Old Ranger, New Dad: Faith, Combat, Security, IVF, & Fatherhood

Today, I sit down again with Seth Ryan, a Marine Corps veteran, former Army Ranger, law enforcement professional, private security contractor, podcast host, husband, and father. Mr. Ryan shares how his life has shifted since our previous conversation, including his rebrand into Old Ranger, New Dad, his focus on mentoring young men, and his continuing passion for school safety, security awareness, and crime prevention through environmental design. 

In this episode, Mr. Ryan discusses his background in the Marine Corps, the 75th Ranger Regiment, law enforcement, private contracting, and serving in Baghdad during the COVID-era lockdowns. We also talk about his previous School to Embassy Project, why conversations about school shootings and security can be difficult to host online, and how censorship, demonetization, and algorithm suppression can affect creators who are trying to discuss prevention, safety, and public protection. 

Mr. Ryan also opens up about fatherhood, IVF, his wife Malyri Ryan’s medical emergency, the loss of embryos, and their ongoing journey toward growing their family through a gestational carrier. We discuss how becoming a father later in life has shaped his perspective, how faith has helped him and Mrs. Ryan endure hardship, and why marriage, parenting, and purpose require more than personal strength alone. 

Throughout the conversation, I also share my perspective on podcasting, rebranding, faith, young men, masculinity, discipline, relationships, public education, and the importance of surrounding yourself with people who are actually trying to grow.

Seth Ryan's Podcast:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/old-ranger-new-dad/id1822839257

Malyri Ryan Episode:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-mothers-journey-of-pregnancy-hardships-near/id1657865479?i=1000767034428

First Seth Ryan Episode:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/combat-veteran-exposes-the-truth-about-school/id1657865479?i=1000701429695

Website: https://coupleonukes.com

Exodus, Honor Your Heart, & Nulu Knives: https://www.coupleonukes.com/affiliates/

Want to be a guest on Couple O' Nukes? Send me a message on PodMatch:  https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1726279485588093e83e0e007

Sign Up For A PodMatch Account: https://www.joinpodmatch.com/coupleonukes

*Couple O' Nukes LLC and Mr. Whiskey are not licensed medical entities, nor do they take responsibility for any advice or information put forth by guests. Take all advice at your own risk.

Transcript

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple O' Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and the world is so ironic. So a long time ago, I had recorded with today's guest, but it is only as of like today/tomorrow, at the time of recording, that the social media clips from that episode are getting released because of my backlog of episodes. So that some weird irony going on. But today's guest, Seth Ryan, he and I recorded a while ago. That episode was, I thought, amazing. Combat veteran exposes the truth about school shooting, security, and safety. We got into the conversations about mental health, about security and structure, looked at some school shootings in the past. And, you know, what really shocked me was Mr. Ryan expressed that a lot of podcasts had turned him down from hosting him because of that subject. And my thing is, if we're not encouraging it, you know, then it's okay to talk about it, especially if we're trying to prevent more. People believe that if we talk about it, then it's gonna inspire someone. But here's the deal: someone's always gonna get this idea in their head anyway. At least we can do what we can to try and prevent that as much as we can. If it unintentionally inspires someone along the way, we're still set up more safely than if they just had the idea on their own. So that's a great episode. I highly recommend you check it out. And then Mr. Ryan's wife, Mallory, was just on my podcast a few days ago. Super impactful story for Mother's Day that we launched, but it's an episode you can listen to any time of the year, talking about her journey of IVF and almost passing away recently, talking about being a super girly girl in the Marine Corps as a diesel mechanic, you know, and what she's doing now. So here with her husband. Got to meet both of them in person at Military Creator Con. If you don't know what that is, it was an amazing event. It was the first year. I know this year is already looking to be so much better. So militarycreatorcon.com, you can check out the details there. But I remember Mr. Ryan came up to me, he's like, "Bet you didn't know I was gonna be here," you know. So, it was awesome to, to actually, again, I w- I didn't think he was gonna be there, so to bump into him, and now we're gonna podcast again. And when I bumped into him, he shared that he had rebranded, new podcast, new structure, new studio new facial hair. Everything was different. So we're gonna get into that today. Mr. Ryan, could you please give us a little 30,000-foot overview of your life and a little bit about what you're doing now? Absolutely. So yeah, thank you for having me on. It turns out that all you have to do is have a very small amount of whisker hair on your chin and you are catfishing. So I ran into him and, and we've been chatting online, you know, for a couple of years now, and still he didn't recognize me when he first saw me. Also, when you're bald and you wear a hat and you take it off, I get it. Like, people look completely different- Yeah ... with a hat, 'cause it looks like they have hair. It's called hat fishing. Hat fishing. That is hat fishing. Exactly. So you were catfishing- That's right ... and hat fishing. And hat fishing- Double crime ... at the same time. Yeah, yeah. I'm a secret agent. So, yeah, my background is very, very, very long, and my wife has heard it so many times that I only get to tell it on podcasts when people ask me. So, military and law enforcement is where I ended up spending quite a bit of my adult life. I come from a family of addiction and drug addicts and, you know, just a lot of alcohol and abuse. Their alcohol abuse, drugs abuse, not necessarily physical abuse on me, but my family members come from very very low economic status. And so I finished my master's degree moved to Florida, started a podcast so that I could share some of the life lessons that I learned with military law enforcement. And then I ended up going, while we were living here, back to Baghdad to be the ambassador's bodyguard, to be one of the bodyguards for the Ambassador of Iraq. And the timing was, of course, amazing. 2019, so I was locked in a embassy for all of 2020. While you guys were locked down in your house, we as Americans weren't allowed back in America because nobody from the Middle East, including Americans, were allowed to come back during the COVID lockdowns. So my experience there was very strange, but it allowed us the m- ability to make enough money, pay off our bills, pay off our debts, and then do IVF for one round. And again, if you wanna hear the real details of that, and my wife, you know, almost losing my wife last year September of last year, so it's not that far away. It's not even a year removed from that experience. It's been amazing. We have a son, Archer, and he is the love of our lives. My wife and I have been together for 19 years. At the December, it will be 19 years. And, you know, being both from the Marine Corps is where I started and a, as a reservist, infantry heavy weapons specialist. I wanted the best, hardest training that I could possibly go through in the military, but I still wanted to go to college, and there was never gonna be a war back in the '90s. You grew up, you didn't expect anybody to ever challenge America. Long story short, I ended up re-enlisting for the 75th Ranger Regiment, Army Special Ops, and did four tours with them. Left there as a corporal, as an NCO, and as a team leader. So now I'm just trying to shift, bring all that experience- To bear against school shootings and trying to find solutions. Long story there short is nobody would talk to me because they told me specifically, "If we talk about this topic on my podcast, it will get demonetized, and I can't afford to get a strike against me, so I can't have you on my podcast." I'm like, "Well, what if I just talk about leadership? What if I, if I just talk about other experiences?" They're like, "Yeah, but that's not your brand, and your brand is still attached to what you're talking about." So long story there, it ended up taking me about a year to finally figure out what the rebrand was gonna be. Old Ranger, New Dad. So I'm a new IVF dad. I'm 45 now, and my son is just about to turn three. And what I already know is that everybody wants to talk to me about my time in special operations, in combat, and the Jessica Lynch rescue mission was my first combat mission. Seeing Saddam face to face. Like I, I got to experience history that most people didn't, and that's what most people wanna talk to me about. Unfortunately, I have multiple other lifetimes of experience in law enforcement living- or I actually lived on oil rigs for a few years in Oklahoma and Texas while I finished my master's degree and then moved out here. So that's a lot, I know. But yeah, feel free to ask me anything about any of those, 'cause I really do love my new brand and, and what I'm able to share with, yeah, our struggling young men in this nation. Right. Well, one thing I'll mention is you might be a new dad again, because from what I've been informed is, you know, you and your wife have been on the journey of finding a, a surrogate mother to, For people who don't know, and they can check out the episode with Mallory, you lost two of the kids that you had through IVF just over the past year or so, like you mentioned, so, a lot of hardship there. I know Mallory kind of got into tears on that podcast episode, and I believe you and I talking was one of the first times you were able to go through that whole experience without, you know, going through some of the emotions that were very fresh. So, you know, when you talk about being a new dad, there, it's still an unfolding journey, and it w- it will be with your, with your current son, of course, learning new stuff about fathering every day, but also a journey of surrogate motherhood is something that is definitely new and what most of us never expect to have to go through as well. So we can get into that conversation, but I wanted to talk about School to Embassy project. Is that still up and running, and is it part of the Old Ranger New Dad program, or is it a separate website? So what's going on with that part of it? So this is my master plan, and I'm sharing it with you and your audience first. So, my wife, I finally explained this to my wife recently, and she was like Oh, okay. Now I don't... I, I didn't impress her. That's the most I get to, to impress my wife. She's like, "Okay." I... Right now I'm a private contract, so one of the 50 jobs that I do, 50 things that I have my hands in is that I'm a CPTED, C-P-T-E-D, so Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design. Mm. Basically, I'm a crime prevention architect, and I got that certifica- it's not just a certification, it's a practitioner's I- I- identifier. And so because I have that through the Attorney General of Florida, and I have to do a, you know, constant upkeep of that and renewals of the law, I'm able to go out to apartment complexes, multi-family dwelling, businesses, and now schools. I actually just went and got my certification and practitioner's- Nice ... designation through the Attorney General's office for schools. Now, I paid out of pocket and spent a week to, to get that designation. So it's certainly not gone, and that's never for me, that's always going to be a passion in the background. And how I know that it's still working, the guy who designed my logo reached out to me out of the blue and was like, "Hey brother, I didn't know who else to call. A child at my daughter's elementary school had a gun in his backpack. I, I really want to know what to do in this sit- situation. My wife is is, is a little bit more calm about it. I'm freaking out. I'm really thinking about pulling my daughter. I just really wanna know your honest opinion." And I told him, and I'll tell you guys, my son, Archer, which of course we had to struggle very hard and very, for a long time to get him, and kinda as you alluded to, you know, with losing two other embryos and nearly losing my wife, and her now because of that emergency surgery to save her life, she's no longer able to carry the children herself. And so we're having to have a, the title is gestational carrier. It's not a big deal, surrogate gestational carrier, but essentially because it's, the baby's already made. It's my DNA, Mallory's DNA. None of her DNA. We need a person to incubate and give birth to, but it wouldn't be any of her you know, it's not her eggs being used, and that's