“So I tell guys, and I tell people in life, if you quit, you’re guaranteeing failure. You are already negating yourself in the only thing that you truly have control over.”–Jay Redman
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Jay Redman is a decorated US Navy SEAL lieutenant. He was critically wounded in 2007 while leading a mission – his team was ambushed and he was struck by machine gun fire. He is the founder of the Combat Wounded Coalition and author of the memoir “The Trident: The Forging and Reforging of a Navy SEAL Officer.” In this inspiring interview you will hear how Jay has committed his life to inspiring and teaching people how to develop an antique of never giving up, no matter the circumstances.
Learn how
- The unwillingness to quit either mentally or physically is the first rule in BUD/S and life.
- SEAL training made Jay understand that neither war, training or any other aspect of life is fair.
- Jay’s determination to help wounded veterans when they return home.
Listen to this episode for a very down-to-earth explanation of military work and leadership.
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We’d love your feedback, please leave a rating and review.Transcript & Shownotes
Hey folks, welcome back to the Unbeatable Mind podcast. This is Mark Divine. So stoked you could join me today. I do not take it lightly. I know your time is very valuable and you have a thousand and one things vying for your attention. That’s why I’m stoked that you have decided to spend the time here, where that time will be spent learning how to develop an Unbeatable Mind. And how to evolve yourself to what I call the 5th plateau. I won’t go into detail now, but you can learn all about that at Unbeatable Mind, our online training program which is a yearlong immersion into developing your 5 mountains of physical, mental, emotional, intuitional, and Kokoro. S
So I also… before I get started introducing my super-cool guest, Jason Redman, want to let your know about the Burpees for Vets challenge. So if you go to burpeesforvets.com, that’s a challenge that I launched literally just 5 days ago, to do as many burpees as we can this year. To raise awareness and money for vets who are suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress. So my commitment is to do 100,000 burpees. I’m doing 300 a day, and then I’ll bank some and we’re going to do a Memorial Day a 24 hour challenge, so you can join us for that.
But go check it out. Burpeesforvets.com. If you’re inspired, you can pledge for myself. You can even put a team together. You can do them solo, and get some people to pledge you. We’ve got about a hundred people already on board and you can choose any number of burpees that are going to challenge you. So just make sure it’s challenging.
So I’ve got some folks who are doing 50,000, 75… Some are trying to up me, and trump my 100,000 and that’s awesome. And I’m sure they’ll do it.
So go check it out, burpeesforvets.com. It’s going to be an amazing thing once we get a few hundred… I’d love to get a thousand people on this thing.
Introduction
04:53
At any rate, maybe Jason… you can join me buddy. So welcome Jason Redman. Super-stoked to have you. How are things going, Jay?
Jay: Mark! Man, I’m awesome. Enjoying the frozen tundra of Virginia Beach right now. And just an honor to be on your show.
Mark: Yeah. My mom is in upstate New York and she texted me. She’s like, “It’s 20 below zero.” She goes, “Don’t tell me that you’re looking at the ocean and it’s sunny and warm.”
And I’m like, “I’m looking at the ocean, and it’s sunny and warm. Sorry.”
So that’s what I…
Jay: I had a friend who called me this morning and he was like, “Yeah, don’t hate me, but I’m in Hawaii right now.” And I was like, “Well don’t worry. I hate you.”
Mark: (laughing) “I hate you anyways.” Exactly.
So Jason, you were a Navy SEAL. You spent 21 years in the teams. I’m just going to give some folks a little bit of background.
You were Summa Cum Laude from Old Dominion University. You went into the Navy in ’92. Went through BUD/S in ’96. You were a teacher in advanced training.
Then you went into the seaman to Admiral Program. I remember some of the folks who went into that. I don’t know… do they still have that program?
Jay: They do. It’s kind of in the 3rd phase.
Mark: Yeah. What an interesting program. We’ll talk about that.
You got commissioned after that in 2004. You served in Iraq and you were injured… you were wounded over there. And then when you got out, you’ve done a whole bunch of other really cool things.
So one of your passions… we have a lot of things that are in common… cause you have a passion for leadership, you’re an entrepreneur and you’re a philanthropist. And you’re an author. It’s almost your resume… except for the part about getting shot in the face… looks a lot like mine.
So let us…
Jay: (laughing) That was a smart point to pass on, Mark. I’ll just let you know.
Mark: (laughing) I figured that. Oh my God.
Jay: Smarter than I am.
Mark: Well, I don’t know about that. But maybe in different place, different times.
So let’s start at the beginning. I love to kind of like get into what motivated you. What was your inspiration as a young man to go into the SEALs… or into the Navy to begin with? Were you thinking about the SEALs when you went in the Navy? What was that all like for you back then?
Jay: Yeah. Absolutely. When I was a kid, I came from a strong military family. Both grandfathers had served. My dad served in the Army during Vietnam. He didn’t actually go to the war. He was an Airborne Rigger/Instructor. And that’s how he actually found out about SEALs. Back then, SEALs were still going through Army Airborne School and when I was about 14 I’d always said I wanted to go in the military. I was interested in ground forces, Special Operations and my dad said, “You know, there’s a group of guys in the Navy, who… highly elite. Some consider it the toughest training in the world. And they Special Operations coming from the water.”
He knew that I liked to swim. I enjoyed the water. I enjoyed all those things. And I started researching it. And there really wasn’t a whole lot of information back then about the SEAL teams. But I stumbled across a few things that I could find. Mark, you probably know Tim Basilibac.
Mark: Oh yeah.
Jay: And I found Tim’s thesis. Which it was kind of funny… I couldn’t pronounce his name for anything when I got that book. I was telling everybody, “Yeah, I got this book by the guy named Bosilchivak.
Mark: (laughing) We just called him “Bo”
Jay: Yeah. Well what was funny was my first SEAL team I checked into SEAL team 4… My new CO was a guy by the name of Tim Bosilchivak, until I met him and found out his name was pronounced Basilibac. And then I just called him “Bo” from that point forward.
Mark: That’s awesome. Yeah, in fact that wasn’t too much… let’s see, you got in the Navy in ’92. I went through BUD/S in ’90. So I was researching the SEALs in the late ’80s.
And right, there really wasn’t a whole lot. There were a few Vietnam vet books. “Men with Green Faces.” I read that like, 4 or 5 times.
And then the Navy’s own recruiting video. Remember that one? I talk about that a lot. That was fantastic.
Jay: Yeah. I actually… “Be someone special.” I actually talk about that in my book.
