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Explore your curiosity - Interesting people with fascinating stories.
Life consists of three things:
-The stories we tell others
-The stories others tell us
-The stories we tell ourselves.
Nate, welcome aboard to the show. So happy to have you here today.
Speaker 2:Excited to be here, Eric. Yeah. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1:So so, Nate, I'm gonna go real far into your, into your past. You're something like 18, 19 years old, and you make a very bold decision. What was that decision and what was going through your head?
Speaker 2:So I decided when I was a young man that I wanted to go serve my country. That's something that my family had done for a number of years. Fourth generation army, so it's kind of the family business as we'd like to think. And I went ahead and went off to college and signed my contract for joining ROTC on 08/28/2001, thinking that I was going to have kind of a career of, like, a paid boy scout, basically going out there and camping and hiking and doing all kinds of fun activities and shooting. It was just gonna be great, similar to what I'd watched my parents do and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:And two weeks later, the whole world changed when nine eleven happened. And I felt really quickly that maybe I didn't make the best decision.
Speaker 1:So wait, hold on. Anybody who's lived through nineeleven remembers exactly where they were when it happened. Where were you? What were you doing?
Speaker 2:I had just come back from math class because, as every smart freshman does, I took a four day a week, 8AM math class, which was a really, really bad idea. I had just come back from math class, and I had about twenty minutes or so to take a nap, because I probably didn't sleep the night before. And so I fell back asleep for like twenty minutes, and I had my next door neighbor next door beating down my door, trying to tell me something was going on. Because I was also in the aviation career path at that time going through college. And one of my fellow aviation students came running in.
Speaker 2:He was also an Air Force ROTC cadet. And he's trying to turn on my TV, trying to tell me what's going on. And I'm like, what are you doing, dude? And I was like, something you know, planes hit the World Trade Center. Was like, what's the World Trade Center?
Speaker 2:Like, I don't even know what you're talking about. And then about the time we finally turned it on, we found the news or whatever it was, is when the second plane hit. I was just like, that's not a little plane, like, you know, like, oh, little planes hit buildings all the time, unfortunately. It does happen. But like, that's not a little plane.
Speaker 2:That's a big plane. And there's something going on here. And as a second one, supposedly, like, this is a big deal. I basically canceled my own classes for the day or whatever was, and ran down to the ROTC department, figuring that we were all gonna get activated and we're all going to war or something like that, whatever it was. They were like, hold your horses.
Speaker 2:You aren't going anywhere right now. You could just sit here and watch the news with all the rest of us. And so that's what we basically did for the day.
Speaker 1:Was there a point that, you know, after nineeleven happened where you're like, Holy shit, this is not what I signed up for?
Speaker 2:Honestly, no, to be fair with you. Right? So, you know, after I got into service, you know, I was I always wanted to be an army aviator, selected to be able to do that coming out of college. And so, when I got to aviation school and I started learning how to fly and I started doing other, you know, military tactical stuff, it really kind of felt just very because it was all about people, and it was all about, you know, leading people and helping people and trying to look out for the best best in people, and being able to take on this really cool, unique skill, learning how to fly helicopters and things, And then also leading people through, you know, some of the crucibles of our lives and stuff like that was all something that I just really, really enjoyed and was something that was definitely very fulfilling. And so doing that kind of like, you know, life fulfilling work definitely was very, very beneficial and very rewarding.
Speaker 2:So, as I went through all that, I would joke with my soldiers all the time and things, and I would say, Hey, all you guys signed up for this stuff. I didn't sign up for this. But the reality behind it is, is I thoroughly enjoyed every minute I was in uniform, as I think most people really do when they finally get out and they transition out of services. The saying kind of goes, it's like, I not miss the circus, but I miss my fellow clowns. So, there you go.
Speaker 1:What was the, when you think back, what was your hardest moment that you can recall? And also share with us what was your proudest or best moment out of, what was it, almost twenty years of service?
