From Navy SEAL to Breaking Point to Building Lives

Johnny Wilson1:18

Um so I have a younger sister, too, and uh she's 5 years younger than me. It was it was what we knew. It's just yeah, you know, I didn't know any better. I didn't know I mean that's just the military life. So, there was great parts to it. Netherlands, I have a story similar to I'm listening to your book right now.

Uh I have a story similar to you when the the local kids put me on my back in the soccer field and that was a pivotal moment in my life. So, there was some challenges of like being like the American and overseas and you know the the German kids and the and the Netherland kids hated us. So there was fights that were happening, but uh overall it was good. It it it made me the person I am today where I'm always hustling. I'm always like trying to to find what the next big thing is, how I can help other people.

I think it's because of that experience of just like moving in and being forced to acclimate or find find success in a new environment.

Johnny Wilson2:48

That's exactly how I think

Johnny Wilson3:07

Um, my dad, you know, he he had uh his father wasn't there in in his life. Uh, he had a stepfather and, you know, I think I've done and we'll we'll probably get to it. I've done some uh some interventions that have helped me get different perspective. My dad's an awesome dude. He tried his very best and I can see that now. I might not have seen that before because we had some tension. You know, he would deploy, come back, and I think I'm the alpha male, and all of a sudden, my dad shows up and we're like this teenage kid full of testosterone.

He's like, "What the [ __ ] are you doing, dude? This is my house."

Johnny Wilson3:39

But, uh, you know, in retrospect, I get it. Like, I understand he has some challenges just like I had challenges growing up. And, you know, I just ask for grace from my kids because I'm trying my very best just like he did.

Johnny Wilson4:05

Yeah. So Clarksville. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. So Fort Campbell, KY up there. That's where he was stationed at. I was on the Tennessee side. Clarksville and uh went to high school there. And um you know we'd come down to Nashville before it turned into what it is now.

Yeah. This was what this was in the 90s, right? Early 90s. And um there's so many stories there, dude. Like second a like fake IDs, getting caught getting caught by the same cop a week apart. There's so much there, dude.

Johnny Wilson4:50

Oh, you do?

Johnny Wilson5:18

But I was a receiver. And we had uh like Travis Stevens went off to the NFL, good dude. And uh we had a really good team at one point. Towards the end, uh coaches switched out and the program when we lost Travis and a couple other guys, the program went kind of went to [ __ ] But um but still good friends. Like I have a crew of guys that were, you know, army families as well. And I still stay in touch with those guys. Those guys all went into the military.

Uh I think they all they all did go army. A few of them have gone on and done cool things with Vandy and are, you know, doctors now.

Johnny Wilson5:49

I got one one buddy, Andre. He's still in. He's an EOD guy. Um, and he's crushing it working with special forces guys. It's cool to see him uh still in the military because I don't know how he does it. Uh,

But you know, that that was it, man. We had a small crew and it was a small school, so we would party like mostly those barn parties, you know, go out to our buddy's place and uh have a good time and that was the priority, like have a good time. and then close second was football and then my grades were good enough to get into uh to the academy. So that's that's how I got over to the to the academy prep school initially, but then and eventually to the academy.

Johnny Wilson7:13

Yeah, my kids are the same. So, I got five kiddos. I got one that's in Brooklyn Law School right now. She's a first year. I got one at College of Charleston. It's her birthday tomorrow. So, we're flying down there to go see her. One at uh he's going to CSU, so Colorado State. He loves the outdoors. Uh a 17-year-old and a 15-year-old. So, the old

How old are you?

I'm 46. Yeah,

Johnny Wilson7:47

But it's the biggest blessing as you know, right? Like, and I look forward to getting into that. Um, they don't [ __ ] drink, dude. I don't get it. What do they do?

And I'm so grateful for it. I don't even want to ask. You're just like, "You don't drink?" And you're just like, "All right, well, I won't I won't bring up anything else because I don't want to change that." But they're hanging out with friends. They're, you know, my daughter was at a concert last night at Red Rocks in Colorado. I'm like, "Cool. If you want to go to Red Rock concerts and not like drink, I'm happy to pay for that." So, they just hang out and have a good time.

Johnny Wilson8:39

Yeah.

Johnny Wilson8:47

Yeah. I mean, all the beer that we drink, there's just like this appetite for it. But I I don't drink anymore. I haven't drank for a long time. And and the uh the non-alcoholic game is just off the charts. I mean, I drink uh Stella Stella non-alcoholic Stellas. only drink athletic brewing on this show.

Johnny Wilson9:05

Well, after this, I only drink athletic. But here's the thing I shared with you. It was like there was an opportunity because I was living in Connecticut at the time when I was working in the city and somebody brought this that idea and I was like, "No [ __ ] way, dude. I what where my head went to was ODS." Yeah. That thing ain't going to make it. If it tastes anything like old dudes and they're great. They're Mexican loggers. My favorite.

Johnny Wilson9:35

I did not know that.

Johnny Wilson9:39

Great friend was at 72are trader. I got Yeah, I that's I had no idea he was the guy that was his background.

Johnny Wilson10:10

Come on.

Johnny Wilson11:15

Uh, it was in Newport, Rhode Island. Uh, Rhode Island. I was single. Um, they didn't card back then. So, Fame Street, if anybody knows Rhode Island, that is just packed with bars. And we had the time of our life. In fact, so much so that you need a 2.0 to go on to the Naval Academy. It came down to my last final. I got a 2.1.

Johnny Wilson11:45

You know, it was a culture shock getting into the academy after academy prep school because I was just like we were having the time of our life. Like the first part of it was tough. You got like six months of boot camp essentially and then you go into the academics and and but they gave you freedom towards the end of your time after that year. So, we were treated like adults and we're having fun going out and then you show up to the Naval Academy and I had a really hard time because I mean probably ego and you know you got these kids some of them that are a year older than you that have never played a sport, never had authority, but now they got some authority and they're abusing the [ __ ] out of it by talking down to you and you just want you're just staring at this person and all the rage and everything inside of you just wants to

Come out and you have to take it. And I struggled. I mean, people people I could tell people knew they can because I wear my emotions on this on my sleeve. They knew I was like on the verge and they kept pushing and pushing and pushing.

That first year was really hard for me. In fact, I mean, I ended up getting kicked out of the academy for a fake ID card. Um,

But you know, that's a different story, but that first year I was like, I don't know if I'm going to make it through this, if that tells you anything, because I just wanted to fight everybody.

Johnny Wilson13:12

Yeah, you know what? In my career, uh, football or being a team guy, I don't think I was ever the guy. And I'd be curious to think what the young guys, uh, thought, but I always tried to treat these guys with respect. And at least how that's how I remember. There were some times because I was an idiot early on in the teams and I thought, you know, I was cool, ego, like, hey, I'm a Navy SEAL. But I always tried to like give them the opportunity to just be an equal.

Um, and especially towards the end of my career when I got into leadership roles, I made sure everybody was a leader on this team. Like, you show up, you do what you say you're going to do, you're going to be treated with respect. And, um, I feel like everybody got that when I was able to run a, uh, a team at one point. So,

Johnny Wilson14:10

Yeah. Well, that's the thing, right? We're going to go to war with these guys. So, why the [ __ ] would you treat them like [ __ ]

Johnny Wilson14:35

Again, like you're just like, "Dude, why would you do that?"

Johnny Wilson14:40

That was like uh 2000. Um

Johnny Wilson14:45

That was sophomore year.

Johnny Wilson14:51

Um priorities were jacked up. Like I wanted to be a SEAL. So, if we take a step back, uh my dad uh introduced me to a couple Army Special Forces guys like this is what I want to do. Uh and then I and then uh when I was in high school, he flew me out to Kuwait and these are pre-war. He was stationed in Kuwait for a year. Like, you're coming out. Send me a ticket. And I did not want to go. I had my first girlfriend.

Uh I was having the time of my life that summer. He's like, "You're [ __ ] going." And so I ended up going out there and and um after a couple days of pouting on like the third or fourth day I see a bunch of men working out like jacked guys with beards and guns and like in weights. I'm like dude dad what is that?

And uh he since corrected me. I thought they were seals at some point but he was like he he called me the other day like dude you know those were green beretss right? I was like no I remember it as seals. That's the story I'm sticking with it. So, I thought it was seals and uh regardless I I went and met those dudes and they they took me under their wing for a little bit, introduced themselves to me and I was like, "This is what I want to do." And at the time when we were stationed overseas when he was in in the Netherlands, there's no football or contact sports.

So, I swam.

Johnny Wilson15:56

So, when I saw the Green Bruise, I was like, "That's pretty cool, but what are these Navy SEAL things?" Uh like, you know, they're special forces, too, but they're in the water diving. And I was like, "That's" And I was a swimmer at the time. I was like, "That's that's cool. I want to do that." So that's uh that's what kind of happened. I I pivoted. Everything I did was to kind of lock it down and then I get to the academy and I just I just got my priorities jacked up.

Johnny Wilson16:20

Yeah. But you know what? To be honest with you, it wouldn't have happened because I'm out. My grades were shitty. They only have a couple billets for each class. So my class would have got like six billets. And you got to have like straight A's, play sports, community service. I'm

Johnny Wilson16:47

Offices? But when you go to BUD/S, everybody's treated the same.

Johnny Wilson16:55

Um we have helmets.

I don't know if you've seen the photos, but there's different colors. Like green, you're in first phase, blue is uh second phase, but you have your rank on there. Oh, okay.

So, if you're if you're below a petty officer, which is an enlisted rank, it's just completely like clean helmet with just your name stencled on or uh stickered on it.

If you're a petty officer, you get like the upside down V. Yeah. That's a third class, second class, third class. Then you got if you're an officer has a stripe. Um

Johnny Wilson17:24

Yeah, because to your I mean to your point, you know, you're going to war with these guys. So, you you're going to vet them. If you're an instructor, you're going to make sure these are the right guys. And that applies to the enlisted dudes as well, but especially officers. Hey, do I want this guy? Can I trust this guy to lead? Is he making the right decisions? When we [ __ ] up, is he taking ownership or is he blaming his men? Like they light into those dudes.

Johnny Wilson18:32

So it's extremely awkward and it happens. Not often, but it happens. And

Johnny Wilson18:38

I just think it's life's experience like on paper they look tremendous. Like holy crap, 4.0 or 4.2, into whatever it is like captain of this you know water polo and all these credentials they've never failed in their life and I think that's something that we have in common is man we've failed and it's created the maturity that we have today but they've just never failed and they get put into an environment where you're going to be forced to fail because we want to see how you respond and when you fail for the first time in your life I mean in my opinion you don't want that to happen in BUD/S

Johnny Wilson19:10

Because you don't know what to do with that I've been I've been the top performer former. I've been, you know, ac accolades my whole life and now I'm failing. I don't know what to do. And sometimes people crack and that's what we saw sometimes is there's some officers that quit

Johnny Wilson19:48

But I'm never quitting." So, we had like 200 something people show up to our BUD/S class. It was BUD/S class 252. And they line you up 20 I don't know. I think it I thought it was 217. I've heard somewhere between 200 and like 230, but let's let's call it 215. When it was all said and done, there was only 17 of us original out of that 215 that made it. And the Navy, it's really expensive to put a dude through the program. Like, it's millions of dollars.

So, they are trying to figure out what makes this dude tick and all these other guys that succeed. And they've done Gallup studies. They've had universities come down and put a monitors on all these students. They're trying to figure out like, hey, what's the common sauce? at the end of the day like the last Gallup or it was a Gallup study 30page paper and you I'm looking through this I'm like what's the common thread is it high school sports they played their upbringing where they you know broken house whatever it is like the common theme is everybody has grit I'm like dude how much did you pay for this study I could have done this study that the question

But what I believe and you just hit on this is the common theme is those dudes gave themselves one option

It's every team guy you've talked to is like you Look out there in Coronado out off off the beach and you see that [ __ ] big gray ship and you're like that is not not going to let that happen, man. I am going to die before I quit.

And if you give yourself one option, then it's going to happen. It might not look pretty. You don't know how you're going to get there. It might be overwhelming, but it's going to happen. If you give yourself a second option or an out, dude, we're humans. We're going to go the softer, easier route every time. And we saw it time and time again with dudes ringing out.

