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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on
the show 20 year veteran of Navy special operations and elite skydiver, Nick Cush.
Now in this conversation we discuss a host of topics from Nick's journey into the military,
his time at SWIC, the world of EOD, concussion, compassion on the battleground, his own powerful
mental health story, his transition, the military industrial complex, post-traumatic growth
and so much more.
Now before we get to this incredibly powerful and important conversation, as I say every
week, please just take a moment, go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the
show, leave feedback and leave a rating.
Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for
others to find.
And this is a free library of almost 900 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so
I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I introduce to you Nick Cush.
Enjoy.
Nick, I want to start by saying firstly, thank you to Travis Denman for connecting us.
We had a great, great conversation when he was on the show and second to welcome you
onto the Behind the Shield podcast today.
Well, thanks James, I appreciate it.
Yeah, definitely shout out to Travis and his brother Jericho.
Jericho is a good friend of mine and Travis is doing a lot of good stuff out west.
So I like seeing all of his updates with him flying.
It's great.
Absolutely.
So firstly, where on planet earth are we finding you today?
So I'm not too far from you.
I'm about an hour and a half or so east of you.
So I'm just outside Daytona Beach, Florida, just north of Orlando in a kind of a college
town, Deland, Florida.
There's a reason why you're there.
So for people in Florida that are in your profession, it's the kind of Mecca in our
area of the US.
So talk to me about why you're in Deland right now.
So we chose Deland.
I retired in 2016 and Deland has always been, at least for the past, I don't know, probably
nine or 10 years before I retired in 2016.
It was this Mecca of skydiving manufacturing, where they manufacture equipment and sort
of, you know, it's arguably kind of like some of the birthplace of the stuff in the states
and a lot of innovation took place in Florida, some of it in Miami.
And then the manufacturer sort of settled here in Deland with the weather, with obviously
all the aviation just outside Embry-Riddle, Daytona Beach.
And so they get a lot of, you know, aviation professions and aviation education from the
engineering department at Embry-Riddle and Daytona Beach.
So that's this little hub of a place, but it's also home to a lot of like really, like
a really good private university here.
So it's kind of like, it's got a college town feel to it.
So that's why we settled because when I retired, it was, I'm going to work in the skydiving
industry and may as well go right to the epicenter of it, where a lot of professional athletes
or professionals just go to say Nashville, they go to where everything is happening and
then something will ideally start to develop.
And that's what I did.
My son runs track and he actually had a race at Embry-Riddle.
I think it was April of last year and he does JROTC as well.
So when we got there, he was drooling over the O course that they have there, but you
could tell there was definitely a military element to it as well.
So what kind of groups are trying to pull candidates from that school?
Well, they're, they're really focused on people that have, they are.
The industry is focused on, I think what we like to see where I work is like the engineers
in the aviation world, any aeronautical aviation, pilots or non-pilots.
It really doesn't matter.
If anybody's got a passion for aviation and aeronautical engineering, there, there's a
place that the engineers are going to find.
Now, granted, it's still circled around skydiving.
So it's considerably a little bit different, but it still has, it still has its connections
for sure.
Now I'm jumping way ahead now, but before we start your journey and putting human beings
into combat, as we sit here now in 2023, obviously you have a pretty solid aviation background
when it comes to flinging yourself from some sort of plane or helicopter.
Where do you see warfare going?
As we're seeing more and more drones and you're, you're close to Emery Riddle.
What would you think that the, the combat landscape would look like in say 15, 20 years
from now?
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
No, that's a, that's a, that's a great, that's a great topic.
I think that anybody could probably discuss for hours is yeah, there's definitely a lot
of drone stuff and we're just, we're seeing it nowadays, even recently with the U S shooting
down drones that are flying out of Iran or anything in that region.
For combat, I foresee always, and I'm obviously biased, but I always foresee some type of special
operations or asymmetrical warfare is going to be a key thing for us.
You know, a good friend of mine who's just on the Sean Ryan podcast back in September,
Eric Prince, who was so fortunate to be able to spend some time with him last year was
talking about how the key to that stuff is really kind of going back to our special operations
roots and what we used to call while I was, when I was doing it was called foreign internal
defense.
It was called the FID missions.
So it wouldn't be just a regular two week J set where we were doing some type of exercise
with a host nation.
We would actually embed and the green berets historically were notorious.
This is their specialty, especially post Vietnam era and was to live, sleep, eat, train with
their host nation and actually build up the force in that, in that capacity.
So I believe that moving forward, where there will always be a place for the special operations
forces to do that, I believe that that will be their closest thing to boots on the ground.
Our big conventional platform is just, it's, it's morphed and it's different than it was
in 2001 Afghanistan than it is today.
And then the types of, you know, with the Chinese elements and the middle Eastern innovation
and technology that we're up against for sure.
Well, you have a very unique perspective pre and post 9 11.
I want to get to your journey into that, but before we even get there, tell me where you
were born and tell me a little about your family dynamic, what your parents did, how
many siblings?
So I was born in Southern California.
I was born in Pomona, LA County, and then grew up for the first eight or 10 years in
a little town.
What was a little town called Laverne just outside like San Dimas used to go to, you
know, raging waters as a kid, you know, it was like this very Southern California American
kid lifestyle.
My dad worked as a, as a financial controller for Toyota dealerships for big dealerships
in the area.
I always really good with numbers.
He still is.
Yeah.
But now I get to make fun of them a little bit because I've kind of adopted some of that
stuff with when it comes to math.
I have two brothers.
We're all eight years apart and I'm the middle child.
So for those of the people that know me, that makes a lot of sense.
So my older brother, he lives now up in, up in the Bay area.
My younger brother lives in Corpus Christi, Texas.
My mom, she lives in Colorado.
So my parents, you know, when we were growing up, we were, you know, we were, we were pretty
outgoing.
We did a lot of, you know, my brother played baseball.
I followed that played sports, but we were all, we were kind of far apart.
So we weren't, you know, eight years apart.
We almost sort of became babysitters for each other as opposed to really close.
As we got older, we obviously got closer.
And so it was, yeah, it was, it was a, it was kind of a rough childhood.
You know, my parents didn't get along for a whole lot of it.
They eventually got divorced.
And then I lived with my mom till I was about 15 and, you know, a 15 year old from Southern
California growing up in the school system, public school system there was, was kind of
rough, but being an eighties kid, I grew up really surfing.
I found a passion for the water and I loved surfing.
And I ended up moving in with my dad right when I turned 16.
And so I barely made it through high school because I was always going to the beach and
surfing and I just, I found a place in my heart for the water.
And it was sort of like, I think when I reflect back on it was an escape from everything that
I, I didn't have at home and you have a really good relationship with my dad and, and, and
I still do today.
But the spending time in the water was the best place for me, even when I connected with
some friends, it was really good because we had that camaraderie and started to kind of
form that bond, especially when we would try to really, you know, we'd go camping just
and make these big surf expeditions and sort of like make some kid mistakes and, you know,
kind of get, you know, getting some trouble and things like that.
But it kind of kept, it built that, that what I call now that early, early brotherhood camaraderie
that I, that I became, it became part of my, my bloodline for sure.
When it comes to the mental health conversation in the military and the first or second professions,
a lot of times we're looking at when we were wearing the uniform, you know, when you're
in, you know, Fallujah or when, you know, the grand fell fire in London or whatever it is,
and there's very little conversation about what happened before we put the uniform on.
And after almost a thousand conversations now, there's so many of us that were driven
to service that did have some things that were, you know, you could, you could categorize
traumatic when we were younger.
So you, you touched on, you know, the, the family dynamic, were there any other, excuse
me, any other elements when you look back now that contributed, do you think to any
kind of highs and lows that you had later in life or even your, your drive to serve?
Well, the high, I mean, obviously I really wish, you know, I wish that I was just telling
my wife this the other day.
I wish that the family, the, the family bond that we have, the four of us have, I wish
that I would have had that when I was a kid.
And I'm just, I, I don't live in resentment of that.
I am proud of what we have.
I'm just, I am glad that we're able to, you know, between my wife and I, we're able to
create an environment that was better than what we had when we were kids.
Cause that's what we're supposed to do is leave the world a little bit better than we
found it.
And the idea that we're able to do this has been, you know, throughout everything that
I put that poor woman through, through, you know, the, all the military time and all the
deployments and then transitioning out of the military and dealing with my going in
every which direction that I could to be able to cope with everything.
The fact that we're still here and we have this together is, is remarkable.
The putting the uniform on, you know, that was in 19, I got a phone call in March of
1996.
It was like I graduated high school in June of 95, tried junior college, didn't take because
I was, I was so busy surfing and I just, I skipped out.
I barely made it through high school because I was surfing so much.
And then I couldn't stick with junior college.
It was just working, you know, at a restaurant.
And then I got a phone call in March of 1996 from a Navy recruiter saying, Hey, you popped
up on a radar.
It looks like you need a job.
And so we started some conversations and then it looked like for me, it was a way for me
to still to have a job, start a new lifestyle, be part of something that was bigger than
myself and keep me close to the water.
And so I could keep surfing.
But the Navy sounded like that was the way to go.
And then as that progressed, getting into a lot of the programs that the Navy have for
special operations, that was that kind of had my aim all over it.
So, and was SWCC the first element that you found yourself in?
It was, it was, you know, I went to boot camp in October of 1996.
And then went to a small little trade school that everybody that you kind of pick out of
the gate for about three months at Virginia Beach.
And then I was assigned up to Washington, DC, when the Bureau of Naval Personnel was
actually based just across the street from the Pentagon.
It's now outside of Newington, Tennessee.
It's always there just as an E1, E2, kind of an admin waiting to go to a ship.
I was supposed to go to a brand new ship that was being built.
Down the hall, made some friends.
We were all, you know, athletes who were trying to be, you know, in shape and runners.
We were, you know, 20 years old, 19, 20 years old.
And those guys were all here going to BUDS, dive school, SWCC, EOD or whatever it was.
And so I wanted to drive boats because I wanted, that's, that was what I wanted to do.
And this is, you know, this is early, this is mid 1997.
And so that was where the SWCC stuff started.
And then I put a package in and then went to Sears School, January of 98, and then went
to SWCC right after that.
So for a lot of people listening, you know, we're not super familiar with these roles.
Obviously you'd have to go too in depth, but give us an overview on what the SWCC role
would be.
Well, so the SWCC was, it's not a new program, but it was a newer program that they really
stood up and focused on.
So SWCC stands for Special Warfare Combatant Crewmember or crewman.
And so the history of the SWCC guys or boat guys was, comes from the, the brown water
Navy guys driving patrol boats in the river, in the rivers of Vietnam, Cambodia, that during
that timeframe in the sixties and seventies.
And the history even goes back even further into World War II, but that was kind of where
we sort of laid our claim to was, was the brown water Navy guys.
And so SWCC in the modern time or in the late nineties really stood up as driving boats,
driving either 82 foot boats, 36 foot boats, 24 foot boats for the primary maritime insertion
platform for the SEAL teams.
So we would be paired up with a SEAL team, a respective SEAL team, and work with the
SEAL platoon and be their maritime insertion asset.
And so that to me was a way in to being on the water, training to be a combatant, training
to be, you know, a commando, at least a maritime type, because that was, that was where that
was my bread and butter.
