Special Guest: US Navy Vet & Twin Screws Foundation Owner - Jesse Cook

In this episode, I sit down with Jesse Cook, founder of Twin Screws Foundation, to talk about hunting as therapy, the veteran mental health crisis, and why doing hard things in nature might be the key to healing. From submarines to elk hunts, Jesse's story is raw, powerful, and deeply inspiring.

Links:
Website: https://www.jessievirga.com/episode29
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drvirga 
Podcast equipment: https://amzn.to/3BxWVTf
Book list: https://amzn.to/3zYwYMo

Transcript

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there's a sense of taking a life where and that spiritual connection that you have when you when you do it and then it increases your resiliency there's actually growth that happens inside your nugget did he work with wolves a wolf pack and then a wolf sanctuary the first rule is you can't die for the moment you you release the trigger on your bow or you really or you pull the trigger you break the trigger on your rifle and you kill something all the work that goes into that right and I know D1 athletes that are amazing they're D1 athletes but they recognize when somebody can help it and what you win a Weatherby 12 gauge shotgun and all its upland shotgun about a 700 dollar value Nomad Turkey vest and a hundred dollar gift certificate to Nomad uh hey Jesse Cooke I am um who I am that is who I am I am Jesse Cook I grew up in a a little suburb or a subset of Olympia Washington called Boston Harbor real real small community Little Harbor down there the name kind of applies it right we we lived on the water and kind of homesteaded it a little bit um when did I graduate high school I I can tell you that I can go real far back 1995 all right I'm an I'm a I'm a product of the late 70s and 80s um I am a military veteran I'm a submarine veteran aviation and surface warrior um I joined the Navy when two weeks out of high school um I went straight into the submarine forces what I did right so when when I was young about 10 11 years old um the USS Olympia which is still a submarine in commission today that's how old this is this so this was in the mid 80s it came to town um and my dad uh brought me and my brother down for a tour and I was completely blown away by what I saw um the crew uh just everything was just so I don't want to say secretive but so unique and so different and so cover and nobody knew anything about submarines or what submarines did I just I I I fell absolutely in in love with this secret society and I'm so much for I even went home that night and I built a submarine rack underneath my parents coffee table and from then on that's all I wanted to do was be a submariner I mean as soon as I turned 17 I I signed up for the delayed entry program and that's what I wanted to do um fast forward I joined the Navy I went to submarine a school for to be a radioman um in turn if it's a little submarine rate history job history is there's a lot of rate not conversions but mergers uh to consolidate down to only to a couple key key jobs and so I went from being a radioman to an electronics technician and which I still did radioman duties which is just communications off external communications of the submarine um and I did that for a majority of my career um but in that communications piece you learn not only satellite communications line sight communications HF you name it uh you also have crypto security um a lot of incident management stuff in there you learn about hydraulics you learn um everything there is to know about a submarine all the jobs that you have to do to perform to operate a submarine um I did that for 23 years I was a submariner from from the brand new to peeling potatoes in the galley to uh being a chief of the boat which is his most senior enlisted that you can be on a submarine over the course of those years right and then after that I decided to see what the rest of the Navy look like and I was a my next job was the command master chief of VFA97 the Warhawks which is a which was an F18 squadron out of Lamore California they since um went away from the 18 so now they're in 35 squatter we started that I started that process when I was a command master chief there and then my final tour was the command master chief of NAS Fallon Naval Air Station Fallon up in Nevada that is probably the best duty station outside of being a submariner I've ever had that my Warhawks I know some of my Warhawks you're gonna listen to this and that crew is absolutely amazing but I had I had a search and rescue helicopter squatter that fell under our umbrella Top Gun was up there also so I got the to mix and mingle with those guys and then every single the strike group Airwing that would come through for training through Fallon and so I got to interact with every strike group and that's I mean I think we average around 30,000 sailors a year that would come through for training and that fell under our our umbrella and I got to work with every single one and that's a lot of people and I had an absolute blast and then I ended up retiring at 27 years in 2000 20 20 one 2,021 I had to think about that 2,021 and stayed retired for a little bit and then I got a job for a government contractor for just about six months just to it was boring I sucked I quickly quit actually I resigned right before hunting season they were coming up I had no PTO saved up and here's my 2 week notice and like what are you talking about I go it's hunting season man because you're quitting huh yeah it's kind of important yeah and then a priorities yeah priorities those are my priorities was my mental health right which we can talk about a little bit later in regards to hunting and outdoors and the way I approach it but and then I ended up getting picked up for a company called Yale August which is smart locks smart Wi-Fi locks which we now we're bigger we're a part of a bigger company called Fortune Brands which owns Moen and Therm TRU and we got like smart showers but I'm a part of their connected products group best way to describe a job I'm a chief of staff for the connected products is the best way to describe that job it's a director level job which is pays the bills right um and then from there I started a non profit which I'm the chairman of called the Twin Screws Foundation um it is veteran based but it's not exclusionary to just veterans but our goal is to bring active duty an active duty component um doesn't matter the branch with a veteran component and we bring um the two communities together in outdoors right out or outdoor activities be at conservation be at hunting be at something away from the noise of life so we can understand each other talk about issues and and go through some really go through some challenges together um I chose specifically hunting just because um the flavor of hunting I do is called it's a backcountry hunting so I not a fan of sitting in a tree stand or a blind and waiting for something to come by and eat some corn I'm not I'm not a I don't have that kind of patience which is funny because I'll sit on a ridge somewhere for three days straight and just glass which I guess is not the same thing as sitting in the blind waiting for something to walk by it's just maybe a better view I guess yeah but you have to get out of the you have to get off the ridge and then go hunt something right by sitting in the blind and shooting something which that's not to say I mean that's that is a it is a a very well practiced method of hunting right but I'd prefer um the solitude of back country and even if you're with one or two people that you're you're hunting with or people that you care care for there's still a a sense of solitude with it um my uh my main hunting buddy I got I got a I got a few guys I go hunting with but my main one he uh me and him have been friends now for I don't know how long um but we can literally do two weeks hunting and say three words to each other and there is no question that we we got each other's back and what we need and what we want and the the it's nice actually those are the best kind of friends especially when you take them into the back country it's like I'm here for a reason yeah we're there for a reason and we know it we like we talked about it and and so like my my fiance she goes what do you guys talk about when you're out there like nothing we don't really talk that's me yeah it reminds me of a I have a I have an uncle my best friend growing up he's army veteran he believes in a fair fight so he only goes like Bowie knife hunting he doesn't take a firearm holy cow he's insane I love the dude like he's very like hippie kimonosabe like very at peace but you take me to the backcountry for a hunting trip I remember the first time he took me and I have my little 22 rifle right and he's like that's not a fair fight and I'm like 15 year old me it is yeah yeah he's Bowie knife hunting it's crazy cause he was the only person that caught a deer that trip so yeah I guess there's a there's a there's a conversation to be had around a fair fight and an ethical fight right um yeah I mean like Fair Chase right so every state has their regulate I'm every state's regulations are they're all very different in a sense they're all kind of the same it's the it's what you need to do to maybe get a tag or apply to hunt is vastly different per state but everyone has built in fair chase right they don't necessarily maybe say fair chase into the regulations but they're all built in like you can only hunt from this period of time with this particular cougar with this and this and you can only take this animal or whatever the case is right and yeah because hunting has gotten so efficient um you have to put in those fair chase things um yeah no I think they're doing a pretty good job at least the regulatory agencies that are out there doing a decent job at and incorporating exactly what you're saying this this fair fight but also to efficiently control the population and not right you know right it's it's management of our resource right of I mean wearing a shirt I hear public land public land owner it's it's a it is it's management of this resource right so back in I mean let's see absolutely go down this road so in the 1800s early 1900s right we almost decimated every game animal that we have from white tail deer mule deer to Elk to buffalo um wild turkeys right and um basically well when Teddy Roosevelt came around he said so hunters if you want to hunt these things you need to fix this and that's what our modern the current model of American conservation kind of came from right was was this and saying okay you're gonna hunt these particular times in these and this is what the money goes to and everything else taxpayer money oh and here's some taxes that you do on your firearms or whatever weapon you wanna shoot this tax now is solely for this purpose right like the Pitman Robertson Act um you can't use that money for anything else right it goes to each state is allocated certain funds from that for their conservation efforts and if the state decides to hey you know what there's a lot of money in this Pittman Robertson thing let's take some of that money and build sidewalks in downtown whatever well now you're going to have those money in jeopardy and you might not get any more funds ever for your conservation through your state through your wildlife organizations and stuff like that right so um I'm I'm huge fan of our model and a lot of the well none of the world outside of US and Canada's very close um follows that model yeah I it correct me if I'm wrong it was Teddy Roosevelt who or established I shouldn't say founded but established Yellowstone correct was it during his presidency I believe that yeah cause that was the first national park I remember that was um not something that he intended during his campaign my fingertips yeah yeah I was like I'm pretty sure that's cause I know Yellowstone is the first national park and then I believe it was Teddy Roosevelt um I remember listening to the story it was like a painter went to Yellowstone and painted these pictures and actually brought it to Teddy Roosevelt and was like this is like what we're trying to conserve and he he went through and concern and establish the national park USG Ulysses S Grant is actually who is it grant okay yep in 1872 I'm like I remember it being president from that time so there we go for everybody out there who's curious about yeah what what how the National Park Service got got founded but um so I want to back up a little bit so what um I'm curious about making connections here so uh your upbringing you said it was kind of homestead ask where you're from is that what established your um your love for the outdoors that and my parents right so the homesteading piece was really neat I mean my parents were hippies right they were and when I mean hardcore hippies my dad grew up in San Francisco nice um in the city itself went to Vietnam came back from Vietnam moved up to