the difference with the surrogate. Oh, okay. That would be my, my, yeah, my DNA, her eggs, match those together, then we adopt the child from her, but it's h- her kid. Like, it's her biological child with me. Right. It's weird, I know. And that's what's funny is that everybody knows that term, but gestational carrier doesn't roll off of the tongue. Right. I was gonna say, yeah. So- so yeah. So that's, I think, Dang it. Hang on. I'm losing my, my train of thought 'cause I went off on gestational carrier. But the schools, so, It's made you more protective of your children probably, what you've been through More protective. And what I told him was, "There's nothing on earth that would keep me from protecting my child. And because I'm so close to it," and this is, this everybody should recognize. If you, if you only listen to this one thing I say for this whole podcast, echo chambers are real, and everyone's in one whether you like it or not. If you are on social media, if you use the internet, algorithms are pulling you and shoving you in different directions. Wherever you wanna go is where they're taking you, and they're gonna take you farther than you wanna go typically, 'cause they're gonna wanna test all the boundaries, much like a little child does. And and when it does that, you're going to either be immersed in that topic for the good or the bad, and it all depends on how you react to it. It depends on your facial expression in your camera, on your phone, 'cause that's all being read, and that's being fed to the algorithm. Most people don't know that. That's why if you work in the government work, especially TS clearance, all those things, you are required by your com- well, I was required by my company, and any company that's smart requires you to cover all the cameras. Cover the cameras on your laptop, cover the cam- put tape over the cameras. And that doesn't mean the little one you can see. All the cameras that are actually in your phone that you're not seeing, and your laptop as well. There's, there's quite often more than one camera in your laptops. But there definitely is in your phones. All that to say, all that data's being fed. Now, I'm so close to the topic, they know that I've, I've ordered and been through multiple, multiple, multiple books on school shooting. All these documentaries that I watch on Netflix, and all the good information that I'm using to educate myself about the content, unfortunately also puts me in that category where I think school shootings is such a big problem when you look at the data and you go, "Okay, but how, how often does it actually happen?" It's minuscule, technically speaking. But one child lost to a school shooter is never minuscule, and one is too many. Right. So for me, I just told him, I was like, "Hey, you're, you're... It's like asking the preacher if the Bible is really something that would be useful." Obviously I'm too close to the topic, so I'm gonna say if, if it were my son, not only would he not have already been in that school, yeah, he would be re- removed immediately, and we would figure out what to do. There's co-ops where different people teach different times and everybody kind of takes turns homeschooling kids together. There's all kinds of organizations today that didn't exist when I was homeschooled. When I was homeschooled as a child up through sixth grade. Kindergarten through sixth I was homeschooled. Then my dad broke his back, my, had to have surgery. My mom had to go back to work, and so I was forced back in- into the public school system. And so I've experienced both, and it's, it's fascinating. Ironically, when I was in ninth grade, a kid wanted to fight my buddy, and he brought two guns to school, and he was planning to shoot us. Wow. And luckily the drug dog, yeah. I know. There again, there's so many things from my childhood, but it's a drug dog had hit, 'cause of course he smoked weed too, imagine that. He hit on the weed- Right, got correlation ... they brought into a locker, and then saw he had two nine millimeters. It was his dad's, of course that he had brought to school. Now I assume that he's gonna try to shoot us with those, because they wanted to fight my buddy. But that was the last, last we saw of them. We showed up for the fight, he didn't show up. We went home and then, you know, we sh- we find out later that he had guns and he got pulled. And we're just like, "That's insane." Because Columbine hadn't happened. This was pre-Columbine. This was, there was no school shootings in our minds r- back then. So it was, for me, I'm, I'm way closer to the topic than most people, and probably too close to it for most people's comfort. It's not something that I think about every second of every day, but it's certainly something that I will never give up talking about that topic. But I have to build an audience large enough that they can't just immediately silence me and bury me underneath the algorithm. That's what happened. I would send you a link of my newest episode, and it would say error 404. It literally, you couldn't even watch my episode. I could look on YouTube and it's live, and it's there, and I can share it, and I can play it, and I can pull it up on, on my phone, and I can show people. But yeah, if, if I'm sending it to, to somebody else, it, they, they just found ways to just completely shadowban stuff. Well, I relate to that because I, I post reels like almost twice a day, and anything about sexual immorality, even my human trafficking content doesn't get pushed sometimes. It gets, it gets basically blocked, for lack of better words. But talking about a Filipino princess getting me banned from Hot Topic, they pushed that out to, you know, over 1,000 people right away. I, I posted a reel about misconceptions around human trafficking and about prevention awareness, and it was like, "Nah, we're not gonna show anyone," you know? Yeah. 'Cause it literally determines- Hey, we're gonna push this out to people, and then if they like it, we're gonna push it out to these people. And sometimes it's just like, we're not gonna push it out at all. You know? Like, and, and unfortunately that's something we can't really control, you know? So it, it is ridiculous. Now, what, what you're talking about with the certifications to do security and threat analysis for different buildings and organizations, what's so interesting is I've done a couple episodes about that topic. I did a episode on prevention and awareness for targeted violence, domestic violence, and terroristic violence and threats. You'll find there's a lot of common threads. And I don't know if it was that episode or a different episode, someone was talk- Maybe it was you. Well, we'll find out in a minute. I had a guest who was doing that kind of work, and no one would, would hire him. They were like, "No, this... we don't need you to come do a threat or security analysis of our building." Then 9/11 happened, and suddenly everyone was calling him saying, "Hey, can you come back and do a threat analysis?" So, you know, things change, and now we've seen a rise not just in school shootings, but unfortunately as politics and the spiritual warfare of morality expands, we've seen church shootings on the rise. We've seen other shootings in general. When I was stationed over in Goose Creek near Charleston, they actually had the one mall, I believe it was called the Northwoods Mall, if memory, you know, can recollect had shootings all the time. You know, and, and we would have musters on base to make sure everyone was safe or if anyone had been part of that shooting a-a-as a victim over there. And, you know, the violence in, in Newport News, Norfolk, Portsmouth area of Virginia, I mean, they had shot a marine 12 times just to take his wallet. They had shot multiple sailors. I know sailors personally who were held at gunpoint in just like a Taco Bell drive-through. You know, just trying to get food for some guys who were on duty stuck on the ship in the shipyard. So the, the violence has definitely gone up a lot, and it's, it's a shame. It's very sad to see. And then I wanna talk about, you know, you talk about having to rebrand, and we'll go into just the struggles with that, you know, 'cause you were so passionate about, you know, XYZ. You've put together all the logos, the websites, the email. I mean, it's a lot of work to put something together, let alone... Now, I've gone through rebranding as well, so I understand, like, trying to make a new logo, trying to, like, spread the information. Now you're competing with your, your old stuff, and rebranding can be a whole nightmare on its own. Trying to find... You know, how were you able to find kind of your new purpose in an interminglement that kind of kept them separate and together in a way that functions well? So to answer that, how, how I actually accomplished this, because ChatGPT wasn't there for me at that point, and I wanted to speak with somebody who's done it. And I remembered it PodFest, there was somebody that I had spoke with, and they had spoken on stage about rebranding and had mentioned it, but that wasn't their topic, but that was part of it. And so I just found that person, and I went and spoke with him one-on-one after a session. And they basically said, "Listen, this is what I do. I just help people do rebrands. Like, that's, that's... I'm talking about all kinds of things here, but my focus actually is just rebranding." And I was just like, "Okay, this is amazing." So their advice was, they gave me an example. They had a lawyer, a lawyer, yes, a lawyer, who had been a a quick magic, like he's doing card things, and he had a whole thing on social media where he's doing that to drive interest. And he thought, "Well, I mean, this is interesting. I'm quirky. Plus, I'm a lawyer." Nobody took him seriously, and it was because they, nobody wants their lawyer to be doing card tricks while you're talking to him about their case. And obviously he's not gonna do that, but that's the perception. And so they, he, he basically said, "I had to convince this guy, and it was hard to convince him." And it was very hard for him to actually accomplish this because he's so used to it, and he had all these ideas, and he was really energetic. And he had to kill that completely. Don't speak about it. Don't post about it. If anybody talks about it to you publicly online, it doesn't exist. And it took over a year, but after a little over a year, he finally got a call from somebody and was talking to them, and somehow the, the topic came up of, "How did you find out about me?" Blah, blah, blah. And they said, "Well, you know, this and this." And he's like, "Oh, okay. And have you ever heard anything else about me? Are you familiar with anything else?" And they're, "No, that's, I just heard about you, and, you know, everything sounds good." And so he, that was the first time somebody wasn't like, "Yeah, I saw the card trick stuff before." And so that's what I clung to, was this idea of I just have to stop completely even the topic of school shootings right now, and I'm gonna build my brand based on, luckily, I already had foresight that I wasn't just gonna talk about school shootings completely. So I'd already had another logo designed at the same time by the same guy, and that logo is my logo today. So he built it out. It's actually, it looks like a microphone- But it's the, specifically the Ranger lightning bolt that goes through the crest on our tan beret that is the lightning bolt. The center of the l- of the microphone is breaking apart. It's actually a dog tag. So there's a lot of things that he had built into this that just perfectly, when I was coming up with if I rebranded, what is it that I wanna share and what is it that I need people to know about me that is going to attract or deter, like attract the right people and deter people that wouldn't be interested? I don't wanna waste anybody's time listening to my boring stories if that's what you think they are. That's cool. I'm not for everybody. And so how I accomplished this, because of course, first is Christ. I'm a father. And oh, by the way, I, I was in the Rangers. So I thought, I, I don't want just the word Christ. I don't want it to be... I want, I... Because I'm not, this isn't a preaching channel. If I, when I start doing that, when I start doing like Bible study type stuff or topics that I might cover later on once I'm a little bit more streamlined, I will build into that. So I want, I want a logo that still shows that. And as you can see if you look at my Old Ranger New Dad, the one thing you see immediately is the big, huge cross that's, with white inside the black so it's, it pops off of everything. And then the title, right, brings people in, but it doesn't just bring me in as a veteran. I am a veteran, but I'm a new dad, and that's what's the most recent, most important. That being said, you know, I haven't shared a lot about the IVF, but it's, it's, I can't not talk about my belief as I'm discussing any topic. It's always gonna come out one way or another. And I, I don't want it to be forced and, and, and all those