Former Navy SEAL to French Foreign Legionnaire Taylor Cavanaughs story EP 21

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Isn't it fascinating how life's greatest challenges often lead to our most profound transformations? Our guest for today's episode, Taylor Cavanaugh, stands testament to this truth. A former Navy SEAL turned French Foreign Legionnaire, Taylor shares his remarkable journey from his troubled past, struggles with drugs and alcohol, to his personal transformation and path to inner peace.

Despite the challenges faced in his early life, Taylor's determination and vision led him to an extraordinary journey of self-discovery and growth. He gives an in-depth account of his experiences in the Navy SEAL teams, his dismissal, and how these struggles were the catalyst for his profound personal development. Get an intriguing insight into the intense selection process of the French Foreign Legion, a journey he embarked on with zero French language skills. Taylor's time in the Legion was an impactful experience that pushed him out of his comfort zone and redefined him.

We also delve into Taylor's practical approach towards self-development, fitness, and entrepreneurship. His unique perspective on discipline, the importance of mentors, and being open to life's opportunities are invaluable insights for those seeking personal growth. Hear his practical advice on health, fitness, and his surprising revelation about cutting alcohol from his lifestyle. His story serves as an inspiration for anyone striving to overcome personal obstacles and achieve success in their own lives. So join us, as we explore Taylor Cavanaugh's commitment to helping others through his experiences and his unique perspective on growth and discipline.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Hey, what's up everybody, Welcome to the Journey to Win. I'm here with my friend, taylor Kavanaugh. I'm super excited for you guys to meet him today. He was a former Navy SEAL turned French Foreign Legionaire, like literally the first from my understanding Navy SEAL to French Foreign Legion. So I'm excited to hear a story today. It's a very powerful story that I'm very confident all of you guys are going to get value from. So, dear Taylor, welcome to the call man, excited to have you.

Speaker 2: 0:27

Brandon, thank you for having me and thank you everybody for listening.

Speaker 1: 0:31

Cool man. Well, let's go and kick it off. I mean, my community already knows what this is all about. I bring on high value people who are winning in their life, and obviously, in order for you to get to where you are to be winning today, did you have to go through some pretty hellish stuff to get there, and so we'll talk about that. But before we do, what is winning in life? The game of life to Taylor Kavanaugh what does that mean to you?

Speaker 2: 0:55

Winning for me means walking in inner peace and living with clarity. That's, those two states of being, are what I think everybody seeks, and that's success to me. What does that entail? That entails you being proud of yourself. That entails people in your life being proud of you and doing the right things and living in congruency with that higher consciousness that speaks to all of us.

Speaker 1: 1:26

I love it, man, you have a coaching program. Do you coach people through that process of the mindset side?

Speaker 2: 1:31

I do. It starts with the basic disciplines, because often that's if you're working towards inner peace. It's impossible to do if your daily habits are not on point. So we start with the daily habits, we start with the nutrition, we start tracking the macros, we get control of your day, start mastering the day, and then that clarity starts to come in and then you can start to experience that state of inner peace that is constantly you have to work for. It's like sweeping the floor. You don't just sweep it and it's done. It's a constant work towards that state.

Speaker 1: 2:09

Yeah, that makes sense, man. So let's tell everybody your story then. So we'll talk. We'll come back to the inner peace side of it here in a little bit, because I have some questions I could branch off on that. But let's talk about your story of becoming a Navy SEAL, that whole process and then going into the challenges that you had and then getting kicked out of the SEAL teams and the Navy in general, not because of I mean, you were, I told you right before this call. I looked into you, man. Like everybody said, you are a great operator. So it has nothing to do with your operational skills, it just had to do with some of the stuff with your inner peace that you were doing. And then you grew through all that man and became a French foreign legionnaire. So yeah, tell us that story.

Speaker 2: 2:53

So I'll kind of take it back a little bit before the SEAL teams, where you know, for a lot of us that SEED got planted when I was a young kid you know, young kid growing up about seven years old that SEED gets planted, men with green faces, that whole deal. You know we come in the age where that will, you know, prenger in the jungle and all that was kind of going on and well, it just it really called to me and so I always knew I was going to do it, going through high school, going through college, and that kind of got put on the back burner while it started to form and I just started to kind of develop into this person that liked self-awareness that was the bottom line. And maturity no self-awareness, no maturity. And those two things don't go hand in hand very smoothly. And I have been arrested multiple times, many times tried even before getting into the military, and well, I had to go to jail to get off probation, to get into the United States military, to even have a chance turned down by a lot of branches. But the powers that be and some hard work and some good connections, I got some waivers, took a long time stomping boxes at home depot at night while I'm trying to go get my seal contract and I get in boot camp, go in the buds class 284, past that. Sut class 284, past that and really happy, so happy and too happy, you know, like what.

