[00:01:17] You did not want to get the call from NCIS. But most of the time, you know, for us it was like, interviewing about security clearance or whatnot. But what was the most interesting thing about that phase of your career? Cause people know NCIS from the TV show. It’s like become quite famous actually. I think the interesting part is it’s nothing like anyone imagines it.

[00:01:35] To be certainly with the television show. It is nothing like that as far as it being a nemesis for both Navy personnel and, and for the teams, it was my introduction to NCIS was probably as different as anyone’s could have been. I came in 1987, I joined. NCIS, and soon after that, Operation Iron Eagle was launched.

[00:02:06] Iron Eagle was the investigation into SEAL Team 6. No kidding. With Marcinko. With Marcinko, yeah. Interesting. There I am, I wouldn’t say fresh, but very closely freshly out of the teams, and I’m at NCIS headquarters, and I want to get on that investigation. I bet you didn’t. I did everything I could to convince them that they needed me because I understood the teams and I understood their thinking.

[00:02:36] And they wouldn’t let me touch it with a 10 foot pole. Because they thought you’d be biased? They sure did. Yeah. There’s nothing stronger than the bond with the teams. Right. And they knew that. What was your, before and after, your kind of opinion on that? Because it did seem, from my perspective, that was very politically motivated.

[00:02:55] And there was some malfeasance, but it seemed to be relatively minor. You know, at least the way it was depicted by Marcinko, of course. Mm hmm. And what was your perspective before and after on, on, you know, whether he really was a bad guy or not, whether he deserved to go to jail for two years. Since I wasn’t on the investigation, I wasn’t privy to the reports.

[00:03:13] Only thing I know is what I’ve heard. And I can tell you this from a general law enforcement standpoint, you go into an investigation with an open mind. Your objective is to collect facts, not to pass judgment. I was an agent for 28 years. Most of the time that happens. It doesn’t happen all the time. Yeah, unless you’re the FBI investigating Trump.

[00:03:35] I said most of the time. Yeah, that is influenced by supervision where and how that happens within the investigation. But to answer your question, is a little bit of crime okay? What if the individual doesn’t know they’re committing a crime like spending using credit cards to buy Equipment for the team.

[00:03:55] You don’t read the fine print. You might be like this is okay Let’s do this the bottom line if the person doesn’t know they’re doing a crime Then it’s not a crime because these crimes are 18 US code, which are specific intent crimes It means you had to know You would know what you were doing was wrong and we could talk about this later But it’s not like certain environmental crimes are just the water pollution act is boom If you put something in the water, you don’t even have to know it’s a pollutant You just have to know that what you’re physically doing you have to be aware of it.

[00:04:24] But with it With a crime, a 18 U. S. C. crime, is a specific, you have to know, Hey, I’m using this credit card, and I know I’m not supposed to. Right. But I’m going to buy this anyway. Right. And that’s what they had to prove. And the fact that they were able to prove that, beyond a reasonable doubt, means, in my opinion, because I trust the justice system, that occurred.

[00:04:49] So, Regardless of what anyone says, but he says, I never met too many defendants who said, Oh, yeah, I knew that what I did was wrong until after sentencing, usually, because then they have to do the mea culpa for the judge and but beforehand, you know, almost everybody says I didn’t do it, or I didn’t know what I was doing was a crime.

[00:05:13] So back to your answer. Your question is, I know you talk a lot about integrity in your book. It could be good and bad. And so integrity in a system. So in my book, a lack of integrity is a lack of integrity. It doesn’t matter if it’s a big one or a little one, and especially in regards to the teams, you can’t have any, right.

[00:05:34] The little one will turn into a big one. So whatever his crime and whatever his punishment, my mind is, well, that’s the end of the story. I, if I would have been on the case, And if he’d done it, he had done it, I would have not withheld information. So, geez, he didn’t do that. I would just, you don’t, you provide the data and let the justice system work its way.

[00:05:54] Right. Right. It’s interesting for those who were listening, maybe clueless about what we’re talking about. So demo Dick Marcinko was the founder of SEAL Team 6. Incredibly creative and resolute character, but, um, you know, had a reputation for, you know, just remember that saying we hadn’t buzzed. If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.

[00:07:22] Like he lived that large. Right. And so he taught his guys, they called a mob six and then, you know, a red cell to use any means possible to get the mission done, even if it meant breaking the rules. And that’s fine in warfare, right? If you’re on enemy territory, right? You want to do that. But when it comes to running a command, so he had the same attitude to, to finance, you know, off the shelf technology, which would have taken years to develop through the original, you know, procurement process.

[00:07:51] He just used his credit cards or the command’s credit cards. And that was against the rules. So he had also ticked off some admirals along the way. I think guy named Dick Lyon, right? Comes to mind. If he hadn’t done that, they might’ve overlooked it or never even thought to, to, you know, lift that hood up and sniff underneath it.

[00:08:10] Sayings change. As they go through buds and arse was. Not exactly what you said. It was cheat if you must, but don’t get caught. Don’t get caught. Because if you do, shame on you. Master Chief Ray, right there. That’s a quote from Master Chief Ray. And that’s a little bit different than what you said, because the don’t get caught part and shame on you part is the Marcinko story.

[00:08:32] Right. That’s pretty interesting. You know, they finally put together an actual SEAL ethos. You’ve probably seen that and wrote it down about 2006 after a few breaches. I’m sure NCIS was involved in those. Seals kind of went off the rails and certain, you know, some drug use and whatnot. And so they said, well, maybe we should finally codify, right, this, this stand or this ethos that the seals have.

[00:08:56] And it took them a while. They brought some, you know, a lot of the senior folks together and sat in a room for an entire week and just threw stuff up on the wall and said, what do we really stand for? And stuff like, ain’t cheating you ain’t trying or what you said, don’t get caught, you know, cheat if you must, but don’t get caught.

[00:09:13] Shame on you. That stuff got thrown out. And they’re like, Oh, this is part of the problem, right? Cause there’s this unwritten rule, right? And that’s what an ethos is, right? It’s a standard. There’s this unwritten standard that it’s okay to do that. And guys were getting in trouble. So I don’t know if they’ve completely eradicated that, but done a good job.

[00:09:32] I never took it to be. That I could take it to the next level, right? I always thought it just meant you need to be like Navy SEALs sneaky, right? In combat, not near civilian life. And I think that’s where the guys, they didn’t really draw that distinction. And let’s face it, they’re telling it to guys who are the hardest charging guys in the world, and they’re going to take it everything to the next level if they can.