Washington state met my mom um but all that time was between bouncing between San Francisco I mean if you ever heard stories of like Hayden Ashbury in the late 60s and San Francisco early 70s my mom and dad were like front and center and all that and then they go up and like our first house was a dirt floor right on a on a way I literally had a dirt floor in 1976 um and I think we had I don't know if we had donkeys I know we had a lot of chickens my dad actually filmed a TV show for his call he went to Evergreen State College if anybody wants to Google what like oh my god liberalism and and what protesting means look up Evergreen State College yeah um uh uh but anyway he filmed a TV show called Crusty's Coopin in the late seventies uh from our chicken coop that was actually like part of the house it was like attached to the house it wasn't a separate building it was part of the house yeah and um and then from there growing up it was all just we we provided for ourselves right we had everything we needed for ourselves um in regards to except for like salt and pepper okay um and then um my dad who who put the who paid the Bill how he paid the bills was he was a DJ he was on a couple different radio stations um growing up he had a morning TV or a morning talk show right and through the area he was he was really quite known to the the Puget Sound area um but his passion was art my dad was a no shit artist a photographer black and white photography um and and that was always his passion and so he actually he had a couple of big things where he did he worked with wolves um a wolf pack and then a wolf sanctuary and he also did like other things with crows and everything else but his his philosophy was we're religious too right we weren't super religious family but we were we were a Catholic family but we didn't really go to church that much because the outdoors was our church and my dad always kind of instilled that in us and so we would go camping all the time we were in the woods all the time we you name it we did it um Cub Scouts Boy Scouts we blow all that was we did that because just that way if he wanted us to be self sufficient be able to take care of ourselves and no matter what we did and how we did it right and then through him and watching him do what he did in his craft I Learned to really appreciate especially the older I got more appreciate it and the more I wanted that life right being in the Navy being in the service you know this and sometimes you're just not in positions or in locations where you can really do that it's it's tough right you're kind of forced camaraderie in some cases uh uh uh you're around people maybe you don't want to be around and then you're around people that you absolutely love and you'll die for right well think about you'll die for everybody that you're serving with but there's there's there's friends and there's non friends is what I'm trying to yeah and then um when I retired it was really it felt like the handcuffs came off of what I could do um with my time especially in the fall I didn't have to worry about a ship schedule I didn't have to worry about a mission to accomplish right then and there oh my god it's right if that mission fell right in the middle of Elk season during the Elk rut mission comes first right I'm not I'm not going out and chasing animals and like some like I live in Texas right so first day of deer season they got their priorities correct yeah right but um that was my love that's where it really came from and we worked at like animal sanctuaries growing up animal rescues I mean there I couldn't tell you how many raccoons baby raccoons and skunks have been through my house yeah right there's pictures of me doing the dishes with a rack with raccoons crawling up my leg or a baby skunk on my shoulder or a great oh my a great horned owl my dad rescued a baby great horned owl that had fallen out right we took it to the animal sanctuary and there was this and they're like oh it's healthy you just keep fed but there wasn't there wasn't enough room they were getting other animals in and so my parents decided to bring the great horned owl home and raise it and that owl grew up and it basically made a home in a tree in the backyard and every time my dad would go out and work on his computer or do something the owl would just land about 10 15 feet away and hang out with my dad and it was like I guess not Mr Magoo but and then there was a crow also he raised the crow yeah so I literally I would come in the backyard and it'll be a crow and an owl yeah haha like a backcountry doctor do little right backcountry doctor do little exactly right right and it was it was pretty neat but I mean I got to learn a lot of animal husbandry um just taking care of and recognizing and understanding how animals behave um I think all that plays into hunting which I guess it's a contradiction right because I mean I love animals animals are my life and and and I appreciate them but I hunt so how how how do you actually I'm gonna ask you Jeff how do you reconcile that so it's pretty interesting I've had this conversation before um especially since like for example my mom is a vegan and is married to an avid hunter he just came back from a bear hunt in Canada so um the way this is the best way yeah I love my mom well I'll talk about her in a little bit because I think she really aligns with this conversation um I love my mom she's my best friend but um the way I look at it is that the way we mass produce our meat these days is less um is less humane then a hunter cause a hunter is gonna go out is gonna carefully select the animal that they're going to hunt based on regulations and based on choice like we're not always hunting those a lot of times hunters won't hunt those even if they have tags for them right but we also we use the entire animal we use the pelts we use the bones we use the Antlers we use you know all of the meat and I I think that is a more sustainable framework for um for you know capturing and you know going and getting your protein so for me I'd rather go and hunt what I mean I'm just it's just me so I'd rather go and hunt one deer that meat will last me the whole almost six months then consistently going to the grocery store to purchase meat plus I think that there I kind of fall into more of like a hippie esque when it comes to this but like I think there's such a connection with the animal that has sacrificed himself for you and like the process that it takes to actually go out there and get that animal it's I'm not driving to the grocery store I'm not driving to Costco and buying 25 top sirloin it's like no I'm gonna go actually hunt that bison I'm gonna earn this meal I don't know I guess it's kind of like the way I yes I I 100% agree with you right um um I think there's an absolute spiritual side of it right where where you have that connection with what you're doing and you're the one there I mean well there's there's a satisfaction in knowing that something that you harvested that you worked very hard because I mean for the moment you you release the trigger on your bow or you really or you or you pull the trigger you break the trigger on your rifle and you kill something all the work that goes into that could be a year two years three years four 10 years to do that right there's a lot of work that goes into that that and isn't known it's not on the surface it's not on your social media feed right it's not it's like oh you just go out there and kill any animal you want it's really easy no the fuck it is it is not easy in any way shape or form right and that spiritual connection that you have when when you do it and then there's a sense of taking a life where I mean people argue that okay in today's world we don't have to do that right and that's that detachment that's that removal um I think every human needs to experience death in some way right in a lot of people I mean even even a loved one right if if one of our loved ones my my dad passed and oh shit almost 20 years ago now right and he he passed the cancer um we're still not not Lenny Light right not did anybody else's experience but kind of my own is we're there's still a detachment from that meaning that we may be in the room say um when that loved one passes that's it you're not the one really taking care of that person or their their body afterwards right the the the processing the the and embalming all these things or the cremation right that's kind of your very removed from these processes and when you go to hunt um and you and you take a life you are 100% the only person responsible yeah right the moment you pull that trigger you now own that life and you need if you own something you need to take ownership of it and treat it as if it's if it's the only thing in the world to you right um and I don't know if you ever listened to Steve or Nela you know who he is no I don't he's a meat eater meat eater podcast meat Eater TV show oh I do I just bought his book he bought a he had a book right he's got a lot of books which one are you talking about I just display at Barnes and noble I have to go check I was at Barnes and noble two days ago picking up books for my book club yeah it's his books called Meat Eater oh there's a yeah he's got a bunch of great one American Buffalo probably the best American Buffalo okay I've read of his I got a bunch of them out there I follow him I followed him when I was at Barnes and noble because his social media handle was on the book but anyway sorry go ahead yep yep um well he said something he was a I think it was a discussion at a book signing or whatever it was but he had something uh he goes um I like the idea of deer more than the idea of a single deer and I'm paraphrasing that I think he said something sure right he goes right he goes of one deer's life is important but I like the idea of deer in general hence the conservation piece comes into it yeah right and then he would challenging anybody in there he's like listen I know more about a deer anatomy biology behavior whatever it is than anybody in this room combined it's because I hunt them and then and as result is and where he was going with it is his intimacy with these animals yeah right and and knowing them and I I mean that resonated with me more than anything else that he's he said or done and and I absolutely respect that um so yes I like the idea of animals and that we have to do that through conservation because humans I don't want to say we fucked up this country um but we want to live everywhere right and we want to live on that beautiful mountain right over there or that that that's got a beautiful view okay well by doing that what are you displacing well yeah I don't want I don't want mountain lions in my backyard so we're gonna have to get rid of those right and you think of overtime and things like that I don't want a grizzly bear in my backyard we have to get rid of those take a look at California right yeah all through the state of California you're not gonna find a grizzly bear there's they actually want to bring them back that's that's completely different discussion that's yeah kind of comical actually but um but as a result the the prey go unchecked the prey go unchecked yeah and then the rest of the ecosystem kind of goes into a tailspin right Yellowstone's great example they reintroduced wolves the predators to the Yellowstone ecosystem a number of years ago and now they're talking and there's there's now foliage and green and trees and things growing alongside rivers because now everything's coming in check um but now it's still a roller coaster right um here's a good example my front yard I got 25 acres and um at any one time if I go out at night with my little night vision thing I can see I can count probably about 20 rabbits yeah and if I drive into the gym early in the morning they're running across the road in front of 20 rabbits right well that's because I have taken six coyotes in the last four months off our property I got neighbors down the road that had chickens disappear another neighbor had a dog or a cat disappear last year right and so we're kind of on a coyote thing right now like hey let's get rid of the coyotes we want to have these things well as a result the rabbits are coming out of my ears now yeah they're gonna eat stuff and yeah right so I need to either a take care of the rabbits myself which I'm okay with because I actually enjoy rabbit or I let the coyotes come back in and do it right and when the coyote become too abundant and the rabbits don't well coyotes now will eventually die off whatever reason they do not yeah that natural selection yeah natural selection right coyotes also have a thing to if food is if food is very very scarce they'll actually um limit their litter size yeah so it's funny that you said that cause I I had an issue with rabbits and what I did was and my neighbors hate this and I know they hate this but I put out water for the coyotes in the summertime because for me I'm like they're