Speaker 2: 4:33

I was locked on through SUT. That wasn't the problem. I was so focused, I had no really she's little bumps in the road here and there. But then I got back from my first deployment and that discipline what all that discipline was started to kind of get shaky and started going out a little bit too much, a little bit more still working hard, still very focused on work, but the off the field stuff. I was just in a celebratory mood, that's the truth. I had arrived, living downtown, going out, and I was on this, the momentum was building, getting a little ahead of my skis and boom, I get into some trouble and a bar, you know physical altercation, and it kind of skated. A lot of stuff for me that took years to get out.

Speaker 1: 5:31

Yeah, I mean, it's so crazy you talk about that, taylor, because and we'll go into your story of how you transitioned into the French foreign legionary second but you know, I think that that's a problem for most people the second platoon, the first platoon, you're a new guy and so you're trying to prove yourself, you're trying to learn everything you can, right, like you're so focused on making sure that you're doing everything right and and knowing your part and playing that part in the game, but once you get in the second platoon, you're the guy, you're the man, right, like that's the mentality and people got to watch out for them. And I talk about this all the time because you know it's like like the saying goes be stay humble or be ready to be humbled.

Speaker 2: 6:11

And I've been like that.

Speaker 1: 6:13

I've been there and so if you're listening to this, no matter where you guys are whether you're a, you know you're in the military and you're on your second platoon and the SEAL teams or you're a CEO of an organization, you can't buy into your own press. You know, as soon as you start doing that, it's a downward spiral. So I agree, Taylor, I mean that's 100. Let me ask you this, dude, because you know what was your environment, like you said, self-awareness, maturity, growing up who are you hanging out with? Like, did you have any good mentors in your life? Because everybody's leading somebody somewhere right. Like you don't have to be considered a leader to be a leader. People are leading people, either in a good way or a bad way, because they have certain influences over people. So who was the people that you were hanging out with?

Speaker 2: 6:58

And you're referring to kind of in those adolescent years.

Speaker 1: 7:01

Yeah, when you were growing up you said you started to lose self-awareness, the maturity level started to fall off and you went to jail Like were you hanging out in the wrong crowd.

Speaker 2: 7:11

Man, I was the wrong crowd. That's the truth. I was the wrong crowd. I always kind of pushed the envelope. You know, I was going down to Mexico. I started getting tattoos at 15 years old. I grew up in San Diego.

Speaker 2: 7:24

We and that's just was kind of a lie I was very tattooed by the time I graduated from high school and was kicked out of high school for possession of marijuana, fighting law, scholarship opportunities, and so I had been doing a masterclass of self-sabotage for many years. And then rallying and coming back rallying, hitting those times of compression, those times of expansion and those and I just like you said, Brandon, during those times of expansion I would forget about all the lessons I learned during that time of compression. You know and I was, I would believe my own hype, get humbled. I'd be in jail again, going never again. And then, sure enough. And so I was in this ebb and this dangerous ebb and flow. And so I grew up.

Speaker 2: 8:14

My father wasn't around much you know he's a prime Marine but was in and out of. There was some drugs and alcohol problems, and so I had a lot of autonomy very early on. You know, I worked in high school, so I wasn't asking for money, I bought all my own stuff, so I didn't. My mom wasn't telling me what to do, you know, and so I that's kind of where it started and I just I didn't have a lot of discipline, you know, and I wasn't disciplining myself, and I think that is the man in the house is so important. Who sets the tone, you know, the fish stinks from the head, you know, and the man or the head in the family, and it's there's not there. Then there's a boy and it's going to get filled somewhere.

Speaker 1: 8:59

It is, man, you're right. I grew up with my dad. He was around, but he wasn't around like a lot right Until like high school years. And you know, you raise yourself and, bro, there was a time like I got saved by my, by one of my coaches. It's like I if it wasn't for him, who knows where I'd have been. I probably would have been in jail and doing all the doing all this stuff. Well, guys like us, like our personalities, like we're all in.

Speaker 2: 9:22

If there's that storm.

Speaker 1: 9:25

Yep, yep, I agree, man. So so tell us okay, so you get in your first fight in the SEAL teams getting in trouble. You know the military in general. The problem with the military is that they really have a zero tolerance policy now with alcohol related incidents and drugs and all that stuff. So how did that all shake out? Because I want to start getting into how you got.

Speaker 2: 9:49

Yeah, how I start getting into the Legion, how that worked. So some very expensive attorneys, some good connections with some SEAL teams and a lot of money was what ended up getting me a misdemeanor. But it was two years later. I had got it postponed. They let me go to Iraq on bail. You can imagine that, and I think some things slipped through the cracks. I was handling my stuff, but it's stressful, sure that is. I did not wish out on my worst enemy dealing with that because I was facing six years in prison plus three. Parole was my plea deal, so I was dealing with all of them. Finally get a four year probationary sentence and a very stern misdemeanor, which was I don't know about what it worked, because I wasn't supposed to leave San Diego. I couldn't own a weapon, but I'm a SEAL traveling all over.