[00:10:00] And so I guess it was inevitable that. Bad would come out of that type of process. They could control it in buds because you were very controlled in buds. But once you get out in the teams, as we all know, in a platoon overseas, there’s a lot that could happen without an instructor watching over you. Hi, Mark Divine here from SealFit.

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[00:11:12] Who? Yeah, let’s do this divine out.

[00:11:20] That is delicious. So a 17 year old kid from Pennsylvania, what the heck inspired you to, to join the Navy and then become a seal? Jacques Cousteau. Oh, yeah. I wanted to be Jacques Cousteau, the machine gun. I had all his books and, you know, growing up in coal country, we had lakes and they were cold, freezing cold most of the time, but I just had to learn to scuba dive.

[00:11:46] And so my dad took me for one lesson because I didn’t get all A’s on my report card. So he said, you get one lesson. And so he took me out to Harvey’s Lake and at eight years old, And the, no, no lesson in 30 seconds. Here’s your go. Here’s your tank. I was so small, the fins wouldn’t fit my feet. So I had to wear socks.

[00:12:08] Harvey’s Lake Dive School. And Tommy was the instructor. He was a merchant Marine. And so he puts this little tank on my back, puts a weight belt on me and I’m floating. And then he says, okay, take off and goes up and starts talking to my dad. And I was all by myself in the lake. Eight years old and I just went.

[00:12:28] Boom! And that was it. I was in love. So, from that point on, it was like, I’m going to do something in the water. And I had no idea what a UDT seal was in 1980. I walked into the Coast Guard recruiter, and I wanted swimmer rescue. I thought, okay, I’m going to jump on airplanes. This sounds really cool. Coast Guard wouldn’t guarantee I would go to rescue swimmer school.

[00:12:50] So, I walked down. The hall to the Navy recruiter, and he says, here, take this book and see what you’d like to do. And I literally just flipped to a page and it said UDT seal, explosive machine guns, planes, and all this other stuff. I’m like James Bond, Jocko stole the machine gun. I said, this is it. This is what I’m going to do.

[00:13:07] And the recruiter looks at me, he’s like, laughs, he laughs at me, he says, no, no, no, no, you gotta pick something you can do, you can’t do that, you’re too small, these guys are big, these are huge guys, you know, I’m, I’ve never known anyone to even make it through the training, he says, you have no chance, no kidding, he said, go home and pick something you can do, so I went home, I looked through the book again, and I’m like, I’m doing this, I’m doing it, but back then we had to go to an A school, right?

[00:13:34] Right. So I picked OSA school, which is Radarman. What, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What gave you that level of kind of certainty or determination? It’s, you know, there’s a small 17 year old from nowhere, Pennsylvania. Was it your father? You’re hitting on exactly what I talk about in my book and which is genetics.

[00:13:56] Genetics. It is genetics. I, I’m, I did research into my family, went all the way back to my to the 1700s in the Netherlands where my ancestors were soldiers, they were all soldiers, warriors, they were guards on a castle wall in the Netherlands. No kidding. Yeah, yeah. All right. And then I found out, not from my father, but through this, you know, trying to understand my history is everybody in my family was in the military.

[00:14:21] My father was, my uncles were, cousins, everybody was in the military somewhere. Uncle was a tank commander in Korea. You know, back to your question is I am a hundred percent positive that my ability to do pretty much all the things where I was born with, I just needed those experiences to draw this out.

[00:14:44] Draw it out. Yeah. Being. Like the smallest person in class, even smaller than the girls, you know, I was the target, you know, everybody wanted to pick on me. So it was pulled this resistance, persistence. Did you get bullied and have to like stand up for yourself? Crazy. Probably develop a little grit. Crazy. I got a great story.

[00:15:03] You know, I was, I was in third grade, and this kid, big red haired kid, Albert Keated, just kept picking on me, picking on me, picking on me. And I ran home crying to my mom. My mom was Irish. So I run home, I’m crying, and she says, What ha What happened? I said, This kid’s picking on me. She puts me on her knee.

[00:15:20] She says, Okay. And she starts She said, I want you to punch my hand and I start punching her hand. She says, I want you to do, I want you and I started laughing. I’m like, yeah, yeah, yeah. She said, I want you to go to school and I want you to punch him right in the kisser. If he picks on you again, you just drop back and punch you right, punch him right in the kisser.

[00:15:38] So inevitably it happened. He picked on me. And I just root back and punched him as hard as I could and he just stood there and he did nothing He picked me up and threw me we got into it some more and I hit him again and he’s like I’m done. I, why are you hitting me, ? I said, you pick, you pick on me every day.

[00:15:59] What do you mean? Why do I hit you? And we ended up becoming friends. . That’s awesome. That was the beginning of these character traits. I was a wrestler in high school. Mm-Hmm? . I tried to play high school football. I got my butt kicked. You bet. I was, you know, a 68 pound, 70 pound kid playing freshman football.

[00:16:16] They had to get a uniform custom made for you. I bet. Oh. You know the shoulder pads are you know, but you know, I was gonna do it It turned out to be a big the only time that I would actively say that I quit something in my life and I quit football And that was another major lesson for me because I would never after that experience quit anything again in my life Mmm, why do you think that is?

[00:16:40] Did you feel a sense of shame or everything? I felt shame. Yeah, I felt shame less than everyone else. I felt that I was the size of person that everyone said I was. Oh, interesting. He’s little. He can’t do this. He can’t do that. So by quitting football, you were living up to their expectations for you.

[00:17:00] Absolutely. I had to do something. I had to do something physically to get my mind set. Now, it’s not like I was thinking of this at the time. There was something within me that said, you got to do something, dude, because you are doing nothing. You’re, you’re going to school. You’re mediocre. You’re not getting good grades.

[00:17:19] You’re not doing anything for yourself. And that’s when I started wrestling. It was a different story because now I wasn’t, I was probably top of your weight class because you’re probably one of the few in your weight class, 98 pounds. I wrestled 98 pounds, high school senior. And you had people to wrestle against?

[00:17:37] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. . Now granted the senior, when I was a senior, I was wrestling usually freshman or Or sophomores. Right. And so I had the experience ’cause of the weight. Yeah, the weight. So, you know, I graduated high school, I was like a hundred. Well, when I went to Navy I was 110 pounds. Okay. Five three, a hundred ten.

[00:17:55] So, but you know, go back to that, that wrestling. Changed my mindset. I need to win. I had to get that winning mindset back and that I wasn’t just a little kid and that I could still live up to my own Standards not everybody else’s standards. Mm hmm. That was again another one of those things that happened in my life that Made a difference down the road.

