MrBallen (Former Navy SEAL): If You Feel Lost, Here's How To Turn Your Life Around In 2025!

I was in Afghanistan in 2014 as a Navy SEAL. We were in the middle of this gunfight when a grenade came over the wall and detonated. I was waiting to either be shot by the enemy or bleed to death. All that was running through my head was, "And that's the way I think people should look at their lives."

So interesting, because I've never actually heard someone give that kind of advice before. Mr. Ballin is a former Navy SEAL turned master storyteller and content creator. He uses his battlefield experiences and personal failures to inspire, educate, and help people overcome challenges to achieve their goals.

My family were very successful people with Pulitzer Prizes, PhDs, and then there's me, getting into street fights and about to get expelled. But it took becoming a colossal failure to realize that if you want to fix this, you have to start with saying, "It's my fault," and then do something about it.

But then fear becomes the thing keeping people from doing it. It's the very select number of people in this life who say, "I'm going to still do that thing that scares the hell out of me," that have the best and most fulfilling life. So I decided to become a Navy SEAL because it was only a really small percent that make it through the grueling, mentally torturing training.

What's the similarities that you noticed between the people that made it? Two words: it's "mental toughness." But then I realized the reality of the job: you kill people. I had really leaned into being as alpha as I possibly could be, but there were just some things that I did, and I struggled so, so bad. I had to face my demons.

What have you learned about dealing with demons? If you begin to have those thoughts, the only way I have found to cope with them is... This has always blown my mind a little bit: 53% of you that listen to the show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show. So could I ask you for a favor before we start? If you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us, the free, simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button.

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John, yes, there are clues in your early context that suggest you might have walked the path that you've walked in your life, but there's also clues that suggest you absolutely would never have done what you've done.

So taking me back to that early context, what do I need to know about that environment, the influences of that environment, to understand how you ended up where you are today? I think it all starts with the family I was born into. They were very successful academic people.

I was born in a town called Quincy, Massachusetts, just south of Boston. My mother, father, and two sisters are brilliant minds in the academic sense of the word. One of my sisters has gone on to win two Pulitzer Prizes, my dad's won a Pulitzer Prize, and my other sister has a PhD and worked out of a Harvard lab. My mom is a professional writer.

And then there's me. When I was growing up, I could have done well in school, but I didn't want to. My form of rebellion was being a bad student willfully. I would go out and party with my friends, trying to be sort of like a bad kid in a way.

The town I grew up in was not a place where academics really thrived. It was a working-class, tough place. I wanted to be like an edgy, tough guy, so I'd get into street fights, get my ass kicked, and stay out drinking with my friends. But what it did was set me up for colossal failure.

By the time I got to college, I got in because my mom, the professional writer, wrote my college essay. My grades were horrible in high school. In fact, they were so bad that when I sent off my application, the school got in touch with me and said, "Hey, your grades are not really what we're looking for, but boy, that essay was so beautiful, we're going to give you a chance."

So I got into college. I went to the University of Massachusetts out in western Mass, where a lot of kids from my area went to school. It's a big party school, and I immediately bombed my first semester. I got a 1.016 GPA, which should have been like a zero. I basically didn't go to class.

I was involved in this riot. At some point, our football team, which was a team that no one cared about, made it to a conference game. The student body didn't care about the football team, but for some reason, when they lost this game, it instilled this need to riot on campus.

It was concentrated in this one area of campus where I happened to live. I went out there, breaking windows and being a horrible kid, with security cameras everywhere recording me. At the end of the semester, there was a witch hunt to find the people involved in this riot.

The college police website posted images of faces of people in the crowd, and anybody could anonymously name people if they saw them. Everybody got expelled. I found pictures of me, and I just got my grades back: 1.016. At the same time, I had been telling my brilliant parents, "Yeah, I'm doing great in school. Things are going really well."

I had to tell them, "Actually, it's the opposite, and I'm probably going to get expelled if I don't withdraw." My dad came out to the school and sat down with the dean, who said, "John has all these violations of living in the dorm, like noise complaints and being a jerk. We're going to kick him out of the dorms. Even if he stays at the school, he has to live off-campus."

My mom and dad said, "You're coming home. We're done with this. You're an adult, and you can either live at home and go to school or get a job, but you're going to be an adult." So I came home at 18.

I was living in my mom's basement in Quincy. I remember the first couple of weeks I was home, I felt mad at my parents, like, "How dare they make me withdraw from the school?" Even though there was all this information that it was completely my fault.

But I had an epiphany when I was literally in my mom's basement. I realized, "Oh, this is my fault. I have created a habit pattern and a way of thinking that's put me in my mom's basement with no direction. I've been gifted all these opportunities that I've squandered."

Something changed in my head. I didn't want to be a screw-up. I was looking at my family members as being so successful, and I just thought, "I can't be that." I was becoming self-aware that that's the path I was on. I was going to be the guy that floundered everything and didn't amount to anything.

So I made it simple: "I'm just going to go to a local school, get good grades, and graduate from college." That was going to be my focus for now. I did that. I went to a local school, got my grades up, and actually transferred back to the school I withdrew from to finish out my couple of years in college.

It was like a drug, having a goal that I was working towards. Doing something that was worth my time and studying was really addictive for me. By the time I was in my last year in college, I ironically had no clue what I would do post-college.

The goal was just to graduate college. I didn't really have a clue what was next. I thought about briefly becoming a lawyer because I was studying philosophy and English, but I had always had this draw to serve in the military.

Some friends of mine in high school went off to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2006, and I wanted to do something really hard in the military because I needed a big goal. Graduating college was this goal I had achieved, and I wanted to do something hard in the military. That's when I got turned on to the SEAL Teams.

The cool thing about the Navy SEAL Teams is virtually anybody can apply to be a SEAL. You have to have the right physical fitness and be a citizen, but basically, anyone can try out. However, it's only those who survive the training that become SEALs, and it's a really small percentage of people.

It was the thing that was like, "Wait a minute, if I go through this rigorous training, I'll become a guy that will no longer be viewed as the screw-up in high school who sort of got it together with college." I'll be able to reinvent myself, serve in the military, and take on a big challenge that requires a whole bunch of training and prep before I get to go.

So I shifted my goal from graduating college to becoming a Navy SEAL, and everything fell in line. Naturally, after that, I became a YouTuber, which is an even longer story. But basically, I became a SEAL, got hurt, was medically retired, and then posted something online that went viral.

I love telling stories, as you can see from this long intro, and I just kept telling stories. Now I'm here. But it started with setting a goal and achieving it, which sounds so basic. I think a lot of people go through life just sort of doing stuff because they were told to or they just sort of fell into it.

I found that setting a goal that's consciously something you care about, for whatever reason, and working hard to achieve it organizes your whole life. My life, starting with coming home from college and being in the basement, has been a series of setting a goal and shooting for that goal. That's all that matters.

It's interesting because even before that, there was something that seemed to happen to you in that basement, which I consider to be the starting place: awareness. This self-awareness, and with that self-awareness came responsibility. You said, "Actually, I need to stop blaming my mom and dad."

I have a role to play in this. That's really hard for everybody to be truly aware of how you might be contributing to the circumstances of your own life. It's a harsh truth when you realize it's your fault, or a big part of it is your fault. But that's what self-awareness is: taking responsibility for the good and the bad.

What's your relationship been like with responsibility, and what's your view on the importance of that broadly? I would say that when I was pre-basement moment, I was definitely in the mindset of playing the victim. If something bad happened, it was somebody else's fault. I wasn't taking responsibility for anything.

I was the guy that would come home from school and tell my mom, "You wouldn't believe it! We had a test today, and Joey got a 50. I got a 65, but Joey got a 50!" That's the way you approach it, versus saying, "I failed the test."

When I decided I would graduate college and organize my life around that, and then become a SEAL, I realized that it's not enough to simply say, "I'm going to do this thing." You need to own the entire process.

For example, in SEAL training, there were a couple of moments where I failed miserably at tests and opportunities to be a leader. I squandered it. The way SEAL training works is it's very reputational. As you go along in training, the closer you get to graduation, the closer you get to being a real SEAL.

Your instructors, who are active-duty SEALs, are no longer viewing you as just some candidate. Now it's like, "You could be my teammate. There are not too many of us." It changes from, "You aren't going to make it," to, "You better do a good job because I might need your help down the line."

I remember in the final part of training, there was this confidence exercise where they exposed our class to CS gas, which is something that's pretty standard in the military. The only thing they say is, "This is a confidence booster. It's going to suck. It's going to make you feel like you're dying from this gas."

They set us up in a square, kneeling shoulder-to-shoulder in an open field on San Clemente Island in California. All the instructors had their gas masks on and held out poles. They fired off these CS grenades, and a big white smoke came out. They held out the pole, and you just had to stay there and take it.

It was like a fight or flight instinct. It was instant. I ran. I had to get tackled by one of the instructors because I was just out. I wasn't even thinking. Nobody else ran. This was the end of training.

Afterwards, I was brought into the amphitheater, where they taught us classes about ordinance. The main instructor stood up and said, "Allan, stand up." All my peers knew I did this, and all the instructors knew I did this. He said, "Allan, you're a [expletive]. Sit down. You're a [expletive], and I never want to serve with you, and neither should your classmates."

I had to wear these like bikini trunks over my shorts for the rest of training. It was the worst moment ever because I had made it so far into training. But I knew, and by the way, at this point, we weren't even home. I wasn't able to go home and see my wife.