Speaker 2: 10:45

It was not. It was setting up not for success and I get, I get in trouble. I was good for like a month. I get in trouble three months later. Not another fight, but riding around in a golf car at a concert. That wasn't mine, it was the county's golf cart. As ridiculous as that sounds, that's how easy it happens and that's what ended my SEAL career, because it turned into that's tasing me, that's biting me, all things. And that was it. I hit the nail on the cotton with that one and, you know, had to fight through that whole thing, but that was what pushed me out. And so then I'm walking out of jail again, signing my DDQ 14 pretty much the next day, and on a general discharge, mind you, on a general discharge, thank you to the CEO of team seven. Really, bro move of him.

Speaker 2: 11:38

And I'm a civilian. So I'm a civilian. I had used some contacts and I had been working it for a while because I knew this was happening. And I walked into a supervisor position at the largest private developer in the United States on a $750 million project in San Diego, and I'm like the two man. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I know how to write teams. So we're happy, haven't seen success and you know what? I was pretty happy but I started stacking bad habits immediately Alcohol I can read Xanax, weed, and every day.

Speaker 2: 12:14

Didn't miss a day because I'm a habitual person. I'm not even an, I'm just habitual. Something works in one day that I'm doing it every day, so that is just how it was working and that's not good for the relationship I was in. I wasn't setting the good tone. No balance, end up switching into the marijuana industry with a venture capitalist. So now I'm pitching decks, raising millions of dollars, travel around, throwing an opioid habit on top of this just to make things interesting for myself, and I'm on this ride for about a year to where I crash and burn.

Speaker 2: 12:54

And that was it. You know, I was pushed out, I was slowly caught up and then I find myself Homeless, in my truck, no money. I realized that I have nothing and I was in a suicidal state for about three days. I was like all of those two years where I had been going a million miles an hour. Now everything was taken from me. I had nothing.

Speaker 2: 13:23

I started to really sit with me, having lost the SEAL teams finally, because I had just jumped it and just million miles an hour in one direction and numbing myself with everything in between. Now it was all coming down, everything at once, and I sat with that for a while and I said some prayer. Man, I said a prayer. I said I know I can't do this, I can't do this by myself. That's what I said.

Speaker 2: 13:52

And I was in the jungle on the east side of the big island of Hawaii, homeless, and I just had a voice kind of you know that consciousness. I call it God, but people can call it what they will and said bro, this isn't about you, you know F you, this is about you have family. Man, stop thinking about yourself for one second. And I realized that's all I was doing for three days. Me me. I feel what I didn't have, what I where my current state and it was a slap in the face for me and I realized that that exact moment. Forget this. No more pity party. I'm going to the French foreign Legion.

Speaker 1: 14:34

So you just made a decision right then, and there You're going to.

Speaker 2: 14:36

Right there in the jungle, no shirt straight, just just Okay, this is happening. How do I do this Right? And then I just started developing a plan. Eight days later, I was in France Wow.

Speaker 1: 14:50

What is the French foreign Legion?

Speaker 2: 14:53

The French foreign Legion, for those who aren't aware, is about a 200, 200, some year old organization that was created by an old king of France to funnel foreigners who were in France from a previous war back onto the battlefield and get them to have streets. That's what the French foreign Legion was created for, and the carrot was you would earn French citizenship if you did five good years of combat and service for France.

Speaker 1: 15:26

So yeah, and didn't they used to correct me from wrong? Didn't they used to? If people got in trouble in France, they made people serve like lifelong sentences there. Is that, or is that?

Speaker 2: 15:36

I've never heard that. I don't think that's true. Okay, because it used to be only forers with French officers.

Speaker 1: 15:43

Got it.

Speaker 2: 15:44

They would go to the Sierra Academy here, kind of like our West Point, and but it only took foreigners. Now they will take French, very few though, and but they changed their citizenship on the way in and they give them Canadian, they call them Canadians.

Speaker 1: 16:00

Oh, that's funny, Okay, so so eight days later you're there. Yeah, how? Tell me about the process, man, because obviously you were in ABCL, you went through that process.

Speaker 2: 16:10

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 16:11

I mean so it was my opinion the toughest military training in the world, right Like oh I thought I'd be in it.

Speaker 2: 16:17

We'll get into that. And SEAL training is, I mean the reputation there. Even when I'm there, you know there's guys from every block, eastern block, everywhere. I know you're a SEAL, they know what's up so, and so you get a little extra love also. You can imagine I wouldn't, I wasn't broadcasting that by any stretch. So the process is there's a two free selection basis. In France we have a couple of satellite locations on the frontier, on the border of France, but there's two pre-selection centers one in Paris, one in Au Bonn, which is right outside of Marseille. And it's a very unique process because you go there with your bag and a passport. You don't call ahead, you don't set an appointment and you just knock on the door.