And so at that age, I, that was perfect for me because I was able to take it all in and
work with a lot of guys that have been around and get around for a long time and really
get some really good mentorship, good and bad mentorship, because all mentorship, you
know, can go both ways for sure, but it's all good for me.
That it was a great time to be raised in my early twenties in that community for sure.
What's the relationship between SWCC and the riverines?
I had two of the guys that are the founders of the US side of BeaverFit and they were
riverines.
So it was a short time they stood that back up and then I think they disassembled it again.
Oh, okay.
So well, the, so the, there was a, you know, when I, when I first started in the late nineties,
there were the two boat units on the respective East and West coast out of Virginia Beach
and out of Coronado.
And then there was one in Panama.
So that would have been the old SBU 26 and those old riverine guys.
And so I wouldn't call it that there was like animosity or tension, but it was sort of like,
if you were a riverine guy, like it was, you were closer to your roots of the old PBR guys,
the old patrol boat, riverine guys from Vietnam.
And so it was a little bit more like, you're a little bit closer to real world action.
If you're a riverine guy, that was sort of like the, what it felt like.
But whenever I met or hung out with any of the riverine guys, there was no like, you
know, beef between, you know, coastal and riverine guys.
But the river, if you wanted to be a riverine guy, you had to live because they later moved
to Mississippi.
Nobody really wanted to live in Mississippi.
So you're like, you river and guys can have it.
But the river and guys did definitely continue that, that pioneer portion of the, of the
history of the, the brown water Navy guys for sure.
And what about deployments?
I'm assuming we're still pre 9-11 at this point.
Where did you find yourself going under that role?
So in 1999, I did my first deployment with, with one of the West coast SEAL teams with,
I believe it was SEAL team five out to Guam.
And so in Guam there was, you know, there's a, you know, little island in the, you know,
in the Marianas Island, in the Marianas, just off the Marianas trench, the Marianas Island
group.
And it was more, you know, 1999 deploying and it's deploying and training, deploying
and training, then doing a little bit with host nation.
We did some stuff with the Singaporeans, some stuff with the Solomon islands.
And we basically, we're always doing training, training, training.
There was a big exercise called Cobra gold that I think that they still really big exercise
that they work with, you know, the Koreans, South Korea, you know, and the whole, the
whole PACOM, the whole Pacific command region.
It was really, it was really cool just because we're now we're closely embedded with our
respective SEAL platoon.
We're just always doing different stuff.
We're doing, you know, visit board search and seizure training, you know, training on
Gulf oil platforms, doing over the beach inserts, live fire shooting.
And it's just, it's like being, doing a workup prior deployment, but now we're on deployment
and we're just always kind of training and doing stuff.
And that was a really, once again, a really good experience.
And, you know, I came back from that deployment, not knowing if I was going to continue on,
got positioned into a really good detachment, some really good leadership, and then went
back on deployment the following year in 2000 to the, to Bahrain.
So it was like to the central Arabian Gulf.
And then our deployments were actually doing, this was like one of the big pieces that we
were actually doing real world operations.
It was, what we were doing is we would go up to Kuwait and work out of the Northern
Arabian Gulf.
And as tankers were smuggling oil out of Iraq, out of the KAA, out of the, out of a river,
out of Iraq, we would do boardings and then seize the ship and then turn the ship over
to the central, the central fleet there to the actual, you know, big Navy.
And then they would take control of the ships and then basically seize the tankers and the
oil because they were smuggling through running ships dark at night.
And so we would go up alongside, Dill Platoon would board and then we would basically, they
would secure the ship and then we would take them off and then turn the ship over.
So that was really kind of like a pretty cool piece of history for me that where there wasn't
a whole lot of kinetic or types of boarding operations like that going on.
And so there was a small footprint of us that got to be able to, we were part of it prior
to 9-11.
Amazing.
Well, well, speaking of 9-11, you're already in the Middle East somewhat.
Talk to me about what that day looked like for you, what your 9-11 experience was, but
also I'd love to hear the kind of contrast between how training was viewed prior to that
initiating, and then what changed for you in the role that you held.
Yeah, it was, I'd come back from that deployment in December of 2000 and just a few months
later I transferred down to Puerto Rico.
So I actually was stationed in Puerto Rico for just under three years.
And so a lot of the missions that we were doing out of Puerto Rico were your foreign
internal defense.
We would deploy to, we would just take trips to say Trinidad and Tobago or Peru or Bolivia
or Costa Rica and just doing internal training with their host nation, Coast Guard or maritime
assets.
And so it was on September 12th, 2001, we were supposed to fly to Bolivia to do a three-week
training mission for them.
And then September 11th happened and we're just kind of glued to the, to we're on the
quarter deck of the command watching everything kind of unfold on the screen.
And just as anybody can remember that was either, that was on active duty, knew that
things were about to really, really dramatically change.
And they did in a heartbeat, but we still had a focus for us as part of the contingent
and extremist force for South America, for Southcom, we still had a focus because Columbia
was still really hot during that time with the FARC and everything that was going on
20 plus years ago.
And there was American hostages in Columbia that we were getting spun up to actually go
and be a blocking force for a respective SEAL platoon for all of these different things.
We're also working with Charlie three seven, which was the ODA group that was based out
of there for Southcom, Southcom, what used to be located in Puerto Rico.
So there was this big contingent that was still focused on central and South America,
you know, when everything was going on.
So while we did spin, spin some guys up and send guys to East Africa post 9 11, just basically
for presence.
And that was where Djibouti kind of started to stand up.
We were still a contingent force for Southcom and they didn't want us, they, they couldn't
just take all assets they could and send them to the Middle East.
And plus, I'm a boat guy and Afghanistan was landlocked.
So, so we were, we, you know, there was only so much at that point that, that as a SWIT
guy that we were part of that, that, that operation.
So I had a guest on Kaye Hernandez, who actually came with us on 7X, which we'll get into in
a little while, but she used Army ODA.
So you just touched on being exposed to the ODA detachment.
Talk to me about, you know, what made you transition from the boats to that role?
So you know, over the next couple of years, we're really good.
You know, I mean, honestly, if you know, they're not being a war going on, being in the military,
being a SWIT guy down in Puerto Rico was, was one of the best kept secrets.
You know, we got a lot of really good training.
It was when Vieques was still open.
So we were able to do live shooting over at the Vieques Island.
And it was a lot, really a lot of good people.
You can get in shape, you could get, there was good surf down there.
It was just kind of like a dream.
But yeah, then the war kicked off and things started getting a little bit, yeah, a little
bit real.
Did a lot, still did some more training trips down to Columbia.
Did a really good, a really long one, about six weeks to Costa Rica, which I didn't have
any complaints about because I was able to find my way, my way, find my way to get some
surf while I was on that trip.
But then we, Puerto Rico, the Naval base was getting braked, was basically up for getting
foreclosure.
So the, you know, Congress approved it and they ended up closing that Naval base.
And so now all of us are sitting there like, what do I do?
At this point, I'd always had this in the back of my mind that I did want to put in
an explosive organ disposal technician package.
And the time it just, it opened up, like there's this path, there's this opportunity.
You're either going to go back to San Diego and be, you know, be a boat guy into your
late thirties and forties and, or you have an opportunity to switch to this community
and then actually get into the fight.
And, you know, Iraq had just kicked off.
This was March of 03.
Afghanistan was still hot.
Here's an opportunity to actually get, you know, build a new trade.
And that was what I thought was if I'm going to spend 20 years in this military, I'm going
to get as much out of it as I can.
So now you switched from the boats.
If you wouldn't mind, give us an overview of that role.
Yeah.
So, yeah, so I knew that the process, I was reluctant because I wasn't sure where like
the SWCC leadership was going to sit.
You know, I didn't want them to think or feel that I was turning my back on the community,
but it was really good.
And, you know, that last podcast, I couldn't remember his first name, but his name was
Mike Whirlman, who was the SWCC sort of detailer who detailed all the enlisted guys, wherever
they were.
And I remember the phone call, just like it was yesterday when I told him what I was thinking.
And he said, he goes, look, man, you've done six years for the community.
Like, if you want to go, you can go.
And if it doesn't work out for whatever reason, if you fail out or if you get dropped, you
can come back.
I mean, it was really, you know, he said, you did a really good job for us.
And so there's no hard feelings, at least not from from our office.
So an EOD school being, you know, academically challenging, more so academically challenging.
It starts with dive school.
It's about two and a half months of dive school in Panama City.
And I was surprised how there was, you know, the student, the class seemed pretty deep.
And we lost a lot of students in dive school.
They just weren't comfortable in the water.
And so it's dive school.
I mean, this was this was my this was my bread and butter.
This is where I was at.
And so I felt most comfortable.
Finished dive school and then EOD school is another 10, 11 months after that.
So we're looking at around 12 with a little bit of a hold time.
There was about 14 months of training of school before even getting to an EOD command or an
EOD mobile unit and then getting worked up and then assigned and then deployed.
So it's going to be a long time.
But I wouldn't I wouldn't have traded my timing for anything because it was just it was perfect.
You know, I went over to EOD schools and E6 finished EOD school in February of 2005.
So that whole cycle of one year long, you know, year and a half long process.
And then eventually found myself in August of 2005 after my first EOD workup and taking
it all in and this new new community, new personalities and new mentors being a new
guy all over again.
And then assigned to SEAL Team 3, which I which later I pretty much found my home for
the following, you know, eight, 10 years is where I would cycle in and out with those
guys.
So you talked about the diving portion.
When you're in this new role, was there a skydiving element to it as well?
There wasn't not yet.
There was like with EOD, there is a military freefall aspect to it, but it's not a pipeline
portion.
So not everybody's going through it.
I had gone to, you know, the formerly called Fort Benning, Georgia back in February 2002
for static line airborne.
So three weeks there, that was my first time jumping out of a plane at 1200 feet.
So speaking of that, I was just at a talk here in Ocala.
There's IHMC is a big research organization and they were doing a concussion study on
the airborne candidates.
So all the jumps and they would have this kind of ballistic helmet that they could figure
out kind of what level of impact they took when they fell.
And you know, it was an interesting perspective on something that ultimately seems mild.
Now when you're in the role that you're in now, we're talking about obviously explosives
and breaching some of these other elements.
Jumping ahead again, talk to me about the TBI and concussion element of the men and women
that serve in your role.
Oh, it's significant.
You know, at the time when you're standing up against a breach, you're setting a breach
or a charge is going off, you know, you're young and we hadn't had all these studies
yet.
It was awesome.
And we're like, yes, this is what I just created on the table or this is what we're doing.
And we love the fireworks show.
And now we're blowing doors open or we're getting rid of ordinance.
So we're basically practicing demo and feeling that shock of what these chemical compounds
can do.
It's a thrill.
It's a rush.
Over time and that exposure, we have found ways, thankfully in the military, I'm sure
at this point I'm granted a little far removed from it, but I found ways to mitigate that.
And what we did in I'd say 2012, 2013, it was a requirement for us to wear ballistic
helmets while we were doing breaching operations.
Well, the ballistic was for basically for shrapnel if you're exposed to it and then
any of the door shrapnel or anything comes flying at you.
What we started to do was kind of say, fuck that.
We're going to wear our vented helmets because when that shockwave goes into it goes everywhere
and it goes up into around your head, we don't want that kevlar ballistic helmet keeping
in that blast way.
