Special Forces SNIPER Explains How to STAND OUT from 99% of People | Tim Kennedy

You had ISIS members try to come after you here in Texas.

FBI called me and said, hey, just wanted to notify you that ISIS is actively recruiting to kill you. I've been going all over the world trying to buy these people and you're telling me they're about to come to Texas? Just dump my address on live television on fox. FBI was pissed. My wife was pissed. Fox News was like, if you just do that, there's nothing more dangerous than a young man without purpose, direction, motivation. Let's go.

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This podcast today is for you men out there who are tired of being told you are weak, entitled zoomers and gamers with no ability to be a quote unquote real man from women telling you you're not enough to society telling you you are too much from courts telling you dads are less important than moms. I see you when I look at the men in my life that is just not the case. And I think the world is starting to wake up to this. And for you women wanting strong partnerships and with men in your life like mine, this episode just hits different. So today we're going to do a couple things. One is we're going to focus on becoming a man in a world that's afraid to be one. Two, marriage, parenting, and education in a way society tells you to never do. Three, becoming hard to kill in every sense of the word.

And.

And four, building businesses, bestselling books that mean something while also making millions. Welcome to the Big Deal podcast. Contrarian idea of the week. It's a little bit different here because I think the truth is people don't often want you to win. They don't want you to be harder to kill. They want you poor, weak and needy. They want to keep you down so your neck is easier to step on. How they keep you poor forever is the secret you have to unlock. And what if it actually has not a ton to do with money? So my husband is a former Navy SEAL and one of the hardest men I've ever known. And somebody once said to him, excellence is just deviance spelled differently. You will never achieve greatness being like everybody else, only by being different. A deviant. So today we're going to talk to a man who has challenged the world day after day in every arena he could find. We're going to push back on on them, making us a nation of serfs. And we are going to do it by seeking greatness. From a little spark may burst a mighty flame. The spark in this man today led him to kick people's faces in as the UFC champion and likely future hall of Famer. Master Payne. As a special forces Green beret, write a best selling book, Scars and Stripes, build a bunch of businesses like Sheepdog Response, education businesses, training, Jiu Jitsu, gear companies and even go behind enemy lines to Afghanistan, Ukraine, Israel. When our leaders and country wouldn't save our allies, he saved them himself. A man I consider a friend and someone I look up to. Tim Kennedy. Bring the band in.

Let'S go.

Talking about young men today, you posted a video that I love and the video is about a lake and a young man jumping in, beating open the back of a jeep to save an 83 year old and a dog. Yeah, which was an incredible video. But what I thought was even better was your commentary on young men today. What do you think about young men today? Are they weak and helpless?

I think every generation looks at the next generation and you know they're disparaging them. They're throwing stones at them. You know, like you, the greatest generation from World War II. Imagine the things that they said post World War II. Like, you missed a big one. You missed a war. Like, where were you? Were you climbing cliffs? Were you storming beaches? Were you planting flags on top of mountains? And then Korea happened. World War II veterans are like, rah, rah, rah. And then Vietnam happens. So there's always these obstacles that the next generation faces, and the one that we're facing right now is one that we've never fought before. Technology, AI, complacency, entitlement. We are living in the. The most prosperous era of American history. I really believe that suffering is the best thing that can happen to a young person. And we haven't had a lot of opportunity for suffering. You're not rising to the occasion. You're not overcoming these challenges. It's just been really good. And these really nice, wonderful times have. Have created what seem like soft young men, and we need tough men. We're having a hard time right now with not just young men, but young people recognizing that suffering and hardship is good and that the byproduct of going through hard things is growth.

What I think is interesting about you is you went from being maybe how you would have described yourself in your book and other podcast that I've listened to you on, you went from being somebody that in many ways was a lost young man. You know, drugs, alcohol, bad decisions. You completely changed, but not before being at, like, one of your darkest moments. A lot of young people today, you know, when you hear your parents say, back in my day when I went to school, we hiked both ways, uphill in the snow, right? It's like, you don't understand. You don't get me. You don't know where I was. You don't. You don't understand what it's like today, dad. And yet you're maybe one of the more vulnerable people that I've ever met who's incredibly strong and tough right now. As much as you feel comfortable sharing, you know, will you talk about where you were maybe on like a, you know, very cold day out in the ocean in California, and then what happened to change that moment?

Yeah, for me to get to my low point was not entitlement, but easy. Like, I had great, amazing parents, great, amazing grandparents. You know, know, I'm living in the central coast of California. The hardships that I was going through were almost not fabricated, but curated. Whether it was wrestling or boxing or you know, going to do these kind of epic events like going on overseas missions, trips, they were controlled, right? They, they weren't real. And then you lose a friend in a car crash, like that's real. You know, then your grandpa dies. That's real. Then you start experiencing the consequences of your bad decisions. Unprotected sex. Or somebody walks into your office and it's like, hey, I might have hiv. You know, having two different women that are pregnant. And these, like, these are byproducts of my choices. There's nothing more dangerous than a young man without purpose. Direction, motivation. That's the definition of leadership in the military, is to provide purpose, direction and motivation. And then you look at young men that, that lack that and you look at me specifically lacking. What am I supposed to be doing, how am I supposed to be doing it and why am I supposed to be doing it. And you see something very dangerous, which is a young man without purpose. A young man with purpose. I'm gonna cross an ocean, I'm gonna climb a cliff, I'm gonna kill everybody from me until them, till I free them. That is a young man with purpose. We're going through the worst economic disaster in maybe the history of mankind. And we build the largest industrial revolution to become the most prosperous country on the planet. That is young men with purpose. Then you look at a young 20 year old idiot not thinking about anything but himself. The consequences of a lot of these decisions are kind of all of the fruit is coming to bear and, and I'm scared. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing walking into the water. In Christianity, the baptism is a proclamation of your faith. And the process of it is they take you and they dunk you underwater and you come back out rinsed of what was into something that is new. And I'm not like getting philosophical like I needed to have this baptism, but what I needed to have was a change. And that was the catalyst. So I walked into the water in Morrow Bay, California, took off all my clothes and swam due west into the fog. There was no sadness, there was no depression, there's just frustration, was lack of direction. And so I just kept swimming until I was in the middle of nothingness with no idea which way shore was treading water in that super freezing central northern California coast water, hoping that I could figure out which way shore was.

Yeah.

Young men without purpose.

Do you remember it still vividly or does that feel like a lifetime ago?

No, I remember, I remember the sounds, I remember the smells, I remember I remember everything. I remember the feeling hilariously. Just a couple of weeks ago, me and Travis Pastrana jumped out of a helicopter into the Gulf of Mexico. We get in the water, the moment we splash, we're looking at the wind, which was an onshore wind, usually an indicator of current direction. Where we entered the water, that was not the direction the current, which was going out into the cold. Moment we get in there, we're treading water, we're swimming against the current. He's like, we're getting pushed further out. I'm like, yeah, we are. What should we do? And he's a great surfer, He's a great swimmer. He's like, let's swim along the shore for a while and see if we can find a different current direction. So we started swimming and then ultimately, you know, turned 90° back to shore and had a little bit more success. But the moment that you get in that water and you see the shore getting further away, there's a feeling inside of you which is like, oh my God. Hello, friends. Guess who? That's right, it is I, the replacer. Once again, I've been called on so you can play the new Call of Duty Black Ops 7 with three expansive modes, 18 multiplayer maps, and the tastiest zombie gameplay you've ever frickin seen. Call of Duty Black Ops 7 available now. Rated M for mature.

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Sort of. My cousin Freddy showed up to surprise us. Oh, sounds like a real nice surprise. Exactly. So now I have to get him a gift, but I haven't gotten my bonus yet. So if we can make it something really nice but also not break the bank, that'd be perfect.

How about a keurig for 50% off.

Bingo savings all season. The holiday road is long. We're with you all the way. Walgreens offer valid November 26th through December 27th. Exclusions apply. I'm going to die, man. I remember that feeling in the water, you know, I remember in Morro Bay, just being a young man without purpose. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. You could not swim and you go into the drink, you go into the darkness, and that's the end. Or you just keep swimming. And maybe there's hope at the end.