Johnny Wilson21:33

Um, so I went back to Tennessee and

Honestly like feeling sorry for myself like I I worked so hard to ring your neck.

We didn't talk for a long time.

Yeah. He wanted to he absolutely and rightfully so, man. Like I get it.

Johnny Wilson21:53

Totally. Like it sucks that kids are put in that position of having to grow up that quick and that kind of mistake can haunt them forever if you let it. If you let it. And I let it for about two months and I realized like I can stay here and and I don't know what I'm going to do. I can't I couldn't even get into like no no disrespect. I just came from the Naval Academy, but I couldn't even get into Austin P.

Johnny Wilson22:16

Uh they didn't want any part. Nobody wanted any The Navy didn't want any part of me. This guy's like he's he got kicked out of the academy. He's not our material. Even the Navy said no. And I was like, okay, I got to figure this out.

Johnny Wilson22:28

And my whole life, I've been told, "No, you can't do it." Or, "Hey, you do you know how hard it is to be a seal?" You know how hard it is to go to Goldman or you know how hard it is to get into Oxford? It's like, please tell me I can't do something. Right. So, when people started saying I started thinking maybe I'll just go enlisted and and the Navy said no. I was like, "Okay, it's time to like buckle up." And

Johnny Wilson22:48

No. So, I um I started leaning into my network. I was like, "Hey, I I messed up." Started talking to congressmen. I was like, "I I made a big mistake, but I I know I can make this this happen. I I can absolutely serve this country. What do I need to do?" And I just started talking to people and I got a few people behind me, talked to some captains and admirals, and the next thing you know, I got the opportunity to enlist. And I worked my tail off, man.

I was community college straight A's. I was uh working out like a madman because when I was at the academy, I was drinking like a mad man. But once I realized like this is I gotta make this happen. Didn't touch booze for a very long time. Ran, swam, lifted. I mean, my life became I'm getting I'm going to make this dream happen and I got an opportunity. So, I I went to boot camp uh in Great Lakes in the middle of winter and uh I had to endure that.

And that's that wasn't the dream. That was a stepping stone to the dream. But I do remember.

Johnny Wilson23:46

I I got two vivid memories of that. One, we have this big peacicoat because it's in the middle of winter, so I missed Christmas and New Year's and Thanksgiving. I was at boot camp then. You have this big peac and for the first time in my life, I had like my eyelids freeze over.

Johnny Wilson24:00

Because we're like marching everywhere to to do, you know, in boot camp. So I I have that memory of that. Um, I have a memory of we finally got ice cream, like a little little thing of ice cream and they had little peanut butter cups and I mixed it and I made my peanut butter ice cream, too. It was the best ice cream I've ever had in my life.

Johnny Wilson24:18

It's just like you haven't eaten anything but the rations and then you get this like little cup of ice cream. To this day, it's nothing will come close to that ice cream. Um, and then like the PT stuff was really easy for me because I had wor I had trained so hard. So, I was just getting ready for for BUD/S. And when I graduated there, I got I got to go out to San Diego.

Johnny Wilson25:35

So, how touch that one.

Johnny Wilson25:37

People you got people that were given the option to go to jail or the Navy. They chose Navy, obviously. And then you got like really smart people. I mean I mean I remember this one guy who's just brilliant. I was like dude you should not be here.

Ended up, you know, getting going to college and then becoming an officer. So you should not be here. So it was it was an interesting like little petri dish of just like all walks of life. We had dudes from Boston and like the culture that you know some of the guys I remember one guy from South came in and I couldn't understand a thing this dude was saying. And you got a a gang member, no [ __ ] from Los Angeles. Then you got the country boys and we're just all forced to like be one.

Johnny Wilson26:27

It's Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah.

Johnny Wilson26:36

So, I had a short stint. You have to go to a school back then. So, that's um they recognize not too many folks are going to make it through these special forces programs. So like EOD, SWAT conceals. So they force everybody to go get their rating.

So a rating is like, okay, what are you going to be a specialist in? And I was I chose operations specialist and that is a radar detector. So if I would have failed out of out of BUD/S, I would have been sitting you we've seen all the movies, the little green dial, that's what I would have been doing. I was like, man, there's something like eight eight clicks out.

Johnny Wilson27:13

And I picked it because of that. I was like, I I want to put myself in a corner because that's where I know I get scrappy and I think I that's for me that's where I've always been able to kind of like figure it out.

Johnny Wilson27:47

Dude, I had a little bit of that attitude like zero options. And there was one point later in BUD/S where the thought crept into my mind, and I'll share that here in a second, but rolling into there, yeah, I was nervous. Like, I mean, I looked up and down the line, I'm like, I'm not the biggest dude. I'm not the strongest guy. I'm not the fastest guy. Uh, those guys actually quit before anybody else. Like, you see some athletes, I'm like, "Oh, dude, that dude's going to make her." You see the jack dude over there that was just crushing the O course didn't make it like came down to mental resilience and you can't tell how resilient somebody is by looking at him.

You can quickly figure it out though and we did in BUD/S. So um for majority of BUD/S, no I was just like this is my job.

Johnny Wilson28:57

Man, there's a lot of stories like that. There was there's one where we were in Annapolis. We were already seals and uh it was New Year's. I'll come back to the story in a second. I'm just thinking there's endless stories in the in here.

Johnny Wilson29:16

I found out.

Johnny Wilson29:18

I didn't know initially, right? And I think that's true for a lot of dudes. Um man, especially in that culture, too. There's alpha males everywhere and like you're running in your pack in these towns like you're going to for Chaffy Arkansas or you're going to Nevada, Reno, Nevada, and you run in a pack. It's like a sports team, man. I mean, you you get it. You show up to a spot and everything's there for you and everybody's looking at you because you look a little different, right?

You're wearing flip-flops. You got I mean, everybody's in good shape. Like, what is that?

Johnny Wilson29:59

Yeah. Now, I I wish I could have thrown up. I wish I would have found out sooner that I was I was a little wild back then. Uh that store in Annapolis is like in short, knocked a dude out, football player. I was bragging about being a football player. Hijacked a newspaper truck. Uh my buddy got slapped by his girlfriend at the time who became his wife. I mean, it was just a wild night. Like, it was New Year's and that was that was before like 10 p.m., dude.

We haven't even hit New Year's yet. Um, the story that you're talking about is like we show up to BUD/S and that same guy that got slapped, he's one of my best friends. Um, we become swim buddies. So, every everybody lines up in Buzz and the and it's height order and the person next to you is your swim buddies. So, you guys are a pair, you guys are a pair. And I just ended up being with this this guy from Montana. And, um, so we show up to BUD/S.

We were actually in a school together and we're the only two dudes in the special programs that were actually kind of doing it like better than the instructor there who wasn't a SEAL. Like we're like, "Dude, this guy's a joke and everybody else here is a joke." So, we hung out at a school. Okay.

And we were old enough to drink. So, we would drive to the local Navy bar for quarter beer night. And so, we hit it off, man. We were good buddies

And still are today. But, we um

We show up at a school. He shows up a week early. I show up uh the week later. Our birthdays are two days apart. May 16th, May 18th, and that just lines up with the start of BUD/S, right? It was that weekend. So, we're in great shape. We're super clean, and we're like, dude, it's our birthday, man. We've been we've been to the compound over in San Diego in Coronado for a couple weeks now because they got to wait until all 200 people show up.

Johnny Wilson31:34

And we were one of the early ones. So, we've been there for a few weeks and it's kind of light training. It's, you know, but you're still doing something, mustering every morning, making sure nobody's screwing off.

And then we got the 200. Hey, we're starting BUD/S on or Indoch on Monday. Take it easy this weekend. And I looked at him, I was like, dude, it's our birthday weekend. Let's just go get one beer at the Padres's game.

And first off, the beers at any stadium. We're like, dude. So, one beer became two became uh we're at the Irish pub at like 1:30 in the morning, closing that down. And it was me, him, and another guy. All starting all starting Monday morning. The next morning, dude. This is a This is Sunday.

Johnny Wilson32:13

Yeah, this is the next day. So, what transpires is my buddy stopped drinking, but he had a couple earlier in the night and he had a truck that was just a three-seater. So, it's him driving,

Me and then my other buddy Zade

And we're [ __ ] off here. Me and Zade are like hitting each other and he's just trying to like stay focused because they had beers earlier in the night, but he had stopped and and you know, I think he had one and was drinking water. And in Coronado to get to Coronado Island, it's not quite an island, it's a peninsula, but regardless when you come from San Diego, you got to take the big blue bridge is what we call it. It's four mile bridge.

And we're screwing around and John is driving up the ramp and he shifts focus to us and like tells us to stop like, "Knock it off, dudes. What are you like, I'm driving, man. We're going to crash." And then he turns back to look in front of him and there's a guy as like it felt like as far as you are for me with his hands up like this in uniform and there's flares and it all like I'm drunk so it's all like starting to come too.

I'm like oh my god that's a cop. There's flares. There's a blockade and then the dude rips us out of the car like what the [ __ ] are you guys doing? Is that booze I smell on you guys? And then the next thing you know we got a scene. There's cops showing up. This is probably like two in the morning now.

Johnny Wilson33:30

Three hours.

Johnny Wilson33:32

So Z and I get put. He's doing a field sobriety test. Uh they take him away. He ended up not having they drew blood. He refused. They drew blood. No alcohol in his system. He's good to go. But that happens later. He's gone. Me and this knucklehead in the back have some college, you know? He's got a degree and I and I got some uh some college under my belt. So we're spouting out [ __ ] from like, "Hey, this is illegal." Like the cops, this this cop's like, "Dude, just knock it off, man.

Just shut the [ __ ] up, please." And we're just yapping, yapping, yapping. He's like, "You know what? I'm going to I'm going to do one good for you guys." He drops us in the ghetto. He drives us off. Instead of taking us to the pre precinct, he just drops us in the ghetto. Bario. And I'm like, "All right, well, that's kind of a blessing because I can see Coronado. It's like not that far away." What happened was there was unfortunately a suicide attempt. So, they shut down the whole bridge.

So, they're dealing with that. I was like, "Well, let's figure this out, man. So, we go over to a taco shop. It's like, "Hey, no Ubers back then." Yeah. "Can we use your phone and they they they can tell we're drunk and they're they shut it down and um so I get pissed and I start like doing stupid stuff there and uh they I hear they I hear them calling the we're calling the cops. I was like, "Shit." So, we take off and I hear the cops coming.

Johnny Wilson34:41

We go across the street and it's a shipping yard with barbwire fence. Somehow we climb the barb wire fence. I don't know how we do it, dude. Cuz I look back I I drove past here like uh a couple days later and I look at this thing and it's not like the janky barbwire. It's like prison and I'm like we came away

Johnny Wilson34:59

Yeah.

Somehow we found a a a a point to climb over. We climb over. We get towards the water. There's rocks all the way down. It's low tide so it's like down 10 ft. And the idea was because there's we couldn't get a car. Couldn't cross the bridge. We're going to swim across. And I'm from Tennessee. He's from Montana. and we're in San Diego Bay. So, the idea was like, let's just strip down, leave our phone, we have flip phones back then, leave our ID, wallet, we'll swim across, we'll get to base, put on our uniform, and then after after uh muster or after the day, we'll come back and pick up our stuff.

Great idea.

Johnny Wilson35:37

We're going to maneuver our way through the base. And dude, I wasn't thinking. I could barely think two seconds in front of me, let alone crazy. was solving the problem as as I was creating. I'm barely barely getting out of the situation. We start walking down and there's all this seaweed on the thing and I slip and go ass over tea kettle and I'm down there at the bottom like bleeding out all over just completely like

Johnny Wilson36:00

And he runs up to me and we look at each other and he's like, "Dude, we can't swim across." I'm like, "Yeah, I know, man. These sharks will jack us up." I didn't realize like sharks don't swim in the bay, but that's where our heads went to like Country Boy.

Johnny Wilson36:19

Maybe I'm still in that here.

Johnny Wilson36:23

Covered in blood. And we're like, "Let's go grab our stuff." And that became a 30minute evolution. We couldn't find our stuff.