looking for food and water and if I give them the water it's gonna attract them to my house they're gonna handle my rabbit situation and I'm gonna be able to retain my pansies every time I plant them outside so for me it works cause they they keep eating my flowers yeah right and and honestly nature is full of that and um I had a house in Connecticut okay and I had put this I planted a tree in my front yard and immediately 10 caterpillars came in and screwed up my tree and I'm like well I don't want to spray I'm I don't like spraying things if I don't have to spray things um just because I'm that's a whole different discussion but anyway I'm like okay well what eats tent caterpillars or these particular caterpillars I'm like oh blue jays okay yeah well how do I get blue jays in my yard oh black oil um sunflower seeds yeah so I started putting those all around shit yeah all the caterpillars got eaten yeah right so you you're attracting one animal to take care of another animal that's how I garden I actually was just talking about this on my social media um so I I started something 3 I think it was three years ago now it's called the hunter's diet is what I called it okay where I I hunt for my meat and I grow everything else and I have to go to the store like my grocery Bill is nothing compared to what what it would be if I was going to the store especially with all the inflation stuff and I get my I don't have chickens but I have a really good bartering system with the lady who lives around the corner who has chickens so I bring her peppers cause she can't grow them um I bring her peppers and stuff like that and she gives me eggs like old timey type stuff here in Southern California but um that's how I garden like I was having a problem with aphids so I was like okay I need ladybugs what attracts ladybugs and then um a bunch of praying mantises are now taking over my yard um but I thought they were gonna be a bad thing but they're freaking awesome cause they've eradicated all of the other issues that I'm having with pests but my big my problem now is I don't wanna attract snakes so because you know the eat the the food cycle that's going on right the food chain so right you're creating it you got your own ecosystem yeah so like well the one thing that really helps now like double like a two for deal is the coyotes help because the coyotes eat a lot of what the rabbits would eat the mice and things like that so I haven't had any issues with um I haven't had any issues with the uh with the snakes not to jinx it but um yeah I honestly the little ecosystem I have going on and now I have a a murder of crows haha that live in the tree a murder of crows haha and uh I can watch those crows all day I don't know what they're doing but they're so entertaining yeah but crows crows will have a crow funeral oh really you know what they're doing right now cause the leaves aren't back on this tree yet but they're like breaking the twigs off I think they're using it I think they're using the live twigs because they're more pliable for make turning into like an it's just so captivating cause like every other birds gonna pick up twigs from the ground the dead dry twigs and here's crows working the twig off of a live tree because it's more pliable I it's I also live in wine country so like there's Hawks and falcons and that whole ecosystem cause they're the only real predator for crows um but yeah it's I 100% agree with what you're saying I think that there is a balance in nature that has to be respected yep so yeah absolutely speaking of balance what does nature provide mental health and in regards to specifically what my kind of desire is is a veteran mental health yeah yeah let's talk about that your foundation it's not a yeah it's I'll tell you it's a probably one of the most complex thing and I'm not a doctor right so any discussions here when I talk about mental health to let your audience know not a doctor yep it's practical applications yeah was that Brooklyn Nine Nine the TV show yeah not a doctor it's a good show but it's it's so the foundation really got spawned out of a hunting trip up in Colorado we were doing some over the counter archery Elk and I had a couple of friends that I had served with that just I got a bug up my ass and hey you've never tried this do you want to try it let's try something right and it's and and one of them I haven't even honestly talked to like in 10 years we weren't we were we weren't very that close so to speak right he was he's retired Master Chief I'm retired Master Chief but I knew that he wanted to try it right and so um reached out and hit this and he went and bought a bow and we showed up and then another friend of mine that was actually he was a first class of mine when I was a young chief um and another young man who actually had the the Test Step podcast Ellison and then I got together with a couple other retired master chiefs that you always go out there hunting and then we all just made a big hunting camp and we got done with it on how good it was and you know we'd sit around the fire at night and have a couple of couple of adult beverages and talk about okay well how can we how can we share this experience right and and ever since when I retired when I was when I was active um my goal actually my entire career goal was never to let me let me let me start there my entire career goal was never to get promoted I I that was never in my sights which um I don't know if that's normal for a lot of people who join the military I think when you first join in the first few years you're like oh how do I get the I need to make more your goal is to make more money get promoted but to make more money right you gotta you you survive you either kept your head down and you just did what you were told and you know if you saw something wrong you try to make it better at least that's what like my dad taught me that he says whatever is something wrong and you know it's wrong what can you do to make it better and it could be just maybe just being quiet might make it better who knows right but I mean that's a that's a judgment call here but anyway um not once did I ever try so what that means is so when I was a first class I was the the leading petty officer on the USS Hartford right and um I had a great crew a great team I had an 8 8 9 radioman at any any given time and we were all the first classes on that particular crew were qualified everything on the boat that we could qualify right and so to break out like you know how about like the early promotion the must promotes when you want to try to get promoted or make chief or whatever the case is you the competition was so close that um everybody stopped giving a shit right we weren't trying to get one up on somebody else or anything else like that um I don't want to say the first class mess is a is kind of cut throat but I do know that if you look at any first class mess across the Navy and if one of those first classes in there maybe has a hiccup or screws up all the other first classes will go well I get to move up a little bit regardless of how what they say or anything else like that there is a piece of them that say oh I get to move up a little bit yeah um it might be kind of cynical of me to say that because I am a very positive and optimistic person but there's a little bit of truth in there and I found myself one time doing that and then I immediately I don't wanna say I flagged myself but I'm like that was absolutely the wrong thing is how can I help this person who just fell how can I get them up because if they fall and think suffering the rest of us the rest of the crew their crew their team their chief their whatever is is the the workloads gonna be a little bit more right and being in the submarine force we're already um undermanned right every job is already short handed enough and we can't have anybody else come off the plate um so anyway so like when it came to make a chief I was actually I was down in Georgia going to school um I had just transferred to the PCU the Precon unit New Hampshire and my buddy called me up one morning he's like hey you make cheap fuck you talking about you're on the list I'm like why am I on the list who put me on the list he goes dumbass you made chief you got selected I'm like I don't know what any of that night he was you took the test I go yeah my chief told me to go take a test I thought you had to do that anyway freaking whatever I yeah you don't get promoted off a test as it as to make chief that's just make board yeah right well I never submitted a package I never did anything make chief so I went to the USS Texas um amazing amazing tour I got to bring it to the North Pole first Virginia class to the North Pole I was one of the ones who wrote the procedures and did all the testing to surface a brand new class of submarine at a North Pole which has never been done kind of scary since it's never been done and they gave my dumbass the hey you write it haha so what do you gotta understand about physics underwater uh uh hydrodynamics and a 70,000 ton vessel with a nuclear reactor to surface it apparently they thought I had the knowledge for it apparently I did because it worked we did I'm I'm here um I'm still alive so is everyone else yeah right but uh uh then I made Senior Chief not not long after that I never put in a package it was time and they said hey your name you here's your star like oh cool um I was out the sea on I was riding a boat helping to do an inspection um as an ISIC I work for a squadron immediate superior command and we're doing an inspection I'm on there and I got a I got an email saying hey you're you're chief of the board your command boards happening in two weeks the day after you get back from this underway I'm like I didn't even do a card right that wasn't really necessarily a career goal so I we did the card I Learned everything I Learned from one of my mentors and next thing you know I'm the chief of the boat of the USS New Hampshire as a frocked senior chief nice meaning that if I got a a in trouble I would have been a first class all right nice yeah you know you get you get that promotion taken away because you're still not paid as an E8 yeah you're gonna go be an E6 and from there I put on the second second screw blade and but anyway so that all that being said was my only goal throughout my entire career was to have I and I think this is came from an insecurity of my own knowledge and my own abilities um I still suffer from imposter syndrome heavily um I don't think I have the capabilities that apparently I've demonstrated I have but if there's some kind of mental thing going on inside me that okay right um I just wanted to make people around me better better versions or better at their job so they could fucking help me it was like the most selfish reason to be a good person yeah hey right whatever works right yeah like if I can get you really really smart at your job that means you can help me be better at my job because I need a lot of fucking help right yeah well turns out that's like the definition of what they want in a leader I didn't know that yeah and that's where Twin Screws came on so when I retired it's I needed I wanted to continue to help people because mostly it it it stems from the veteran suicide piece of it um uh uh you see stats online you can Google stats like if I were to Google this right now I'm actually curious what today says how many veterans commit suicide oh look at that it's already pre filled out in Google yeah it's sad that it's even trending yeah I wish it trended in other places right now the average is 22 21 it's dropped that's a good thing but but why I think that they're yeah it's so yeah you see what I'm saying is yeah that's that's a mind blowing number to me right um now I know the reasons are there's no there's no one reason so you can take a couple of years ago there was a full bird captain right and 0 six he was a Navy seal Navy seal commander and he took his life right and right after he took command to one of the teams or one of the one of the dev groups I don't I honestly don't remember and I don't want to misquote that but he took his life well two days later uh uh a friend of mine I saw a person I served with took his life he was a submariner they are completely different fields different backgrounds different experiences like 100% right I can see the the team the team guy maybe had suffered explosions near him right or something where there might have been concussive forces um not only those concussive forces but maybe he saw trauma something that he couldn't he saw something maybe down range that he couldn't help he couldn't fix that really hurt him right something along those lines in there they there's there's maybe more got the dog barking I'm glad I'm my headphones are in because my dogs would be up here right now right but there was something maybe you can maybe point a finger a little bit more clearer on somebody who is in combat right not specifically him but