Of this, this generation of young people in general, but you know, just to stay on men for a second, when I go out and speak to them, you know, and I watch somebody like you and Jordan Peterson do it, it does seem like that word hope is missing a lot. I remember I was having A conversation with the University of Austin Dean Pano, and I was like, I wanted to teach all these young people about buying businesses and financial freedom and how do you structure a deal? So I was asking him, you know, should we talk about seller financing in tandem with, you know, equity financing rounds? And he's like, if you want to teach them the one thing that they need more than anything else, you need to teach them hope. And I kind of, as a spreadsheet junkie, thought that sounded fluffy, but yet I think it might be true. I know you've been. You've talked about this in many ways, and most of your businesses substantiate it, but what do you say to the youth of today or to, like, whisper in the ear of young Tim Kennedy for those that feel hopeless? Yeah.

In my era, if you told me to run up a hill and kill everybody at the top of the hill, that's the end of what you need to tell me. Go up that hill. Destroy what's on the top. Got it. Task condition, standard. I'm off this time. This generation, when I'm talking to young soldiers that are wanting to go and do and be something, the two things I have to provide to them, our hope. Like, what is the end result of this? It's such. It's such a complex thing that needs to be communicated as a leader to this generation is like, the reason why. One, why is it important to them specifically? And then second is the end state. The hope, like, we are going to go and defend this spot because it does this thing for all of these other people. For the Alamo. They went to the Alamo and fought there and died there for the hope of a Texas. I'm storming this beach. I'm climbing this cliff. I'm planting this flag for the hope of defeating imperialism, fascism, right? And they're going to do it, period. End, end story. That same kind of requirement for hope exists with these same young men. It's interwoven in our DNA. Like, why will I be provider? Why will I be a protector? It's because I hope that I'm going to be able to make a better future for my family, you know, for my wife, for my kids, for my country, God, family, country, friends, for, like, those things. I'm doing this act because the byproduct of it is hope. Existentially, that's a difficult thing to. To break down and explain and convey, but it is so necessary.

So when you have young people come in here that are not preconditioned to be warriors, let's say they don't have much money. They're kind of happy ish with their life. Maybe not really happy. They don't know a general direction. And let's say you got to tell them, I wish you would do these couple things for the next 30 days or I wish you would ponder this. Is there something that's accessible because half of these young people don't want to eat meat more or less go murder a human. Right. And so like what's the, what's the. Tim Kennedy. Hey, I get that you're not me, but if you are just starting, here's somewhere you could start that might just change your life with a very few small actions compounded.

It's doing something hard. Yeah, that's the, that's first. And, and that's going to be different for everybody. And I'm not going to throw stones at where you start. Yeah, maybe for some people not playing a video game, getting up and walking around the block is hard. You know, they've been eating potato chips and, and, and pounding Mountain Dews for a while. A little overweight man. I love you. It's fine. Your starting point's going to be different than someone else's starting point. It doesn't matter. But go and do something hard every day. Every day and that hard thing's going to change. I love when Chris comes and hangs out because like we're two diabolical minds that like, are we shooting, are we grappling? Like are we cold, plunging, are we swimming? Like how am I going to strangle or choke or drown each other? Like that's a clear byproduct of us having done hard things for a long time. Both in business, physically, academically. I want to be challenged intellectually. Go do something hard. One, two is do something for someone else that might be hard, it might not be hard. It might be really self serving and feel good. But when you do something for someone else and you voluntarily put yourself through suffering, it transforms your mind and body in a better way.

Today we were at a coffee shop, right? And the guy in the front of the coffee shop was like, oh, I know Tim Kennedy. You know what, he came in here, he bought coffee, he said hi, we got to know each other and then he just did a video about my business and like not for anything and just told everybody to come to my location. And for you, you have two muscles that are very big now and one muscle is the hard muscle where something that seems hard for somebody else is probably pretty normal for you. And the second is the giving muscle, where, like, it must give you some sense of joy. Every time I hang out with you guys, I remember the first time I met some of you, I was like, you guys are really nice, and you're offering a lot of, like, connections and, like, what's going on? Why are you doing this? Because that wasn't my sphere before. But you think if you're unhappy, two things, hard and give, start there daily.

That's right.

Why do you think so many people struggle? Why do so many people not do hard? Why do so many people not achieve their dreams? And you have so many friends that are ultra high performers. What's the difference?

Bedros actually, systematically, in a process of his life, he forces himself for six weeks at a time to do something that he's not good at. Rock climbing, jiu jitsu, learning how to do an iron man. It is part of his program of life to go for six weeks and do something that he's not good at. They also dedicate a portion of all of their money to go back into giving. Sometimes they're giving about things that they very much care about. Sometimes it's. It's things that just benefit the community. They do those two things, something hard, and then in some form or fashion, selflessly giving to people. If the people around me are. If I'm giving to them and they're still around me, I benefit from that. I don't mean to make it selfish, but that. That act of selflessness, of me giving something to my neighbor to make my neighbor a little bit happier and healthier, that will make me happier and healthier. But the act of me giving to them selflessly, without any expectation of receiving something in return, makes me a better person. And it also forces me to be able to produce more so I can give more. And if I give more, I then start producing more. But if that's happening in conjunction with me forcing myself to do hard, challenging things through the acts of suffering, I then even start producing more. And it's just this, like, endless cycle of me being able to be a better version of being able to give and provide for more. And then, like, where's the limit to that?

Yeah, there isn't one.

There isn't one. That's right.

Which makes sense because in every other week, you're in a different country doing X, Y, and Z, and yet, you know, you keep refueling your tank. And I also think it lends to the people that you attract when you are a giver. And when you do hard things, you just Attract a different level of human. I remember we were chatting about your wife, and I was like, I can't wait to meet her. And you kind of raise one eyebrow and you go, the thing is, she's tough. She is a badass woman. She's like. You were like, she's maybe the most badass woman I've ever met. And it makes sense that you can do such badass things because you have a support system of, you know, we're sitting in your office right now and you're like Delta, you know, SEAL Team 6, you know, Ranger. Like, everybody in here is a.001% and so it makes sense that your wife would be too. You told me a story about her that I loved that I don't know if you're willing to share about a bar, a stiletto heel, and a dude.

That's right.

Do you remember that story?

There was love at first sight when she walked onto a unit in Fort Bragg, North Carolina that you can't walk into onto without like serious clearance. So she walked on as like, that's a Russian spy. There's just no chance that that human is here. You're like, if you're at Fort Bragg and you know, like, the ratio of men to Women is like 9 to 1. The next time I see her is at this bar in Fayetteville, North Carolina. She would just go with her friends. They wanted to be left alone. They just want to listen to live music. There's not a lot of great places to listen to live music in a. In a military town. So she's sitting there listening to this music and she gets up to walk to the bar to get a drink, and there's this ramp that goes from the live music floor up to where the bar is. And this guy wanted her attention and she was not wanting to give anyone attention because she just wanted to go back to her seat and be left alone. I know this because I went up and talked to her and she no. So like that gives an indication that she talked back. That's not what happened. I started talking to her and she just started turning and I'd like remove to try to talk to her more. It's just turn again. And then ultimately she just like walked away. Like I was never talking to her and really awkward. I it anyways, so like I knew what this, what this poor young man was experiencing as he was trying to get her attention and she didn't care. She was walking up with these stilettos up this ramp. So he reached out and did the Worst thing that he possibly can do, which is touch her. There was no, like, consent. There's no indication, like, I would like you to touch my leg. So he just, like, reached up to get her attention, and. And when it touched her leg, I could see there was, like, this electric shock that went into him. Like, I got her attention. Electricity, especially in direct current, you know, it's travels in one direction, and that was from her to him, which ended up being her balancing on the foot that he had touched and her taking her stiletto and stabbing him in his arm to get him to release her leg. And then she just walked up to order her beer. It was like a law. Yeah, like, electrical shock to my heart. Immediate love. I was like, I have must. Must have that one.

That is so good. Also, I think probably a lot of young, young men see you today, and they're, you know, Tim's wife. He got this badass woman who's beautiful and, you know, kids and also really tough. But when you told me what you had to do to get her attention, you know, you took a maybe more face punches in that than you did in the ufc. Like, what was the story about how you finally got her to say yes to even a date?

She didn't say yes.

I know this is one.

