Tom Hruby
Appearances
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. Man, we got a banger of an episode for you today. All right. There are some cool things about my old job. A lot of people think that it is the, I don't know, the apex of what your life could potentially be. And I'm just here to tell you that if today's guest doesn't convince you that that's not the case, I don't know what to tell you.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I just found mine recently. His name is Mediocrities. Okay. And his phrase line is, sometimes it's just good enough. That's right. I made that up. There's no mediocrities, but if he was, he'd be my spirit animal.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I actually, hold on. I have to get the phrase right. Somebody forwarded this on social media and I actually posted it yesterday. I'm like, this is my spirit animal. What is the saying? It says, meh, good enough. Mediocrities.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And your kids aren't probably either. My kid is hilarious. You know, going back to regardless of what I've done in my life, how they resoundingly just don't care.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
They maybe two or three times have asked me a single question about our old career. Every, yeah. Well, they were, so my last appointment was in 2010. My daughter was still in a crib at the time and I got out in 13. So she was older, but as far as me going back and forth overseas, both of my sons were born in Virginia beach. My daughter was born in San Diego.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
My sons are waiting for me at the stairs in 2010 when I left, but my oldest was seven, maybe eight. So, you know, their life, I got out in 13 older and have done a lot since then. I just, I don't know.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I don't know what level of awareness or interest, but maybe a couple of times they've asked me, they don't ask me much about the skydiving or the base jumping stuff, even though like I've taken them to Switzerland with me and was jumping over the top of them in a wingsuit. Yeah. It never comes up. They're just like, whatevs. You know, who doesn't have that happen?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Their papa doesn't fly over them in a nylon wingsuit. I'm like, fuck, guys, I'm doing my best to be interesting here. They all three worked for me at the coffee shop at one point in time. That was probably the coolest thing. They all shared a shift once. And I actually thought if the world was going to end, it would be that day. The nuclear mushroom cloud. Wow, man.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
My daughter and oldest get along great. My oldest and middle son get along great. My middle son and my daughter, I have to worry about whether or not there's knives in the house if they're spending time with each other. And then all three of them were there. I thought that was going to be the end. But yeah, I just, I'm just dad.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And the thing is too, I also never talk about any of that other stuff because I'd rather talk about their life than what I did almost two decades ago.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
What does somebody do after they've already done all of those things? I don't know. How about continue to stay in school and educate themselves author. Unbelievable. It just goes to show you that you are really limited by the barriers that you put in front of yourself. And I'm going to shut up. I'm going to let them talk for themselves. We're going to get into episode 380 with James and Tom.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And I'm happy to see it because they are, all three of them in their own ways, more capable than I could ever be. And I think some of that is, I mean, what year were you born? 82. Okay. So I got five years on you. I remember the first time I sat in front of a computer. It was my senior year in high school. I took a computer class and we're talking full dial up. You've got mail. Yeah.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
What is this internet? Yeah. I... cannot even fathom all three of my kids. If they want to learn something or if they have a question, they go to YouTube. How do you fill in the blank? And there is on every subject that I've seen so far, a volume of information. So I agree. They're more evolved, but so are the tools that they have to leverage them forward.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I can't even, can you imagine in the teams, how do you, not that there would be a reference or resource for that, but imagine if there was, and you had in your pocket, why isn't there? Probably because some of the stuff's considered sensitive.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
But I mean, how do you pack a parachute, right? How do I pack my ruck for a free fall jump? Imagine if there was that Rolodex. It would be a burden relieved from the mentorship and leadership because you could answer the questions on your own. And what I have found with my kids is because they have that, they're even more inquisitive.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Because if they can get the answer to this, well, what about this? And what about this? That's how my son taught himself how to day trade. It was YouTube. Yeah. That's how he found his business model for he has a window cleaning business and a Christmas light business. All cash. Cool. He's a psychopath. So all cash business, he started storing money in hollowed out books. Oh my gosh.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
But he would pull it out on Fridays and lay it out on his bed and just count it. I'm like, you are a psychopath. And then he ended up having so many hollowed out books that he wanted to open a bank account and is on YouTube researching how much cash can I put into a bank account before the IRS finds out. Wow. All because of this. What a kid, man.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
But we would have done the same thing, I think, if we would have had those tools.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
It wasn't for about two years before I started Googling then. Yeah. But then how many days do you go by now without Googling? Every day, all day. Your kids are growing up in the AI world.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Imagine, again, you and I go back into time. I don't know about you. My interest in school was below average. If I had had a tool in my pocket that I could have had listened to my classes and then create and submit the work for me, I would have been a 4.6 student.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
So I believe there are tools that can recognize.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Before that though, give me a quick sec. Let's pay the bills. Today's episode is brought to you by Montana Knife Company. I know everybody who listens to the show is familiar with the brand. Last week's episode was with the founder, Josh Smith. It was really cool. We combined like a little bit of a podcast with a little bit of a vlog. Go to montanaknifecompany.com.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
So I think there's tools. I believe there are tools and the plagiarism tools I think have existed for a while. It just references the AI tools, I believe, because the LLMs are, they're not perfect. Like I'll use them sometimes for podcast descriptions and it just, if you don't use a very specific program,
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
input, it's a little bit verbose, likes adjectives and you can tell a little bit, but then you could also tell it to write differently in a different tone of voice and first person.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
So I believe that there is software that exists that can help recognize, but again, it's going to be this chess match of the software that allows it to create, then the software that, I mean, yeah, it can create undetected. Have you seen the math apps on the phones the kids have? No. So you can take an equation, you just hold your camera up to it
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And it not only will answer it for you, but it spits out the steps along the way. So you can do your work. You can do your work, but here's the thing. If it's also showing you how to do it along the way, And you're learning from that. Is that wrong? Or is that adopting the latest technology?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I mean, I don't, I went, you know, in high school, you, you know, math and algebra one and algebra two of which I have used precisely and exactly probably zero since maybe a little bit of math at like free fall jump master, trying to figure out wind drift. Yeah. But is it wrong for them to use that tool if, you know what I mean? Like I don't have the answers to any of this. I don't either.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And some people will just say, well, that's cheating. Yeah. And I'm landing on the place of it's not cheating. You're using the tools that you have available. And if it can teach you at the same time, I think what we're hearing is people who didn't have access to those tools saying, fuck you. Yeah. You have something that I didn't. That's right.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I want an engineer to understand the math that makes the bridge that I drive over safe. I don't need the, let's use the coffee shop again, the barista that works for me. I don't need them to have gone through calculus. I need them to understand that a two shot latte is two, two ounce shots. You don't need your camera or trigonometry for that.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
So if you're a spec, if you're a brain surgeon, I really need you to understand if you're not a brain surgeon, do you need to go to like biochem level four classes in college? I don't know. Yeah. I didn't. I mean, I'm a resoundingly the dumbest person I know and I've been okay. But I also leverage this a lot too. Well, you leverage a lot of things, you know, right?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Right now they're having a sale on their apparel. I'm actually wearing one of their shirts right now. That was accidental. I generally dress in the darkness, and whatever t-shirt is on top is going to be what I get. They just dropped their tactical line. We talked about that in last week's episodes. There are four knives associated with it. It's actually what I carry in my fanny pack as my EDC.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
people look at the individual success of individuals and again i can tie it back into the seal community and this is something i try to talk about every single time because special operations in my opinion they it serves an amazing role and it's a specific role but that job is impossible without every other metric inside of the military and they get everyone everyone
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And they think that the people inside of the community are somehow very unique or they're superhuman or they're anomalous in society. In my opinion, and I try to tell people this, if I were to line up your average buds class from shortest to tallest, you're going to have some D1 people in there that look like Adonis. And then you can be like, who's that nerd?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And the answer is that nerd is the guy who's likely going to make it through training. But then you get into the community. you're not doing shit without the boat support, the helo support, the intel. We would sit there and throw rocks at ammo cans.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