Speaker 1: 17:06

That's wild.

Speaker 2: 17:07

And a guy with a gun, with a green beret, who's also a foreign legionnaire, will answer it. All legion bases, man, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. You could go there on Christmas morning and join if you wanted, and it's been like that for 200 something years, no deviation.

Speaker 1: 17:30

And you didn't. Did you speak French beforehand?

Speaker 2: 17:32

Not a word. I Googled je suis ici pour la legion, I'm here for the legion. I Googled that right before I walked in.

Speaker 1: 17:43

So you go there, you don't speak any of the language. Where they speak French to you, where they speak in English to you.

Speaker 2: 17:49

So through the selection process, I mean they tell you that once you go in they you give your passport to them immediately. I didn't see that passport again for two and a half years. Two and a half years you are locked on and they give you a fake name. After you pick past the IQ test, after you pass the medical screeners and the psychological evaluations and the inter-poll background checks, all this stuff goes down in about a month period. But they're they're pretty much just finding out who you are. Right, that's the most, because there's guys coming from every dot corner of the earth and with Americans they know our paperwork's pretty good, but there's places where they don't even have real birth certificates, you know.

Speaker 2: 18:33

So they're just really the interview processes. The most it's in depth, it's an interrogation. They get into it and mine was extra in depth because they're like what are you doing here? You know what? I had my DD 214. What's a Navy SEAL doing here? There's a prop, you know, is he one of the work times? They don't know. They don't want a problem with the United States government also.

Speaker 2: 18:59

Right, so they they've had some issues, so they're trying to make sure that's not a problem.

Speaker 1: 19:04

So let's talk about selection. How was it? What was it like? What did you have to do?

Speaker 2: 19:09

Now you gotta remember what the Legion is and what it's not. It's not a special force unit, that's. That's something to make clear. So you're not going into a special force selection. It's a basic Army boot camp. Right, and if down the road they do have commando groups, but that selection is years down the road. So the actual selection process is basic boot camp. I would call it like the Marine Corps, the 19-is, that's what I would call. That's exactly how it kind of grasped it. Foreign Legion's about 7, 8,000 guys and it's a one package unit. They have their own territory, they have their own parachute group, they have their own infantry, on mountain group, on engineers, on cooks, on medical. It's a one package of foreign foreign fighters in France.

Speaker 1: 20:05

So they need all types. Excuse me, are they, are they fighting Like? Are they? Are they actively in any engagements right now?

Speaker 2: 20:13

All the time. So they're. They send the Legion because they don't have that political pressure if guys die. Right, they don't have. They have foreigners coming back in body bags, not French, which is that's why it's there, you know. So they're kind of a camp, but they're in Africa, they're in all the countries in Africa. I mean, 26 countries speak French in Africa. That's not by coincidence. France is strung down there and they have guys, mali, guptebois, all throughout, you can imagine, all the way down to pretty much South Africa.

Speaker 1: 20:59

Did you have how long, first of how long you've been there?

Speaker 2: 21:01

So I've been here about four years and there's a change going on. No, four and a half years.

Speaker 1: 21:07

Okay, and did they deploy you, or is it not like this?

Speaker 2: 21:10

Yeah, so I went immediately I got into the mountain group and I was going to request because I was kind of funneled to the commando, mountain commando group. They're like, okay, we'll take this legionnaire, I mean this form, navy SEAL and put them in one of the commando groups. We'll talk about that later if that comes up. So I went to the mountain infantry. It's pretty much attached to the mountain infantry brigade of France. They immediately sent me to the jungle. They sent me to South America for four months on deployment, right when I get to the mountain.

Speaker 2: 21:41

So I thought it was actually pretty cool. I didn't expect that. And we were doing deep jungle operations, an addiction for gold mines. We were blowing gold mines up every other day, huge gold mines, bringing demo, smashing all the I mean two, three week patrols, again over months and months and months and hitting gold mines every other day. Seriously, yeah, it's what's going on down there is the wild west. Seriously, it blew my mind. I had no idea what's going on down there. I mean, there's pirates giving gunfights and it's not like what is going on, man, but it's because there's no deep jungle, there's no rules.

Speaker 1: 22:21

Are you allowed to talk about operations, or is it like you're not allowed to talk about that stuff?

Speaker 2: 22:25

No, I mean, I mean it's not really super close source, but you know it was. It's mostly Brazilians coming over the border into French territory. French, that's what's going on, and sir and I mostly were on the sir and I'm French, I'm border and kind of running this new post and controlling the traffic of boats also because they're looking for drugs as well. And it's in joint, joint, it's in a joint effort with the French gender arms, which are kind of a French not military police, but the militant type police force for France. And yeah, and then then we did some anti, anti terrorism patrols in turn, all of France, which is unique that we don't do the United States it would be weird. You're seeing guys patrolling around downtown San Diego, but they do it here like it's nothing you know, and so they would send the legionnaires. We would patrol for two months and niece, straight, fully kitted up, patrolling the beach straight up, and the French just don't even bat an eye, because they had a huge terrorist problem there in 2016,. A bunch of people died.

