Lessons Learned From A Legendary Tier 1 Operator – CSM Tom Satterly (Ret.)

My guest today is Tom Satterley. Tom is a highly decorated combat veteran having served in the army for 25 years, with the last 20 spent in the US Army's most elite Tier 1 unit Delta Force. During his career, Tom was involved in and led some of our nation's most important military campaigns, including the battle for Mogadishu, portrayed in the film Black Hawk Down, and the capture of Saddam Hussein. Tom is the recipient of numerous medals, including a Silver Star and four bronze stars, one for valorous acts. He was also the first American to ever attend Germany's Ranger School. Tom retired from Delta in 2010 as a command sergeant major. Tom's willingness to speak openly and honestly about his mental and emotional struggles have saved the lives of countless other warriors who believed they had to suffer in silence or make it alone or not at all. Today, Tom and his wife and partner, Jen, are the co-founders and co-CEOs of the All Secure Foundation. A nonprofit organization serving special operation warriors and their families tell where we connect and to heal. Tom's best-selling book, All Secure, is available at all major bookstores. I'm excited to have Tom on the debrief, not only because of his extensive leadership experience in one of the world's most elite units, but for the amazing work he has done since leaving Delta. My name is John Becker. For the past four decades, I've dedicated my life to protecting tactical operators. During this time, I've worked with many of the world's top law enforcement and military units. As a result, I've had the privilege of working with the amazing leaders who take teams into the world's most dangerous situations. The goal of this podcast is to share their stories, in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people. Welcome to the debrief. Tom, thanks so much for joining me today on the debrief. It's great to have you. Yeah, thanks John. Appreciate you having me on. Why don't we start just for those that are not that familiar with a quick, you know, Saturday bio so that everybody kind of is brought up to speed with who you are? Yeah, I think I hate to date myself back in '85. I graduated high school and it was a John Cougar moment. A friend of mine had just got out of basic training from the Army and he was on his way to Germany. He was telling me all about it on the way up to this concert. By the time I got out of that concert about an hour and a half drive, I decided to join the military just to get college money. They'd y'all go for four years and get out. And I've gone to Germany. Was there for three years and one more year to get out. But during those three years, I went to French Commandos School, German Ranger School, to Tim Confidence training and the Swiss March was like 40 miles a day for five days. And it just felt good. It felt different, you know, and it felt more than just motor pool Mondays where you sit in the motor pool and you do shit. You're never going to go anywhere. You're never going to do anything. And you know it. You're in the regular Army. You train a little bit. But once I got a little taste of more of a special operations environment, I guess, I just wanted more. And a friend of mine used to show me, it showed me a picture of him as a baby and his dad's holding him in his arm wearing his dad's green beret. And I kind of adopted that dream right then. And said, that's what I wanted to do. So I kind of enlisted, reenlisted for jump school so I get the four bra, get a green beret. As soon as I got to four bra, I started hunting down the green beret recruiter. But come to find out about two years ago that that was a stolen baller picture. His dad really wasn't SF. So, you know, my career started out with a stolen baller moment, which was fine. I took that ballerous moment and made it my own. And then I went to become a green beret. And then when I was in language school, I got approached by a couple guys at Ren the unit. You know, and they're like, hey, we saw you in the cue course. I think you have what it takes. You should go try this out. Mike, okay, that sounds cool. So I put in first selection date and got accepted and made that in 91. And I stayed there for 20 years. Through 20 of the most probably tumultuous years. Crazy. In special operations. And if you're going to pick 20 years, 91 to 11 would probably be the 20 busiest years in special operations history. Yeah, it was a fun time. I'll tell you it was, you know, after a year and a half, you know, thrust right into Somalia's my first combat and, you know, engagement. That was, I remember thinking, holy shit, that's not any idea what I thought this would be. You know, I mean, you don't think about it, right? You train and you're the heroes and you're the winners and you're the good guys. But when your friends start dying, you're really like, oh, okay, the shit goes two different ways. It comes back at you too. Well, and like, why don't we put context on Somalia? Because I think, you know, there's, there were a lot of things that happened in Somalia that were bad. You know, the operation you were involved in was so historic and for lack of a better term, so rough that, you know, we made a movie called Black Hawk Down about it. Why don't you give us kind of a quick thumbnail sketch? Yeah, that was, that was a quick day of a time sensitive target where a guy on the ground had done the signal, you know, of, hey, the guys are here, we're looking for some people on the ground and he had done that. What he was supposed to do, pull up with his car, open the hood, shut the hood and drive away and that tells us, oh, he's there and it's this house, you know, and the guy did the wrong house. They're all idiots. But still we figured it out. So we loaded up while the team leaders were getting a quick debrief. We all loaded up, you know, after the pages went off and sit on our helicopters and wait for the team leader to come up and scream at you with a piece of paper pointing and you're just nodding your head going, sure I got it, but you don't know what the hell you're doing. I mean, you can't hear him. The helicopters are cranked up and you scream and appointed and you're like, what ever, we'll do that. Infiltrated and realized immediately, we're already under fire, you know, it was in the heart of the beast, it was in the Bacara market. So that's where all their weapons were and just bad guy territory. Of course, we thought, you know, now, right, you know, now before they even know we're there. And you know, you shoot one helicopter down and then they shot another helicopter down and I'm, I remember watching it fly overhead off to the, the Northeast and then crashing and I knew, that's when I knew during that mission. That it had changed. It was going to be a lot longer. You know, up to that point I was still joking about, we're going to make a home for dinner. I wonder what they're going to have for dinner tonight, you know, and we're still kind of cracking jokes like we did and then people started getting shot and five ton trucks started blowing up and helicopters were shot down and we had to fight our way up the street to the crash site. And then basically we're pinned down to the crash site for 18 hours. It's like the longest sustained firefight since Vietnam at the time and it may still be I don't know. It was the night that my watch friends die. I thought I was going to die. I kind of gave in, we ran out of ammo and my team leader came in and I asked him a question because you could hear the convoy trying to make it to make it to us. But I'd been going on for hours. Just hours of raging gunfight going off in the city as they tried to fight their way to us. There's a gun fight at our house as they pick our house apart with rocket propellaker nades and AK-47 far. The thing got way the little birds to keep him a bay and we were kind of in the alamos situation the best we could be at that crash site. But they just kept picking us apart and when my team leader came in I asked him, do you think they're going to make it? And he looked at me and I was like waiting for that motivational speech. You know, like, hey, you know, buck up young camper and he just looked at me and goes, I don't know. And he turned 11, not that was shit, you know, shit, this sucks. And I kind of at that moment, I could calm, you know, washed over me versus the harry. Like, what's going on? What's going on and looking everywhere? And it was kind of like, here we are, right? Here we are. I'm going to break as much shit as I can tonight, kill as many people as I can and help as many of my guys as I can because I didn't figure I was going to make it. And it just kind of gave me that courage and strength to keep going. And then when we got back the next morning, that run out, I'll tell you the run out when the two vehicles finally showed up, maybe it dawned right before dawn. And they hooked up chains and pulled the helicopter frame off of the pilots that were stuck underneath, which is why we wouldn't, you know, we wouldn't leave. And then farther way back, you know, we put all the dead on top, we put all the wounded inside those vehicles and then when I went to get in and pulled the door shutters, like there's no room inside, you know, it's like, all right, we hatched out a new plan. We'll run alongside the vehicles, they'll use this cover and we'll work our way that mile back to where everyone else was. And as soon as the first shots fired again, they took off. Those vehicles just took off. We're sitting there like, all right, new plan, we're just going to run back, you know, so we just ended up fighting our way back until we ran into the tanks and Brad Lee's and Humvees that we climbed into and made our way back. And when I pulled back into the two Humvees, I was in, got lost. I went the wrong way. Nobody else went to the Pakistani stadium. Our two Humvees got lost. I didn't find that out until about three years ago when I made a post and somebody wrote back, that's my vehicle from the 10th mountain. I'm like, hey, what happened, man? Why any told me we're lost? All right, good enough, you know, good enough. Now I know 30 years later that we got lost, but we made it to the back gate of the airfield. I waited a little bit, nobody else came. I went, well, shit, let's drive all the way around to where our hanger was. And when I did, I noticed like 12 bodies laying on the street covered in poncho liners and whatnot. And I started looking, I could see the boots and you see desert boots, then you could see black Adidas boots. And it's more deserts and more black Adidas. And I needed to get out of here. bars were the black adidas. And that was the first hint that I had of how bad the night was, how really bad it was, how many lives we had lost. You know, and then I just went inside and started rearming and cleaning up, charging my radios and getting ready to go back out. And then everybody started flying back in from the Pakistani stadium and then we started getting word that Gary and Randy were missing, they were live, people out there missing and that just anger, right, just anger washes over you. Everybody packed up, rearmed, got ready to go back out and then just wouldn't let us do it. They wouldn't let us go back out. I think they knew, like, don't