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Coming up next on Passion Struck.
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Never even thought of doing a marathon, let alone across the English Channel, not the easiest of marathon swims.
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And he said, no, you ve been through buds.
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I think you got the right mindset.
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You should be able to do it.
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But contact the family of one of your buddies, one of your fallen buddies.
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And immediately I thought of Neil Fifi, Neil Roberts, nickname is Fifi.
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I called Patty, his wife, and I said, hey, Patty, I m thinking of doing something in memory of Neil.
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What do you think?
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And she said, well, what are you thinking of doing?
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And I told her.
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I could hear her slap the table on the other end of the phone.
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She said, oh, my god, you got to do it.
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He would love that.
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He would love that.
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He would have done it with you.
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And I was like, oh, shit.
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I just screwed myself into this one.
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I can t get out.
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Now I m committed.
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I just told Patty that I m going to do it.
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Welcome to Passion Struck.
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Hi, I m your host, Jon R. Miles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world s most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you.
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Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.
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If you re new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays.
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We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes.
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Now, let s go out there and become Passion Struck.
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Hello everyone, and welcome back to episode 441 of Passion Strike, the number one alternative health podcast.
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A heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who return to the show every week, eager to listen, learn, and to discover new ways to live better, to be better, and to make a meaningful impact in the world.
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If you re new to the show,
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Thank you so much for being here, or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or family member, and we so appreciate it when you do that.
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We have episode starter packs, which are collections of our fans  favorite episodes that we put into convenient playlists that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show.
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Either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started.
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I have a special invitation for you.
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I m excited to introduce our new Passion Struck Quiz.
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It s a unique opportunity for you to discover where you stand on the Passion Struck Continuum.
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Are you an orchestrator who s masterfully balancing various aspects of life with passion and purpose?
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Or are you a vanquisher, conquering challenges and turning obstacles into opportunities?
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Take the quiz on passionstruck.com and find out which one resonates more with your journey to living a passionstruck life.
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In case you missed it, earlier this week, I interviewed Dr. Stephanie Estima,
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the renowned expert in metabolism and neurology.
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Dr. Stephanie is known for her groundbreaking work in optimizing human potential, and she will share her insights on how to harness the power of your body s biology to achieve peak health and performance.
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I also wanted to say thank you for your ratings and reviews, and if you loved today s episode or that one with Dr. Stephanie,
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We would appreciate you giving it a five-star review and sharing it with your friends and families.
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I know we and our guests love to see comments from our listeners.
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Today, we dive deep into the life and lessons of my very good friend, Captain John Doodleittle, a retired Navy SEAL captain with a story that captures the essence of courage, resilience, and unwavering perseverance.
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John s journey from the US Air Force Academy to the demanding world of the US Navy SEALs and beyond is a testament to what it means to live a life driven by purpose and passion,
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Captain Doolittle is not just a military veteran of 25 years who has mastered the art of navigating life s most turbulent waters, both literally and metaphorically.
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An accomplished channel swimmer, John has taken the lessons learned in the SEAL teams and applied them to not only swimming vast and treacherous waters, but also to speaking to organizations across the country about overcoming adversity, leading with integrity, and building teams rooted in trust.
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From the depths of the ocean to the forefront of leadership development, John s message is absolutely clear.
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Anything is possible with resilience and perseverance.
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In today s episode, we explore John s multifaceted career, his motivations for enduring some of the world s most challenging military training, and what it took for him to swim across the English Channel in honor of a fallen teammate.
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We ll delve into the principles that have guided him through life s adversities and triumphs,
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and how he s bringing proven leadership skills to organizations and teams around the country.
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Join us as we uncover the depth of Captain John Doolittle s experiences from his impactful work with Katsu Global and the Tampa Bay Frogman Swim, raising awareness and funds for the Navy SEAL Foundation.
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Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life.
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Now, let that journey begin.
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I am absolutely thrilled and honored to have my very good friend Captain John Doodle on the podcast today.
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Welcome, John.
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So great for you to finally be here, because we ve been talking about this for, I think, like a year and a half now.
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John, it s taken forever, man.
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I mean, we re talking like two and a half years we ve been talking about this.
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I feel blessed to be here finally, so thanks for having me.
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Yeah, well, thank you for giving me so many of your friends to be on the show.
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I mean, I appreciate it, but I figured... You had Redman on, didn t you?
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Yes.
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Yep, and Mac Belt, he ll be coming on, and a bunch of guys.
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Yeah, well, thank you for that, and...
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I think we have so much to explore today because you ve had such an incredible life and career, but I want to start where it all began in Walnut Creek, California.
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Okay.
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All right.
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And can you share how your family s emphasis on adventure and stepping out and creating experiences shaped who you have become?
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Well, so I grew up in Northern California, Walnut Creek.
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It s part of the San Francisco Bay Area.
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My mom and dad, John and Norm, my sister, Tori, younger sister.
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And we were swimmers.
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We did rec swimming, that kind of stuff.
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And we were big skiers.
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My dad was a ski patrol.
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He, every winter, so about three weekends out of each month, we d be up in Lake Tahoe.
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And he was National Ski Patrol, did that for 30 plus years.
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He also worked for Southwest Bell, Pacific Telephone, and a bunch of other stuff.
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But where I really got the taste of adventure in my family was in 1978, AT&T reached out to all the phone companies in the whole nation.
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And they said, hey, the Shah of Iran in Tehran wants to redo his entire communication infrastructure.
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And they asked for contractors to come to Tehran, Iran, for three years at a time.
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So it was in 1978.
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My dad comes home, tells my mom, hey, what do you think about moving to Tehran?
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My mom says, no way in hell are we going to Iran.
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And then my dad takes this piece of paper and he slides it across the dinner table.
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And he said, well, this is what they re looking to pay me.
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And my mom said, well, when are we going?
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So we ended up going to Tehran.
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I was eight, nine years old.
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And that was before the revolution.
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So the Shah was in power.
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But while we were there, things started to go south.
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And I ll tell you what, you want to talk about adventure?
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That was high adventure.
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It was crazy.
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What, getting out of there?
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Yeah, the whole experience.
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My dad got out before the hostages were taken, but all the women and children had been evacuated by that time, so we were back in California when all that was taking place.
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Yeah, that was the beginning of my appetite for adventure.
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Ended up going through high school, played basketball, got hurt, and I was told I d never run again, so I started swimming.
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And I swam all through high school.
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I wasn t great, but I was good enough that I got noticed by some colleges.
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And I swam for a guy, we ll talk about him later, Mr. Mike Troy.
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Gold medalist, right?
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Yep, double gold medalist in the 1960 Olympics, a world record holder in the 200-meter fly, and did, I believe it was three tours in Vietnam as a SEAL, back when the Navy SEALs were a brand new thing, after the UDTs and post-Kennedy, getting the SEAL teams going.