We were out on this island for a month, working seven days a week until we were done. The only choice was to own the fact that I did that. Don't make excuses for it. Let this show people my actual strength.

Instead of running from it, literally own it. Take responsibility for what you did and show people that I'm prepared to show up for work every day wearing these trunks and be looked at as lesser than.

There's something really important in that, which is critical to business and to anyone that's professional or in a relationship. If you make a mistake, you get the second opportunity, which is how you respond to the mistake you made.

In business, when I was running a marketing business, we might drop the ball in some way, but we could actually make the relationship stronger than it was before the mistake by how we responded. Making a quick phone call, apologizing, taking responsibility...

I think there were some people that carried that stigma into the teams. Right after we finished this, we kind of went into the SEAL Teams. But I do think that there were definitely some people that, and I'm not even tooting my own horn, knew they could trust that I was prepared to take responsibility for me.

I'm going to do what I'm supposed to do. I'm going to be the best teammate I can be. Even at my lowest, you're still going to get the best version of me. That doesn't mean I think I'm better than anybody else. It just means I'm an adult.

I think that's a big part of being an adult: responsibility is ultimately owning those mistakes. Sometimes your mistakes are painful, public, and awful, and that's the most important time to own them.

That's your opportunity not just to rectify the mistake but to become a stronger, better version of yourself. My mistake in college was a series of mistakes, my first semester of screwing it up and getting sent back home.

But it was only when I recognized that it was my fault and I had to own that that I was able to graduate college and try to become a Navy SEAL. In the process, I had the CS gas incident, but in some ways, that made me a better SEAL.

In failure comes the best opportunity for success, which is something I certainly didn't coin, but it's the truth.

What are the Navy SEALs? Because around the world, people are aware of the term Navy SEAL, but we don't fully know what it is.

Every branch of the military has some form of specialized unit that carries out special operations. It's the stuff you see in Call of Duty video games and Modern Warfare. In the U.S., you have the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Air Force, each with their respective special operations divisions.

Of all the special operations units in America, you could make the case that the most well-known and potentially most skilled is the Navy SEAL Teams. The acronym SEAL stands for Sea, Air, Land.

The idea is that even though it's under the Navy, which is maritime and water, the SEAL Teams are a special operations group that can insert into virtually any environment: sea, air, or land. They can also use multiple insertion platforms, whether it's diving, jumping, or going in on land.

It's a highly versatile special operations group. A lot of other special operations groups are specialized in certain geographies. The SEALs do everything. They came into prominence in the 60s under JFK and really became well-known post-9/11 because they were being sent out into the Middle East.

How long does it take to get through training and pass out the other end? Broadly speaking, it takes about two years, but realistically, it takes a little bit longer.

There are two ways to become a SEAL: you either go in as an enlisted person or as an officer. The enlisted component is someone without a college degree who just raises their hand and serves. The officer side requires a college degree to apply.

In the SEAL Teams, there's a tiny number of officer SEALs and a massive number of enlisted SEALs. There are two very different pathways into training. If you go the officer route, it's practically like a political appointment just to get an opportunity.

There's a handful of spots available, and you have all these people on the enlisted side who have college degrees and could easily become officers but want to be SEALs. This makes the enlisted side super competitive.

You have professional athletes, Olympians, and the best college athletes, along with random people like me who have no resume. You all show up for the class in San Diego, which is technically six months long.

But before you've even joined the Navy, you need to compete for a spot to even have a chance to try out. There's a whole application process that can take years. If you get your chance as an enlisted person, you first go to boot camp, which is two months in Chicago.

Technically, you can fail out of it, but really, you won't. At the end of boot camp, you go to a prep school, another two months in Chicago. Mind you, you haven't even started training yet.

Now you're four months in, and you're in the Navy, but you're not really in SEAL training yet. You go to this prep school where you learn how to swim and run. You already know how to do these things, but professional coaches work with you.

The Navy invests a lot of money in getting you really strengthened up and mentally prepared. Following the prep school, you go to San Diego, where you go through what's regarded as the hardest part of SEAL training, called BUD/S, which stands for Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL School.

Imagine whatever you think of as military boot camp, but make it not two months long but six months long, and make it a thousand times more difficult. It's intense, grueling physical, emotional, and mental torture for six months.

That's the part where everybody fails out and drops out. If you made a movie about SEAL training, you'd focus on the six months of BUD/S training, particularly the first two months, because that's the most physically challenging.

Once you finish that, you go to advanced training. You're still not a SEAL yet. It's another six months of learning how to actually do the job. BUD/S is about whether you can handle it.

Advanced training or SEAL qualification training is about teaching you how to shoot a gun with surgical precision, jump out of a plane, and use technology because you need to know how to do the job. After that, you go to language school or medical school for additional qualifications before you go to your team.

All told, you have about two years from saying, "I want to be a Navy SEAL" to "I am now a Navy SEAL."

What are the similarities you noticed between the people that made it and those that didn't? The thing that stands out is that the folks who show up to BUD/S with incredible resumes often wash out quickly.

There was a guy who played for the Arizona Diamondbacks, 6'5", and looked like a god. He was so humble, but he washed out so quick. A lot of the other guys with big resumes typically wash out quickly, not because they lack the physical ability, but because they are used to being the best at what they do.

In BUD/S, your instructors don't care about who you were. If they suspect you think you're special because of your resume, they will torture you. They will single you out and make you feel terrible.

For me, I went to BUD/S and thought, "I'm a joke compared to the people here." I wasn't in great shape relative to my peers. The only thing on my resume was that I nearly flunked out of college but managed to graduate.

I had very little to lose. Either I'll make it, and that'll be amazing, or I won't, and people will say, "That's about right." The folks that go in with resumes expect to be really good, even if they're humble.

Everybody in their personal lives expects them to make it through because who wouldn't? The course is too long to simply gut your way through it. The level of physical discomfort in BUD/S is so unbelievably high that you need to want to be there.

You need something to hold on to in your brain that overrides the discomfort. For people like me, it was proving to myself that I could do this hard thing. It wasn't even about serving in the military; it was accomplishing this goal because I set my mind to it.

In my worst moments, I would go to that place where I thought, "This is worth it to me." For other guys, it's not. At the end, when you graduate, you look around and see a ragtag group of short, weird-looking guys that don't embody what you would think of as SEALs.

It's a group of guys that just didn't quit. A lot of it is because they had some sort of chip on their shoulder that internally drove them and allowed them to persevere when things got so bad.

If I were to meet the guy in his mother's basement and then meet the guy who qualified from SEAL training, how would their mentality differ? What evidence does the guy who graduated from SEAL training have that the other guy doesn't?

Before, when I first got to the basement, I wasn't even able to see what a mess I had made of my life. My default setting was that this is somebody else's fault. I actively remember being furious with my mom and dad for making me withdraw from college when I was about to get expelled.

I had a terrible GPA and couldn't afford to live in the dorms. There was no evidence to suggest I would succeed in college. It wasn't until I was home in the basement that I realized, "Wait a minute, it's you. It's not them; it's you."

It seems so obvious now, but it took falling to the bottom. Kudos to my mom, a single mom who didn't care. She was not like, "Don't worry, you'll figure it out." She was like, "No, you're going to get a job or move out, and you're going to pay rent while you're here."

At first, I was mad, but it became this arduous thing I had to overcome. I had no self-awareness and was genuinely blaming the world for my problems.

Then I went from that to being ultra self-aware and secure in my image. It took falling to the bottom, being home with no new opportunities in front of me, while other people were off at college succeeding.

It was in my mom's basement that it sank in: "If you want to fix this, you have to start with saying it's my fault and then do something about it."

This idea of rock bottom is interesting. It sounds tragic that sometimes people need to go to the bottom on their own to realize that, as the quote says, "The pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of making a change."

I never heard that until I was 18 and had just dropped out of university. I saw someone on YouTube say that change happens when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of making a change.

This speaks to why some people, when you listen to their stories, it wasn't until they hit rock bottom that they were able to look themselves in the mirror and take actions in the right direction.

Sometimes when you try to help someone and prop them up, like if your mother had said, "Here's some money, and you don't have to pay rent," she would be propping you up a little bit and keeping you away from that realization.

I'm trying to think about the kid that's listening to this right now that can relate. They might be in a job or whatever, knowing that there's something not quite right in their life. Maybe they're at a point where they can start to look themselves in the mirror and take responsibility.

Do they have to go to rock bottom to start to change their life? I think part of the reason I was fortunate is that when I hit rock bottom, I don't have what is called paralysis by analysis. I'm sort of an impulsive person, for better or worse.

Once I hit that rock bottom, it wasn't hard for me to quickly find a good North Star, which was college. I was going to do college. When I was nearing the end of college, I wanted a new goal.

SEAL training checked some boxes: I wanted to serve, it was a super hard goal, and it offered me a chance at reinvention and rebirth. I jumped to that.

I think there are plenty of people who have hit rock bottom and want to make a change. They know it's their fault or that they've contributed to it, but they don't know what to do next.

If you're at rock bottom, you have every choice in the world to make. One of the things I preach is that you don't need a perfect idea; you just need something that checks enough boxes for you to be worth doing.

For me, it was, "I'm in my mom's basement. I've done this to myself. I'm the reason I'm not at school. I'm the reason my parents are embarrassed about their son. It's my fault. What do I need to do?"

I should graduate school because that demonstrates that what happened at UMass is fixable. I can graduate school; I can do it. So I did it.