let them out. Don't let these angry people out. It'll be bad. And then I, but I think they also knew that we were decimated and we just didn't realize that it never happened to us. We were just angry and probably wanting to go back out, but they had decided they're going to bring another squadern over and replace us. And all we got to do after that day was was train with the other squad and show them what we knew, talked about what we knew before we packed up and left. We had, I think, I'll screw these numbers up. I know it was 19 KIA and I want to say 98, probably wounded out of all of us, being a little over 100, and I'll screw those numbers up this much later, but it was very, very few left that were unscathed, but a lot of the walk and wounded made it out, and then finally evac back to the rear. And it was kind of a more of a destination than I realized upfront how many people were injured and couldn't go back out. There's a pretty violent way to start your career Delta 2, wasn't it? My first trip was to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, skiing. I was like, this is the life, man. I've never been skiing before paid by the government. And then you know, and then you got crawl over a mountain at two in the morning and make it all worth it and sleep overnight in a snow cave. But you know, the skiing was fun. This is a pretty cool place to be. You know, and then I went, did a trip down south and early 93. And then boom, Somalia pops up. You know, we rehearsed for Somalia before they called us up to go in August, I think. And I remember I remember landing on the ground like rated a role as a kid. I was a kid, you know, and remember how hot it was. Just how hot. And then the rainy season kicked in. And then you know, your hangar's full of holes, right? So it's just raining on you all the time. And then you're on the ocean. You're like, well, let's go swimming. And then some tigers eat a couple of tenths mountain guys. You're like, all right, no more swimming. Yeah. So everything that you can do, they kind of take away from you over there. This is a horrible place to be. Does it, how did, how did Somalia, so at that point, you know, you're, you're young in your army career, how did that inform your leadership later as you got older and got responsibility? How did that impact you? I relied upon that a lot and I screwed that up too. It had been such a long time 20 years before I'm back. And now I'm in charge and I'm calling Black Hawk down, you know, and I'm like, I would, I'm enough water. I did it again. And it was one of those things that we learned so much then we re-wrote how we do, you know, Mount Training and Urban Warfare. It's made the whole military changed how they did it. And I had one of those feelings like this will never happen again. We're just going to keep training until this never happens again, right? So I just put my head down for the next 30, 20 years was like, this will never happen again. Just keep training, keep training, keep training. And it kind of drove my leadership into the, into the arena of I know what the most horrible things are and that's what we need to prepare for because we're so highly trained that we don't need to keep being so highly trained. We need to maintain that. But the things we had never done, the down hilo, the occupying of a four-way intersection properly was a small element and we don't operate large elements. Understanding that that was not our real mission, our real mission. It's in a mountain, small elements, you know, and and and then fast forwarding to 20 years of war in the Middle East again. And we're doing the same things. We start doing the same things again because we've lost a lot of knowledge. So I started stealing a little bit back into our people as much as I could. Like, hey, we can't have our helicopters hovering over the target. It tells everybody where you're at. And then they get shot down and you have another issue. So that started to repeat itself. You know, and what caught me was that mission we went on where I said I had to call Black Hawk down over the radio because right up on an infill, Hila Compton got hit with an RPG and had to do a hard landing like about 150 meters away in a field. So I had to send all the Rangers over to protect that and surround that crash site. Well, our guys were taking down the target, which was by the way not a wedding party. If they told us was a weapons training area. So they had all their weapons ready to go and they were training and just starbursts. That night ended up being AC 130 gunships. I mean, just everything went wrong that night. Nobody killed one person injured that night with a suicide vest in our house. But other net man, we found a huge cache in the car port, you know, of 155 rounds setting up huge IED. So once we left, we blew that house up. But that was another all-nighter that wasn't as violent. And it kind of gave me that feeling that maybe we handled it better this time, you know, but it wasn't an urban area as much as Somalia was. It was still a little bit of an open area where we had some advantage plus we had our night vision. We had everything and we were supposed to take with us. So I tried to instill that along the way of people like don't think that your plan will be executed the way you think it'll be executed. You bring everything that you think you might need to stay overnight 24 hours at a minimum no matter where you go. Instead of cutting out things like, well, we're back in there. I don't need a lot of extra water. It's a daytime. I don't need my nads. You know, all the things that we did back then, the newer guys were starting to think of again, like let's lighten our load. I'm like, hmm, no, why don't you go work out and carry that load, right? You do extra work out with that load in your back because you need that shit, you know, and when you need it, it's better to have it, right? So that's that's kind of what I went with was, was that deep thinking of beyond our training, beyond the plan, when it all goes to shit, that's what we need to worry about. Yeah, it's interesting. In your book, one of the things that really stuck me was you, you described the second event and and they look up to going down and calling Black Hawk down and it instantly struck me that the contrast of now being in a leadership position and having, you know, what appears to be the beginning of a very similar event, you know, it starts in a very similar way. Had to be kind of a profound emotional event for you where it was like, oh god, now it's going to happen on my watch. It was and when I get emotional or when I get scared or when I feel shameful or when my wife calls me out on something, I get mad. I go straight to rage. I used to. I used to. I don't. Now I just get mad like normal people. But I would go because I was living at a seven, right? Most people live at one or two. I was living at a seven. That was my normal day. So when you made me mad, I go to 10 right away. It's not very far to 10, you know, or 11, even. I go all the way to 11 and it was one of those, um, I had to break that process of the rage that came up at that night when that happened again and and it came over me. My boss was a new, was a new officer and he was like on the roof and I was telling him we needed to do this. We needed that and he was kind of timid about putting it in because it was one of his first hits, you know, that was like that. And he kept telling me, hey, the command wants us to go chase these squirters. And I tell him no. And I'd go about doing more business. He said, hey, hey, they kept hitting me up again. They really wants to send a team after those squirters. I go, tell them no, you know, and I'm over there doing my job. He goes, hey, Tom grabs me and goes, listen, we're on the roof of this building. He's like, they really want to see their ticket helicopter fly over with a team and chase the squirters that ran into this house about, you know, half a mile away by now. And I looked at him and I go, let me show you how to do this. And I grabbed the radio from him and I got on there and I called back the headquarters and I said, we've got it down the hill. I've got Rangers running it. I've got my sultry scattered about this target area trying to figure out we're still under fire. We're still chasing people. We're not chasing squirters out. And I threw it back at him and go, that's how you fucking do it. You know, and I turn around. I was so freaked out. And so mad that since then I've learned to operate. I was operating out of fear back then, right? Since then I've learned to operate out of love and get the same thing done. But on target, there's no time to mess around. And I was just overwhelmed with those emotions from Somalia and being in charge and thinking, this can't happen. I can't let this develop into this. So they were trying to make us still go and do things. Well, I'm trying to secure something now, right? I just couldn't, I couldn't do it. And I'm glad I didn't separate our men more. You know, I'm glad I did because I already had a guy missing. And he was out there in the field just messed up on Ambien. So once I found him in, then I could use AC-130s to suppress the size. So that moment of Somalia, I was just a kid breaking shit, you know, shooting people and it was just me. To your in charge of all these people was a great difference. And it was worse to be in charge, even though you might not be in as much danger, entering the door first, you know. Yeah, but I think it's you raised an interesting point. And maybe it is a lesson that we learn out of trauma and pain and mistakes, but you know, as a leader, we've got to have moral courage. We have to have a willingness to stand up, even to those above you when there is peril. And I think that, you know, one of the things that came through to me in reading that story was that you had kind of come to this point where it's like, "I have responsibility for these guys and I'm willing to put myself, you know, I'll call it in political harm's way to make sure that we're not going to repeat the mistakes of the past." I just, I felt it was my job. So I get paid to do. That's what my men expect me to do. I think they might have been using the timidity of the new commander or they're sitting back in the back and they got an overall picture at the top. I'm going to think they know what's going on, but they don't know what's going on in the trees and the building and running around as much as we do on the ground. And my point to him was, you're the ground commander. You're number one. You make the decisions. You deal with it in the rear when you get back. Don't let them bark in your ear about, "Go do this. Go do that." I mean, they're sitting in the back seat driving right now. You know, they can shut up, put some socks in the kids' mouths. Let's go get those targets secure. Then we can call them up and tell them what's going on and ask them what else they want us to do, but they don't drive the target from afar. And that's what I was trying to teach. Yeah, but I think it's easy if you are not managing up, right? If you are not, you know, as the ground commander, if you're not delivering ground truth to those above you, it's very easy for them to go, "Oh, well, let's go do this and let's go do that." And I think that one of the