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And I ll tell you what, Mike used to tell these stories.
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They were motivating as hell, and they were great learning experiences, but it always resonated with me.
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That kind of planted the seed for me eventually getting into the teams.
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Well, you have an interesting route of getting there, and when you and I, you went to the Air Force Academy, I went to the Naval Academy, and ironically, my roommate went in the Air Force, you go in the Navy, so I guess we traded one.
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Who s your roommate?
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Colin Morrison.
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Oh, okay.
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Don t know him.
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Yeah, and also another one of my company mates, Todd Chevonne, also went into the Air Force.
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Okay.
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One got out as a colonel, one got out after five.
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You were in 91 year group, right?
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93.
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93.
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Okay, I knew we were separated by one.
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So, I was in 92 year group.
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So, let s back up a little bit.
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So, you re 90.
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So, we re about the same age.
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So, you remember when Top Gun came out, the first one.
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So, that s what I was going to say.
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The old one.
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That s what I was going to say.
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Everyone I knew went to the academy because they wanted to be Top Gun.
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I wanted to.
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I was too tall to be Maverick.
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I wanted to be Goose.
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but not get killed, right?
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I wanted to be Goose.
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I applied to Naval Academy.
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I got turned down.
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They actually laughed at me on the phone when I told them my SAT scores, my college entrance exam scores.
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They basically laughed at me.
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And I told Mike Troy, who was one of my mentors, or behind my dad, Mike, and we ll come back to him several times, just an incredible mentor.
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And I always tell people, if you don t have a mentor in your life that s not friend or family, it s incredibly important.
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important, I think, to have a back board that you can lean against when things get tough.
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But anyway, yeah, I went and lost my train of thought.
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Well, I wanted to do the same thing you wanted to do, but there was no way in heck I wanted to be Goose.
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If I was going to have to land on an aircraft carrier, I wanted my hands on the stick.
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And unfortunately,
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I have some field of vision issues and my junior year, even beginning of my first year, we were preparing to do selection.
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I would go to the optometrist like every week and they were so patient with me because if you had on the 2020, I was able to get 4 out of 6 and then one time I got 5 out of 6 and you had to get 6 out of 6 and do it like a couple repetitive times and I kept getting 5.
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They d bring me in and I could just never get the 6th and so when I knew I couldn t
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fly in the front seat.
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I didn t want to fly.
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So then decided I wanted to follow in my father s footstep, who was UDT class of 16, and then I played rugby and I ended up getting hurt and got medically disqualified from being able to do it.
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So my path was a little bit different.
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But to go from the Air Force Academy to the Navy, when I was there, I thought that you had to have lineage.
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Both the gentlemen I knew, both their fathers were in the Air Force.
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So I had always had the conclusion that you had to have a father or grandfather who had served in another service.
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But you proved me totally wrong.
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Well, I mean, my dad was Air Force.
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He did a career in the Air Force.
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He, during Vietnam, he did four or five years active duty.
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Then he got out, and ironically, he missed the camaraderie that comes with being in an organization like the military.
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So he tried to get back in.
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And he kept getting denied, denied, denied, because they were downsizing as Vietnam was ending, obviously.
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And eventually, they let him in to the reserves.
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And so when I got turned down at the Naval Academy, I asked Mike what he thought.
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And he said, well, you should talk to the swim coach at Navy.
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That also went down in flames.
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But then he said, hey, if you want to fly, look at the Air Force Academy.
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And I did, and I called the coach there.
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And ironically, they needed a short-distance butterflier and breaststroker.
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They looked at my school grades and my scores, and they said, well, keep taking that test.
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And if you can scratch the bare bone minimum, we can probably get you in.
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And that s what happened.
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So I barely got in.
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Well, so you end up graduating from the Air Force Academy.
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It must have been pretty interesting when you re there in a Navy uniform when you re graduating.
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I assume that s how you did it, because that s what our guys did.
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I mean, they were there in their Air Force.
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Yeah, it s a little different there.
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You get in your parade uniform, and you have the big parade where everybody throws their hats in the air and that kind of stuff.
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But you get commissioned right before that.
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So I put on Navy whites with Air Force shoulder boards.
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I got commissioned, became an Ensign, 01 Ensign.
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And then I had to change back into the parade uniform and then go march out for the graduations.
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May 27, 1992, Ensign Doolittle graduated with all his Zoomie buddies.
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But there were actually four of us in that class that went into the Navy.
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Two of us went, we all wanted to go to BUDS.
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We all wanted to go to Basic Underwater Demolition School, and initially had orders to do that, but the Navy, once they realized there were four Air Force guys going to one BUDS class, they said, no way.
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And they only ended up taking two, and I was not one of the two.
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The next three years, every six months, I submitted a package to try and change my designator to go into the BUDS training pipeline.
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and I got denied six times over three years.
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And while you were doing those applications, you were a Navy diver.
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I was a hard hat diver, salvage diver.
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Yeah, that s what I was doing in the Navy.
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So do you think that ended up helping prepare you even more to then going to BUDS?
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Oh yeah, absolutely.
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The Navy dive school for the salvage diver is, it s different than anything you do in the SEAL teams, but it definitely prepares you for being comfortable in the water.
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If there s one thing you need to be comfortable at to go into teams, you gotta be comfortable in the water.
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So yeah, absolutely, the hard hat diving school helped with that.
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Yeah, I think one of the misconceptions about the seals is that when you re diving, I think some people think that you re going really far under and really a lot of what you re doing is like right under the surface.
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Oxygen, rebreathers, you stay like 15, 20 feet under the surface and you transit, you know, combat swimmers getting from point A to point B. It s not about going down.
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I always love to hear about different experiences from BUDS.
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And a friend of mine, one of my classmates, Chris Cassidy, told me the story that when he was going through BUDS, he and his guys were told to clean the office of some of the instructors.
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And this was right before Hell Week started.
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And he said, we go into this office, and with all of us who go in to clean it, it probably only takes about a half an hour, but they allocated like three, four hours for it.
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And he goes, when we walk in, just like this book is sitting here, here is a book that says Hell Week Schedule.
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And some of the guys who were with him said, oh my God, there s the book.
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It s right there.
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And Chris was like, no, you don t want to pick that up.
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There s something to this.
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This is a trap.
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But the two people pick it up.
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They end up photocopying it.
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And they spend the whole night reading it, going through it.
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And before Hell Week even started, both of them quit.
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And Chris said the lesson that he really learned from that is that sometimes it s better not to know the hardships that you re going to face than to have them laid out right there in front of you because that s what they psych themselves out.
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I agree with that.
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I agree.
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And I think that applies to a lot of life.
