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J.C. Ledbetter is recently retired from being the Chief Operating Officer for Tactical Air Operations (TAO), located in San Diego California. TAO is the first civilian contracted parachute school for the United States Military and are responsible for training all US Navy and Air Force Special Operators – U.S. Navy SEAL’s, SWCC, EOD, and Air Force ParaRescue (PJ’s), and Combat Controllers (CCT’s) – in free fall and static line parachuting. While with TAO, JC oversaw the training of over 7000 Special Warfare Operators through 271,000 training jumps.

JC served twenty years in the United States Navy serving in the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) and Special Warfare Combatant Craft Crewman (SWCC) community, with five combat deployments in support of the war on terrorism. His service has been recognized with two Meritorious Service medals, Three Navy Commendation Medals (one with a V device for valor), Five Navy Achievement Medals, one army achievement medal, Combat Action Ribbon, and four campaign Medals, among others.

After serving his combat tours for nine years, he was selected for a tour at the US Army Military FreeFall School as a Basic and Advanced Parachute course instructor, attended selection for an elite unit simply referred to as Orange or the secret Army of Northern Virginia, before finishing his career at the U. S. Navy Parachute Team (The Leap Frogs), the US Navy’s prime recruiting unit for Naval Special Warfare, orchestrating and executing thousands of aerial demonstrations around the United States.

JC holds a United States Parachute Association “D” License, the highest-level license available. He holds a Professional Demonstration Skydiver (PR0) rating and is an appointed Safety and Training Advisor. He has every instructor Examiner rating for both civilian and military parachuting making him one of the most qualified parachutists the military has produced.

JC has over 20,000 skydives which equals 11 days and 13 hours of free fall and 2 months, 9 days, 10 hours and 40 minutes under a parachute.

Though officially retired, he still performs demonstration parachute jumps with Frog-X Parachute team for professional sporting events and directs many skydiving shows, in addition to his roles as a public speaker, demonstration skydiver and team photographer/videographer. He is also an airplane pilot and boat captain, and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Homeland Security and Emergency Management from Arizona University.

In his public speaking, JC incorporates his vast personal experiences within the US military and civilian business environments, weaving a compelling narrative that identifies the important commonalities between personal, military and business leadership in order to inspire his listeners to pursue excellence.

 

In this episode, Steve and JC discuss:

  • Overcoming Adversity 
  • Military Service and Training Experience
  • Becoming a Parachute Instructor & Extensive Skydiving Experience
  • Small Attainable Goals for Success
  • Helping Others Find Inner Strength

Key Takeaways:

  • Learn how to turn challenges into opportunities for growth and strength
  • Uncover the power of your mindset in overcoming obstacles and achieving success
  • Discover effective strategies for setting and achieving goals, even in the face of adversity
  • Understand the universal experiences of adversity and how they can bring us closer to others
  • Thrive under pressure and excel in intense situations

 

“Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Embrace the suck. Learn to push through hardships and set small attainable goals to achieve success.”

 - JC Ledbetter

Connect with JC Ledbetter:

Connect with Steve and Jason:

 

Listen to the podcast here:



JC Ledbetter- Small Steps, Big Wins          

            

Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of the The Insight Interviews. This is your host, Steve Scanlon. I have a guest today that I think might require you to sit down, grab a cup of tea or coffee, I don't know, maybe a gin and tonic, whatever. Maybe not that, but whatever. Grab something, get a pen out, and, I don't know, bring an open mind and an open heart, because I just can't wait to be with him myself. And so, without further ado, Insight Interview world, say hello to JC Ledbetter. JC, say hi to the podcast world.

How you guys doing out there in podcast world? This is JC sitting with Steve, and I'm ready to do this with you guys.

Okay, well, JC, you and I met, and I'd love to even say when, but I'm going to go with ten years ago, thereabout, maybe nine. You might know better than I do, but you and I met on Coronado Island because our organization hired you, and some of your colleagues, we'll call them, to come in and train us and to do this training, and it has famously become known to the people in our world, JC, as the Navy SEAL training. And you were the head guy, and we have subsequently, you and I, have done some stuff together, and I don't know, I guess I'd consider you a friend.        

I would, too.

Yeah. And so, you and I, we go back a ways, and I've been asking you to do this podcast with me. How long I've been asking you for this? Come on, man.