Mark; Do you? Yeah, I do to. That totally inspired me. They run a little op and they blow up this radio tower… it’s pretty awesome.
Jay: I don’t know if you’ve watched it lately. When you go back and watch it, it’s like total ’80s cheesy… it’s awesome.
Mark: (laughing) I’m going to have to go do that. Just get inspired.
So you had your eyes set on the SEALs, but it sounds like it took you a few years to get to BUD/S. Talk about your early Navy career. What was that about?
Jay: It did. It took me a few years. I trained, and I’ll be honest, I started encountering the first levels of adversity when I was a young teenager. One of the things… I’m not a real big guy. I’m 5’8″ and when I was in high school, I wasn’t even 5’8″. I bloomed late so I was probably… when I walked in the recruiting station when I was 15. And I said, “Hey, I wanna be a SEAL.” And I was probably 5 feet tall and weighed 95 pounds…
Mark: (laughing) That’s awesome.
Jay: They laughed.
Mark: “What the hell are you talking about?”
Jay: They laughed me right out of the office. They showed me the “Be Someone Special” video. And then they kind of tolerated me for a little bit. I left and then I came back the next week and asked if I could watch it again. And there was a really crusty, salty 1st class… I mean, old school Navy who basically chased me out of there. It was like, “Get out of here. You’re wasting our time. Stop… Don’t come back.”
So that was kind of my first introduction to the military. But I just had this burning drive that this is what I was going to do. And so I trained. I went out for the football team. I wrestled. And I came back maybe a year later.
There was a new recruiter. Great guy, and he helped me down that path. I joined the Navy when I was still in high school at 17. As soon as I graduated high school, I had a boot camp down in Florida. And I screened… there were no SEAL programs back then. You just basically raised your hand and said, “Hey, I wanna try out for the teams. For BUD/S.” And that’s what I did. I picked up a slot, but they were a little backlogged so they sent me to Naval Special Warfare Group 2. And I hung out there for about a year, working in their Intel department before I finally got my slot to BUD/S. And checked in January of ’95.
Mark: That’s cool. So were you an IS–Intel Specialist? Or what was your rate?
Jay: Yup. I was an IS. So I worked as an IS at group 2 and at one of the other SEAL teams while I was waiting to go to BUD/S.
Mark: That’s cool .That’s great preparation actually. I can’t think of anything that could prepare you more for what came down the road.
Jay: Yeah, it was fantastic. I mean, I got to work, and I got amazing insight into the teams. I went over and worked at one of the SEAL teams… working in the operational readiness exercise. For anybody listening, that’s where we… kind of the final graduation exercise where we take SEAL platoons and get them ready to deploy. And go to combat if they have to.
And I got to work in that cell. And I got to work with an old, crusty warrant officer who took one look at me… this 5’8″, 130 pound guy and goes, “You’re never going to make it through BUD/S.” He’s like, “You’re too skinny.” He’s like, “I’ll tell you what you’re going to do. Every day…” And this was, like, November. And he’s like, “Every day, you’re going to go sit in the Chesapeake Bay for 10 minutes. All through the winter until you go to BUD/S.”
So I did it. And I found out later that he would be in staff meetings and be like “You’ll never believe what I got this kid to do!”
Mark: (laughing) That’s awesome. But that probably put some much needed fat on your body, right?
Jay: Well, I think so. Not only that, I talked to people… life’s about perspectives. And I won’t say that after several weeks I felt like, “Oh, the water’s so much warmer out at BUD/S.” But I will admit, for the first couple of weeks, I was like, “Oh, this isn’t that cold.”
Mark: Yeah. Exactly.
Well that’s cool. So then you went to BUD/S. What class were you? At the BUD/S.
Jay: I started 200 and I graduated 202.
Mark: So you had some setback in BUD/S. Were you injured or what happened there?
Jay: Yeah, I was injured. 2 separate injuries. I injured my feet and got rolled back in dive phase. And then while I was on leave, I did something really stupid and broke my arm while out drinking.
Mark: Oh my God.
Jay: So thankfully, even though I think the instructor’s knew that my story did not… did not add up, they let me roll again but I had 3 weeks from the time I got my cast off to class back up. So I will admit, when I classed back up, it was pretty brutal. I was pretty weak.
Mark: And what were the biggest lessons for you from BUD/S itself? From the actual SEAL training? And getting through Hell week and all that?
The Overcome Mindset
14:07
Jay: Definitely the… what I call the Overcome Mindset, Mark. You probably call it the Unbeatable Mind. Every SEAL… when I listen to SEAL speakers we all kind of speak on the same things. And I think those things are forged in BUD/S and then they’re further reforged and hardened when you get into the teams.
And it’s really funny… I’m sure you feel the same way. I now… because I speak so much on leadership and teamwork, I look back on what they did at BUD/S, which sometimes the evolutions… somebody might consider them cruel. Or somebody may consider them unjustly hard or unfair or any of those things.
But now I look back and I see totally why they did it. And the method to the madness. And what they were teaching us.
So probably the number one thing. Here, I’ll tell you what. I have 3 rules to the Overcome mindset. And those 3 rules are the same 3 rules that I tell young pre-BUD/S students on how to make it through BUD/S.
And rule number 1 is don’t quit. Don’t physically quit. And these rules apply in life, they apply in SEAL training, they apply in anything you do. But in BUD/S specifically if you ringing the bell, you have just ended your chance at ever becoming a SEAL. And there’s enough external factors out there that can derail what you want to do. You can’t control injuries. You can’t control these external factors that may play into you getting rolled or failing something.
But the only thing that you can control 100% is whether you ring that bell or not. So I tell guys, and I tell people in life, if you quit, you’re guaranteeing failure. You are already negating yourself in the only thing that you truly have control over. So that’s number 1.
Number 2, I tell guys not to mentally quit. And mentally quitting will lead you down the path of physically quitting and so many people will mentally quit for days before they finally move to that point where they physically quit.
And you’ve seen it. I see it all the time. I see it in the sports arena all the time. I see individuals playing football or a sport where the team is just totally beat. You know? It’s 40 to nothing or something like that.
And the losing team stops putting out effort. They’re just going through the motions. They may physically still be on the field, but mentally they already checked out and lost. And I tell guys, if you do that in SEAL training–1) you’re letting down your team and 2) you are walking down the path of physically quitting. So you gotta steel your mind against mentally quitting.
And then the last thing, and I think the biggest thing I learned at SEAL training was life is not fair. And SEAL training is designed to be unequivocally not fair. And I give… one of the big examples I give are room inspections. How back when we would do room inspections. And they tell you how to be absolutely, unequivocally perfect. And you’d be standing there with your roommates and the instructors would come through. And you knew you had done everything right.