just in combat compared to the submariner which we don't see combat right we're not in constant nothing's exploding next to us it's a very rare instance that maybe you have a high pressure air rupture which if anybody's experienced forty five hundred pounds of air being dumped into a sealed environment your eardrums will rupture right it's nothing inside nothing internal that I know of um is gonna do that um but nothing what a combat veteran will have um so why are veterans still doing it is kind of going that that that was my my that's my that's my goal maybe not find out the specific reason but maybe get more of an understanding and maybe figure out the commonalities between those two extremes and there's a lot of stuff in between those two extremes yeah that makes sense yeah I think the varying degrees of mental health issues amongst veterans there has to be some commonality some plane out you know other than they both served yeah you have like the combat veteran who's experienced severe levels levels of trauma that's more um a little bit easier for people to understand um having to deal with a lot of what that job entailed but then having someone on the other end of the spectrum who maybe didn't see combat maybe didn't have as you know as a traditional term like as much trauma as we would have thought um but yeah maybe it's like maybe like surface trauma right so stuff that we can see maybe we can tie it to to something service related yeah and that's not knowing every single person who um what was their childhood like what kind of stuff did they go through what has been repressed what anything else like that what did they see prior to the service what do they do in their personal time right um yeah is there alcohol involved is there other drug use involved is there something um are they on an antidepressant right um anything like that yeah there's over the counter antidepressants right there's there's all kinds of things that you can maybe get in to try to make yourself better self medicate that can really lead you down it and there's just it's it's overwhelming when I try to think about it too much but I needed something to bring um veterans in active duty right so when you become a veteran and I know you you hope well I hopefully but I'm pretty sure you experienced this and I know I experienced is the day you stop putting on a uniform there's a sense of relief and then there's a sense of oh fuck what do I do now right it's there's it's it's almost it they it the Band Aid is being ripped off almost too fast um regardless of what your transition time is right you could have had six months at your last command going hey you're getting out you're getting out you're getting out and you have like by the time there's like two months left you like you have no duties you're just breathing extra oxygen right that's your only job is the the breathe oxygen while you're at work but as soon as you take off the uniform it is the same level of to me it was the same exact level of of fuck what do I do with my time what do I do here where's my purpose at and then after a while it starts festering and then you start you can either it's very easy to go down the wrong road um and which I think I think to a degree I think every veteran does go down that wrong road a while right and it's who you maybe who you have around you or your mental fortitude whatever the case is it kind of bring you back onto your path or at least teeter on that line um a little bit but like so the things that we experience as as veterans in these these these suicide rates they don't start when you become a veteran this mental health issues don't start the day you get your DD two fourteen right um they they start somewhere early on and that's where my hopes was with the act of duty piece of it is going to understanding what they're going through and so that way when that young soldier sailor airman spaceman right Marine um if they encounter something while they're in they they can take maybe a tool they learn from us and apply it through their entire career and impart it upon some of the people that work for them as their career goes right um because you know as well as I do I'm pretty sure at your command or one of your commands there was either an ideation or an attempt or successful suicide right yeah yeah there as military police I've responded to a lot of those well I was with security forces so yeah you responded to him but how about in your group in the people you work with your specific command itself right the one you the people you were close to yeah I'm assuming there was an I at least an idea I mean that is like that's a safe stat I can say that every command experiences in some way well what happens what happens in the command when that happens right what is your skipper your skipper comes down your exo your shift commander what what happens like walk me through like four or five days of what happens when something like that happens yeah if someone has expressed any sort of suicidal ideations the first thing that they're they're taken to medical there's usually a 24 hour hold depending on where you're at so if you're um if you're near an actual naval hospital they're brought to the naval hospital for 24 hours for evaluation okay and then what happens to the rest of your command though oh yeah it's everybody covers down there's a you know usually the X O C O will give a talk to all hands um and then it's changed a little bit from the time when I first joined to when I finally left they when I left the last time we had that talk it was um providing some resources on buns on buns was there um usually somebody from the naval hospital would come on board um yep it's a playbook yeah right they're they're running a playbook they're running a playbook yeah yeah it's an SOP and yeah it's a standard standard playbook now there's there's two reasons and this is not to knock it because it yeah hey you have to make sure you know the commanders that really really give a shit about their cruise and then the ones who are kind of going through the motions right and I'm going to assume all commanders really really give a shit about their cruise and so when they take this sop they take it they're like alright I have to do this how can I personalize this how can I make it that it I am actually no shit giving a fuck about my teams and in the same breath they also have to make sure they are legally covered because if something happens within 24 48 hours with another crew member all shit not outside of the morale and outside of giving a shit about your crew big Navy will commence to pooping all over everything and dismantling every single thing that you have right they looking at your retention I mean no kidding retention record because I've been through this every single thing is why is this command screwing these people up yeah and it's this cookie cutter response and also within a week come come day come that next working Monday I don't want to say it's brushed under the rug it's pushed aside it is pushed aside hundred percent and it has to be because you still have a mission accomplished yeah right you you still have things to do you still have to get the boat underway you still have people to protect you have to get the air you have to get the helicopter in the air right you still have to fly you have to have so many hours of flight time for for the aviators or if you drop below that that that floor of certain hours you're now 90% risk of running into a mountain right so you have to maintain these things and the mission has to go on and the only way to do that is to compartmentalize it poop it away shove it into a drawer in the back of your head yeah so how can I as a veteran working with veterans bring that to an active duty component and understand it's not they have to go out there and change the world right now the the things I'm hoping to to do with this foundation and and getting these active duty people with us is if I can they can impart a change that maybe makes one person make a different decision in 10 years that's a win yep this is not an overnight solution this isn't we're fixing this tomorrow we ain't this ain't we ain't fixing it in the next two years right this is getting one person to change their mind in 10 years in 15 years in 20 years yeah I think kind of going back to what you said about the commands efforts and following this like cookie cutter approach I think the stuff that you're doing really humanizes those efforts because I feel like it's very obvious that they're reading from a script um it's very obvious that they're doing what they're supposed to be doing to cut not only cover themselves but it's like yeah they care but there's it's not humanized there's no real personal effect to it um I had a really good captain my very first captain uh Noter Dame fan it was a captain hall absolutely American absolutely amazing he was like he was the first CEO for the USS America was my precom okay he put like Notre Dame signs like Lucky Irish all over the ship and he's like you know Notre Dame we we hit these on the overhead as we leave the ship as we pass through you know certain hallways officer country and he was I don't know what it was about him just very charismatic leader but he really gave a shit like he knew pre cum life sucked and he did everything he could to make it better and we had I didn't have any issues like as a command especially made with security forces we didn't have a lot of issues um as it relates to mental health that we were aware of and even and even throughout but it did start to you know this like that dark pathway really started to rear its head for a lot of people and what we saw was a lot of the cookie cutter responses after hall left from the preceding commanders cause they just didn't know how to handle the situation so no because he he established a great a great rapport and and reputation and in a relationship with your crew right yeah um it's very very hard to follow in those footsteps when the previous commander senior enlisted whatever it is is is that good um everything always falls short and you're always gonna you're gonna have a lot of issues every time a commander gets relieved right it does good or bad reason they got relieved or you get a new chief of the boat or command master chief is because you have a different you have a fresh set of eyes and you go in there and you see different issues and you see things right and then you might see well this person was too friendly and this is what the cause of the too friendliness is and now we have all these other admin issues or whatever culture shift yeah right it's a culture shift and so that's that's a hard challenge right and it's it's probably the hardest thing that you can do in the service is changing a culture that doesn't need to be changed yeah at least yeah I think the culture change really come from exactly what you're talking about like the stats on paper are we meeting strategic goals on paper and to do that you have to break the culture or change the culture to check the boxes on the paper but right I'm curious though so so you have so if your foundation you have both active duty and veterans what does that look like like if I was a veteran and I signed up like is it are they retreats um are they events uh more events right now so we're we're one year we just had our one year anniversary last month right so we're brand new and we had two events last year we had a Turkey hunt up in Vermont and um a pheasant hunt in Colorado all right and this year um we're gearing up we got a we got our second annual Turkey hunt up in Vermont which I'm gonna talk about here a little bit too cause I gotta do some plugs for it cause we're doing a raffle for it and then we're doing a Elk hunt in Washington state in September right um now for the Turkey hunt is a little bit easier because I can have more people join that right we got 10 people going I got two active duty three active duty three or four veterans myself the the farm owner who's a veteran who's a submariner like I was good friend of mine but anyway so and then we're also looking at a retreat here at Lost Pines Bed and breakfast which is down the road for me it's great people they love support veterans and it's a very secluded little bed and breakfast that was an old um there's an old farm that they kind of turned into just these ran like a carriage house now they just updated it and they turned it into a 1950 style room that you can rent right and we're gonna do a little retreat there and where we'll have somebody from Austin so you ever heard of PBA post post base abate um so they have chapters all around right um I'm pretty close with the Austin chapter and they got some people who do like breath work um they have a yoga they got somebody's like we love doing yoga this is the lady that comes out and so she's gonna come out and you know we'll do some yoga classes in the morning sunrise yoga and maybe some breath work um physical fitness is a