Over a year.

Okay. Dodged and ducked and weaved the entire time, which I love about you, but I was tenacious. And I finally get you to be on a podcast, and I'm super excited to anybody listening to this call if you've ever wanted to maybe be with someone for a little while who emulates the concept of living a pretty disciplined life about how they go about things, and even to the point where that's what they're helping train in others, well, today's your day. But in all fairness to JC, I have really respected, even though I was tenaciously trying to get you on, JC, your reason for not being on to me was really noble. You're not big into self-promotion and you were busy doing the work that you did for our country, and I'm just super grateful and honored, and on behalf of all the people listening to the call, we're thankful for your service.

Thank you.    

So, without any further ado, I told people, in fact, before we even get going, I'm going to ask you a question. Before we even get going, here's my first question for you. Today, as you sit where you're sitting, you don't even have to tell us where it is, but wherever you're sitting, what are you grateful for?

I guess I'm grateful to be here and to still have the ability to tell my message, because a lot of my friends haven't had as much grace as I have to actually still sit here and be with us. So that's a lot of the reasons why I do what I do is for the ones that I've lost, that I've known over my career.

That's one of the best gratitude I've ever heard. Well, let's honor them Even with our little podcast. I'll participate and honor them. Dude, as we dive off, I think I mentioned this to you before we went on live, but would you mind giving us a quick snapshot of who you are, where you came from, what you've done, doesn't have to be every nugget, but a snapshot would be great from you.

Okay. Well, as I see here today, I'm 51 years old. I was born in Dayton, Ohio. When I was about three or four, my family, my dad and my mom who were high school sweethearts, moved down to Florida and I started school in Pensacola, Florida. From there, my dad got a job working at the Ford courier plant down in Tampa, so we moved down to first Treasure Island, Florida, and then to the Dunedin Clearwater area, and then that's where I spent the majority of my childhood. My father, my parents are from the 60s, was quite the alcoholic and abusive and had several DUIs at that time that I could remember and was abusive towards my mom, towards my brother, and towards me. So finally, when I was about in first grade and my brother was in third grade, my parents decided to split up, thankfully. My father went back to Ohio, I stayed in Florida with my mother and my brother, and then my brother started acting up and he ended up leaving about a year or two later and then moved to live with my dad in Ohio, while I stayed in Florida with my mother. And then my mother was just working to make ends meet, so I was kind of by myself a lot, and I used athletics as the way that I got my attention or way I got my gratification or praise from other people because my mom was busy doing what she had to do to provide for us. My father wasn't much about providing, so during that time, I became big in sports and playing soccer and riding bicycles. My mom got married and divorced again, and then married to my stepdad when I was in junior high school, who was a good man and really taught me a lot about his family, grew up riding motorcycles, so he taught me all about racing motorcycles. So, then I was devoted to motorcycles and playing sports all throughout my junior high school and high school years, and then my brother went to go live with my dad. And although we come from the same DNA, we couldn't be any more different. So, for me, it's something I never really shared with many people, and I haven't talked to anyone about, is how different our lives had become with our parents getting separated. So, I stayed, I lived a pretty conservative, middle-class family where my brother went to live with my dad, who was an alcoholic and abusive, and my brother chose to do the wrong things all the time. He ended up spending most of his childhood in juvenile detention centers, and then ended up spending pretty much the majority of his adult life in prison, where I spent majority of my adult life in the military. And it's something I really have never really shared with anyone because it wasn't my story to tell, but now my brother's been reformed. He is a pastor. He tells the story a lot, so it allows me to give that insight into our lives. The thing that's crazy about that is we both are these natural leaders, and we possess so much of the same abilities. It's just I've used mine for the greater good, he used them for the bad for the longest time. So, it's something I never really shared with people, but it's crazy how the DNA in someone can develop who you are, but make you do different things. But I was blessed where I was given a little bit better of a life. I was still exposed a lot with my father growing up, spending summers and stuff with him, but it made me always see the good and the bad, and I've never really been a drinker.

                                                                                                     
"I've always chose the harder path, and if there's a good or bad option, I've always chose a good option, and it's made me a pretty good person in doing that. And no one has really pushed me to do that other than myself. And it's just me trying to be a better person than who I was or who I was brought up by."