Dude, I don't know. And in my head, and there's cameras everywhere. In my head, I'm I truly believe this. I don't know if it's true or not, but there were so many cameras. I guarantee like whoever the security guy was was just like, "Hey, Mikey, get over here. Look at these two dumb asses." And they're just watching us the whole time like on their feeds. What are they doing, man? And we're like walking around trying to be secret. Naked. Naked.

So, we finally find our stuff. We step out on the road and there's a Hugo. You remember those? Yeah. Hugo rolls up and we just stop this thing. And I feel so bad about it now. Like, I was such an idiot back then. And to everybody that I treated poorly, I am truly sorry. I really am, man. I'm a changed person. I was an idiot back then. Um, but we we basically hijacked these guys, a bunch of Mexican workers going to work. They got their hard hats on.

There's like there's no room in for you. And my buddy's like 220, you know, I'm like 190 at the time. And we forced ourselves in there with like four other dudes in the back like sitting on people's laps and like these guys are idiots. They just just take us to the bridge, man. Just drop us to the bridge. So they drive a mile, drop us to the bridge.

There's two sides to the bridge with like little quay walls in between. So for traffic and we proceed to because the suicide thing is still unfortunately happening. We're watching like let's just low crawl right past these guys. Well dude Ken, there's cameras on the bridge. So we're low crawling past the situation. All of a sudden Dukes a hazard style. These cars come over the top. Flashlight, shotguns, let me see your hands. I go to run off the bridge because I'm like I'm going to be a Navy SEAL.

I'm just going to hop in the water. And I go to jump. And the hand of God like literally grabs me and I realize I'm not over water yet. I'm still over land. I would have [ __ ] been a dunner. And I was hand of God was my buddy. He's there's been twice that he's saved my life. And I I truly believe that was one of them.

Pulled me up. We get hands up. I see the flashlight in my eyes and it slowly comes down and the and the cop proceeds to say, "Are you [ __ ] kidding me? How did you two get back here so fast?" And it was the same cop.

And he's like, "What are you guys trying to get back to?" He's like, "We start BUD/S tomorrow." He's like, "Oh, you guys are [ __ ] done. Hop in the car. I'll drop you off." And he took us to the base.

Johnny Wilson38:42

He was a Marine. He's like, "Yeah, he he was a prior Marine. He was like, "Dude, you guys are fucked." Like,

Johnny Wilson38:52

You got to show your ID, but we're hammered and I'm bleeding and we're terrified if we're going to walk through the we're going to cause a scene. So, like what what would anybody do? Let's just hop the fence to the to the military installation. And obviously, people saw that, called it in, and now there's this big search happening. Like, somebody called in, there's intruders and and meanwhile, we go in there, we get like a quick power nap, like 45 minutes, wash up, put our uniform on, and I mean, literally patrols are happen trying to find the intruders.

They're like, "What the don't say anything, dude." And uh we get we get to formation and what happened was John was not there because he was arrested and we're down a man and the instructors are like, "Listen, nobody's going out by themselves. Where is he at?" And finally Zade and I look at each other and it's like, "Somebody knows. Get over here and tell us what happened." And we finally step out of line. We go in there and the rest was not pretty. Like they smell booze.

We got extra beatings for like a whole extra two months. So, we'd have to show up an hour early. Do BUD/S get beat afterwards an hour. I mean, it was relaxing.

Johnny Wilson40:04

Yeah. They were like, "You guys are done." And I truly thought that, too. And they're like, I mean, that's where he pointed out, "You see that ship? You're going to be on there before the end of the week." So, imagine that. Like, you again, I work so hard to be here. And I [ __ ] I [ __ ] it up. I almost lose the opportunity, but God willing like steps in and gives me the opportunity. But in the back of my head, I'm being told every single day it's only another day and you're out.

Like I don't know why I just kept going forward. Maybe there's a chance.

Johnny Wilson40:52

I believe in God and I think he's got a bigger purpose and part of what we're doing now with helping with veteran suicides and toddlers. I think that like he was like you got to go through this stuff and

Johnny Wilson41:04

So I think he I was my doing trials and tribulations but it's made me the person the father the husband the human I am today.

Johnny Wilson43:04

It's exactly what you just said. You would get to a spot where like, ah, damn, you know, [ __ ] it. Here we go. And it was it was almost every evolution was that that thought process like this, this is going to blow. This sucks. [ __ ] it. Here we go. Um, and I mean that was my whole experience. It was just like, man, I know this is going to be freezing. Those waves look really big. Uh, it's extra cold today. Hey, where's the sun?

I mean, without the sun, it is just miserably cold. The wind the wind's high. Wait, we're running how far? Wait, we're we're swimming twice as much.

Johnny Wilson43:39

We're not runners. And we're kind of Well, there were some runners. I don't

Johnny Wilson43:44

You're running on the beach, though.

Johnny Wilson43:46

So, that sucks. I mean, you can find hard pack, but you've done soft sand runs. Totally do.

Johnny Wilson43:54

Dude. that just tears the like, yeah, 10 night. I mean, all the stuff that happens down there and the pace would get faster. You finally like, okay, I finally like I made it. I'm I'm I'm doing good. And they're like, great, now shave a minute off your time. You're like, what? And then you got to shave a minute off your time. And it's like, all right, like a month of that. Great job, guys. Shave another minute.

So, at the end, it like felt like it was an allout sprint always.

Plus, you're you're depleted in nutrient. I mean, we ate good, but

You've had an evolution earlier. You're running around with boats. you're doing like sprints back and forth to the ocean and oh by the way you got a time run later today four miles like after doing five hours of calisthenics so it's not like you just show up after like you know like a week of training like okay I'm good rest recovery I'm going to go bang this out and crush it is it's like I'm already depleted today I don't know how I'm going to do this

Johnny Wilson45:22

But if I could see,

Johnny Wilson45:28

Yeah.

Johnny Wilson46:38

It is. For for those that haven't done it. When next time you go to the beach just go 100 yards

Johnny Wilson46:44

And you're in boots. Yeah. But, you know, your body is it's such it's such a tremendous system. Like, it acclimates pretty fast. Like, and uh that's what we witnessed. I remember when you show up to budge, you got to do a PT test to get in. And I was I told you I was in a great shape, but I didn't train the way that we fought is what we used to always say in the teams. Like, train the way you fight. I used to run in sneakers.

Johnny Wilson47:08

The first run was a boot run and I barely passed. Like, if I would have passed, that was it for me. I'm like, "God, I can't close every time."

Yeah. Every time. And then from that point on, your body's like, "Okay, this sucks. This run sucks." But you're you're passing. And the next thing you know, you're like, "Okay, I'm I'm doing like 7 minute miles, 7:30 with boots on sand." It was it was pretty cool.

Johnny Wilson47:48

It's it's it it really is that. But I laugh because that same guy from Montana, he fell off the top.

So you Oh, yeah. So you get on the slide for life. It's this rope. And there's two ways to do it. You can go underneath it.

Johnny Wilson48:02

But it's faster to go on top, but the rope is sagging and it's to it's basically to mimic us on like from our ship to enemy ship. And we would if you come across the top, you can move pretty quick, but you got to adjust yourself before you get on there because that rope's going right between your legs. And if you don't adjust yourself, you're gonna get

You're gonna get some burns and it's going to hurt. All the weight is right there in your private. So he went to adjust himself and we're all running the O course and it sounded like a missile hit. It was like

Boom. And the whole everybody stopped and looked and you just see this poor guy like how how hurt was he?

He was fine. He walked it off but he's a big boy. He's like a big muscle.

Johnny Wilson48:54

Until that point I thought you would have like gotten pretty severely injured but he literally like knocked the sand off. He was sore for a little bit. I mean

Johnny Wilson49:03

Oh they loved Yeah. They he threw himself off a freaking 30 foot tower 40 foot.

Yeah. But I mean it happened quite a bit. I mean the old course was fun. It was it was a man maker is what I would say because you got to go like and the times just keep they keep decreasing the times when it was all and it I mean it was a true test of your overall physical well-being. Like are you in really good shape running? Okay that's great but can you run and climb a rope? Can you climb a rope and like do pull-ups essentially?

Can you time I mean it really does capture every movement and show who really are the true athletes in the group.

Johnny Wilson49:41

I mean out in town. Yeah. Like when guys

Johnny Wilson49:46

I mean there was I mean because they're brothers. I mean you I mean you got s if you got siblings, you know it. Like you love that person and there's times where you just want to [ __ ] hit them and you do.

Yeah.

How do they respond?

Johnny Wilson49:56

right out. Uh, no, they would uh we never did it in at least not in my BUD/S class. I'm pretty sure it's happened though because he goes alphas. Uh, but it never happened. We'd take it offline in the barracks or something like that or over the burm is what we used to say.

Johnny Wilson50:18

We showed up to team four um and steel team four is out on the east coast and historically the teams were broken up where they would have an area of focus. So, team four was South America, but the war is going on. So now everybody's going to Iraq, everybody's going to Afghanistan. We show up and we immediately jump into training and nine months later after training and training is um you do everything from like CQC, so close quarters combat where you're clearing buildings to land warfare.

I mentioned Fort Chaffy, Arkansas earlier. We're going out there and doing like big maneuvers out in open terrain. Uh we're skydiving. We're diving in Key West. I mean, we're getting all set up for any and every scenario. Nine months later, we're on a bird over to Iraq and uh my first deployment was Baghdad and it was in the heat of the war.

Johnny Wilson51:12

No, it's the the hardest part was you were a new guy and you were treated like a new guy. So, it's like showing up to a sports team and you're the new guy. They're going to they're going to treat you, make sure you're the right, you're cut from the same cloth, you're a good dude.

So, I mean, we would get picked on every every place we showed up. They do what we call the meat Olympics. So new guys were called meats.

Johnny Wilson51:31

Um and they would just we'd be booze fooled events after training. They're like, "All right, stick around. We're going to have some fun." And there'd be tires, like massive tractor tires, and then we'd do sprints. We'd get dressed up. I mean, it's just like like I imagine what a sports team I', you know, have a couple buddies that played uh professional sports and like when we showed up, we'd have to get dressed up in drag and I mean, literally the same thing. That was challenging that at at the towards the end they realized, okay, these guys are going to be a part of this team.

It's time to shift focus and get ready for war. So, um, and that's what happened. We kind of brought into the tribe, if you will, and then the next thing you know, we're heading out.

Johnny Wilson52:14

Not quite. Um, until we got back from Iraq. So, they took our trident. We show up and they had a bird cage because our trident are eagles and like we had a no- ship bird cage with all of our trident in there.

Johnny Wilson52:26

And we had to take it to every evolution. So the new guys would car like literally show up to a bar with a bird cage. I mean it's so they took it and they didn't give it back to us. Um they were like, "Hey, we're going to war. Um you know, you guys are part of the tribe now." But they still didn't give us our birds until we came back from that deployment and then afterwards was the ceremony.

Johnny Wilson52:53

Yeah. Again, I think about, you know, you and I were talking a little bit about this. All our life experiences have made us a more mature human man. Um, back then I was just like naive and just like, let's get after it. This is what I trained my whole life for. Uh, today if I were, you know, put this version of me back then I'd be a little apprehensive. I'd be a little, you know, I mean, I'd still be, I think, excited to do what I've trained my whole life to do.

Uh, but at the same time, I'd probably feel a little bit differently about stepping into into that. I mean, I plus now we got kids. I got a lot to lose. I mean, I would Yeah, there's I mean, different chapter.

Johnny Wilson53:58

Yeah.

Johnny Wilson54:02

Yeah. I think how you teed it up was right. Like you'd ask me today and I'd have a different perspective. Yeah.

But back then it was just I mean some of the reporting these guys were murdering murdering people like their own people our people.

Um and yeah I wanted vengeance. I wanted to to inflict harm on them because you know that's what we we knew to we wanted it. It was like a good versus evil and they were evil, right? And again, there there are some evil people there and groups there that don't deserve to be on this planet. I promise you, like the things that they were doing to children, to women, uh to other people, it's just like it's it it's unfathomable. They should not be living in my opinion.