I had to figure out her pattern of life. This. If you try to do this to my daughters, I will find you and I'll wear your skin as a birthday suit. I'm being super clear here. Like, this is stalking, but, you know, in 2005, this is okay behavior for a special forces guy in a. In a special forces town. So, like, I had to figure out who her friends were. I had to figure out where she worked. I had to find out, like, what she liked to do. And I found all of this out from her friends, which I was slowly starting to befriend as I was building the network of people around her. So. You sound so bad, so good. Once I made friends with all of her friends, I created an event, knowing the things that she likes. Music, food, wine. So we're going to do this. This live music, wine pairing at my kind of historic house downtown Fiil. And I told all of the friends different times than what she was told. She was told a time to the left, and they were told time a little bit later to the right. And so when she showed up 20, 30 minutes late to her time, it was still 20, 30 minutes before anybody else was going to show up. And this was like the Razer 3 flip phone era, where you had to hit like if you wanted the letter C, you'd hit the letter two, three times. A, B, C. So I had saved a draft of a text message to go out to all of the friends simultaneously. Like hey, dinner's canceled, I'll see you guys later. Because I knew that when she got there early I had a reservation made at an Italian restaurant downtown in our first date happened when she shows up and it's like ah, things like fell through for a whole bunch of people and like some, well I'll just take you out to dinner. And I don't know why she said yes, but she said yes. And from that day until the day I left for Iraq on my first real combat deployment, I took her out on day every single day from that day until I went overseas and then was overseas I had somebody fall over to make sure she was a good woman.

No red lights outside of her, you were gone or you like not a Russian spy, not a Russian spy.

You know, and, and you know when she says hey I'm, I'm going to be just with you.

Okay, let's see, let's see. You know, trust but verify also a Russian proverb. Actually what's incredible is in this day and age this is the opposite of what we're taught to do. Like I miss the, the Tinder Bumble era with, with Chris, thank God. But what are we taught to do? We're taught dating is a numbers game. Swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. And if you go on a thousand of them then you will have a high probability of finding another person. But quite opposite in business, right, you would never say the goal is just like call a thousand people. You would say know who you sell, find them and predisposed people who already want what you're going to buy and sell them really well. And so I think it's actually a beautiful reminder of you can opt out of actually the virtual awful soul sucking world of swiping left and swiping right. And you did exactly that.

I don't think there's anything less conducive than finding a person that you want to spend time with than one just the physical features that you see on their phone to access to that person via technology. Why did young men have to leave their village at puberty to go and find their spouse? Because you couldn't spread your seed with people that lived in your village because you guys were genetically too similar. So the, the act of leaving your village to go to find someone else's village like one, there's sometimes war that happens between those two villages. Bears, tigers. Who knows what's between the two of these two places? It's hard. It's supposed to be hard. There's supposed to be like this beautiful ballet of violence to attract that spouse, to attract your. Your other. And there's something really rewarding. I mean, I'm just speaking from my perspective and my wife expressing this to being pursued. It is really sexy. It's really fulfilling to know that their man will. They'll pursue them. To this day, I pursue my wife. Fight for a date. Fight for, like, can we get coffee? Fight for, hey, your mom's coming into town, I'm taking you to Paris. Fight for, you know, like, insert all the things so she knows that she's being pursued.

The bar for pursuing has actually never been lower because you used to have to do wild things to get a woman to pay attention to you. Right? You know, you'd have to ask her father if you could even take her out. You would have to get through a slew of brothers, potentially and friends. You'd have to do group dates where you couldn't go by yourself. And so while simultaneously the optionality has never been higher. And so we feel like it's harder than ever to date in some ways. It might be easier than ever to stand out as a young man, but important to hear for people who feel like there aren't women anywhere for this new incel movement. It's like, really, if you focus on you becoming the best version of yourself and actually pursuing a woman, you might have a much higher likelihood of success than you could ever imagine.

Find values that in the person that you want to spend time with, and then the activities that are around those values, you can find those people there. Like, you want an active person? Cool. Go and do some active hobbies, like go and canoe or hike or join a running club or go to CrossFit or go to like insert a jiu jitsu. Like any kind of active activity. And you're going to find a ton of people that share that value. Any spiritual thing, go to that type place of worship and then get actively selflessly serving in that. And like, lo and behold, you're going to see tons of people of the opposite sex that are there with the same values or the same reasons with the same spirituality or activity. Or just sit there at a bar with your friends and swipe.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, and then, and then talk to me about how unhappy you are.

It's so true. Especially if you're a woman. Jiu Jitsu is an incredible place to go. The ratio there's got to be like, what, 90, 95 to 5% or less.

We have a huge woman Jiu Jitsu community here. Our Wednesday night women's only classes. There's like 30, 40 women here. We have a Sunday open mat. Like.

Yeah.

And just women. I like, walk in here to, like, clean up something in the back. I won't even make eye contact with the girls on the mats. They'll just, like, tear my face off. Here, I bet it's like 70, 80%.

But it's still huge.

Still huge. Yeah. And the men are hardworking, you know.

They'Re tough women shooting fish in a barrel. Jiu Jitsu class, that's where you should go. Dudes, I want to talk about becoming hard to kill. And, you know, you texted my husband one night late at night, something along the lines of, you know, do you have a passport? Can you have a bag? And be ready to go to X location? Which I won't say, which is a war zone. And I said, sorry about that, Tim. No, I didn't. I really support him in never leaving the fact that he is always going to be a warrior behind. And if he ever feels the need to call, I will support that. But one of the things I find fascinating about you is you do this a lot. And you were sitting in this huge office. You don't need monetarily to go and put yourself in harm's way. You know, you have all these businesses, you have an incredible family, and yet you feel some driving need. And maybe the world feels that need in return. Why do you keep doing this? Why do you keep going to war zones?

Well, I'm not a hypocrite. And I said the two things that you have to do is do something hard, which I do every day, and then find ways to give back to others. How you give Dan, man, he does a toy drive, and he raised millions. I think it was a million something dollars worth of toys. It was more than that. I don't even know how much. It was, like, broke the record for the number of toys that they gave. Like, he's good at that. I'm not good at that. What am I gonna. I go out and do toy drive. Like, I'll have, like, a little bucket and people can drop things in there.

There'd just be a lot of knives. Yeah.

You know, but if you're on a missions trip in Haiti and there's a coup, you're stuck and you want to get home to your family and you're scared. You think that this new rebel militia is going to come into your missionary camp and rape all the young girls that are there from your church? Who's going to come and get you? People like your husband are people that have been given the skill and the drive to be able to protect people and now have the trade craft to go and do it. There's not a lot of people that can walk into a conflict area, a non permissive war zone, and feel comfortable there. We know a lot of those people that can do that. Every time my phone rings for Save Our Allies, General so and so says, hey, we have a problem. There's not currently like a diplomatic or military solution, but there is like an NGO opportunity. Do you think you and your organization could slip in with our support and everything that we do? I think people look at Instagram and they're like, oh, these cowboys. If you think that I can walk into Afghanistan during the immediate middle of the evacuation without DoD and DoS support, like, you're in. You're a crazy person if you think that we're going to be in Djibouti or Sudan during a coup. Like, you're a crazy person without the support of the American government.

Not to mention you're active.

Yeah.

Which I didn't even realize.

Yeah. Well, like, I don't talk about a lot of that stuff because I'm assuming that people will figure out that their, their systems and processes that we operate under. Like, I'm not throwing on a cowboy hat and be like, I'm going to go to Afghanistan and rescue people. It's going to be like, there's a specific need and a requirement that has to be filled and we, with a group of people are able to, to do this and help. I do it because it's my version of giving and I think it makes me a better person and a better business partner and a better colleague and a better husband.

Will you ever stop?

No.

Ever?

Nope.

Do you like it?

No. It's like the worst thing ever.

Explain that.

