Latest / The TalkBlock Show's Podcast / It’s Always Too Soon to Quit: Resilience, Grit, and Purpose with Jay Setchell

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It’s Always Too Soon to Quit: Resilience, Grit, and Purpose with Jay Setchell · The TalkBlock Show's Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Hey everyone, welcome to the topic doctor.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Vadeem, and today we are diving deep into a story about true resilience, faith, and inner strength.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: In a world where many look for shortcuts, my guest today proves what happens when quitting is simply not an option.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: He grew up on farm, served in US Marine Corps, built successful businesses, and survived multiple near-death experiences.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: And today he's living mostly paralyzed.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: He continues to run ventures, inspired thousands, and live by one core rule.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's always too soon to quit.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Please welcome entrepreneur, marine veteran, and survivor Jay Secho.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Jay, thank you for thank you so much for joining me today.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Vadim, it's glad I'm I'm glad to be here.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's a pleasure to try try reaching out to you and having a conversation with you, sir.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: My pleasure.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: So you're joining us from uh Texas, correct?
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Today.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Today I'm in South Central Texas, and it's gonna be a hot day.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: We here in uh Vancouver we had uh like a super hot week, but now it's now it's raining as always in Vancouver.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well we had a we had a lot of rain here about two and a half weeks ago.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: We had over 30 inches and had rivers flooding, and the lake we had our our our local lake came up almost 20 feet in height, and um we had several people die again.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Last year we had a we had uh about the same time of the year we had a severe flash floods and uh about 35 people died.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we but we're but it now now it's now it's sunny and hot and it'll be 102 or 103 today again and and it'll dry up, but you know it it rains and it suns, and you need you need both.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that's for sure.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so um I have a I have a question to you about your uh farm life and marine discipline.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: How did farm life and uh the marine corps shape your work ethic?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: How did it affect your your life from the very childhood to to who you are now?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: How do you think I yeah, I I'll jump right on that.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um I you know, I I was raised on a pretty good sized farm, what we call a working farm.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: So uh some people live on a farm, but they don't work at the farm.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: And what kind of farm?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh like uh some animals or it's co crops?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: We had uh corn and soybeans was our main crops, and we had uh pretty good sized farm, and uh we had a lot of cattle, we had uh different years we would have more hogs than other haw years, and we had for about 10 or 12 years we had about a thousand chickens, which wasn't a lot, but it was it was enough back in the 50s, and uh because I was born in the 40s at the end of the 40s, but uh that was a lot.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, even 200 head of cattle in the 50s, you know, on a regular farm, that that was a pretty good size, but we we ran about 600 head uh twice a year.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we did about 1200 head of cattle a year, but I you know so much of it, Vadim, was not it wasn't what we did, although I started feeding calves and collecting eggs and stuff by the time I was four, and I've got pictures to that effect, and and uh driving tractors by the time I was seven, it it was the old school, it was the old days, and it's like when I I was being taught how to uh and showed how to straighten nails out.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: When you pulled nails out of wood, uh, you know, they they would have a bend to them or a curve to them.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we would straighten nails out when I was five, and by the time I was six, seven years old, I I was good at straightening, straightening out nails.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And you put the nail up on an anvil, uh a steel, big, heavy steel anvil that might weigh 40 pounds, and I can't move it.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: And used hammer or how did you do that?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: You used a hammer and you put the nail on it, you you would that you take that curved nail and you'd pound it until it until it got straight.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: And you'd you'd put it over here.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: And we had literally pails or buckets of nails.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the point is, and some of them were square nails, the old square nails from back in the 1800s and 1700s.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the issue is that I'm trying to get to, that I've learned over the years, it wasn't straightening nails out that was important.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: It was the fact that you were conserving money that you didn't have to spend to go buy nails, even if they were 10 cents a pound or 20 cents a pound.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: 20 cents in 1955 was like ten dollars today.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it it's a big difference.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: So you gotta remember it it's it's just a different period of life.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, but so I I I I I was raised in such a way I didn't get I you know, I I've I've kind of really thought about the word raised.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't really raised on the farm, I was educated on the farm.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: Educated.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's where I grew up, if you want to use the word raised.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: But it's the word educated, I learned about feeding cattle.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: I learned about the okay, if you got three three products you can bed cattle with, and this is informational for anybody that would be listening.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you got straw, you have corn cobs, which is you know, an ear of corn that's been shelled off.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: You got a corn cob, and we started using corn stalks.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, corn stalks are this big around, and they're very fibrous, they hold a lot of liquid.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: You can you can soak them and they absorb a lot.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, originally I remember the straw mouth up above the the where the cattle were, a lot of the cattle.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: We had a lot of cattle, so the straw mow didn't cover all the cattle, but you would kick the straw down and you'd have a big pile of straw and then you spread it out for bedding in the wintertime when it was 25, 30 below zero.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that straw would absorb some of the liquid and the manure and the snow and stuff like that.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: But it it didn't, and it didn't really absorb much.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's like if you throw 10,000 toothpicks into a bucket of water over a long time, those toothpicks will probably absorb some water, but they're not going to make it dry.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: They're not gonna really make it comfortable, if you will.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: So corn cobs were a little bit different.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: They they would absorb a little bit more, but they were handy because you, when you shelled corn and you had corn cribs full, you would have piles of corn uh or corn cobs uh as big as houses, twice as big as houses, and several of them, piles and piles of them.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, what are you going to do with them?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: What you can do with them is spread them back in the field, and they just turn organically, turn back into eventually they become dirt over time.