Johnny Wilson55:00

Yeah, you know, there is a moment when we were going after targets and we and we were rolling up on target and we knew what that person did. I'm thinking of a specific scenario. This guy had killed like 30 some odd people. When that guy was neutralized, that was like mission accomplished. Didn't even bat an eye. But when we blew doors in and use charges to breach doors and then the frag hits a woman or a child,

Those images still sit with me.

Yeah.

Johnny Wilson55:35

Um,

Johnny Wilson56:04

Yeah. Nobody wants that." So,

Uh when I show up there, we land and we came in hot because back then they were like shooting planes down uh rockets.

Johnny Wilson56:18

I met Yeah. Yeah. So, I met Allison uh right after I got kicked out of the academy. Um so, we met and uh we started dating and then um I went to boot camp. I went to a school and we

Johnny Wilson56:36

Yeah. And

Johnny Wilson56:45

It's an interesting tribe we're a part of, man. It is uh the women come together and they support each other. I mean, it is one big family. We we call ourselves, you know, the family and uh those women when the guys deploy, they come together and they support each other. They help each other with activities, the children and stuff like that. I think that's the only way you get through it.

Johnny Wilson57:04

Because I mean, plus like think about I mean, I got so many friends that are widows now. Their husbands were killed overseas. It's like I can't even imagine being on that side of the equation. Like just at home and you get a call or you get a knock on the door. Like

Can you imagine being a wife like every [ __ ] knock for 6 months until your husband's home? You're like, "Who is that? Why is it's 8:00 at night? Why Why the [ __ ] am I getting a knock? Is that what I think it is? Oh, it's just the pizza guy. I forgot to order pizza." Like, can you imagine the emotion?

Johnny Wilson58:59

I've done the same thing, man. I mean, it's verbatim what you're saying. And I I'm just past that part in your book where you just said like I finished the race. I I ran to the hotel. Yeah.

Uh and I I went to the airport. I do the same thing. I'm like, "Hey, I'm going to stick around an extra day here or two, just kind of decompress, like do my thing." And she's all about it. Like, "Yeah, absolutely. Take your time." The second I'm done, whatever it is, whatever evolution it is, I'm like, "All right, what's the next flight?"

Oh, [ __ ]

Johnny Wilson1:00:32

Yeah. And then you know a couple things to call out there too is um they got the routines man. You've been gone for six months. You come back in and you're trying to be the you know kind of the the um the male or the husband and the and the father. And she's like listen this is how we do [ __ ] now. Yeah.

This is the life that we chose. You just can't come in here barking orders. And I go back to thinking about, you know, uh my dad too when he deployed and he was gone. I I get it now because now I'm living it when he goes away and he comes back with me there and the kids there and we're like, "Dude, what are you doing, man?" Like, "Who are you again?"

Johnny Wilson1:01:04

It's kind of how, you know, my kids were happy to see me and at times my wife was too, but there was some resentment there. There were some challenges that we had. Um, but you come come back in. I was like, "Hey, just got back done with war and oh, by the way, I'm back. So, let's just get back into the old routine."

Johnny Wilson1:01:25

Yeah. We've been Where you been, dude?

Johnny Wilson1:01:28

Yeah. And that was 6 months or nine months, you know? I mean, it to your point, even after like a month, two month, eight weeks, things have completely changed, man.

Johnny Wilson1:01:40

Yeah.

Johnny Wilson1:01:48

Uh, one. um 2002.

Johnny Wilson1:01:56

Yeah. Madison and JD. So, JD's a junior. He goes by JD. Um and then we go do that first deployment.

Johnny Wilson1:02:08

Yeah. We come in hot. Uh normally when planes and we've probably been on some planes like where they [ __ ] land hard. That was one of the hardest landings and it had to. We're we're up high out of kind of missile range or rocket range and all of a sudden this plane just drops. So I'm like is and we're all sitting in the back like what is going on because nobody told us they were about to do this.

Oh really? Yeah. And we come in and this thing just like last second nose up boom lands because we didn't want to get a shot out of the air. So that's open the doors. Next thing you know we're on a military compound. It's like the movies. I mean there's movements happening. There's pallets everywhere. There's lights like beaming. And I'm like, where are we? And you hear like in the background just like gunfire. I'm like, okay, we're in it. We go to our compound, get all set up.

There's already a SEAL team there. We do turnover with them. So, usually kind of understand what the process is, walk us through this, and then we do a turnover operation.

Johnny Wilson1:03:06

It'd be a week or two.

Johnny Wilson1:03:08

Yeah, probably two weeks normally.

Johnny Wilson1:03:15

Yeah. But you got to think the logistics there. They recognize this is the way we've done war. There's manuals on this. So like the new team comes in, put them in the overflow tent and then we're all in bunks. They're in their rooms and then they they they leave and then we start taking over

The shoes is what they were called, which is just trailers. So like it'd be a normal single wide, but they split into thirds. So everybody had their own little

Like twoerson spot. But we showed up and then uh we we did a turnover op. Nothing happened on that turn turn turnover op. But I will tell you historically like I've lost a lot of friends on those turnover missions and I don't know what it is about those but we've had helicopters be shot down. We had you know on that actually on that deployment we lost um a SEAL wasn't on my on the mission I was on but we were on the same team. I was we were working in another part of the country and it was the last mission.

They were going we were going home. Mission success and uh unfortunately uh Clarky um got killed and and um and then one of our chiefs uh was in the room and I mean his name is Mike Day. He's legendary.

Johnny Wilson1:04:23

Mike Day was shot multiple like 20 plus times. Zippered up and uh the door closed. Barricaded shooters. They're shooting out towards the rest of the SEAL team. They do a headcount outside and again this is another platoon and they realize they're down a man and Mike is been shot up just laying in the middle of the floor. They took his rifle and all these enemy are like outside the windows shooting the SEAL teams and Mike comes too after being shot 20 some odd times.

Johnny Wilson1:04:52

He's inside the enemy's house.

Johnny Wilson1:04:57

They're assuming he's dead

And they take his gun. They take his rifle

Johnny Wilson1:05:05

He's on the floor like presume presumed dead.

Johnny Wilson1:05:09

He comes to still has his pistols. Kills everybody.

Johnny Wilson1:05:14

Uh I think there was three or four dudes. He comes on comms. He's like, "Somebody come and get me." Uh they come in, he walk he's like it's clear, building's clear. They they come in, he walks out, hops on a medevac, walks out, hops on a medevac, um, flies and gets uh, worked on. He ends up living and he lived until about two years ago when he took his life.

Johnny Wilson1:05:40

Yeah. And that was 20 That's probably 20 years after that that mission happened.

Johnny Wilson1:06:33

I know, man. He's got a book out. I mean, there's there's you can go online, find find some documentaries on him. He's a lot of guy. So sad that um you know, unfortunately that happened. Crazy. So, but you weren't on that mission.

No, we were done. We had done our last turnover op. And I was just simply calling out like turnover missions are historically not they're they're scary for us. People get hurt. Um

Johnny Wilson1:07:04

So the So, we'll go back to what we what you're you know what you were asking about is we had a SEAL team already there. We just showed up. You My impressions are like, man, we're in it. This is like what I've seen in the in the in the the movies. We get there with them. They start briefing us in our different roles. So, I was a sniper or comm's guy, whatever it was. So, I would get with them and they would brief me all of their stuff and then we would go out and do a a turnover mission and it would just be like show you how it operates, how the VIX work, if we do hilos with the hilos and then and then we'd high-five and they'd be out and now it's our turn for six, seven, eight months, whatever it was.

And that's what we did. And it was at the peak of the war in Iraq in the northern part of Iraq. Uh in Baghdad, there's a city called Solder City. Yeah, that was the hotbed. I mean, it was just block after block of just enemy fighters wanting to just murder us. But that's where the leadership was. That's where we had to go to get the bad guys. And that's what we we would do. So, it was almost every night, sometimes two missions a night, we'd either take helicopters.

We could never take helicopters to solder city because they shoot them down.

So we have to do vehicles and they had these IEDs everywhere. Um so then we'd have to change our routes constantly. I mean they were getting they would learn our tactics so fast and evolve that we would have to evolve and it's just this gnarly game of you know war chess. Uh you you do something new. We showed up with just Humvees that were unarmored. Well, they blew the [ __ ] out of those. People were dying. Okay, well let's armor the bottom. So then they arm it.

And it's like, well, there's all these walls that these Americans have put up. Let's put the IEDs in the walls. And we never had armor on the side. Now we put armor on the side. Well, they're going to drive under this bridge, so let's drop bombs on top of it. Now we got to armor the top. And it was just

Johnny Wilson1:08:52

Oh, dude, they were tanks. I mean, these things were monsters. And again, we started, we showed up with Humvees, like Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator Star with no doors on with like riding out. It's like that ain't going to work anymore. The enem is evolving too fast. And that's what war is, man. Uh, it evolves so fast. You think about all the technology we have today. It's because of the last 20 some odd years. I mean, drones.

Johnny Wilson1:09:37

Scary.

It's evolving so quickly. When I first showed it, they set they send you to schools on your new guys so you can become an expert in something. And they had a drone school. So they sent me to that drone school. And this is like 2003 or four, something like that. The first drone that we had was a styrofoam plane with a camera system like this big. Yeah. On one side. Yeah.

And you had to launch this thing. You'd have to like run and launch this thing. And it's 40 grand, dude. And you launch it and if you got to you got to just kind of throw it the right way. And if you don't, this thing goes right in the ground and the styrofoam just blows up.

Oh my god. So you launch this thing and then it takes off and it sounds like a lawnmower and it's like and it's slow as [ __ ] and it can only loiter in one direction. It has to loiter this direction

And that was our first drone.

Johnny Wilson1:10:25

And to your point today like they have drones that are like the size I mean of like a battery that are more sophisticated. And I guarantee you there's stuff that we have in China has that no one's even talked about

Johnny Wilson1:11:36

$400,000 bet.

Johnny Wilson1:11:53

Dude that was hours before that announcement.

Johnny Wilson1:12:47

Yeah.

Johnny Wilson1:12:49

Systems corrupt. Uh I I believe in my heart and in fact I know quite a few people that are in not in the senior parts of the administration but like congressmen I got former teammates and I mean I talked to them and then it's just so disheartening. He's like I'm done. Like I can't do this anymore. I can't change this system. And that's what's going on is like you you go in there with all the best of intentions and you're like a small little cog in this massive corrupt broken machine and then you realizes like I can't make the change I wanted.

I will tell you though it was really [ __ ] cool this past Saturday with that executive order around psychedelics.

Johnny Wilson1:13:26

That's been years in the making. A lot of people busting their ass. So there is hope when you see stuff like that. But to your point, like the counter to that is like, well, how the [ __ ] did we get a billion and a half trade off five hours before? And that dude's never traded before and nobody's ever put a trade that size ever in this.

Johnny Wilson1:14:29

Yeah, totally.

Johnny Wilson1:14:42

I told you I mentioned earlier you asked a question about if we go fight uh like if we ever fought when we're in BUD/S. We're in the SEAL teams and we I we used to always say go over the Bur and handle this like men, right? Yeah.

And that's how you do this. I think a leadership lesson I learned is like you praise in public, you rep them in in private. You got an issue with somebody, you take it to them. And the burm is a sand burm. And we would say, "Go over the [ __ ] burm and and figure it out and come back because we got work to do."

No way in hell you'll ever catch me saying anything negative about somebody

On a podcast or I'll go right to that person. I'll share my my my piece with them and then we'll be good.

Yeah. No, I'm with you.

Johnny Wilson1:15:25

Well, there was one where um I mean there was just so many different missions and it's you know

Johnny Wilson1:15:31

There is a couple uh one of the first ones like we did hilo in infill and um I was one of the first people that was going to make entry in the target building and we we are met with like incoming fire and it was I mean it's the first time I've been fired at. I mean, not quite true because in training you sit in a bunker and they shoot round so you can hear that snap.

So you understand like, hey, that bullet's really close to you. And we get off the heel and I'm like, and it's just everywhere like snaps over our head. Holy crap. And I go dive behind a little like tiny little burn, probably six inches, but I have my whole body behind that thing. There ain't a bullet going to hit me. I mean, I literally got behind this little mound. It was a mountain for me.