And they would look and look and look and they couldn’t find anything. And then one of the instructors would reach into his pocket and drop some sand on the floor. And be like, “You got sand on the floor. You guys fail.”
And I remember when I was young I was like, “That’s so unfair. That’s such BS.”
But now I look back, and especially after having been in combat… Combat is unequivocally not fair. And life is unequivocally not fair. And you can do everything right. You can have the best team. You can have the best plan. You can have built the best leadership mindset in the people working with you and yourself. And things’ll still go wrong.
And it’s how you handle yourself and drive forward through that, through those moments when you’ve done everything right. And can accept that life is not fair.
Mark: I love that. And, you know, most people these days they would just up and walk out. They would just quit at the first sight of that kind of lack of fairness. They haven’t learned that lesson.
You know, this reminds me of that old saying in the teams, “Failure is not an option.” And a lot of people think that we thought we were perfectionists with that. We couldn’t fail.
The reality is what you just said is what that’s speaking too. Is that life isn’t fair, so regardless of how good you are, how perfect your plan is. How well you’ve trained. All conditions are set for you to win this sucker. There’s a good percentage of the time you’re not going to win. And so the only way you can lose is not learn from that failure. So pick yourself up, clean that frickin’ sand off the floor. And stand by for the next inspection, right?
Jay: Exactly. Laugh. And that’s the biggest thing I miss… I’m sure you do too about the teams… is no matter how bad it sucked, somebody was cracking jokes or making sarcastic comments that would cause you to laugh.
And I miss that. In the civilian world, you don’t see that too often. You know, people get caught up in that stress and they just… that becomes the focus.
Mark: My sense is we have to create that… those environments and that culture. And I’ve worked really hard myself to try create that. But it’s not easy. The SEALs have refined that over 60 some-odd years. But you’re right, to have that resiliency where no matter how hard you get kicked or pushed down you just step back up, a big smile on your face, and a joke at the ready.
I think SEAL training was the funniest period in my life, quite honestly.
Jay: Oh, there were so many hysterical moments. I remember a time… so post-Hell week we were in hydro-recons. For those of you out there that don’t know what that is, it’s where we’d map beaches. You’d basically swim offshore with something called a lead-line. You’d map out how deep the water is and you’d create a chart. So that amphibious forces can come on the beach.
Well post-Hell week, you’re so afraid of the water… None of us wanted to be in it, and a whole bunch of us in the class. Probably about 25 of us went out and bought cheater-tots to wear under our wetsuits. They did an inspection and busted all of us.
So they made us do the hydro-recon that night without any rubber at all… without any wetsuit and so, of course, we froze. And then the next morning they told us that we were going to be kicked out of training. And then they told us we were going to be rolled back.
And I remember, one of our officers, Gus Kaminski, who’s no longer with us. The instructors asked Kaminski, “Hey, what do you wanna do, for punishment?” And he said, “Well, we cheated by trying to cheat the cold so you guys should punish us with the cold.” And we all looked at him like we wanted to kill him.
So every instructor tied to come up with the most evil think they could think of. To make us cold. So after several hours later and nobody’d quit, we’re all shivering in the surf, getting surf tortured. And Kaminski goes, “Hey guys, I just want to let you know something.” And we’re like, “Oh, what?” And he’s like, “I just wanna let you know when I told the instructors we should be punished by the cold–yeah, that was a bad idea.” And we all busted out laughing. Everybody’s laughing in the surf. And I think the instructors saw it and they secured us right after that.
Mark: That is awesome. I love that.
Columbia
22:49
Mark: So when you were at… you went to SEAL team 4, right? ON the East Coast? After BUD/S?
So you served down in… SEAL team 4 is South American kind of focused.
Jay: Yes. Yes.
Mark: Did you do anything interesting while you were there?
Jay: I did. I got to do a lot of interesting stuff. I mean, the counter-drug war was running pretty hot and heavy at that time. And that was one of the reasons why I wanted to go to SEAL team 4.
And got some unique opportunities to go down into Columbia, and my very first trip, we were deep in southern Columbia and doing things and placing sensors and stuff along the river. And I think that was kind of my first introduction that, “Hey, as cool as this job is, there’s also a very real element to it.”
Because I remember when we went back to pick those sensors up, my senior chief was like, “Hey. New guy. Go get those sensors. And, oh, by the way, these are all the different booby traps you should be looking for. Cause the FARC–the guerilla forces in Columbia–they booby trap everything.”
So there I am, this 19, 21 year-old kid who’s walking in this dense jungle next to the river. And every explosion that ever could play in my mind is going off as I go up to recover this sensor.
So Columbia was very neat for me. I loved the people. I loved the culture. But I also–for the first time–got to see the real danger associated with our job.
Mark: You weren’t there to contact the enemy at all, right? You were just there to advise and to gather Intel and stuff?
Jay: Correct. But we took contact. IN the camp we were in. They shot into the camp one night. And that was kind of my first exposure to fire. So yeah, it was a dangerous place down there. But it was awesome. It was a lot of fun.
Mark: Okay. After team 4, what came next?
Jay: So I did 3 deployments while I was at team 4. And then got picked up to go to training. I was communicator. That was kind of my forte. And got selected to go to training. I was teaching communications, reconnaissance, marksmanship. And a lot of fun really I learned a lot.
As you know, when you teach you learn so much more…
Mark: And was this in your training department at team 4? Or advanced training at BUD/S?
Jay: It was team 4’s training department.
Mark: Got it. Yup.
Jay: Before… I think it was the early thousands before the training departments consolidated under the groups.
Mark: Yeah, our training was all at the team level when I was in the teams. I don’t think a lot of people understand that. It’s probably irrelevant for this discussion. But there’s a lot of overhead associated with that. So we had a whole platoon sized training department. And we handled all our training internally
And the problem with that was that the SOPs, they differed team to team. And when we started to interoperate, that became our….
Jay: Yeah, we saw the same thing. And that’s how we operated also.
Mark: Yeah. Okay, so you went to training and after that… I know you went back to combat. Or no, then you went to the Seaman to Admiral Program?
Jay: I did. I got selected for Seaman to Admiral out of team 4, and got sent to Old Dominion University. I basically could pick 3 different areas to go to school–Jacksonville, Norfolk or San Diego. And I had recently married so I decided to stay in Norfolk and went to Old Dominion University. Got a degree in Business Management.
