Latest / The Warriors & Watchmen Podcast / Warriors & Watchmen: CJ3’s Hunt for Healing and Purpose with Special Guest Rob Whitfield

Transcript

Warriors & Watchmen: CJ3’s Hunt for Healing and Purpose with Special Guest Rob Whitfield · The Warriors & Watchmen Podcast

• 0:19
  By the CJ3 Foundation and No Boundaries Nonprofits, presented by Raven Tech
• 0:25
  and Negative Bounce Productions.
• 0:27
  I'm your host, Eric Thomas, a.k.a. CJ3 Actual, the director and founder of the
• 0:32
  CJ3 Foundation. Stop it.
• 0:35
  Sorry. With me, making all the noise, is my senior advisor for Virginia,
• 0:40
  Roger Singh. CJ3 Factual.
• 0:43
  Maybe not. Maybe not.
• 0:45
  And as always, off camera is Guy Wayne way bright our guy in the sky the ceo
• 0:52
  of negative bounce productions keeps us in line,
• 0:55
  i don't know about that yeah it's true look i try there's been nights a guy
• 0:59
  in the sky it depends where are we at in the drinking stage because i want to
• 1:03
  know how long we're going to pontificate,
• 1:05
  there's not going to be much punch i feel like i feel like tonight if he had
• 1:09
  been a little bit more loose he wouldn't have been as stressed he was a little
• 1:12
  stressed in here tonight so yeah let's talk about that real quick what happened
• 1:16
  tonight guy what did you do,
• 1:18
  i thought it's what i didn't do well first of all what's today today is friday right and what what
• 1:23
  guy in the sky let's go ahead and do this because i appreciate what you're wearing
• 1:26
  today what do we do on fridays well we we wear red why is that sir because we
• 1:32
  remember everyone deployed until they all go home boom yes absolutely so
• 1:37
  you'll see roger and i have our red
• 1:40
  friday shirts on always representing appreciate you wearing it roger and.
• 1:45
  Even the guests in the studio guy did the right thing and told them to wear
• 1:50
  red. Yes, he did. I was impressed.
• 1:53
  I wasn't sure whether it was... Are we supposed to get... Is he supposed to
• 1:56
  be wearing these shirts?
• 1:58
  Are we supposed to? I mean, realistically, I think Negative Mount should kind
• 2:02
  of have a joint collab shirt, I really believe, right? We need that,
• 2:05
  yeah. I mean, I think that'd be kind of cool. Yeah.
• 2:07
  So, and a cool thing, since it is Red Friday, we also have...
• 2:12
  We're working with a company out of Kentucky, I believe, through my brother-in-law.
• 2:17
  You remember my brother-in-law, Mike? Yep, absolutely. He got a new job,
• 2:20
  and their site, there's about 50 of them at that site, and they hit me up and
• 2:26
  said they want to do a collab Red Friday CJ3 Foundation shirt with their company.
• 2:31
  So that's cool. Looking forward to doing that. So Negative Bounce,
• 2:34
  we certainly could do that with y'all. Let's do it.
• 2:37
  I'm pretty particular about my t-shirt material. So is Eric, by the way. I am too.
• 2:43
  I mean, look, I don't like heavy t-shirts. Neither do I. He wants his arms to
• 2:47
  look very big, so he gets them really tight. It's got to be tapered,
• 2:50
  and it's got to be tight in the arms. Come on.
• 2:53
  I agree with this. Thank you. Unfortunately, he doesn't carry my size,
• 2:56
  so I have to get my own shit.
• 2:58
  Yeah, well. Well, if you weren't like fucking Andre the Giant.
• 3:01
  Well, you can go to Bed Bath & Beyond and get those. I mean, I...
• 3:09
  Dick. Eric's an asshole. Whatever. Whatever. So anyway, Red Friday,
• 3:13
  happy Red Friday. Every Friday we remember.
• 3:16
  Also, you had a little gift in front of your seat today, Roger. I did.
• 3:21
  I did. Oh, wow. That's a big answer. I mean, Mikey, our buddy who was on a few
• 3:26
  weeks ago. Our guy from Cleveland, Ohio.
• 3:28
  He is from Ohio. I was leaving that part out. But he gave us some nice Sasquatch
• 3:33
  stickers wearing the T-shirts, various T-shirts of the foundation,
• 3:37
  which I will put on my actual Sasquatch Bronco.
• 3:41
  What did you do with yours? So they are already on my Bronco because unlike
• 3:44
  you, I was excited to put them on mine. Is yours a Sasquatch?
• 3:48
  I mean, I don't understand. You shouldn't put it on. Mine's bigger and better than that.
• 3:51
  Bro why are we doing it so you want to keep talking crap we'll park the f-350
• 3:56
  next to your broco his compensation vehicle yes i have i have a small well whatever.
• 4:04
  So anyway hey roger well hold on guy you were telling us what wrong with what
• 4:07
  what went wrong with the studio today so we showed up and roger i'm pretty sure
• 4:12
  we said we were going to record at a certain time usually on fridays it's earlier
• 4:15
  than the rest of the week because we
• 4:17
  we all have regular jobs to get through,
• 4:20
  What was wrong with the studio today? I mean, yeah, I have not seen you like
• 4:24
  that ever, guys. So tell us what happened.
• 4:27
  Well, what happened is. You see what happened was. Let's see what happened was.
• 4:32
  No, look. I just, I was not prepared. Oh. I wasn't prepared.
• 4:35
  Hey, what is it? I was trying to modify something and I thought I had all this
• 4:39
  time. I was like, eh, I got an hour. And then Eric shows up.
• 4:42
  I see. No, you saw Havoc. I see Havoc out the window. And then I'm like,
• 4:47
  what the fuck? Why are you here?
• 4:49
  Yeah. So I had to, you know, I had tools everywhere and wires and,
• 4:53
  but Hey, look, we, we, we adapted and we overcame. We did. Cameras are set up.
• 4:59
  Oh, that's good. The army. I don't know whether the Marine Corps,
• 5:02
  cause maybe you just, you guys always run around this way, but the army had
• 5:06
  a thing, piss poor planning.
• 5:09
  Wait, what is it? The five Ps.
• 5:12
  Prior planning prevents piss poor performance. Thank you. God.
• 5:17
  Anyway. Haven't been a Marine. I don't know anybody that could wire something
• 5:20
  up like this, uh, that I served with. So wait till you see it.
• 5:23
  I'm not actually sure a guy's a real Marine because he, if he's got as much technical skills.
• 5:27
  Oh, he must've been an officer. Maybe he's flexing the Fobbit skills.
• 5:37
  I had the best PlayStation out there.
• 5:41
  I can't even set up my own email account. I like to say I'm an undercover geek.
• 5:45
  Nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that. That's all right.
• 5:48
  Nerd or geek which one geek nerds don't get laid,
• 5:52
  oh there you go so speaking of geeks now we've offended half the nerds in our
• 5:57
  listening audience that's all right no hey i love nerds too don't get me wrong
• 6:01
  i appreciate guy's ability because actually if you can see the inside of the studio it's phenomenal
• 6:07
  we appreciate the partnership and the use of it so
• 6:09
  no outstanding job and you know For those of y'all don't know,
• 6:14
  the picture will eventually change because,
• 6:17
  the studio is growing as he expands the studio and all that.
• 6:20
  So looking forward to seeing...
• 6:22
  What Roger and I are going to affectionately refer to as the CJ3 Clubhouse.
• 6:26
  Yeah, I'm looking forward to the Liquid Lounge.
• 6:30
  Is that what we're calling it now?
• 6:32
  So, hey, you guys heard a voice commenting earlier because this guy can't just
• 6:37
  sit here and be quiet. No, he shouldn't.
• 6:40
  He shouldn't do it at all. But a good friend of ours, supports us at a lot of
• 6:45
  events, another senior advisor for CJ3 Foundation.
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  He brings a lot of the technical side and makes some of the connections that
• 6:53
  we need to be successful. Connections is an understatement.
• 6:56
  So, no, the guy we're referring to, the voice you heard earlier,
• 7:00
  is Mr. Rob Whitfield. Welcome to the podcast, Rob. Thanks. Thanks for having
• 7:04
  me. No, glad to have you. Man, you were on a whirlwind tour today trying to
• 7:08
  get into town, were you not? I was.
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  I was. It's been a week. How was soft week? Yeah.
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  It was the most crowded it's ever been. They opened it up. They kind of opened
• 7:18
  the floodgates. Now that thing is, if anybody's ever been down to Special Operations
• 7:21
  Forces Week, used to be called SOFIC.
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  It's always an event that hurts your liver, but it's a reunion.
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  It's business. It's talking to the government about all kinds of things.
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  But in the past, they would limit the attendance a bit. And this year,
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  they did not. How did that work out doing that?
• 7:40
  It was great. It was a lot of energy. So you think it's good that they opened
• 7:43
  it up? I do. I do. They've expanded into, you know, three or four hotels around the convention center.
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  The demos are almost nonstop. The excitement outside in the water,
• 7:52
  if anybody's ever seen it, you know, they do full on soft guys come in and do full raids.
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  They did. They used the mayor of Tampa as a hostage this time.
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  Came in, blew stuff up. They got helos flying around. They got guys coming out
• 8:06
  of the water. You know, it was snipers on the roof.
• 8:09
  It was a good time. So I know the weird ass weather we were dealing with up
• 8:13
  here. What was the weather like for you down there?
• 8:15
  It was cooler than it normally is. But on the way, I had to exfil quickly to
• 8:20
  get back for some meetings on Thursday. And we had severe weather down there.
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  Trees are blowing down at the same
• 8:25
  time. Trees are falling down up here in Virginia. So it was a little wild.
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  So we understand you had to fly back of the bus getting here? I did.
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  How'd that work out? 6'5". I was in a middle seat. I had to get on a flight
• 8:37
  quick. That's desperation, sir. It was desperation, man.
• 8:41
  So, hey, Rob, for the folks that don't know you, so your involvement in CJ3,
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  first of all, thank you for it. Much appreciated. It's good to have a friend
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  and a brother on board that supports what we do.
• 8:54
  Let's talk about the draw, man. How did you get here? Like, where did you hear
• 8:59
  about it? Why did you come on board?
• 9:01
  How did that— How do you deal with Eric? I mean, I'd like to know,
• 9:04
  actually. That's a later question. That's a later question.
• 9:07
  Yeah. So introduced to Eric by my friend, a good friend, Chris Riker,
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  and who I really- Hold on. Who is he to you? I didn't even know that.
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  Who is he to you? He's my brother-in-law. There you go. Yeah.
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  I was at my favorite restaurant here in Leesburg, Tuscarora Mill,
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  and was sitting there. And, you know, Chris was kind of told me I need to get
• 9:26
  involved with this foundation, told me some good things about it.
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  Sat there for two hours with Eric talking, didn't realize there was a giant,
• 9:33
  you know, Malinois under the table until- gets up until we stood up,
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  but just really kind of fell in love with the mission and the way they do things.
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  One of the things, you know, just from my past, I'll get into it in a second, but
• 9:48
  through, you know, defense contracting world, others have been burned by some
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  veteran supposed charities in the past that you realize 50, 60% of the money
• 9:56
  is not going to the cause that they say that they're trying to support.
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  They're wasting it on parties and basically their event planning and fun organizations.
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  And they waste a lot of donor money on stuff like that. And the idea that nobody
• 10:11
  at CJ3 Foundation gets paid, everything's volunteer, and Eric beats people with
• 10:16
  a stick to make sure that... I do this for free? I don't understand.
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  You absolutely do. That everything gets donated for the events that I've been
• 10:24
  involved in. And just the ethics and the ethos behind it really aligned with
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  the ethics and the ethos that I personally have and that the companies that
• 10:31
  I'm involved with have. And yeah, that was what, four or five years ago.
• 10:35
  I think so. At the time, you had a position with Patriot Group International, right? Of course.
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  And so very much appreciate not only did you get on board, you got the company
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  on board, and they've supported us, and they continue to support us on into
• 10:50
  the golf tournament this year. So thank you for that.
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  It's been a phenomenal relationship, and we're very appreciative.
• 10:56
  I think the, the missions matched well and neat thing just for the group.
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  One of the things we encourage is the folks that are on the board,
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  whether they're senior advisors or ambassadors, whatever their position is,
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  we want them to go through some of our process, right?
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  So you can't sell something. You can't preach about something unless you've been through it too.
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  Rob's been through a couple of our processes. Rob, I open the floor to kind
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  of talk about what you've seen going through it, right?
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  What, what, what did you go through? What do you think? No, it's great.
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  I went through the five-day mental health program out in Albia, Iowa.
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  It's a weird little town in the middle of Iowa, bro. Weird little town,
• 11:35
  but a really awesome spot and getting more awesome with some of the,
• 11:39
  renovations and some of the donations that have, that have come from folks to
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  renovate this old governor's mansion in, in the middle of nowhere in Iowa.
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  And just five days of really intensive mental health, mental and physical health
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  treatment that was really beneficial for me.
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  I've got a minor TBI. I've got injuries all over my body.
• 12:00
  And I came out of that week refreshed. It felt like I really got something out
• 12:04
  of it and then really understood the benefit of the program and then obviously
• 12:09
  been able to kind of translate that into supporting the foundation for me.
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  And even cooler, I got the opportunity to go through because I'll just,
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  I have no problem saying I needed to go through, right? every once in a while,
• 12:19
  you also need a tune-up and I needed to go back through.
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  Since I knew Rob, I wanted to go through while he was there.
• 12:25
  Well, oddly enough, in this small little town of Albia, Iowa,
• 12:30
  I think 4,800 people, I think max, we decided we needed a break from the process
• 12:35
  and went out to the Mexican restaurant in Albia, Iowa. That was an interesting process.
• 12:40
  Was. I think I might have heard this story. I think I heard this story.
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  First of all, we ordered more food than they're ever used to seeing anybody order.
• 12:47
  And we had a good time. That was a blast. Neat thing about this town that I
• 12:52
  enjoyed taking Rob to, they got a place called Welcome Home Soldier Monument,
• 12:56
  which we've partnered with and they're friends of ours.
• 13:00
  But it's amazing because in this small town in Iowa, this monument rivals monuments in D.C.
• 13:08
  It's the best veterans monument I've ever seen. And there's no reason for it.
• 13:13
  I've been to virtually every one in the United States. And there's no reason
• 13:15
  for it to be there. I've never seen anything like that.
• 13:17
  How did it come about out there? Oh, my God. So just a patriotic person took
• 13:21
  this initiative to build this thing and this town, it's probably one of the
• 13:26
  most patriotic towns I've been to. It's ridiculous.
