This episode is sponsored by Transcend, a veteran owned and operated performance optimization company that I introduced recently as a sponsor on this show.
Well, since then, I have actually been using my products and I've had incredible success.
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And if you want to hear more about Transcend and their story, listen to episode 808 with the founder Ernie Colling, or go to TranscendCompany.com.
This episode is sponsored by a company I've literally been using for over 15 years now, and that is 511.
Now, my introduction to their products began when I started wearing 511 uniforms years ago for Anaheim Fire Department.
And since then, I have acquired a host of their backpacks and luggage, which have literally been around the world with me.
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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, former ER nurse and the man behind any means necessary, Sean Koss.
In this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from Sean's early life, his journey into nursing, his parallel love of art, working with Cyanide and Happiness,
working with Stephen King, the WWE, creating his own brand, Any Means Necessary, the impact of his mental health artwork on the community, 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 950 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 Sean Koss.
Enjoy.
Well, Sean, I want to start by saying firstly, thank you for saying yes.
I came across your art on Instagram quite a while ago now and it mirrors the kind of an artistic version of what I'm trying to do as far as bringing storytelling to the world of mental health and hope.
But I reached out to you and you said yes, and here we are.
So I want to welcome you to the Behind the Shield podcast today.
I'm happy to be on.
Yeah, it's taken a while.
I think we talked, what, months ago, like three, four months ago, maybe.
Yeah, I think so.
But there was, I always tell people it's not if it's when, you know, when the time is right, it'll all come together and here we are.
And here we are.
So where on planet Earth are we finding you this afternoon?
I am currently in my studio in Akron, Ohio.
My wife is from North Canton, so not too far from me.
Really? You guys don't live in Ohio anymore though, right?
No, no, we're in Ocala, Florida.
Actually, she's ironically, she's in med school at the moment, so she's 300 miles away from me in the Lauderdale area.
But, oh, wow. All right.
Well, I would love to start at the very beginning of your timeline then.
So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings?
OK, so I was born over in the United Kingdom.
My dad was a military.
We were stationed over there.
They were stationed over there for a couple of years when they had me.
And I was only there for about two or three years.
Funny enough, I can actually remember the flight over because I threw up on my mom the whole way.
And I just remember landing in the United States and just vomiting everywhere.
Ended up moving to Maine, Ohio, where we were stationed for a couple of years and then West Virginia.
And then finally settled in Ohio and I've been here for most of my life.
I have one younger sibling, a sister.
She's about two years younger than me.
And so both my parents, they had me very young, which I'm very grateful for because they're only in their early 60s.
And as a mama's boy, like that's huge for me, I get a lot more time with my mom.
Family dynamic.
Standard military style.
You know, my dad was very he was young, you know, when he had us.
So like he was 18 when he had me.
So he was still a child. He was in the military trying to figure out his own life,
dealing with, you know, diapers and wiping ass and shit like that.
And he wasn't very good at emotions.
So I wasn't allowed to show emotion.
You know, he didn't really have a dad to raise him, didn't really have father figures because his dad, my grandfather was a piece of shit on that side.
And so my dad had to raise himself.
But unfortunately, that kind of passed on to him to where he was very stoic and just, you know, like you're not allowed to cry.
You're not allowed to show emotion to their anger or, you know, so you know, you can't really show anything else.
And so that was always tough.
My mom, on the other hand, has always been a champion for me on anything that I would do.
So I told her I was going to, you know, I want to go to space.
You'd be the best fucking astronaut ever.
I'm like, Mom, I'm going to be a musician. You're going to be the best rock star.
You'll be touring with Alice Cooper.
I'm like, slow your roll, Mom.
Like, let's just take it one step at a time.
But she was very much always about me chasing my dream.
And they struggled a lot.
We struggled a lot growing up and very poor.
You know, once my dad left the military and we moved to West Virginia, he was very, very tired.
He was in Virginia. He was struggling to just make ends meet.
My mom was working three or four jobs, cleaning hotels, never really had much money for food or toys.
I always tell people during Christmas, we would have so little money that we would have to wrap toys that we had previously,
just we had stuff to unwrap for Christmas.
Max the price.
Yeah, yeah. So it's like we wanted to have something.
The odd part was we never me and my sister never really knew how bad we were.
We were just because they work so hard.
You know, we just thought all parents worked all hours of the day and we never saw them.
And, you know, they tried their best to kind of give us whatever we needed.
Sometimes something that we didn't need, but they knew it would make us happy.
But yeah, the the dynamic much better than a lot of people I know.
You know, there's some people who've grown up in very broken homes, very abusive homes.
You know, my dad was big into physical discipline.
I think a lot of men were, you know, growing up in the, you know, that era.
So like, hey, if you spank him, sorry, I, uh, voices not working today.
If you spank him, you know, set him right and all that stuff.
And so he was very much into physical discipline, but it was never like excessive, you know.
But yeah, like, you know, we had our fights in my teenage life, you know, when I was developing
into a man, you know, and trying to like fight for the household, you know, being the, the
hierarchy never won, you know, because he was always stronger than me.
But yeah, so it was a nothing out of the ordinary.
It was a pretty, I guess, typical family.
I don't have like a crazy, uh, like, you know, dad was an alcoholic.
You know, mom was a drug act or anything like that.
It's interesting that when you said grandpa was a piece of shit, cause this is a re is
reoccurring theme now.
And I'm actually just finishing up a book where the theme is multi-generational trauma.
And then there's the hope element that you can stop that last domino from falling and
not pass it on to your children.
But understanding that there's a ripple effect.
And I think especially in your part of the country, we know with the West Virginia and
Ohio being a real hub for, you know, the, the opiate addiction, you know, and you reverse
engineer to whether it's wars or mines closing, whatever it is, if we're not accepting or
acknowledging the impact of generations prior, we're kind of missing some of the why and
why we're struggling.
No, I agree.
Uh, the thing with my grandfather not really being around, unless he needed something was
very apparent.
Uh, but he was always wanting to go out and do things.
He was always busy chasing women.
He always thought he always wanted to be a cowboy for whatever reason.
And my dad has that same trait almost like he has to be doing something all the time.
So like for father's day on Sunday, he's going fishing, you know, he's not going to be hanging
out with me.
He's not going to be hanging out with my sister and I'm not offended by it, but cause because
I know my dad, like he has his own life that he wants to go do.
And I find myself doing the same thing when I'm at home and my two daughters are sitting
hanging out, I can sit with them.
But I was like, I really just want to go up in my studio and just draw, you know, and
I'm trying to like fight that because I feel like it's the same trait that's being passed
on and like, I don't want my kids to grow up and be like, man, dad was never really
around.
He was so focused on his career as opposed to being focused on us.
And so I'm trying to stop that domino from falling into their generation.
Yeah.
I mean, there's that phrase work life balance, which is obviously a little cliche, but I
think realizing that sometimes busyness is an unhealthy coping mechanism for the craziness
in your head.
And I know, you know, a lot of firefighters that will take extra shifts and you take a
step back, like, why would you not want to go home with your family?
You know, you can find money in a side job, do a, do a job that you come home that night.
But there are some people that if they just immerse themselves in the busyness, especially
in a, an exciting profession like the fire service, the one thing that you're not really
realizing is it's then not giving you the space to deal with the things that you need
to be dealing with and you're pushing them down.
Right.
I agree.
So I saw an interview that you did a while ago and you mentioned about eating MREs when
you were a young boy.
And it's interesting because I'm just about to interview a Navy SEAL spouse and that's
exactly what she's going to be talking about.
But a lot of us don't realize some of the poverty of our active duty families.
So talk to me about that element.
Well, while we were growing up very poor, even in West Virginia, when we moved there,
someone gifted us a trailer.
I didn't realize like, and that's right.
We had a wild raccoon come in and end up being my pet for like three years.
I just found out last year that it was a wild animal and it wasn't domesticated.
So my dad's like, Oh, it just came in one day and just got in your bed with you.
I'm like, what?
And he goes, yeah.
And then we just kept it.
I'm like, what the fuck?
But yeah, during those times of struggle, my dad was in, I think, was it inactive reserves?
Maybe I can't remember what it is, but he also worked for the public debt, which was
like the government building, but he used to go and bring MREs back for us to eat.
And I, so I just had lunch today and I got food in my mouth.
So to supplement like just the lack of money we had, he would just bring in more than what
he probably should have of MREs.
And we would have like 30 or 40 of them in our cupboards and we would just eat those
for the week.
It's funny.
It's like so many people are like, I MREs are so bad.
I'm like, the fuck you talking about?
That's just good as shit.
Like it's calorie dense.
The what was the chicken and rice I think was super good.
The cheese spread, the crackers, it was all good to me.
You know, and I ate the shit right off the back.
I didn't like years later, my dad showed me how to like, how they would cook it like out
in the field and stuff like that.
I was like, I'll just eat it straight out of the bag.
Fuck it.
But yeah, we would eat those all the time.
And anytime I see an MRE, I'll buy it up.
I'll eat some.
So what about from the art point of view, when did you find yourself kind of falling
in love with that site?
So I don't remember the exact age.