things. So that's what's going through my mind while I'm thinking of this rebrand, and I've gotta, I've gotta kind of figure out how to thread that needle so that it, it really makes sure that it doesn't hone in on one and block the other. It doesn't feed too much into one side and the algorithm just shoves me into only IVF topics, 'cause then I'm gonna be the weirdo talking about jumping out of airplanes and, you know, combat missions that doesn't fit in IVF. So that's kind of how I imagined it. Now to answer your question as to how it's going because that's, that's the ultimate test, right, is- Right where are you? So I, I would say LinkedIn, which is the main thing that I'm a, I'm an influencer on LinkedIn. It's kind of a joke, but like I've got 8,000 s- plus connections on there. It took me years to build that. That I've noticed I'm, I'm still growing. I'm not... I didn't have a free fall, and that's what I was worried about too, is I don't want a free fall to where I'm talking about a topic and then all these people are connected to me because I was in the private contracting world. I was a recruiter for private contractors. I was doing recruiting for all these jobs, and, and it hasn't happened. So that was, that's one of the staples that really has put my mind at ease. And then as far as subscribers and followers, YouTube is where the young men of this-- that are struggling in this nation, that are our future sailors, Marines, police officers, firefighters, trash men, Walmart supervisors, loss prevention, like it doesn't matter. We need all of them, and we need all of them to be productive, and not just in a selfless way for us as a collective. They need that too, and I'm trying to share with these, the young, struggling men of our nation why they need to get their act together and start pursuing whatever it is. And I want to expose them to so many good things that I've been through. Although they're extremely hard, because that's what I go after is extremely hard, I wanted things that were gonna change me as a person to make me more disciplined. That was my focus. That's when I joined the Marine Corps. I had never thought that I was gonna join the military, ever. And finally, it had dawned on me after talking with... Doing my own research, then I tracked down a recruiter. He didn't recruit me. I recruited him to be my recruiter. He just laid out like, "This is what it's really like in the Marine Corps." He was super honest, and I-- he didn't lie to me at all. And he's like, "This is what it is, man. If you're wanting money, go to the Army. If you're wanting a cushy life, nice food, great conditions, Air Force is right down, right there." Right. Like, all the branches were in this one strip mall. It's Oklahoma. I don't have a lot of money for all that. Right. Right. So they were all next door to each other. And the thing that impressed me was not only that, it's, it's the people that were recruiters. I look at the other recruiters. Again, they're, you know, overweight, kinda lazy, standing around just smoking, not... And then here's the Marine Corps, and it's just fit girl, fit dude walking in, walking... And it's just the-- that was what I wanted, and I wanted to be that. That's what I want to share with the young men. You don't have to join the Marine Corps to get that. That's what I try to tell people too, is like w- at what point in boot camp, in all the pushups that I did, pull-ups that I did, sit-ups that I did- You know, exercises, running, getting screamed at. How does that turn you into a United States Marine? How does that completely separate you from 98% of the American population having gone through something that hard? And, and the answer really is just the, the mental side. You were put under so much stress, stress. You're, you're, like, put in a Crockpot, and it was turned to full blast and held there for 13 straight hours. What comes out of that is, is, is going to be very hard and refined, whatever it is that survives. And so when I went into boot camp, half of the guys that I started with anyways, we had a 50% attrition rate. They, they fell out one way or the other. They got hurt, they quit, and yes, they definitely... You can quit from Marine Corps boot camp. And so that, that is again where my rebrand... I was like, I don't just wanna push people to the military. A lot of guys have channels like that where they're just talking about the military and trying to get guys to sign up. I'm cool with that. Obviously it's gonna be natural, but I also want to a- attract the young men that aren't necessarily a fit for that, but they still could go do a Spartan race, man. You could still go and do difficult- Right ... things, join groups, and be connected, and that's also a big part of what every time that I'm talking with a lot of veterans, especially retirees and seasoned special operations guys, they're like, "Man, connectivity is it." That's the one thing that we need this next generation to know, is they've got to get connected to other like-minded people that also wanna work hard, better themselves, and do something with their life. And if you're a trash man, you could have a phenomenal life as a trash man. And, and that, there's no shame in that whatsoever. Same thing as being a private contractor, you know, and that's the route I'm going now. It's kinda scary, 'cause I've never done that. I've always worked for, had a, you know, had a regular W-2 l- ca- you know, job and insurance and all those things. So it's different, but again, I'm telling other people what to do. I'm gonna do the same thing. I'm gonna jump out, sew my parachute on the way down, and then once I get there, I'll tell you how to do it. Right. And you know, one overview and takeaway is, like, you know, I've been to a lot of conferences. I've been to PodFest, Podcast Movement, Military Creator Con. I've spoken at half of them. Actually, technically I've spoken at all of them. W- anyway, you know, one thing I always heard there, whether I was speaking or attending, it was niche down. If your show is for everyone, it's for no one. Now, I never followed that. I always said, "Well, that's b- malarkey," for lack of better words. You know, like, that is a bunch of baloney, 'cause it's, you know- I say trial and error is the only truth. You know, what you do and if it works or not is the only truth because we've seen, like, for example, you niche down, very specific niche, and it did not work out. We've seen people like Joe Rogan doesn't have a niche, you know, and people will say, well, just because of celebritization. But no, there's a lot of shows like his, like the Jason Cavness experience. Shout out Jason Cavness, you know, that is not niched down and is long form and people tune in and listen. You know, my show, I think one of the diversities of it is, you know, I have people, every episode is a different audience. And at the same time, it's all interconnected. You know, it's about just humanity, connection, and self-improvement, right? There is no niche where all people are trying to improve our lives, you know. And sure, maybe I attract more young men because of my personal identity, right? You know, because other young men are more likely to work with me than middle-aged women, let's say, even though I work with a lot of middle-aged women, actually, but both at work and before I was engaged outside of work. But, you know, I say all that to say, like, you know, it's about trial and error because people will give you all this advice about rebranding, about, you know, your audience, about creating it. And the truth is, you know, you're just going to find out the hard way. So I think if you're someone who is struggling to rebrand because you're like, I can't find a niche to niche down to, or I don't want to be so broad because no one's going to listen, I would say do whatever one you want and whatever your focus is. You know, you don't have to just streamline into one specialty. Everyone will say if you streamline into one specialty and become known as that one person for that one thing, then you'll get monetized faster and you'll get speaking opportunities faster. And I have to disagree. You know, I'm not the biggest speaker, but I've spoken on multiple stages, you know, across the United States. And a lot of them have been about different topics. Sometimes I speak about addiction recovery. Sometimes I speak about suicide prevention. Sometimes it's podcasting. You know, a lot of people want to ask me about podcasting. I'm trying to speak more on mental health and even getting some live sermons in, doing some more faith-based work. You know, I think it's so strange because everything else in life they say diversify, diversify, know as much, you know. And there's an old saying, you know, we used to hear a lot in school and military, which was you, what is it? It's like you can know a mile wide and an inch deep of knowledge, or you can know an inch wide, mile deep of knowledge, you know, and what's going to serve you more in whatever you're trying to do. And that's what you need to analyze. And I definitely want to get into the conversation about how faith has been a part of your journey and stuff. And I just want to address First, the one of the most difficult things in my life, though I wish I had done it much sooner, was cutting out people in my life who were not accomplishing things, who were not trying to improve theirselves, who did not wanna do difficult things. The reason it took me so long to do is because, at least for me, I'm a very caring person, and I'm actually caring more about others than myself, and I want to see them succeed. Especially when you have a personal relationship with those people who are underachievers, you wanna help them. But there were gentlemen in my life who, you know, I would take them to the gym on my membership, and they wouldn't show up. They would show up late. They would complain, say they rather smoke weed or play video games than work out. If they did go to the gym, they would say, "Oh, Mr. Whiskey, I just don't like when the weight gets too heavy, you know. I, I, I don't like when it's difficult," right? And I, I, I had the opposite mindset, you know. Lightweight baby, you know, like vers- The whole point is that it's gonna be difficult, right? I mean, and again, I don't, I don't wanna repeat just some old sayings, but if it was easy, everyone would do it, right? The whole point is that you're doing something more difficult to become, you know, to improve yourself in some ways. I would take these people to entrepreneurial events, to social gatherings, to all these things to give them resources and information, connect them with people, and they never did anything with it, and it starts to be a waste of your time and drag you down. I can tell you now having a, a fiancé who goes to the gym with me and is encouraging and lifts heavy and does things that is difficult for her, she's the best gym partner I've ever had compared to young men who complain that they were too skinny or too fat. They had no self-confidence in their body image. They said, "Mr. Whiskey, let's go to the gym with you. We, we see what you're pursuing and, and we wanna do that as well." But then they didn't actually wanna put in the work, yet they're still gonna complain every day about everything. I mean, these were people who were complaining about their job positions, about their family lives, about their relationships. One of them even complained, "Mr. Whiskey, I can't talk to women. I can't get on any dates." That's something a lot of young men are struggling with nowadays. That's why we see the rise of OnlyFans and pornography as well because men rather just indulge in that than go talk to a real woman. And I set this man up on two dates, and he flunked twice in a row even with full advice from me and, and the woman. I women that said, "We, we... If he just listens and, and we just go on a date and, and we can go from there." And he didn't even wanna put in the work. Quote, "Texting and making conversation is too much work, you know. I just want a, a, a woman who will just give without needing a relationship, you know?" And so it, it got frustrating to the point I had to cut these people out of my life because here I am Every- anyone who knows me personally, I'm a workaholic, an overachiever. I've got, like you mentioned, 50 different projects going on, always doing something. Every day I've... Like, every time someone calls me, I'm in, like, a different state or country doing something, you know? And so those people were holding me back, and really, I was holding myself back trying to help these people. But, you know, I don't wanna compare them to horses, but taking them to the water and they don't wanna drink 'cause, quote, "It's too much work." Yet they're gonna complain about dehydration, you know? So you're doing all these things, and this is an issue with a lot of people are busy trying to pull others up, and it's weighing you down. That's the truth about it. When you're trying to pull people up, it's weighing you down. When you're with a, a bunch of people