[00:18:17] I find again. I find that fascinating because there was some stream either internally generated or Again, through example, or maybe even like karmic or epigenetic that was driving you to set a higher standard for yourself. Because that’s, again, that’s uncommon, right? Because you could easily have been like, oh yeah, I am that little guy.

[00:18:40] I was given, you know, I was given a short stick, so to speak, in life. And it is what it is. Right. And so, and you, you know, you would have had a completely different life, like literally one different shift in perspective and attitude or thought changed and you said, I’m not going to settle for that. And so I’m always curious, like, where does that emanate from?

[00:19:03] You know, you, even if you say it’s genetics, it’s not your genetics that are planning that thought in your head. They don’t plan the thought, I don’t believe, but my research into the, in the subject matters, you know, Robert Plowman, who’s a behavioral geneticist wrote a book called blueprint. How DNA makes us who we are.

[00:19:21] Interesting. And I really studied that and studied some other works and I believe, what Plowman believes is that, well even the psychologist Carl Jung, he even said it towards later in his life, that you are born with the personality that you basically will be. It just hasn’t developed yet. Clowman says, your, your genes are who you are, and your potential, probability, probabilistic probability is what he says.

[00:19:53] It doesn’t say, it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. But you have all these You have the potentiality for a certain You have the potential to do that. Right. And so, and if you exercise that potential, then you’re going to I’m going to be the person. Well, it could be good or bad. Right. In my case, luckily it was good that I just, there was something within my makeup that said, you are not going to stand for this.

[00:20:14] You’re not going to allow this to happen to yourself. And it wasn’t my parents. I could tell you that it’s not like they were driving me to wrestling practice or football practice. would say the same thing about my, my parents freaked out when I told them, he’s joining the seals. They said I was throwing my life away.

[00:20:28] Thanks. That was helpful. You know, I was four of five kids. So. I wasn’t even on their radar, right? I told them I’m going in the Navy, they’re like Uh, you sure? You know, I love them very much and they, obviously they raised me and they did everything they could, but they were not there to, hey, you need to get good grades.

[00:20:49] Hey, you need to be the best wrestler you can be. They didn’t go to my bootcamp graduation. I was the honor grad, got the Navy League award. I finished first in my A school, was meritoriously promoted to E4, didn’t show up. Went to Bud’s, graduated from Bud’s, didn’t come to Bud’s. Oh, no kidding. They literally had no idea what I was doing in the Navy until probably when I was ready to get out.

[00:21:11] I went to night school and got my degree while I was on shore duty. And that’s when they realized that kind of I was on the right path.

[00:21:23] That’s great. So tell us about buds, you know, I remember we had a Smurf crew as well. So you’re obviously you were on the Smurf crew. What were some of the, like the biggest challenges, insights, you know, what, what was the buds experience like for you and how did it shape you? Interesting. You mentioned the Smurf crew and I was in one 14.

[00:21:41] I started in one 14, like so many other unfortunates, I developed stress fractures and also pulled my groin right before. Hell, we did a four mile time run dragging my right leg behind me. So you got med rolled. Yes. And you didn’t have to go in front of the review board. It’s a scary damn thing. Yeah. And so I get into the front of the review board and I was not a stellar buzz candidate like you were.

[00:22:05] I was passing, but my running was, was horrible. Get in front of review board and. They had just dismissed the other guys. They’re going out to the fleet. If they want to come back, they’ll come back. And I’ll never forget the comment he made. He’s a Brown doing pretty good here. Doing pretty good here. You, you ran a four mile time run on two broken legs and pulled groin.

[00:22:25] We’re going to let you roll back to the next class. That’s awesome. They saw, they saw that grit. Yeah. And so in one 14, I was in the smallest boat crew, but we weren’t Smurfs, because Smurfs didn’t exist yet. Right, okay. When 15, I get there, I’m trying to remember the lieutenant’s name, he was, he was actually, ended up being our second phase proctor.

[00:22:47] He’s the one who came out and said, you guys are like these little blue things you see on the cartoon that just came out, you got a bunch of Smurfs. And so we were like, that was the instigation of the Smurfs. We were the instigation of the Smurfs. Yeah. Yeah. So we were the smallest boat crew.

[00:23:02] Unfortunately for my boat crew. I’m 5’3 and like the next smallest guy is like 5’5 and then we went up to, you know, like 5’7 So, I didn’t run it under the IBS, you know, I’m not touching Your head is not even close. They made me run under the skeg, the inflatable skeg, so, because it would stick down a couple more inches, and it’s still You know, Ensign Coleman, I don’t know if you know George Coleman, but he was our OIC for the class and for my boat crew.

[00:23:32] Poor guy, it rubbed a hair right off the top of his head because I couldn’t, you know, most of the time I was running, pushing up on the IBS, but, but my boat crew was wonderful and they did everything they could to make sure I made it through. And I did everything I could to make sure they made it through, but they were at a disadvantage.

[00:23:49] They had one guy who his head didn’t touch the IBS. Right. That’s interesting. Do you remember how many of your boat crew made it through? Everyone. Everyone. We won boat crew. We won hell week. That’s fascinating. ’cause I didn’t think there had ever been another boat crew that stayed intact, but we did the same.

[00:24:07] We won hell week and we were there at the end. It’s all, it’s leadership. That’s cool. So besides not being able to put the boat in your head, what were some of the biggest challenges and leadership lessons you learned at Bud’s? And I was scared to death of quitting. And I don’t know that I was absorbing all the things that were being thrown at me.

[00:24:32] I didn’t have that wherewithal to understand what was going on. As, as far as how I felt rather than what I’d learned, I felt like, like these guys were my blood brothers and that they would do anything for me from then on. And that began my understanding of what, you know, long lived the brotherhood means and what these guys and the team guys would ended up being.

[00:25:01] Like family to me. So as far as leadership goes, yeah, the OIC did what he needed to do and got the, you know, instructors mess with him and he got us, they got us in line and we did the evolutions and we did all that. But it was more for me, it was about a feeling that I’d never had before, as far as a team goes, I didn’t play team sports, my family wasn’t.

[00:25:24] really that tight, you know, as I told you, nobody showed up for anything I ever done. So this was like the first realization of a tight knit family for me that would go to any lengths to make sure that you were safe. Interesting. Yeah. Similar experience to me. That’s cool. I mean, that’s, that’s a significant lesson right there.

[00:25:44] You know, there is no I in team, right? They don’t, they call it SEAL teams, not SEAL individuals. Yeah. I think people really don’t quite get that, like the instructors are looking for their next teammates. And so the number one quality besides grit is your ability to be a great teammate. It’s a tricky thing.