That's literally all we would do if we didn't have every enabling aspect, the N1 through N9 departments, of which the operators fall into the N3 in the Navy world or the J3 in the joint world. Without that, You wouldn't be able to do anything. Any person, you and I, right? We are the sum total of the people that have helped us get to this point in life. Yes. And people forget that.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
They look at the person like, you've done amazing things. Like, I've never actually done anything without the support of others. Mm-hmm.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
It's humbling when you look at it in the totality.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I will say this, for all the downsides of living your life like that, there's tremendous upside.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Not because I'm looking to get into a knife fight, but mostly because I like to open envelopes in boxes efficiently. These knives are ridiculously sharp. Please be careful. They have chef's knives. They have hunting knives. They have tactical knives. They have knives for people like Greg Putnam who work out on the Little Belt Cattle Co. Ranch. They have knives for people who are fishing.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
That's just the cost. The things that you're able to do. And most of the things that I have done in my life, it doesn't come down to below the neck. It's above the neck. It's an unwillingness to give up. And that program, at least the initial filter does a good job of selecting for people that look, in my opinion, this is my words, not doctrine. I think Bud's looks for people that,
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
that see roadblocks as motivation, as opposed to roadblocks as a stumbling point that they can't get past. Because how many times were you really, just all the way back to Bud's, how many times were you actually ever really successful? Not many. No, almost none. And when you were, the suffering didn't stop. It was moderately successful. That's what I'm saying.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And so if you can wrap your head around that mentality, I mean, what makes a good entrepreneur? I wouldn't be able to answer that because I'm not one. But in the people that I've seen, most entrepreneurs are not successful in their first venture. So they keep going and going and going and going, which is the same mentality expressed in a different medium.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
So I think it doesn't surprise me that a lot of the guys who get out of that are entrepreneurial. And it also doesn't surprise me that when they end up on the wrong side of the law, they go big. You know, there's no little, I'm going to deal cocaine on the street corner. If you find a team guy who gets into that world, he's going to be the kingpin, mulling cocaine and U-Haul trucks.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Yeah, he'll be well up the infrastructure because, you know, we win big and we lose big. I'll leave it at that.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Probably their arm through the swim fins coming out of the water.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
They have knives for anybody who would need a knife. The brand was founded here in Montana, Montana Knife Company, right? It's definitely global. I will say this, they're incredibly hard to get. If you see something that you like of theirs, join their mailing list. They are releasing knives now, I believe, every Thursday and Saturday.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Yeah, let's not leave out the professional 7-0 fighting career.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
How did you get into that, by the way? Like MMA, people who train MMA, which is largely striking and jujitsu in the modern vernacular, there's a lot of people that do that recreationally. Very few people actually want to step into a cage, even though they'll tell you that they're training for self-defense, which I totally get.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And there's a difference between training for self-defense and wanting to go get into an MMA fight. Two very different people.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I think they release a couple thousand at a time, and it is not unheard of that they'll go within a matter of seconds, probably 60 to 120 seconds. I have personally had multiple knives stolen from me by other people out of my shopping cart because I was slower in the process. So join the mailing list. Support an American manufacturing brand. Born and bred here in Montana.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
So there's two people today, two guests, James and Tom. James, I met today. Tom, I served with in the military. Well, I can't say necessarily served directly with him. Apparently, I was a BUDS instructor at around the same time he went through. He has a memory of that. I do not. James, before we get into this, is, man, what a hell of a life the man has lived.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Were you nervous before your fight? Were you scared before your fight? I was terrified. Okay. Which is the answer that most people, even professional fighters in the UFC, you hear these interviews, even to this day, they're fighting on the largest stage in the world for the... most recognizable belt for the most recognizable organization.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
They'll tell you they're scared shitless before they walk out. It's a, and again, it's, it's easy for people to think they're in there in that cage and they're just Superman and they're not. And I think it's important that people don't forget that. Yeah. Because if you think that that's Superman, the second you think that somebody is Superman, you're putting yourself into this.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
They're bringing jobs back. Not that they're bringing jobs back into the U.S. because I think the jobs they're hiring for are in the U.S., but they're definitely bringing jobs here to Montana. They're building a huge facility on the western edge of Missoula. They're some of the coolest people. I love their knives, and I'm the first to tell you they're the hardest to get.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
It's a self limiting place because like, well, there's Superman and I'm just normal. So I can't do that. Yeah, man. What a pathway to hell.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I don't, if you want, if you want anything different in your life, I think a lot of people are stuck at this person is able to do something more than they are better than I am, or they have a different skill or I want to do that, but I can't. The obstacles in life are going to be plenty, but I think most people stand in their own way more than the obstacles thrown at you in life.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Yeah. I mean, let's go back to Bud's, right? I feel like, yes, Bud's is a great experience of that. Did any, have you ever, so I was there for as instructor for 18 months and I had never once watched an instructor grab a student's hand, wrap their hand around the bell handle and ring it ever. Okay. Never. And people will tell you, so-and-so instructor made me quit. Like, what do you mean?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
They carried you over to the bell? They grabbed your hand, they put it around the bell and they rung it for you? Did you, did, did kids say that? Oh, guys would say. Yes. Well, so it was, it was for me the most rewarding tour that I did in 17 years. I didn't want to be there when I first went there because I wanted to be where I had left.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
It made sense of so much going back as an instructor to see why the curriculum was the way that it was. I mean, let me know if this was your experience going. Well, you got rolled, right? Because you started 264.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
So I started in 212 and I graduated with 212. So the experience was a little bit different because when people would quit, I would never see him again. You and you probably got to spend more time around them in that off time in between 264 and 266. Mm hmm. As an instructor, I got to spend a lot of time with people who had quit.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And I would try to talk to them, because I was actually fascinated by it. Why? Really, realistically, why? And people will ask me, did you ever consider quitting? And I don't remember a moment where I was thinking, this is it. But I'm also thinking back to 1997. So I'm doing my best to view it through the lens of many decades.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Why do some people not consider quitting and why do some people want to give up? Talking with those students, they were in a really low emotional state because they had just given up on, most people would tell you it's their lifelong goal. but they would be really honest. And some of them would say, well, you know, I just couldn't take it anymore. So I had to quit.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And I would ask them, I'd say, well, what do you, what do you mean you had to? And often, well, this instructor was in my face and they were never going to let up. He made me quit. What do you mean he made you? I think what you mean to say is you chose to. Yeah. Because nobody can make you do anything, right? Quitting is optional, regardless of what it is you're trying to accomplish.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And that's a super rough statement because it puts the agency back on the person, which in the world that we live in is the exact opposite of what seems to be the norm. But watching students quit, it's a really... I view BUDs very differently now. It's a laboratory test on quitting. And I wish that there was a way to reverse engineer.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
If you can figure out why people quit, why can't we reverse engineer that and make people as bulletproof as possible? I think you can, but the reason that it doesn't really get much traction is that it lands on the person absorbing the information and then they have to do really, really, really hard work.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
There's one thing and one thing only. Time. How they view time.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
You know that we would set our watches incorrectly in Hell Week.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
The fuck we wouldn't. Do you think anything accidental happens in Hell Week?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
The things in your head were the only things that mattered. So think about this, students going into BUDS, which we'll call it 183 days. Wow. Nothing happens that is accidental. So two students, one of them has 183 little 3M yellow stickies and the top one says 183 and the next one's 182 all the way down to one. And he puts those up on his wall in the barracks. The other student says...