I think between five and seven, I remember going through one of our rooms in the trailer,
like a closet for whatever.
I don't even know what the fuck I was going through it for, but there's a suitcase or
briefcase and I opened it up and it's a bunch of my dad's old military stuff.
And within it is a bunch of these like, like pieces of paper.
And I pulled it out and it's just all this artwork.
You know, it's a beetle Bailey, which is very old comic for people who may not remember
pictures of portraits of my mom, portraits of animals, the Eagles deer and all that stuff.
And like, it was like super realistic.
I'm like, oh shit, like who's who did this?
I saw my dad's name.
I was like, oh, my dad's an artist.
That's wild.
I don't ever see this guy draw.
I was like, huh, he can draw.
I wonder if I can draw.
And so I start trying to draw and it looks like absolute dog shit, but something about
taking a blank piece of paper and creating something from it was like magic in a way.
You know, like I'm turning nothing into something.
And that whole thing kind of was intriguing to me.
And my mind was always super overactive.
You know, I pretended a lot of being in like these long forgotten planets and mystical
places and like just a wild imagination.
I grew up watching a lot of Stephen King as a child.
My mom was a huge Stephen King fan.
So when I was five, six, seven, eight years old, I was watching Pet Sematary, Salem's
Lot, you know, shit like that.
You know, my mom didn't realize, oh, I'm traumatizing this kid to a career of dark artwork, which
thanks mom, appreciate it.
Because it's done well for me.
It's done well for me.
But at that moment, I've just always been drawn to creating.
You know, I would go to school, I'd go to aunt's house, my uncle's house, you know,
my grandparents, not the shitty one.
And I just wanted paper because I just want paper.
I just want to draw something.
And it was like this, like I don't have an addictive personality, but I liken it to needing
my next fix.
Like if I don't create something within at the time, like every day, I felt withdrawal
from it.
I felt just drained.
Like, gosh, like I felt worthless if I wasn't creating something.
I wasn't putting something new into the world.
And it was just this gnawing hunger that was just like, I'd wake up and I'd even before
breakfast, I'd just grab my sketchbook and start drawing.
And I would like satiate that need.
And then, you know, later in the evening, I'd be like, oh, fuck, I need to draw something.
I need to draw something.
It was like a, like I was yearning for, I was jonesing for, I was like, I need that
fix.
And it just kept going.
You know, it's hard to explain because it's not like I didn't want to be an artist.
I just, I'm just creative.
I just create it.
I didn't choose it.
It was just always a part of my nature.
And as a hard thing to explain to people when they're like, when did you decide you want
to become an artist?
I didn't decide.
It just happened.
You know, just I found this artwork and it triggered something in my brain.
So I was like turning on another aspect and say, oh, hey, you do art now.
You know, I wasn't like, I want to do art.
It kind of reminds me of the real artists.
When you look at the music side, you know, you have people who arguably probably want
to be stars rather than actually be a true artist.
And then you have the phenomenal artists that some remain undiscovered and some happen to
get a lucky break.
But there's there's such a difference between, you know, someone who's who's lip syncing
someone else's song to someone else's choreography.
And then you've got, you know, Adele, for example, who pours their soul into their songs.
Yeah.
So what about from the sports point of view?
Were you a sportsman or exercise much when you were in the school age?
Against my will, yes.
My, my dad didn't want me to be a pansy.
And you know, he was, I know, right.
So I don't want to say pussy, but you know, you know, I'm saying he was the quarterback
first football team wrestler.
What else did he do?
Track and all that stuff.
So like he was the jock, you know.
And when I was growing up, you know, I was the sensitive kid.
You know, I wore all black.
I had fishnets on.
I had makeup on.
You know, I was a big fan of Marilyn Manson.
I was a big fan of pushing the envelope, but I didn't really want to be a part of the mainstream
because I was super goth, which is fucking stupid.
But I always had a competitive nature to me.
And so my dad forced me to do wrestling and I wish he would have kept at it because I
miss it.
Especially now as I've gotten older in my younger thirties, I was doing Muay Thai and
I was on Brazilian jujitsu.
I was like, damn, if I just would have stuck with wrestling, I would have had such a better
base understanding of like fighting.
But I did wrestling for a year, went to state, which they said was not going to happen, but
got all the way up to, you know, state championship got destroyed.
But you know, I got some trophies for it.
I did track, which I was really good at track.
I was a foot and a half from breaking the high school history's record of the long jump.
And once they told me how to do it properly, I lost three feet.
So like, yeah, because when I ran, I just full fucking sprinted.
And then they're like, you just got to jump before you can't pass the white piece on the
ground.
I'm like, all right, cool.
So fucking full sprint.
And I would just leap.
And they're like, oh, my God, like you're like a foot and a half away from breaking
the record of all time.
I'm like, oh shit.
And they're like, we're gonna show you how to do it properly.
And you got to count your steps.
And ever since then, I'd always stutter step right at the end.
And I was like, you motherfuckers.
But I did that the four by 100 was I was really good at the last leg.
I was like the fastest one in our four man team.
I did soccer, sucked at soccer.
We were 0 and 12.
Our coach sucked and made us run laps more than taught us and did baseball briefly.
Wasn't a big fan of it.
Couldn't throw to save my life.
And then I did marching band for the rest of my career because I just had taken out
with my friends.
But yeah, like now, like once I got into my mid 20s, I started going to the gym.
I started exercising a lot more.
I got picked on a lot as a kid.
No surprise, you weren't fishing out to make up all that stuff in Ohio.
And then started practicing jujitsu and then kickboxing for a couple years and had a lot
of fun.
But then I had two daughters and I was gonna hit a lot in the head just in sparring.
And I was having headaches.
I was like, you know what?
I'm 34, 35.
I'm not gonna be a pro fighter anytime soon.
So I'm just gonna end this shit.
Yeah.
Well, firstly, I can relate to that.
I was a weekend warrior, I get my bloody jaw dislocated and my nose broken.
That's this.
There's no bell.
Yes, right here.
Yeah, I'd be I'd win the stupidest, you know, ugliest face belt.
That'd be it.
It's the only thing I'm winning.
Yeah.
The last thing I did with Muay Thai was I was sparring my one buddy who was a fighter.
And I thought he was going for a leg kick.
And he actually going for a roundhouse and just kicked my nose actually this way, kicked
it all the way that way.
And just a faucet of blood poured out and like the whole ring was just filled with blood.
I was like, I think I'm good, guys.
I think I'm good.
I've told this story before, but I trained in L.A. in shoot box, which is the one that,
you know, Vandeley and all those ones used to train, but they opened.
Those are monsters.
Yeah.
Well, it's Fight Club.
It's it's it wasn't really learning very much.
It was again using the word pussy like you discover if you're a pussy or not.
And I figured that I wasn't a giant, you know, pansy to use the word.
But certainly not going to win any any championships.
But yeah, it was the same thing.
The headaches and all that stuff, you know, fighting 250 pound guys just because it was
just everyone on everyone.
Yeah.
There's a certain line where you're like, OK, my longevity is more important than.
Right.
I'm no I'm no axe murderer.
Yeah.
I met Vandeley Silva in Cincinnati when Anderson Silva fought Rich Franklin.
And nicest gentleman, but when you do the face off with him, you feel your soul leaving
your body.
I can imagine he's a scary looking man.
Scary.
Yeah.
Well, going back to the long jump for a second, it's an interesting kind of, you know, lens
on this.
When I started the podcast, for example, rather than dive into how do you start a podcast,
I was like, well, what if I just didn't?
What if I just figured it out?
And then maybe that would create something a little bit differently.
And it did.
I mean, it's not like completely unique, but it's it's a different format than you normally
hear.
And I think that that creates like an entirely different kind of alleyway for you.
Taking the long jump analogy with your art, did you kind of go down the how to be a trained
artist or did you find yourself kind of improvising the same way you did tearing towards the sand
pit?
I'll improvise.
I struggle with just paying attention to things and trying to read anatomy books from like
an artist standpoint just made no fucking sense to me.
I'm like, I'm just learning medical shit.
What the fuck am I doing?
And it I would like I had like 60, 70 books on how to draw this, how to do this, how to
do this.
But I was like, I'm spending more time studying this and not actually getting to draw.
And I've always had this thing with mortality where I have a very finite amount of time
on this planet.
I don't I don't want to be wasting it trying to learn something when I could just be drawing
and then learning it as I go.
So if I need a reference or like need to draw like like a peck muscle or like a forearm
or something like that, I need to I'll just pull it up on Pinterest or something like
that and just find it as opposed to like spend weeks trying to understand it and then, you
know, go.
But I do wish I would have went to design school a little bit because there's technical
things that I struggle with that I could have benefited from everything I've learned and
done is through years of trial and error and figuring it out on my own.
And it's not always the right way.
The way I create artwork, the way I approach things.
And I think having some type of base of fundamentals to understand, you know, they always say,
like, learn the rules to break them.
So I think a little bit of design school would have helped.
But yeah, everything's just been I call it the oh, it's the Plato theory, not like the
actual philosopher Plato.
But I tell people like how I've learned my abilities is we have, let's say, like four
pieces of play dough, different colors, and each one represents a seller technique that
you are inspired by.