I think it was Joe who said that when you're lost in a military context, you need to start moving. It doesn't necessarily matter which direction you move in, but you need to start moving in a direction.

That's what I was thinking about when you mentioned paralysis by analysis. People might be at rock bottom but don't know what to do, so they just sit in the same situation.

In that context, certainty is sometimes better for people than the uncertainty of what happens if they make the wrong choice. If you've hit rock bottom and want to fix your life, but you get paralysis by analysis and go nowhere, that only reinforces the idea that you screwed up again.

You haven't; there's just too many choices, and you're allowing too many factors to be at play. Joe's advice is dead on.

There's another way that's talked about in the military, which is that an 80% solution now is often better than a 100% solution tomorrow. It's all about speed over certainty.

In the military, it applies a lot of times, but that's how I think people should generally look at their lives. If they haven't built anything yet, whether they're at rock bottom or just starting out, if you feel like you need to make a change, the pain of staying the same is greater than making a change.

If you're at that point, you kind of know it. Think about what matters to you. Whatever it is, I like to equate it to when you're in the shower by yourself and having unfiltered true thoughts.

Ask yourself what you really care about. Forget what society says you should care about. If you really just want to be famous, that's what you want.

Listen to that part of you. It's not vain; it's a thing that matters to you. Similarly, if you want to be rich, great. If that's a real motivation for you, at your core, in the shower, it's just you.

If that's what drives you, great. Those are boxes that must be checked for something to be worth doing. For me, the reason the SEAL thing really paid off was that I wanted people to say, "That's John Allen, the Navy SEAL."

To me, it was like I had been the black sheep in my family. I discovered this, and it was like, "Oh, his sisters have done this, his dad's done this, his mom's done this, and then there's John."

I wanted something that would override the mediocrity and failure. I felt like what better thing, what more honorable thing, than to serve? That's another check. It's a big goal that's difficult.

But ultimately, I wanted people to know that I became a Navy SEAL. That mattered to me. It flies in the face of what Navy SEAL instructors tell you, which is that you shouldn't do this because you want to be a Navy SEAL. You should do it because you want to serve the country.

That's true, but what else are you going to tell your students? If you want to be real about it, you have to find your real motivation, and that box must be checked.

Once you become a Navy SEAL and everyone's saying, "That's John Allen, the Navy SEAL," does your motivation disappear, or does it become something else?

I think it's really honest but also quite unorthodox advice to say, "If you're in the shower and you just want to be rich to prove these people wrong, or you want to be famous to prove these people wrong," it's unorthodox advice to say to follow that.

But I completely agree. Sometimes you have to have a hypothesis fail you or some kind of idea fail you for you to scratch the itch. That's why I was focusing on this idea of ticking the box.

It's going to stay there. I don't know if you can go to therapy or do something to get rid of that thing, but for me, until you pursue it and have it fail you or succeed, it's going to stay there.

Ultimately, if that box goes unchecked, you might convince yourself that you never needed to check that box. But at some point in your life, when it becomes too late or you're on your deathbed, you will have regret.

I can speak to a specific instance in my life where I had checked a box by this point, but I had one that I hadn't checked. I was in Afghanistan in 2014, and we were in this alleyway when a grenade came over the wall and detonated next to a whole bunch of us.

I nearly bled to death. I had this moment where I couldn't pull the tourniquets off my kit that were rubber-banded to my chest for quick access to stop the bleeding. I was so weak and losing my vision.

We were in the middle of a gunfight, and I couldn't get them off. I realized, as I sat in this alleyway in the middle of this horrible place in Afghanistan, waiting to either be shot by the enemy or bleed to death, that I was at the end of my life.

I had a couple of thoughts running through my head. One was kind of funny now: "I wonder if my obituary will say Jonathan Allen killed in action or John Allen killed in action."

But I also had this acute sadness that I hadn't started a family yet. I didn't have kids. I was married; we'd been married for several years. My wife and I had talked about having kids before that deployment, but we thought, "Oh, we'll have time."

I'm sitting there in this alley, bleeding to death or expecting to be shot to death, and it was like, "Holy [expletive], I wish I had a child." That's horrible for the kid; they lost their dad. But that was a box for me. I wanted a family.

What was the first thing I did when I survived this and got home? We started a family. That's an extreme example, but I believe a lot of people have boxes that are going to go unchecked.

To your point, just try to do it and fail. Believe it or not, you actually check the box.

It's so interesting that I've never actually heard someone give that kind of advice before. What people say is to find your why, and they often are quite judgmental about what's motivating you.

The only accepted motivation is something like, "I want to serve my country," or "I want to change the world." But actually, most of us are either driven or dragged, as I say.

Driven is being conscious of what's driving you and being in control, but being dragged is the insecurity, the shame, the feeling that my siblings are better than me, and I want to say, "Screw you" to my parents.

It's very interesting. It's also even more interesting that you ended up where you are today. You got medically discharged from the military after Afghanistan.

It was not immediately after, but between that and some mental issues I was having, I was pushed to see a psychologist. This was years after. In 2014, that injury happened, and I survived.

I ended up getting surgery to fix my shoulder, which was banged up. I got fixed up enough to deploy again, but I was not fit to serve physically. I was really struggling to keep up.

I had some issues with my shoulders and knees. I had strapping on my leg. Ultimately, I was recommended to a psychologist in the military because they said, "Dude, you are not doing well."

Close friends of mine said, "I don't think this is working out for you." I was very angry. I had stereotypical PTSD. I had not dealt with the near-death experience in Afghanistan.

I ended up going for a medical retirement, driven in part by physical injuries but also because mentally, I wasn't there. I got medically retired at the end of 2017.

I never really had a plan. I knew I was going to get medically retired, which just means you're going to get out, and there's going to be a certain amount of money you get paid.

It's a retirement, but it's not really enough to live on realistically. You're going to have to have a job. I got out at the end of 2017 and went on LinkedIn.

I thought, "I guess that's where you get a job because that's what people do." I wound up randomly connecting with a guy named Jordan Celik, who was living in New York at the time.

He was a former investment banker who had just happened to be trying to prove a point to his friend, a transitioning fighter pilot. The pilot was struggling with the transition, which is very common in the military.

Jordan was trying to prove to his friend that he must be alone in this struggle. He reached out to random veterans on LinkedIn, asking, "What are you doing with your transition to the civilian world?"

Nobody really got back to him because they didn't know who he was, but I did. I said, "Actually, I just got medically retired. I have no idea what I'm going to do. I have kids, and I'm stressed."

Jordan quickly went from trying to prove a point to his friend to saying, "Why don't you come to New York? I'll introduce you to some people in my network."

Out of that was born a charity that Jordan and I started called Elite Meet. It's still around today. It's a series of networking events for transitioning military veterans and private sector hiring managers to meet and get jobs.

I did that for a little while. Ironically, my job became running a charity that helped other vets get jobs. Jordan instilled in me a belief in Gary Vaynerchuk's style of social media: bombard the internet with content and go all in on content.

Jordan had a similar style to Gary Vee. I found it fascinating, the idea of social media and content creation. When I was in the military, I didn't even have a YouTube account, and I certainly didn't post on it.

With Jordan, we began using social media content to drive donations for the charity we were running together. At some point, I wanted to do more with social media. I was doing storytelling but narrative storytelling about military stuff to generate donations.

I thought, "I want to do something for myself with social media and build a brand." I committed a cardinal sin, one that I was very aware of. In the SEAL Teams, and in special operations generally, there's a code of conduct that you don't talk about being a SEAL.

Being a SEAL is not something that's yours. You were allowed to enter a community of people fighting for a common goal together. The strength of the SEAL brand is built on people dying.

You can't leave the military and say, "Look at me, I was a Navy SEAL," for personal gain. It's a gray area, but I began posting about being a SEAL.

At first, it wasn't like I was saying, "Guess what, guys? I'm a Navy SEAL." It began as, "I'm going to tell stories about my experience as a SEAL to push people towards Elite Meet."

But as these began to succeed, I started leaning more into it until finally, I was full send—the guy you're not supposed to be. This was in 2018 and 2019.

I got disowned by the Navy SEAL community. I mean hard. Give me specifics when you say disowned. At first, I didn't catch a lot of public backlash.

I think I was doing the charity Elite Meet, which was helping SEALs and veterans. But gradually, as I drifted farther away from that into just being John the Navy SEAL, I began receiving painful messages.

It's different than getting hate as Mr. Ballin on the internet. I get hate from time to time, but it's different because they don't know me. They see someone on the internet doing something they don't agree with, and they speak their opinion.

This was actual SEALs who I knew, writing me messages to say, "Hey, I used to think of you this way, and now I think of you this way." They detailed how at the team, we all talk about how much you suck.

I lived in Virginia Beach at the time, where a huge concentration of SEALs were. During this time, I would go out to the grocery store and see people I knew.

These are not people I think could be SEALs; I served with them. They would mean mug me and my family at the grocery store or the gym.

I had done something that, in many ways, tarnished their brand. They looked at it as me being selfish. I received two to three messages regularly, emails, Instagram, phone calls, and voice messages.

People left me deep-cutting personal messages, saying, "This is how I know you, and this is what's being said about you." It was horrible.

Luckily, I had already had the experience of the CS gas incident and the coming home from college moment. I realized that no matter how I justified this, I knew what was going on.

I knew the line I crossed. I was not dumb. I would have been just as upset if I was them, still active, looking at a guy like me.

Instead of getting mad or looking for retribution, I deleted it all. At some point, I remember sitting on my couch and getting a message from someone I would have said was a very close friend.

