He Nearly Lost Everything After Retiring... Here's How He Came Back.

What happens when the mission ends, but your body and mind are still fighting the war?

If you’re a high-performing man over 40, an executive, founder, attorney, or senior leader who has spent decades being “the strong one,” this conversation will hit different.

In this episode of No Hype. Just Standards., Zac Armstrong sits down with Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Scott Mann, former Army Green Beret with combat tours in Colombia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, NYT bestselling author of The Generosity of Scars, playwright behind Last Out: Elegy of a Green Beret, and founder of Task Force Pineapple and Rooftop Leadership.

Scott gets raw about his personal battle with post-military transition, depression, and near-fatal despair. Whether you wore the uniform or you wear the suit, this is a roadmap for leaders who carry weight no one sees, on healing trauma, building trust in low-trust environments, and leading when the stakes are highest.

📌 In This Episode:

💡 If you’re a man over 40 who is done guessing about your health and ready for a physician-supervised, data-driven protocol built for how you actually operate, learn more about Executive Health Edge:

🔗 Connect with Lt. Col. Scott Mann: Book: The Generosity of Scars Play: Last Out: Elegy of a Green Beret

👍 If this episode hit home, LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, and leave a review. Sharing this video helps it reach the men and leaders who need to hear this message the most.

Transcript

Auto-generated from the episode audio and lightly formatted. Each timestamp links to that moment in the video.

0:00 I almost took my life. I almost lost my marriage. I was falling apart to the point of like about to be alone. Here’s what nobody tells you about being the strong one. You spend 20 years being the guy who holds it together. Then the mission’s over. The uniform comes off and your body sends you the bill. The sleep’s gone. The fuse is short. You feel a decade older than your license says. You go get checked and they tell you everything’s normal. But you’re not normal. You’re carrying a debt nobody’s counting. That’s not aging. That’s a receipt coming due. I’m Zach Armstrong, retired naval commander. Now I coach high performing men over 40 who have hit a ceiling they just can’t explain. This is no hype, just standards. My guest lived at the edge of that ceiling for 23 years. Lieutenant Colonel Scott man, retired Army Green Beret, tours in Colombia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. A New York Timesy’s bestselling author, playwright, founder of Task Force Pineapple, and the man behind rooftop leadership. In 2021, he helped pull Afghans out after the withdrawal trust belt in hours with lives on the line.

1:00 Now he teaches what all that costs a man and what it gives back. We both wore the uniform. Two guys who know the price talking straight about what the standard system never measures. If you felt that gap between what you’ve been told and what you feel, this one’s for you. Hit subscribe and let’s get into it. Hey Scott again. Thanks for joining us. So 23 years in the special forces, tours in Colombia, Iraq, Afghanistan. when you look back uh what was your body actually doing all those years that never you never stopped to notice? Uh well just to be uh it was about actually about 18 in SF and about 23 in the army but it all feels like 23. Uh um let’s see. Um you know I so much of what uh I was just talking to another Green Beret buddy of mine I mean not that long ago today in fact and and I was talking about the the the stuff that that you push down to stay in the fight. You know the stuff that you

2:00 That you push down to stay in the game to stay relevant really. And it’s it’s I’m 57 now and it is amazing uh the stuff that I’m noticing now about my body uh performance-wise that I had that I look back on it now that it was it was there. I mean, things with my knees, with my back, with my hips, um the the the tonitis, you know, all of those things, but I just normalized them because I the thought of not being able to stay relevant and stay deployed was ter more terrifying to me than anything that was going on with my body. And I think at the time too, uh you know, the way the global war on terror went was like you just felt like you were going to kind of live forever and there would you deal with all that crap down the road. And so but but for me it was it was knees and back really that um that I know that I ignored right and continued to degrade just so that I could stay in the fight. Yeah. And you know we we talk about the

3:00 Physical attributes of it but what about the mental attributes on it as well? I think for that one even more so, right? Because the the way I thought about I mean I got out in 2013 and I don’t know how you feel about this but I can tell you in in my SF community my group in 2013 no one was talking about mental health. No. No. No. Uh so you just didn’t. And and at the time, honestly, I don’t even know that I I mean, there were things going on in how I acted in my marriage. There were things going on in how I acted towards my kids. And frankly, I was starting to experience levels of depression and things like that. Uh but I didn’t have any baseline to compare it to. No. And that’s that’s it’s hard when you don’t have that, right? to sit there and try to walk yourself through it. And I

