"That's Gen Z in a Nutshell" - SEAL Team 6 Operator on the Modern Day Navy SEAL

0:00 that's Jen Zena nutshell that's cool to hear they don't handle failure well the SEAL Teams need their own Science and Technology shop some of the things I did notice that are negatives I you were talking about drones and without skipping a beat this dude leans forward he goes and like we talked about every candidate writes a letter uh it's their last appeal I read it before we bring them in and then question them and make our decisions but the title of his letter was fear no man right that's interesting that sticks out that's a little different so already I was like what's this guy's deal so my CMC Dave Hansen's like hey yo let me put some rounds across this guy's bow let's try to Rattle him let's find out what this is all about is this ego is this guy have an ego here so dude comes in sits down

0:45 and my CMC is just letting them have it I mean like yelling like like if you've ever been on the receiving end of Dave Hansen you know giving it to you not a great place to be and I'm watching this guy's body language the whole time just like you and I are sitting here right now dude if we had a if we had a pulse pulse oomer on whatever it is I don't think his pulse would have jumped One Beat dude just sat there and took it he was so secure in himself um and he he was like Hey I I don't think I made a mistake here's what I did here are the facts of my case uh I stand by it I regret that we're in this room and we found ourselves here but I stand by my decisions and what I did in my choices and we're sitting there and so so we're like this guy's impressive and so I hit him up on the last question

1:30 I asked him I said hey man I have a question for you you wrote Fear no man right now I've got all the authority in the world to let you continue on in your dream of becoming an nav seal or end your career right now and moving on to something else do you fear me and without skiing a beat this dude leans forward he goes no sir but I respect you that's Jen Zena nutshell I was so impressed like Not only was I impressed having gone through what now I've gone through I can tell you I thought of him probably every single day I was going through this struggle because I'm like how do I get what that dude has as a 22-year-old man to look an' 06 in the eyes and have no fear he did not fear me

2:17 he respected me um how do I do that because I was a very afraid when I started this journey and started pushing back against Authority and saying this is wrong I think we're having a problem here guys I was very afraid to do that I was very afraid to confront uh people with higher rank than me so I'm looking to this gen Z guy he's 20s something years younger than me I'm like I'm inspired by this guy I got to learn from him um wow they're impressive man like that takes that takes big balls mhm and you don't just fake that that was genuine other things I saw with these this generation um man some of them so you would say that's a commonality throughout I saw a lot of that in genz yes yeah mhm that's one story but I saw things

3:04 like that so it's a good one to use to kind of I think um use an example to to say that this is pretty consistent what I saw across this this generation um we always like to pick on the next Generations make fun of them obviously because they're different from ours some of the things I did notice that are negatives um they don't to quote an Italian soft guy they don't bruise well and what I mean is uh some of them were helicopter parented I think growing up and so they can't handle they don't handle failure well when they fail at something sometimes they emotionally crumble we saw candidates do that um we saw candidates do that one guy this guy was a total stud um class leader class oicc I mean he looked like he was chiseled out of the like the granite of Oklahoma like this guy was just quintessential what you think of as you w as a potential seal officer great dude

3:50 showed a lot of great leadership attributes um class loved him very charismatic everyone was running with this guy and then on day one of first phase he failed his first Four Mile time run and he quit filled it by like 2 seconds and he quit we're like what you know you almost want to like how do you rewind the clock sometimes and say no no no don't say that but he said it and you know how that is you don't unring that Bell and so country like why did you do that dude like you were crushing this program everyone loved you and he said well how can I lead men if I can't hold the standard myself now our point to him was that's admirable however you missed the entire point of of our program nobody ever succeeds at everything how do you lead through adversity is a better question

4:36 how do you lead when you don't succeed because as we talked about the enemy gets a vote uh sometimes you can do all the right things on Target and still be caught on your heels how do you lead in those cases uh so that was there was a negative that I saw in their generation but that wasn't consistent with all of them but but a lot of them um man they are they have an incredible sense of teamm ship uh one more story and then we'll move on I think but uh this one time I was coming out of a couple months out of a boot I'd broken my foot um and so I was not in the best shape haven't been in a boot for like three months in my first phase OIC total stud he's like Hey sir we're doing the murf as a class um we're going to lead the murf for one of these uh pts it was I think we were at the one

5:23 of the annivers of Red Wings or or one of these things and and um are you in and in my mind I'm thinking like I'm not in shape to do a murf in front of candidates right now um but how do you say no you know he the skipper so of course I'll be there so me and my CMC show up and we're doing this and um man I was sucking like bad bad and I'm so far behind everyone else they're like knocking out all their reps all for those out there don't with the Murphy is you can look it up but it's it's a mile run I think it's 100 pull-ups 200 push-ups and 300 squats is that right right in another mile run I think that's right um so I'm still cranking out my reps and these guys are already done with their reps and they've started their second run and it's just

6:10 me and my CMC on the grinder now still doing the Reps like we're that far behind everybody because I'm that out of shape and it it was embarrassing I was I was humiliated as a CO my CMC was a good teammate he was pretending that like he was hanging with me like like oh no it's not you dragging me back but it totally was he was just being a good good swim buddy so uh we started our run and now guys are actually coming back from the last run and I'm I'm so beat down and defeated and depressed uh as as I'm running through the sand I'm looking at my feet I'm depressed I'm I'm watching The Sweat fall off my face and I'm thinking like how do I Salvage this moment as the CEO here uh when I wasn't hanging with these dudes and I I've embarrassed myself and I get to the turn around Point hit it turn around and start to run back and I see something different I look up and I see my first