So, then I graduated high school early, and at 17 years old, I knew I didn't want to be in the situation I was. My mom and my stepdad ended up having my sister, who was 14 years younger than me, and my mom really changed her life and really tried to devote herself to being a good mother to my sister, which kind of left me still out in the woods. And like I said before, I just kind of try to get my praise through racing or through playing sports, and I knew I wanted to join the military. Most of the people in my family have served, so I went and listed at 17 years old, and I had to have my parents write off on it. II went to the recruiter's office, and my grandfather, who I idolized from a small age, was a fireman, and he was a fire chief at an airport. So, I was like, that's a great job. So, when I talked to the Navy recruiter, I was like, I'd like to go into this firefighting community, you know, do my four years, then get out, and then go be a fireman. So, I did that. I joined, went to the boot camp, I went to a school where you learned. how to be firefighter, and then from there, I knew I needed something more of a challenge. So, then I went into the explosive ordinance disposal community, which is the bomb squads, which I thought would just make me more marketable on the outside world. When I got out as a fireman, I could be a bomb guy as well, and I did that for about two years before I saw the naval special warfare community. And my old senior chief, at the time, senior chief Demik, had left to go be our detailers, and the detailers are the ones that give you your next assignment. And while I was at EOD, I always enjoyed being out on the boats, and I knew that I wanted something more of a challenge. I had had bad vision growing up as the reason why I wasn't able to go to seal training, because you have to be 2020 correctable in one eye, 2025 in the other eye, no worse than 2040 without correction, and I was nowhere near that. So, I went ahead and tried out for the special bow teams, and I went through the first class that was mandatory for that community. And coming from EOD, I was already really fit. So I went to training in Coronado. The special boat teams are a small community within side naval special warfare, which is made up of 3000 members. Within that 3000 members, there's about 800 that are in the special boat teams and then the other 2200 are seals. So, it's a very small community. There's three commands that we can go to. One's in San Diego, one's in Stennis Mississippi, and one's in Virginia Beach. So I selected to go to training, made it through training. It was pretty fun, I thought even though it's no different than like seal training where you're wet and sandy. And that's really embracing the suck term comes from that I use a lot, but I excelled at it and really, never really felt that challenge going through it because I had already come from a community that expected excellence out of me. So I was just doing what I've known my whole career or my whole life at that point. From there, I graduated high in my class, so I got to select orders and I moved back to Virginia Beach to special boat Team 20, where they were just starting a program called the MCATS program. And that was where they were going to take our boats and start dropping them out of airplanes, and then we parachute out behind them, get in the boat, and we go and do our mission. During that time, we still had to do our know, do all the deployments and workups and all that stuff, but we were trying to develop this program at the same time. So, I was one of eight guys that got selected to go into this very specialized community of guys. And that's pretty much what I did. For the next five years, I was deploying, going overseas. This is when the war in Bosnia was going on and some things in Africa were going on but then when we would come back, we were working on the MCATS program, and that was helping develop this ability to drop this boat anywhere in the world. We had always sat on an air base somewhere with it loaded. It would get pushed out of the back of a plane, four huge parachutes on it. We would parachute out, land in the water, get in the boat, and then go do our mission, whether that was taking down a ship, saving people, or doing insertions onto the beach for seals or whatever we were doing at that time. But during that