SPEAKER_00: 0:12

When I look at a resume like yours, and I think about the importance of relationships, obviously, you're defending the country. Everybody's got to get along on a team, or people are going to die.

SPEAKER_02: 0:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 0:23

Same thing with the LAPD and putting yourself in harm's way that you did. But I find it so unique. What was that transition like? And when did you know that you wanted to move from really this defender, this person who's helping us have our freedom, this guy who's serving the country, to really this entrepreneurial mind where you turn it and go into as much detail as you want, you really turn it into a business. How did that all happen for you?

SPEAKER_02: 0:50

Um, you know, I've always I coined this recently, or I heard someone I've always been a servant leader, obviously going in the Marine Corps, serving the country, and then LAPD, which was a boyhood dream. I always wanted to be a cop, and the only reason I ended up in the Marine Corps is because when I got out of high school, I kind of floundered around. You know, I was a, I was a D, if I got a C, my parents were impressed. So I was a D student, a daydreamer. Uh I had no path to get where I was going. But I went to the police chief in my local town when, and it was a five-person department. I said, Hey, chief, I want to be a cop. How do I join the department? And in his own kind words, he said, Listen, you're young, you're immature, but if you go in the marine corps, he didn't say anything. You in the marine corps, I'll hire you the day you get out. So I grabbed my best friend, went to the Marine Corps, and and then discovered, wow, New Jersey's not as big as I thought as when you grow up someplace, you think that's your world. But I the work ethic has come from my dad. You know, I always worked with him part-time, always worked making money, I always wanted to have more in life. And the entrepreneurial thing, I I guess back then it wasn't even called an entrepreneur. You'd probably be called a workaholic, right? But but I enjoyed working and bringing value to other people. I guess I don't it sounds kind of cliche, but that's really what I enjoyed. And and the idea of being an entrepreneur was more like, how else, what else can I do? I mean, there's there's more than eight hours in a day, right? So even when I was do be a cop, I was working off duty part-time for a sergeant who had a security company. And uh I was like, Wow, this is pretty good. I mean, this is a side business, it's a side hustle, I call it. And I'm learning how to, once again, a service industry, right? Everything I've done is in the service space only. And it just it's something uh uh it I can't describe it, but it was such a good feeling to serve other people. And it's always been Marine Corps LAPD protection business. I I'm a servant, I'm okay not being number one, I'm okay just right underneath the layer serving people.

SPEAKER_00: 2:39

So let me, I always love paying attention to the details. So let me grab onto something and then tie another piece of your resume, which is being a championship bodybuilder, which explains the discipline and powerlifting. So when you really look at the discipline that it takes in order to become a power lifter, I always joke whenever I work with athletes, I'll say to them if they're transitioning and they'll say, Oh, I'm just I'm struggling, like, how am I gonna do this? I said, it's one rep at a time. I said, You would never go into your strength coach, and he says, Give me five reps of ten, and you say, I'll give you three really good sets of six, right? I mean, you're gonna put in the work. And so it's unique if everybody pays attention to what you said, which was there's this extreme discipline where while you're with the LAPD, you said, Well, that's only eight hours, and I've got more, so let me go do more. Where did that burn come from to maximize and to work and to attack and to not settle?

SPEAKER_02: 3:36

You know, my friend Bedros Coollian said, you know, average is the enemy, right? And I'm not, I'm not looking to be a star or celebrity, but I but I just felt like there's plenty of people, 90% of the population just does nine to five. And I said, there's gotta be more to life, you know. And I just I just want to contribute more to to the world, you know, and and to my family. And I think that drive of just, you know, obviously being a cop, you got an average salary back then. It wasn't anything great, even though they pay more now. So I thought, okay, economically too, I'm gonna make more money, I'm gonna learn another skill, and I'll have something else in my resume, and my family would benefit from it, you know.

SPEAKER_00: 4:12

It's incredible. And you know, hard work always gets noticed, as you as you know, hard work creates opportunity. I think we live in this world where everybody's waiting, you know, for opportunity to just knock on their door rather than going and beating down the door, which is what it takes. Tell us about the quest opportunity. How did that come to be? How did that door open up for you?