And when you first take all four of those and you smash them together, you can kind
of see very prominently all the different inspirations, different techniques, very prominent.
But then as you keep molding it and smashing it together and putting time into it, it turns
so big brown ball of shit, which turns into your silent technique.
I like that.
I wish it came to a better color.
But whenever you mix all that play dough, it just looks like brown shit.
I was like, that's my style.
Brown shit.
Well, you mentioned anatomy.
Obviously, you know, as we're talking now, art was one of the areas that you found yourself
really thriving in.
Talk to me about the journey into nursing, though.
So the nursing comes back with my dad.
I was in nursing school just because in Ohio, you either go to college, get a business degree,
be a nurse or work in a factory.
It's pretty much what Ohio is for the most part.
I'm generalizing.
There's way more many jobs.
I can be a barista or whatever, subway sandwich artist.
But the careers are limited and nursing fools you with the, oh, you only got to work three
twelve and you make like thirty bucks an hour.
That's amazing.
Yeah, it sounds awesome.
And my dad was pushing me to go to college because none of them had gone to college at
the time.
He's like, I don't want you to have to struggle like we did.
I don't want you to have to really hurt for money and wants and needs.
He's like, I want you to have a better life than what we had.
And so that's kind of pushed me towards nursing.
It made the most sense.
I did one year at Kent State for graphic design, but I didn't want to make a magazine.
I was very naive.
I was like, I don't want to make magazine layouts.
That sounds fucking stupid.
Looking back, you know, owning a clothing brand and doing more design stuff, I was like,
oh, shit, I could have did way more with it other than just magazine stuff.
But I've also always been fascinated by like medical weird shit, organs, you know, growing
up a horror fan, like seeing trauma in person is vastly different than seeing it in the
movies, not in like a weird serial killer way.
But like, you know, if you have a patient coming in and they were just attacked by like
Rottweiler and you can see all the like the skin ripped away and you can see all the tendons
moving like from a a I guess scientific medical position, like that's very fascinating, you
know, and then I've always I've been I've always been very one to like help people in
a way or try to listen like no feel like, you know, if I see someone collapse, I'm going
to try and approach and try and help them.
I've always run towards danger.
I'm like when the fight or flight response happens, I've always gone fight mode.
I never run from it.
It's always just towards it.
So I think nursing social and ER like that kind of suited that type of response.
And I just felt like there's no other options I had at that time.
When I was young, I used to read wasn't Stephen King, but it's James Herbert books, who was
a kind of English Stephen King.
He wrote The Rats and The Fog and a couple other ones.
But then I was into the horror movies to the kind of slasher movies.
And then I got to it was late teens and just had this kind of realization one day like
I'm watching people being tortured for entertainment.
This doesn't seem quite right.
But then I got into the fire service and obviously all the things that we see as a paramedic.
And it really kind of turned me where I still love kind of macabre things and ghosts and
ghoulies and all that.
But the kind of torture, capture, torture, slasher type stuff turns my stomach now.
And for me, when I reflect, it's like, well, because when you've seen it in real, you know,
you've seen the real thing and you've seen the suffering that actually causes, there's
no entertainment about it.
It's not that I'm triggered by it.
I'm just kind of disgusted by it now.
Did you have any sort of journey like that as you progressed into the nursing side?
I became colder as a person with becoming a nurse because as you know, most medical
people, we have to compartmentalize our emotions during a situation.
You know, so like we had like that really bad opiate crisis in November of 2018, 2019.
I can't remember.
But Ohio had the record amount of heroin overdoses in the country in one month.
It was insane.
And I was in the ER during that time.
So we had, you know, people coming in left and right overdosing on carfentanol because,
you know, that's when like that whole thing started happening.
But on Christmas Eve, we had a 13 year old male come in who tried it for the first time.
And we're in there doing whatever we can, you know, save this kid.
And we couldn't, we just couldn't.
And we had to tell the parents Christmas Eve, hey, your son's not coming home tomorrow,
you know.
And during it, I was just cold, even, you know, cold calculated, just doing my job,
didn't think about it.
Didn't think it really affected me until years later, like after I started like going part
time nursing and I finally left nursing, like my wife said, like, you're always so angry
when you came home.
Like you're agitated all the time, you're drinking a lot.
And I was just like, I'm just trying to relax, you know.
And I'd realized that I was compartmentalizing so much of that trauma that I was seeing and
just putting it in the back of my mind, not trying to think about it.
But during all of that, and then also having, you know, what we would call pain seek or
pain seekers, you know, or like the come for the pain meds, you know, and we'd pull up
their, was it the ORDs report, I think, we see they've been to like six different hospitals
in a week looking for pills.
And I just lost my faith in humanity, you know, because I'm seeing them at their worst
and in there when they're, you know, needing their next, you know, pill because they took
all of their neratin, or no, sorry, their gabapentin for like a month's dose they took
in a week, you know, and then they try to tell you how like, it wasn't enough, I need
more, I need more.
I was like, dude, what the fuck are we doing?
Like we're just, we're just drug dealing to these people.
And everyone's okay with it.
So I just became more and more cold towards like humanity.
And like a lot of my friends, my business partner will say like, I just, it doesn't affect me.
Like they'd be like, oh, so much, this happened.
I'm like, whatever, don't care.
You know, someone died.
Cool.
School shooting.
Yeah.
All right.
Cool.
Don't care.
But then as I had kids, I got further away from nursing, like I've been on nursing now
for three and a half years, I think.
And that compassion started to come back a little bit more, you know, I'm affected more
by things, you know, we saw Inside Out 2 last night and I was a mess, you know.
You know, and then, you know, school shootings like that hits harder now with having two
daughters, you know, we had a school lockdown like two months ago because there was an active
shooter like a mile away from their school.
And I drove, it's about 35, 40 minutes from my studio.
I got there in like 20 minutes.
Like I was flying.
And the only thought in my head was if I see him, I'm going to kill him.
I'm just going to run him over.
And I had already just accepted that he could kill me.
And like I was like, you know, I've had a good life.
If I can do this to protect my daughters, it'll be worth it.
And so like this compassion thing is starting to come back and like this range of emotions
I wasn't having as a nurse, as a nurse, it was just very cold and just angry.
I think I don't know if you had the same thing, but certainly with the addiction side, I think
what's so maddening is preventable.
You know, these are people, if we viewed it, addiction as it should be as a mental health
problem that needs compassion and empathy and the right medical community around it,
then we can fix it.
But you put prohibition in and you send addicts into the shadows.
Because I know in Ohio, for example, you were one of the biggest victims of the Oxycontin
crisis that we had.
They were, the pill mills were here in Florida where I'm sitting.
And then that was shut down.
And then you had all the black tie heroin come in from Mexico.
So you've got this community that was devastated by the lack of industry, this massive void,
this mental health crisis.
And now they're flooded with opiates.
And now here we sit and then people are looking over their nose, judge, you know, judgmentally
an addict was like, well, it's not the consumption of the drug.
It's the thing beneath the thing that we've got to be discussing.
But if we don't have any empathy for people that are struggling, we're never going to
fix this.
It's funny.
They finally admitted that the hospitals are what caused the opiate crisis.
It took them very long to admit that like, oh, we're just giving percusses to everyone.
You know, we had a doctor that we call the candy man in our ER because they can come
in with like an army.
I give them like 10 perks.
I'm like, what?
And he says, yeah, there's some 10 perks.
That's fine.
I'm like, he's got arm pain.
Like he can take like a muscle relaxer or something.
So we had all these people that we were getting hooked on, Oxycontin, Percocets, all that
stuff.
And then they finally go, hey, we're going to do a nationwide sweep of that.
So now it's here's an approximate, here's ibuprofen for your pain.
And like, we've already got all these people hooked.
And now, you know, they go to pain management and pain management will boot them if they
take certain medications without regulate, like without, I think it's like an ER, they
can't take certain medications or kick them out of pain management.
I forget what the, the, the legal part of that is, but I've had a lot of them say like,
I just go out and get heroin for five bucks and it takes all the pain away.
I'm like, I can't argue with you.
Like I get it.
Like if you're in true pain and the one thing that people were giving you, even though it's
making you an addict was taking your pain away and all of a sudden they're like, oh,
we're going to take that back from you.
You know, and we're just letting you live in that.
So yeah, I agree.
Like the, and it's taken me a long time to understand addiction as a, an illness and
a mental, you know, a mental health issue until I had like one of my close friends.
Years ago, we found like he was a severe alcoholic and we had no idea for years.
And he got to the point of our, you know, he was on his verge of death and like he lost
everything.
He was sleeping in a hotel, uh, doing sexual favors to a six year old housekeeper.
I wish I was making this up, uh, just so that he could stay in the room for free.
And he thought everything was fine.
He thought we were all overreacting.
And I was like, dude, I was like, there's something going on.
Like you have, you know, his mom was an addict, you know, they had a long list of addicts.
I was like, dude, that's a, that's the thing you need therapy for.
And like, you know, he's been, I think four years sober now, five years, you know, he
had one relapse.