And then commissioned in mid-2004. And came back to the East Coast. They sent me to SEAL Team 10.
And this is where my career kind of went off track a little bit. You would think that being a prior enlisted guy you would come back and you would be this great leader. Unfortunately, when I came back, the world had drastically shifted. Because I went to school… I started school in August of 2001–and obviously 9/11 happened in September. So I had grown up in a pre-combat military. And by the time I came back, all the SEAL Teams had combat experience.
So here I was, I stepped into this platoon… This brand new JO leading guys who had combat experience. But I was an experienced guy. And unfortunately I thought too highly of my own skills and arrogantly my own capabilities. Instead of humbling myself and reaching out to guys around me to say, “Hey man. I don’t know how to do this. All this is different from what I learned in the past.”
Mark: Amazing mess of change, too, hunh?
Jay: Oh, overnight. It was amazing. Within 2 years, everything we did was different.
Mark: Yeah. Incredible.
I can see how that would be a real challenge. Not only that but you’ve been off the operational… you’ve been out of the operating cycle as an instructor. And then you went to school, so you were sitting in a seat. But you were probably 4 to 5 years removed from leading a team with a bunch of guys who are swinging their weapons around behind you. So I can see how that would be a big challenge. What was your wake-up call?
Jay: (laughing) My wake-up call was… I’ll be honest… there were several things that led to this, Mark. In that platoon… I won’t even get into all the details. I’ll just focus on myself. The bottom line that to cope with the stress of not keeping up I started drinking way too much. And I started doing what I used to do as a young team guy… go hang out with the guys. And as you know, as a leader, you have to carry yourself as a leader all the time. So I wanted to act like a leader when I was on the job, but then in my free time, I wanted to cut the fool and be an idiot.
And the problem with that is you’re a leader all the time. And even though I should have known that lesson, I was allowing what was going on around me to drive my decision making. And poor decision making.
Operation Red Wings
29:14
So there was that degradation of confidence in me. And then I was part of the cycle with Operation Red Wings. So I wasn’t on one of the helicopters. I was actually in Germany when the helicopter was shot down. But we flew into country immediately after… recovery ops were still going on. We were part of that deployment cycle in Afghanistan.
So a lot of stress and drama I think, around that. And us trying to get back out into the fight after that incident. And we were on a combat operation in Afghanistan…
Mark: Stop there. So that… most people don’t realize that… Operation Red Wings is the story that Lutrell–Marcus Lutrell–talks about. And Michael Murphy won the Congressional Medal of Honor. So most listeners are aware of that.
But they kind of forget that SEAL Team 10 lost a ton of really good operators on that rescue mission.
Jay: We did. We lost our task unit commander, Eric Christensen…
Mark; Great guy.
Jay: Yeah, he was. He was amazing. He was a great leader to learn under. I wish I had heeded some of his lessons, but sometimes hindsight’s always 20/20. I look back…
And then we lost 5 more guys from our sister platoon, Echo platoon. So Jock Fountaine. Jeff Taylor, Jeff Lucas, Mike McGreevy… four guys. Four guys and Eric so we lost 5 total.
Mark: Those are all my era those guys. Yeah, so you were following up, kind of sweeping up after that? What impact did that have on Team 10 to lose so many operators?
Jay: Major. I mean, there was a tremendous emotional impact. And there was a compounded frustration… and I wrote a lot about this in my book, because we had a hard time getting out and operating after. After that. And there was a lot of reasons for that. There was a lot of political activity that was going on in Afghanistan at the time. The war was… I don’t want to say it was slowing down, but I will say that the leadership in Afghanistan at the time wanted to slow the war down.
And so they were reducing the amount of kinetic operations that were occurring. So we kept putting up missions to go out, and we were all chomping at the bit, obviously, after what happened with Red Wings, we wanted to get out there.
So needless to say, it had a hard impact. And fast forward, we finally went south down to Kandahar and we started operating again. We were all hungry. I was a young guy, and a new leader, and I’d had a lot of friction and issues. A lot of it because of my own mistakes.
So I was on a mission and I made a bad call. I wanted to get down into the fight. WE got into a firefight, and I took myself and our machine-gunner down to try to support an element that was on the ground. And it’s funny… a lot of people who don’t understand the military and the way things work, they’re like, “So let me get this straight. You ran down in this firefight to help?” And I was like, “Yeah.” But they don’t understand multiple moving elements in a firefight. They don’t understand giving up the high ground. They don’t understand when we have air assets, we need to keep people in position so we know where everything is.
And that was all the complexity that occurred. And so that was the pivotal moment that I really got a knot jerked in my chain. They actually pulled me back to Bagram and I had to meet with the C/O. And, you know, if I had humbled myself, Mark. And said, “You know what? You’re right. I made a bad call.” That probably would have been the end of it.
But I didn’t. I fought it. I fought it tooth and nail. I said, “You know what? I did what was right. I ran to the sound of the guns. I went down to support our guys.”
And instead of taking that step back that I know you talk a lot about. I know I talk about it. To reflect on myself, my decision making. What really led up to all those things? And what would have been the impact if things had gone wrong from my decision?
Instead I fought it. So I had several guys who I’d bumped heads with who were like, “Kick him out. Take his trident. Get rid of him.”
Mark: Hmm.
Jay: And so here I was. I’d been in for 12 years at this point. 13 years. And I was faced with the prospect of losing my trident. And I still fought it. I still was in denial about the whole thing. And I went before the C/O and thankfully he believed in me. And these are these moments that you have when people give you a second chance. And that’s what he did. He said, “You know what? You’re going to get a unofficial letter of reprimand.” He said, “It’s going to sit in my safe and the oncoming C/O’s safe and your next platoon–” he said–“it better be spotless. You better be the best leader out there.” And he said, “If you are, this gets shredded and you move on down the road with your career. If it’s not, we sign this and it officially goes on you record.” Which would have ended my career.
Mark: Who was your C/O at the time?
Jay: Bob Gusanteen.
Mark: Yeah. Good guy.
Ranger School
34:41
Jay: And then the last thing they did, they sent me to Ranger School.
Mark: (laughing) Oh, cool. Sure it wasn’t cool to you at the time.
Jay: No. As a matter of fact, I was really bitter about going. I’ll be honest. After the Red Wings deployment, how emotional that was–after getting myself in trouble and coming home from deployment–a very hard deployment–and turning around and having to go to Ranger School only about 8 weeks after I got back. Yeah, it did not go over well with either me or my wife.