[00:26:02] Like you can’t take a test, you know, it’s got to be observed behavior. They don’t pick your boat crews because of personalities. They don’t do a Myers Briggs test to see how your, how your best group, your personality is going to mesh in so you could get along, you know? So luckily I think ours. If you did a psychology test for Maiboku, we would all be in a, in a similar bracket that we could mesh because we did naturally.

[00:26:30] We didn’t know each other from Adam, what our backgrounds were, yet we understood by the end of Hell Week for sure, you know, who was going to do what, when, how they were feeling, who was up, who was down, who needed help, and who could help. So, that dynamic. I would have paid a lot of money later on when I was a senior executive with the federal government to understand how, where can I buy some of this, you know, where can I get this potion?

[00:27:01] Where can I get the formula? Yeah, to know who to trust. Yeah. How can you put these people together that would have Type of commitment to get something done because I never, never got that in the federal government. I don’t know if you, when you’ve worked in corporations or anything, I haven’t personally seen it.

[00:27:19] You know, I’ve, we’ve come close to creating that through our Sealford training, but it’s training, right? So trying to recreate that, that seal ethos and that that team bond through arduous, you know, crucible style. training. And I think that’s frankly, the only way it really can be done is these, you see it in these high risk environments, you know, like the astronaut program or the seals or, you know, other places where life is, you know, it could be extinguished with one wrong move.

[00:27:45] It’s kind of like the Holy grail. How do you develop that level of trust and teamwork in a low risk environment? You know, like a bureaucratic situation, whether it’s corporate or government, it’s difficult. The times that I had close knit. Whether I was a special agent in charge and I had a group of agents that were just all clicking.

[00:28:04] They all knew how to help each other. Like I said, like being in Hell Week, who needed help when and they would be there for them without having to ask. Mm hmm. And those groups, my joke was, don’t count on it being here for more than five years. People are going to go, they’re going to move off. When you were in charge, what did you do to try to create that?

[00:28:24] A lot of the things, now I’m going to go back to your other question, leadership lessons. I guess I did learn some things in the teams because, you know, I used that kind of philosophy when I was putting hiring agents, because I knew who my other agents were. So I, when I hired somebody, I would ask these types of questions.

[00:28:42] Yeah. I want to know more about who you are, not what you can do. I can teach you the things you need to understand to be an agent, but what I can’t change is who you are. And so I needed to understand those people. Who are you? Answer these questions for me. And I’m going to get a sense of who you are as a person, because I want to know how you’re going to fit in with this team dynamic.

[00:29:04] And that’s how I hired people. And I, you know, you can only get so much out of an interview or the second interview, even the third, and then, you know, You hope that this is going to gel, but it’s all about personality and understanding. Are you going in there to make a career for yourself? Are you coming into this office environment to make sure that we as an office are successful?

[00:29:30] And if you can get this, what you want, you can be successful and you can be promoted and you can do all the things you want. But if you don’t do this dynamic here, you’re not coming into my office. Mm hmm. And that’s how I looked at hiring people. Yeah, and, and, and essentially BUDs is a big hiring process, right?

[00:29:49] And they call it selection. Right. You don’t make it through, then you don’t get hired. But it seems all physical, you know, at least when we were back in the day. Yeah, well, that’s the subtlety of it, right? Because again, with a little retrospect, it’s easy to see the brilliance, easier to see the brilliance of the system.

[00:30:03] But the physical, of course, you know, that’s a prerequisite to being an ABC. You have to be physical to handle that. Those extremes of pressure and environment and whatnot. But those physical challenges are simply opportunities to expose character. And they happen to be particularly effective because they create extreme discomfort really quickly.

[00:30:26] And you think about any selection program, even like for you in the SES to hire agents, wouldn’t it be cool if everyone could go out, for three days and do like a simulated hell week. And you would expose the good guys and the weaklings real quick. And I don’t mean physically weakening. I mean, those who are really.

[00:30:44] You know huge egos and in it for themselves, but can mask it pretty well Like the narcissists do a pretty good job of masking that stuff Yeah, they do. I don’t know if the physical part would do well Yeah, i’m saying you would never this would never fly in a million years. I’m just saying wouldn’t that be It’s a particularly effective mechanism For exposing character.

[00:31:06] Yeah, I would it’s too bad. We can’t use it You know buds is has a way of filtering out people and you know Not nice ways, let’s say. I was not Uncomfortable. Yeah, although, you know, I got up to the physical part that needed to be achieved, but what I think I had going in, and while it may have not been known to me at the time, is I was mentally ready for it.

[00:31:30] And so when it came to those hardest days, and, you know, You didn’t know quitting was an option. Exactly. You’re coming up, running up the demo pit road, and you’re just exhausted. You’re falling behind. You know, you’re going to be in the goon squad. You could just quit right there, right? It’s like, I’m not doing this again.

[00:31:46] You know, you’re going to get wet and sandy and you, you run over to Berm and start doing eight count bodybuilders and you know, you just live through it and you say, I’m not going to do that again. I’m not going to be in the Goon Squad again. What was your career in the SEALs like? Where did you serve and what were some of the cool adventures?

[00:32:02] I am the most non traditional start with SEAL team, well UDT, you know, we went to Army Airborne and then I checked into UDT 21. I don’t think I was UDT is under what, our demolition team for listeners who aren’t aware, but Oh yeah. Yeah, UDT SEALs were co existent for a while. Yeah. I remember the big controversy was Jesse Ventura was UDT and of course everyone who’s got a Trident, we consider them Navy SEALs, but a lot of people were saying, you know, Jesse wasn’t a Navy SEAL.

[00:32:30] He was, he just served on a UDT team. Somebody said there was a separation in NECs back then. I don’t know. There was, they even had originally had different insignia, but then they just did away with UDT insignia. Yeah, I was 53 26 from day one, so it was UDT, so I don’t know, I don’t know. That was the eighties, so by the time I got in in 1989, 1990, they had converted all the UDTs to the SEAL teams.

[00:32:56] That was in 83. Two of them became SDV, one and two. And then one of them became SEAL team five, I think. Yeah. Five was an old UDT team. And I think on the East coast SEAL team four. Yeah. So you, you were at 21, that became four. Yes. I checked in the UDT 21 and I’m there for like a week and the XO says, we got to do some RDT and E in Puerto Rico.