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Approaching difficult times one step at a time.
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In Bud s In Hell Weeks, they say don t think of it as a day at a time or even an evolution at a time.
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And an evolution might last one to three hours.
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But to think of it as one step at a time.
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If you can make it to right there, well, you can probably make that next step.
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And to just think about those really difficult times in life when things get tough, just one, you know, what they say, how do you eat an elephant?
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One bite at a time.
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Not thinking about the whole overarching picture yet, because it can get overwhelming.
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I mean, we ve talked about this in the past, yeah.
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Well, in the teams, you served in an actual, you were in SEAL Team 2, and you did deployments.
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You also served at much higher levels.
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One of the things I like to talk about in my book is this concept called Gardner leadership, and the person who really taught me this was General Stan McChrystal.
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And what Stan talks about, and I think it s very applicable to a SEAL team, is that from his perspective, he could be the head of SOCOM,
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or whatever detachment is giving you your mission, but if you are a SEAL and you re deployed 5,000 miles away from where your boss is, your boss has got to think of it that they re giving you the training, they re giving you the operational awareness of what you need to do on this mission, but yet they have to be hands-off because they can t be there in the moment that
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you re in conflict, to micromanage everything you re doing.
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Do you think that s true, and how do you apply that to the civilian world?
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Yeah, in my current role, I love talking about commander s intent, and that s something we learned about in the team.
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It s a military concept, but it s very much leveraged in Special Operations Command, where you take a very senior person in an organization,
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And you talk to the most junior person in the organization, the whole organization, about what the overall intent is of what we re trying to achieve.
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And you tell them what you want done, but not how to get it done.
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You ve got to rely on historical perspective and their experience to really accomplish whatever that mission is.
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There s a great quote, his name s Britt Slabinski, Slab.
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Medal of Honor recipient, he would be a great guy to have on your show as well.
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But Slab used to say all the time, you re never too junior to have the best idea in the room.
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And you re never too senior to be wrong.
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You re never too junior to have the best idea in the room.
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You re never too senior to be wrong.
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And that s beautiful because it empowers everyone in an organization to achieve something great.
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And when you look at, yeah, okay, I was in the SEAL teams.
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I did that for 25 years, but when you look at
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Any small group of like-minded personalities and like-minded people trying to achieve some overarching goal, end state, if you can tell them not at all how you want it done, but tell them what the end state is, and let them navigate between those swim lanes,
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It s amazing what they ll come up with.
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And oftentimes, when you empower those junior guys in an organization, they ll crush it.
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They ll crush it.
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When they feel like they re being under that traditional military model, that hierarchical where, hey, you will do what I tell you to do when I tell you to do it, that doesn t work a lot of the times.
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That s certainly the case in special operations.
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It s funny, you were Admiral Pence.
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I do, yes.
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And I was talking to him about you, and he goes, when people see Doolittle, he goes, that s what everyone pictures a SEAL looking like.
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He goes, when they see me, he goes, I have no physical ability at all.
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So he goes, John makes it look easy.
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And he goes, I had to work like 10 times harder than he did to do anything.
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Oh, man.
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He s a great American, great leader.
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He did a friend of mine s retirement just a couple weeks ago.
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Oh, that s great.
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Well, when I think of SEALs, and I think when a lot of people do, you oftentimes think of physical endurance and the physical aspects of it.
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But I think way beyond that is the mental toughness aspect of it.
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Can you share a technique or a practice that you learned in the teams that helped you maintain mental resilience in times of extreme challenge?
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Yeah, before you go to initial training, everything in a young alpha male s head is all about physical.
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And once you get there and you realize everybody s just in incredible shape, and I don t want to say everybody s the same, but in my opinion, the thing that distinguishes guys that leave on their own accord, that ring the bell and quit, and the people that stay, it s their mindset.
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It is absolutely their mindset.
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For me, personally, it was that perspective that I might get kicked out, I might get medically dropped if I get injured, or something horrible might happen, but I will not, no matter what, quit.
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And that s where my mind was.
2
SPEAKER_01
Now, everybody treats it a little bit different, but it is definitely more mental than physical.
2
SPEAKER_01
And when you go through an experience that live with a lot of friends and teammates, you walk away from that experience, at least I did, realizing that there s really nothing you can t do as long as you surround yourself with the right people.
2
SPEAKER_01
What you learn at Bud s, though, is you cannot do it by yourself.
2
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely not.
2
SPEAKER_01
Impossible.
2
SPEAKER_00
No, absolutely not.
2
SPEAKER_00
Really a band of brothers, for sure.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, a lot of SEAL missions are shrouded in secrecy.
2
SPEAKER_01
As they should be.
2
SPEAKER_00
As they should be.
2
SPEAKER_00
And you re going into very dangerous, oftentimes unknown situations.
2
SPEAKER_00
Can you describe at all what goes on behind the background?
2
SPEAKER_00
Like when you re typically preparing for a mission, what aspects do you focus on that people might not expect?
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, this can apply to a lot of things in life.
2
SPEAKER_01
The mission planning, that was one of the things that kind of surprised me, was how distributed across the organization it was.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you might be the senior enlisted in a task unit.
2
SPEAKER_01
You might be the senior officer in a task unit.
2
SPEAKER_01
But you re not necessarily doing any more work than anyone else in that task unit.
2
SPEAKER_01
Everybody s working hard to prepare for what that mission is.
2
SPEAKER_01
So if you think about a small program manager in a small team, if you wanted to take the special operations model and apply it to that team,
2
SPEAKER_01
You give everybody high levels of responsibility, even those most junior guys.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that surprised me.
2
SPEAKER_01
I really thought the officers and the senior enlisted kind of shaped all the mission planning.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s not at all the case.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s not how it works.
2
SPEAKER_01
Without giving away too much, the way we insert an infill to a target, that might be all the point man s responsibility to figure all that out.
2
SPEAKER_01
And unless one of the leadership in the organization sees a major issue with it, they go with it.
2
SPEAKER_01
They trust him.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that has applications throughout life, especially if you re working in the business world, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Right.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, absolutely.
2
SPEAKER_00
I love that.
2
SPEAKER_00
My father was a breacher.
2
SPEAKER_01
Really?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I always asked him, especially because he was in Cambodia, and I m like, how did you feel about being in that position?
2
SPEAKER_00
He goes, I didn t think about it.
2
SPEAKER_00
He goes, you don t think about it.
2
SPEAKER_00
You ve got a job you re trained to do.
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SPEAKER_00
If you don t do it well, that people are going to get hurt.
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SPEAKER_00
They re relying on you.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so he goes, I just went into it
2
SPEAKER_00
trying to do the best job I possibly could and I just felt the rest of it would take care of itself because everyone else was entrusting me that I m going to get it right so that they could concentrate on their jobs.