It just said, "You suck." This was from someone on Team Six, someone I trained with. I knew the context of this message. It was more than just "you suck."

It was, "We're not the same anymore. You're different, and I look down on you." I thought, "I can't do this. There's no amount of success that I could achieve doing the Navy SEAL content stuff that would be worth what I'm going through right now."

Instead of acting like it didn't happen, I removed all the content, save for a couple of very small specific things. I hadn't lost the itch for making content, but I couldn't do anything regarding being a SEAL because that wasn't worth it to me.

I felt wrong. After trying things that never worked, like sketch comedy and following trends, my lowest moment was when there was a trend on TikTok where people told weirdly traumatic stories with autotune.

I did something like that, and I thought, "I cannot post this. This is the worst thing I've ever made." Nothing worked. I thought, "Okay, I don't have a clue what I could do that would be interesting."

I had two documents on my computer. One was ideas for content that were not SEAL-related, and I had exhausted all of them. The other document was titled "Dyatlov Pass."

Personally, I am interested in the strange, dark, and mysterious. The tagline that's become the Mr. Ballin thing is basically "Unsolved Mysteries," but not like true crime. Think of world-level mysteries: what's out there? Is there life out there?

Why is this portion of Antarctica blacked out on Google Earth? The Dyatlov Pass is a famous mystery about hikers in the 50s.

These nine experienced hikers were going for their level three mountaineering test, which was a big deal in Soviet Russia. They had to map out a route through rugged mountains, and they brought cameras with them.

They set off on this journey, reached the first checkpoint, but didn't make it to the second. When they missed the checkpoint, a big search was launched.

The search crew found tents in a bad spot, cut open from the inside. The hikers weren't in the tents, and their clothes were neatly folded. They followed footprints and found three of the hikers deceased.

There were deep scratch marks in the trees, and the hikers were missing pieces of clothing. The other six hikers were found in a snow cave, and they had exchanged clothing.

Some of their clothes had trace levels of radiation, and some had parts of their face removed. The Soviet government launched an investigation, but they shut it down, saying the hikers died from an unknown unnatural force.

To date, it's one of the great unsolved mysteries. I always thought that was fascinating. I was at a water

You, if you're already on the move, if you're stationary, they don't open.

It's interesting because as you were talking about timing, I was thinking that's not what I think the answer is. I was thinking that timing is one of those things you see in hindsight and go, "Gosh, wasn't that perfect timing?" But for it to be perfect timing, you need to be the kind of guy who's willing to send their kids down to the pool with your wife and make a TikTok video on a platform you know very little about, doing something you've never done before, right?

And it's actually in that moment that I think that's your moment of brilliance. That's when your life pivots because genuinely 99.9% of people would not be making a video on a platform they don't know much about on a subject that they've never made a video about before.

Your story is like riddled with those moments where, like even responding to the guy on LinkedIn, you said most people didn't reply. That's right, but I responded. And then you went and met him in New York or something.

So, in hindsight, yes, it looks like timing, but actually, it's that you were in moments where you were lost, you got moving, you did something, you had a bias towards action.

Yeah, and failure is feedback. Feedback is knowledge. Knowledge is power.

So, it's interesting because when you're talking about your bias of just like doing something, aiming at something, what appears to be happening there is even if the thing fails—like some of the things you tried failed—at least you're getting feedback. True.

And then the feedback is informing what you do next. Like you said, I did the seals thing on LinkedIn. You learned some stuff about social media there. Okay, it didn't work out how you wished, but you took that into the next test.

And that's really, I think, when I looked at your story, the defining thing is this willingness to, in fact, I'll be honest, a willingness to embarrass yourself and be bad at something.

You know, it's funny you say that because I literally have like sort of a mantra that I've developed that I can't claim is something I came up with, but I definitely find myself living by it now.

And that is, do things that scare you. And I'll quantify that or qualify that.

So, actually, Will Smith, the actor, has this great thing he does. He goes on Oprah, I think it was Oprah or some talk show, and he talks about his experience skydiving.

And, you know, it's this unbelievable, like monologue, this impromptu monologue he gives. But he basically is like, you know, my family was like, "Yeah," or my buddies were like, "We're going to go skydiving tomorrow." And it was like, "Oh yeah, that'll be so crazy, we'll go skydiving tomorrow."

But he's like, "We're not going to really do that." And then it's like the next morning we get up and he's like, "Yeah, let's go get breakfast, guys." Like, "No, no, we're going to go skydiving. Like, let's go, let's go skydiving."

And he's like, "Wait, really? Doing that?" And they're like, "Yeah." And he's like, "Oh my God, I don't want to go skydiving. I thought we were just like saying it last night."

And he winds up, you know, going with his buddies to the actual airfield, and they're like signing the paperwork. And he's like, "Guys, are we really doing this? I don't want to do this."

"Come on, it's not so bad." And so before long, he's like in the plane, up in the air, attached to the instructor, and he's like, they open the door up and they're like, "All right, it's your turn."

And he's like, I'm sitting on the edge and I'm having like this full-blown crisis. Like, I don't want to jump. I'm terrified of jumping.

And the instructor is like, "All right, Will, we're going to go on three. One jumps, really." And he was like, the second I left the plane, fear was gone.

Yeah, and it was just this exhilarating experience of soaring through the air, of skydiving. And he was like, when I landed, he’s like, I suddenly understood that there's always been this aspect in my life that I've sort of seen in other ways in my life.

But it's the best things in life—this is Will Smith, not me—the best things in life are on the other side of fear.

And so what I've taken that as, you know, like becoming a Navy SEAL, for example, when I decided to do it, like there's a huge amount of fear. And not so much fear of failure, it's like just it's fear of like not stacking up.

Like when I got there, I was so intimidated by the people around me, but I knew if I could just like not let the fear overwhelm me, that the reward on the back end would be so high.

You know, or even take, you know, I just did a live tour with 15 shows. I actually am terrified of public speaking. I've had instances in my life where I have frozen up publicly giving a speech and literally had to put the microphone down and leave.

I've had that experience, and I'm volunteering to do a tour with thousands of people. But the way I look at it is like the things that you don't want to do, you'll be indifferent to.

The things that you do want to do, you'll typically have a—if it's a big enough thing—the best things in life, so to speak, you will have an element of a fear response to it.

Now, if you're scared to go down the basement because you hear an intruder breaking in, listen to yourself, don't go down in the basement.

When it comes to like goal setting, kind of going back to that idea of shower thoughts, right? Everybody has some that they just really want to do, and it's not even necessarily motivated by one particular thing.

Maybe it's some action they want to take, maybe it's talking to a friend that they've blown off for 10 years, or it's public speaking, or whatever it is. But they know, even if they don't admit to it, deep down they know fear is the thing keeping them from doing it.

It's fear of embarrassment, it's fear of failure, it's a fear of all the things that make us human.

It's the very select number of people in this life that are still able to say, "I'm going to still do that thing that scares the [ __ ] out of me," that have the best and most fulfilling lives.

Not always, but they often do. And like that's why we look at like Will Smith, for example. That dude very likely, just because I'm referencing him, he's probably had to do things that were so uncomfortable in his life to be an actor at his level.

It's like, "Hey, perform in front of everybody right now and don't screw it up." You know, it's like pressure and performance.

It's like that dude has faced fears his whole life. Yeah, he's using skydiving as an example, but his life is very likely a product of a guy who faces fears.

But it's the fear knowing that if I do this, there's something big on the other side.

And so I preach to my children, and I try to live this idea of do things that scare you. And literally the live tour that we just did was it.

I was having like an existential crisis before we began, but the second I took the stage, it was like, "Oh, this is great."

So it goes back to what you were saying about when Will jumped out of the plane. Yeah, all the fear was there before he jumped.

Oh yes, and just like you walking out on that stage, the fear, you're tormented before.

Oh yes, I always find before significantly harder in every way.

Oh yeah, before everything that I've done in my life is the worst part. Once you get into it, you're confronting reality, which isn't always as bad.

But yes, before is horrible. And also when you're talking, I was thinking, you know, it's really either way you're making a decision in those moments.

Like when you're thinking about your live tour, the decision is do I accept the unchecked box or do I accept this mental torment that I'm going to inflict upon myself?

That's very true. And I think, yeah, when they talk to people on their deathbeds and stuff, the worst thing is the unchecked box, not the—it's got to be not that I walked out and put the mic down and walked off.

Yeah, like I don't look—I look back at the fact that I was in San Francisco at a dinner where I literally froze and put the mic down and walked off.

I looked at that as a catalyst for why I was so scared to do public speaking this time, and it ultimately pushed me to do it.

I don't regret San Francisco. I'm glad it happened, but only because I faced it later on. I would be so embarrassed. I would harbor like my pain forever if I never tried it again.

But yeah, it's like you don't regret the failure, you regret not trying.

How do people misunderstand you? Because they like you, they see you on a screen and they consume a certain type of content you make.

They probably don't know the full context of your life, but how do you think people have misunderstood you?

Oh, good question. I would say, and this is not even to try to curry, you know, favor with my, you know, former SEAL brethren, but I think that even when I was posting—and this is really just specifically to the people that really disown me, who still very likely do—you know, my intention when I was posting the SEAL stuff before Mr. Ballin and the thing happened, it was never like, "I'm so great."

It was more like, "I want to do something with my life, and this feels like an opportunity." And I know it's sort of like questionable, but when you're no longer in that insulated team room, when you're in the Wolfpack, so to speak, it's easy to view the rest of your life as being, "Oh, if I become a SEAL, I can do anything I want."