SPEAKER_02: 4:34

Completely serendipitous. I'll be honest with you. I was in the gym, which I work out every day, and a woman that goes by on Instagram goes by Quest Creator, her name's Shannon Penna. She worked out at the gym, and and you know, gym pals, you just say hi to people, you know, as a courtesy. And and one day she said, Hey Bruce, I want to, I want you to try this product. I we I started these bars, I've been making them in my kitchen. Let me know what you think. And she gave me a couple bars, went home and tried them. And I think I saw her maybe a week later. It's not like I saw her every day. Her and her husband worked out at this gym, and I said, Those bars were really amazing. And at the time, you know, growing up, eating protein bars for years, they were they just had a great taste, texture. And I said, uh I said, listen, I don't know why. There again, I had this uh epiphany. I said, I'm gonna be doing the security at a celebrity golf tournament next week up in Rivera Country Club. I said, Hey, if you have some product, I'll get it, I'll probably get it in some people's hands. I had no idea what I was talking about. I never even offered that, but they were such kind people and the product was good. Got the product, brought it to my friend Cheryl, who was running the publicity, and I said, Hey, I got these bars, and she says, Oh, amazing. No social media at the time. Facebook just started, no Twitter, no Instagram. But Mario Lopez was there, and there's a handful of celebrities, and she said, I'll do one better. I'm gonna get some people to interview, try it on camera. So I got, so I thought nothing of it. Got me this content, which I didn't know what that word meant either, right? Because that was I got photos. I remember I sent them to Shannon and she's like, Wow, how do you know these people? I said, Oh I protect them, that's what I do for a living, but I figured I'd bring these bars. The nine months was a little bit of a blur. I would go see them at the gym. Hey, I got another event, or hey, uh Jessica Simpson's uh, you know, trying to lose weight. She's just had a kid. Let me can I send some to her assistant? And they're like, Wow, yeah, sure for sure. I'm on the set, I'm doing this, I do all the security on the set of extra. Mario Lopez's show because it's filmed outside. We have off-duty cops, and I bring him product, and next thing you know, he's giving out on camera. Then my Bruce from my my friend Bruce from Quest came and you know, I'm giving out these products. So I just what and it's crazy, Ben, they became my why. While I had great success in the bodyguard space, I noticed people were like amazed at the taste and texture, and then people started writing blogs saying, Hey, I lost 20 pounds over the last three months. It was my go-to snack. Hey, I've got diabetes, I've got celiac disease. And I started like, wow, I feel good about this. Like, you know, protecting people is great, but now like we're changing people's health. Nine months later, Ron, the chairman, takes me to lunch and says, Hey man, we're stealing from you. What do you mean? He goes, You're doing all this cool stuff. You're either working for the enemy or you're just a nice human being. And I said, Well, I hope I'm a nice human being. He says, Friday, he says, Friday, we're gonna put you on the payroll. I said, You don't have to do that. He goes, No, no, we're gonna start paying you. You could donate it to charity. Keep doing your bodyguard business, keep doing what you do, but we're gonna start paying you. We're not feeling good about this. And I was like, Oh wow, I swear to God, Ben, I I it reflected back to my dad with his work ethic where he would work. He's the guy that worked all day and then was doing Boy Scout stuff at night and projects with me. And I thought, shit, now I really have to prove myself. I'm getting paid. And I don't, there's no such thing as a I wasn't a consultant. I didn't even and I kicked in and I would split my day between my office and I had a very nice office on the west side, beautiful, near the ocean. Secretary. I would go visit them, and they were on the border of Compton and Paramount, which is in the hood. When I first visited them, they were in a little industrial strip strip mall with graffiti all over the walls. And I thought to myself, they're not gonna be in business in six months. They're there's this, it's a shit. Their office is a dump. And fast forward, you know, it it was started working, but that's that's how it all started.