4:01 Imagine that’s what you did. Yeah. And and it honestly it wasn’t until I was ready to retire in 2013 or maybe 2012 when I made the decision to retire and I went to DC to meet one of my mentors uh Doc Dave Phillips who was on the original Jawbreaker team uh that went in as the pilot team on 9, you know, post 911. He was a CIA uh operator, but he was before that he was a iconic fifth group uh guy who had worked with the Montine Yards in Vietnam. Anyway, just highly regarded, respected individual. And I couldn’t wait to sit down with him and talk to him about my retirement and all the plans I had. And he kind of stopped me uh mid-sentence and he said, “Now Scott, you make sure that you watch out for those snakes in the head and and when they start squirming, and they will, you reach out to me or somebody else.” And I was kind of ticked off by it. I thought you even talking about man. Like I’m trying to lay trying to lay my plan out for you and you just blew it, you know? And but man did he call that one. I mean within a

5:03 Few days honestly of of retirement. I started to experience what felt like just like snakes in the head. Just just really squirly thinking that I had not been cognizant of before. And that’s when I really knew, Zach, that something was like off. Like something was different that So, right, let’s walk let’s walk through that. So, when you separated, how long did it take you? You said days before you it started happening. Like, what did you do to help with that? I ignored it and I pushed it down. And that’s that was the only at the time that was the only tool I had. I I’d been sober for a lot of years, you know, and so I had, you know, I had certain tools to cope with my addiction. Uh, but this was different. This was this was the only thing I knew to do was push it down and ignore it and pretend like everything’s okay. Especially now that I was a civilian. I mean, I was working a contract job. I was writing a book. I

6:03 Was home. My three kids were still in school. I you know I this was what we had been waiting for for God’s sake like this was the thing that we had deferred for almost two decades and and now I’m going to you know what like go crazy that’s what it felt like you know and and I’m not going to do that I’m going to be present I’m going to show up for my family and so I just buried that but but there was this persistent agitation and just feeling of uh like absence of purpose unsettled untethered and it just got progressively worse. Uh, and I really didn’t know how to deal with it and there was no one that I was talking to about it, including It’s hard. It’s hard to make that initial outreach. Always is. What What spurred you to maybe make that first initial outreach that you did? It just got so bad that I almost took my life, you know, and and and I knew that some kind and I almost lost my marriage, you know. I had I had become so hard to

7:04 Live with with my wife and my boys that I could tell that I was I was falling apart to the point of like about to be alone. And that’s when I knew I had to I had to figure something else out. And honestly, what what it what for me it was was uh working with a couple of mentors on storytelling. You know, everybody finds their own way if they find it. and my modality. Um, and it was purely accidental because I I I felt like taking acting classes and storytelling classes might help me be a presenter and be more relevant in the world because I felt like my skills and human connection were were needed in this divided country that we lived in. But I had so much anxiety and imposttor syndrome postmilitary life that I couldn’t get in front of a group of veterans and talk about, you know, veteran issues. like so how was I going to get on a stage with corporate leaders and talk about building trust but I wanted to and so I got into storytelling thinking that might help me but it ended

8:06 Up being the modality that helped me make sense of things that didn’t make sense and eventually start to heal. Yeah. And talking about that with the building building trust um you you you had to build trust with people in hours when you know your life was on the line. How how do you actually connect with someone so fast? Special forces helped me with that a lot. Yeah. The EQ, I imagine. Right. Yeah. And you know, because by definition, you were going into places that were undergoverned, at risk, low trust. By definition, like that was where you targeted to go. Yeah. And so, you know, you went in there knowing that you were going to have to build social capital. In other words, you were going to have to build tangible and intangible linkages between you and other humans. the, you know, the way I explain it to civilians today is this idea of going in with 12 and coming out with 12,000. You know, that’s the combat multiplier that special forces is supposed to provide, whether it’s