2
SPEAKER_00
Is he still around?
2
SPEAKER_00
He is.
2
SPEAKER_00
He s 86 now.
2
SPEAKER_01
Awesome.
2
SPEAKER_01
Awesome.
2
SPEAKER_01
You should get your dad and my dad.
2
SPEAKER_01
You all have a beer.
2
SPEAKER_00
That d be great.
2
SPEAKER_00
I want to now jump from the Seals to your swimming prowess, because you not only swam in college, and ironically, my roommate in college was also a swimmer, he was a butterflyer.
2
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
2
SPEAKER_00
But you did something pretty remarkable.
2
SPEAKER_00
As far as I know, you are the only Navy Seal who s ever swum the English Channel.
2
SPEAKER_00
Is that accurate?
2
SPEAKER_01
I think there s another guy that s done it now.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s done it now, but at the time you were the only one, and that s what, 33 kilometers, something like that?
2
SPEAKER_01
It s 21 miles as the crow flies, but what happens with the channel is you go through two tidal shifts, so your track across the channel ends up looking like a big S. So 21 miles as the crow flies, but our track for my swim was 37.1 miles.
2
SPEAKER_01
But you re not swimming that far, because if you re swimming one knot this way and the current s going five knots this way, you understand?
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SPEAKER_01
You re being pushed and pulled by the current, tides and currents, so you really rely on your pilot vessel.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that was an incredible experience.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was at the school, Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey.
2
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It was early 2004.
2
SPEAKER_01
A lot of my friends and teammates were over in Afghanistan and at that point Iraq, so we had both things going on then.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it was a really busy time in the military for sure, but I was struggling with that.
2
SPEAKER_01
because all my buddies are getting after it, doing these great things, and I m at school, at a post-grad, when you re an officer, they encourage you to go get your post-grad degree, that whole thing.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I, one night I called up Mike Troy again, and I said, hey Mike, this school thing, it really sucks, and I m struggling with it, and something s not right with me, I just, I feel off.
2
SPEAKER_01
And without skipping a beat, yeah, he s no longer with us, but I know he s laughing right now.
2
SPEAKER_01
Without skipping a beat, he goes, John, swim the English Channel, and do it for one of your buddies that died.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, Mike, I was like a 200-meter breaststroker when you were my coach.
2
SPEAKER_01
I ve never done a marathon swim.
2
SPEAKER_01
I ve never even thought of doing a marathon swim, let alone across the English Channel, not the easiest of marathon swims.
2
SPEAKER_01
And he said, no.
2
SPEAKER_01
You ve been through buds.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think you got the right mindset.
2
SPEAKER_01
You should be able to do it.
2
SPEAKER_01
But contact the family of one of your buddies, one of your fallen buddies.
2
SPEAKER_01
And immediately, I thought of Neil Fifi, Neil Roberts.
2
SPEAKER_01
Nickname is Fifi.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so I called Patty, his wife, and I said, hey, Patty, I m thinking of doing something in memory of Neil.
2
SPEAKER_01
What do you think?
2
SPEAKER_01
And she said, well, what are you thinking of doing?
2
SPEAKER_01
And I told her.
2
SPEAKER_01
And she s just, I could hear her slap the table on the other end of the phone.
2
SPEAKER_01
She said, oh my god, you got to do it.
2
SPEAKER_01
He would love that.
2
SPEAKER_01
He would love that.
2
SPEAKER_01
He would have done it.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, oh shit, I just screwed myself into this one.
3
SPEAKER_00
I can t get out.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now I m committed.
3
SPEAKER_00
I just told Patty that I m gonna do it.
3
SPEAKER_00
So then I went to go do my first swim in Monterey.
3
SPEAKER_00
No wetsuit, because to do the channel, for it to count with the Channel Swimming Association, you can t wear any neoprene.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you got to be in a Speedo, and you can have a swim cap, and you can have earplugs.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s it.
3
SPEAKER_01
No fins.
3
SPEAKER_01
No.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, God, no.
3
SPEAKER_00
No fins.
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SPEAKER_00
The only rule is you can t touch the boat, and you can t be wearing any neoprene stuff.
3
SPEAKER_00
You can put some Vaseline on or something under your armpits.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I go in Monterey, and I get in the water to do my first training swim for the English Channel.
3
SPEAKER_00
How long do you think I lasted?
3
SPEAKER_00
Maybe you did a mile?
3
SPEAKER_00
Five minutes.
3
SPEAKER_00
Five minutes?
3
SPEAKER_00
Five minutes.
3
SPEAKER_00
At five minutes, I was jackhammering.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because you were so cold?
3
SPEAKER_00
So cold.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the water temp in Monterey, that time of year, 58, 59 degrees.
3
SPEAKER_00
But that s the same temperature it is in the summer over in Dover, England.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I was like, ooh, man.
3
SPEAKER_00
But what I learned about myself and about human physiology is your body has an amazing ability to adapt.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so the first day I lasted five minutes, the next day I lasted seven.
3
SPEAKER_00
And by the end of the week, I was in the water for 10 minutes.
3
SPEAKER_00
The next week, 15 minutes.
3
SPEAKER_00
And later on, a few months later, I want to say it was about six months of doing that or a little more, I worked my way up to what they call an immersion swim up in San Francisco.
3
SPEAKER_00
You got to last for 10 hours in water under 60 degrees Fahrenheit.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I did that.
3
SPEAKER_00
And long story longer, did it in memory of Neil.
3
SPEAKER_00
and to raise money for the UDT Seal Association and the Navy Seal Foundation to help Gold Star families.
3
SPEAKER_00
And yeah, long story longer, eventually made it.
3
SPEAKER_01
How long did it end up taking you to do this one?
3
SPEAKER_00
12 and a half hours, a little under 12 hours, 24.
3
SPEAKER_00
When you finish that, you go to Dover.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you swim Dover to Calais, or near Calais, France, and then you finish it, and you get back on the boat, and the boat brings you back to Dover, and you go to the White Horse Pub.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the White Horse Pub, if you complete the swim, you get a free pint of Guinness.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s your reward.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s your reward.
3
SPEAKER_00
You have to write your name on the ceiling tiles or on the walls.
3
SPEAKER_00
But there s a pay phone, right, or there was, and I went out there, called Patty, and it was powerful.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was one of the coolest things I ve ever done.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s an amazing thing to say you ve done it, but to do it in honor of a teammate is quite a remarkable honor for him and his family.
3
SPEAKER_00
One of the things Mike told me before I started training for this, he said, yeah, John, it s hard.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s going to be hard.
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SPEAKER_00
It s going to be one of the hardest things you ve ever done.
3
SPEAKER_00
But if you re doing it for a purpose greater than yourself, you will be able to achieve it.