But, I tell you what, Mark. I broke down some walls when I was in Ranger School. And there’s a lot more stories. We could be on here for hours. But their bottom line is… well, here… I’ll tell this story cause I think it’s important.
I’ve only quit one time in my life and I quit during Ranger School. Before it really started… when I showed up at Ranger School I had an incredibly bad attitude. I didn’t want to be there.
And I also totally underestimated Ranger School. I thought, “Hey man. I’m a SEAL. I got combat experience. This course is going to be a joke.”
It was not a joke. It was very hard.
Mark: I’ve heard. I didn’t get to go to Ranger School. The opportunity just wasn’t there. But I had a lot of my friends who for a little while in the early nineties, they were trying to get all J/Os over to Ranger School. So there were a bunch of guys sent in staccato. And they were coming back looking like POWs. (laughing) We’re like, “What happened to you, man? You left this Hollywood SEAL all buffed and tanned. And now you look like the cat dragged you in. When you came back.”
Jay: Like you just stepped out of Auschwitz.
Mark: Yeah. Yeah, it’s tough.
Jay: Yeah. But I… and this is a God moment. The bottom line is I got 3 days into the course and I just had the worse attitude of all. I wasn’t helping out my classmates. I stuck to myself. The instructors saw it and of course, they just pinged on me all the time. So all this friction was building up inside me. And on the 3rd day we did the Land Nav course.
It was brutally cold that morning. It was February in Georgia. And it was so cold that when we left at about 3 AM to start my Camelback hose had frozen. And I was just bitter. WE weren’t allowed to wear any warm gear. So I just had a horribly bad attitude. And instead of launching on this course and running out to knock it out. There six points you had to make in about 4 or 5 hours, if I remember correctly.
I had taught Land Nav, so I was like, “You know what, man? I’m not going to run around in these woods in the dark and stab myself in the eye. I’m just going to take my time and when the sun rises, then I’ll run and I’ll knock out the rest.”
Well, that did not happen. The sun rose, I think I’d only found 1 point. And it was a hard course, and I failed it. And the instructors totally started giving me grief. And it was at that point I mentally snapped. And I said, “Screw the score. Screw you.” And this is where we start telling our self lies in life. I convinced myself in that moment that I had… the mistake I’d made in Afghanistan, the mistake I’d made drinking and partying with the guys. And now this mistake I made with Ranger School that I would never be able to go back and lead in Teams again. Nobody would ever follow me no matter what I did. And that was a lie I told myself to justify what I was doing.
So I had to go see the Ranger colonel and he was like, “Are you sure this is what you want to do?”
And I laid out this sob story of I’m a victim. I was in combat and I went to help these guys and they threw me under the bus. And thankfully he saw right through that. And was like, “Oh, okay. Well, here, let me call this one guy.” And I didn’t want to talk to anybody, but who he called–and I’m going to leave him nameless because he doesn’t want to be named. Phenomenal guy. You would know him immediately and I’ll tell you off-line. Very respected leader.
Btu he was the only guy that I couldn’t say no to when this Ranger colonel handed me the phone. Because I respected him so much. It was like him handing me the phone from my dad. And he said, “Red, what are you doing?” And I laid out my whole sob story. “I’m being thrown under the bus,” and all this. And nobody’ll ever follow me again. And wah, wah, wah.
And he said to me the most profound thing. Amongst many other things. But he basically said to me, “People will follow you if you give them a reason to.”
Mark: I love that.
Jay: And it was phenomenal. And it was the tipping point I needed.
Mark: And so that shift there was… It’s not about you, Jay. It’s about them. So stop your fucking pity party. Start focusing on your teammates.
Jay: Absolutely. And he was like, “Go back. Crush this course. Show these Rangers how it’s done. Come back to the teams and lead.” And that began a whole new journey in my life. Of leadership. Understanding leadership. Watching leadership. Studying leadership.
And 180 turned me around on how I approach things.
Mark: I love that. You know, I studied leadership. I got an “ABD” meaning all but my dissertation in leadership at University of San Diego. I didn’t finish because I went to Iraq myself. I got recalled to go to Baghdad in 2004. And I was just starting my dissertation for my PhD.
But anyways, the reason I was thinking… that came up to me is there’s this famous leadership author named Zeleznick and he’s got this concept called “Twice Born.” It’s almost like born again. And he says you really can’t become a true leader until you hit that bottom, and then your self-concept gets shattered. And that story that you’ve been telling yourself gets shattered and you emerge like a phoenix with a whole new story and that story is more expansive one. And in my terminology you’ve gone from “me” to “we.”
And no matter how much you get told in the SEALs… in BUD/S training or from the SEAL ethos that you gotta be ready to lead, ready to follow. Never quit. And it’s all about your teammates.
Until you have that experience that you had I don’t think it’s possible. And a lot of our… A lot of leaders… even the SEALs haven’t had that experience and they’re still doing an adequate job, technically. And meeting the requirements of the position, but that authentic, true leadership is when you have to… when you really humble yourself to this notion that pretty much everything you’ve been telling yourself is bullshit.
Jay: Yup. And you’re right. And it took a long time… or not a long time, but it was a very hard journey at Ranger School to come to grips with the fact that, “Hey, you’re not as great as you think you are.” And yeah, you’ve been placing yourself first in every situation and specifically that situation in Afghanistan. The reality was I saw a shortcut to establish myself as this great leader, great warrior, whatever… “Hey, look at me. I’m going to run down into this valley and save everybody.”
But the reality is combat doesn’t always play out that way. The whole, life’s not fair, combat’s not fair. You’ve got to do everything according to our tactics and SOPs. Cause those are the things that will protect us. Combat’s chaotic enough.
Mark: Yeah, and you know what else this brings to mind is you really can’t try to be hero, right? Hero-ness has to find you. You go out and say, “Hey, this is my moment. I’m going to go be a hero. Standby.”
Jay: Exactly.
Mark: Interesting.
Redemption and Leadership
44:10
Mark: Okay, so let’s… we’ve gone like, 40 minutes. I don’t want to take up too much more of your time, but we really haven’t even gotten into talking about your Iraq experiences and how you got wounded. And there was a little bit of… I remember you… Though we’ve never met, I remember very clearly seeing all the social media buzz about your recovery at Bethesda and what you posted on the door.
So before I jump into that, let’s talk about Iraq and the leadership transformation. And then how you got wounded and all that.
Jay: Absolutely. So coming back to the SEAL teams after Ranger School, I stepped into that platoon where we were going to be going to Iraq. And the way I led was much different. I really relied on the guys. I trusted the guys. I lean on the guys to ask how things are done. To make sure that I knew what I was doing. And to give them the opportunities.