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, but what happened was we had when we were finished combining corn or picking corn, you know, we we had all these corn stalks that we would disc into the ground and regenerate, and we use them, they they just become dirt again, but or we would plow them under.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my dad in about 1957, we built another barn on the north side of another barn, and it was 80 feet wide and and uh no, it was yeah, it was 80 feet wide and 200 feet long, and then inside of that on the north end, we built a 60 by 80, 80 foot long and 60 foot wide um uh enclosure, if you will, that would hold co hold corn stalks.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: So you would take out and the dry corn stalks, use a flail chopper that would blow the corn stalks into a self-inloading wagon, take the self-inloading wagon and put it in a blower, and the blower would blow it up in.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: So we added corn stalks that were 80 feet long, 60 feet wide, and 25 feet deep.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a lot of corn stalks.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but those corn stalks, when we would use them for bedding, far, I mean, one one fork full of corn stalks was absorbed more liquid, manure, snow, than uh 10 pickup truckloads of corn cobs and straw.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Just just just one pickup would equal 20 or 30.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's not even comparable.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: So all that being said, in the springtime, when you were cleaning your your barn lots out, and ours were all concrete, we had about uh uh oh gosh, we had over 80,000 square feet of concrete catalot.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: So we had we had pushing two acres of just catalot.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then that didn't include the barns and other areas.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a pretty good size operation.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: But when you when you scoop that up, you put it in a manure spreader, you take it out into the field, you respread it, and all the the urine and the manure, the and the the crap, the whatever, all the the the water, the snow that was left, or maybe it wasn't still, maybe it was just rain, maybe it was just dry.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: But what we did is you spread that back in the field and it fertilized the field.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: So you it was a generational recycling, kind of like the cycle of life, because if you look at it, Vadim, you you would plant a kernel of corn, one kernel of corn in the spring when it's 12 or 13 feet tall and it's now got three ears of corn on it, and each ear of corn's got 500 kernels, you've got 1,500 kernels of corn from one kernel of corn, and that is now chopped into silage.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: It goes in your silos that feeds the cattle that create the poop.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: You got corn stalks that you you've got left over from picking corn that you're using to absorb the manure and the urine and all the other stuff, and bed the cattle down, and it just continues on, and then all that gets spread back into the land, plowed under or disked in, and you plant corn again.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: So in the in the meantime, the cattle have grown from small to bigger to being what they call, you know, going to market cattle, and the next thing is Vadim has a steak or he gets a hamburger or he has a roast and he gets to have supper.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a cycle of life.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I I was I I learned a lot of that's where I learned a lot.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: And uh how did you uh how did you end up uh joining uh U.S.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: Marine Corps?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: How old?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: How old were you?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh 17, 17 years old.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, but on the on the farm, I I want to get back to that for just a second.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Is you learned a sense of urgency.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Things need to be done now because the sense of urgency is hey, there's storms coming in.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: We got some bad weather coming in.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: We need to get the crops in, we need to get the crops out.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta be prepared, be be attentive to the weather, be attentive to the the needs of your soil, but responsibility.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's like when I was feeding calves when I was four years old.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was if it is to be, it is up to me.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because if I didn't feed them, they wouldn't get fed, because that was my job.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's like if I tell you your job is to put gas in your car, and then you run out of gas and you're sitting there going, Well, I don't know what to do.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: I can't go anywhere because I'm out of gas.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's not my problem.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's your problem.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't put gas in your car.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: So so you take all that.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then I had a cousin that was in the Marine Corps from 1960 to 64, and I was 14 years old when he got out.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Jay, whatever you do, don't go in the Marine Corps.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Do not go in the Marine Corps.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's like telling a kid, don't take a piece of candy from the candy bowl.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like I go, Oh, I gotta go in the Marine Corps now.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: But I I I had wanted to anyhow, because in in here in our country, uh the Marine Corps is viewed really as the toughest branch of the military because it's we're first in, we're first out.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're like the special forces where you come from, you know, where you're from originally.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we have our own special forces within the Marine Corps, just like the Army's got the Green Beret or or uh, you know, we've got force recon, we got recon, force recon.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: My son was in force recon in the Marine Corps, and he's he's uh 39 now.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: And he he did several several years and a couple of enlistments, and he's disabled, got some disability like I do.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Not as bad, but not good either.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: But at any rate, uh I I enlisted in the Marine Corps when I was 17, and um uh I learned I I didn't spend long in the Marine Corps, Vadim.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: I got I I died in 17 months and 12 days.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh uh but I I start I started out originally, they but they they didn't that what I really learned in boot camp uh in the Marine Corps.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: If if if you're not aware, the Marine Corps wants to break you down, they want to make you nothing.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: You are you you are nothing, you're you're you're nothing.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm nothing, we're all nothing, and they want to build you back up into their image.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: What do they want?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: They want someone that's gonna follow orders.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: So that's like marching.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: When you do a lot of marching in boot camp, it's not marching that you're learning, you're learning to listen to the sound of command.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you know, like you, you're you you've got your your marching, uh they they call it cadence, like left, right, left, right, all except they sing kind of a song.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, when they say, you know, to the left, ooh, you know, everybody needs to turn thin.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, to the right, ooh, you know, or platoon, ooh, stop, you know, and then shoulder your weapons, clean your weapons.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: We had to like like you get so good at like an M14 that we used in Vietnam, um uh you could I could break down an M4, fuel strip an M14 and put it back together with blindfolded at nighttime in less than third in less than 30 seconds.