who are all going in the same direction, you really, you know, do see yourself uplifted. And, and they've done studies on it. You know, there's a famous book about, like, the five people who are in your inner circle being the most influential and stuff like that. So it is so important, and unfortunately, that was one of the difficult parts, was cutting all those relationships. Sometimes it's family members. Sometimes it's, it's your own family members, or even, dare I say, your partner in your relationship, who is maybe your spouse or girlfriend or boyfriend. And so that's been one thing I've had to do. I'm sure you've had to do it, Mr. Ryan. You know, it's a choice- Definitely ... we, we get to sometimes it's when we're rebranding our, our podcast. Sometimes it's just when we're shifting our goals and our alignment. Sometimes it's when we get more into the faith and we realize we have some bad influences in our life. And so I'll, I'll pivot to that. You talk about the faith, about it not being your whole brand identity, but it's gonna be built into it. It's gonna be a part of it. I'm the same way. You know, there's, the faith is behind everything I do. I bring it into all the conversations. So what kind of has been your journey with that? How did IVF challenge that? How did being in the military and law enforcement challenge that? Because those are all, those are, like, some of the big three of will challenge your faith. We see you know, moral injury and the loss of faith being one of the major causes of suicide and other mental health issues in the military, in fact. I've done whole episodes on that. So how has your journey of faith really-- Definitely go back to how it started, but how all these things shaped it. Yeah. Just because I don't wanna lose this, you, what you were mentioning I did spend, just to kind of echo what you're saying, I did spend some time doing personal training for people that wanted to go into special operations or for females that were tr- trying to join the Marine Corps. Like, if you're just trying to join the Marines as a dude, y- like, you got it. Like, girls are trying to go in, and again, my wife at that time had, had been out. I had the exact same experience. Ironically, anybody that just- Got to know me and, "Oh, yeah. Well, I'm gonna join the Rangers. I'm gonna join this. I'm gonna go be a SEAL." Every one of them would pull a muscle the second we took off on a run. Every one of th- And I'm not trying to... I'm not... That's one of the other problems if you have a background with the identifier of special ops. Everybody's intimidated. I get it. And I'm like, "Listen, I'm not ever gonna push, push you through what I went through. I'm not... You're not at that level, and I'm old, so either way, I can't do what I used to do. Okay?" And still, there would always be an excuse why they wouldn't show up to the gym, just like you're talking about. And I got sick of it, so I was like, "Okay, I'm just gonna charge people to do this." And then people paid me, and then I actually trained them, and a girl ended up going in the Marine Corps and I believe making it. The... I didn't, like, s- stay in touch with her per se, but on social media I did get to saw she had graduated the Marine Corps and was in. And that's wild because it's like I was pretty much just focused on young men, and the one person who was actually focused was this girl. You know, she needed to lose weight and she hadn't been somebody who had ever really exercised. So all that to say, yeah, you know, if you're, if you're attaching, if you're... The imagery I like to bring up, which is very sim- very easy for a military veteran to understand, Forrest Gump for those who've seen a very popular movie, right? He doesn't go and pick up every guy and carry them all out at once. He goes back one at a time for each one of them. In doing that, he could do it m- as many times as he needed to to get everybody out. Hacksaw Ridge, he goes and gets these people one at a time. He... There's only, there's only so much weight that you can carry. If you're carrying your ruck and all your equipment and all your weight, when somebody goes down, s- simulated or real, all that is distributed between all of you. And that's why when someone grabs a person by themself and hauls them out, that is seen as heroic, because you shouldn't have to bear the entire weight of the other by yourself. You should be with your friends, everybody pulling together. Combat's combat, I get it. So that to say y- people should understand that, that that's the way it is. You can help somebody, but you, you can lighten their load, but you should not be bearing all of their weight, and if that's what you're doing, you are not going to go far and they're going to be dragging you down, and then you're just both laying on the ground exhausted and exposed. I... As far as, like, y- you, you mentioned guys struggling dating. So ironically, me and Mallory are both one and O. So I introduced one guy one time to a girl. They have six kids now, have been married for years and- A, a phenomenal success story. Mallory in the Marine Corps, one guy found out Mallory, you know, is a Christian. Everybody kinda knew that about her. He actually went over and asked, "Hey, I don't really have a church to go to. I'd be interested in going, if that's okay." And so he didn't go with, like, he drove there. She told him where it was. She ends up introducing him to a girl at church. They're now married with multiple kids. Success story, right? Years, and years, and years later, not some short thing. So i- it's, it's very easy if you start doing hard things and you surround yourself. That's, that's the other part, is when you're doing hard things, you will be inadvertently connected with or find yourself around other people that are also trying to do hard things, and that's the type of person you want to be with. If I had married some really nice girl who, you know, just struggled with weight, never wanted to exercise you know, whatever it is, and I want to go for a 10-mile run and then go do an obstacle course race and go do all these things, it's the, the alignment isn't there. And it's not a matter of being a good person or you think you're better than somebody else. We're just different. Like, there's, there's somebody that, that, you know, is for everybody. And even though you should improve yourself so that you can better take care of yourself, set the example as God lays out, like, that's, that's all throughout the Bible. You should try to strive to be better. So to a- to get to your a- to get to your specific question, my faith helped me lay the groundwork, because my parents had raised us studying the Bible. Pretty much every night we'd be reading a chapter out of the Bible or a couple of chapters. And no matter how painful it was to go through Exodus as a child, to go through Leviticus as a child, and listening to all the names that my family's butchering, and I don't know how to pronounce any of those either, and it really doesn't matter to me at that point, now I see the wisdom in it, and that's what we're gonna do with our child. Because if you have a, a foundation of thinking about very, very deep topics, this, I literally, yesterday was Sunday, I was just talking with somebody about very, very deep topics that he is exposing his child to at a very early age, thinking maturely, thinking about wisdom, right? Not, not sexual, not, like, things that they can talk about later, but I mean, like, really, how are you gonna set up your entire life? Most 10-year-olds are not thinking about everything that they ha- do as a consequence, benefit, you know, negative attached to it. And- If you do think on those things, and you really keep that in your mind as you're going through your day-to-day, and you attach yourself to that wisdom because you believe it, fully have faith. That's how I ended up where I am. So I can tell people, and there's no way to, to, for it to not come off as like a humble brag, but it's like I'm 45, and my life has never been better than it is today, and it is only going to get better. Now, that being said, we already talked about in the last year we've lost two embryos. My wife almost passed. She also started passing out, hyperthyroidism. She-- There's a whole lot of e- you know, emergency room visits that I've spent and a week in the hospital at a time trying to get her where she needs to be and back to healthy. But at the same time, like, we get to spend so much time together, and I'm focused on podcasting and building my brand. And if you're doing it for the right reason, then the people-- it's gonna attract those people to you. And that goes into the, the other part of the answer. So in the military, I was attracted to and attracted other people that wanted to be around a Christian guy. The guys who were just blackout drunk every weekend, I mean, obviously we were still cool for the most part. Some guys hated me, but for the most part, most of those guys were still cool with me because they also knew I was dependable. Every Saturday, I'm going on a barefoot beach run to toughen up my feet while they're nursing a hangover. But they also know that they could have called me on Friday night, and I would come pick them up, you know. And not that, not that I ever was a part of that scene, but at the same time, everybody knew that about me, and that I was that guy. I was designated driver whenever big events were going on, ranger, birthday ball kind of thing that we would do yearly. I was the designated driver for my privates, for the PFCs, and I'm the corporal, and I'm out coming and getting you and your hot date and driving you two drunk kids who are 18, 19 years old back so you guys don't get thrown in jail and, you know, you get kicked out of the military. So it's-- it, it-- to-- There's no way to really just break it apart and talk about. It all has to go together. So my faith is fully saturated in every part of my life. Not that I'm perfect in every part of my life, not that I did everything right, but I knew this. I knew that if I didn't have a chemical in my body that changed my brain and- inhibited my ability to make wise choices. If I just did that, if I just made it all my life without having a chemical that could possibly make me more likely to make a poor decision, and like you talked about, sailors, Marines getting shot, getting stabbed, getting beat up. Beat up is constant. That's what happens outside of military towns, and Savannah was no was not different from that. We had guys driving home from the bars, and some dude was just walking slowly across the street right in front of them. In the middle of the dark, they almost slammed into him. He's wearing all black, Black guy. And it was just like, "What are you doing?" They start cussing at him, you know, and he pulls out a gun and just empties the clip into the car. They take off. One of the guys gets shot through the leg, and the other, you know, whoever the guy was that's driving the car, their car is full of bullet holes now, and they got a lot of explaining to do. And you're gonna be driving around the base with a car full of bullet holes? It's like, that was an expensive lesson. Luckily, you know, nobody got killed, but it very well could have happened. And unfortunately, all of that is just off of one simple thing. If you, if there was a person there that wasn't intoxicated, if there was one person there that had wisdom, that knew when it was time to go. And at first, I tried to play that role, and I tried to be there for my buddies that were gonna go party and do all the things, and I would just be there to help. And then it got very fa- very fast, the police are called, and, you know, some girl that he- somebody's hooking up with, their family's looking for her. They think she got kidnapped. Actually, she drunk, walked off with this drunk ranger, and they're hooking up. And I'm just like, "I don't want any part of this scene. I am not getting kicked out after all the work I've done." Right. So I, I, I isolated myself in that way from not being downtown there. But again, I'm always available. You guys know I will come help you. And if you're that guy, again, by default you will attract the right people, and that's how I ended up with Mallory. Mallory and I have made it only because of our faith. Not our faith in each other, our faith in God, and that is not the same thing. Nobody talks about that enough in our t- in our society. If your faith is in me, we're doomed. If my faith is in you, we are doomed, period. You're an imperfect person. You're gonna be irrational, you're gonna be angry, you're gonna be... At some point, this is gonna not go well. Same thing for me. I'm gonna be irrational, I'm gonna be angry, I'm gonna be completely in the wrong. We're doomed. How, how can anybody make it then? Why is the divorce rate not 100%? Oh, a little thing called y- you're not just- expecting this other person to be flawless, and your expectations are not that. But you also have to love a God that knows that you're imperfect and can forgive you. And that's not to