazy. You know, it's just such
Speaker 1: a surreal conversation I'm having about right now with you
Speaker 1: as this whole you know, active shooter at these places
Speaker 1: and you know how we're trying to thwart it, and uh,
Speaker 1: it's kind of bringing it home a little bit. I
Speaker 1: just so don't mind me if i feel I'm getting somber.
Speaker 1: I just feel a little like, you know, my son
Speaker 1: was in an active drill at school, you know, and
Speaker 1: they forgot to release them from it and let them
Speaker 1: know it was a drill, and so one of the
Speaker 1: little girls in the class was just like crying and
Speaker 1: screaming because it was about twenty minutes had gone by
Speaker 1: and they were like still sheltered in place and no
Speaker 1: one had like released the kids from this drill that
Speaker 1: they planned, and so they yeah, I mean that's kind
Speaker 1: of like just trauma. Yeah. I tell people like it's so,
Speaker 1: you know, my parents and stuff to grow up doing
Speaker 1: nuclear fallout shelter drills because of the Cold War. Then
Speaker 1: we grew up doing firelarm drills. Like the idea of
Speaker 1: an active shooter drolls like not even close, not not
Speaker 1: even in the realm of reality. Then you had senior
Speaker 1: in high school and the combine happened, and it's just
Speaker 1: like the world drastically changed from that, or at least
Speaker 1: in the United States, and now we have our kids
Speaker 1: doing these active shooter drolls all the time, like it's
Speaker 1: like norm like a fire alarm drill, and you're like,
Speaker 1: what the fuck. And that's why I see it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I never had that camera eventually, or this type of
Speaker 1: technology being on every camera eventually, just that it's more
Speaker 1: way more. It's like twelve or fifteen times more people
Speaker 1: die from gun violence every year than they do fires.
Speaker 1: But every building you walk into as a smoke detector, firelarm,
Speaker 1: higher suppression system, and like it's just gonna be code
Speaker 1: where you have to have this technology on to help
Speaker 1: with the first responder so they co get medical aid
Speaker 1: and aarro as fast as possible to stop the threat
Speaker 1: and uh, get people, it's true. And get some decent
Speaker 1: cameras for your security system. What pixel camera back, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? I want cameras that can at
Speaker 1: least see the assailants stabbed me, okay, so they could
Speaker 1: catch him right, Like who was that? You know, it's
Speaker 1: like I may not make it, but at least you
Speaker 1: got the footage. And when you see some of the
Speaker 1: footage that comes over the news of like whatever robbery
Speaker 1: or something like that kind of news, and you're like,
Speaker 1: what is that camera from like five? What? What is that? Really?
Speaker 1: I mean? Is that is that coda? Black and white film?
Speaker 1: What are they what are they still using? There was
Speaker 1: a then record that Yeah, it's true. It's like a
Speaker 1: little bit goes into invest in your security system, right,
Speaker 1: that's what you're there to help with too. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you've got some quality systems that you can recommend if
Speaker 1: somebody decides to, you know, hit you up. And I
Speaker 1: just want to let anyone know, no one's no one's
Speaker 1: paying me to talk about his business. This is something
Speaker 1: that's very specific and very top of the conversation. And
Speaker 1: and he's leading le even the charge with this artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence and the conversation of facial recognition. We're all being
Speaker 1: facially recognized, whether you think it's walking down the street
Speaker 1: or when you go to look at your iPhone. Okay,
Speaker 1: when you're like looking at your cell phone and it's
Speaker 1: like facial recognition to open that thing, like every every Yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't do any facial like. We just focused on
Speaker 1: detecting guns, which is great. We're like, we're focusing on
Speaker 1: this one specific type of object. We're not collecting any
Speaker 1: personal identifiable information. We're not making lists of people to
Speaker 1: watch or anything like that. We're just straight up like, hey,
Speaker 1: if you want to know if there's a gun on
Speaker 1: your campus or your your business or your base or
Speaker 1: whatever whatever the environment is, like shopping mall, because you know,
Speaker 1: hospital right here, there's a gun right here, and then
Speaker 1: they enact that's right, they enact their their protocols to
Speaker 1: respond to that a while the first responders are coming. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like was that old school that's the old Chevy
Speaker 1: car Star where you'd hit it. It's like you roll
Speaker 1: and it automatically like sends the satellite signal like you're
Speaker 1: an accident. We're sitting one right to you know, right
Speaker 1: onto your spot now on star. Yeah, it's like I'm
Speaker 1: not also not paid by them for plugging them. But
Speaker 1: on start right, we all know what that was. You push.