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Less than 30 seconds completely, ready to fire, ready to go.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: But that was what you had to do.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: So if you learn that, and it's it there's a lot of physicality.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: When I went through back in those days, you got slugged in the guts, you got I threw up blood, they punched you in the face.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they they called you every name that you can think of.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's not a bad word you can think of.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: You there's nothing they made up bad words to call you, and uh they did.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was horrific, but but it wasn't a big deal.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a big deal.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: Two things I'd like to comment about boot camp for me, and we boot camp was about 14 weeks long, but we went through it nine weeks because they needed bodies in Vietnam.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like where you came from.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: You needed at certain times in that situation that you folks got over there, they need you on the front now.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, you know, and so you your training, but our training, we got all the training, but we went 18, 19 hours, 20 hours a day instead of 14 or 15 or 16 hours a day.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, but we got we did the same stuff.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: But two things that stood out in my mind was we had a platoon commander that took us outside one morning and he sat there and he said, Listen, he said, you pukes, you know, you know, and he called us all our names and typical everything.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: He said, We're really hard on you, and we're gonna be hard, we're gonna get harder, because the reason is you may as well get used to it now, because over half of you in the next month and a half, two months, are gonna be in Vietnam.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: And half of you are gonna die, and the other half of you will probably come back wounded, which is in fact true.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I've I just got back from a trip two months ago that one of the guys I went to boot camp with, well, I saw three, but one of them, he only made it in five days in Vietnam and he lost both his legs.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: So it'd be like going on your first patrol over in your area, and you and you get you get killed.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: Or you you you it's just that's just the way it is.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: First day or last day, it doesn't matter.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: It just happened.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, but anyhow, but he said, What I want you to do, we want you guys to live, we want you to be become trained, we want you to understand.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, um, but after that, that was so that kind of that kind of got your attention.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: That, you know, hey, I'm telling you, and we're hard on you because a lot of you are gonna die.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: And they did, and we did.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of you are gonna come back wounded, and those that don't come back wounded are gonna come back with a different mind train or mindset than what you did before.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you were in the Air Force and you're a air traffic controller in Thailand and you're going out with the hookers at night, or you're drinking during the day, it's a whole different world.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you're you're you're living in the city and you're just enjoying life, and you talk to pilots up in the sky.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're you're not out in the combat, you're not out dying.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: And uh you got the same ribbons or metals or whatever you want to call them, but it was a different world.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other one was real quick, they took us down to Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego, and uh we all got tested, our blood got tested.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why, because they already knew we had blood or we wouldn't be there, and we'd all had our shots, but uh they took uh a unit of blood from all of us, the whole platoon.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: There was 82 guys in my platoon, and uh when they took the blood out, the doctor came out, and I don't he he couldn't call you can't call you Marines because you're not Marines yet, and they can't call you I don't know.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: He just said something to the fact though, the blood that we have taken from you today, the blood that you have given us will be flowing through the veins of your fellow Marines in Vietnam within two days, yeah, within 48 hours.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of a when you tell that to a 17, 18, 19-year-old kid, you're not a kid.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: You're not a kid, you're gonna go kill.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing is that all of a sudden it's like if I if I it's like me telling you it w it however old you are, that the blood I just took from you now, that you just gave me a unit of blood, a bag of blood, this bud is gonna go back and it's gonna be going through your cousin's body to help save their lives within two days.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you go, it it gives you a different mindset.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, wow, crap.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, 100%.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: That could be you in two months, and a lot of times it was.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so where's that blood coming from?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it's like when I had my second accident and I I was and I was I had died, they they got me back or kept me, or I I don't remember coming back from it, but they were putting bodies, they had two men up and they did direct transfusions for their bodies into my body to give keep enough blood in me because I bled out.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't have any blood left.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so that's a but I I I think with that, Vadim, I I I learned responsibility.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: When you when you go into in the Marine Corps and you're doing your job, you don't think about your girlfriend and apple pie and back home and and all your friends.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: You think about I'm concerned about my the man in front of me, the man behind me, the man to my left, the man to my right.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: They are my life.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I am their life.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a different reality.
• 23:02
  unknown: Right.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's a different reality, it's a completely different world.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: You are you are separated from that.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is it.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is now.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a book out now, or there's a book out that sold millions and millions and millions of copies.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: To me, it's there's a little bit of it that's duplicated, but it's called The Power of Now by Eckert Toll.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the power of now talks about you know what what you've been through in your in your life is is something you should learn from, something you should experience, something that, okay, but that happened then.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, whatever you want to do in the future, whatever your dreams are, whatever your goals are, that's in the future.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, the only thing that's happening right now is you and me talking.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's the only thing.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever we talk about.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: So that's called the power of now.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: So the power of now, if you good, if you think about it, as you move into the future, if you can take those dreams, if you've written them down or you can remember them and act on them, then they're happening then, then that's then.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's it's kind of a it's kind of it makes me smile reading the book, but it it is.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's about now.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: What is now?