time, I became really good at parachuting because I learned quickly. The better parachutist I was, the less I had to swim, and swimming in old, dark water sometimes sucks. So, I got to where I could be very accurate and became very good at parachuting, where at my command, I became better than anyone else that was there. So, after five years of deploying and doing that job, I was selected to go be a parachute instructor for all the military. So, I left Virginia Beach, went to Arizona, where I worked for the army for three years, and while I was there, you're just teaching all branches of the service. Back then, all branches went to one school. So, every instructor provided 1.2 billets for their service. So, we had about ten Navy guys. There were ten air force guys. There were probably six marines, a bunch of army guys. Our CO was an army guy, and our XO was a Navy XO. So, getting there, I came in with thousands of jumps. So, I excelled through the advanced course, got selected to go to the basic course. While I was in the basic course, they have a three-month program called the shadow phase, where you get one student, then two students, and then you test out on your third month. I was able to do that within one month because I had already had such good parachuting skills. And then about two months after that, I was on a night jump, and we had a double fatality where a student and an instructor collided at night. One guy's name was Mustard, and one guy's name was Schaefer. Schaefer was the instructor, air force guy, and then Sean Mustard actually had come from my old team to us put team 20. He had opened his parachute while shape was still in freefall, and they collided, and it killed both of them on instant. But by that time, I had already been surrounded by a lot of death and was kind of used to it, and it's just the reality of what we did. And I kept doing that job. After about ten months, they selected me to go to the advanced course, where I now became the guy that taught the instructors how to become instructors. And during that time, I was really into fitness, and a lot of the army guys just sat on base and drank and just lived their lives. I was working out every day, and we would run to the hangar from where the advanced course building was, and while we would only do those three days a week, every day I would run home across the desert to where our building was, and no one else was really doing that. So, during that time I was doing. That, these two guys that were in the course that I really didn't know who they were or where they are from approached me and said, hey, would you ever consider going to selection for this use attack? And I'm like, I don't know what that is. And he's like, it's an army command. And I'm like, well, what are you guys doing? He's like, we're not allowed to say. And I'm like, why would I try out for something I don't even know what it was. And he's like, I think you've got something in you that you would be good at this job. So I'm like, well, I'm up for a challenge. And this was in about November time frame, right before 911 had happened. So, then I go to this selection course. While I'm there, I have no clue what I'm going to, and it turns out to be a command called Orange or use attack, and it's the spies that are in the military. So, they're part of the US military. They work for the state department, and they kind of broaden this line between doing military operations and doing state department operations that no one really even knows what they do. And then when I went to selection, I had no clue what they actually did. So, for about five months, I was away at selection trying out for this job that I had no clue what I was doing, which was some of the best training that I've ever been through in my entire career. So in depth, and it actually took place in Nevada. We landed in McCarron airport. We went up to Indian Springs, and then actually where area 51 is in Nevada is where most of our training took place for the land stress phase and then back for the urban phase. We were back in Vegas on the strip, and then that was probably some of the coolest training that I've been through. I'm not really allowed to talk much about it other than the fact that I actually went through it, and I really never mentioned much about it to you before because I had this obligation.        