things that came through to me in the book was that kind of realization, probably born from the fires of Somalia, that in the end, the ground truth is really the only one that matters because that is where the guys are in contact. Yeah, because the same thing happened in Somalia. They were passing information from a buck. They were trying to drive a convoy, but by the time they radioed down, it was too late, the delay and the radios turned right and then missed that and then turned right at the next one. Now they're lost again and they had to keep doing it, trying to guide them to where instead of just telling them where to go and letting them navigate there, they were trying to help them through the burning tires and the roadblocks, but the system wasn't in place. So they were trying to drive it from the top down and it just made it very difficult on that ground. When you raised one of their point kind of in passing, but you know, in the 20 years that you're in the unit, are certainly 20 of the most tumultuous years in American military history. And I think that you were on the front end of the great American experiment of how hard can we drive our special operations forces and not kill them. How many times can we deploy them? How many times can we, how much can we feed them at ambient and energy drinks and see if they go psychotic? And I think one of the last thing, one of your last in contributions, not only from the book, but the work that you done since, is this realization that we were doing it wrong? I look at how many of our best and brightest, right? The assumption is that the guys that are in the unit, the guys that are in dev group, the guys that are in our soft units are the best and brightest our country has. And I think the lasting consequence of the war on terror is that we ground up hundreds of our best and brightest through, you know, overworking them in attention, imbalance, and everything else. I would love to hear kind of your thoughts, you know, as the canary and the coal mine, Tom, I would love to kind of hear your thoughts on our approach to that. I think our leadership has found out that it's cheaper and faster to send special operations in repeatedly and then pull them out versus sending a large organization and that they've never really trained well. You zero your weapon once a year, you work on your vehicles, do their tankers shit, I get it, you know, they've just the, we used to call it one percent does not a nine percent of the work. And we just keep deploying over and over again and it's, it got so bad that they added another unit to every special operations organization. We're going to add another SF company, we're going to add another Ranger, you know, whatever company, we're going to add another squadron over here, you know, to the organization, probably added another SEAL team, you know, group. So it's one of those, we'll make four instead of three of everything, change the whole cycle, guys will get an extra 90 days off, right? Never have it. What it did was allow them to deploy to two different locations with two different elements, while one was on alert and while one was training to go again. So you're still training all the time that that whole bullshit about, oh, there's an extra squadron, an extra element, you can get an extra whatever off never happened. Leaders just took that because honestly again, work humans and leaders chase promotions, leaders chase, you know, it's their job. They want to show off, right? So where we show everybody what we can do and how we impress people. So the leaders want everyone to do other jobs and aren't their legacy tasks like hostage rescue or are taking out foreign leaders. And now we're out running around chasing everybody. The rangers are running out chasing everybody. That's if guys run around chasing everybody. They all got out of the legacy tasks until near the end of the war. When I think General Sikolik started pushing everybody back to your legacy tasks, we need that we brought these people up for reason. SF, your nation builders, right? You shouldn't be running around killing people all the time. It's time to start training and building the nation. Rangers, you know, you're designed to do this. They're going to do this. So pulling people back. There was a start of that. I don't know how far it got. Didn't get too far. Special officer organizations are still doing the 99% of the work around the world in places we don't even know about. It's never ending. And they abuse, I say abuse, but it's abuse on the body. They abuse the operators. I know in the unit we were never fully mad. They might be now, but I doubt it. We're never up to our full to you. It's always just a six-man team. Well, I've had four, you know, so we're always short anyway. And you're barring people from here and here. So this guy might be off or on training. Like, hey, we need four. Of course, the hands go up. You know, you have four guys now. Now there's four wives with no husband again for another 90 days. And it's such a high competitive place that no one's going to back down. I mean, I'm talking to my friends and aunts and people that are still in the organization, like get some help. You know, it's you're when you're healthier, you'll be a better warrior. It's not like you, you know, and it's not like you're going to hide behind a car and say, please don't shoot at me when you go get help, right? And you deal with this stuff where you get a stellate shot, which turns down your fight flat or free. So you're not an asshole at home. And they're like, well, when I go back, I want to be aggressive. I go, you'll be straight aggressive, right? This just calms you down while you're here. But it takes these guys, it took me a good, I've been working on it for good 10 years now to get past that asshole phase that that I'm in the military still phase, you know, where you talk like a pirate when you want to be mean and angry, but you got to give up your past or or it develops you and destroys you, especially when it's a past like this because the things that we had to do were not natural. Those aren't natural things to do. And it affects everybody. I don't care who you are. I don't care the story you try to tell me it will affect you, the shit that we've done. And it will take you a long time to get back to feeling good. Do you think it's possible to do that job and not be that way? Is it possible to have that balance now retrospectively? Is it possible to do, you know, to be in the unit, to be in one of these units and have a normal balance? Or is it just going to be an unbalanced state for the whole time you're there? I think it's an unbalanced state where you're there, but I think if leadership took an active role in making you do things, right? They don't want to make you do that. It's an extra thing for them. It costs more for them, you know, on up. But I think if we came back as a squadron, if they made us go and have two sessions with a counselor that was really had our interested heart and you weren't going to get fired and you weren't going to have somebody say, well, it just do crazy because we're all crazy, right? We're all crazy. That's who they pick crazy people. But if you come back and you have a class on, this is how it affects you. Here are some tools to work on it. When you go home, you're going to be angry with your spouse. You know, screaming your kids, you're going to get mad about everything and you don't want to. You're going to have that Homer Simpson syndrome where all this shit's going on in your head and you're going to say it. Don't say it. Don't say it and you say it because you just can't help it because we've been embedded to win everything we do. So everything we take on like dishes in the sink, I'm going to win that argument. I don't care if it's 16 or 15 and you got all these excuses to me. That's bullshit back in the day. That would be bullshit. I don't want to hear it. There were no excuses because my mind was operating under the aspect that if it's chaotic, you could die. So it takes over. You get hijacked and you start behaving like everything needs done right now or we're going to die. I took clear the dishes in the sink. So I had to get past the fact that I was programmed to be that way. I've been given awards and rewarded for being violent. It got me through all the hell on earth. I had been through. You know, hate, anger and just lack of love for mankind. But it's time to let all that go because I no longer need it to keep me a lot, right? I don't need to act that way anymore. And I think a lot of it is guys can't let go. It's your identity. It's who you are. It's the last best thing you did, right? Some people talk about college oftentimes. You see them flying their college flags are like 55. Flying a college flag wearing their college shirt and going to the college games all the time and having college parties. And I'm like, is that the last great thing you did? You didn't do anything since college or that last high school touchdown pass you through? That's your story for life. Move on. Make something else happen just like the same guys at the organization or any special option when you get out. No one gives a shit what you did. No one gives a shit what you did for living. Generals get out, they go to home depot. Like, they get out my way old man. They don't give a shit. You know what I did? I don't get fucked. Get out my way, right? They don't care. And it hurts. And it will affect you so you have to go get some professional help. Not even help. You need to retrain. You need to retrain how you act in your relationship. You need to retrain how you behave around normal humans. You just don't need to help. You just need retraining. It's an interesting point because we, you know, human human beings have a wide range of of sensitivity to stimulus. We have a wide range of how we respond to that and in normal life, it's very easy. Somebody bumps you in the store. It's no big deal. You know, a group of military age males are standing around with their hands in their jackets. That doesn't mean anything other than their hands are cold sometimes. And I see it especially when my friends come back, they're at 11 because they've had to be at 11 because everything is life threatening. And I think there is this kind of balance that we have to strike as warriors that is a really difficult balance. And it becomes more and more difficult as the assignment and the opt-tempo increases. Yeah, we definitely have a lack of trust issues of our own. You end up only trusting those that are around you and that know what you're going to do and what you do. And then you forget that you've gone out to do it for those people that you're running around and bump it into, right? I mean, people that are burning a flag or something, I don't like it. But I've fought for the right for you to do that, right? So I think that a lot of guys need to understand the job that they're doing is what they're doing and then deep down think about the job that you're doing. You know, you're protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States, which states you can protest and burn a flag, right? Now it's very emotional for others, but it's not emotional to some who are doing it, right? To them, it's a protest which we fought for the right for them to do