SPEAKER_00: 8:13

This episode of The Burn is brought to you by our dear friends and partners at Q Logics. Now, you know I don't co-sign things I don't believe in. And I believe in John Chiarando and the team at Q Logics. He's built multiple nine-figure businesses, real integrity, real character, the kind of guy you want in your corner. But here's what happened: all that expertise, all that knowledge, it was just his. Locked in his head, his decisions, his team, you couldn't access it. So John created Q-Logics. He basically said, How do I make everything I've built available to people who actually need it? Here's what that looks like. Q-Logic helps you see the blind spots in your business, the gaps you don't even know you have, you don't know what you don't know. They're your tour guide through that. Q-Logics helps you build systems that make your business work better, or they ask better questions so you're approaching it in the most effective way. And Q Logic has access to a network of businesses and resources, real connections, real synergies that can accelerate what you're building. If any of that resonates, go to QPLogics, L-O-G-I-X.com forward slash Ben. Fill out a form. Their team will research your situation personally, then they'll tell you straight can they actually help? Thank you to our friends and partners at Q Logics. Make sure you find out more about Q Logics and your opportunity to win more with them today. And so that's what I was referring to. So it's yes, serendipitous at the gym, and you get to taste the bars, but the hard work gets noticed to then go create this chief communication officer role, which doesn't even exist at Quest, for a company that goes to sell for a billion dollars. What was it like moving towards an exit like that with Quest?

SPEAKER_02: 9:57

Well, honestly, what the beautiful thing is, and I called myself, I didn't until recently I learned it, I called myself an entrepreneur in their business because they gave me the latitude to do what I wanted. And it wasn't because they didn't, they one guy was in charge of RD and one guy's in charge of manufacturing. And and when I started helping them, they didn't know. Like they'd send me an email and say, Hey, I wasn't even, I didn't even have a company email. It was still my old email. They say, Hey, there's this event. What do you think? I would pay for the event with my credit card, I would go get the product, I do everything, I do the event. And I think what happened was they kept seeing me do this stuff. Like, what this guy's just I did, I did anything and everything it took. So as we built up towards the exit, it was almost by virtue of God, this guy's doing everything we need in the company. He doesn't say no to anything. He's traveling 40 weekends out of a year for four years straight, which think about that. I used to ask people to go travel with me, and I never, they'd be like, Oh, my girlfriend, my boyfriend, I can't on a Saturday. It was always something. And I just kept doing it. It was like rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. And even if I stayed home, I'd be like, okay, I'm gonna go to Gold's gym in Venice. I would bring product with me, I'd work out, and I'd probably touch five or ten people, celebrities, Arnold, all these people. I'd go eat at the firehouse, I'd come back, I'd spend six hours at Gold's Gym just getting product in people's hands, not in a bad way, just like, hey, check this out. And it became my it became my why. If I had a down day, I'd be like, shit, I gotta go find something to do to market this crazy. Or I'd make my girlfriend who, you know, she was in a fitness space at the time. I'd say, let's go, we gotta go promote this stuff. So, but by the way, there was no, and I just want to emphasize this because I tell people when I speak, there was no promise of anything. I started out as an intern, I started getting paid. There was no promise of equity, there was no promise of, hey, Bruce, by the way, you're gonna get rich with us. It wasn't towards the end, and then they finally said, Hey, by the way, we're we're carving up you know some equity. Oh, wow. And as my dad would say, you know, you it was sweat equity. You didn't you didn't write a check at the beginning, right? I just earned, I earned my keep. Which I wish more people would do in spaces where they have an opportunity because as you said, you get recognized, right? A chairman of a company or any any C-level guy's gonna say, Wow, that guy or girl's really putting a lot of time and energy in here. We gotta, we gotta, we gotta take care of that person.

SPEAKER_00: 12:09

I believe, just like John Wooden believed, that you cannot have a great day until you've done something for somebody else with no expectation of anything in return. And you've literally designed your life and committed your life to doing that. It's exceptional.