Untitled design (3)-Feb-22-2024-04-15-30-4901-PM 

This is all news to me.

Yeah, there was this obligation that I had that while even though you retire, you have ten years in active reserves where you're still not allowed to talk about that, and you could still be called back, so I don't talk about any of those things. So ended up making it through this training, get back to my command. During that time, I lost probably a good 25 pounds because it was a kick in the butt. And a lot of it is just walking and starving yourself, and it was quite intensive and about as realistic as they could make it to a wartime scenario and really pushing you to your limits with a lot of isolation. So you were by yourself the entire time. And what they're doing is they're trying to make sure that you could be in country, blend in, acting like a reporter, or you're acting like a partisan, just trying to build information or get information from people, but they're taking you to your limits. So, by then, I go back to my command at the parachute school, and. I walk into my xo's office, and he's like, what the heck happened to you, man? I'm 25 pounds lighter. I'm already, like, a pretty lean, muscular guy. So he was just like, take the rest of the month off. Just enjoy yourself. Put some weight back on it. We'll see you in July. And I was like, okay, cool, man. And then during that time, I get a phone call from one of my friends, Lance, and he's like, hey, they've had a couple of bad accidents on the parachute team. They're looking for some guys to come to the parachute team that have experience. I thought of you right away. Why don't you come out for training? So, then I was like, all right, cool. So I go to San Diego, and I attend selection course for the Navy parachute team. And what they are, they're the recruiters that go around and parachute into. Sporting events and try to recruit the athletes to join either the naval seals, naval Swick, or EOD or diver, any of the special programs. So, we're out there trying to get the elite of the elite to come to join us. So, I get back from that selection, and then I get a phone call from the master chief at the time, and he's like, hey, you made the team. So, then I'm like, now I got a choice to make, whether I go do this super-secret job or this really Hollywood job. During that time, 911 happens. And I'm like, what do I do? What do I do? And I've decided at that time I'd been around enough death and I've seen enough during the wars in Kosovo that I was like, I think I'd be better suited for this recruiting mission. And so, then I selected the orders to go to the parachute team, and I ended up going to the Navy parachute team. Within ten months of being there, I became the team trainer. With about a year and a half of being there, I became the team chief and then I was pretty much running the team for the next three years. We got a junior officer that came in, he broke both of his legs during training, so he was out, so now I'm the OIC of the team and all we do is travel around the country and jump into professional sporting events or high school, college, anything you can imagine that have a large group of people. But then our job is, once we land, is to go and talk about the Navy and the opportunities the Navy has provided for us. Then, you know, all of us are very highly screened and selected, so we're very good at that aspect of it. So, then I do that for the next couple years, and everything is going great. While I'm there, they're realizing they're not getting enough billets and Yuma for the Navy parachute school. So, they decided that the Navy wants to start their own parachuting program and they want to rent a civilian skydiving center and pay them as a contractor, to teach Seals how to skydive. Since I had come from Yuma and I had had this military freefall instructor background, a guy that worked at Warcom at the time pulled me off the team and said, hey, you're going to be my liaison officer down there. I need you to get this program up and running. They need a curriculum developed and risk assessments, any and everything, to make this civilian course a military course. So, for the next ten months, that's what I was doing, was helping, trying to get this course validated and up and running. And after ten months, we got approval from the army, and we were the first civilian school that was approved to teach parachuting for the military. And I'm like, great. During that time, I got orders, and I was going to go back to Virginia Beach and go back to a team. I had been a chief now for quite a while, but I needed to go back and be a chief of a team going overseas, not just a chief of the Navy parachute team being conus like in the country. So, everything is going good. They packed up my house, they moved everything to Virginia Beach, and then just out of the luck of something happening, my friend took over as the team chief. Something happened where he needed to leave. They needed me to come in because of my experience, so then I was selected to go back to the navy parachute team again, which is unheard of and within my community to do two tours on the team, let alone my first tour was almost four and a half years long. So, then I go back to the Navy parachute team again and my friend Gus, a good friend of mine, he ended up developing brain cancer. He was the officer in charge of the Navy parachute team. So now for the next almost three and a half, four years, I become the officer in charge of the Navy parachute team again because of an OIC that's fighting a terminal cancer who ended up losing his life in 2011 with his battle from brain cancer. But it allowed me to go back to the navy parish team and continue to do what I did.   The best thing that I could do for the military, which was training seals and Swick and EOD guys how to jump out of airplanes. Something about me that's made me good at that is just my ability to remain calm and assess situations and react accordingly and teach in a way that people can understand. So, I did that for the next almost four years, and then in 2010, I retired. Right when I retired that company, Tac Air, that I had helped start back in 03 to 06, when the Navy. First started going there, right away, they offered me a job to come in. And I was like, great. I just show up, teach students, and go home. No responsibility, no nothing. And within about a month or two. I'm there, I become the director of the school. Within a couple of years, I become the course director of the entire program. And then within five years, I become the COO of that company, and now I'm running everything. So, it's just something in me where I see things that need fixed, and I end up taking charge and just go with it. But during that time, I started working, doing these boot camps where I was just teaching people about the mindset that we have and going out and jumping still as a demonstration parachute jumper, but for financial reasons, not just to recruit for the Navy, and then that's kind of how when our path came across is when I started doing that.

Here I am trying to, first of all, I've always asked you this. I'm sorry. I mean, that's just such an amazing synopsis and thank you for that. How many hours of jumping do you have right now?

I used to know exactly. I used to track it on my phone, but I have over 20,000 skydives now and I'll probably approach 21,000 maybe this year. But you think each skydive is about 50 seconds. So, if you do the math, it's days of just falling and then being under parachute, depending on how high we get out, it's usually 1 minute for every 1000ft of descent. So, it's months and months of being under a parachute, which has made me one of the more experienced parachutists in the military, for sure. In the civilian world, there's some guys that have more jumps than me, but it's in different disciplines than what I've done. But when it comes to demonstration parachuting, I'm up there with some of the elite guys that have the most experience out there.

And here I was patting my back as I was strapped to- I did it twice. I'm all proud of my twice. And here you have all these hours. I don't think I ever jumped with you. I jumped with Larry one time.

I think you and Jason came down and maybe Jason jumped with me, and you jumped with Larry B.

Yeah, and I jumped with Larry. And I also jumped one time with Smurf.

Yeah, there you go.

That was a test.        