And thankfully I had a really good OIC who… he gave me a lot of opportunities to lead and learn. So by the time we got to Iraq, I will admit, that platoon was probably the best platoon I’ve ever been in. Throughout my career. We just gelled really well. Everybody got along well. We were a very strong platoon.
And got into Iraq at the tail end of the Anbar Awakening started in the fall of ’06 and we got into Fallujah in the spring of ’07 and it was very volatile. We were conducting operations almost every night. And there were certain areas we would go into that almost every time we’d go in there, we’d get into a firefight.
So very good experience as a platoon and as a SEAL. And I was able to operate in several different roles of gaining experience… it started out as a sensitive site exploitation commander. And then moved to assault force commander and mobility force commander. So learning all the different aspects of conducting operations in Iraq–urban, and desert, rural environment.
Mark: Let’s break those down for the listeners. So assault force is the guys that are going in to take down the target. SSE or Sensitive Site Exploration–so you were there after the takedown to pick up any Intel. And then the Mobility guys are in charge of getting you there and getting you back. Is that right?
Jay: Yup. That’s right.
Mark: And so for listeners to know… none of this was part of my experience as a SEAL. We used to walk to our target or jump out of a helicopter. We did not have Humvees in the ’90s. It’s crazy. Entire mode of operation changed, and I saw that when I was leading the Cerdex. Remember the Cerdex? I launched that thing with Bart Jackson and Bill Wilson. WE ran the first one. And then I was kind of on the group 1 staff to lead those efforts. I think I led like 5 or 6of them. But that was all. We were trying to get platoons into that whole notion that “you’re going to be using Humvees. You gotta coordinate efforts with Humvees and gone are the days where you’re going to be rucking 18 clicks to a target.” Pretty different.
Jay: You know there was a lot of times we patrolled…
Mark: Did you?
Jay: Absolutely. Because we could control the element of surprise. But anything… the IED threats were so high, we tried to avoid driving if we could help it.
Mark: No kidding. That makes sense.
Jay: yeah, so a lot of times we would do a… well, I don’t want to get into tactics. But yeah, we buried how we got in to different areas. And we learned a lot. We were a great… it was just a great group.
Mark: So you did over 100 missions that deployment? That’s incredible.
Jay: I think close to 50, but our troop did probably close to 100.
Mark: Okay. What were some of the high points? Now thing that you’re really proud of in that deployment.
Jay: Probably the 2 that stand out the most is… and this was kind of validation or kind of redemption moment for me if you will. You know, I’d had these black marks on my career and not trying to redeem myself. Just focused on the task, the mission and what I was doing. But we went in on a target in June of 2007, and we were hitting 3 target simultaneously in a compound. And I had the second target, leading the guys on that. And on our target, the situation got incredibly chaotic. As we made entry, there were guys on the roof. Guys who had a barricaded machine-gun. And they started dropping grenades down on us.
Outside, we had 11 women and children so 1 of our guys was immediately fragged and our interpreter was fragged really bad. Shoulder, neck. So he’s bleeding all over the place. And it’s just chaos. We have these guys on the rooftop shooting at us. We has shooters in another house about 50 yards behind the one we were making entry that started shooting at us in the house.
So just a really crazy, chaotic situation. And this all happened as we’re halfway through clearing the house. We popped up onto the roof. They tried to take that guy out. One of our guys took a round in the chest. Thank God his body armor stopped it.
But they fell back and so we’re in this crazy situation. And I was faced with multiple shooters, guys spread out all over the target. 11 women and children in the middle of this firefight. I had Iraqi national police that were spread out between our target and another target. And we were trying to get a head count to call in a fire mission on the house behind us to try and neutralize those guys.
So just a really complex situations. /but I took a breath and I just said “Okay. What are the first steps that we need to take? Let’s all stay calm.” And that really… we came out of that. We managed to take out the guys behind us. WE established a casualty collection point. We secure our interpreter and our other wounded guy.
And then we managed to shoot and maneuver to another house about 60 yards away with the women and children. We brought all them with us. So under fire we moved these women and children and then called fired on that house that had the barricading machine-gun and took that house out. Neutralized him.
So we didn’t have anybody else injured and not a scratch on those women and children. So that was definitely, probably the high point of the deployment for me. And a lot of guys said, “Well, Red did a great job.”
Mark: Nice.
When you called for fire like that… I mean, we had sorties up in the air. How long did it typically take to… for them to drop ordinance?
Jay: Very quickly. Because we were at a point in the employment where it was so hot, where we were operating–that it was almost a no go… we always had an air asset dedicated to us for the missions we were conducting.
So it was pretty quick. And that night we had an AC-130. So…
Mark: And back in our day, we used laser rangefinders…not rangefinders, but we’d lase the target and they would track on that. Does that still a tactic that’s used? Or is that obsolete?
Jay: It can be.
Mark: It can be, okay. Pretty fascinating stuff.
Wounded
51:48
Let’s shift fire now, a later op, you were wounded. And you talk about this in your book. But you entered the house and you got hit right away with machine-gun fire. Let’s talk about that. AS best you can. And give the listeners a sense of what it’s like to face enemy fire like that. And be the recipient.
Jay: Yeah. Absolutely. And then actually–it didn’t happen in the house. We took the house down initially, and we were told that the enemy leader that we had been tracking all deployment was in that house.
And so we really expected pretty fierce resistance. Made that entry. Nobody was there, but we could tell we had just missed people. And starting doing our secondary search. Started uncovering explosives, weapons… things like that.
So my team was dedicated to the actually take down of that house itself. So we had stood down while the external security team was taking care of everything they were finding around the compound. And our explosive ordinance guys were going to blow all that stuff up, and we were going to call it a night.
And we started seeing a whole bunch of activity on another house, about 100 yards away. And our snipers saw 5 individuals run out of that house and run across the street and hide in some pretty dense vegetation.
So the ground force commander said, “Will you take your team and maneuver on these guys? Leave your Iraqis, just take our guys because the Iraqis didn’t have night vision. And he said, “Hey, maneuver on these guys.”
So we maneuvered around. We had seen this before. We had seen these guys run out and hide, so we were just going to go over there and wrap them up.
Well, what we didn’t know was that 5 man team was the last part of the security detail for this senior leader. And we estimate it was anywhere from a 12 to 15 man crew that had an ambush line set up across the street from tat house.