• 13:28
  So just to give you a, for instance, when, when our recipients go through or
• 13:33
  our team is there, the Kendall place, which is, it was the governor Kendall
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  was I think 22nd or 23rd governor of Iowa owned this house.
• 13:44
  And, you know, we've, we've since acquired it. And a hundred years ago,
• 13:47
  he was helping soldiers from the world wars and all that stuff.
• 13:52
  Now, here we are a hundred years later helping again. So we've kind of gone
• 13:55
  full circle from this home.
• 13:57
  But every, when the recipients show up or a team member shows up,
• 14:01
  we raise the CJ3 Foundation flag.
• 14:03
  Well, they announce it on the radio. They announce it in the paper. They announce it.
• 14:07
  When we've showed up, the mayor has shut the town down and they've done events
• 14:11
  on the town square. They've done, it's crazy.
• 14:15
  Every restaurant, every restaurant we went to had a CJ3 sticker.
• 14:18
  And they know who you are. Oh, you're with CJ3 Foundation. Oh,
• 14:21
  you know, and it's pretty cool.
• 14:24
  It's a neat town. The memorial will bring tears to your eyes because it plays
• 14:28
  taps at a certain hour and it was, it was really, it's moving.
• 14:31
  So then all of our veterans that go through the process get their name on the
• 14:35
  monument out there, which I'm, so I struggle with that at first.
• 14:41
  And Rob, I'd be interested to see what you think. So at first I struggle with
• 14:44
  that because we're all used to it being posthumous, right?
• 14:47
  You die, then you get your name on a wall. and and when it was broached to me
• 14:52
  that we should do this for our veterans at first i was very against i was like
• 14:55
  no that's weird i don't want to do that i don't like that,
• 14:58
  but then the curator explained it to me he's like listen your service is over
• 15:02
  it doesn't mean you have to be
• 15:03
  why can't you get celebrated while you're still alive it's a great point
• 15:07
  and i dug it and i've watched it how that affects people emotionally because
• 15:11
  the amount of people that go through and then they want to take their family
• 15:14
  back to see their name on the wall while they're still alive i think that's cool.
• 15:18
  That's fantastic. So now it was cool having Rob there. And then Rob,
• 15:22
  you also been down to Georgia for annual hunt.
• 15:25
  I have. I've been part of the, you know, I know Eric, you probably described
• 15:28
  the four pillars of CJ3 before, but one of them is the field ops and the kind
• 15:32
  of a flagship event of that is a hunt where CJ3 takes 12 wounded heroes down,
• 15:38
  veterans, first responders.
• 15:40
  And we get to hunt on land that nobody really gets to hunt. It's the primo hunting
• 15:45
  land. there's people in Georgia that would sell their kids to hunt on that property. And it is, it's.
• 15:51
  Gets to a point where you see you are not taking shots at deer that other people
• 15:59
  would consider trophies because they're too small. So it's a really good time.
• 16:04
  I love the way CJ3 does it. It's a two year, you get to come back a second year.
• 16:09
  So the, you know, the brothers that you meet the first year,
• 16:11
  the camaraderie is there.
• 16:13
  You get to develop a network and we all stay in touch and, you know,
• 16:16
  signal or WhatsApp groups out throughout time.
• 16:19
  So it, it really helps with the alleviation of some of that separation anxiety
• 16:23
  and that loss of mission that we all feel when we, when we transition out of
• 16:26
  the military or law enforcement or whatnot, but it's, it's an epic experience.
• 16:31
  And, you know, I'm going back this year, this will be my third year and I'm
• 16:34
  not even hunting this year.
• 16:36
  I'm staying in a hotel just to come out and hang out by the fire pit and,
• 16:41
  and, and volunteer and, you know, help make coffee. So you're one of the few
• 16:44
  people that get to see both sides of it since you're on the team and you're supporting.
• 16:50
  The other cool thing about this hunt is going back to Rob's point about none
• 16:54
  of us getting paid for what we do. And we also don't pay to play.
• 16:57
  This hunt, with everything that goes on.
• 17:01
  Maybe cost us, I think last year cost us $400 out of pocket for everything that happened.
• 17:07
  That's, that's for people to be able to take their trophy heads back with them.
• 17:12
  That's for American defense manufacturing comes down that provides the weapons
• 17:17
  for the hunt and they come down and support and make sure nothing's wrong with
• 17:20
  them and make sure everything goes off without it.
• 17:23
  And each veteran goes home with almost a duffel bag of swag and a gun,
• 17:28
  right? I mean, Everybody gets a rifle. It keeps growing. It's ridiculous.
• 17:32
  So you go two years, that's almost two duffel bags worth of sweat.
• 17:36
  What'd you have, like 25 hats from different companies? I still have 25 hats, probably 20 t-shirts.
• 17:40
  I've got boxes of hunting, you know, deer retracted. I've got stickers.
• 17:44
  I've got key chains. I got all kinds of stuff. But I mean, that's,
• 17:48
  it's everything. It's a, it's a primo hunting kind of lodge plantation with
• 17:52
  individual cabins. All of that is donated.
• 17:55
  We, we leave with a hundred pounds. We leave with a hundred pounds of venison,
• 17:59
  combination of ground and steaks and sausage and everything else.
• 18:03
  And all of that is donated by the processor. So like when I said Eric beats
• 18:07
  people with a stick over getting things donated and not just paying to be an
• 18:10
  event planning company for fun stuff for veterans.
• 18:14
  Everything that people donate to CJ3 Foundation actually goes to treat guys.
• 18:19
  I mean, it's insane. So Eric's told me about this and I was supposed to go last
• 18:22
  year. Wasn't able to go, but I'm going this year.
• 18:25
  I'm looking forward to it. I mean, the way he talks about it,
• 18:28
  I'm just like, I can't, and I'm not going to be doing anything but serving and,
• 18:32
  and, and apparently I'm hogging, but that's beside the point.
• 18:36
  Different kind. Different kind. It's fine. Who's out there? It's different kind.
• 18:40
  But I'm looking forward to it. Just hearing, hearing that you guys sit around
• 18:43
  a fire pit. You can tell stories.
• 18:45
  I can imagine it's cathartic for you guys out there to be able to have those
• 18:48
  conversations with other vets and have, and just to be able to be together in
• 18:53
  an environment that you might not be used to. I think it's, I think it's amazing.
• 18:57
  And who actually put all that together for...
• 19:01
  Not just A, the foundation, but how did you get all of these sponsors on?
• 19:04
  So it used to be, it was run differently. So it used to be run by a nonprofit
• 19:09
  called WVON, just run differently.
• 19:12
  My philosophy is, and Junior Coker is my associate director down there that
• 19:18
  works a majority of this process. So kudos to him.
• 19:21
  I don't want to take credit for what he's doing because it's phenomenal what
• 19:24
  he's got going on down there.
• 19:26
  But before, it was a couple of rich dudes stroking checks, making it happen.
• 19:30
  And the problem with that is there's no real buy-in from the community.
• 19:34
  And what we wanted to do is we wanted to involve the community in it.
• 19:37
  So, you know, the thing, everybody shows up, what is it, Robin,
• 19:41
  on Wednesday, I think it is, or something like that. So Thursday...
• 19:45
  We have what we call a sponsor's dinner. And so it's all the veterans plus all
• 19:49
  the sponsors that have bought in. And we have them all out on the property.
• 19:53
  And we tell the stories. And we give away the gifts. And we do all this stuff.
• 19:57
  It's emotional as hell, man. These sponsors love this thing.
• 20:00
  And so really it's about buying, right? It was, you don't have to have a couple
• 20:04
  of rich people to write a check. What we want is the community involved.
• 20:07
  The more the community is involved, whether that means a weapons manufacturing
• 20:11
  company, the local lumber yard or whatever.
• 20:14
  They get to feel touch and see what they're what they're supporting and so they
• 20:19
  get to be out there and so to your point you know so
• 20:22
  as volunteers i'm going to tell you bro good luck we're not getting much sleep
• 20:25
  because here's what happens we'll get up at four o'clock in the morning start
• 20:28
  the coffee make sure there's ice all that other stuff
• 20:31
  these guys roll out not really awake whatever to roll out what like five o'clock
• 20:36
  in the morning rob and they're rolling out to go to get into the stands.
• 20:40
  Then what do we do we clean up then we'll go sit around the fire pit and hang
• 20:44
  out and chat for a little bit talk about what went right what went wrong what
• 20:47
  we need to fix whatever and then have a good time then they come back at lunch we feed them,
• 20:52
  kick them back out for the evening hunt and then you know and that goes on then
• 20:56
  when they come back from the evening hunt,
• 20:58
  normally then the alcohol the cigars and stuff around the fire pit that's that's
• 21:03
  kind of the camaraderie time the social time
• 21:05
  you'll find some veterans that couldn't pull the trigger because this is the
• 21:08
  first time They've touched a weapon since Iraq, Afghanistan,
• 21:11
  whatever, and it's an emotional experience. Nobody's joking them for it.
• 21:14
  You know, they may pull out a camera and take pictures instead of pulling a
• 21:17
  trigger, right? That may be what they need to do.
• 21:20
  But sitting around the fire is just that time of, dude, we've had some real
• 21:23
  comedians out there that just, we have craziness, but yeah, it's just a good time.
• 21:29
  It allows some of our veterans to remember what it's like to be around brothers again.
• 21:35
  Turn, you get to turn all your filters off, turn all the, you know,
• 21:38
  pull down your walls and be yourself again. And it's a good time.
• 21:43
  So you'll have a blast watching. You may not even say much. You may just sit
• 21:47
  around and laugh and just hang out with them. And you'll have a blast.
• 21:52
  So, and the property's beautiful. Like Rob said, some of these properties,
• 21:56
  there are dudes in Georgia that would sell their kids to hunt there because,
• 21:59
  they're just, they're plantations that all year long, they prepped them just for this hunt.
• 22:05
  Only thing I'm going to ask, there's, there's snake bite kits,
• 22:07
  right? I haven't had a snake problem yet.
• 22:09
  Although Havoc. It is December. Hey, Havoc took down a coyote.
• 22:14
  Did he really? Yeah. So that was pretty impressive. Did you have to give him
• 22:17
  the word or did he just do it on his own?
• 22:18
  No, dude. He just disappeared I was like, okay But we do have a problem with
• 22:23
  Havoc He is a dead deer humper He likes to bite him on the neck and hump him,
• 22:27
  So all I hear is Eric, your dog,
• 22:32
  So anyway Damn it, Havoc There's a trailer full of dead deer and there's Havoc.
• 22:38
  I'm just here for the gangbang It's a porn movie for him at that point It's
• 22:41
  fantastic So your last year How many deer did you take down, brother? I don't know,
• 22:48
  The first day or two, first day one, I waited.
• 22:53
  I let a lot of them pass. And then I found a really nice buck the second morning.
• 22:57
  Got him and the two doe with him all in, yeah, hell, Uram Marine Corps.
• 23:06
  Got three in about 10 seconds. And then some of these plantation owners,
• 23:11
  as Eric referred to them as sponsors,
• 23:13
  they donate their land, but they also have land management and wildlife management
• 23:18
  kind of roll we don't call it hunting down there we call it harvesting right
• 23:21
  yeah sure like at the end of the day this is management because you'll have
• 23:25
  you'll have these plantations i think where rob's going that they'll tell you,
• 23:29
  we this year we need to get rid of 30 doe or whatever the number is because
• 23:34
  300 on the place i was hunting they needed 300 gone in the next three months
• 23:38
  otherwise the land is overrun right and it destroys the ecosystem right the great thing is
• 23:43
  that any of all of the meat that is not taken home you know we
• 23:47
  we probably have tens of thousands of pounds of meat from the week,
• 23:51
  they give us all 100 pounds each so 1200 pounds comes homes with us the rest
• 23:55
  of it gets donated to the churches.
• 23:58
  And everything across georgia and florida we don't let anything go to waste
• 24:01
  other places so it's not uh it's not just a you know a kill fest down there
• 24:05
  but they asked me and one of the other guy from the american defense manufacturing tom
• 24:11
  we had already kind of got our fill and they said, Hey, look,
• 24:14
  we got to get 300 doe off this, this one plantation February.
• 24:19
  Don't threaten me with a good time. Would you mind, would you mind going back out?
• 24:22
  Cause most of the, most of the hunters we have down there go out with a guide
• 24:26
  and they sit in the guide with the stand, whatnot.
• 24:27
  Some of the guys, because you know, some of our veterans are first responders.
• 24:30
  They're not precision marksmen by trade. They're not hunters.
• 24:34
  Some of them are not, you know, you might have a, a cop who's never,
• 24:36
  uh, you know, shot a scoped rifle. You know, we've had some guys down there
• 24:39
  that were bow hunters, but never again shot with,
• 24:43
  Guys like me and Tom, they just let us out there by ourselves,
• 24:46
  and they were like, hey, get as many dough as you possibly can.
• 24:49
  So the guy got five, and Tom got three in about two hours the second afternoon.
• 24:55
  So, yeah, it was a great time. We were doing a good favor for the farmers.
• 24:58
  We're also getting hogs that are destroying their land.
• 25:01
  Any hogs that we saw down there. So hold on, Roger. I'm going to break in because
• 25:04
  I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to tell you something.
• 25:06
  I'm going to call him Robbie right now because he pissed me off. Oh, what'd you do?
• 25:11
  I can say this because he's on the team So Robbie He comes back from the first
• 25:17
  Sorry for any Robbies out there But that's a douchebag name,
• 25:19
  I don't like it He came back from the first hunt and he said,
• 25:23
  I said, Rob, so how'd it go? He's like, bro, I mean, you told me about the hunt.
• 25:30
  I thought it was going to be all right.
• 25:31
  But he's like, I was actually impressed by it. I said, what the hell does that
• 25:35
  mean? He's like, I didn't expect that.
• 25:38
  I was like, what's that? I mean, why would you be mad about that?
• 25:41
  That's actually very flattering. No, it's a compliment. But then I'm thinking,
• 25:45
  what does he think? I'm running some half-assed thing out of a trailer. I mean, Eric.
• 25:49
  I couldn't believe it. I showed up and I had a bag on my, on my bed that had,
• 25:53
  it was like, you pick a bag and you, some guys get a, you know,
• 25:57
  a thousand dollar rifle. Some guys get a $400 rifle. They all have an optic
• 26:00
  on it. It's luck of the draw.
• 26:01
  But I've got two brand new rifles in my house from two years of being at that
• 26:04
  hunt. And, uh, and they're nice rifles. One of them has got a vortex scope on it.
• 26:08
  You know, did you get your mount brother? I did. Yeah.