Smurf's one of our shorter guys. That's why it's called Smurf. That's a Navy Seal that jumps with us all the time.

He was great. I’m still here, so I think you guys are great. Now, folks, I hope you're listening. You can imagine when we hired JC to come in for a corporate retreat, I'll never forget you saying, because we had done all this pre work and I was already talking to you, and if you can't hear already by JC's voice, like, this is a nonsense guy, that's one of my favorite things about you. You just have no pretense. What you see is what you get. And that's just an amazing quality that you have. And I kept saying, like, dude, we're going to do this training with you. It's like a 90 minute training or a two hour training or whatever it is, and I kept wanting to call you and go, you know these people aren't in the military, right? I don't think many of these people are, even athletes. We just want to do a corporate fun thing. And you were like, yeah, it'll be fun, it'll be fun. And I got to tell anyone listening to this, it was no fun ever. And by the way, it was the best. To this day I have people even all those years ago going, it was the greatest thing I ever did. And it was a fraction of what you put normal seals through, but explaining what a sugar cookie is, you guys did that to us. And some people listening, if when you go to the beach, you're kind of perturbed when you get sand on you that doesn't come off. Well, the first thing, it was like six in the morning, and you were like, okay, everybody in the water. And there were people who weren't even dressed for that, and you guys didn't care. We don't care. Get in the water. We did. And we came out and you were like, okay, everybody on your stomach. And we all wanted to look at you go, you know we're wet, right? And it's six in the morning in San Diego. And like, whenever it was, it was like October wasn't super warm. That's what I remember, but that's the point. And then you were like, on your stomach, on your back. And being wet on your stomach, on your back on the beach means you're now full of sand. And I remember it was either you or someone else going, now we're going to spend the rest of the workout with you being full of sand. And the point being, well, that sucks, right?

I think that first event invited been myself and Darren McBurnett, McBee, that helped run that program. And what we're just trying to get people to do is just get comfortable being uncomfortable. And even though people think Southern California, it's warm, it's nice, our ocean is anywhere from high 50’s to probably 72 degrees in the middle of summer. But when you guys are there in October, it's about 65 degrees, so it's not that warm. And we spend every day of training wet and sandy while we're sitting in class. We start the day out wet and sandy; we end the day wet and sandy, so, you just get comfortable being uncomfortable, and that's kind of what they're trying to get us to do. They're trying to get us to get used to just being uncomfortable, learning how to embrace how sucky a situation can be and we're training to do a mission that usually our missions are going to take place at night in a condition that most people think there's no way anyone is going to attack us now, because the seas are too bad or it's too cold or it's too nasty. That's when we operate. So, our whole training is about getting you used to being uncomfortable. So that's why we start out every day that way. It's teaching you that mental toughness, that you need to embrace the suck. When you know every situation sucks and you're miserable and you turn to your buddy and you look at him and he just smiles at you and you just smile back and you're like, roger that. Let's go, man. And it's something about it, but as. We're going through our training, there's about an 80% attrition rate. So only guys that make it, actually make it. And the one thing that I've been this last year really concentrating on is. Like, what makes me, or what made me be able to do the things that I've done or other people that I've been with? And the thing that I've noticed most about the readings and the other guys that are out there that are doing a lot of these podcasts like Jocko and David Goggins, is we all came from some type of adversity as a child that put us where we always had to challenge ourselves, so we weren't handed anything to us. We always had to work for what we had.  And that's the one commonality I've realized. Now between me, a lot of my old teammates and my friends is like we all grew up with some type of hardship. So, when you're going through training, it's just like life in general that you've grown up with. You've learned how to deal with hardships, so you learn to embrace those hardships, and just push through them and actually start joking about how hard it is. And that's something I think that found as a commonality amongst the guys that make it through special forces training is they've all dealt with some type of hardship or something as they were growing up. A lot of them weren't coddled and given everything that you could think of as a child because then they're too soft. Those guys quit right away, and you'll see that in training where you're standing beside a guy who is six foot two, muscular as can be, played college football or was an Olympic athlete, and then two weeks into training, he quits. And then other people start judging themselves compared to that guy, and they looked over and they're like, well, if that guy couldn't make it, why am I even here? Because that guy was a better runner, he was a better swimmer, he was in better shape than me. So if he quit, why in the hell am I here? And then the next thing you know, 20 people quit right after that because they're comparing themselves to someone who, you have no idea what's going on in their mind. So, to me, it was about setting these small obtainable goals where I'm going to make it to lunch, I'm going to make it to dinner, I'm going to make it until the sun comes up, I'm going to make it 10ft up the beach. That might have been how hard the evolution was that we were doing, so by doing that, I always had these small obtainable goals.