Speaker 2:So so I would say the the the hardest moment that I had was probably we were doing an infill into, you know, some of the deepest, darkest portions of Afghanistan. And as I was going through the mountain pass, I saw kind of out to the right hand side of the aircraft, all these little lights lighting up on the side of the almost very, you know, reminiscent of if you've seen the scene in Lord of the Rings where they light all the campfires to activate, you know, Rohan to come to their aid or whatever it was. It looked almost exactly like that. I swear to God, it was absolutely true. And I was like, on the first infill, know, full of, you know, good guys doing bad things to bad people.
Speaker 2:So we went, did an infill, everything worked out okay, came back around for the second time. I had not seen that much fire. I'd seen a lot of fire in that was my third or fourth deployment by that point. I'd seen been shot at a bunch, but this was the absolute most I'd ever seen. On the front of our aircraft, we had a small 30 by 40 field of view that we could actually see FLIR camera imagery on.
Speaker 2:And in that one little camera, we could count nine RPGs that were shot at our aircraft, just in that one little 30 by 40 degree fold of view, much less everything else that was happening all around us. So it was definitely a hair raising moment. Luckily, knock on wood, we all survived, Didn't have any problems, any issues getting through all that. I'd like to chalk it up to expert pilot knowledge, but it could just also be luck. So, I'll be good with luck too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that was probably the most difficult that I ended up having to kind of fight through in real life. But probably one of the most proudest moments you would probably find a little funny. So I had a soldier who was a really good soldier that we had deployed together for our first deployment. We'd come back, and he had kind of come back and kind of gone to his ways of just kind of being a little bit of an idiot, and he'd gotten into doing some stupid stuff from time to time, and he got caught because, of course, he wasn't good enough to not get caught, you know, and so then I was his commander, so I had to then, you know, dish out judgment. And so, know, he cleaned a lot of bathrooms and he did a lot of extra duty and worked a lot of extra hours that he didn't have to work because he'd gotten himself in trouble doing stupid stuff.
Speaker 2:And finally, he had done something to where I had to take his promotable status away. So what that means is, is once you earn enough points to get promoted, you are basically just waiting your time out to finally get promoted with your group of counterparts. Well, he missed his promotion because I had taken this portal status away because he'd done stupid stuff. But what had happened was, about six months later, he finally got this portal status back and was getting ready to be promoted. I'd left the unit by that point.
Speaker 2:The unit had actually deployed back to Afghanistan again. And I got a report from both him as well as some of the other soldiers that said, you wouldn't believe what he said. He said, I I wanna thank captain Swann for giving me all those article things and all the all that, you know, non judicial punishment because if it hadn't been for that, I wouldn't have gotten my act together, and I wouldn't have improved myself and wouldn't be able to stand here in front of you today or whatever it was because I would have probably continued to have gone out. But he believed in me, so he didn't completely destroy me. He just gave me the punishment that I needed to make sure that I cleaned my act up and I went on to do those things.
Speaker 2:And that was probably one of my proudest moments was that I was able to positively influence somebody using obviously UCMJ, but positively influence somebody to make themselves better, to help them become a better human being, a better person, whatever it was. That was more than fifteen years ago at this point, and that's still one of my proudest moments of being able to help influence that person, to just be a better person, be a better man, that kind of stuff. So so, yeah. So that's something I really, really pride myself in is trying to help people to to be
Speaker 1:What do you, what do you learn? What were your kind of fundamental leadership takeaways from your time in the army? What's, how did it kind of structure your leadership style?
Speaker 2:I would say, you know, there were, there were a lot of, you know, the Army is certainly a breeding ground for all kinds of people, right? So, you know, it's very much a melting pot of little America inside of the military. So you find all kinds of people. And number one, one of the big things you have to do is you have to learn how to work with everybody, right? So like you're all there for the same reason.
Speaker 2:You're there to serve your country, to do whatever it is that you came in the army to do. Some people came in the army to be personnel clerks, and some people came in the army to be cooks, and some people came in the army to be pilots, and some people came in the army to be infantry guys and blow things up or whatever. Everyone came into their army to do their thing, but you got to understand that everyone else also comes with wherever they came from and you got to help break down a little bit of, you know, hey, just because you came from bad situation or just because you came from a really nice situation doesn't mean that we all can't work together to accomplish our common goal. And so what I would say is, saw some folks that did that really, really well, focusing on the people that they were there to serve. So leaders really should be focused on serving those whom they are serving them, right?