Like, being in Israel after the attack. I know Israel's like a trigger that's regardless of what side you are, but I'll just tell you, you get there after October 7th and you see the hollowness in the eyes as the reports of what happened, the villages immediately adjacent that were attacked. It's horrific. Like, you go to Afghanistan during the evacuation In August of 2021, there's nothing good anywhere. Like, you can't look in any direction and see a Happy story. Sudan or Haiti or Ukraine. Like, I don't care where your political allegiances are. There are people that are suffering. The only people profiting are the people that make the things that kill both sides and they sell to both sides. But there's people that need help and I can't not do it. You know, if I'm at the mall or I'm at church with my family and I start hearing gunshots, first thing I'm doing is getting my family off the X, right? Like they're going to get in the car, they're going to be gone. There's not a chance in hell that I'm not watching that car drive away and I'm turning around and running back in. Does that mean I like doing it? No. But that means I, I have to do it and I was made to do it. And there's lots of people that were built that way, that were made that way and then learn to be that way. With Venmo Stash a taco in one hand and ordering a ride in the other means you're stacking cash back. Nice. Get up to 5% cash back with Venmo stash on your favorite brands when you pay with your Venmo debit card. From takeout to ride shares, entertainment and more. Pick a bundle with your go tos and start earning cash back at those brands. Earn more cash when you do more with Stash. Venmo stash terms and Exclusions apply. Max $100 cash back per month. See terms at Venmo Me Terms. The Holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our US based restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com podcast terms apply.

I think what's incredible too is finding you know, if you carve away the layers of easy and complacent and prescribed finding that probably a lot more people are made to do these hard things sure than we think and that's beautiful.

I think almost all of us are. That is very intuitive of you to recognize when like all, all of this these smoke and mirrors of to the 2024 world that we're living in. When you start pulling back the entitlement and you start pulling back that I can, you know Uber Eats and have something delivered to my. To my door. There are still the same species that carved their existence out of the wilderness. The same group of people that are sitting here in this country today are descendants of people that were told they had to pay a tax on a hot beverage. And they're like, nah. So they pushed it into the harbor, and then they. Because they pushed in the harbor, somebody got shot in Boston. The shot that was heard around the world. And then we killed everybody that was on the other side until they left the continent. Like, that is our heritage, and every single one of us are descendants of that. We all have it. It just hasn't been, you know, cultivated.

Yeah, 100%. We were with a couple girlfriends this past weekend, and it was the first time she was shooting a gun. You see this because you have, you know, protector courses for women with sheepdog response that are incredible that I've had a bunch of friends go through. And watching a woman for the first time, like, her face the fear, the guilt, the. Like, a little bit of shame of holding it, the, am I gonna hurt somebody else? Which is typically what I see on women's faces. It's not even, I might hurt myself. It's like, what if I hurt somebody else? And then when she finally shot it, not actually a release on the first shot. I don't know what you usually see, but, like, kind of scared. And then having to shoot a bunch of. Until she thought, oh, like, I. I feel a little bit safe. I feel like I could handle. This is actually so beautiful. And, you know, women were warriors, too. And so I think you do an incredible job of pushing people towards that.

The transformation that happens in these walls.

Yeah.

In two days, like, the women come on Friday. They get, like, a situational awareness class. They start learning, like, all the things that they have in them are beautiful things that have to be harvested and cultivated and. And encouraged. I park under the light, you know, because I'm. I'm fearful. I'm like, that's fantastic. You should always park under the light, you know, like, you're so sweet. We're walking to the coffee shop. You're like, hey, do you want the seat? I'm like, no, I can see the door from here. And you can see the door, too. You're like. But you were. You were seated in the exact seat that you should be seated in in two days, watching that same fear of, like, can I hold this gun? Can I. Like, can I do this fighting thing? Can I get this guy off of me? As, like, one of the, you know, Yaaku Kalili, Special Forces.

He's a stud.

He is a stud. He's a frightening human. What a gentle giant suit.

How come all the scary guys are the nice ones?

If you are intimately familiar with violence and you are capable of violence, the less you have to prove and the less amount of violence you have to do to ever be successful at anything in law enforcement, there's. The more trained and capable somebody is, the less amount of violence they ever have to do. I use Chantry or Travis. They're Austin PD guys. Both monsters. Both, like, professional fighters, both great shooters. Never have to tase someone, ever. Never have to pep or spray anyone, ever. Never have to hurt someone, ever, to get them in cuffs. And they are the most violently capable people. You know, my family will never know the amount of violence I've done to understand, like, how soft and gentle I am to them. You know, like, my kids have never seen a harsh hand out of anger or out of. Out of fear or. Or an ego position. If there's harshness, it's out of love and wanting them to be a better, better people. But you're 100, right? Like, these monsters out there are the nicest people on the planet, and it's because they're capable of doing so much. Jordan Peterson talks extensively about a man being pushed to his absolute limits. He should be absolutely capable of doing violence, and he's a good person because he chooses to be kind. Like, if you're not capable of hurting somebody and you don't hurt somebody, that doesn't mean you're good. That just means you're useless. But if I'm able to take your face off, but I choose to be kind and gracious and giving and selfless to you now, I'm good.

It's so true.

Yeah, give me that. Give me more of that.

I want to talk about fear a little bit. So you have been in so many of these situations you just got back from, from one where there's, like, danger and death all around. And I know, you know, at least for me personally and anybody listening, fear is really scary. You know, I associate a lot with that quote from Dune that says, fear is the mind killer.

It is.

You almost don't know what to do. It can paralyze you. And you must be in positions all the time where you are scared, you are fearful, you don't want to be there, you don't like it, and yet you do it anyways. When was there a moment where fear was almost crippling to you? Does that happen to you and what do you do?

Fear is debilitating. Fear is paralyzing, and everyone has fear. There's not, like, a person that doesn't have fear. Courage and bravery, even in the face of fear, you do the thing. I personally believe that there's not, like, a hero, that you just open up your shirt and there's an S there. And I'm able to, like, do this act. It is them consistently doing hard things and selfless things that enable them to overcome fear. I don't want to get in my cold plunge in the morning. It's cold. It's 34 degrees. I'm gonna sit in there five minutes, but I get in there, my heart just pounds as if I'm about to die. And then five seconds later, I'm like.

Oh, this is all right.

That's the tiniest version of it. Like, I don't want to go out on the mats with Yakko.

Are you scared then to get choked? Yeah.

Like, my ego is for sure. Competing in jiu jitsu or competing in a shooting competition. Jumping out of a helicopter with Travis Pastrana. Like, there is absolutely an adrenaline spike of fear.

Yeah.

And. But I choose to do the thing because it's hard. I choose to do the thing because it's better for somebody else. Like, just to make it super simple, I'm trying to, like, PR on a lift. Yeah. I'm fearful I'm not going to be able to lift it, but I lift it. The byproduct is I'm stronger after it. I know that's, like, a super oversimplification of it, but in the human condition, if I'm fearful to do this act, this hard thing, the selfless thing, this thing that is that. That might hurt me, that is suffering, but on the other side of it is a better version of me. Cool. I'm down for it. I'm here for that.

Do you have a mental monologue that goes on? Like, for instance, I'm not. I'm scared all the time. And I try to do things anyway. I think fast twitch fear is interesting because fast twitch fear is like, I don't want to go get choked out, but, like, I gotta get on the mat. And we're doing it right now. And So I have 30 seconds, and I just have to go, and I have to be able to fast twitch, decide into fear. And then there's like, slow twitch fear, which is, I'm scared for an extended period. I could bail at some point. I could decide to not do this. But I have to beat fear every single second and moment for an extended period of time. And I remember, like, I was hiking Mount Banker. I don't like heights. I don't like the cold. It was a blizzard, you know, I was scared of crevasses. We were all roped in and it was three days of a mental monologue of like, don't, don't be a. Like, keep going. And what would that be? Like you have a mental. Like, I played the Rocky song, my head. It was like, you know, in here. Do you have that anymore or are you cognizant of it?