• 26:11
  That was beautiful. You had a good hit. Beautiful. Yeah. So,
• 26:14
  you know, I got a trophy, I've got a trophy deer mount that was,
• 26:17
  I, it, this thing looks like a reindeer.
• 26:20
  I mean, it's not even, it's a whitetail and it looks like a reindeer.
• 26:23
  And I keep joking with my wife that I'm putting it right above the bed. Yeah, no way.
• 26:28
  I'm pretty sure she's not. When they did the mount, I said, hey,
• 26:32
  I want the eyes looking downward.
• 26:34
  So when I put it above the headboard, it's looking right at my wife.
• 26:39
  All right. Well, hey, so Rob, I appreciate the story. We're going to get into
• 26:43
  a couple more stories after this quick break. Roger, we will continue this momentarily.
• 26:49
  So we will be back.
• 27:12
  And we're back with Rob Whitfield and Roger Singh.
• 27:17
  Hey, uh, we were talking about the hunting real quick.
• 27:21
  Let's start moving into Rob. You, uh, you guys just participated in an event
• 27:26
  we had kind of segued from Patriot group, although they were out there and you're
• 27:31
  kind of moving through career changes and things like that.
• 27:35
  Pretty cool that you were on board and being on board as a senior advisor,
• 27:38
  but your wife owns a company and you guys supported our golf tournament this
• 27:44
  year. We did. It was great.
• 27:46
  A few years back, probably four years going on, another charity spent over a
• 27:50
  hundred grand on me, getting me fixed up.
• 27:52
  My head, my body, stem cell treatments. Thank God. stuff on for,
• 27:56
  for TBIs, you know, anything and everything that I needed to do for about two
• 28:00
  months. They, they, they did a number on me and it was so effective.
• 28:05
  I just kind of fell in love with like a longevity and wellness type businesses,
• 28:09
  the peptides, the, you know, the IV therapy, uh, the hormone replacement, things like that.
• 28:14
  And what, what it could do and wished I would have done it 10 or 15 years earlier.
• 28:21
  And an opportunity came up another veteran friend of mind, Tommy Roth,
• 28:24
  who owns a clinic here, a men's health clinic in Ashburn, reached out to me
• 28:28
  at like two o'clock in the morning one night and said, hey, take a look at this
• 28:31
  place. It's for sale in downtown Leesburg.
• 28:34
  And I didn't believe the numbers at first. I looked at it. I was like,
• 28:36
  there's no way this place is doing this well. I've been there for some IVs when I was hung over.
• 28:41
  And it turns out, long story short, it was. We closed the deal.
• 28:44
  We bought it in February of 2025.
• 28:48
  And my wife has been, she retired from CIA and she's been running that since and doing a great job.
• 28:53
  Yeah. Phenomenal person. She's a badass. Period. No, Sarah's awesome.
• 28:58
  I'm glad you have that. I got the opportunity.
• 29:01
  I appreciate you inviting us over. Cool thing about it is for my birthday gift.
• 29:06
  Roger, unfortunately I was with you on my birthday and you hurt me that night.
• 29:13
  We hurt each other. That's fine. The next day, luckily I had an appointment
• 29:17
  with Rob and Sarah and met them at Haven, Longevity and Wellness,
• 29:21
  downtown Leesburg once again, and got the opportunity.
• 29:24
  They put me on an IV drip that, yeah, I don't know what all was in it,
• 29:27
  Rob. You probably know better than I do, but it was loaded with vitamins and all these other things.
• 29:32
  Instant man i felt so much better when that was done you know i'm not a big
• 29:36
  pill guy i'm not a big and so the opportunity to do more natural
• 29:40
  you know wellness and all that stuff dude it was phenomenal michelle my fiance
• 29:45
  has has had the opportunity to go there and
• 29:48
  do laser hair removal and some of the other things so,
• 29:51
  the the the stuff this place offers is is really cool jen and i are definitely
• 29:55
  heading out there we've talked about that a few times like we got to book an appointment it.
• 29:58
  She's like, oh, we'll just reach out to Sarah. I was like, we'll do it.
• 30:00
  This type of stuff will change.
• 30:01
  And it's not just because I own one of the, a business in this space, but it changed my life.
• 30:05
  You know, my, my wife was skeptical, you know, when we, when I'm about the,
• 30:08
  just even about the IV infusion therapy and, you know, we do lasers and Botox
• 30:13
  and all that other stuff as well.
• 30:14
  But the people are skeptical until they come in and they're not feeling well,
• 30:18
  they're sick or they're, they're hungover or whatnot.
• 30:21
  And the first time she was 30 minutes into her first one was like, oh, okay.
• 30:25
  But to your point. Now I, now I see what you're talking about you know if you
• 30:29
  do them even before you're sick and before you're i mean my god man you're going
• 30:33
  to get sick flu and immunity at flu season like we have teachers
• 30:37
  one of our best customer groups is teachers they're in flu season they come
• 30:41
  in like once a week you know every saturday or whatnot and they do a immunity.
• 30:46
  High vitamin c high glutathione other things that are that are good for your
• 30:49
  immune system and and they go through the whole season without getting sick
• 30:52
  you know that's It's amazing.
• 30:53
  That's insane. And, you know, I know, you know, I'm not going to lie.
• 30:57
  I joke my friend Rob, because you go from, you know, this hardcore Marine,
• 31:01
  whatever, and you think, then you think this. They're talking about skincare.
• 31:05
  Longevity and wellness.
• 31:06
  I was going to say, Eric, you could do some Botox. I mean, they're doing Eric's Botox.
• 31:10
  But I'm going to tell you, they bleed well into each other, in all honesty.
• 31:13
  I mean, it goes into even what we do in Albia, Iowa, with the health and wellness
• 31:19
  and all that, right? And so it bleeds well together. So appreciate the hell
• 31:23
  out of y'all. They were our title sponsor this year for the golf tournament. I will say.
• 31:28
  I will say this, especially for my Loudoun County, Virginia folks,
• 31:32
  if you go in there and say you're with CJ3 Foundation, that's awesome.
• 31:36
  Let them know that you saw them, you heard about them through your affiliation with the foundation.
• 31:41
  That'd be much appreciated. Not to mention you get a 20% discount if you come
• 31:44
  in there and say something about CJ3 Foundation. There you go.
• 31:48
  So, no, much appreciated. And they're friends, they're family.
• 31:52
  And Rob is, and his wife, candidly, even though he's listed as a senior advisor,
• 31:57
  she supports probably as much. They both participate in the foundation.
• 32:01
  They're always wearing our gear, so it's awesome. Great thing is we've got a
• 32:04
  great community here about, and I think everybody should be doing this across
• 32:08
  the nation, veteran-owned businesses of any type need to be sticking together.
• 32:13
  And we've got a new Mexican restaurant right across the street from us in Leesburg, Casa de Avila.
• 32:19
  Not only is it the best Mexican food in Northern Virginia, bar none,
• 32:22
  I think even some of our- Abraham's awesome and his wife is- Even some of our,
• 32:26
  when you go in there and you see a lot of Hispanic people eating there,
• 32:29
  you know the food is good, right? That's racist.
• 32:32
  Whatever, man. It's true. I'm with one. It's true. And she loves it.
• 32:37
  And they're right across the street from us, but we get together, we trade off things.
• 32:41
  We give them gift cards to give away at their trivia night. They come over and
• 32:45
  they support our business. And there's other veteran owned businesses in the, in the neighborhood.
• 32:49
  And we've had some friends like Ted Adair at Oath and Oak and others that have
• 32:51
  been really cultivating the communication between vet owned businesses and Loudoun County.
• 32:57
  And it's a model that. It's kind of a neat thing, right? We need to be,
• 33:00
  need to be doing across the nation. Like we help each other out.
• 33:03
  We're not competing. We're helping each other out. Especially with increasing
• 33:07
  veteran unemployment and things
• 33:08
  like that. Like, Hey, if a vet starts a business and you got a choice.
• 33:11
  You know, support a veteran owned business. I will make a plug,
• 33:15
  whether popular or not, bro. This, this is, so we have veterans helping veterans
• 33:20
  here. This is where I'm just going to say straight out in Lowne County,
• 33:24
  I wish the county would get more involved.
• 33:27
  You know, I've gone to places like Colorado Springs and things like that.
• 33:30
  They have veterans parks where they give discounts to veteran companies to serve
• 33:35
  the veteran community and things like that.
• 33:37
  I would like to see a little more of that because right now I feel like we're
• 33:40
  doing a great job of taking care of each other.
• 33:42
  I'd like to see the county, the cities, things like that, kick in a little more
• 33:46
  and do a little more for our veteran community. I agree. I agree.
• 33:50
  And, you know, not just during election season either. I think,
• 33:52
  you know, this is a nonpartisan thing. It's not political.
• 33:56
  We don't care whether veterans are. Veterans, first responders,
• 33:58
  the people that protect us, firefighters, EMTs, things, all things that CJ3 Foundation focuses on.
• 34:05
  You know, we, we shouldn't have to, we should know about, even the programs
• 34:09
  that we do have here in this county, Nobody knows about them.
• 34:12
  They're not really effective. They're not properly funded. There's a few things
• 34:15
  going on, but for the large part, I 100% agree with you. There's not much going.
• 34:20
  Loudoun County, where we're at, where we're sitting today, is the wealthiest
• 34:24
  county by median household income in the United States.
• 34:29
  And we have severe veteran and first responder and law enforcement issues and support.
• 34:37
  We lack support and services at the county and above level, but I would say
• 34:42
  then conversely, we're doing a good job of taking care of one another,
• 34:46
  given that lack of service and support.
• 34:48
  Yeah, the gap is being filled in by organizations like CJ3, but even as...
• 34:56
  I've been involved with CJ3 for a while. Yep. Even the organizations that are
• 34:59
  doing these things struggle with the county governments in various things.
• 35:03
  So I think I'm hearing something here. Fighting for tax-free status, you know.
• 35:08
  I believe we have an opportunity here for one of you to announce your candidacy
• 35:12
  for out in the county here. We'll leave that to Eric.
• 35:16
  You know what? It isn't about that, but I am going to advocate because something
• 35:20
  Rob was talking about. I mean, we did have to go to the county.
• 35:23
  I will say straight out, we're exempt by the federal government,
• 35:26
  tax-exempt by the federal government. We're tax-exempt by the state of Virginia
• 35:29
  or the Commonwealth of Virginia.
• 35:31
  You're a known entity by the federal government people can donate to through the government.
• 35:35
  That's insane. But one of the things we ran into was the county did not want to tax-exempt us.
• 35:40
  We had to go fight at a county meeting, and for a number of years,
• 35:48
  I applied and was rejected for tax-exempt status in our county.
• 35:53
  As a non-profit. What a lot of people don't understand about Loudoun,
• 35:57
  we're one of the counties in the United States.
• 36:01
  This will sound completely ridiculous when I tell people in other states about it.
• 36:04
  But when you own a business here and it's not tax exempt, the county comes in
• 36:08
  and taxes you on every piece of equipment that you have. So,
• 36:11
  you know, negative bounce here that's hosting us in this beautiful studio.
• 36:16
  He's going to get assessed on the table that my hands are on.
• 36:19
  The table, the cameras. The camera, the chairs, the microphones,
• 36:23
  the pencil pad, everything else. So Haven Longevity and Wellness,
• 36:25
  for example, they'll come in once a year and assess the value of the lasers
• 36:29
  and the chairs and everything. And then they charge me taxes on it. Correct.
• 36:33
  Including your own vehicles, which is one of the things for CJ3 Foundation,
• 36:37
  right? I have a Jeep Wrangler, not exactly a luxury vehicle, right? Yes.
• 36:42
  I pay $1,300 in taxes every six months in this county. And they split it up
• 36:47
  to every six months to make it feel more palatable. $2,600 a year.
• 36:51
  By the time I'm through the five-year life of that, I've spent basically $15,000 in taxes on that.
• 36:59
  That is crazy. That's crazy. That's absolutely crazy. And then we're going to
• 37:02
  tax CJ3 even on the shelving that we were using to store the equipment.
• 37:05
  Just to store stuff. Yeah. And...
• 37:08
  Because I use my, because we believe in saving money, right?
• 37:11
  I will not go get a CJ3 property just to say I have one. There's no reason for it.
• 37:16
  So most of what we do is out of our house, out of businesses that support us.
• 37:20
  And they wanted to almost double tap because I already get taxed on that stuff.
• 37:25
  They wanted to tax me again because they said, you must have property.
• 37:28
  You have to. At the end of the day, say our heads prevail.
• 37:33
  We did have some good county officers that kind of came through for us and squashed that.
• 37:38
  But every other veteran-owned business and every other business in this area
• 37:42
  is suffering. But it shouldn't be that much of a fight.
• 37:44
  It shouldn't be a fight like that at all. Especially for a non-profit,
• 37:46
  a legitimate non-profit.
• 37:48
  Absolutely. So let's go to a little more fun topic, man.
• 37:52
  I said Haven supported the golf tournament. Yep. Brother, another thing you
• 37:56
  did was you and Sarah and Haven man every year at our golf tournament.
• 38:01
  A hole that every year gets more rain. People brag about it, laugh about it.
• 38:08
  The premier athletic event in the United States every year. They say they swear
• 38:12
  up and down you're stealing their money.
• 38:16
  What is that you support us with at the golf tournament, brother?
• 38:19
  So years ago, there was CJ3 Foundation's golf tournament had the loose beginnings
• 38:25
  of what we now call kind of the bourbon putt or the liquor hole.
• 38:29
  We set up a whole bunch of... I don't know if we can talk about liquor hole.
• 38:34
  We set up bottles all across the practice putting green. And because it's a
• 38:37
  captain's choice scramble, you know, the golfers pass by that putting green twice.
• 38:41
  And you come up, you get to putt, and if you – we set the bottles all over the green.
• 38:45
  How many bottles were out there? 40 to 60.
• 38:48
  It's ridiculous. It's a ridiculous amount. It is a ridiculous amount.
• 38:51
  We put the good stuff way out at the other end so it's a long putt.
• 38:56
  You know, you want a good bottle of bourbon, but if you want some slop,
• 39:00
  it's right up front. So if they putt, the idea is they putt,
• 39:04
  you pay for the amount of golf balls, and you've got to hit a bottle to get
• 39:07
  it, right? Right. You donate 20 bucks, you get to putt and hit it.
• 39:11
  If you, you can take it home and it could be anything from a,
• 39:14
  you know, an airplane bottle of a fireball or some cinnamon toast,
• 39:18
  French crunch bourbon, French toast crunch. I think that's what we have out there this year.
• 39:22
  But then my boss won that, by the way, my boss won that. That was hilarious.