[00:33:19] You’re going with me. I’m like, Oh, you know, okay. I didn’t even unpack my sea bag yet. You didn’t even know what RDT and E was. I had no idea. I just knew I was going with the, uh, commander. Research, development, training, and evaluation. Yes. Okay. Yeah. What I end up understanding what it meant is we’re going to try to kill you.

[00:33:44] So we go down to Puerto Rico and we’re doing this underwater mapping device. And, and that’s when I realized, and you mentioned it in your book and being a graduate of buds and getting to the teams was the beginning. That’s the easy part, right? That’s the beginning. I have this commander who’s probably, I don’t know, six, four, six, five, six, This dragging me around the bottom of the Caribbean, we’re swimming for hours and we’re blowing through tanks.

[00:34:12] Like I’m, I said, you gotta be kidding me. I’m just coming out of buds and I think I’m tough. And this guy’s, you know, just wiping my butt with the bottom of the ocean here. And he’s like, what’s the matter with you? I thought you could swim and all that. You know, of course he’s harassing the hell out of me.

[00:34:25] And that’s when I realized, okay, training’s just beginning. Now the hard part is I got to really get up to speed and be as good as the rest of these, these guys, right. We’re down there for like four or five days. And he. He says, Oh, somebody’s in trouble in the med with the 3rd platoon. You’re going to go take this place.

[00:34:44] Now I’m not even in teams for a month. I packed my bags. I’m on a one 41 over to Spain getting on a ship. I got no trident. I got no kidding. I got no training. I got nothing. Yeah. They used to have a STT at the team back then. Yeah. Same with us. The SEAL team three. Nice. So you were supposed to go through six months of STT and, and a board and everything to get your trident.

[00:35:07] You hadn’t done that. None of that. None of that. That’s the only board I got was to get on board. The ship, and get my butt over there, and, and that was it, and so. I’m replacing the guy that, you know, they’ve been through deployment workup. And so they trust this guy with their lives. And now here I show up, I’m still, as they would say, you know, I’m still wearing my Bud socks and Bud’s chow and, and I’m on the ship.

[00:35:30] And so I got to prove myself. So. A lot of work was done to win over my platoon, and we were getting ready to do some work in the mountains in, in Zaragoza, Spain, and we’re going to fly out on some 46s, and it, and my LPO comes up, leading peg officer comes up, and he says, talk to the guys, we’re not letting you go off, get on a bird, or go off the ship without your trident.

[00:35:55] So they gave me a trident, and I was wearing a trident, like after my trip. You know, a month and a half at the teams didn’t earn it, had nothing, but I was wearing a trident. Oh, that is cool. Yeah. Let’s just say they gave me a little initiation to get it. And of course, when I got back to the teams, I couldn’t wear it.

[00:36:14] Cause I didn’t earn it yet. I wasn’t, I didn’t have it, but it was soon after my, that deployment that, you know, Excel came out and tagged me with my own, my real trident at the time. You didn’t end up having to go through the STT process and to do the board. You got trialed by fire. I done it all. I mean, doing the jumps, doing the dives, doing explosives.

[00:36:32] There were fully trained. platoon doing seals or UDT stuff. We’re doing hydrographic reconnaissance. We’re doing, we’re doing it all. So instead of having to practice it back at the team area and sign off on a book. I was living it, you know, making sure I didn’t kill them, they didn’t kill me. So that was my beginning.

[00:36:52] And then right after that, you know, it was 83 and UDT turned into SEAL team. And I met this really cool lieutenant, Bill McRaven. Yeah, I know Bill. He was my CO at Team 3. Yeah, and he says, Hey, you know, we’re going to South America, you want to go, you know, it’d be really cool if you could be the photographer and the photographer and everything.

[00:37:14] I’m like, Hey, let’s go. Let’s, and so I jumped on the fourth platoon and we went to did a unit toss together and learned a lot. You know when I talk about leadership lessons, Bill McRaven was the man for leadership lessons. He knew how to command and control the platoon, how to bring out the best in everybody.

[00:37:32] Even when I made mistakes, which I did, he never yelled except for once. He yelled at me once. We were doing a beach landing. And it was getting late, and so the IOPO sent me onto the ship. He said, you need to get red lens paper so we could guide these landing vehicle track. You know, I’m trying to not use the acronym LVT’s Inn, because it’s going to be dark.

[00:37:54] So I run up on a bridge, and I’m looking for lens paper, and this officer comes around the corner. He said, what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be on a beach. I’m like, well. We need the red lens paper. Officer says, what do you need that for? They’re going to be, you know, these were launching. He said, I said, the way this ship is run, it’d be tomorrow morning before those damn things are launched.

[00:38:18] He got, he read the face. I’m like, Oh, I’m in trouble. I ran off the bridge. The CEO went out. It was the CEO. I didn’t realize it was the CEO. McRaven calls, Bill calls me in the next, Day. He said, were you up on the bridge? Yeah. Were you talking to an officer? Yeah. He said, you didn’t notice like the scrambled eggs up on his hat and all the bars.

[00:38:39] I said, he said, and that’s when he yelled at me, don’t you ever go back on the bridge again, stay out the bridge, Brownie. And, and that, and that was the only time, cause he got his ass chewed. Did they launch that on time? They did. That’s awesome. Yeah. Bill McRaven went on to be four star admiral in charge of all, uh, Spec Ops, SOCOM commander.

[00:39:01] He did. And if you look at the front of my book, that’s his quote. Oh, no kidding. Yep. He wrote the blurb on the top of where your thumb is there. Captivating, heartbreaking, and filled with the struggles of life. Admiral Bill McRaven. That’s interesting. Good job. You know, speaking of leadership, the one, and we talked about Marcinko earlier.

[00:39:20] You know, what a, what a difference in leadership styles between McRaven and Marcinko, both bigger than life characters in the SEAL teams. And interestingly enough, that was the only time McRaven actually had, was fired, was by Marcinko. They had a difference of opinion on how to lead. What was your version of the story?

[00:39:39] I mean, I’d like to hear that actually. Well, I, I only heard that it happened. I don’t, Bill never told me, you know, we used to call him Mr. Mac, but I don’t know exactly what happened. But I know when we talked about integrity a little earlier, you know, Bill McRaven is the epitome of integrity. And so I could see how he may run afoul with somebody who maybe was more willing to do things outside the box, if you will.

[00:40:08] And so Mr. Max saw something was going on and he didn’t like it. He wasn’t gonna be part of it. What made you decide to switch over to the NCIS from the Seals? What was happening in the world in 1987? Nothing, right? That’s true. We weren’t at war. No skirmishes. I’d been on two deployments, and a whole bunch of training, and we were high speed, and we could do a lot of things, and we were doing nothing.