9:06 Through unconventional warfare or some other means, is that we build social capital that becomes a combat multiplier for bottomup solutions, right? So you can mobilize indigenous people to stand up and do things collectively they otherwise wouldn’t do. Well, that is 100% built around relationships and trust and rapport. And so I I did learn a lot from iconic special forces NCOs and officers who taught me how to do that. But I will tell you this, Zach, there really wasn’t a craft or a regimen for that. It was a lot of instinct and observed behavior, but you know, there wasn’t a real grammar or language for it. And that was what actually fascinated me when I got out of the military. I thought, man, there’s such a trust deficit here at home. What if I could build a body of work around human connection, social capital, rapport that would help business leaders and moms and dads and travel ball coaches employ the kind of interpersonal craft that we used in special forces. And so that became my

10:07 Thing and it still is. And so I guess what I’m telling you is I learned the instinct and um approach to this in special forces, but it’s really in the last 13 years of of diving into it as a civilian and teaching it and iterating it and working with other social scientists and negotiators and storytellers that I’ve learned to actually put a grammar or a language to it. Right. And I imagine that some of that too is just needing that downtime because when you’re in it, you’re in it and you’re moving and it’s hard to kind of rationalize everything that you’re going through. Um, so yeah, for anyone who doesn’t know, can you kind of explain to us what uh task force pineapple is? Yeah. Uh, it’s funny that it’s it’s it’s we have all these task forces right in the world and country and yeah, uh, Task Force Pineapple was everything but that. Task Force Pineapple was was kind of a it well it was an informal group of veterans and other volunteers who like many other groups organized

11:07 Self-organized around the chaotic withdrawal of 2021 when Afghanistan collapsed and we left and frankly as a nation wholesale abandoned tens if not hundreds of thousands of our allies in Afghanistan to fend for themselves as the Taliban overran the country. And for me and a handful of other veterans in our group, I was not good with that. I had a friend Nazam and others who were on the run being hunted, targeted, and and so we came together u using cell phones and relationships on this side of the pond. We didn’t go over there, but we we did we were pretty good at remote ops, you know, like a lot of veterans from the war on terror were. We were good at distributed operations using cell phones and you know uh virtual communications. And so we and our knowledge of the terrain and relationships inside country and we built this network that helped um quite a few Afghan allies and their families get into Kabell International Airport

12:08 And then ultimately into the west uh to freedom. And we became known as Task Force Pineapple. And that pineapple term came from a a code word that the first passenger Nazam had to use as a password to get through. They told him to say pineapple. So we started calling ourselves task force pineapple. Right. That’s awesome. Um what does that mean to you? Like to do something, you know, of that abundance of, you know, a human human effort to help others. What does that mean to you when you look back on that? It’s mixed. I mean, I’m I’m I’m proud of the fact that we as veterans were not good with the decision that was institutionally made and we went against it and and we stood up for what we thought was right and frankly what we were trained for. How many years, Zach? Were we trained by, with, and through you don’t leave a man on the battlefield, you know, like right

13:08 forever. and and so all of a sudden now it’s okay to do that, you know, and and so I feel good about that. Um I feel less good about the moral injury that resulted from this, the the violation of of one’s moral code by people that we previously trusted. Um I feel really bad about the ones we didn’t get out. There were a lot more that we did not get out than we did and many of them have been killed and tortured and made to disappear. Um, you know, I don’t know what it’ll be like if we ever have to go back into Afghanistan and our children have to go in and work with indigenous communities again. I don’t know what social capital will look like in other places like if for example if we used worked with surrogates in Iran, I have to think it would be much harder. Uh, so you know there’s a mixed bag. I in fact I’m doing a oneman play right now called 11 days uh the story of Operation Pineapple Express where I’m traveling the country in the 25th anniversary of 911 in the fifth anniversary of the

14:09 Botched withdrawal telling the story from the stage about uh what it means to honor a promise and what happens if you don’t and and I tell you what man I have interacted with so many veterans and military families and they are really feeling the pain and the moral injury from that abandonment 5 years Yeah. And what we and you know this as well too that that has a potential to turn on us too cuz generationally they’ll look at that as something that happened to them. Um what about rooftop leadership? Let’s talk about it. Um what is it in plain terms? Well, rooftop leadership really stems from um it it stems from the the program that we did in Afghanistan in the early let’s see it was like 2010. We we we knew we were losing the war in Afghanistan and that’s because there were more Taliban in the rural areas than when we started uh in 2001 and we needed a new plan, a new strategy. We