And uh yeah, that's where the the tunnel vision kicked in. You know what I mean? I'm just like and I'm just staring like right through this and everything goes quiet and I don't know what to do. I'm like a brand new guy. I'm just sitting there training. Everything's out of my head. I was like and my buddy taps me on the shoulder and he's like, "Hey man, we got to go." And I was like, "Oh shit." And then it all came back. The visors opened up.

But it it was it was really interesting. That was the first time and one of the last times where it just like I just got tunnel vision. I didn't know what to I I was just a brand new dude. Never been shot at. This is real. this is happening. I'm like, "Holy crap." And then um it took simply like the calmness of another dude that's been doing this for a long time. He's deployed numerous times. He's like, "Hey, man. Let's go." I mean, it wasn't like, "Hey, what the [ __ ] are you doing, dumb ass?" It was I mean, it was one of the coolest leadership moments I've ever seen.

Like, you talk about calm under pressure. This dude

Gun dangling between his leg, just tapped me on the shoulder like, "You got to get to the door, buddy. Let's By the way, I forgot to ask. Did you go into BUD/S as an officer?

Enlisted.

Johnny Wilson1:17:38

It is. We are in my opinion um we're so good at what we did because of the systems and professionalism that was in place. So there was times when we played and when we played we played but there when it was time to work we worked and we would come back from mission and it didn't matter if somebody got hurt, it didn't matter if somebody got killed. Um it didn't matter what happened, how long you were out, we always debriefed. We always did our afteraction. It was true professionalism and it was it got to a point where we would take rank off and it was like you got to allow as a leader everybody to share their truth and not reprimand them.

If you made a mistake and oh by the way we all make mistakes every single one of you. You made a lot. I've made a lot. Own those mistakes. Don't point fingers. Don't say it was somebody else's fault. Like what happened? Explain what happened and then let's fix it if it was a if it really was a mistake. But what we saw is what was happening was our TTP our tactics were evolving. So even though we trained to do something a certain way, like survival, intuition kicked in and people were doing the same thing over and over again.

We were doing a different tactic. So it wasn't a mistake. It was like survival. So it's like, hey, what's going on there? It keeps happening. Let's test this. Maybe we start doing it this way. And that's what happened. And that's how our tactics evolved.

Uh but to answer your question, we would get back and we would go grab food. We'd go right back to our our debrief room with all of our gear on, by the way, because we wanted it when it was fresh. And we would debrief just the same way we briefed what we were about to do. We debrief what just happened.

Johnny Wilson1:19:12

That one was 6 months.

Johnny Wilson1:19:17

Yeah. I mean then there's tons of stories there and you know uh maybe for another time, but I think about like some of the silly things that we did when we weren't working. We go out in town. I know that sounds kind of crazy back there.

Yeah. Yeah. There's a green zone area. So it's it's not quite on the base. We called it town. It's not really town. It's still protected. But they would sell booze there.

Johnny Wilson1:19:37

So that me and you know, a buddy would take the up armored Suburban and we'd fill the back of that whole Suburban with like they had Guinness and like Blue Label. We get cases of Blue Label. I mean packed to the gills. I'm talking about there was even between us on the center console, we we stacked this thing up and we come driving back onto base with all of that booze for the team. I mean, we had some fun.

And it was just dudes. There were no women there, right? No, there was uh no there was no I mean not on our compound. I mean there was women that were you know supported in different parts of the base. So we were on something called Biop which was a massive compound and there was tons of units. So our unit was segregated um and um there was no women.

Johnny Wilson1:20:21

No.

Johnny Wilson1:20:24

Yeah. So I ended up um I ended up getting my degree. So, it's just something, you know, kind of similar to some of the points of your story like I'm not like I started this. This is something I want. This is meaningful to me. So, then you just put it in your your focus and you're going to go get it.

Johnny Wilson1:20:38

So, I actually did it on my next deployment. I started I only had a couple credits I had to do. So, I did an online program initially

Through Maryland. And I would get back from missions, we'd debrief, I'd grab some food, and it'd be like 3:00 in the morning. I was like, I got to get this assignment banged out. And I would do I'm no [ __ ] Like,

Johnny Wilson1:21:00

Yeah. Yeah. There was a lot of dudes. I mean, not a lot. There was a there was guys that were in similar situations. We were all like there was a small group of us like, "Hey, let's go get our degrees." And some of those guys wanted to go off and be officers. Uh, in fact, I've wanted to be at one point and then we made the decision after um I think my third deployment, my wife and I now had five kids and we're like, you know, we've been to a lot of funerals, memorials.

Um, we got five kids. maybe we decide to shift focus and that's what we decided to do. So I ended up not pursuing the officer route but ended up going to as you know Goldman um after

Johnny Wilson1:21:40

So I went to a couple things I went to uh Maryland got a degree there and then uh I ended up going to Oxford as well. So uh I got an MBA from Oxford.

Johnny Wilson1:21:50

Yeah.

Johnny Wilson1:21:52

No, it was overseas. Uh, I spent it was an executive program. Yep. So, I'd go over there every so often and then we had a a group of classmates. Uh, we work on projects. So, it was a two-year MBA and it was an executive program.

Johnny Wilson1:22:19

It was volatile. Yeah. It's listen I was really immature um and I had past traumas like you know and again not pointing fingers like it's just um I had a good upbringing. I think there was opportunity for it to be have been better but again I'm not pointing fingers or passing judgment because I've made mistakes too. I also think uh you know Allison, my wife, she's had some challenges in her upbringing, you know, divorced family like and we brought all of our [ __ ] into this relationship and during this chaotic period of our our our marriage like we never really had time to get to know one another.

We just BUD/S, baby, deployment, baby deployment, baby deployment, baby gone six months, training nine months. Like I didn't know who she was.

Yeah. And a lot's happened since we first got married, right? Like, and again, that's when we kind of knew each other, but not really. We were still young and moving quick. So, we'd have some great moments because we were a family, like awesome moments, and we had some volatile moments. And part of that was because of my immaturity and, you know, the culture that I was a part of, drink heavy, and I was not, as you know, some of the stories that I've shared, I wasn't the thinking clearly when I was in that mindset and doing stupid stuff.

So, you know, to be honest with you, I didn't deserve her and she should have left a long time ago if I'm being honest with you. And we're so we're so [ __ ] good now. Like,

Johnny Wilson1:24:24

Yeah.

Johnny Wilson1:26:29

So, there was a guy there, uh, a SEAL. So, I again, I didn't know how skills translated. I didn't know like, dude, I'm a sniper. I'm a team leader. Like, how the [ __ ] does that I don't even know what I could do outside of the military, but there was a team guy that was uh tra trading derivatives there, I believe. Uh, Joe Feminia. I don't know if you know that name. M um and he'd been there for a while and actually he was there I think prior to the war maybe right at the beginning of the war he might have deployed but regardless you know when we talked uh he was like yeah you know there's some similarities and there there kind of are in a sense but not quite so what he said was like yeah there's some similarities between the high risk of what we used to do and and so I bought off on that and I went out there

And uh you know had degrees and and got an opportunity uh on the equity uh trading team to to to um to trade there and I had to go through the interview process and I I just didn't know if I was going to get a shot because I am not I'm 30some at the time now and usually they're hiring.

Johnny Wilson1:27:29

They it was I think it was right time, right place. I think God has a hand in everything and uh it was one of the hardest and most challenging times of my life.

Johnny Wilson1:27:41

I went from like being a part of this crew, this tribe, the the brother. So we we always say purpose. I had purpose, clear purpose. I was aligned with that mission and what we were doing at the time. I had passion in what I did. I loved what I did, man. Jumping out of planes, like shooting guns, like this is what man wouldn't love that. And then you have this team that would take a bullet for you. And you know, I have friends that are no longer here that absolutely did do that, right?

So, and then you go to corporate America. It's not just Goldman. It's it's majority of corporate corporate America. But I get there and I'm like a And you wrote I'm going to actually read it because this resonated. I wrote it down. The only constant was I didn't fit in anywhere. I did not. This was in your book. Yeah.

I didn't fit in. I don't fit in anywhere still to this day. I walk around I feel like I'm a fish out of water everywhere.

Johnny Wilson1:28:44

Like, let's get out of here. And then it's just like, you know what? [ __ ] this, man. You are dude. It's like all going on and we're in the middle of this party or something. It's like, dude, you own this place. Ego flares up a little bit. And

Um but I get there and everybody's congratulating me. It's like, dude, you got an Ivy League degree. You're 1%. You're trading that gold, man. Like, you made it. And what started happening is all the [ __ ] I compartmentalized in my life that I put away, like just hid in in this brain of mine somewhere started coming out. I felt isolated. When you're isolation, that's that's a dangerous place to be. I didn't have any friends.

Johnny Wilson1:29:30

I had a cool team. These are some athletes. I told you that guy. He's an Iron Man dude, too. Uh, his name is Double A. Uh, is his nickname. I I won't share his name here, but he's he's still in the business. I just talked to him like a week ago. He's like, "Johnny, come." He's got a thick accent, dude. He's like, "Come do this uh this Iron Man with me. Come on. This is the year." I was like, "Fuck, man. I don't even have a bike, dude."

I'll tell you a funny story about uh the only Iron Man I've ever done here in a second. But great dude. Uh, you know, the manager on the desk was uh I think it was a hockey player at Harvard. Man, I mean, you get some I

Johnny Wilson1:30:04

Oh, yeah. I mean, we had this chick from Russia. She was a brilliant. She was she was trading all the tech stocks and I was just like in awe. I was like, man, I'm never going to get to that that point. She was just brilliant.

It was a cool team, man. It was It was awesome. Um I sat there and I felt like completely lost to be honest with you.

Johnny Wilson1:30:25

Yeah. Well, no. Oh, and that was one challenge because you're in the military, you're told what to do with clear instructions. Like, you do this and this is how you do it. You get there and they're just like,

And I'm like, "What the [ __ ] Somebody tell me something to do." I was like, "Fucking pick up the phone, idiot."

Johnny Wilson1:30:38

I mean, at first it was like, "This is this dude's a Navy SEAL." Like,

And I appreciate it. Finally, like the day they were just like, "Hey, dumbass. That's not how you [ __ ] you say it. This is how you say it." I was like, "Okay, I'm part of the tribe now." Yeah.

But that didn't last long because

Johnny Wilson1:30:54

I was No, I was associate. So that was a pro uh a problem too in the sense that I should have been a sales guy. I'm a sales guy. I didn't know that

Johnny Wilson1:31:07

Dude, I can't sit still. You see me. I've touched this bottle 25 times, man. Um so imagine me staring at Bloomberg like and I'm like, "Okay, what's Dude, it's 9:32. I I still got a few hours under my like it was it really was that." And then I saw the sales traders down there and I started talking to them. I was like, "Tell me about what you guys do." I like, "Well, we do we trade but we're still out. I mean, we're out there more, you know, meeting with clients." I was like, "This feels like" and I was kind of figuring it out.

And um I got to a spot where it was December, I think six. And I get a text and uh it's like, "Hey, um uh Nick just just got killed." And then I look up on the screens and the news feed starts happening like Navy SEAL killed on mission and he was on a hostage rescue mission. And um at that point I just I don't know what it was. I just looked at Maddie and I was just like hey I'm done. He's like what do you mean?

He's like I'm going back in and I and he's like you sure? And I was like I'm 100% sure. And I quit

Johnny Wilson1:32:09

On the spot.

Johnny Wilson1:32:12

He was like dude I get it. He was just like, "Man, I I got [ __ ] buddies still over there."

Johnny Wilson1:32:17

And he's like, "All right." And that was it. I walked off and then I told my wife, "That's a huge mistake." Like I

Johnny Wilson1:32:32

That was part of the problem, too, is I I made the assumption I'd be home all the time. I lived in Princeton, New Jersey. First off,

Johnny Wilson1:32:41

My father-in-law lived in Princeton. And he's like, "It's an hour commute." That mother, it's not an hour commute, man. I

Johnny Wilson1:32:49

I was doing 3 3:30 on the like Princeton to to Princeton Junction from my house, Princeton Junction. Uh then I'd go from the tram to World Trade Center, World Trade Center to get to the desk.