Speaker 2:You know, the whole concept leaders eat last. You know, I'm a huge Simon Sinek fan. There isn't a single thing that that man says that I don't believe in, you know? And so, because he completely gets it. He's absolutely right in everything that he says, especially in regards to leadership.
Speaker 2:And so the reality is, as leaders should be focusing their energies on different tasks, if you empower those underneath you to take ownership of whatever it is that needs to be done, and you enable them to be successful by resourcing them of what they need to be successful. Perfect leadership looks like taking a nap. Perfect leadership looks like doing a whole lot of nothing because if you've done what you're supposed to do as a leader, focused your energy, focused your efforts on resourcing and providing the right guidance and being there for your people, supporting them, helping them grow, just like a parent, right? So I've got a young daughter, you know, I'm there to help her grow, and sometimes she has to trip and fall to learn, you know, that that's not the way you want to do it. You want to tie your shoes to make sure that you don't have that problem, or you don't want to touch the stove because it's hot.
Speaker 2:Like sometimes you have to learn those things the hard way, and sometimes you can just teach them and coach them and mentor them to grow. But if you take the same type of lessons that you would take towards helping your children grow and applying that in leadership, not to treat them like children, but if you take the same types of lessons and you apply it to those that you're responsible for, it's amazing, truly amazing what you can actually accomplish.
Speaker 1:You spent, I think it was nineteen years in the Army. The day you're taking off the uniform for the last time, was that scary? What were you thinking?
Speaker 2:So, it was a little scary, right? So, I ended up medically retiring out of the military. I have a C5, C6, C7 fusion from all those years of doing cool guy stuff, so I call it the side effect of being awesome, you know? So, it's just part of being that lifestyle that we have to lead. And so, from that, you know, I end up going to go kind of moving out pretty quickly coming out of the military sooner than I had kind of expected.
Speaker 2:I thought I was going to do twenty, twenty five, thirty years, but come to find out, I was going to get turned away a little bit sooner than that. And so from that, I was like, Okay, well, what am I going to do next? And I was like, Well, I never thought I was going to fly when I got out in the first place. However, now don't know if I'm gonna be able to do that when I get out. So I'm certainly gonna have to figure out some sort of new plan as to what I'm gonna do when I retire.
Speaker 2:And so I looked around, tried to find a whole bunch of different things, and I started looking at all these different opportunities that I could do. And I started realizing that, you know, it's probably less important to figure out what I can do because the army's taught me how to be a generalist. I can do anything. That's not the issue. It's probably what do I want to do?
Speaker 2:And more likely, what do I not want to do? As I started factoring away the things I didn't wanna do, I started kind of roping in the things that were really important. And I made sure that for the first time in really my entire lifetime, really, I was able to finally do the things that were really important, which was I was able to put my family first. I could actually, for no kidding, for the first time ever, okay, let me ask my daughter what she wants me to do. She was probably five or six at the time.
Speaker 2:So, the reality is, is like asking your six year old, what do you want daddy to be when he grows up? Was just probably not a common conversation that most people say. Essentially, she was saying was, I want you to in my life. When I came back from my fourth deployment, she was two, and I vividly remember her getting We do the typical welcome home party kind of thing, whatever it was. We've got a camera person there taking pictures and things.
Speaker 2:I physically remember her running behind the photographer because she understood and she knew who the photographer was better than she knew who I was because she was hiding from daddy to go hang out with the photographer. Now, again, don't hold that against her by any stretch of imagination because she was two or three at the time, but the reality was it's like, okay, I need to really reprioritize some things, you know, in Life 2.0, as I call it, as an opportunity to try and do more with my family. And so, I'm a very proud Irish dance dad. I try and go to every single Irish dance, you know, either competition or even just, you know, she goes to dance, she, three or four times a week, you know? And I'll tell you this for your listeners, if they're considering things, I was like, I had the option of either Irish dance dad or ballerina dad.
Speaker 2:And I'm telling you, ballerina dad, dress up all fun, funny, go into some really stuffy auditorium, throw roses and clap and that kind of stuff. Irish dance dad, we're going to go to the pub, the kids are going to dance, we're going to drink and have a good time. I much prefer to be Irish dance dad. So something for your listeners to consider.