• 39:26
  She couldn't take it home, but I got to tell you the first year he did this
• 39:29
  or last year when we did it, Rob looked at me when I came up,
• 39:33
  he goes, Roger, we put all the big bottles up front so you could actually fucking hit one.
• 39:36
  And I still missed. Dude, I'm going to tell you that. Half gallons of old granddad.
• 39:40
  And, uh, yeah. With 50 or 60 bottles out there, it looks so easy.
• 39:45
  I swear to God, every year it looks so easy.
• 39:47
  And the people are amazed, so they can't help but give money to go,
• 39:50
  I'm doing this again. They do. Now, let me ask you this question.
• 39:54
  Because this is what I believe. Are you better off just shutting your eyes and
• 39:58
  hitting it instead of aiming? Because I think if you aim, it fucks you.
• 40:03
  What's your thought? Can you watch it? There's only like, even the good golfers
• 40:06
  out there, that putting green we did it on at River Creek Golf Course is actually
• 40:10
  pretty challenging. It's got a lot of contour to it.
• 40:12
  And I don't golf, so this is why I run the bourbon hole. Is it easier to shut
• 40:15
  your eyes or do you think it's better? You've got just as good a chance.
• 40:17
  So, Eric, I will say the only reason I missed this year is because I knew I
• 40:21
  couldn't win one being a member of the foundation. Yeah, you're full of shit.
• 40:24
  I mean, I could have hit like five bottles in a row, but I was like,
• 40:27
  no. What it could have should have.
• 40:28
  No, honestly, it's funny because watching people hit, like they'll hit and it'll
• 40:32
  just graze by the fucking.
• 40:35
  Which I love because they'll drop another 20. They'll drop another 20. Easy.
• 40:38
  I would have if I was like, shit. That's a great part about it.
• 40:41
  We raised almost, what, almost $6,000 from just the bourbon.
• 40:45
  People coming up and putting for 20 bucks each. People have a lot of fun with it.
• 40:48
  And we still took about 15, 20 bottles home that I'll now store and we'll use
• 40:52
  those next year. And yeah, it's, it's, it's great. It's a, it's a good time.
• 40:56
  We have a lot of fun. It's caught on other charity golf tournaments are asking
• 40:59
  us to kind of, Sarah and I are like the bourbon hole people now.
• 41:03
  They're like, Hey, can you come out and do the bourbon hole?
• 41:05
  There's your new LLC, brother. Yeah.
• 41:09
  The challenge is that I, I personally, Sarah and I bought, I even bought all the bourbon.
• 41:12
  Cause you hit that in Georgia, right? On your way back. I did from the hunt.
• 41:17
  Actually, I used the hunt to, uh, to hit the bourbon trail all the way back
• 41:21
  from all the way up the Appalachian Trail to get home.
• 41:23
  And the challenge is now, like people will be like, hey, Rob,
• 41:26
  Sari, will you guys do the bourbon putt at our charity golf tournament?
• 41:29
  I'm like, well, who's going to buy the bourbon? Because that was sort of our contribution.
• 41:34
  That's going to be $10,000. That's one of my contributions to CJ3 Foundation.
• 41:38
  I love it. I don't get to write that one off either. So Eric,
• 41:41
  I have, uh, so I believe Rob probably knows.
• 41:45
  Who has a sniper golf course out in Nevada, like that would be badass for CJ3. That would be cool.
• 41:53
  And it is a badass sniper golf course.
• 41:57
  So, I mean, like you're, you're living in like a, you, you have to,
• 42:00
  you know, everyone lives in the same room. There's a bar.
• 42:03
  You have to cook food as a, a, a family basically every night.
• 42:07
  There's a wood burner and like the holes.
• 42:12
  I mean, you're talking like 1,200 meters for tee number one.
• 42:16
  And then you've got to hike, and then you go to the next hole.
• 42:20
  It is the most badass thing ever.
• 42:23
  What is this? What is this? Do you actually hit golf balls, or do you shoot?
• 42:28
  You shoot them. You shoot. Okay. You shoot. He's got targets set up.
• 42:32
  How did we go from golf to that? I mean, because he's talking about,
• 42:36
  you're talking about the other part of this.
• 42:37
  Well, look, you guys both, like, you started on shooting, and then you went
• 42:41
  to golf. So I mixed it. Hold on, Roger.
• 42:45
  I didn't know where he was going at all. So a lot like the 1968 Camaro.
• 42:49
  Set it up. Oh, my Lord. Guy in the sky, set it up, and we'll go do it.
• 42:54
  Guy is the idea man, and he's not a bad idea man. But he likes to drop a shit
• 42:59
  pile and go, go make it happen. Go make it happen.
• 43:02
  Well, I mean, honestly, this is actually pretty easy to make it happen. Oh, I just heard that.
• 43:07
  This sounds like something for this weekend. Can we go check this out? I mean, we need to reek.
• 43:12
  I mean, I don't know if he would be like, I was, I've been telling some corporate
• 43:16
  people like, look, dude, this is something where you take customers for a company outing, man.
• 43:21
  Like this is like men, like you go there and you do man things and you bond and it's just a fun time.
• 43:30
  Like you have to go and drive to get water and stuff.
• 43:33
  It is one of the best times as a man, like to go there and just chill out.
• 43:37
  It is so awesome. There's no cell phone service. Roger likes men. There's none.
• 43:45
  I mean, I don't like you very much, but I might like some men.
• 43:48
  As soon as you said bond, Roger lit up. He's like, oh, I know about bonding.
• 43:54
  I appreciate the concept. I absolutely do. I think it's cool as hell.
• 43:57
  But until you got a proof of concept that says we're going out one weekend or
• 44:02
  we need to go, then I'm game.
• 44:04
  Let me know. Well, he's going to charge us about.
• 44:07
  $3,000 a day. All right. But I'm going to tell you this.
• 44:10
  So that's nothing compared to a golf course. Well, but let's,
• 44:12
  let's go back to Rob's thing. Right.
• 44:15
  So this is the same thing. I challenge any of my folks when we're running event.
• 44:19
  Cool. That's the cost. Now, what do they charge a charity or nonprofit?
• 44:25
  And two, where are we finding the sponsors to pay for that? Because the,
• 44:30
  we don't pay the housing. We don't pay to play.
• 44:33
  Housing, logistics, food, all that. That's, I don't mean, I don't mean that
• 44:37
  to be an a-hole. I mean that to be, we don't pay to play.
• 44:42
  This is the way I like, the reason I support CJ3 Foundation is because of that
• 44:47
  thought process is, hey, that's a great event idea. Let's do it.
• 44:50
  Let's get everything donated so that the only thing we have to pay for from
• 44:53
  CJ3 Foundation from donor dollars is insurance.
• 44:56
  Because insurance is not really outsourceable.
• 44:59
  So if we can do what would normally be probably a hundred thousand hunt for
• 45:04
  $300 or $400 worth of insurance and maybe some cleanup fees.
• 45:09
  Same thing, you know, to go out here to, uh, play some sniper golf.
• 45:12
  A hundred percent on board. Awesome. A hundred percent on board because that's a great example.
• 45:16
  The other side is there's, there's therapeutic things for the veterans and the
• 45:21
  wounded heroes to go do things like that. A hundred percent agree.
• 45:24
  I mean, now I say the challenge is where do we find the people to,
• 45:28
  to, to support that going on?
• 45:31
  Well, I mean, uh, do you have a relationship with, um, Black Rifle Coffee? I do.
• 45:36
  Evan, Evan is a good friend of mine. They go there all the time.
• 45:37
  Yeah. We serve together and, in the Intel community. The Matt Best coffee? They, they.
• 45:42
  That's Matt Best. Matt Best. Evan and Matt. Yeah. We both said,
• 45:45
  well, all three of us served you. I didn't, I didn't meet Matt at that time,
• 45:47
  but Evan and I actually went through selection with a particular unit in the IC together.
• 45:52
  Oh, very cool. Yeah. And there's probably tons of good sponsors to get out there. Yeah.
• 45:56
  And it's, I'm telling you, it is such a good thing because you,
• 45:59
  there's nothing, there's nothing,
• 46:02
  there's one grocery store, it's like four miles away, but it's,
• 46:04
  it's a garbage podunk grocery store and you have to buy all your food before you get in everyone.
• 46:11
  So you got to plan your meals. I love that. And everyone cooks,
• 46:14
  there's barbecues, everyone's got a responsibility to cook.
• 46:18
  And then you're in like a squad bay environment with a, it's got a,
• 46:22
  you know, a stove where you're feeding, cause it gets cold even in the summer there. And then.
• 46:27
  There's a bar and then you go shooting all day. It's like, how could you not love that? Yeah.
• 46:32
  How could you not love that? Well, that was a good suggestion to you,
• 46:34
  Guy. Evan's probably one of the most generous people I've ever met in my life.
• 46:37
  So, and he's obviously come, come, come into some, you know,
• 46:41
  some means here over the last, you know, five, 10 years, he's doing real well for himself.
• 46:45
  And, uh, I was actually down at soft week and a couple of people were talking
• 46:48
  about, uh, him, him stroking some right on the spot checks for some really good causes.
• 46:53
  So that's, that's good. We'll reach out to him, see, see if there's,
• 46:56
  even if it's not for that for something else because they would be a good they
• 46:59
  would be a good partner for cj3 hey rob what are you holding in your hand right
• 47:03
  now man i've got this uh guy just,
• 47:06
  brought me over something to write down notes just in case i needed to just
• 47:09
  in case you said something profound that i really needed to take notes on well
• 47:14
  he brought me the most high-tech pencil.
• 47:16
  When was the last time you've held a pencil probably probably about 20 years ago uh,
• 47:21
  this thing is It's very high-tech.
• 47:24
  I'm kind of having a wolf in Wall Street moment. I can sell you this pencil.
• 47:28
  I want to say, I think Rob needs a pencil at all times. He's been playing with
• 47:31
  it the entire time. It's got grippies on it.
• 47:35
  It feels like it's made out of carbon fiber or titanium. It doesn't have any
• 47:39
  weight to it whatsoever. I respect the hell out of it. Out of all the cool tech
• 47:44
  and stuff that I got to see all week at Soft Week, here I am.
• 47:46
  I'm more enamored with this pencil.
• 47:48
  So that's what I was getting ready to say, Rob. I respect the hell out of you.
• 47:50
  You get around. You get to see some cool things and do some cool things.
• 47:54
  But when you were handed this pencil tonight, you would.
• 47:59
  I'm keeping this guy. Sorry. You can't like I buy him a walk.
• 48:03
  I'm taking it home. So, hey, hey, Roger, you can have the notepad,
• 48:07
  but I'm taking a pencil. So we're talking about events, brother. Yes, we are. Go ahead.
• 48:10
  What you got for us? So as we're talking about our golf event that has passed
• 48:14
  for this year, we have a couple more events coming up here. We're going to be right back.
• 48:18
  May 30th, we have the Rocky event at the Percival and Ashburn pub.
• 48:23
  What? Hey, this is a 50th anniversary. 50th anniversary of Rocky.
• 48:28
  50th anniversary of Rocky. So wear your best Rocky outfit.
• 48:33
  You can show up in American trunks and a robe, whatever you want to.
• 48:38
  So here's the weird thing about that.
• 48:40
  Ashburn is going to beat up Percival. Oh my God, this is not going to happen.
• 48:43
  Why is that? Because Percival has me. Because Havoc will be in Ashburn. Havoc's with me.
• 48:48
  He's already told me today, I want to go hang out with you that day.
• 48:51
  I said, that's fine. Just tell your dad you're out.
• 48:54
  Roger, I have to interrupt you real quick. Yes.
• 48:57
  So, so Paul, you know, one of the guys standing back here behind with me.
• 49:01
  Yes. I was like, dude, you got it. Let's get, let's do this.
• 49:04
  We'll go to Rocky day. And he's like, when is it? It's like Saturday.
• 49:07
  He's like, I can't. I'm trying out for the U.S. bobsled team.
• 49:11
  Bro, seriously. Is that this Saturday or next Saturday? Cause it is next Saturday.
• 49:16
  You're not joking, guy. No, he's not. He was telling us earlier.
• 49:20
  Hey, you remember the movie Cool Runnings? Cool Runnings. That's what I really
• 49:23
  think of, but this dude's white. Yeah. Jamaica, we have a bobsled team.
• 49:28
  Yeah, he's like, I can't, man. I signed up for the bobsled tryouts.
• 49:34
  I think that's fantastic. But no, this is on May 30th, a split event with Eric
• 49:40
  and Ashburn, who will lose, and me in Percival. They have Havoc and Michelle there.
• 49:45
  I mean. This is great that the pubs, Ash, that the owners and the proprietors
• 49:49
  of that place are having this in both of their locations at the same time.
• 49:54
  Kevin Bednarz is a good friend of mine.
• 49:59
  And he, and Kevin will be in Percival. I know this because I asked him.
• 50:02
  Yeah, he's going to be in Percival.
• 50:04
  So Kevin actually came to me with the idea because we talked to him about events
• 50:07
  where we bring people in for his bar.
• 50:11
  And he's like, well, dude, I'm doing a Rocky event. Why don't I just benefit
• 50:14
  the CJ3 Foundation? That's great.
• 50:16
  So we're going to be out there with tables. We're going to do a 50-50 raffle,
• 50:20
  all that stuff. For Rob, I want to say this. Here's the cool thing about what Kevin did, right?
• 50:23
  So there are some folks that go, what are you going to do for us?
• 50:27
  And I kind of, that puts me on my heels a little bit because I go,
• 50:30
  wait a second, we're the non-profit. Don't get me wrong.
• 50:33
  One thing I try to sell to people is, as a non-profit, I understand we're notoriously
• 50:38
  takers, but we try to also partner and go, how can we help promote your business?
• 50:44
  You guys do that for me. You've done that for Patriot Group.
• 50:47
  You've done it for Haven. You've done it for me personally. And, you know, it's great.
• 50:52
  Obviously, we were talking about Casa de Avila and other veteran-owned businesses.
• 50:56
  Shout outs Percival pub Ashburn pub you know they you know,
• 51:00
  they give to us at CJ3 foundation we give to them and
• 51:03
  tell everybody we know that hey this is the place you need to be and here's
• 51:06
  why because they're doing this kind of support for for the good guys so the
• 51:10
  neat thing is to his point Kevin's like listen
• 51:13
  I don't really want you to do anything this is already a successful event we
• 51:16
  want to bring you in and make it something now don't get me wrong we're gonna
• 51:19
  work legitimately I said to him I was hey, how can we,
• 51:22
  on a night that you're not busy, I gave the Eric speech, and he looked at me, he goes,
• 51:27
  cool we can do that but why don't we do this first and i was like are you serious
• 51:32
  and then so as i've had conversation with him like what do you need me to bring
• 51:35
  we can bring some giveaways or whatever and we talked about the the wallets from proof and,
• 51:40
  all this other stuff and which are cool which are cool as hell i love proof
• 51:43
  wallets shout out for them yeah absolutely cj3 some uh marine sniper buddies
• 51:48
  of mine great company other than the fact their marines are cool yeah.