Uh, but you know, he goes to AA, he works for a guy who only hires AA members, which
is super dope.
Um, but it made me realize that, um, addiction isn't like, they didn't choose to be an addict,
you know, they didn't choose it.
Uh, but from the non addict side, it wears you down too.
Like if you're constantly trying to help that person.
So it's a lot of patients and understanding that's needed, but not all of us have that
order.
Like people feel like they have the time for it.
Yeah.
Well, that means there's definitely compassion fatigue, whether you're an EMS or within the
hospital setting.
Like you said, the frequent flyers become maddening and anyone would be, you know, we'd
all admit that there's times where we just lost our temper or at least we're a lot less
friendly than we normally are when it's the over and over again.
But this is the problem is we're in an environment where we're doing the same thing, expecting
different results, you know, insanity.
So all it does is just wear down everyone, all the cogs in that machine rather than taking
a step back and going, we need a new machine.
A hundred percent.
So I wanted just to go back to your childhood, just for a moment, you mentioned about, you
know, growing up as a goth, which is, there's nothing wrong with that at all.
But one of the important parts of the mental health conversation as adults is obviously
our formative years.
When you reflect now today in 2024 at your upbringing, were there any elements you identified
that would have contributed to some of the struggles later in life?
In high school, even though I dressed like, I never cared about people's opinions.
So like wearing a dress, wearing combat boots, wearing fishnets, like I had joy from like
just seeing how upset it made people.
I was like, why does this upset you so much?
Like, this is hilarious to me.
But like the opinions, just they never bothered me.
And so I just kind of kept at, and obviously being in a very, it's weird to say Ohio is
conservative, but it is a pretty conservative area, you know.
So I was definitely the, you know, black sheep in this whole crowd, but I like, I enjoyed
the confrontation, you know, I've always been very aggressive.
And I think that's affected me as an adult because I'm still super confrontational about
things.
Like a lot, I realize a lot of people don't like confrontation, especially face to face.
They do not like it.
And I thrive on it sometimes.
Like I want to, like if there's an issue, I'm going to be right in your face about it.
Not like let's fight, but like let's deal with this, you know.
And most people I realize aren't like that.
They don't like being uncomfortable.
I don't have times where I get super uncomfortable about things.
There are like very few times here and there, but like I rarely get embarrassed because
I'm just like, dude, who cares?
I'm never going to see this person again.
Or you know, I don't give a shit what their opinion is, but I don't know if that's always
a healthy thing to have because it almost puts me on like an island at times because
I'm so confrontational about things when maybe there's a different approach, which is something
that I've been working on the last couple of years, just within the business I have.
You know, there's two owners, so there's a lot of give and take and compromise with
a vision that we have because we come from vastly different backgrounds.
And in the past, it was a lot of arguing, a lot of me just like shitting on other view
points.
And now like I'm trying to get better at like seeing from the other side or like trying
to understand a person's viewpoint or understand that we both have the same intentions towards
something.
So I think, oh, I will actually, I will go back to this because I wasn't in the, the
popular crowd in high school.
I've always been drawn towards the spotlight.
So acting, being the lead singer for a band, being a content creator, putting my face on
camera all the time.
I think a lot of that has to do with not having that chance younger.
You know, I wasn't the attractive kid.
I wasn't the wealthiest kid.
So like no one really gave a shit.
And so I think a little bit of that has caused what I, the monster I've become now from like,
I need to be on camera all the time.
You know, I need to make all these fucking videos.
Always need to be in the limelight.
Well speaking of, I guess the performance world, talk to me about your, the kind of
metamorphosis of your art early into some of this more powerful side and how that brought
you full circle of actually working on a Stephen King project.
So stuff I used to do before was just creepy stuff, you know, grew up in horror movies
and I just like drawing demons and monsters and shit like that.
But it was just artwork, you know, and when in 2016, 2015, I was trying to do the annual
drawing month called Inktober in October, you draw a piece of artwork every day for
the month of October to kind of help create or try to get those creative juices moving.
And so they give you a prompt every day.
But since I don't like following directions because I'm fucking just difficult, I wanted
to make up my own.
And a fan of mine suggested drawing mental illness through the eyes of a schizophrenic,
which made zero sense to me at the time.
I was like, why does it have to be from a schizophrenic?
Why can't it just be just mental illness?
And mental health has always been intriguing to me, trying to understand why people act
the way they do.
When I was in college, there was a point where I was like, I should go into psychology because
I loved understanding why people think the way they do and why they behave.
And so I did a few pieces of artwork based on borderline personality disorder, bipolar
and generalized depression and posted them on all my socials.
And then within like two or three days, I had like 30, 40,000 likes, comments, all this
stuff and just kind of blew up in this thing.
I'm like, I don't know what the fuck's happening.
And I started getting all these emails telling me to go fuck myself and I'm not a monster.
And like all these people attacking me for drawing mental health in this darker aspect.
And I'm like, I've never been used to having people just attack me over my artwork.
It's always been, no, I love your art.
I love your art.
This is the first time I had people go on like, you suck.
I hope you die.
And I'm like, oh damn, this sucks.
And a bunch of my friends are like, hey dude, you made it.
You know, your art's now reaching everyone.
So now you're getting all the haters too.
But the connection I was finding with drawing mental health and with like people reaching
out to me was like so profound to me.
So I was like, oh, I'm doing something that I can like potentially really help people.
Because there's a lot of people who reach out to me saying like, you know, I haven't
seen therapy for, you know, 10, 20 years and I could never put into words how I felt.
And like this artwork did it.
And I took it to my therapist and said, this is the art.
Like this is how I feel.
And it opened up a whole new like discussion with their therapy.
And I had people just reach out saying like, you know, I've been feeling so alone.
I've had a lot of people, it's heavy, tell me like, you know, they were, you know, at
the end of the line.
They were ready, like they were getting ready to leave this planet.
And they just happened to stumble upon my artwork.
Now whether that's true or not, or they're just making up the story because I'm paranoid
of all people and I don't believe anyone.
But if that is true, like that's super moving, you know, knowing that my artwork had the
ability to change someone's decision from leaving this earth and staying a couple of
days longer, you know, and that's been very profound for me.
And it's come with a lot of weight because people open up a lot to me.
People reach out to me for help.
And I, you know, I try to tell them like, I'm not crisis trained.
I cannot deescalate you, you know, there are resources for that.
And I can try and help you get those resources.
But like I've had people in full manic, you know, mode reach out to me say, you have to
help me, you have to talk me down.
I'm like, why are you putting that on me?
You know, like I can't help that.
And then, but then you have to be careful on how you approach that.
Because if I tell them like, here's the resources, they might be like, you don't fucking care.
You know, I'm like, I'm trying to bring awareness.
Like I'm not here to treat you like that's not, I don't have that expertise.
And what if I treat gave you the wrong advice and just completely sent you over the edge?
And so I don't want to have that on my conscious knowing that I seared someone wrong.
And you know, people send me a lot of DMs of just the darkest stuff that they've been
through, you know, sexual assault and like they open up a lot.
And I, I'm humbled by the fact that they're willing to open up and tell me just some of
the darkest stuff that's ever happened to them.
At the same time, I feel like every time they tell me that I'm just throwing it on my back.
I'm putting another one on my shoulder.
I'm just carrying this load with me.
And it's got to a point now where I don't get to check my DMs as much because I'm afraid
to open one up.
And that that's going to be the story that breaks me and just makes me spiral out of
control.
And so a lot of people think like, oh, he's just too big and he doesn't have time for
his fans.
I was like, I try to check all my messages.
I do run a business.
I you know, I have a family.
I do have a life, but I also have to protect my own mental health.
And if you keep, you know, I did that as a nurse, I went to people's worst times with
them.
I've seen people die.
I've seen people die unexpectedly or shouldn't have people, you know, at their worst.
And what that did to me back then.
And so this is even heavier because it's mentally.
And so I'm packing this all the way into my own, you know, my own back of my head, hoping
that just stays back there that I'm holding it for them.
You know, maybe that they told me, you know, their darkest feelings that it helped them.
But now I have to like bear it almost like a like you ever see the movie Sin Eater?
I haven't seen that one, though.
Had Heath Ledger in it, but a brief thing is he would pretty much do the last rites
to all these people who are dying.
But in a supernatural way, he would actually eat their sins.
So he would take their sins from them, but he would have to bear all of that sin in him,
you know, all that darkness so that they could go to heaven.
So something like that, like take it, you know, if I can help them in that way.
But surprisingly, that had zero relation with the Stephen King thing, which is the Stephen
King movie.
Someone reached out to me through Deviantart, which is a platform.
A lot of artists can post their work and stuff like that.
And I hadn't posted on there for years.
And I get this email from this guy from a production company.
He goes, hey, we want to use your artwork for a Stephen King film.
I'm like, OK, assuming it's just a fan film that the real Stephen King movies aren't going
to reach out to me.
It ended up being a real Stephen King film.
And they want to use my artwork for the all that the demon work and all the creepy stuff
for John Cusack's character.
And so I got to draw a lot of artwork for it.
It's in I always tell people, watch the first hour of the movie.
After that, they lose funding for the film and the movie turns to shit.