SPEAKER_02: 12:23

Yeah, that's one of my favorite things. I mean, I really tell people just do for others with really, truly no expectation. It's hard. It's hard for people to do that. But sometimes I I say it just comes back tenfold in life. It really does.

SPEAKER_00: 12:35

And for everybody watching, I want you to ask yourself this question: what can you do to serve more? When you hear a story's story like Bruce's, and it's literally a life committed to service, the Marines, the LAPD, starting a security company, and now going to work for Quest for nine months for free, not knowing, not expecting, not wanting anything for it. And then you read the story of what happens, that is a true life of service. What would happen in your life if you serve more? Where did your burn for life? Where did that fire come from for you to really want to operate at the highest possible level in everything that you do? Because you don't become a SEAL as a small thinker who doesn't take action in life.

SPEAKER_01: 13:22

Yeah, Ben, I, you know, that's a great question. And I've often asked that. Some of it is genetic, in my opinion. There's a little something inside us that drives us to be better. There's a fuel to that fire. I'm not a big guy. I'm on the smaller end of the spectrum in the SEAL teams. Uh, I'm about 5'7, 170 pounds. And and I was definitely a runt growing up. I mean, I didn't, I think when I went through SEAL training, I was only about 135 pounds. So I didn't even, I was one of these guys that blossomed late and all these different things. So I heard my whole life from my dad, you're too small, to guys at school, you're too small. Although I wrestled, I played football to push myself. But there was just this fuel that drove me that when people would tell me I couldn't do something, it just ignited this drive to do it and prove them wrong. And I had grown up in a family that had been military. And as I explored different aspects of the military, my dad was the one who my dad was in the Army, he was uh airborne, he was an airborne instructor, he was a rigger. And SEALs, including myself, all the way up until about 2001, we all went through U.S. Army Airborne School. So my dad had met SEALs in airborne school, and when I was a kid, you know, about 14 years old, he said, you know, if you really want to, if you want to go to the best of the best, he said, you should check out the Navy SEALs. And I looked them up and it said, hey, the toughest military training in the U.S. military, some say in the world, I don't know what it was. At 14 years old, I really hadn't pushed myself in any way at that point. I wasn't an athlete at that point. I was a I was a fan of G.I. Joe. That was about it. And but a kid with this burning desire to do something and to be in the military. And at that moment, I said, that's what I'm gonna do. And so many people told me I'd never do it, I'd never make it, and all that just continued to fuel my fire. I never lost sight of that vision. And 17 years old, I joined the Navy while I was still in high school. It was part of the delayed entry program. As soon as I graduated, I went to boot camp and 18, turning 19, found myself in SEAL training.

SPEAKER_00: 15:38

It's so incredible to hear you talk about how you embraced what I refer to as a JWM mindset, a just watch me mindset. So take us now to going to serve the country. How many deployments for you? And what was the first deployment as a SEAL?

SPEAKER_01: 15:56

Uh my first deployment was to Central and South America. So this was in the early mid-90s. My team was focused on jungle warfare and counter-drug warfare. The drug war was still pretty uh in high demand, obviously, into the 80s. The cartels were still strongly running many of the coca production that was coming out of Colombia and Peru. Uh, and even moving into the 90s, even after the death of Pablo Escobar, the cartels and Colombian guerrillas were still controlling a lot of the coca production. So the U.S. continued to put a lot of effort into that. And I found myself as going down into Colombia and Peru and got to do some different things, counter-drug training forces, working with local militaries on how we could train them and even levels of intelligence gathering to facilitate operations in Colombia. I mean, for a 21-year-old kid, 20-year-old kid, and I mean it was amazing. It was everything that I ever dreamed of to be able to do these real-world operations and gave me a great appreciation for life outside the United States, great perspective in our own country. We so many Americans, I feel like they take for granted how good we have it. You don't, you know, until you've been to really the deep, dark, hard, poverty-stricken areas of a third world country, I think it's hard to wrap your head around that based on our lives here in America. Not that we don't have problems, not that there's not poverty here, but third world poverty is a whole nother level. And it just, it really gave me a lot of great perspective. And it was a kind of an amazing career to jump off on, you know, as I got to go do these things as a young SEAL.