• 51:53
  Well no kev came to me and said no why don't we do this and and uh he's like
• 51:56
  and hey we'll just do a split event he goes got the ashburn got the percival,
• 52:00
  he goes we're you know give you 10 percent of the food proceeds and we'll do
• 52:04
  a 50 50 raffle he's like don't bring anything,
• 52:06
  he's like just do we'll do the 50 50 raffle he goes i don't think you should
• 52:09
  do both he goes you bring him in the door i'll close him literally we're we're
• 52:14
  showing up and sitting at a table and handing out some swag and,
• 52:18
  making people aware of the foundation but that's on may 30th so not this saturday but next saturday,
• 52:23
  well if you depends on when you all listen to this it'll be may 30th ashburn
• 52:27
  personal pub and then after that,
• 52:30
  we have on june 7th which is a sunday right say it right what kind of toss we,
• 52:37
  had the i a cornhole tournament there you go,
• 52:42
  cornhole turn roger's favorite type of tournament he's he's laughing i would
• 52:45
  say he's laughing at because I always call them beanbags.
• 52:48
  Which we know Rob Rose does not like to call them beanbags.
• 52:52
  IRC, Irish Rose Cornhole, is hosting the event, and it's benefiting the CJ3 Foundation.
• 52:57
  At the Asheville Sports Pavilion. Yeah, Asheville. Or Asheville.
• 53:00
  Asheburn Sports Pavilion.
• 53:02
  Asheville. Eric, didn't you say you wanted that dude to be a guest? Who? Did what?
• 53:08
  Oh, Rob. Who? Sure. Why not? Let's do it.
• 53:15
  Absolutely. Rob, come on here. And so we're going to be out there on June 7th throwing some bags.
• 53:22
  Not bean bags, but cornhole bags, because I love saying it.
• 53:25
  So those are our next two events coming up. The cool thing is,
• 53:28
  man, we've got Bear Chase Brewery. We've got Honor Brewery out there.
• 53:31
  It's going to be a good time. It'll be a good time.
• 53:34
  Yep. And those are the next two events we have up, and then we'll work on the
• 53:36
  next ones. And then we'll have some pop-up events at different locations.
• 53:39
  Yeah, we'll have some pop-up events over the summer, and we'll figure all the
• 53:42
  rest of it out. But these are the next two events coming up in a couple weeks.
• 53:45
  And then we culminate the summer into a phenomenal event that Roger's going
• 53:51
  to participate in this year.
• 53:53
  We'll talk more about it later.
• 53:56
  No, no. What are we, streaking to the court? No, no, no. We're not.
• 54:00
  Our friends at Honor Brewery are phenomenal sponsors and supporters of us.
• 54:04
  I appreciate the hell out of everything they've done. They've been awesome.
• 54:07
  But they also own a gym right next door called PR Star Fitness.
• 54:12
  And every year they put on an awesome CrossFit competition that raises phenomenal
• 54:17
  money for the foundation and just has great people in it.
• 54:21
  Well, Roger managed last year to show up just as it was ending and didn't exercise one at all.
• 54:28
  I go through the event with havoc. I'm dying. I'm pouring with sweat.
• 54:32
  He was dying after five minutes and cleaned up poop for 45 minutes after.
• 54:36
  People are tilt their head going, oh, bless your heart. You tried so hard. Good job.
• 54:41
  But no, it was a great event. But this year I'm making Roger actually do it instead of just watch.
• 54:48
  I'm working the table. No, you're not. I think we're getting our new bobsled
• 54:51
  friend team guy over here. We're going to put a shirt on him and let him do
• 54:54
  it because he looks like he's in a whole lot better shape than the three of us. I mean, we'll see.
• 54:59
  Eric's going to spend a summer working out. He can wear his Jamaican shirt and
• 55:03
  whatever he wants. Dude, I do want to see the Jamaican bobsled outfit.
• 55:09
  You got to wear the tights though, man. Absolutely. That's what Roger wants
• 55:12
  to see. That's what Roger wants to see. Smuggling raisins.
• 55:17
  So hey in that vein let's go ahead and take one more break before we finish
• 55:22
  this off so one more break before we come back and close this out yep absolutely,
• 55:48
  Hey, welcome back. This is Eric Thomas with CJ3 Foundation. I'm with Roger Singh
• 55:53
  and Rob Whitfield. And what's the name of the podcast, Eric? You tell me, brother.
• 55:58
  It's Warriors and Watchmen. Warriors and Watchmen. Warriors.
• 56:03
  Thank you. I appreciate it. Hey, Rob. He's going to screw it up.
• 56:06
  Rob, we've been all over the place. We've been, you're supporting the foundation
• 56:10
  and what you've done with us and some of the other things.
• 56:13
  One of the things we like to get into with our guests is your why.
• 56:17
  So my brother, you know, the funny thing is we all make a ton of fun of each
• 56:23
  other, you know, for different services. And, you know, when we're in,
• 56:26
  we don't let exterior people do it.
• 56:29
  You, my friend, were in the Marine Corps. I applaud you, brother,
• 56:32
  even though we joke and even though we whatever. Phenomenal thing.
• 56:36
  How'd you get into that? I mean, what you're...
• 56:39
  When you grew up, was that just the thing you knew, you know,
• 56:41
  you saw the commercial about slaying dragons and that's what you had to do?
• 56:44
  Or, you know, tell us about your why.
• 56:47
  What got you into that? It's almost exactly that, actually. Is it really?
• 56:50
  Right. You know, I come from a long, long, long line of veterans.
• 56:53
  My grandfather was a fighter pilot in World War II. He was a doctor in the Korean War.
• 56:59
  My other grandfather was in the
• 57:00
  Coast Guard. He was in Iwo Jima watching bodies float by him on a ship.
• 57:04
  My mother and father are veterans. My mother was an ambulance tech in the Army.
• 57:09
  I know that. And my father retired out of the Army when I was in about seventh or eighth grade.
• 57:16
  And, you know, so service has always been a part of my family.
• 57:19
  I didn't really know what I wanted to do.
• 57:21
  I was in a graduated high school in Illinois and moved to Pennsylvania.
• 57:25
  And I was out there near my mom's family in the middle of nowhere and saw a commercial.
• 57:30
  But one day I wasn't excited. i was going to penn state and i was working in
• 57:34
  some factories and i was working at wall i was a walmart toys and hardware and
• 57:39
  paint manager through a partnership with penn state,
• 57:42
  and i was sitting there one day and i was just losing my mind didn't have any
• 57:44
  friends around and yeah i saw the commercial where the with the the marine and
• 57:49
  his dress uniform he goes he ends up in a dress blues but he climbs up the volcano
• 57:54
  he's got the sword and he you know he,
• 57:56
  well hold on I remember that commercial. What was their motto then? He kills the dragon.
• 58:00
  The few, the proud, the whatever the hell that was. Yeah. So,
• 58:04
  uh, you know, I saw that and I was like, you know what? Maybe I'll think about going to the military.
• 58:09
  The next day, the army commercial came on and they were talking about like $25,000
• 58:15
  bonuses for certain enlistment for certain MOSs.
• 58:18
  And I was like, shit, I'm in the car.
• 58:21
  So I get in the car. I drive up to Hazleton, Pennsylvania, 13 miles up the road
• 58:25
  to the recruiting station.
• 58:27
  And I go in and everybody's out to lunch. All the doors are closed and I'm filling
• 58:30
  out the card on the front of the army guys door. I'm sitting on the casting
• 58:33
  couch there. They got the army, the air force, the Navy, everybody's offices in there.
• 58:37
  And I fill out the card and a guy comes out of the Marine Corps office.
• 58:42
  He's in, he's in civilian clothes and.
• 58:44
  He looks at me, he's like, what are you doing? I was like, I'm filling out this
• 58:46
  car for the army. He's like, you ever thought about the Marine Corps?
• 58:47
  I was like, nope. I was gone 11 days later.
• 58:51
  I was in bootcamp. So went in the Marine Corps as an infantry guy.
• 58:55
  I wanted to, you know, he showed me videos of camouflage paint.
• 58:58
  Everybody comes in as infantry. Showed me camouflage paint with guys with hats
• 59:02
  and, you know, and Zodiacs coming up on the shore. And I was like,
• 59:05
  I want to do that, you know? And he was like, all right, well,
• 59:07
  let's, let's get you through the test and whatnot.
• 59:10
  I was a very smart kid. I was a 1360, you know, SAT kid and could have probably
• 59:16
  gone to Harvard if I wanted to at the time, even though I had like a three,
• 59:20
  less than a 3.0 GPA in high school.
• 59:23
  And as a friend, the attention span of a net. Yes. That's about right.
• 59:27
  That's about right. But I went in, I crushed the ASVAB. He's like,
• 59:30
  you sure you want to go? Because, you know, they're recruiters.
• 59:32
  He's thinking of an officer, but they're trying to feel really serious.
• 59:35
  Like, oh, this guy's got this kind of score on the ASVAB. Like,
• 59:39
  hey, we want to put you in.
• 59:40
  He needs to be Intel. You need to be a nuclear engineer. something.
• 59:42
  And I was like, no man, can't be paint. Right. Put me in a boat.
• 59:45
  I want to shoot cool guns. I want to shoot stuff. And I'm like,
• 59:48
  can't be paying. I want to be in the boat. Right. And so he was like,
• 59:50
  all right. So I go in long story short, I ended up kind of matriculating up
• 59:54
  through the Marine sniper community.
• 59:55
  Ended up as an instructor at a Marine sniper school in Quantico before I got
• 59:59
  out. I've been out. My God, it's, it's amazing now. I've been out for fucking
• 1:00:03
  25 years. Hold on. Let's talk about that though. Out.
• 1:00:07
  I'm going to tell you this. And I've talked about this before,
• 1:00:09
  getting out was a struggle because I didn't retire. I got out before it was
• 1:00:13
  time to get out due to injuries, due to whatever.
• 1:00:16
  Dude, not an easy decision. Like that's the world, you know, that's the world.
• 1:00:20
  I don't know what you thought, but when you get into that, everybody gets you
• 1:00:24
  thinking that's where you need to be and finish out. Yeah. 20 and out or whatever it is. Right.
• 1:00:29
  I didn't go in with that mindset. I knew I didn't want to retire,
• 1:00:32
  you know, from the, from the military. I was going to stay in another,
• 1:00:35
  I only actually was only in five years, two months. I extended to be an instructor
• 1:00:39
  at sniper school. Okay. I did not re-enlist.
• 1:00:42
  And when when afghanistan kicked off what i tried to go back to yeah we're.
• 1:00:47
  We're running around we're right around 9 11 i have just gotten to be an instructor
• 1:00:50
  i was at sniper school i had been there two months and 9 11 kicked off yep,
• 1:00:54
  i immediately put in tried to go back to an operational unit i wanted to go
• 1:00:57
  put me in the game all my buddies buddies were getting to deploy and you know
• 1:01:01
  do this is what i signed up to do this is what i signed up to do,
• 1:01:05
  and they gave me the giant FU, right? So they would not let me go.
• 1:01:10
  I ended up teaching there until I finished up my extension. In the army,
• 1:01:14
  we called that the big green weenie.
• 1:01:15
  Yeah, I, I got it, I got it. I bent over and took it. I mean,
• 1:01:20
  so I got out and, but I still knew I wanted to serve. So I, you know,
• 1:01:24
  I, I got into the contracting field, like a lot of guys, you know,
• 1:01:27
  from that background do. And.
• 1:01:29
  Ended up at the CIA as a kind of a, I won't get too much into it,
• 1:01:32
  but as a kind of paramilitary type contractor.
• 1:01:35
  So I ended up in war zones for a number of years.
• 1:01:40
  Yeah, it was one of actually my very first stint in it. I was one of Blackwater's
• 1:01:44
  very first guys on their very first intelligence community contract interviewed
• 1:01:50
  by Eric Prince himself. That's how small Blackwater was at the time.
• 1:01:54
  So you go down to Moyoc? I did. Yeah, I interviewed, and Eric actually did a
• 1:01:59
  lot of stuff personally at the time. They were probably all about 30 people.
• 1:02:02
  So he's actually interesting because, oddly enough, he's still in our community.
• 1:02:06
  He is. I just saw him a couple days
• 1:02:07
  ago. Because I know he spends time in Middleburg and some other places.
• 1:02:10
  He does. Interesting individual still. He's one of the pioneers of the community.
• 1:02:13
  No matter what anybody thinks about him, he kind of started what I consider
• 1:02:17
  the kind of the wave of government contracting in that space and an incredible
• 1:02:21
  amount of employment for the boys, you know, when they would get out.
• 1:02:24
  So long story short, man, I went through a couple of different contracting companies,
• 1:02:28
  spent most of my time with the agency, moved into the private sector as a program
• 1:02:32
  manager and a VP of running some of those paramilitary programs.
• 1:02:37
  And then, you know, an opportunity came up to acquire a shell company that was
• 1:02:43
  in our space called Patriot Group International.
• 1:02:46
  And they were zero revenue. All I knew them from is they had,
• 1:02:49
  they actually had the canine contract for CIA in Iraq.
• 1:02:53
  They had two dog teams on the ground. That's it. That's all they were.
• 1:02:55
  They were about $2 million a year in revenue. It sounds like a lot for two dog
• 1:02:58
  teams, but that's the kind of money. Considering what it was, that's not a lot.
• 1:03:02
  What it cost to get dogs and people through that process over there.
• 1:03:07
  That's not actually much they were uh they were a fledgling company so bro house
• 1:03:11
  house i mean candidly how scary was that to step out and,
• 1:03:15
  you're going from a i rely on a company now i am the company scary because i didn't have a salary,
• 1:03:24
  and it was it was actually my third entrepreneurial try the first two failed
• 1:03:28
  yeah first two the first one didn't fail front range training consulting eventually
• 1:03:32
  sold to a company called eodt.
• 1:03:34
  Back in the day and i didn't make any money on that i'd already sold my partnership.
• 1:03:38
  I started that with a force recon guy that was a good buddy of mine.
• 1:03:42
  And we did, we did enough to stay afloat. Okay.