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I don't care how many days I have left because my goal is just to make it through today. The difference in those two students, percentage point graduating, almost everybody who's sitting there who, oh my God, I made it through the first day and they peel it off and they look at that number, they go, fuck. Can I do this for 182 more days? That destroys you. Their view of time.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Hell week is the same thing. The advice I was given by a brown shirt and for people listening, If post-health week, which is in first phase, which when I went through is the fifth week. Was it the same for you? I think it was fourth week when I went through it.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
It might be. So before that, you wear a white shirt. After that, you wear a brown shirt. So I got some advice from a brown shirt, meaning somebody who had successfully made it through Hell Week. And the guy said, don't worry about what day it is. Don't worry about if the sun is up. Just make it to the next meal. Because they have to feed you every six hours.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
The caloric requirement of that portion of training is ungodly. So that's what I did. I just thought about making it to the next meal.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And if you, which is a call at six hours and you could chunk that down to one hour or the evolution that you're, you're with, but who cares what day it is if you're just trying to make it to the next meal, because eventually the next meal is going to be on a Friday and you're going to be standing out in the surf and they're going to secure you from hell week.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
The difference between that student that can do that and the student that says, okay, it's Sunday, five more days. It's Monday morning, four and a half more days. one is tolerable, not easily tolerable, the other one becomes overwhelming. How they view time.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Because it's an academic principle that's hard to live. Mm-hmm. You got to remember the immense amount of physical pressure we're able to apply as an instructor. Some people cannot detach the way that they think from the way that they feel. Okay. And I think that's the beauty of that selection process.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
You know how I'd give a kid an upper hand in buds? I would explain to him that concept of time. And then I would explain to them the value of bending themselves before the world bends them. Find something every day that physiologically or psychologically challenges you and intentionally go do that even if you don't want to.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And when you're in the middle of it, go for a little bit longer than you think you can. And tell yourself, hey, I can always do one more rep. I can always do one more step. I can always do one more lap around, fill in the blank. That is how you weaponize a human being. In my opinion. Yeah.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I mean, I'll speak broadly about my divorce. My ex-wife and I agree. We probably should have ended it 10 years before. Yeah. You know, probably the main reason when I look back that I didn't make that decision, I didn't want to be called a quitter. Yes. Because it was the only equity in the community that we came from. Quitting was the only currency or your ability to not give up.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I think so. This is all the prep that I do. I just say hit the record button and go off. Okay.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And I fucking took that into my personal life. And it can destroy you.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
So your boundaries are set for you. That's where people hiccup on the way out. But once you're out. You have to. Now you've got. Special operations, in my opinion, is nonlinear problem solving. where people get hung up is that we're presented with the problems. Very rarely inside of special operations are you the one finding the problem to solve. Like if you get overseas, here's your target deck.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Like, cool, do you want me to go alphabetically? Who's the person you're, you know what I mean? And if you do a great job, they say, good job, here's another one. And you can do that ad nauseum. You do that for a career, you're so good at solving problems, then you get out of the military.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And if you want to reinvent yourself, you have to now figure out what problems need to be solved or what problems you want to. And that my friend can be an interesting journey. That is one journey for sure. And I see a lot of guys and there's nothing wrong with this. I see a lot of guys who will do an adjacent career to the military. Because I think it relieves a little bit of that stress.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Do you want to start with the book or go backwards? Because the book is obviously an amalgamation of your experiences a little bit. I don't know actually what that word means or if I used it correctly, but I think I did. Maybe a collection. So I'm fascinated about the book, fascinated about how you guys met.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Maybe they'll go contract. Maybe they'll go work for an alphabet soup agency. And if you think about it from just the lens of somebody either presenting problems to you or you're finding the problem to solve, they're trending a little bit more towards still people presenting the problems. And I'm not saying that negatively. I understand the draw to do that.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
But man, if you get to a place where you realize you get to pick your problem and then you start having a good time and exploring and realizing that, oh, I'm going to be okay because if I never give up and I just take the same mindset that I had for almost two decades and apply that to the civilian world, people better look the fuck out. Yeah. You can do amazing things. Yeah. Tough though.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Not everybody has that, though. That describes my entire SEAL career, to be honest. I was 18 when I was going through BUDS, 19 when I got to my first team. I had my bird before I was 21. lost my bird the first time before I was 21 also, but I don't even, whatever. Yeah. I got it back eventually.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
So we had switched over to, uh, patches and I was at captain's mass and he slid a pair of scissors across the table and said, why don't you cut? I'd had it for six weeks. I lost my bird too. Did you one time? Like physio, like you just left it in your car or no, what'd you do?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
But I think if we're going to talk about the book, we got to start with the origin story a little bit. You guys good with that? Sure. All right. Where do we begin? First, there was light? Yes. There was the word. I think the word came first, actually. I'm not sure which one came first.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I'm like, God, if I could just get in a time machine.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
You just skip it. Actually, what would be a good term for gun decking? That would be, I'm trying to think of the best. I mean, it's a Navy term for sure. It's basically saying you did the work and you didn't.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
So I'm at Team 5, my first platoon. Yeah. I fucking cut my bird off and then I have to go back to my platoon and you know, and you're in uniform occasionally and I'm just the only asshole at 16 standing there with a pair of camis that clearly has a rectangular section where something used to be. And I'm just like, awesome. So it was, it course corrected the me though for the rest of my life. Yeah.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
What, what, what, what happened? Sometimes you need to pull a knife in a bar fight and then run from the cops and then get caught by the same cops because you told them where you were staying, but forgot about that.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Is it though? Was it nice? No, it wasn't fucking nice. Well, it's nice now. It course corrected me for the rest of my life.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
The biggest lesson. So I was brand new. We were at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base is where we were staying. We were out there doing CAS, close air support. The air crew had something else to do that day. I think we were using A-10s and 16s, whatever they had out there at the time. And so we were going to drive back the next day. We have, you know, classic Econoline 16 pack van.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I think we had like two of them. Did you guys fan wars in there? Oh God. Constantly. People don't understand the level of violence in a van fight. Um, they don't.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
There's a little bit of PTSD from those for sure.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
There's a little post-traumatic stress associated with the Econoline van. But, you know, we had a day off before we were going to drive back. It's 10 in the morning, so what do we do? We immediately start drinking. I'm underage. I get carried into a strip club. This is where we started by my LPO. Mm-hmm. So they didn't even check my ID.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And it goes to later in the day or in the night in an Irish bar. And there was a guy in my platoon. I'll give you his name offline. He ended up actually interfacing at a federal level with law enforcement just running his mouth. And looking back, and again, this is through the lens of many decades. I knew that he was out of control.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I knew that somebody needed to stop him before, like the classic error chain. Like, can we just break one of these chains here and stop this? He ends up talking shit to a woman at a bar who happened to be related to the person that owned the bar. So they call the cops. He gets dragged out, tries to fight them or the bouncers. The cops show up. We talk him out of the back of the cop car.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