We want it to vent out.
So we would wear our carbon fiber helmets that we were issued.
And so that was a way to so I mean, a lot of us were suffering from short term memory
loss and headaches and problems with sleep while we're on active duty.
But it's just that we thought, oh, well, like we're sleep deprived.
And this is just this is this is how it is and we just can keep going.
I mean, that's that was that was the beauty part about about working with so many great
guys was that we can operate in the red and we can still operate as hard as we can and
perform.
And so but yeah, the traumatic brain injury is definitely a real thing, especially in
a real, you know, almost, you know, kind of an epidemic that's happening because we had
no idea, you know, in the early 2000s, you know, up until just really fairly recently,
how bad it really is and what the after effects are.
You know, we thought it was just like, OK, well, this is just this.
This is part of it.
This is hard and it's cool that we're so close to these charges and it, you know, I'm going
to get your blood pumping, man.
I mean, it's it's awesome.
So but we just didn't know it wasn't good for you.
I had Sarah Wilkinson on this.
She's gone twice now, I think.
But she lost her husband, Chad, you know, who's the seal.
And then Jamie Metcalfe's husband, David, as well.
And both of them, it seems like there was a TBI element.
So when you know my profession, we don't get as much of that.
You know, we have ceiling fall on my heads.
And if we like I did martial arts, so I had a lot of impacts from other human beings.
But, you know, you and law enforcement, those are communities where if we're missing the
TBI element in the mental health conversation, someone might be doing all the right therapies
and still that one portion is being missed.
Yeah, no, because it develops scar tissue on the brain.
And it's it's from what I understand, it's not it's not really reversible.
We have to have different coping mechanisms and different methods in order to cope with
it in order to basically get through it.
And it develops into hormone imbalances, it develops into which really then develops into
just personality and mindset imbalances where it's just it's just functioning on a different
on a different plane because of that developed scar tissue, for sure.
Absolutely.
I've had quite a few people say that there's promising information coming out as far as
psilocybin, not just the mental health kind of, you know, ayahuasca element, but that
compound and actually be able to help the trauma from TBI.
Oh, I mean, not to get too far into it.
But yeah, I absolutely support that.
Because I think that what what I've seen that that does is that helps.
It doesn't it's another way of coping with it, but it helps remap how we make decisions.
It doesn't change who you are.
And that was never three thousand plus years ago when they first when when tribes in South
America were using these medicines was not to change the person but to help remap their
decision making process.
Absolutely.
Well, you mentioned Iraq then.
So 9-11 happens, you change into the EOD.
I've got that anagram right this time.
So now, where did you find yourself in Iraq?
So I found myself in Iraq.
You know, first I was paired up with SEAL Team 3 in August of 2005.
And then I met the platoon.
And when I met the platoon, it was a really unique, really unique experience that first
day walking into the land warfare facility out there in Island, California, was I got
there when everybody was still sleeping.
They were already they were already had been there for a week training.
And this guy's walking down the hall and I'm in, you know, I'm in I'm in uniform because
I thought that's what I was supposed to be is in uniform driving out there.
And the guy walking down the hall walks up to me and I'm like, well, no shit.
That's my Tony.
The Tony was a team guy that was on my first deployment to Guam in 1999.
And he walks down the hallway and he's like, Nick, yes, he is.
Are you a guy?
I said, yeah, because you're in trouble, too.
OK.
And so that was that first, you know, so he already knew me from this.
He's been six, seven years prior to then putting me into this into his platoon, which turned
out to be, you know, Dr. Willings task unit with Charlie and Delta Platoon, Leif Babin
with the OIC, was the officer in charge of the platoon.
And so those dynamics really started to kind of to really take some really good shape.
You know, it got really good mentorship from those guys as well.
You know, guys like Chris Kyle, Ben Teder, Bob Holland.
I mean, the list goes on and on and, you know, form really long life standing friendships.
I'm still really good friends with Jake Heimbaum and Bob Holland and a lot of those great guys.
And we were getting spun up to go to Iraq and we were going to be doing a type of mission
that was like not all that sexy.
It was like we were just going to be doing some PSD, personal security details, what
we're going to be tasked with.
And I think we got that tasking right around February.
And then we had about a month and a half off.
I went to military free fall school, you know, sort of on my pre-deployment leave.
So I got a seat at free fall schools three weeks and out in San Diego.
And that was where I got my first dose of jumping out of a plane, at least in free fall
capacity.
When we get to the North Island to take off on the C-17, we were told that we were going
to Al Ambar province in Ramadi and we were going to basically be conducting the Sunni
Triangle conducting asymmetrical kinetic operations with the Marine Corps, with the Army and
basically being this big assist as advisors with the Iraqi Army, the Iraqi Jundis.
And so immediately while we're on the tarmac, we're like, oh shit, like this is going to
be pretty bad.
We thought we were just doing security detail, but okay.
So the quick shift in all of our sort of demeanor started to kind of happen that day.
And so we, yeah, we found ourselves in Iraq within the first two weeks.
We were out doing kinetic operations.
We were just getting fuel, doing some atmospherics and getting a lay of the land and just pouncing
on targets, taking Intel and yeah, and really doing our thing, what we're supposed to be
doing and going after bad guys and pissing people off.
Well, Jocko's been on the show a couple of times.
Leif, we were talking about him just before we hit record.
Amazing guy.
Loved having him on as well.
Great guy.
But I want to ask you a different question because I mean, first off, obviously those
deployments have been story told quite a lot now, that specific area.
However, I think the really valuable perspective that most people don't get, and I'll preface
it with this, when we're back home, when you're a civilian, you get a very polarized view
of war through your televisions.
Either kill them all, let God sort them out, stack bodies, or they're all baby killers.
And in the middle are the men and women, arguably sometimes children that we send overseas to
fight for our country.
So first part of the two part question, regardless of the politics that sent you to, in this
case Iraq, was there a point where you started witnessing horrors, atrocities, whatever it
was, where you realized, okay, there were some horrendous people that needed to be taken
care of?
Oh, without a doubt.
Yeah, regardless of politics, at the time, being in my mid, late 20s, and most of us
were all of that age, mid, late 20s, and we were older than what the guys were.
We were, Sebastian Younger followed at Restrepo.
I mean, a lot of those guys were 18, 19 years old, and over there for a long time, man,
I mean, a good year plus.
The atrocities of, it definitely wrecks, it impacts your hope in humanity when you see
the way that other people are and that other cultures are and how things just seem to be
okay.
You can sit there and say, hey, we should westernize all this, but there's just some
certain dignity that you got to have.
You can't treat people like this.
And there comes to a certain, there's got to be a line drawn in the sand.
This was in 2006, and so it wasn't something we were really ever concerned about getting
in trouble for interfering, but there's a line that's got to be drawn where your own
culture has to be implemented when it comes to the human decency.
Now granted, that can be a little bit subjective, especially in today's day and age, but there's
got to be a line that where you've got to impose some human decency in how you treat
people, no matter what.
I mean, we can look, we're directed at what we're looking at on Instagram, on the news
channels and things like that, but if you actually really look or you're able to see
some of these countries that are just basically suffering from total genocide because of their
religion, it's absurd that you've got to implement your culture in order for some human decency
to restore your hope in humanity.
There's no question about that.
And so there was, yeah, I mean, it was really bad.
I don't want to get into any gory details or anything like that, but I was, being in
the military, in combat with your brothers, shoulder to shoulder and seeing the way that
other cultures and other people sort of live and operate, it should really appreciate being
an American for sure.
Absolutely.
Well, the other side of the coin, another perspective that we really don't get, kindness
and compassion amidst these battlefields.
I've had so many people tell just incredible stories, whether it's our own men and women
in uniform, whether it's the indigenous people that you guys were over there to protect.
So what were some of the kind of moments that really stuck with you as you transitioned
out?
You know, I remember, I remember going, we were doing a morning daytime clearance and
I remember going and usually in the morning, it's really, there's not a lot of tension
in the air.
It's usually in the afternoons and evenings during prayer time.
The mornings we do these clearances and it's more of like a show of force.
It's more of a show of presence.
We go inside in this building, we've gone inside several, several buildings in this
very urban neighborhood and there's this dad standing up, not a threat, just standing there
with his daughter.
And I remember standing there seeing like he was, he put on this face, like he was trying
to be happy to see us.
He was, I mean, he was scared.
She was scared.
But I, and I, this was before I was a father and I remember his concern for her safety
and I broke out a little glow stick, you know, kids love these things at Halloween.
I broke out a little glow stick.
I think it was green or you know, whatever.
And I broke it and I gave it to her.
And it wasn't that she was just showered with happiness, but it was more just like, we're
not here to disrupt your way of life.
It's like, you know, and I could see this, this compassion and this care of this father
that he had for these, you know, these men and, you know, in ballistic, you know, attire
and guns and all this shit and all these people coming in.
And I just, that was the, that was a moment that I reflect back on sometimes.
It's like, if that were me in my house and people were coming in, the way I would deal
with that would have been drastically different.
But the compassion that he had for his daughter definitely sat with me for a long time.
I think this is an important conversation.
You hear that over and over again.
And I think one of the things that the media does that's very irresponsible is paint the
picture that we're at war with Iraq.
We're at war with Afghanistan where, you know, the truth is there's the average person is
just trying to get on with their life, but there are, you know, extremists in their country
that are terrorizing them.
So, you know, when you hear about what the average person was like in these countries
and the humanity, the shared experience of the soldier and the resident, I think it's
an important perspective that we just don't hear very often.
Yeah.
I mean, don't get me wrong, you know, like, you know, before Donald Rumsfeld passed away,
he, you know, there was a documentary that he did.
It was called, I think the, the, the unknown knowns.
And it was a really good documentary and he admitted to some of the mistakes.
I mean, it's like, yes, they made some mistakes and people died.
And, but these, these were at the time of the intelligence and the data that they were
provided, this was the best decision.
These were the, a series of decisions that were made for us to go and execute.
Yeah.
They made, they made some mistakes and where it's our job to go, you know, go through and
execute as cleanly and as effective as can be.
It's not, it wasn't a uniformed war against Iraq.
It really wasn't a uniformed war against Afghanistan.
It just, it doesn't happen that way.
It's kinetic and it's asymmetric and it's guerrilla warfare on a completely different playing
field.
And it continues to adapt.
It's this insurgency type of revolutionary set of mindset that is just, it is not easy
to play that chess game at all.
Now with K.E., I think there was another guest, I'm blanking who it was now, but someone else
was in the EOD role as well.
And they were talking about almost the chess game they were playing with the bomb makers.
And when, you know, when you guys found a solution, then they would then one up and
figure around that.
So what was your perspective when there was such a big IED element to both of these conflicts
through your EOD lens?
Oh, I was terrified.
I mean, I was, I was, I was terrified.
You know, the EOD role that I had with the SEAL teams is not EOD work every single day.
Whereas where some EOD guys were deployed into a capacity where they were doing response
work where they would be sitting at the FOB or the forward operating base, get a phone
call from an element that's out in the, outside the wire and say, hey, we have a suspect IED.
All right guys, load up the truck and then go prosecute an IED.
As simple as that sounds, it's very complex and very difficult and very dangerous.
My role as an EOD guy was the, we sort of adopted this adage of a, we're to clear the
impedance, any impedance to assault that has like an explosive component to it, an unknown
explosive, an improvised explosive device.