Johnny Wilson1:33:01

It was miserable. And then plus you got dinners afterwards, so you're taking clients out. And then I get home. There was a point towards the end of my tenure there that I would I had a buddy that I started this foundation with to help seals transition called the SEAL Future Foundation,

But we we co-founded it and he was a trader. He was at Deutsche, I believe, and then he went to Jeff. Um he's like, "Just stay with me, man." So instead of going home at like midnight, getting there at like, you know, taking a car and getting there at like 1:30 or 1:20 in the morning, waking up two hours later, I lived he had a tiny little spot like a in his in his spot and I would like roll up in there and I lived there for like a month and a half towards the end of my time there.

It was nuts. But I made the assumption it was like I'd be home all the time. I got out to be home with my my family. I was gone more on Wall Street than I was

Than I was in the teams.

Johnny Wilson1:33:54

Well, there's a couple things there. So, one is at some point your time as an officer, you're going to stop operating.

Johnny Wilson1:34:02

And I was still young and hungry and I wanted to kind of get after it. So,

The idea did cross my mind, but

I was like, let me just hop back in because there was a team that was deploying. I had some buddies there like, hey, if you can get through this process fast, you can jump on this deployment. So, I did. Uh it took like three months. Couple things I didn't think through and and again you you can see God's involvement in my opinion everywhere. I had to uh if you're out longer than 2 years, you have to do everything all over again.

I wasn't out. I was barely under the two-year window before I quit. I didn't even know this rule existed. So, I got through. The second thing is I told my wife and she's like, "To your point," she's like, "We made it. We got out of harm's way. We're going to be rich. Like, we got this beautiful home in Princeton. like you're going back in. Can you imagine cats?

So, but she stuck it out with me and we figured it out and we did it again. And I deployed I deployed to a couple cool spots. There was some some uh al Qaeda stuff kicking off in Africa.

Johnny Wilson1:35:05

I went to Africa. Uh Kala. So, Uganda.

Oh, wow.

Beautiful.

Johnny Wilson1:35:10

I saw the gorillas to Lake Victoria. like we our base was in inbe.

Johnny Wilson1:35:22

I'm going to bring the family there at some point. We got a big family. We try to do a trip every year. Uh calendars didn't line and they're getting older, but I am going to take my family. It's one of the most magical places and I was only in a small part of it. We fly in and out of like

Uh uh Kenya like but it was I never spent quality time there like but we spent time in Uganda and I loved it.

Johnny Wilson1:35:47

I do four years again. So all in all, it was 15 total years.

Johnny Wilson1:35:54

She was initially. And then it was just like kind of like this is what we're doing. She stuck with me and we figured it out. And it was the same routine. It was what I was comfortable with. If I'm being honest with you, I look back and no never any regrets. Like everything had to happen to get me to where I'm at today. The goods and the bads. the things that crushed me and hurt me, the things I failed at, the stupid decision I made, but all the good stuff, too.

And um there are times when I was like, man, I I could have just stuck it out on Wall Street. Um you know, I didn't have to react. I I I look back at that and I think I did that because it was comfortable. It's what I knew. I was good at it. And I was early stage on Wall Street and I didn't get my feet my feet under me, you know, and I was like,

I could have stuck it out, but I didn't. I chose an easier path. Um, so there is some parts of me that think that and then there's, you know, the other part of it is like I man I I missed what I was doing. I missed the brotherhood.

Johnny Wilson1:36:48

So that but that's the culmination of all those emotions, feelings, experiences what led me down uh to go back in. But we did four years. I did some South America stuff as well.

Johnny Wilson1:36:58

Drug warfare and that's been kicking off in again. And plus all of like you know uh al Qaeda and some of the other stuff are funneling stuff not just drugs but they're funneling enemy into the US potentially through the southern border. So we went down there Colombia. Uh there was teams all over. I went to Colombia and then I went to uh Chile. Have you been to Chile?

Johnny Wilson1:37:20

You got to go. It is the most be it's like it's like Southern California. Same temperament, same climate, super clean.

Uh food is tremendous. Uh, you can ski, you can So I I wasn't able to do it, but you can skydive, ski, and surf all in the same day.

Johnny Wilson1:37:37

Um, and at some point I'm going to do that. So

Johnny Wilson1:37:45

Yeah.

Johnny Wilson1:37:53

Yeah. So still not aware, right? I'm still just grinding like, okay, it's time to get out again. I had a foundation at the time that helped seals transition and I still struggled the second time and we've helped hundreds, thousands of SEALs transition and I'm like, I'm the CEO, I'm the co-founder of this thing. This is going to be a cakewalk and it was still hard because we're we're so used to our patterns, behaviors, the life. It's we've gotten acclimated to it. There's some con, you know, maybe we're content with it.

But I got out again and I found a great firm this time, uh, Capital Group. Yeah. So, I worked

Johnny Wilson1:38:27

In LA. So, I didn't work in LA. Uh I ended up going on the sales side and that was a great fit for me. Like I that that organization was started by a veteran in the Great Depression.

No corner offices, like really good culture. We all go by initials because he he got tired of people calling him sir. He's like, "Please stop calling me sir." In 1930, imagine 1930 the boss saying stop calling me sir. So his workaround is like you go by initials. So my initials at Capital Group were JTDW and everybody that's how you go by. Hey JTDW, what are you doing today? Hey, can you swing by the office or something? But

Johnny Wilson1:39:01

I was on the sales side. So wholesaling.

Johnny Wilson1:39:08

Yeah, we'd go out and uh we so uh did that. I did some practice management stuff. So helping like I embed with some of the biggest consultants and advisory teams out there. was like, "Outside of investments," and this was a perfect fit for me, right? Uh outside of investments, what are your biggest challenges? He's like, "I don't we're [ __ ] secession planning. I'm retiring. I don't know what to do here. We come in and embed it's we're straight consultants." And that's where I operate. Like,

Embed me behind enemy lines. Like, let me figure out what the hell's going on here and I'll put some systems and SOPs and

Johnny Wilson1:39:40

No, we we started we went back to the East Coast, so Connecticut at the time.

Okay. and we lived there for a good chunk of time and then we moved out to Colorado to wholesale. So initially I started off uh on a national account team and I I just stayed in Connecticut working out of there and flying around the country and then I went out to Colorado wholesaliled all like the Wyoming uh Montana so the wealthy you know.

Johnny Wilson1:40:06

Institutions

Johnny Wilson1:40:10

We had a team working on that and I would be a part of that. I worked mostly with like the Morgan Stanley's and and some of the banks.

Johnny Wilson1:40:19

Correct.

It was fun, man.

Johnny Wilson1:40:22

It was a better fit for me besides uh like I just I can't I I need to be out and about.

Johnny Wilson1:40:31

100%.

Johnny Wilson1:40:32

It's such a blessing and I'm so grateful. Um the opportunities created the wealth. Like I didn't come from money. You know, my dad shared a story that he sold plasma to put food on the table and like and I remember being tight. My first paycheck in the Navy was like in one month was like 400 bucks or something like that, right? That was I had two kids at the time.

So to see what you can do when you work your ass off and you find a great organization that realizes the talent and we're blessed.

Johnny Wilson1:41:01

No. So I just think about like I was just at dinner last night with some friends and I was just telling them there my daughters have horses, they ride horses. like none of these things we could have afforded. I you know and my buddy's like do you like horses? And I was like as much as I [ __ ] about him because it is it is a rich man's game and I am not rich. Um you know the good thing about him is it distracts your daughters away from the boys.

Uh one of my daughters rides at College of Charleston. My other daughter is going to ride somewhere in college and there's no cooler thing to be at my house in Colorado where I live and pour me a cup of coffee and look out my window and see horses in the pasture.

Johnny Wilson1:41:39

It's a blessing, man. I'm so

Johnny Wilson1:42:15

I can I can consult for you on that. I know how to do that. It was the same thing. I was like I don't know how to do this. But that's actually how I met Allison. She it's her hobby.

Johnny Wilson1:42:27

And I wanted to win her over. So I would go watch her ride and then uh they're like hey you give us a hand. So I would literally trying to impress her. I would like for the first time in my life I'm shoveling horseshit and I'm riding tractors while she's riding just to try to impress her.

Johnny Wilson1:42:47

Today we now have pigs. They're just like they're they're cool. They're like little uh I forgot what they're called. Um

I can't remember what kind of Yeah. Yeah, exactly. They're all They're all kind of similar, but uh they're like they're pets. Uh and then we have horses. Uh, we have chickens and ducks, so we get fresh eggs. And brother, fresh eggs.

Johnny Wilson1:43:15

I hunt now, but not growing up. So when I got to the Naval Academy, I had a roommate there and his name was uh Bubba Frank Durham. Bubba Durham. And um he and I got into it. He was a big hunter so he taught me how to do it. So I bought a bow and arrow and you know, it was cool. He he just kind of showed me the ropes and I got into it. But I fell in love with it and I I do it now as uh something that when I'm in Colorado, we try to I try to pass that down to the kids and we'll take one elk.

We'll try to take one elk a year and then just fill the freezer up and it's just great lean meat. It's super tasty. It's cool to like have that experience with, you know, your kids. So that's what we do. And then we fly fish, too. So I've, you know, just

Johnny Wilson1:44:19

Show me one more time.

Johnny Wilson1:45:07

Yeah. I had a similar story. I was uh I went back to my folks house in Clarksville. Uh my parents are divorced, so my mom's house now at the time. And I'm out there just like slinging arrows and I missed the target and it goes right through the wooden fence, like the crack in the wood fence. And I'm like, "Oh my god." And I go out there and I'm like peeking my head over. I'm like, "Where's that [ __ ] arrow?" And then I'm like snooping around my neighbors because I don't want them to see like, "What the hell?" I was a kid at the time.

But yeah, I mean, that's no joke.

Johnny Wilson1:45:44

Axis is good.

Johnny Wilson1:46:27

Snipers.

Johnny Wilson1:46:37

We should do that.

Johnny Wilson1:47:17

Boom.

Johnny Wilson1:47:29

Yeah,

Johnny Wilson1:48:54

Okay. So, we'll take a step. Prior to capital, I was still in and uh right at the end of my time, I started realizing I just there was no well, I mean, there was there was like a couple times when I was like, if I'm being honest, like I I you know, I would be at a buddy's house uh partying and I was like, I I want to get home. And uh I left his house and I drove to a uh like a Waw Wa and I was like, I can't get home.

What am I doing? like I'm going to get I'm going to get [ __ ] DUI. This is stupid. And I would pass out and the cops tapped on my window, found me asleep in there. There was like stupid stuff that I was still doing like that with with kids at home, man. So, I realized like, okay, something's off here. Um, and it's it's one, it's part of our culture. We got a hard drinking culture, like a fighting and drinking culture, but if I'm being honest, it was also a part of me.

I was like numbing stuff and ignoring things. And so, when we're going to get out again, now I have this foundation. We're starting to get into mental health. And I'm starting to learn a lot. Like I'm realizing, okay, a lot of us from the explosions have like traumatic brain injuries. The same thing that football players or hockey players have from the concussions, you know, soccer players, anybody with head injuries, they get the CTE. A lot of the acoustic concussions, explosions, or and man, we blew up so much stuff when I was overseas.

So maybe there's something there. And then just the way I reacted, I was like always hyper vigilant. And when I was for for that that those whatever years when I was in Wall Street, I would put myself in a corner on that train

Anywhere I was at. I was always in the corner like assessing looking like

Same

Johnny Wilson1:51:04

Yeah. Exactly. Uh we're constantly in that fight or flight. We're always in fight mode.

Yeah. We're we're not we're in fight mode. So it doesn't matter if you're at home like we never addressed it. We never dealt with it and I'm constantly in that fight mode. So this is 2017 18 when um and this is right when I was going to start capital when I was starting capital but then uh there's a SEAL teammate of mine uh that um uh found out about ibogaine. And how I found out was I had seen a friend of mine that was in the SEALs.