Well, I'm very cognizant of it. That desk back there is a painting of two guys on the Runway of Afghanistan. That is in August as we're loading up C40, C47s or C17s to get people out of Afghanistan. The flight into Afghanistan that I took out of UAE is a long flight. And for hours I'm sitting there, I'm changing the batteries on my night vision. I'm getting my kit set up. I'm like, okay, I might not sleep for the next few days. I'm going to try and get a couple hours of sleep as cortisol and adrenaline is pumping through my veins. There's complete conscious thought in this slow fear trip of. I'm about to land in the middle of a conflict peak war zone. The last pictures I saw were C17s taking off with people hanging onto the wheel wells falling to their death. And then I'm on the ground in Afghanistan and I see a spotter on our roof as I'm outside the water wire that takes a peek and sees me. And I know it's Taliban spotter. In a matter of minutes, there's going to be a tower Taliban patrol trying to find us. And it's like, run. Like, run now or we're all going to die. And that's the fast twitch. Like, I could stop. We could be like, paralyzed by fear and just have a. Just sit down and have a cup of tea until the Taliban get there and kill us all. Like, nope, not an option. I could walk up to the pilot and be like, man, change. A change of heart, change of mind. I don't really want to go in Afghanistan. It's my plane. You're like, that was. They'll turn around and fly back. We charter that flight. He would probably be more than happy to turn around and because he's getting paid regardless. Sometimes you just have to do it for no other reason than doing it. The exploration the adventure, like, why did we have to go to the moon? Why did we have to. What is at the top of Mount Everest that we need? There's nothing. Like, we didn't find the cure or anything. It's doing it because it has to be done. Like, why do we plant that flag on Iwo Jima? Why did we climb. Climb the cliffs at Point the Hawk? You know, why do we go on Omaha Beach? Why do we jump into Saint Mar? You know, it's because it had to be done. And regardless of the fear that you're feeling, why do I get up early to provide for my family? Why do I go and challenge myself to be a better person in business, intellectually, grow, physically grow? It has to be done because it's what has to be done. That's the end of it. Like, I have to do it. You can have a process, you can have a system, whatever you need to get you over the hump of doing it. But ultimately it has to be done.

You know, you watch the. The movies about you guys going into Afghanistan and Ukraine and Israel and Special Forces and what it's like. And there's like, the team lead and he's around all his guys and he gives this speech and they're like, go. And then I asked Chris about, and he's like, yeah, we basically don't do that. You just fuck it. You know, you just kind of go. But I was wondering, is there a leader from when you were in or now in a moment that inspired you incredibly and why and what happened and what he said.

I've had so many great leaders around me. I promise. Cody, I. I am, like, below average, especially in the worlds that I worked in and work in in the military. Being around true talented high performers, I'm, like, hanging onto their coattails, trying to, like, I don't deserve to be here. Be able to contribute in some form or fashion, I think is what each of us really focus on. So I take this pie, and we break this pie into these slices, and each of these slices for our skill set is my. My job and my responsibility. So as an 18 Bravo, a special Forces weapons sergeant, I had very specific things that I was in charge of. I had to make sure that the. The guns were loaded, that the headspace and timing for the 2, for the M2 is all set, or the mark 19. I had to make sure that the routes were all set and get in with the 18 echo, that all the fills were good. Now all the GPSs were preloaded and that everybody has everything like, we're working and collaborating on that. In my piece of the pie, I have to make sure that I'm contributing it and my team sergeant isn't there getting like, all right, here's our motivating speech, guys, like, ever.

No, no. All right. Hollywood's got it wrong.

Yeah, man. I remember I was in Iraq pulling security. I wasn't even good enough to be on the inside of the building. I was literally on the outside of the building in, like, behind cover, pulling security as, like, the dudes were doing a battlefield interrogation, like, tactical questioning on the inside. Lower experience guy was on this other corner of this building, and we had these interlocked interlocker. Interlocking sectors of fire. So he was, like, looking. His piece of the pie was from here to here. And then my piece of the pie over here was from here to here. And our lasers would cross here, making sure that we both could see everything. The ground force sergeant major for the Delta Force unit that was on target with us, he comes up, he's like, hey, what are you doing? Like, pulling security? He's like, yeah, what are your sectors of fire? So I could turn my laser on. And the guy next to me, he turns his laser on, which is, like, confirming that we both are good here.

Yeah.

And sometimes you turn your laser on to, like, to indicate that you're looking at something.

Yeah.

So he'll turn it on too, but he'll put his on in flood mode so that I can see a little bit more, and I turn his off. And you know the Titomaso who was wearing multi cams, I was wearing desert combat uniforms. It's the DCU's, the camo color. So he, like, looked different. I'm like, who are you? And he's like. He says, who is he? Sue is. And I'm like, what are you doing here? Anything I want. That's so cool, dude. That's, like the coolest response. Like, you want to talk about the most motivating thing to, like, a young E5 on target that doesn't deserve to be there as, like, the boss of all bosses is sitting next to you, spot checking your job, and you're doing the right thing? Like, that was the most motivating thing as he was disparaging me. Like, he wasn't, like, being aloof, you know, he wasn't talking down to me. He was just being, like, matter of fact, like, whatever I want, bro. And he walks back into target to check on how the interrogation is going. And I was sitting here like, dude, that was so sick. I'm gonna pull the best security I possibly can. You get over there. Check my laser again. Check your laser again.

Sick.

All right. That's the version of the motivating speech that is missed in the movie. And understanding the culture is like. And back in. Sick.

So good. I remember we went to Team 3's 30 year anniversary. What struck me is it's often with you guys not about what you say, it's about what you do. And so I've noticed that a lot because, you know, with my team, I'm more of a, you know, I try to do the doing, but I also try to motivate them with words more My, my motto. So they basically highlighted the lives, every single Navy SEAL that had been lost over the past 30 years. And as they did it, you know. Double D, right? Yeah. Badass.

Quite the resume too.

Incredible resume. Like, I don't even know what I can say. So anyway, just the coolest SEAL that I had probably ever met. He's the one that's on the mic. First of all, it was like chills down your arm because they would each. They came out fully kitted, right? So in their uniforms. For every single member that had fallen, one of them was in their uniforms, you know, with a gun and a flag. And then they sat up on the side. And so immediately, because a lot of the family is there too, for those who've been recent, there's just a visceral reaction. And then I remember he would yell out each of their names and they would respond, just the whole group yelling somebody's name. And then they shot off the guns as a tribute. And what I thought was so fascinating is so many times in the military and in government you get these huge speeches and they don't say that much, although they use so many words, the really scary guys often don't say a lot. But man, the thing that they do sticks with you forever. And so I think it's a good thing to remember for us humans. Like, we're not. People aren't going to remember what you said, they're going to remember what you did.

You know, we aren't what we say. We are what we do. My nine year old was, was asking, we talked about geopolitical things at the dinner table and he was, he was questioning some of the things that are happening internationally right now, Israel and Ukraine. And he's like, what side are we on? Or like, are we good, are we bad? If we're siding with Israel and they're, you know, killing These people in Gaza, like, man, what a tough question to answer. And I told him, like, we are what we do, both as a nation and as an individual. Like, if you, are you a good person, well, what do you do that is good for other people? That's, that's easy. Like yes or no. Like, do you selflessly give to others? No, you only work for yourself. You only work to benefit you and yours.

Cool.

I'm glad you go to church. You know, I'm glad that you, like, wear polo and khakis every day. You know, I'm glad that, like, what do you do for others?

That's the real test. You, like, have a crazy history, obviously in the military. And your book is beautifully written. I remember texting you, you. I know, that was so funny. You guys, first of all, never give you a compliment. You're the worst at compliments in the world. But that compliment you'll take, yeah, I.

Will receive anything negative speech I can receive.

Command through negation probably works well with compliments too. Okay. But you in your book one, I thought it was beautifully written. And then you had some incredibly hard moments in that book that you've talked about many times. What I haven't heard you speak about yet was you wrote a book where you lost friends, where you've chronicled almost every mistake and victory you've had through life. And there are moments in that book that, you know, brought me to. To allergies in one way, shape or form. What was the hardest part of that book to read? Did people get out of it what you wanted them to?

The response to it has just been so overwhelming. And so, yeah, I don't take compliments well, but, you know, you go to Amazon or Barnes Noble and you click it. Comments. And there's. There's five. I think there's 5,004. Five star, four point. I think we're 4.9 out of 5,000 reviews. And it's. This book changed my life in this way, this book. Thank you for your vulnerability. Thank you for your transparency. Thank you for showing, you know, and each of those was a single person having read that book and it helping them in a way. And that that meant so much when I was writing that book, in between each of those lines or each of those stories is a smell or a sound that I vividly remember that I tried to describe in black and white, but that, that never gets what was really happening. When I walked up to Mrs. Cunningham's door after Jared died, I was 15 years old. I remember the sun. I remember what it smelled like. I remember she'd been to the hospital and that she'd been up for a day now. I remember her mascara was gone and that her eyes were just like black, soulless eyes of a shark. And she couldn't even look at me because that's her son's friend. And so, like, wherever her eyes were, they weren't at me because obviously, I was everything that she didn't want to see. I remember walking downstairs to Jared's room, and it still gets me. You know, the lights were off. Nobody could go down that floor. They couldn't even go on that. That entire floor of the house, which was like the playroom. Your Commodore 64 was down there. The Atari was down there. You can't put that in black and white. I can't explain that. There's no way that you can explain the. The smell of the perfume that's a day and a half old on a woman that's been crying for. For two days. Those are the hard things that you can't put in pages. You try.