Speaker 1:I have an 11 year old daughter, so so this is gonna be interesting. Has the demon inhibited your daughter yet, or not just yet?
Speaker 2:If the by the demon, you mean the fact that Godzilla, because we call it we're raising Godzilla, so she's actually taller than my wife now, and she weighs more than my wife did when we got married. So she's certainly becoming a full size woman at this time. But if what you mean is that Godzilla only comes down from her room when she wants food or, you know, she needs to take a bath, outside of that, that's probably about it. Like, it just kinda goes up into its cave upstairs, whatever it was, and tends to want to spend more time with it than us. But she'll at least still listen to us.
Speaker 2:She'll at least still, you know, respect us. She'll at least bring up her problems and her issues that do arise. So, we're still very much still in her life and that kind of stuff. But she's starting to want to spread out and spread her wings a bit and kind of have her own space and things. So, But I would definitely say she's not gone, you know, full teenager yet.
Speaker 2:Know, there haven't been any sort of, you know, fits or something like that or whatever, but I'm waiting for it.
Speaker 1:So, was talking to my daughter and I made this deal with her, and I said, the demon inhibits your body, you fight it for me. And if you promise me this promise, then I will give you an iPhone. And and then she she thinks about this and like, holy shit. Like and then she says to me, you must be very scared of me, daddy. And I say, Emma, everybody's gonna be scared of you.
Speaker 1:So then she asked me, she says like, what about mom? Does this deal does this include mom? Like, nope. Just me. So
Speaker 2:I understand.
Speaker 1:Let me ask you this. Jokes aside, what lessons that you learned from kind of army life have you successfully and unsuccessfully implemented as a father, as a parent?
Speaker 2:Well, will definitely say, you know, I have had to learn how to deal with chaos differently. You know, whereas, you know, Plex problem shows up. There's all kinds of things that are happening. Whether it's wartime, whether it's just, you know, I've got a soldier who just got rolled up by the cops, so now I have to go deal with them at 02:00 in the morning. You know, whatever it is, you know, I can't just, okay, focus, buckle down, no emotion, get after it, get it done, and just pull the checklist or whatever.
Speaker 2:And none of that exists.
Speaker 1:No checklist So, for
Speaker 2:I've had to approach things a little differently. I've had to listen a little closer and that kind of stuff. If we start getting deep down the emotional track, I say, go find your mother. But, you know, I'm not quite there yet. But, you know, when it comes to, you know, just trying to be more present and more, you know, listening and less, you know, potentially judgmental or something like that, those are all things that are, you know, knee jerk reaction kind of response to something like, I gotta kind of slow everything back down.
Speaker 2:Luckily, I've had a few years since I've been out of the military to be kind of figure out how to do that, but I would definitely say that it's not easy.
Speaker 1:I love that. We need to talk more about tips and tricks to deal with teenagers. So coming out of the army, you had an appreciation for doing hard things. How did that transition into your career as it is today?
Speaker 2:So I would definitely say that I've certainly had some good ups and downs since I got out of the military. You know, life outside of the military is certainly much different than being inside. I wouldn't say it's institutionalized, but there is very much kind of a Shawshank Redemption arc, I think, to all of us that come of the military, where we're trying to re figure out how we interact with this whole world that is vastly different than what we've just come out of. And the fact that there's very few of us in comparison to what it was just ten years ago, fifteen years ago, the percentages of veterans in America right now are pretty small. So finding that group of like minded or similarly experienced people that have someone to go through this, again, Life 2.0 journey, as I call it, it can be difficult.
Speaker 2:And so, would definitely say finding the right tribe. So, something else that we decided to do. So, I live in Orlando, Florida, live just outside of the Magic Kingdom, and we love living here. But the problem is, obviously, it's not as much of a military town as it would be if I had stayed somewhere closer to a military base, we'll just say. But the thing I love about Orlando is the simple fact that the going phrase is that there's nobody actually born and raised in Orlando that actually lives in Orlando.