• 1:03:46
  But I tried a couple of times and gone broke a couple of times,
• 1:03:49
  you know, and that's just kind of the way the entrepreneurial cycle works.
• 1:03:52
  You don't take any risk. You don't get any reward.
• 1:03:54
  But I learned a lot of, I learned a lot of lessons. You know,
• 1:03:57
  my, every time one of those failures, I look at it like tuition.
• 1:04:00
  The key is that you don't pay the same tuition twice for the same degree. Right.
• 1:04:06
  You know, you got a bachelor's degree in political science. Don't go back and
• 1:04:08
  get another bachelor's degree in political science. Well, I got a PhD in what
• 1:04:11
  not to fucking do. Right. through my first two iterations, through a lot of that.
• 1:04:16
  And Patriot Group was something, you know, that kind of came as an opportunity.
• 1:04:21
  We bought it for, you know, hope and a prayer. It had a top secret facilities
• 1:04:24
  clearance, no employees, no revenue.
• 1:04:26
  And as of today, I just retired from there on May 1st.
• 1:04:30
  We had a little over a thousand employees and a little over probably 250 million
• 1:04:34
  a year in revenue here in 2026.
• 1:04:37
  That's fantastic. And the awesome part about that is 90 plus percent veterans,
• 1:04:42
  including some guys who were in my sniper platoon in the late 90s.
• 1:04:46
  You got to take care of some of your own. Got to take care of a lot of the boys,
• 1:04:49
  stay connected in the community. Well, as a result of that, my entire social
• 1:04:53
  circle, you know, comes from the intel community and SOCOM kind of space. My wife is retired CIA.
• 1:05:01
  I met her there, you know, in 2005 on MySpace, believe it or not.
• 1:05:05
  And she's a better person. She is a better person than me, for sure.
• 1:05:09
  But the why that I get in, you know, getting to the point, you know,
• 1:05:12
  the why that I get involved in things like CJ3 Foundation and some of the other
• 1:05:16
  nonprofit boards I'm involved in is nine guys in my unit at the agency,
• 1:05:21
  all paramilitary contractors, all former soft guys for the most part,
• 1:05:25
  nine of them have killed themselves in the last 13 months. And hold on. I need to break in.
• 1:05:31
  This is, unfortunately, this is not abnormal. I mean, so, you know,
• 1:05:36
  we've helped SEAL Team 6 get a dog and get for one of their...
• 1:05:40
  Bro, the amount of people that I know in these communities, I'll just throw
• 1:05:45
  quotes up and say these special communities, whatever, with the amount of they've
• 1:05:49
  seen and done, the suicide rate, unfortunately, is astronomical.
• 1:05:54
  And increasing. Yes. It's not decreasing. Right. Even with all these nonprofits.
• 1:05:58
  You would think because. It's not decreasing.
• 1:06:01
  We're not at the same deployment level where, you know, there's more nonprofits.
• 1:06:06
  We have more time to look at it. You'd think they should be decreasing.
• 1:06:09
  They're not. They're going. It's increasing, and I think most people these days
• 1:06:13
  know, and I don't say PTSD, I say post-traumatic stress, you know,
• 1:06:17
  because a disorder is not curable.
• 1:06:19
  Post-traumatic stress is curable. It's mitigatable.
• 1:06:22
  I think even the VA is starting to say PTSD.
• 1:06:25
  Post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety. TBIs.
• 1:06:29
  TBIs, for sure. And just general separation from the mission is that separation
• 1:06:35
  from the mission and purpose is the number one thing that causes guys to go down the path.
• 1:06:40
  And then it gets compounded with very terrible, poor treatment from the VA or other mental health.
• 1:06:47
  They just want to prescribe people antidepressants and painkillers and eventually
• 1:06:51
  those things. We don't know what we're treating anymore half the time. They don't work.
• 1:06:54
  Once they stop working, you start taking more. Right. You start drinking on top of it.
• 1:06:59
  And one thing that is a absolute recipe for suicide is an SSRI or an antidepressant,
• 1:07:06
  painkillers for all of the injuries that we have, and alcohol.
• 1:07:10
  When those three things come together, it's a ticking clock.
• 1:07:15
  And if you can't interdict...
• 1:07:18
  During that phase and early in that phase, your chances of recovering that buddy of yours is low.
• 1:07:25
  And like I said, nine guys, just in my very small unit at the agency,
• 1:07:31
  you know, probably we had 400 guys at our reunion.
• 1:07:35
  There's probably another three or 400 in history that served in that particular unit.
• 1:07:40
  Nine guys in 13 months. We had four in one week.
• 1:07:44
  And a lot of that is coming from the consolidation. So there's no work in Afghanistan.
• 1:07:48
  There's no work in Iraq. There's no work in these different,
• 1:07:50
  these different war zones.
• 1:07:52
  And guys are separated from that purpose. They're separated from the boys.
• 1:07:55
  They've been used to being 90 days overseas at a time and coming home for 30, 45 days.
• 1:08:00
  And now they live in Kansas on
• 1:08:02
  a street full of, you know, civvies who are accountants or whatever else.
• 1:08:07
  And now what? You combine that with what you said, then you combine it with
• 1:08:10
  the drugs. You combine it with now the lack of camaraderie, the lack of purpose.
• 1:08:15
  One of the things I go around giving speeches on is perspective and perseverance
• 1:08:19
  that goes to finding that purpose finding those things right and,
• 1:08:24
  I know there's a lot of folks that go oh it's easy it's man when you're trained
• 1:08:28
  to go out and slay dragons and that's what you know,
• 1:08:31
  and you know the like you have this community of people that you can rely on
• 1:08:37
  you don't get that back here that that same purpose that same camaraderie does
• 1:08:41
  not happen back in the United States rarely ever And so,
• 1:08:46
  yeah, it's interesting as we, as we scan.
• 1:08:48
  There's no more, there's no amount of superficial things like,
• 1:08:51
  you know, I obviously do pretty well for myself. You know, I just,
• 1:08:53
  you know, just came out of a very successful company and whatnot.
• 1:08:57
  There's no amount of superficial things, money, women, drugs,
• 1:09:01
  partying, any other creature comforts.
• 1:09:04
  There's no amount of that that fixes it.
• 1:09:07
  You know, I've been through the CJ3 phone down foundation programs,
• 1:09:10
  not just because I wanted to check it out because I need it,
• 1:09:14
  you know, and I, and I still, you know, I feel like we're, everybody in the
• 1:09:18
  world is on a mental health journey, you know, when they're adulthood,
• 1:09:21
  you know, people that are veterans, men, women, doesn't, doesn't matter veterans,
• 1:09:25
  spouses, whether, you know,
• 1:09:28
  gender regardless, we're on a mental health journey.
• 1:09:31
  And I continuously have to keep an eye on myself and how I'm thinking.
• 1:09:37
  And, you know, people in our community, I use a line, a movie line from Shawshank
• 1:09:42
  Redemption all the time, get busy living or get busy dying.
• 1:09:45
  We make one choice or the other, and we go down that path.
• 1:09:48
  So the why for me of why am I involved in CJ3 Foundation, you know why I love it?
• 1:09:52
  Because it, it it's not purely about special operations it doesn't you don't
• 1:09:57
  have to be a delta force guy you don't have to be marsoc you don't have to be
• 1:10:00
  a ranger or whatnot you can be a,
• 1:10:03
  is a friend of a good friend of ours i won't name but he child sex crimes cop you know which is dude,
• 1:10:09
  i would put horrible i would go slay,
• 1:10:12
  taliban left and right before i did that job all day long you know that was
• 1:10:17
  one of the guys that went through the mental health porn all day and go find
• 1:10:19
  these guys child sex crimes oh my god you know firefighter that saw some horrific things losing kids.
• 1:10:27
  A crew chief who lost his legs from a pallet slipping loose on a c-130,
• 1:10:31
  those uh that's what i love about cj3 foundation that's how it differs from
• 1:10:35
  the other boards i'm on that are focused on special operators they're not they're
• 1:10:39
  not bad it's just they have a focus right different focuses because i will tell
• 1:10:43
  you this you as a non-profit you have to have focus because it's the.
• 1:10:47
  There are so many people out there that need help and need, right?
• 1:10:51
  And that's not a bad thing, but you have to stay focused.
• 1:10:55
  You have to stay within your charter because otherwise you'll get outside your capability.
• 1:10:59
  So what are some of those others you're involved in, Rob?
• 1:11:01
  Because you've talked about a couple of them. Yeah, so I'm on the board of a
• 1:11:04
  charity called Operator Relief Fund that does a very specific treatment that's
• 1:11:09
  an immediate interdiction for post-traumatic stress and depression,
• 1:11:12
  anxiety, and essentially a treatment I've had six times in the last four years.
• 1:11:16
  It's called a stellate ganglion block. I won't get into the medical side of
• 1:11:19
  it because it would go for a while.
• 1:11:21
  But in essence, it's an injection in the neck of a numbing agent like a novocaine or a lidocaine.
• 1:11:27
  And that numbs the nerves that are called the stellate ganglia on either side
• 1:11:31
  of your spine and in your neck. And that's what governs your sympathetic nervous
• 1:11:35
  system and your fight or flight response.
• 1:11:37
  So, you know, we hear a loud noise in the room, whether you're a veteran or
• 1:11:40
  not. You're going to look over there and say, oh, is there something up?
• 1:11:44
  Your protective nature chimes in. It doesn't matter if it's your kid or your
• 1:11:47
  wife, everybody's going to look. That's your sympathetic nervous system.
• 1:11:50
  The challenge with veterans that have repeated exposure to trauma is that that
• 1:11:56
  fight or flight thing is always switched on. Your sympathetic nervous system
• 1:11:59
  is always on and never turns off.
• 1:12:02
  And that results in anger, depression, post-traumatic stress,
• 1:12:05
  all the symptoms that come from that and frequently results in substance abuse
• 1:12:11
  and severe alcohol addiction, things like that.
• 1:12:14
  The SGB injection, if done properly, resets that, allows it to operate normally
• 1:12:20
  for about six to eight months. So I'm a big believer in it.
• 1:12:24
  I'm a believer in it because I did it and it changed my life.
• 1:12:28
  But I've also seen we treat about 30 to 40 guys and their spouses a month at Operator Relief.
• 1:12:35
  And we specifically focus there on special operations veterans and veterans
• 1:12:38
  of intelligence community, paramilitary, special activities,
• 1:12:43
  special operators, types of types of folks.
• 1:12:45
  Then I'm also on the board of the International Spy Museum as of this week,
• 1:12:48
  which is new. This is kind of cool. That's really, really, really exciting.
• 1:12:52
  For those of us in the Washington, D.C., Nova area, that's pretty cool. Yeah.
• 1:12:57
  Anybody that's coming in, it's listening to this podcast. It's from around the,
• 1:13:01
  if you ever come to DC and you're making a slate of things to do,
• 1:13:05
  scratch some of the Smithsonian's and go to the International Spy Museum.
• 1:13:08
  It is by far the best museum in the country. Like I told you, to me...
• 1:13:12
  Spy Museum, the Bible Museum, two of the top museums down there.
• 1:13:15
  It's epic. Other than like the World War II Vietnam and monuments and stuff.
• 1:13:20
  Memorials and stuff. Memorials, yeah. Right.
• 1:13:22
  You can go bore yourself to tears in the National History Museum if you want
• 1:13:26
  or some of the art museums.
• 1:13:27
  I love art, but it's boring. You can go to the Smithsonian and see Anthony Fauci's
• 1:13:31
  picture. That'd be great.
• 1:13:33
  You can. You know, not everybody needs to see a 60-year-old,
• 1:13:36
  you know, model of a T-Rex in the National History Museum.
• 1:13:39
  But the Spy Museum is truly an epic experience. It's the most architecturally
• 1:13:44
  and aesthetically pleasing building in the United States. And I didn't know
• 1:13:47
  until you told us it's a nonprofit. It's a nonprofit. It is a charity.
• 1:13:51
  That's awesome. While there's a physical structure there, their main mission
• 1:13:54
  is education. So they do educational programs for underprivileged,
• 1:13:59
  neurodiverse kids, memory care patients, things.
• 1:14:02
  They've got free educational programs. That's pretty cool. And they've got hundreds
• 1:14:07
  of them. You can get on the website and go through analyst training programs,
• 1:14:11
  critical thinking, targeting, you know, all kinds of fun stuff.
• 1:14:14
  And you were telling us they have, so one of their displays changes regularly.
• 1:14:18
  Yep. And what's the new display they got on right now? So the new one they've
• 1:14:21
  got is the temporary one that'll be there for about another two and a half years
• 1:14:25
  is the camouflage deception in disguise. Why does that matter to you, Rob? Man.
• 1:14:31
  Can I go there and put on a ghillie suit and hang out in there?
• 1:14:34
  You can't put one on, but there's one that's been donated. That exists.
• 1:14:38
  They don't have it in your size.
• 1:14:40
  Did you say fat guy ghillie suit? You sure did. They don't have it in your size, man.
• 1:14:46
  Fucking poor ass ghillie suit.
• 1:14:50
  It's a ghillie parachute. Sorry, please continue. Camouflage and visual obfuscation
• 1:14:57
  is a passion of mine. I was an instructor at Marine Sniper School.
• 1:14:59
  I was there at a time where we developed what everybody knows as digital camouflage today.
• 1:15:05
  I was one of the testers and was there when, you know, literally we were pulling,
• 1:15:10
  my boss was pulling swatches from Lowe's of the colors that are in the Marine
• 1:15:14
  Corps, what we call the MAR pattern, the Marine Corps camouflage digital pattern that
• 1:15:18
  has now spawned all these other digital copycats and even these dumb ass uniforms
• 1:15:23
  from the Navy with the blue digital.
• 1:15:25
  So we can match the water. Yeah. So you can make sure you die if you go overboard.
• 1:15:30
  I was going to say, so they can't find you in the water. So the sharks can't get you because of camo.
• 1:15:35
  Oh, it's just water. Ridiculousness. But I, you know, I, it's a funny story.
• 1:15:40
  You know, the, the, the genesis of that, we spent a year and a half testing
• 1:15:44
  all of the different camel patterns across the, the world.
• 1:15:48
  And we'd go out to these groups of pogues, you know, for anybody listening,
• 1:15:51
  it's not a, from the military, you know, people that are administrative in the
• 1:15:54
  military, whatnot, you know, non-trained, non-trained observers.
• 1:15:58
  And grunts. Yeah. Non-trained observers. So we'd go out, we'd go to like the
• 1:16:01
  admin battalion and we'd take them out in the woods, you know,
• 1:16:04
  for their, their field day and test, and test their perception of the camouflage.