No, I was terrified.
You know, while being part of the assigned with the SEAL platoons, it was great because
I got to be on the assault.
I got to be on the offensive.
Whereas instead of being an EOD guy waiting for the phone call, that's more of a response
to something.
So I liked the part of it as being part of the offensive.
And so I sort of stuck with that the rest of my career as an EOD guy.
The, I was scared.
The thing was is that I adopted this mindset to where, and I used it later on when I would
train other EOD guys as I got older in the community was that I didn't want to make a
mistake that got someone else killed or hurt.
Like I'm okay.
Like wrapping my head around, I'm going to go to work on something.
And if it kills me, that'll suck.
It's fine.
But as long as I don't get anybody else hurt.
So that was, it had to do with the training that I gave the guys.
When you see me take a knee, get the fuck out of the room, like leave, because if something
goes off, it's, it's me.
This is my job.
And it's not yours to take the blast for it.
And so that was, but yeah, I mean, every target, you know, I would hear over the radio, EOD
up and I'm like, oh shit.
You know, like I get pumped and it's like, I get to go to work.
But then again, it's like, oh man, what am I going to find?
And so, you know, the first time I got a call was on our first target and I rise and I got
a call was like, EOD up and I'm like, go and I go over and it was this stealing fan underneath
the stairs.
And I'm like, what's up?
He's like, I don't know, that looks weird.
Like it is weird to put a ceiling fan underneath the stairs, but it's just a ceiling fan.
So he said, well, fuck you then, you know, it was, it was good, but it was like, that
was the first time that it was like, okay, it's on.
And so throughout that, you know, any of those deployments, it's like, yeah, I was, I mean,
I was afraid, man, I didn't, I didn't want to get in any of my, my, my friends and my
teammates who get killed or hurt, you know, because of something that I was responsible
for.
So that's kind of, that's everybody.
So, yeah.
When I was listening to you on the EOD podcast and you said this same thing about wanting
to make sure that your mistake didn't get someone else killed.
I don't know if I just picked on something wasn't there, but it almost sounded like there
was a real raw emotion behind that statement.
Yeah.
So, you know, I, I came back from those deployments.
There's a lot of combat lost, lost more guys than we, we thought, you know, we weren't
supposed to lose anybody because we've got, you know, we have the tactical advantage.
We have the equipment, we have nighttime, we have night vision equipment, you know,
we have all these things that are advantage, but yet we still, you know, we're able to
find that, find out that we were human.
So I wanted to package everything that I learned and pass that down and, and it wasn't just
the actions on because actions on they change in even from region to region, whether that
be in the West and now AMBAR or in Baghdad, you know, they operate and they have different
equipment they have, they're able to get different technology for their IDs and weapon systems
in different areas.
So it was different, but what I was trying to adopt was a mindset pass down.
And that was just take care of your guys better.
I mean, it better than you take care of yourself.
And that's the mindset.
And that's the, that's the, what brotherhood really is, is putting the, you know, the safety
and wellbeing of others above your own.
And to, yeah, just to not do something so ballsy that it was, it's irresponsible and
get someone else killed.
It was, it is emotional because I, I, you know, I got out of it unscathed and I never
any of the decisions I made, I made, you know, for the team.
It wasn't just for, for me and my safety was to make sure that I didn't put my hands on
something that I came across until everybody was out because I didn't, I can't imagine
someone, one of the, another EOD guy or living with themselves after that and knowing that
if you, you know, you made a mistake and you got someone fucking blown up and killed, um,
would just be really, really hard.
And so that was, um, it still is something that, that, that, that stays with me for sure.
Um, I just, even with the work that I do now is to make sure that everything is covered
the best I can so that way anybody that, that I'm working with is as safe as possible.
Because I just can't be in that position.
Um, if it, yeah, safety begins, you know, they like, we like to, the officers and everybody
used to like to say, well, safety is paramount.
And we would say, well, safety is third, you know, get it done.
But at the end of the day, you, if you're going to do something risky, just make sure
that it's just you and you don't take down your brothers, uh, for, for fucking up.
So I had, I think it was Alistair McCarthy, McCarthy that was on the show, a fellow Brit
and then base jumper.
Um, and we were talking about diligence and he said, uh, I forget I'm paraphrasing, but
he says something like, you know, most people will say, well, you know, as long as I'm 95%
there, then we good.
He said in the world of base jumping, there is no 95%.
It's gotta be a hundred.
And what I see in my profession, there are some phenomenal firefighters that understand
that lives are at stake in our job, you know, our own lives, the lives of men and women
to the left and right of us and obviously who we serve.
But there's also a real cancer of complacency and that can be organizational, it can be
personal.
Um, that drives me crazy because lives are at stake, you know, lives depend on us.
So through this, you know, journey, as you get through Iraq and ultimately Afghanistan
and out into the skydiving world, how have you managed to, to fight complacency yourself
and then also culturally or with the people around you?
So, um, the fighting complacency is actually not been, um, it hasn't been too hard.
Um, I think that what I've done is with the, the types of the types of the type of work
that I do and the type of jumps that I do or, you know, can be really, uh, sketchy at
best, um, sometimes and, you know, really, you know, high altitude testing, new parachutes,
um, heavy weights testing, new parachutes.
Um, it's, I'm very calculated, uh, when it comes to, when it comes to this kind of, when
it comes to these types of operations, uh, these types of, you know, events, the testing
events or even just basically executing very similar and we'll talk about later in the
triple seven very calculated.
What, when, what does it look like?
What is, what is, what does X look like?
Or how does it, what does it take to get there?
What are going to be the effects of it?
So when, when I talk about the effects of it, it's like doing, you know, deploying a
parachute at a, at a moderate, you know, a moderate to heavy weight at high altitudes
at high speeds, that's going to fucking hurt.
And that's going to hurt the body and it's going to be 60 below.
So there's a lot that you have to contend with.
So the prep work that goes into it is trying to think of every single, every single factor
that contributes to success or failure.
And so I think that that's what like a lot of the EOD work and my experience in EOD really
has provided for me is I'm very, very calculated.
I'm not going to do anything that's, is just like, it doesn't make any sense or the reward
is minimal for the, for the, for the risk.
You know, for testing, it's like, I have to go through, you know, I, my, my team and I
go through a lot of arduous testing when it comes to the engineering aspect and the design
of the parachutes, the intricate design of the parachutes in order to minimize the impacts
that the test jumper myself gets and receives, you know, the opening shock.
So it's very, very calculated.
So I don't feel there's a whole lot of complacency.
And I think that a little bit driving force behind that was that I look at it like I survived
multiple combat deployments.
I retired at 39.
I'm 46 now.
I'd like to see 76.
So I'm going to take care of my body and take care of my mind by basically, if we're going
to do these high risk things at my age, then they're going to be very calculated for the
best, best possible outcome.
It happens.
I get hard hits all the time, shitty landings, and it sucks, but I'm able to keep going because
I feel like that we're very calculated in looking at the risks and really doing a lot
of like kind of risk management, risk mitigation.
I'm the, a lot of the operators that this equipment is going to be going to are, you
know, 12, 15 years younger than I am.
Some of them are a little bit, a little bit less, but I've got to stay, I have to stay
in shape so I can perform as close to that, you know, as close to that top tier as I can,
you know, considering the body degradation at 46 years old, but I try to do the best
I can so that way I can mimic the results.
Well, while we're on the kind of training philosophy conversation, again, in the EOD
podcast, you touched on the importance of the basics and it's something that I talk
about a lot in the fire service.
There's a lot of shiny objects.
There's a lot of, you know, videos on Instagram of firefighters doing, you know, poodle tricks
for lack of a better word.
And that's great if you are an absolute master of the bread and butter movements that we
have to do.
But talk to me about your philosophy, especially as you transitioned into the training role
when it comes to mastery of the basics in your profession.
Well, I think that if we always remember the basics, then the advanced movements will then
start to reveal themselves.
I think we had a tendency to do was get in, being so being such in such a rush to be the
best to be the fastest, to be the quick, you know, the quickest, the cleanest, the most
efficient get in and get out.
But if you go back to the very rudimentary basics and use those as stepping stones, the
only reason that we're here is because of the foundation that was laid in the framework
that was created in order for us to accomplish, you know, be so fast because we would find
that doing you're doing a lot of our training runs that we would be in such a hurry that
we would we would we would say no more comps stop talking because people would yell and
people would be all over the radio.
And so stripping that down, going back to the basics using hand and arm signals and
normal two man, four man room clearance type of mindset really helps reset, reset everything
because everybody's already made it through to different types of basics.
So we don't have to be so advanced.
We have to master the basics that then in turn reveals your expertise and that you're
able to fine tune those things.
And so we really carry that over into the civilian world that I work in in this industry
is that keeping it simple and mastering the basics and understanding what these different
types of components do and why they do it and stick with those things and evolve and
innovate from that as opposed to completely coming out of a different direction.
I know you found yourself, as I said, in the kind of training development role and obviously
ultimately in the skydiving area.
One thing I'm always intrigued is the EOD in this case, you know, the special operator,
special forces soldiers perspective of the first responder professions, because in many,
many of the conversations that I have with them, they kind of hold us to the same standard.
And obviously we're protecting their families when you guys are overseas.
However, behind the curtain, it's a very different scenario as far as our support, training,
equipment, etc. than some of the tier one groups.
So I don't know if you've had any perspective in law enforcement or fire.
If you have, have you noticed any inequities between maybe some of the training and equipment
that you were afforded versus the people on the street back home?
Oh, I think that the from, you know, I work with some with a few guys down at in Lee County,
Lee County Sheriff's Department SWAT team.
And those poor guys, it feels it seems like, you know, they are stuck with a lot more administrative
work than we were ever stuck with.
Then and that was that that that sucks.
So these guys are not like able to pound on doors, do call outs and things like that,
do their job because they're stuck in a lot of the bureaucratic stuff because in my in
my perspective is that, you know, with firefighters as well as obviously with the police departments
and sheriff's departments throughout the country is that there's more of a spotlight on your
guys is daily operations when you're going into a fire, you're going into onto a target
to, you know, to issue a warrant or anything like that or arrest somebody.
There's more the potential of a spotlight and people, you know, fellow Americans seeing
your actions on target are way more prevalent than us.
I mean, granted, you know, when video gets out of us from, you know, from, you know,
from any type of ISR platform or things like that, that's that would piss us off.
So you guys definitely have a lot of our sympathy and appreciation for having to deal with,
you know, being operating within the confines of the audience themselves.
You know, so, you know, we operate.
The idea was that nobody sees us.
But when I think of, again, the that group within the SEAL teams, you're looking for
the best new techniques, the best equipment, you know, the best nutrition, strength, conditioning,
mindfulness training, et cetera.
And I think that this is something that we need to elevate ourselves in the first responder
professions that we are asked to do, you know, from zero to a hundred in a numerous amount
of ways.
I mean, just for example, my shopping mall here in Ocala, Florida, a few days ago, two
days before Christmas, someone was executed in front of everyone that was Christmas shopping.
I saw that.
So all the first responders that responded there were probably sitting around waiting
for a call.
And then all of a sudden, they're doing a manhunt and trying to clean a dead guy off
the floor.