                                                                                                       
"If you think about, it's just same thing as if you're going to college. Your freshman year, if you think, man, I got to go to all these classes for the next four years, that's why people quit, because they think about how long that road is to get to where the end is. So, what I thought about was just making it to the end of the day, making it till the sun came up, making it this far down the beach on a run, or this far in the ocean on a swim. And then I realized, oh, I can make those small obtainable steps and not think about the big picture all the way down the road. The next thing you know, you've chipped away at everything and you're at the end and you've made it, and you're like, shit, I'm here, I've arrived, and it wasn't that hard, because I was able to have this positive self talk in my head."

And a lot of people have that negativity in their brain and their voices that are always telling them they can't do something or something that's holding them back. I learned from a younger age with my playing sports and racing, I would be on the line and I'm like, there's no fucking way this guy's going to beat me; there's no way that guy's going to put me in my place. And I would be so much harder on myself than any coach could ever be, or any instructor could ever be, because that's some determination that I had on myself. And that's a very common performance trait that's in a lot of the guys that make it through training, is this ability to have this positive self-talk, where you can talk to any demons or anything that hold you back and push through them. And I don't know where that comes from or why we have that.

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But I got to challenge you now. I love this. Is it your opinion, because here we are all these years later, you and I, and I remember those times on the beach, and I have people that talk to me about that. And it's not just a metaphor. What I love about your message, and, okay, you don't want to be Jocko and all these guys out promoting it, but you were living it, JC. And some of the stuff that you just said about these small attainable goals, I love it when I read books like Charles Duhigg, who's a wonderful research scientist, wrote a book on habits, and one of his key things about how to develop habits is small, attainable goals. I love that you learned that stuff doing it.        
            
Yeah.

You didn't read about it. You did it, and you helped us do that. I guess my question for you is this. I feel like having known you and I got to hang out with you a little bit, and we got to talk. You've helped me do that.

Yeah.

So maybe that's the reason I stay at you, because your stories about how you do stuff are evidence.

Yes.   
     

Okay. So, you grew up like that, and I loved your story about your mom and your dad and how you did that. And we can go into that more later, but my big question is, is anyone listening to this, let's say they're 50, they're 60 years old, do you believe that learning to do that is possible, even if you haven't done it before?

I 100% do. I mean, I think I've helped a lot of people be able to obtain that, whether when I was in San Diego, when I was the COO of tactical operations, the parachute school, I also owned a CrossFit gym. So, I was teaching fitness to a variety of athletes, from guys that had been in the Olympics to housewives that just had a baby. And I was teaching fitness to these people every day and it was my mindset and the way that I was able to relate to them or find some inner strength in them that kept my business growing and growing and made it pretty successful as I was being the CEO of another company. And I've learned over time how to take those messages that I've had and then put them into the civilian world. And, you know, because we've spoke about it, at 50 years old, I had made enough money and had become successful enough where I could retire and never really have to work again. And that's what I did. I sold everything in California, and I moved to the Gulf coast in Alabama, and then once I got here, I realized how empty my life was, not having that ability to help other people or to push other people when I really didn't need financial gain from anything or I didn't need any praise from anyone, but that fulfillment I got from helping people is what kept me full inside. And I kind of went through this depressed state where I was like, what do I do now? What's my next thing? I'm only 50 years old, and here I am with really nothing to do. For my whole life, I've been busy, busy, busy. I have worked two jobs, or if I wasn't parachuting, I was at the drop zone on the weekends, getting better, doing what I was doing, and then here I am sitting in The Gulf shores on the Gulf of Mexico in Alabama, going, what's next for me? And it's about the emptiest I've ever felt in my life and I spoke to you several times over this last year about this. It was me trying to figure out what is it that's going to make me happy? And I'm getting job offers from people, but I really don't need a job because I've done so well financially that I didn't need income, I just needed something to fill my tank and something that feel like I had a purpose in life. And that's what I had been struggling with for a long time. So, during that time, I had just been reading and listening to podcasts and listening to other people similar to me that had the same life as me and hearing their stories and how they've overcome whatever it was that they were going through, and I really looked into the brain and how the brain works, which is what you're really good at doing, and why was I feeling so empty and depressed when I've attained something that most some people will never be able to obtain? To be able to retire at 50 years old, to own a home outright, to have several nice vehicles and motorcycles and money to do whatever I want, yet I'm still empty inside and I'm not feeling, like, fulfilled. And then that's when I started talking with my buddy Darren McBurnette that, you know, McBee, and he's like you know, you have a gift for this, and I have it as well. He's like, why don't we partner up and do this? And that gives us something. It gives us a way to give back to people. So that's kind of what's been my motivator lately, is like, yeah, I can go out there and help other people. It'll help people maybe achieve whatever it is next in their life or just hearing my story and find something they can relate to, to help them, and that is what I've been trying to do.        
            