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we were just talking about.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: And Francisco, the gentleman that lost both his legs, he was only on his second patrol.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he was in the he was he was the middleman, and he stepped on a mine, blew him up in the air, lost both his legs.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: The man in front of him and the man behind him were about 12 to 15 feet out, but the shrapnel killed both of them.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then the the point man and the tail gunner both got a little shrapnel, but they were okay.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: So they got, well, it was, you know, but that was typical.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: That was typical.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you've seen it, or you've heard of it, or you've known of it at the same time.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: Different time, different world, different, different area of the world, different war.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: But it's it's it's going on.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing that scares me about today's world, and I'm very involved in a company that does a lot of training as a service for the military, for firefighters, and for for law enforcement and SWAT teams, is the drones.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: The drones, that's it and robots.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's a scary deal.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because I, you know, it's one thing if you say you're gonna go out man to man, or the old word I think was mono omano, you know, it was a Greek term or something, man to man, and go out and fight.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: Not have somebody sit back drinking a cold beer running a uh a drone, and he flies it into your head and blows your head off.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's a that's a scary thing.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And and and we all have them anymore.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a bad thing, but but that's what I I I just I learned that you have to take care of your others, make sure that I have your six, that you're covered, that you're protected, and I'm willing to give my life to save you.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: But you have to be willing to give your life to save me.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I know some people that I saw some people that didn't feel that way in reality.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's like they say they are, but do they really?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of those people uh would likely get taken out quicker than they should have because they're not gonna protect you anyhow.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's like you know, so but but I learned a lot again, but I I still there again in the Marine Corps, it was a sense of urgency, it was responsibility, it's accountability, it's it's taking care of action and making sure that your your weapons are gonna work, that everything's clean, that everything's ready to go at all times.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: That sent that sense of urgency, it's now.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it's like on farm, it's like on farm.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: You always gotta be prepared.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Always be prepared.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think every man should go through at least one year of something like Marines.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I well I've I've said for decades that I think everybody should serve their government or or serve serve their country, not their government.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: The heck the government's a pain in the butt.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: The government, I hate the government.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't I'll say it to anybody.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like our government.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like any government because they want to tell you what to do.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, no.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: You're in charge of the government.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing is, I think everybody should serve two years in the military.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: And and and if not the military, something that they're actually serving other people because there's too many people that want to go up and tell Vadim what to do, and they never did it.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: What who gives who put them in charge?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're telling you, oh no, you need to pay taxes, you need to do this, you need to do that, and they never did it, and they're never going to do it.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: But they have the power or they want the power to tell you what to do.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if they had done it, they would have experienced it, they would have understood it.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's a big difference, you know.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: But well, go ahead.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um a little bit about patience and effort.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: You say nothing comes free that it's worthwhile.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: What is uh modern society missing about hard work nowadays?
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: How do you think modern people, modern society?
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't think society it depends on what you term society as.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's kind of like uh they there we've got here in America, we've got too many people getting a lot for nothing.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: There it's just like it's socialism.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's I don't care what you call it.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not I'm not afraid to say it.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's like, oh, oh, well, we've got illegal aliens all over because the last administration let them in, and now they don't well, okay.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: You've come over from another part of the world, you are trying, you're working, you're establishing something, you're working towards an end, you're helping people, you have uh a sense of responsibility, you have ownership, you have uh all of that, but how many people don't?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: They just want a free ride.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: And we have people coming in and say, oh, well, times are tough.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I want free food, free phone, free this, free housing, free medical, free this.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: And and then we got people in the government that want to stay in the government and keep get the vote.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: So they go, oh, I'll give you free food, free housing, free phone, free this.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: Exchange for a vote, yeah.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for your vote.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: And and that's it, it's that's that's the problem.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we worry about, I mean, I remember when we weren't we weren't in debt at all, and now I don't know,$38 trillion or something.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, or 40 or something.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's insane.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I don't and and I just saw in today's, and I don't I don't watch the news, I haven't watched TV in 20 years.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I haven't read the newspaper in 40 years, 45 years, uh, but I see the headlines, but I see that um uh what was it they were oh that uh they've now uncovered documents about our past administration, which was Biden, but he wanted to leave the country in worse shape than he left it in, anyhow, for whoever was going to be president.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: But but I mean, he never went to the border.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: They had 200,000, 200,000 people a month coming across wearing t-shirts, and and these people were bringing in diseases, polio, uh, malaria, things that we've not had in this country in in decades.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's crazy, you know.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so, and those people, if if you were one of those people and they they load you, you come across the border, are you gonna go back?
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna come back and and and report in in a year or six months so we can we can get you registered?
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes, I sure am.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: Ah, baloney, that's a bunch of crap, you know, and they put you on a plane or they put you on a bus and they sent you to someplace in some little farm town, or they sent you to Vancouver and they dropped you off and they kicked you off the bus.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now you got 3,000 people in a matter of a month in Vancouver that are from South America that speak Spanish, that don't, they don't understand anything about Vancouver, you know, and and and or or Chinatown area or anything.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: And but they want free food, and they got little kids, and they got this, and they got that.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: The sad thing was, in my opinion, is there were there were quite a few children came up, but they were like carried along.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of them were used because they didn't even know the people that were bringing them.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was a lot of uh military age men, a lot of uh uh uh people that it were criminals.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of people, it was just open open borders.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: So that that's just a bad thing.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't we could go on, you know, at no no point in the in the discussion.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: But but I uh so something that uh you had mentioned before was I I well I or I'll I'll get back into when I mentioned I said I died my second time, and that was a car accident, it was a drunk hit me almost head on.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he got thrown out of his car, um had no seat belt on, run over by his pickup truck, and got killed.