So, you know, for me, I feel like we need to kind of lean into the ethos from your profession
more as far as hiring standards, as far as fitness standards, but also equipment and
training as well.
I couldn't agree more.
I feel I think that it's underappreciated and it's not looked at as much as because
it really wasn't trendy.
I mean, it was, it was, it made sense to like look at the military, look what they've done,
look what all these men and women have done for the past 20 plus years in Iraq and Afghanistan
and in Syria and in Africa and everywhere.
So like, let's throw all this attention to them.
Whereas I'm sure guys, you know, like in hotspots of fire departments and police departments
are kind of like, well, yeah, we support that.
You know, we could probably use some of that human performance initiative as well.
I'm sure.
And I think, you know, with the matter of speaking, I think, I think it's coming, you
know, I think that like the guys that I work with down in South Florida, they do have a
small human performance stuff that they're working on here.
They've got, they're doing hormone levels and hormone treatment stuff with those guys
or at least monitoring and advising.
So some of that, it looks like it's starting to take off.
I think that traditionally and notoriously, it's always been sort of behind, you know,
your tier one to tier three military operators.
The local first responders and treatment and care has been just a little bit behind of
the military.
And I think that that's like, that's something that I think we can look back on the past
30 or 40 years and sort of do that.
I mean, in the nineties, there was no humor performance stuff.
You know, it's like with being a SWIT guy, it's like, you're, you're going to be, you
know, three inches shorter if you do this for 15 years.
That was a big incentive for me to get out of, stop riding boats because I don't, you
know, back in the back knee and neck problems.
So the, you know, those guys have done a whole lot of studies because there was people that
were that study cases over 15 years of riding boats.
And I think that it's only, you know, I think that only a matter of time before, you know,
your local fire departments and your police officers and sheriff's department actually
do start to get some of those treatments and some of that attention.
Absolutely.
Well, I want to get to the transition out and then obviously we'll talk about 7X and
7X7.
Before we do though, you talked about Iraq.
What were the contrasts between Iraq and your time in Afghanistan?
Oh man, that was really interesting.
You know, cause I had, there was a bit of a hiatus before I went, you know, after I
left Iraq for my last time and then went to Afghanistan.
The Afghanistan piece, as you heard before, was really unique for me because I was in
the training detachment in the urban combat cell.
So I was basically responsible for giving, you know, EOD training to EOD technicians
that were assigned with their seal platoons during urban combat.
So it was a huge opportunity to really help shape those guys, their expectations and,
and get some really good training for them so they could provide training for their respective
seal platoons.
And so I was able to pull off going to Afghanistan as an augment, as an augmentee, which is most,
as a lot of people know, if you're able to pull that off from being in a training, you
know, a training command to go on deployment is gold because you kind of miss most of the
workup.
If you have good rapport with the guys, you don't really, like you're going to, you're
going to get there and you're going to have good rapport with them already.
So I went over there and, you know, took a couple of guns with me and some equipment
and some cold weather gear and was basically just operating out of a basic, a big backpack.
So that way I can move around by myself from, from a couple of different locations.
I remember going into the dining facility for the first time in Afghanistan.
Now, the last time I had been into in a dining facility overseas was in Iraq.
Yeah.
Outside of Biop when we were working Sadr city.
And so, or Biop being Baghdad international airport.
And you remember seeing, and this was really prevalent in Al Ambar in 2006 in Iraq, when
you would sit down at the dining facility and you would look over at other people in
their, their faces, they're, they were just, they were just staring.
It was just the very thousand yard stare.
Like they just came out of the shit or they were just getting ready to go back into it.
And they're just basically trying to get some caloric intake and get some energy and get
some fuel.
But there were, there were, that was hard to see that.
That was not the case in Afghanistan in 2014.
I mean, it looked like a, you know, a shopping mall food court.
And it was just, it was really a stark reality for me that to see the difference between
guys and girls that were doing conducting conventional kinetic operations.
And then a few, several years later, retrograde and pulling, getting ready to pack things
up, cutting vehicles in half and getting knowing that the withdrawal is coming.
And so that was a huge difference.
However, our kinetic operations were still very prevalent.
Something that I didn't do very much that I can't even recall anything that, that stands
out in Iraq was we'd never really did any helicopter inserts.
So getting on 46s and, and flying, you know, the target and then walking, you know, five,
eight kilometers, it was not something that was all that common for us in Iraq.
So that was a huge difference for me.
And then, you know, going to 8,000 feet above sea level, you know, takes them getting used
to January in Afghanistan.
So there was definitely the, the playing field was different for me going over there.
And but the guys, man, the guys, the guys were, I mean, it was, it was remarkable to
be with the, with that task unit and that, that troop and those, those guys from the
platoon and with the, the, the, the 10th special forces, ODA group that was out there with
us.
They're just a lot of great people doing a lot of really good, really good kinetic operations.
It was fantastic.
I loved it.
A lot of people that have come on the show that served in Afghanistan, that, you know,
obviously lost friends in Afghanistan is of course applies to Iraq as well.
But you know, that particular withdrawal, the way it was done, I think, I don't think
there's a single person out there.
I hope there's not, that doesn't realize that they made a huge difference while they were
there.
And even like you said, if it's handling a scared girl, a glow stick all the way through
to building schools and, you know, all the things that you guys did.
However, you know, that sudden just evacuation, I think left a lot of our veterans feeling,
you know, a multitude of emotions.
I think it contributed probably to a lot of mental health challenges as well.
You know, what was it for?
And the, the, the survivor element, I mean, all these different things.
And I think organizational betrayal too.
You were part of this tribe, you wore this flag on your shoulder.
And then the very organization that you represented did something like that.
So I mean, I was going to say without loading the question, clearly I just loaded already,
but what is your perspective of that?
Because just like the pandemic, for example, people are like, Oh, I don't want to talk
about anymore.
I think it's important because these are lessons that we can learn and maybe apply God forbid
if there's another sort of combat, apply that to the next one.
So kind of giving you the microphone, what is your perspective of Iraq and or Afghanistan
as we sit here outside both those countries?
These are going to be, you know, hopefully they're going to be huge lessons learned in
a hundred years.
You know, we can look at, you know, Washington crossing the Delaware, you know, 200 years
ago as at least like lessons learned in military history, we can look at the long shakes, you
know, and look at the way that they operated and they did kinetic operations, you know,
hundreds and hundreds of years ago.
So like this, these mistakes, you know, or hopefully the way that they're going to be
perceived is like these lessons learned or should be definitely, you know, lack of a
better way of putting it in the textbooks going forward for military history and tacticians
as a whole.
The withdrawal of Afghanistan specifically because it was so abrupt, there was a lot
of like this Vietnam type of feel to it.
This granted when we pulled out of Vietnam, you know, I was born in 77.
So obviously that the withdrawal out of Vietnam, but those videos in the way that it was depicted
and depicted today was reminiscent of that.
I can only imagine, you know, being in Afghanistan during the withdrawal, I can only imagine being
in Vietnam during that withdrawal, during that hasty withdrawal.
We know deep down what the score is, you know, it's really easy for us as Americans and policymakers
to get us into and into conflict and disrupt things and basically turn them into our operating
system very, very quickly.
What it appears to me, what we suck at is actually rebuilding and building and then
leaving and continuing to support.
Because we look at Afghanistan now, it's like how much we're funding the Taliban right now
to be able to fight Al Qaeda in Iraq or in Afghanistan.
It's mind blowing to me.
So that hasty, hasty, that incredibly hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan just does not
seem like it was very well calculated at all.
And me being me, a very calculated person, I don't feel like we were looking at as a
whole, the first, second, third order effects of what we were doing.
We were trying to basically appease the American public by stop spending money in Afghanistan,
stop spending money in Iraq and get out of it.
We were there.
We've been there for over 20 years, you know, 20 plus years.
Let's get out.
And so that was sort of the popular thing to do.
But it just surprised me how we were not very calculated as policy enforcers and policymakers
to do that.
And it just, I mean, I can't imagine.
Jericho was actually there.
You know, Travis's brother was there, you know, when all that was going down, he was
there reporting.
And so that hit him pretty hard.
And when I talked to him, you know, talking to someone that was there, out of all the
combat operations he had done, that was one of them.
That was not a combat operation.
That was one of the hardest ones.
And the anniversary always kind of gets to him.
I mean, that was fucked.
Now it went down for sure.
Absolutely.
Well, one kind of one element or one more area on this topic.
When I think about the pharmaceutical industry and the nation's health, I'm hoping for an
honest box here, as someone who's come from a wellness background and fitness and all
that stuff.
Clearly, there is an element where if we make Americans sick, but keep them alive, you have
an incredible consumer.
Well with that same lens, when you look at war and you make uniforms, MREs, weapons,
whatever it is, there's an element that wants war to continue so that certain groups can
make a huge amount of money.
Now that's separate from protecting our country and being there when we're absolutely needed.
Oh no, it's a war machine for sure.
So how do we, you're king for a day, how do we increase accountability so that we don't
allow certain groups to keep forcing us into conflicts that we may or may not need to be
in in the first place?
A very deliberate and calculated level of transparency.
I just don't think that we are having the right conversations.
Maybe we are having the right conversations, but we're not being transparent.
And that usually, that breeds itself, right?
So calm breeds calm and honesty breeds honesty.
So if we can have some actual king for a day transparency, I think is, I can't go wrong
there.
But what we have now is king for a day is where's the money at?
Where does the money go?
I mean, you talked about the pharmaceutical company, companies in the pharmaceutical industry.
That's a money thing.
That's exactly where it's at.
And I remember not to get too much on the pharmaceutical stuff, but the Lipitor and
cholesterol meds, same thing.
My dad was on Lipitor and he's like, fuck this.
I've got all these different side effects.
And then later on, after he got off of it, these cholesterol companies, these companies
making this cholesterol medication were like, hey, this is a great way to basically pump
meds into our society because everybody has, the number one killer is heart disease.
So I think that if we could just be a little bit more transparent and be welcome to the
vulnerability and accept that.
I think that if you can have a little bit of like self-compassion as opposed to being
selfish, I think is going to really, really help.
And I really think that a lot of policymakers could benefit from some of the treatments
that veterans are getting with hormone treatment, psychedelic treatment, and actual like no
kidding, like getting in touch with who you are kind of treatment moving forward.
I think that congressmen, senators, and cabinet members could benefit from that kind of treatment
themselves.
Just my opinion.
No, I agree 100%.
When we talk about the mental health crisis, obviously we focus on, you know, whether it's
the addiction we see on our streets and homelessness, whether it's our veterans and first responders,
but there was a guy, a sad guru who was on Joe Rogan's podcast and he made, it was almost
in passing, he made a comment, but Joe was talking about, I think it was drug companies
and he was like, no, even them.
And I was like, I'd never thought about that.
There's only way that you can sleep at night knowing that you pulled out of a country and
betrayed all the allied nations that were there and all the people that serve in uniforms
is you have to be a sociopath.
The only way you can sleep at night knowing that drug prohibition is an epic failure and
yet your prisons are full of people that were caught with marijuana 20 years ago is you
have to be a sociopath.
So our mental health crisis, I think extends deeply into our politicians and owners of
news stations and other drug company execs and people that should not be able to sleep
knowing the unethical practices of the organizations they work for.
I couldn't agree more.
But yeah, but I think it boils down to money, power and position of authority for sure.