3
SPEAKER_00
if you do something for a greater good or a greater purpose than just this then you d be able to accomplish it and he was exactly right because we were halfway across and the tides were going the currents are going one way the winds had picked up and we re going the other way so now
3
SPEAKER_00
We didn t have swells.
3
SPEAKER_00
We had that washing machine chop, and everything was starting to fall apart.
3
SPEAKER_00
My stroke count was slowing down, which you never want to have happen.
3
SPEAKER_00
My shoulder was just aching.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was cramping.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was hitting jellyfish, all this stuff.
3
SPEAKER_00
And my dad was in the support crew on the pilot boat.
3
SPEAKER_00
And they all could see that I was struggling.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I didn t know it, but they had snuck on board a 3 by 5 American flag.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it was like 15, 18 knots of wind.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I breathed to my right.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I look up, and they re holding in the wind this American flag.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I just remember thinking, holy smokes, John, get out of your own head.
3
SPEAKER_00
This isn t about you, man.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s about Neil.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s about all the guys like Neil that we re going to lose going forward in this long war.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I ll tell you, it was like a light switch.
3
SPEAKER_00
All of a sudden, nothing hurt anymore, and we were able to finish it.
3
SPEAKER_01
What s incredible, and I just released an episode this week that we re doing this with this Gurkha soldier named Hari Buddha Magar.
3
SPEAKER_00
The guy from Nepal.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes, and this gentleman unfortunately lost both his legs above the knee from an IED in Afghanistan and
3
SPEAKER_01
Remarkably, he was the first person with that situation who s ever climbed Everest.
3
SPEAKER_01
And just to hear his whole story, he got similar to you trying to get into the seals.
3
SPEAKER_01
He kept getting denied because the Nepali government doesn t want a fatality.
3
SPEAKER_01
They don t want someone to fail.
3
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so he had to actually climb mountains.
3
SPEAKER_01
Blanc and another mountain just to prove to him that he could do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
But as I was interviewing him, I said, how often did you want to give up?
3
SPEAKER_01
He said, almost every hour of every single day.
3
SPEAKER_01
He goes, because it was so hard.
3
SPEAKER_01
He goes, but to your point, he goes, I wasn t doing it for myself.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was doing it to prove to other people with disabilities so they could see me and realize in their own mind that anything is possible if they set their mind to it.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was telling Katie about, I listened to the first 10 minutes of it last night when he told me.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so I haven t finished it yet, but when I told Katie, bilateral amputee, both above the knee, first person in history to summit on Mount Everest, she didn t believe me at first.
3
SPEAKER_00
We had to look it up.
3
SPEAKER_00
She s, oh my gosh, that s amazing.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m really grateful you were able to get him on the show.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s an amazing story.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, I happened to... I don t know where I heard about him.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think it might have been Corey saw a video about it and said, you got to get this guy on the show.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I d never... It was such a remarkable accomplishment.
3
SPEAKER_01
I just thought his story was worth telling to inspire other people.
3
SPEAKER_01
Going back to swimming, English Channel isn t the only thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
We re staying in swimming.
3
SPEAKER_01
We re staying in swimming.
3
SPEAKER_01
English Channel isn t the only thing that you have done that is supporting the Navy SEAL Foundation and fallen SEALs.
3
SPEAKER_01
I have seen you now two years in a row swim here in Tampa Bay in January.
3
SPEAKER_01
You do the Frogman swim and that is something that s in what it s like 14th year
3
SPEAKER_00
Yep, well, 15 years.
3
SPEAKER_00
We just had our 15th one.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so let s go back a little bit.
3
SPEAKER_00
15 years ago, I was stationed at Special Operations Command Headquarters, SOCOM headquarters.
3
SPEAKER_00
And we heard about a SEAL, and he doesn t mind me telling this story, so I ll tell you his name, Dan Knossen.
3
SPEAKER_00
And Dan in Afghanistan, they were landing on a hilltop, they were inserting from a rotary wing insertion, and the point man missed a pressure plate IED, improvised explosive device, and Dan stepped on it.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the IED went low order, meaning the whole daisy chain of explosives did not go off, luckily, thank God.
3
SPEAKER_00
But the pressure plate primer charge did go off, blew both Dan s legs off above the knees.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so we heard about that, of course, immediately at SOCOM.
3
SPEAKER_00
And they medevaced him, and he was at Walter Reed.
3
SPEAKER_00
And we were hearing through the grapevine that this was before our foundations had a lot of money to help wounded guys, to help Gold Star families and all that.
3
SPEAKER_00
So we heard his family was in the hurt locker financially a little bit.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so some of us here locally, and a lot of these guys, Dan O Shea was one of them, and a lot of us got together and we said, well, what can we do to support this guy?
3
SPEAKER_00
And somebody, I think it might ve been Rory, came up with, why don t, oh, I know who, it was Terry Tomlin.
3
SPEAKER_00
Rest in peace, Terry, that guy was great.
3
SPEAKER_00
But Terry said, let s swim across the bay.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, wait a minute, the Tampa Bay is like 26 miles across.
3
SPEAKER_00
What are you talking about?
3
SPEAKER_00
No, we ll do a shorter version.
3
SPEAKER_00
Eh, 5K, three and a half mile-ish.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s a place we can swim across.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so we did it.
3
SPEAKER_00
We ended up having a little party afterwards at the American Legion on the Tampa side.
3
SPEAKER_00
There were about, I don t know, 25 of us, maybe 30 tops that showed up that morning.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was cold.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was in the 30s.
3
SPEAKER_00
And at the end,
3
SPEAKER_00
We consolidated all these handwritten IOU notes on bar napkins, little wads of cash, pocket lent checks, and we put them all on a table at the American Legion.
3
SPEAKER_00
And we started counting up.
3
SPEAKER_00
And we were hoping to make about $3,000 to give Dan s family to just help out with something, anything.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it ended up being
4
SPEAKER_00
about $30,000.
4
SPEAKER_00
And at that point, we re like, well, wait a minute.
4
SPEAKER_00
We re onto something here.
4
SPEAKER_00
Because we didn t even try and we made $30,000 for this guy.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so now jump forward a few years, and instead of doing the SWIM for an individual, we decided to do it in support of the Navy SEAL Foundation to help with Gold Star families and surviving spouses and surviving kids that are struggling with A, B, or C. And each year, the SWIM has made more and more money for the foundation.
4
SPEAKER_00
And the foundation s got a lot of money to help guys now
4
SPEAKER_00
But if you think about what happens when we lose somebody, when a family loses their husband or their father, the entire family needs to get to the memorial service.
4
SPEAKER_00
The entire family needs hotel rooms.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s rental cars, there s per diem costs.
4
SPEAKER_00
Then there s the burial, which is often at a different time.