He's in the silver bracelets in the back. We talked to the cops during which I pulled a real Jason Bourne moment and just told him my name and where we were staying and the duty station we were attached with. Yeah. They're like, we're going to let him go, but you guys need to take him home. He gets out of the cop car. We go around the corner of the building.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
He immediately just walks directly at another bouncer and starts talking shit. You know, I'm 160 pounds at the time. And if I look back, the reality is I was scared and I didn't know what to do. So he was talking shit to that bouncer, turned around and started walking back towards me. And it was just, he was walking towards me and I was off of his right shoulder looking at the bouncer.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And the bouncer had a crutch. There was something wrong with his foot and he picked it up and he looked like he was going to swing it. And I had a Spyderco on me because I'm an idiot. And I pulled it out and I flipped it open. I just put it up against the side of my leg. And I said, I don't think you want to do that. You put the crutch down, I put the knife away. He started yelling for the cops.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I handed the knife off and had a moment of thought of, do I stay or do I go? And obviously the move is you go.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Not legal advice for anybody. Do not repeat my mistakes. So I take off, end up getting away from him. We ended up going to another bar as cops are like looking for me all over the place. That same dude gets his ass beat by another group of people that he had talked to. And, you know, so we ended up making our way back. The fucking command master chief is waiting for us.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
He's flipping tables and he's just pissed at me, you know, cause I was a, probably an E4 at the time. First platoon, first trip of my first platoon with my bird, with my bird.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And I have to go to a chief's mast. And I remember before I went in there, I had this split of, I'm gonna say this was everybody else's fault, but my own, because that's how I was originally thinking about it. And then I was like, you know what? No, fuck that. This was completely on me. And that was the shift that I had. And so I went into the chief's mast
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
You know, they asked me about what happened and then what would I do differently? And I answered him honestly, like I should have fucking stopped the person. And the reason I didn't is that I was the youngest, most junior new guy. And I thought that the people I was with, or not that I thought the people that I was with were my heroes.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
So if they had said crawl through fire, I would have said, okay, how far do you want me to do that? And that is the wrong way to think about it. Like if you, you have, don't look for somebody else to do the right thing, do the fucking right thing. And it changed the course of who I am as a person. Let me tell you, though, it's hard to cut a Trident off while wearing a camouflage top.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
That fucking skipper. And the scissors were dull, too. That fucking asshole. Really getting that first purchase in there to get it on the thread was tough.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I can't speak to that, what they were doing then. I 100% experienced the Trident getting smashed.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I don't think that they have. I think that they just do it quietly.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
We did the ceremony where you get the eight and a half by 11 piece of paper, go hit the surf. I'm like, Oh no, I'm going to hit the surf. Go back to your platoon space and things happen differently than the, just the piece of paper. If you know what I mean.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
OK. We have a buddy who lives, Dan Hart, who has totally non sequitur, the most beautiful jujitsu school I've ever seen in my entire life. What's his name? Dan Hart. He's up in Woodstock, Illinois. OK. I will show you his social media. He actually has the same lights that these people can't see. But imagine hundreds of square foot of this light over pristine mat and epoxy floor with 30 person.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Team one for people listening, odd numbers West Coast, even numbers East. So you walked metaphorically 50 yards from the Bud's compound in your first command.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
The tread did not almost kill you. We are there as an instructor to save you.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
For anybody listening, the tread is very easy. No, don't overlook it.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I have to emotionally prepare them for failure.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
This is, and so this is five minutes. And as an instructor, what you're looking at, like if you bend your wrist, there's usually like two creases. You need to have basically the creases of the skin in your wrist above water. So they need to be, what would be camera angle? People can see basically that much of your hand out of the water, both hands out.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
If the person is sinking a little bit, but they do their best to keep and not use their hands for assistance, let's just say there's a little bit of room for interpretation for the instructor. If they put their hands in and they start sculling with their hands, that's a fail. I would let students go underwater as long as they didn't use their hands and they could come back up.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
You're like, what the fuck? Yeah. He does it right. So we fly into Chicago all the time, but we head up to the Northwest, up to Woodstock. Okay. So he's North in Wilmette.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
But again, there was a little bit of a deviation. By the book, hands out of the water, five minutes, vertical treading configuration. Yeah, pure hell. Considered to be the easiest evolution in BUDS.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Only in the history of Bud's three people have ever failed.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Well, there is one way to short circuit the five minutes. And I've only seen it one time. I've seen a guy quit on the tread post-Hell Week.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
You play dead? I play dead. Let me guess what happened. He just sat there and watched you because he knew you were playing dead.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
No. So you'd sit there. Let me tell you, as an instructor, the tread is very easy. I don't know what you guys are complaining about out there because I'm just sitting there watching you. One-to-one ratio, we got you. You're going to get out of the pool. I have seen every version of somebody try to play dead. And so what you let them do, here's the varsity move. You let them go to the bottom.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Yep, I did that. And at some point, they realize... that you realize that they're faking it and they come back to life.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I'm surprised you didn't pop your own CO2. That's a move that a lot of the students make when they resurrect themselves on the bottom. No, no, I didn't go that far. When that happens, the instructors will come and hold down the valve on your life jacket and let the CO2 out. Because we get our five minutes. Yes. So you guys got your five minutes on me.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Let me guess. Probably has to do with the time of year? Well, it has to do with a girl, mainly.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
So for the listener, though, you get four attempts at this. So you had three more shots.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
So I'm going to assume that you, first time out, 6'6", you pass. First time, yeah, 6'6", yes. Okay, good, okay. Again, training that is designed to throw failure at you. And there are two different people.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
So at one time I was doing the tread. It was a foreign exchange student. And at about 30 seconds in, they decided the evolution for them that day was going to be over. So they did the same thing. First, it was weight belt got dropped. So I went and got it and looped it over the back of their twin 80s in a position that they could no longer touch it.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
CO2 cartridge fired, pulled a little handle to let it out of the vest. And at this point, like I am aware that this person is having a religious experience out of body, if you will. So I'm way closer than you and I are. I'm sitting there face to face and I'm just kind of doing the float where you have your arms crossed in front of you.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
This guy's last ditch move was a heroic kick and he came up and he wrapped his arms around me as the instructor. And I just started laughing and slowly exhaling. So we became negatively buoyant and just had mask to mask eye contact with this guy as we went to the bottom of the pool. At which point he let go and I went back up to the top. He was just down there. So what did he do? Passed out.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
You get them 50 meter underwater, you're going to get some people. That's first phase though. Pool comp, quite a few.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Quite a few because they just take it too far. It's actually after administering pool comp, you can tell when people are going to get ready to go out. You know, they start the little- That's the first part, but that's not necessarily the indication that they're going to pass out yet.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
As soon as bubbles start to come out of their mouth when they're doing that, they're right at the lip of being able to go out. And then, I mean, you're watching this as an instructor and you're right there with them. You just grab them and bring them up. They're out for maybe five seconds. And then, you know, red line, drag them to the side of the pool.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And a guy with seven years of medical school slaps him in the face. I'm like, I could do that. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. And they're just, they come back and that's it. Next. Yeah, but you get four shots at it. You'll be all right.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