Speaker 2:You know, everybody's from somewhere else and they've all had to make the move to come down here. And so, the nice thing is, is you gotta kind of find your tribe coming out of the military and find how you wanna put roots into the ground. I would absolutely say that, you know, three of my daughter's best friends or whatever it was, have no military background whatsoever. They have no relation to it whatsoever. They don't even have a clue really what the military has anything to do with her life and or my life.
Speaker 2:Just simply because we've been here now long enough, we've put enough roots down on ground and we've made friends in the local community that understand us as to who we are. And I think that's really important, is finding kind of your tribe, not just the folks that you can relate with that have been in your shoes, but find your tribe of those folks who haven't been in your shoes, but can still relate to you as just a friend and a human and that kind of thing. That's definitely been.
Speaker 1:Was that a realization that you had that you, maybe your wife too, that you need to figure this out or did that just come naturally or was it more like, Look, this is a problem. We need to now kind of figure this out?
Speaker 2:So I think it was kind of a mixed bag, to be fair with you, right? So I think we kind of understood, okay, we're going to a place where there's not going to be as much military here. Okay, we acknowledge that. We're going to go to a place where, you know, finding defense work or something like that, if I wanna do that, might be a little bit hard. There's actually quite a decent sized defense, you know, world here in the Greater Orlando area, but it might be a little hard to to find from time to time.
Speaker 2:But and finding like minded people might be a little hard. We are kind of in the purple belt of Florida, if you will. So, it's like, hey, know, are we gonna find similarly minded people as us? And that sort of thing. And what it came down to was, is like, we just had to make the conscious effort to go out and hunt it out and find it ourselves.
Speaker 2:And so, I was like, okay, we're gonna do this. We're gonna put ourselves out there. We're gonna try some things. We're gonna to some folks. We're gonna interact with some folks.
Speaker 2:And to be honest with you, a lot of it came through our daughter, to be fair. Like, she kind of, you know, opened the door to friends for us that were kids that were in her class or, you know, other kids that were in her activities that we were involved with and that sort of thing, that then spawned into other activities that'll, know, other friendships that we were allowed to have outside of just the kids. And so, I think that, you know, and because Orlando is itself its own melting pot and everybody else did come from somewhere else, generally speaking, everyone knows that we're all trying to kind of do the same thing. All trying to kind of reestablish ourselves. And so, if you can't move to a military town as a former military person, which I don't encourage people to do, I do encourage them to get out because I do think more of America needs to see their veterans on a regular basis.
Speaker 2:We live in a slightly higher end part of town or whatever it was, and I wear my Afghan veteran hat everywhere that I go just to remind people that, hey, yes, you may be a hedge fund manager or something like that, but there are just regular old normal people here out here too, for you to to know that there's there's all kinds of folks that live in your own neighborhood. But no, I I think that there's definitely a lot of opportunity for folks to reestablish themselves in society after they get out of the military, you know, if they're just willing to put in put in the work to do it.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that. I found that some of the things that most surprised me were not things that I were afraid of or didn't know about. It's the things that were different that I didn't know were different, you know, especially kind of, you know, the differences in chain of command versus military versus civilian ship. Those things are like, I can do that? Kinda surprised me.
Speaker 2:See I'll definitely say that my first job, I probably could have done more in my first job, not realizing that I had as much freedom to do as much as because I was like, so am I allowed to do this? Is is this something that that you're going to give me permission to go, Can I just go and do the kind of plan this? It was like waiting for that permission to be able to go do something where it's just like, Yeah, you're going go help us go make money. So, go do whatever it takes to go do that and just let us know when you're done. It's like, Wow, if I applied myself slightly differently, it may have worked out a little different with that particular role.
Speaker 2:But it's okay. We all grow, and that's the important part.
Speaker 1:That's true. Fast forward many years, you're doing some really cool stuff now. Tell us about it.
Speaker 2:So something that I found out when I was in the military, had I realized it when I was much younger in age, I would have never been able to do anything that I did in the military. I found out in 2019 that I have ADHD, and in 2020 that I have Asperger's, which is a form of autism. Funny enough, back in about nineteen fifty something, the government said, Hey, we're not going to take those folks who have mental disabilities and things into military. And so from that, we're going to restrict those folks from being able to serve. Had I been diagnosed as a kid, as most folks, you know, diagnosed ADHD as a kid or something like that, I would never have been able to do all the things that I did in the military.