Speaker 1: It's like you must have a nine dollar a month membership,
Speaker 1: like I have my Like, oh yeah, exactly, exactly. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's just the way of the future. You know,
Speaker 1: technology is gaining steam. You know, you've got you know,
Speaker 1: super artificial intelligence sensors out there in the world since
Speaker 1: for smart cities being constructed, and you know the gun recognition,
Speaker 1: weapon recognition, you know, probably crossbow recognition, I mean recognition. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wish it was just crossbows. You know, if you
Speaker 1: could imagine the right to bear arms with a musket
Speaker 1: right now, active shooters would just be like a one
Speaker 1: shot and then they'd pull on a blade because they
Speaker 1: got time to reload. Right. Black Beard carried eight pistols
Speaker 1: on him black Beard the Pirate, so he had pop
Speaker 1: pop pop pop because he couldn't reload them, right. So
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just saying like, there is that opportunity
Speaker 1: to you know, but I know that my community loves to,
Speaker 1: you know, have their things, and that's fine. Have them.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, just lock them up. Okay, that's what's up.
Speaker 1: I don't care if you have a anything. I'm not
Speaker 1: even gonna talk about no more. I'm gonna stop because
Speaker 1: I got it too, That's all. But I will sit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is, it is, and it gets crazy, and I
Speaker 1: don't want to offend anybody because I do and I don't,
Speaker 1: but I want to talk about what you're wearing on
Speaker 1: your shirt and I feel like I know that logo.
Speaker 1: It feels like to me, yeah, I'm actually Yeah. So
Speaker 1: we went out and did their podcast, me and a
Speaker 1: couple of the founders. Um, we went out to Utah
Speaker 1: to your Jeff and uh yeah it was awesome. We
Speaker 1: went on their show and I got I rocked your
Speaker 1: T shirt all the time. I love it. It's actually
Speaker 1: like it looks like the Ready Man logo. And then yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're actually well, I just had Jeff. I just had
Speaker 1: him on the podcast. He was he just he was
Speaker 1: my two shows before this, I had Jeff Kirkham from
Speaker 1: I think that's probably who took you out. You know,
Speaker 1: I forget his name that interviewed me. I have to
Speaker 1: look at my phone. I'm so bad with names. My
Speaker 1: brains like, so there's probably Jeff and Paul and uh
Speaker 1: you probably back controller and then did stuff at the
Speaker 1: Well he was green Beret and he had that room
Speaker 1: at Black Rifle Studios where it was a really nice
Speaker 1: podcast studio. Would you go into that? Yeah? It was sweet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was that was what I used to use to
Speaker 1: until COVID. That was my studio. Crazy that I can't
Speaker 1: remember his name right now. I'll look it up in
Speaker 1: a second. Now I'm in Whitefish, Montana actually today, Oh
Speaker 1: are you going skiing? And my Fanci was with me
Speaker 1: just snowboarding yesterday but it was snow and so we're
Speaker 1: getting like fresh powder as we're going. I love that.
Speaker 1: I love that. So my wife wants to go to
Speaker 1: Big Sky. That's where you're at right now? Or what
Speaker 1: Whitefish Mountain? White Fish, Whiteish north so like Missoul about
Speaker 1: two hours north of and well, but like later tonight,
Speaker 1: I'm going down to Cal's Belts or Black Rifle Coffee
Speaker 1: place that they just built there with Andy Stump and
Speaker 1: going on his Clear Hot podcast with some of my founders.