But like when you're cast out or when you leave and you're by yourself and you got to like figure out your new life, it's really difficult to imagine how you're going to do that without leveraging, you know, the biggest thing you've ever done.

And so I think that the one definite specific thing is I never made that content because I literally believed I'm the special guy and like everybody better look at me as like Mr. Navy SEAL.

I was very aware of the fact that I was a junior SEAL relative to the other people that had served, and like my experience was minimal compared to others.

So I think that some people think that I actually somehow believe that I'm like, "I'm a superhero," and I didn't then, and I don't.

I'd say now, sort of the Mr. Ballin side of things, there's like a practical thing, which is as the sort of Mr. Ballin thing has grown to where it is now, to where it's like a pretty recognizable thing in the genre of the strange, dark, and mysterious, it's been really, really challenging for me personally to balance my life with my wife and my three kids—kids who I adore—and sort of like, you know, responsibilities with content.

I mean, we have a recording schedule, we have things that I sort of have pledged to do, and as you know, with content creation, there's not really an end. You just sort of keep doing it.

I think that by no means am I saying like, "Oh, this job is so hard, people better sympathize with me." Hardly. Like I understand the privilege.

But at the same time, like I started making content and it was like an outpouring of content constantly. I was making five videos a week, sometimes times that are like 25 minutes each by myself, like shooting it, editing it, everything.

It was like it would take me about 26 hours or so per video over seven days. So it's like, yeah, I really wasn't sleeping.

I became like a raging alcoholic. I became like horribly overweight because it was like everything got pushed aside to make videos.

And then as I realized that like doing content at that ferocious rate was really taking a toll on my physical health, my mental health, and definitely my relationship with my wife and kids, I began to sort of make an exchange.

It was like, I'm going to do less content for more time with my family. And loads of people got that. It isn't like the masses were like, "Dude, you're a jerk."

But I think what's happened now, and it's sort of a product of success, is we've reached a point—not just me, but like we have a team that's pretty sizable.

We have an amazing studio, we have a publishing division, we have this, we have that. Like we've reached a point where I think people view me as like this corporate guy out to get money when in reality, like you were talking before the show, like you're like, "It's weird. People say you're so successful when I don't even know what I'm doing."

Like I'm still very much the guy that randomly made a video that went viral on TikTok.

And so one of the harder things for me has been, as the audience grows—which I'm happy for—it's like you really have to understand that there are people that don't like me anymore, like have taken an issue with me.

And it's always this idea that like I'm somehow like this money-grubbing, like corporate guy that is only in it to make money when in reality, like as you've probably seen with this interview, dude, my default is I love telling stories.

I love this genre. I always have. And like I also, I kind of like being my own boss to a degree. So it's like it checks a lot of boxes for me.

Do you ever worry that you've got your priorities wrong?

Well, when I say that, I really mean, because when you're a content creator like we both are, like you say, it's constant, it's constant, it's constant.

And there's no light at the end of the tunnel in terms of there's not like you get off this train at some point. If you get off, you fail.

That is how it works. So how do you think? Because if I said to you, "You're going to be doing this forever. Like you're going to be doing what you do now for the next 30 years."

You know, I think that I've actually probably reached a point in my life as a content creator where maybe I haven't come to it exactly the way you've just laid it out, but I'm definitely not currently in this for money.

If anything, I'm in it for—I get a lot of enjoyment out of literally telling stories. I mentioned to you pre-show that doing the live tour was so much fun because I got to actually interact with these people that show up as numbers on my YouTube videos, but they're real people.

And it's like, it was so much fun, like fulfilling for me. I would have—I literally told Nick, our CEO and the man and my manager before the tour started, like I would have paid to do the tour.

And now especially, I would have paid money to have that experience to put those shows on.

But yeah, like looking ahead, it's like I've sort of reached a point which is like I was never really in this for fame or money.

I definitely was in it for like the idea of being successful, no doubt. I want to be successful, and things come with that that are in the money and fame in the app.

But like I ultimately just, I'm a guy that just like tries new stuff. I've done lots of new things. I sort of reinvented myself several times over.

But I do really well when I just sort of have a new goal, and I thrive in that environment.

And like for me, like when the Mr. Ballin thing started, it was not how much money can we make or how successful or how big of a business can we make.

It was like, can I make another video that people like? Can I keep doing that? And that became the goal. Can I repeat interest in the videos?

Could you see yourself ever stopping?

Yes and no, for sure. Because I think that I'm also capable of saying, "Now I'm good. I'm going to go do this completely new thing with my family and ride off into the sunset."

You think you're capable of that?

Saying that, I do actually.

How many subscribers have you got total?

It's like, I mean, your main channel's got almost what, 10 million?

It's about 10. I think that if you—if I think we've done the math and we looked at all areas, all platforms, including podcasts, it's probably somewhere around 20 to 25 million.

Like 20 to 25 million subscribers. You would be okay with just walking away and saying, "Could you see that reality in the future?"

Yeah. Is there anything that it would take for you to get there? Is it like, would you need—yeah, is there anything, any catalyst you think?

You know, it's funny to bring this up because I've sort of mentioned the live tour a couple times.

If I had to be honest about my deeply internalized unchecked box from the time I became an adult—well, from the time I like joined the military—it was I always just had this interest in giving a big public talk for no other reason than to simply conquer that moment.

My dad is an incredible speaker. He's done some pretty big talks, and I've seen him speak, and he's so good.

And I’ve always known that I was—I have a—I’m a good speaker. I can tell stories. This is something well before Mr. Ballin.

But I viewed it as something that was so terrifying that I would never actually do it. I was the guy that had that thought and was like, "I'll live with an unchecked box."

And I would tell myself it's because I don't really have the content to deliver a talk. I have the ability but no content, and that was my excuse.

But then the Mr. Ballin thing sort of takes off, and suddenly it's like, "Oh, you have the audience, you have the content, you have all this stuff."

It is now a decision: are you going to do it or not? And I, over the last couple years, have like really mentally tortured myself to work myself up to be like, "I'm not only going to do the live stuff, but I'm going to do a whole tour."

And I told you before the show that I wanted limited production value. A part of that was because I wanted it to be me with a spotlight on me with a microphone to make it as intense as it could possibly be.

Because I felt like if I didn't start there, I'd be worried I didn't fulfill the thing I've always wanted to do, which is like be the guy with the mic and captivate people.

And so I did that. I feel like I genuinely accomplished this thing that I really didn't think I would ever actually do because fear was too much.

I wasn't able to get past it. But as a result, coming back from that tour—and this is going to sound so like egotistical—but it's like we come back from tour and we have this graphic novel we released, New York Times bestselling graphic novel.

Like it's beautiful. I'm so proud of that book. You know, the tour was like statistically, financially, whatever you want to call it, a huge success.

You know, the YouTube channel, the podcast, everything's going great. But I suddenly had no more genuinely deep-seated unchecked boxes.

I don't—the only thing I have is like a real desire to be a good dad, but it hasn't—there's not a specific way to quantify that.

But by doing the live thing, which was so in the back of my mind, now that it's been checked, I could do 50 more live tours and it would never be the same as the first one.

Like I could right now, they said, "Hey, there's 7,000 people out there. Go tell a story impromptu." I could do that right now.

It wouldn't be—it'd be stressful as hell, but I'd do it. I don't have—and this is again not meant to be egotistical—I don't have a goal anymore.

I've now reached a point where the only other thing that I wanted to do was pitch for the Boston Red Sox, and I think that ship has sailed.

That'd be the one thing I'm not going to be able to do. But I don't really have like the big audacious goal. I'm sure I'll find one. I'm looking for one.

But I've sort of reached a point where like I adore the storytelling aspect of storytelling. I just do. I'm doing it right now.

But I also adore my family and my kids, and I want to have a full life there. And by the way, I definitely have a good balance right now.

But to your point, could I do this for 30 more years? The answer is no. I could do this for a time, and I'll put all of my energy into it.

And when people hear my fans, when I say like I genuinely care about what you think, I'm in the comments. I read Reddit. I read painful things. I read all this stuff.

It's because I genuinely care because this was never about building a business. That's a product of the thing that I love to do.

It's a product of telling stories and loving to do that. But yeah, I don't have the deep unchecked box. I hope to find one, but right now it's like I feel like I'm just sort of doing stuff, and I need to find the thing, and I don't have it.

I'm so fortunate, so blessed, and I love my life. I love that, but I don't have—I don't have the box checking, and I don't know what's next.

Everybody needs an unchecked box, don't they?

I feel like you do. It keeps you moving, keeps you like thinking about—it's like purpose and meaning, isn't it?

It's like there was that horrible disaster with the little submarine that imploded. Horrible thing.

And I was reading about it, and like the people that go on these deep-sea excursions are typically like billionaires.

It's people that literally have every resource known to man and can do basically anything you want within reason.

And it's like they can't figure out what to do now because everything—like to us, if it's like, "Hey, do you want to go buy a hundred million dollar yacht today?"

Like we can't do that. Like I can't—I can't go buy a hundred million, but it's like imagine being—it's very difficult to do this.

I'm sure billionaires could tell us if you could buy anything. It's like suddenly everything loses its value, at least the things you can buy.

It's only valuable to us because we can't have it. You know, it's like I can get this nice of a car, but I know I can't get a McLaren.

Yeah, but that's what makes this one special because I can't afford this one. But it's like the billionaires, it's like, "Oh, well, all I can do is like adrenaline now."