that. So we have to be real careful while we try to shut down because then someone else is going to shut us down. But we've been at war too long. We're probably going to beat another one soon, right? And it's just, uh, it's one of the things where people are going to get more and more screwed up. Society's going to change because of it. And it's going to be another divisive line between us all. Yeah, the thing that I find worth, you know, seeing more and more of is we are training our rank and file, like, you know, T take law enforcement. We're training our rank and file less. We're putting them in more missions, making their lives more complicated, which then, you know, elevates the need for special units. I look at it elevates the need for SWAT teams and for soft units. And, you know, the whole point of a special unit is it's doing something special, right? The point of a Delta is, is like you said, hostage rescue and, and you have very difficult small team insertion kind of stuff. And they were like, no, actually what we want you to do is go do these normal missions because you're just better at it. And it doesn't strike me as a particularly intelligent plan. Take Fallujah. You guys, you 15 guys go take Fallujah or it's like the Marines couldn't do it. 82nd can't do it. I don't think we're going to do it. It's hard, but we're going to try. It's hard, you know, and even even law enforcement, this comparison thing I call comparison and thief, right? It's a thief of healing. It's a thief of joy when we compare. And when we judge versus being curious about people and we've spoken to law enforcement often. And sometimes they're the worst, you know, I look at the regular law enforcement like the regular army. They get very little training. They're expected to do so much, but there's no time to train because they're always out doing so much. Please more, please or more doing their job on a daily basis versus training. The regular army doesn't do the job and train. So they do, they rely on your SWAT guys more to do more than what they're supposed to be doing. They call the SWAT guys out or and they use them even more and more and more, right? And then those guys get burned out. And they're the ones that do the comparison. Well, I don't might, I don't have combat time or, you know, the shit I go through is nothing like, here's me. How do you know? You live in your own combat zone. Your family lives with you in your combat zone and you never leave it. You can bump into the enemy that you fought recently at a store, right? So consider that when you sit there and judge that, well, mine's not like yours, mine's not like yours. I got to come home from my combat zone. I got to relax. Yeah, it's one of the guys that interviewed last season, beginning of this season was one of the guys that made the entry in Bata Clon. The team leader for the Bata Clon rescue. And he made a really interesting point that I'd never thought about. He talked about when the operation was over, they, you know, they went back their headquarters. They had two suicide bombers blow themselves up. They're covered in, you know, suicide bomber and all kinds of stuff. And he said, you know, we took a shower and then we went, huh? And he said, it's the first time it ever struck me that in a military deployment, which that was very similar to, there's processing time. You get to fly home. You're going to kind of transition back and he goes, you know, I got home and my family said, like, well, what happened? He's like, I just need to go to bed. Yeah. You can't say those things. You can't. I mean, when I got back from Simo, I didn't talk to my wife, I got the house and then she said, how was it? I mean, literally, how was it? I started balling. I didn't know what to say. I just broke down. It was too much to even try to make someone understand because you know, they can't. They'll never understand it. Right. So why even try? And I literally could feel his feelings in that. You know, I just want to go to bed. Just just let me just, don't talk to me. Yeah, just kind of let it, let it work its way out of you. How do you, you know, now retrospectively, how do we find that balance between what we do and who we are? Like, what struck me as you were saying that is, you know, dealt with was what you did. It wasn't who you were. Right. The two get conflated and at some point, like you said, like you move on. And I think that the guys, like I see it in my law enforcement friends, the guys who, who, police work is what they do. Retire pretty well. And go on and, and you know, they, they find meaning in being a Walmart greeter or being a soccer coach or just being a good dad or moving on to some other thing. The guys that being a cop is who they are are the ones that struggle. How, now retrospectively, how do we better strike that balance? You know, you need a hobby. You need something that you do other than work. I never had a hobby. I, I don't think I still have a hobby now other than cleaning. I had literally people like, what are you doing your off time? I think I don't really have off time. I'm still always helping people. I'm still always waiting around to help somebody or the phone call or to talk somebody down off something. But I don't have a hobby. I mean, my wife and I, we drive are convertible at the end of the day when we're just wiped out, talking to people, are hearing people's shit problems in their lives. It's just a waste you down. You have to have a thing. And I would suggest it being in nature, you know, where we go out and get grounded again. And you just, my wife and I will get in the car at the end of the day and just start driving out towards the Ozars. Hitting those hilly roads and just staring at nature, not even talking. Just, just, when in our hair, just driving, driving about 45 minutes in one direction on this nice, straight, beautiful highway, we turn around, drive back. When we get back and then we might start talking about things we've done that day. But you need to decompress, like really decompress. I don't mean go get drunk. You know, I don't mean start taking pills and getting drunk because that's what most people do to decompress. That's just another depressant, right? Add it to it. I'm not saying don't drink. I'm not a T total herbizer. I didn't know you drank time. I don't drink at all anymore. Okay. I just have a couple. I've set limits and rules, which is how I think people can learn to manage that. At work, people don't seem to tend to have problems, right? They're showing off. They're shining. They're doing their thing and they can prove who they are. They can climb up and get rewarded for it. And then, you know, it's happiness. It's kind of like, hey, you're my bro's. I feel good here. We're torn between going home. Guys who're torn between having second lives, you know, you're gone so much. It just happens a lot. That adds more stress. The stress to get caught, the stress that you're doing wrong, you know that, right? You have this feeling that one day, you're going to get caught, you know, the shoe's going to drop and that's a horrible feeling to have every day of just waiting for an email, a phone call knowing you're doing wrong. Bon appétit! set rules and abide by them like with our spouses how we fight Making rules for fighting nice people who has rules for how you fight and I'm stupid like we have the law lamb warfare We make rules for for war You know we have signs everywhere posted don't jump in the tiger bin because people have done it before right? So they had posted rule don't eat the gum off the railing underneath the the fucking seats or something You know you make rules and when I see a rule I'm like that's because somebody did it and they had to write it down, you know or a bunch of people did it So if you make rules about how you fight, you know you make rules about You know your wife's got you up against the ropes and you feel bad you like you cussing her out She's cussing you out and she's winning you pull out the nuclear option like oh, yeah We're acting like your mother knowing that that's gonna freak her out right? You're both just trying to be right, right? I know I'm gonna win and be right and I've told her that before if she started talking to me About something and the guy a little elevated. I would I've looked at her before and I'm like you know you're gonna lose You know I will do anything to win you know I will tear you down I would say the dumbest shit you'll walk away crying and I'll feel like I won and then I'll feel bad and I'll come sam sorry or We can follow the rules of We you know we only take it so far if it gets emotional we back off because emotions are shit Right you go back to logic you talk about those things if it gets emotional you back off Because when we get emotional we start arguing and fighting and when we do that our relationship starts to tank The kids start to know and they start to tank and then you have this stressful home life which carries over to your work life People can't take one out of the other you bring your work life home you bring your home life to work and So with that I tell leaders you need to know your people more than just it work So if he starts having an issue at work and he's fine at work you can determine Are you having a trouble at home? You know your wife have cancer your kid dying you just arguing a lot is it you I? Think we could do a lot better with that be open and honest about it and that will help people not Trash their home lives as much because you can get it under control. You control it while you're doing it If you have the awareness that you're doing it and most of us don't think we're doing it. We don't realize I Would prove it I would prove it all the time those are facts. You can't tell me those aren't facts You know and my wife would say it's not what you're saying. It's how you're saying it I'm like oh I don't need to scream that I don't need to scream at you when I talk you know So the awareness of how we behave and that it's not needed here in the civilian world They don't want it when I think I you raise a really interesting point which is you know I teach it but block on culture and trick leadership and one of the things I talk about really in that block is Maslow's hierarchy of needs Right and and you know for those that are not familiar Abraham as well as a psychologist who determined Came up with a framework to explain that people have a hierarchy of needs that starts Kind of picture it like a pyramid the bottom of the pyramid is physical security and safety and the ability to eat and all those things And you know when you get up to the top of the pyramid you're into self-actualization and concern for others and everything else One of the things that that I talk about in that class is you have to understand that people you're you're interacting with people who are in a variety of positions on that higher-er give needs and as a leader you better know where your people are Because you know somebody's life is well grounded and things are great and they're happily married and their kids are wonderful Then then they're going to be thinking different thoughts than a guy that has a wife and a girlfriend and you know a side job and a drug problem And a drinking problem and is weighed down at the bottom of that you know triangle trying