Speaker 1: But we know Andy from he was like our instructor
Speaker 1: and the Seal teams at one point and some of
Speaker 1: the guys deployed with them that are gonna go be
Speaker 1: on the show. So it'll be cool. That's awesome, bro.
Speaker 1: And if you're ever here in Utah and you want
Speaker 1: to go ride up at like any of the brightening
Speaker 1: or something, you just let me know. Yeah, we'll go.
Speaker 1: Yeah for your fiance. My wife will all ride, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. She's snowboards and there's got a great terrain park.
Speaker 1: You know, lots of good I mean not so much.
Speaker 1: It's not there's there's vertical there, but it's a lot
Speaker 1: more like long runs for especially snowboards. Yes, we're going
Speaker 1: on runs yesterday that we're over an hour long, which
Speaker 1: is amazing, Like you don't get that on the East Coast,
Speaker 1: Like you can go up to Vermont and get like
Speaker 1: some decent you can get some decent ones from the
Speaker 1: East Coast from Vermont, but like they were getting long
Speaker 1: run yesterday and we're not going to rust off. We
Speaker 1: haven't gone in a while, and we haven't gone it
Speaker 1: all this season. But it was nice as gorgeous. I
Speaker 1: love it. Yeah, I'm gonna whom that you're gonna you
Speaker 1: wear a helmet. I usually do, yesterday I actually didn't.
Speaker 1: I was just were just we weren't going down. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're all greens and blues. Yesterday, we weren't doing anything.
Speaker 1: I got. I got you, bro, I'm just gonna let
Speaker 1: you know. I'm just gonna be Jimmy Cricket right now.
Speaker 1: Just whisper in your ear, so let you know. So
Speaker 1: let you know we're not getting younger. You know, I
Speaker 1: take any more hits on my head. I've taken too many.
Speaker 1: So I was cutting some trees yesterday, going through them,
Speaker 1: you know, with my wife, and I was leading, and
Speaker 1: I came up a little high and hit the back
Speaker 1: of my edge against the tree and I was like, oh, ship,
Speaker 1: you're a real tree, bro. That tree is like oh,
Speaker 1: And it knocked me down a little bit. I just
Speaker 1: off balance off my board and I was like, I
Speaker 1: got a helmet on. I got a helmet on. That's
Speaker 1: all I'm thinking. It's like I got a broken arm,
Speaker 1: but I got a helmet on. I'm taking your advice
Speaker 1: because you got it. It's not even about like you
Speaker 1: hitting a tree or sometime. I mean that that's obviously
Speaker 1: a part of it, but you all know that other
Speaker 1: knuckleheads that are out there that are gonna come true
Speaker 1: into you. Ye. No one's even like I'm always like
Speaker 1: coming out or you know, right side, and there was
Speaker 1: just like trying to like cut You've got fast, dude,
Speaker 1: cruise and past you trying like fourteen year olds, I
Speaker 1: have no fear and they're just like flying right yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we'd like bells like bring ringing on the beach
Speaker 1: on your bike's ring ring coming through ring. I'm cool
Speaker 1: with that. A whistle you could take a wid I
Speaker 1: haven't like I love taking my kids and stuff too,
Speaker 1: but most good person like I I'm like going out
Speaker 1: of speed where I have a beer in my hand
Speaker 1: and a smoke and I'm like I'm flying totally nice.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we'll get along just fine, dude. I have
Speaker 1: no problems with that. And if again, if you're ever
Speaker 1: out in Utah, just let me know. We'll go right
Speaker 1: up to Brighton and uh let's go right up there
Speaker 1: and ride. It was we got about a hundred and
Speaker 1: right now, so we've already maxed out from our last
Speaker 1: two seasons. This year. Actually lived in Tahoe. I dropped
Speaker 1: out for a semester just before I even went into
Speaker 1: the military, and I just I just bought a plane
Speaker 1: ticket to Reno and I packed rag and within like
Speaker 1: five days and left. I had no plan and I
Speaker 1: got out at Reno and I was like, this is desert.
Speaker 1: I was like, I was expecting Tahoe. I got a cab.