Yeah.
Because, you know, a king can move a man, right?
And so that's the mindset is I can just move all of these different pieces, these 400 million
pieces that I have in the United States, I can move all this and I can adjust all this.
But we have to really look at is that like you're in your own good, keep it alone.
And you can't say, you know, before, you know, religious stuff aside, but when you go before,
when you die, these are your decisions that you have made.
You know, so if people are going to basically do all of these puppeteer work and all these
different things in order for their own benefit, you've got to be able to make your own decisions
and be good with what you're doing.
And so I wholeheartedly agree with you, man.
Like I think that if I was, I couldn't ever do that and be in good, in good keeping alone
with myself and sleep at night for sure.
Well speaking of mental health, one area that I think is very jarring for military and first
responders is the transition out, whether it's injury, whether it's being fired, whether
it's simply retiring.
We and you talk about Sebastian Junger, he's been on the show several times.
You know, that tribal element is so important.
You know, we had a purpose, we were part of a tribe, you know, we knew when we went home
that day that we made the world a little bit better.
And then you find yourself the other side, your ID doesn't work, you know, you're not
around the same people anymore.
Some people transition well, they already have those tribes set up for moving out.
Some people it's a little bit more difficult.
What was your transition story yourself?
I mean, it was terrifying.
But just like me, I tried to be very calculated in what I was going to do.
You know, leaving Coronado and leaving Southern California after being there for so many years
and having so many close friends and somebody within the community and having someplace
to always go with people was gone.
You moved to Florida and it's like just a few, you know, family members that live out
here and starting over out here in Florida and trying to basically make a name for myself
in the industry and work in the industry.
I say make a name for myself in the industry.
That's not really correct.
I think it's really just contribute to the industry because what I do for a living is
and this is how I sit comfortably with what I do for a living is that I'm helping equip
still, because like almost as if I was still on active duty, helping train and equip military
service members, you know, not just US, but also our allies.
So there's a big part of that for me that I'm still kind of this active duty sort of
training component that in itself has definitely helped with my transition because I'm still
around some of the boys, not like, you know, it is, you know, when I was back home in San
Diego or back in Coronado, but it's really close to it.
And so I've been out, I've been retired for seven years and the first few years were really,
really hard because I was struggling to find purpose.
And on the daily was tough to find out.
I'm 39 years old.
Who am I?
Why am I here?
I still have a lot of life left over and I don't know what to do with it.
And I've got this, I've got a family, but I'm still so, I mean, I was looking at like,
I'll deploy again.
Like, I don't care.
Like, you know, whatever it is, I would, you know, I was just looking for something to
grasp a hold of.
And it was really hard to find anything that was not, it was really hard to find a grip
hold on something.
And then, yeah, a few years into it, I finally did.
And then I realized, you know, that my family has been there the whole time and I just didn't
grab a hold of them the way I should have.
And while I don't have a whole lot of regret, I'm glad I learned the way I learned as opposed
to just like, oh yeah, this is how you're supposed to do it.
But where I found that was through some mentorship and through, you know, through community with
seeing other guys retire and get out, them have problems going down, you know, trying
to find their solution at the bottom end of a bottle, at the bottom of a bottle, but still
some guys being able to have that strong family component.
And then it sort of started to get me like reset into, yes, being a father, being a husband
and doing this piece is my mission.
And that's my purpose.
So because they're my teammates for life, you know, it's not like they're going to rotate
after two years.
So that really helped.
But with my work now, it was tough, but to be able to find my niche within the industry
and to still be up around, you know, different tier levels in the community has been beneficial
for me.
I mean, it really helps find that mission and find that purpose and give me value because
I think that that's what we're missing in society, especially younger men is that is
being valued and having that value and knowing that our job is really just to protect and
provide and not only for yourself, but obviously primarily for your family, because that's
what's in our DNA, in our male DNA for thousands and thousands of years is that the perfect
and provide to go out and hunt and then to provide shelter and to provide food and to
provide these different types of things so we can have sustenance and live.
So that is what's really gotten me through a lot of this, a lot of the shit and a lot
of like the dark times is realizing that this my baseline is this caveman genetics that
I have to be able to protect and provide.
And then throughout the, you know, the small little things like I write a lot.
I'm trying to reading some good books and the writing has really helped.
You know, I was working with a coach a couple of years ago and she told me, Nick, you and
you guys are all the same.
You're all fucking chess players.
You like to use all these different things with your words and you're so fancy with your
words and you can dance around this stuff, but you really can't get into your emotions
and just sit and feel your emotions.
And she got me to start writing.
And so like the journaling has been going really, really good.
And I try to be an advocate for it for other guys.
It's like, just write, like, I don't know what to write about.
It's like, don't write about anything.
Just almost like free association, pull up a pen and paper, pull up your phone, listen
to a song, inspire it.
It can be dark.
It can be light.
It can be whatever you want, but at least you're getting something out, you know, and
not in itself as a form of art, you know, like just, just put it, get it out.
You don't have to share it.
Nobody's going to read it.
Just write because it's very cathartic and very therapeutic.
Even if you reread it and you like see all these typos and, and you're like, man, this
sounds like I'm fucking, I'm a sociopath.
Just write because it'll get better.
It will get better.
Just practice at it.
So.
Well, two things that you said, firstly, purpose being your family.
I think that's a really important conversation because they were without you for, you know,
in my profession every third day for 14 years, you know, and yours, you were deployed months
at a time.
So that, you know, and I think also you're, you're rebuilding yourself.
I mean, I know you're still beating your body up at the moment, but I mean, 14 years for
me, hormonally and mentally, you know, there's, there's a lot of fixing that I'm doing right
now.
But the other thing is that purpose.
And I think that it's hard for some of us in uniform to understand that there are so
many ways to serve.
There are so many ways to keep giving and it could be become a counselor or a fitness
coach or, you know, write books or, you know, whatever it is, or create the best new shoots
for people that are going to deploy 10 years from now.
But where I've heard people struggle, you know, if we're talking about the, the role
that they go into is, is the seal that becomes a realtor or goes into finance.
I think it's because there isn't that service.
So there are so many ways to serve, but there are also ways not to serve.
And I think for a lot of us that did that for so many years wearing a uniform, I think
it's important to kind of ask yourself, all right, what kind of position do I want to
want to go in?
And when I lay my head on the pillow that night, do I still feel like I made the world
a little bit better?
Yeah.
I think that we, I remember having this, this, this misconception that it's like, wait a
minute, like I've been in combat and I led people and I was the TL on this and I did
all this.
I should, you should bring me in as the fucking president of this company or the CEO or the
CFO or something.
So no, it doesn't.
And I had that mindset for a long time and it doesn't work that way, unfortunately.
But I think that finding that purpose for me, finding that purpose for me has been crucial.
In late 2017, now I wasn't sure if I was going to talk about this or not, but I think it's
really important because I think that a lot of people can relate to this.
So I retired in October, 2016.
We moved here the summer of that year and throughout that year was really tough for
me.
I was just doing some coaching and some jumping, making very little money.
I mean, thankfully retirement and, and some other stuff, uh, it's financially kept us
afloat living in Florida is a lot better than living in Southern California financially
on for obvious reasons.
Late 2017, um, I left my wife and we split for about two years and I went off and just
wanted, I was in such a dark place that I didn't like myself.
And so that resentment carried, you know, basically went to her and I resented her for
it because when we first met in 2005, when I moved to San Diego, she, not that I had
a whole lot of life problems or life experiences, but she was there for everything and she solved
everything.
She was part of these, these training trips, these deployments, these losses, these gains,
you know, with every, with every victory, there is a fall, you know, I mean, part of
all of it.
And then now that I'm retired and we've had two kids, I'm retired and I've got all these
like issues that I can't seem to wrap my head around about my identity.
She wasn't solving it anymore.
And so this resentment built up and this wasn't just, you know, over the span of a year and
a half, the span of probably a good like, you know, nine, 10 years, I was dealing with
a lot of darkness.
And so finally in November, 2017, um, I said, I have to go and we split up and I stayed
close and we co-parented, um, and we went into, I dove into work really, really hard.
And May of 2019, um, I did a retreat with a buddy of mine who encouraged me to go with
him, came back about six, eight months later and things started to kind of come back to
me.
I forgave myself for the things that I've done and I started to like myself again and
have some self-compassion sort of remap things, if you will, in my decision making process.
And I could sort of see the forest for the trees were all these years before I thought
I was.
Um, and then early December, uh, 2019, uh, I bought her a car for her, for Christmas
to always surprise her and then I asked her on a date and then, uh, about three months
later we got back together and we've been together ever since.
So it's a hard one though, because I put that woman through a lot, you know, and, uh, the
fact that she took me back and without skipping a beat to really let me back in and allow
us to create this, this, this bloodline, this Kush family bloodline, this legacy for both
of us, um, has been, yeah, I'm grateful for her every day, man.
So, well, firstly, thank you for trusting me enough to share that because it is, it
is important and so many people struggle.
I've watched firefighters that I adore, you know, incredible men literally start to crumble
before my eyes and, and, you know, just head over heels with their wives and all of a sudden
their marriages start devolving.
And it's, you know, it's the job.
And I always tell people that if someone was a shit bag day one on the grinder, then they're
probably a shit bag and they got some stuff from before, but if they were, you know, loyal
and, and, and all the things that we admire in someone and then five, 10 years later,
they weren't anymore, then it's the job, you know, it is the job.
So you talked about a retreat, you know, what kind of a treat was it?
And then what were the observations that you made that you were then able to forgive yourself
and navigate yourself back to that incredible man that you were that she fell in love with
in the first place?
Oh, yeah, that's a good one.
Um, so I'll just keep it, um, at surface level.
Um, but it was, it was, um, yeah, it was like a four day retreat, um, down, uh, down south.
So I do want to keep it service level just for some of the, some of the other reasons,
for some other reasons.
Um, and it, and it, and it allowed me to really, I mean, it allowed me, it forced me to take
a long look at my, not when look at my life.
When I, when I say I look at my life, it wasn't just here.
So it forced me to take a long look at my life here.
So from birth, childhood, present, and then projections of a future.
And that was a huge eye opening experience for me.
And it caused me throughout the following, you know, six, eight months, I just, I paused
and I was in like really deep and good thought.
And I knew that I would eventually, I felt drawn that I would find my way home.
I didn't know that she was going to say yes.
I was really apprehensive that she would say yes.
Um, and so this long buildup of is this going to happen, um, was really nerve wracking,
but I wasn't, I wasn't super, I wasn't hyper focused on it.
I was really focused on finding some compassion in myself.
And it's like what I've done and what I've been through, whether it was by, you know,
because of me or not because of me, just by circumstance and being in combat and you know,
these, these different atrocities, but I was able to finally take a look inward, which
then helped me view things outward a lot better.
Um, so I could, the biggest thing was actually to find to like myself again, cause I didn't,
I didn't for the longest time was to actually appreciate what I actually provide and what
I give and what I, what I receive because of it.
Um, the self-compassion I think is literally be a lot of, can solve a lot of, uh, can help
open doors for, for, for solving a lot of problems for us down the road.
Yeah.
Well, again, it's a powerful story, you know, because the job does have an impact.
It just does.
It's just the bottom line.