to survive every day And I think that you know one of the one of the points you make is is as a leader we need to know that yeah I mean just to fully know what's going on more than just it work Because that's a human you get to know the human Then you can help that human be better and if that humans better that that makes you look better So it's easy. It's you know, I call it choosing your heart. It's hard to train people. It's hard to To corral those stiants that work for you, you know I mean they're not mules you got a whip. They're stiants. You got to steer them and hold them back a little bit and that's great But they're humans And if you don't get to know them as humans you won't know what's bothering them And if they're not operating fully then you're not going to get all you can get out of them. So Not hate and anger gets you through but you know love and respect will get you through hate and anger can Can make you feel better like you don't have any emotions But I think a lot of us try to hide our emotions and keep the emotions at bay Because we think they'll make us do our jobs differently versus actually helping us heal by venting out those emotions and releasing it Well, and it's it's interesting you know as you're saying that I'm thinking back to earlier in our discussion When when we take a group of people and we place them in a harm's way for an extended period of time And we turn them up to 11 and you know, we're putting them to sleep with ambience and we're waking them up with energy drinks And we're sending them out on you know, four five six seven hits a night and Like we are pushing them so far down the mazlo triangle The that there isn't anything else. Yeah, right after 20 years of war I'm not sure that anybody comes out, you know quote unquote normal or healthy And I think that it's it's something that we really need to think about as leaders, you know what we're doing To the people that work for us. It's our job to care for them Not work them to death, right? They always say humans before equipment, you know blah blah blah but they don't do that in their actions They don't behave that way in their actions. They've taken all the money for the preservation of the force and family funds So military organizations that you spring us in to talk to people Like we don't have any money all about went to covid vaccinations this and that they pulled money They don't have money to help families anymore even though they say You know people before equipment families before this and that Great motto You can show it up your butt that work, you know, it's They don't they don't behave that way they behave as if You're another number right? It's it's a big organization. You're another number. They'll replace you. They're already working on Replacement, right So if you're just not working out fully for them then you can be gone Which I mean organizationally It has to be that way Right like organizationally, you know the trains have to run on time, you know, etc And and I think that one of the one of the difficult balances to strike is between the organization and the individual And and there's always attention between the organization and the individual you know if if Tom is having problems somebody has to move into Tom's spot because we need to go capture You know Saddam Hussein and in your case literally we need to go capture Saddam Hussein And so we we do need to have that organizational readiness. I just question whether We run these organizations and I see this with SWAT teams to do a lot of time. Are we are we running them too lean to be able to effectively You know protect the personnel it's like you said, you know, we added a fourth team And the net effect was that now we have two missions and nobody gets any more rest like is the right answer here For us to say no, let's let's have you know, let's have six teams. Let's have six squadrons in Delta and two of those at any given point or at summer camp And you know and and our running five ks on the weekend for fun Yeah, and two returning and two operate, you know, it's it's how do we how do we do that you think Logistically it's a nightmare, but there's so much money out there, right? There's so Much there's obviously trillions. Give it away all the time. You know, we print it. We fucking borrow it But we give it to things that Well, I don't know we we should be giving it to other things like the mental health the care of our warriors You know, then again old people are gonna go what about the old people what about this? You know the money's there I don't think that they sit back and honestly care About the humans part of this, you know, I think they want their numbers. They got to fill the slots. They got to get a job done And that's what they'll tell you is our job When we just we spoke of Congress and we were talking to the Department of Defense and the VA We were speaking to the VA about um Bio markers, right picking up on biomarkers that will determine if you have post-traumatic stress early on so you can go get help That way you can't you know, somebody can't say you're just saying it because you don't want to go somewhere, right? There's actually biomarkers in your body that tell you things are wrong with you and you probably should go get help And the VA was saying I love this. I love this and then John McCain at the time his he sent his staff over to listen in And they came up and they said look John McCain wants to move this into the DOD - Help the warfighters while they're fighting Maybe they don't need to help them as much when they get out and I said that would be perfect if you could give them the help while they're in You probably won't spend as much when they get out, right? They probably won't have as many problems Just like you used to teach us in the army, you know Prevented maintenance checks and services. They always have these little cartoon books. They hand out these little dude with big muscles and a wrench in his hand Keep it running right, you know, take care of your equipment because if it breaks it costs more and takes longer to get it back We need to do PMCS with our humans. We need to do that with our relationships, right? We need to do that with ourselves. Why wait till we're so broken that it takes so long to fix us Why not keep maintaining? I'll sit there and it goes the same thing with relationships I have a Stadium full of couples I'm talking to and I'll honestly show a hands. How many people have a perfect marriage? Zero hands ever go up, right? Zero. Okay. How many people here see a therapist a couples therapist A couple of hands go up. I go, "Why aren't all of you seeing someone every now and then?" You just said it's not perfect, which means you could work on it. If you work on it, it'll stay perfect. If you let it fall off and trash and die and you rock bottom and you're all the way down, it's going to take so much more to come back. We apply that to everything. Keep our operators healthy and maintain them and still train them. But as part of that training, they get the training on mental health and how to take care of themselves. They'll be better all along the way. I know it. You'll get a better warrior. I won't have to worry if this guy to my right or left is got an alcohol problem or he's taken pills or he's on anambion because he's hooked to him or his kids or hate him and his wife's leaving him. Is this head in the game? I don't know that I have healthy people with happy families at home that they're not worried about and that they know how to take care of themselves as well. Versus only knowing how to kill other people. I think it's very challenging as an A type personality and as a man, especially a man in the kinds of units that we're talking about. Hard enough time admitting when they're physically damaged, much less emotionally damaged. We've created such a disincentive to look at our mental health and I've had conversations with friends where it's like you need to go to therapy and I got to do a therapist. If your knee was damaged, you'd go to an orthopedist. Yeah, you break your arm. As you break in your arm and just go into work and say, "Fuck it, I'm fine." And it heals at an angle. It's all screwed up. Now it's worse. Now if you want to fix it, you got to rebrate that sucker, right? It's biological. I know you can get a brain scan and a doctor can tell you what you do day to day by looking at your brain scan without even knowing you. At a doctor in LA, looking at my brain scan, it called me. He's like, "I had to call you because this was such a difference between when I got a stellar shot before and after." He said, "Before you have the brain of a 35-year pro football player." He goes from the colors of your brain from the scan. I can tell what's firing around. "Do you do this, this, this, and this, and this." And I was like, "Oh my God." You know me perfectly. Dang. Over the counterpills. Hyper-Berg auction 10. Other things along the way. Not one prescription med. I had a stellar ganging box shot and he said it overnight that my brain looks so much different. So I try to tell people. And I felt different immediately, which is not the end all. Be all that put me in a space where I could go get more help to change my behavior, right? Because people don't like our poor behavior. So you have to do behavioral change. No matter what you do along the way, you have to change your behavior. That's muscle memory developed, right? I got rewarded for being aggressive. I got awards for it. So I have to change that muscle memory of being aggressive to be thanked. I got to behave differently. And that takes a lot of work. It's like when you're trying to use something to shoot and they have anticipation, right? You're like, "I got to break that before we go anywhere." So I have to back up, stop this one thing, and then start again and start working on shooting. So I have to back up with people, stop what they're doing, and then start piling on top of that with the new stuff. And that takes time. It takes a lot of time. And I honestly just don't think people have the time for it. You got to be persistent and diligent and you can't quit. You just can't quit. It takes time. But I think we've got to, we've got to as a society and as leaders, we have to prioritize it, right? Like people do what they have to do, right? Most of us do what we have to do and a little bit of what we want to do. Yeah. And if we want to spit out healthy warriors, we need to require that they stay healthy. Man it to it. Like sexual harassment, whatever sharks, whatever they call it. I mean, we have to take computer classes in the army. We had to take them. I got to check the block, you know, sexual harassment. Everybody did that. Okay, drug and alcohol. Yep, yep, yep. Check in the block. Nobody's even tried to check the block of mental health. Even if it's shitty and doesn't work. No one's even done that yet. How about check the block of mental health? No, if anything, it's in this realm, in the tactical realm, it's actually the exact opposite, right? Because we've we've used, we've weaponized mental health. Like, oh, Tom isn't right. We need to take Tom out of service here. You know, he's not right. And, you know, we're focusing on using mental health as an elimination tool, rather than as a maintenance tool. And it strikes me, you