4
SPEAKER_00
All the travel costs that comes with that.
4
SPEAKER_00
And the kids, their college education, the SEAL Foundation covers that.
4
SPEAKER_00
A lot of times the spouse had not been working, just been raising the family, but now the spouse needs to go back to work, the foundation helps with that.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it just spiderwebs in so many ways that they can help these families.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s why we do The Swim, and it s incredibly successful.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s one of my favorite things to be part of, man.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s really cool.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, this year, when I was there, it was a tough year because right at the time that this was happening, there were two SEALs in the Gulf who had gone missing, presumed fatalities.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I also, every single year, you swim for a different family.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it s typically a family who is there present.
4
SPEAKER_01
And this year, I got to see and meet the parents of- Daddy, where it says, you have mom, his Sandy was there.
4
SPEAKER_01
Mom and his father, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
And his father was a fighter pilot himself.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I didn t know that.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, he flew F-4s.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, just to see how impactful it was for them and the power of hope and remembrance that it brought them made me, I mean, just internalize the whole reason why everyone does it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I think what s remarkable now is that the vast majority of people who swim it aren t Navy SEALs.
4
SPEAKER_01
They re civilians who are now trying to help or veterans.
4
SPEAKER_00
It is such a cool way for the Tampa, St.
4
SPEAKER_00
Petersburg, Clearwater region community to come together to support this effort.
4
SPEAKER_00
Because at that memorial ceremony, when the sun s coming up that morning and the reading of the names of all the naval special warfare operators we ve lost since 9-11, when that memorial service is happening, we re surrounded by the local community on the beach.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it is incredible.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, you ve experienced it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Every time I talk to somebody about this, I encourage them, even if they don t volunteer, even if they don t swim, even if they don t go to the after party, go see the memorial ceremony.
4
SPEAKER_00
and the reading of the names.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s so powerful and it s just information that needs to be shared and I ll keep doing this thing till I can t walk anymore.
4
SPEAKER_00
Hell, I ll keep doing it after I can t walk.
4
SPEAKER_01
Where are we going now?
4
SPEAKER_01
The life of a SEAL, I think any of us who served, we end up later on having a whole bunch of injuries and if I have it right, you ve had
4
SPEAKER_01
a dozen-plus surgeries yourself.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, 13 orthopedic surgeries.
4
SPEAKER_01
You re stationed at SOCOM, which is the Special Operation Command here in MacDill.
4
SPEAKER_01
And at the time, you are now having to get shoulder surgery, if I have it right.
4
SPEAKER_01
And you had had to have this shoulder surgery.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, rotator cuff.
4
SPEAKER_01
In the past.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it took you about a year
4
SPEAKER_01
to recover from it the first time, but you re going through this now the second time and you re introduced to this device.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I know where you re going now.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yes, and so you re at the same time, you re contemplating getting out of the service, but knowing you, you want to do something that s going to help people.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so you end up starting to use this device, which we re going to talk about, and it ends up cutting your recovery time in about half, if I understand it correctly.
4
SPEAKER_00
You got it right.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s like you ve done research on that.
4
SPEAKER_01
And you start realizing that this thing has got
4
SPEAKER_01
applications that could be helping a lot of people, especially people who ve lost limbs, who are in severe chronic pain, like a lot of veterans are in, and even the elderly who suffer falls and other things.
4
SPEAKER_01
So can you tell us about this path?
4
SPEAKER_01
I think I just did some sugarcoating on it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, first of all, thanks for even going down this road, because I ve been out for six and a half years, and I ve been working with this company, Katsu, the whole time.
4
SPEAKER_00
Katsu is a Japanese word.
4
SPEAKER_00
It stands for increase, ka, and if you think of shiatsu, atsu, pressure, increased pressure, ka, atsu.
4
SPEAKER_00
And there s another word, shiatsu, shiatsu.
4
SPEAKER_00
So katsu is like pressure on, shiatsu is pressure off, jiatsu.
4
SPEAKER_00
What katsu is, it s pneumatic, elastic pneumatic bands controlled by a little pneumatic compressor.
4
SPEAKER_00
And when I was going through rehab over at SOCOM from one of my surgeries, they would put these devices, in this case, on my arms.
4
SPEAKER_00
And during the inflation phase, it looks like a tourniquet,
4
SPEAKER_00
It s not a tourniquet.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s an elastic pneumatic band.
4
SPEAKER_00
And all it does is it pulls the blood in the limb.
4
SPEAKER_00
So if I had it on my legs right now, during the pressure phase, I would feel all this tingling in my legs.
4
SPEAKER_00
It would all be engorged with blood.
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SPEAKER_00
and you re slowing down that venous return, but when you start moving the leg, when it s in that state, or same with your arms, not only does it feel much harder than it actually is, but you re tricking the body, you re tricking the biomechanics in the body.
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It s almost like a biohack, where the body thinks you re working really hard, but all you re really doing is instead of moving 100 pounds, you might be moving five pounds.
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but you re getting that hormonal response as if you re moving 100 pounds.
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So it s a great tool for rehab.
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That s how I got introduced to it.
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They d have me do these exercises with incredibly low resistance, low weight, but it was really difficult.
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And what I found is, in my case, they used it on me for two different surgeries.
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In both cases, my rehab time was pretty quick.
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And yeah, I fell in love with it, and a few years later I was getting out.
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I ended up traveling to Tokyo, Japan, and I met the founder, Dr. Yoshiaki Sato.
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And I got trained by him, and then I met the CEO for Katsu Global.
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And long story longer, I ve been working there ever since.
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But the thing I really enjoy about it is helping, and you touched on it, is helping the wounded, ill, injured teammates, especially in the veteran space.
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There s something to be said when somebody has chronic injuries, orthopedic injuries or otherwise, or they have a lot of osteoarthritis and they can t, like, go to the gym and lift heavy anymore because they get that massive inflammation response.
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or they get injured and then they re down for a while.
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This is a way to, with very low weight, so the risk of injury is very low, but this is a way to get that workout without going heavy.
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And if you saw pictures of my back, you d understand why I will never be able to go heavy ever again, but I can still get good workouts from this stuff.
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I want to explore this a little bit more.
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I mean, we are an alternative health podcast.
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So I mean, this fits right in.
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And I know you ve got one of these with you.
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My understanding of this, if I have it correctly, is the person who discovered this actually studied people over a 10-year period.
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to understand the usefulness of it.
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And I think I ve heard you talk that there are people up until 104 years old who have used this in a safe manner.
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So the other thing I understand about this is it s got a couple different modes.
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One, as I understand it, is it s like a constant mode.
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And another one is a recircling mode, where it gives you some... We call it the Katsu cycle mode.
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Okay, so why don t you go through this.