The best, though, is as the instructor watching the fake death, knowing at some point there'll be a real resurrection. Yeah. Which usually is going to occur about 12 feet underwater, which is really an emergency for them, but not an emergency for us. It's great. It's better than TV. Today's episode is brought to you by True Work. Damn, these people make some cool stuff.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Not in the summertime, though. Not in the summertime. How people actually survive there is beyond me. The last two summers there have been brutal.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
One of the cool things about doing ad reads for brands is that they're going to send you some of their products. So you can talk about it from firsthand perspective. I don't have their pants on today, but man, they sent me one of the coolest pairs of work pants that I've ever had. And you just understand when a brand gets it and they're being intelligent in their design.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Everywhere that you would reach that you would want to have maybe your phone or in this case, the work pants, you would want to have a pencil or a pen or a pocket that would be good for fill in the blank. And you put your hand there like, damn, It's already there. Their pants are ridiculous. I'm not joking.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I think I wore those things for a week straight when I first got them, and they're just in my rotation now. They're spectacular. So True Work, as a brand, they're hell-bent on creating the most technical, high-performance workwear in the world.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Their story, the true work story, began in the Colorado mountains where a trade worker knew there had to be a better solution than the wet, heavy gear that was weighing him down. Man, I know exactly what you're talking about. So the pants they gave me specifically, they are soft, but they're stretchy, sweat-waking soft shell, and are a major upgrade over wet, heavy jeans.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I remember working for my father long ago, and that is actually kind of what I wore to protect myself, jeans. And they suck. There's nothing technically complex about denim. at least when I was wearing it when I was 11. It was horrible. So with those pants, wind and waterproof shells that use intelligently placed insulation for streamlined warmth that lets you stay mobile and agile.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Every TrueWork product is engineered for maximum comfort, protection, and efficiency with minimum bulk or extra weight. I'm telling you, when you get some of their stuff, you'll think, hey, this would be a perfect spot for it, and they've already gotten there for you. They've already beat you to the finish line, and that's the product that you have in your hand.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
TrueWork has over 50,000, you heard me correct, 50,000 five-star reviews and countless stories from trade pros in every state and every job across the country. You can upgrade to TrueWork for a major change in the way that you work, and TrueWork helps you be your best when the best is what matters most. If this sounds interesting to you,
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Check out the full lineup and get 15% off your first order at truework.com slash clearedhot. That's 15% off at True Work. T-R-U-E-W-E-R-K. WhiskeyEchoRomeoKilo.com slash clearedhot. You're not going to be disappointed. Check them out. Yeah, I can see that. Thank you for that.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Worked in the bar space for quite some time. He's also an author of A very well-published author. And with Tom, they have created a novel, which is what we're going to get to. But the book is called The Breacher's Playbook. This is a fictional novel. But what I like about this kind of genre is that it's very similar to Jack Carr in many ways, meaning –
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
How many kids do you have? Four. I have four sons. We're doing it. Do you have three sons?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And how much football experience did you have at this point? High school.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I was going to say, she was happy that you weren't there? Is that what you mean to say?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Between us, though, 11 kids, we are doing our part. 4-4-3. Oh, yeah.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And you will sacrifice everything to include personal life, relationships and marriages to be the best team guy that you can be. It's all a fucking lie, man. If I could go back, I wish I could balance that way better. I don't know if I was capable of it at that phase in my life. And I don't want to say that the job isn't important or any of those things.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
When I say it's a lie, I'm talking specifically only about myself in the way that I view it, not anybody else. But yeah, because I told myself those same things and missed time with my kids, did every deployment that I could do, right? Fear of missing out, fear of not being there, fear of not being good enough.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
What will the guys think of me if I say that I can't go on this trip because my relationship with my wife is struggling?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I thought you were doing 11 kids yourself. We're doing good. We are... For anybody wondering if we're doing our part, we have done our part. Mike, how many kids are you going to have? Remains to be seen. Actually, you know what? We have 12 kids. Four, four. I have three and an adopted fuckhead.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Both can be true. I think at best we can help round the edges of the corner. Okay. There is an aspect of them having to experience at least a portion of what you're talking about for I think it to be a concrete lesson. Because knowledge absent the experience. You know what I mean? This book knowledge says I should do this.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And in this case, book knowledge would be you or I literally trying to crack the heads of our children with knowledge that they're like, fuck you. I have learned better things on TikTok. But... they're going to still make mistakes. My hope is to help my children at least miss the catastrophic ones that I made.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Cause I've made plenty along the way that were not catastrophic with which the lesson could still be learned. If I was in a place where I was ready to receive that lesson. So they're going to, they're going to fail galactically. But I think you could probably, if it's a stereo equalizer, like a one to a 10, maybe you could keep it at a six. Did you, um, Was your dad around? Mm-hmm.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I successfully extracted him from Santa Cruz. Oh, man.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I'll do episodes with him and they're awesome. They're some of my favorites because they're time capsules. But he's also an absolute pain in the ass. Really? Yeah. I tell him to his face now that I'm looking for homes to put him in. He hangs out at the coffee shop. He like monopolizes our manager's time.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
He's, he's starting to tell me I need to make t-shirts that just have his beard on it because he's been on the show. So people reach out to him and tell him that. So he tells me to which I say no. So now he's telling other people to tell me that I should do that.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Yeah. Trust me. I've heard that. So he plays Santa Claus during Christmas for us. You guys always have a good relationship. No. It's gone up and down. And I'll tell you, there was one particular series of years where it was pretty rough. Actually, fuck it. I'll tell you why. I was going to tell you offline, but I'll tell you exactly what it was.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I don't know if I've talked with him about it openly. I got shot in 2005. The reason that I actually came out to the West Coast was My parents didn't come and visit me for like six months. And that scrambled my eggs. So is your mom?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
She's passed in 2010. I got a Red Cross message to come home from Afghanistan in 2010. Had about... 14 days with her before she passed. She was diagnosed with the cancer for the second time before I left. So I knew it was coming. It was more of a bit of how much time remains, not whether or not this is going to happen.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
2005 though, they were both, uh, they both were able to travel and I actually, and I, I can't fathom being on the receiving end of a phone call where you're told that your son has been injured overseas and he's going to work his way back over. And they were notified by my ex-wife because I was able to call her from Balad. But they didn't come out to visit and it fucked me up.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
It really strained our relationship. And it got to a point about six months later, I kind of exploded to him on the phone about it. Just like, what the fuck, man? Like my sister had come out and visit. My in-laws had come out and visit and they hadn't. And it was rough. It had an impact on our relationship for sure. Did they say why they didn't do that?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