So don't finish it.
It just gets worse and worse.
But that first hour is pretty solid.
And my artwork artworks in it and get to see John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson in a room
with my artworks like super cool.
Also the the coincidental part is like my wife is a diehard John Cusack fan and my mom's
a diehard Stephen King fan.
So I felt like it was fate to be a part of this movie.
That's amazing.
Speaking of Stephen King, the analogy you use at the Cine, I use the same thing with
Michael Clarke Duncan's character in The Green Mile.
Yes, yes.
I think that's what we do as first responders and doctors and nurses.
We're research empaths that we take it and take it.
But you know, obviously, you got to be careful because if you just take it and don't have
some sort of release, eventually it will take you.
100% I forgot I forgot about that Green Mile.
That was a good movie.
Amazing movie.
They had funding the whole way through for that one.
Yes, they did.
You can tell it was good all the way through.
Absolutely.
And yet Tom Hanks in it.
So I mean, yeah, he's was he in it?
Tom Hanks.
He was.
Yeah, he was.
OK, because my wife was getting confused about it the other day.
But yeah, he was in he was in that as well as Shawshank.
Was he in Shawshank as well?
Am I getting confused now?
No, not Shawshank.
That's what we had back when we were talking.
So Green Mile, it kills me.
My wife so has not seen Shawshank Redemption because it's a Stephen King film, too.
But she just assumes that it's going to be a dumb movie.
I'm like, it's one of the best movies of all time.
Watch the movie.
Yeah.
Have you been to the prison where they shot it?
It's near you.
I have to leave it now.
Yeah.
I think it's Mansfield, isn't Mansfield correction?
That's right.
Yeah.
So you can go in there and you've actually got some of the sets.
And obviously, there's not really a set as rooms from the actual prison that they have
some of those scenes.
They have a a three day rock festival there called Incarceration, which is super cool.
Yeah.
So they had one.
Well, they have one here called Welcome in Rockville.
And it was phenomenal.
It was in this place called Met Park in Jacksonville.
So you had the river, you had all these different parks and then they'd have different stages
and it was incredible.
And then something happened with the city.
And so they ended up moving to Daytona Speedway.
And now it's absolute dog shit because it's just in this big fucking racetrack.
There's no no nothing to it.
You're just in a big circle.
All the bands are bouncing off the stands and I can't stand it now.
So so we're thinking of going to maybe Ohio or somewhere to watch.
You should do a Sonic Temples really good.
I was there.
I have a lot of friends in the music industry.
And so I was at Sonic Temples.
I did Audemars work for us either.
And so they were performing.
That one's a good show.
It's in a stadium and they have four stages.
It's super legit.
You'll enjoy it.
Yeah.
And with Mansfield, the new prison is next to the old one, isn't it?
So I wonder what the prisoners must think for those three days when everyone's having
the time of their life just meters from from the boxes that they're saying.
Maybe they're just happy to get the music at least.
Hey, let's get to hear some music.
I'm going to say hate metal.
And they're like, fuck, I hate this.
Exactly.
Three days of misery.
Right.
But what about the WWE?
I saw you did some stuff with them as well.
Yeah, so a couple, two, three years ago, we worked with a company called Chalkline Jackets.
They do like the old school starter jackets all over print, like supplemented jackets.
And they have a license with the WWE.
And they had reached out because obviously I do creepy artwork and they had the Undertaker's
30th year anniversary was coming up.
So they asked me to design a jacket for it.
Also my mom is a huge Undertaker fan.
That was our favorite wrestler growing up.
And you can see a trend with all the dark artworks.
All my mom's fault.
It's all her fault.
Sounds like it.
Yeah.
But yeah, so we did the Undertaker jacket.
His wife was wearing it.
It was super cool.
And then they hit us up for the Ultimate Warrior in Papachango.
So they were cool.
It wasn't like a huge financial venture, but it was just cool because me and my business
partner grew up huge wrestling fans in the early 90s and the Attitude era.
So he was a huge Ultimate Warrior fan.
So getting to do an Ultimate Warrior jacket the way he likes it was super cool.
And then we both love Papachango, even though it's super stereotypical of a character.
But back then, you really believed this dude was a voodoo doctor.
So I was drawn to him as well, just because of the creepiness.
The Ultimate Warrior, actually, he went on to coaching a lot, physical coaching.
He worked with youth football teams, that kind of thing.
Yeah.
He seemed very profound in a lot of things that he talked about.
So it was a real shame that he died so early, as so many of the wrestlers do, because he
would have been a great person to talk to on here.
Yeah.
You just had to call him Warrior though, because he changed his name, which was super like,
hey, what's up, Warrior?
I gave it to the Frisbee people.
Well, I would love to unpack as well the social media journey.
So you mentioned about putting some of the art out there.
Talk to me about your time with Cyanide and Happiness, and again, the evolution of a somewhat
small platform to putting comics on that medium.
Yeah, so with C and H, back during the MySpace days, I was posting artwork on there, and
one of the original creators, Chris Wilson, had DM'd me.
I don't know if you called it DM back then, whatever he called MySpace messages, just
saying that he loved my artwork.
And I thought it was a scam.
I thought he was going to, like, you know, back then, you know, every other day, you'd
get a spam email saying, hey, grow your dick six inches, you know, take these pills, whatever.
And I won't check their account got hacked, you know, I got to delete it.
But he...
Fake emails?
I've been replying them to...
Right, right.
Just getting all of my...
Give me all these pills.
He reached out and he was a big fan of my dark artwork.
And he goes, hey, man, I do a lot of dark art too.
I'm like, holy shit, you're Chris.
Like, I'm a huge fan.
And we became friends that way, just through like a passion of dark artwork.
And he ended up inviting me out to his house like six months later of meeting him online.
And my dad lost his mind because he says, you know, God love my dad.
He's trying.
He's made it leaps and bounds of what it used to be.
But he was like, you know, it's just a bunch of gays in Colorado.
And he goes, if he invites you out into the woods, be careful because that's where they
do the gay sex.
I'm like, dad, I don't think this dude is going to kidnap me and make me have gay sex.
Like, I can say no, but I don't know why he had this fear.
But then he let my sister go to Cancun by herself for like senior trip.
So there's no gay stuff.
So he's right.
Explain this shit to me.
But I get there and I just have for a week and we're hitting it off.
We're doing artwork.
And as he sent me back to the airport, he was him out.
I want you to I want you to work with us.
I'm like, oh shit.
You know, and I thought like, oh, man, I'm going to be like one of the like the the O.G.
guys to create wasn't like that.
So to speak, he had me doing the merchandise designs because they wanted to really get
into like drawing, like like selling prints, t shirts, stuff like that.
And so I started doing a lot of the poster designs, helping out with a lot of products.
And then I started working on the cartoon show.
So I worked on like the character design,
background artwork, and I started working on like the video game that they started having.
But then I started traveling the United States with them, going to Comic Con events and where
we would do kind of like improv comedy with sketching.
So you would come up, you'd buy something.
And then at the time, three or four of us would all be drawing at the same time, like
these random sick figures just making the most absurd shit on earth, you know, like
Santa having sex with Hitler over a bonfire or something like that.
Dicks everywhere.
And I kind of built my my brands, so to speak, through that, because I always let people
know who I was.
You know, I never tried to tell them, oh, you should look at my other artwork.
But I'd always like, hey, I'm Sean cost.
I mean, I'm one of the newest people, you know, with sign on happiness, you know, and
try to treat them the way I would want to be treated as a fan, because I was a fan first
of sign on happiness.
So whenever a fan would come up, I would treat them the way I would want to be treated if
I met like my favorite cartoon.
And yeah, I was with them for 10 years from actually made a little bit longer 2009 to
2020.
Yeah.
But like all things, you know, drawing dick and fart jokes for 10 years can sometimes
wear and they had to start like downsizing and so I end up being one of the people that
they downspin because they're like they knew I had a career outside of it as well.
But they showed me really that there was a life as a creator, because before that, I
didn't know what Comic Con was.
I honestly had never heard of the fucking word ever.
I didn't know San Diego was this fucking Mecca of just comics and movies and shit like that.
And never no one in Ohio would ever go.
You know, we didn't know anything about that.
So like we knew comics.
But you know, I went to my my first Comic Con was at C2E2 in Chicago.
It was busy.
I was like, what the fuck is this?
I'm seeing all these amazing artists.
I'm like, what is this?
They're like, oh, these are all artists that do this for a living.
You know, some have part time jobs like that.
I'm like, holy shit.
Like I didn't know this.
I didn't even know this word existed, you know.
And then I did San Diego as my second Comic Con ever with 300,000 people, you know, at
that event.
And my scalp was peeled back.
My face was blown away.
I'm hanging out with fucking porn stars and celebrities.
Like, I'm like, what is going on?
And realize this whole world was being opened up to me.
And those guys, you know, I tell I always tell people I owe Chris everything to my art
career because he gave me the helping hand to open my eyes to see like you can make it
as an artist and as a creator, you know, and he'll never take credit for it.
Anytime I ever talk about it, I'm like, dude, like you had to put the work in.
I was like, yeah, but I've been putting the work in.