Speaker 1: I only had like four dollars in my pocket. I
Speaker 1: took a cab from Reno to Lake Tahoe and was like,
Speaker 1: dropped me off at the first ski resort, and they
Speaker 1: dropped me off at Sugar Bowl and I went in.
Speaker 1: I was like, hey, do you have a job, and
Speaker 1: they're like yeah, And I took a job like kitchen
Speaker 1: sometimes I've worked out to be like a lift operator
Speaker 1: and then smart though kitchen housing barracks warm thing with
Speaker 1: a bunch of other employees, and it was like I
Speaker 1: was there for four months. It was awesome. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: What a great core memory right there, dude, that's awesome,
Speaker 1: right just might might have just turned nineteen, and I
Speaker 1: was like, I need something different in my life right now.
Speaker 1: Going into the Navy, coming out West, you wind up
Speaker 1: probably going through what Coronado and all of that for
Speaker 1: your Seal Team train and then you got put into
Speaker 1: a team that we don't really talk about. You got
Speaker 1: Seal Team six. We hear about Seal Team one, Seal
Speaker 1: Team three, but you're part of Seal Team four. It's
Speaker 1: is that now a lot of us automatically maybe assume
Speaker 1: everybody goes to Afghanistan. Everybody in the Seals just goes
Speaker 1: to Afghanistan, boom, But was your team designated to a
Speaker 1: certain area of operation like now we're so just they
Speaker 1: restructured to Seal Team for before nine eleven used to
Speaker 1: cover down on South America. Post nine eleven, they changed
Speaker 1: it all up. I'm not sure how it is now,
Speaker 1: but they changed it all up where it basically every
Speaker 1: whenever a Seal Team was ready to deploy, they were
Speaker 1: going wherever the action, like you're going Iraq, You're gonna
Speaker 1: so yet, somewhere in Africa, whatever. So I spent all
Speaker 1: my time in Afghanistan. Combat wise, my first deployment, we
Speaker 1: had some platoons go to Iraq, but they were winding down,
Speaker 1: wrapping it up, and in Afghanistan was really picking back up.
Speaker 1: So I spent some time in like this small fob
Speaker 1: with just our platoon by the border of Pakistan, and
Speaker 1: it was it was wild that first employment. We're the
Speaker 1: most attacked FOP while we were there in country, and
Speaker 1: there's like they're only a handful of us staying in
Speaker 1: this thing, and it was like every day, three times
Speaker 1: a day, rockets, mortars, small arms fire and then but
Speaker 1: your this against us to like really stop it. It
Speaker 1: was like they didn't want us going out at night anymore.
Speaker 1: Eventually our commander was like, these guys are gonna get
Speaker 1: fucking smoked if they keep just we're just like sitting ducks.
Speaker 1: And then finally took the gloves off and we got
Speaker 1: after it, and we didn't get it to the last
Speaker 1: three months of the deployment was like roughly eight months.
Speaker 1: The last eight months or three months at the point
Speaker 1: we didn't get attacked at all. It also helped it
Speaker 1: was winner. But then we started moving into like village
Speaker 1: stability operations, which was they would take a handful of
Speaker 1: green Berets, seals or whoever and Stickleman. You would literally
Speaker 1: live in the village with people and like sit around,
Speaker 1: drink tea and eat goat and and then you would
Speaker 1: like try to get them stand up for themselves and
Speaker 1: in a nutshell yah, politically, you know a lot of
Speaker 1: green Berets are you know, just instilled governments. It was exactly.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a typical mission set for Seal at all.
Speaker 1: Like it was definitely a green Berry mission. So like
Speaker 1: before we actually enter our v s O site or
Speaker 1: village ability site, me and two other guys from my opportunity,
Speaker 1: we went out and stayed with green Brays for like
Speaker 1: two weeks out there to see how they're running their
Speaker 1: VSO and what was working, what wasn't, and then we
Speaker 1: went and stood up ours. So it was a really
Speaker 1: interesting deployment. It was very very active. It was everything
Speaker 1: I asked for and was expecting from the Seal. So
Speaker 1: kind of lucked out with that. And then the second
Speaker 1: deployment went back to Afghanistan and I went in on.