SPEAKER_00: 17:36

You know, one of the things I I love in hearing you mention that, and I knew because watching you from the stage, you do such an incredible job of painting a picture with your words. Like I can see you on that battlefield, boots on the ground, in the in the middle of a firefight, as I know you SEALs like to call it. And I think this is so important for where we're gonna take this conversation because you've been right in the middle of it. Like when you talk about, and we're gonna talk about it later, getting off the X and taking action and execution. And sometimes you can't think it's this immediate action. When you're in the middle of a firefight, there's you better be prepared for what's coming your way. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_01: 18:18

Yeah, 100%. I mean, and I often talk about this. I mean, you you already talked about this idea of getting off the what I call the overcome mindset. And I survived a devastating and very elaborately well planned and executed enemy ambush. And I'm very fortunate to still be alive. Oftentimes, well-executed ambushes, you don't survive. And and obviously hit eight times between my body armor, body shot in the face, two rounds in the left elbow. Several of my teammates were shot in the same firefight. We managed to get out of that firefight by getting off the X, and that is a phrase used in special operations. Law enforcement uses it also, but the X is the point of attack. It's, you know, it could be a sniper attack, it could be an IED attack. In this case, it was a multiple machine gun, multi-enemy force uh configuration ambush. And the idea is that you have to fight back. And, you know, you nailed it, Ben, when you talk about there is a mindset of preparation that has to happen. That falls into the overcome mindset that I talk about. Those things run parallel, you know, overcome mindset and this idea of getting off the X. The overcome mindset is built on three principles. Number one is awareness. You have to have awareness that bad things can happen. You can be ambushed. I mean, if we translate an enemy ambush into what I like to call life ambushes, guess what? No matter how great your plan is, no matter how great you've prepared, if it's for an athletic event, if it's for a financial event, if it's for a relationship, I don't care what it is. Just you can get punched in the face of life and knocked down and everything can go haywire. And if you live your life thinking that that's never gonna happen, you're never gonna have some life-threatening illness that, oh, sexual trauma could never happen to me or someone I love. Life-threatening illness could never happen to me. This devastating incident or traumatic event would never happen to me. That's just not reality. The reality is bad things happen to good people all the time. And there's an awareness that has to happen and recognize that. And it doesn't mean we live our life in fear. That leads us to step two of the process, which is preparation. And oftentimes I meet people who they get so absorbed with something bad that can happen, their level of preparation starts to consume them. So now they're spending 90% of their time to prepare for something that there's only a 1% percentage of it happened. That's not efficient use of your time. This is where we've got to be smart, manage our time. If we recognize, hey, there's a chance this could happen, maybe it's just mentally preparing myself for, okay, well, what would I do? What are the steps? How would I deal with this? And then number three is action. We think about what are the action steps that I'm gonna immediately bring into K into play if this bad thing was to happen. And I tell people that is the essence of an overcome mindset so that you are not overwhelmed when some catastrophic thing happens. I try to tell people, I live my life this way. SEAL training was designed to be this way. We are designed to think, what is the absolute worst case thing that possibly could happen on this mission? Okay, let's ramp that up maybe by five. Most of the missions that we were on typically were pretty boring compared to training. That's the reality. Oftentimes, that night I was wounded, that was an exception to the rule. But for the most part, if you train well, if you have a mind and overcome mindset, you will be ready for those moments and you won't freeze up, and now you'll be able to get off that axe.

SPEAKER_00: 21:54

Your resilience to just choose for me when I hear your story, to just choose to live. Because I think you and I both know there's people who face adversity and challenge, you get shot in the face. Some people choose to die, and God listens. And I think there's there's a resilience, and this overcome is I maybe hear it deeper. I read your book maybe deeper than some do. But to me, it's one of the reasons why I was so excited to meet you is because I feel the resilience that you have just to choose to live is remarkable. So if you don't mind taking us there, Jason, what was it like? You're literally you're facing death. I mean, you've been shot in the face, your body has been blown up. What was it like to choose to live in that moment?