Speaker 2:I flew 15 platforms in sixteen years. I deployed for my country six different times to multiple different countries. I killed bad guys and good guys names and that kind of stuff. I carried some of the most precious cargo, American soldiers, to some of the most difficult places in the world, things I did. All of that pre diagnosis.
Speaker 2:So the thing that really has got me going now is working with a couple of different groups to really get people to understand what neurodiversity is, the importance of it, and why being a little different is not necessarily a bad thing. As I said, back in the fifties, we signed a law that we weren't going to let all the weirdos into the military anymore. Well, if you notice, we haven't won a war since the fifties. Maybe we need some of those weirdos who think a little different to help us be able to win our wars because if we all think the same, we're all going to take the same approach to the same problem. And if we're all continuing to march up against that wall and it's not going anywhere, maybe we need somebody who's gonna think about how to go around it.
Speaker 2:So, and again, there's lots of ways we can figure out how to do this, but I'm working with a couple of different groups to kind of help both on the pilot side of things. So there's a pilot mental health group that I'm trying to work with because obviously, you know, there's a concern about pilots and anxiety and depression and overwork and that kind of stuff, trying to help people see the opportunities to treat that properly and then let them be able to continue to fly successfully, as well as helping folks see the value in people that see the world just a little bit different and what they can bring to the table as individuals to help us answer some very wicked questions potentially that are out there in the world today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, maybe it's not entirely true, but World War II was one predominantly in my opinion due to one weirdo who cracked the Enigma machine. That's where the tide really changed who also invented computers for all of us or at least the first version of computers. So, you know, the mad geniuses of, you know, one hundred years later are weirdos today and I think that's a very good thing that all of us should probably remind ourselves once in a while.
Speaker 2:Okay, two more.
Speaker 1:What advice would you give to the weirdo who is just a weirdo? He isn't the mad genius yet, just struggling I through the
Speaker 2:I've had the chance to do a couple of other podcasts where I've had a chance to kind of spread my weirdo ness out there. And I've actually had people reach out to me and I've been like, Hey, how did you do it? How were you successful? I think I'm a little bit like this, whatever it was. What would you do?
Speaker 2:What would you say? And I've told them all kind of the same thing. I was like, Continue the journey. I truly believe we're all you know, something you can't really see behind me right now, whatever it but I'm a huge Star Wars fan. So I think, you we're all on our own hero's journey of some kind or another.
Speaker 2:And so I feel like now where I'm at is I get to kind of be, you know, Obi Wan Kenobi and kinda help the young loops of the world to kinda move through their their own journeys and help kinda coach them and guide them and mentor them. I would say the weirdos that are out there, keep just doing the best that you can and understand that even though you're a little different, it's okay to be different. And it's okay because we need people who think different. The most successful man on the planet, Elon Musk, is probably one of the leading weirdos on the planet. I don't think there's any argument to that statement.\ For sure.
Speaker 2:But he's a genius. He absolutely is, and there's no way you can argue that. And so, from that, I think, you know, use his example as a means. It may be a way, not the way, but it is a way of kind of helping define yourself and how where you can see yourself fitting in the world of tomorrow. Because even if the world of today doesn't necessarily resonate with you, the world of tomorrow will, and I really believe that.
Speaker 2:And then I think the folks that are listening that aren't necessarily the weirdos that say, Hey, maybe you should give a weirdo a shot. Because you never quite know what that weirdo is going to be able to do for you. Because if you have a whole team of people who all think and act and do the same way, you're probably not growing as an organization. You're probably not learning. You're probably not developing.
Speaker 2:You're probably not getting better. You're probably stagnant in your market or something like that. And it's like, where do we find the weirdos that are able to help us grow as an organization, grow as a community, and realize that oftentimes these weirdos are the ones that are able to help us develop our communities and our organizations in ways that nobody else could ever see because everyone else was focused on their particular side of the tracks and they could see it from another side of the tracks. And that's how organizations and as we as humans just grow, is by blending the best of all of us together. So I would say, hey, give a weirdo a shot.
Speaker 2:You never know what they're going be able to do for you.