He didn't think that he could be around me emotionally and be supportive because when he sees me, he sees the young man that he used to hold in his arms. Oh, man. Rough for sure. Did you reconcile with your mom about it? Yes. We talked about it afterwards. I think for her more than anything, she was just making the same decision as my dad to be more supportive of my dad.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Well, you're the 25. I have a 21 year old boy, a 19 year old boy and a 16 year old girl.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Didn't make it any easier to be on the receiving end. We haven't talked about it directly much, him and I, but for about two years, it was, it was just skin deep at best, the interactions back and forth. So just time healed that. And you guys eventually. Time healed it. And I think I put it down a little bit. You know, it's amazing. What happens is you get a little bit older.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And you, I knew six months later that that was his reason for it.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Well, they just, it was weird. I mean, I was fully trying to rehab myself. I had other people coming out to visit. That's not like the, you know, I had young children at the time, which were their grandkids. Um, And I, he eventually, my mom actually called me and put him on the phone because my interactions with them had started to get a little bit more terse, like one word answers on the phone.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I just, I wasn't reaching out to them. I was fucking pissed. Right. And I'm not trying to justify my behavior. I'm just explaining where I was. And she just asked me straight out. And I, it just, it caught me in a moment where I was like, I'll fucking tell you why you want to fucking know why I'm pissed. And here it is. And I just kind of, I kind of blew up on him a little bit.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
So does he live with you? Fuck no. Okay. I'd blow my brains out if he lived with me. He lives with his wife. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Like a mile and a half from where we live. Absolutely out of his fucking mind. Michael can attest. That's wonderful. He watches their dogs sometimes. It's wonderful from a distance. Yeah.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Have they all expressed yet their difference in personalities? For sure. Okay. So I, what I have found is, and how old are your kids by the way? They're older. Okay. So we can talk about the tail end of this. Cause I'm curious how it ties in. Cause we are actually, we're in all probably three spectrums of parenting. You're, you're in what I'd call the trenches. My youngest is 30. Okay. Yeah.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Are you a perfect parent? No. Do you mean to fuck up when you do?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
probably don't right what's that you're not trying to fuck up like you don't mean to fuck up when you do not at all i think a big first step is to when you're younger you look at your parents and they're all you know they're literally your model of perfection and you have to realize at some point in time that they're just people people are a fucking mess so i would say if you can get to a place where you realize he's probably not intentionally doing that that's a good start
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
if he were to pass today and you feel like you would have regrets where things left unsaid, I would say, do something about that. But chemical and substance abuse is a different fucking animal. I would put that back into his court. And I would say, if you want to have a relationship with me and your grandkids, That's what I want to, but it comes with this criteria and you have to hold that line.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
You know, but if you feel like you would have regret or things left unsaid or unfinished, if he were to pass, I would say do your best to do something about it. But the emphasis and impetus is really on him to govern his behavior. It's your role now as a parent to hold that line, to create the line and hold the line.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
It's his role as your parent to live up to that so he can have a meaningful relationship in your life and your kids' lives.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
That's the metric of control you have. The metric of control he has as to whether or not his relationship with those substances means more than his family. Unfortunately, sometimes it seems that way, right? And if that is the case... as horrible as it says or sounds, I'd fucking cut him loose. That's his choice. Correct.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Death due to old age is one day closer. Yes.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
You never know when you're on your last square.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Yeah. Stay on top of the, there's a lot of consequences to the job that we did. Stay on top of the health metrics as much as you can.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
So you're in the trenches. I'm in the charge after you climb the ladder out of the trenches, and he's already won World War II. Nice job, Jim.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
You're not going to get the time back. I think the best thing you can do is take that feeling of wanting to reconcile and allow it to guide your behavior going forward. Like a walking, walking amends. Yeah. You just live that way. I don't know what else you can do with it because you could sit there and wish and hope for the time back. Yeah. And I'm just not aware of a way to get it. Yeah.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
So, I mean, it is what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Jim, I'm really tired of you interrupting and talking so much in this particular episode.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
We're skipping around a little bit because I know we'll get back to it. I'm curious, though, how did you two meet? Because I'll tie this back in together. We'll tie it back into you leaving the military, playing football, and then your desire to become an author weirdo. But you have a great pool of personal experience to pull from. I didn't.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
They do that now, I believe, in third phase.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
That's a joke I go with. We had to go find our own.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Yeah. Man, so they're different, right? Same genetic makeup, DNA-wise combination, but my kids couldn't be more wildly different. My middle son is... going to college in Bozeman, knew he wanted to be an engineer since he was mid-teens and is teaching himself like CAD programs. It's insane to watch him go down that path. Started two businesses before the age of 18. Nice.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Okay. It's like, weird, that's a really weird yellow house cat. Why would that be the... Cat house as in whore house. Yeah. Oh, all right. Man, my brain is slow today. I'm not putting that together when I think like a yellow tabby cat. Like, what are we talking about here?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I don't know if there's a whore house here in town. I'll check with my law enforcement buddies later today. I'll be like, hey, is there a whore house here called the cat house?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And this is before you guys met? Before we met. Fortuitous circumstances. Right. Okay.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Well, let's also add slightly older age than your average college football player.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Yeah. They didn't have three kids either. Well, you don't know that for sure. That's an assumption. They could have started early.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Let's hope they didn't have three kids. Let's start with that. That's a full plate at 21 with three kids. Get some.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
My oldest son has no interest in school whatsoever, has drifted around a bit. I lost touch with him for about 18 months during our divorce. It was wild. Probably one of the most difficult times of my life, actually.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
No worries. So a question for you about a novel, and I bet this depends on the author. So the completed book, The Breacher's Playbook, is sitting here in front of us. And I'm just, I asked this out of curiosity. When you're thinking about a novel, do you have an idea of the storyline, kind of a skeleton, and then you work backwards and fill it out?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Or do you let the story as you're writing it take the twists and turns that you want it to? That's a great question. I'm fascinated about the creative process itself.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Well, the books are fascinating, especially to me, suspenseful books where they throw these twists and turns at the end. I always ask myself, did they fucking know they were going to do that at the idea of this book? Or as they were writing it, did they just recognize this is a great opportunity to do fill in the blank?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
have recovered that relationship probably even better but he is like motorhead loves he got a motorcycle a couple years ago which you want to talk about aging and dog years i'm like i'm feel comfortable completely fine on a motorcycle i do not like the concept of my 21 year old son on a motorcycle yeah who promised me he's gonna ride safe and then he'll send me gopro footage look at me dad i'm just cruising around on this road and i'll zoom in on the speedometer yeah i'm like
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Is this going to be one of many, one of three? You put three fingers up now. Maybe we'll put up another three. Maybe it's one of six. Let's not limit ourself. I mean, Jesus, we've talked about not quitting and chunking things. Why would you stop at three? I won't. If nobody buys the book. I mean, there's that. There is some reasonable.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
What were your thoughts on writing the book? Did you enjoy the process?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Okay. Do you think he enjoyed it though? Because it was based, so Jack Carr, a good friend of mine, his books, I think you guys have an advantage and the advantage is you can do 98% realistic and then a little 2% of flair and you can call it nonfiction.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I think writing, or you can, I'm sorry, you can call it fiction. Yes. Writing a nonfiction book. God, I feel like there'd be a lot of pressure, especially if it's going to be anything other than a historic event that you can really, really research. And in the modern era, too, where people might say something like, oh, well, that's not, you know what I mean, or come at you.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