He got he got asked to leave Seal Team Six. And I think eventually he got asked to leave the Navy because of his drinking. And if you if you're getting asked to leave the the this the Seals and Navy because you're drinking, you got a real big problem. So I saw him in Virginia Beach

And he looked terrible, man. You can tell when dudes are drinking, you can see the red in their in their you know their their their veins in their face and

And he just didn't look good. He was overweight. He just not healthy. Fast forward, I don't see him for a few years. And this dude runs up to me at a barbecue and he's got long hair and he's literally glowing, man. Like I've never seen an aura around people when people say that, the woo woo people. I'm like, back then I was like, I don't know what the [ __ ] you're talking about. That's the first time I saw it. And he glowing runs up, gives me a hug, and he's like, dude, it's Will.

It's cheese. And I was like, oh my gosh, you look great, brother. What happened? Like, what'd you do? And he proceeds to tell me he did psychedelics. And I'm in the back of my head, I was like, this dude lost his [ __ ]

Johnny Wilson1:52:26

Dude. this guy nuts.

But he planted a seed and I started looking into it and I researched it. I went to the UK. There's uh the lead researcher, his name is Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris. He was out of a university out there. Now he's at UCSF in San Francisco. But I was just like, "Hey, what is this? Talk to me about it because what I'm seeing right now, I don't understand because it's saying it's better than SSRIs." Like this is helping more people at a staggering like just exponential rate compared to SSRIs.

Like walk me through this. would this be a good tool for veterans? I got a couple buddies using and they're they stop drinking and these guys were not like dudes that were just going to stop drinking. Like why? I don't understand what's going on. So he proceeds to educate me. We had the foundation at the time. I go to my board and I'm like guys um there's something interesting going on like there's veterans going to do this psychedelic and the first pass was like I I was at a board meeting as a CEO and chairman.

I was like this is something we need to look into. And you should have seen I have a guy uh he's from Goldman, pretty senior guy. I think he was their chief compliance officer when he left and he's like tenur guy now. He's he's I imagine he's still on as some type of way. But I just remember seeing the room of people and they're just like what the [ __ ] is Johnny talking about, dude? Crickets. So we move past that topic and I finally get to a spot where I realize like I'm not doing well.

You talked about suicide ideation. There's times when I'm driving down a bridge, I'm like, "How easy would it be?" Like, it just little thoughts like that that never came before were happening quite a bit. Um, the fights were there. I left my family as like my wife and I were fighting. I was just like, "Fuck it." I went and got a place in Stamford uh by myself. And it wasn't me, by the way. It wasn't me. It was her, right? Yeah. It wasn't me. It was the kids.

Like, they were they don't get it. Nobody gets me actually. And then I finally get to a spot where I talked to the doctor, Dr. Martin Palano that was administrating this in in in um in Mexico and I was like, I want to go. And I went and you know, there was a lot that we've learned from the initial time sending veterans down there because I went no prep, no coaching. I just [ __ ] showed up and banged it out.

Johnny Wilson1:54:38

All right. So you get down there and they they do put a port in you because it does it is a

People have died. Yeah, it's a powerful drug. So, they got to do a medical analysis on you. They do an intake. They do they check your heart. Uh people are passing away because it it can it lowers your heart rate so low. If you have preconditioned issues, you you're disqualified.

But so, they put a port in you in case they got I think it's lithium that they have to is that they have to inject something that'll get your heart going again if if you were to go into arrest. So, but they inspect you and then we go down there and there's a bunch of veterans with me and um we sit around and you know this is the first time I'm doing anything like this. It's a little woo woo for me. There's like a a fire pit and we write our intentions down and we burn the you know our past traumas and my ego was flaring up.

He's like, "Dude, what are you doing, man? You don't get out of here, man. Come on, bro. Like, this is not us. Like, I've kept you alive. What are you doing?" We all go around the [ __ ] and we kind of share our intentions and why we're there. And then we proceed to take ibogaine which is from the IBOGA plant.

Johnny Wilson1:55:44

All at the same time.

Johnny Wilson1:55:50

Okay.

And then you sit down blindfold music and and I'm still like my ego is flaring up. He's like, man, like what are you doing? And everybody has a different experience. And that's what I will tell you is like, you know, in fact, I historically don't share my experience because I don't ever want somebody that's hasn't done it that is potentially going to do it to be steered or have fears or, you know, assume that this is how it's going to be for me because it's wildly different for everybody.

I had a challenging experience and I had friends that were there that had the most magical like purple dragon, mother dragon walking them through like their past and gently helping them understand some stuff. For me, the initial part of it was just like revisiting moments in my past that were crystal clear. It's almost like I had a TV in front of me, a projector, and I can just swipe to different parts of my life. And it was it was crazy. I'm sitting there thinking,

Initially thinking, I'm going to go to war. I'm going to go to like some of the things that we talked about.

Johnny Wilson1:56:52

It was childhood, man. It was like going back to like my birthday, seeing my parents like realizing they were trying their [ __ ] best even though they were at ends, you know, like fighting. They ended up getting divorced. I saw the love that was there at one point and they were just as hard as they could trying to figure this thing thing called life out. And I'd swipe to the next memory and it would be like my kids birth and it was crystal clear as as clear as it is right now.

I'm like this is amazing. And I'm just going through and I'm like coming to peace at parts of my life where I had trauma. But what was the challenging part?

The challenging part was when that was over. For me, it was just like, okay, that felt like it was like 10 minutes. This was really cool. This was beautiful. And then it just went dark for me.

Johnny Wilson1:57:55

Yeah. So I've done it a few times now and I've done other types of uh plant medicines. So like psilocybin 5-MeO-DMT which you've done um or DMT. Um every single medicine is a little bit different. So I've done psilocybin magic mushrooms

And I do these in therapeutic settings. So I have somebody there. I'm sitting down and I don't I don't care how people do this. I mean, I know people do MDMA and they go to raves. Cool. Do your thing. Doesn't bother me. For me, I'm using this as a tool.

Johnny Wilson1:58:26

So, psilocybin, you can do that and you're in this like for me it's really visual and I'm like this is really pretty cool and it's just like I'm seeing some like kaleidoscope stuff and then there's times where it's just like super clear and visuals and like futuristic stuff and like Native American stuff. I've seen that quite a bit in my journeys and it's all making sense to me after years. But then there's you can take your mask off when you're on psilocybin. You're just going to see kind of some of like the vortex,

Johnny Wilson1:58:53

Yeah.

Johnny Wilson1:59:00

You're back there.

You're not on a forth bad trip like acid. You can you can come out and you'll be in that room. You'll know you're in that room. Um, but here's what I'll say. You're going through, they say, you know, I've I've as mentioned, I've done medicine bit now. It gives you what you need.

Okay.

Johnny Wilson1:59:20

I realize that now. And I put that mask back on because I was getting it was getting pretty dark for me. And I was like, [ __ ] this. Like, what am I doing? And I was like, you're here. Like the voice goes in, what are you here for? You want to heal? Let's go.

And you put it back. It's it's partially your ego. It's like now it's on the other side. I was like, "Bro, we're here." Like, "Why are you here? Let's figure this out." So, it got dark and what I perceived happened is I have all this dark energy in me like from years of like fighting and war and arguing and yelling and like, you know, people hurting me and all of this is in my like body in my cells. And what happened next was like it was all dark and it just started like coming out and I started throwing up.

And what I perceived happened was like I was like throwing up all of that darkness and I just for the next like six hours I just was releasing trauma and people release it differently. They shake.

Yeah. For me, I just I was vomiting and uh when it was out and I I tell you the first couple times and there's no food in your system because they know you you could potentially vomit, but I was still getting like this dark what I thought was dark mucus. And afterwards, I'm sitting down with the woman that was holding space for me and I was like, "Man, these dark pucks like hockey pucks were coming out." And she goes,

"No, they weren't. They were clear." And I it was just mucus. I was like, "Well, I thought they were dark." She goes, "No, they weren't, but they might have been dark." you know, she was like kind of help me get there. They were dark to you. So,

For me, that set me down this path of just like it gives you an opportunity to change your behaviors. And again, I said we've learned a lot since then because I hopped on a plane on Monday. I did this on Friday. Hopped on a plane on Monday. We flew right back into JFK.

Johnny Wilson2:01:02

Not what you need to be doing today. They got these great programs set up with places like Beyond I Began and Ambio. You get a coach, you get prep, you do middle in uh medical intake, you you get prep for a month, you go through the program afterwards, you get integration, you've already thought through what you want to change in your life, you start integrating, you got a accountability partner. I mean, it is tremendous today.

Johnny Wilson2:01:25

Um, it depends for people, but for me it was my first experience because I've done it a few times now with ibogaine is um it was a longer experience. It was almost like 18 hours.

Johnny Wilson2:02:45

Yeah.

Johnny Wilson2:04:13

Than everyone else.

Yeah, brother. I know exactly what you're talking about. I've been there.

Johnny Wilson2:04:19

But

Isn't it such a blessing to get to that place, though?

Johnny Wilson2:05:27

Yeah. This is strictly a tool for me and it is it it for me personally it's hard and and I um but I always come out of it with kind of experiences like you had. The first thing I think about is like dude nothing else matters. You're loved. You got a beautiful wife. You got beautiful kids. Like everything else is [ __ ] always the same. I come to the same place and I ball my eyes out and it's just like a release

From people like you and I that work so [ __ ] hard and are so driven and it's just the way that God's made us like there's no ifands or buts about it. This is just who we are. People can say, "Can't can you do this? Can you slow down? Can you not juggle 32?" I can't. This is how I made. But when I get the opportunity to do 5 MO in the past and just fight it tooth and nail, stop like ego flaring up, dude.

And then feel that like feeling that you're describing. And when I'm like surrender.

Johnny Wilson2:06:19

When I say that in my head, it's just like I drop into it.

Johnny Wilson2:06:23

You feel love. You feel the presence of God.

Johnny Wilson2:07:20

All right. So all these other psychedelics, but ibogaine specifically gives you an adverse reaction to drugs, alcohol. You don't want any part of it, man. Like in fact, you you

No, you'll have a a physical reaction. and you will violently respond to drugs or alcohol.

Johnny Wilson2:07:39

That's why they do it. That's like they've been doing this for 30 years down in Mexico for addicts specifically. There's a great documentary called Dosed.

Johnny Wilson2:07:47

Uh on Netflix and it follows this woman who is a heroin addict. Like dude, she was in it and she's she's doing uh when you go to the clinics they give you for heroin, it's um uh what do they give you? It's methadone.

Methadone. Thank you.

Johnny Wilson2:08:08

Oh, I remember you. You said you were trying to Yeah.

Johnny Wilson2:08:11

Yeah.

So, she's fighting this battle and that's a real battle. Like you I've read in your book, you've seen a lot of friends struggle with that and um and um I've seen it as well. Right. She goes and does I one time.

One time, dude. And they follow her for a year after. She never touched again. Like I don't know what's happened since then because you got to think too like if you're going to do that great but if you go back to your old environment you're surrounded with that old posi that's doing heroin like it's going to be hard even if you're in a good space for a month

Two months like you're a product of your environment is my belief like you got to change that too right so it looked like she changed it for a year she didn't touch and you know that's a that's a huge thing for a heroin addict so

Johnny Wilson2:09:02

That I'm I'm high.

Johnny Wilson2:09:40

So coffee is my only thing but after my last I began I didn't drink coffee for like four or five months and I I kind of forced myself because I love that

Johnny Wilson2:09:48

I was like you know I'm just going to drink it and it didn't taste right and And I kept doing it and then finally I broke it down. So you can you could force yourself back to it. And I was like, listen, I don't drink anymore. I don't do drugs. I'm not like I am loyal to my wife. Like I am I'm doing the very best I can. If I got one vice, you're doing okay, Johnny. And my one vice is coffee. I [ __ ] love that vice.

Johnny Wilson2:10:10

Okay. So as mentioned started a foundation and in 2017 at the seal future foundation initially our mission was to help these guys get jobs right but what we saw is a lot of us are like we have injuries PTSD TBI like we need to address this because we can't plop a dude into Goldman trading you did it yourself doesn't we got to address that so we looked at what was out there and they're like hey just take SSRIs for that I'm like where's the research that supports taking SSRIs for a [ __ ] brain injury What else is out there?