The greatest thing. How many podcasts have you done so far?

I've done zero podcasts.

So, I just want anybody listening to this podcast to know that you are the recipient of the inaugural. This is JC going, I want to serve people. I don't get to serve in the way that I did, but here's how I'm going to serve people. I'm going to tell my story in a way, and it's not just about me. That's what I always got from you, JC. Yeah, your story's cool for you. You helped me personally go, well, if I can do that, if that's possible, and if that's possible, and so that's one of the more difficult things that you don't maybe get to see as clearly is you've made an indelible mark already on a lot of people's lives. I love the fact that you're going to not stop doing that. And I love the fact that to the degree to which even this can be a launching point for, yeah, you got a ways to go. You want to study and stuff, but, dude, for whatever it's worth, I feel honored. I am grateful. May this be one of many, and may your ability to serve people and help people through what you've been able to do, not because they're going to point at you, because what you did for us and all these people that call me all these years later, because I don't know how many times we did that. I think we did it four or five times.

I've done two in Colorado. I've done several in California or Dana point in Coronado.

We've done some crazy stuff, but I just, time after time, all of my cool messages about the brain, and I still be like, but that been a - it's been really great, and I want to thank you. I want to have you back. We got to go because. We’re done. We'll come back because embrace the suck. What I was hoping people could get was all that adversity and resilience. Yes, we're talking about wartime and this and that, but I think what you've understood, and you've helped, at least me understand is when someone's going through a battle in their life and challenges at work, you know, the brain doesn't distinguish between some of the battles that you saw and some of the battles that we see.       
 

Yeah, very relatable. To me, the norm is war. And that is my baseline where you guys, it's just life and living and surviving. It's something why I think a lot of veterans relate to other veterans when they get out and then when they find themselves not around those veterans, they struggle because they can't relate to civilians. When they're like, oh, I play call of duty, and you're like, shut up. That has nothing to do with anything I've ever done.        

But in our own way, we have communication. It's not that. It's not that physical demand, but we have stuff that is super relatable, and I have a lot of evidence of people around me that have been super grateful for you. So, dude, I'm grateful for you, thankful for your story. Know that you've got so much more to give. And I'm not going to jump out any more airplanes with you because number two was way worse than number one because I knew what was coming. Number one, I was just stupid. But that's plenty of that. But I'm grateful that you continue to do that.

Yeah, I still do it all around the country. So, we still have that contract with live golf, so we do all the live golf events in the United States. We still do NFL games and major league Baseball, motocross racing. I still do it for the crowd, and I love that pressure of being in front of 70,000 people and me being in a 1ft meter of where I've wanted to land. I love that pressure and I excel at it, and it makes me good at what I do, and most people can't understand that, but that's just who I am.


That's funny. I'm like worried about jumping off a curb right now. I don't know, dude. All right, JC, thank you. Thank you so much for your time. Just incredible lessons that we get from that and that's why we have this thing called the Insight Interview, and hopefully even listening to your story and where you've come from, any of the lessons about embrace the suck, I wonder how many people are going to hear this and go, what is the suck you need to embrace in your life right now?

Yeah.

What little things can you do over and over to get through them? And I love that you live that. Again, so grateful for you, your service, our friendship, and just thankful for you.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you. All right, thank you. And we'll see you guys all here next time on the The Insight Interviews. Have a great day.        

            

 

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