So you have creativity, which is awesome, but you can also balance it really well in realism, which Jack does a great job of. For people who know what they're looking at reading those books, like, damn, dude, did you have to include that detail? Like, leave that shit out. The reader, though, the average reader doesn't know where the authenticity and the fiction aspect is rolled on top of it.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I wonder how much you would have enjoyed it if it was a nonfiction book.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I haven't thought about it like that. I feel like that could be kind of cathartic to write maybe the antagonist character, but it's all based on your own character traits that you wish you could change. Like I'm going to create an asshole. Maybe nobody will realize it's me. What an interesting way to be able to fucking deal with that.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Dude. Come on, son. So he's like a motorhead. Wants to move to Florida at some point because it has better riding season. My daughter is 16, finished up high school early and is digging and like diving into welding and has drifted. And at 16, I mean, I knew what I wanted to do at an early age. I'd be curious if you knew what you wanted to do.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Houses. Unfortunately, probably every building in Hogan's Alley has a horrendous backstory at some point in time all rolled together. Hey, something happened at a theater. Maybe we should practice on this. Hey, something happened at a post office.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
These lessons are written in blood, unfortunately.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Let me ask you this. So you've written how many books? Ten. Have you ever... in the writing process, written a book and gotten it to a place where you would make no additional changes? Or at some point, do you have to turn it in to an editor and say, please help me because I've stared at this so much that I'm losing my fucking mind.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I feel like if you look at it enough, you would make changes so many times that it would actually revert back to the original that you started changing it from.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Unless you shorten it into book two, then you've already got your second book done.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I mean, there's two ways to view that it's horrible or I've already got some work that I needed to do done. Yeah. So 10 books, man. Do you have a favorite out of those 10?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
She's kind of navigated all over the place, which is totally fine with me. I completely support them pursuing things that they love. They find to be interesting, but they couldn't be different, man. And my oldest son, the difficult phase or problematic phase or worrisome phase for me, mostly when he was growing up, was probably like 16 to 18. That was kind of the hardest.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Of course. Yeah. It's kind of a fucked up question, especially since Tom's in the room. Oh yeah. I really love this other book and it's not this one.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I learned how to ride a bull at 46 years old. I mean, that's the time where you're known to be the most flexible anyway. And, you know, you have the most durability. So, I mean, why not?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Yeah, don't get into it for a few more years.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Those bull riders, do they strap them into a backpack? I mean, my God, no.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
My middle son, Tyler, wouldn't you agree he's like 40 years old, Michael, trapped in a 19-year-old's body? I would agree with that. Yeah, he'd be more likely to be found on a Friday night reading a stoicism book with tortoise shell glasses on.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
You have zero control over anything that animal does. Those bulls, if you've never walked up next to one, are some of the most impressive animals. The TV does it no justice because there's no relative size or scale. Holy shit.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Yeah. All muscle. That doesn't want you on its back. Right.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
There's more people like you and I out there than there are not.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And it was... Well, give me the wavetops of the book. Describe it for the listeners so they know what they're going to be getting into.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Yeah, and trying to figure out which crypto to short the next day. Amazing, man. He wakes up every morning in college and day trades.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I enjoy, you know, movies that start with a brief glimpse into something that you're catch up with in like the third act.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
like what are you doing he's he's sees a goal for himself he sees like this is how i can become something else and he's he's working towards he's gonna be fine and he's totally fine with that and when he started his businesses he um the only way he got business is he went and knocked on doors he doesn't care if he gets told no if somebody tells him no or get the fuck off my property he literally say well do you happen to know anybody of your neighbors that might need my service so he
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
As a writer. So not to interrupt him. Fascinating. You made that comment. Cause I'm curious, how many pages do you think you have as an author to catch somebody? A dozen? Maybe. It's interesting, right? There's got to be something really compelling. Because I'm thinking about my own consumption. I read more nonfiction than fiction. Yeah, it's going to have to be quick.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
lot of truth woven in and when you know what you're looking for you can kind of tell about the authenticity and it speaks to you in that way and then if you just still want to be able to detach your mind you can go down the fictional route as well so i actually think it was james that reached out to me first and i need to read right off of what he wrote tom's background because it's ridiculous
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
You will be fine. Yeah, that works on zero evolutions and buds.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
As far as the framework goes, you can add some muscle and ligaments to that stuff for sure.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
He doesn't care. So I look at him, I'm like, you're going to be so fine. The world actually probably isn't ready for you because he just keeps going. I'm like, you're good. Let me know when I can start borrowing money from you. You're going to have to hire him. I don't know if I can afford him.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Yeah. Don't give it away. What is, so if you're going to do a three book series to start with, I think we've agreed it'll be six, but what is the publishing goal with that? Is it every 12 months to keep the reader who may find this and it's, it's one of fill in the blank and they know that something is coming. Do you lose the reader if it's 18 months or two years apart?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
What do you usually aim for? What do you think, James?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Optimally, what would it be? Every 12 months-ish? Yeah. Okay.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Is that what he's doing, 12 months? I think so. And I think he's now doing backstories to the... Ah, damn it, Michael. What's his character's name? It's Reese. James. James Reese. Yeah. And I think now he's telling the origin story, I believe, of Reese's father. So not only is he writing that every year.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Well, I think that's what he wanted his job to be post-military. So he's living his absolute dream. That doesn't sound like a dream to me. I'd rather go test gravity. You should write about it.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Well, the main lesson is it's undefeated. So, you know, deploy your parachute before impact, but it's lesson one. There are some lessons there. Keep it simple. Yeah. Yeah, he is. cranking them out. Yes. But it's every 12 for him. It is every year.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I think that might be how he's entering into the contracts with his publisher though, because they wanted it to be what it is. So I think he is actually a little bit more, and I, I think it's safe to say, I'm not giving it away any information. I know he, he has mentioned the term deadlines to me. So I think he is a little governed by his publishing relationship.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
But he also seems to be enjoying it, so good for him.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
He got ahead of that, though, and I think kind of like you guys would have the ability to do. I think he had, and I'm speaking for him a little bit, I think he had an idea of the story arc that probably was going to get him through his first publishing contract, so he was able to work his way backwards from there. which would probably be easier to flesh out that way as opposed to getting one done.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Like, okay. And does anybody have any ideas for book number two? No, he's killing it, man. He is killing it. Yeah. His stuff's great. So I'm assuming you're just going to keep writing. Correct. What are you going to do? You're out of college now. Kids, you're an author. Are you going to, you're going to dive into writing or what else do you think you want to do?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
What's the name of the school if you want to give it so people can research if they live there?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Can I get some feedback on your website? Yeah, go ahead. Will you use a fucking higher resolution photo, please?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
My daughter, Michael can probably attest to this, has got a real sharp mouth. She's got some sass. Real smart ass, if you will. I'm like, well... I know where you got that from. My oldest son's stubbornness and ability to just kind of detach and do his own thing. Like kind of know where you got that from. Cause that's how I deal with things as well.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Likely because it is a different experience.