You said, hey guys, check this out, you know, revealed me to the world.
You know, I got, I got to be on a platform that had 14 million fans on it.
You know, a lot of artists would kill for that.
So I had like, I always tell people I had the cheat code to just kind of throw myself
into that world so quickly.
I didn't have to build up, you know, years and years and years of trial and error to
get there.
Even though I did, I mean, I did do artwork all of my twenties, you know, I had friends
who liked it.
You know, I did album covers here and there for local bands, but it wasn't like career
money.
Like I couldn't survive off of it, but they showed me like the importance of social media.
Also the dangers of it with just how much it like consumes us, you know, in my age now
at 41, I realized how much social media affects mental health and how much I see it affecting
my kids.
And it's just like, it's frustrating because like, it's never going to go away.
So I can't be like, you guys can't be on social media.
Cause I was like, well, then I'm just preventing them from, or like keeping them from like
developing with the times.
And so there's like this weird balance I'm having to like adjust to.
Yeah.
What I've found, you know, with the social media side, I have an account that's, you
know, it's grown pretty well now and that's not the focus tool.
The focus is the podcast.
I just happened to have an Instagram account that helps share positive stuff.
And then obviously the episodes that I put out, but it's amazing how if you guide your
account in a positive direction, it stays positive.
People are like, ah, you know, did you see what Trump or Biden?
Like, no, I didn't because my Instagram doesn't have any of that bullshit.
That means nothing coming to my field of view.
So I feel like, you know, the future and obviously social media is you want to keep it away from
your kids as long as possible.
But then it's like learning how to curate it, learning how to guide them.
My son, he had, uh, I didn't want him to have Instagram and his mother, we were divorced
and his mother allowed him to have it.
And I watched like over weeks, this kid's kind of, you know, taking selfies all the
time and his self esteem just go to the toilet.
And I was like, fuck this.
And I just said, no, this isn't happening.
And I think it was a couple of years, two or three years later, we've slowly fed it
back in and now his feed is surfing and volleyball and, you know, golden retrievers.
He loves them.
You know what I mean?
It's all positive stuff.
He's not worried about trying to show the world who he is.
In fact, he barely ever posts, you know, so I think it is a very powerful tool, but it
really does require the diligence of a parent to slowly, you know, at the right time, guide
a child into that world and give them the training wheels.
Because if you just drop them in the middle of it, it's an absolute shit show.
100%.
Yeah.
And especially with kids like, you know, I have a, uh, soon to be eight year old that
wants a YouTube channel and she's trying to like, you know, film her videos and stuff
like that.
And she wants to have merchandise and everything.
I was like, Hey, just take it one step at a time.
You know, like just have fun doing it.
And you know, I just, I always tell her all the time, like, you know, you don't have to
spend all your time on your iPad.
You can get out and do things.
You know, my older one, she's very active.
She does three different dances.
She's going to be doing gymnastics again.
She's very active.
So I'm like, I just need to get my youngest one to do it too.
Well speaking of the cartoon side, did you ever cross paths with the guys from South
Park?
We hadn't directly.
I know, um, when Chris and, uh, Dave and Rob were trying to sell the show to, uh, Comedy
Central, there was a whole situation where they were brought to LA where they thought
they were actually going to meet with Trey Parker and Matt Stone and not being that at
all.
I ended up being a fucking shit show with their agent at the time that was like telling
CNH guys one thing, but telling Comedy Central the other thing.
I ended up turning into this whole nightmare where Comedy Central said, we'll never buy
you guys, like never buy a show from you guys ever.
They're so disrespected by whatever this agent did.
And so that burned like a pretty big bridge for them.
Um, but yeah, I don't know if the South Park guys are even aware of CNH on their radar.
I gotta imagine they had to at least have heard of them by that part.
I I'm not really involved in or wasn't involved in, you know, like I was never like one of
the cart, like the comic writers.
I was more of like the artists.
Like they always said, like I'm the only one who can draw within the with that in that
company.
And so they had me drawing all like the more intricate stuff or like coming up with some
like absurd ideas.
But the those type of business meetings I was never really a part of because, you know,
not my, you know, I didn't actually create the cartoon.
I was just kind of helping that grow.
Yeah, I think they would be amazing.
I don't know if it will ever be able to make it happen.
But I mean, they're very elusive and I think deliberately so because they offend everyone,
which I think is the way comedy is supposed to be.
Like if we all make fun of each other, no one really technically gets offended anymore.
But well, then walk me through that you mentioned about having to ultimately be let go, how
that spawned any means necessary.
So any means necessary had actually started around the same time I started CNH.
But at the time it was just like kind of like a hobby.
My business partner time was a cable guy while I was still a nurse in school.
And he had mentioned about trying to sort of clothing brands because we wanted to like
just put my artwork on the t shirts and just kind of make cool shit.
And you know, I wasn't a big fan of the idea because every time I tried doing clothing
or like go into a business venture with other people, like I was always getting taken advantage
of, they were always using my money and never went anywhere.
So I kept turning it down.
And eventually, he just kind of, you know, he kept being persistent with it.
I said, fuck it, you know, what do you want to call it?
And you know, he came up with the name with any means necessary, because he's like, I
just got to get out this fucking cable band, you got to get out, you know, being so poor,
you know, being a nursing student.
And so we just started that, you know, we had a shirt, our first shirt was called a
feeding on the weak and poor.
It was a flip on the American Eagle seal, but it's a vulture, you know, hoarding skulls
and arrows.
And we did a art show at a tattoo shop down the street had, I think, 25 or 50 shirts,
sold them out within the first like half hour.
I had 250 bucks I put into getting them produced, getting my 250 bucks back, we made I think
like $400.
And we just kept putting that money back into the company to keep restocking, reordering
new stuff.
And it wasn't until 2016, I did the whole mental health series, where, you know, people
kept asking for like, I need a book of this, I need clothing of this, all this stuff.
So we decided to like release a book of it, like a little pamphlet, and ended up doing
like 60k in a month, which is more money that either of us had seen in one month from this
book.
And so we were trying to get this book shipped out, we had this money come in, where, oh,
we can actually start doing stuff with like the brand.
And so, you know, we took we set some money aside so we could donate, like we wanted to
donate to like, a good mental health cause because we felt kind of dirty, you know, just
taking money on mental health artwork.
And so we donated to the treatment advocacy center for mental health, which I think is
based out of Atlanta, Georgia.
That's the one that Robin Williams wife highly recommends that they get 100% of the funding
that's donated.
And so we've donated to them a couple times.
But from that point on, you know, we started taking it a little bit more and more serious.
And around, I think 2017, the beginning of 2017, he ended up getting let go from his
job, because the cable company merged with another company, and had him filling out new
documents and just seeing how close they were to like the old documents.
And then when they switched over, they brought him into the office and said, Hey, we're firing
you for falsifying documentation.
He was like, and falsifying documents, you said just to fill us out the best we could.
Well, that was kind of their way to get rid of certain people.
And so they let him go.
And then brought in the rest of the employees and said, you can either take a severance
package or reapply for a new position.
So he didn't get any of that.
They just fired him.
And so there was a hot minute where he's like, you know, he was lost.
And he's like, don't the fuck, you know, and he was getting unemployment for a couple
months.
And we had the conversation of if a man can pay his unemployment, then he can, he'll continue
working on the business full time and just like selling shoes and stuff like that to like
make supplemental income until like we get the shit going.
And he did that for a couple years.
And then 2018, in 2018, we ended up moving to our first.
So all of this we're working out is 100 square foot basement in this house.
Like he'd work eight, nine hours at the cable place and then go home and then work from
like 8pm to like two in the morning on AMN orders.
I was doing CNH nursing school and I try to draw for AMN.
So we were all just juggling and we had wives and he had just had his first kid or sick.
I think it was his first kid.
So there's a lot of lot riding on this succeeding for us.
And so then we got a 400 square foot studio or office space and we were there for about
a year or two, maybe three years, but we were growing exponentially to where we had shit
in the hallways with the fire.
Marshall's coming and saying like, Hey, you guys gonna move this shit out the way.
And so like we had to find a place to move quickly.
And we did a photo shoot at a studio in downtown Akron that had like a really cool aesthetic
that we really enjoyed.
And we found out that the guy that we needed to talk to was actually my business partner's
old record label owner when he used to make music.
And so we met with him and we got this 3000 square foot studio space that I'm in right
now.
It's just been exponentially growing since then.
In 2020, when we were still in the old studio in January of 2020, it's about the same time
like when I think COVID like we're starting to shut everything down.
Was it?
Yeah, I'm trying to get my dates right.
I get a call with them.
They said, Hey, we're meeting with everyone within C and H and you know, we're gonna get
on a call with you and we'll let you know, you know, if you're saying or we let you go.
And so I'm thinking, I'm good.
I don't use their insurance.
I don't have an office space for them.
They just got to pay me my hourly rate and that's it.
So I'm the cheapest one to have and they get on the call and I see them and they just look
fucked up.
I'm like, damn, like I know where this is going.
And I at the time I was very pissed off, but I knew that they really didn't want to let
me go because they knew how much like I just built a house.