So to be able to navigate back and for your wife to have the forgiveness as well, I had
a guest on Chris Fields who became a good friend.
And he, if you think about the Oklahoma bombing, there's an iconic, tragically iconic picture
of a firefighter holding a dead toddler.
And that was Chris.
So you imagine you talk about anniversaries every year that that happened.
His picture is all over the magazines, all over the TV screens.
And he had a complete, you know, spiral downwards and ended up being unfaithful and ultimately
was able to get help navigate his way back and his amazing wife, Cheryl took him back
and they're still happily married again today.
But I think, you know, these, we need to hear this because you fell in love with, with an
incredible first responder soldier, whoever it was, and then they went to war or then
they did what we do for 10, 20, 30 years.
Doesn't give you an excuse to behave in a certain way, but it's a reason.
And if a couple's dynamic is able to navigate that and a person's going to put in the work
and get help, then there's hope for some of these relationships that are struggling right
now.
It's true.
Yeah.
And, and she's the, she's the, the best and the best, she's the best kind of best kind
of person and I'm very fortunate, but also sometimes unfortunate because she has her
doctorate in clinical psychology.
So, you know, you get where I'm going with that and she'll be okay with it.
I said that.
But yeah, so she's very analytical as well.
And so she looked at things.
It was really hard for her not to, for her not to look at things, obviously with a huge
bias because I completely upended her world, you know, by doing that.
And for us to continue to work on stuff because it's, everything's a process.
You know, you just go to the gym and peek out at your deadlift or bench press and then
that's it.
I'm good.
You know, you still, it still takes discipline, it still takes practice and commitment for
sure.
So yeah.
Beautiful.
That's what, that's what I want to be good at.
You know, for so many years I want to be good at this, this, this, and this.
I want to be good at being a dad.
I want to be good at being a teammate.
That's what I want to be good at.
And the fact that she never told me that's what you need to do in order for this to be
successful that I figured that out on my own was, was one of my bigger accomplishments
for myself, you know, at least in the, in the head space world was that I realized that
this is what I want to be good at.
I want to be, I want to be good at being a husband.
I want to be good at being a dad, you know, so.
Well I think that's what a man is.
And we've had lots of conversations about this, but you know, the, the kind of two dimensional
facade of masculinity is, oh, it's the seal.
It's the firefighter.
It's like, no, we're a yin and a yang.
You know, we're also a father, a husband, a lover.
You know, you can, you can be shooting a terrorist or you can be handing a little girl a chem
stick.
Still the same seal or EOD operator, but you know, two sides of the same coin.
All right.
Well then one more area I want to hit before we go to the closing questions.
February last year, you and I both were part of a round the world trip.
Yours was seven by seven.
Mine was seven X. When I say mine, it was my friend Ryan's, Ryan Parrot, and then the
Navy seal who, who was spearheading that.
We went around the world and the goal really was to break down these, these incredible
humans and kind of plan how to, how to train them for it, break them down, which they did
incredibly successfully.
It destroyed us.
And then how do we kind of put the pieces back together again?
Yours was, you know, I know there was some kind of human performance studying going on
as well, but also there was an actual record attempt with your group.
So talk to me about your experience of circumnavigating the globe skydiving.
Geez.
Yeah.
So, I mean, I got to give it a little bit of history, not to, not to repeat it too,
too much from, from, from, from earlier, but the, it was July, 2021 that my former teammate,
Mike Cirelli gave me a call and Mike and I had done two deployments to Iraq in 2006 and
in 2008.
And we had lost touch.
He would gone, he'd gone over to the East coast and I was staying on the West coast.
And then we, you know, every once in a while conversations would come up, but then he reached
out to me and kind of cold called me and said, I have this idea.
We'd like to do seven skydives on seven continents in seven days.
And I was like, bro, you are, you are, you are biting off a lot on this one, you know,
just to do that logistically.
And so we started planning.
I had a really good friend who had been to all seven continents and who actually held
the skydiving record for all seven continents.
He had done it in like six months and like three weeks, I think.
And his name was Tom Noonan and Tom was a world renowned tandem master tandem instructor.
So he ran the tandem program for United parachute technologies, which is a manufacturer, sort
of the birthplace of tandem skydiving here in Deland.
And so Tom was the pioneer sort of leader for that, for the safety and training for
that program.
Sadly, we were planning and October 16th, 2021, Tom died.
So now our go-to guy for all this overseas and all of his experience worldwide was now
kind of in ashes.
And so, you know, went to Tom's funeral.
That was really tough because Tom is a very dear friend of mine.
And then we sort of circled the wagons and decided to keep going.
And so fast forward to summer of 2022, we started to get some funding.
Like in Andy Stump, who was a big part of the expedition team.
They got on, did a podcast with Joe Rogan and was able to do a pitch for the overall
nonprofit we were raising money for, which was Folds of Honor.
And Folds of Honor is a nonprofit that raises money for kids' education scholarships for
deceased, disabled, first responders and service members.
And so they do basically private education.
And so we wanted to raise money for Folds.
And the big reason we wanted to do it for Folds was we really liked their mission.
And we had an eclectic group on our team.
We had a Ranger, we had a Canadian guy, we had a couple of team guys, we had a Marine
Scout sniper, and then we have myself.
And so we had this group where if we went to the Navy SEAL Foundation or another foundation,
it's not their against Navy SEAL Foundation or any other foundation was that in order
to get support from some of those foundations, you had to have had been an SF guy or a Ranger
or a SEAL.
So with Folds, it was, it didn't matter who you are, if you're a first responder, you
know, 100% disabled service, you know, veteran or deceased family, dependent of a deceased
service member, you qualify.
That was kind of, we looked at it.
Was it like we want to spread it out and push forward from there.
So we had a training camp in October with the guys were, you know, kind of, you know,
getting a feel for everybody, you know, jumping, you know, we had some low jump numbers, some
high jump numbers, and so we're just trying to get some reps, because all we were doing
was jumping.
Then we did, you know, along the way, I was having to do paperwork for all of these respective
locations, Antarctica, the drop zone in Chile, drop zone in Florida, Barcelona, Egypt, UAE,
and Australia, and working all of those pieces.
So we had seven skydivers, and then myself was going to be, I was the tandem instructor,
and then Jim Wiginton was my tandem passenger and Jim Wiginton was Tom's passenger for the
other seven continents.
So Jim had already had the record as a passenger, but he wanted to do it in seven days.
So and he's, I think he's now 74 years old.
So good on him.
So yeah, then in right before New Year's of December of 22, we flew down to Chile, and
we were down in Chile for about a week or so.
And it flew down to Antarctica.
And then the machine just started.
You know, we were, we tried and we sat there and looked at like, do we build a contingency
list?
Do we have, you know, do we like kind of basically do this as if we're planning and, you know,
a big operation?
Yes and no.
I mean, we were prepared for delayed flights, lost baggage, we had those types of contingencies
in place, but we didn't really see the point of building out and trying to get super creative
with this long list of contingencies.
And then, you know, spending all this unnecessary time trying to figure out this enigma, we
were going to basically deal this with this puzzle as it came to us.
So we planned it and we planned it flawlessly.
And if we knew that it wasn't going to be executed flawlessly, but we were able to respond.
And that was why we built the team that we had was the guys were incredibly resourceful.
You know, they had connections in aviation, they had connections with finance, they like
all these, you know, it's a lot of social media presence.
So there was all of this resources that opened up this huge scope that we could tap into.
And we weren't, none of the guys were like professional skydivers.
You know, like there was two of us that do this for a living on the entire expedition.
You know, Fred Williams, the president of Complete Parachute Solutions has got 15,000
jumps.
I have 12,000 jumps.
And then right behind me is somebody with like 4,000 jumps on the team.
And that trickles all the way down to the lowest jump number was 200, because that was
the base minimum for us to go to Antarctica.
So we weren't really wasn't a complex skydiving, you know, event.
It was just it was a logistical enigma is what we were basically going through.
And the idea was to do something really, you know, loud and over the top to get attention,
people to follow us kind of Forrest Gump style, and then, you know, raise money for folds
and talk about folds of honor and tell the story of of our fallen comrades.
You know, I got to talk about Mark Lee, you know, who is in my platoon and was shot and
killed on August 2, 2006, while we were on a, you know, on an assault.
And the friendship and relationship I formed with Debbie Lee, his mom and her foundation,
because Mighty Warriors doing, you know, traumatic brain injury treatment.
And so it was it was a really good experience overall.
And then the platform that we created in order to tell the story.
And I think the documentary is due to screen I think in February or March of next of this
coming year.
And but it was physically like, as you know, a kick in the ass.
I mean, we were monitored by whoop and whoop did a small, you know, pretty cool little
study for a few of us.
And it took me about three weeks to fully get back into the swing of things.
I mean, sleep and body aches and like, I wasn't sure what was going on, but it was definitely
we were smashed for sure.
Yeah, it was brutal.
I mean, obviously, ours was a couple months later in February.
And ours was I think total travel time was I think we were gone for 12 days because we
were in South Africa for a few days.
Antarctica fell through like last last minute, like, you know, hours before, which was was
the same.
But it was funny.
I'd actually reached out to Kurt Parsley about the sleep supplement.
And then he's like, Oh, I'm already part of something.
I'm like, Oh, really?
And he was part of yours.
So I remember pictures of the man who really opened my eyes about sleep deprivation, exhausted
on your social media posts as everyone was fast asleep in an airport.
We did not intend for it to be a competition.
And I'm so glad that it wasn't perceived like that.
You know, really, you know, I mean, maybe between, you know, you know, like, sort of
like in the team room, if it were, you know, like if Ryan and I are because I met Ryan
years and years ago and I don't know if he remembers me, but like on the West Coast.
So but it really like big picture was just like, hey, we're both doing something really
good for, you know, for veterans.
And that was basically it in their families.
So but yeah, Kurt Parsley is awesome.
Yeah, I still he just got married a few weeks ago.
And yeah, I still take his sleep remedy every night because it's awesome.
Yeah, it's great.
It is.
And everyone was impressed.
People had he donated some for us as well.
Oh, good.
And people were blown away.
How well it well I've used it for years myself.
Yeah.
One more area.
I've only done two skydives ever, both tandem.
One was in New Zealand and then one was out of a Russian helicopter over the pyramids.
Now, I know there's a very iconic picture from your trip of you guys all, you know,
holding hands with the pyramids kind of in the middle of the circle.
Talk to me about that jump for you.
I mean, you're so experienced already, but was that a pretty, pretty powerful moment
for you, even though you had so many jumps?
Yeah, it was.
You know, out of all of it, out of all those jumps, Antarctica was still my favorite just
because there's been so few to ever jump over Antarctica.
And also Antarctica is like another planet.
You know, I mean, it's it just it doesn't feel or look like it makes sense, you know,
but the place is amazing.
And hopefully you get to go back there next December, next year, doing some other stuff
with Fulnes of Honor with the company that runs the Union Glacier camp down there.
But the pyramids, yeah, that was really iconic.
It was funny because I think it was about a 14 mile flight from the airport to the pyramid
location.
And then did you guys land on the golf course as well?
No, we landed right next to the pyramids, right next to the pyramids.
Yeah.
So I don't know how they managed to make that work, but it was it was pretty crazy.
Yeah.
There's a couple of different companies that sort of operate down there.
And it was just happened like the one that we were with.