And long story short, we walked right into that ambush. I was stitched across the body armor and body. I took 2 rounds in the left elbow. Our medic was initially hit. One of our other guys ran up to try and grab our medic. He was stitched up the body 3 times as he tried to grab our medic.
And just a really bad situation. They had 2 PKM machine-guns, on that ambush line and then the rest were AK shooters.
Mark: Did that other SEAL and that medic survive the incident?
Jay: They did. We didn’t lose anybody thank God. And so the only point of cover we had was a… so across the street… the house was kind of diagonal from where they were. And there was a road and then it was nothing but open desert for who knows? Miles. Across the street.
And the only point of cover, there was an old John Deere type tractor tire off in the northeast corner. And that’s what the guys fell back to.
And I was trying to lay down fire when I got stitched across the body. 2 rounds in the elbow, which I thought had shot my arm off. And tried to lay down some more fire. Got shot up again. Took rounds off my helmet. Night vision tube shot off. Took rounds off my weapon.
Mark: Jesus.
Jay: And then I got up to try and run back to the tire, and I caught a round in the face. Caught me directly in front of the ear. Traveled through my face exiting my nose, right cheekbone. Blew out my cheekbone. Took off most of my nose. Vaporized my oracle floor. Broke all the bones above my eye, and shattered my jaw.
Mark: Fuck.
Jay: (laughing) And it knocked me out.
Mark: (laughing) Oh my God.
Jay: (laughing) A lot of guys of course, give me shit over there. Jokingly, of course. But they’re like, “Dude, one bullet to the face and you pass out? What kind of team guy are you?”
Mark: (laughing) Exactly.
So you had stood up to run to cover. So the bullet hit you from behind?
Jay: Yup. It was the only round. And I’ll be honest, in the book–if people read it–it took me a while to figure that out. And I’ll be honest, it was almost 6 months after the firefight when I was with one of the guys that I was in the firefight with who told me that that’s what had happened.
For those first 6 months I thought, somehow, I’d gotten myself turned around on the ground and I had taken one of those rounds while I was on the ground.
Mark: Right. Yeah, cause I do think that’s what I read back when this incident came to my attention because of what you hung on your door. Which I want to read to people. But that you had gotten shot–point-blank–in the face. And I was thinking, “That’s hard to survive that,” you know?
Jay: Yeah.
Mark: Incredibly unluckily lucky I guess.
Jay: Yup. Absolutely.
Mark: So you, of course, that ended that deployment for you. Many surgeries… skin grafts… try to reconstruct your face. Got a note here that said you had 36 surgeries that you underwent?
Jay: Yup.
Mark: That’s incredible.
While you were in recovery–I’m just going to read this–somehow you had the… people must have been coming to you with this sense of pity. It probably pissed you off a little bit, and so I’m going to read a sign that Jason hung in his door.
It says, “Attention to all who enter here:
If you’re coming to this with sorrow or to feel sorry for my wounds, go elsewhere. The wounds I received I got in a job I love, doing it for people I love, supporting the freedom of a country I deeply love.
I’m incredibly tough and I will make a full recovery. What is full? That is the absolutely utmost physically my body has the ability to recover. Then I’ll push that about 20% further through sheer mental tenacity.
This room you are about to enter is a room of fun, optimism and intense rapid regrowth. If you’re not prepared for that, go elsewhere.”
I love that. That is awesome.
Jay: Thank you.
Mark: What inspired you to write that?
Jay: You nailed it. I had had some people come into the room expressing pity over what had happened. And they were talking about, “What a waste. We send these young men and women off to war and they come back broken.”
And it just… it made me angry. And I’ll be honest, it wasn’t like I mulled over it for a day or two and then wrote that out. It was truly a stream of consciousness in the moment.
I couldn’t talk because I was wired shut and I was tracked. So all I could do was write. So in that moment I wrote that sign out.
And that’s…
Mark: Did you hand it to someone and say, “Hey, paste this on the door.”
Jay: I did. I gave it to my wife. I gave it to my wife and I said, “Hey put this on the door.” And originally it was on… cause what I was writing on was 8 and a half by 11 piece of printer paper. And that’s what the original sign was on. And I said, “Hey, put this on the door.” And I said, “Tell everybody they gotta read it.”
And a few days later, I had somebody else come in after we had put the first sign up. And they also were expressing pity. So I told my wife, I said, “Hey, go find me the biggest piece of neon poster board you can find.” And I transcribed it word-for-word onto that piece of poster board. And said, “Put this on the door.”
I told all the doctors, nurses and medical staff, “Nobody’s allowed into my room unless they read this sign.”
And a couple days later a guy–I don’t even remember who it was–but somebody took off their trident and tacked it into the door. And a few days later a New York firefighter took a picture of it and it went viral.
Mark: That’s cool. Yeah, I remember that.
And somehow President Bush got wind of it. This is probably a little bit later when you were recovering. Or more fully recovered, but you got to go visit the White House? What was that like?
Jay: Amazing. And it was a year later. So I got wounded in September of ’07 and I got invited to the White House almost exactly a year later. September of ’08 and I went and visited President Bush in October.
And it was incredibly surreal. I’ve never been one to be that start-struck. I’ve met some relatively famous people, and awesome to meet them. And I’m always excited by their accomplishments. But at the same time, I’ve never been someone that felt like, short of breath, or some people really get caught up I guess. And it’s celebrity status.
The only person I felt that way with was President Bush. Part of that was him. But it was much more the whole experience of being in the White House and going to the Oval Office. And having my family there was just really, really incredible. And just very humbling and surreal.
And he was the most gracious. He spent 35 minutes with me and my family. In the Oval Office. And there was… just a great genuine guy. I felt like we could be out having a beer and talking about all this stuff together.
Mark: I’ve heard that about him. I was at the White House visiting Bob Harward? Do you know Bob Harward?
Jay: Yup.
Mark: Yeah, he was a… I think he had Ollie North’s old position for a few years there. And my wife and I and my son–we visited him. And Bush came in on his helicopter and he kind of like stopped by to say “hi” to the guys. I didn’t really get to meet him but I was there while it was happening. And I got to observe him.
And he just seemed like a real down-to-earth guy. And one who had great respect for the military. Which was pretty interesting, cause it was a little… different presidents have had different relationships with the military. But one thing I could say positive about Bush is he really respected the military.
Jay: Yup. For sure. And he was phenomenal with me and my family.
Mark: So now that you’re… you’re recovered and you got out of the SEALs. Actually you stayed in a couple of years. You ended up doing a full retirement, right? You didn’t get medically retired?