huge part of all of our events which I always want to do right but if you go to the website has a volunteer page and you get onto that so we have an events where I want 10 people I go basically random I get a little random generator right picks numbers boom boom boom I'm pick these six people and I just call them and if they're not available it's the next whoever whoever can do it and whoever do that right the Elk hunt this year is a little bit different where it's going to be it is a backcountry Elk hunt where it is extremely physical and extremely hard yeah um my buddy uh Sam who's gonna come we've already got him gearing up and doing some sit UPS for this one yeah uh uh because it is I mean it's it's gonna be a 20 25 mile 10 12 miles in and then if you actually get an Elk in Washington which is Roosevelt Elk and those are 12 13 14 pound animals yeah even dressed it's gonna be a workout bringing that thing back out yeah it's a bad it's it's a long day bringing one of those guys out right yeah um and there's no no motor vehicles you can get back there with so no yeah anybody's ever tracked an animal knows that you're gonna get in the brush you're gonna get in there yeah if you ever track an animal in western Washington or western Oregon oh yeah it is a completely different thing than anywhere else on planet earth except for maybe Alaska yeah right um or the Northern Territories but uh uh so that one is just that was very very small right we were any we will have a content guy Sam and myself and that's that's it yeah um going going into that particular one but so we got the Turkey hunt retreat and um the Elk hunt for this year um now what I'm really thinking about doing is because we just uh uh we just let go two board members um hired one board member on I'm actually looking for one more I need a vice chairman out there but uh we're possibly and I really like how PBA does chapters um I think that would be absolutely amazing it's almost like are you familiar with backcountry hunters and English is it like a group or like this the concept of it cause I'm familiar with no it's it's a it's a no kidding non profit nationwide non profit right so interesting okay yeah yeah bha um there's there's the nationwide one right which isn't like veteran it's just everybody who wants to do it and they're a big advocate for public land yeah and um they a lot of litigation they got some great lawyers they got some really really smart people on there so when people wanna like approach on public land and buy public land we can go in there and say no and then we have a voice on Capitol Hill right well there's an Armed Forces Initiative branch of BHA on the AFI which is veterans and I a dear friend of mine he's actually the chairman of it um and we try to work things out with him but when I was in California I was the the California rep for BHA where you have a lot of bases and a lot of sailors on this base that are maybe from other states and they want to hunt California and they have no idea how to hunt or get through the paperwork or the policies or procedures whatever it is for the state of California because it can be intimidating to hunt in that state if you're not from there and I would put together pint nights and this and like hey hi okay you want to do this well this is how you do it and I would be like get people out on base who've never hunted in that state and we go out and do a duck hunt or whatever yeah case or a long range shooting clinic right so but anyway they have a chapter format right along with PVA and I'm thinking of leaning towards that right so we had an event in well one of our board members he did a an ice fishing and they called the day the Twin Screws event ice fishing in Connecticut nice hell yeah yeah so that I'm like you know what I think we need to do that so my Pao he lives in Colorado right so if he wants to do an event my treasure lives in Colorado also she raped her and her husband yeah let's gather something right go just do a Pine Night get together invite people out talk about it oh there's a fitness event um I did it's called TFX the fittest experience in Texas it's a big big Crossfit event hosted by um Crossfit Central out of Austin Jeremy Teal and his his family and his entire team put this big big event on well they invited me to have a booth um for free thank you Jeremy and we raised almost $2,000 that's awesome just sitting there during this fitness and hey what's this twin screws thing like oh yeah yeah this is this and this and this I mean yeah it's here's the money yeah I have a lot of people I wanna network you with cause uh the submariner that I talked to he's in Oklahoma owns a Crossfit gym very big into the mental health space and then there's Libo Risk which I talk about all the time um it's a Marine veteran who runs these wellness retreats but on that page there are lots of people who you know like I um I posted that I own land in Wyoming and I was offering it to veterans for free I'm putting two hunting blinds on it you just have to work with the state if you own over 100 acres in Wyoming you get priority tags so um and I can pass those to whoever I just write a letter um yeah I know we chatted about this yeah yeah I need to get on that volunteer list no priority tags I think it's awesome I think anybody who's ever been out there like I started um fly fishing tincara fishing specifically cause I backpack and I'm getting back into it but like anybody who's ever done any backcountry hunting you know that when you get out there sometimes you're like super bored and uh and that's great but like for me that's how I got into fishing so I have to look up that that non profit that you're talking about because I'm curious to see what initiatives they have going on cause I have the um Casper Mountains is right next to my land and the Casper Mountain River runs through it so it's obviously not owned by me and you can't own public water but um it my property bumps up against BLM and I bought I bought that property specifically because I'm not building on it I refuse it's kind of like an extension of BLM but that's a conservation piece so okay so you have it like a couple hunts going on um how do folks sign up for those is it just they fill out that they're interested and then you go through the lottery I do yeah and well on the website itself it has like what events are coming up right so if you want to sign up for that specific event um it's probably not a link on that specific event you just go to info shoot the email and it go the emails all go to me and I'll answer right back I mean I we don't get a lot of emails so I got plenty of time to respond back so what is it we're still a fledgling fledgling non profit I mean you guys are growing but I think it's interesting so I'm curious how do the tags work then I mean obviously the Elk thing is just gonna be you and your buddy but um so yeah okay so I'm not a guide right I'm not a licensed guide in any state um uh but if you look through um a majority of the regulations the state regulations is you don't need to be a guide if you are hunting with a non profit or for not profit Idaho has got a great little clause in there right and we actually talked about with the BH a guys hey get in this clause how can we put this into Wyoming Utah Arizona Colorado yeah name the state right so what we do is we pick a if it's an Elk hunt right um what over the counter opportunities are there okay um that is or a high percentage of draw right and so we'll do a lottery anything like that with this like I said over the counter easy so if you're gonna go hunting with me and you're gonna do an over the counter and I want you to go Elk hunting with me but archery we're going archery okay a little bit easier um I'm going to give you in it I I try to make it as simple as possible but I also want you to do your own research and to the regulate cause you're responsible for your hunt correct I am not responsible for you killing the wrong animal right yeah um but I'm going to ensure you kill the right animal you you buy everything you do all the stuff yourself and just give me the receipt right and I'm going to reimburse you 100% okay right and now if the person um I haven't encountered this yet but if we got it we got it in the plan is if say say you can't afford um that's and some of these tags can be a you know a 700 dollar Elk tag for say Colorado over the counter yeah um because you're a non resident okay let me know I'll front you the money right yeah right out of the foundation or my own pocket and let me take care of the finances whatever the finances are right yeah but I will make sure that you have the money so you can get the tag before any deadlines um if like they say it requires a lottery mostly it's not gonna be Elk because Elk lottery party tags are not easy to get um they're yeah very very hard and I want to do something where it's it's gonna be relatively there's going to be success of you getting a tag or at least an opportunity yeah there's a that's what's happening right now in Montana I put in for the lottery and it's archery tags the lottery in Montana is just insane Wyoming is a little bit easier but um okay so I'm gonna shift gears a little bit because this question is just burning in my brain right now burn away so anybody who's not familiar with hunting after if you're in the back country and you you hunt something you actively you know you kill something in the back country you have to cry you have to drag that shit out of there like you're hiking out of it so how do you are you using game bags how are you guys you have like like Terra frame backpacks like I use a Mystery Ranch Terra frame hunting backpack um which has like modular uh game bags that you can use to carry it out but how how do you um well 1 what's your method for dressing while you're out there and how do you how are you um you know breaking it down and carrying it out so I do gutless um if I'm by myself um my primary method is gutless okay um because it's well I want to say it's easier right it's definitely easier but it's a step that you necessarily don't have to take um if I had to move an animal from point a to point B to get maybe a safety reason because where the animal died and I got you got to be able to recover it and I got to move it up say 100 yards up somewhere else then I'll do a field field dress right there and and got it out get it as light as possible so it allows me to move it yeah because that can take up there's a lot of weight inside oh yeah yeah um but if it's in a safe spot gutless I know basically you lay the hide back almost completely there completely skinned out I take the quarters off right um quarters game bags um I don't have a specific brand that I like um I don't like I I believe you you get what you pay for and I like using game bags that I can reuse yeah so Argyle uh high country um they have some really really great game bags you can get large ones medium whatever you want um they're very easily reusable they're synthetic so they breathe they allow to them the meat to get a good rind on it to protect it yeah and keeps the insects away um get those and I hang it in a tree preferably in some kind of shade if there if that is not available um to hang it at least shade or or sometimes even a creek you can put it into a creek bed buddy of mine did a cow Elk by himself and the only thing available was a creek and so he would put the meat in there so he would in and out um but gutless and then once you do that you get your straps off you get your quarters off get all the rib meat neck meat that you can um on an Elk I found it easier is if I pop one of the rear ribs you can really easy to pop yeah cut there and I can actually get a hand right above the gut sack and pull out the tender ones yeah right um then I roll it right over on top of its own hide and then repeat that process and for an Elk it was about two and a/2 to three hours to get it completely bagged up now once it's bagged um hiking those things out of there right um if it's a real real real far far far hike and I haven't had to do this one particularly yet by myself thank god I would debone it um I don't like personally I would rather have the bones because I like making bone broth later on down the road yeah oh yeah but to debone it right and that's a lot of weight also um actually a friends of ours actually deboned it we help him get it out and that was in that was in Colorado but anyway that different different story um packs some kind of pack that has an external frame yep out there just because you can remove it and a lot of them have meat shelves or storage shelves that's how my Mystery Ranch has got a great one right I use my first one was Everly Stock um I had an M1 frame which is I mean you can put freaking like you can put way more weight than you can physically carry on this backpack yeah um it's pretty awesome but then I went from there I needed something a little more versatile uh so I went with Stone Glacier and I run uh