SPEAKER_01: 22:38

Yeah, and that's it really does come down to that. I mean, you nailed it. It is a choice. Now, you can't will, obviously, there's a limit to what we can drive ourselves through. Obviously, when the human body, I mean, there are certain parameters that we know, but we also know this. The will to live is one of the most powerful things we have. And and we have seen it on, I mean, I can't tell you how many firefighter paramedics that I'm friends with or combat medics who will talk about when an individual gives up on the will to live, they will die. That is just if they're grievously injured, I could have died. There's no doubt about it. Every doctor I've talked to that was involved in it said it's a miracle you survive from your injuries, from the amount of blood you lost, and it was a choice to not give up. It was a choice, I told myself, stay awake to stay alive. It was a a, and and it doesn't guarantee that I would have survived. I mean, if that battle had lasted another 10 minutes, 20 minutes, would I have survived? I don't know. There's no guarantee of that. I'd lost a lot of blood. But I will tell you this: if I had accepted that I was going to die and I gave up and I just said, you know what, man, I'm just tired. I'm not going to fight anymore. I knew as I was laying there bleeding out that if I gave into that darkness and I allowed myself to go to sleep and just stop fighting, that I would never wake up again. And I think that is the difference. That is the overcome mindset. It is a willingness to continue to fight no matter what in this life. And I know there's a lot of you listening to this right now that are like, oh my God, this is such bullshit. You know, this guy, he's a CL. What he's talking about doesn't correlate to my life. It's not true. I want you to understand something right now. Trauma is trauma. Problems are problems. Whatever hell you're going through as a human, it's your own hell. Like you're going through your own personal hell. And we live in this comparison world where we have a tendency to compare this to that. But the reality is the human body and humans, all of us, myself, Ben, anybody that's listening to this, we all operate the same. Our bodies work the same. You know, adrenaline, cortisol, heart rate, breathing, respirations, your ability to move your body forward, your ability to get up when it's hard, all those things are the same. So for those of you out there that that it is a choice to drive through these hard moments in your life. And it is one of the biggest things that I try to explain to people. It was not a guarantee that I would survive on that battlefield, but I tell you what, there is no doubt that it helped me to stay alive longer.

SPEAKER_00: 25:11

Well, that's the part where you know it just floors me your mindset. And I don't, I don't want to be hard on some of our listeners, but I also don't want to apologize for what I'm about to say. I'm not going to make you say it, but but I think it's important. And for those of the those of you that have been to events, you've heard me speak, I always share my mother's story and my perspective of losing my mom, completely different type of pain and trauma than Jason faced on that battlefield. But when I get finished, I always say, I'm not the only one that has a story. Jason isn't the only one that, every single one of you, you have a story. Where I want to be hard on you, but with love and care, is my story or Jason's story gives you perspective. Your story, the pain that you've been through, gives you perspective. So the next time you're complaining about something that isn't worth your energy to complain about, remember the tough stuff that you've been through. Remember that Jason had to make a choice to live. Doctors are saying you're not gonna live. Doctors are coming into his hospital room, which we're gonna talk about next, basically saying you're not gonna live. They're talking about the odds that you're not gonna make it. You're not, and we as humans spend so much time getting consumed in what the world tells us is gonna happen or politics tells us is gonna happen. And the meat, just stop the self-talk and remember you've probably been through something tougher than what you're currently complaining about now. And so I just I just want to say that with love because Jason, I think you and I are one in the same. Like, we don't talk about sliding down rainbows and riding around on unicorns. Like, this is real life stuff. We want people to realize life is not easy and you will get ambushed.