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I remember leaving my body and being up in the heavens and um uh hearing voices.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's it.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I uh wanted to talk about next.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh this facing near death and uh paralysis.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what went through your mind in those first dark moments when you it's uh well, first of all, when I died in the Marine Corps, I was 19 years old.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh 19 years uh I died, I was in the Marine Corps 17 months and 12 days when I died, and I was undercover covert ops in a criminal intelligence unit.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I'd gone to see a well, I didn't go to see him, I just happened to stop by his house, but a guy that worked for me, and uh he was in another, he was part of my team, my my intelligence team, and somebody found where he was at, they beat him real bad, they cut his head open, his ear was hanging off, cut him into his neck, and uh he wasn't doing good.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: But I had gotten there, I heard his wife scream, they'd only been married six months, she'd been there four months.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: I got him in my car uh to take him to the naval hospital to see because he was bleeding out.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: He he wouldn't uh he wouldn't have laid there for a half hour on the ground, he'd been dead.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: And um uh but on the way there, we hit a semi, and the truck had pulled out across the road, it didn't have any lights on, the the mark there were no markers, you couldn't see it.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: It it was like driving into a black hole.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: And there were cars behind us that one of them was a colonel, uh a you know, Fulberg Colonel in the Marine Corps, and he said, uh, well, I didn't hear him, but I read the police report later.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: He's he testified, he was he said, no, nobody was speeding.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: There was no, it was just if if he hadn't hit him, we would have.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was just like so, but they got us out.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: There were three Marines.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: The last one died uh June 30th, the last Marine died that helped get us out.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: I went and visited with him May 10th and cried my heart out because I hadn't connected with him.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: They thought we were all stayed dead fifth 55 years ago, but uh we connected about 10 years ago, and we've had some good moments, but he passed away on on June 30th.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: But uh but Linda got damaged real bad, uh, head what had head damage, internal damage.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: She was in a coma 18 months and passed away.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: I had died, uh the that I was out of my body, looking down, very violent, a lot of red, uh uh cussing, swearing.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: The three doctors that were working on me started to walk away.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh you notice I just used my left hand, that's the only one that works.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: I I am mostly paralyzed, but this this one's all this doesn't do much.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, but they were walking away, and I I was oh, I was cussing and swearing and get back here and all this, and then another one, another doctor, another doctor came in and uh he started checking me over, and what happened is I had so many busted ribs and my lungs were punctured in so many places.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, he cut a uh tracheotomy here in my throat, and the blood just came up like a whale surfacing.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he pushed more blood out of me, but my I had drowned in my own blood.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason the other doctors were walking away and I had no heartbeat and I couldn't breathe, number one, I drowned from my own blood, but my heart was so tight and compressed it couldn't expand, it couldn't beat, you know, boom, boom, boom.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh when he released the blood and all that, I I still had enough life in me or desire to live, and that's an important word in life is you got to have a desire to do something, a willingness to fight for it.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I wanted to live so bad.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember after he got the blood out of me.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember ever going back in my body, but I remember uh about a month later kind of coming out of a coma, but then they put me back in another coma for a couple of weeks.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: But my face was ripped off, my jaws were fractured, my head was caved in, uh, I've got third-degree burns, I was all torn up.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um I only my right wrist and my left elbow are the only two body parts I have, Vadim, that aren't that haven't been fused, rotted, pinned, replaced, broken, or something.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: My left foot was turned backwards, my jaw was hanging out over here, uh, you know, shoulders broken, collarbones, all that.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: But when I so that that was just a long fight, but it was a year in the naval hospital.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, you just get through it, you gotta remember, it's like how how have you gotten to your age?
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: You get to your age by every every you know, seconds become minutes, minutes become hours, hours become days, days become weeks, weeks become months, and time keeps going on.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, I I just feel a lot of gratitude.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: I feel blessed that I'm here, that I'm alive.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: I believe in God.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: I believe that God put me here on this earth for a reason, and he's still here, and he's still walking with me.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is walking with me.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: He's gotta be, or I wouldn't be here.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because on July 4th, 1981, I jumped in a swimming pool feet first, and broke my neck in four places and drowned and was paralyzed from the shoulders down.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I was under the water about eight minutes until they got me out.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: And they told me I'd never move again.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: So that was another whole battle.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I think that's where I realized until that point, Vadim, I pushed ahead, I charged ahead, I wasn't gonna quit.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: Did I realize God was with me?
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, but I didn't I wasn't prayerful about it.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't I didn't probably sit back and give thanks like I should.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: But when I was in when I was 31 and a half is when I drowned, from that point on, uh my my goal was to walk.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I had a lot of pre-people, I had thousands of people saying prayers for me.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm an overachiever, I'm an overworker, I'm never gonna quit.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I I'll people tell me, Jay, you're gonna keep working until the day you die.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: I said, No, I'm gonna work all the way to the grave.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm I'm gonna keep trying.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing is, if it wasn't for the prayer, and I during the week later on in rehab, months later, yeah, I might get back a an eighth of an inch during the week.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but on Sundays, when when I had five or six thousand people praying for me, and I was praying, I would get back maybe a quarter of an inch or a half an inch.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: I would get back stuff that I'd never got back during the week.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the power of prayer.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: And from that point on is what really changed my life the most and gave me the belief that you're here to help other people.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the more people you help, the better person you become.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: The more people that you help throughout your life, the more people you can give direction to, whether that's uh for health, for finances.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we talked earlier a little bit about being an entrepreneur.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: Why why not give you a little bit of advice?
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: Give you a little bit, because I've done it.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: I've started many, many companies.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just something you see and you learn because you you know considerably more now than you did 10 years ago, even five years ago.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: So can you imagine looking back in 20 years and saying how much you thought you knew now?
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: And in 20 years from now, you're gonna go, wow, I thought I knew quite a bit.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: I I didn't know near as.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then you got to remember you got another 10 or 15 or 20 years.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it's always life is a learning process.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can share it, Vadim, I think that's that's the biggest thing.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and you're you you said I believe you you had mentioned you have another man working with you on your in your project now, and that's that's starting to spread the word.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: Work with him, help him, help, help him become better, whoever that is, and what can you learn to do and how can you spread the word?