say that if somebody's cheating on you and somebody's out doing... I've seen plenty of marriages that somebody cheated- Right ... and they came back together, and that is a magical thing. And at PodFest, there's a lady, and that's what she turned her podcast to, toward helping divorced couples possibly get back together and heal. And I was just like, "I, I need to be I need to know about this podcast," 'cause I've never found one. Yours is the first. Al- so my, my time in the, in the military was very hard because of my faith, and there was a lot of guys that didn't like me. But most people respected me and treated me fairly. But I had direct supervisors who hated my guts, who smoked me in Iraq during combat. Like, not on the mission, but, like, we're here for combat. We're forward deployed. We can get killed, and they're smoking me and asking me Bible questions, and if I don't give them the answer they want, not the truth. I told them the truth every time, and it just made me get smoked longer. But I'm just like, I mean, I'm not getting nailed to a cross and set on fire. So this, I'm not getting boiled to death. This is not persecution. Like, th- this is, you just get- Right ... smoked for no reason most of the time. This time, hey, he's smoking me because of what the Bible says. Fine. I can take that. But that, that hurt. That hurt me on a level I've never really even wanted to explore because to be cast out, to be an outcast for my faith, I, I was, I knew that I was ready to stand on the Bible and on truth, but I didn't know what it would feel like afterwards to be one of the other that's stuck on the outside looking in when it's a person who's over you and has power over your life. So it, like I say, there, there's definitely a lot of hurt and some things I've, I've had to start processing at a very late age. And I'm by no means there where I wanna be with that. But and b- and being a father, you know, it's, for me, because I'm so old, and I'll just keep saying that, old ranger. Like, it's so much different, and Mallory and I talk about that all the time. If we had been blessed with a child when we first got married, it would've been horrible for that child. And I don't mean that, like- We were constantly just in shouting match, but it's just we didn't have the love and the maturity that we've come through all the things we've come through now and we have. So that attention to just drop everything and go be with him when we see something is happening and he's, you know, just hungry, but he's throwing a fit. But if you're not paying attention, you're just, this is just a bratty kid being bratty, and we need to punish him instead of identifying that actually it's just he's hungry. But if you don't stop and take that time, and so we're, we are so much better parents, I believe, and I think God did that on purpose. I think Archer is being blessed by all of the anxiety we've had for all these years and all the difficulty we went through to have him and hopefully have another one, you know, in the next year or so, however long that takes. I know that's a lot. Right. Sorry. No, no, there's definitely a lot to unpack there. One thing that- Yeah ... side tangent note. Everyone who's ever almost been run over by me w- was at nighttime wearing all black. A- and I'm, I'm tired of all these people who wear all black at night. Like, put on a reflective vest or something, you know? But I don't know. It's, it's usually not like, how do I say this nicely? It's not usually, like, decent regular civilians doing stuff, you know, at that time of night. It's usually people who are doing whatever they're doing. Yeah. So- It's not the, it's not the little old lady ... they're always wearing all black, head to toe. That's true. And then they don't go at the crosswalk. They'll just randomly cut across a highway or a road too, so. Yeah. It happens all the time. I'm a, I'm a jaywalker. I'm a jaywalker myself, so I can't, I can't fault them for that. But you're right. It's never the little old lady who needs help across the road Right. Right ... in the middle of the night, so. At 2:00 AM. But, you know, it's like you mentioned, there's a l- a lot to unpack there because I've seen in my own life how I wish the way the Bible was taught to me had been done so differently as a child and created a stronger foundation. There's a lot of mistakes I've made that if I had the word more central in my life or understood it more properly, I, I wouldn't have made those. And I know when it comes to... Like, I plan on homeschooling for sure. I'm very anti whatever the public education system is now. It's a political indoctrination machine, and it does not teach much. It just has you memorize a bunch of useless information and- You talked about actually how many resources there are nowadays, whi- which is true. There's homeschooling podcasts and online programs, and then I found, because you know, I was looking at homeschooling stuff, world schooling cruises where all homeschool parents get together, and all the kids socialize, and they exchange homeschool advice and information while on a cruise. So there's, there's a lot now that, like you said- Wow they didn't have back in 1880 or whenever you were homeschooled, you know, so- Exactly ... it's, it's- Yeah ... it's changed a lot. 1870s. Yeah. But yeah, I-- and part of that is teaching that faith foundation and integrating it in- into every part of our lives, in- including our relationship first and foremost, you know. And all my relationship history, you know, it was always a problem of misalignment, of being with women who humanity or the pleasure of this world were at the center of their life, and then God was, at the time, not the center of mine as He is now, but He was always at that core. And so, you know, I tried to date women who were pagan or self-claimed witches or Wiccans or a lot... I was in my King Solomon era for a while, and you know, it just did not line up and work out ultimately because of, you know, misaligned morality. And it really changes everything you do, and it, it doesn't seem like it. You know, for a while you can compromise on, "Hey, we're not gonna talk about A, B, C and X, Y, Z. We're just gonna do whatever." But when it comes to those bigger life choices like parenting, like where you're living, where, w- how you're gonna raise your kids or, you know, future choices, or we saw the election broke apart a lot of families, a lot of relationships, you know. And politics and morality have become intermingled in deeper ways than ever before. You know, there is major spiritual warfare going on. So, like you said, it's so important to have that foundation, and I actually had a, a gentleman on the show, shout out Justin Workman. You know, he and his wife were going to separate, and she said, "You know, unless..." He was an atheist. She said, "Unless you bring God into our relationship and He's a part of this, we're not gonna work out." And he actually ended up converting, and they're together. They've got, you know, kids and I think, you know, hopefully grandkids one day and, and stuff like that. I think his daughter just recently got married, if I'm not mistaken, you know. And he talked about- Wow ... how bringing God into their relationship, like, he's like, "God had to save it because, you know, on our own we could not save it." So, you know, I've, I've seen it, you know, firsthand or at, at least I've interviewed people about their experiences with that. And, you know, even my relationship right now, you know, keeping God central in it has been huge for all our conversations about the future and our arguments, you know? Having covenantal love, having patience. Like you said, we're gonna be irrational. Irrational fears get into every relationship. Irrational jealousy and, and greed and selfish desires and, and resentment. You know, forgiveness and peace that only God can give in a relationship. I think the idea of a, a podcast on, you know, reuniting divorcees is definitely unique. You know, I- that's the first I've heard of it, and- ... that, that's definitely cool. But it, it can be possible, you know, and I think having that foundation is so important. So I'd love for you to share, what I always ask any faith-based guest on my podcast is, if you could share one quote of scripture from your heart right now, what would it be? And it doesn't have to be related to the conversation, just whatever the Spirit puts on you. Well, so John, John 15:13 is, is the one that I've written on all of my books. Like, you have just blank things for notes when you're in the military and you have your books. Right. That was always written on it. I've always had that inscribed, like when I was a police officer, on, again, my ticket book. Maybe that's not the best place for that, but- ... I thought it was funny. And you know, it, it's more we always take it as a brother i- in, in the idea of, you know, police, law enforcement of being the other guy with the gun instead of brother. Everybody should be a brother, and you should be there for all these people and be willing to give yourself and give... And this has to be worded correctly and understood correctly because you, as we've already discussed, you can't hook yourself to people that are just going to drag you down. At the same time, you have to be willing to put yourself out there and be the one who gets egg on your face when this person screws you over. You don't now write that person off and they're just dead to you. 70 times 7 7 times 77, whatever, 70 times 70. I can't even s- I can't get it right now. I literally know that verse. But my point is, like, if it... There's so many times in my... in, with family, with people th- that I was kinda raised around, where they're just gonna use you. And, and, and that's a terrible thing to realize, but you have to realize it, and you have to put your foot down because if you do not set boundaries. That being said, Jesus showed us that He was willing to die on a cross for the people that were murdering Him, and His... He's on the cross suffering, held up by nails, and He's asking that God does not condemn the people that are literally doing this to Him right now. That is a, a le- that's what separates Christianity from the other world religions. That's what separates God's love from our understanding, and it's why the Pharisees of the day and the, and the elites hated him so much is because that's, that's disgusting. We, we don't even wanna brush up against these people. We'll be unclean. What do you mean we need to... Like, if th- if one of them punches me, I should turn the other cheek so he can hit that. What are you talking about? Love him? Love the person that hates me? So i- it's revolutionary, but if you try to live it, you will get screwed over. That doesn't mean you need to be a doormat, and that's... It takes a lot of experience to find that line as to still being there- Yes ... for somebody. And I will share this with you. I've never shared this before. I have, I've recently had a family member who was in prison, and she was in prison. She, she had been in, in trouble with the law and had already been in jail and spent quite a bit of time back and forth in and out of jail for committing crimes. Of course, stealing and drugs, right? And once again, here she is in prison, and this girl's 21 years old and facing, you know, a 10-year sentence, and she's already, like, a couple years into the sentence when I find out where she is. So I reach out to her, and I started being a pen pal to her and started trying to, like, "Hey, we need-- Let's, let's change your direction." So I sent her a book one that I had went through with some friends at church, and it's called Change Everything. It's not a religious book at all. It's actually a book of a bunch of, you know, essentially s- very smart people who just sit down and try to figure out what is it that we could do to create the design, the environment, the self habits that would get a person to change, and they went from all different ages, even though, even all the way down to children, and put all these children through these little tests to see how if somebody was able to break free from the group and save money, was able to break free from the group and eat healthy, to do all the things little kids typically won't do, right? They wanna spend all their money and get the little toys or get, get the candy bars and just eat it all. So they, they did all of this work for a long time, for years, and then published this information. I send that to her. So it's, again, obviously, I'm speaking to her about God and about faith and these things, but I'm just trying to get a baseline of her wanting to change when she gets out. And long story, couple years' worth of time goes by, and she just- I know that she wasn't reading it, and I, I would ask her questions about this chapter, about that, and she just always had an excuse and all the, all these different things. I still stayed in touch with her. I still was trying to just provide her with contact information for when she gets out, because she's of Native