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Well, first of all, sarcopenia is the muscle loss that happens after, as you get older and older, you lose more and more muscle mass.
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And it used to be considered a medical truth that once you got over 55 years old, you were gonna start losing muscle mass.
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What Dr. Sato showed, and he showed it with people up to 104 years old with MRI cross-sectional measurements and whatnot,
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If you pool the blood in a limb and then you exercise that limb, very simple exercise.
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you can actually get muscle hypertrophy even into your 80s, 90s, and in that extreme case, 104 years old.
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That has taken a lot of the fitness industry and turned it on its head a little bit, especially for people that are in their 50s and older.
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Because when you talk to guys, especially, we see this as ex-military guys all the time,
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Guys just don t want to go to the gym and go heavy anymore because if I go to the gym and I do some deadlifts, just like back in the day, 225 deadlift was nothing.
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If I do a 135 deadlift and I m wrong in my form in any way, I m down for a month, if not longer.
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This is a way where you can still get that
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but maybe just do the bar, or maybe no bar at all, and just do those movements.
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And this is what it looks like.
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This is our Bluetooth version where the compressor s actually connected to the band.
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But these bands, they re not tourniquets.
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They stretch, and they give, and they move with the limb.
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Now, there s a lot of, I ll call them competitor products, and they use repurposed surgical tourniquets.
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and that would be much wider than this, over double the width of this, and they re rigid in their cuffs.
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Now, those are designed to fully occlude blood flow, and then you back it off a little bit, and you can get muscle hypertrophy from that.
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That s true.
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but you can only do that on young, healthy people.
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You would never do that on somebody that has compromised vascular system or cardiac issues.
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This, on the other hand, is actually a cardiac rehab device in Tokyo.
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We just recently registered it as a class one medical device here in the U.S., and we re working with the VA and a lot of medical organizations for the cardiac rehab piece of this.
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And for those who are not watching but are listening, this is, it s about what, 18 inches long?
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Yeah, so this is an armband.
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It s about 18 inches long, just over an inch wide.
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It has a pneumatic bladder in it.
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This one is controlled by your smartphone, so it has the actual compressor on here.
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The other versions, you wear the compression device on your shorts or on your sweats, and then there s a tube that connects to the band.
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A lot of the military organizations like that one better because you can untether.
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The band will hold the pressure when it s untethered, and then you re waterproof in that mode, and you can do aggressive movements like jiu-jitsu and things like that.
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I like this version when I m in the kitchen making coffee and working around the house.
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But that folds into something else that is really what got me started with this company.
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It s less about having people add something new.
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It s more about taking whatever your life, how you live your life already activity-wise and folding this into your existing life.
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If somebody never goes to the gym, they should never go to the gym with this.
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They just fold this in to what they already do for activity anyway.
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I could talk about this all day long.
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So going back to Harry
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I know one of the things that those who have lost limbs, it could be from diabetes, it could be from a motorcycle accident, it could be from combat, they end up getting phantom pain where they almost feel like their limb is still there.
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How would this help someone in that situation?
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So we have many cases of this decreasing residual limb pain.
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Now, full disclosure, when I say residual limb pain, I m talking more at the actual area where the limb had been severed and then sewn closed.
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So those nerve endings around, I don t like to call it a stump, but that residual limb ending, a lot of people have pain at that point.
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This helps alleviate that pain by simulating, when you exercise, what do you do?
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You re dilating and relaxing blood vessels over and over when you re exercising.
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Well, you can do that with this in the passive state.
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So if you think about an amputee and they have a lot of discomfort in that limb, if they can exercise that residual limb,
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then it feels much better nine times out of ten.
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Some guys don t like it.
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I mean, I ll be honest.
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Some guys, especially if they ve had any nerve ablation done, this can actually not work on many of those guys.
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But nine times out of ten, guys love it.
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Now, we also have had people with what you re talking about, phantom limb pain,
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having that decrease with this, but we haven t done studies on that.
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I can t say that we gotta do some further research on that, but anecdotally, yes.
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I think what it is more than anything is a distraction technique for the brain.
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I think the brain gets into these pain pathways, gets so engrossed or embedded in the brain, if you can distract those pain pathways, then you can help decrease that pain.
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paraplegics and quadriplegics that are dealing with that nerve.
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What type of nerve pain is that called?
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I can t remember off the top of my head.
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I m having a mind blank.
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But we work with plenty of paralyzed veterans and otherwise.
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And it s a way to improve systemic circulation in that person.
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So we have somebody right here in Tampa.
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He s a total quad.
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He was shot through and through his C3.
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So he s a complete quadriplegic from his neck down, but neuropathic pain.
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So his neuropathic pain, even though he has no feeling or traditional feeling and no muscular control over his legs, he s still before bed, he still has neuropathic pain.
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this seems to decrease it in those guys.
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I m not going to say it makes it go away, but he does say when he s using this before bed, he s able to come off those meds to help put him to sleep.
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Okay.
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Well, I mean, that s great.
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And I think the other big use case is I know when my grandparents were older, my parents now, we re always worried about them falling because
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slip on ice or slip anyway where you end up damaging a hip or something like that.
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It s the repercussions that come from that downstream and to me this is a great way for people to use a device like this without having to go to the gym if that s not a resource or they don t have the strength at that point to do it.
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Yeah, frailty is a big issue.
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As people get into their 70s and 80s, I mean, both my parents use this on a religious basis every single day.
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And they swear by it.
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And if you saw my mom and dad, I mean, yes, they look like, sorry, mom, you don t look like you re in your 80s.
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You look like you re in your 60s.
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But their muscle tone, they both still ski, they both still hike.
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It s that eliminating frailty as you age is incredibly powerful.
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And to your point, that is a way, if you do fall, if you do slip and fall, muscle tone in the body is just gonna help in a variety of ways with that fall, if not help keep you from even falling in the first place.
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Well, thank you for sharing that, John.
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I want to go back to swimming here for a second, and I m going to introduce this topic through this lens.
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I know you love to speak.
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You ve been donating your time a lot to universities to try to inspire the up-and-coming next generation.
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But I happened to go on LinkedIn one day, and I see this conference announcement, and
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here you are headlining and they had these two, I don t know, average people speaking with you, Michael Phelps and... My aquatic childhood hero.
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And I know that this speaking is something that you love to do and it s something that s become very important to you.
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Can you talk about
5
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I know one of the things you like to talk about is burnout and how to avoid it.
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I was hoping you might be able to share that and then I ll ask you a couple other questions about some of the things you like to cover.
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So I do enjoy the public speaking, which surprises me because in the military,
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I hated getting up in front of large groups and selling our mission.
5
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Anytime we wanted to try and get a mission, the officer would get up and brief all the senior leadership.