Speaker 1: I got attached to a NATO's Special Forces unit. I
Speaker 1: got attached to the Polish Special Forces and what they
Speaker 1: would Yeah, I worked with the GRAM and j W.
Speaker 1: K and so they like one or two seals and
Speaker 1: with them and then like we would help them intel
Speaker 1: and at whatever they need helos, We'll go get helos
Speaker 1: you need intel together a package and then like direct
Speaker 1: on this for like what we wanted to get done.
Speaker 1: So it was a big force multiplier for us. So
Speaker 1: like instead of like the US having to put a
Speaker 1: whole platoon of seals in one area, you can now
Speaker 1: only have to put like two Americans, but used the
Speaker 1: Native Special Forces. And I was like I lived with
Speaker 1: those guys for months and they just like really took
Speaker 1: me in and it was a great time. We're doing
Speaker 1: all some missions. It was. It was a lot of
Speaker 1: nighttime stuff blowing up like I d cachets and crazy.
Speaker 1: It was. It was. It was fun everything you wanted,
Speaker 1: you know, it's what you're weird, you know. It would
Speaker 1: be me and like twelve Polish guys out on knop
Speaker 1: like the Afghans, and I was the only one speaking English,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I was like, well, ship hits
Speaker 1: the fan. At least I was talking to the birds,
Speaker 1: like I was talking to guys. Yeah, hey guys, so
Speaker 1: I'm down here by myself and how are you doing up? There. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not really by myself, but mentally yeah, yeah, mentally.
Speaker 1: And then there was always like that one or two
Speaker 1: Polish guys. I would speak their broken English, but after
Speaker 1: working with them for a while, like you just learned
Speaker 1: how to communicate. I would pick up some of their language.
Speaker 1: They're getting better with mine. And at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, you're special operators, like you know what needs
Speaker 1: to be done and we're body language and everything like that.
Speaker 1: But it was an awesome experience working with much would
Speaker 1: or rather have been with a seal platoon, but it
Speaker 1: was still it was still good. And then there was
Speaker 1: a couple of seals that rotated in and out with me.
Speaker 1: I stayed there most of the time. And then like
Speaker 1: so I wasn't always solo, but it was it was good.
Speaker 1: Like they haven't forgot about you're new. Yeah, are you
Speaker 1: real Polish? I forgot that. I slept through Polish class. Sorry,
Speaker 1: Oh that's intense. You know. They were crazy that they
Speaker 1: would make It was like jail house wine. They would
Speaker 1: take like jerry cans that you would see that you
Speaker 1: would put on like the back of a humby and
Speaker 1: they were setting up. They would use fruit cocktail yeast
Speaker 1: to make like basically do this stuff would rip fucking
Speaker 1: paint off a car. But you got used to drinking
Speaker 1: it after a while. But it probably took a couple
Speaker 1: of years off my life. Oh yeah, you're good. It's okay.
Speaker 1: You're like a cat. It's got to count all those lives,
Speaker 1: those close ones. You're like, Okay, these guys like that. Well,
Speaker 1: I I think that, you know, the Polish Gram are
Speaker 1: just one of those special units that don't really get
Speaker 1: a lot of like spotlight on them, and they like it.
Speaker 1: I get it. And at the same time, you know,
Speaker 1: actually I think there's a character and call of duty
Speaker 1: though that is off the GRAM right now. And so
Speaker 1: you know, they're all about that piano. They have like
Speaker 1: a piano at their headquarters and it's a very significant thing.
Speaker 1: It's very interesting about the ground. So when I went
Speaker 1: in and I only worked with them for like two weeks,
Speaker 1: they ended up doing a mission and we're basically advising him,
Speaker 1: like stop doing it this way, but I'm not going
Speaker 1: to go into crazy details about it, but we're like
Speaker 1: sure me. And there was another seal that was with
Speaker 1: me and he was really working the GRAM. I was
Speaker 1: working at jw K, but we're like right next to
Speaker 1: each other and then we work with each other and
Speaker 1: the GRAM they ended up going out to do this
Speaker 1: op and we were like advising against it because of
Speaker 1: the Intel packet what we're seeing through Intel. And then
Speaker 1: they got they got fucking ambushed. They lost like four
Speaker 1: dudes or true commander took a fucking shot in the face.