[00:40:36] I wanted to carry a gun, and I wanted a possibility of using it. So, I applied to the FBI, DEA, and NCIS. Within probably a week of my interview, called me up, Hey, you’re hired! You know, show up at federal law enforcement training center in 30 days. And so that’s how I went, ended up with NCIS. It wasn’t like, Oh, geez, I want to be an NCIS agent, but Oh, technically you’re not in the Navy anymore, even though it’s Navy criminal investigative service.

[00:41:06] Correct. And at that, at that time it was NIS, Naval investigative service before tailhook. If you remember tailhook, how NIS screwed up the investigation. It was basically an administrative investigation and they should have never been involved in it. And so we had a secret service, they, they dismissed the, the director for NIS, and they hired a criminal guy from secret service.

[00:41:31] And he said, you know what, we’re not going to do this administrative stuff anymore. And I’m going to put criminal in the name to emphasize what we’re going to do. And so I was in another transition within an organization that I was part of, and it was a palatable organization. difference in, in the mindset.

[00:41:49] We’re not doing these things and we’re going to focus on crime. And I was really excited about that. Was it crime just within the Navy, but was it also Navy Marine Corps or other services or did you do anything outside of the Navy? Absolutely. In fact, most of my work was not involving Navy personnel. I did some, what we call general criminal investigations, rapes.

[00:42:11] murders, you know, thefts on base, some of that stuff. That’s what I, so the jurisdiction was had to be, was it geographic? Like how, how do they determine that NCIS is involved versus like FBI or local agencies? If it’s within the geographic area of operation within the Navy on a Navy base, let’s say in, in housing, whether it’s a Marine Corps or Navy.

[00:42:37] And then if it affected a personnel, Or Navy property. And that was cool. I was okay with that. It was still very limited in my mind. I wanted something bigger. I wanted something where I can go out off the base and I want bad guys. So I went into the fraud section. So you can go after people who are trying to defraud the Navy.

[00:42:59] Exactly. Oh yeah. So I started business probably. Yeah. 500 companies. So that got my blood boiling and flowing and just, I loved it. Can you share kind of a. a poignant success that you had. Absolutely, from Buford, South Carolina, where it all begins for the Marines. Really small area of operation to Honolulu, Hawaii.

[00:43:25] And in Hawaii, the strategic operations of What they’re doing in Hawaii is important for the entire Pacific. They supply the Pacific. Everything goes through Hawaii that’s going to protect that part of the world. So it’s very important to have supply lines and everything that they can provide. I found out that a Contractor who was providing a emergency generator to the naval supply.

[00:43:57] I’m trying to remember the acronym, but anyway, naval supply in Honolulu or in Pearl Harbor was the generator that they’re providing was not the specification was the allegation. If this generator goes down, the supply center can no longer. work and provide supplies to the entire Pacific. So it was like, okay, how am I going to prove this?

[00:44:21] That this generator, which is a giant over a million dollar machine is defective. I had an assumption. We had two pieces of paper in front of me. So this says the generator can run continuously for X amount. And this one says it can’t. And we believe this is what the original Says and this guy doctored this so I go in there I’m looking at the types of paper that they’re using.

[00:44:42] I’m trying to figure out. How did he do this? I just grabbed an eraser and I erased it and wrote it in with a pencil. I’m like, well, that was pretty damning So I went to a judge down in Honolulu got a search warrant and I showed him the same thing I’m like, this is how I believe this is how I did it And I believe it’s in this guy’s desk drawer down in Honolulu.

[00:45:01] Give me a search warrant He gave me a search warrant believe it or not We go in there, we raid this guy, sure enough, I go into the engineer’s drawer, pull out the top drawer, there, he kept paper! No way. He put, erased them, put white out, changed the specifications for the engine. And, we nailed him, we nailed him on that.

[00:45:21] And, uh, I’m going to say the company’s name, it was big, Cummins, Cummins Diesels. Wow. Yeah. And so we put that guy in jail. So that was a big deal. Putting fraud people in jail is very hard. Unfortunately, that’s the kind of guy I ended up, most of my defendants were, you know, these middle aged white guys who were, had raised to the level in their corporate, but unfortunately for them, they became the designated felon as we used to call them.

[00:45:47] Yeah, yeah, like the the organization gets off scot free or pays a little fine, and there’s always the fall guy Yep, I did undercover work out there. It was fantastic on another case. I did it was a white collar case I hired informants, you know, I mean we had one really big trial where we I put a The president of the company in jail, which was nearly impossible to do.

[00:46:08] And I went through two weeks of federal trial on that. It was a big lesson for me. Learn how to use resources like real law enforcement, as opposed to sitting behind your desk and going through paperwork. Right. I was out in town recruiting sources, using wires. And getting inside the companies to understand really what was going on.

[00:46:28] And that excited me. But it was, it was nothing compared to the cases I did with the Environmental Protection Agency. So you went from NCIS to the EPA? Yes. Okay. And I did more undercover work, believe it or not, buying, selling hazardous waste. No kidding. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Guys dumping in the Mississippi, 55 gallon drums.

[00:46:50] The cases I did actually were, ended up being national. Janet Reno, got a word from Janet Reno for one of my cases. Mississippi River Initiative that we did, and it was very exciting. We did a search warrant on a metal plating company who was dumping their hazardous waste into the sewer. Good lord. The problem with that is It goes down, and it goes to a water treatment plant, and the water treatment plant kills all the microbes in the water treatment plant, and then it fails, and then you have effluent going out into a stream, and then it pollutes entire counties.

[00:47:24] Good lord. So, you know, it was important to catch the guys like that, but the biggest case that I’ve ever had, and it was against Burlington Northern Railroad, they polluted an entire county and poisoned the Dozens of people with lead. At the time it was the biggest fine for EPA CID, 17 million. And then the recovery and the cleanup was, I don’t even, untold.

[00:47:49] I don’t know. I was a criminal investigator. So I focused on the criminal part. That case took me three years. And I remember sitting in the U S attorney’s office in St. Louis, I had five attorneys come in from Chicago, Burlington Northers, a fortune 500 company. They got enough money to spend. And I. Had a glass jar with the lead that they were throwing all over the damn county.

[00:48:11] Jeez. And I said, I looked at the attorneys and I looked at the jar. They were bringing rail cars of lead ore in and they were dumping it, using it as fill in people’s yards and gardens. For what? I mean, just cause they didn’t know what to do with this stuff? I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Doe Run.