• 1:16:10
  And what we found was no matter what we tested is that the tiger stripe pattern
• 1:16:15
  was the most effective camouflage pattern.
• 1:16:17
  Like the Vietnam era, the tiger stripe. The problem was the tiger stripe is
• 1:16:21
  worn in a lot of different countries. It also has a lot of connotation to it
• 1:16:26
  from the Vietnam era and everything else.
• 1:16:28
  So we started, we started fucking with it and my boss at the time,
• 1:16:32
  guy not friends with, Jack Eisterman, who's kind of the, the,
• 1:16:37
  the kind of the guy, the principal behind this.
• 1:16:41
  I mean, we blew it up and he started clicking pixels out of it and he went and,
• 1:16:45
  we were testing the color patterns on this and found that the visual perception
• 1:16:50
  of the color patterns in the Tiger Stripe was not correct.
• 1:16:54
  We needed to reduce some of the black increase some of the medium value colors
• 1:16:58
  and things that go into camouflage and visual perception and eventually came
• 1:17:01
  out with the marine corps traveled around
• 1:17:03
  the country with the natick soldier testing facility for for a year or so testing
• 1:17:07
  that camouflage and pissing off every e-7 e-8 e-9 in the marine corps wearing
• 1:17:12
  test camouflage without a haircut because i didn't we had relaxed grooming standards in my role,
• 1:17:18
  so i'm wearing like i got i got shit that has zippers on my shoulder you know
• 1:17:21
  all the tests we're all wearing different camis and you know you you got the
• 1:17:25
  gunnery sergeant in a marine corps that's just losing his damn mind on the px,
• 1:17:29
  every time you come and giving you the knife hand you know like come here come
• 1:17:33
  here sergeant and i think it was it was.
• 1:17:35
  I used to go to the px in these test uniforms just to fuck uh just to fuck with
• 1:17:40
  admin e6s and e7s so they would say something and be like well here's my here's
• 1:17:45
  my approval you know but anyway so the camouflage exhibit up there is it's epic, man.
• 1:17:49
  It's, it's, it's not just about uniforms and stuff. It's about all kinds of visual deception.
• 1:17:54
  Jonna Mendez, who's on the board with me, she used to be the chief of disguise at CIA.
• 1:17:58
  And so there's things in there about lace, latex masks and the visual deception
• 1:18:03
  used in like the world wars, but you know, with the dazzle patterns on the ships
• 1:18:07
  and all the history of this and the art and the way we feel about.
• 1:18:10
  I met her, I don't know, it was a few years back, But, you know,
• 1:18:17
  we were going through some of her work and, uh.
• 1:18:21
  The hair, the hair on the masks or the hair on the suits.
• 1:18:27
  For sure. It was like, what in the fuck, man? It was so real.
• 1:18:31
  It was so cool. It was so cool to meet her because I was a recipient of obviously
• 1:18:35
  of, you know, the genesis of what she starred, her and her husband,
• 1:18:38
  who was Tony, who was also a chief of disguise at the agency, kind of the originals.
• 1:18:43
  But, you know, when I was deployed overseas doing, doing different things,
• 1:18:46
  you know, I had a custom set of these like mustaches and a wig that was specifically
• 1:18:52
  made for me, cut onto my head, trim mustaches that stick on.
• 1:18:55
  I still have a bunch of this stuff at my house.
• 1:18:58
  They have a black man suit. I actually got certified in Mystic Tan while I was over there. Yeah.
• 1:19:04
  We used to sit there, you know, we'd have gay day and we'd spray each other
• 1:19:07
  down like we'd be in our underwear because. It's crazy.
• 1:19:10
  All we really needed was our faces to be darker, right? So that we could drive around town.
• 1:19:15
  But you know us, we're not going to have tan lines. Right. God forbid.
• 1:19:19
  We're all jacked. We're all, you know, juiced up. We're all jacked.
• 1:19:22
  We're all in phenomenal CrossFit Jim Jones shape at the time and whatever. So we're all in there.
• 1:19:26
  Garmin watches. Like we don't want any lines at all. So we're like pulling down
• 1:19:29
  the underwear and our buddies are spraying us, you know, just this epic detail.
• 1:19:33
  You know what's, and Rob, I know you come from, wait, first of all, do you guys hear an echo?
• 1:19:39
  Marine Corps equals homo. A little bit.
• 1:19:42
  All right. So it's just a little bit. It is definitely my microphone.
• 1:19:45
  That is your mic. There's no echo on ours. No, not on ours. Yeah.
• 1:19:49
  Hopefully this doesn't go on to the recording. Anyway, on a future podcast,
• 1:19:54
  we could actually video be teaching you guys how to do spray tans if you want.
• 1:19:58
  What's interesting. I don't need a tan, sir. Thank you. It is like what we're
• 1:20:02
  just talking about is the deception now with facial recognition and like all
• 1:20:11
  that is totally different.
• 1:20:12
  It's hiding in plain sight is what it is. It's one of the things in the exhibit
• 1:20:15
  up there and it shows how deepfakes are made in the videos.
• 1:20:18
  They show a video of various presidents, Obama, Bush, Clinton,
• 1:20:24
  Trump, Biden, and they show the person who's actually talking and then they
• 1:20:28
  deepfake the face in. and they show it to you on the video,
• 1:20:32
  And it's awesome watching people that are not used to this community in that
• 1:20:36
  exhibit and them seeing the awareness of it.
• 1:20:40
  And one of the missions of the museum, the best things about it is they invoke critical thinking.
• 1:20:45
  That's one of the main tenets of the mission is invoking critical thinking and
• 1:20:49
  questioning everything that you see, especially in the media and social media
• 1:20:53
  propaganda, whatnot, and the messaging.
• 1:20:57
  And challenging you to actually research and analyze what it is that you see
• 1:21:02
  on a day-to-day basis and what you think the world is or what you think you
• 1:21:06
  know, it's really, really great.
• 1:21:08
  Well, if that's the case, more people need to go through the spy museum and
• 1:21:11
  do that because we don't have enough people. One of the best things about one
• 1:21:13
  of the, I think everybody knows this, it's in the veteran in the IC,
• 1:21:17
  but we're facing recruiting challenges, you know, people that are interested
• 1:21:20
  in national security, people that are interested in the military, that type of thing.
• 1:21:23
  And while the mission of the museum is not to recruit people for the ic or the
• 1:21:28
  fbi or whatever inform them right i mean but
• 1:21:31
  in making people aware around the country about what these people do and what
• 1:21:35
  they sacrifice in their lives whether they're you know cia nsa fbi,
• 1:21:40
  special operations whatever making them aware of that you see the lights you
• 1:21:44
  know kick on about what they've only you know somebody lives in idaho or whatever
• 1:21:48
  no they've only seen something in the news.
• 1:21:51
  It's it's great especially with kids and there's a lot of interactive stuff
• 1:21:54
  there so that museum is one if you've got your kids and you don't want them
• 1:21:57
  to be bored to death and drive any nuts take them to spy museum because there's
• 1:22:00
  interactive there's interactive stuff there because the one the one i always
• 1:22:04
  remember i don't remember why it was a,
• 1:22:06
  i'll call it a pull-up bar that you sit there i was just about to say that how
• 1:22:10
  old you can hold yourself up on it,
• 1:22:12
  yes well anyway the new one the new one at the new location is is epic and encourage
• 1:22:17
  everybody to go out there but the why again And going back to the why is,
• 1:22:20
  hey, man, people that serve in this community, they suffer from.
• 1:22:25
  Mental challenges when they leave and when they separate.
• 1:22:29
  And it, it's not unlike somebody who, you know, anybody who's not in the military
• 1:22:35
  community and your dad worked at a, you know, a particular factory for 40 years and then retired.
• 1:22:41
  And then a month and a half later, he's losing his shit. Why?
• 1:22:45
  Because he doesn't have a purpose, you know, he doesn't have a mission.
• 1:22:48
  And that is, take that and multiply it by a hundred.
• 1:22:52
  It's got to be exponentially more. Multiply it by a hundred.
• 1:22:55
  And that's the same, you know, kind of thing, but it happens at 30 years old
• 1:23:01
  or 35 instead of 65 or 70, you know, when you're retired, when,
• 1:23:05
  you know, the traditional retirement used to happen.
• 1:23:07
  So, Rob, we'll combine that with, I'm going to say this. So,
• 1:23:10
  we had the senior enlisted to the joint staff here for the Marine Corps here on previously.
• 1:23:17
  One of the things we talked about is also the lack of transition out.
• 1:23:21
  Yeah, absolutely. I will say they've gotten better, but it's still not good.
• 1:23:26
  No. And they don't do a good job.
• 1:23:29
  You know, you train a pit bull to go fight. You're talking about the lack of assistance.
• 1:23:33
  Lack of transition out of the military to help you find that purpose and help direct that.
• 1:23:41
  We're still not good at that. We're not. We don't do that in the military.
• 1:23:44
  He talked about that because he's still in, and we talked about that last week. I'm just in shock.
• 1:23:49
  He's a senior advisor to the Joint Staff. It does not matter what level you get out of the military.
• 1:23:53
  I watched a fireside chat at a charity event where General Stan McChrystal was
• 1:23:59
  talking, and he was unceremoniously separated by President Obama over a disagreement of whatever type.
• 1:24:09
  It's neither here nor there. But one of the things he says that's really profound
• 1:24:12
  to me is he looks everybody in the eye of the crowd and he says,
• 1:24:16
  one day the military is going to be done with you.
• 1:24:19
  And when it is, when it happens, it's abrupt. He's like, and whether you're,
• 1:24:23
  he's like, whether you're the CENTCOM commander like he was,
• 1:24:27
  or your private janitor, the janitor in the mess hall, the military is going to be done with you.
• 1:24:33
  And you need to start thinking about that right away when, when you start at
• 1:24:38
  day one and when you're getting, especially when you're getting close to separation
• 1:24:42
  and you need to think about what you're going to do and develop a purpose for
• 1:24:45
  yourself when you leave.
• 1:24:46
  And it's not unlike my wife, who just retired from CIA. You know,
• 1:24:49
  she, she went through like two or three months after she got out.
• 1:24:51
  She's like, what am I doing with my son? She's used to working 15 hour days
• 1:24:54
  as a senior, as a senior agency person. She was at the white house,
• 1:24:58
  you know, every, every, every couple of days.
• 1:25:01
  And then all of a sudden chop. just stops everything stops and what is your
• 1:25:06
  purpose going to be you know get busy living get busy dying because that's what's
• 1:25:10
  going to happen without you and doesn't care you can either you can either,
• 1:25:14
  start being self-destructive or you can start being self-productive you know
• 1:25:18
  it's one of those things right yeah i was shocked by that hearing that there's
• 1:25:21
  just no no assistance as people are getting out and i get you need to find your
• 1:25:26
  own path but there's also that.
• 1:25:29
  The service you guys give, there should be, hey, here's a piece of paper to
• 1:25:33
  help you on your way. Something that they could just give you and be like, hey, here's a context.
• 1:25:38
  They do a little class. You know, they do a little class. They have somebody
• 1:25:41
  who's never worked in the corporate space teaching you how to do a resume.
• 1:25:45
  A GS7 or a low-end contractor that's never been out there. You end up with a
• 1:25:49
  guy, you submit a resume that has his picture on the top of it.
• 1:25:52
  You know, like anytime I see a resume with a picture, it goes right in the trash.
• 1:25:55
  You know, so they have people. my resume with a picture on the top of it.
• 1:25:59
  People with no, no, no experience in the corporate world and no experience in
• 1:26:04
  the private sector teaching the separations and transition classes.
• 1:26:08
  And it's nothing against them. You get assigned there just like you get assigned
• 1:26:11
  anywhere else, but it doesn't, it does not help you.
• 1:26:15
  In some cases hurts you depending on who you have in that class.
• 1:26:18
  I mean, these days, at least you can AI your resume, but you know,
• 1:26:22
  when, when, when we got out, my God, you had to type the thing on it.
• 1:26:25
  When you got out you had to type the thing on a typewriter I at least had a
• 1:26:28
  computer even AI was dangerous because I'm watching people not even reviewing
• 1:26:32
  what the fuck AI is saying and
• 1:26:34
  you know what you're like you didn't write this bro that's right so bro,
• 1:26:38
  first of all I appreciate everything
• 1:26:40
  you've done man for the foundation everything you continue to do,
• 1:26:43
  so I'm gonna challenge you with something and this ain't fair to you but I don't
• 1:26:46
  care because you're a friend and it just is do I need this high tech pencil
• 1:26:51
  that guy gave me no but you've been fiddle fucking with that thing the whole time.
• 1:26:57
  I'm going to challenge you. I would love to see a CJ3 foundation out at Spy
• 1:27:01
  Museum because I appreciate the hell out of that. So eventually I would love to see that.
• 1:27:05
  No pressure on time. No, you just got on the board, but it's a phenomenal place.
• 1:27:10
  We're a phenomenal organization. I'd love to see the two pair somehow.
• 1:27:13
  I think that would be awesome. Is that your question for him? No, it's not.
• 1:27:18
  Number two, keep doing what you're doing, brother.
• 1:27:21
  You're always out and about. you're always doing.
• 1:27:25
  When I first met you, I wasn't even sure I liked you because I wasn't sure we were going to pair up.
• 1:27:30
  I wasn't sure, but you're a phenomenal dude. You got a big heart and,
• 1:27:35
  and something I admire about you that I don't even know if you know,
• 1:27:39
  but dude, you always got people asking you for stuff.
• 1:27:42
  Always. You're in a position where you're blessed to, to be in that position
• 1:27:46
  with Patriot Group and with everything else you're doing.
• 1:27:49
  You've managed to stay humble. You've managed to keep on a course.
• 1:27:54
  So kudos to you, because one of the questions I asked you is why us,
• 1:27:58
  right? I didn't understand it, didn't get it.
• 1:28:00
  You and I just get along and we value each other's missions.
• 1:28:04
  I rarely ask you for anything. I only ask you to support when you feel it's,
• 1:28:09
  it's in your heart to support. Right. And, and I think that's what makes us
• 1:28:14
  work. So appreciate the hell out of your friendship and all that. I do have a question.
• 1:28:18
  You do owe the listening audience. What is an Arubu, Aruban Kanuku?
• 1:28:24
  Aruban Kanuku. That's what you wrote down. Aruban Kanuku. And I know the answer
• 1:28:29
  to this because I have, I have one in the family. So I am 47 years old,
• 1:28:33
  as is my wife. but we do not have children.
• 1:28:37
  Oh, yes, you do. They just have four legs. We are dog people.
• 1:28:41
  The dogs are our kids. I think more of my dogs than I do about just about everybody else's kids.