Speaker 2: 23:36

So it's actually, you know, yeah, and so they. France has their anti terrorism units in internal France. Like my boy you know. You know we have friends that are at the tip of the spear. You know the guys who are listening to kind of know what that is. They're training. They're training with these guys here in France because these guys are working for real. France has a lot of issues with terrorism serious issue and so they they take it very seriously.

Speaker 1: 24:05

So I just went to the south of France and I was in the east literally in June, and and so they, they literally had I didn't hear about this, they had a terrorist down there 2016,.

Speaker 2: 24:15

they had a big explosion.

Speaker 1: 24:17

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2: 24:18

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 24:20

That's wild man. Hey, yeah, I mean, it makes sense, they're so close. You know they're so close. Europe's not that far from Africa, right, like when I was in Malta, you know, we were doing a non visibility. I was getting my when I was still in active, I was getting my Yachtmasters license so we could do some non visibility stuff. There were people coming through Malta, a lot of al-Qaeda, you know.

Speaker 1: 24:43

all of them were running through, running, running through Malta and so the program ended up not really coming to fruition, even though I got my Yachtmasters license through it.

Speaker 2: 24:52

Nice yeah, I wouldn't trust this little Jerry.

Speaker 1: 24:55

I wouldn't trust myself to captain a Boat. That, bro, it's crazy. It's funny like you know, you first off we, we weren't on a ship. I don't know about you, but I wasn't in the regular Navy, so I've never been on a ship, so you had to kind of you had to kind of make up all these hours.

Speaker 1: 25:08

These hours I don't know how many it was, but it was a lot of hours, like over a thousand hours or something, that you were on a ship, captaining a ship or or or being, you know, in control of the ship. I can't remember exact rules, but it was crazy. We made up everything was me and two other boat guys I didn't even know the terminology, bro, like it was a two week boat and I'm like I don't know how I'm going to pass this yet it was powerboat and sail, so I had to learn how to sail in two weeks. Oh man, so test.

Speaker 2: 25:39

You get the synopsis before before actually sailing.

Speaker 1: 25:44

It was, it was insane.

Speaker 2: 25:45

The bullet points.

Speaker 1: 25:46

Yeah, Okay. So tell me about the commander group. So you went up to the mountains, you were in the commander. What's? What's that group? How's that work?

Speaker 2: 25:54

Yeah, so yeah. And then I'll hit the last deployment. I was just on the front. I was doing a with NATO on the Estonian Russian border last year for five months with on the enhanced four presence battle group with the English, danish, estonians and the French. So we were all there and we were going home with 86 tanks behind us. I had never seen anything, a movement like that, 86 English tanks. I was like challenger tanks. I'm going man, this man, you know millions of day on gas. It's unbelievable. So yeah, so that was the three kind of mission sets I had since I've been here.

Speaker 2: 26:39

Was it just a show of course.

Speaker 2: 26:41

It's flexing. Yeah, it's flexing on the border. Yeah, it's just kind of blowing stuff up, making noise. That's very much what's going on.

Speaker 2: 26:50

And yeah, so for the commando groups, so there's two, there's two commando groups in the foreign Legion. There's GCP and GCM group, commando parachutist group, commando multi at two rep, which is a very prestigious regiment in the foreign Legion. It's on Corsica, on the island. Second rep, you might have heard, that's the parachute regiment, very difficult. A lot of Anglophones there, a lot of English speakers there, a lot of Australians there, not a lot of Americans. But that's like where the war findings go and it's difficult. Their selection is very difficult. Gcp is like the premier, then GCM is the mountain regiment where I was at, where I am at, and that's another difficult selection. They do just an initial three week kicking the crutch and you get picked up and then you're part of the section and then you go through a full year training selection of actual group. Commando montagne, with the French special army. I would say they operate like a rangers, if I could break it down like that. That's how they operate. It's kind of like a ranger regiment. It's they're rucking. That's kind of their mindset.

Speaker 1: 28:18

Okay, and so you're getting out. I think you said you have less than a year left, so you're finishing up. And then what's your plans?

Speaker 2: 28:28

So right now I really started to fall into this through this. Last time I found this redemption through discipline because I came in broken, seriously broken, and I said I'm going to use this time as a vehicle, as I felt myself. I can't keep doing this again and again and again and you know, breaking my life apart, what I need to unlearn, whatever I have been thinking. So I really started into this self-development and reading a lot of philosophy, reading a lot about just stoicism and praying and being trying to stay plugged in and just being open and dropping the ego. And, as I said, it wasn't perfect at first. It took me some and then all of a sudden, one day something just clicked and I realized I have to hold myself accountable. Nobody's going to do it for me. So then I started instituting seriously strict discipline on myself. I get up at 2.35 in the morning, I do work, I stay strict with my diet.