15:10 Had been living on builtup fire bases and and and working top down into these rural areas for a decade and that hadn’t worked. And honestly, it had allowed the Taliban who we had driven from the country to reenter the country and start establishing connections and relationships at a village level. So the villages, this was a rural insurgency and we had lost the villages by 2008 or nine to the Taliban and and so we were trying to treat this as an urban drive to work kind of thing and that just wasn’t working. So in 2010, we got back to our roots as a special forces community and we we decided to do kind of a modern-day Magnificent 7. Everybody grew their beards out and dawned indigenous garb and moved into communities that were occupied by the Taliban and and and villages that were willing to do to work with us. Um we made them three promises. This is like, hey, if you don’t want us here, we’ll leave. um it’s going to get worse before it gets better and and and the Taliban are going to come for you and they’re going to come for us and if they do um

16:10 We’re going to be up on the those rooftops fighting uh to defend this community uh alongside you or even if you don’t come up there we’re going to fight them anyway. And so that became what was known as village stability operations. But the whole thing hinged, Zach, on our ability to build social capital out in these rural villages and over time to get the locals to come up on the rooftops when we were attacked and defend their own communities one rooftop at a time. And it I watched this occur over and over again. And pretty soon I started calling it rooftop leadership. This ability to move people up onto a proverbial rooftop when they’re reluctant, when they’re scared, when they’re afraid. And what I learned was that [clears throat] really comes down to being able to use old school interpersonal skills and build trust when risk is low. And then when the actual event presents itself and everybody’s terrified, you know, as a leader, are you willing to go up on that rooftop even though nobody joins you? Like those are the two components of it. You got to build trust and you got to be willing to go up on that roof by yourself. And and that’s what has become

17:10 Kind of my methodology for root for leadership for the last 15 years. And uh and I think it works just as well here at home, right? And so how do you interlace that with like the the corporate world and at home? Yeah. Well, I mean, think about think about the world we live in today right now. You know, I talked to you about the Afghanistan thing where you would go into a village and you’ve got an elder looking at you through a furrowed brow and you know he’s pretty pissed off and you don’t even know why because there’s been 40 years of war and he’s got a cup of green tea to his left and an AK-47 to his right and you’re just like, man, I’m hoping he picks up that green tea. uh you know, and everything that you’re doing is to try to get him to pick up that green tea, take a sip, have a conversation, incrementally build rapport, then trust, and then maybe over time loyalty where you fight together. And to do that, you have to overcome this churn of disconnection and disengagement and distrust. Well, I don’t think it’s that different here at home today. If you look, I mean, the the levels of distraction in the United

18:11 States are measured in seconds, not minutes. Oh, yeah. 80 80 85% of the population according to Gallup is disengaged. And and twothirds of Americans don’t trust their neighbors. I mean, hell, they’re calling it the trust recession that we live in. So, you think about corporate leaders, you think about our communities, you think about the 247 news cycle, moms and dads at the PTA, like we live in some very tribal times. And so trying to teach leaders at the corporate level, at the nonprofit level, at the community level, small business level, those old school interpersonal skills, also to understand the churn of what we’re up against is very different than what it was 5 years ago. And that this human operating system, our our biology, our primal innate drivers of meaning and emotion and social capital and storytelling and struggle are still the best gifts we have. But we’ve buried them, man. They’ve become invisible. I mean, that comes from the world that we live in, right? That um instant

19:11 Gratification that we we seek now because with social media or anything like, you know, uh we’re not we’re not s we’re so sensitive to time now that that it’s hard to build trust because we honestly just don’t have the patience for it anymore. Yeah, I think that’s true. But I I think also we’ve we’ve we’re uh Dr. Ivan Tur in the human givens he talks about um he talks about this thing called the trance state and he says that you know humans are we are n we we’re driven by our emotions even though we like to pretend that we’re not. Yeah that’s 100% true. And when you he says that anger makes you stupid. Fear makes you stupid. When you live in prolonged and persistent anger and fear, your frontal cortex shuts down and uh the part that controls ration and logic shuts down and you go into neural override. You go into fight, flight or freeze. Your autonomic nervous system takes over and uh you go into a sympathetic state, right? And so you’re