You can't. Maybe. But I think you can feel it on the other side for those people who have ever had to tell somebody that the person that means more to them than anything in the world is no longer with them, and they're still there. They have a different smell that triggers it just the same. I mean, you know, Chris always talks about the smell of the dirt of Afghanistan.

Yeah.

You know, and how that smell. The second that we landed, even in Morocco, after we had. He had gotten out, he had to take a minute because it took him back some places. But I think sharing those moments of difficulty in this world where everybody's talking about their trauma that they have that nobody else has, it's an excuse for why they're not going to do X and Y and Z. To say, like, we've all been through really hard things. And sharing. It's a real gift.

My wife, we're having, like, a moment a couple of months ago, and she's like, I'm not all right. And I was like, yeah, welcome to the club. You know, like, who here you do you think is, like, all right? You know, like, nobody is okay. Everybody has trauma. Everybody's gone through it. And. And I'm not gonna, like, talk little like, my suffering's greater or. Or my suffering's been like, everybody has gone through it. What's Trump's big son's name? That giant.

Oh, God, I don't know, but I know who you're talking about.

Born into wealth and prosperity, you know, like supermodel for a stepmom, you know, and like, president for a dad, billionaire for a dad. You don't think that dude has adversity? You know? You don't think the Obama girls have a different kind of adversity that I can't even understand? Of course they do. Without a doubt, there's trauma there.

Yeah.

You know, without a doubt, there's. There's suffering there. And so, like, with. With my wife, I was like, it is fine that you're not. Okay, because I'm not either. But what we're going to do is keep working at doing hard things and giving back to other people.

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Every time I've spoken to you, you talk about this next thing that you are building that is in the idea of hard and giving. And your life has been kind of like a physical manifestation of hard things into business, which is really rare. And it seems like you turned some of the traumatic events that you've had in your life. You go to, you know, war zones, your buddies are blown up in front of you. You know, you have lost innumerable men that you have touched throughout your times. You fought in the UFC. Did you really fight in the UFC for like 60 bucks? Your first flight fight or something like that at Pechenga Casino? What was wrong with you? Why did you decide to do that?

I mean, I was going down to Tijuana for nearly free.

Wow.

Yeah.

Because you wanted to fight. You loved fighting or you were angry?

Both. Yeah. Young man without purpose. Damaging, destructive, dangerous.

You were a young man that was angry fighting, and then you turned that into a career in ufc. And my husband says he's like, you know, Tim will be in the UFC hall of Fame like incredible storied history to. Then you turn it into a jujitsu facility here and you also turn it into self defense for women. You know, you go to Green Beret military to then creating save our allies and creating gear and gun companies. It seems like you almost take your. Your deepest, darkest, most difficult things and turn them into businesses or something else. Is that true?

What was Winston Churchill in a speech that transformed a nation and united them to fight to the last man, woman and child. What was that? The motivation that speech was the complete eradication of their people. Like that is coming from a position of fear. Like every one of fighting out of the Great Depression that then went into World War II. Those men trying to provide for their families, taking one potato and making it last a week. Like the fear was starvation, the end of their line. And they take all of that fear and they take all of that suffering and they. They weaponize it for good. Or they weaponize it for overcoming or they weaponize it for accomplishing. Or they weaponize it like it's a superpower. When you can do that, when you can take the thing that can hurt you and then transform it into the thing that builds you.

The weaponized for good is a great. Is that something that you think about?

I do. We are going into a conflict war zone. I don't think there's a better example of weaponizing evil. Like the things that we are taught to do. How to kill people, how to track people, how to figure out a pattern of life and an intersection point to be able to kidnap a person, how to overthrow a government. Like these are the things that we were taught by our government to do. And I take the inverse of that and do that for good in a country to rescue Americans out of a conflict area. Like there's not a better representation of that.

Speaking of hard to kill and weaponizing for good, is it a true story that you had ISIS members try to come after you here in Texas? And what you did next from that sounds crazy to me, but. Except I know you, so it might be true.

I think you're giving them a little bit too much credit when you say that. Like they're coming after you because they're a bunch of cowards. Yeah, they're a bunch of like impotent, tiny, petty humans that don't have the capability to do anything brave or courageous unless there's like 25 of them and they're going to kick in a door in the middle of the night and like rape the child and then try to kill the parent.

Yeah.

Like, that's brave to them. Brave would have been actually doing what they were trying to do, which is find me and kill me here. And here in Texas, the FBI called me and said, hey, just wanted to notify you that their ISIS is actively recruiting to find a radical in the Central Texas area to find you and kill you. I was like, sick, you know, like, this is so fantastic. I've been going all over the world trying to find these people, and you're telling me they're about to come to exist. I pick up the phone, I have a friend that works for Fox News is like, hey, ISIS is trying to kill me. Can I go on live television? Like, yeah, sure. Unbeknownst to them, my plan was to go into live television and give my home address, which is what I did it. The camera goes on and I see a. A red light. And I was like, we're live. Like, yeah, we're live. Like, this is so cool. Like, you can send anyone that you want to my door. Just know that you're never going to get them back. That's the end. And I just dumped my address on live television on fox. And the FBI was pissed. My wife was pissed. Fox News was like, could you just do that? And, yeah, of course they didn't show up.

I wouldn't show up to your house either. Nope, no chance. But hysterical. Can't imagine why your wife was upset. Somebody asked me the other day, like, well, what would you do if somebody came into your house and tried to attack you? And I go, well, you know, the natural thing is, like, I just flipped the switch that turns on the strobing lights. And welcome to the Jungle Song, which is Chris's idea for home protection. And then, you know, you end with a shotgun. And so I think you guys are built different. You guys are total psychopaths in the best way possible.

If somebody came into your house and Chris, like, you know, the alarm goes off or, you know, a ring camera goes off and there's somebody, like, pushing in the door. The first thing you'd have to do is, like, hide his erection.

He's like, yes, finally.

And then the second thing would go and, like, do the business that he's built to do. It's hilarious.

He might actually take off his pants. Yeah, he might not hide it.

And then he'd send me the video. Be like, dude, this is amazing. I just watch over and over and over again of him, like, himself and then going out there taking the dude's scalp off.

Yeah, but, you know, Quite honestly, you know, I was with a group of friends this weekend and we were talking about there is such joy as a woman to be with a man who you know can protect you and to support that man in the endeavors that he has. You know, we helped support him on some stuff that he did this weekend. Young Cody kind of thought that she was girl boss, tough, didn't need no man. Now, being very happily married to somebody who at times drives me crazy for sure, but is that protector is so incredible, empowering. It's. Yeah. Do you know how much more I can achieve because I have somebody behind me that I know will be there no matter what.

Similarly, like, this is symbiotic, like how much better of a human he is because he has you behind him. It is such a broken projection of what that beautiful marriage looks like. At no point is he demanding or commanding as a protector of the household about what you're going to be or what you're going to do, what you're going to wear or how you're going to run your business. And similarly, like, in no way, shape or form as you support him, are you undermining him or taking authority from him as he is just selflessly giving back to you and vice versa. And how sick that is to come home to that woman that loves you and will. I. I just. I literally just said this a few days ago. I was like, you fill me. Like she. Her question is like, I'm so little. In all of these things that you do is like, I can't do any of the things that I do without you filling me up to do those things. And like, everything in my soul and everything in my being is rejuvenated. And some things are created in those moments with her.

There's. And I think realizing that you have a human who will go through the test of time with you is one of the most powerful things you can do. Because why else fight? Why else work out? Why else get the six pack? Why else build? It's not. At some point you don't need more money. It's because you want to leave a legacy and because you want to impress the person that you're with to be the best type of human you can. And it's really beautiful. I want to out you on the Internet about something that happens often. One of your biggest secrets, actually, it's not too totally secrets that the Internet doesn't know is you have an almost trad wife level of love for chickens.

I do love chickens.

You and I, we always joke about These like sending little chicken videos that we should be doing. You know, we talked about being hard to kill, but this other part of what you do is like being hard to sustain overall. Like, you know, being a type of person who can be an independent center of gravity. Part of that is like chickens and meat. And like talk a little bit about that because I think there's a whole movement of women that love that and a whole movement of men that are now kind of getting into this as well.