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's all about that.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's all it's really it's about helping other people.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: That that's that's what the world's about.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly, yeah.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: So also I have uh question.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: So uh you still uh you still run in businesses, right?
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: Is it one business or or multiple?
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh multiple, and uh the big one right now is that we're uh we we do training as a service, and then we also do everything with uh explosions that are non Pyrotechnic, a lot of flame, but it's non-pyrotechnic, smoke, sound, uh, total battlefield immersions for the military.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we also do it for fire departments, uh, for for law enforcement.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's uh we're not only here in America, we're also now uh Australia, Germany, UK, uh, we're we we've now gone global.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: And um it's it's really exploding.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's growing very quickly.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: But it's about training, it's about it's about saving lives.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's about how, you know, it's like a firefighter.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, here let me put it this way.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you take a room that's 10 feet wide and 20 feet long and 10 feet tall, in the past, the only way if you were a firefighter that you could kind of be disoriented is they used fog machines that made it look foggy.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's but when the fog gets hit with water or gets hit with heat, it evaporates.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's gone, it's clear.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, our product is our smoke is non-toxic to role players or to firefighters.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: You can use it for all sorts of training scenarios, and when it when there are smoke cartridges go off, they they go the smoke goes up like it's heated.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's a thermal layering, it goes to the top and fills from the top down, and you can fire use fire hoses all day long.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna put it out, you're not getting rid of the smoke.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: You might move the smoke around.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: But we can take that room that's 10 feet wide, 20 feet long, 10 feet high, one smoke cartridge, and within 20 seconds, you can't see a thing.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: Then we use sound, and the sounds, we've had we've got such powerful sound systems that let's say we and they're all in all this is controlled um uh uh remotely, remote control.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you could be a thousand feet, you could be two blocks away and set off smoke over there, smoke over there, smoke over there.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what a backdraft is?
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: When you when you open up a door or a window, okay, and the flame comes out, it seeks the air.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we can create backdrafts that are totally shocking to everybody in the fire, fireworld.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, amazing.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, but you fire, you do that remote control.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I I see you, and you're gonna be going into uh start to open the door, and you're gonna you're just gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fire it.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: Boom.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: I just hit the button.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: Flame blows a door open, flame comes out, you you're you're terrified.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the sound systems, we turn the sound systems on.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: You as a fire department or fire chief or a training officer can choose what you want, and we will do it.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: So it can be fire engine sounds, it can be uh ambulances, it can be dogs barking, people screaming, it can be the chatter, the noise chatter on your microphone or your hearing aid, but it's so loud, so much smoke, explosions going off, you don't know what you're doing.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: You do not know what you're doing, you are lost.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's training, that's real training.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you can get through that and start to learn it in the real world, now you can it's not it's not pretend.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like, okay, you come in the room and I'll pretend like you can't find me.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: When we were up at the FDIC up in Indianapolis, that's the world's biggest fire convention.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we had a room that we we put a dummy in it, but nobody could see it.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: We did we did it from behind, and we would put a dummy in a chair or a a mannequin, tied it to a chair, and we put a patch on the shoulder.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: Then we would get a fire, you know, any one of a lot of people want to volunteer, so you want to volunteer.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to go in there, find the find the mannequin in the chair, and tear the patch off the shoulder and come back out, and you've got 30 seconds out of out of 35 or 40 people that did it the first the first day, only three survived, only three found it.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's how, and people came out, and so the fire chiefs they can see it because on one side we have clear plastic and they can see the thermal layering and stuff.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: They can see their firemen or their one of their battalion chiefs go into the smoke, but they can't see them.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's so dense, it's so thick.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: So that's real training.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: And what we just got done with the Air Force, uh, we were out in the southern deserts of uh New Mexico in southern Arizona, and we had uh small vehicles going around, and then they were trying to hunt them down with drones, which you're familiar with that word.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: And uh when they did it, when they got close, if they got close enough, then we can set off a remote explosion that they got the vehicle.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, if they didn't, then we don't set it off, and they failed on their mission.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it's uh but it uh we we can blow flame what they call the bleve.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's a boiling liquid evaporative vapor explosion, and we can blow it, we can blow flame 300 feet in the air.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's from a what we started to call it the Moab, the mother of all bombs, which is an American term.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: And uh now we call it the beast because that way in the civilian world they don't get offended by the word Moab, you know.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: I see, yeah.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's sounds really cool.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, I never I never heard about this this industry.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's uh yeah, it's very it's very um it's it's very consuming, but it it can save lives.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you look at it this way, if I can save, if if we do a training seminar and or we you you you as a training department, which that's what they're doing, they're buying our equipment and uh using it.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's really we're four, five, six, seven sales a day.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh big departments, uh big cities, uh airports, uh around the world, we're starting to really, really, really grow.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_00: But if we save one firefighter's life through training, if we can get him to understand the the all the noise, all the smoke, all the all the the fear, all that, and we can overcome that.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: What if he what if he's able to save 20 lives throughout his career?
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we didn't save one life, we saved his life and 20 more.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, Jay, so most people retire at your age, but what keeps your fire burning?
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like what's what moves you?
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm alive.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_00: God's kept me alive.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: I I I why should I quit?
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I'll be 77 years old and I I'm I'm I've got more going now and more interested in life than I've ever been.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I I I could get around pretty good, but I can't walk anymore, and I can't use my right arm for much of anything.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_00: But it's it's up here that you think.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_00: You use your head.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you your your body, and when you're doing whatever you're doing now for a job, yes, your arms working and your hands working, but you're thinking about it.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's what you've what your intent is and where you're going.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's what you're gonna do with your podcast.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_00: Where are you gonna go?