20:12 You’re in survival state, your survival mode, fight, that’s it. And Terrell calls that a trance state. And if you look around the country today, most people are in a trans state or one Yeah. from it. I I you know, in the world that I operate in now, I talk to people all the time about that and especially you keep yourself in that state and the cortisol levels are high. The way you operate is high and you you burn out. And what happens is what you talked about, you become so disengaged when you’re in that state with everything, not just work, but your life um and the people around you. Yeah. for you when you’re talking to the corporate leaders and trying to tell them what is like, you know, two or three things that you always point on like, hey, this is how we try to build trust and rapport in the best ways and approaches. I love that question. I love that question. I try to come at it, I tell them, I tell them I’m your rapport coach, right? [laughter] And the reality is you’re looking across that elder right now who’s trying to figure out if he’s going to pick up the green tea or the AK. Now, the stakes are different, but that’s where he is or she is. That’s where that buyer is. That’s

21:13 Where that prospect is. That’s where your teenager is. Are they gonna completely shut you off or are they gonna listen for five more seconds? Right? And so what I tell them is, you know, the first thing is you got to make a human connection first. I don’t care what your agenda is. You know, if it’s if it’s a PowerPoint presentation to an all hands or or if it’s a sales presentation, you got to make a human connection first. If you don’t make a human connection first, then the odds are they’re not coming with you. So that’s number one. You got you got to make a human connection first. Then you’ve got to get the other party ready to listen to what you have to say. And what I found is that most people today, including our children, are in such a sympathetic trance state, they’re not ready to listen. No. You know, they they they can’t really they can’t really hear because they’re so agitated. So, you’ve got to bring their emotional temperature down. Right. How do you do that? That’s my third point I would tell them is it’s not the things you say, it’s the questions you ask. The best way to get your prospect or your kid or your spouse ready to listen to you are to ask

22:13 Thoughtful, open-ended questions that start with what and how and let them tell you a story in return. And if you do that, you’ll bring their emotional temperature down. You’ll get them ready to listen. And then there’s a place where you can actually say, “Hey, is it okay now if I share with you how I think I can help you or if is it okay if I tell you what I think we can do here?” So, make a human connection first. Get them ready to listen, right? getting ready to listen by asking questions or using questionnology. That’s that’s I love that the way that that’s framed. Do you ever talk to them about non-verbal communication? Yeah, I do. And one of the things that I found with nonverbal communication is that rather than try because if you’re not careful in an engagement, you can get all caught up in your head and you’re trying to read tales or whatever. What what I the place for non-verbal communication to me, Zach, is in your preparation before the engagement. Right. If you think about it, most of us are running so hard from one meeting to the next. I was just talking to a bunch

23:13 Of commercial bankers and I asked them, “How many Zoom calls do y’all do a day?” They said, “1 Zoom.” I’m like, “Where do you go to the bathroom?” you know, but but what I told him was I said, “What do you think it’s like for the audience that you’re speaking to at that 11th Zoom call, right?” And there and and I I said, “How agitated and tired do you think you sound?” You know, and and I said, “So, one of the things that you can do is you can reset your own energy. Leadership and engagement is the management of energy.” So, when it comes to nonverbal, what I say is this. Before you go into your sales call, before you get up in front of a room and give a presentation, or before you go home at night to your spouse and kids, do two things. One, close your eyes and do three belly breaths. Just three big belly breaths. And then and then with your eyes still closed, say, “I have time.” Three times. And just those three breaths, those

24:13 Three diaphragmatic breaths and those three I have times will slow you down and get you present so that you’re there non-verbbally and they will get you in the right state of mind so that you’re ready to listen to the other party and you’re not all up in your head. I I like that. I teach something similar. I don’t I don’t do the verbatim like you do, but the breathing technique um it works a lot more wonders than people think. Small little things that we can do in our lives make a huge difference. Small sensations. Small sensations like noticing the temperature in the room, noticing your feet on the floor, notice your breath, notice the feel of your clothes on your skin. You can do all these things when you’re in a conversation. And it’s impossible to notice your breath at the same time that you’re in head your head thinking about what you’re going to say next. So, if you just notice your breath in a conversation, you’ll listen better. Right. And speaking of listening, um, in your world, silence was trained to you. Why is it so hard for men to open up um even when staying quiet is clearly costing them probably at home, at work,