You know, my cost of living doubled and they had to let me go.
So after I get off that call, I'm just like, fuck, you know, my business partner was sitting
next to me.
He goes, you good?
I'm like, I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do.
And I was part time nursing at the time, but it wasn't enough to pay for that mortgage
car and all that stuff.
And I was like, I can go full time nursing, but then that just fucking hurts the business.
And I just tried to figure it out, you know, and we ended up, you know, getting more and
more sales and starting to grow more and more to where we can actually start paying ourselves,
you know, a decent wage because we're, we have no business background.
And so we're learning it.
We're still learning it on the fly, but no one really told us how to go about running
a business, how much to pay ourselves.
What to do with taxes and all that stuff.
So we're kind of figuring it all out.
But in what I think the end of 2021, like in October, I think I said, fuck it, I'm leaving
nursing.
I'm just going to go for it.
You know, he left his or he got to go to his job and went full time in the company and
we grew exponentially.
I leave and go full time in the company.
Maybe we'll grow even more exponentially.
And so I took that leap and so far so good, you know, I still renew my license.
I still keep it active just in case I lose my hand for whatever reason, you know, to
cut my left hand off or something.
But yeah, it's been a, the being let go from CNH is probably the best thing that happened
to me because I didn't have that safety net anymore.
And I always like having safety nets and my business partner is the other way.
He doesn't like having a safety net because he's like, either this works or I've crashed
and burned.
And so I was like, all right, let's, let's try that.
So I said, okay, I'm going to leave nursing too.
And we're just going to do the brand.
And so far it's been, you know, it's worked out so far.
There's a lot of people listening, whether they're in the hospital setting or the first
response setting that, you know, are kind of shackled to their jobs.
And now there's a lot of people listening that still love the profession they do.
And hopefully they're in great departments that they enjoy working for.
But what I've realized is there is a real paralysis when it comes to understanding that
we can do other things, that the skillset that you have as a firefighter and a paramedic,
for example, can be applied in a thousand different ways.
And you know, as I alluded to earlier, if you're going to work a second job, then make
it something that you love doing, make it an entrepreneurial project that you can then
transition to whether God forbid you lose your job or you just, you know, retire.
So what would you say to in your, in your career, the nurses of the world who aren't
happy what they're doing and are scared to take that leap of faith?
It'd be kind of Gary V. Asked, but I'm just like, if you're in your twenties, fuck it.
Just fucking quit nursing, renew your license every two years and just go chase whatever
the fuck you want to do until you're 30 or 40.
And if it doesn't work out, it's going to be a nurse again.
You know, like the, the good thing about nursing is people get sick all the time.
And so like, uh, the medical professional profession is not going away.
We always need people, we need paramedics, we need firefighters, we need doctors, we
need nurses.
That's never going away.
Um, but if you're doing that because you're like, well, this other career, like maybe
you want to be a fucking tap dancer, like isn't lucrative.
You don't fucking know, go try it.
Try it for a couple of years.
Like if you do it for three years and you still ain't getting anywhere like, all right,
maybe it's not it.
You know, maybe you can do it for a hobby, but yeah, I mean, I just, I wish I would have
went sooner into leaving nursing, but at the same time, everything happens the way it has
to get me where I'm at now.
So if I would've changed anything before that might've put this off in a whole different
direction for better or worse.
But I feel like, yeah, people should chase their dreams because I seeing people who do
what they love versus someone doing something that they have to do to make ends meet.
You can see the level of, uh, happiness in their life.
You know, like stress out in nursing is miserable stress out on my business is miserable, but
it's in a much better way of handling it.
I'm like, we kind of control what's happening here, you know, in a sense, you know, with
the hospital, we have management supervisors, budgets and all that stuff.
You know, it's always about the bottom dollar, not really about the patient.
You know, with this, you know, for like, shit, we need to figure something out.
We can brainstorm and when it's successful, we're like, damn, we did that.
That's awesome.
You know, and it's a much more satisfying feeling.
Feeling something that's like sustaining.
And it's like something you're passionate about.
I think that train translates to other people that are like supporting whatever it may be.
Yeah.
I mean, I agree with you completely.
I was in the fire service for 14 years, didn't have any plans of leaving, but the universe
put me in my last department, which I spent five years trying to make a difference in.
And it was just kind of one of those environments where I was at a crossroads, just re just
healed a meniscus tear, like rehab back to a full duty.
And I said to my wife, what if I didn't go back?
What if I just retired?
And this is, you know, not a good retirement 14 years.
So I just cashed it out.
And the podcast is a couple of years old by that end, by that point.
And I was like, this seems to be doing more.
This the kind of false multiplier effect of something that's accessible around the world.
They're going to find another body to sit in the seat that I used to sit.
But this is something different.
And so it was, it was a massive leap of faith.
And zero business plan really, other than I hope I get a sponsor in a year and a half
before the money runs out.
And still, I don't think I've even matched what I gave up yet, but it's not about that.
It's about trying to make a difference, trying to make the world better.
And I truly believe that if you're forging that path, the money will come when it's supposed
to the money will come.
But just kind of like we said, with being a star versus an artist, you know, if your
mission is to do good, you're not focusing on the money rather than the other way around.
Because if you focus on money, then stay in the fucking fire service, be miserable and
collect your pension.
But if there's something burning in your heart and you've just kind of reached the end of
your organic journey, then why not?
Why not?
Yeah.
I told people all the time, like I have friends who like want to be like YouTubers because
they're like, they see the money that can be made.
I'm like, you realize like, let's take them like five to 10 years to get there.
Now you have the ones like Sketch, the What's Up Brother guy, who is like super popular.
He's only been doing it for a year.
But like, that doesn't always happen.
Like that overnight success is very rare.
And so I always tell people like, you know, most YouTube creators have spent five, 10
years perfecting their craft before they start making actual money.
It's like you see the success.
You don't see the, you know, the struggles, the getting behind on bills part to get where
they needed to be.
So I try to just let people know like anything that like you should be passionate about it
first.
And like you said, the money will come if it's if people can, I think can see the passion
behind it.
So you know, podcasts, art, music, stuff like that.
Like if you're doing it for the sake of just creating it and understanding how to market
yourself, you know, like learning the social media game, but like not compromising the
integrity of what you're creating.
Yeah.
And that's a hard balance for me because I try and keep my face off social media, even
the this and I want to do the promo video.
It's just you.
I don't think there's no reason for me to be on there as well listening to you talk
and as I just put it, but then you can be a little bit too meek if you're not careful
and now you're not out there at all.
So it's trying to find that balance.
So I want to hit one more area and then go to some closing questions.
Your art obviously is incredibly powerful and a picture does speak a thousand words
and I've had other artists on here.
Paul Combs, who's a cartoonist, not raw, visceral art like yours, but just a beautiful, you
know, summarization of a concept in one simple drawing.
And I had a guy, Brian Hillard, who was actually a horror movie, make special effects makeup
artist and they've actually been using that in mental health therapy.
So they create that demon that you see and they actually put it on you and then they
have this kind of ceremony and then ultimately they burn the mask.
So it's, you know, it's interesting all this interaction with, with art and mental health.
How much though of the art that you draw are the demons inside your head?
When I'm drawing other disorders, obviously I, you know, I have a lot of people ask like,
oh, do you have all of these mental health disorders?
I'm like, no, no one does.
Like I would not be a functioning human being if I had 270 mental health disorders.
Like I'd be trapped somewhere, probably studied.
A lot of the pieces I do have like depression, anxiety, loss, flaw, like expressing like
flawed parts of me.
So like that, like that's a lot of me that I put out, you know, when I would have my
worst times with depression, always so it feels like I'm sinking in like a never ending
like pit of like black, you know, and like there's like tar pulling me down.
And so a lot of my artwork has that.
I do a lot of stuff that's more, I guess, human condition, I guess, but I try to put
a piece of me into it, like how I would feel during experiencing this in a way.
But I try to do my best with understanding like just in the mental health part of like
what the behavior is and what those struggles are.
You know, the one that I've learned a lot more about now is OCD and like the intrusive
thoughts part of it and just like that voice in the back of your head that's always telling
you that you're not good enough, that people don't like you and that you're everything's
going to fail and like trying to relate to that in a way.
Like when I'm creating the artwork and try to understand like what that what that would
do to someone, you know, constantly being told that I could tell you like, dude, you're
amazing, you're awesome.
But in the back of your head, someone's going, they're lying to you, you're a piece of shit,
you know, don't listen to them.
So I do try to put a piece of me into the work in some way, like there is a part of
me that's felt a certain aspect of the piece that gets put in there.
Maybe not always with the mental health stuff because some of it's more just like straight
research and trying to understand it and then trying to personify it.
But the ones of like the, you know, social anxiety, generalized depression, like that's
something I do relate to so I can like depict more of like how I feel when that stuff happens.
That imposter syndrome is so strong.
And it's funny because as what's his name, Steven Pressfield even talks about it when
you're writing that the more resistance there is actually the more valuable the thing that
you're working on actually is.
So you know, if you're getting close now, it's almost like that.