uh the same frame on my stone glacier depending on where I'm at I got a thirty three hundred pack or a 60 500 um liter um just depends on which one I want to run right and it got plenty of accessories you put stuff on the collar and the belt anything else yeah but it's got a great um meat shelf and you need to practice using it prior to going into the back country because you may be doing this in the middle of the night and your headlamp may die and so you gotta there are so many straps and buckles things you gotta unbuckle and yeah right and if you don't know that shit yeah it's a long you're just now you're just taking off your shirt just tying around it maybe trying to hold it on so you can get out for some daylight right yeah but uh that yes game bags good a a solid backpack um I don't know if I said this yet but I'm maybe I did with game bags is you get what you pay for yeah okay you I'm a firm especially in back country stuff where equipment if it fails it could be really painful if shit fails be it physically mentally whatever the case is um last year two years ago I took a black bear a 400 pound black bear uh New Mexico I was by myself and um this was actually so this story I was hunting in Colorado for 30 days prior to this for archery season um and in 30 I covered probably five to 10 miles a day on my feet I only went full draw one time and that was in the opening morning oh wow 30 days I saw 29 days doing nothing yeah oh it hurt my soul yeah it hurt my soul right get done hunting I was really discouraged I get home for like two weeks and then my buddy had a mule deer tag for New Mexico and I'm like hey I'll tag along to head over the counter bear tags and so I got an over the counter bear tag and I like hey I'm headed out there I'm gonna be out there a day before you get there um we really he wanted that tag so he could scout for Elk in this unit yeah in New Mexico because we had taken both of our first Elk in this in the state and so New Mexico we've had pretty good success there anyway I get there and he calls me up right when I'm pulling in the camp said hey I'm not gonna make it I'm like by myself like what the fuck dude I'm coming out here for you but anyway I go I take the quad up I take this long trip up and I go hiking up not very far 100 yards from my from my from my from my quad and I sit on a ridge twenty fucking minutes later this 400 pound ruin comes walking out on the other side of a ridge right there was like a big ravine yeah and he was on the other side hundred and fifty yards from me I'm like are you kidding me right now I just hike across Colorado and 20 minutes sitting down yeah so I take them well I was so excited and it looked really he was pretty high up but he wasn't there and according to my map my Onyx there was a trail in the bottom of the ravine which I planned on taking the next day up to a ridge I'm like alright cool I'll just take it to the bottom of that trail and it would have been a mile mile and a half in up this trail and then up probably 80 90 yards to where the bear was well I get down to the bottom of that trail this trail has not been a trail I think since the Oregon fucking trail right this there was nothing overgrown it was a Dry Creek bed with trees yeah deadfall and yeah and it was 15 20 feet of uh uh erosion oh wow okay yeah of either side up right and I'm like oh no yeah oh no so I went all the way up and I found the shale where I remember we were marked at right and I went up the shale and big boulder shales and it's slipping and falling and I finally get up there and I get to him and he's just in this really nasty position and oh my God I knew this was gonna happen so I was able to move them around 450 pound bear by myself I moved them around so I could get them right I needed to get them so I can drag him out a little bit further and start cutting on him well it's now sunset I'm writing that 30 minutes of twilight that extra shooting light right but I'm already processing this and I'm like this is gonna be a three or four hour job I'm gonna be here all night yeah so I get him out and I start doing it and what I didn't realize is how greasy a greasy bear right every time I would make a cut or anything like that work on the hide work on anything else and how heavy was he and he would just move and then he'd slip down a little further slip down a little further slip down a little further and by the time I got done getting him into bags I had cut myself because of the fat moving my hands are cramping um we were like 60 yards from where we started where I started processing this this damn animal and now I'm like now it's midnight so I'm like all right now what do I do so I got all of his quarters down I got two of them into a tree and then I hiked two of them back I made two trips back to the quad and back and got that and so the next morning I knew I would have that right so I get there probably 1 o'clock in the morning I had two quarters in my bag and I'm like oh the hide and the head were still up on the side of the the ridge so I'm like you know what I'm already awake let me just go get the other fucking two so I made two more trips I got all the quarters back and all the meat back in my quad I'll come back first thing in the morning and I'll get the high and the hide was 50 yards from the gut pile so I didn't want another bear coyote whatever it is to get into high get into any of the other meat they at least go to the gut pile first and that's a good reason to have a gut pile if you're gonna be working overnight on something yeah you gotta leave it for the next day hundred percent yeah gut pile right it's a bait to keep keep animals away from your good stuff anyway or hang it high but so by the time I got back to camp it was 2 in the morning and I'm like well I'll get up at sunrise which is like three hours away four hours away and I'm just gonna take the quad straight in I'll go up there fold this thing up put it in and my backpack and then get it out and get out well temperature dropped from the time I got to my quad to the time I woke up in the morning from 30 something degrees to 10 degrees and my primitive freaking monkey brain thought that if I laid the hide out flat that it would air out overnight and not be as slimy with the fat from the bear well what I didn't think about it was gonna fucking freeze into an 8 by 8 sheet of skin fat and hair yeah I mean frozen I get up there and I actually did a time lapse because I went to like just roll the leg up and I went you gotta be kidding me right now and the sun still hadn't peaked over and so I set up a time lapse and it took me almost two hours I mean you see me folding and sitting and jumping on this thing to try to get into a ball big enough to fit in the meat shelf of my backpack yeah with the head just I mean this thing weighed 130 pounds easy 130 pounds and then I slid down this the shale rock on my side with 100 the the legs were nothing compared to this nothing I mean ripped clothes I had bruise from my knee all the way up to my armpit from just going down this hill on like on one side and getting out and yeah that's I'm always curious that I've never hunted anything that big and anytime I've been in the back country I'm really into bush crafting right now so going out with minimal minimal stuff but a lot of times what I um when I end up killing out there I really lately it's been fishing cause you know if you have a fishing license you tell him where you're going it's a lot easier but um I normally will will dress it and eat it in the back country um because I've never hunted anything that big so it's always when you said Elk I was like damn cause like I have the Mystery Ranch Terra frame so it has that meat shelf and Mystery Ranch sells game bags but I don't remember the name I bought them from Cabellas I I I don't remember the name of them I remember feeling them and they were like pretty thick and they had that like breathable um material to them so I was like okay this will be pretty good but I mean I got like four small bags and they fit perfectly on like a 20 liter shelf so I'm like I can't imagine a freaking Elk and like the only people I've talked to that actually done bear hunting have done like a guided bear hunt so the guys take care of it yeah they have the logistics figured out they know exactly how they're getting this thing out but to carry it out yourself like and then I don't think people realize that back country is not like a paved trail it's not even an animal trail it's like thick brush it has not been cleared out you're stepping on like five feet of leaves and roots and there's no une there's no even terrain so that plus hundred hundred fifty pounds multiple trips I'm like that's a workout right there that's what you're preparing for so it's it's it is yeah the real work starts when you kill the animal when you get it on the ground and you're earning it you're 100% it is at that point there are points where it is so painful and you don't you question everything all your decisions in your life that LED you to this point I mean there are multiple times and then you get you see your truck or you see your quad or side by side or you're camping you're like that that wave of satisfaction yeah is I it's hard to describe how I actually crave that it doesn't matter the pain I'm going through if I can get that wave of satisfaction when I arrive yeah I think the mental yeah the mental fortitude you need to actually do a hunt like that and the dopamine rush from just seeing the finish line yeah the finish line yeah the mental fortitude you go in there and you're having some conversations with yourself that you like nobody should be listening to you right you're like it's pretty good we did we're helping that we met these guys in Colorado and it was the one that they had they they boned out their meat right and they heavy right we like we met them I don't know how we ended up talking to them I don't know how that we've hunted with them actually since then and we met up a car they're from Florida but we're like hey we'll take out half the animal for you me and my buddy my buddy rowdy right well we decided to walk out it was the quickest path because it was all very down a river bed well this river bed was 50 yards wide and it was all these big river boulders and trees and just wash out and we have our I call it four wheel drive right you got your hiking poles um I in two miles yeah it took us damn near three and a half hours to get out this two mile river bed with the meat and I fell no less than 15 20 times yeah I was so pissed and angry the like I I did the emotions that were going through me were just and we got done I'm like I am never doing that again and sure shit like next year yeah right back we're walking out the same damn river bed going I I could have swore we had this conversation where we weren't gonna do this again I think right the mental health component though is so I I love like I love hiking and I was like what was the what's the next level right I love being in nature the next level was backpacking then the next level after that was like I kind of got into bushcrafting but I wanted to learn more about um trapping and like the the capturing of food out there other cause you're not always gonna be near a water source you can't always fish and I um that was kind of like the gateway into like hunting and for me establishing the hunters diet but um I think it's so important for people to experience that like just to get out into nature so how how often do you guys have trips does your foundation have trips I think you mentioned well three trips so this year we're planning on three okay next year we don't know right I want to do more but the think that a lot of it what you're talking about right beginning in the nature nature is got a a healing a very I I call it a healing quality right even if you don't like nature sitting outside by yourself in your backyard yeah as long as it's not on the highway um there's some kind of just tranquility right getting your lost in your thoughts a little bit but doing something requires a mental health I think it's doing something very hard for you not because my hard might be different than doing something for you is hard right or might whatever the case is hards are all different yeah there's different levels of it but if you do something extremely hard that challenges your why am I doing if you say why am I doing this you found the right level of hard okay yeah um but there's I mean there's scientific studies there's there's all kinds of great data out there that if you do something like that it increases your resiliency there's actually growth that happens inside your nugget right um um that that will just it makes you better healthier um there's a great author author Michael Easter I don't know if you've ever heard of Michael Easter he wrote a book called The Comfort Crisis Yep um if you have not read that I highly recommend getting that book um he goes on he talks about uh