Speaker 2: 29:40

Once I started doing things I said I was going to do and I did them all the time no deviation I started having this clarity and I started feeling more open and I just I was like man. I really want to teach people this. People talk about poaching and this and that, but I really need this. I know this can help people to feel better and part of its fitness, but it's just a part, and so I'm looking to go into that work. I kind of started it already and it's been going good and I really like the purpose of it to be. You know, at nine to five is not going to work for me. That's just not going to happen, you know. So I'm definitely going to go into entrepreneurship. Yeah, you know, I had a bunch of the clocks, I think, especially with the tattoos man, I think I'm going to be too many, you know, too many interviews. So it's, I'm committed to this, to this entrepreneurship world.

Speaker 1: 30:37

Cool man. Well, yeah, I feel you and you know I did the same thing back in the day and you know someone like you guys, like us, we're going to be successful, no matter what we do, and I think that there's a lot of people that need your help, man. There's a lot of people that need that mindset and all this transfer. They need the, they need everything they need. Like for me, like I didn't lack work ethic back in the day, neither did you. I didn't lack a vision. I just liked to mentor, to help get me from where I was, where I wanted to go, and I prayed for it and got it delivered. I was open minded, like I say in the minds, like the person only works if it's open, and my mind was open.

Speaker 2: 31:06

I liked that. That's good.

Speaker 1: 31:08

Yeah, man, my mind was open enough at the time when God handed me something and said hey, I'm putting this person in your life for a reason.

Speaker 1: 31:14

Like it might not be the vehicle that you, it might not be the vehicle that you thought it was going to be, because it was direct sales and I'm like direct sales, like I've never sold I never, I've, never. I don't even know how to do that world, and so it was really foreign to me. But but I just decided to lean in man, and there's a lot of people that that need that same type of mentality from you for you to help them get to to where they need to go.

Speaker 2: 31:37

So I like that. I like that, brandon, it's. That's exactly what it is. It's getting people to that's stank them, shake the tree a little bit, loosen them up, say, hey man, you're here, and not only you're here. You need to be better for everybody else in your life, not just you. But you need to get good first, or you're going to be good for nobody. And that's and it's not a lean into that Right, you're open to it and you got to. You got to be honest about where you're at. That's the hardest part for people at first is to go. You know where. You don't know where to go if you don't know where you're at. So it's getting people to be like you know what I do need help. Once they're there, okay, we can work.

Speaker 1: 32:20

Yeah, man, absolutely. You know, most people are the results that they currently have, or just it's a direct reflection of the, the, the, the, you know, decisions that they've made up to that point, right, and so it's harder for them to become. Like the saying goes, if you want to break through, you need to break the current version of you to get to the next level of you.

Speaker 2: 32:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 32:41

Definition of Sandy is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. So they got to. They got to do something new, find a new coach, find something, some or somebody that has the results that they want in that area of their life and start doing what they're telling them to do, which. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about fitness, because you're a beast in that realm as well. So what do you? What do you? Coach people, use your ideal client like that you would like to talk to, like who. Who do you or who are the ideal people that you're already serving?

Speaker 2: 33:09

So I could. Most of the clients that come to me. I'm not a bodybuilder. I don't like spending hours in the gym. I'm a little max. I'm in and out. It's and I'm not going to do content. You know that does. It interests me, zero that stuff. So I'm about getting in. I'm not going to know what it is. It's a. It's a discipline that you do like brushing your teeth. Fitness is a basic discipline. You cannot have sound mind without sound body. It's impossible. You will not see somebody obese who's sound of mind. It's impossible. So you don't need to be crazy good, you gotta be. You can't be to some getting on stage type level. That's not what I am. Those aren't the people that come to me because, first of all, that's not me All right. So most of the people that come to me are not have been athletes but have fallen off or are relatively new and want to get going or are trying to go into selection by points. Those are generally my three and I can work with guys. A lot of them are type of service who are feeling a little lost, need to get reset. I thought I'd hit an awful reset.

Speaker 2: 34:24

I go, we strip it down to the stuff I take a look at their whole day. I tell them exactly where they're like I go. Well, first of all, if you got to start getting up early, get up before your wife. You should be the first one up. Get up, set the tone, ground yourself, no phone. Get yourself some time to think. That is the first thing that I'm shocked that people don't do. And I didn't do it and guess what? I wasn't sound of mind. So once I started doing that, then we start there and we get to the food, then we get to the basic body weight disciplines, then we get the body type. Now we have the disciplines, now we can get in the weights, now we can actually do some work. No point in doing the advanced stuff when you can't even get the food right. So that's kind of how I break it down for people.