6:55 phase o I see coming back to pick me up and as he comes around the corner a candidates behind him another candidate behind him another candidate behind him no one told him to do this they came back filed in right behind me didn't say a word just got in place marched with me to pick me up as a straggler there was no condemnation in their eyes there was no uh pity there was nothing other than we here to be a teammate and as we're marching now all of a sudden like another one files in another whole class uh I start to get a little bit better my gate opens up my breathing fixes I'm starting to get okay that that surge of energy and my first phase o I see Whispers behind me it's always nice KN when someone's coming back for you and

7:42 this was this class and they just did it and then we come around the corner they do their class chant I'm joining in the Chant dude I got goosebumps like like man these guys are incredible super inspirational just one more I can't stop one more where at s island uh Dave and I and we hear this weird noise we come around the corner Sun's going down and the whole class is standing around the American flag and they're doing colors and they're lowering it and they're sing in the national anthem as a class so we stop salute do the thing and I look at the instructors I said hey um do we mandate that is that something like we forced them to do they're like no no they just do it on their own they started it a couple classes back as a tradition and they just kept passing it on these Patriots just love their

8:27 country uh and they bring so much to the table not to mention the fact that they they're incredibly Innovative man yeah cool to hear yeah we that's something I want to dive into a little bit breakfast we were talking about um they are innovators yeah and they're fast innovators and it sounds like the the military in general is having a hell of a it's impossible for them to keep up right you were talking about that and so so I it sounds like the SEAL Teams need their own Science and Technology shop well I mean you could just say gen Z run you know uh because they they are the Science and Tech these guys I mean they they grew up

9:14 on cell phones they understand coding they understand man machine pairing in ways that we can't understand from Our Generations I didn't get my first smartphone till what like mid-30s or early 30s maybe and so they are automatically looking at problems through a different lens than than we'll ever get to uh on top of that you know while we did some great things in the war on terror and we evolved as a as a as a war fighting entity I think that a lot of that is built scar tissue and is Irrelevant in the fight to come and so we're holding on to that is my generation a little bit like no no we were successful because we did it this way well that's irrelevant and gen Z sees that it's irrelevant um and in a sense we're almost slowing them down as a as a military uh as a military uh our

10:00 acquisition process in general is too slow it's a five we talked about this it's a fiveyear cycle and that's if you have a requirement written to get something into the cycle and and funded in order to get it in the war Fighters hands and what we're hearing from the front lines of Ukraine is that they're on a 30-day cycle of evolution right now where they come up with a new tactic Monster Garage 3D print whatever Implement and within 30 days the enemy can counter it and so now you're having to evolve to a new tactic a new technique a new procedure a new piece of equipment that helps you exploit now what they're doing differently and so it's this constant 30-day Loop but we're supposed to catch up with that with a 5year cycle right now to fund our our troops with the next piece of gear have you have you seen them is there anything specific you've seen them invent or

10:45 innovate that that captured your interest I mean yeah yeah uh yeah for sure um let me think here I think you were talking about drones yeah I mean there's there's a bunch of examples so I was going I was going through my files and then I'm wondering what can I say what can I not but the drones is a great example is just last weekend we at a hotel with some some people and uh we had an E6 and then a contractor who's helping them out and they literally brought like a 3D printer and all this stuff and they're like 3D printing parts of a drone uh soldering wires together uh and making this like mobile backpack with a drone with a some glasses that serve as an fpv um first person point of view with an

11:32 overlay so it's almost it's almost like what lucky was talking about with you uh a few episodes ago but the Monster Garage version lowtech for sure but so you could see through the glasses normally but you'd have the overlay image of what the Drone was doing and they were like just in their off time came up with this are you [ __ ] me just coming up with this and they're yeah we don't so what what what what sparked that mini invention they just want the technology and the and the SEAL Teams doesn't have it so they're like [ __ ] it we'll just make it I think so like we could do this I mean like like like harness that kind of energy cut it off the leash you know what I mean like hey dudes here's your left and rights um let's give you funding authorities and equipment to

12:18 just experiment have fun with this stuff uh boom run let's see what we come back with compete by teams see what Rises to the top buy some offthe shelf stuff Monster Garage it we should just be giving these like Limitless authorities and autonomy Direction run this way you can't cross these thresholds legally whatever but but right now um I mean they're doing it on their own because they're hungry and they see that there's a need but we're not evolving fast enough as a military to I think scratch their itch as gen Z and that's a problem because like we've talked about they're not going to sit around forever and wait for us to to do what needs to be done they're GNA leave because they I can go make money somewhere else doing this or or if this isn't gonna if you're not as Innovative as I hoped you were when I got here I'm going to walk away you only have so much shelf life before they're

13:04 they're going to get impatient and walk away what would it take to do what would it take to do that to to to have an S&T shop set up with funding so they can innovate no matter where you're watching Shan Ryan Show from if you get anything out of this please like comment subscribe and most importantly share this everywhere you possibly can and if you're feeling extra generous please leave us review on Apple and Spotify podcasts