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I went right back into the, the chunking or the time philosophy. Yeah. I remember being on zoom calls right back to the old ways, dude. I don't know how else I would have gotten through it. I mean, there were days where I just like, how is this possible?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
How am I possibly, whether it's in the discovery process and they're asking for three terabytes worth of, and like, how am I even going to get all of this? Where do I do this? How do I just so easy to get overwhelmed? And I just chunked it, man.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Same thing. Yeah. What, uh, what are you learning right now? Do you have anything that you're pursuing that's pushing you as a person? Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. I mean, cause you talked about everything you're doing for others, the school, the Airbnbs, which is economical. Right.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I'm just, I'm curious because I've realized in myself, I do way better when I have something that I'm trying to master that is not masterable or something new that I'm trying to learn. I think it keeps you young in air quotes.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
And honestly, my middle son, he is just kind of better than me in every way. And I kind of sit there and wonder where the fuck did that come from? Wow.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
You could say, what is the most impact I could have while maintaining that sphere that you're unwilling?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Yeah. I don't mean problems in a bad way. It's right.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
It's the habitual nature of our mind, given our old career. You get the idle time. I hate the idea of being bored because there's always a problem out there that I could solve. And the more complex the problem, oftentimes the more interested I am in the actual problem. But I just can't turn my brain off from looking for them.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
No, I've accepted the fact that this is what it is.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I try to manage my time appropriately around that.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Because there are more problems than my calendar will allow for. That's right. And it's a slippery slope because sometimes I'll try to stick them all on the calendar and nothing good comes from that. I know. Other than exhaustion and usually I get sick.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Start with blocking off time you're unwilling to deviate from, and then you're just left with the stuff that you can play with. That's helped me substantially. Up here, hunting season is a good example. You get 60 days to get it done and fill your freezer.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I'm pretty sensitive of my time around that, making sure I have time for my kids, making sure I have time for my wife, my own personal training, because otherwise you're on the road so much, like, oh, shit, I didn't get to train for a week. I'll do twice as much this next week. Yeah, I'm 47. That doesn't work so fucking well. No.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I can't say that I've ever heard of them, but it sounds cool.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Yeah, I know. We'll put the link to it in the show notes, too. Is that the only place you can get it? Is this thing on Amazon? Is there an audio book? It's coming. It's not out yet. The book just— Who's reading it? Oh, I don't know. Petitioning. No. The only person I think should ever read audio books is James Earl Jones.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
We keep looking for new challenges and we go after them. To my children, I'm the most resoundingly boring human being ever.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Yeah. Somebody threw this one out though. Morgan Freeman is a good second.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Yeah. Those would be good. I have no ability to help you with that, but I think it would be amazing. You can't get us in contact. No, no, no, but it'd be fucking awesome if I could. That would be awesome. So there will be an audio book. There will. Okay. How long has this thing been out?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
So March 1st today. So if that's the presale, when is the official launch?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Well, here's the deal. There's no way we could ever cover everything in one episode. So how about we just agree to this? Every time you guys come out with another one, we just circle the wagons and have another conversation because we've actually been at it for almost two and a half hours. Yeah.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Isn't that the truth, man? They just, they just, they're like, dad. can you go away? I want to spend time with my friends. Can you not talk? I'm going to have some friends come over.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
We could probably do five hours. And the problem is that's too long of an episode for anybody. We're better off doing it in iterations because we just scratched the surface.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Let's do that on a variety of things. But before we close it up, closing thoughts from, from both of you guys, what do you want to leave people with?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
You might want to pick a different term for those people. I already have. But it was just, I just wanted to throw that in there. And I'll never forget that. Do you figure out who your friends are when it's raining and they're standing out there with you? even if they have an opportunity to be under a shelter.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Well, at the phase you're in, use, I mean, all of my kids can drive. All of my kids are out of school. I arrived at the place where, you know, sex, drugs, alcohol, you're just hope that they don't all occur at the same time, you know, have the conversations up front. The really cool thing with all three of my kids is I can have open conversations about all of those things.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
In a long enough timeline. There are moments where you think it's not going to be all right. Yeah. But you got to, again, I'm telling you, man, time. Fuck.
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It was the number one tool I had as an instructor. How could I get you to think about time? That's all I did.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Yeah. We know you thought you had something going. It's okay. Cause that trick wasn't for you. It was for the other people who on Tuesday read our watch and said, Oh, it's Monday evening.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
No. And not intentionally. And I also think that's just kind of, I mean, I geographically moved. I occupationally, not separated, but diversified myself from that. And guys just communicate differently than girls. I could reconnect with any of those people in five minutes and we'd be back up and running. We really could.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
They're very open with me. Um, almost to the point where I want to say, Hey, do you want to not share that with me? Because as your dad, I really am not interested in knowing any of that. But I'd rather have that than them be guarded or go to somebody else with that. But at this point, I mean, my oldest, he just sends me pictures of crotch rockets. And with the text, so just hear me out.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
There is a difference in communication and then just the way that men and women manage relationships. I watched my wife have multi-hour conversations with her sister and her aunt and her mom. And I would, I would blow my brains out. You know, average guy conversation. Hey, what's up? Anything new? Okay. Later. Fucker. Done. Talk to you in a decade. And the person be like, okay, cool.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
We'll do it again for sure. Cool. All right.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
I'm like, no, no, you don't need a faster bike. And he just... I can't stop him. Right. So I just laugh and I try to give him advice. And if he takes it cool and if he doesn't take it cool, but he's still coming to me for it. Yeah. Which is all that I can hope for, you know? Yeah. Yeah.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
But think about it. I mean, so the community we came from is, I don't know, 2,000 people at any time, maybe 2,500. Bunch of people getting in, bunch of people getting out. There has to be a way to achieve without the physical and mental suffering that we were exposed to. Many other people on earth seem to be doing just fine without it. Right?
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Tom obviously went to Bud's and successfully graduated, served at SEAL Team 1 as a breacher. Before that, he was a professional MMA fighter, 7-0, no big deal. Joined the Navy after 9-11, 10-year career as a SEAL. Then he enrolled in Northwestern University and walked on and played D1 football as a linebacker when he was 32 to 34 years old.
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Episode 380 - Tom Hruby and James Pomerantz
Not only how did we decide that was a great idea, how did we continue smashing our head against the wall, thinking in the back of our mind, this is the way for so long? I don't know. It does make it possible to achieve great things, but also there's people all over the world achieving great things without going down that path.