Because money doesn't put a—so it's—I've sort of reached a point—not millionaire status, even close—but it's like it's hard to figure out what I even want to do besides knowing wife and kids is like a really big thing for me.

It stems literally from nearly dying in Afghanistan, like really cherishing the fact that I have a family.

But it's like I also cherish what I have here with Ballin Studios. I just, I'm waiting for the next big sort of unchecked box to appear.

What's your journey like been with your own mental health? Because you talked about PTSD. You talked about becoming a bit of an alcoholic as well at one point.

What's that journey been like? What's that sort of overlaid across your story?

Yeah, I’ve really struggled with my mental health, in particular kind of like in the—from military service was a big part of it.

When I was medically retired, so 2014, I get hurt in Afghanistan. I really didn't—I thought I dealt with it because you have to go see a therapist and stuff post-deployments.

You go speak to somebody, but I sort of was just sort of playing the game to get through it because I just wanted to deploy again and be a part of the team again.

It wasn't until later on that I actually—so I deployed a second time and I went to South America.

And I remember not giving much thought to the deployment before I got there. I remember thinking like compared to going to Afghanistan, we're going to South America to like sit in a nice house, literally in a beautiful part of South America, and like train Peruvian military forces.

Like it's not a combat deployment. This is like you're deploying and you're living there, but you're just sort of like a teacher. That's the gist.

And that's an amazing thing to do, but it's definitely not combat. But as a result, I really didn't like mentally prepare myself for what it would be like to be in Peru.

And if you don't know this, like Peru is a totally Spanish-speaking country. It's very—at least where we were, there was very little English, like very, very little.

And so I remember I had to go late to Peru, so my team had gone—the group of us that was deploying there, they went early to Peru, and I went like a week later.

And it meant that I had to fly into the airport in Peru by myself, and I had to like navigate the airport.

And I speak a little Spanish, like barely conversational, and I didn't take it seriously at all. They gave us Spanish courses. I blew it off.

And I remember I got to Peru, and it was like, "Oh my God." Like as soon as I landed and I look around and no one speaks English, I'm trying to figure out where to go.

Everything's in Spanish. I can't find my ride. My ride, by the way, is a local who speaks Spanish, doesn't know what I look like.

And my bag got stuck, and they were trying to figure out what was in my bag, but I don't speak their—it was so stressful.

And then I finally get in the vehicle to get brought to our house we were at, but to get there, it required driving through like a true slum, like a very, very unsafe place.

And I remember thinking, "I am in a totally foreign country. I'm so far from my family, and I'm going to be here for six months," which is not long by, you know, deployment standards.

That's a long time to be away. And it was like I didn't put any thought into this. I can't believe I'm going to be here.

It like I had suddenly felt like I was in Afghanistan again a little bit. I struggled so, so bad on that deployment with just being sane.

Like I was so miserable there. There was like to the point where I was borderline having delusions. I was so depressed.

I can't even describe it. I had this recurring dream where I'd be lying on my bed, and it's also—it's always moist in Peru.

Like everything's wet, like no matter what, like your sheets are wet, your clothes are wet. It's like a very humid environment.

And I'm like laying in my bed. I don't have a fan. It's like humid in this crappy little room.

And outside, you just hear the chaos of like the Peruvian streets. And I would like fall asleep, and I'd have this dream that I was in Russia standing on the corner of this like embassy or some federal building.

And somebody would come out of a car and like grab me and like hijack me and like take me hostage. But it was like over and over again.

I had this dream to the point where I began to believe I was losing my mind. That like how can I have the same dream?

I'd like wake up in a panic. I missed my wife so terribly. She was pregnant with our first child. It was awful.

It was like the worst time of my life, and it's hard to even— even now to put it into words.

It was just like I had bordering on like a mental collapse, and it was in part because I just didn't appreciate the fact that like you're going to another part of the world where everything is different.

And I also sort of began to confront, I guess, my demons from the deployment to Afghanistan. There were just some things that I did that were not necessarily wrong or like illegal at all, but just like it's war.

And war is like this horrible thing, and seeing it up close, man, it's just rough. You know, and at the time, you're so conditioned to not only see war and be okay with it, but to practically revel in it.

Because how else do you get young men to keep going to war and keep fighting and dying? You need men and women.

But it was like I had like a breakdown, like a mental sort of questioning, "Why am I in the military?" You know, questioning who I was.

And so I ended up getting medically retired, and it was not really from Peru at all. It was more like I was so unhappy.

I came back from Peru, and I just detested the fact that I was in the military. I didn't feel like it was the place for me.

I also was physically injured. I was dealing with the injuries, and I ended up getting medically retired.

But it was my choice if I wanted to continue to see a therapist after I got out. And at first, I didn't.

At first, when I got out, when I got medically retired, I just was like, "Whatever, I'm done. I'm on my own."

But I was so angry all the time. Like just everything made me mad. I was so like on edge.

Not even like jumpy, but just I was just like so high-strung. And it got to the point where like nobody wanted to be around me.

Like my kids didn't want to be around me. My wife didn't want to be around me. And ultimately, they were like, "I think you need to see somebody."

And I was like, "You know what? I think I do too. Like I feel like I'm a mess."

And it was through therapy that I—this is like 2018 or so—that I realized I had some very deep-seated issues with myself, with my service, with just stuff I saw and did.

And it was only when I began to sort of openly talk about those things that I actually began to sort of forgive myself and begin to feel content.

Like, what's the word? Content again. You know, it's not about like therapy is not meant to make you forget stuff.

It's to give you perspective that you didn't have. And I just—I think I had fallen into a cycle of like just detesting who I was and why.

I think that it was like ultimately, if I were to boil it down to its simplest part, it's like I wanted to be a Navy SEAL in part because I just wanted to go through the training.

I wanted to serve in the military, but I didn't really think that hard about that. It was mostly like I want to serve because it's an honorable thing, and I know people that have done it, and that's something that means something to me.

But it was really the draw to be a SEAL that was the challenge that I saw. That's the thing. It's going to take years to do it.

It's like this really hard thing. It was like the idea of even contemplating what life would be like as a SEAL felt like even cart before the horse.

It's like, "Who do you think you are thinking about what it's going to be like to be a SEAL? Like if you ever get there, you'll figure it out."

And this is actually, I think, it's a relatively common phenomenon that the people that become SEALs, it's almost surprising.

Like you become a SEAL and you're like, "Wait a minute, like now I'm going to be a Navy SEAL," which sounds goofy, but it's years to get to that point.

And all the way up until the end, to a degree, you can not make it. You can like fail out.

And so you finally become a SEAL, and you realize like the reality of the job. And I say this not because I have deep exposure to this, but because it's just true, which is in this job, people die and you kill people.

Like that's kind of the gist of the job. There's way more to it than that, but it's like that's the job, guys.

Like why do you think they make video games and movies about it? And I think that there's a mental conditioning to being able to do that job that comes from training.

And frankly, it's a remarkable thing that they're able to create this system that creates really capable warfighters because that's how you protect your country.

That's how you go out and do what you got to do. But when you come out of that, when you sort of—what's the word?

It's almost like when you enter this matrix of thinking when you go through training and you become like willing and able to fight wars, basically.

But when you begin to fracture and you begin to sort of realize that you want to do something else with your life, you have to like kind of come to terms with what you have been doing and the way you've been thinking about it.

You begin to view who you were as a SEAL as a person. For me, I was not proud of the person I had become.

I had sort of really leaned into being as aggressive and as like, you know, like alpha as I possibly could be—not with my teammates, but just in doing the job that I had sort of drifted down a path that I wasn't very proud of.

And I think that realizing that this wasn't a fit for me, like being in the SEALs, even though I got medically retired, I think I realized it wasn't a fit for me.

And I would have gotten out whether or not I was medically retired. It was really difficult to cope with that loss of identity.

You still have those demons?

Yeah, but I go to therapy for them. And shout out to Vinnie Shoran, who actually, he's based in the UK. He's my therapist. He's awesome.

We haven't really delved too deeply into the military stuff, but yeah, I think that it's something that will always be with me.

I certainly, when I think about having served, I'm very proud, and I'm proud to have been—I'm a veteran now.

And the people I worked with were incredible. Even the people that hate me now, like it doesn't mean I think any less of them.

There are incredible people in the military. I think that I just sort of—it wasn't a fit for me.

It was like I thought the military was, but it was the SEAL thing that drew me in. And in many ways, this is going to sound weird, but I was sort of lucky enough to get to deploy to Afghanistan and actually have a combat deployment.

Because many people, what happens is they go to like a war-fighting unit, like a special operations unit, and then they never see combat.

And it's not because they made any decision, it's just the way it goes. And those people, it's sort of like they have this unchecked box.

But it's not their decision. And so in a way, I was given this gift—that sounds horrible to say it that way, but I don't know how else to say it—of getting to sort of do the job in real life.

But there are sort of like—and to anybody who's listening that's done multiple deployments, like look at this guy.

Like I don't claim to have like, "Oh, I've done 87 deployments, and this is my experience." It's just from like I had one combat tour, one.

But it was enough to show me that like that isn't what I was cut out to do. And I think that—but I still did those things, and I still was that person.

And now as a civilian, sort of reconciling that, I'm such a different person now in a good way.

I've taken all the best qualities I possibly could, and I've poured them into this person. I'm trying to be a good husband and a good dad, and I'm trying to do all the right things.