• 1:28:47
  And he will share pictures.
• 1:28:51
  We're a rescue dog family. And Aruban Canucus are street dogs from Aruba.
• 1:28:55
  Canucu means countryside in Papamiento, which is a kind of makeshift language they speak in Aruba.
• 1:29:02
  But these dogs get left down there If you've ever been to Aruba or the- They're
• 1:29:06
  running up and down the beach or between the- Is this what my sister ended up
• 1:29:11
  with? Yes. Yes, it is. And that's what my daughter has too.
• 1:29:14
  My daughter got married in Aruba and she has one. Yes, we actually delivered
• 1:29:18
  one to Roger, Roger's sister and her husband.
• 1:29:23
  Sarah drove all the way to Florida to deliver that dog. She did.
• 1:29:27
  I was like, wow. Yeah. So I love those dogs.
• 1:29:32
  They're mutts. by science, but they all have the similar mannerisms and the similar capabilities.
• 1:29:40
  Little known fact, they own the record for that thing where the dogs run and
• 1:29:44
  jump off that diving board and get as far as they can and get the ball.
• 1:29:48
  And they also, that dog they sent up in a space or whatever,
• 1:29:51
  that was an Aruban Canuku. And they also have the vertical leap record.
• 1:29:58
  One of my two dogs is an Olympic athlete, almost like our buddy Paul is going
• 1:30:02
  to be over here on the box. This sounds like little penis syndrome because I
• 1:30:05
  have a Malinois and you have a Aruban Canuku dog. I will tell you in speed,
• 1:30:10
  Dolly Parton, one of my Canukos.
• 1:30:13
  This is a Marine Corps guy saying his dog's name is Dolly Parton.
• 1:30:16
  Will make a greyhound on a track look like a turtle with a broken leg.
• 1:30:23
  This dog is, it'll make you dizzy to watch her.
• 1:30:28
  She's a phenom of athletic ability. The other one's dumb as a box of rocks.
• 1:30:32
  But I will say this. Clumsy, but. Personality-wise, phenomenal dog.
• 1:30:36
  It makes me laugh. Cause so that's the other charitable work that Sarah and
• 1:30:39
  I do is all for dog charities. So, you know, so my, my daughter has one, your sister has snowy.
• 1:30:45
  And so, so it, it is a connection we have because I don't know how many Aruban
• 1:30:50
  and Canuku dogs there are in Loudoun County now, but that's awesome. It's pretty cool.
• 1:30:55
  But here's the other cool thing, right? So, you know, we do service dogs.
• 1:30:57
  Think about what your dogs offer you, right? Like no, no BS.
• 1:31:02
  Take down the bravado, take down all that other stuff.
• 1:31:06
  The, emotional support that a dog brings you when all else is fucking falling
• 1:31:10
  apart around you, everything's dude, you go home to that dog,
• 1:31:15
  You smile. That's right. Right. Like one of the things that,
• 1:31:18
  uh, that havoc does for you, uh, that Dolly does for me untrained is if I'm,
• 1:31:24
  if I'm stressed out, I'm intense, my heart's beating up fast, everything else.
• 1:31:27
  She comes up to lays right on my chest and puts her nose right up against my
• 1:31:30
  neck. She knows, uh, she can sense it. The other one, like I said, dumb as a dog.
• 1:31:37
  All right. One's Dolly Parton. What's the other dog's name? Sneezy.
• 1:31:41
  So sneeze, Sneezy is from the, from the snow.
• 1:31:44
  What was called? Snow White Litter, so Snowy, who we delivered to your assistant,
• 1:31:49
  was the largest of the eight that were left in a box on a pier next to the Ritz-Carlson and Aruba.
• 1:31:56
  That's so sad. And Sneezy was one of them, and we just liked the name.
• 1:31:59
  So we kept it, and it suits him.
• 1:32:02
  He's got a little bit of a pit in him, so he's got a pit kind of face,
• 1:32:05
  but he's got a, you know, Kanuku body.
• 1:32:07
  Although it sucks to have fast Kanuku dogs right now in this weather when it's
• 1:32:11
  raining every day, because that means your house is muddy as hell.
• 1:32:14
  Yeah, well, we go through about a pack of the wipes because they sleep on the
• 1:32:20
  bed with us, so we wipe their feet every single time they come out. You're a brat.
• 1:32:24
  Let the dogs sleep with you. Come on, man.
• 1:32:26
  Hardcore. Well, so does my sister and Chris, as I've heard. He sleeps on the
• 1:32:30
  bed, and it keeps Chris happy. My wife weighs like 100 pounds,
• 1:32:33
  and I'm the skinny guy, so in a king-size bed, I got plenty of room for dogs.
• 1:32:36
  It's not like you, Eric. Hey, he's showing off now, bro. He really just showed off.
• 1:32:40
  Bro, really? We're flexing? Listen, I'll say my wife is not.
• 1:32:44
  What size shirt is that, Eric? A California king? Hey, wait till I come back
• 1:32:49
  from Georgia there, Robbie.
• 1:32:52
  Doing the PR star fitness thing by yourself.
• 1:32:56
  So my wife is still fairly small. My fiance is still fairly small.
• 1:33:00
  But I still have to levitate to stay on the bed for as much as she takes up
• 1:33:02
  on it. I was like, there's no dogs on this bed.
• 1:33:05
  There's no dogs. No, but once again, appreciate the hell out of y'all.
• 1:33:09
  What's next for you, bro? I mean, because really you're in a transition period.
• 1:33:14
  You just basically retired from Patriot Group.
• 1:33:17
  You took on the board, you support us, you support the other organization.
• 1:33:22
  Like what's, what's next, bro? We're taking a strategic pause,
• 1:33:24
  man. Sarah and I are both, we're going to Normandy for the D-Day anniversary
• 1:33:27
  here in a couple of days. Are you dressing up?
• 1:33:29
  I am not going to dress up and I'm not jumping with the other guys that are
• 1:33:32
  going with me. Some of them are retired soft guys.
• 1:33:35
  Some of them are still trying to relive their past. I'm not.
• 1:33:37
  I'll be on the ground with the snacks and the booze. Don't you usually dress up as a furry in D.C.?
• 1:33:43
  Yes, I am. I am a furry.
• 1:33:47
  Actually a pink unicorn. Oh, shoot. That's a different ego. Different dress
• 1:33:52
  up. That's a totally separate podcast.
• 1:33:54
  You want me to come in character, I will. We'll do that next.
• 1:33:58
  Yeah, we're going to do that. My dad's in bad health. He's a vet.
• 1:34:01
  He's got Parkinson's and dementia. So memory care has been part.
• 1:34:04
  He's, you know, being able to spend time with him was a big part of my decision
• 1:34:07
  to kind of step down and, you know, kind of let the next level of people at
• 1:34:11
  Patriot Group kind of take the reins.
• 1:34:13
  So I'll be an observation of that and then doing as much as I can for the community.
• 1:34:18
  And then I'll see, you know, maybe after, maybe sometime this summer,
• 1:34:21
  some I might start something else up, might not.
• 1:34:23
  I just really enjoy this nonprofit stuff. I really enjoy, I get more job satisfaction out of
• 1:34:30
  supporting the guys and their spouses and their kids and their families that
• 1:34:35
  are going through struggles than I do out of trying to make money anymore.
• 1:34:39
  And it's therapeutic for you, is it not? I mean, that's what I do.
• 1:34:42
  Honestly, I'd rather go work at like, And being in the government contracting
• 1:34:46
  space for, you know, 20 something years, I'd rather go work at like Home Depot
• 1:34:49
  if I was being really good at something.
• 1:34:51
  Rob's going to be our gringer at Walmart when we go there next week.
• 1:34:53
  I will be in there with an apron and like working.
• 1:34:56
  I'm not handy, so I don't know where they're going to put me.
• 1:34:58
  Probably. And then I'll probably be cleaning the bathrooms or something.
• 1:35:01
  Rob, let me ask you this, Rob. This echo is crushing me. No,
• 1:35:05
  you're good. You're good. It's not bad. So.
• 1:35:08
  Not everybody can do that though, right? So, you know, the only reason why you're
• 1:35:12
  in a position to do that is because you worked your ass off and,
• 1:35:16
  you know, you put yourself in a position where now you can do what you want to do.
• 1:35:21
  And, and that's support nonprofits and, you know, what your passion is.
• 1:35:26
  And I think that's important for veterans to know. It's like,
• 1:35:30
  look, man, you know, there is a life after the military service or government
• 1:35:34
  service or contracting service.
• 1:35:37
  You still have to work your ass off to get up to that point to do what you actually want to do.
• 1:35:43
  And I think you're a prime example of that. And, you know, people should.
• 1:35:47
  You know, look at your path and, you know, try to follow that path if that's
• 1:35:52
  what they truly want to do, because it doesn't happen overnight.
• 1:35:55
  No, it doesn't. And, you know, there's a lot of other examples.
• 1:35:58
  We were talking earlier offline about, you know, Evan at Black Rifle Coffee
• 1:36:02
  and the path of those guys and a good friend of mine that I worked with a long
• 1:36:06
  time ago. And there's some other examples of that.
• 1:36:10
  But what I encourage people to do, especially veterans, is.
• 1:36:14
  But before you get to the point where you can do whatever the hell you want
• 1:36:18
  to do, and you may never get there, you know, and it's just the reality of it.
• 1:36:21
  It doesn't always work out. I was very lucky.
• 1:36:23
  I'm a guy that is in the space I'm in. I didn't even graduate college.
• 1:36:26
  You know, I was an E5 in the Marine Corps when I got out.
• 1:36:29
  Knucklehead, right? So I can't even set up my own email account from a technical
• 1:36:33
  capability still today.
• 1:36:35
  But so I got, I got lucky. I was in the right place, right time,
• 1:36:38
  you know, and it took advantage of opportunities.
• 1:36:40
  But what I tell people, what I tell guys, especially on a mental health path
• 1:36:43
  and because we, you know, with CJ3 Foundation, everything else is you don't
• 1:36:46
  have to wait till you get there to be able to give back.
• 1:36:49
  And that giving back is therapeutic and it doesn't have to be money.
• 1:36:52
  You know, you don't have to donate 500 bucks. You don't have to donate a hundred
• 1:36:56
  thousand dollars to CJ3 Foundation or any charity that's important to you,
• 1:37:00
  but doing the work, getting out there and, you know, doing a
• 1:37:04
  food drink drive for hungry people or whatever, that is more therapeutic and is,
• 1:37:09
  resolved more problems in my mind for me personally and for my wife over the
• 1:37:15
  years than anything else.
• 1:37:17
  Helping other people is the best antidepressant that's out there.
• 1:37:21
  So, yeah. And I will, I'm going to second that.
• 1:37:25
  This is another pontification, Eric. Here we go. Three tequilas.
• 1:37:33
  Hear me out. Hear me out. So like just scooping somebody up and mentoring them.
• 1:37:39
  You don't have to help a hundred people, a thousand people, 10 people.
• 1:37:43
  Sometimes it takes just mentoring one person that's going to fulfill what you
• 1:37:47
  need to make you healthy. And.
• 1:37:52
  That's proven. It doesn't matter if you're special operations or you weren't special operations.
• 1:38:00
  Mentoring somebody gives you purpose. and you know that that's something that's
• 1:38:04
  it doesn't matter it could be mentoring somebody on their homework it could
• 1:38:08
  be mentoring somebody on baseball it could be mentoring somebody on podcasting
• 1:38:13
  you know what i mean like you know,
• 1:38:15
  just do that just do that and you're going to find purpose and fulfillment and
• 1:38:21
  it's going to make you a better person you're going to make someone else a better
• 1:38:23
  person that's going to push off to someone else and you
• 1:38:26
  know it just grows from there so I love that message that's a great message
• 1:38:30
  I'm gonna tell you as a nonprofit,
• 1:38:33
  director or founder whatever,
• 1:38:36
  there's also other simple things I'd you know there are certain people I'm not
• 1:38:40
  trying to collect money from because they're the people were helping where the
• 1:38:43
  other people were supporting,
• 1:38:45
  but you want to help, wear the brand, wear the gear. And it's not because,
• 1:38:50
  but it's to represent, to show solidarity.
• 1:38:53
  The reason we do Red Friday, it's not a CJ3 thing. This is a national thing.
• 1:38:58
  Why? Because it's bringing focus, bringing attention back to what's important to this group.
• 1:39:04
  So you ask what you can do to support, buy a t-shirt.
• 1:39:08
  Why? Because you go, that says a lot when you wear it. And it says,
• 1:39:12
  I'm supporting this foundation. I'm, and I'm going to tell you this from,
• 1:39:16
  from this group here, we get asked all the time, you wear this thing out.
• 1:39:20
  So you either wear the red Friday one or wear the send me for whatever reason. Those are the two.
• 1:39:26
  Somebody's always going to ask you what that is, what it's about, what you're doing.
• 1:39:32
  And you may not be the one giving, but because you wore that shirt out and about
• 1:39:36
  and you represented and you believe in it or you, you know, whatever it's.
• 1:39:41
  It's going to bring donations elsewhere and bring support elsewhere.
• 1:39:45
  So you want to know how you can help? That's a huge help.
• 1:39:48
  It is. And then, you know, we're just wearing the stuff around the town around
• 1:39:52
  here and other areas where CJ3 is well known. And everybody,
• 1:39:56
  every time I'm out, somebody asks me if I'm wearing CJ3 stuff.
• 1:39:59
  And it also reminds them that, oh, you guys are doing a golf tournament.
• 1:40:02
  Oh, you guys are doing this. Oh, hey, I saw something about a cornhole,
• 1:40:05
  you know, tournament and things like that. So people that might've forgot that,
• 1:40:09
  hey, I need to buy a $25 ticket to this thing or a $50 ticket or get a golf
• 1:40:14
  foursome or something like that.
• 1:40:15
  It's very helpful to the foundation and any charity that you support,
• 1:40:18
  you know, whatever it is, whatever great cause you're excited about, but it helps.
• 1:40:24
  Well, hey, Rob, much appreciated. Appreciate you being on here.
• 1:40:28
  Roger, as always, thanks for co-hosting this thing.
• 1:40:31
  Well, as I say, I always say this at the end of it. I don't know if I've ever
• 1:40:34
  said it to you, but thank you very much for your service and appreciate everything you do. Yeah.
• 1:40:39
  Guy in the sky. Appreciate what you're doing for us. Thank you to no boundaries.
• 1:40:44
  And this is I knew you were going to say it. I was waiting for you. Yes.
• 1:40:54
  This is warriors of watchman. Hey, we're out. Thank you.