Speaker 1: 35:14

That's perfect, man. It's like I go to a fighting gym, for example, like Muay Thai gym, and I see some of these trainers teaching these brand new people all these crazy advanced punches and I'm like why don't you start with the footwork? Everything starts from the footwork.

Speaker 2: 35:27

How are your feet?

Speaker 1: 35:29

Yeah, Like, teach this person first how to actually, when they're throwing a punch, what's their foot like? Footwork like? So I agree, man, and so you know. It's funny you say that because we're in line dude Like I, I got out of the SEAL teams and 2018 and was making great money, so it's very easy to rest on your laurels and think that you know that same type of fitness is just going to naturally come to you. And it hit me pretty hard when I realized that I was focused more on making money than I was on fitness. Yeah, and then my mindset started to slip.

Speaker 1: 36:05

Like you're saying and so, and then what happens is is then it's easy to grab a you know a drink of alcohol to go to bed at night, and then you're drinking caffeine all throughout the day to stay awake and it's just, it's just perpetual cycle, and eventually you got to break the cycle, and so what I started doing was I started training the mind, meaning doing things that I didn't want to do, and then I was going through buds, right, like I think you get a little bit of PTSD with cold.

Speaker 1: 36:28

Oh terrible and so yeah. And so it's natural. It's natural to just stiff arm it and say I want to stay awake. So what do I? So I do cold baths now, like I do ice baths.

Speaker 2: 36:42

Yeah, you're a bad man, but not.

Speaker 1: 36:44

No, but it's because I don't want to do it, right, and so I'll get in, knock it out, and then from there I'm training my mind and when I, when I, when I go to the gym, I'm like, let me do some things. Like I went and did a marathon not too long ago because I'm not really a fan of running, and so I'm like I'm just going to do this because I don't want to do it, I'm going to lean into it. And then now I'm in the gym, hitting the gym hard, and I'll do things like like our boy Ben does on the on the airdine bike, the power bike, you know, 45 minutes and that thing, because I don't like it, you know. So my point is like I train the mind now through personal development, through doing things that I don't like, like I focused on that because then then for me, you know, my fitness follows now because I'm focused on the rest is easier 100%.

Speaker 2: 37:32

There's no clarity there that no growth happens in comfort 100%.

Speaker 1: 37:37

Yeah, so okay. So let's talk real quick. Maybe give everybody just a couple pointers on their, what they can do on their fitness. I mean, obviously you know they need to come to you and get coaching and they should, and I'm sure some of them will. But what are some? Let's just say maybe top three to five things that they can do right now. If they're, you know, in a rut, yeah, To where they can, they can get out of that rut and and and start building, because life is about momentum. Why don't your momentum? Yes, it's hard to, it's hard to build momentum, but once you're in momentum, it's easy to sustain it.

Speaker 2: 38:12

That is spot on. That momentum takes some outside energy a lot of times. That's why coaching helps or Some new information, and they can't be both that outside of that new information and a little outside. You need to push that. You need to. You know, needs a little bit of that outside energy by couple pointers Track your macros, that's.

Speaker 2: 38:35

That would be the first I would say if somebody's having issues. And that's where the information. Because, like, people are just like, well, what are you know? Because you you're just guessing. That's like coaching helps. But, port, if you don't want to track portion control, whatever you normally would eat, start eating. After that, keep yourself in a train yourself. When you feel hungry, you go. This is what fat loss feels like, because we immediately want to reach for that dopamine hit in the fridge when you. That's why tracking helps, because you realize how many times we go to the fridge and it's just for a dopamine hit. It's not because we're gonna die, and I do it too. It's a constant. Everybody kind of wants I'll just take a little nibble and act for you out of bed. Everybody does it and it takes discipline and so it's it's training your brain to go. You know what? A little hungry. A little hungry is Okay, that's actually now. We're in. Now we're now we're burning food, it's good.

Speaker 1: 39:37

Can they replace it? If they get a dopamine hit, can they just replace it with drinking water?

Speaker 2: 39:42

I Suggest. So what I like to do, a little little hat, is I put a zero calorie Flavoring and water and I drink a little glass of that for you to bed.

Speaker 1: 39:52

Yeah, you know, and another hack that I had, man and I know because I talked to Ben and he told me, you told us I Used to cramp up like crazy, bro, like crazy. Anytime I do abs I'd cramp up. And all of a sudden I saw this Jason proce and guy online talking about how he took like a thousand milligrams or 1500 milligrams of Himalayan sea salt to the salt is huge. It had changed the game for me.

Speaker 2: 40:14

Can that it's a game to your body, you physiologically, your brain. You start thinking better.

Speaker 1: 40:20

So so do you, do you recommend people do that, like as far as not just.

Speaker 2: 40:24

I would say. I would say, if, if people are have high blood pressure or something I Generally don't, I'm always hesitant to tell them to take more salt because I want to take a look at kind of what's going on with them first. But for majority of people were salt-efficient and that's where a lot of the cravings come from. Where, magnesium deficient, our electrolytes are out of balance. You should be taking a multivitamin, if you're not, and a little salt with your water.