What they call it the senioritis, you know, the kids are almost there to graduate and
then their motivation tanks and I'm kind of reviewing this this final draft of my second
book and there's that voice, fucking hell, this is terrible.
No one's going to read this.
That was too short.
He didn't describe this enough.
And then you take a step back and go just shut up and you read it again.
You're like, that's really not bad at all.
Right.
If you let that fucking voice, you know, run its mouth, it can just drive you into the
ground.
100%.
All right.
Well, I want to go to some quick closing questions.
The first one I love to ask, is there a book or other books that you love to recommend?
It can be related to our discussion today or completely unrelated.
Man, I wish I could say yes, but I don't read books.
Not that I don't have a appreciation for my just don't have time.
Typically if I'm if I had downtime, it's usually I'm watching YouTube videos on like art marketing,
advertising, stuff like that, or I'm like drawing at some point.
I think the last book I read.
Fuck, it's probably Hunger Games.
It was probably the last book I read.
I hate it because it seems like all people like like all these like super like entrepreneurial
people, like they all read books.
I'm like, motherfucker, when do you have time to read books?
Like I got zero time to read a book.
I had someone on recently.
They made a really good point.
There's all these motivational books and people, you know, will again we see them on Instagram.
These are the 10 books I read this month.
How much of the knowledge and the wisdom are you applying to your daily life?
You guys just pick one fucking book that resonates deeply with you and do those practices.
I'm like, that's a really, really good point.
Otherwise, it's just paralysis by analysis.
You're inspired to the Hill, but you haven't done anything with it.
Yeah, exactly.
I've had that happen.
I do that a lot when I'm looking for ideas for a new concept.
I'll go through Pinterest and like tell you inspiration, but I just get overwhelmed by
it.
I'm like, oh, that's a good idea.
I just don't create shit because I'm just like blown away by all the creativity.
I was like, well, they already fucking did it.
I ain't gonna do shit.
Have you come across a show on Netflix called Eric?
I haven't watched it yet, but I want to watch it.
I read the, yeah, I read the, uh, I think the synopsis of it.
Uh, it looks super cool.
I like Cumberbatch.
He's a super dope actor.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I won't, I haven't even finished yet.
I've got like one and a half episodes left, but obviously I'm not ruining it because it's
in the, in the promo, but yeah, that, that puppet is kind of the, the alter ego, the,
the OCD, the, you know, the imposter syndrome.
It's all the things kind of rolled into one.
So I think it would, uh, you'd relate to a lot of having this conversation today.
So I'll check it out.
It's, it's on my list of ones to watch.
I have, I love watching movies.
I love watching horror movies obviously.
And I have had about 30 or 40 movies I have not seen yet and I just want to watch them.
But when I go home, if I'm not working on artworks, spending with the kids and playing
video games, it's like, I need time to watch my fucking movies.
So speaking of movies, movies and documentaries, what are some of your favorite?
So movie wise, what was the one, um, where evil lurks is probably one of my favorite,
uh, horror movies right now.
It's such a visceral movie and they build a whole lore on like possession and stuff
like that.
And it's just, some of the scenes are just intense.
Talk to me really good movie.
I love talk to me even more because it's, it was created by two YouTubers, the rocker
brothers that are just fucking goofballs and they made one of the best horror movies of
all time.
Uh, great movie to watch.
Um, any Godzilla film fucking sucker for it.
I just finished up Godzilla minus one.
I love all the Godzilla films.
I grew up watching Godzilla.
There's something about Godzilla is just, I get goosebumps when I watch that those movies,
like seeing this giant fucking Goliath of a monster and that iconic scream is just sends
me right back to being an eight year old kid.
I'm just like, I, I, that's my childhood.
Right.
Hear it.
Uh, documentaries as funny as, so my business partner is obsessed with like true crime documentaries
and I actually hate documentaries because I'm already miserable about our just life in general
of like what's going on in the world.
And like, I used to listen to a bunch of true crime podcasts, uh, like sword and scale,
true crime garage and some other ones.
And I realized it was making me more miserable because I'm just realizing like these people
exist out there.
And, you know, when you start to get into like the child murders and stuff like that
or like the, the who done it documentaries is just like, man, I just don't want to deal
with that stuff, you know?
Uh, so I don't really watch documentaries.
Yeah.
I think that's some of the most popular viewing now in Netflix are those documentaries.
Yeah.
And sadly there's a part of, you know, people feeling, well, at least my life's not as shit
as the person.
Yeah.
I think they use it for like, what's like the morbid curiosity?
It's not something you see every day.
And like, if you have a, it's kind of like reality TV, I despise reality TV.
Uh, cause like, I don't need to see their shit show.
Like I think some people, again, not all do it to make themselves feel better about their
lives, you know?
Like, Oh, my life ain't that shitty, you know?
But like, I don't, I already see real life.
I go down the street.
I can see real life.
I want, give me fantasy, give me shit.
That's not real.
Give me stuff that's out of this world.
That's entertaining to me.
Yeah, 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?
Man, honestly.
So they're okay.
I should go back.
There is one person that I recommend to come on this podcast.
So they're okay, I should go back.
There is one guy I listened to that does, is that really true crimes?
It's like weird stories.
Do you know who Mr. Ballen is?
No, I don't.
Okay.
So it's a John Ballen.
So he was actually a, uh, was he a Navy seal?
Mikey?
Yeah.
He was a Navy seal, served a couple of tours and came back and he loves storytelling.
And so he does the Mr. Ballen show, which is on YouTube and TikTok.
He's got like 6 million followers.
Like he's built a whole career off of it, but this dude is so genuine.
Like he doesn't know me, but we're like cordial on like Instagram.
And so I can message him that dude, love what you're doing.
And he replies to everyone.
Maybe he does it, but he replied to me and he goes, I try to reply to everyone I can't
and like, I do, you don't even have to do this anymore.
Like you have a Joe Rogan fucking gym now because you're, you're doing so well, but
he would be an awesome person to have because he is very open about the mental health struggles
he had after he came back as a civilian and how, and how he had to, uh, go from soldier
to civilian and what that process was.
Um, he was on the, the, what the Sean Ryan show, I think.
Oh, okay.
Where he talked about, uh, his career as a soldier and like, you it's weird listening
to him talk because when he talks about the pod, like when he's on his podcast, he tells
the stories.
He's very animated and he's got a smile on his face.
When he's talking about his military, you can see it in his eyes.
You can see like the depth, the, the, the war you see it in him.
Like you can see his face just change.
It's very intriguing, you know, uh, because of like, he has such a good memory of like
stuff that he's experienced.
I think he'd be an excellent guest on your show and, uh, not that he needs any more fucking
accolades, but, uh, he'd be an interesting one to have beautiful way.
I've got a lot of friends in that community.
So I'll see if I can find some ones that will be able to make the connection.
Just fucking DM him.
He'll probably just respond to you to be honest.
I'll do that today.
All right.
But then the very last question before we make sure everyone knows where to find you
and the company, what you do to decompress video games.
I play call of duty a lot.
I play an odd ungodly amount of call of duty.
Uh, that's usually I go home, uh, first two hours, you know, help cook dinner, hang out
with the kids for a little bit.
And then around eight or nine o'clock I go upstairs and play war zone for three, four
hours with a couple of my friends, which is a waste of time.
I could be fucking doing artwork, but sometimes I just, I had to completely disconnect from
everything and just, uh, uh, do that.
But I did start yesterday and today was God awful, uh, ice bath plunging and fuck my life.
Is it God awful?
It's so God awful.
Um, but that I did one today at 40 degrees and I lasted 60 seconds.
And when I got out, I thought I was dying to be honest, like everything just, I thought
I was breaking apart.
And then after that initial feeling goes away, I felt just light, like relieved.
It was really weird, but that's probably a good moment.
My new thing to help me unwind is just freeze my ass off in a fucking tub.
You're in a good state to do that.
I tried doing it with my son last year, but it was during the summer and I put two giant
bags of ice in and I still couldn't get it below like 60s.
It was so I actually, I bought the ice chiller machine.
So it plugs it.
So I have like the, what is the ice potter, but it has a machine that actually filters
the water and it makes it colder.
Okay.
Yeah.
I've seen those.
It's going to be like what?
80, 90 degrees today.
And my thing's running at 40 degrees Fahrenheit right now.
Okay.
There we go.
I need to invest.
So for people listening then, where are the best places to find you online and on social
media?
So the best place to find me, if you're looking for like my personal artwork is just Sean
Koss at Instagram, Facebook.
If you just type my name in, it pops up, it's Koss, Knot, Kross.
A lot of people think that there's an R in there.
If you want to support me and get behind a brand that's very focused on mental health
awareness, we're very big advocates for mental health.
It's anymainsnecessary.com.
Buying from that company directly allows me to keep creating the work that I do because
it pays me.
It allows me to be in my business partner, feed our kids, have houses, have employees
and stuff like that.
So that's like the best way to help support.
Brilliant.
Well, Sean, I want to say thank you so much.
I mean, firstly for the art because I know that it has touched so many people out there
and it's just myself just watching it and my wife's response to it as well, but also
the vulnerability and the depth of this conversation.
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.
Thank you, James.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.