But it's like I have this part of me that it's just crazy to me that I was ever in the Navy SEALs.

It's crazy. Everybody has their demons to some degree, whether it's, you know, it's a spectrum of how strong those demons can be and how much control they can have over your decisions.

What have you learned about dealing with demons that might be of any—because you've been to therapy. A lot of people haven't.

A lot of people maybe even haven't arrived at the awareness that they need to go yet. What have you learned about dealing with demons that might be useful to anybody listening?

That you can't talk yourself out of them. A demon, to me, is something that if you begin to have those thoughts and you feel them creeping in, and you tell yourself, "Stop thinking about it. I don't want to deal with that. I don't want to think about that."

If you have those thoughts in your life, that even just the slightest beginning of a thought about that thing starts to creep into your head, and your reaction to it is, "Oh my God, I can't think about this thing," like that is a demon in your life.

And you are not going to be able, at least in my opinion long-term, to simply convince yourself that that's not a demon.

It is a demon. It doesn't matter if it's rational or not. For me, I have several that sort of creep into my life.

But the only way I have found to sort of cope with them is to sort of not embrace them, because that's not what you do, is to talk about them with someone.

It's cathartic to talk about it with a therapist, but it's even more cathartic to almost hear yourself talking about it.

Like you actually have—for me specifically, like I have things that I've said in therapy that I can't believe I'm saying out loud that are so like personal and intimate and so tied to like deep insecurities and pains in my life.

But it's only in that environment with like a third party who's neutral in a private setting that these things just come to the surface.

And I'm saying these things, and the beautiful thing about having a great therapist is their whole gig is they're listening and interpreting and providing perspective.

They're not trying to like tell you, "Oh, that's not a thing." It's like, "Well, have you thought about it this way?"

One of the things that I think about all the time, because my life is quite hectic and busy, is how to manage my energy load.

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Your father, you mentioned earlier that you were raised by a single mother in the basement at least.

Yeah. Has your father been a sort of key figure in the man that you are?

And we talk about demons, sure, and the demons that you have.

So, you know, it's funny. My dad and I recently have sort of had a resurgence.

He and I sort of had, I guess you could call it a falling out. I was very close with my dad growing up.

My parents split when I was 13, and even though I was living with my mom and sisters, my dad was a very active part of my life.

It isn't like I didn't see him again, but we had like a good relationship, me and my dad.

And then when I left for the Navy, it came after I had found a way to graduate college, and I was talking about law school a little bit.

And I think my dad, he was like, "That's great, my son. Like he turned it around. He's got this career in mind that seems like a really strong idea."

And I sort of sprung it on him and my mom and my sisters that I'm like, "Actually, no, when I graduate college, I'm going to enlist in the Navy and try to be a Navy SEAL."

I hadn't really talked about it with them at all. I mean, I'm exaggerating, but it was a very quick turnaround.

And I didn't want to talk to them about it because I knew they'd say, "One, why will you make it through?" And two, "Why are you doing this?"

And so when I began talking about it, like right at the end of my college career, like literally I'm getting ready to enlist, my dad, I think he couldn't quite wrap his mind around the idea that I really was going to do this for reasons that make sense to me now that didn't at the time.

Like it's his son. If you're successful, that's not good. You're going to be a Navy SEAL, like going to war.

If you're not successful and you wash out of training, you're stuck in the Navy in the sense that you don't get to pick another job.

You kind of become needs of the Navy, and you have to go do like these crappy jobs for like four years.

Nobody likes being stuck if they don't have what's called a rate. It's like your job.

So it's like he's viewing it as both outcomes sort of come with big negatives. But the way it came out to me was he doesn't believe in me.

He doesn't believe I can be a Navy SEAL. Like he thinks I'm not going to make it.

That I'm sure that was not what he intended, but that's the way I interpreted it. And it marked like a departure in our relationship.

In 2010, I left for boot camp, and while he and I absolutely maintained some level of contact from 2010 until quite literally like a few months ago, I barely spoke to my dad by choice.

I had a lot of ill will towards him. I always just sort of felt like he doesn't believe in me.

He also got remarried, and he has—and he's, you know, he got remarried, has a family.

It just—I had a lot of resentment towards him that some was founded, much of it was not.

And it sort of became something that it never was, which is I had it in my head that my dad doesn't believe in me.

That really was the thought, and it actually helped propel me to—at times, there were days in SEAL training where I would literally think to myself, "If I don't make it, I can't even fathom what it would be like to face my dad."

Who in my head at the time, I'm like, "He'd be like, 'Told you so.'" Like the idea of that, it made my skin crawl.

You know, so in many ways, my relationship with my dad had become sort of negative for many years, but it sort of maintained a pretty healthy chip on my shoulder that pushed me to sort of prove him wrong in a sense.

But with self-awareness recently, like very recently through therapy with my boy Vinnie Shoran, and through some sort of the world lining up, he and I sort of reconnected.

And we actually had some frank discussions about that, and it turns out that no, my dad just literally was worried about his son and felt like I didn't like him or love him.

And we sort of drifted, and life happens. I had my life, he had his life, but we've reconnected now, and I'm happy for it.

There's a lot of men that aren't at the place yet where they'll speak openly about their demons and how they're feeling and their emotions and stuff, especially, I mean, people that have been in combat and that seen as big tough guys, right?

Sure. What would you say to those men that maybe, you know, because we all feel things?

Sure. Most of us don't have the tools to know how to talk about it. We don't have the environment. Maybe we don't have friends or outlets where we can talk about it.

And a lot of men don't feel like they can even—I was one of those men that probably until about the last, I'd say, two years, I would never tell my partner if I was having a bad day, if I was feeling bad, if I was anxious in any way, if I was struggling with something.

I would always try and shield everyone from it. Like I thought as a man, my job was to just take it.

Yes, take everything, absorb, hold. But what I came to learn is that it is coming out.

Yeah. But in with unintended consequences, in unexpected ways, it's coming out somewhere.

Maybe in my mood. Maybe in my health. Maybe in my habits.

Maybe in my search for quick fixes of dopamine. It's going to come out.

So I ran the experiment one day of just like sitting my partner down and saying, "Look, I haven't been honest with you. This is how I feel, and this is what's happened. This is what I'm going through."

Yeah. And it was such an important pivotal experiment in my life because—see that? You know what I mean?

Yeah, I do. So I'm just wondering what journey you've been on with opening up.

I think that taking men specifically as an example, you sort of have like the socially acceptable things that can be demons for you that maybe we don't talk about them.

But if you did, no one's really going to bat an eye. Like turns out I hate my job.

And you know, it turns out I don't love my partner. Okay, these are bad things, but they're things that if you brought them up, no one's going to question your manhood.

They're not going to question, you know, things that society views as important, right?

It's the stuff that is super personal to you that's like could be potentially embarrassing. Those are the things that are your real demons.

I'm not saying those other things aren't demons. They are. They are.

But if you can't talk about those things, they will dog you your whole life. They really will.

And so I think it's not about you need to go sign up for therapy and go talk to a therapist, but I do think that, like you mentioned it yourself, you have to be able to sort of like unburden yourself.

And part of that is simply talking about it.

Like I had one—this is not really a demon, but to give people a sense who are watching this of like how comfortable I am being forward about things that I struggle with.

So oddly enough, one of the reasons that I was also drawn to the military, believe it or not, was I struggle mightily to urinate in front of other people.

Just publicly going to the bathroom in front of other people. It's not like it's destroying my life, but it's uncomfortable.

Like it's easier for me if I'm alone, right? I knew this about myself at a young age.

I don't have a reason for it, but like I knew when I was like in high school or like in college, like I would go to a bathroom that was private because that was easier for me.

And as I got older, I was like, "That's not really that normal that this is happening to me."

And so part of the reason I was interested in the Navy is they drug test you, and they do it really publicly.

And it was like in order to deal with this, I have to go into an organization that literally will force me to have to urinate in front of other people.

But like for me, it's sort of like facing these things that are hyper personal, like inability to pee in front of other people, which, you know, I've overcome.

But you have to be willing to sort of identify those things. And in my case, I talked to my wife about it before I joined the Navy, and she's like, "Okay."

I talked to my therapist about it recently as well. But it's sort of like that's a really specific personal thing that if I brought that up in a casual conversation, I'm sure there are people that could actually relate to it.

But most people would be like, "This is a little uncomfortable you brought that up."

But like everybody's got stuff that falls into that category. Maybe not specifically, but you—everybody's got weird insecurities, and they've got things that drive their decisions that would be to them deeply embarrassing to bring up.

That is the reason you have to bring them up because they will dog you, and they will always be there until you deal with them.

And for me, it's been helpful and cathartic to state them out loud and then do something about them.

The other thing I've noticed is that when I don't state them, especially in the context of a relationship, is you live misunderstood.

Yeah, that's true. So like let's play out the scenario that in you struggle to urinate in front of other people.

Your wife might always start to wonder why you don't want to go to certain places or when you're in those places, you're acting strange.

She'll misunderstand that as maybe he's X, Y, and Z. And then you're dealing with a problem.

You're dealing with another set of problems. It's like, "He's cheating on me."

No, no, it's like actually it was just we didn't have an environment, a safe space where we could talk about the actual issue.

So I've created like five other issues, and I have that in my life where I'm like, "If I just told the truth."

It's a shame that sometimes I have to get to the like bust-up moment, turn around and say, "You've got this totally wrong."

And the reason why you've got this totally wrong is because I didn't tell you the truth.

Yeah. And it's led you off down a path which is really unfortunate.