Speaker 1: 40:52

And I'll tell you most people who are our age. I'm not. How old are you?

Speaker 2: 40:57

38 38.

Speaker 1: 40:58

Yeah, I'm 38. So most people who are our age or you know, maybe a little bit younger, a little bit older, who are just getting straight, going straight to testosterone, I think a lot of these guys, they need to do a lifestyle change first and then, upset and then decide if it's right for them yeah there's a lot of things that need to be fixed first.

Speaker 2: 41:19

Yeah, like drinking alcohol once you cut that, first of all, you're gonna be cutting out a lot of anti-calories I'm still a lot of problems and also Messing up your schedule if there's no, there's no worse thing to mess up a schedule than alcohol. Anytime I'm throwing off of a schedule, it's for looking back at my life. It's always been, because about every time Do you still drink I?

Speaker 2: 41:47

Stay away. I don't. I don't like doing that hard fast because I Don't, I don't go out and I don't go out and do that whole thing. That is time Completely. But if my mom has a glass of wine, all the glass of wine, with my mom or a girlfriend as a good, okay, that's kind of where I keep it. I keep it in like a private setting and never leaves me with, and I've never Drank and moderation, and moderation.

Speaker 2: 42:13

Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's. I started focusing on the greater and the lesser started falling away, you know, and maybe I'll get to that point where it's completely cut out. But it's become, it's something I don't think about. It's not something I partake in, definitely not every day, definitely not weekly. You know, it's very spread and so it just doesn't fit into my life. It's fitting in my life. Less and less is what I'm finding.

Speaker 1: 42:38

Yeah, man, it's crazy. I cut it out it's. It's honestly. I feel super human right now, like yeah, I believe it compared to what I did feel like when I was drinking and when I was only drinking like once, like once, like on the Weekends, right, but but when you drink, guys like us, typically when we do something we do it right, like in, so so I stopped. I haven't drank, dude, I haven't drank and I feel freaking amazing it's it's.

Speaker 2: 43:03

There's more detriment to come from it than positive. And what looks for us in a previous life, I might kill us in the next. You know, in the teams growing up there's a lot of bonding that. You know. There's times where I could see where it could have been, maybe even beneficial, but there is a won't Potential. That also. So, yeah, mixed feelings.

Speaker 1: 43:32

That's very true, man. Last question on this, and then we'll finish up here. What? What's your opinion on caffeine? How much per day should they limit it?

Speaker 2: 43:41

I, I'm a caffeine guy. I can't lie, you know. So I can't. I'm a coffee guy. That's what I. That's what I prefer. I prefer black. Yeah, I put a little cinnamon in it if I'm feeling frothy, but that's, that's a. I like a quality coffee and I find it gets me where I need to go in the morning and I enjoy it. It's a very simple pleasure, I think. If you're relying on it, I think if it's something that you're needing, something's wrong. If, if you can't get going like I, don't have energy dips in the middle of the day, I think it's because my diet is very clean. I like it. In the morning I might drink a coffee Some point, but it's not really because I need energy, it's just because I kind of like the process of it. It's comforting.

Speaker 1: 44:27

Yeah, yeah, it makes sense, makes sense.

Speaker 2: 44:29

Okay, cool.

Speaker 1: 44:30

So let's talk about where do they find you? Do you have a website? Yeah, I know you have your social media.

Speaker 2: 44:35

Talk, talk to us about how they can find you so Instagram right now T cap official, my YouTube T cap TV and my website's coming out December 1st. That'll be T cap official calm.

Speaker 1: 44:53

And if they want coaching, they just DM you on on Instagram.

Speaker 2: 44:55

They could DM me or email me. I have my All those contact points available, but DM is gonna be the best. Or they can get my email on at T cap official. T cap official at gmailcom.

Speaker 1: 45:09

All right, man Well, any final words for everybody.

Speaker 2: 45:14

Remember it's not about you. It's not about you. Once we stop thinking about ourselves and how we can actually help the people in our lives first and everyone else around us, our communities, and we start focusing outward, everything clears up.

Speaker 1: 45:30

Yeah, I love it, man, what you give you give back in return. I love it. Mm-hmm, oh, all right. Well, guys, thanks for listening. Taylor, thanks for being on, brother, you guys, you guys know, subscribe, share this so that other people can see it. Okay, download it. All of the guys like, like, if you take care of the journey to win, join, the ones gonna take care of you and it's gonna take care of all your friends and family, the people that you share this with. So get it out there and let's get this message out there. Taylor has a powerful message that everybody needs to hear. All right, guys, appreciate you guys. We'll see you guys on the next episode. All right, taylor, we'll see you, brother, cheers.

Speaker 2: 46:02

Yeah.