25:15 And other endeavors? I think it’s because we’re conditioned to do so, particularly in like in the special operations world, there’s this whole quiet professional thing, right? And somehow, which I agree with, by the way, being a quiet professional and not spouting off and showing your butt and all that, I agree with that. But that that doesn’t mean being a silent professional. Being a silent professional means that you’re not advocating for yourself. It means that you’re not um you’re not you don’t have emotional access to the feelings that you have in the moment, which means you’re basically robotic and dead to the world. Um you know, we know that through recent neuroscience that to effectively engage another human, two things have to happen. You have to gain and hold the attention of the other party and you have to resonate emotionally. Well, if if you’re if you’re silent all the time, right? Or if you’re buttoned up or you’re buried or you’re armored up, you’re not going to do those things, which means you look like you don’t trust yourself and the other party is not going to trust you either. So, I think we’ve created a culture, Zach,

26:15 Where somehow emotional access, storytelling, and interpersonal skills at just a relatable level. Forget vulnerability. Just be relatable. You don’t have to be vulnerable. Just be relatable. and and and that to me seems just almost taboo in the world that we live in and it’s killing us. It’s killing particularly uh men. I I I’m no this starts eating your insides, right? And um that’s why it’s important to like take the approach you to reaching out to people. Um the title generosity of scars, what does it mean to call a scar generous? Well, to back that up metaphorically, you know, I’m a storyteller and so I always wanted to write a book about storytelling and and the methodology that I teach in storytelling is the generosity of scars. And in this case, scars are simply a metaphor for struggle. And the idea being that storytelling is a 100,000-year-old

27:16 Sensemaking tool. It’s the most effective way to communicate even today in the modern world. And the way our brain works is it has a mandate to make sense of the world and it uses story to do that. And if you can convey your ideas, products, um, thoughts in a story that starts with struggle and then it moves over to resolution. In other words, how you changed and what you learned from that struggle. The other party can’t look away from you. They’ll forget they even own a cell phone. And it could be in a TED talk. It could be in a sales pitch. It could be talking to your teenager. But the idea is you have to take the scars in your life that scuffed you up, the struggles, and you repurpose them into stories that serve other people. Hence the generosity. Generosity means giving all of oneself. When you share a story, giving all of yourself to the story you tell and the people that story serves. And most people are not willing to do that. Most people are buttoned up. They communicate from the neck up. And so generosity in this case means giving all of oneself in the story that you tell in the service of your audience.

28:16 Yeah. And and I frame it usually a little different with the scars. um you know no one can become a hero without having that journey of having scars or something happening to them to make them become the person there u and so the reason I asked that is because I’m a firm believer you know you have to have things in your life that happen to become that storyteller to help other people because it makes you more generous person more humble right um definitely the things that occurred in my life have made me humble and from that helping your fellow man means so much more. At least for me, it does. Um, and for you being able to do that in the same way with the storytelling and helping others is is impactful. Um, what what is your favorite story? Oh, my favorite story? Um, it’s none of mine. None of I love I love I love telling stories, but I love hearing them, right? You know. Okay, then what’s your favorite story

29:16 You’ve heard? Uh, I would say the stories that my dad would tell about growing up in Appalachia and fire and his stories firefighting. Um, I loved he passed away last summer and and I thought he was the best storyteller I ever met and uh he there’s a TEDex talk if people want to check it out. If you just type in Rex man um Youngstown TEDex uh you’ll see it. But my dad at 73 years old, uh, 6 months after beating cancer, he got up on the stage and he talk he told a story about the restoration of the American chestnut tree. Um, but he opens with a story about him and his father and us kids sitting around a fire up in the mountains. And from the first words out of his mouth, he has you, man. You can’t move. Like he that old man gets you. He was such a masterful storyteller. And the story was very simple, but it was filled with imagery and love and sensory details and you can’t help but be transported into it and feel like you’re right there with him and you hear the

30:17 Fire pop and you smell the smoke and next thing you know the guy’s got you in a trance. And that was for me growing up as a kid being able to sit in his presence and hear him tell stories. Uh like it was it was the most magical thing in the world. Still is to this day. I I still got recordings of his stories and I’ll just sit and listen to them. That’s awesome. That’s amazing. Um your other book says nobody’s coming to save you. For the man um waiting to be diagnosed or rescued, what is the line good news and not bad? Well, because you know that was just a mantra that I heard Green Beret NCOs’s tell me all the time because like we talked about by definition you’re going into these undergoverned at risk remote areas where trust is low and you got 12 dudes if you’re lucky and you know you’re going to be there a long time and it’s going to get ugly and and the NCOs’s that raised me and taught me they would always say sir nobody’s coming you know it’s just but they would always say it with a big grin on their face because it was really empowering and It was really liberating because you knew