Self sufficient, being a provider, being a protector, all of that falls back into categories of being sovereign. So sovereign is, is like being free is cool. Being sovereign is where it's at. Being sovereign is I'm gonna live my life and there's nothing that I need from anyone else to live the life that I want to live. You're going to tell me to do a thing, I don't have to do that thing because you have no authority over me. Hey, I want you to take this experimental medicine. Like, nah, I don't, I don't need to because I'm like super freakishly healthy and as are my kids. Take this disease that you're trying to protect me from, go and inject into that four year old's neck because she will poop it out. Like five minutes later she's eating bison and running up the side of that hill because like that's just who she is as this like this antibody of power and strength. It's like I want sovereignty with sovereignty because like food, health, financial freedom, like these are all requirements to be truly free for like a sovereign nation, to have borders that are sovereign, to be like financially self sufficient. So that's what I want for me, for my family and for my household is sovereignty. And chickens are kind of a representation of that. They are like this proclamation, like they give me guilt free protein. Like you, you want to be a vegetarian for like ethical reasons. Buy chickens because they give you the most. Like in that tiny little egg is everything to build life. Every nutrient that you need to live is inside of that beautiful thing that they're going to drop every single day. And it's free. They're freely giving it to you. And they're cute and like I got little poof head ones that run around, you know, I want that one, Luna.

I want that one so bad.

And like my eggs are orange and they're rust colored and they're blue and they're green and they're speckled and they're white and there's the sweetest things those chickens Chase my dogs around, they chase my cat around. They follow. Wherever my kids are playing, the chickens will be there. Like if they're out on the swings or they're on the pirate ship or they're in the backyard riding motorcycles, the chickens are like immediately adjacent to them because they just want to be with the family. You know, like this guy right Here, that was a 265 grain bullet that was flying at 3,000ft per second. Now they call it the Chef. Kiss that hole right in the front, you shoot it right in the face. I, I didn't need a trophy. I was trying to harvest every ounce of meat off of the entire animal, right. So I'm not going to shoot it through here, which is going to take some rib meat. So normally, you know, in an ethical harvest, especially when you're shooting wild game, that's broadside too, you're going to punch the lungs and go through the heart. So they're immediately dead. That's a very ethical way to harvest an animal. Not Chef Kiss right there, where you just kind of like punch a hole. Tons of energy goes immediately into the brain. And it's just dark. You know, he's sitting there, he's an. He was an old bison eating some grass. And then there's blackness. That's the end. There's no pain. There was no anything. Thousand pounds of meat. A thousand pounds. That is like two years of meat for a family. Food at Fajitas. Corned beef hash.

No seed oils, just real nutrients. My dad had to work in a slaughterhouse too. And like the industrial food complex, it's toxic.

They're trying to poison us. They want you sick. Like, don't want to be sick.

Get chickens.

You want to be free.

Get chickens.

You want to have cute little things running around getting chickens.

We don't own a chicken company, but we should. It's the best. I love this. So I want to end with talking about you as a parent because you took it one step further than most people do, which is not only do you parent your children differently, but you started a school and that school now has tentacles to start a bunch of other schools. And so maybe start with telling me what do you do as a parent that you think is a no brainer that most parents would think is crazy or have never thought of?

I don't do things for them parents. I think out of one, their egos and to their own trauma, their history of, of maybe not having, they then tried to give everything to their kids. And by giving everything to their kids, they're taking away everything that that kid needs, which is the opportunity to accomplish, which is the opportunity to create, which is the opportunity to overcome, which is the opportunity to suffer. I know that sounds hard that you're going to, like, intentionally allow your child to do something hard like, oh, I'll just go tie their shoe for them. Don't do that. Let them learn how to tie their own shoe.

It'll.

It'll give them this feeling of accomplishment. It gives them sovereignty. It gives them the knowledge of doing something new. It gives them the small motor function of being able to do something difficult. You don't need to do it for them. That is a really hard thing to like. I love my kids, and I would do anything for them. And the thing that I have to do the most for them is nothing. I have to let them accomplish and challenge. And like I have to do. This is a hard one. I have to hold my wife back, be like, no, let him go for a second. Let him do it himself. He's. If he falls from the tree, he's not going to break anything. He's going to get hurt. He's not going to get damaged. Let him climb.

Is that part of the core curriculum at Apogee? If you had to sum it up in, like, a few sentences, what is different between my public school and Apogee?

Everything is different. I think the first and most important thing is the ability to choose. In public school, they're given everything. Like, you're taking this test, you're going to use this pencil, you're going to use this piece of paper, you're going to sit in that desk, you're going to sit in that chair at that desk. In this classroom, we don't give any of them that you sit wherever you want. You don't have to sit in a chair. You can sit upside down on the wall if you want. You know, like, you can either do it or you can't. You've either done the work to be able to accomplish this thing or you haven't. We are putting first and foremost inside of them this intrinsic desire to accomplish, to create, to collaborate, to critically think. And those characteristics are not being taught in school. I argue that they're actually being taken from them. We're trying to build what's inside of them first. This is a byproduct of what's in here. Like the desire to read and desire to learn and to be intellectually challenged is not because somebody told you to sit down and take the star test. Because something that There was a catalyst, there was something that was lit and ignited in you. Like I have to have more, I have to know more, I have to do more. I like, I want this feeling that I just got by creating this thing and then taking this thing to market and then selling this thing that I created and built. And then people like it and now it feels good because I'm contributing to them. It's very entrepreneurial. And that whole entire line was like a, like an eight year old, you know, like vastly different. So one is we're giving them all the choices. Two is we are letting them learn by making mistakes. This is a hard thing for parents that aren't quite on board when they start looking at it. A lot of people want like straight A's on their refrigerator and you know, they want Tommy to, to come back in his school uniform, you know, and like the teacher put five gold stars on his, on his little daily sheet as their parents dropped their kid off at eight, at eight o' clock and they're going to pick them up at 4 o' clock because they don't care about their kid. They don't get any of that from us.

You have a couple daughters, but you have one that's, that's still quite young. Will you let her make all the mistakes like you will your young son? Do you think there's a difference between men and women and how you parent them in that way?

Yeah, there's definitely a difference about how you parent every single child and especially boys and girls. But I mean, I argue that the amount of adversity that women have to overcome is, is far more significant than the, the, the type and adversity that I have to overcome as a man. So that girl, that little girl, being able to have the confidence and the power behind her voice and know like, like that four year old like go up and try to touch her. She has a voice and it's like, I don't know, you don't touch me. You know, like just instantly automatically, you know, like not stranger danger, just like you're a weird person. Get away. And you know, like where did that confidence come from? That confidence come, came from her doing hard things like watching her where it's just. She was in hockey practice, she's four. She was in hockey practice yesterday and I was like, why were you drawing on the ice? And she. Well, I kept falling. So she was like sitting down on the ice and she was drawing with a puck and I was like, well, how do you think you're going to fall Less. She's like, by skating more. I'm like, were you gonna skate more sitting on the ice, drawing? And she's like, fine. She throws the puck, and she gets up and she skates off.

I like her already. Yeah. Do you have anything really good planned for, like, the first dude she brings home? I know. You do?

Yeah. I think you're supposed to be so funny. Comes in, like, I just walk out of my gun shop gun room that is in. In my house, mostly naked, you know, with, like, a dead animal hats on and, like, sharpening a weapon and one of many, but not, like, make a thing about what's going on and be so sweet and gregarious and welcoming and inviting. Like, I'm so glad you're here. I've been so thrilled to meet you. You know, she's talked so much about you, you know, like, really thrilled about what you guys are gonna be doing. He'd be like, I'm gonna just.

You know. One of the best things that my dad did was when I was younger, too. I remember people would say to him all the time, what they say to. You have beautiful daughters. And so they're like, oh, gosh, you know, karma's gonna be a bitch for. You know, you're gonna have to watch out for that one. And he would always look back at them, and he would always go, they're gonna have to watch out for her. And, like, that line I carried throughout my whole life. And I think you've obviously done the same thing with your daughters. We've talked a lot about personal sovereignty across the board and things that people should do to change their life in very small ways and in very big ways. You have a ton of different mechanisms for that here. If you were to tell people, like, right now, today, one thing to change specifically, would you. Is it, like, go. Just go try to do Brazilian jiu jitsu? Is there, like, a tactical hack that you're like, I have seen because we've coached thousands of people in shooting, protecting, in buying guns and buying gear. Is there one thing that you think, man, this is actually a hack. It's hard 100, but you should do it. What is it?