know, you see it in shootings all the time with police officers, you know, they'll get involved in a shooting. And they don't want to talk to the therapist because the therapist is going to say, oh, he's not right. He's not off duty. There isn't this, you know, it's become mental health has become a hurdle. It's become a, it's become a means of us taking you out of service. In much of the same way in, in specialized units, you know, like yours, physical ailment, becomes like, oh, well, he's not fit for duty. He has, you know, his knees blown, man, his brain's blown. He's not fit for duty. And, and it's, it feels like we have to turn that around. We have to get out of a mindset of using it as a means of pulling you out of duty and get into a mindset of using it as a means of keeping you fit for duty. I think we need to get out of the mindset that if you can't see it, it's not real, right? I bet people, if you break your leg, they'll give you light duty. You sit at a desk for six, eight weeks, right? Yeah, he'll up, bro. You got a broken leg. You got a cast on it. But if the same guy said, hey, I'm an alcoholic and I can't stop drinking. I need six or eight weeks to dry up. How far are you? Yeah, mental health. Hey, I'm having trouble at home. I need to speak with my wife more. I need to get some help because of the things I've gone through. It made me behave poorly at home. Look at it, you. But if you break your damn leg, you had a bone sticking out of your head. They're like, oh, poor you. I was going to take care of you and then throw you right back in the, in the game, right? Yeah, I think one of the things that, that made me initially want to talk to you that I loved about your book is, you know, there's, there's so many instances that I've seen instances in mental health where, you know, people perceive the attention to mental health as weakness. Right. We go, yeah, you know, that guy's a big sissy. He's emotional. He's whatever. And I read your book and my reaction is telling one of my friends that he should read the book and he's like, why? And so, you know, it's very easy in mental health context to attack, you know, and make an ad hominem argument. Oh, that guy is this. I said, I will challenge you to invalidate Tom Satterley's man card. Like if you can, if you can invalidate Satterley's man card, then we're all fucked. Right. 20 years in the unit, doing the things that he did. What I loved about the book was, was that it is, it is difficult to impure in your man card because of what you did. And yet the book is so raw. It is not there. There is no candy coating at all in the book. It is absolutely raw emotion. This is what's going to my brain. And it feels to me like that's really what we need to be doing is we need to be telling those people. But writing that book got a lot out of me. It terrified me. I mean, it literally terrified me. But we just got to the end and I started thinking, maybe we should take May, I don't know. You know, everybody's going to think I'm this and then my friends are going to, you know, and I started thinking of all this crap. And then I talked to my wife again and the final answer was, we wrote this book for a reason. You know, not to brag about anything I'd done, but to help others understand and see that it affects you and you can get better. You know, my wife wrote Arsenal Pope right after that and published it and it's a continuation of that story and it's the add-on on the end of when I met her how horrible it was for us and how we fought to get through because we chose each other versus the easy part. You know, it's hard and hard. Marriage is hard, divorce is hard. It's what hard do you want to choose, right? So I chose being married hard versus the divorce hard and it turned out, right? It just, it works out. If you put the effort in, things really work out and that was some hard to throw everything out there, right? And worry about being. Oh yeah, no, it is raw and naked. Like it's, it is, you know, standing in a room naked with 40 year friends and bright lights on. Like there is no hiding in the book. You know, there are a number of things that struck me. The description of you sitting in your truck contemplating, killing yourself, being literally seconds from doing it and deciding not to, because of Jen, was, was to me kind of the pivotal moment of the book and may have been a pivotal moment, well, it was a pivotal moment in your life. It strikes me that she, she was kind of your spirit animal for a while there in a way that, that, you know, you see in the book that she saved you, but it, it strikes me that that's very much how you feel about it. To this day, her wisdom, her calmness and demeanor, and I've made her tough. I made her real tough, tougher than she was. She thanked me for some of it. I, we've duked it out. She's, she's pretty hardcore. And it's, I mean, she literally did say, I mean, she, she'll say I didn't say if anyone you did the work, but I wouldn't have done the work. Right, I wouldn't have done the work if I didn't have somebody to do the work for. And I certainly didn't love myself at the time. And it made it very difficult. go to love anyone else, but she was lovable and taught me how to start liking myself. And so that made it doable. And then I got to a point where, okay, I appreciate me and respect me again. And I don't hate me because when I hated me, I hated everybody. You know, you can't love anybody unless you at least love yourself first. And I just couldn't and she helped me see that. Pulled me out of that shit. And then stayed strong the whole time when I fought it the whole way. So yeah, I credit her with saving me. And to this day over and over again, she'll deny it. But yeah, without her, I wouldn't be here. Well, I think sometimes we can be catalytic and other people's lives though, right? Like it, it, you know, she was, she was the spark. Obviously you had to do the work. But I think that especially from a leadership standpoint, it is important to realize that frequently we are having an asymmetric relationship with somebody. And we need to pay attention to it, right? Like the things that she said to you that day, that, you know, led to you going to meeting or to bar, rather than blowing your brains out in a car, probably were not that significant to her. No. But they had a very large asymmetric effect on you. And I think that it's important for us to realize the effect that we have on other people. Yeah, she dug in and grabbed the one thing she knew I hated because she didn't know what I was doing. She was, knew something was up. And she took the one thing I hated and that's being late and threw that at me and that snapped me out of it. And it was that easy. And that's, that's when I started to realize after we talked about it down the road. Was that's how easy it is to interrupt that process for somebody, right? Everybody's terrified. And so I think about killing myself, I don't know what to do, right? And they call us. I'm like, I don't either. Man, just talk to them. Talk to him as a human. Don't tell him not to do stuff. Talk to them. Say don't, don't say don't do it for your kids, right? Their kids might be the reason they feel like they're fucking up, right? So just listen, just listen. And then offer love. Because you can change somebody in a second. All they need to do is feel worthy again or needed. And it goes away pretty quick. Yeah. And I think that, you know, we can, we can walk this balance. You know, you and I talked before we went on the air about this balance between work and family. And it is, it is an achievable balance. It's never, you know, it's kind of like riding a bike, right? You're never, you're never like just balanced. Right. You're actively constantly balancing. And, and I think that it's, it's a difficult message for a type of personalities who want to win everything that we have to work at it. But it, it, it strikes me that we do. And we need to do a better job in leading people of helping them to achieve that. I think we could learn to swallow or ego. You know, would all do a little better. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You go in pride or definitely not the way to go. Yeah. Why don't we, I'd love to pivot and kind of get your thoughts on something. So there's been a lot of overlap. You know, since the global war on terror and the rise of soft, there's been a lot of overspill from the soft community into the long-forcement tactical community. You know, you've got, you know, everybody doing training all over the place. And, and we see, you know, long-forcement units, equipping themselves and training more and more like military units. And we see this kind of, you know, rise of the warrior cop and, you know, the arguments against militarization. I think that there are, from my seat dealing with both sides, the law enforcement and military side of the house, it seems like a lot of times we, we were actually taking the wrong message. Rather than taking tactics and moving the tactics from, from soft units to law enforcement, I think what's, what's missing is the amazing levels of proficiency and the leadership skills in soft units. And that could be what is carrying over. What are your thoughts on that? I had to be careful. Teaching law enforcement was one of those things that I had to think about, you know, when I first started, I just teach him how to shoot, right, CQB, blah, blah, blah, just like we do. And then you have that realization of, well, they don't have the powers that I have when I'm a war, right? You guys, you do a shooting. It's a big, big, big deal. And, and so the whole, when I've a teacher, I would say, listen, you have a certain thing that you have to do. You have to call out, you have to announce yourself, whatever those things are, that you have to do. That's on you. My training for you will be this. Teaching marksmanship training. And anything after that moment that you decide that you need to protect yourself or someone else, that's what I'm teaching you. Don't hold me accountable for anything else you're supposed to know up to that point where you have to make that decision. I'm just giving you the skill. Once you've made that decision to engage a target properly, you know, and, and I've tried to help law enforcement with the leadership aspect of it and the training aspect of it, but the budgets are different, the jobs are different. So I think a lot of these soft guys that get out and do the training really need to be careful. It's a lot more than just marksmanship and seeke being dominating the room. There's a lot more in law enforcement that comes before that happens that they need to understand as they instruct. It's a lesson I learned, you know, we don't come in and say, "Drop it, drop it, you have a threat, you're dead," right? I mean, your rules can be different about that and individualized and politicized and shit. So I would wish the soft guys, I hope that what they're doing is, is that method of, you have a certain job to do up to a point. I can't teach you that. I don't want to. It's, I was afraid to even think about becoming a cop when I got out because if I saw something with the gun, I'm afraid that my instincts would be to shoot them immediately. Any threat in your hand or knife, whatever, my instincts are to kill you. So very