American. We're all Creek Indian tribe. We all have our Creek Indian degree blood. That's why I'm a little bit more tan than Mallory is, and it just stays that way. And so she doesn't have a, a card. She doesn't have any of that proof, because her father spent all of his time in prison, and so he never did the paperwork. And I'm, I'm reaching out to the, to the tribe and getting all this inform- trying to help her every way I can without going to the... I said, "Don't ask me for money. You're in prison. You do not need money. I know what money does to you in prison. I worked in a federal prison for a couple of years. Right. Don't ask me for money. That's... Just, just know that that's an automatic red flag, and you're not going to trick me. You're also never going to trick me, because I was a police officer, and I've heard lies 50,000 times a day for years on end. You're not going to game me." And I told her that right from the outset. And I'm like, "But I'm your family." Her... Both of the people that raised her are already dead, and she had nowhere to go when she got out, and so I'm trying to get her to change. The last conversation I had with her, she was about to get out. She ended up calling my cousin, who I had already talked into going to the prison and physically picking up when she got released so that, you know, one of her druggy friends didn't come and get her. Right. And, and so the... at, and I'm, you know, still gonna be in touch with her and all these things. And then she lies to my cousin and his family, his wife, and is like, "No, no, I need money. Can you guys send me money? I broke my glasses. I... Whatever it is, I need this. I need something from the commissary that, that pills or something for an infection that I have or something in my stomach. I don't know." She was making up all kinds of different things, and then tried that on me too, and I was just like... No matter what you want to do for people, sometimes they absolutely will not allow you to help them. They, they are going to push back because their frame of, of reference, their understanding of the world, the way that they should go through life is one of just taking. And it's like a, somebody who's been stranded on an island for a year by themselves, and then a cruise ship pulls up, and there's a all you can eat buffet No matter how much you tell that person they should slowly drink room temperature water, they should slowly start reintroducing foods to their diet, it's not gonna happen. They're going to gorge themselves. And unfortunately, some people have spent their whole life being abused, being used by other people and/or in complete dire want that they are just going... That's, that's their personality. They- That's, that's who they've become, and that is their foundation. And if your foundation is a sinkhole, no matter how much you yell into the sinkhole, it's still gonna be a sinkhole, and they're not going to come out because that's where, that's who they are. And they don't... A lot of times it's guilt and shame, and they, they know that they're doing wrong, but they're, that's not gonna change. And I would just say, like, when it comes to the verse, you're, you have to know that line. You have to know when to help what people, because I... If you, if you're surrounding yourself with the right people, they are going to be forever in your debt. And not that that's what you want, but I'm forever in people's debt that have helped us. And, and they don't want anything in return because they know that I would absolutely pay them back 10 times if I possibly could if they're ever in need, right? But they're, they're not in that need. I'm in that need at that moment, you know? And my family just had their house flooded twice in one year because of the hurricanes down here. Two times people from my church go over, empty their house, help them pull down, you know, all of the walls and replace the, the drywall and get the applian- buy the appliances for them, because they don't have the money for it. And, and that's just if you're, if you put yourself around other people who have faith, and their belief system is that you should do more for others than they can do for you, you've already won. There is no need to rely on yourself. You can rely on God and the people that He's provided. And you should be the type of person, and naturally will eventually, I believe, be the type of person who wants to then jump back in when you are okay and help those people who are struggling too. So that verse is, is much more widely applicable than most people really, I think, take the time to apply it. And can you share what that verse reads exactly? Oh, oh, yes. Yeah, sorry. Now that I've been talking for 15 minutes straight on this tangent. So, if you... I'm gonna mess it up, 'cause I'm thinking of all these different things and, and my niece that was in prison. So to, to give your life for... Now I'm gonna mess it up. And I ha- I've had this thing memorized for so long Giving your life... I'm getting it mixed up with the- Yeah, I believe you're thinking of- "Some will give their life for a good man, but few will die for a friend," is what I'm thinking of. That's the verse that's coming to mind. Is it there "Greater love has no one than this, that they should lay down their life for another"? For, for another. For another. But I wanna make sure. So because it says for friends, that's the part that I... So, "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." So when I say that, there's different... Some, some of the versions say brother, some say friends. It also starts with, "Greater love hath no man than this." I'm reading off the English Standard. Right. And so the, the terminology is a little bit- You were trying to speak of the u- universality for the lack of a better word. Yeah, yeah. About, yeah. The universality of it. Yeah. Yeah. And giving your life- Universality ... you giving your life for your brothers in combat, we all understand. But giving your life in a way of giving your resources, giving your time, that is giving your life. You are, you can not be in the military, not be in a life and death situation, and still give your life for your friends. You can still give your life. I- that's the great thing about the Bible, and that's why when you're 45 and you're reading it versus 25 and you're reading it, it means different things because you've now seen so many more good and bad things that have happened. And so you can see where this applies universally as well as specifically. And- Right ... like I say, when I fall back on this, always being willing to give you know, for others and put yourself out for another person. And of course, there's many, many verses where he talks about God will reward you. You don't need the praise of men. And Jesus speaks about the Pharisees as they're doing this constantly, standing on the street corner to pray aloud so that they've already been given their reward. They don't need a reward from God. They're already getting everything they deserve right now, and that's not gonna be glory from God. It's the man who's praying in his closet, who's, you know, doing these things with his family that are building a foundation, not getting praise, not being known for this. Exactly. Exactly. So- He whose right hand doesn't know what his left hand is doing and, you know, not doing it for public affair, but for- Yeah ... the glory of God. And of course, you know, when we give as it is written in, in, I believe it's Proverbs, you know- Not giving to just those who give back to us, for even sinners will give and lend to sinners who repay them, but giving with no expectation of anything in return. You know, that's what it's about. You know, that when someone sues us for a shirt, that we give them our jacket as well, and that if they ask us to walk one mile, that we walk two. However, there are also some great sermons out there about how even Yeshua had boundaries. So you look at not every apostle went to the most private places with him. He had, you know, circles of trust, and he talks about boundaries. And we've seen, you know, Yeshua have human emotions of anger and confrontation when it was necessary to do so. So, you know, it is not just give all without boundaries. And I have a lot of... If you're really into those conversations, I've had a lot of great episodes about that, especially when it comes to addiction, when it comes to- Yeah being held emotionally hostage, when it comes to enablement, when it comes to codependency for relationships and addiction. It's a whole topic on its own. What I wanna wrap up with really is Old Ranger New Dad, getting into, we've talked a little bit about the creation of it. I wanna talk about how it's going and what the future is looking like, and really who would benefit from listening to it, being a guest on it, collaborating with you, kind of promoting what you're doing now. So it, it's, it's really been slowly building, but it has, you know, I haven't had a viral clip from that or anything really, really to that level. But I will say ironically, School to Embassy project, one of those clips on TikTok, a year and a half after I published it, outta nowhere, one morning I pick up my phone and I have like 300 notifications from TikTok. And I'm like I don't know what's happening. Somebody's spamming me." And I'm scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. New follower, new follower, new follower, just page after page. And it's, it's the retired Marine general who talks about his style of leadership and going to a military base and saying, "Do not paint. Do not have them clean rocks. Do not have Marines waste their time getting everything pretty for me and buffing floors so that it's shiny when I show up. I wanna see cigarette butts on the ground. I wanna see gaggles of Marines standing around smoking and joking. I wanna see the real Marine Corps. Do not try to sugarcoat it for me." Wow. He was enlisted. He was enlisted- Hmm ... prior, so he comes from enlisted side, and he's a- So he knows ... very, very, and a very devout follower. And so he's like, "I understand what the Marine Corps is and what it should be, and that's what I'm going to expect." And so he has gone to a, to visit bases where they did not listen to him on more than one occasion. And he said, "That first sergeant was no longer a first sergeant when I left, 'cause I told him, 'You are not to do this, and you did it, so I can't trust you.'" If you can't follow a simple order, how is anybody below you supposed to follow your orders? Mm. So, yeah, that, that one clip has over half a million views, and I- it happened literally within, like, maybe a month. It went from, you know, 20 views, 50 views to over half a million. And that's the strangeness of it all because- Yeah ... you know, I just had an episode that was out maybe a year ago, and one weekend, boom, like dozens of people were listening to it every day for three days, and then it died again. You know? Like- Yeah it just- Yeah. Yeah I've, I've seen holidays pick up certain episodes. I've seen just ... It just comes and goes. Like I've mentioned before, I had a episode that got listened to every single day. I had a Gen Z suicide prevention episode for six months straight every single day listened to, and then gone. And then suddenly implementing traditional values into the modern workplace and world, The Working Man's Guide, suddenly that was listened to every single day for, like, a month, and then it died, and then So it just comes and goes in waves- Yeah ... sometimes, you know? You never know, and it's hard with ... I, like I said, I post two clips or reels a day on average, and it's like keeping track of some old episode blowing up, you know, sometimes I don't know, sometimes I do. But I think it really speaks to ... i, I r- I really, as a man of faith, put all the episodes into God's hands. With everything I say, "Lord, I don't care about the, the instant gratification," right? We are planting the seeds of a tree whose shade we will never sit under, right? The conversion of y- is yours. The blessing is yours. The message is yours. So I say, "Take this episode to the right person at the right time," maybe after I'm passed away, maybe it's three years from now, maybe it's today. So I, I really believe that part of it is God. Sometimes it is just the algorithm or something's trending. But I do believe that things are reaching out in the right place and the right time. And I know it's hard for people who aren't of the faith to, to be- to believe in that, you know? They're ... It's just like, "My content's not reaching people." But I know that it is going to reach people at the right time, at the right place, and it's having that faith in that helps keep me from getting buried in the depressiveness of the numbers, which a lot of podcasters or creators fall into, watching every single number, watching all the downloads, the views, the comments. We can get really disheartened by that. But when you have that anchor of faith and know that it's all in God's hand, you don't need to worry. And so many people are