It's caused us more hurt than me just being honest with you.

Yeah, but it's—I'm not saying it's going to be easy. I think, like many of the things you've described in your story, first you have to just take one step in that direction.

I'm not saying like pull your partner in and like offload or offload with a therapist today.

It's just you have to run the experiment to build the evidence and have it compound and go, "Actually, this is a better life than secrecy, keeping everything to yourself."

You know, there's some—when I interview people, there's always questions I know that they get asked all the time.

Yeah. And I'm like, "Do I ask him the question that I know he probably gets asked all the time?"

But you're so good at telling stories.

Yeah, you really, really are great at telling stories.

Thanks.

So there's really two questions I wanted to end with, I guess. We've got a couple of minutes, but sure.

The first question is, to be a great storyteller—and we're all telling stories whether we know it or not—yep.

Is there any principles that you've come to learn that you could give me to tell better stories?

Yeah, so I would say obviously the medium by which you're telling the story matters.

But if we're talking about literally speaking a story, telling a story, and assuming you have people listening to that story right in front of you—which is the medium by which many of us tell stories, telling our friends, telling our family members—

To tell a really good story, it has less to do with the content of the story and more to do with the delivery of that story.

When I told you the Deatlov Pass story, I was fully committed to telling you that story.

I didn't care if you thought it was interesting or not. I thought it was interesting enough that I was going to give you my hand gestures.

I'm like going to make sure I harp on the details that I find really interesting.

But it's like a level of commitment to telling that story. Like that's the key.

It's commit to be like—you have to be in the story.

And like for example, when I did the live tour, like that's the purest form of you're either going to be awkward up there and like get through it, or you're going to [ __ ] own the story, be in the story, and tell it to those people right there.

And they're going to hear what I want to tell them.

So it's like the delivery. It's not just practice and get your words right. Hardly.

Dude, I don't even use a script when I tell stories. I look at the story, I learn the story, I internalize the story, and then I inhabit the story.

And when I tell you the story, it should almost feel like I was there.

Like that is the level of commitment you need.

And I would say also like with regards to general storytelling, it really is true that it has less to do with like finessing the language so it's perfect or getting your script exactly right.

It's like I would say when it comes to most stories, you need to make sure there's some sort of payoff at the end of the story, which is sort of like storytelling 101.

But if you look at the way newspapers structure stories—for those who maybe don't read the newspaper or generally hear—here's how it goes.

This thing happened, and now I'm going to tell you the details of what that thing is and how it happened.

Right? That's not good storytelling. That's great for getting information across.

But all too often, if you look on like YouTube or if you look at other people who tell like, you know, mysteries, for example, sometimes in their header, it'll be like, you know, crazy, like golden, you know, skeleton found in cave in Russia.

And like actually, that's pretty compelling. Maybe I'd read that.

But it's like, "Suzanne murdered, you know, in London."

Like, and then you click on it until they find out what happened. But it's like you don't want your audience to already—in certain cases, you don't necessarily want your audience to know where the story is going.

They might have a very strong inclination that Suzanne's going to get killed at the end of the story or there's going to be a gold skeleton found in Russia.

But being a storyteller, your job is to keep people invested and to build tension and to get them like ready for the payoff that the end—any story can have a twist at the end.

It depends on how you tell it. Like it isn't like some stories have payoffs and some don't.

Absolutely not. You can use point of view. You can inhabit aspects of the story that give different lenses into the story.

But own the story when you tell it and ensure that there's some type of payoff at the end, whatever it is.

Like when I told you the Deatlov Pass story, like ultimately the goal is to get you to see the—wow, all these conflicting things.

There's pictures of this and that, but the Russian government set an unknown, unnatural force is responsible and then close the case.

The whole point of that is to say all these crazy things that are objective—they objectively happened.

That we have data, we have pictures, we have all these things. I've demonstrated that to you, and clearly something's wrong, and they sealed the case, and no one could look into it.

The whole point is to make you think, "What is going on over there?"

But if I had said, "Guess what, there's this case that's sealed, and no one will look into it. Here's what happened."

It's the same story, but I've opened with the reveal.

You got to do it the other way. So payoff at the end and own the storytelling aspect of it.

I'll go and tell people to check it out on your channel, but is there a particular story on your channel that is—this was the cliché question—that is your favorite?

Oh man, it's like asking your favorite kids, right?

I would say the story that I'm the most proud of in terms of just how difficult it was to piece it together is the Headless Valley.

And it's actually in our graphic novel as well.

It isn't that it's literally the best story, but it's a story that is a composite of a whole bunch of anecdotes over about a hundred years.

There's this—I know I don't have time, but there's this place in Canada called the Northwest Territories.

And so it's a part of Canada that's already very remote, and it's just wilderness and forests.

And there's this section called the Northwest Territories, which is even more remote.

It's as big as Germany, but Germany has like 50 million residents, and this has like 50,000 people there.

So it's like no one lives there. And within the Northwest Territories, there's this valley, this like river that cuts through this beautiful valley called the Nahanni Valley, which has been now dubbed the Headless Valley.

Because over the course of like a hundred years, all these people who have gone into this valley have turned up headless.

They've been—but like in the most bizarre ways. And you also can't really get into this valley.

It's very difficult to do. You can't fly there. You can't hike there.

You have to either take a boat upstream and literally carry a boat up a couple waterfalls and then continue going upstream, or there is an overland hike, but it's like 70 miles of treacherous terrain.

So it's like really hard to get there. It's totally remote.

And the only other people that ever lived there were the Nahanni tribe.

And they—one day, somebody was actually there on a hunting expedition. They noticed that the Nahanni tribe, which made up like hundreds of people, they were camped out along this river.

They disappeared overnight, and literally nobody knows what happened to them.

They left behind all their equipment, all their housing. It was all—it was left. They just vanished.

No one knows what happened to them, and there's rumors of like white creatures wandering the woods.

But I took like seven or eight anecdotes chronologically and pieced them all together and created what, in my opinion, is the most comprehensive narrative of what could be happening in the Headless Valley.

And I'm very proud of the way it was written and put together, and it's in—it's the first story in the graphic novel as well.

We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving it for.

And the question left for you is, what do you see as the most desirable future for the new media podcast world?

I would say that what I love about the podcast space that I hope continues is that it is not corporate in the sense that it's totally like anybody can start a podcast.

We're seeing so many podcasts, but it's like it's this great meritocracy of content where the podcasts are growing and succeeding based largely on merit and skill.

And they're covering all these topics that are like so far-reaching.

So it's like it just feels sort of authentic. I know there are plenty of corporate podcasts out there too, and there's nothing wrong with that.

But I hope that podcasting continues to be this sort of like—how in the world are like The Joe Rogan podcast and like, you know, whatever the random podcast you want to name, like these like titans of industry.

But it's like it's so random, but it's like it's like the beautiful product of just like human authenticity and willingness to talk about stuff.

I love it. I think that it's a very authentic place that has not been corporatized yet.

Amen.

John, thank you so much for everything that you do.

Thank you.

It's really, really incredible. It's really incredible.

You run a phenomenal media company, which I don't think people truly understand.

Nick Witts does. You and Nick run a phenomenal media company, which I think—I don't know if people understand the scale and size of that media company, but it's truly impressive.

And you have this awesome graphic novel.

Yes, in the graphic novel, it's a New York Times bestseller.

It's an anthology of nine stories. It's beautiful, and we intend to continue making more of them.

So definitely check out the graphic novel. It makes a great holiday gift.

It is absolutely gorgeous. The illustrations and all the—I think you call them illustrations—the illustrations are phenomenal.

I'm proud of it. Thank you so much for all that you do.

I'm someone that loves, is absolutely enthralled by all these stories.

I love mysteries. I love unsolved mysteries, and I love true crime.

So, and as we were saying before we got recording, me and my partner, when she lets me listen to these things in bed, it helps me sleep.

And your channel is by far and away the best at this because you're such a gifted storyteller.

Thank you.

And as you've been speaking to me today, I've been thinking, "Ah, that's—I've been trying to piece together what makes you so brilliant as a storyteller."

I guess it's a long journey, a family influence, and generally probably, you know, the experience that you've had.

So thank you for what you do. Thank you for your time today as well.

And it's been an honor to learn about your story of reinvention, but also to hear some of these stories, which by the way, I need to go and figure out this [ __ ]—what's it called?

Deatlov Pass.

The Deatlov Pass.

Pretty well.

Thank you, and it's an honor to be on your show, really.

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you.

I'm going to let you into a little bit of a secret. You're probably going to think me and my team are a little bit weird, but I can still remember to this day when Jima from my team posted on Slack that she changed the scent in this studio.

And right after she posted it, the entire office clapped in our Slack channel.

And this might sound crazy, but at the Diary of a CEO, this is the type of 1% improvement we make on our show.

And that is why the show is the way it is, by understanding the power of compounding 1%.

You can absolutely change your outcomes in your life.

It isn't about drastic transformations or quick wins. It's about the small, consistent actions that have a lasting change in your outcomes.

So two years ago, we started the process of creating this beautiful diary, and it's truly beautiful inside.

There's lots of pictures, lots of inspiration and motivation as well, some interactive elements.

And the purpose of this diary is to help you identify, stay focused on, and develop consistency with the 1% that will ultimately change your life.

We're only going to do a limited run of these diaries, so if you want one for yourself or for a friend or for a colleague or for your team, then head to thediary.com right now.

I'll link it below.

[Music]

Ah.

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