there's a I can't pronounce it but he does something it's something extremely hard that will the first rule is you can't die um but something extremely hard every single year to challenge yourself to the point of doing that right where he goes on a back country hunting trip with a hunter called Donny Vincent named Donny Vincent not called his name is Donnie Vincent but uh who's he's he's on social he's got a couple of great shows on like apple and stuff like that and they go up hunting Caribou in the Northern Territories yeah and what you have to go through to do that but anyway the whole point is building resiliency building fitness building a core like because the heart the more often you do hard shit the more resilient you're going to be in whatever situation comes up in life and the fucking confidence boost like I remember being in the bad country and I got lost and I used I kind of just like I panicked then I sat down like calmed myself the fuck down had the why the hell am I out here conversation about 50 times and then you just settle right into everything that you've been training for everything that you've been learning while you're out there and when you finally get yourself back on track back to your truck it's a confidence boost it's like damn I just did that like it's it's amazing yeah it is and then you can take those lessons that you learn like okay well how did I take that right turn instead of the left turn yeah kind of do your own little after action report right yeah and and figure out okay how did I fuck that up I got a story for another podcast about yeah that exact thing and involved Northern Nevada a cliff and my dumbass for about 18 hours in the country in the back country by myself but anyway that's a different story yeah yes it it it and that is the kind of the goal of this of my foundation is well provide a space for veterans to to get away from the noise of life to find out what our purpose is to maybe rediscover our original purpose or or find a new purpose but to do really hard shit um Vermont we have a our Turkey hunts coming up here in may and a friend of mine that I served with he he's got a 250 acre maple syrup farm yeah I was just supposed to say that maple syrup Vermont versus Canada yeah maple syrup right and it's it's an old it's kind of a decrepit farm um and so he's been he's kind of single handedly getting this thing back up and running and all that so last year we went up and Vermont's got a really neat rule that you can only hunt till noon um you can't hunt past noon so we Turkey hunt in the mornings and then we helped him clear shed move some things tear down a building whatever the case is we get some physical fitness and I brought sandbags up right um we actually didn't really get to them I did nobody else really did but it was our first event so I was like wow okay yeah we're fucking winging it but uh helping him and then this year um and I had another piece of it I had a representative from the the NWT t at the National Wild Turkey Federation they came up and they educated even we brought people in from the community is it middle sex for Manson very small community right um people came and uh they educated us on Turkey conservation Turkey habitat what wild Turkey and what it means what's the history of the wild Turkey and it was pretty pretty pretty cool educational piece and then we did fireside chats at night big bonfire um and we're repeating it again this year and we actually got more people this year than we did um last year and I'm really really excited about this but there is going to be hard shit that we got to do yeah yeah getting out of your comfort zone kind of a looting back to that book yeah making yourself uncomfortable is the goal yeah yes if you can even if it's for 1 minute 1 minute being uncomfortable right now is the benefits down the road you you can't measure the benefits of one minute because I guarantee you the next week or the next day you're gonna do it for two minutes right yeah it's going to keep piling on right and starting a fitness journey I was thinking about this this morning is when you start and I go to a visit it I'm building my gym at home um but Strive Strength and conditioning in Bastrop Texas right and they're not a Crossfit gym but they're they used to be a Crossfit gym but they have all everything you want for you do Crossfit and there was a there was a lady in there who is like her very first class and I'm working out in the corner I'm doing my own thing and I she kept looking over at me and see what I'm doing and I'm doing I've been doing this for 12 15 years right so I've got pretty good at some things and not everything I don't look at my scores for the open if you know what that is um other than that I'm okay and but it's starting your fitness journey and what does that look like and what does your level of confidence how uncomfortable do you wanna be what kind of discipline um is required to do that um I say the hardest thing is walking into the door of a gym or walking or asking somebody a question about diet asking somebody about hey how do you do this how do you do that and and eating a little bit of humble pie in some cases um and and asking those questions um another example this morning no shit a buddy of mine texted me about kettle bells and moving a kettlebell properly like hey do you know any good videos or anybody like that that can show me how to work a kettlebell correctly and this guy was a uh uh a top notch hockey player all through college right yeah he's an athlete yeah I played some baseball and I ran some cross country in high school right that was the extent of my athletic abilities yeah um he was a no shit hockey player so he that but he understood that I knew more about one thing and his his journey has been really fun over the last year with him I got him into the carnivore diet and then and the more fitness and I tell him to squat he hates squatting but it's it's great and I I saw like one video of I care about like you know what I'm just gonna show him so I know shit right before this meeting I was actually filming a couple of videos on how to properly clean a kettlebell and then press a kettlebell over your head and I sent it to him yeah you know right it's funny that you said that uh cannibal sorry but I'll I'll let you finish again oh no that's that's really the end of the story right there it's just it just it's just maybe you were a color and I think the whole thing of me saying that was if you were that athlete in high school or college yeah right and I know D1 athletes that are amazing they're D1 athletes but they recognize when somebody can help them yeah right and and that's that's very hard to do for a lot of people very hard to do and so they don't want to ask him so what suffers yeah no I I have a fitness company and one of the things I realized and kind of shifted the culture of my company was it was very much so like based on my foundation in the bodybuilding world but as I started getting into the back country I realized that I was a cinder block like I was constantly rolling my ankle and like I didn't have any of these other flexibilities and these capabilities I was strong I was in shape my cardio sucked because I was so focused on on the gym and having to again to take a piece of that humble pie and like go to a functional fitness guy who worked in my gym who he looks up to me because I have a PhD and I'm like dude you gotta help me like I need to learn how to use kettlebells like literally that was the exact thing I told him like I bought a set I don't know what the hell to do with them I'm trying to do the kettlebell swing but I don't think I'm doing it wrong cause my back hurts and yeah I had to like be like hey listen you know more about this than me and I need you to help me out with this and I fell in love with that like functional fitness side of things yeah and as someone who has spent the last 20 years making fun of Crossfit I got into Crossfit because it was so gateway drug yeah called it the gateway drug right yeah the second you touch a kettlebell the second you touch one are you doing Crossfit yeah you're gonna keep to do double under we were doing on base in Groton Connecticut we started just a little fitness group and we called it Squid Fit was our nickname for it yeah and I got yelled at saying you're doing Crossfit you're not allowed to Crossfit in the Navy what the fuck you talking about oh I remember well you're jump roping fast so that's Crossfit I'm like yeah yeah jump rope and Crossfit oh but if you combine it with a barbell yeah and it was that argument I always had but I I do I call Crossfit a gateway drug um and you can look at it through all society right so sure there's a lot more interest in Olympic weightlifting nowadays there's a lot more interest in powerlifting there's a lot more interest in all these kind of sports that were maybe you really really needed to like them and know them to if you wanted to watch them yeah right um now it's you can turn on FUBU or whatever streaming service you have for sports and watch something related to it ESPN three I mean yeah has a bunch of stuff and I think it's it's pretty remarkable when regards like functional fitness though it's how like you said you're a cinder block right I used to say I was as flexible as a piece of rebar is like one of my favorite terms yeah how can you get your body to move as if you were 3 years old yeah right you ever seen a 3 year old just go or a young child to get things done do something pick up something right have them pick up um pick up something big off the ground and you watch them get into a perfect squat you watch them move their arms their everything is straight there you're using big muscles and body mechanics yeah it's freaking amazing right like the No. 1 I think it was a joke like what's the No. 1 cause of shoulder tears is when you're driving in a car and you reach back to slap your kids yeah right because when you drive or you bench press everything gets short and compressed yeah right if you sit down a lot your hip flexors are very short you ever have that old or the granny walk when you stand up yeah it's because your hip flexors are so short and everything else they can't straighten out and looks like your ass got scratched off right because you don't have a butt anymore because you don't squat and hey there's functional fitness and I told my kids I might have a 19 year old and a 17 year old that if it gets to a point in our lives where you are taking care of me physically we need to have this discussion about putting me out to the pasture right um because I do not I I I cringe inside when I see children taking care of their parents physically because the parents now there's a thousand different reasons out there maybe somebody's decripter or anything or decripitude or indecripitude right um but because of poor choices that maybe that parent made throughout their entire life and now they're relying on their children to take care of them I I am terrified of that um I am blessed that my mother who's who's 75 4 74 if she's gonna listen to this um she is an absolute rockstar she was a black belt in taekwondo like 20 years ago and the way she is always taking care of her body and her mind is she's gonna out she's out she's out running me every day right I she told me that once she goes she goes you will never ever take care of me physically don't worry about me and she's always made it appointed to do that right and I am exactly the same way I I want to be able to kick my son's ass when he's 25 years old still when I'm right haha yeah no 100 I think so that's kind of like the I've been sharing a lot of Doctor Gabrielle Lions who um her and Peter Attia have really been making yep really making headway when it relates to really emphasizing the protein consumption especially animal based protein and um what it means for longevity and maintaining your overall quality of life even later in life so I've been sharing a lot of like clips from from those podcast episodes in their channels because I think it's really important like I even tell like I have a I have right now my main client base is all C suite executives we became more of a um like an elite fitness company but more so because I targeted those individuals because they're the ones who are making a lot of decisions for other people cause I I would have clients who are like I have to be in front of my computer for 8 hours a day because my boss has me in meetings from 9 to 5 back to back to back so changing the culture I I went to the top and um one of the things that I noticed is that there's not a lot of they don't realize that that is so incredibly important the protein consumption and just moving just moving around like I start taking my meetings you know with me on walks and but there's also that like um the mental fortitude that comes from challenging yourself from a fitness perspective but there's also just becoming a more capable person so like I would I