carrying this heavy burden of viewership and popularity that they shouldn't be. Yeah. Paralysis through analysis or over analysis- Ooh, I like that. I like that ... is, yeah, is, is, is something that, you know, Mallory struggles with 100%. I'm sure she said that because she knows that she watches the algorithm. And, and it's ... If you're putting out a post and it has 5,000 views every single day, you put out a post and you get five grand views plus, and then- For no reason you put out posts and now only 1,000 people even see them. And now you're just like, "Wait, what is happening?" And then you start reaching out to your friends, and they have the exact same experience. That's an algorithm change, and that's just, that's part of the li- right, of social media and the way it's going to work. And it, you know, obviously it's a joke and it's tongue in cheek, the, the algorithm giveth and it taketh away, right? It's, it's- Right ... the, the algorithm is, and if you... Me and Mallory had a very long discussion about this yesterday. It was like the algorithm is today what your average civilian is trying to please as their god. The algorithm is God. What they want is their god to reach down for no real purpose, grab them, and lift them u- up on high. And that's, that's the dream of Gen Z. Now, the, and the numbers so far that I've seen are roughly 80%, and I'm sure it's probably even climbed since then, of Gen Z want to be influencers. And I'm sure Gen Alpha is gonna be even worse. Mm-hmm. And it's gonna be a point where 100% only want to be influencers because they believe the curated fake life that they see on these Instagram pages, on these things, and then you see a Kardashian posting and making $1 million per post. And same thing with a Joe Rogan, right? Yeah, cool. It's y- you see somebody who's the one per- who's not just the 1%, is the percent. This is the one person on top of it all. Well, if you're, if you're trying to build a computer program and you're expecting to do better than Bill Gates tomorrow, it's not happening. It won't happen anytime i- in, in reality, it's not gonna happen. But th- when you try to, everyone's like, "Well, shoot for the stars." Okay, listen, if you shoot incrementally, you're gonna get really, really high and much closer to the stars, and that might sound counterproductive to what all the fairy tale beliefs that this generation and the next are being fed, but I'm 100% with what you just said. So spray and pray is what we mockingly talk about, right, the enemy doing, because that's literally what they do. They don't even look when they're firing at us with their AK47 a lot of times. They literally just spray in the air and hope that Allah guides their bullets into the infidels. And so that's, a- again, it's kind of a, a rough thing to, to joke about. But at the same time, when we're just putting out the word and there's a living, breathing God that created all of us, we know that- A story that I just had a podcast two days ago with, or three days ago with a retired Navy chaplain, Steve Mills, that we had at Military Creator Con. That's where I met him. He was on my podcast live, so it's already out, and he is sharing about what it's like to walk with someone through the darkest days in their life. You're with a sailor, their wife, you know, cheats on them, maybe she's pregnant with somebody else's baby or she just emptied the bank account, emptied the house, and she's just letting him know that, that, that they're done, and he just got on the ship and they're gonna be at sea for six months, so he can't do anything about it. And what... I asked him, "What, what do you tell this person?" And he's like, "That's not on me. And if you think it's on you to say the right thing, if it's on you to fix this for this person, if you think you're gonna say some magical phrase that's gonna break this up and make them laugh and... You're going to fail, you're gonna burn out, and you're gonna cause a lot of harm." And he didn't say it specifically like that, but as I've kind of walked through what he said in its entirety, that's really what it is, and that is what he, you and I, and people that are out just trying to put good things out into the world. I have the exact same belief system, that I want what I'm doing today to matter after I'm dead. I, I, I have faith that God has a reason for me to be in this space, and He's given me the ability and just the timing and everything to have this time to sit down with you and be on a podcast rather than, you know, going to a 9:00 to 5:00 every day. Right. That being said, even if that changes and, and we end up I, I don't have as much time to do it, it doesn't matter to me. Yeah. I'm not focused on the money, I'm focused on the change. I'm focused on preparing the next generation of young men, and that's as much focus as I'm gonna do on it. Plenty of young women need to to change, but they need to listen to my wife, not to me. Y- y- if you're a young woman and you, you want to be an Army Ranger, cool, then yeah, maybe you'll follow me. But e- even though that's open to you today my wife is the person that you should be... And I believe that, too, with sexes. Like, you shouldn't listen to women to try to figure out how to be a man, and you shouldn't listen to a man to try to figure out how to walk through life necessarily as a woman. That doesn't mean that that wisdom's not there and that the men have nothing to say for the women or the women have nothing to say for the men, because of course there's wisdom and there's a lot of application. But so many people are listening to people that are all about money and monetization and clicks, and that, I would say, is probably 98% of people who are filming something today are, minimum 98%, are doing it to make money- And that's their actual- Yeah focus. Everything on top that you see is the, the banana split. Underneath it, it, it's, it's hollow. There's nothing there. And this is, this is for photos for a commercial. This isn't... You don't eat this. So that, that's what I've seen, and I know that's the reason why Military Creator Con, PodFest, these groups where people... You c- you find out very fast that somebody's in this for money and in it for clout, like that's a word. In it for right, in it for praise, in it for all these other things. Exactly. And so, you know, ultimately, that's, that's what I care about, and I told my wife when I first started, this is my, this is my success. And this is, this is where people trying to aim so high, it's not that I'm settling by aiming lower. I'm aiming at something that doesn't put the reward on me. If you put the reward on you, then even if you succeed, you didn't succeed the way you could have. If you put the reward on someone else, then you are blessing someone else. By doing this, you automatically win. And, and even if God doesn't point you out on Judgment Day and be like, "Oh, and by the way, that podcast was cool," that's not happening. But for my family tree, as an example, I didn't know for sure I was gonna ever be able to have a child. Now I have one. I intend on keeping him alive, and that he will have- Right other children, and that I will have heir, you know, grandchildren and, and, and have a lineage. I want my lineage for the first time in human history to be able to be recorded in high definition, color, my words, exactly what my voice is, and Mallory's. And that's why I'm trying to get her on podcasting. Thank you very much for getting her on your podcast. I'm not joking. That's, that's a huge step for us because if we could do that, and if her and I could have a podcast, a, a regular podcast, either separately or together, no matter what, we win, no matter what. Because if I could right now go back and watch my grandfather talking about what it was like growing up in the 1940s and '50s while, while they were street racing and doing all kinds of wild stuff with old muscle cars and chopping the tops off of their cars and, and just doing, like, the life that they had to live. And almost everybody married a girl down the street, and it was a dirt road, you know? And that's just, "Why did you marry Grandma?" "Well, she was down the street." Hmm. "Okay, well w- what about Gra- great-grandma and Grandpa?" "Well, they, you know, they were next door." And that's how it was back then. Same thing with my great-grandfather. I don't know him, never met him. He died before I, I was born. And so I really wish, right, that I could. And that's what you, and now, you know, as you're gonna go down your life and have children, that- If all you fix, if all you help, if all you change is the people in your immediate circle, the family, then when you get to judgment day, when you get to the end, once you are standing before God, you can at least say that you didn't bury your gifts in a hole in the dirt. And you can't, you, you can't guarantee that your lineage is gonna go on and just be this amazing great people of faith. But if you did the best you could truly, and oh, by the way, you documented it so there's no way they could say, "Well, actually he was a terrible guy." Here, here's what he was teaching me every day, and it's video proof of it. I'm not adding that into it. That's just funny to think of now that I think of that. I've got proof that I was a good dad to you. But yeah, I just think that that's, that in and of itself should be the first goal. And if you start by creating success, then everything after that is just either more success or it certainly isn't failure. Because even if you don't get amazing brand deals and you never reach making a million dollars or $100,000 or $10,000 per post, you don't, you don't need to. What you need to do is help the people that you can, the, the people in your immediate life. And if more people did that, going back to connectivity, if you can just help your neighbors. I, I told you I do 50,000 things. So Saturday I loaded up a trailer with toys, like legit toys that are collector toys, and art that I put together. I bought posters, put them together and framed. And I took it out to the side of the road, had a tent that I bought off Temu. It was, it was worth it. And then I sat there all day and sold toys, right? That, I've been selling only toys at Comic-Con at toy shows. That's what I usually do. That's one side thing that I've been doing over the last couple of years. I love it, but I'm all in on podcasting now, so I'm trying to just get, get rid of all that inventory. That being said, I came home and I had my trailer full of toys, and I was about to load it in my garage, and then I thought, "You know, my neighbor down the street just painted his house," and it was a different color than is in the HOA's approved book. So I, I went over and just asked him for the colors, and he went and printed out the copy of the approved letter from the HOA board and gave it to me. Because of that, I would've never been able to do that on my own, 'cause I didn't even know, you know, I would've just went with colors, 'cause I didn't even think about, to be honest, really trying to buck up against the system and change that. He did that, and he gave that to me, so when I went to the board and handed them, I'm like, "Hey, you've already signed this. I just need you to sign it for me." That was a huge help for me. So I went over and just knocked on his door out of the blue, and they had guests over too, so it was a little awkward, but not too bad. I knock on the door and he comes, "Hey, what's up man?" And I'm just like, "Hey, I have toys. I'm trying to get rid of my inventory." Mallory doesn't know this by the way. "And you really helped me out with painting your house. If your kids wanted to come over and pick out a couple toys, that'd be cool. So if you want them to do that, you can. If not, that's cool too." And so of course, his kids came over, and the thing that this kid wanted I have. And the next thing this kid can't believe that he had. It was Christmas, and it's not December. This isn't the time that kids get presents, but they all walked out with, you know, three, four toys, little pieces of art that they love, and didn't cost me much. Right? And now I'm- I've- I've been thinking about that one moment. This was l- the day before yesterday, Saturday. I wanna do more of that, and that's why podcasting for me has to work, is because not only do I want to help my lineage... Yep, done. So I'm already a success in my mind. Now, what else can I do? Now, who else can I help? And just that one thing right there. I want to get to a point to where I can make money doing podcasting, not so that I can get $100 million Spotify deal, not so that I can be the number one, you know, S. Ryan. I f- I don't wanna knock off Sean Ryan and be Seth Ryan. I don't need that. I, I just want to be at a level to where I have money, that I can pay my bills and support my family and do, do right by them, but we're not gonna add luxury. We're not buying a new house and doing all the things that everybody else wants to upgrade and improve their life, and then they're stressed out and in debt, and if anything