[00:48:29] Doe Run is a lead smelter in Missouri that they don’t really don’t do it anymore. It’s too, it’s so toxic. They don’t even do it anymore. Yeah. These lead cars were rail cars when it was in a circle within the railroad track within Missouri, somebody would throw pallets or garbage in them and they had to clean them out before they could go to the lead smelter again.

[00:48:49] Their employees would come in with like front loaders and whatever and dig out all the garbage. Well, at the bottom of all these rail cars was all this lead ore. Yeah, it could have been a foot deep and they were just dumping it on the side of the railroad tracks. It got so high that they started taking this, what they thought was dirt.

[00:49:05] And they started using it at Phil. Fixed driveways with it and Took it to farms. Pigs are snorting around in it. Pigs are getting lead poisoning and the people are eating the pigs. Wow. I mean, it was this, this cycle of pollution from, as they call it, the generator to end user there, or to disposal.

[00:49:26] Incinerating. Like, it wasn’t willful. It was just ignorance. No. And that’s how I got him on a crime because remember now this is a different, I won’t go into it. It’s called a RICRA resource conservation recovery act, which is a hazardous waste. You don’t have to prove willful. Yes, you do. It’s specific intent.

[00:49:44] So I had to show that they knew what they were doing was has was dumping was hazardous. And how did you do that? I mean, if these guys are just like, Oh, we’re just going to clean out this. Rail car and dumping inside the road. What you do is you get their records and you pour through years and years of their records and you discover that their environmental scientists had tested that.

[00:50:04] Oh, no kidding material. Yeah. It’s wonderful when you come across those documents, I bet it is. You know, you, you see smoking gun, right? 10. That’s, it’s a smoking gun 10 years ago. You find this environmental report from Cherryville, Missouri, and it shows lead that it’s just out off the charts. And then you get an email that says make sure that you, we are not responsible for the Clark car cleaning facility in Cherryville in a contract.

[00:50:36] So, you know, they know, and they’re going to try to cover their tracks by modifying the contract for their disposal. Well, that’s all we needed from there forward. They let it go. Amazing. These are things that I don’t, you know, the general public don’t know, like this stuff is going on. It’s going on all the time.

[00:50:56] And these corporations, because they, they hide behind their legal status, they just get away with awful things. And they didn’t know it, Burlington didn’t know it, but they had me on the case. And I was not going to let them go. You want to talk about persistence, making it through buds, going through hell.

[00:51:13] We didn’t know how to quit. That’s right. They didn’t know. They thought they had dumped all these documents on me and I would be walking away and saying, forget about it. I’m not even going to look at this. This is too difficult. No, no, no. They walked into that U S attorney’s office and I’m sure they thought we got this, we got this.

[00:51:29] And they’ve got a lot of high price attorneys probably on their bench. You know, um, we’ve been, I could talk to you forever, but, uh, Your book and Goliath, I love the title by the way, so you go through, you know, your, your life lessons from the smallest Navy SEAL and Buzz Class 118, you graduated? 115. 115, through NCIS and now the story of the EPA.

[00:51:52] So what, like, for the listener, what, what are some of the biggest things that you wanted the reader to kind of walk away with from your book, like the biggest insights or lessons? That would be helpful to them. We talked about the positiveness of persistence, determination, which is both together’s perseverance.

[00:52:11] I’ve led my life of never quitting, always going after the things that I thought meant success to me. And when I retired, I. Look back at my life, and I was not happy. I was like, I’m not successful. I don’t get it I did all these things. I did the things that people Would kill to do and so wait a minute. So because you were so focused on the mission And, you know, you always had another mission, right, always had another mission.

[00:52:47] And so then you retired and you didn’t have that mission to focus on. And so suddenly for the first time you’re like, whoa, how do I define success for my life? And you didn’t like what you saw. Exactly. That story has got to be And, uh, I think that the way that we’re supposed to reflect on ourselves is to have a self reflection that’s repeated countless times every day.

[00:53:04] Because as a culture, we just don’t teach people how to do that self reflection before retirement. Right. Before something catastrophic happens in life. So that was pretty recent, though. When you retired just a few years ago. Right? No, um, believe it or not, almost 10 years. 10 years. Okay. I luckily I was able to retire at 52.

[00:53:25] did some acting as we talked about a little bit and and then I was just it wasn’t working for me and I’m I didn’t have the A feel of self satisfaction as to what I’d done with my life, and I should’ve, you know? You should’ve, yeah. I should’ve, I should’ve. You’re a Navy SEAL, you’re a highly successful investigator.

[00:53:47] Yeah, I mean, I reached the top levels of the government as a senior executive, something very few people do. And here I am, I should be out fishing and having a good time and, you know, and I just couldn’t do it. I, I had to go back. And I had to reevaluate my life, try to understand myself. Who am I and why do I feel this way?

[00:54:09] Why do I not feel successful? You know, I know there’s the three Ps and the Y in your book. I’m trying to, I can’t remember the three Ps, but I remember the Y. Repurpose, passion, and principles. Thank you. That is So important I had to discover for myself who I was or why I was what it was my purpose in life It really wasn’t to be a Navy SEAL and it wasn’t to be a special agent It wasn’t to be those things.

[00:54:33] Those are the things everyone else framed as being successful Those are just the objective measures of what you did Yeah, and who you are and so I had to figure out who I was. Mm hmm and The book is this journey that I have through my life, way back when, and you asked me the leadership lessons in Bud’s, and so all these questions at the time, I wish I had the maturity to understand myself at the time, I would have enjoyed it, I would have embraced it more, and I would have, you know, Maybe when I retired, I would have been able to embrace the success that I had.

[00:55:08] And so I had to go through that process and, and understand who I am and why I am. And in doing that, finally, I’m able to look back and forgive the things that I should have done or didn’t do and get rid of regret and now do nothing but look forward. And, you know, every day I get up and I’m, I’m thinking about what can I learn today?

[00:55:34] What can I do? How do I go forward? And not defined by other people’s idea of what success is, but what I know I’m about and who I am. I don’t do it as well as you do in your book. I can tell you that. You really pinpoint for people how to do this. I had to do it on my own. I stumbled through, and I did the research, and I did all the things, and I got it in my head as to who I am.

[00:55:59] And so now, I’m here. First time in my life. I’m happy. I’m actually a happy person. I’m sitting here. You do. You do seem happy Sorry, you didn’t find that You know what? There’s a lot of people listening who share your experience, right? And I think the the book is going to be very helpful for you And, and the message is clear, like wherever you are in your life, the time is now, right?