just went out like yesterday what's today Monday yeah yesterday I went out and hired a trainer because an in person trainer cause I'm new to Crossfit this is not I'm like 100% serious I interviewed Cody Hayjack the the fitness the Crossfit owner in Oklahoma he got me so pumped the next day I went to a Crossfit gym and I was like let's go but you have to take a piece of that humble pie I am I've been a personal trainer for 20 years and I still went and got a trainer to help me with something that I'm not familiar with so you got a personal trainer to learn how to be a beginner at Crossfit yeah they already have a trainer yeah in the class so that that that's well that's something they need to address right because a lot of people think they need to get in shape to do Crossfit oh no I'm not like I've been off the wagon for a year and you don't have to be in shape to do Crossfit you no can literally have never done a single thing in your entire life and step into a class and do everything in that class they're scalable things right you might not be able to squat all the way down you might not even be able to hit parallel so squat to a box that's 6 inches below your butt yeah it's that's why I would not be where I'm at today with it wasn't for this sport yeah everything's yeah they modify everything like the little assess did while I was there so I spent the last year and a half not really working out us to is a long story but um I'm not in shape right now and I wanna get back into it but I'm not very focused right now on the things that I'm used to doing which is like becoming a cinder block so I went to the Crossfit gym and it was again everything was very modified I don't know how to freaking do a stand up push up but like there there were a lot of these modifications and things that they had do a regular push up yeah like the even like at a little bit of an angle you know your feet on a step like there's all these modifications I felt incredibly comfortable and I also went in there reminding myself that yes you might be a professional in the fitness and health space you're not a professional at Crossfit so you have to for anybody out there who's a personal trainer or like me I have a PhD in and holistic health like take a piece of that humble pie and no you don't know everything so I I love it but yeah I like it because it does it it it it humbles me every single day um so I'm I'm pushing 50 now I do there is a piece of me that really likes that if I go and I work out next to a 25 year old kid that's in shape and everything else we do it I kick his ass um I'm like it's pretty good but in the same breath is I just took that particular workout and I made it hurt me right I wanted to work I always want kind of the work out to win a little bit um and it is but it it it it is literally for everybody it gives you I like it because there is a goal right that as prescribed right this is what's on the board okay well that's my goal to to to achieve that number or that amount of squats in that amount of time or or whatever the workout is it's a goal to work towards right and if you do have to modify you got to adjust you got to scale appropriately so you can actually get the the stimulus that's desired in that particular workout and the coaches should all be saying hey this is this workout this is what you should be feeling this is what your the desired outcome is and so how do we modify that so you can get the same stimulus that the pro athlete is getting right because that stimulus it's all relative right your hundred percent is different than my hundred percent and different than you know rich fawning who's you know 4 billion time Crossfit champ his stimulus is we're all 100% what does that really mean for you right and it's it's just going it's your effort your perceived effort and uh again that's that's why I love it right this morning's workout I had heavy deads um and then a a little short minute um eight minutes of some calories on an Echo bike and some lighter deadlifts and the goal was not to take a break in between the two movements not if you go on broken on everything or you you know you go slow as shit on the bike push on the bike but the goal was to get off the bike and immediately pick up that barbell because now you're like and that was the goal of the workout for me because I look at it as training we do the open which I don't know if you're familiar with the open or anybody wants to look up the Crossfit Open right but the very first workout of the open involved burpees a dumbbell clean and jerk and walking lunges with the unweighted no weight just walk 15 feet walk 15 feet I have never been so humiliated in my own mind than when I did that workout it was horrible I I did it twice I did it at the house two days later and I barely got any better and that was with a I had a I have a 13 week old puppy jumping on my back during the whole entire thing right and I still it one day I'll be good at the sport I've been doing it since 2,010 right so no definitely definitely open my eyes to the sport and I think that I I think the whole point here is just doing things that are hard doing things that you yeah doing things that you're not comfortable with and you know being uncomfortable it's just short period I was uncomfortable for an hour that's nothing I had 23 other hours of the day to be that's a really long time in a workout oh well the the trainer was a was like showing me like proper form and things like that and still kicking my ass but you know be uncomfortable for a little bit and no I I think that's that's a kind of good way to round it out transcends yeah right all all these I looked at it as when I started the sport was the uncomfortable as you're feeling the the pain that you're feeling be it in your legs be it in your head most of it's in your head believe it or not all of this transcends what you do in life right so you're down and out maybe okay I'm in okay I have to finish this I only have to do this this and this I have to put one foot in front of the other right I just have to pick this thing up one more time I did whatever the case is if you're in life now and you're doing something extremely hard it's exactly the same thing and it could be metaphorical it could be um it could be a work issue maybe if you have a coworker and you don't and they're doing something wrong and you know how to do the right thing and call them out okay well how does that transcend from a workout and a Crossfit what's that relationship right there is actually a relationship because I guarantee you in this workout whatever you're doing um and somebody might be hollering at you whatever the case is you're doing whatever you can to finish it as you're breaking through a barrier and a barrier is a barrier is a barrier is a barrier right if you are if if you have where was I going with this talking to somebody and maybe if they're doing something wrong and you need to call them out or you need to bring attention to it maybe whatever it is and you're afraid to do that because you don't want to get them in trouble what's the greater good all right the greater good is X y Z whatever it is for the mission of there but it's a barrier that you have to bust through and I have found that if you can bust through one barrier it makes it easier to bust through another barrier even if it's not related to that particular issue yeah I linked it I did link it okay good yeah no I no I think that's a good point I mean being uncomfortable at a certain point in time you're going to become comfortable so you have to continuously push that threshold I push that boundary um or break through that boundary and get to the next boundary so for me like or anybody out there whether it's fitness whether it's going into the back country you know for me bushwhacking is always a serious challenge because um you're not relying on the paved trail and tree markers right like you're relying on if you have Onyx Backcountry definitely download it 70% off for veterans not a plug I'm not yup sponsored by them like that's a dope deal um but you know using you know can you triangulate can you use a compass do you have a backup method for navigating and being uncomfortable relying on yourself it definitely it is something that you can master in each area of life so no hundred percent question though what um if folks wanted to reach out to you sign up for one of your retreats what um where can they reach you uh Twin Screws foundation.org um this website is the easiest Instagram Twin Screws Foundation um or my personal Instagram which is Jess 1 2 7 6 uh uh but these twin screws and you can absolutely reach me on any of those um we're currently uh said we're gearing up for the the hunt in um Vermont hunt for Turkey hunt uh soon may and we're running a raffle right now uh through April 1st I'm drawing on April 1st but you can get tickets through our website um you just donate and it says Turkey Foundation and for every ten dollars you get one raffle ticket and what you win I'm glad you asked just is uh is a uh Weatherby 12 gauge shotgun and all of its upland shotgun it's about a 700 dollar value um along with that you get a Nomad Turkey vest and 100 dollar gift certificate to Nomad for clothing or whatever else you want to get um all that is just it's just one prize um we've sold maybe two we're at 20 20 $200 so 220 tickets it's unlimited I I I yeah didn't really put a cap on it it was only like 200 tickets available or whatever now just go in there because all the money this the money for these the the gun and everything else was donated by um a retired master Chief and he donated the money said hey I want to do this raffle and for you guys you you pick the gun you pick that you do this because you're more of the Turkey hunter than I am I'm like sweet so he gave me the cash and I went out and purchased everything for it we're doing the raffle and it's just straight through the website and so you'll get an email from me saying how many tickets you got and I'm gonna I put it into a spreadsheet and I'll do a drawing live um I found out the easiest way to do it by some kind of raffle software shit I just do it live with it and run share my screen on an Excel spreadsheet on how I do everything so it's very transparent yeah um and then we go through the FFL because I have to transfer the gun to myself obviously right yeah that's it says it's gonna be fun yeah yeah and then transfer well we did a raffle last year G Force donated us a shotgun right it's great and I used a company a gun company I'm not gonna name them and it cost me $1,000 for them to have me do the do the raffle for me they wanted to use paper tickets even though it was nationwide link and then when like we did the live drawing I'm like hey we're going live right now right and there's like literally 100 people waiting to go like oh we're writing everything on a raffle ticket I got an Excel spreadsheet what are we doing yeah but then we transferred the gun and in between the transfer the company one of the company went out of business so maybe I'm saying this online on the the internet right now but there's a shotgun somewhere in space yeah no that's always a pain in the ass when you buy you need to transfer a gun and like finding an NFL shop in your area that's willing to do the transfer that at a reasonable cost on top of the NFL fees so yeah I bet you win this shotgun this package you give me the NFL I am going to cover all the costs okay that's what I will cover it up and I give them my card number yeah they take it the only thing you need to do is show up and maybe pay for a background check yeah and pick the damn thing up yeah no that's that's awesome you guys eliminated the middle man so there's no problems now yeah yes yeah completely like all right that was a pain in the ass last year let's just do it this way yeah and and we're good well I want to wrap absolutely I want to wrap things up I want to give you opportunity if there's anything else that you wanna wanna say or you know tell our listeners hey uh yeah um nobody's alone it feels that way um I promise you you're not alone somebody out there is thinking of you people people love you all right and sometimes it doesn't feel that way but there really is and I get it right and and and being empathetic to it is something that I I take a lot of pride in so I wanna I'm I'm I'm always there for somebody and I'll take a phone call in morning noon night um my family understands that I might be getting up

at 1: 1:50:29

00 in the morning to talk to somebody it's it's perfectly normal in my life and I and I don't want to say I I I I enjoy it but it's something that puts a smile on my face if I can have one person stick around for one more day yeah no absolutely and I'll like I always do with every episode I'll always include resources if anybody's curious about resources that exist out you know also the you know your foundation as well so yeah with that thank you so much thank you for being here um yeah