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: What do you want to ask?
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I I I just I God's kept me here.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm alive, he he I certainly could have died.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, five years ago, I had COVID Delta so bad that I was I spent five months in four hours four five months in four hospitals, and they had told my wife to go home and and uh make funeral arrangements that I I will be dead within three to five days.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I just I wouldn't quit.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't quit, wouldn't quit.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: And uh uh two years ago in June, I got I was in a car accident.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: I got hit from behind a little bit.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: It pushed me across two lanes of traffic, across five lanes of traffic, uh, totaled my vehicle out.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they finally got me cut out and got my wheelchair out, got me out, and uh I had one cut on my leg, one cut.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_00: That was all, you know, and uh so God's got me here for a reason.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: I believe it with all my heart, and I'll tell the world, and and he's got you here for a reason, you know.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, whether everything is for a reason, in my opinion.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, and you've got a purpose, and that purpose is to help other people, that purpose is to to to reach out to others, and and and I think your purpose changes throughout your life.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_00: When when you're when you were a a boy or young, up to say the age of eight or ten, your purpose was to uh maybe uh take the trash can out or go go pick up something or help help your dad or your mom or your family.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it depends.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: Every everybody's different where they're raised.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um even farmers are different.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: Some don't have cattle and some do.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so, you know, and then from 10 to 15 or 15 to 20, my life changed and my purpose changed when I went in the Marine Corps compared to what I did when I was on the farm, you know.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_00: And when I was on the farm, when I was in high school too, Vadim, I I I when I was second half of my sophomore year, my junior and senior year, um, I that we had a small agriculture factory that made grain dryers and pickup reels for combines for wheat and oats and soybeans.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I got out of school quarter to four, I started work at four o'clock, I worked till 12:30, got home about one in the morning, got back up at 5:30, did my chores, helped my dad with his chores, and then I went back to school again.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I I got four and a half hours of sleep for two and a half years.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: So by the time I went in the Marine Corps, I was used to 20-hour days.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't, it wasn't a big deal, you know.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I was making, I was making more money with my hogs, my cattle, my soybeans, and my corn crops that I had for ag projects and working nights at a factory than any high school teacher was making.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: I was making more than the principal was.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it would, but it wasn't about the money.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: I was learning.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_00: It kept me busy.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_00: I learned about life.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_00: I learned about cattle.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_00: I learned how to feed hogs.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_00: I learned about this.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: I learned about life and death.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you see the cycle of life.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's uh it's like where you where you're at is not as dramatic as it is 300 miles west or east of you, towards Calgary, for example.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_00: There they have a real a real winter where it gets 20, 30 below zero in snow.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_00: They have they have a nice spring.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they have a nice spring, you know, and the flowers come out.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: The summer is a little bit warmer and nice, and may even be hot.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then the fall, the colors change, and you know, uh, it's like in Banff, BA, you know, Banff.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's beautiful up there.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_00: I I love it.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I've been there several times, and I I it's gorgeous.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: But that the falls are beautiful.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_00: The falls are the best time of the year, in my opinion.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some rather maybe like it in the wintertime when everything's covered with snow and the the trees are all beautiful.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_00: But what I'm just saying is it's a cycle of life, it's a cycle of time.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_00: And if you learn that as you get older, and I'm in the winter of my life, I I don't have a lot of years left, but I'm gonna make the most of them.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna do something with my life.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_00: I I I want to I want to achieve something.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_00: And uh whatever I've done, and I've I've helped a lot of people, I've started a lot of companies, I've I've profited, but I've not profited at anybody's expense.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think it's more important to do for somebody and help somebody than worry about making money.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: Do you need to make money?
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, of course.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: I understand that.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: But it's like I'll share this with you too.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's like being an entrepreneur and working with people.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: You may have a product or you may have a service or you may have something that you can sell along with what you're doing now for a company.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're if you're going to explain that to me right now, how do you know I even need it?
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: How do you know that I want it?
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: How do you know that it's necessary?
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: So the best thing to do is I would say to you, Vadim, uh, boy, you've got a great operation here.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_00: I I really enjoy seeing what you're doing.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_00: But do you have the time?
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_00: Would you take a few minutes and show me around your your company or your operation and tell me more about it?
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, sure, you're gonna do that.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna say, okay, yeah, I'd I'd like to do that.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when I come back, I know more about what you're doing, about your operation, about the direction you're going, the number of people you have working for you, who you're serving, that what product you're providing.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: So now when I go to sell you my product or tell you about my product to see if you're interested in buying it, now you understand that I care about you.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: So this is what I want to say.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_00: People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: True.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's true.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_01: Also, Jay, I want to ask uh how has faith helped you to go through those uh impossible seasons of your life?
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_01: Is it a big thing in your life, as I haven't discussed, right?
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it it's it's you know, we we we did the Sunday school thing.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I went to Sunday school, perfect attendance when I was a kid, and we went to church, you know, probably about 30% of the year, but it was it was more about saying grace before you had a meal.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's more about thank thanking the Lord for your food.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's more about when you go to bed at nighttime saying a prayer and thanking the Lord for for the uh your day and for your life and for grandma and grandpa and how things are going.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh we hope that Uncle John, who's sick right now, gets better, you know, or what can the doctors help him with, or how Lord, can you step in and do something?
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I I don't that's why I said before I faith played and belief and and God.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_00: I knew they were there, I knew they played a part in my life, but it wasn't until I really broke my neck and got through that and worked my way through that that it really impressed me or impressed upon me.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_00: That that's that's really that's something that's never gonna end.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, our countries can come and go, wars can come and go, wars can start and happen, but God is always there.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is always there, he's with you right now, right?