[00:56:23] To do that self awareness and self reflection and stop looking for validation outside of you, in your career, in any kind of success measures or other people’s expectations, because you’re ultimately going to be disappointed. And at the end of the day, you know, I, one of my favorite quotes is you come into this world with your fists closed and you go out with your palms open.

[00:56:40] And so everything that slides through your hands during the life is not there at the end. So what do you have? You have your sense of self, right? And you want that sense of self. You want that knowingness to be like, yeah, I lived a good life. I did what I was supposed to do and I’ve forgiven who I was supposed to forgive, including myself.

[00:57:01] Right. And I, and I feel a sense of completeness. That’s like the, that’s the most valuable gift. But you can only give it to yourself. Absolutely. You can only find that in yourself. You have to slow down, take time every day, and I’m like a broken record on this podcast. Sitting in silence and self reflection is the most important thing to do.

[00:57:22] Don’t waste time not doing it. And do it before you’re on your deathbed. Do it before it’s too late, exactly. But if that’s the time and you find peace, so be it. So be it. It’s still the right time. So be it. But to do it. So what is your purpose? What is your why? What did you discover? who you are. I’m curious.

[00:57:38] Is it still a work in progress? What I discovered mostly about me is that going forward, that I am still persistent, and I’m still want to do many, many things and learn many, many things. I am a person that will never sit still. And I have to accept that. I also understand Like any good Navy SEAL. I have to The ants in your pants.

[00:58:04] I have to understand that I have to take care of myself, which I didn’t do before. And I have to take care of my family, which I didn’t do before. And it all collapsed on me. And, and now I’m more focused on not my accomplishments, a certificate, or a title. Now I’m more open to taking care of myself. And to take care of my family and to be engaged every day in what I’m doing in the here and now and not thinking about, Oh, I have to do this and I have to do that.

[00:58:32] So I really tried to focus myself not on the accomplishments of what everybody thinks I’m going to do, but on the accomplishments that I am a happy person today, right now. Yeah, that’s brilliant. It’s hard. It’s hard. Yeah. So this is the keys living in the present, right? So if you’re caught up in regrets of the past and that takes you out of the present So to clear up the regrets that was that’s incredibly important.

[00:58:57] So forgiveness free of yourself and forgiving others I like what you said for things done and undone and that releases all that energy that keeps you trapped in the past. And then the future usually is a projection of the past into the future based upon expectation. And so if you let go of all those expectations, especially about other people, what, how other people or how society is going to see you or judge you.

[00:59:21] And so you let go of that, then you clear up your future, which allows you to remain super present. And living in the present is where, you know, ultimately peace is found and it’s all, it’s where all creativity is found as well. You said it better than I did. That’s brilliant. I love that. I love that you made the, you know, the time to come out here in person.

[00:59:42] It means a lot to me. This so much more powerful to do these, these conversations in person. So I really appreciate you for coming out here. Making the journey here and absolutely and hopefully your flight home won’t be delayed Canceled like all the rest of this. It’s not so bad with my flight coming out here I was worried because we were so late.

[01:00:00] There was only one other flight from Arizona. Yeah, and I was afraid I was gonna miss the interview. Oh, well, and so I was really in a panic, but luckily my second flight was delayed as well. Was it? So the double delay, I’m like, I’m cool. I didn’t get in till midnight last night, but you know what? I’m here.

[01:00:16] It’s only a six hour drive. You could have hopped, you would have hopped in the car and gotten there. You don’t take no for an answer there. Yes, sir. Any big projects? What’s next for you now that you’re? you know, I certainly do. I have something in my head. I have a couple more book ideas, right? And that’s so that’s a possibility.

[01:00:34] And as you know, writing a book is no easy task. It’s no easy task. And I am not, it’s not something I’ve been trained to do. I had to train myself to do this. It was but it’s cathartic in such a way that you can get those thoughts down on paper. And, and so far everybody likes what they’re reading. And so it’s even nice to be accepted in a profession that you know nothing about.

[01:00:57] And that goes to your, you know, back to your question is who are you? I, you know, I want to do things that I’m not necessarily good at, but I can make myself better at. And so those challenges help my personality, you know, I feed on those. Yeah. Those situations. That’s awesome. So many people don’t start or try new things because they think that they have to be the best at it.

[01:01:22] And what you just said is just try to be better. Yes. And, and through that, trying to be better, you’re growing and learning. That’s what I, how I get excited. That gives me the dopamine that gets me the, and I didn’t realize that that’s what did it for me. And so when I stopped doing that, I was miserable, but now I really channel it into what I’m Positive things that make me happy rather than what everybody else sees as a success.

[01:01:48] Yeah. Awesome. Hey everyone This is mark divine fonder seal fit and unbeatable mind and i’m super stoked to announce that my new book Uncommon is due out from st. Martin’s press this summer july 16th And we’ve launched a pre order campaign You can learn more about that at read uncommon. com to try to get early awareness for the book You Which I hope will help a lot of people where I go and do a deep dive on the five mountains.

[01:02:17] Of personal mastery physical mental emotional intuitional and spiritual uncommon simple principles for an extraordinary life Check it out at read uncommon. com And thank you for your support and being part of the change you want to see in this world. Hooyah Well David, thank you again. I appreciate it.

[01:02:35] Sure. If people can find your book and Goliath at Amazon Play, do you like to connect with readers, get feedback? Can they email you, find you on social media? Yeah, absolutely. It’s on Barnes and Noble too, and it’s on a whole bunch of other outlets and, you know, since the launch in a little while, a couple of weeks ago, uh, I’ve been communicating with a lot of people and, you know, they’ve been, Really connecting with the story and it makes me feel great when somebody says I actually cried Reading your story because it I remember that part of my life and for you to tell it Was and the way you came out of it.

[01:03:13] It was really cool. So I’m I’m really enjoying that part How do people connect with you? Do you email or social media? Yeah, absolutely and Goliath One at gmail. com. Okay. And that’s the number one. Yes. Okay. And Goliath one, and then at gmail. com. Yeah. And you can also, I have a, a website it’s called udt, Dave.

[01:03:36] com. Right on. And you can go there and you can also message me through udt. Dave. com. That’s awesome. I don’t know how or when I came up with that, but it seems to be very appropriate now. That’s awesome. That’s great. I appreciate your time. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure and I really enjoyed your book.

[01:03:57] I’m looking forward to reading your new one. Awesome. Yeah, I should have brought a copy with me. You’re definitely going to sign this one for me. Well, likewise, can I have this copy? If you’d like. I would love it. Thank you so much