difficult to get out and do that job and it's very difficult, I think, to get out and teach that job unless you're thoughtful about telling them what you're teaching them after the point of they made that decision. I do think that there are things that, you know, carry over from the unit very well to law enforcement. I think that, you know, like, for instance, selection, I don't think anybody pays more attention to selection than Delta does. And I think that there are messages in the way Delta selects that are very valuable for, for state and local teams and, and looking for the right people from the outset and paying attention to how you're selecting, I think actually really matters. And, and, you know, it was a guy who's dealing with the top units all over the world. The one common theme in the really good units is they start off with a really good modeling client. Yeah. Yeah. You have to start off with decent physical fitness, obviously. That just keeps you more mentally healthy and things. But I'll tell you that what they look for is the individuality that can work on a team, but you can be an individual, people that can take a lack of information and create something from that. And then the psychological evaluations, you know, whatever they pick out of that, I don't know, you know, they're looking for the crazy ones or the ones that, you know, have a little propensity to be more loose and free maybe, but they're looking for a specific person that can go do those things. And it's the foundation of what we do, right? It's a foundation of everything. If you select somebody before you allow them to come in versus if you meet a certain minimum requirement, you can start our training. And if you fell out of that training, then okay, sorry, we'll recycle you. But if you make it all the way through because it's not too difficult, then you have someone you really don't know what they're doing that you've given equipment to to go out and do a job versus getting a good foundation of who you let in first, you know. And I think organizations change their selections to meet quotas. And then they can't change it back. So they drop their standards to meet a quota. And then when that trickles off, they drop their standards again, I mean, other quarter. Next thing you know, every cop used to be in jail and every soldier, you know, used to do something that they would never do. It's one of those. We've never dropped our standard. We've only changed two things since I've been there. And that's because it didn't matter. You know, not everybody saw the one thing. So they had to remove that to make it even. And the other one was like the swim test. They moved it from selection to the training portion because it'd give you more time to learn to swim. And then they'll cut you. I don't know, you know, I think they're banking on the fact that, okay, in six months, I can teach you to swim and they will keep you, you know. But that's the only thing that they've ever really changed, even though they've been pressured to change other things to increase numbers. They just won't. They say, look, it works. We get good people. We rarely fire people, right? Our guys rarely make real shitty decisions. Now when they do, they're real big and shitty decisions, but they rarely happens. So they've done a good job of selecting the maturity type of person with the minimum age limits and things that they're looking for. But I think if everybody could afford to do a selection like that and evaluation before they hire, one, they wouldn't have enough numbers to it costs a lot of money. But three, they'd have a wonderful element of people that they could trust and work for them. Well, and it's There is a lot of pressure to change standards and to drop standards. And one of my favorite things is that your standards are what you tolerate, not what you say. Yeah. And we've seen a friend that for years ran buds. And when the global war on terror took off, they were trying to increase the number of seals. And so they started feeding them more and more at the top of the funnel. And the same number kept coming out the bottom of the funnel. It had funny. And yeah, and he said, you know, he's arguing with Congress about it. Like, no, you can send me a million people. There's, you know, there's 40 guys a quarter. That's what it is. And so I think that one of the things we have to do is realize that we may need to create additional units. We may need to create different standards for different jobs. But we can't take, you know, every single person, you know, in, if you look at, you look at, you know, Delta as a, as a specific unit, like there may only be at any given point in the United States, a few hundred guys that would be capable of serving in that unit. And we just need to accept that and not try to stuff the top of the funnel. Because I think the more we stuff the top of the funnel, the more noise we have and the less signal we have. And it's ruined forever. It's ruined forever once you change it like that. You know, it's yeah, you're going to take freedoms back. I mean, they even though they're trying. But I mean, it's hard to give somebody something and do a certain thing and then retract it. Because then next group's going to go, hey, wait a minute. You know, so it's, you got to hold hard and fast on those things that, you know, you know, works for you, brings in leadership. You know, I'm not saying don't ever change. All right, I'm not that guy. All right. But if something's working well and it's always worked well, changing it to meet a number, like you said, you're only going to get the same amount coming out the other end anyway. Right. If you're looking for the same things you can let as many people in as you want, but you're really just wasting airfare and food money, you know, on those guys. Because you're going to send them back home anyway. Yeah. And, you know, one of the things that has always struck me with the unit is, is each of the operators, you know, I want to think one of the most misconceptions is people think that the unit operators are operating in large teams all the time. And it is, you know, it's, you can talk about it in the book. Like there are circumstances where it might be one or two guys. You know, it's, it's not going to be the, you know, the entire squadron lands and off we go. You know, it's, it's a unit that requires a very high level of individual responsibility and also an extremely high level of individual proficiency across a very broad range of skills. What is it about the unit's approach, you think, that allows, you know, a guy who's dumb enough to go to a John Kouger concert to develop extremely high levels of proficiency and, and then maintain those for that many years. What was the question about that? What, what is it that, what is it about their system that allows them to maintain these high levels of proficiency across broad spectrums of knowledge? I think it's who they select. Through selection, they know that those people have the propensity to fit into those jobs well. I mean, we recruit separately for support and direct support. So those guys do their own thing over here. Operators do their own thing over here and then they bring them all together in the end and they work out great. But I think they're looking for a certain personality type or whatever it is. I don't know. There's not a lot of people that know the magic up a selection, you know, just a few at any one time. And they're just looking for that individual that can meet those time standards because they know that those certain time standards says something about somebody. You know, here's a distance, here's elevation, here's the weather. I mean, everything we did up there was kind of analytical. Everybody at every RV took the weather, you know, the temperature and the weather at every RV so you could calculate the different times for what that does to humans and how cold it is and the elevation. So it's real analytical to determine in the end that individual that's going to be able to do those things that you know you want them to do. Now, how they built that over the years and it's a lot of bigger brains than me that put that together, figured out what worked and stuck with it. But there's a ton of psychological evaluations before and after and during selection that I know what they're looking for is that individual that'll be able to do those things which lends itself to keeping them healthy, right? Because you're sending a dude on a mission by himself or maybe with two and it happens all the time, all around the world. If he's not mentally stable because of other things he's done, the chances of him making a poor decision are greater. And when you're going out with one or two, the backlash of you screwing up can be greater. And so that's where they need to determine and decide that yeah, we brought him in, we selected the right guy, now we got to keep him right, we got to keep him doing that way the way we picked him because he's going to get worse along the way. So if you don't maintain it, you've selected a guy that you're beating down and he's getting worse versus maintaining it again. Again, that preventive maintenance checks and services, you know, keep him up and running right and keep him healthy. He'll be able to do those jobs, but once selection grabs a hold of the right guy and the training gets him trained with what you want and then you get to the squad and two years later you almost worked your way up to where they think you're worthy and can run with him properly. You're already starting to break down, just the stress of trying to keep up. You know, every day you turn yourself, you're not good enough, do more, you know, all your brain hears is you're not good enough. So you start to break down even with the competition every day, I'm trying to fit in, trying to keep up. Where is you down? Makes you feel like shit, you start putting yourself down and then you believe it, your brain doesn't know the difference between perception and reality. So the more you put yourself down, the more you feel bad. And it's just tanks over the years, you know. If you were advising law enforcement, especially law enforcement tactical teams on training and how to maintain high levels of skills, what would your council be? Know your basics very, very well. Everybody wants to come in and get the magic shooting. Show me the magic shooting. I'll go, yeah, I'll show you the magic shooting. Five rounds slow so far. 20 minutes, give me your five best rounds. Guys of fire off in three seconds. I'm done. You got like four and the, you know, zeroes and you got one 10, maybe one nine. I want five in the X, right? I want five in the X and I want you to do the basics right. And then I'm going to have you run a mile or run a half a mile, carrying center blocks and drop them. Then you're going to shoot the same shit because now I'm simulating you being hyped up and jacked up and your blood's flowing, you're angry as shit. Because I need you to be an exact marksman with, with in your craft, right? Because the worst thing is shooting a civilian, shooting a non-armed and non-austile. But it's all basics, you know, the basics of human contact, right? How to talk with an individual. How do deescalate? Because cops need a deescalate. And they need a deescalate themselves. I