fails, they're screwed. I just wanna keep everything exactly like it is, maintain it, live life, enjoy it, help other people. And when you get to the point to where you can help other people, self-actualization, if you went through psychology in college, when you get to that level and you start helping other people... And the chaplain, Steve Mills, that I interviewed, right? He now has moved on to helping and focusing. He's retired, but he's still hope- helping veterans who are in hospice. Hmm. Now, that's a whole nother level, right? And that's also a level my mom has been at. My mom used to work for hospice. She would go take care of people when they have, you know, a few months left, and that is a special type of person. I don't know if I am that person, 'cause I haven't done that. But when I hear of, of somebody doing something like that, that pricks my heart, and maybe that's God's way of this whole podcasting was actually just to get me to interview Steve so that w- I could hear about that and that experience, and then I go do that. Maybe that's what I need to do, go and find out toys. But no matter what it is, I, I need to get to a point to where I'm really making an impact in other people's lives and showing them Christ on Earth, not as being Him, but simply a reflection. And that's all we're ever asked to do. We're asked to be a reflection. We're asked to be a light, to be salt. It's not as hard, as insane hard as most people think but it starts small, and it starts by truly believing and having faith that you are not gonna be rewarded for what you're doing. And if, if you let that go, your entire world and perspective shifts, and that's the type of person you wanna, wanna be married to. I assure you this, I dodged a couple of bullets and and maybe a missile or two. And I ended up married to Mallory, and I can't imagine how my life would be if it wasn't with somebody with that strong of faith, that when... I'm sure she didn't s- I'm sure she didn't really tell you guys the full details. When she had just gotten wheeled down from the operating room, the doctor, the nurse came out and told me that Mallory was alive. Unbeknownst to me, I was on the table, I didn't know that. I-- we brought her in because she was bleeding. We didn't bring her in because she was dying. She comes out after four, three and a half hours of surgery and says, "Okay, so Mallory's alive." Now I'm in shock. Now I'm panicking. What do you mean she's alive? "But she... It was very close, and we had to remove you know, we had to remove her wound, and she doesn't know it, so please don't say anything. Would you like to come see her? Do you want some water?" If it were a practical joke and deadpan humor, that would've been a good one. It wasn't. She was serious. And this was 4:00 AM in the morning at this point, or 3:00 AM in the morning. And so I walk over and see Mallory, and she's coming out of the anesthesia, and I'm having to keep a straight face, and I'm trying to be strong. And I'm trying not to say anything that would give away anything. I'm just, just petting her head and, and her arm. And they wheel us down. It didn't take very long. They wheel us down to our room. And they said, "The doctor's gonna come break the news to you," the nurse said. "The doctor will come down and, and, and, and talk to her." And so he comes into the room, and it wasn't very long. He was, he was pretty quick about it. And he says He takes a deep breath. It's obvious, like, here comes something, and he's just like, "So here's what happened. And I tried everything I could. I even reached out to other surgeons. I, I, I, I exhausted everything I could possibly do to fix this on my own. But ultimately, I had to save your life, and that meant removing your uterus. It meant removing your ability to have children in the future naturally." And Mallory did not take a breath and, and start crying. She didn't do... She didn't react the way a normal human would react in that situation. She instantly replied with, "I already know." And the doctor immediately, and the other nurse in the room immediately look at me, and I look at them, and it's very obvious on my face that I didn't tell. So she's like, "I already knew because it was too painful. I knew you had to have done more than just, you know, what, what we were thinking it was. You weren't just going in there and, you know, putting some stitches or doing whatever. It, it's, it hurts way too much for that." And in the sentence, she's, she hasn't broke. She's saying a s- a continuous sentence. She says, "And God is going to use this somehow." So that's the type of faith that you don't fake. That's the type of belief system that you don't have unless every fiber of your being is so ingrained in believing in a good God that even if God has in your life as a plan that you lose the ability to have your own children, we still have three frozen embryos. That's not lost on anybody. That He's still gonna provide a way. And if those three embryos do not work, He's still gonna, He's still gonna provide a way. We'll adopt. We're g- there's a reason why He's done this. Her story is going to help somebody out there. And then from this, multiple people at our church have come up to us and said, "Hey, we went through something similar. I don't really wanna get into it, but it was rough, and we stopped trying." And I, I feel instead of so angry at God, I, I didn't have anger for God at all. I was so blessed that my wife's alive, and that my son is still at home with my mom. And he's okay. That everybody stand up on Sunday and look nice and smile and clap and, and pat each other on the back and sing songs. You can lead prayers, you can even preach. But it's not until you literally have everything on the line that you might lose, that you care about, that you've worked toward your whole life, that you find out how much faith you truly have. And I've had friends when I grew up as a kid, that they prayed for mother, just a routine, sh- in and out. She was supposed to go in, very light anesthesia, do just a little whatever it was, outpatient surgery. She died on the table. What? I pray to God that she's fine. There's no reason her life should have even been in danger. This was a very simple thing. And because of that, they left faith as a whole for decades. And they've luckily, I think, they have now amazingly, they have, they have come back, and that's something that I know my family and I have prayed about for many years. They don't know that necessarily, but we were always keeping them in our prayers and in our mind because we know that we want to, we want to have somebody like that that we can share faith with, and we want to spend eternity with them. But you're only gonna get there if you, if you accept God, and if you want to serve Him forever. And the least that we can do is serve Him in the amazing blessed life that we have to the, you know, today. So I, I know I kinda went a long-winded and I went across several different topics. I don't even remember what original question was, but, Oh, yeah, I don't think you answered it. No. But that's fine. When I'm on your podcast, I'm gonna return the favor for sure. All right. That you have- I appreciate that ... for almost two hours talked for. I- I- I'll, I'll, I got my 10 minutes in and, and you got the rest of it, so, Awesome ... no, but it's, it's all, all great stuff, you know. And I know you and I could do plenty more episodes. We haven't even gotten into, you know, funny military stories or unpacked- Oh, yeah ... a lot of the military and law enforcement mental health side. So, you know, we'll always re-collaborate, and I'm sure trying to get... Well, I'm moving to Florida, you know, so I'll, I'll be closer to you. Yeah. And you, me and your wife and my future wife will do some content together. And I told those two- I would love to ... they can go on. I said, "Me, me and Seth will go get some beers or something or, or, or, or whatever it is, and you two ladies can go to Walmart and, and do your dress shopping and get your summer sandals and all that." So we'll, we'll be meeting up again soon for sure. And you know I got a schedule- Awesome ... to be on your podcast, but- Yes ... i'm, and I'm excited for that New Rang- yeah. O- O- Old Ranger, New Dad ... Old Ranger, New Dad. Yep. Almost said it backwards. You're good. You're good. Yeah. Well- It's a mouth ... trust me, I've said it backwards. Yeah. It's awkward when I say it- Old Ranger, New Dad on my own podcast backwards. It's 'cause, 'cause you were talking about how old you are, so I was like, old dad. Yes. Yeah. Old . Yeah, so. But, I was thinking Old Ranger, Old Dad, but then I was like, well, there should be a juxtapose, or there should be something funny in the name, and I ran it through chat, and they were like, "Yeah, that's way better, New Dad- Instead of Old Dad." But yeah, no it's funny. Yeah, it's funny you say that. M- moving down here and just being around people, that, yeah, that makes all the difference in the world with podcasting. That's what I love about, again, Military Creator Con, PodFest, all those people being so close around here. And James and Mara, we, they're, they're in Texas right now. They're... As soon as they get back, we're gonna have dinner with them, and I just love- They're actually in California now. They drove- Are they? ... from Florida- Yeah ... to Texas, and then they drove from Texas to California. Nice. Nice. So they've been on the road all week. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, 'cause he was, he had, something was going down with their flight, so I think that's, that's what ended up happening. But- Mm ... yeah, the, just, just the, the network that we have though, I will, I will say, man, that's why I love pushing people toward your content. And just every- everybody that we met at Military Creator Con, it was so amazing because, like you mentioned this almost everybody there were, were people of faith, and that's not a prerequisite. There were definitely people there that weren't people who, you know, necessarily practice a- and have a faith. But the vast majority, it was just, it was funny because Mallory and I, we talked about that too. It's just like everybody we're talking to, at some point very quickly in the conversation you find out that they definitely believe in God, because they're giving credit to God for this blessing or that. And that is one of the two... I've mentioned faith, but having humility and having gratitude. For any young man or young woman that's looking toward a spouse, as you obviously have already found yourself, when you find somebody who is grateful for the air conditioning they have, and understand that the vast majority of the world is not in the luxury that we live in to this day. And it's small things like that that are not small. It's the things like that that when the big things happen, that's when you find out that this person really is grateful for all they have and all you guys have built together, and it's not all about a transaction. It's not about what can you do for me today. And, and they don't have to be happy every day. You know, nobody's- Mm ... happy every day. And if you think you're gonna be happy every day, and you just keep switching husbands and wives until you're happy every day, you will definitely have more- Yeah ... husbands and wives than Donald Trump, and that's, that's a lot. So Right. So on that note, I do wanna wrap it up 'cause it's, Let's go ... I've got another interview right after this, you know, the daily grind. Awesome. No worries. You know how it is. But- Yeah ... like I said, we'll be collaborating together in the future for sure, you know- Yeah ... now that we're bumping into each other in person more and online more. Plus you got your whole new thing going now that you're up and established, so we'll be seeing you again. But I highly encourage everyone to check out your content. We're gonna have that in the description below for people to check out, whether they wanna be a guest or collaborate or just, you know, watch some of your episodes. And like you said, you've already worked with plenty of impactful guests. I found that each interview I've done has been so different and so insightful. Sometimes topics overlap, but even then, you know, you're getting different perspectives from people, I'm sure in your case as well, from around the world, around the country, from different generations. So, it's truly amazing to have that community and collaboration and, you know, I thank you for the work that you're doing now. You know, one thing that I always tell people we gotta recognize is you and I don't have to be doing this. I could be on the beach right now. You could be at Walmart shopping with your wife. But we're here taking some time out of our day to put together content to help make an impact for people that we don't even know. So I wanna take that time as well to recognize what you're doing and thank you for that and for being on the podcast today. I appreciate it, brother. Absolutely. I'm always gonna be here, always gonna be making content