Speaker 1:As one fellow weirdo to another, I'll say thank you to that. I'll add one thing from my personal journey. I have ADHD as well. The hyperactive is a real bitch. My son is hyperactive as well.
Speaker 1:He makes me feel apologetic to my parents. Now me experiencing through him what I did to my parents, I was probably much worse than than he is to us. I I owe my mother an apology. But the journey is full of failure and my advice would be embrace the failure, learn from it, opening yourself, oneself to a perception of self awareness and understanding these are the things that I'm less good at and these are and and you can get better at everything. You just need to work at it and sometimes the work can be painful.
Speaker 1:That's the small piece of advice that I would, know, God knows, I've made so many mistakes. We've run out of time. I should be asking you the final last question but I have to ask you one more thing. Tell me about the AR.
Speaker 2:The AR?
Speaker 1:Yes, the augmented Yeah,
Speaker 2:so this is really cool. So I'm working with a partner. We've got a technology that's out in Salt Lake City. I highly encourage everyone to go out and visit Salt Lake City, the Mecca of all things tourists, if you haven't had a chance to go out there and do that. There's a technology that's out there that is designed to allow people to fully immerse yourself into a jump sequence and allow you to jump out of a perfectly good airplane 100% risk free and safe.
Speaker 2:So it has the highest levels of of movie theater quality video that has ever been seen in virtual reality. It's a fully immersive environment. You will feel like you're jumping out of an airplane. You will feel like you're jumping off a cliff, and it's in a wingsuit. So, you're going to fly like as you go through this whole thing.
Speaker 2:And so, it is absolutely one of the neatest, coolest experiences I've ever had a chance to do myself. I fully felt like I was absolutely involved, you know, there the whole time, even though I knew that it wasn't there, it was absolutely felt like I was absolutely there. And the reality is, is the guys out there do a really great job and we're trying to see if we can take this and expand it out to a bunch of other locations around The US and the world. And we are hoping to be able to let people experience the opportunity to jump out of a perfectly good airplane but whenever they decide they want to do that.
Speaker 1:Is this like, can anybody just go and experience this now or is this still kind of in the engineering stages? Where is this?
Speaker 2:100% it's been live and well for about the last three years, like I said, out in Salt Lake. It doesn't matter if you're eight or 80, so long as you can So how do go people this? How
Speaker 1:do people find this? What is it called?
Speaker 2:So look up limitlessflight.com, and it's called Jump. And like I said, it's on the South Side Of Salt Lake City, and I highly encourage. They've had folks fly from as far away as Japan on an out and back trip just for a thirty, forty five minute event just to get back on the plane and go back to Japan. I'm dead serious. So like, and they were like, I would have paid twice for because was worth absolutely that much.
Speaker 2:So, if you want to experience, challenge yourself, experience something that you've never experienced before, you're like, take the opportunity to go out to solid city and really enjoy jumping out of a perfectly good simulated airplane.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. So Nate, as I said, have only one question that's scripted in this show. It's a difficult one because it's personal. If you had to go to the most difficult moments in your life, whether it's a year ago or ten years ago or twenty years ago, wherever you choose, what's the advice that you would give yourself?
Speaker 2:The advice I would give myself is to keep the path. Right. So I can definitely say that military life is hard. It's hard on the family. It's hard on myself, hard on my wife most especially.
Speaker 2:Knock on wood, my wife has been with me since two we are high school sweethearts. So she has been with me for almost twenty five years now between dating and marriage. She is absolutely the greatest blessing of my life, and we got to a point where life was really, really, really hard. A lot of it I had done to myself. And so, the last thing, you know, we got to the point where, you know, we may not have been around together for much longer had I not made some different decisions.
Speaker 2:And the reality was, I was like, Hey, I can either continue the path or I can say, Hey, divorce is where we're going and this is the end of it and off we go. And I chose to continue the path. And so, it's been hard, obviously, having to rebuild from a very difficult space. But the reality was that it's been worth every minute of it, and I would do it again in a heartbeat, and I hope that I can continue to be the best husband that she'll ever have, and she's certainly the best wife I could ever ask for. So, with that, would say continue the path.
Speaker 1:Nate, thank you so much for joining the show today. I appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. This has been a lot of fun. Appreciate it.