know if I get in the high speed chase of somebody for about five or 10 miles and he's run over shit and I've almost wrecked, when I get there, I'm ready to beat some ass, right? I am jacked up. Well, that law enforcement individual needs to think about is, okay, we've crashed. We're here now. Camped 10 or whatever. Breathe deep, but don't run up there jacked it because you're hijacked emotionally. So I would tell them to excellent marksmanship, learning how to deal with people and deescalation. Because if you can deescalate, you won't need your gun. You won't need this to that. I mean, now I don't work in that world and I see the news and it looks a lot shitter and it used to be it. Nobody listens to cops anymore. And I've seen a lot less cops on the road. And I'm like, I wouldn't be either if I was going to get fired for pulling somebody over. You know, I want my paycheck and go home at night. Screw it. But if our leaders aren't covering and protecting, you know, our law enforcement officers, then they're not going to do their jobs. They're not going to go out and get in trouble. So yeah, that needs to clean itself up too. But yeah, I would say marksmanship, deescalation, and pretty high up there. So what don't we talk about the foundation? Because I think it's important to kind of get the message out. Started by you and Jen. Mostly Jen, I kept working so we could eat food. Because we were working together doing realistic military training exercises when we met. We helped co-found an organization. And then during that time when Jen was working, we were working together getting to know each other. People were dying. People were going overseas and getting killed. And then not coming back on the next iteration. And would be doing work with seal team for whatever. And she said, hey, where's Bob? Bob got killed. You know, or where's Jimmy with Jimmy got killed too. So it started breaking her down. You know, once he got killed on a training exercise, we were on. And she freaked out and we just kept training. She said, are we going to know? We got to keep going, man. People die all the time. She said, what? Yeah, people die. She's like, I don't get this. So one day she said, I can't do this anymore. I don't want to train people to go to war. I want to train people to come home. She used to sit around on target and talk to all these guys about their issues. And they ended up talking about their families. Now they want to be better at home. And so she decided. And I kept working for a couple years, a year and a half. And she started working on it. I helped along the way. But my job was to make money. She was researching what to do. Finally got it going. It started in 2016, 2017 went official. And started really pushing donations to help. And what we do is we became a resource library up front, things that we would research that I did. I would go do it. it's sent it out there and tell everybody this works or this doesn't work and I tried this and I trust them so It was easier people to come to us to find everything they needed versus what I had to do was go find it myself And it was very difficult so we wanted to bring it all into one spot Then we got more money and we hired Licensed clinical social workers to be coaches and we started doing coaching over the phone to people who needed it all Along the way we were the first to start up to help spouses as well the whole entire family It's you know, so we were the first to start that up and if the warrior doesn't want help we help us spouse anyway It doesn't matter. We're trying to fix the family So we travel around as well and teach about post-traumatic stress and relationship issues And now we've just changed our programs to where we used to run four to six Marriage retreats a year with eight to 12 couples Which got to be very expensive because we paid for them to come in we paid to stay and we paid for their date nights And we you know very effective very effective, but now we we've morphed into a program that we have coming up in our October for brag well Southern pines to where we're bringing in 150 people and Instead of doing the real close marriage counseling stuff we're gonna Give them a showcase of sleep experts, you know Hey, you guys have trouble sleeping so here's how you sleep up on stage. Oh, here's a relationship expert Here's a psychedelic expert talking about all the things that helped us all the information that they may need from the Mouses of the people who have done it and all these guys are special operators as well Plus we're gonna throw out music and games and we have 25 glamping tents, you know 25 couples can sign up for the camp out overnight two day event So we can dump as much information into them and then offer them the coaching that we offer because every time we do a retreat Phone line start rang and hey that was great. I want more help more help So we gave everyone up to 12 counseling sessions unless they need more but up to 12 counseling sessions for couples all throughout the year Love it. How can people find out more about the foundation? Well all secure foundation org has everything on there It has the request to coach button. It has a camp home front button on there It has a donation button on there, which I beg people not to pass up because nothing that we do is free and everything that the Veterans do and the spouses do that we bring in is free to them so it obviously takes donations and Anything that you see on the website Actually, there's a podcast button on there too for all secure podcasts, which is part of our programs because on the podcast you have The listen up series to where we have experts talking in a short form about here's what you need to do Here's what you got to do to this this this and this and then we're done and then we have the longer format to where we get to know people and talk about different Special things that you can understand but we consider those programs because they're all learning events for people Yeah, I mean, it's I guess it's important for people to understand that that nothing that you're doing is government funded You know everything that's happening is happening because of private donations and I would encourage our listeners to go and support the foundation and support your work Tom, I'd love to finish with we do five rapid fire questions. Uh-oh. Short answer. Yeah, short answer You know sentence thoughts something quick What is your most important habit? Cold plunge I started cold plunge in the morning and that changed my life Give me more what's that? Give me more about the cold plunge Yeah, man, you know, I started reading about it. I'm like, I don't want it. I don't want it I don't want it. It's stupid because I hot tubbed every morning, and then I finally bought one Thusam ice in it got in the hot tub jumped in that thing and about died and then I got to where I could do three or four minutes Just sitting in it chilling and I would get out and I have more energy. I feel better all my sore bones have been you know the Inflammation that I have so much up from the multiple surgeries feels better I'm more alert all day and then if I get in the afternoon, I'm feeling a little down I just jump in it real quick and get out But I got sick all the ice so I bought a water chiller and it's supposed to keep it down pretty cold I've got to set it like 39 right now, but it's 105 outside so I got out of the hot tub this morning got in I went, nah, no, not even worth it. You can't keep something that cold out there But that's that's changed me a lot. It's made me feel better I have a lot of pain from all the surgeries I've had and all the arthritis from those surgeries so That really helps out with that pain. It really helps me sleep at night Love it What's the most important thing in your opinion for building an effective team? trust You have to trust the people that you work with in order to expect them to trust you and to work together What's your favorite current online resource website or podcast? You know what I just started and this is funny. I just started the story of Jesus and I don't know why I had a feeling the other day I was watching a YouTube video and it was something about It was a religious thing obviously and it was something about You know if you want to go ahead or you want to feel this way or certain way you have to know Jesus and I was like whoa Okay, I mean, I'm not a religious person. I'm spiritual and I believe in it all and everything but I don't go to church. I do my thing Not that okay, so I started a podcast about the story of Jesus and a lot of it so far I knew about but a lot of it was like very new to me and I was like okay And I just got into it and I just started liking and subbing listening to it over and over again different stories Like it keeps going on not over and over again, but there's like 10 minutes stories and it just pop a man It's like the the life of Jesus on up and I'm like a lot of understanding a lot of good lessons What's your most important what do you think the most important characteristic of an effective leader is? Courage and not Courage to do anything but moral courage, you know the courage to do what's right? Even when everyone else is trying to talk into doing wrong and even doing the wrong thing is easy Right, but choosing the proper hard through courage Okay, final question what's the most profound memory of your career? Sitting on a bed in Somalia Pulling guard out of a window with bars on it and hearing a dragging noise coming up It was dark. I looked out the window and there's a dude with an AK on the ground Crawling towards me In my window between the two buildings about three feet apart. I just had to look and I could and I there he was His old man dress or whatever and I couldn't get my M4 at that angle And so I pulled out a grenade and was like oh my god, I've never done this before I just pulled a pin and dropped it on his head out the window and I remember him looking up as I did it Laying on his neck and I just laid on the bed and I think blew up sprayed the ceiling and broke glass out everywhere and I was like I sat up and I was like holy shit and Somebody came running in the room goes what was that and I go as a flashbang because I thought I was in trouble And the guy in the room with me goes hey's lying. That was a grenade and I go you're right It was a grenade look at this dead fucker down here. I mean, I'll never forget that it was almost comedic and gross obviously, but yeah That's fantastic Tom I can't thank you never for doing this man Thank you first of all for your service to the country you sacrificed a lot For the blanket of freedom we sleep under and I think it's very easy for us to go. Oh, yeah, these guys did a lot for us I think everybody should read your book and understand that the price that Our soft warriors pay For the freedom re-enjoy is very high and it's easy for us to you know say thank a veteran and and clap at a baseball stadium It is a different thing to look somebody in the eye and say thank you. Thank you. Thank you appreciate that And and you know thank you for everything that you're doing to continue to keep our warriors safe man It's it's the work you're doing Now matters more than the work you did previously. So thank you for doing it. Yeah, I feel the same way. I appreciate that You