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he's he's he's blessing you.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_00: And and and if it's not God or Jesus you believe in, and maybe it's some other faith, that's that's that's up to you.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's up to that's up to that person.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_00: I I understand that.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, whether it's Buddhist or whether it's you know, whatever, uh that that's up to that person.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, Jesus is the one that said, I am the way and I am the life.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_00: And if you believe in me and why I was here and that I died for your sins, you shall have everlasting life.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus said that.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody else said that.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't say if you if you say hello or or pray six times a day, you're gonna live forever.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's not what he said.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that that's what it is.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think I I just believe in it.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I'm still going, Vadim.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_00: I I that's why I believe that I can still hang it.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like you said, I'm gonna be 77.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_00: Most people who some a lot of people retire by the time they're 60, 62.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_00: But but why?
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you can help other people around the world or in your area or your community and serve other people, 100%, yeah.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_00: Why not do it?
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because one day, one day you may realize you should have, and now you can't.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what I think.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_01: Also, um a little like final advice from you, I would maybe for our listeners.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: If you could leave listeners with one piece of advice, what is it?
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_01: Especially maybe for a younger generation.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what would be your advice in life about life?
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_00: I I I I can't do just one.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_00: It might be two or three.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: But but one of them is I've I've written a book, Vadim, that's out now.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's doing very, very well.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's called The Strength Within You.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's Always Too Soon to Quit.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_00: And you can find it on Amazon and stuff.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a it's not a very long read.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it and it what it does is it it talks about some of my medical things and dying, but it also talks about where you can find that strength within you.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_00: Is it in your religion?
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_00: Is it in your your faith?
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_00: Is it in your family?
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_00: Is it stuff you've experienced?
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: Is how do you how can you find that strength and then use it to move ahead through all the problems that you're gonna face throughout life?
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_00: So my advice is look for the strength and find the strength within you as a person.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care who you are, man, woman, what race, what what country, it doesn't matter.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_00: You have a strength within you that you can use to better yourself and help others.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_00: And realize it's always too soon to quit.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_00: Too many people quit right before they could have had the answer, right before they could have solved the problem, right before, right before it was there there was the answer.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_01: They were so close, yeah, but they decided to but they quit.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it's always too soon to quit.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_00: And and then my final thing is that I I think what what lies behind us, the things we've been through, the things that have happened to us, and the things that are ahead of us, the things we're going to work on, achieve, and work towards are very small matters compared to what lies within us.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because the strength within you is already in you.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's what you've experienced.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's stuff that God's given you that you've experienced, and use that to help move forward in life.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_00: And another thing is I I think really is always dream big.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_00: Think, think, have a big vision.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_00: Look down the road, but take small steps.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_00: Take little steps at a time.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you ever trip and fall, or you ever don't go the right way, you can if you're taking small steps, you can correct it.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_00: You can make it, you can, oh, whoops, I can change that.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_00: But if you take big steps and you fall, you may never get up again.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you it may not be you may not be able to to get back from what happened, you know.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's a that's a lot of it.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_00: Just uh it's find the strength within you.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's always too soon to quit.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_00: Think about what you've been through and where you're going and use those strengths to help you.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_00: And uh just just there again, never give up.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_00: It it's uh right, right, right.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, Jay, and w where People can uh come contact you and uh buy your book.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_01: Is it neverquitting.com as I remember you.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I I I do have a website and it's kind of funny that you know what I when I was looking for a website, I didn't it's like when I've talked before about it's always too soon to quit.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_00: I just don't quit.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_00: I just I won't quit.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_00: I I if I can move a millionth of an inch, I'm gonna move.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna do it.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's like it's like watching the grass grow.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_00: You can't see the grass grow.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care who you are, you can't see the grass, but all of a sudden the grass needs to be mowed.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_00: How did it get there?
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like you know, so you just keep moving ahead.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_00: But uh but I I typed in never quit trying and it came up and I thought, well that's crazy because I doubt that you probably have ever quit trying, and that's why you're doing what you're doing now.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're moving ahead in life.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_00: But neverquitrying.com and there's a little information on there.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm gonna improve the website, but there's a there's a uh list on there.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_00: They can order the book on there, it'll take them to Amazon.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's a link.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um but but I I'd be yeah, and then if somebody would like to reach out and ask me a question or say something, I there's a little form on there that says, Hey, uh Jay, we what I just talked to a lady yesterday in in uh California, Northern California, that's they're looking to buy uh uh bed and breakfast and and do some Airbnbs.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing is uh they're t they want to know about making them handicap accessible.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, who better to talk to than somebody that's paralyzed and a cripple?
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean somebody that's dead and uh we better build her and build homes.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I understand that.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so it's just just always keep moving forward.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_00: Never stop, have a good attitude.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_00: If if you're gonna be down, give yourself a limit.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when when you get down someday when things aren't going perfect, when things are tough, okay, I'm gonna be down, I'm gonna feel sorry for myself, I'm gonna whatever.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_00: Give yourself say, hey, what I'm only gonna give myself one day and then I'm gonna get back up and I'm gonna go.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna do good again.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, neverquitrying.com or the link down below.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_01: So talk with you and yeah, okay, Jay.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for an incredible conversation, inspiring stories.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_01: And thanks everyone for watching to the Talk Block Show.
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_01: And make sure please to subscribe, and we'll see you in the next episode.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_01: Bye bye, bye bye.