Yeah, we landed on that golf course just on the east side, I think, of the pyramids.
But it was really it was really cool.
I remember getting out with you because I had I was doing the tandem.
So I had Jim attached to me.
And it's more like, you know, kind of what Jim moved your head so I can see, you know,
like this.
But, you know, we when we were under under canopy flying.
Yeah, it's really surreal because you see the very tip top of the pyramids and the way
the sun is hitting it and the shadow that it casts.
It's just so it's like it's so perfect in a very imperfect type of like kind of world
almost, it seems like.
But it was a really good it was really cool.
You know, we landed and we packed our packer parachutes and they had tea and food and everything
like that.
And they said, hey, do you guys want to do like this VIP tour of the pyramids?
And no, we just want to go to sleep because we were we were so smart.
I mean, in hindsight, maybe we should have.
But not there wasn't one person that said, oh, man, I kind of want to go.
Everybody was just like, we had like four hours.
We can get sleep at the hotel.
We're going to get some sleep.
So it was cool.
But it was I think that it was surreal to finish.
You know, it was cool.
Like we did the jump in Florida, our third location, a lot of our friends and family,
a lot of people from Folds of Honor had flown down to support us.
Then to Barcelona, then to Cairo, UAE, and then to Perth.
And Perth was was great because you had all these people following Black Rifle Coffee
because we had two Black Rifle Coffee guys with us.
And and Andy's obviously social media presence and following Legacy Expeditions.
It was neat to see like 40, 50 people just come out of the woodwork just to be there
when we finished it, take a big picture and drinking beers at 1030 in the morning Australian
style.
It was just it was cool.
It was great.
It was great to see all these people around the world, you know, whether it be part of
skydiving or not, just come together and support.
I mean, they're supporting a nonprofit that's based in the United States that is educating
the kids of U.S. citizens.
They didn't care.
They just liked being part of what we were being part of.
And that was like something that I remember thinking at the end of it was with all of
the stuff that's going on in the world today, where it kind of diminishes your hope in humanity,
stuff like that restored it for sure.
100 percent.
Yeah.
One of the highlights for us, I think, was London.
So the lads went off and did they did a base jump out of a crane, I think, in England.
Yeah, I saw that.
Yeah.
I think one guy had a very low opening as well, from what I understand, not one of our
team, but someone that came along.
But Leo and the other guys were doing the marathon in the park.
And I was there kind of, you know, at this place and they were doing loops.
But I'd got the firefighter charity and Royal British Legion Industries to come over.
And it was it was again, like you said, a bunch of Americans are doing this run.
And yet all these people come and then people that were running in the park started joining
them and doing laps.
That's so cool.
Like you said, it was a beautiful moment.
It's freezing and I'm English and it was still fucking cold.
But yeah, so powerful.
Yeah, that's so cool.
Yeah.
No, I love that how it, you know, how it how it unveiled itself, because I remember when
we announced it in September, I think someone from 7X Media had, you know, popped a comment
on LinkedIn or something like that.
It was a good comment.
There was that it never felt like there was any hostility, you know, competition.
I mean, competition is good, right.
And that's that's in our nature.
You know, a good friend of mine, DF, he had said that the combat is emotionally and physically
taxing and it's competition based.
So that just kind of goes into who we are.
It's like, yes, we're going to push ourselves physically, emotionally, and even in the gym
at home in San Diego, shit's competitive, you know, when it comes to each other, shooting,
jumping, anything it is, it's like it's in our nature to just continue to, you know,
to be competitive with one another for sure.
So it was cool that this was not that case.
It was like we were kind of boosting.
We could probably could have in hindsight, we kind of boosted each other up a little
bit better.
But I think it's really cool that it was it was one right after the other.
And it wasn't like one was any it was any more significant.
You know, that was great.
Yeah, exactly.
Two good causes going on simultaneously.
For sure.
It's awesome.
All right.
Well, then closing questions before I let you go.
First one I love to ask, is there a book or are there books that you love to recommend?
It can be related to our discussion today or completely unrelated.
Well, definitely one of the first one that pops out.
It's a really easy read.
And I know it's been recommended probably very extensively is Tribe by Sebastian Younger,
because I think that what he did in that book was he took all of his time and what he saw,
you know, in the 80s and Beirut and everywhere he's been and then really wrapped it up with
his like, I mean, his shock and awe documentation of of Restrepo.
I think that a lot of his studies and interviews and everything like that really compiled into
that.
You know, I mean, he may not say it.
And I don't I don't know him personally.
But it's to me, it's a it's a short book.
It's an easy read.
But it was like his swan song.
I mean, it really is everything when it comes to the tribe, because I think that it's not
just military combatants and things like that.
I think that it serves in our community.
It's like, man, be a good neighbor.
Like, like that's because that's how we were, you know, not that many not that not that
many years ago is we were living in, you know, living in caves, living in tents, and we had
to be good neighbors and take care of one another.
And that's the overall sort of premise I got from that.
And then one that I'm reading now by Eckhart Tolle is The Power of Now.
Actually, a friend of mine gave me that book, and that has really helped me in my mind,
sort of just be more of an observer of the the thoughts that come up and like the dark
stuff that doesn't is not self serving.
I can just sort of like sit back and just just observe and don't have to dwell in these
negative these negative areas, you know, and sort of even in the positive areas, I don't
treat any of them differently, because I think that there's there's service in both of them
and growth in both of them is really just to be an observer and act when it's appropriate.
And it's helped me it's you know, that is influenced me to write and listen to really
good.
I love like, good classical music and a lot of piano work and string work.
It's like it's just it's soothing.
It's calming.
But when I go into gym, of course, it's you know, metal and, you know, standard music,
of course.
But there's a balance to what I'm finding.
What I surround myself in my environment is what is who I become.
So that's that's I think that's true of it all.
So
Absolutely.
Well, what about films and or documentaries?
Oh, man.
Well, I mean, we stay on the Sebastian Younger kid, but definitely I watched Restrepo again
with my son, and I took that off of advice that Andy stumped when he interviewed Sebastian
Younger a few months ago.
I remember texting Andy about how good how good of a interview I thought that was.
Andy had said he watched Restrepo with his kid and his son is a little bit he's a little
bit older than mine.
Mine will be 15 next week.
And that was really cool.
A really good experience because it wasn't it wasn't I didn't talk to him a whole lot
through it.
I sat through it, and I was able to give my perspective of my combat of what they were
going through.
And I respected what they were going through.
It wasn't that mine was any more significant or because I'm not I was part of the special
operations.
It wasn't like that.
It was just like, this is what fucking people are doing.
You know, these kids are four years older than you, you know, to kind of talking to
him like that and giving him a little bit of perspective with that.
I think let's see another one.
How to Change Your Mind.
It was a really good book.
And I think that that goes hand in hand with a lot of the treatments that he he has been
doing.
Yeah, that was a really that was a really, really good book.
I highly recommend that one.
I won't get too much into that one.
But How to Change Your Mind, it's a pretty common one.
I think that people know about this.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, then the next question, is there a person that you recommend to come on this podcast
as a guest to speak to the first responders, military and associated professions of the
world?
You know, man, when I looked at your list that we talked about this the other day was
like, man, like to see Debbie Lee, Lave, JP, Danelle, Richard, Rich Graham, Jock, you've
had Jocko on, I believe, right?
Yeah.
I think honestly, I think Jericho would be a really good one to tie the brothers together,
especially to see how yeah, I think Jericho would be a great one to have on.
He's a good friend.
And he's he's a travel machine.
Like I said, he's got this like, Anthony Bourdain sort of feel, you know, he loves food, he
loves writing, you know, he kind of these are my words, you know, he might not be crazy
about it.
But he sort of put down the gun and picked up a camera, you know, was doing he's got
so many interesting stories when he was in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Ukraine.
And then he was just got back from Israel.
He was there for about 10 days earlier this month.
You know, so he's got a lot of really unique perspective.
I love his his overall picture on just on on what we're doing kinetically overseas.
Another one that would be phenomenal is a good friend of mine would be Eric Prince.
I think that for years, he's gotten a lot of you know, he's gotten some bad press.
The great thing about Eric is he's so well read and so incredibly educated and so incredibly
smart that he does I'm jealous that he can really not let that shit bother him.
The man the guy is the guy is rock solid and a very good friend.
So you're friends would be great.
Yeah, if you can help us make both of those happen, I think it'd be phenomenal.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
All right.
Well, then the very last question before we make sure people know where to find you, what
do you do to decompress these days?
So a lot of it is is my therapy is found in the gym.
And I think that that's like getting more and more common.
I think that 315 on the bar is always going to be 315 on the bar.
I think that no matter what you're doing, you can get the gym and it can if you put
40% in, you're gonna get 40% out.
I think it's the most honest place with that you can be with yourself.
So that's why I love it so much.
But that's also why I kind of hate it sometimes.
But the gym is great.
I've been playing golf a lot.
I picked it up when I was in high school.
And then a little bit while being on active duty and then moved to Florida, it's like,
okay, got time, may as well start swinging the clubs.
And my oldest, both my kids are actually starting to get kind of into it as well.
So that kind of brings a new little bit of enjoyment, you know, enjoyment to it where
it's fun for me.
Golf is very calculated.
And so I can definitely get, you know, definitely go down the rabbit hole on it.
I like golf because you can experience pretty much every emotion known to man in the span
of about four hours, you know, love, hate, victory, defeat, you know, the whole thing.
So that's been a really good experience.
So yeah, I feel like happy Gilmore when I'm on the bloody golf course.
It shows me how bad my anger actually is.
All right, well then for everyone listening, where are the best places to find you online
and or social media?
So I pretty much stick to just the Instagram.
So I'm at Nick Kush 237, pretty easy.
I'm the owner operator of my own LLC.
It's called Deland High Performance.
And I do my primary means for that was to be able to, you know, create the company for
tax purposes.
Also, I can bid on government contracts.
But I really just use that for when I get sole source from different organizations or
different agencies to basically contract me for work.
But I'll do anything from skydiving to any EOD support or diving support or anything
that's in my wheelhouse that I can do.
And then I also work for Performance Designs Incorporated, which is a parachute manufacturer
here in Deland.
And that's what I'm a test jumper and project lead.
Beautiful.
Well, I want to say a shout out to Jack Lane as well.
I know he's another mutual friend.
I know you work with him too.
So put that in before we leave.
Well, Nick, I want to say thank you so much.
I think it's been an incredible conversation just hearing, you know, your journey starting
off on boats and then EOD and then ultimately in this skydiving world that you exist in
now.
But also for the transparency, I think in our generation, it was raised on arguably
a pretty two dimensional facade of masculinity.
There's no better antidote than the man to the man that says, oh, I'm too tough to have
feelings than having someone from EOD, a Navy SEAL, SAS, firefighter, police officer, whatever
it is, being courageously vulnerable.
And so by telling your story today, I know that it's going to resonate with a lot of
people.
So I want to thank you so, so much for being so generous with your time and coming on the
Behind the Shield podcast today.
I appreciate it, James.
And I really want to thank you for what you're doing with all the guests and the messages,
the multiple messages that you're sending and the projects that you're on and involved
in.
So I really appreciate what you're doing for the community, for humanity in general.
So I really appreciate it.
I think that sometimes might be underappreciated, but I sincerely appreciate what you're doing.