5
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And it always was, I always felt like I was getting sniped from the crowd.
5
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And so I avoided that stuff.
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I didn t enjoy it.
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I tried to do one-on-ones with the senior leadership to get missions and that kind of stuff.
5
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And then I got out, and I got asked to go speak at a local high school.
5
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And I didn t really want to do it, and I went and I did.
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It was a Veteran s Day thing, and Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Month of the Eleventh Hour.
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And I look out in the crowd, and these kids are hanging on every single word.
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And then I opened it up for questions after I spoke.
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I only talked for 15 minutes.
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And after a half hour, the principal had to cut it off.
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It was so much fun.
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It was so much fun.
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And what I learned is
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There s so much from my life that I ve learned in my time in the military and my time after the military in business.
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There s so many lessons that I ve learned that I love sharing with people, especially when they re younger, that college age, seniors in high school, college, or young professionals just starting in the business world.
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I love talking to those guys, because there s so many lessons that I learned the hard way
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that very simply can be avoided with doing the little things right.
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I love talking about that, right?
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When you re at the service academy and it doesn t make sense why you gotta do all these little things the exact right way or you get the buds and you have to sharpen your knife a certain way or tie your shoes, all those little things, they don t necessarily make sense until one day you re in the combat zone and you have tragedy and somebody dies
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and you peel it all back and you look at what happened and then you realize, oh geez, we missed a little thing.
6
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Those types of stories resonate with young Americans.
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That s what I love to do, is there s things that I ve done in the military, and there s stories I like to tell, and then take the operational piece of whatever the story was, and then fold it into these kids  lives and how it can help them.
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And it works for small businesses and project management teams and that kind of stuff as well.
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And I think going back to that story with Harry and him trying to show that anything s possible, I think your journey of doing the English Channel and even becoming a SEAL is also a testament that if you put your mind to something and you have passion and perseverance and you re intentional about how you re approaching it, you can accomplish things that you never in your life thought you could accomplish.
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Is there something you would like to talk to the audience about that
6
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Yeah, just that my website says anything is achievable.
6
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And I think that applies to about anything in life.
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Anything you put your mind to, especially if you surround yourself with a small team of like-minded individuals, there s nothing that will stop you.
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And I love talking with people about that.
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The final thing I wanted to ask you is looking ahead,
6
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What are some of the next challenges or goals that you re passionate about pursuing?
6
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And if there s one you want to talk about, how are you thinking about tackling it?
6
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I love talking with people about the work they do and the passions they have in life.
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And if you can have both of those intersect some way, you have found personal gold.
6
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And that s what I m doing with Katz s.
6
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So my passion journey and my hope for the future is that injured, wounded first responders
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military veterans, especially that population in our country that s dealing with stress and burnout and mental health and behavioral health issues, if you can get them exercising again or you can get them feeling better about themselves, that s gold.
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And I m so grateful that the organization that I m working with is doing exactly that.
6
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My goal is anybody that s wounded, ill, injured, or can t go to the gym because they can t lift heavy weights anymore, I want to get them caught to.
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That s what I m going to do.
6
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Okay, well, John, if someone is interested in learning more about you, wanting to hear where you re speaking, wants to hire you to speak, things like that, where s the best place for them to go?
6
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JohnDoolittle.com.
6
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And a friend of mine told me about making a website with my name in it, so that s what I did.
6
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So the back story of this is John s talking to me about, I m in the process of designing this website.
6
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This is the name I m going for.
6
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I ve bought the domains for my kids because I think if you can find them, you should get them because they re so valuable.
6
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Because no matter who you are, it s never too late to brand yourself.
6
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And I m going through that and I called John up, I m like,
6
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Why aren t you just using your own name?
6
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He goes, well, I checked it like six months ago and it wasn t available.
6
SPEAKER_02
I m like, well, you better go right now because you can buy it for $9.99.
6
SPEAKER_02
And I guess you listened to me because you have it.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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Well, thank you.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
Thank you.
6
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Well, John, it was such an honor to finally get you on the show, and we just packed a little bit about who you are, but what a remarkable story, and thank you so much.
6
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As I ve gotten to know you, you are an inspiration to so many, and I think what I ve always admired is you go out of the way, you go out of your way to make other people feel special and to try to help people, and I think that s why you have developed such a big following.
6
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Well, thanks, John, and thank you for what you ve done with this passion project and this podcast, because you re changing a lot of lives in a positive way, and that s gold.
6
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And while we can t sit here and say that you re saving lives, I will tell you that I think that is happening.
6
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So thank you very much for what you re doing.
6
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Well, I mean, thank you.
6
SPEAKER_02
That means a lot.
6
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And I am just so happy we could finally bring this to the world.
6
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And hopefully, I can get you to do more podcasts with me, because I think people would love hearing you and I banter and talk to guests.
6
SPEAKER_00
Let s do it.
6
SPEAKER_00
Anytime you want.
6
SPEAKER_00
You live right down the street.
6
SPEAKER_02
There you go.
6
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Well, thank you, audience, for tuning in today.
6
SPEAKER_02
And so glad we could get this final episode with John out to you.
6
SPEAKER_02
So thank you again, John.
6
SPEAKER_01
Thanks, John.
6
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Thanks for having me, man.
6
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I am so honored that we were able to do that interview with my friend, Captain John Doolittle, and he and I have honestly been talking about this for the past two years.
6
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All things John Doolittle will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com.
6
SPEAKER_02
Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show.
6
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Videos are on YouTube at both our main channel at John R. Miles and our Clips channel at Passionstruck Clips.
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6
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6
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Live intentionally at passionstruck.com.
6
SPEAKER_02
You re about to hear a preview of the passion struck podcast interview that I did with Gabby Bernstein.
6
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who will share the transformative wisdom from her latest book, Happy Days.
6
SPEAKER_02
We discuss how to heal from your past, embrace the power of self-love, and learn how to step into a life of joy and peace.
6
SPEAKER_02
So tune in and get ready to unlock your happiest days yet.
6
SPEAKER_03
We cannot heal what we re not willing to see.
6
SPEAKER_03
Having the bravery and the courage to become conscious and aware of the physical experiences, the thoughts, the energy, the sensations that are keeping us out of alignment with true nature, which is joy.
6
SPEAKER_03
Having the courage to be the witness of those experiences that are blocking us is the first step to healing because you cannot heal what you re not willing to see.
6
SPEAKER_03
So having the bravery to begin to look at your life and maybe even simply say, is this it?
6
SPEAKER_03
There has to be a better way.
6
SPEAKER_03
That willingness opens the door for more recovery to be revealed.
6
SPEAKER_02
Remember, we rise by lifting others, so share this show with those that you love and care about.
6
SPEAKER_02
And in the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen.
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Until next time, go out there and become Passion Strike.