Jay: I did get medically retired but I did stay for the rest of my time. I wanted to… for the first few years I held onto hope that I could get back operational. So I tried through a lot of rehab, a lot more surgeries… My elbow was effectively destroyed. And that was really the big obstacle to me going back operational. Originally they talked about amputating it. And then thankfully I had a doctor who thought keep it. So then my arm was fused. I couldn’t bend my elbow at all.
And then I found the doctor out of Johns Hopkins that was able to do a surgery that gave me limited motion. But it still wasn’t enough motion. Like, right now, I can’t bend… if you were to take your arm and the same side arm and reach in and touch your side to touch your ribs… that’s a pretty severe bend in your elbow to make that happen. I cannot do that. I can’t touch my side with my left arm anymore.
So needless to say, for an operator, your ability to grab magazines or grab things is a real problem. And so I fought and fought and fought to try and get back operational and finally had to give up the ghost.
And at that point I was at 18 years. And the team said, “What do you want to do?” And I said, “Well, I came in to do 20 years, so I’d really like to finish 20 years.” So they said, “Hey, we’ll let you work with wounded warriors, Families of the Fallen, these different programs and projects and ops.” So I got to finish my career on my terms and then because of my injuries, they still medically retired me.
Mark: No kidding.
Jay: Yup. Which for me was phenomenal. Because I got my full 20 year retirement but still fell under the medical retirement. Which gives some extra benefits. Like, my retirement is totally tax free. So there’s some benefits from that.
Mark: Yeah. Well, you earned it, buddy.
Jay: Yeah. (laughing) Moving too slow.
Mark: (laughing) Yeah, that’s one way to look at it.
Well, thank you for your service. And that’s just amazing. Amazing story.
So and of course service for you… you’re just getting warmed up I think. First was serving your country as a warrior. Now as a speaker, author, and advocate I would say. So your book is called “The Trident,” and that’s your story. Basically what you kind of just outlined, right?”
So I’m looking forward to reading it. I’ve heard it’s very, very good. So if you’re listening to this and you want an inspiring book–not a chest beating Navy SEAL, “I’m Awesome,” kind of book. But a real humble look at leadership and the story that Jason tells then go buy “The Trident.” I can’t wait to read it myself.
And now you’ve got an organization where you’re out there doing some speaking and leadership inspiration. It’s called “Sof spoken” without the T. sofspoken.com.
Jay: That’s my speaking company, yup. So that’s getting out speaking and talking about many of the things that you speak on also. Leadership, teamwork, overcoming adversity. I mean, my motto–my mantra–is “overcome.” And that is to keep focus on everything I speak on.
But obviously I believe that leadership and the overcome mindset. Resiliency go hand in hand. As a strong leader you have to be resilient.
So my key motto that I always say is “Lead always and overcome all.” And that’s what Sofspoken is focused on.
And then I have the Combat Wounded Coalition which is a non-profit focused on supporting wounded warriors. We have evolved over the years. We started out as “Wounded Wear” providing free clothing and clothing modification to wounded warriors.
But started moving more into the integration piece and in 2018 we’re actually moving into the leadership instruction and integration for wounded warriors.
We are launching a new program. The first one runs February 19th called the “Overcome Academy.” And it is a 2 week program for wounded warriors. Leadership, resiliency, communication. Teaching them how to speak. Teaching them how to tell their story with a purpose.
And then they have to get back out in the community as leaders. So it’s a requirement for them to take on a leadership role with the youth mentorship program. Whether it’s Boy Scouts. Whether it’s Little League. Whether it’s church youth group. It doesn’t matter. They just have to take that on.
And then they have to speak at a school in their community. And they have to speak for a business that typically will sponsor them.
Mark: That’s cool. You know, and I think that’s critical. I mean one of the key things that people need for recovery is a purpose, you know? Something positive to focus on. I think a lot of the vets who are suffering are wandering. They’ve lost the sense of mission.
I think that there’s probably a way that we can support… mutually support each other. And in particular along the lines of serving the vets.
I mentioned our Courage Foundation at the beginning of this call. We just launched Courage last year. So 2017 was our first full year. And this year with our Burpees for Vets challenge, we’re hoping to raise a quarter million dollars for vets suffering from PTS and we’re looking for good organizations to partner with.
So Josh Mantz and I are going to kind of scan the horizon and see what organizations are worthy. So we’ll be talking further about that, because I think what you’re doing is very solid and is filling a much needed gap in vet care.
You know, the VA system has completely failed the veterans. I shouldn’t say that… what they should do is provide a nice handoff to real care organizations. So maybe that’s the way it’ll evolve.
Jay: Yeah. I agree. And Josh actually coming in to speak at our first Overcome Academy. He’ll speak at the end, and then he’s going to speak at our black tie gala the next night.
So we’re pretty excited to have him. Great guy and a good role model for a lot of these wounded warriors that are going through this.
Mark: No doubt. Awesome. Well, good luck with that. Let’s stay in touch. I’ll hook you up with Jon Atwater who runs our Courage Foundation. Of course, Josh, who’s coming on the board. So we’ll be in touch on that.
Awesome. Jay, thanks so much for your time. We went a little bit long, but every second of this has been very, very fascinating and super-valuable for the listeners. So really appreciate it.
I know everyone listening really appreciates you and says thank you for your service. And keep charging. Keep leading.
Jay: Thanks. Will do. Absolutely, Mark. Lead always, and overcome all. That’s what we do.
Mark: Yeah. Hooyah to that.
And we’ll see you in 2018.
Jay: Yeah, man. Thank you.
Mark: You bet. Out here.
All right, folks. Jason Redman. Check out sofspoken.com. That’s his speaking… if you’re looking for an inspirational speaker for your company or for an event. And check out his book “The Trident.” And stay tuned for more on our work together with the philanthropic efforts to help vets.
You know, 22 vets a day are committing suicide. I mean, that is just unsat. It’s unsat and we’ve got to do something about it. And if you’re listening to this, you can help out just by referring someone to the Courage Foundation or to Jay’s organization. You know if you’re active and you want to challenge yourself, then do some burpees with me. I’m committing to 100,000 burpees this year. I already cranked out my 300 before this podcast.
And so I think I’ve got pledges of r a few thousand dollars. My goal is to get 250,000 dollars raised. So I’m just getting warmed up. So you’re going to hear me harping on this quite a bit.
But we want to have overall do 22,000,000 burpees collectively. 22 million burpees. I think that would be pretty cool.
All right. So thanks again for listening. Stay focused. Train every day. And develop that Unbeatable Mind.
Divine out.
See you next time.