31:18 That the guys that were at your left and right were the best in the world. You know, you knew that that that medic in that on that team could do an appendecttomy and he could prescribe medicine and he could do dentistry and veterinary medicine like he was the best. And so nobody’s coming me that means okay we have to self-actualize. It’s it’s just us. We have to get it done. And that is the message in the book. Although the title kind of grabs your attention because it sounds like, oh man, we’re in trouble. But the the real message in the book is nobody’s coming. Good. Let’s get started. Yep. Because every you need everything that you need to have because the subtitle is a Green Beret’s guide to getting big stuff done. Uh everything you need to get big stuff done in your life is already in your human operating system. We’ve just buried it. So this book is about how to unbury it. That’s great. That’s a Yeah, that that’s exactly what we need to do as human beings big time in the world where we open up that that that

32:19 What we buried in there. Um because it’ll change your life. Yeah, it change your life. Um so coming to the close here, what I like to do is I like closing out with what I call rapid fire. And it’s just um I don’t want much thought put to it. I’m going to ask you 10 questions and from there just get the first thing that comes to your mind. You ready? Sure. Yeah. All right. One move to connect with people fast. Go. Uh, ask them a question that starts with what and how about their day. I like that. All right. Rooftop leadership in one sentence. Connection. All right. The word connect like your life depends on it. How about that? Say that again. Connect like your life depends on it. Well, I think you’d approach it a lot differently if that was the truth, right? If if your life was dependent on it. The word you’d use the night um task force pineapple was running. Promise. I like that. That’s that’s well said. Uh name a scar you carry that you’ve made some kind of peace with.

33:19 Suicidal ideiation. I’ve been there myself. Uh nobody is coming to save you or somebody is. Which one do you tell people? Somebody is always right. There’s someone out there. Uh, name one thing you would tell yourself about your body during those 23 years that didn’t hold up. Say that part. Ask me that one one more time. Name one thing you would tell yourself about your body during those 23 years that it didn’t hold up. Um, you did what you had to do. Yeah. All right. Writing last out versus living it harder which way? Oh, writing it. Yeah. Why? uh because these were things that I had buried and didn’t want to come to come to face in in in in a way that they were told from the stage. It’s one thing to live them, it’s another thing to tell the world about them. It’s uh you know, as someone who started doing that myself in the last couple years, um the one thing I will say about it, why it’s hard to do,

34:21 What you get out of it is tremendous for you. What do you think have you gotten out of that from being able to go out there and give these in talks and tell them what happened yourself? Uh, I’ll give you this one. I was at a I was at a fundraiser a few months ago and a uh talking about the play and a Delta former Delta operator came up to me and he was tears and I’ll leave his name out of it and he and he said, “Can I talk to you for a second?” I said, “Sure.” He pulls me aside and he said, “I just want you to know your play saved my life.” I said, “What?” And he said, “I came to see your play in Tampa at the Stra Theater. I was ready to pull the trigger. I was done. I was checking out. I hit the go button. But I came to see your play on a whim. I was half liquored up. Uh after I watched Last Out, I went out in the parking lot of the Stra and I sat on the suicide hotline for three hours. And that was two years ago. And now I lead a nonprofit that counters veteran suicide. And I just wanted to say thank you. And I’ve had that happen more than once. That’s um damn, that’s inspiring, man. Um yeah. Um, one thing you want uh the

35:22 Cadets at VMI to leave with? Oh, wow. What a great question. Um, that that the things that we experienced uh in our life in the global war on terror, they don’t have to reexperience. You know, that that the things that we went through with our bodies and our mental health, they don’t have to go through that. Just because you I I’ll refine it. Just because you serve with honor doesn’t mean you’re supposed to suffer following doing that. Yeah, that makes total sense. Um because a lot of us do. Yeah. Uh the night task force pineapple was running. What’s the one image that still sticks with you? the way that um the way that all those guys and girls that I knew and loved all those years came together even though we many of us had not spoken in years. the way they