The VA is like, "Oh, go talk to a therapist." So, for me, I I live this, right? I'd go stand I'd drive to the VA an hour away from where I live in Connecticut because I wanted to talk to somebody. I needed to talk to somebody. I couldn't find a parking. I [ __ ] find parking a mile away. I'd run into my VA appointment so I'm not late. So, I show up an hour early, but now I can't find parking. And I [ __ ] walk in and I get bered by the the the lady at the front desk.

So, like, you should you were in the military. You should you should show up on time. you should. And I'm like, "Fuck this." Like, I'm out. My ego flares up. But then I finally talked to somebody. I'm like, "Well, let me kind of describe what happened, who I am, like my upbringing." They had no clue. Like,

They they they didn't even know how to handle the conversation, right? Like some of the stuff I was sharing. You just see him like taken back. I'm like, "This dude doesn't know what he's doing.

I need somebody that that has experience." So, that didn't work.

So, what did we do? We're like, "We just figure [ __ ] out." I I saw this brand new startup called Whoop. And there was like a couple employees at the time, like five employees of Boston startup. And I was like, "This is interesting. They're using same way we use data to find bad guys overseas. They're using data to help people understand how to train better, not burn out." I wonder if there's any research that shows some of that data like heart rate variability or sleep impacts your mental health.

I mean, I have to believe it, right? So, let me let me kind of dig in. And I found, no surprise, you don't get good sleep, your mental health is off. That's probably the cornerstone of everything is sleep. Heart rate variability is an indicator to some of the the challenges, depression, anxiety. So I was like, wait a second, let's throw Whoop straps on Navy SEALs and we threw 1500 straps on SEALs and we tracked it not for recovery, not for performance. We tracked it as an early warning indicator to see when our dudes weren't doing well.

Johnny Wilson2:13:25

100%. In fact, I highlight that what you talked about in COVID, like 48 hours before you showed symptoms, it knew you had it.

Johnny Wilson2:13:31

Nuts. Right. So, we used it 1500 seals. I'd call my best friend. I'm like, "Yo, what's going on, man? You you good at the foundation? You good?" He's like, "Yeah, I'm good, man." I was like, "No, you're not, man. You haven't slept in 4 days. Like, you you're like, "What's up, dude? I'm getting a divorce." Like, who? Let's talk through this, man. That's why we're here. Let's support each other, man. That's why because we just started losing guys to suicide and like that's the last thing you isolate.

You you you got shame around this. You don't want to let the tribe know you're not doing well because people you might you think they might think differently about you. It's time to kill all that mindset. Like everybody has struggles. So that's what we did. We would throw these straps on. We'd reach out. They they we'd know when guys weren't doing well. The other cool thing is like when guys were taking medicine or psychedelics or talking to a therapist, we would measure the impact that it has on that person and we can tell you what works for you and what doesn't.

It's like, hey, 50% of the time, this is your solution. It's walking outside and getting some sun. It's not taking a pill. Only 20% of the time does that improve your physiology. So, when I saw that, I was like, hey, let's is there initially I was like, man, I think there's an opportunity. And now I say it's an obligation because now I knew there's something out there that could change the medical system. It's not an opportunity. It's an obligation to help. In my opinion, I know this I hope this doesn't come off as egotistical.

I think there's an an obligation to help humanity, right?

There's too many people hurting themselves. We got children that were committing suicide in uh in COVID. I mean, there's self harm that happens all the time. There's bullying. We can see the mental well-being of people by their biometrics. So, didn't know how to do a startup. I went to all my old buddies. I was like, "Hey, you guys want to chip in? Let's do a friends and family round." And prei we started working on building this this like platform, if you will. And what it is is we don't care what the wearable is.

You can have an aura, a Whoop, a Garmin,

Johnny Wilson2:15:22

Apple Watch, don't care. And now we do medical devices. So, think heart rate monitor if you're working with a VA. But initially it was like let's pull the biometrics from that. And then we have a qualitative a simple questionnaire that we ask you on in the app. So this you interface the user interfaces in the app and it gives you a mind score. So it's like here's where where your mind score is and you have a specific baseline. So the mind score is not really important.

What's important is the trend lines off of it. So if it trends down by a little bit it'll alert you like hey man just letting you know you're down by 3%. Here's what's messed up in your equation. It's deep sleep. So, we're going to send you deep sleep solutions videos and we're early stage, but we have plans to do more. We can introduce you to a therapist. We There's a lot of things that we can do. We, because I'm from the SEAL teams, we have something called the swim buddy system.

We are so skeptical of the medical system. We're so skeptical of anybody outside of our tribe.

But what who we trust unequivocally is our teammate. Yeah.

So, we built in a swim buddy system. So, how it works is you got self- aid, buddy, and cormanade is what we used to say in the battlefield. Same thing for us. It alerts you first if your trend lines are down. You pick your buddy. It could be your spouse. It could be your best friend. It could be multiple people. You can create a team. And now we support each other on this journey together. So now it says, "Hey man, check in on Johnny today because his score is down pretty significant." And just see what's going on instead of us just like thinking something's wrong and not saying anything.

Now we have a reason to reach out. I like Johnny, your score is down 20%. You good? He's like, "Yeah, no. I had I was flying all night. I had to fly to, you know, to London. All good, man. Okay, cool. Thanks." The third solution is now we're going to do personalized medicine is what we say personalized solutions. So again, we have all the data and we're not selling your data by the way. That's not what this business is about. This is truly about helping you.

Johnny Wilson2:17:11

We're not selling it. That's not the point of this.

Johnny Wilson2:17:17

Yeah, that's exactly right. So we pull that down and we help you understand it from a mental health lens, right? Mental well-being lens. It's like how do we optimize here?

Uh the third part of that is we're going to personalize solutions. So we'll create like a marketplace and we're talking to other companies like you know maybe it's a a hormone replacement company like okay well we can look at the equation and say hey may maybe you want to talk to this company or maybe it is a therapist because we can regionalize and localize therapists that we've vetted that we know can help uh the demographic. So that's how we started and now we have this dashboard that uh we just got a significant contract with the government uh with ARPA-H and what we're doing for them is they asked a bunch of companies over 200 and they have only selected I think like 20 of them and they gave us $4 million and what we're going to do is we're going to go out there and look at four different solution sets and use our system to analyze what works and what doesn't.

So, one of them is I gain and we've partnered with Beyond Iggain. We're going to send 50 vets through that. We're going to throw or uh wearables on them or or rings on them and we're going to attract them to the whole the the whole system. The next one's psilocybin. So, we're going to look at mushrooms and addiction. Um the third one is TMS. So, uh magnetic stimulation. So, shock in the brain. We use that in the military. And it's not just military and veterans. This is everybody.

And then the third one is is meditation.

Yeah. Uh so 50 200 patients we're going to send them through our system is going to just ingest all the data not where just wearables we're going to do EEGs so we can see what's going on in the brain and we're also talking to a blood company the end goal for us is simply to just show people what's working for them and what's not. So that's what we're doing. We've done a couple seed raises uh we're doing uh we have contracts with a lot of psychedelic centers because they want to show their patients what works before and after.

We got contracts with former NFL groups uh that are training adolescence. So all the local high school kids trying to make it to the next level. So we help their coaches just analyze all the information there. Um when it comes to the mental well-being, are they burning out? Are we, you know, should we throttle back? We work with law enforcement. So just helping optimize like SWAT teams and stuff like making sure everybody's good and nobody's getting to that me that dark place that we've all been in before.

But um it it isn't a job. It's a I mean it really is a blessing and a mission to be on this path with like so many great people. We got some brilliant folks on the team, MDs, PhDs, uh we got former military, former law enforcement. It's just really cool to all be behind this mission.

Johnny Wilson2:20:34

Yeah.

Johnny Wilson2:20:36

Uh, we're hiring as we speak. I just I'm waiting for somebody to respond right now on a contract, but we probably have, uh, I say by the end of next month, we'll have seven employees. We got a bunch of 1099s.

Yeah,

Johnny Wilson2:21:15

I love it. I mean, I've learned so much. I, you know, people ask me like, "How's the entrepreneur thing?" And I was like, "Dude, it is it is one of the hardest things I've ever done in life." And I and I even joke, but there's some truth behind it. There's times when I feel like it's harder than BUD/S, right? Because you got people people's livelihoods. Like there's been ups and down in this startup's journey. Like we've knocked it out of the park and then we've gotten to a spot where it's been challenging and like my wife and I had to like, you know, chip in to make sure we covered payroll.

And now like we're finding success. It's taken a while. It never goes as fast as you want it to. Like you know, an employee thing. I was just like, I'm done with the with that model. What I'm going to do is 1099. At some point, if this makes sense for both of us after we date as a 1099, then we can consider doing a W2. But right now, the 1099 thing is brilliant.

Johnny Wilson2:24:41

can." I mean that's beautifully said. A few things that I I'll maybe just amplify is your comment is like your trauma is your trauma. And I think a lot of guys and gals um that come to do healing, whatever that looks like, plant medicine or not, they don't think they deserve it.

Let me just be clear. You [ __ ] deserve it. And your trauma, don't compare your trauma to somebody else's. Like that's your trauma and your body perceives it how it perceives it. Nobody else should be touching your trauma, judging your trauma, thinking about Don't compare traumas. Um, I I do want to applaud you. I think that book was like I I I read quite a bit. I I [ __ ] appreciate the vulnerability, man, because in what you did and what you will do and continue to do is you've given everybody else the authority because they look up to you.

They see all the accolades. They've given everybody else the authority to now be, okay,

[ __ ] he's human and maybe it's okay to talk about my [ __ ] And

I truly believe, and you may not have thought about this, or maybe you have,

But it's going to because of what you shared, because of what you were vulnerable with, there's going to be people out there that are going to live and continue to live and not take their lives because you felt like, hey, I'm going to bust this wall of shame and just [ __ ] tell people how it really is.

Johnny Wilson2:26:52

Totally. Yeah. And and that's the group that's finally like willing to kind of share that. And I mean, that's I think that's why our app is finding the traction it is is because like, okay, you got these folks like yourself and like either like, okay, we here's our story, man. It's not perfect. Like, yes, we found we got some accolades. Yes, we found some success, but boy did we pave a way of [ __ ] fire and barrels like [ __ ] just burning.

Johnny Wilson2:27:15

But we create community around this. It's the AA model. Like it's okay. We are all going to struggle at some point in our life. Hop on the app, man, is what I would say. And just like find a swim buddy, support each other on this journey. You might be fine for this year, next year, 10 years, but at some point something challenging is going to happen. You're going to lose somebody you love. You're going to get in an accident. Whatever it may be, you want that tribe there to support you.

And you know, to the veteran community out there too, like if there's interest and not just veterans, first responders, whoever, it doesn't matter if you've served, like there's so many great things happening right now with that executive order that just happened on the se uh on Saturday. We're accelerating plant medicine. Do your research, find out about it. I mean, Allison has an amazing organization called the Hope Project. She helps all the women and the families because what we were doing is we were healing the war fighter and not addressing the other 50% of the equation.

Oh, by the way, we've passed on all of our trauma to our wives and our children and we're just going to let them hang.

Johnny Wilson2:28:12

So, she supports them and they do, you know, eight, nine retreats a year taking women down to do plant medicine and we work with them as well at INVI MindHealth and we help them with the swim buddy, the app, we give them wearables. So, it's really cool stuff that's happening right now and uh I really appreciate, you know, you allowing me to kind of share the story and be on on the podcast. It's been a pleasure.

Johnny Wilson2:28:34

It's called the Hope Project. She helps website.

It's the hope-pro.org, I believe.

Johnny Wilson2:28:44

INVI MindHealth. So, if you It'll be if you go to the website, it's envym.com.

Uh but you can find it in the app store. INVI.

Yeah. Stands for invisible visible. So we make the invisible visible with data.

Johnny Wilson2:28:58

Mind health.

Johnny Wilson2:29:01

But if you go to the app store and you type in envy mindalth, it'll pull up.

Johnny Wilson2:29:18

Thanks, brother. Appreciate it.