SPEAKER_01: 26:56

Yeah, and Ben, I want to to tee that up. I think it's critical that we understand that, and you've nailed it, there is a problem in society today that we're convincing people they're victims. And people will place you in the victim box. They wanted to place me in the victim box and not hospital. You know, oh, you've been you've been totally mangled, your face is blown out, you're an ICU, we're gonna amputate your arm, you're never gonna be the same, your career's over. It's okay to lay here and feel sorry for yourself. That is the message that we are perpetuating across the world today. You know, no matter what excuse you can come up with race, creed, color, gender, gender persuasion, uh, injury, disability, socioeconomic background, demographic, where I live, where I came from, single mom, whatever, fill in the blank. We are trying to convince people they're a victim. An overcome mindset says, nope, that ain't me. I am a victor. I will get up. Not a guarantee that I'm gonna find this instant success, not a guarantee that I'm gonna get back what's lost, not a guarantee that I'm gonna fix what's broken, but it is a guarantee that I am going to get up and drive forward and figure out a way to overcome. That is that is what victors do. And in that hospital, that's what was happening. Doctors were telling me I wasn't gonna be able to recover. They were telling me they were gonna amputate my arm. They were telling me they didn't know how they were gonna rebuild the structural integrity of my skull that was totally blown out. They were telling me that I was wired, you know, I was wired shut. They were feeding me through a stomach tube. I was so weak, I had to have doctor or nurses help me go to the bathroom. I mean, 120 hours earlier, I was a super healthy, fittest shape of my life, running, so running with some of the most amazing warriors on the planet. And then suddenly I found myself lying in a hospital bed with nurses helping me use the bathroom and and not even being able, not even strong enough to lift myself up out of bed. And I was struggling with that. I think for all of us in this life, when you when you have been hit with a major life ambush, when you find yourself on the X, we all go through the human Navy SEALs and anyone else too, we go through a process in our mind, like, where do I go from here? Like, how do I find the hope? How do I find the light out of this darkness in the midst of the storm? How do I, the world is spinning out of my control. There's nothing I can do, you know, and then we get into that mindset I did. You know, it's not fair. This isn't fair. And I realized, and you know, as I went through those things that, hey, man, like, you know the formula, you know, I had had a leadership failure that occurred several years ago. I talk about that in both books, the tried it and overcome. It was through that journey of failure that it built this relentless overcome mindset. So I always tell people if you be thankful for the bad things that happen to you, because that is when you're truly being forged. An overcome mindset is never built in easy times. You have to go through hard times to flex your overcome. Overcome muscles. And it was that leadership failure that put me in the right place and right time that when I was injured, I was able to go, you know what, man? You just climbed out of the deepest, darkest hole you were ever in. You rebuilt yourself as a leader. The formula you use to get out of that hole, it's the exact same formula you use to climb out of this bed. And there was a couple of people in the room in this moment when all of this was coming together, and they were trying to keep me in the victim box. Like, oh, it's so sad. You know, these wounded warriors, you know, they're none of them are ever going to be the same, broken. They'll, they'll, you know, never be able to find success. And they left. And I was left with my thoughts in that moment in that room. And I remember thinking, like coming back full circle once again to you have a choice. Stay awake to stay alive. You get up, you drive forward. I may not know what the outcome is going to be, but I know that the outcome will not be me laying here as a victim feeling sorry for myself. And I, when my wife came back into the room, I couldn't talk, I'm tracked, I'm wired shut. All I could do is write. And I wrote to her, you know what? That it no one will ever come into this room feeling sorry for me again. And I refuse from this point forward to feel sorry for myself. And I wrote out this sign, and it said, attention to all who enter here. If you're coming into this room with sadness or sorrow, don't bother. The wounds I received, I got in a job that I love, doing it for people that I love, defending the freedom of a country that I deeply love. I will make a full recovery. What is full? That's the absolute utmost physically. I have the ability to recover, and let me push that about 20% further through sheer mental tenacity. This room you're about to enter is a room of fun, optimism, and intense rapid regrowth. If you are not prepared for that, go elsewhere. We sign it, the management and hung it on the door, and it took on a life of its own. It's now been seen all over the place. I got invited to the White House to meet President Bush. But I tell people it re that that sign represents choice. You have a choice when bad things happen to you. You can choose to be a victim and feel sorry for yourself, or you can choose to get up.