36:22 Came together without hesitation, with like smiles on their faces, like, “Hey, sir, looks like we’re getting the band back together.” And without without an ounce of reservation, these men and women jumped into the fray to honor a promise and never once uh questioned the the risk or anything about it. Um, they just they just did it because it was the right thing to do. It was the most humbling uh empowering thing I’ve ever seen in my life. That that’s Yeah, that’s um something you just can’t Yeah, that’s almost a word list for that because of uh the impact you had on so many individuals. Um that’s why I do the play. That’s why I do the play, Zach, because I’m able to bring the uh emotional point of view of that. It’s almost hard to put it into words, but in the play, I think civilians get the emotional point of view of why Afghanistan mattered so much and why veterans stepped up and did this and why our allies are so important. And

37:23 That emotional point of view, you you never forget that feeling. And so that’s why I do the play because I don’t even know how to put it into words, right? Sometimes it’s hard, right? Um yeah, just like we talk about the non-verbal communication like sometimes like you can just read things and from our human experience. Um I’m going to ask you just a kind of different question and end on this. Um there’s so many people that probably are so thankful for all the stuff you’ve done and impacted on them. Um when you look back just like you know the guy you talked about from two years ago, what does it mean for you as a human being to know all of what you’re doing for other people? Uh, you know, my wife Monty, who’s just off camera here, she she reminds me of those things all the time, and I have a tendency to not figure that, put it, not a big deal. But, you know, the the I appreciate you saying that. I mean, the thing that I try to I just try to be every day is I just try to be Rex and Anita Man’s son.

38:23 Like, that’s and I try to be Monty Man’s husband and dad to Cody Cooper and Braden. That’s that’s who I just try to show up as and just really not take myself seriously because if I start taking myself seriously or believing my own press, then I I do the cardinal sin that my dad always talked about, which was don’t strut. Uh and and I just I’m a you know I’m a servant and uh I’m a vessel and a vehicle uh who’s been gifted the opportunity to take good notes and tell stories about real heroes that I served alongside and you know men like you who who gave so much. So, like I don’t know. I I just it means the world to me when I meet them and when I hear from them. But what really means the world to me is when I see them telling their own story and I see them standing up there and making those connections and and moving into a version of themselves that they didn’t ever think they’d be able to do because of their pain and their their darkness. That’s what really lights me up is when I see them telling their own stories. at

39:24 57 years old, like that’s all I want to do anymore is help people who are struggling find their own voice and tell their own story because that’s frankly what the world needs. And if I can do that from the background, that that makes me pretty happy. Well, I would say you’re doing a tremendous job at it. And um I’m the impact you’re having on other people in this world. What I like talking about is what we don’t often realize is when we do those things, we can see it in the moment, but we don’t also realize the causation and the ripple effect we cause because what you make a change in that person’s life, the ripple effect is they go make other changes in other people’s lives as well. So small act can carry generationally. Um and I think that’s what you’re doing. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Well, platform is what you’re doing and you know this is why I think it’s so important for each of us to find the platforms where we can put our voice into the world unafraid and and uh and with all its scars and warts and and because you never know it’s the person

40:24 Sitting in the back row back corner that you never even meet whose life truly transformed and that’s I think that’s what we’re put here to do particularly after coming out of service 100% and that’s there’s no way better to end than that. So really uh thankful for you coming on today and um look forward to hearing from you then soon. Yeah, thanks Zach. Thanks for having me on, man. Scott, thank you. That was a real thing and I don’t say that lightly. And here’s what I want you to take from this. A man can spend 23 years being the strongest guy in the room and still be carrying a bill nobody’s counting. The body keeps a receipt. It doesn’t care how tough you were. And the standard checkup that tells you you aren’t normal isn’t measuring what you’re actually carrying. But here’s the other half. And Scott lived it. The scar isn’t just damage. It’s something you can use, something you can give, and nobody’s coming to hand you your health back. That’s not the bad news. That’s the good news because it means it’s yours to take. If you’re the guy who’s been told you’re fine, and you know that you’re not, this episode was for you. Stop waiting for someone to save you and go get the real

41:24 Numbers. Go check out Scott’s work, Rooftop Leadership, and his books. And if you’ve got something out of this, do me a favor, rate the show, leave a review, and hit subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you’re listening. It’s how the right men find this. No hype, just standards.