It's grit. Every selection, Hell week with the seals team week, Special forces selection. You cannot. There's not a predictor of, like, this guy did jiu jitsu, or he was a wrestler or he played water polo. Like, the best swimmers in the world go to buds and they bump, they bail out just like everybody else. The freak D1 athlete that played football, like, he Is this superhero build shows up at Special Forces selection, he quits just like everybody else. Like, the predictor is grit and business. Like if you walk out here and like you see if you think about all your successful entrepreneurial friends, like what is the characteristic they all have in common? Like Dan and I do not have anything in common. Like we are physically the opposite, like intellectually the opposite. Like our approach and values. Like very dissimilar. What do he and I have in common? There's grit, a thing that is just gonna keep fighting. And just like that guy at Selection or that guy in buds, he just won't quit. So how do you build grit? That's the question. This is the hack. It is suffering. I was listening to a TED talk and and they're talking about kids becoming successful after college and they're looking for a characteristic that was the predictor. And at first they were looking at like their grades and their IQ where their internships were. Like if one was at a Fortune 500 company. Ultimately they had to change the whole entire measurement sale because they couldn't find a predictor. Then they started looking at character characteristics, personality characteristics and specific specifically. And the one thing that stood out was grit. Someone that has resolve, like these are all synonyms of grit. That is a direct byproduct of the physical challenges that somebody does in life. Some of those you can elect to do, you do those by choice. So the hack is go do hard things, go do jiu jitsu, go climb the mountain, hit the peak, find the summit. Like apogee, the word apogee is the top culmination of a moment. It is the summit of a thing. It is a crescendo of a song. To reach that thing is you have to do all of the suffering leading up to it.

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Based upon the latest available competitor information, Chrysler is a registered trademark of FCA US llc. The deal of the week this week. Well, the deal is actually the business of Tim Kennedy. So if you listen to the rest of this episode, you might have thought, well, he seems like kind of a badass former, you know, MMA guy, former military guy. But you know what else? And the truth is, if you thought that's all that Tim Kennedy did, you would be wrong. This guy's an absolute machine. Let me list for you all the different businesses this guy has so we can learn how to build multiple businesses, so we can break down how to build what's called what I call satellite businesses around your core thesis. And we can do it while having fun and maybe making a difference in the world. Listen to this. Okay, so he's got Apogee school school for children in Texas. Sheepdog response live trainings around the country like protection, hunting, shooting, tactical for both civilians and government. Sheepdog response gear which is like shooty, stabby, rolling around pieces of gear, black rifle, coffee. He was an investor in the business also as a franchise holder. Ranger up fitness clothing and gear company Live Relentless supplement and nutritional fitness company Noble Defender Next Gen tactical weapons accessories Four Pillars Fitness, which is a fitness and training app. He has a new jiu jitsu studio of Gracie Humaita in Austin which is actually a franchise business. And what's wild about this is when you walk into his office, I've actually never seen this before. I came in the same sneaky way. But let's say you're going to come in through the front. First of all, the whole thing's bulletproof, which is wild. Then you walk into the front of his, his office. He calls it a kill box. But basically what it is is it's a foyer for those more evolved humans. And that foyer opens to on one side a gear and retail store. Behind that gun store where you can like ship guns that you want to buy, you can actually purchase arms, ammo, et cetera there. Then behind that is Gracie Humaita, his jiu jitsu gym. So there's a full gym, full training area, full, you know, franchise under the Gracie Humaita brand. Then you go into the other side and there I can only explain it as a re rendition of the Wild West. It's like five offices along one side with the people who run his varying businesses. Then he has an area in the middle that's open for anybody to meet there and engage. When I was there, they actually had a might have been Delta, it might have been Green Beret. Basically what those mean is there's like the normal armed forces and then there are the special forces. So those are usually have special training, some elite level on top of them. So anyway, there's a guy there talking to a young man who wants to potentially become a Delta and then a couple of recruiters. So he lets some of the military guys use it. Then he's got his online businesses in the back where he does all of the shipping from them, like a big, you know, unit for that. And then he's got two podcast studios, like one that he lets some people rent out. One podcast studio that he uses and his office. And then he looks across the way and he's like, I want to buy that building over there. And what I thought was so interesting is you guys heard this during the podcast. He was talking about, you know, weaponize things for good. The way that I look at about this business model that I think is fascinating is what I call the core satellite. So when people ask me what type of business I should, I should buy, I typically say something like, well, you know, if you're an accountant and you know accounting and you've managed an accounting business before, you probably should first go out and buy another accounting business because you already know this. It's like the devil you know. And then on top of the accounting business, maybe you could layer on like a financial advice business. Maybe you could layer on like a financial education based business. Maybe you could layer on an app for accounting. Maybe you could buy other accounting companies so you have like your core of the thing you're really uniquely good at, then you buy these satellite businesses around it. Now Tim's built these businesses, not bought them for the most part. I think he bought into the Black Rifle company from an investment standpoint and bought the franchise rights. But what's so cool is they all make sense, right? If he gets one customer to Gracie Humaita, guess what they're going to need? They're going to need jiu jitsu gear. Oh great. Buy it in the store right there. They're going to also potentially need workout gear. Oh great. Buy it in the store right there. The likelihood that they are also into hunting and fitness and protection. So we'll do some sheepdog courses. Really Likely. Might they also be somebody who buys a gun? Probably the Fascinating part about the Jiu Jitsu thing is I used to do Jiu Jitsu back in the day. I should really get back into it. And I did some women's classes. 70 to 80% of all females who practice Jiu Jitsu have either been sexually assaulted or have known somebody who was sexually assaulted. And that was the reason they came to Jiu Jitsu. It's really powerful to see these women want to protect themselves more because it's a. It's a scary thing. I get it. We weren't taught to, like, fight. We weren't really taught to roughhouse. And so learning all of that is. Is really, really cool and interesting. And then he can also support all of his portfolio companies through this big media empire he has, which is he has a podcast, he has books, he has a bunch of social media channels, and he has people like me come in there who would interview him. He was like, can we do it at my office? I said, sure. And so I went into his office and we basically toured all of it. We're going to show you guys some short form content about it too. What a flywheel. So a flywheel in business obviously is like you go to an old, like a water mill where you have the. The water thing that scoops the water out, and it scoops the water out and it dumps it back in. And this process right here of scooping that is just from the power of the river rolling through this scooping mechanism that automatically creates what? Energy. And that energy, as long as the river keeps flowing, it gets easier and easier. The first push on the water wheel is kind of hard, but after a while, the river just keeps flowing. And that's what Tim Kennedy has. He has this water wheel or flywheel for his business where his media company supports just about everything else that he does. So the deal of the week this week is actually a dude and his name's Tim Kennedy. I hope you all felt how special this episode was to me too. You know, I'm trying to, through this podcast, open up some of the humans that I think are most unique in the world that I actually have come to know and love to all of you. We don't go out and try to interview the, you know, the most famous people, the hottest new thing, whoever's got a hot new book out the. The podcasters that you guys have all listened to forever. That's not my jam. My jam for this and for you is truly this that. I think you are a big deal. You are a big deal to me and I want to do everything humanly possible to help you have personal sovereignty in every aspect of your life and to show you the humans who already have it and steal their homework so you can get it too. See you next week, you guys, if you liked this today, I don't know if I've told you all about this, but we have a community for small business buyers, people who want to buy a small business and scale it. And we also have a series of courses specifically focused on this one idea, that if you can do deal making to get ownership, you have more personal sovereignty. It's called Contrarian Community and the courses are all listed at Contrarian Thinking. The community is for those who are really serious about taking action in small businesses right now. But if you just want to learn how to do deals, maybe how to do seller financing and deals, or how to buy businesses by yourself, sort of mano a mano, you should 1000% check this out. It's a labor of love for me. We have what I think is the Wharton of M and A mergers and acquisitions online. It's getting better every day. And if you guys haven't checked it out, you should go do that today. Contrarian Thinking co Look up education and see if any of those things are right for you in your business buying journey.