Speaker 1: It was bad, and so that they got the rest
Speaker 1: of the poem. For the next couple of months like that,
Speaker 1: they weren't operating, so we just focused specifically on j
Speaker 1: w K. But it was like it turned into a
Speaker 1: ship show. You always feel bad for guys when I
Speaker 1: lose a brother, and it's that's uh. I felt bad
Speaker 1: for them, But they just didn't operate for the next
Speaker 1: couple of months while we're there, So we just worked
Speaker 1: with the j w K, j w K publish Green
Speaker 1: Brace that these guys were awesome too, I see, okay,
Speaker 1: so the GRAB would be looked like a seal, right,
Speaker 1: and then the jw K would be the Green Brace.
Speaker 1: That's s style. That's cool. Yeah, that's cool. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's a bummer that you know that ambush took place,
Speaker 1: because I mean like, these guys are trained up, you know,
Speaker 1: whether there's a packet telling them not to or not,
Speaker 1: they still yeah, you know, you get you like you,
Speaker 1: you know. And then there's someone out there. He says
Speaker 1: that his dirt means more than the side of your dirt.
Speaker 1: And now you guys are fighting over this dirt. Ye,
Speaker 1: and you're both up trained obviously, huh has to be.
Speaker 1: They just they thought they had good intel the this
Speaker 1: target for someone, and they walked into a straight up
Speaker 1: ambush and his compound they had like holes caught out
Speaker 1: in the walls and like they walked right into the
Speaker 1: dead zone and it was just like damn. The fact
Speaker 1: that some of them got out alive is really impressive
Speaker 1: because the four yard and they're just getting a ship
Speaker 1: hammered out of them. Wow. Yeah you were there to advise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, bro, sorry about that to you, and I'm
Speaker 1: just letting you know, okay, it's part of the job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I understood, understood, understood. Well that's crazy. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: try to end it on that, but thanks for being
Speaker 1: who you are. Thanks for going after your dreams. Thanks
Speaker 1: for reading a book in seventh grade that steered you
Speaker 1: into you know, choosing to fight for the flag that
Speaker 1: I get to sleep under at night. Thank you for
Speaker 1: you know, being an outdoorsman and a father and and
Speaker 1: coming home to us safely, and so thank you too
Speaker 1: for me to you for all those things. So thank you, yeah, man, yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you, and thank you for all you do getting
Speaker 1: the word out and all these great stories and people
Speaker 1: you have on your show. And I appreciate it. Rat
Speaker 1: it's awesome than beer. You're very welcome. It's that beards
Speaker 1: perfect you. I'll tell you when it gets ice beards
Speaker 1: from snowboard and bris it was like the big chunks
Speaker 1: in there. And yes, I love that. I know my
Speaker 1: wife's all got herself bundled up like a ninja, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, just grow your beard, just let it go,
Speaker 1: let it go. Well, look, I know you've got other
Speaker 1: podcasts to do, and you've got a busy schedule and
Speaker 1: you're a popular dude. So thank you so much. We'll
Speaker 1: make sure that deero Eyes dot com gets mentioned in
Speaker 1: our typed out soft reap dot com post. And I
Speaker 1: just want to thank you so much for serving our country,
Speaker 1: being a really chill dude to take the time to
Speaker 1: talk with me this morning on your vacation and thanks
Speaker 1: so much for joining me. Do you have anything you
Speaker 1: want to say? No? Yeah, just check out zero dot
Speaker 1: com and thanks wrong. You know, let's go make a difference.
Speaker 1: Let's go make a difference. All right, Well this is
Speaker 1: rad I'll be happy, Mike saying peace you them listening
Speaker 1: to self red Radio. M